FullReads

Central in all his life was the little cabin of two rooms and a loft over it. There is no day of his life, from that time to this, of which Fanny cannot tell you the story from his weekly letters home. For though she does not live in the cabin now, she keeps the old letters filed and in order, and once a week steadily Ethan has written to her, and the letters are all sealed now with his own seal-ring, and on the seal-ring is carved the inscription, “Love is the whole.”

I must not try to tell you the story of Alice’s fortunes, or Sarah’s. Every day of their lives was a romance, as is every day of yours and mine. Every day was a love-story, as may be every day of yours and mine, if we will make it so. As they all grew older their homes were all somewhat parted. The boys became men and married. The girls became women and married. George never pulled down the old farm-house, not even when he and Mr. Vaux built the beautiful house that stands next to it to-day. He put trellises on the sides of it. He trained cotoneaster and Roxbury wax-work over it. He carved a cross himself, and fastened it in the gable. Above the door, as you went in, was a picture of Mary Mother and her Child, with this inscription:–

“Holy cell and holy shrine,
For the Maid and Child divine!
Remember, thou that seest her bending
O’er that babe upon her knee,
All heaven is ever thus extending
Its arms of love round thee.
Such love shall bless our arched porch;
Crowned with his cross, our cot becomes a church.”

And in that little church he gathered the boys and girls of the neighborhood every Sunday afternoon, and told them stories and they sang together. And on the week days he got up children’s parties there, which all the children thought rather the best experiences of the week, and he and his wife and his own children grew to think the hours in the cabin the best hours of all. There were pictures on the walls; they painted the windows themselves with flower-pictures, and illuminated them with colored leaves. But there were but two inscriptions. These were over the inside of the two doors, and both inscriptions were the same,–“Love is the whole.”

They told all these stories, and a hundred more, at a great Thanksgiving party after the war. Walter and his wife and his children came from Sangamon County; and the General and all his family came down from Winetka; and Fanny and the Governor and all their seven came all the way from Minnesota; and Alice and her husband and all her little ones came up the river, and so across from Quincy; and Sarah and Gilbert, with the twins and the babies, came in their own carriage all the way from Horace. So there was a Thanksgiving dinner set for all the six, and the six husbands and wives, and the twenty-seven children. In twenty years, since their father died, those brothers and sisters had lived for each other. They had had separate houses, but they had spent the money in them for each other. No one of them had said that anything he had was his own. They had confided wholly each in each. They had passed through much sorrow, and in that sorrow had strengthened each other. They had passed through much joy, and the joy had been multiplied tenfold because it was joy that was shared. At the Thanksgiving they acted the ballad of Lochinvar again, or rather some of the children did. And that set Fanny the oldest and Sarah the youngest to telling to the oldest nephews and nieces some of the stories of the cabin days. But Fanny said, when the children asked for more, “There is no need of any more,–‘Love is the whole.'”