folly, yet in their going did they leave behind a lesson of wisdom.

The morning dawned--the blessed Christmas-morning! With it came my
good and dutiful, my real life--children. When they were all
assembled round me, and when, subdued and thoughtful beneath the
tender and gracious associations of the day, each in turn
ministered, reverently and lovingly, to the old mother's need of
body and of soul, my heart was melted within me. Blessed, indeed,
was I in a lot full to overflowing of all the good gifts which a
wise and merciful Maker could lavish upon his erring and craving
creature. I stood reproved. I felt humbled to think that I should
ever for a moment have indulged one idle or restless longing for the
restoration of that past which had done its appointed work, and out
of which so gracious a present had arisen. One idea impressed me
strongly: I could not but feel that had the craving of my soul been
answered in reality, as my dream had foreshadowed; and had the wise
and beneficent order of nature been disturbed and distorted from its
just relations, how fearful would have been the result! Here, in my
green old age, I stood amongst a new generation, honoured for what I
was, beloved for what I had been. What if, at some mortal wish in
some freak of nature, the form which I now bore were for ever to
remain before the eyes of my children! Were such a thing to befall,
how would their souls ever be lifted upward to the contemplation of
that higher state of being into which it is my hope soon to pass
when the hand which guided me hither shall beckon me hence? At the
thought my heart was chastened. Never since that night have I
indulged in any one wish framed in opposition to nature's laws.
_Now_ I find my dream-children in the present; and to the past I
yield willingly all things which are its own--among the rest, the
Lost Ages.