The Star Of The North

Daughter's Love.

There is no one so slow to note the follies
or sins of a father as a daughter. The wife
of his bosom may fly in horror from his embrace, but his fair-haired child cleaves to
him in boundless charity. Quickened by
the visitation of pain to the paternal dwelling, her prayers are more brief but more earnest--her efforts doubled and untiring--and
if she can but win a transient smile from
that sullen and gloomy face, she is paid--oh,
how richly paid!--for all her sleepless cares
and unceasing labor. The father may sink
from deep to deep--from a lower to a yet
lower depth--Satan's kinsman and Satan's
prey. Those who, in a happier hour, received
largely of his benefactions, may start
when they behold his shadow, and accelerate
their pace to get beyond it--all, all may forsake
him--God and the world--all but Satan,
and his daughter. Poor child, if thou canst
not save, thy feeble torch, made as bright as
thy power canst make it, throws, at least, a
flickering light upon the path, till the object
of thy unquenchable love has forever left
thee, and is shrouded in the thick darkness;
and when undone--when gone from thee,
and gone forever though thou mayst wear
thy early love, and know in him all that thy
young heart pictured, yet, again and again,
in the midst of thy placid joy, even with thy
smiling infant on thy knee, the lost one will
not be all forgotten. Seeing the past, as if it
were only yesterday, forgetful of thy little
darling, thou wilt exclaim from the depths of
thy ever mindful and affectionate spirit "My
father! oh, my father!"