216 UNOPENED PARCELS.

I did not speak, for although I thought it an
interesting story about old John, I could not all
at once reconcile myself to the thought of those
tedious answers in the Catechism that had so long
been my Sunday’s dread.

My father broke the silence. :

“And there are yet other unopened parcels,
Honor; but I do not like to say too much about
them. Only this. As I talk to you now, so I
was once talked to myself; but I was impatient,
more so than you, my child, a thousand times ;
and it was not till the hand of death came between
me and my poor mother that I thought seriously
of anything she had said. I loved her, however,
and my grief was almost indignation, it was so
stormy. That was a dark, heavy burden, Honor,
but it opened at last into light. My bitter regret
for past indifference helped it to do so, perhaps.
I taxed my memory to recall what I could never
hear again. I got up many a time in the night to
put down on paper any words which occurred
suddenly to my mind ; and much that I have said
to you is but an echo of those old memories. And