to the land where the law of color and caste does not rule, but the smart serving-maid, who had grown from a child to a stout woman during the interval, seemed to have some remembrance of the ancient guest at the old plantation; and the little boy, Bob, who presided at the brush, grinned with all his might when I talked to him of his Uncle Morocco, as if we were friends and kindred at once by that tie of association.
Our stay in the city was a succession of delightful recognitions, deepened yet not wholly saddened by remembrances of those who had passed away. Our religious services renewed all the best associations of former years, and for five days the hours were too few for the discourses, devotions, and discussions which engaged the conference of worshippers, met together from so many States. It is not the place to describe the theological aspects of the occasion, and I will only give a description or two of social experiences.
An observing man could write a good treatise upon the chronology of the human features or the traces of time left upon the human countenance by various periods of years. This visit has given a far milder idea of the ravages of this ruthless power. My friends who were in early manhood eighteen years ago are now in their prime; their look is the same as then, nay, even more decidedly pronounced, and, like Pat's portrait, "more like than the original." They who were in the meridian then are now of more venerable mien, yet not one such face had any trait that did not seem familiar and agreeable. The feminine complexion is indeed a more delicate chronicle of times and experiences; yet the many buxom mothers in whom I recognized the sprightly girls of eighteen years ago were but the same flowers in fuller bloom; and I more than once, in view of a worthy mother with group of a half-dozen children about her, was reminded of the favorite theory, that even personal beauty is more a moral than a physical attribute, and ripens, instead of dying, with years of faithful service to life's true ideal. What Dante said of Beatrice in Paradise is true of every woman who does her work nobly and keeps her soul unspotted from the world. There is a "second beauty," even fairer than the first—a beauty radiating from a life beyond that of youthful bloom.
