TIME AND THE ELOWERS 
329- 
empty name — they believed that its all-seeing eye kept a 
severe watch over the plightd troth of Love, and that the 
Recording Angel never blotted out a single letter which 
stood beside his name who had broken the heart of a fond 
and confiding woman. 
Wealth had not then ploughed down and dug out that 
deep abyss every foot of which separates us further from 
heaven : man wandered not in those days in the dark, 
amid stumbling-blocks and wedges of unfeeling gold; he 
moved not in that cold, cheerless atmosphere where Love 
would never be able to breathe, and Affection could never 
open the smallest of its beautiful buds. 
For in that heart which pines only for riches. Love 
can, at best, but find only a brief dwelling-place — no 
blossom can ever come into full bloom amid such dark- 
ness I Mammon alone dwells there : he is the sole god of 
those cheerless dominions, and ever doth he sit alone with 
his aching head pillowed upon a wedge of gold. The 
cold, faint light of the unfeeling riches that surround him 
makes him shiver — he can find no warmth in his bright 
icy diamonds — he freezes in his mail of silver — ^and when 
it is too late, learns that the warm and -beating heart of 
a loving woman is the richest gem that the angels ever 
dropped into the world, that without her Happiness can- 
not exist, that there is no true Love where she is not, that 
real Friendship lives nowhere long unless nursed within 
her gentle breast. 
That when tender Pity returned to heaven, she threw 
her mantle over the white shoulders of woman, and bade 
her ever wear it for her sake; that Sorrow and Sincerity 
pressed her lips ere they soared away together, hand in 
hand ; they left her not hidden by a curtain of gold, but 
kneeling with her long hair unbound, and her white sup- 
plicating hands uplifted, praying for someone to come and 
comfort her. That after a time an angel, with averted 
head, led forth man, then turned away weeping and silent ; 
and all night, as he stood alone, sorrowing, beside the 
battlements of heaven, his immortal heart smote him for 
what he had done. 
It was one day, as Time sat musing in the midst of his 
ruins, while his scythe lay idly by his side, and he took 
