The sentiment contained in the notes was
that which was common in the school, and expressed a melancholy
foreboding of early death, and a touching desire to leave hair enough
this side the grave to constitute a sort of strand of remembrance.
With little variation, the poetry that made the hair precious was in
the words, and, as a Cockney would say, set to the hair, following:
"This lock of hair,
Which I did wear,
Was taken from my head;
When this you see,
Remember me,
Long after I am dead."
John liked to read these verses, which always made a new and fresh
impression with each lock of hair, and he was not critical; they were
for him vehicles of true sentiment, and indeed they were what he used
when he inclosed a clip of his own sandy hair to a friend. And it
did not occur to him until he was a great deal older and less
innocent, to smile at them. John felt that he would sacredly keep
every lock of hair intrusted to him, though death should come on the
wings of cholera and take away every one of these sad, red-ink
correspondents.
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