The first line in the forehead,
the first streak in the hair are chronicled without malice, but without
extenuation. The footprints of thought, of passion, of purpose are all
treasured in these fossilized shadows. Family-traits show themselves in
early infancy, die out, and reappear. Flitting moods which have escaped
one pencil of sunbeams are caught by another. Each new picture gives us
a new aspect of our friend; we find he had not one face, but many.
It is hardly too much to say, that those whom we love no longer leave us
in dying, as they did of old. They remain with us just as they appeared
in life; they look down upon us from our walls; they lie upon our
tables; they rest upon our bosoms; nay, if we will, we may wear their
portraits, like signet-rings, upon our fingers. Our own eyes lose the
images pictured on them. Parents sometimes forget the faces of their own
children in a separation of a year or two. But the unfading artificial
retina which has looked upon them retains their impress, and a fresh
sunbeam lays this on the living nerve as if it were radiated from the
breathing shape.
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