" There were tables
on either side of my aunt's bed. She was a bad sleeper, and wanted, or
thought she wanted, many things at night. I put a book near the matches
on one side, and a book under the box of chocolate drops on the other.
Whether she wanted a light, or whether she wanted a drop, there was a
precious publication to meet her eye, or to meet her hand, and to say
with silent eloquence, in either case, "Come, try me! try me!" But one
book was now left at the bottom of my bag, and but one apartment was
still unexplored--the bath-room, which opened out of the bed-room. I
peeped in; and the holy inner voice that never deceives, whispered to
me, "You have met her, Drusilla, everywhere else; meet her at the bath,
and the work is done." I observed a dressing-gown thrown across a chair.
It had a pocket in it, and in that pocket I put my last book. Can words
express my exquisite sense of duty done, when I had slipped out of the
house, unsuspected by any of them, and when I found myself in the street
with my empty bag under my arm? Oh, my worldly friends, pursuing the
phantom, Pleasure, through the guilty mazes of Dissipation, how easy it
is to be happy, if you will only be good!
When I folded up my things that night--when I reflected on the true
riches which I had scattered with such a lavish hand, from top to bottom
of the house of my wealthy aunt--I declare I felt as free from all
anxiety as if I had been a child again.
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