There were verses in many
languages, and innumerable pages of fragments, separated by dates, like
memoranda. "Why should you burn all these?" I timidly suggested; "has
not man a moral as well as a material inheritance to bequeath to those
who come after him? You are perhaps destroying thoughts and feelings
which might have quickened a soul."
"What matters it?" he said; "there are tears enough in this world, and
we need not deposit a few more in the heart of man. These," said he,
showing the verses, "are the cast-off, useless feathers of my soul; it
has moulted since then, and spread its bolder wings for eternity!" He
then continued to burn and destroy, while I looked out of the broken
window at the dreary landscape.
At length he called me once more to the bedside. "Here," said he--"save
this one little manuscript, which I have not courage to burn. When I am
gone, my poor nurse would make bags for her seeds with it, and I would
not that the name which fills its pages should be profaned. Take, and
keep it till you hear that I am no more.
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