THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 
 
 " I have gathered a posie of other men's flowers, and nothing 
 but the thread that binds them is mine own." 
 
 MONTAIGNE 
 
 SIXTH EDITION 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY 
 1898
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
 BY A. C. McCLURG AND C<X 
 
 A.D. 1894
 
 TO 
 
 WHO HAS FIXED MY IDKALS, EMBODIED MY DREAMS, 
 
 AND DEEPENED MY SENSE OF THE POSSIBLE 
 
 BEAUTY OF EXISTENCE. 
 
 January, 1894. 
 
 1703882
 
 AN EXPLANATION. 
 
 T HAVE wandered among many ages 
 *- and climes of literature, and have 
 picked up various bits of knowledge and 
 beauties of sentiment. When, " In Maiden 
 Meditation," I began to record the flying 
 thoughts that have come in the midst of 
 dinings and dances, I was often puzzled to 
 know the children of my own brain from 
 those of my adopted fancy. However, Mr. 
 Emerson ranks the quoter of a good thing 
 next to its originator, and I acknowledge 
 that I have been a very Sabine, both con 
 sciously and unconsciously, in appropriat 
 ing other people's goods. After all, who 
 among us is wholly original ? Not Homer, 
 singing the myths and traditions of olden 
 Greece, nor yet inspired Shakespeare, em 
 bodying into classic and enduring form the 
 legends of all lands and ages. Our mod-
 
 8 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 ern philosophers but interpret the wisdom 
 of Plato, and each succeeding generation 
 of wise men but gives the same answers to 
 the same old questions that still defy solu 
 tion. And there is no new thing under 
 the sun. I have omitted the " pestiferous 
 quotation-mark," assuming that my readers 
 have wandered as widely as I have. They 
 will recognize, I am sure, without fur 
 ther indication, the rare gems, which, as old 
 friends, flash back smiles of recognition, 
 and they will, I hope, appreciate and enjoy 
 the new ones found on every page, deem 
 ing them worthy, if only in a small degree, 
 of the good company in which they are 
 found. It is, after all, only a simple record 
 of a woman's moods, caprices, tendernesses, 
 dreams. May the mosaic be judged har 
 monious, whether the fragments be seized 
 from Diogenes or Dr. Holmes, from Balzac, 
 George Eliot, or Julien Gordon, or whether 
 they are only the dreams and theories of 
 
 E. V. A.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 AFTER THE BALL J 3 
 
 AFTER DINNER 55 
 
 AFTER CHURCH 97 
 
 AFTER A WEDDING 12 7 
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER 167
 
 AFTER THE BALL.
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION." 
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 
 
 " I heard as I hurriedly entered the door 
 The church clock strike twelve : 
 The last waltz was just o'er." 
 
 WITH soul attuned to the exquisite 
 melody of that last waltz, I am 
 alone with my thoughts. The frolicsome 
 rhythm of the scherzo seems to tell of the 
 gayety and frivolity of the hours past ; the 
 soft andante engenders sentiment and peace 
 which, as the sounding brass becomes louder 
 and more rapid, is merged into the vanity, 
 emulation, and contention of the ball-room. 
 Music was before speech, and is now beyond 
 speech; (for language is not subtle enough 
 to express the deepest, highest, tenderest 
 longings of the human heart.] Music is 
 a language conveying the most vivid im 
 pressions, embodying the whole range of
 
 14 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 emotions, from the delicate, ethereal tender 
 ness of a dream of love, to the despairing 
 wail of a nation borne down by the anguish 
 of ultimate defeat. 
 
 Perhaps a funeral march the heavy, 
 alternating chords in the bass sounding like 
 the rhythmic tread of armed men, the sob 
 bing chords of a minor harmony freighted 
 with the tragedy, the heart-break, of a thou 
 sand defeats weigh one down as with the 
 agony of a personal grief, when out of the 
 tumult and anguish of the chant a heavenly 
 melody soars like the prayer of faith. The 
 soft murmur of a nocturne, the faint cares 
 sing diminuendo of the lullaby, the wailing 
 harmony of the dirge, the melodious bene 
 diction that is like the " Peace be with 
 you" of an angel, the tumultuous cres 
 cendo of emotion, like a majestic epic, 
 becomes an awakening and a revelation. 
 Only music can bridge the vast distance, 
 and interpret to Heaven the prayers of 
 men in all the omnipotence of their de 
 sires, in all the diversities of their woe, 
 with the tints of their meditations and
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 15 
 
 their ecstasies, with the impetuous spring 
 of their repentance, and the thousand im 
 aginations of their manifold beliefs. 
 
 My ball- dress is thrown over the chair. 
 Its freshness and purity are gone ; and as 
 I gaze sorrowfully at its tattered condition, 
 I sigh, not for " the fleeting show for man's 
 illusion given," but for an undiscovered 
 bourne, where woman's illusions and other 
 trappings will be allowed to rest in peace. 
 What a pretty, dainty gown it was, and how 
 much the knowledge that it was becoming 
 added to my pleasure ! VThe consciousness 
 of being well dressed, it is said, imparts a 
 blissfulness to the human heart that even 
 religion is powerless to give or take away, 
 and its importance can hardly be over-esti 
 mated by the feminine mind. \ The value 
 of clothes was impressed upon the heathen, 
 and they declared the art of weaving to be 
 of divine origin ; for, according to Grecian 
 mythology, a goddess was sent from Mount 
 Olympus to teach this art to the Greek 
 maids. The Hebrew mother, with constant 
 toil, accomplished the covering for her
 
 1 6 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 household. "She layeth her hand to the 
 spindle, and her hands hold the distaff." 
 The savage who adorns himself with strings 
 of shells or with feathers has taken the 
 first step towards civilization ; and the tat 
 tooed is somewhat in advance of the un- 
 frescoed. 
 
 Clothes have become among all nations 
 an index of character. For woman in 
 dressmaking, as man in legislating, does 
 not proceed by mere accident, but the 
 hand is ever guided by the mysterious 
 operations of the mind. What meaning 
 lies, not only in texture and design of our 
 garments, but in color. From the sober 
 drab to the high-flaming scarlet, mental 
 idiosyncrasies unfold themselves in choice 
 of color. Carlyle, after astute reasoning, 
 arrives at the conclusion that "Cut be 
 tokens intellect and talent j color reveals 
 temper and heart." 
 
 . Authors realize how much depends upon 
 the clothes that are worn by characters in 
 novels, clothes put on, not only to please 
 the readers who are to associate with them,
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 17 
 
 but to exhibit the inner life of the char 
 acters. It is pretty well understood that 
 women, and even men, are made to exhibit 
 the deepest passions and the tenderest 
 emotions by the clothes they put on. 
 How a woman in a crisis hesitates before 
 her wardrobe, and at last chooses just what 
 will express her innermost feelings ! At 
 times, I think his Satanic Majesty himself 
 sends a special messenger to preside over 
 a woman's toilet, to peep and hide and 
 beckon in the plait of a dress, in the 
 curve of a girdle, on the tip of a shoe, 
 in a coil of hair. 
 
 Does she dress for her lover as she 
 dresses to receive her lawyer, who has 
 come to inform her that she is living be 
 yond her income? Would not the lover 
 be spared time and pain if he knew, as the 
 novelist does, whether the young lady is 
 dressing for a rejection or an acceptance? 
 
 A clever man has acknowledged recently 
 that clothes alter his very nature ; that he 
 could not help being fierce or daring with 
 a plume in his bonnet, a dagger in his
 
 1 8 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 belt, and a lot of puffy white things down 
 his sleeves. But in an ulster he wants to 
 get behind a lamp-post and call the police. 
 A woman, I know, never appears to better 
 advantage in any way her talk is never 
 so brilliant, her heart is never so loving 
 and charitable, as when she is conscious of 
 looking her best. A brilliant Frenchman 
 declares he has theories concerning the 
 veriest trifles, gloves, boots, buckles, to 
 which he attaches the greatest importance, 
 having discovered that a certain relation 
 exists between the character of women 
 and the caprice of costume. Each woman 
 should know that the very folds of her dra 
 pery, each frill of lace, are but expressions 
 of the inner self, betraying its boundless 
 grace or its poverty of outline and expres 
 sion. Is it not, then, the part of wisdom 
 in women to stand for hours before the 
 mirror in adorning this " perishable body," 
 to twist carefully the silken tresses, to guard 
 tenderly the single cuticle that divides youth 
 and gayety from wrinkled old age and lone 
 liness, to puzzle and weary their minds in
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 19 
 
 youth by mathematical problems, lest they 
 should fail to properly calculate the angle 
 at which to wear their bonnets or the sym 
 metrical ratio of a tie-back? Is it not time 
 well spent, since the most trifling details 
 of dress, the grain of cloth, the shade of 
 a ribbon, may be uncomfortable revelations 
 of character to appreciative eyes? Most 
 women, I fancy, appreciate the importance 
 of dress. Did you ever see a group of 
 half-dozen women, arch, brilliant, mutinous, 
 discussing some subject in secret conclave 
 with such avidity that you long to know 
 what it is, believing the topic to be some 
 thing racy, wicked, delicious? When you 
 draw near you discover that they are 
 eagerly discussing whether petticoats are 
 to be scant or full next season, flat at the 
 hips or bouffant, drapery long or short. 
 
 It is exquisitely absurd to tell a girl that 
 beauty is of no value, dress of no use. 
 Her whole prospect and happiness in life 
 may depend upon a new gown or a becom 
 ing bonnet ; and if she has five grains of 
 common-sense she will find out that love
 
 , 
 
 20 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 itself will hardly survive a winter hat worn 
 after Easter. 
 
 Men may pretend to like intellectual 
 women, but they can pardon anything 
 better than an ill-fitting gown. Better a 
 thousand times (I say it after the most 
 profound consideration) be frivolous than 
 badly dressed. Moralists may continue to 
 impress upon the world that beauty is a 
 delusion, faces are masks (it is always, by 
 the way, a feminine eye that detects the 
 moral deficiencies hidden under the " dear 
 deceit " of beauty) ; but it remains an axiom 
 of life that a charming face can make a 
 man campaign and fight and slay like a 
 demon, can make a coward of him, can fill 
 him with ambition to win the world, and 
 can tame him into the domesticity of a 
 dining-room cat. 
 
 It is true that behind those dark, soul- 
 stirring eyes may be a heart devoid of one 
 impulse of tenderness ; that the clear gray 
 eye, no traitor to the heart, may reveal 
 no insincerity, no want of frankness; but 
 if in the reaction of disgust you betake
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 21 
 
 yourself to a fishy eye, there is surprising 
 similarity of result. One begins to suspect, 
 after a while, that there is no direct corre 
 lation between eyes and morals. 
 
 Nature has a language, and is not un- 
 veracious ; but we don't know all the 
 intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in a 
 hasty reading we may happen to extract 
 the very opposite of her real meaning. 
 
 The love of beauty is shared by man 
 with most animals. The wings of the moth 
 are painted by love, by desire ; and this is 
 the foundation of the bird's song. For my 
 own part, I have no less respect and deep 
 sympathy for a man who has fallen under 
 the witchery of a lovely face. Is it any 
 weakness, pray, to be wrought on by ex 
 quisite music, to feel its wondrous har 
 monies searching the subtlest windings of 
 your soul, the delicate fibres of life, where 
 no memory can penetrate, and binding 
 together your whole being past and pres 
 ent into one unspeakable vibration, melting 
 you in one moment with all the tenderness, 
 all the love, that has been scattered
 
 22 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION, 
 
 through the toilsome years, concentrating 
 in one emotion of heroic courage or resigna 
 tion all the hard-earned lessons of self-re 
 nouncing sympathy, blending your present 
 joy with past sorrow, your present sorrow 
 with all your past joy? If not, then neither 
 is it a weakness to be so wrought upon by 
 the exquisite curves of a woman's cheek 
 and neck and arms, by the liquid depths of 
 her beseeching eyes, or the sweet childish 
 pout of her lips. For the beauty of a lovely 
 woman is like music; what can one say 
 more? 
 
 Beauty has an expression beyond and 
 far above the one woman's soul that it 
 clothes, as the words of genius have a wider 
 meaning than the thought that prompted 
 them. It is more than a woman's love that 
 moves us in a woman's eyes. It seems to 
 be a far-off mighty love that has come near 
 to us, and made speech for itself there : 
 the rounded cheek, the dimpled arm, move 
 us by something more than their prettiness, 
 by their close kinship with all we have 
 known of tenderness and peace.
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 23 
 
 A woman's arm touched the soul of a 
 great sculptor two thousand years ago, so 
 that he wrought an image of it for the Par 
 thenon, which moves us still, as it clasps 
 lovingly the time-worn marble of a headless 
 trunk. 
 
 The noblest nature sees the most of this 
 impersonal expression in beauty (it is need 
 less to say there are gentlemen with whis 
 kers dyed and undyed who see nothing of 
 it whatever) ; and for this reason the no 
 blest nature is often blinded to the character 
 of the one woman's soul that the beauty 
 clothes. Whence the tragedy of human life 
 is likely to continue for a long time to come, 
 in spite of mental philosophers who are ready 
 with the best recipes for avoiding mistakes 
 of this kind. 
 
 All honor and reverence to the divine 
 beauty of form ! Let us cultivate it to the 
 utmost in men, women, and children, in 
 our gardens and in our houses ; but let us 
 love that other beauty, too, which lies in no 
 secret of proportion, but in the secret of t- 
 deep human sympathy. Paint us an angel,
 
 24 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 if you can, with floating violet robes, and a 
 face paled by celestial light ; paint us yet 
 oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face 
 upward, and opening her arms to welcome 
 the divine glory. But do not impose upon 
 us aesthetic rules which shall banish from 
 the region of art those old women with 
 work-worn hands, men with rounded backs 
 and stupid, weather-beaten faces, that have 
 bent over spades and done the rough work 
 of the world. 
 
 In this world there are so many common, 
 coarse people who have no picturesque, sen 
 timental wretchedness. It is needful we 
 remember their existence, or else we may 
 happen to leave them quite out of our 
 religion and philosophy, form lofty theories 
 which fit only a world of extremes, and fail 
 to sympathize with those men who have 
 given the loving pains of a life to the faith 
 ful representing of commonplace things, 
 men who have seen beauty in these com 
 monplace things, and delight in showing 
 how kindly the light of heaven falls on 
 them.
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 25 
 
 There are few prophets, few heroes, and 
 few divinely beautiful women in the world. 
 But beauty is not everything, and things 
 may be lovable that are not altogether 
 handsome. I think it is quite true that 
 the majority of the human race have been 
 ugly. 
 
 I have a friend or two whose class of 
 features is such that the Apollo curl on the 
 summit of their brows would be decidedly 
 trying; yet, to my certain knowledge, ten 
 der hearts have beaten for them, and their 
 miniatures, flattering but still not lovely, are 
 kissed in secret by loving lips. I have 
 seen many an excellent matron who could 
 never in her best days have been hand 
 some, and yet she has a package of love- 
 letters in a private drawer, and sweet chil 
 dren shower kisses on her sallow cheeks. 
 And I believe there have been plenty of 
 young heroes of middle stature and feeble 
 beard, who have felt quite sure they could 
 never love anything less magnificent than a 
 Diana, yet have found themselves happily 
 settled in middle life with a wife who
 
 26 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 waddles. Yes, thank God, human feeling 
 is like the mighty rivers that bless the 
 earth : it does not wait for beauty ; it 
 flows with resistless force and brings beauty 
 with it. 
 
 " Idle Thoughts of Idle Fellows " and 
 " Reveries of Bachelors " have, from time 
 to time, been submitted to our criticism. 
 These lords of creation, lolling in easy- 
 chairs, with lighted cigars, evolve, through 
 clouds of smoke, theories concerning love, 
 which is easy enough lighted, but needs con 
 stancy to keep it in a glow ; or of matri 
 mony, which has a great deal of fire in the 
 beginning, but it is a fire that consumes all 
 that feeds the blaze ; or about life, which at 
 first is fresh and odorous, but ends shortly 
 in a charred cinder, which is fit only for 
 the ground. They carefully consider, in 
 their moments of solitude, whether it is 
 best to dream on of a future Elysium, where 
 only roses bloom, or reduce their visions 
 to the dull standard of reality. And why 
 not doubt, why not tremble, Bachelor or
 
 AFTER THE BALL, 27 
 
 Maiden, at so radical a change in your 
 manner of living, so complete an inter 
 ruption to all the habits of your life ? Can 
 a man stake his bachelor respectability, his 
 independence and comfort, upon the die 
 of absorbing, unchanging, relentless matri 
 mony, without trembling at the venture? 
 Can a woman find one who will realize the 
 ideal of the " unknown god," which reigns 
 in the heart of every woman, and to whom, 
 like the Greeks of old, she constantly min 
 isters and sacrifices? 
 
 " Why not," a bachelor queries, " go on 
 dreaming?" Can any wife be prettier 
 than an after-dinner fancy, idle and yet 
 vivid, can paint for you? Can any house 
 wife be more unexceptionable than she who 
 goes sweeping daintily the cobwebs that 
 gather in your dreams? If she becomes 
 tiresome or provoking, he has only to open 
 his eyes she is gone, and the old free 
 life continues. 
 
 Thoughts of this nature come with even 
 more force to the minds of maidens, as 
 they sit in their dainty boudoirs, building
 
 28 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 castles in the air. For they realize that the 
 trifling incidents of the day, the sympathy 
 and approval of one man, make up their 
 whole existence, and without them their 
 lives are wrecked. There is no outside 
 world to which they can flee for comfort ; 
 no professional or business occupations with 
 which to engross their minds; no club- 
 rooms where they can be amused. 
 
 Then, if a man feels no inclination to 
 marry, he has only to remain passive and 
 think nothing about it, while a woman has 
 to listen to the arguments and entreaties of 
 impassioned lovers, who picture connubial 
 bliss in its most attractive guises, until she 
 is won, often regardless of judgment and 
 reason, yielding to the pride of being loved, 
 which, Bulwer says, most women mistake 
 for love. 
 
 Call this weakness, if you will, Mr. Bach 
 elor, but picture yourself besieged by a 
 lovely woman whose beauty and grace have 
 already won from you the tribute of admira 
 tion ; to have her sweet voice tell you that 
 you had become to her the embodiment
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 29 
 
 of all that was true and noble in man, that 
 life without you would form a dreary waste : 
 the sweet voice would falter, and the lovely 
 eyes, suffused with tears, would by turns 
 betray her love, her anxiety, her hope. If 
 by reason of the "woody" fibre of your 
 nature, you were enabled to say nay to 
 her sweet pleading, would your manly 
 strength resist a siege of this delicious 
 flattery? 
 
 Are there many men who can resist the 
 charm of the one woman who believes them 
 to be heroic ? And are not most men really 
 better for the trust and faith that is placed 
 in them by others? as the earthen vessel, 
 valueless in itself, becomes a thing of price 
 and beauty under the loving hands of the 
 artist, who draws graceful figures upon it, 
 colors it skilfully, and handles it tenderly. 
 
 A wise philosopher recently discoursed 
 upon the subject of a woman's proposing. 
 He argued in this wise. It is generally 
 conceded that women have a clear con 
 ception of what they want ; and why should 
 they be more handicapped than men in
 
 30 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 obtaining it? Would they make more mis 
 takes than men? It is impossible. All 
 history teaches us that women have been 
 accustomed to scheme for what they want, 
 and alas ! as much after marriage as before. 
 It is no answer to the question, whether 
 women will propose, to say that every 
 woman can get married who wishes to, do 
 so, and that all history shows this. The real 
 question is, is she free to marry according 
 to her taste and inclination, and would she 
 be happier in the majority of cases if she 
 could honorably approach those to whom 
 she is attracted, instead of waiting to be 
 approached by those who are attracted to 
 her? To this effect reasons a man, and so 
 might I in some prosaic moment ; but the 
 sound of one man's voice would put to flight 
 such a theory in the minds of most women. 
 For the sweetest music in the world to a 
 woman's ears is the voice of a man telling 
 her that he loves her, and it is music of so 
 potent a character that it often melts a 
 heart that was cold before. As for me, I 
 cherish enough old-fashioned sentiment in
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 31 
 
 my heart to believe that the pleasure of 
 being wooed far transcends the pleasure of 
 wooing. 
 
 Maidens will continue to dream of that 
 one who in time will whisper that all- 
 important question. What different forms 
 those ideals take in their visions ! We have 
 but to glance at here a page and there a 
 page of the past records of the race to feel 
 quite sure that woman's ideal man has 
 varied much in the tide of time. In the 
 days of Homer, daughters yearned to be 
 led from the parental roof by some Achilles 
 of a youth, broad-chested, with a soul of 
 adamant and an eye of consuming fire. At 
 one period, the influence of Byron's power 
 ful genius was plainly discernible upon the 
 heroes of fiction of female authors. Again, 
 a bloodless countenance was about all that 
 was required to constitute a hero over whom 
 the women went mad. He was depicted 
 as cold and impassive apparently ; but the 
 author would contrive to suggest by a deli 
 cate hint here and there that this coldness 
 was in outward seeming only; that this
 
 32 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 stern, haughty possessor of the broad, pallid 
 brow (against which he ever and anon 
 pressed his hand as though in pain) was 
 the clandestine owner of feelings fit to be 
 compared to a stream of lava. In this 
 nineteenth century, we find the ideal to be 
 a man who parts his hair and his name in 
 the middle, employs a London tailor, and 
 can dance the German. My ideal, I think, 
 varies with my mood. I like so many men 
 for one particular quality, and so few men 
 for all. \ I have sometimes fancied that I 
 would like to boil down the characteristics 
 of some ten or more men I know, take off 
 the scum, and let the rest crystallize into a 
 being who would respond to all my moods. 
 He might become a Frankenstein monster 
 on my hands, but even the risk would be 
 alluring. 
 
 One man I like, because he brings me 
 candy at the precise moment when my 
 inner nature craves that form of sustenance ; 
 another, because the fragrance of his flowers 
 conveys to me a delicacy and refinement of 
 feeling that his words could never express.
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 33 
 
 1 One wholly disapproves of me, and frankly 
 exposes my faults and shortcomings in a 
 way that affects me as a. bracing tonic. \ And 
 there is yet another who finds me perfect, 
 and so skilfully does he word his creed of 
 my perfection, that it penetrates my heart 
 with sweet conviction, while my spirit in 
 abject gratitude confesses his wonderful 
 discrimination and judgment. One whom 
 I know may be devoid of brains, but he 
 dances divinely, and in certain moods he 
 stands the favored one. 
 
 And I am all things to all men. To one, 
 I am gay and frivolous, with no idea above 
 the last morsel of society gossip, no hope 
 of heaven but in looking sweet. To the 
 next, I am an earnest, thoughtful woman. 
 With this one, I display a lack of sense that 
 is close akin to idiocy. Another suggestive, 
 sympathetic listener calls forth treasures 
 from my mind that I am ignorant of pos 
 sessing. To one, I am cold and austere ; 
 to another, impulsive and loving. To only 
 one, perhaps, of all my friends, do I open 
 my heart, and show all the weakness, all the 
 3
 
 34 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 pain, all the vain hopes and dreams. In no 
 mood am I affected ; and the sad thought 
 in moments of folly is, that a mood lies in 
 one's nature, just as reflections do, and 
 more; and one can never do anything at 
 variance with her own nature. We carry^ 
 within us the germs of our most exceptional 
 actions. 
 
 The froth and frivolity, the glare and tri 
 umphs of the evening are cast aside, and it 
 seems that I have detached myself from 
 the madding crowd, and from some high, 
 secluded spot am watching, with pitying 
 eyes, the throng hurrying and pressing on : 
 some with great gaunt eyes and hollow 
 cheeks, fiercely determined to win the race 
 or die ; others beaten back and trampled 
 down so often that each effort they make 
 to rise becomes feebler than the last ; more 
 still crushed into stupid, stolid hopeless 
 ness ; some sacrificing friends, honor, truth, 
 to outdo the struggling, striving wretches 
 who are spurring on in the mad race, which 
 all hope to win, and after years of hope and 
 toil and strong belief and perhaps final
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 35 
 
 victory, see all the warm glow and flush of 
 success flicker and pale and fade to dull 
 regret that it comes too late. This is the 
 end ; the fruit is turned to ashes ! Utter 
 sadness envelops me as a pall, as the hope 
 lessness, the uselessness of it all is borne in 
 upon me. Ah, mournful are these moments 
 of isolation, when triumphs dissolve into the 
 air, brilliancy is cast aside as a garment; 
 when, free from affectation, we stand face 
 to face with our real selves, in that solitude 
 which is the only sincerity of the soul ! We 
 are on trial before the most pitiless of judges, 
 and every thought and deed rushes forth to 
 witness against us. /] God help the one who 
 is self-condemned, who can find for himself 
 no pardon for wrong done, no palliation ! 
 Our ideals may be shattered, and with a sigh 
 of regret we march on. / 
 
 Our most trusted friends may deceive us, 
 and, though hearts are torn with grief, we 
 push bravely forward ; but when we our 
 selves have stained our souls by acts of 
 which we proudly deemed ourselves inca 
 pable, have seen the fabric of character,
 
 36 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 a fair structure reared with prudence and 
 sincerity, crumble in a moment, ah, then 
 the footsteps falter, the way grows long, the 
 heart weary. ) 
 
 What a difference in the way memories 
 grow old ! Some incident that seemed a 
 trifle at the time of happening grows more 
 tender, more infinitely dear, as the days 
 pass ; and I wish that I had grasped it and 
 upon it hung all the hopes and ambitions of 
 a lifetime. Another, which seemed equally 
 unimportant, grows unpleasant, loathsome, 
 as time passes, and seems to throw a baleful 
 gleam over the whole after-life. How true 
 it is that a small imprudence, helped by 
 some insignificant accident, as an acorn is 
 fertilized by a drop of water, may raise the 
 tree on which we and others shall be cruci 
 fied ! It is the fatal spell of destiny. From 
 morning to night we are scattering the seeds 
 whose harvest we cannot foretell; and the 
 soil in which they fall is the human heart, 
 a soil so rich that of all those seeds none 
 utterly perish. 
 
 Ah, the turning-points in our lives, upon
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 37 
 
 which we rush with such recklessness ; and 
 yet after they are passed, nothing is ever 
 the same, and nothing can restore what has 
 been lost or changed ! i 
 
 Memories are the landmarks of the past. 
 Some gleam out like stars in the dreary 
 path, shedding radiance and joy; some 
 are mournful crosses, gnarled and withered 
 trees ; some the ruins of happy households : 
 all of them helpful, if only heeded, toward 
 rinding one's way through the intricate fields 
 of the soul. 
 
 Every wanderer has thus marked his 
 progress, and is thus enabled to trace his 
 thoughts, his motives, his results. 
 
 What a wide world is the past ! a great 
 and gorgeous, a rich and solemn world. 
 Fancy fills it up, artist-like ; the darkness 
 is mellowed off into soft shades, the bright 
 spots are veiled in the sweet atmosphere of 
 distance, and fancy and memory together 
 make up a rich dreamland of the past. As 
 in a lightning-flash I review the days of my 
 past, with all the rapid changes of my life, 
 back, back, my mind wanders until it
 
 38 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 reaches the home of youth, the village around 
 which cluster such tender memories. 
 
 Life may and does change ; but we are 
 not wrong in believing that the thoughts 
 and loves of the first years will always make 
 part of our lives. We could never love the 
 earth so well, if we had no childhood in it, 
 if it were not the earth where the same 
 flowers come up again every spring that we 
 used to gather with our tiny fingers, as we 
 sat lisping to ourselves on the grass. What 
 novelty is worth that sweet monotony, where 
 everything is known, and loved because it 
 is known? 
 
 What grove of tropic palms, what strange 
 ferns or splendid blossoms, can ever thrill 
 such deep and delicate fibres within me as 
 this home scene ? The familiar flowers, the 
 well-remembered notes, the sky with its 
 fitful brightness, the furrowed and grassy 
 fields, such things as these are the mother 
 tongue of our imagination, the language that 
 is laden with all the subtle, inextricable asso 
 ciations the fleeting hours of our childhood 
 left behind them.
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 39 
 
 Our delight in the sunshine, in the deep, 
 bladed grass, to-day, might be no more than 
 the faint perception of weary souls, if it were 
 not for the sunshine and the grass in the 
 far-off years, which still live in us and trans 
 form our perception into love, those hours 
 which all one's life long can be looked back 
 to with loving remembrance, which can gild 
 and beautify the most sorrowful lives. It is 
 surely a mistake to think that the memory 
 of past delights makes present pain sharper. 
 If not, why do we so universally strive to 
 make children happy? Is it not because 
 we know that happiness in the present will 
 give a sort of reflected happiness, even in 
 the saddest future? Is it not because we 
 know, how in life's bitterest moments, its 
 most barren and desolate places, we feel a 
 warmth about our hearts, a smile about our 
 lips, when we remember the old home days 
 with the eager, childish interest and hopes, 
 their vividly recollected pleasures, their shel 
 tered luxuriance of fatherly and motherly 
 love ? The thought of those hours breeds per 
 petual benediction, a benediction which
 
 40 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 outlives the cares and troubles of later life, 
 which we may carry with us to our dying 
 day, and find perfected indeed in that 
 Unseen where all we have willed, or hoped, 
 or dreamed of, shall exist. The lives of 
 children are proverbially and retrospectively 
 happy. They have not yet trusted and been 
 deceived ; not yet loved and been deserted ; 
 not yet learned that flattery means self-inter 
 est, that honor in the eyes of men may be 
 bought at the cost of self-respect, that gold 
 can turn to rust, and success grow bitter as 
 the apples of Sodom, that all earth's prom 
 ises that glitter so temptingly never yet have 
 stood the test of time. Yet the annoyances 
 and griefs of children are very real to them, 
 and often minor chords are sounded whose 
 plaintive melodies echo through their whole 
 lives. 
 
 It was years ago when my first sorrow 
 came, like a chilling frost, repressing every 
 instinct, stifling every impulse. It was a 
 sunny day in early spring. 
 
 If it be true that Nature at certain mo 
 ments seems charged with a presentiment
 
 AFTER THE BALL, 41 
 
 of one individual lot, must it not also be 
 true that she seems unmindful, unconscious 
 of another? For there is no hour that has 
 not its births of gladness and despair, that 
 does not bring new sickness or desolation, 
 as well as new forces to genius and love. 
 There are so many of us, and our lots are 
 so different ! What wonder, then, that Na 
 ture's mood is often in harsh contrast with 
 the great crises of our lives? On this 
 bright day, when grief seemed so discord 
 ant, and fate hid her cold and awful face 
 behind a radiant veil, beguiling with soft 
 breezes and poisoning with violet-scented 
 breath, my mother died. She was still so 
 beautiful, and seemed so young and full of 
 life and activity, that the idea of separa 
 tion had never crossed my thoughts, save 
 as a very distant prospect, softened by the 
 gradations of age and by the shortness of 
 time I should have to pass in the world 
 after this farewell. 
 
 How much more I might have loved 
 her ! Do we ever repent our tenderness 
 to one we have lost? If we could only
 
 42 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 realize how short life is, how little time we 
 have for gladdening the hearts of fellow- 
 travellers, would we ever repress a kindly 
 impulse, a glance of sunshine, a cheering 
 word? Oh, be swift to love, make haste 
 to be kind, ere Death leaves us to mourn 
 our lost opportunities ! The old, old fash 
 ion, Death ! The fashion that came in 
 with our first garments, and will last un 
 changed until our race has run its course, 
 and the wide firmament is rolled up like 
 a scroll. The old, old fashion, Death. 
 Oh, thank God, all who see it, for that 
 older fashion yet of Immortality ! Look 
 upon us, angels of loved ones, with regards 
 not quite estranged, when the swift river 
 bears us to the ocean ! 
 
 It is an exquisite and beautiful thing in 
 our nature that when the heart is touched 
 or softened by some happiness or affection 
 ate feeling, or in the warm glow of triumph 
 or success, the memory of the dead comes 
 over it most powerfully and irresistibly. It 
 would almost seem as if our better thoughts 
 and sympathies were charms in virtue of
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 43 
 
 which the soul is enabled to hold some 
 vague and mysterious intercourse with the 
 spirits of those whom we dearly loved in 
 life. Alas, how often and how long may 
 those patient angels hover about us, watch 
 ing for the spell which is so seldom uttered 
 and so soon forgotten ! 
 
 Life is a lonely affair at best. Only a 
 mother's loving instinct ever comprehends 
 us, and when that is gone our souls are 
 indeed isolated. 
 
 The remoter stars seem a nebula of 
 united light, yet there is no group that a 
 telescope will not resolve; and thus the 
 dearest friends are separated from us by 
 impassable gulfs. 
 
 " Not even the tenderest heart and next our own 
 Knows half the reason why we smile or sigh." 
 
 Each soul lives and dies alone. How 
 long we live before we realize that life is 
 the one breath we breathe, the while we say, 
 " I live ; " before we are content to draw 
 from every day its fullest uses and bene 
 fits unglorified by dreams of to-morrow;
 
 44 Iff MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 before we learn that whatever effort we may 
 make to touch another life, it can but end 
 in a longing that is never satisfied ! Day 
 by day we knit bonds that bind until the 
 blood flows, but do not join ; we tremble 
 for the life of this one, or the love of that 
 one ; we feel our hearts die within us, be 
 cause this life has passed away from our 
 grasp or that love has failed us in our need. 
 All this we do, fighting through our little 
 day; and when the end comes, we must 
 let go and journey out along the "lonely 
 road " without a footstep timing ours, or a 
 hand clasped in our own. 
 
 The days that followed this sorrow were 
 very dreary ones ; and there is no hope 
 lessness so sad as that of early youth, when 
 the soul is made up of wants, full of eager, 
 passionate longings for all that is beautiful 
 and glad, thirsty for all knowledge, strain 
 ing after dreamy music that dies away and 
 will not come near, with no long memories, 
 no superadded life in the life of others ; 
 though older friends, who look on, think 
 lightly of such premature despair, as if the
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 45 
 
 vision of the future lightened the blind 
 sufferer's present. 
 
 The ambitions and rivalries of school- 
 life, its first boastful importance as knowl 
 edge begins to dawn on the awakened 
 mind, the ripe and enviable complacency 
 of its senior dignity, all blow over my 
 memory, like the morning breeze along the 
 meadows, and like that, too, bear upon their 
 wings a chilliness as of distant ice-banks. 
 At the end of my school-days another event 
 occurred that made me pause and reflect 
 upon the uselessness of the petty ambitions 
 and strivings and rivalries of the school 
 room, which is only life in miniature. 
 
 No wonder I paused in fear and trem 
 bling as I was about to embark on that 
 " unknown sea " on which sweet girl grad 
 uates so eloquently descant. The wide 
 expanse had seemed so gay with ripple 
 and wave, so musical with ebb and flow. 
 Yet a fear crept over me that I might not 
 make the voyage in safety, for did I not, 
 right on the eve of starting, look with a 
 pang at an empty shallop beside us, whose
 
 46 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 dear young pilot had gone down before 
 our eyes, ere we had put from shore ? Yet 
 she had stood with us on the hither side 
 of that dark and troublous sea called Life ; 
 had watched with us the pitching and toss 
 ing of the numberless barks that had gone 
 before ; had seen some struggling amid the 
 breakers, others going to pieces on the 
 reefs ; still others drifting, dismantled and 
 shattered, upon a shore already thick strewn 
 with wrecks, yet had dreamed with us of 
 smooth and sunny paths, across that piti 
 less waste of waters. 
 
 Those days are past now. The quiet 
 childhood of humanity, spent in the far- 
 off glades and by the murmuring rivers, is 
 gone forever ; and human life has deepened 
 to womanhood amid tumult, doubt, and 
 hope. Its age of restful peace is past. It 
 has its work to finish and must hasten on. 
 What that work may be, what this world's 
 share is in the great Design, we know not, 
 though our unconscious hands are helping 
 to accomplish it. Like the tiny coral in 
 sect, working deep under the dark waters,
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 47 
 
 we strive and struggle, each for our own 
 little ends, nor dream of the vast fabric 
 we may be building up for God. 
 
 There are some advantages, too, in begin 
 ning life with tragedy. It belittles all the 
 rest into the province of the light comic. 
 It is an immense safeguard and armor of 
 protection to be at the bottom indifferent. 
 I have learned to take the world genially 
 instead of literally, and it is only in these 
 quiet moments that I indulge in the luxury 
 of woe. There is a good deal of satisfac 
 tion sometimes in being thoroughly mis 
 erable. As a rule, it is not trouble that 
 makes us melancholy. The actuality is too 
 stern a thing for sentiment. We linger to 
 weep over a picture, but from the original 
 we should quickly turn our eyes away. 
 There is no pathos in real misery ; no 
 luxury in real grief. When men or women 
 love to brood over a sorrow, and take care 
 to keep it green in their memory, you may 
 be sure it is no longer a pain to them. 
 
 I am glad when I see Regret walked with 
 as a friend, glad because I know the salt-
 
 48 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 ness has been washed from out the tears. 
 Time has laid his healing hand upon the 
 wound, when we can look back upon the 
 pain we once fainted under, and no bitter 
 ness or despair rises in our hearts. 
 
 The burden is no longer heavy, when we 
 have for our past troubles only the same 
 sweet mingling of pleasure and pity that 
 we feel when old knight-hearted Colonel 
 Newcome answers " Adsum " to the great 
 roll-call, or when Tom and Maggie Tulliver, 
 clasping hands through the mists that have 
 divided them, go down, locked in each 
 other's arms, beneath the swollen waters of 
 the Floss. 
 
 Wise men may continue to talk of the 
 influence of mind over matter, but my 
 thoughts always seem to take tone from 
 my physical condition. And when I am, 
 as to-night, " so tired," I grow melancholy. 
 Then I stop and think how poor the in 
 centives and objects of life ; for few of us 
 risk our salvation to win kingdoms and 
 provinces, but waste what is best and no 
 blest in us by teasing anxieties and petty
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 49 
 
 ambitions, for results not worth the striving 
 for, scarcely worth the having when gained. 
 Immortal beings though we are, our daily 
 problems, our crying necessities, chiefly 
 concern the questions what we shall eat, 
 drink, and wear, above all, how shall we 
 answer our neighbors' expectations of us 
 and put a good foot forward. What a 
 feverish contest it is ! Never ending is 
 this wild procession. Day and night can 
 be heard the quick tramp of myriads of 
 feet, some running, some walking, some 
 halting and lame, but all hastening, all 
 eager in the feverish race ; all straining 
 life and limb and heart and soul to reach 
 the ever receding horizon of success. 
 Their speed never slackens, their race 
 never ends. There is no wayside rest, no 
 halt by cooling fountains, no pause be 
 neath green shades. On, on, on, on, 
 through the heat and the crowd and the 
 dust ; on, or they will be trampled down 
 and lost; on, with throbbing brains and 
 trembling limbs; on, till the heart grows 
 sick, and the eyes grow blurred, and a 
 4
 
 50 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 gurgling groan tells those behind they may 
 close up another space. 
 
 The words, " What shall it profit? " ring 
 in the ear like a death-knell, forming a 
 solemn undertone amid the laughter of 
 mirth and the plaudits of success. How 
 we waste our brain tissue in trying to 
 philosophize, and answer that endless, un 
 answerable question, Cut bono ? Only 
 one who has asked this question in bitter 
 earnest, and fairly faced the answer, can 
 know the horror, the blackness, the empti 
 ness, of the abyss into which it plunges. 
 
 Retrospectively, life seems nought but a 
 crumbling ruin, a shattered column there, 
 where a massive portal stood ; a broken 
 shaft of a window to mark a temple of hap 
 piness ; a mouldering heap of blackened 
 stones, where the glowing flames once 
 leaped. Regrets and broken resolutions 
 will chase over the soul like swift-winged 
 night-birds, and all the unsteady heights 
 and wastes of action will lift up distinctly 
 and clearly from the uneasy but limpid 
 depths of memory. The past may be gray
 
 AFTER THE BALL. 51 
 
 and mysterious, the present dark and full 
 of terrors; but there is still a glorious 
 future full of hope. I will go forth to meet 
 that shadowy future with a brave heart, and 
 let my thoughts revert with exquisite sat 
 isfaction to my castles in Spain. It is a 
 country famously romantic. My castles 
 are in perfect proportions, set in the most 
 picturesque situations. I have never been 
 to Spain myself, and it is not easy for me 
 to say how I know as much as I certainly 
 do about my castles in Spain. The sun 
 always shines upon them. They stand 
 lofty and fair in a luminous golden at 
 mosphere, a little hazy and dreamy, per 
 haps, like Indian Summer, but in which no 
 gales blow, and there are no tempests. 
 All the sublime mountains and beautiful 
 valleys and soft landscapes that I have not 
 yet seen are to be found in the grounds. 
 There is wonderful music there ; sometimes 
 I awake at night, and hear it. It is full of 
 the sweetness of youth, and love, and a 
 new world, I lie and listen ; and I seem 
 to arrive at the great gates of my estate.
 
 52 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 They swing open upon noiseless hinges ; 
 and the tropic of my dreams receives me. 
 Up the broad steps, whose marble pave 
 ment mingled light and shadow print with 
 shifting mosaic, beneath the boughs of 
 lustrous oleanders and trees of unimagi 
 nable fragrance, I pass into the vestibule, 
 warm with summer odors. I am no more 
 alone. Together (sweet word that) we 
 move on in company with noble men and 
 beautiful women; and through days and 
 nights of eternal summer the stately revel 
 of our life proceeds. 
 
 And I will dream my dreams, and attend 
 to my Spanish possessions. I have so 
 much property there that I cannot, in 
 conscience, neglect it. All the years of 
 my youth, the hopes of my life, are stored 
 away like precious stones in the vaults; 
 and I know that I shall find everything 
 convenient, elegant, and beautiful when 
 I come into possession of my castles in 
 Spain.
 
 AFTER DINNER.
 
 AFTER DINNER. 
 
 "DREAKFAST is always a serious time 
 * ' for me, perhaps from an intuitive 
 perception that it is taken at the beginning 
 of a sacred day, a day with all its possi 
 bilities and chances of what may happen, 
 the fateful day which may change the whole 
 course and current of a life. 
 
 In the evening the work is done. I still 
 live, and have passed through all the dan 
 gers of the day. If, counting the things that 
 I have done, I can find 
 
 " One self-denying act, one word, 
 That eased the heart of him who heard, 
 
 One glance most kind, 
 That fell like sunshine where it went, 
 Then I can count the day well spent," 
 
 and can laugh and be merry at dinner. 
 
 The thought that comes to me immedi 
 ately after a dinner-party is not so satis-
 
 56 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 factory. It is what the French term 
 f esprit de Fescalier, the bon mot that 
 might have been introduced, the retort 
 that might have been given. 
 
 A clever sculptor that was who designed 
 Opportunity as a god, whose face was cov 
 ered with hair, for men seldom know 
 him when he comes to them, and with 
 wings to each foot, because once gone, he 
 cannot be overtaken ; I have good author 
 ity, however, for the consoling thought that 
 though it is nature to communicate one's 
 self, it is culture to receive what is com 
 municated ; and the magnetic experiment 
 of conversation at a dinner-table is to me 
 the most charming feature of society. 
 
 I have beguiled my time with varied 
 amusements during the last few days. 
 
 Last night I went to the opera. It was 
 a crowded night ; for the opera was one 
 that appealed to the senses, and stimulat 
 ing them to activity, left the mind free to 
 pursue its own schemes, the orchestra and 
 scenes forming an accompaniment and 
 interpretation of the private dramas in the
 
 AFTER DINNER. 57 
 
 boxes. (Is not all music, to tender and 
 poetic souls, to wounded and suffering 
 hearts, a text which they interpret as they 
 need?) 
 
 Is not the charm of life somewhat de 
 pending upon a sense of its fleetingness, of 
 its phantasmagorical character, a note of 
 coming disaster in the midst of its most 
 seductive pageantry, in the whirl and glit 
 ter and hurry of it? 
 
 Is there some subtle sense of exquisite 
 satisfaction in snatching the sweet moments 
 of life out of the very delirium of it, that 
 must soon end in an awakening to bank 
 ruptcy of the affections and the dreadful 
 loss of illusions? Else, why do we take 
 pleasure a pleasure so deep that it 
 touches the heart like melancholy in 
 the common drama of the opera? 
 
 Do we like it because it is life, or be 
 cause there is a certain satisfaction in seeing 
 the tragedy which impends over all, per 
 vades the atmosphere, as it were, and adds 
 something of zest to the mildest enjoy 
 ment? How simple, after all, was the ere-
 
 58 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 ated world on the stage to the real world 
 in the auditorium, with its thousand com 
 plexities and dramatic situations ; and if 
 the little knot of players of parts for an 
 hour could have had leisure to be specta 
 tors of the audience, what deeper revela 
 tions of life would they not have seen? 
 
 Desire for the dramatic is natural. Peo 
 ple will have it somehow. In the country 
 villages, where there are no theatres, the 
 people enjoy the story of each other's 
 lives ; the most trivial incidents are mag 
 nified and talked about, dramatized, in 
 fact. Good theatres thus exert the whole 
 some influence of satisfying the natural 
 appetite for that gossip from which noth 
 ing can be concealed, everything being 
 used to create that illusory spectacle which 
 the stage tries to give. 
 
 This afternoon found me in attendance 
 upon one of those ingenious contrivances 
 for amusement in this agreeable world, 
 called a reception. 
 
 If an angel from the starry skies were 
 sent down to inspect our social life, and
 
 AFTER DINNER. 59 
 
 should pause at the entrance of a house 
 where a reception is in progress, he would, 
 I am sure, be sorely puzzled at the noise 
 of our highest civilization. It may not be 
 perfect, for there are limits to human 
 powers of endurance ; but it is the best 
 that we can do. It is not a chance affair. 
 There are selected, picked out by special 
 invitation, the most intelligent, the most 
 accomplished, the most beautiful, the best- 
 dressed persons in the community. The 
 angel would notice this at once ; and he 
 would be astonished at the number of 
 such persons, for the rooms would be so 
 crowded that he would see the hopeless 
 ness of attempting to edge or wedge his 
 way through the throng without tearing off 
 his wings. An angel, in fact, would stand 
 no chance in one of these brilliant as 
 semblies, on account of his wings ; and he 
 probably could not be heard, on account 
 of the low, heavenly pitch of his voice. 
 Men, by reason of their stolidity and 
 deeper voices, can never be proficient in 
 the art of screaming, and are carefully 
 excluded,
 
 60 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 If half a dozen ladies, meeting by chance 
 in a parlor, should converse quietly in their 
 sweet, ordinary home tones, it might be in 
 a certain sense agreeable ; but it would not 
 be fashionable, and would not strike the 
 prevailing note of our civilization. 
 
 With restful satisfaction I thought of the 
 dinner from which I have just returned, to 
 which I had been summoned to meet one 
 of the most famous writers of the day. 
 
 With great interest and a certain amount 
 of dread we contemplate contact with any 
 of these glorious gifted ones, who have 
 sung of joy and sorrow, love and death, 
 touching our hearts to quick sympathy, and 
 soothing many an hour of pain and weari 
 ness. What a glorious achievement to pen 
 even a few words which, whenever read, 
 must bring a throb of restful pleasure to 
 a human heart ! What a gift to have the 
 transcendent genius that turns the very 
 stones along life's road to precious gems 
 of thought; that finds speech in dumb 
 things and eloquence in the ideal half of 
 the living world ; that genius to which sor-
 
 AFTER DINNER. 6 1 
 
 row is a melody, and joy sweet music, to 
 which the humblest effort of a humble life 
 can furnish an immortal lyric, and in which 
 one thought of the divine can inspire a 
 sublime hymn. 
 
 Nervously, yet happily, I looked forward 
 to being face to face with this man, upon 
 whose truth and philosophy I had leaned 
 as upon the heart of a friend. He had 
 looked into the human heart with sym 
 pathy and with truth ; and in every line I 
 had felt the noble soul that throbbed 
 behind his words. 
 
 It is always interesting, I think, to feel 
 the author in his book. I do not mean 
 that confidential appeal to the " gentle 
 reader " made by the old-fashioned novel 
 ist, who had an insinuating way of drawing 
 you into a corner, as it were, away from the 
 confusing scenes of the story. If any dis 
 aster was impending, you were warned of it 
 in time. " But, reader, little did Arabella 
 dream in her thoughtless mirth that she 
 should never again behold the scene of her 
 childhood," etc.
 
 62 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 If any change of scene was made, the 
 writer did not forget you, but politely re 
 marked, " Come with me, reader, from the 
 glittering halls of wealth to the abode of 
 honest penury." By this means it was kept 
 plainly before your mind that these events 
 were only things in a book, and if you were 
 unduly moved thereby, it was your own 
 fault. The author had done his part toward 
 averting from you a dangerous excess of 
 emotion. 
 
 Relations between author and reader are 
 not as familiar as they used to be. Now he 
 tries to remain neutral ; he states the case, 
 and will not attempt to prejudice your de 
 cision, and he only gains by keeping his 
 personality out of sight. But when you 
 divine him through his books; when his 
 words bear unconscious witness to what he 
 has known and suffered, then your inter 
 est is quickened. 
 
 It must not be forgotten, however, that 
 there are certain writers who have the 
 keenest appreciation of the aesthetic value 
 of what is good and noble, although they
 
 AFTER DINNER. 63 
 
 may be blind to its moral import. The 
 tremor of feeling in their voices, the shim 
 mer of tears in their eyes, when they speak 
 of anything humanly pathetic, is not as 
 sumed, but for the moment entirely genuine. 
 They comprehend the loveliness of self- 
 sacrifice, though they have no notion of 
 practising it ; and the beggar in their path 
 is a picturesque object to be studied of 
 sketched, not a creature whose necessities 
 demand relief. 
 
 It would require a Machiavelian reasoner 
 to reconcile the preaching and practice of 
 one author, who gave to the world works 
 which revolutionized the educational ideas 
 of his time and inaugurated a movement 
 toward nature and simplicity, yet was capa 
 ble of abandoning his children without com 
 punction at the door of a foundling asylum. 
 
 Think of the vast difference between the 
 uttered wisdom and acted folly of another, 
 who wrote solemnly : " Death itself to the 
 reflecting mind is less serious than marriage. 
 Death is not even a blow, is not even a 
 pulsation ; it is a pause. But marriage un-
 
 64 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 rolls the awful lot of countless generations." 
 Afterwards, seeing an attractive young wo 
 man in the glamour of the ball-room, he 
 exclaimed, " By Heaven ! that 's the pret 
 tiest girl in the room ; I '11 marry her." He 
 did, and was as wretched as might have 
 been expected. 
 
 It seems idle to waste time in trying to 
 explain remarkable incongruities, for the 
 weakness of the flesh will sometimes prevail 
 over the strength of the spirit. Yet it is 
 often startling to note how the intellect will 
 keep itself high and white above the mire 
 of a shameful existence, as if gifted with 
 some immortal, self-preserving power. 
 
 A man may be to all intents and pur 
 poses morally degraded beyond redemption, 
 yet still retain the bright ideal which finds 
 voice in the words that seem so strangely 
 at variance with his deeds. All is not lost 
 till that is destroyed. It is a matter to be 
 regretted that the hunger for personalities 
 brings the author, at the present day, so 
 plainly into view. 
 
 All his little failings and absurdities, com-
 
 AFTER DINNER. 65 
 
 raon to human nature, are detailed merci 
 lessly, making us wince when we contrast 
 them with the words that have inspired us 
 to nobler living. What does it profit us 
 to know that one maker of literature is an 
 undutiful son or a pitiless creditor? How 
 much better it would be, if to us they could 
 remain beautiful, mysterious voices, teach 
 ing, cheering, and consoling. Contact will 
 dispel illusions. Humorists are never funny, 
 barristers are never logical, and authors fail 
 to materialize into that airy structure we 
 have built upon their own words, the fan 
 cied personality gleaming through pages of 
 glowing sentiment and noble truth ; and the 
 book itself is much more apt to become 
 the warm friend and trusted counsellor than 
 the writer. 
 
 What a lovable friend a book is ! He is 
 the master who instructs without rods or 
 ferules, without hard words or anger, and 
 without reward or money. If you approach 
 him, he is not asleep. If investigating you 
 interrogate him, he conceals nothing ; if you 
 mistake him, he never grumbles ; if you are
 
 66 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 ignorant, he cannot laugh at you. We rifle 
 his pockets and put him aside at our pleas 
 ure, and he does not feel neglected. We 
 invite him to a tete-a-tete before the fire, 
 and fall asleep while he is doing his best to 
 entertain us, yet when we awake his counte 
 nance is still unruffled ; doubtless because 
 all the time he is aware that we still prize 
 him. What strange things we do to those 
 whom we love ! 
 
 An old writer says : " No matter how poor 
 I am, no matter though the prosperous of 
 my own time will not enter my obscure 
 dwelling, if learned men and poets will take 
 up their abode under my roof, if Milton 
 will cross my threshold and sing to me of 
 Paradise, and Shakespeare open to me the 
 world of imagination and the workings of 
 the human heart, and Franklin enrich me 
 with his practical wisdom, winds may 
 blow and skies may rain, fortune may prove 
 unkind, days may be lonely and evenings 
 dull ; but for the true lover of reading there 
 is always at hand this great company of 
 companions and friends, the wisest, the
 
 AFTER DINNER. 6^ 
 
 gentlest, the best, never too tired or too 
 busy to talk with him, ready at all moments 
 to give their thoughts to instruct and enter 
 tain. They never disappoint, they have no 
 moods or tempers, they are always at home, 
 in all of which respects they differ from 
 the rest of our acquaintance." 
 
 To-night I turned in grievous disappoint 
 ment from this author, finding in him a man 
 of ordinary appearance, without brilliancy of 
 speech or grace of manner. As I listened 
 to hear from him the crystallization of a 
 thought that would perhaps prove an inspi 
 ration to me through months to come, my 
 amour propre was deeply wounded at his 
 first remark. It was aggressively common 
 place, relating to the fine condition of the 
 atmosphere ; revealing a desire to accom 
 modate his genius to my poor feminine 
 intellect, and a belief that I would be un 
 able to fathom the meaning of a remark of 
 deeper significance. 
 
 Most men disguise their thoughts for wo 
 men, as if to venture into the feminine world 
 were as dangerous as travelling in Africa.
 
 68 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 One of the greatest misfortunes in the 
 intellectual life of women is that they do 
 not hear the truth from men. 
 
 All men in cultivated society say to women 
 as much as possible what they may be sup 
 posed to wish to hear ; and women are so 
 much accustomed to this that they almost 
 resent an expression of opinion which takes 
 no account of their personal and private 
 feeling. This consideration for the feelings 
 of women gives an agreeable tone to society, 
 but it is fatal to truth. Observe a man of 
 the world, whose opinions are well known 
 to you ; notice the little pause before he 
 speaks to a lady. During that pause he is 
 turning over what he has to say, so as to 
 present it to her in the manner that will 
 please her best, and you may be sure the 
 integrity of truth will suffer in the process. 
 He professes to take an interest in things 
 he does not care for in the least, and he 
 passes over subjects and events which he 
 knows to be of the most momentous impor 
 tance to the world. 
 
 The lady spends an hour more agreeably
 
 AFTER DINNER. 69 
 
 than if she heard opinions which would 
 irritate, and prognostics which would alarm, 
 her, but she has missed a golden opportu 
 nity for culture;^ she has been confirmed 
 in feminine illusions.; 
 
 Conversation between men and women 
 will always be partially insincere ; the high 
 est culture, though, has a direct tendency 
 to command sincerity in others, because it 
 is tolerant of variety in opinion, and because 
 it is so penetrating that dissimulation is felt 
 to be of no use. 
 
 As women increase in culture, they may 
 expect to be treated by men with more of 
 the candor and frankness they bestow upon 
 each other. 
 
 By the side of an uncultured woman a 
 man feels that, if he speaks anything differ 
 ent from what she has been accustomed 
 to, she will take offence ; while if he says 
 anything beyond the narrow range of her 
 information, he will make her uncomfort 
 able. The most honest of men in such a 
 position finds it necessary to be cautious, 
 and can scarcely avoid a little insincerity.
 
 70 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 But with a woman whose culture is equal 
 to his own, these causes for apprehensions 
 have no existence, and he can safely be 
 more himself. Undoubtedly, women, if not 
 queens and victors, are the law-givers in 
 the art of conversation. Madame Necker 
 compared their words to "light layers of 
 cotton-wool in boxes packed with porcelain : 
 we do not pay much attention to them, but 
 if they were taken away, everything would 
 be broken to pieces." 
 
 Men, however, seek the society of women 
 during the hours of mental relaxation, and 
 find such a charm in their presence, espe 
 cially when they are magnetic or beautiful, 
 that they are not apt to be very severe 
 judges of the abstract intellectual quality 
 of their talk, though 'they realize that the 
 pleasure of conversation is always enhanced 
 by any increase of knowledge. 
 
 Talleyrand's maxim was, that if you 
 wanted to be thought agreeable in society, 
 you must consent to be taught many things 
 that you know already. 
 
 A wise and tactful woman who wishes to
 
 AFTER DINNER. 71 
 
 be popular with mankind (and she is not 
 wise if she does not) will, in the majority 
 of cases, keep her intellect subservient to 
 her graces and charms when in the pres 
 ence of men. A man likes a woman's 
 intellect to shine brilliantly in its full force 
 only when great occasions demand. At 
 other times he likes it veiled by her beauty 
 and modesty. He would rather it would 
 gleam like a star on his path, or suddenly 
 glow forth in shadowed places like a power 
 ful dark lantern, than to glare always about 
 him like an electric light, that blinds the 
 eyes of his egotism and offends his pride. 
 
 Minds can so easily make these oppor 
 tunities for culture and the increase of 
 knowledge. 
 
 When one woman moans she has no 
 time for mental culture, another makes 
 her chance. 
 
 Often when sewing or dressing, I have 
 before me a book with marked passages, 
 or a newspaper clipping, that I am conning 
 again and again, or I am repeating some 
 verse or sentiment that has struck my fancy.
 
 72 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 I believe that the most delightful and satis 
 factory education is gained in this way, little 
 by little, until it is wrought in the memory, 
 is a part of one's being, and seems but the 
 echo of one's own thought. 
 
 The condiments of my dinner came in 
 the person of my right-hand neighbor, a 
 cynic, a woman-hater, a pessimist, one who 
 believed nothing but what he saw, and then 
 convinced himself that he was the victim 
 of an optical delusion, one of those select 
 natures, who hold that all great men are 
 over-estimated, and small men are insup 
 portable ; that if you would ever love a 
 woman without looking back upon that 
 love as folly, she must die while you are 
 courting her; and if you would maintain 
 the slightest belief in human heroism, you 
 must never make a pilgrimage to see the 
 hero. 
 
 If I talked of women, he said he had 
 never known but one sensible woman, and 
 she was the one that declared there was 
 only one fact reconciled her to being a 
 woman, and that was, She would not have 
 to marry one.
 
 AFTER DINNER. 73 
 
 When marriage was discussed (the half- 
 soul and other equally interesting theories 
 having ardent supporters), he called our 
 attention to the wisdom of Dr. Holmes, 
 who declared that there are at least five 
 thousand women in these United States, 
 any one of whom the most fastidious young 
 man would marry if he happened to be 
 thrown with her and she had no objection. 
 And to dear young ladies priding them 
 selves on their discerning delicacy, he says 
 there are twenty thousand men, any one of 
 whom, offering his hand and heart, under 
 favorable circumstances, they would first en 
 dure, then pity, then embrace. He agreed 
 with Buckle that the number of marriages 
 depends altogether upon the price of corn. 
 
 We talked of love, we discussed the 
 old subject, we said again the things that 
 have been said so often; and that word 
 " love " which came back ceaselessly, now 
 pronounced by a strong man's voice, now 
 uttered by the frail-toned voice of a woman, 
 seemed to fill the room, to flutter there like 
 a bird, to hover there like a spirit.
 
 74 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 Can one remain in love for several years 
 in succession? Is love eternal? "Yes," 
 affirmed some. "No," maintained others. 
 We distinguished cases, we established lim 
 itations, we cited examples; and all men 
 and women, filled with rising and troubling 
 memories, which mounted to their lips, but 
 which they could not quote, seemed moved, 
 and talked of that common, that sovereign 
 thing, the tender and mysterious union of 
 two beings, with profound emotion and 
 ardent interest. Cupid and Psyche ! The 
 young man and the young woman who are in 
 love ! The couple which is constantly van 
 ishing and constantly reappearing; which 
 has filled millions of various situations, and 
 yet is always the same ; symbolizing, and 
 one might almost say embodying, the doc 
 trine of transmigration of souls ; acting a 
 drama of endless repetitions with innumer 
 able spectators. 
 
 What would the story-reading world 
 yes, and what would the great world of 
 humanity do without these two figures? 
 They are more lasting, they are more im-
 
 AFTER DINNER. 75 
 
 portant, and they are more fascinating than 
 even the crowned and laurelled images of 
 heroes and sages. When men shall have 
 forgotten Alexander and Socrates, Napoleon 
 and Humboldt, they will still gather around 
 the imperishable group, the youth and 
 the girl who are in love. Without them our 
 kind would cease to be ; at one time or 
 another we are all of us identified with 
 them in spirit ; thus both reason and sym 
 pathy cause us to be interested in their 
 million-fold repeated story. And the old, 
 old story of clinging hearts is more fasci 
 nating from age to age as human thoughts 
 become purer and human feelings more 
 delicate. Love, like all things earthly, is 
 subject to the processes of the law of evo 
 lution, and grows with the centuries to be 
 a more varied and exquisite source of hap 
 piness. The scoffing cynic, desirous of 
 strengthening his position by distinguished 
 witnesses, only muttered to me the words 
 of Charles O'Malley, to the effect that what 
 we hear of single or only attachments is 
 mere nonsense. Love, like everything in
 
 76 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 the world, requires a species of cultivation. 
 The mere tyro in an affair of the heart 
 thinks he has exhausted all its pleasures 
 and pains; but only he who has made it 
 his daily study for years, familiarizing his 
 mind with every phase of the passion, can 
 properly or adequately appreciate it. The 
 more you love, the better you love, etc. 
 
 To recover from the wounds my vanity 
 received during this conversation, and to 
 regain the usual contentment with my lot, 
 I betook myself as soon as I reached home 
 to the pages of Ruskin for consolation. 
 Proudly I read : 
 
 Shakespeare has no heroes ; he has only 
 heroines. In his labored and perfect plays 
 there is no hero, but almost always a per 
 fect woman, steadfast in grave hope and 
 errorless purpose. The catastrophe of every 
 play is caused always by the folly or fault of 
 a man, the redemption, if there be any, by 
 the wisdom and virtue of a woman. (Me- 
 thinks I hear the mocking tones exclaim, 
 "for instance, Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, 
 Goneril, and Petruchio's sweet and gentle
 
 AFTER DINNER. 77 
 
 Kate.") In all cases with Scott, as with 
 Shakespeare, it is the woman who watches 
 over and guides the youth, it is never by 
 any chance the man who watches over or 
 educates her. ("Yes," my scoffer contin 
 ues, " Meg Merrilies, Effie Deans, and Rob 
 Roy's freckled-faced, red-headed, angelic 
 Helen.") 
 
 Dante's great poem is a song of praise 
 for Beatrice's watch over his soul ; she saves 
 him from hell, and leads him star by star 
 up into heaven. (Whose voice suggests 
 that conjugal devotion should have led him 
 to apostrophize the charms of his wife, 
 Gemma, from whom he was forced to sep 
 arate ; and that his vision of hell was a 
 faint reflex of his domestic felicity?) 
 
 The cynic is incorrigible ; but before he 
 so ruthlessly condemns, let him first com 
 prehend the heart of woman, for if any 
 man says that he understands woman, he 
 is convicted of folly by his own speech. 
 
 Of men, it may be sufficient to say with 
 David that they are all liars, though it may 
 be allowed that some are curable of the
 
 78 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 vice of falsehood. Of women, however, 
 there is no general statement that is true. 
 The one is brave to heroism, the next 
 cowardly to a degree fantastically comic ; 
 the one is honest, the other faithless ; the 
 one contemptible in her narrowness of soul, 
 the other supremely noble in broad truth 
 as the angels in heaven ; this one gentle as 
 a dove, that one grasping and venomous 
 as a serpent. The hearts of women are as 
 the streets of a great town, some broad and 
 straight and clean, some dim and strange 
 and winding; or as the buildings of this 
 same city, wherein there are holy temples 
 at which men worship in calm and peace, 
 and dens where men gamble away their 
 souls. Does any man boast, then, that he 
 knows the heart of a woman ? 
 j The heart of woman containeth all 
 things good and evil ; and woman in all 
 her weakness is the strongest force upon 
 the earth. She is the helm of all things 
 human ; she comes in many shapes, and 
 knocks at many doors. She is quick yet 
 patient, and her passion is not ungovern-
 
 AFTER DINNER. 79 
 
 able like that of a man, but as a gentle 
 steed she can guide e'en as she will, and 
 as occasion offers can now bit up and now 
 give rein. She has a captain's eye, and 
 strong must be that fortress of the heart in 
 which she finds no place of vantage. Does 
 thy heart beat fast in youth ? She will out 
 run, nor will her kisses tire. 
 
 Art thou set towards ambition? She 
 will unlock thy inner heart and show thee 
 roads that lead to glory. Art thou worn 
 and weary ? She has comfort in her breast. 
 Art thou fallen ? She can lift thee up, and 
 to the illusion of thy senses gild defeat with 
 triumph. 
 
 She can do all these things, for Nature 
 ever fights upon her side ; and while she 
 does them, she can deceive and shape a 
 secret end in which thou hast no part. 
 And thus woman rules the world. She is 
 thy slave, O man, yet holds thee captive. 
 At her touch honor withers, locks open, 
 and barriers fall. She is infinite as ocean, 
 variable as heaven, and her name is the 
 Unforeseen. \
 
 80 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 The statement was recently set afloat 
 that George Meredith understood and de 
 picted woman better than any one who 
 had preceded him ; and I have heard men 
 wonder if this be true, or only a wily state 
 ment to throw men again off the track. 
 Wise women encourage this notion of mys 
 tery, and men generally accept it. Mr. 
 Warner, however, is of the opinion that 
 women, conscious of inferior strength, have 
 woven this notion of mystery about them 
 selves as a defence ; and he insists that if 
 novelists and essayists have raised a mist 
 about the sex, in which it wilfully mas 
 querades, it is time that scientists should 
 determine whether the mystery is in nature 
 or only in imagination. Women are not 
 very mysterious objects to each other. 
 Men can deceive men, men may occasion 
 ally hoodwink women, or be hoodwinked 
 by them; but it has not been given to 
 one woman to throw dust in the eyes of 
 another. The silliest girl can see through 
 the most astute as though she were of 
 glass.
 
 AFTER DINNER. 8 1 
 
 Historically, it would be interesting to 
 trace the rise of this notion of women as 
 an enigma. The savage race does not ap 
 pear to have it. A woman to the North 
 American Indian is a simple affair, dealt 
 with without circumlocution. In the Bible 
 records there is not much mystery about 
 her, and there is no evidence that the 
 Egyptian woman was more difficult to un 
 derstand than the Egyptian man. 
 
 It was, I believe, in mediaeval times and 
 the chivalric ages that women were first set 
 up as being more incomprehensible than 
 men, that is, less logical, more whimsical, 
 more uncertain in their mental processes. 
 The writers. of the seventeenth and eigh 
 teenth centuries always took an investigat 
 ing and speculative attitude toward woman, 
 and Montaigne seems specially to regard 
 her as a mystery. 
 
 Some one (that anonymous person who 
 is always saying the wisest and most de 
 lightful things just as you are on the point 
 of saying them yourself) has said recently 
 that the mysteriousness of the soft sex is a 
 6
 
 82 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 tradition only, and women are as easy to 
 understand as men (honest creatures !), if 
 only one did not blind one's capability of 
 understanding them by presupposing them 
 to be darkly complex. This opinion, com 
 ing from one of our keenest pens, made 
 a decided impression ; but that impression 
 was shortly afterwards blurred by reading 
 a story by the same writer, into which he 
 introduces women most irrelevant and un 
 reasoning, the most feminine of the sex, 
 and makes remarks about them like these : 
 "Who knows what is in a woman? How 
 many moods in a quarter of an hour? And 
 which is the characteristic one? " His first 
 utterances were in the nature of an essay ; 
 his story was life. However, in spite of 
 science and reason, she sits like a sphinx 
 and smiles ; and no man has yet read all 
 the riddle of her smile, or known all the 
 mystery of her heart. 
 
 Wise women, too, will continue artfully 
 to foster, in the eyes of men, this conceit of 
 their separateness and veiled personality. 
 
 Man is by nature a discoverer. He likes
 
 AFTER DINNER. 83 
 
 suggestions, glimpses, possibilities. A flash 
 of an eye under a veil, the gleam of a white 
 neck under soft filmy stuff, are more effec- , 
 
 ^r 
 
 tive with him than the steady look of an 
 unveiled face or the most decollete gown 
 ever worn. So, too, a fleeting glimpse 
 of individuality, a suggestion of the real 
 woman, stirs him, sets him thinking, won- . 
 dering, longing to explore the hidden 
 treasures of a personality. 
 
 And the woman who can whet curiosity, 
 give vague, shadowy hints of her real self, 
 can allure, repel, cajole, command, grow / 
 scornful and tender in one breath, battle 
 bravely and yield gracefully, is the woman 
 of all women who will fascinate men. . . . 
 
 It has been said that flippant minds are 
 readiest in speech, because their supply of 
 ideas is so limited that they have only to 
 hurry them forth. Well-stored minds, in 
 pausing to reflect which of their theories 
 or opinions shall be advanced, proceed 
 more slowly, and are rarely fluent. 
 
 Perhaps this is the reason that the 
 conversation this evening, in spite of the 
 
 i
 
 84 fN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 intellect and talent gathered there, was 
 commonplace. It is true, however, that 
 the commonplace needs no defence, since 
 everybody takes to it and thrives upon it. 
 Great is the power of the commonplace. 
 
 Beloved and read and followed is the 
 writer or preacher of the commonplace. 
 Is not the sunshine common, and the 
 bloom of May? Why struggle with these 
 things in literature or in life? Why not 
 settle down upon the formula that to be 
 platitudinous is to be happy? 
 
 When one of us who has been led by 
 native vanity or senseless flattery to think 
 himself possessed of talent arrives at the 
 conclusion that he or she is ordinary or 
 even dull, it is one of the most tranquilliz 
 ing and blessed convictions that can enter 
 a mortal's mind. All our failures, all our 
 shortcomings, our strange disappointments 
 in the effects of our own efforts, are lifted 
 from our bruised shoulders, and fall like 
 Christian's pack at the feet of that Omnipo 
 tence which has seen fit to deny us the 
 pleasant gift of high intelligence, and made 
 us commonplace.
 
 AFTER DINNER. 85 
 
 In any gathering, how little we have to 
 boast in the way of conversation ! Locke, 
 when in company with certain English lords 
 renowned for their wit, amused himself by 
 taking down the conversation, and caused 
 them to roar with laughter as he read 
 aloud the result and asked them to say 
 what they could make of it. The truth is, 
 the upper classes in all nations have a 
 certain jargon and glitter of talk, which, if 
 burned in the embers of literary or philo 
 sophical thought, would leave a very small 
 residuum of gold in the crucible. 
 
 When one reflects how much of conver 
 sation is mere purposeless impulse or habit, 
 and how few talkers express their real final 
 sentiments, it seems that no one should 
 be held altogether accountable for what 
 he has said.* Nothing so surely kills the 
 freedom of talk as to have some matter- 
 of-fact person instantly bring you to book 
 for some impulsive remark flashed out on 
 the instant, instead of playing with it and 
 tossing it about in a way that shall expose 
 its absurdity or show its value.
 
 86 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 A person cannot tell very well what he 
 does think till his thoughts are exposed to 
 the air, and it is the bright fallacies and 
 impulsive rash ventures that are most fruit 
 ful to talkers and listeners. I have seen 
 the most promising paradox come to grief 
 by a simple " Do you think so ? " 
 
 Racy, entertaining talk is only exposed 
 thought, and no one would hold a man 
 responsible for the thronging thoughts that 
 contradict and displace each other in his 
 mind. 
 
 A man had better be silent if he may 
 not launch into the general talk, the whfrn 
 and fancy of the moment; or if he can 
 only say to-day what he will stand by 
 to-morrow, for fear of being considered 
 inconsistent. None of us seem able to 
 shake off that reverence for a past act or 
 word, for we realize that the eyes of others 
 have no other data for computing our orbit 
 than our past, and we are loath to disap 
 point them. Why drag about this corpse 
 of your memory, lest you contradict what 
 you have said in this place or that place ?
 
 AFTER DINNER. 87 
 
 Mr. Emerson assures us that a foolish con 
 sistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, 
 adored by little statesmen, philosophers, 
 and divines. With consistency a great soul 
 has simply nothing to do. He may as 
 well concern himself with his shadow on 
 the wall. Speak what you think now, and 
 to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks, 
 though it contradict everything you have 
 said to-day. 
 
 All original, independent action exerts 
 a powerful magnetism. The soul always 
 hears an admonition in originality on any 
 subject. The sentiment it instils is more 
 valuable than the thought it contains. 
 
 To believe your own thought, to believe 
 that what is true for you in your private 
 heart is true for all men, that is genius. 
 
 A man should learn to detect and watch 
 that gleam of light from within more than 
 the lustre of the firmament of bards and 
 sages. Yet he dismisses without notice this 
 thought, because it is his own. 
 
 In every work of genius we recognize 
 our own rejected thoughts ; they come back
 
 88 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 to us with a certain alienated majesty. I 
 believe any man can be really great if he 
 will only trust his own instincts, think his 
 own thoughts, and say his own say. The 
 stupidest fellow, if he would only reveal 
 with child-like honesty how he feels and 
 thinks when the stars wink at him, when 
 he sees the ocean for the first time, when 
 music comes over the waters, or when he 
 and his beloved look into each other's eyes, 
 could he but reveal this, the world would 
 hail him as a genius, and would prefer his 
 story to all the epics that ever were written 
 from Homer to Scott. 
 
 Intelligence having been insulted by the 
 condescending author, my sensibility was 
 wounded later in the evening. A youth 
 with a simpering admiration informed me 
 that I was "Such a flirt," the suggestive 
 pause convincing me that he shared the 
 general impression of misguided youths, 
 who fancy that to be a flirt is the summum 
 bonum of a woman's ambition, and that he 
 can offer her no more intoxicating incense 
 than the expression of such an opinion.
 
 AFTER DINNER. 89 
 
 I hate a flirt, and almost agree with Dr. 
 Talmage, that " flirtation is damnation." A 
 flirt must necessarily have a coarse-grained 
 soul, well modulated and well tutored, 
 but there is no fineness in it. All its native 
 fineness is coarsened by coarse efforts of 
 the will. True feeling is a rustic vulgarity 
 the flirt does not tolerate, yet she will play 
 you off a pretty string of sentiment she has 
 gathered from the poets, and adjusts it as 
 prettily as a Gobelin weaver adjusts the 
 colors in his broidery. She shades it off 
 delightfully. There are no bold contrasts, 
 but a most artistic mellowing of tints. She 
 smiles like a wizard, and jingles a laugh 
 such as tolled the poor home-bound Ulysses 
 to the Circean bower. Her words sparkle 
 and flow hurriedly and with the prettiest 
 doubleness of meaning. Naturalness she 
 copies, yet scorns. She measures her wit 
 by the triumphs of her art. She chuckles 
 to herself over her own falsity. She is 
 always gay because she has no depth of 
 feeling to be stirred. 
 
 She counts on marriage not as the great
 
 90 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 absorbent of a heart's love and life, but as 
 a feasible and orderly conventionality, to 
 be played with and kept at a distance, and 
 finally to be accepted as a cover for the 
 faint and tawdry sparkles of an old and 
 cherished heartlessness. She will not pine 
 under any regrets, because she has no ap- 
 
 Ipreciation of any loss;, she will not chafe 
 at indifference, because it is her art; she 
 will not be worried with jealousies, because 
 she is ignorant of love. With no concep 
 tion of the soul in its strength and fulness, 
 she sees no lack of its demands. A thrill 
 she does not know, a passion she cannot 
 imagine ; joy is a name, grief is another ; 
 and Life, with its crowding scenes of love 
 and bitterness, is a play upon the stage. 
 
 I tread on delicate ground, ground, 
 alas, which many a girl treads boldly, scat 
 tering much feather-bloom from the wings 
 of poor Psyche, gathering for her hoards of 
 unlovely memories, and sowing the seed of 
 many a wish that she had done differently. 
 They cannot pass over such ground, and 
 escape having their natures more or less
 
 AFTER DINNER. 91 
 
 vulgarized. I do not speak of anything 
 counted wicked, but of gambling with the 
 precious and lovely things of the deepest 
 human relation. If a woman with such an 
 experience marry a man she loves, will not 
 she now and then remember something it 
 would be joy to discover she had but 
 dreamed ? 
 
 What will the true king have when he 
 comes to his throne if his golden tribute 
 has been wasted on every passer-by? 
 
 There is a distinction to be made be 
 tween coquetry and flirtation; and no 
 attractive woman is free from a certain 
 amount of coquetry. A coquette sparkles ; 
 but it is more the sparkle of a harmless 
 and pretty vanity than of calculation. She 
 only whets the appetite, while a flirt de 
 praves it. She does not regard all men as 
 possible lovers. Perhaps a day will come 
 when the clear, sparkling eyes will droop, 
 and the brave mouth tremble, in the pres 
 ence of a man ; but not for every man 
 does she lose her sweet freedom and 
 fearlessness. 
 
 tW- - r^-ec-;
 
 92 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 Ah, Mr. Bachelor, you see a coquette 
 in your revery, dancing before you with 
 sparkling smile, teasing you with the pret 
 tiest graces in the world, maddening you 
 with hope and fear ; but as you watch her 
 with your whole soul in your eyes, you see 
 her features relax to pity, as a gleam of 
 sensibility comes stealing over her spirit, 
 and then to a kindly, feeling regard. And 
 if you could whisper some of these vagaries 
 that grow on your fancy in lonely hours 
 into her listening and loving ears, ears 
 not tired of listening because it is you who 
 whisper ; ears ever indulgent because eager 
 to praise, and if your darkest fancies 
 were lit up by a ringing laugh from that 
 sweet face turned up in fond rebuke, how 
 far better than to be waxing black and 
 sour over pestilential humors alone ! And 
 if, when a glowing thought comes to your 
 brain quick and sudden, you could tell it. 
 over as a second self to that sweet crea 
 ture, who is not away because she loves to 
 be there ; and if you could watch the 
 thought catching that girlish mind, illumin-
 
 AFTER DINNER. 93 
 
 ing that fair brow, sparkling in those plea- 
 santest of eyes, how far better than to 
 feel it slumbering and going out, heavy, 
 lifeless, dead in your own selfish fancy. 
 And if a generous emotion steals over you, 
 coming you know not whither, would there 
 not be a richer charm in lavishing it in a 
 caress or endearing word upon that fondest 
 and most cherished one than in patting your 
 glossy-coated dog or sinking in loneliness to 
 your slumbers? 
 
 If, in short, you were no bachelor, but 
 the husband of some sweet image, and in 
 that chair yonder were seated a sweet-faced, 
 true-hearted woman, and if you could reach 
 an arm round that chair-back, without fear 
 of giving offence, and suffer your fingers 
 to play idly with those curls that escape 
 down the neck; and if you could clasp 
 with your other hand those little, white 
 fingers of hers, which lie so temptingly 
 within reach, and inspired by her sweet 
 sympathy talk softly and low, the hours 
 would slip by without knowledge, and the 
 winter winds whistle uncared for.
 
 94 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 And if she should turn her head daintily 
 to one side, and look lovingly into your 
 eyes, and your fingers should close fast and 
 passionately over her hand, like a swift 
 night-cloud shrouding the pale tips of Dian, 
 and your eyes should draw nearer to her 
 laughing, teasing, loving eyes; and you 
 should clasp her shadowy form, and your 
 lips should feel the warm breath, growing 
 warmer and warmer, would you then, O 
 scoffing Bachelor, so gladly banish her to 
 Dreamland?
 
 AFTER CHURCH.
 
 AFTER CHURCH. 
 
 " TF I have all faith, so that I can move 
 
 *- mountains, and have not Love, I am 
 nothing." 
 
 Two types of ministers dwell persistently 
 in my mind to-night, suggested by the ser 
 vices of the day. 
 
 The first, the Reverend Dismal Hor 
 ror, author of that profitable volume, 
 " Groans from the Bottomless Pit to awaken 
 Sleeping Sinners." He was a rousing 
 young dissenting preacher, who had fright 
 ened into fits half the women and children 
 and one or two old men of his congrega 
 tion, giving out among several similarly 
 cheerful intimations that they must all 
 necessarily be damned, unless they imme 
 diately set about making themselves as 
 miserable as possible in this world. 
 
 He had proved to his trembling female 
 hearers, in effect, that there was only one 
 7
 
 98 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 way to heaven, through his chapel ; 
 that the only safe mode of spending their 
 time on earth was reading such blessed 
 works as that which he had just published, 
 and going daily to prayer-meeting. On 
 Sunday he had preached a sermon, " to 
 improve the death " such being his im 
 pressive phrase of a Miss Snooks, who 
 had not been a member of his congrega 
 tion, who, having been to the theatre on a 
 Thursday night, was taken ill on a Friday, 
 and was a lifeless ( ?) corpse when the next 
 Sunday dawned. So the minister this 
 morning railed of Progressive Euchre 
 (which he declared was rightly named, 
 because it was progressing to the devil) , and 
 pointed out with awful force and distinct 
 ness how cards and novels were the devil's 
 traps to catch souls, and balls and the 
 atres easy cuts to ! And men who had 
 defrauded their neighbors, got the best of 
 a little business transaction, as it were, 
 women with slanderous tongues or violent 
 tempers, who had deprived each other of 
 honor and purity, or who had destroyed
 
 AFTER CHURCH. 99 
 
 the peace and sanctity of their own homes 
 by words that sever hearts more than 
 sharp swords, nodded in a gratified ap 
 proval, and uttered loud and sonorous 
 " Amens." 
 
 In powerful contrast to this style is the 
 Reverend Morphine Velvet. His is a 
 fashionable church, a church of ease ; 
 for it was a very easy mode of worship, 
 discipline, and doctrine that was there prac 
 tised and inculcated. I should say not 
 intending irreverence that Mr. Morphine 
 Velvet's yoke was very easy, his burden 
 very light. There was a sort of soothing, 
 winning elegance and tenderness in the 
 tone and manner in which he prayed and 
 besought his dearly beloved brethren, as 
 many as are here present, to accompany 
 him, their bland and graceful pastor, to the 
 throne of heavenly grace. Fit leader was 
 he of such a flock ! In the pulpit he was 
 calm and fluent. He took care that there 
 should be nothing in his sermons to arrest 
 the understanding or unprofitably occupy 
 it, addressing himself entirely to the feel-
 
 100 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 ings and fancy of his cultivated audience, 
 in frequently interesting and even charm 
 ingly imaginative compositions. Such a 
 sermon I heard to-night. The text was 
 a fearful passage of Scripture, 2 Corin 
 thians iv. 3 : " But if our gospel be hid, 
 it is hid to them that are lost." If any 
 words were calculated to startle such a 
 congregation out of their guilty and fatal 
 apathy, were not these? Ought not the 
 minister to have looked around him and 
 trembled? So one would have thought; 
 but this " dear man " knew his mission 
 and flock better. 
 
 He presented us an elegant description 
 of heaven, with its crystal battlements, its 
 jasper walls, its buildings of pure gold, its 
 foundations of precious stones, its balmy 
 air, its sounds of mysterious melody, its 
 overflowing fulness of everlasting happiness. 
 And would his dear hearers be content 
 to lose all this? Content to enjoy the 
 pleasures of sin for a season? Forbid it, 
 eternal Mercy ! But lest a strain like this 
 should disturb or distress his fastidious
 
 AFTER CHURCH. IOI 
 
 hearers, he took the opportunity to en 
 force and illustrate the consolatory truth 
 that 
 
 " Religion never was designed 
 To make our pleasures less." 
 
 He finally sent his congregation away over 
 flowing with Christian sympathy, very well 
 pleased with the minister, but infinitely bet 
 ter pleased with themselves. 
 
 To know whether a minister, young or 
 still in flower, is in safe or dangerous 
 paths, there are two psychometers, a 
 comparison of which will give infallible 
 returns. 
 
 The first is the black broadcloth forming 
 the knees of his pantaloons ; the second the 
 patch of carpet before his mirror. If the 
 first is unworn and the second frayed and 
 threadbare, pray for him. If the first is 
 worn and shiny, and the second keeps its 
 pattern and texture, get him to pray for 
 you. 
 
 Thoughts of these ministers and their 
 countless imitators make one exclaim with
 
 102 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 Romola, " God's kingdom is something 
 wider; else let me stand outside it, with 
 the beings I love." 
 
 These, however, are exceptions, with 
 whom we like to contrast ourselves. Our 
 own weakness and misdemeanors are not 
 so apparent. We appear better and 
 grander. But we hesitate in drawing near 
 the procession of holy men who live lives 
 of purity and self-denial. I wonder if it 
 was ever easy for any one to be good? 
 Being good, it seems to me, is as much a 
 v matter of temperament as being happy/' 
 There are people with strong capacity for 
 enjoyment and the corresponding power 
 for suffering; and there are people of a 
 stolid, phlegmatic nature, feeling neither joy 
 nor sorrow very keenly, feeling no decided 
 inclination to be anything but good and 
 commonplace. They do not eat their 
 hearts out with intense anticipations, or 
 exhaust themselves with devouring posses 
 sion, but take things placidly as they come. 
 They never feel their hearts ache with the 
 " VVeltschmerz " which Goethe tells of in
 
 AFTER CHURCH. 103 
 
 such comprehensive words, that world- 
 weariness for which he tried every cure, yet 
 which cursed so large a part of his life. 
 Some men, then, are trying one way to be 
 good, some another, one in a calm 
 methodical way, with no expense of heart's 
 blood ; while another is fighting and strug 
 gling and straining against temptations that 
 hourly beset him. 
 
 Have we any right to condemn when we 
 remember that the germs of all things are 
 in the human heart; that the greatest 
 heroes and the greatest criminals are but 
 different modes of ourselves ? It is proba 
 bly a truer truth than most of us realize, 
 that our own virtue is largely a matter of 
 circumstance; that our good conduct is 
 the product of forces outside of ourselves ; 
 that we are mainly the creatures of circum 
 stance, including in that term hereditary 
 predispositions, social environments, and all 
 other things that influence conduct and 
 character. 
 
 Do you remember " Old Titbottom's " 
 magic spectacles, through which he could
 
 104 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 read the hearts of all men, and which he 
 sometimes regarded as a gift of the great 
 est value, and at times as something he had 
 been happier never to have possessed ? 
 
 I borrowed those spectacles once ; but 
 the visions made me afraid. If I felt 
 myself warmly drawn to any one, I struggled 
 with the fierce desire of seeing him through 
 the spectacles; for I feared to find him 
 something else than I fancied. But, some 
 times mastered after long struggles, as if the 
 unavoidable condition of owning the spec 
 tacles were using them, I would seize them, 
 and saunter forth. 
 
 In many houses I thought to see angels, 
 nymphs, or at least women, and found only 
 broomsticks, mops, or kettles hurrying 
 about,, rattling and tinkling in a state of 
 shrill activity. I made calls upon elegant 
 ladies ; and after I had enjoyed the gloss 
 of silk, the delicacy of laces, and the glit 
 ter of jewels, I slipped on my spectacles, 
 and saw a peacock's feather, flounced, fur- 
 belowed, and fluttering, or an iron rod, 
 thin, sharp, and hard ; nor could I pos-
 
 AFTER CHURCH. 105 
 
 sibly mistake the movement of the drapery 
 for any flexibility of the thing draped. Or, 
 mysteriously chilled, I saw a statue of per 
 fect form or flowing movement, it might 
 be alabaster, or bronze, or marble ; but 
 sadly often it was ice. But the true sad 
 ness was rather in seeing those who, not 
 having the spectacles, thought that the 
 iron rod was flexible, and the ice statue 
 warm. I saw many a gallant heart, which 
 seemed to me brave and loyal as the 
 Crusaders, pursuing through a long life of 
 devotion the hope of lighting at least a 
 smile in the cold eyes, if not a fire in the 
 icy heart. I watched the earnest, enthu 
 siastic sacrifice. I saw the pure resolve, 
 the generous faith, the fine scorn of doubt, 
 the impatience of suspicion. I watched the 
 grace, the ardor, the glory of devotion. 
 Through these strange spectacles how often 
 I saw the noblest heart renouncing all 
 other hopes, all other ambition, all other 
 life, than the possible love of one of these 
 statues. 
 
 I wept until my spectacles were dimmed
 
 106 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 for those hopeless lovers ; but there was a 
 pang beyond tears for the icy statues. I 
 grew old and hard, almost morose ; people 
 seemed to me so blind and unreasonable. 
 They did the wrong thing; they called 
 green yellow and black white. Young men 
 said of a girl, " What a lovely, simple 
 creature ! " I looked through my glasses, 
 and there was only a glistening wisp of 
 straw, dry and hollow. Or they said, 
 " What a cold, proud beauty ! " I looked, 
 and lo, a Madonna, whose heart held 
 the world. Or they said, " What a wild, 
 giddy girl ! " and I saw a glancing, dancing 
 mountain stream, pure as the virgin snow 
 whence it flowed, singing through sun and 
 shade, over pearls and gold-dust, touching 
 the flowers with a dewy kiss, a beam of 
 grace, a happy song, a line of light in the 
 dim and troubled landscape. They went 
 to see actors upon the stage. I went 
 to see actors in the boxes, so consum 
 mately cunning that others did not know 
 they were acting ; and they did not suspect 
 it themselves.
 
 AFTER CHURCH. 107 
 
 But I could not grow misanthropic when 
 I saw in the eyes of so many who were 
 called old the gushing fountains of eternal 
 youth and the light of an immortal dawn ; 
 or when I saw those who were deemed 
 unsuccessful or aimless, ruling a fair realm 
 of peace and plenty, either in their own 
 hearts or in others', a realm and princely 
 possession, for which they had well re 
 nounced a hopeless search and a belated 
 triumph. I knew one man, who had been 
 for years a by-word for having sought the 
 philosopher's stone. But I looked at him 
 with the spectacles and saw a satisfaction 
 in concentrated energies, and a tenacity 
 arising from a devotion to a noble dream, 
 which was not apparent in the youths who 
 ridiculed him, or in the clever gentlemen 
 who cracked their jokes at his expense at a 
 gossiping dinner. 
 
 And there is your neighbor over the way, 
 who passes for a woman who has failed in 
 her career because she is an old maid. 
 People wag solemn heads of pity, and say 
 that she made so great a mistake in not
 
 108 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 marrying the famous or wealthy man who 
 was for years her suitor. It is clear that 
 no orange-flowers will bloom for her. The 
 young people make their tender romances 
 about her, as they watch her and think of 
 her solitary hours of bitter regret and wast 
 ing longing, never to be satisfied. When I 
 first knew her I shared this sympathy, and 
 pleased my imagination with fancying her 
 hard struggle with the conviction that she 
 had lost all that made life beautiful. But 
 when, one day, I raised my glasses and 
 glanced at her, I did not see the old maid 
 whom we all pitied for a secret sorrow, but 
 a woman whose nature was a tropic, in 
 which the sun shone, birds sang, and flowers 
 bloomed forever. There were no regrets, 
 no doubts or half-wishes, but a calm sweet 
 ness, a transparent peace. I could hear 
 her say simply and quietly, " If I did not 
 love him, how could I marry him ? " Could 
 one grow misanthropic in the face of such 
 fidelity and dignity and simplicity ? Great 
 excellences lie concealed in the depths of 
 character like pearls at the bottom of the
 
 AFTER CHURCH. 109 
 
 sea. Under the laughing, glancing surface, 
 how little they are suspected ! 
 
 Have those of us who wear not the 
 magic spectacles continually any right to 
 criticise or condemn? Can we tell aught 
 of the wrong resisted ? There is always a 
 deep vein of sorrow and disappointment, 
 of shadow and drawback, in every human 
 life. One man wrote "Miserrimus" on his 
 tomb, and there are many who would not 
 refuse that briefest, saddest, and most sig 
 nificant of epitaphs. If we could only see 
 into the inner lives of men, we should find 
 that behind all the lightsome foreground of 
 pleasure there looms up perpetually this 
 background of darkness, like a thunder 
 cloud which rolls over the city at evening 
 and makes the world colorless. How long 
 will it be before we shall learn that for 
 every wound that betrays itself to the sight 
 by a scar, there are a thousand mutilations 
 that cripple, each of them, one or more 
 of our highest faculties ? The Saviour fre 
 quently cautions his disciples against this 
 hasty judgment of others, to which we are
 
 110 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 all so much inclined, disposing lightly and 
 flippantly of reputations which are as dear 
 to them as ours to ourselves. What if the 
 same easy, careless mode of judgment were 
 turned upon us? Nothing in all the wide 
 world of human wickedness is more selfish 
 or cruel than this mean depreciation of our 
 neighbors, as if we were better than they. 
 In this as in all things, in word or deed, 
 there is one rule to be followed, "What 
 soever ye would that men should do unto 
 you, do ye even so to them," a rule so 
 simple and so comprehensive that all ages 
 have pronounced it the Golden Rule, as 
 summing up our whole duty in our relations 
 to each other. 
 
 We have been accustomed to be told that 
 the greatest thing in the religious world is 
 faith. For centuries it has been the key 
 note of the evangelical religion. Long ago, 
 I decided that my faith was not to be tri 
 fled with. It may be weak, and doubtless 
 shows a great want of intellect on my part, 
 but the only faith I have any faith in is the 
 blind, unquestioning faith of a child, and 
 with this faith I dare not trifle.
 
 AFTER CHURCH. in 
 
 Students so often become sceptical from 
 so much investigation that I have always 
 abstained from the reading of any books 
 that would weaken the faith I have. The 
 religions of the East have been very allur 
 ing, with their fascinating theories, such as 
 cycles and cycles of soul-life, ending in the 
 attainment of all knowledge, but I have 
 never explored them. And I have been 
 able to preserve unquestioning faith in 
 "God, the Father Almighty, Maker of 
 Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ, his 
 only begotten Son," a hell where bad peo 
 ple go, and a heaven peopled with good 
 angels, and echo in my heart the words of 
 Savonarola, "Be thankful, my daughter, if 
 your own soul has been spared perplexity, 
 and judge not those to whom a harder lot 
 has been given." 
 
 I can never forget the impression made 
 upon me by a clergyman, who took me into 
 his confidence, with one of those strange 
 confessions which are sometimes made by 
 the most reticent to the most unlikely of 
 listeners. A mutual friend mentioned his
 
 112 IN MAIDEN MEDITA TION. 
 
 name to me one day, as we stood at the 
 hotel door together ; he merely bowed, and 
 a moment later moved away, and I did not 
 give him a second thought. The following 
 afternoon, in one of my long rambles, I 
 found myself far away from the hotel, and 
 a sudden mountain storm came up before 
 I could find shelter of any kind. It was 
 not only an unpleasant, but a dangerous posi 
 tion, and I confess to having been a good 
 deal frightened. As I looked helplessly 
 about, the sight of the tall priest I had met 
 there the day before was a very welcome 
 one. He was at least a human being and 
 a man, and might know of some hut where 
 we could find temporary safety. As it hap 
 pened, he did ; and for more than an hour 
 we were together in an empty cabin on the 
 hillside. 
 
 The storm increased, and our danger 
 was very evident. How it came about I 
 do not know, but the conversation turned 
 upon fear, trust in God, and faith. Shall I 
 ever forget the man's haggard, stricken face, 
 as he told me his story ? told me, while
 
 AFTER CHURCH. 113 
 
 the lightning played about us in forked 
 tongues of flame, of his simple, child-like, 
 unquestioning belief in God and Christ and 
 the old-fashioned devil with a cloven foot 
 and a hell of fire and brimstone ; how he 
 had preached plain Bible truths such as he 
 himself had learned at his mother's knee ; 
 how little by little doubts came, question 
 ings arose, faith became clouded ; how the 
 wonderful story of Christianity, which he 
 had reverently received, and in which he 
 had reverently instructed others, took grad 
 ually but surely the hues of a lovely fairy 
 tale which man's intellect could only smile 
 at, not seriously accept; how the trouble 
 grew greater, and books and study only 
 made it worse, until, in order to remain an 
 honest man, he had fled from church and 
 people, taking his nominal holiday for a 
 season, knowing well in his heart that it 
 was a farewell for all time. As the storm 
 increased, the man's excitement grew. I 
 think he forgot I was there, and talked only 
 to himself or the spirits he recognized in 
 the storm shrieks. Oh, it was awful, the 
 8
 
 114 IN MAIDEN M EDIT A TION. 
 
 great agony of a soul in doubt ! Never 
 can I forget the unutterable horror of it, 
 the tortured pain, the seething agony, the 
 writhing despair of that human soul. It 
 was sport for devils, rare mirth for thb 
 Arch-fiend himself, bored with the puny 
 impotence of man in fashioning evil. Rich, 
 rare sport for the old pagan to watch a 
 nineteenth-century conscience so saturated 
 with intellectual culture that it had thrown 
 old beliefs to the wind, and denied as fables 
 God and Satan equally. 
 
 To be doubted must convulse the Power 
 of Evil with devilish delight; and I can 
 fancy him evolving out of his inner con 
 sciousness a rare refinement of revenge for 
 the presumption of this clarified intellect, 
 even while the anguished soul told of his 
 doubts and of the peace gone from him 
 forever. 
 
 The storm cleared slightly, and the light 
 ning ceased. The man before me was still 
 looking out over the mountains with wide, 
 unseeing eyes, unconscious that any one 
 was near him. I hated to leave him alone
 
 AFTER CHURCH. 115 
 
 with his great agony, yet I dreaded more 
 to have him come out of that trance-like 
 state and remember that he had spoken 
 such words to a stranger. 
 
 So very quietly I stole away and left him 
 alone with his tortured soul. Are we not 
 all 
 
 "As infants crying in the night, 
 
 As infants crying for a light, 
 And with no language but a cry " ? 
 
 And if a glimmer of light has come to me 
 as a glorious heritage, I shall fan it gently, 
 lest I be left in total darkness. Wise men 
 do not encourage the habit of criticism, the 
 tendency of which is necessarily sceptical. 
 In religion lies the only guidance for human 
 life ; and a man should reflect that although 
 observances may seem to him offensive, 
 and stories told about the gods incredible, 
 yet, as a rule of action, a system which has 
 been the growth of ages is infinitely more 
 precious than any theory he can think out 
 for himself. He should know that his own 
 mind, that the mind of any single individual, 
 is unequal to so vast a matter. A man may
 
 Il6 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 think as he likes about the legends of Zeus 
 and Here, but he must keep his thoughts to 
 himself. A man who brings into contempt 
 the creed of his country is the deepest of 
 criminals, and deserves death. " Let him 
 die for it," a remarkable expression to 
 have been used by Plato, the wisest and 
 gentlest of human law-givers. 
 
 A woman's need of religion seems to me 
 much greater than a man's, not only for the 
 next life, but for this ; not only to gain 
 heaven, but to enable her to exist until she 
 reaches it. A man without some sort of 
 religion is at best a poor reprobate, the 
 foot-ball of destiny, with no tie linking him 
 to infinity and the wondrous Eternity that 
 is begun with him ; but a woman without 
 it is even worse, a flame without heat, a 
 rainbow without color, a flower without per 
 fume. A man may in some sort tie his frail 
 hopes and honor to business or the world ; 
 but a woman without the anchor, Faith, is 
 adrift and a wreck. 
 
 A man may craze his thought and his 
 brain to trustfulness in such poor harborage
 
 AFTER CHURCH. 117 
 
 as fame and reputation may stretch before 
 him ; but a woman, where can she put her 
 hope in storms, if not in Heaven ? 
 
 And that trust, that abiding love, that 
 enduring hope mellowing every page and 
 scene of life, lighting them with pleasant 
 radiance when the world-storms break, what 
 can bestow it all but a holy soul-tie to what 
 is above the storms ? Who that has enjoyed 
 the counsel and love of a Christian mother 
 but will echo the thought with energy and 
 hallow it with a tear? 
 
 A vision comes to me of my mother as 
 she sat one Sunday afternoon. One hand 
 is softly stroking the hair from my forehead, 
 the other turning the leaves of a book as 
 she reads in her low sweet voice the words 
 of Thomas a Kempis. It was years ago ; 
 but I hear the words now, embracing, as 
 they do, the whole world of self-denial, the 
 spirit of self-sacrifice. I have never com 
 prehended them, but once comprehended, it 
 seems to me they would prove the essence, 
 the soul of Christianity : 
 
 " Forsake thyself, resign thyself, and thou
 
 Il8 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 shalt enjoy much inward peace. Then shall 
 all vain imaginations, evil perturbations, and 
 superfluous cares fly away, then shall im 
 moderate fear leave thee, inordinate love 
 shall die." 
 
 It was a little, old-fashioned book, but it 
 works miracles to-day, while sermons and 
 treatises newly issued leave things as they 
 were, or worse than before. It was written 
 by a hand that waited for the heart's prompt 
 ing ; it is the chronicle of a solitary, hidden 
 anguish, struggle, trust, and triumph, not 
 written on velvet cushions to teach endur 
 ance to those who are treading with bleed 
 ing feet on the stones. And it will remain 
 to all time a lasting record of human needs 
 and human consolations, the voice of a 
 brother who years ago felt and suffered and 
 renounced, in the cloister, perhaps, with 
 serge gown and tonsured head, with chant 
 ing and long fasts, and in a fashion of 
 speech different from ours, but under the 
 same silent far-off heavens and with the 
 same passionate desires, the same strivings, 
 the same failures, the same weariness.
 
 AFTER CHURCH. 119 
 
 Lately, I have heard women arraigned 
 in a most startling manner for their want 
 of charity, of thoughtfulness, of loving-kind 
 ness. Having come into the arena, men 
 no longer consider it necessary to " handle 
 them with gloves," but boldly criticise and 
 condemn. 
 
 In the table of contents of a well-known 
 magazine, my eye caught the title, "The 
 Mannerless Sex." The writer scathingly 
 denounced the code of manners followed 
 in public by the so-called "gentle sex" as 
 disgracefully inconsiderate, superlatively 
 selfish, and exasperatingly insolent. He 
 railed of their manner in a horse-car. He 
 ruthlessly condemned the inconsiderate 
 woman in a sleeping-car, who arises while 
 it is yet night, and, secreting herself in the 
 dressing-room, locks the door against all 
 other women, and refuses to be dislodged 
 by threats or prayers. But it is when lovely 
 woman goes a-shopping she receives the 
 most severe criticism. He said, in fact, 
 that she does very little that she ought to
 
 120 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 do, and very, very much that she ought not 
 to do. 
 
 Who has not suffered from the waspish 
 tongue of an inconsiderate woman? For 
 how much misery must it answer? The 
 wounded pride, the lacerated feelings, the 
 tarnished reputations she leaves in her 
 wake ! A few hasty, careless words, a 
 brutal attack, a refined stab, as the case 
 may be, and some one's life is not the 
 same. Thank God, there are few such 
 women ! But rare as they are, they have 
 the power to reflect sadly and endlessly 
 upon the world of womankind. If each 
 woman could only realize her own power 
 for the weal or woe of the world ! Each 
 woman is a queen. Consciously or not, 
 she is in many a heart enthroned. Queens 
 they must ever be, queens to their lovers, 
 queens to their husbands and sons, queens 
 of higher mystery to the world beyond, 
 which bows itself and will forever bow be 
 fore the myrtle crown and stainless sceptre 
 of womanhood. 
 
 A most universal and most unlovely trait
 
 AFTER CHURCH. 121 
 
 in woman's character is the little sympathy 
 they have for each other in weakness or 
 sin. Can it be true there is a savage in 
 stinct of cruelty innate in women, not only 
 the lack of the partisanship of the sex, but 
 a real distrust and disbelief in each other, 
 a feline wish to rend and tear? Who does 
 not remember the scene in "The Scarlet 
 Letter " where Hester Prynne, led forth to 
 her ignominious punishment, finds her worst 
 tortures in the grim, upright, and unfeeling 
 Puritan dames, who treated her to cold, 
 unpitying glances and jeers? 
 
 The same spirit modified has exhibited 
 itself in each succeeding age, and one sadly 
 recalls that throughout history women have 
 been tenfold more pitiless and unrelenting 
 to women than have men. Yet women 
 daily pray to be delivered from "envy, 
 hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness," 
 and possess in the highest degree the re 
 ligion of the ermines and of refinement, 
 the horror of a speck or stain. v The one 
 thing, it seems to me, that a woman owes 
 to the world, to herself, and to her Maker,
 
 122 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 is reverence for her own sex. Pay homage 
 to womankind, adorn it, place sacrifices 
 upon its altars, rejoice in unceasing service 
 to it, for surely there is nothing more beau 
 tiful, more holy, than womanliness. 
 
 There is a courtesy of the heart : it is 
 akin to love, and out of it arises the purest 
 courtesy in the outward behavior. 
 
 And is it not by Love we expect to be 
 saved ? Love, which is the high-priest 
 of the world, the revealer of Immortality, 
 the fire of the altar, and without whose 
 ray we could hot even dimly comprehend 
 Eternity. 
 
 Saint Paul says, "If I speak with the 
 tongues of men and of angels, but have not 
 Love, I am become sounding brass or 
 a clanging cymbal." Christ himself says 
 that Love is a fulfilling of the law. Love 
 suffereth long, and is kind. Love envieth 
 not. Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed 
 up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh 
 not its own, is not provoked, taketh no 
 account of evil. 
 
 And the final test will be not religious-
 
 AFTER CHURCH. 123 
 
 ness, but Love : not what we have done, 
 not what we have believed, not what we 
 have achieved, but how we have loved, 
 according to the number of cups of cold 
 water we have given in the name of Christ.
 
 AFTER A WEDDING.
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 
 
 " That which issues from the heart alone 
 Will bend the hearts of others to your own." 
 
 " TAEARLY beloved, we are gathered 
 -1 ' together here in the sight of God, 
 and in the face of this company, to join 
 together this man and this woman in holy 
 matrimony." 
 
 A hush has fallen upon the expectant 
 multitude. The bride has come ; and every 
 eye is turned upon her as, with her beauty 
 shadowed in white veils, she stands with 
 her court, with her blushes and smiles, the 
 glisten of her white robes, the glimmer of 
 her lace, the prominent feature of a lovely 
 pageant. 
 
 "For better, for worse, for richer, for 
 poorer, till death us do part ! " How few 
 of us realize the solemnity, the sweet awful- 
 ness of the scene !
 
 128 IN MAIDEN M EDIT A TION 
 
 Does the young bride among her cloud 
 of maidens realize it herself? Are her 
 thoughts with the great mystery that is 
 about to absorb her life into another's, or 
 do the weighty matters of her parapher 
 nalia, of her wedding gifts, her train, the 
 church processional, exclude perception of 
 the way into that new sphere just closing 
 around her, in which she shall walk to 
 all outside view the same, but in reality 
 another being? Let us hope that she at 
 least, of all this vast throng, understands 
 something of the great miracle. It can 
 only be, then, with the reverence due to 
 some mystery of old, where one draws near 
 to the holy of holies, that the bride ap 
 proaches the altar, an altar that burns to 
 heaven with the white flame of all pure 
 love and devotion, or an altar on which 
 is to be offered the mournful sacrifice of 
 broken hearts and lives. Full often the 
 consciousness of this betrays itself by the 
 trembling tones in the voice that invokes 
 invisible powers to witness the bridal, and 
 the realization of it is so appalling that all
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 129 
 
 the nervous strength is summoned to carry 
 off the hour triumphantly, and hide emo 
 tion from the curious crowd that custom 
 calls to witness the solemn acts of our lives, 
 the bridal and funeral rites, the two mo 
 ments when feeling is most intense, and 
 should be most sacred and unseen. 
 
 The bride was wondrous fair to-night, 
 and we can only hope that the tremor of 
 her voice, the earnest look in her lovely 
 eyes, evinced that in her soul there was an 
 altar where sacrificial fire is ever burning, 
 that she whispered as an oath, " Set me as 
 a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon 
 thine arm, for love is strong as death, and 
 jealousy as cruel as the grave." C Of all 
 passions that can take possession of the 
 heart or brain, jealousy is the worst.) For 
 many generations the chemists sought for 
 the secret by which all metals could be 
 changed to gold, and through which the 
 basest could become the best. Jealousy 
 seeks exactly the opposite. It endeavors 
 to transmute the very gold of love into the 
 dross of shame and crime. Does she know 
 9
 
 130 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 this, and swear self-abnegation? Does she 
 give thanks for the strength and fire and 
 tenderness in him, thanks that so great a 
 fate has been given her, as entering into 
 the circle of his days? Does she feel 
 that neither teasing trouble nor want, nor 
 pain, nor weariness, sharp thrusts nor heavy 
 blows, shall signify to her; that she will 
 defy death and fate itself, and love shall 
 be eternal? 
 
 If one desires to investigate how the 
 groom thinks and feels, while passing 
 through such an ordeal, I refer him to 
 Rudyard Kipling's " Story of the Gadsbys," 
 in which he pictures in detail Captain 
 Gadsby's misery from the moment when 
 his friend begged him "for the Honor of 
 the Regiment, stand up " to the time when, 
 having been Mendelssohned out of church 
 to the paternal roof, they are enduring the 
 usual tortures over the wedding-cake. 
 
 Ah, what a prize a man gets who wins 
 a bride so beautiful ! How the men envy 
 him who come to the wedding and see her 
 hanging on his arm, in all her wealth of
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 131 
 
 tulle and orange blossoms. The dear, 
 young, round, soft thing ! Her heart must 
 be just as soft, her temper just as free 
 from angles, her character just as pliant. 
 If anything ever goes wrong there, it must 
 be the husband's fault ; he can make her 
 what he likes, that is plain. And the lover 
 himself thinks so, too ; the little darling is 
 so fond of him, her little vanities are so 
 bewitching, he wouldn't consent to her 
 being a bit wiser for the world. Every 
 man under such circumstances is conscious 
 of being a great physiognomist. Nature 
 has written out his bride's character for 
 him in those exquisite lines of cheek and 
 lip and chin, in those eyelids delicate as 
 petals, in the dark liquid depths of those 
 wonderful eyes. How she will dote on her 
 children ! She is almost a child herself, 
 and the little pink round things will hang 
 around her like the flowerets round the 
 central flower, and the husband will look 
 on smiling benignly, able whenever he 
 chooses to withdraw into the sanctuary of 
 his wisdom, toward which his sweet wife
 
 132 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 will look reverently and never lift the cur 
 tain. It is a marriage such as they made 
 in the Golden Age, when the men were 
 all wise and majestic, the women all lovely 
 and loving. Of course it is extremely un 
 becoming in a sensible man to fall in love 
 with a girl who has nothing more than her 
 beauty to recommend her. I know that, 
 as a rule, sensible men fall in love with the 
 most sensible women of their acquaintance, 
 see through all the petty deceits of coquet 
 tish vanity, never imagine themselves loved 
 when they are not loved, cease loving on 
 all proper occasions, and marry the woman 
 most fitted for them in every respect in 
 deed, so as to compel the approbation of 
 all the maiden ladies in the neighborhood. 
 But in so complex a thing as human nature 
 we must consider that it is hard to find 
 rules without exceptions. 
 
 It occurs to me that as people when 
 they marry virtually renounce other com 
 panionship and friends, they might perhaps 
 do wisely before the knot is tied to ascer 
 tain whether the intellectual dowry of the
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 133 
 
 other is sufficient for the demands that will 
 be made upon it for sympathy and enter 
 tainment. Men choose their wives because 
 they are pretty, or because they are rich, 
 or because they are well connected, but 
 rarely for the permanent interest of their 
 society. 
 
 Yet who that has ever been compelled 
 to the dreadful misfortune of a tete-a-tete 
 with an uncompanionable person could re 
 flect without apprehension upon a lifetime 
 of such tete-a-tetes ? 
 
 What is the use of having any mental 
 superiority, if in a matter so enormously 
 important as the choice of a companion 
 for life it fails to give warning when the 
 choice is absurdly unsuitable? Have you 
 never noticed, though, that gifted women 
 are most apt to throw themselves away on 
 men entirely unworthy of them, led captive 
 by their own ideals, making gods of stocks 
 and stones ? When men complain, as they 
 do not infrequently, that their wives have 
 no ideas, the question inevitably suggests 
 itself to me, why the superiority of the
 
 134 M MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 masculine intellect did not permit it to 
 discern the defect in time. If they are so 
 clever as to be bored by ordinary women, 
 why were they unable to find the feminine 
 cleverness that would respond to it? The 
 world, from past experience, does not expect 
 a man of genius to marry rightly, and half 
 includes a blunder in matrimony among 
 the evidences of genius. 
 
 Of all men who ever lived Shelley was, 
 perhaps, the best representative of genius 
 pure and simple, possessing it in the high 
 est degree. Those who read of Shelley and 
 his marriage somehow feel that it was in 
 him to make precisely the blunder which, 
 without indorsing the modern libels on 
 Harriet Westbrook, one feels assured that 
 he did make. And what profound disap 
 pointment, what failure, what dismay, comes 
 to the mind with the name of Mary Shel 
 ley ! All that is highest and best in mental 
 aspiration, all that is lowest and most dis 
 appointing in actual experience. If any 
 two people could have been joined together 
 other than God's Word doth allow, and
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 135 
 
 have lived honorably in the eyes of men 
 and before the tribunal of their own hearts, 
 one would say it would have been the pure 
 spirit of Mary Godwin and the unworldly 
 soul of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Intellectual 
 companionship, a true affection, freedom 
 from the trammels of worldliness, might 
 have secured them an ideal union for all 
 time. But what does one see? The first 
 sorrow comes, the death of the little child 
 at Rome, and then the sweet bells jangle, 
 dissatisfaction, weariness, the sundering of 
 real companionship, a noxious social atmos 
 phere, probable infidelity, and the end. 
 However, observers may experience any 
 emotion at the blunders of genius, in 
 dignation, regret, scorn, or even a certain 
 pleasure at finding the demigods so like 
 men, but they are never surprised. But 
 genius is incomprehensible; all we know 
 of it is, that it is neither a cause nor a 
 consequence of the possession of judgment. 
 . . . But why able, sensible, practical men 
 make such blunders is a source of constant 
 amazement. The common notion that they
 
 136 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 are carried away by passion may be true 
 sometimes ; but that does not explain why 
 passion men's field of choice being so 
 wide does not fix itself upon the right 
 person. 
 
 Some say it may be all summed up in 
 the one word " attraction." Is it not odd, 
 then, that the gifted in selecting the one 
 friend from the world commit such fatal 
 errors, yet in choosing their other friends 
 display rare judgment? 
 
 I frequently see a woman married to the 
 man of all others the least suited to her, 
 yet gather a circle of friends around her, 
 whose excellence and charm does but in 
 crease her trouble by rendering it more 
 conscious; and men do the same thing, 
 though it is less perceived. 
 
 There must be something that clouds 
 the judgment, and that something, I fancy, 
 is one of two things, either unreasoning, 
 almost preposterous self-confidence, which 
 makes a man quite sure that if a woman 
 impresses him pleasantly he must therefore 
 understand her ; and the other is the action
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 137 
 
 of caprice, that mental impulse which is 
 independent of reason, and which in both 
 sexes seems to operate more strongly in 
 choosing a companion for life than on any 
 other occasion. A man who likes a woman 
 and a woman who is in love with a man 
 always believe that each knows all about 
 the other, resent advice from the outside, 
 and will not even consider circumstantial 
 evidence, patent to all but themselves. 
 There is an inner vanity in men and 
 women as to their own judgment, and 
 when a helpmate is to be chosen, it seems 
 to wake in irresistible strength. 
 
 Marriage is still an unsettled problem. 
 The Eastern poets sing woman a slave ; the 
 Western, man enslaved by her. But far- 
 sighted spirits, like Dante, reject both views, 
 and sing Ideal Love, a thought too 
 precious for humanity to let it escape when 
 once it reaches human consciousness. Yet 
 it is philosophers and moralists whom Time 
 leads to accept it; while the poets, its 
 first leaders, ignore the truth that marriage 
 involves human dignity, responsibility, com 
 munity, and mutual trust.
 
 138 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 To making this truth clear, the " Woman's 
 Poet " has devoted his poet's gift ; and no 
 sooner does he do so than we see how 
 little woman's voice has been heard in 
 other poetry ; and we can but feel thank 
 ful that a singer, who can make himself 
 gladly heard, is singing of freedom, open 
 ness, pure and conscious devotion, con 
 science responsible to itself alike in man 
 and woman. 
 
 On his plain but trusty sword are these 
 words only, Love and Understand. The 
 union between two people is only true, 
 according as they love and understand each 
 other in thought, feeling, and will, and are 
 consequently able to fight life's battles, 
 bear its pains, and enjoy its glory together, 
 and this by having directed forward and 
 freed each other's development. 
 
 How often, when all is falling to pieces, 
 do two people by a sudden flash see how 
 they have been gradually bringing their fate 
 on themselves, so that it destroys all the 
 edifice of their past life, the man by not 
 having considered the woman's personality ;
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 139 
 
 the woman, by having loved a person who 
 does not exist. 
 
 An eminent historian, now a dignitary of 
 the Church of England, was once asked, 
 " What is the moral attitude of men to 
 ward women?" After a few moments' 
 consideration, with a humorous twinkle of 
 his eye, came the unexpected reply, 
 " They have none." Is it not true ? Men 
 have no really definite standard by which 
 they regulate their conduct toward women, 
 such as they have in their dealings with 
 their fellow-men. A lie told to a woman 
 is hardly a moral offence. A promise 
 made to a woman is only optionally bind 
 ing. The moment a man finds or feels 
 there is a woman in the case, his moral 
 sense of fairness and justice seems to desert 
 him. If she be young and fair, he places 
 her on a pedestal and worships her like 
 a goddess, doing her behest for right or 
 wrong. After a while he wearies of his 
 worship, and rudely shakes the frail ped 
 estal of his goddess. Down comes his 
 idol, and falls to pieces before his eyes.
 
 140 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 Then the quondam worshipper scornfully 
 exclaims, " Why did n't she live up to my 
 ideal? She's only a woman after all;" 
 and the fallen idol gets afterwards less than 
 justice.^ It is not priests or pessimists who 
 advance this idea ; but keen-sighted ob 
 servers of the every- day lives of men and 
 women are of the opinion that, if the stern 
 hand of law were relaxed, no sense of 
 honor or justice would bind men to women 
 after the outward sensual attraction was 
 gone or diminished. Sadly often they are 
 correct in believing that honor and justice 
 seldom enter into account in connection 
 with a woman; and in the lives of most 
 women it is only credulity, the continued 
 trust in man, which is the alternative of 
 despair. This is due, in a measure, to 
 that hateful view of life which most men 
 hold, that reduces woman to a mere thing, 
 the dearest thing, perhaps, in all the 
 world, but not a human being, not his 
 peer. They believe they really love their 
 wives, and at the same time think they 
 can be Will and Conscience for them. It
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 141 
 
 is a view that makes it possible for a 
 woman to call these habits of thought in 
 men chivalry, and exercise every quality of 
 her inner and outward being only to secure 
 the small triumphs of an odalisque. Yet 
 can she believe herself a pure-hearted 
 woman, believe that she loves ; believe 
 that she really lives? 
 
 There may be degrees of conjugal felicity, 
 satisfactory in their way, without intellec 
 tual intercourse ; and yet I cannot think 
 any one of high culture could regard his or 
 her marriage as altogether a successful one 
 so long as either is shut out from the 
 mental life of the other. No love is likely 
 to last that is not based on intellectual 
 sympathy. When the mind is interested and 
 contented, it does not tire half as fast as 
 the eyes or the passions. In any very great 
 love there is at the commencement a de 
 lightful sense of meeting something long 
 sought, some supplement of ourselves long 
 desired in vain. When this pleasure is 
 based on the charm of some mind wholly 
 akin to our own, and filled for us with ever-
 
 142 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 renewing well-springs of the intellect, there 
 is really hardly any reason why this mu 
 tual delight should ever change. I have 
 often wondered if it were possible that 
 two people should live together, and talk 
 to each other every day for twenty years, 
 without knowing each other's views too 
 well for them to seem worth expressing 
 or worth listening to. There are friends 
 whom we know too well, so that our talk 
 with them has less of refreshment and en 
 tertainment than a conversation with any 
 intelligent stranger. There seems to me 
 danger of this in marriage, which may be 
 come dull, not because the mental force of 
 either has declined, but because each has 
 come to know so accurately beforehand 
 what the other will say on any given topic 
 that inquiry is felt to be useless. To keep 
 herself, then, from growing uninteresting, a 
 woman should take as much trouble at least 
 to renew her mind by fresh knowledge and 
 new thoughts as an author is compelled 
 to do for the unknown multitude of his 
 readers.
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 143 
 
 Women have so much less egotism, so 
 much more adaptability than men, that, if 
 they will only make the effort, they can 
 easily retain their ascendency over their 
 husbands, and keep up the interest in their 
 lives. 
 
 In an exceedingly clever novel of recent 
 publication, called "A Successful Man," 
 there is a hint of one of the perpetually 
 recurring tragedies of modern life. The 
 matter is one which, by common consent, 
 we do not talk much about ; which in each 
 individual case we do our best to ignore ; 
 but which all must recognize as the source 
 of much unhappiness, much bitterness of 
 spirit. A man marries a woman. They 
 sincerely love each other, and are ap 
 parently satisfying, each to each. The man 
 becomes engrossed in affairs ; the woman in 
 domesticity and fashionable life, or in what 
 ever else of feminine occupation her tastes 
 and circumstances may suggest. Struggle 
 is good for the man. Contact with men, 
 the constant attrition of mind, the strenu 
 ous contests of life, these things bring
 
 144 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 growth to him. The years slip by ; and he 
 finds himself larger, intellectually devel 
 oped out of himself into a new an'd higher 
 manhood. The wife, meanwhile, has been 
 standing still, in all sweetness and purity ; 
 but she has not grown. She is the same 
 woman she was at the wedding time, only 
 a few years older. She has been loyal to 
 her duties. She has brought up her chil 
 dren well. She has done her best to make 
 her house a home, as she understands the 
 word ; namely, a place of entire comfort. 
 But she has lost the capacity to share her 
 husband's thoughts and aspirations. She 
 has not grown with him in intellectual 
 stature, has not acquired his enlarged 
 tastes, has not fitted herself to be still his 
 most valued companion, counsellor, and 
 friend. He must seek companionship of 
 that kind elsewhere, in his club, in so 
 ciety, or as a last resort he must find a 
 substitute for companionship by complete 
 absorption in his pursuits. 
 
 In the novel, which suggests all this, he 
 finds his solace in the love of another
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 145 
 
 woman; but that is not necessary to the 
 completeness of the tragedy. The tragedy 
 comes when the woman recognizes her 
 lack of capacity to share the thoughts, and 
 be the companion, of the man whose help 
 mate she set out to be. There is no rem 
 edy after that; and the tenderest, loyal- 
 est devotion on the part of the man can 
 accomplish nothing of repair. The woman 
 knows that through her lack, even though 
 it be not through her fault, the marriage 
 has failed of being what it was meant to 
 be ; and if she be sensitive, and the man 
 sympathetic, the very affection that remains 
 to both adds to the distress of the situa 
 tion. The old notion of woman as a 
 domestic animal, a petted slave, a soft 
 unthinking minister to man's comfort, has 
 been put aside. Is not two thirds of the 
 misery of ill-mated couples dated from the 
 decline of interest of the husband in 
 the wife, when her beauty begins to fade, 
 and she has nothing deeper to charm him? 
 that peerless beauty which won for 
 her the intoxicating admiration of himself
 
 146 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 and others, the admiration which, suffered 
 to-day, becomes necessary to her happiness 
 to-morrow. 
 
 It is chiefly for admiration that women 
 have been educated, and for which they 
 continue to live. To present a pleasing 
 exterior, to have a graceful carriage, to 
 make themselves entertaining in society, 
 these, for generations, have been considered 
 the only requisites of a woman's educa 
 tion. She must excite admiration ; or else, 
 in common parlance, the object of her 
 destiny marriage may never be at 
 tained. It has been considered a matter of 
 comparatively little importance whether she 
 possesses deeper and more fascinating qual 
 ities. There is one quality, without which 
 all the fascinations and acquirements of 
 women are futile. Beauty, grace, wk, 
 erudition, are in vain without that inde 
 scribable something we call personal mag 
 netism, a mysterious influence which 
 never has been dissected by science. Its 
 source is unknown, its extent unlimited; 
 but it is the strongest weapon a woman can
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 147 
 
 wield. Some women have an eloquence in 
 their whole persons, which touches and sets 
 vibrating chords lying wrapped away in the 
 veriest secret recesses of the heart. Women, 
 it is said, are bourgeoise in their judgments 
 of each other. They cannot understand. 
 They think that beauty or wit will master 
 men. Ah, no; the mystery lies deeper. 
 Many completely beautiful women are en 
 tirely without this charm ; and many plain 
 women have possessed it to such a degree 
 that noted beauties have been unable to 
 contend against them in personal influ 
 ence. Princess Metternich, one of the 
 most indisputably ugly women of the cen 
 tury, was one of the most charming. Does 
 any one imagine that Helen of Troy, past 
 forty, and Cleopatra, past thirty, could 
 have changed the face of the world on the 
 strength of beauty alone, had they not had 
 this mysterious, unexplainable gift besides? 
 Women as beautiful have perhaps been 
 born into the world many times ; but they 
 had not the sorceress' talisman of charm 
 possessed by them. Plutarch says of the
 
 148 SN MA WEN MEDITATION. 
 
 peerless Cleopatra that her actual beauty 
 was not so extraordinary or incomparable 
 that every one was struck by it ; but her 
 presence and effluence were irresistible. 
 She conquered the world's conqueror ; and 
 this alone denotes her immeasurable fasci 
 nation. She was fashioned grand as the 
 spirit of storm, lovely as lightning, cruel as 
 pestilence, yet with a heart. This charm 
 the gewisses etwas has always seemed 
 to me to spring from a heart full of feeling, 
 whether overflowing or concentrated and 
 stifled. However, this power, which domi 
 nates and fascinates, is as rare in human 
 beings as the sentiment which it inspires. 
 Fortunately, Providence requires no such 
 raging torrents to turn the wheels of life. 
 The quiet tides of the instinct of mating 
 are enough. 
 
 The French, in speaking of a charming 
 woman, say she has a cultivated intellect 
 and a cultivated heart. " A cultivated 
 heart," how little attention we pay to 
 that organ in comparison to the time and 
 care expended upon the intellect ! People
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 149 
 
 of this day are altogether too much afraid 
 of the power of " emotion " in a woman. 
 They think it means hysterics, and at 
 once proceed to throw cold water over it. 
 These are they who are unable to per 
 ceive the difference between sentimental 
 ity and sentiment, which is only the power 
 of feeling deeply. It is not the cold, prac 
 tical, purely intellectual women, but the 
 women capable of feeling, who are the 
 most attractive to men, and retain their 
 influence longest. The ideal woman is as 
 soft as she is strong. And we cannot but 
 long for greater quantity of the capacity for 
 generous enthusiasm, the capacity for warm 
 love, the capacity for romantic devotion. 
 The power of rich and delicate emotion is 
 what discloses a woman's sympathies, gives 
 variety and color to her whole nature ; and 
 to her manner gives delicate tact and fine 
 intuitions. 
 
 A cynic has written that the hearts of 
 men are like grates in inns where the wood 
 is laid ready for kindling ; and the smile of 
 any pretty woman is enough to set it in a
 
 150 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 blaze. If this be true, it can be readily 
 seen that there is no safety in the intrinsic 
 charms which call forth only admiration ; 
 and the only foundation for genuine and en 
 during love is the inner spirit and mental 
 furnishing, which are independent of the 
 vicissitudes of fortune, and which can hold 
 forever the wavering fealty of any but the 
 most shallow and wicked man. It is, per 
 haps, this lack of inherent and substantial 
 charm that has given beauty its imme 
 morial association with misery, and caused 
 the poet to sing so sweetly of " beauty and 
 anguish walking hand in hand." Beauty 
 is generally too content to be beautiful, 
 and misled by the intoxication of flattery, 
 has taken little pains to secure the plainer 
 gifts which remain after the gilding has 
 worn away. It has mistaken admiration 
 for love ; and the mere loss of their accus 
 tomed incense has often been enough to 
 embitter the souls of men and women. 
 Fame is only a large form of admiration. 
 All young and ardent souls think longingly 
 of fame, and are seldom discouraged by the
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 151 
 
 universal testimony of the great, that fame 
 is very barren after all. 
 
 Great women especially have borne wit 
 ness to the unsatisfactory nature of fame. 
 Is this because of the traditions of the char 
 acter of women? Or, is there a stronger 
 inherent longing in them than in men for 
 love and loyalty? 
 
 " Fame indeed, f t was said, 
 Means simply love. It was a man said that, 
 And then there 's love and love ; the love of all, 
 Is but a small thing to the love of one." 
 
 And women, on the whole, have made 
 rather poor work of it when they have set 
 out to get admiration, and ignore love. 
 With few exceptions (and they have not, 
 perhaps, encountered the temptations which 
 beset many of their sisters), they have ig- 
 nominiously succumbed before Cupid, kiss 
 ing in abject submission the very arrow 
 that has slain their ambition, content as long 
 as he brings to them the single-hearted de 
 votion of one man. 
 
 Perhaps woman will never overcome this
 
 152 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 tenderness of heart ; perhaps she will ever 
 stand ready to give up the most brilliant 
 career for love, happy to let the silver flame 
 of her genius illumine the heart and lessen 
 the loneliness of the one man she loves. 
 A single life, though enlivened by many 
 duties and pleasures, is lonely at times 
 beneath the deafness of space and the 
 silence of the stars. But give him one 
 friend who can understand him, who will 
 be accessible day or night, one friend, one 
 kindly listener, just one, and the uni 
 verse is changed. It is deaf and indifferent 
 no longer; and while she listens, it seems 
 that all men and angels listened also, so 
 perfectly his thought is mirrored in the 
 light of her answering eyes. The altar of 
 your confidence is there ; the end of your 
 worldly faith is there, and adorning it all 
 and sending your blood in passionate flow, 
 is the ecstasy of the conviction that there, 
 at least, you are beloved; there you are 
 understood; there your errors will meet 
 ever with gentlest forgiveness ; there your 
 troubles will be smiled away; there you
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 153 
 
 may unburden your soul, fearless of harsh, 
 unsympathizing ears; there you may be 
 entirely and joyfully yourself. If the deep 
 diapason of gloom rolls out from your soul, 
 she will not answer it with a wanton jig, 
 but rather with a touching plaint that shall 
 yet have a hint of hope in its soft strains. 
 
 All the conditions of marriage may be 
 summed up in the one word, Love. But 
 Love, the chief musician of the world, 
 must find an instrument worthy of his 
 touch, before he can show all his power 
 and make heart and soul ring with the 
 lofty strains of a sublime passion. Not 
 every one knows what love means ; few, 
 indeed, know all that love can mean. But, 
 at present, love is an idea to which no 
 clear meaning attaches. Love presumes 
 youth, as a rule ; but it is not the same 
 thing as youth, or even as youth with warm 
 and mutual liking into the bargain. Youth 
 is a glorious thing ; but it has its own dan 
 gers, and the chief of these is self-deception. 
 Love is confidence, mutual understanding. 
 With this love, marriage will prove no fail-
 
 154 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 ure, but the highest and most permanent 
 of earthly relationships. 
 
 And two lives intertwined with mutual 
 hopes and joys and sorrows will find love 
 glorified and intensified, will find that the 
 deep fulness of perfected love is as much 
 dearer than its dawning dreams as the 
 flower in perfect beauty is lovelier than the 
 opening bud, or the hope fulfilled is better 
 than the first faint, half-formed wish. What 
 strength is given by this love and bound 
 less trust between two human beings ! It 
 places in one's heart a little fortress, which 
 outside influences assail in vain, which is 
 securely stored with faith and confidence 
 as ammunition, assured affection as provi 
 sions ; and no siege can weaken, no attack 
 prove dangerous. 
 
 Wherever love is, it is pure, and there 
 has been no time in the world's history 
 when its light has been extinguished. In 
 all ages, in all climes, among all people, 
 there has been true, pure, and unselfish 
 love, and everywhere at all times the cere 
 mony of marriage testifies to that which has
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 155 
 
 happened within the temple of the human 
 heart. < A true marriage is a mutual con 
 cord and agreement of souls, a harmony 
 in which discord is not even imagined ; it 
 is the uniting of two mornings that hope to 
 reach the night together.]) 
 
 Each has found his ideal : the man has 
 found the one woman of all the world, the 
 impersonation of affection, purity, love, 
 beauty, and grace ; and the woman has 
 found the one man of all the world, her 
 ideal, and all that she knows of romance, 
 of art, of courage, of heroism, of honesty, 
 is realized in him. 
 
 Within this radiant enclosure of conjugal 
 relations and communion, we become sure 
 of ourselves and our companions. The dis 
 guises which the world and society force us 
 to wear, the various deceptions we practise 
 in self-defence, are all laid aside when we 
 come into the presence of that dear com 
 panion to whom we have given our heart, 
 and from whom we have nothing to hide. 
 When love opens the door of the heart and 
 abandons the vigilance and defence born of
 
 156 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 suspicion and fear, we can revel in joyous 
 confidence, and can lift the veil that has 
 hitherto screened the secrets of our life. 
 
 When two hearts throb with a common 
 joy and hope, when two lives blend as 
 meeting streams, and flow on as one for 
 ever, storms may smite and sorrows startle, 
 but God gave to love a potent charm, by 
 which the storm is stilled, the stings removed 
 from sorrow's poisoned fangs. 
 
 Is it the consciousness of all these glori 
 ous or gloomy possibilities that gives to a 
 married woman that unmistakable air of 
 confidence, an exaggerated notion of the 
 value added to her opinions by the act of 
 marriage? You can see it in her air the 
 moment she walks away from the altar, 
 keeping step to the wedding march. 
 
 This assumption of superiority is perhaps 
 the hardest thing for those who still linger 
 in single blessedness to bear from their 
 self-congratulating sisters. 
 
 I wonder how many people in my 
 acquaintance could claim the "Dunmow 
 Flitch," of which Coleridge writes, a relic
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 157 
 
 of a Middle Age jest, perpetrated by the 
 monks of Dunmow Priory, in the east of 
 England. 
 
 They assumed that it was practically 
 impossible for married people to live in 
 harmony, and, to prove their assumption, 
 caused it to be known that if, after a twelve 
 month of married life, any couple could 
 make affidavit that they had not quarrelled, 
 had not regretted their marriage, and if 
 they could live their lives over again would 
 do just as they had done, they would receive 
 a present of a flitch of bacon, be placed 
 in chairs of honor, and have their names 
 inscribed on the Monastery roll. In three 
 hundred years it was granted only three 
 times. Though numerous applications were 
 made, the juries of men and women, one 
 half married, and the remainder bachelors 
 and spinsters, on examining the claims 
 decided that they were not entitled to the 
 honor. 
 
 Marriage in its widest sense, the common 
 work of man and woman, is the question 
 of all questions, the question that involves
 
 158 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 the final untying of every knot of difficulty, 
 and determines whether or not we are to 
 realize the idea of our race. But notwith 
 standing all our science, all our analysis of 
 the tender passion, all our wise jabber about 
 the failure of marriage, love and marriage 
 are still personal questions, and are not to 
 be reasoned about or in any way disposed 
 of except in the same old way. They are 
 subjects of which no one can have more 
 than an infinitesimally small atom of knowl 
 edge. Each one may know how his or her 
 marriage has turned out ; but that, in com 
 parison with a knowledge of marriage gen 
 erally, is like a single plant in comparison 
 with the flora of the globe. The utmost 
 experience on the subject to be found in 
 this country extends to about three trials 
 or experiments. A man may become twice 
 a widower and then marry a third time ; but 
 it may be easily shown that the variety of 
 his feeling is more than counterbalanced 
 by its incompleteness in each instance, for 
 the experiments, to be conclusive, should 
 extend at least over half a lifetime.
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 159 
 
 The subject of marriage generally is one 
 of which men know less than they know 
 of any other subject of universal interest. 
 People are nearly always wrong in their 
 estimates of the marriages of others; and 
 the best proofs how little we know of the 
 real tastes and needs of those with whom 
 we are the most intimate is our unfailing 
 surprise at the marriages they make. The 
 judgment of the lady who said of her 
 friends, that she had given up attempting 
 to understand why anybody married any 
 body else, is the judgment of all mankind 
 in all grades, where free choice is allowed 
 at all. Every one knows there is not a 
 circle of any size where there is not at least 
 one couple whose marriage was pronounced 
 unintelligible, or one in which the perplex 
 ity was not occasionally deepened by obvi 
 ous ability either in wife or husband. What 
 did he see in "her," or she in "him," is 
 sure to be one of the criticisms, and the 
 one to which there is rarely a reply. Some 
 times, I admit, it is a stupid criticism, due 
 to that impenetrable veil which hides us
 
 160 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 from each other, and which is intended, 
 perhaps, to deepen the individual sense of 
 responsibility ; but very often it is true as 
 a criticism on appearance or peculiarities 
 of mind and manner. We will judge things 
 from our own little peak of observation, for 
 getting there are always souls vibrating to 
 tunes we consider foolish. Yet we do not 
 hear that Memnon's statue gave forth its 
 melody at all under the rushing of the 
 mightiest wind, or in response to any other 
 influence, divine or human, than certain 
 short-lived sunbeams of morning. And we 
 must learn to accommodate ourselves to 
 the discovery, that some of those cunningly 
 fashioned instruments called human souls 
 have only a very limited range of music, 
 and will not vibrate in the least under a 
 touch that fills us with tremulous rapture 
 or quivering agony. 
 
 Our ignorance of marriage is all the 
 darker, that few men tell us the little they 
 know, that little being too closely bound 
 up within that innermost privacy of life 
 which every one of right feeling respects ;
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 161 
 
 for the one who lifts up the veil of married 
 life profanes it from a sanctuary to a vulgar 
 place. 
 
 The only instances made bare to the 
 public view are the unhappy marriages, 
 which are really no marriages at all. An 
 unhappy alliance bears the same relation to 
 a true marriage that disease does to health ; 
 and the quarrels and the misery of it are 
 the crises by which nature tries to bring 
 about either the recovery of happiness or 
 the endurable peace of a separation. 
 
 How to be happy, though married, is a 
 matter of vast importance to the world ; but 
 being still a " looker-on in Vienna," I am 
 forced to deal only in theories. 
 
 I wonder if this is not the best way, to 
 leave a too close adherence to facts, and 
 study marriage as it appears in hope and 
 not in history; for each woman sees her 
 own life defaced and disfigured, as the life 
 of others is not, to her imagination. Each 
 woman sees over her own experience a cer 
 tain stain of error, while that of others looks 
 fair and ideal. Everything seen from the
 
 1 62 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 point of the intellect, or as truth, is beauti 
 ful. But all is sour if seen as experience. 
 Details are melancholy, though the plan is 
 seemly and noble. What a charming pic 
 ture Disraeli draws of his own married life 
 in one of his novels : " The lot most pre 
 cious to man, and which a beneficent Provi 
 dence has made not the least common, to 
 find in another heart a perfect and pro 
 found sympathy, to unite his existence with 
 one who could share all his joys, soften all 
 his sorrows, aid him in all his projects, re 
 spond to all his fancies, counsel him in his 
 cares, and support him in his perils, make 
 life charming by her charms, interesting by 
 her intelligence, and sweet by the vigilant 
 variety of her tenderness, to find your 
 life blessed by such an influence, and to feel 
 that your influence can bless such a life, 
 the lot the most divine of divine gifts, so 
 perfect that power and fame can never 
 rival its delights." 
 
 \As I sit here to-night, I, too, can weave 
 a future, the whole piece of which will bear 
 fair proportions and perfect figures, like
 
 AFTER A WEDDING. 163 
 
 those tapestries on which men work by 
 inches, and finish with their lives ; or like 
 those grand frescos which poet-artists have 
 wrought on the vaults of old cathedrals, 
 grand and colossal, appearing mere daubs 
 of carmine and azure, as they lay upon 
 their backs working out a hand's breadth 
 at a time, but when complete showing 
 symmetrical and glorious/) 
 
 Is not my position, then, an enviable 
 one? Round it do not all the Muses 
 chant, as I dream that there is no more 
 beautiful thing than the joining together 
 of two souls for life, to strengthen each 
 other in all peril, to rest on each other in 
 all sorrow, to minister to each other in all 
 pain, to be one with each other in silent, 
 unspeakable memories at the moment of 
 the last parting?
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER.
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 
 
 " The angels call it the bliss of heaven, 
 The devils call it hell's torments even, 
 And mortals, they call it Loving." 
 
 TT is a dull, dreary day, a day when 
 * old regrets and joys deeply buried 
 from human eyes call from their graves 
 with shrill voices, that sear the reason and 
 stun the will. It is a day of pitiless intro 
 spection, when wrongs done, kind words 
 unspoken, love estranged, enmities unfor- 
 given rise up to confront the soul, a day 
 in which only minor chords are sounded, 
 whose sad and wondrous melodies search 
 the subtlest windings of the heart. It is 
 the month of melancholy days, which brings 
 an end to all the change and rapid pleas 
 ures of the radiant summer; the year has 
 passed its fevered solstice, and subdued 
 the bold and passion-hued emotions.
 
 1 68 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 It is the month for reflection, the month 
 that raises ghostly memories that are always 
 with us, and always will be while the sad 
 old world keeps echoing to the sob of long 
 good-byes, while the cruel ships sail away 
 across the great sea, and the cold green 
 earth lies .heavy on the hearts that we have 
 loved. 
 
 But why waste the strength of that illumi- 
 nous point, which we call the present, in 
 vain repinings for the " might have been " ? 
 No regret or remorse can undo the past. 
 The record of each act is written, sealed, 
 and closed forever. Is not forgetting, then, 
 a far higher art, a vastly better thing than 
 memory ? 
 
 I have no wish to remember everything. 
 There are many things in most lives that 
 had better be forgotten. There is that time 
 many years ago, when we did not act quite 
 as justly, quite as honorably, as we should 
 have done ; that unfortunate deviation from 
 the path of strict rectitude we once com 
 mitted, that act of folly, of meanness, of 
 wrong. Ah, well, we paid the penalty, suf-
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 169 
 
 fered the maddening hours of vain remorse, 
 the hot agony of shame, the scorn, perhaps, 
 of those we loved. Oh, Father Time, lift 
 with your kindly hand those bitter memo 
 ries from off our overburdened hearts, for 
 griefs are ever coming to us with the com 
 ing hours, and our little strength is only as 
 the day. 
 
 Not that our past should be buried. It 
 is but the poisonous weeds, not the flowers, 
 we should root out from the garden of 
 
 ^ 
 
 Mnemosyne. Do you remember Dickeris's 
 " Haunted Man," how he prayed for forget- 
 fulness, and when his prayer was answered 
 he prayed for memory once more ? We do 
 not want all the ghosts laid. It is only 
 the reproachful, cruel-eyed spectres that 
 we flee from. Let the gentle, kindly phan 
 toms haunt us as they will. The world 
 grows very full of ghosts as we grow older. 
 We need not seek in dismal churchyards, 
 nor sleep in moated granges, to see their 
 shadowy faces and hear the rustling of their 
 garments in the night. Every house, every 
 room, every creaking chair, has its own
 
 170 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 particular ghost. They haunt the empty 
 chambers of our lives ; they throng around 
 us like dead leaves, whirled in the autumn 
 wind. Some are living; some are dead. 
 We clasped their hands once, loved them, 
 quarrelled with them, laughed with them, 
 told them our thoughts and hopes and 
 aims as they told us theirs, till it seemed 
 our very hearts had joined in a grip that 
 would defy the puny power of Death. 
 They are gone, now; lost to us forever. 
 Their eyes will never look into ours again, 
 and their voices we shall never hear. Only 
 their ghosts come and talk to us. We see 
 them, dim and shadowy through our tears. 
 We stretch our yearning hands to them, 
 but they are air. Like a haunted house, 
 the walls of memory are ever echoing to 
 unseen feet. Through the broken case 
 ments, we watch the fleeting shadows of the 
 dead, and the saddest shadows of them all 
 are the shadows of our own dead selves. 
 
 An old philosopher claims that if one 
 concentrates reflection too much on one's 
 self, one ends by seeing only what one
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 171 
 
 wishes ; but it is not so, for if we answer 
 honestly the questions conscience puts to 
 us, those answers must necessarily prove 
 how we have used the limitless freedom 
 granted us as individual free agents. The 
 choice between good and evil, which has 
 been our own willing choice, assumes an 
 appalling responsibility; and one grows 
 frightened and dissatisfied as he realizes 
 how far he has wandered from that ideal, 
 the attainment of which has been so ar 
 dently desired. It is good for every man 
 and woman to have an ideal of life, if it 
 is never realized. It is their prerogative 
 to fix the end of their existence and strive 
 toward it. If that end is power or fame 
 or wealth, it is the craving of vanity ; if it 
 is simply pleasure, it is the inspiration of 
 selfishness. Whatever it is, it affects char 
 acter and determines destiny. 
 
 And there is this to be said of ideals of 
 nobler sort : they cannot lead to disap 
 pointment while they are cherished for their 
 own sake. The artist may fail to paint as 
 he would, the poet's touch may miss the
 
 172 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION, 
 
 magic string, the scientist may die before 
 his work is completed, the patriot may live 
 to see his country defeated and oppressed ; 
 but ideal beauty, truth, and goodness are 
 stars that shine forever above the storms 
 and wrecks of time. 
 
 These quiet intervals like anniversaries 
 remind one of so many undertakings left un 
 finished, so many good resolutions broken. 
 They define too clearly the widening gaps 
 in life never to be filled, the circle of 
 friends narrowing with such pitiless speed 
 and certainty. 
 
 Among the ghosts that haunt me to-day 
 is that of a friend, who, pursuing the even 
 tenor of his way through life, is yet dead 
 to me. 'T was only a misunderstanding ! 
 How many there are who can trace back 
 broken friendships and severed lives to that 
 one thing, "only a misunderstanding." 
 
 The tenderest relations are often the 
 most delicate and subtle ; and trifles light 
 as air may scatter and utterly destroy the 
 sensitive gossamer threads extending be 
 tween one heart and another, as easily as
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 173 
 
 a child's passing foot destroys the spider's 
 web woven on the dewy grass in the early 
 morning. 
 
 " Only a misunderstanding ! " How sim 
 ple the words are to write ! How unutter 
 able is the depth of their meaning, the 
 infinity of the loss they represent ! And 
 I had trusted him as holy men trust God. 
 Ah, friend, how could you write me such 
 words, or how, once written, could you have 
 the heart to send them to me, weighted 
 as they were with the demons of doubt 
 and mistrust, with harshness, suspicion, and 
 coldness ? 
 
 It was a dangerous experiment, that 
 friendship with pen and ink and paper. 
 
 Ten thousand deviltries may lie unsus 
 pected along the hastily scribbled words 
 or carefully thought-out phrases, destined 
 to play unutterable havoc when the seal 
 shall be broken. 
 
 A letter, what thing on earth more dan 
 gerous to confide in? A letter is flippant 
 if it reaches you in a serious mood, or 
 dull if you are filled with life. Written at
 
 174 M MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 blood-heat, it may reach its destination 
 when the recipient's mental thermometer 
 counts zero ; and the burning words and 
 thrilling sentences may turn to ice and be 
 congealed as they are read. Or, penned 
 in irritation and anger, they may turn a 
 melting mood to gall, and raise evil spirits 
 which all future efforts may be powerless to 
 exorcise. A letter is the most uncertain 
 thing in a world of uncertainties, the best 
 or the worst thing devised by mortals. 
 
 With a single drop of ink for a mirror, 
 the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal 
 to any chance comer far-reaching visions 
 of the past. With one drop of ink from 
 the pen of a friend for a mirror, I saw the 
 beautiful structure of friendship crumble and 
 fade, learned that friendship was but a name, 
 found that the world had changed since men 
 thought it good to love, natural to trust, wise 
 to believe. 
 
 Perfect loyalty and faith from one's 
 friends would make existence too ideal; 
 and to quote Emerson, friendship, like 
 immortality of the soul, is too good to be
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 175 
 
 believed in. Our friendships hurry to short 
 and poor conclusions, because we have 
 made them of a texture of dreams instead 
 of the enduring fibre of the human heart. 
 The laws of friendship should be austere 
 and eternal, of one web with the laws of 
 nature and of morals. All friendship, in 
 fact all association, must be a compromise, 
 and each has to descend to meet the other ; 
 for we are armed all over with subtle an 
 tagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, begin 
 to play and soon translate all poetry to 
 stale prose. 
 
 Real friendship should not be glass threads 
 or frost-work, but the most solid thing we 
 know. We should be able to approach our 
 friend with audacious trust in the truth of 
 his heart, in the breadth, not to be over 
 turned, of his foundations. Friendship 
 seems to me to depend principally upon 
 intrinsic nobleness and contempt of trifles, 
 and has two sovereign elements in its com 
 position. One is truth. A friend is one 
 with whom I can and ought to be sin 
 cere. Every one alone is sincere, but at 
 the entrance of a second person hypocrisy
 
 176 IN MAIDEN MEDITA TION. 
 
 begins. We parry the approach of our 
 fellow-men by compliments, by gossip, by 
 amusements, by affairs, and cover up our 
 thoughts from him under a hundred folds. 
 My friend should be the one before whom 
 I may think aloud, in whose real and equal 
 presence I may drop those garments of dis 
 simulation, courtesy, and second thought, 
 and deal with him with perfect simplicity. 
 
 The other element of friendship is ten 
 derness; for it is for aid and comfort 
 through all the relations and passages of 
 life and death. It is fit for serene days 
 and graceful gifts and pleasant rambles ; 
 but its tenderness should shine over rough 
 roads and hard fare, shipwreck, poverty, 
 and persecution. This is the friend the 
 heart longs for, not the weak, pulseless, 
 forceless thing which so often usurps the 
 name ; but an honest, loyal, helpful soul, 
 that lives and feels and suffers ; dares, 
 yet does not change, steadfast amid good 
 report and evil report, true in word and 
 deed, tender in weakness, and generous in 
 pain. Such an one, I fear, is a dream and 
 a fable.
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 177 
 
 You proved unequal to the contest, my 
 friend ; but why could you not have said, 
 "I am sorry"? How hard it is to say 
 these little words ! yet I would not give 
 much for either a man or a woman who 
 could not. There is a good deal of com 
 mon-sense in some of the old saws, such 
 as, " Honest confession is good for the 
 soul ; " " A sin confessed is half re 
 dressed." 
 
 There is something very real and sooth 
 ing in that odd, warm glow which comes 
 to one's heart in gentle, swelling waves of 
 feeling, after the fault has been confessed 
 or the misunderstanding cleared away, and 
 the kiss of perfect pardon and glad com 
 prehensiveness has consecrated and sealed 
 anew the friendship or the love. He who 
 has never felt this weight of doubt or vexa 
 tion lifted, and the warm, trustful belief 
 born again all fresh and holy, has missed 
 one of the purest joys to be tasted upon 
 earth. I pity those who cannot say frankly 
 and freely, " I am sorry ; " for the three 
 small words possess a mighty magic for 
 
 12
 
 I 78 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 softening angry suspicion, and .healing sore 
 and wounded feelings, where grander phrases 
 are powerless. 
 
 Had I not kept well the compact we 
 made so many years ago ? But a question 
 like that should be asked in far different 
 fashion, hand in hand, with frank, true eyes, 
 looking the reply before the words can form 
 themselves in speech. 
 
 As the events of the past year flit like 
 shadows over my heart, it seems as if all 
 my life had been centred in this one meas 
 ure of time ; and I have experienced the 
 most transcendent happiness, the most ex 
 quisite pain. The consciousness of that 
 pain still makes me weary ; but I would not 
 have it cease entirely, for it is the seal of 
 the actuality of experiences that are very 
 dear to me. 
 
 Maidens, they say, think ever of lovers. 
 In tender years, these visions are of some 
 impossible heroes of romance. But they 
 are not met with at every corner, and for 
 many years we are striving to reconcile facts 
 and theories, experience only adding to our
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 179 
 
 astonishment at the disparity between the 
 real and the ideal. 
 
 Many a woman, it seems to me, does not 
 love the actual man she marries, though she 
 may go on in perfect content and security, 
 loving an ideal to which she has given his 
 name. If the lover has enough of the ser 
 pent's wisdom, and she of the innocence of 
 the dove, the happy illusion may last to the 
 end of their lives. 
 
 No man is as high, as wide, as deep, as ) 
 the woman who loves him thinks he is ; and / 
 his care ought to be never to let her reach 
 his limitations. He cannot possibly reach 
 her ideal of him ; but let him artfully veil 
 the point where he stops short. 
 
 Women, sometimes realizing their own 
 responsibility, their power to make or mar 
 their own fortunes, sigh for the Sabine 
 mode of courtship, though I am afraid it 
 would be more annoying than gratifying 
 to be swooped up by any rough rider who 
 came along, and " wooed and married and 
 a' " before they even knew how their cap 
 tors looked. Most of us prefer to be 

 
 l8o IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 wooed before we are won ; and although 
 a certain amount of boldness and confi 
 dence are conducive to the success of a 
 wooer, an excess of these qualities is fatal 
 to his hopes. 
 
 A brave man is not daunted by his lady's 
 frowns, and he sweeps aside her little affec 
 tations and pretences as he does the train of 
 her gown ; but as he can move across the 
 room among fifty trains, and never crush 
 the most fragile fabric of a costume, so he 
 will not wound or startle the smallest of 
 those little feminine defences, and, even 
 while proceeding in calm assurance to con 
 quest, will never abandon the role of defer 
 ence and loyalty. 
 
 If men could only realize that women 
 have as many atmospheric rings about them 
 as the planet Saturn ! Three are easily to 
 be recognized. There is the wide ring of 
 attraction, which draws into itself all that 
 once crosses its outer border ; these re 
 volve around her without ever coming 
 nearer. Then the inner ring of attraction : 
 those who come within its irresistible influ-
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. i8l 
 
 ence are drawn so close that it seems they 
 must become one with her sooner or later. 
 But within this ring is another, one of 
 repulsion, which love, no matter how en 
 terprising, no matter how prevailing or 
 insinuating, has never passed ; and, if we 
 are to judge of what is to be by what has 
 been, never will. 
 
 In this age of progress, why cannot we 
 carry the theory of evolution into love- 
 making? The brute woos his mate by a 
 terrific growl and a cuff on the ears from 
 his mighty paw. He terrifies her into sub 
 mission; and a certain savage loyalty in 
 her nature responds. Tribes of savages in 
 various parts of the world seize their brides 
 by the floating hair, or attack them, and 
 give them a sound drubbing, by way of 
 showing the force of their affection. One 
 step further brings us to William the Con 
 queror, who, some nine hundred years ago, 
 met Matilda of Flanders coming from 
 church, and dragging her from her palfrey, 
 beat her soundly, and rolled all her gay 
 raiment in the dirt. Out of the dirt in
 
 1 82 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 which William rolled Matilda, grew the fair 
 flower of chivalry and a race of men brave 
 even to folly. 
 
 Have we not a right, then, to expect, 
 with the progress of civilization, lovers who, 
 retaining all their courage and confidence 
 in presence of danger, all the devotedness 
 and delicacy to the lady of their love, will 
 add the wisdom, the experience, the broader 
 thought of the nineteenth century? To 
 such a lover will a woman gladly yield sub 
 mission and all the lavish loyalty of a 
 woman's nature, not because he demands, 
 but because he deserves it. 
 
 I should like to be a man for a little 
 while, that I might make love to at least 
 two or three women in a way that would 
 v neither shock them with its coarseness nor 
 starve them with its poverty. As it is now, 
 most women deny themselves the expression 
 of the best part of their love, because they 
 know it will be either a puzzle or a terror 
 to their lovers. 
 
 Natures, like melodies, have their key 
 notes ; and with a heart stored with visions
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 183 
 
 and theories, I, too, dreamed of the hand 
 that would strike this note, would make 
 out of the broken sounds of life a song, 
 and of life itself a melody. Eagerly I 
 listened for the trumpet note that would 
 herald his coming. I did not know that 
 Love is very humble-minded, that he bids 
 no heralds and ambassadors go before 
 him with blare of trumpets and waving of 
 banners. He comes by chance along quiet 
 country lanes, on crowded city crossings, 
 in gleams of moonlight, on dewy lawns. 
 Quick, subtle, and fearless, he steals upon 
 us gently and softly without observation. 
 And at first we laugh at his pretty face, 
 which is that of a merry, earthly child ; but 
 his hands, when we take them, grasp like 
 bands of iron, and his strength is the 
 strength of a giant, his heart the heart of 
 a tyrant. And he gives us to drink of a 
 cup in which sweet is mingled with bitter ; 
 and the sweet is soon forgotten, and the 
 taste of the bitter remains. And we hardly 
 know whether to bless him or curse him ; 
 for he changes all things. We cannot tell
 
 184 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 whether to weep for the old world we have 
 lost, or shout for joy at the new world we 
 have found. 
 
 Love, the first, the greatest, the gen 
 tlest, the most cruel, the most irresistible 
 of passions ! In his least form he is 
 mighty. A little love has destroyed many 
 a great friendship. The merest outward 
 semblance of love has made such havoc 
 as no intellect could repair. The reality 
 has made heroes and martyrs, traitors and 
 murderers, whose names will not be for 
 gotten for glory or for shame. Helen is 
 not the only woman whose smile has 
 kindled the beacon of a ten years' war; 
 nor Antony the only man who has lost 
 the world for a caress. It may be that 
 the Helen who shall work our destruction 
 is even now twisting and braiding her 
 golden hair; it may be that the new 
 Antony who is to lose this same old world 
 again already stands upon the steps of 
 Cleopatra's throne. Love's day is not over 
 yet; nor have men and women yet out 
 grown the power of love. One day, without
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 185 
 
 warning, I awoke, and found the world 
 created anew. 
 
 There is a story in the Norse religion of 
 two lovers who declared their passion to 
 each other on one stormy night in the 
 depth of winter. They were together in a 
 desolate hut in the mountains, and around 
 them lay unbroken tracts of frozen snow. 
 And it happened, after they had sworn 
 their troth, the doors of the snow-bound 
 hut flew suddenly open, and lo ! the land 
 scape had changed : the hills were gay 
 with grass and flowers ; the sky was blue 
 and brilliant; and everywhere was heard 
 the ripple of waters let loose from their icy 
 fetters, trickling down the rocks in the 
 joyous sun. This was the work of the 
 goddess Friga ; the first kiss exchanged by 
 the lovers she watched over, and banished 
 winter from the land. 'T is a pretty story, 
 and true all the world over ; for every time 
 a youth looks love in a maiden's eyes, 
 and sees the timid, appealing return of the 
 universal passion, the world for them is 
 just as surely created as it was the first
 
 1 86 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 morning, in all its color, odor, song, and 
 freshness. 
 
 Blessed be the capacity for being fond 
 and foolish ! If a letter was under my pil 
 low at night, if this new revelation was last 
 in my thoughts as I fell asleep, if it 
 mingled with the song of birds in the spring 
 morning, as some great good pervading the 
 world, is there anything distinguishing in 
 such an experience that it should be dwelt 
 on? The youngness of the year seemed to 
 reveal me to myself, -*- the tenderness of the 
 first foliage, the tiny leaves uncurling so 
 gently, the sky all dotted with fleecy, rain 
 bow-tinted clouds. 
 
 All innocent, natural impulses respond to 
 this subtle influence. One may well gauge 
 his advance in selfishness, worldliness, and 
 sin by his loss of this annual susceptibility, 
 by the failure of this sweet appeal to touch 
 his heart. 
 
 Only to live on such days is pure hap 
 piness ; but to live with the knowledge that 
 another heart beats with you and for you, 
 another warm, living, loving human being
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 187 
 
 thinks of and cares for you, ah, then the 
 happiness is doubled and intensified ! 
 
 I heard the call of the birds, I inhaled 
 the odor of the New Year, I was conscious 
 of all that was gracious and inviting in the 
 scene ; but in my sub-consciousness there 
 was only one thought, I loved. 
 
 I loved the soft, sweet earth, the dawn 
 of it, and the twilight of it ; I loved the 
 sun in his rising and in his setting ; I loved 
 the moon in her fulness and in her wan 
 ing ; I loved the glorious light of day for 
 its splendor of heat and greenness ; I loved 
 the gloom of night for its softness, for the 
 song of the birds in the ivory moonlight, 
 and the odor of the sleeping flowers in the 
 garden. Ah, how I longed for all these 
 sweet voices of the earth, all these tuneful 
 tongues of the air, that I might tell you how 
 I loved you ! 
 
 Love did not consist for me in any one 
 particular symptom or confession, in any 
 external circumstance against which I 
 could have fortified myself. It was an 
 invisible miasma, diffused in the surround-
 
 1 88 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 ing atmosphere, in the air and light, in my 
 longing soul. My beloved, you were in 
 every cloud, every stretch of blue ether, in 
 the wind, every picture that came before 
 my eyes. I grew parched, restless, faint 
 sometimes, thinking of you ; but then again 
 the memory of you revived me, like the 
 warmth of the sun and the cool breath of 
 the wind. What few days in the year or 
 in a whole life do we really live ! We sleep, 
 wake, perform a certain number of duties 
 or pleasures, and then sleep again. Who 
 can call that living? Only a few days, 
 perhaps a few hours, out of a whole life 
 can be gathered out of the long stretch of 
 years. 
 
 Love annihilates time. With love, as 
 with God, time is not. Like the miracles, 
 it brings into use the seonial measurement, 
 in which " one day is as a thousand years." 
 Oh, Love, what eternities of time canst 
 thou bury in one moment ! 
 
 At the instant when I realized that I was 
 beloved, that I loved, if God had struck 
 all with immobility ; if the sun, as a witness,
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 189 
 
 had remained with its disk half hidden 
 behind those dark firs which seemed the 
 fringed lashes of the eye of Heaven; if 
 light and shade had remained thus blended 
 on the purple mountain-tops; the same 
 look reflected from your eyes, holding all 
 shadow and light, all love and pain, in their 
 depths, I should have been able to com 
 prehend eternity in one instant, infinity in 
 one sensation. 
 
 Love of this sort is hardly distinguishable 
 from religious feeling. What deep or worthy 
 love is so, whether of man, of child, of art, 
 or music? 
 
 Our caresses, our tender words, our still 
 rapture under the influence of autumn 
 sunsets or pillared vistas or Beethoven 
 symphonies, all bring with them the con 
 sciousness that they are mere waves and 
 ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love 
 and beauty. Our emotion in its keenest 
 moment passes from expression into si 
 lence ; our love at its highest flood rushes 
 beyond its object, and loses itself in the 
 sense of divine mystery.
 
 1 90 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 My lover came, not as a warrior, but 
 with stealthy tread ; not with the blazing 
 sunlight on his armor, but in the sweet, dim 
 twilight I found him at my side, on his 
 face the familiar grace of a friend. To 
 gether we had shared many hours of study, 
 together we had trod the difficult paths of 
 intellectual toil. We had studied German, 
 until " Ich Hebe dich " tripped from my 
 tongue with perfect accent. And when he 
 murmured, " Je vous adore" I compre 
 hended all the intricacies of the French 
 verb, even to the perfect and pluperfect 
 tenses. We read the same books, we 
 walked, we talked ; and in every pursuit, I 
 was cheered by the sweetness and en 
 couraged by the strength of his beloved 
 companionship, until the dream of my life 
 was to associate him with all I did. I did 
 not know this was "love." I was inter 
 ested, I knew. Beware that word, O 
 maidens ! Interested means far more to 
 women than to men. " In love " is the 
 same thing; but that is an expression 
 which women are chary of using, unless
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 191 
 
 of men. According to one philosopher, it 
 is tacitly assumed that, as it is not the 
 proper thing for woman to fall in love 
 until she has been asked, she never does ; 
 and falling in love is with most women a 
 purely voluntary act. When entreated to 
 lose their hearts, they lose them, should it 
 seem judicious, all things considered, so to 
 do. 
 
 But as in Latin grammar, so in life, there 
 are exceptions to all rules ; and while in 
 nine cases out of ten, women are guided by 
 judgment and reason, men impelled by 
 passion and instinct, there is, after all, a 
 tenth case, where a woman, deluded by her 
 imagination, wrecks her life on breakers 
 that seemed to others too apparent to need 
 a beacon. Could I have reasoned so wisely 
 a year ago ? If so, perhaps I would not have 
 acted so foolishly. 
 
 And the saddening thought that follows 
 acts of folly is, there is no returning on the 
 road of life. The frail bridge of time on 
 which we tread sinks back into eternity 
 at every step we take. The past is gone
 
 192 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 from us forever. It is gathered in and 
 garnered. It belongs to us no more. 
 No single word can ever be unspoken, 
 no single step retraced. 
 
 Questionings came to me, and serious 
 questionings. For habit is almost as strong 
 as love ; and the odd ways of life and 
 thought will reassert themselves in a thought 
 ful mind, and reason will insist on analyzing 
 passion and even hope. But all were an 
 swered when I looked into the eyes of 
 my loved one with glance half-wondering, 
 half-shrinking, and saw that for which my 
 soul had longed. 
 
 The countenance is an instrument, whose 
 keys, swept by one look of passion, trans 
 mit from soul to soul mysteries of mute 
 communion which cannot be translated into 
 words ; but I felt the repose of the heart 
 from having met with the long-sought ob 
 ject of its restless adoration, the peace that 
 comes from the satisfying of that vague, 
 unquiet feeling which agitates the soul, and 
 which mingles with our hearts as our sighs 
 with the air. I had waited so long and
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 193 
 
 it had come so suddenly, this cyclone of 
 love ! As I rested upon that brave heart 
 with upturned face but closed lids, from 
 beneath which forced their way drop after 
 drop of happy tears ; as I rested upon that 
 strong arm, drunk with the wine of young 
 love, the past was forgot, the future ban 
 ished, and I lived only in the delicious and 
 dreamy present, wrapped in rose-colored, 
 incense-breathing mist, which shut out the 
 whole world. From afar came floating to 
 my ear the sounds of life and laughter, 
 meaningless and inane. 
 
 All things else seemed shams. Love 
 alone was real. "Only one thing really 
 counts," they say, only one thing, love. 
 Nothing else endures to the end ; nothing 
 else is of any worth. And then I believed 
 what they said, that love alone is worth 
 living for, worth dying for ; believed that it 
 is the only satisfying good we can grasp at 
 among the shifting shadows of our brief 
 existence ; that in its various phases and 
 different workings it is, after all, the bright 
 est radiance known in the struggling dark- 
 13
 
 194 M MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 ness of our lives ; believed that many sins 
 can be washed away by love, and become 
 purified and redeemed. What is there that 
 love cannot hallow? Barren places blos 
 som and become green if love smiles upon 
 them. Darkness turns to light, loneliness 
 to sympathy, doubts become blessed truths ; 
 and all things mortal and tangible, shadowy 
 and unreal, lose every power of evil and 
 turn each ill to good. 
 
 Perhaps the little cigarette-maker had 
 found the definition of true love when she 
 said, " It is something I cannot explain ; it 
 is something holy." 
 
 Some one told me once that "Love 
 excuses all things, but we must be sure that 
 it is love." What sad words, the saddest 
 any one could write ! What infinite possi 
 bilities they suggest ! What boundless sor 
 row, when the awakening shall come, and 
 one discovers the paltry imitations which 
 have been mistaken for the original, the base 
 coin believed to be of sterling gold ! How 
 can one ever be sure of finding real love, 
 when the devil himself has not half the dis-
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 195 
 
 guises that love can assume at command? 
 and Satan's imagination, lively as it is, 
 grows absolutely uninventive in comparison 
 with Cupid's. Yet, on the other hand, may 
 not too much caution lose the best thing 
 life can give, leaving in exchange regret 
 and remorse as one's twin companions to 
 the grave? 
 
 No such thoughts came to us to mar the 
 happiness of love's young dream as the 
 days passed swiftly by. 
 
 We read no books that were not tales 
 of love. One heavenly day, so clear that 
 God's own truth seemed to pierce the sky 
 above, descending in shafts of light, a 
 day when the cloudless sky revealed through 
 all its exquisite transparency that inex 
 pressible tenderness which no painter and 
 no poet can re-image, that unutterable 
 sweetness which no art of man can ever 
 shadow forth, and which none may ever 
 comprehend though we may feel it in some 
 strange way, akin to the luminous, unspeak 
 able charm that makes us wonder at the 
 eyes of a woman when she loves, that
 
 196 77V MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 day we read together a love-story, whose 
 pathos awakened all the tenderness in our 
 hearts. There is something in us that 
 quickly responds to a real touch of the 
 pathetic. We read a book, eminently stu 
 pid, but one sentence, one small line which 
 conies unexpectedly in the middle of a 
 page, will touch us to sympathy, bring hot 
 tears to our eyes and a painful wedge in 
 our throats. 
 
 This story of a tried, faithful heart (how 
 vividly I recall the scene, almost the very 
 words !) was told by a Frenchman who had 
 visited the Island of Corsica. 
 
 His story runneth thus : " One night, 
 after ten hours' walking, I reached a little 
 dwelling quite by itself at the bottom of a 
 narrow valley, which was about to throw 
 itself into the sea, a league further on. 
 The two steep slopes of the mountain, 
 covered with brush, with fallen rocks, with 
 great trees, shut in the lamentably sad 
 ravine, like two sombre walls. 
 
 " The woman who received me was old, 
 severe, and neat. The man, seated on a
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 
 
 I 97 
 
 straw bed, rose to salute me, then sat down 
 again without saying a word. His com 
 panion said to me : ' Excuse him ; he is 
 deaf now. He is eighty-two years old.' 
 
 "She spoke the French of France. I 
 was surprised. I asked her, 'You are not 
 of Corsica?' 
 
 " ' No ; we are from the Continent. But 
 we have lived here fifty years.' 
 
 "A feeling of anguish and of fear seized 
 me at the thought of that fifty years, passed 
 in this gloomy hole, so far from the dwell 
 ings of men. 
 
 "When the short repast was finished, I 
 went and sat down before the door. 
 
 "My heart was pinched by the melan 
 choly of the mournful landscape, wrung by 
 the distress that sometimes seizes travellers 
 on certain sad evenings, in certain desolate 
 places. It seems that everything is near 
 its ending, existence and the universe 
 itself. You perceive sharply the dreadful 
 misery of life, the isolation of every one, 
 the nothingness of all things, and the black 
 loneliness of the heart, which nurses itself
 
 1 98 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 and deceives itself with dreams until the 
 hour of death. 
 
 "The old woman came out and talked 
 to me, and finally, having learned who she 
 was, the memory of it all came back. 
 
 " It had caused once a great scandal 
 among the nobility of Lorraine. A young 
 girl, beautiful and rich, had run away with 
 an under-officer in the regiment of hussars 
 commanded by her father. He was a 
 handsome fellow, the son of a peasant, 
 and he carried well his blue dolman, this 
 soldier who had captivated the colonel's 
 daughter. 
 
 " She had seen him, noticed him, fallen 
 in love with him, doubtless, while watching 
 the squadrons filing by. But how she had 
 got speech of him, how they had managed 
 to see one another, to hear from one an 
 other, how she had dared to let him under 
 stand she loved him, that was never known. 
 Nothing was divined, nothing suspected. 
 One night, when the soldier had just fin 
 ished his time of service, they disappeared 
 together. Her people looked for them in
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 199 
 
 vain. They never received tidings, and 
 they considered her as dead. So I found 
 her, in this sinister valley. 
 
 "Tears fell from her eyes as she talked 
 of her home and loved ones; but she 
 pointed to the old man, motionless on 
 the threshold of his hut, and said softly, 
 'That is he.' 
 
 "And I understood that she loved him 
 yet, that she still saw him with bewitched 
 eyes. 
 
 " I asked, ' Have you at least been 
 happy ? ' 
 
 " She answered, with a voice that came 
 from her heart, 'Oh, yes, very happy. He 
 has made me very happy. I have never 
 regretted." 
 
 " I looked at her, sad, surprised, 
 astounded, by the sovereign strength of 
 love. This rich young woman had fol 
 lowed this man, this peasant. She was 
 become herself a peasant woman. She 
 had made for herself a life without charm, 
 without luxury, without delicacy of any 
 kind.
 
 200 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 "And she loved him yet. 
 
 " Still young, she had abandoned life and 
 the world and those who had brought her 
 up and who had loved her. She had come 
 alone with him, in this savage valley, and he 
 had filled her life with happiness. And he 
 had been everything to her, all that one 
 desires, all that one dreams of, all that one 
 waits for without ceasing, all that one hopes 
 for without end." 
 
 And we who loved, gazing into each 
 other's eyes so filled with tears, swore that 
 our love should be eternal, that in our love 
 should be neither to-day nor yesterday, 
 only always believing that Time with all 
 his power over hours had none over our 
 souls. 
 
 Clear and sweet in my memory is one 
 walk in the moonlight. Our souls were 
 filled with the yearning melancholy the light 
 of the moon induces, distracted and moved 
 by the grand and serene beauty of the pale- 
 faced night. Silent we were, but happy in 
 that "consciousness of presence" which is 
 the essence of real companionship. ; With
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 2OI 
 
 hands clasped, we contemplated the plain, 
 bathed with a soft brilliance, inundated by 
 a caressing radiance, drowned in the ten 
 der and languishing charm of the serene 
 night. 
 
 If the night is destined for sleep, for 
 unconsciousness, for repose, for forgetful- 
 ness of everything, why, then, make it more 
 charming than the day, sweeter than the 
 dawns and the sunsets ? and this slow, 
 seductive star, more poetical than the sun, 
 and so discreet that it seems designed to 
 light up things too delicate, too mysterious 
 for the great luminary. Why does the clever 
 est of all songsters not go to rest? Why 
 these quiverings of the heart, this emotion 
 of the soul, this languor of the body? God 
 has surely made such nights to clothe with 
 the ideal the loves of men. 
 
 And thus we pampered and cherished 
 love. Wer besser liebt? I know not, for 
 each was happy in the belief that his talent 
 for loving had never been excelled. And 
 no voice whispered to me in my delirium 
 that
 
 202 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 " Hearts, like all things underneath God's skies, 
 Must sometimes feel the influence of change." 
 
 No whisper warned me that his throbbing 
 heart was ominous of storm and wreck ; no 
 warning was breathed that those eyes, so 
 tender, soft, and loving now, might one 
 day fill my soul with dread by their stern, 
 reproachful glances. No ; I only pillowed 
 my head upon that arm, my heart upon 
 that hope, and dreamed. 
 
 In sorrowful fondness we approached 
 the time for separation, lingering tenderly 
 over each hour as it passed so fleetly, and 
 the last day came, the saddest, the most 
 sentimental of all days. 
 
 The boy when he leaves school, where he 
 has been fagged and bullied and flogged, 
 on this last day looks around with choking 
 throat upon the dingy walls and battered 
 desks. Even the convict, who is about to 
 be released after years of imprisonment, 
 feels a sentimental melancholy in gazing 
 for the last time upon the whitewashed 
 walls. The world, which underrates the 
 power of temptation, is distrustful as to the
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 203 
 
 reality of repentance, will probably prove 
 cold to him. How much more mournful, 
 then, to behold the last day with a loved 
 one ? How we trembled, not alone at the 
 pain of parting, but at the thought of when 
 and how we were to meet again ! We 
 would fain have uttered some great word 
 of love and courage ; some thought which 
 would go with us through lonely years, 
 and uphold us with its wondrous strength ; 
 some benediction of such rare tenderness 
 it should seem from God himself; but our 
 lips could only tremble with that old, old 
 word fraught with heart-break, "Good-by." 
 Ah, lover, friend, beware of parting ! From 
 the passionate farewell to the one who has 
 your heart in his keeping to the cordial 
 good-byes exchanged with pleasant compan 
 ions at a watering-place, a cord stronger or 
 weaker is snapped asunder in every parting, 
 and Time's busy fingers are not practised 
 in resplicing broken ties. Meet again you 
 may ; will it be in the same way, with the 
 same sympathies, with the same sentiments ? 
 Will the souls, hurrying on in diverse paths,
 
 204 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 unite once more, as if the interval had been 
 a dream? 
 
 A poet hath said, " Eternity itself cannot 
 restore the loss, struck from the minute." 
 Are you happy where you tarry with per 
 sons whose voices are melodious to your 
 ear? Beware of parting, or, if part you 
 must, say not in insolent defiance to time 
 and destiny, What matters? we shall soon 
 meet again. 
 
 Alas and alas ! when I think of the lips 
 that murmured, "Soon meet again," and 
 remember how in heart, soul, and mind 
 we stood divided the one from the other 
 when, once more face to face, we each inly 
 exclaimed, " Met again ! " 
 
 The letters that followed me breathed 
 the tenderest devotion ; in them it seemed 
 that nothing evaporated during the slow 
 and dull transition of the feeling to the 
 mood, which often lets the lava of the 
 heart cool and pale beneath the pen of 
 man. And my thoughts by day, my dreams 
 by night, were tinged with rosy-tinted hopes 
 of receiving his letters. Nothing feeds the
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 205 
 
 flame like a letter. It has intent, perso 
 nality, secrecy. Quickly I answered them. 
 My letters were not freighted with wisdom ; 
 for did I not know that the wisdom he liked 
 best in me, and found the wisest, was the 
 folly of love ? I knew it, and loved him for 
 his wise folly ; and he loved me in return for 
 my foolish wisdom. 
 
 The change came ; how, I know not, 
 even now. Perhaps I was to blame. He, 
 too, was unreasonable. 
 
 "Alas, how light a cause may move, 
 Dissension between hearts that love," 
 
 misunderstandings, doubts that are the 
 drops that fall from the eaves upon the 
 marble corner-stones, and, by ever falling, 
 wear furrows in the stone that the whole 
 ocean cannot soften. 
 
 Ah, love, you made me weep bitter tears 
 of alternate self-reproach, indignation, and 
 finally complete bewilderment as to this un 
 happy condition of affairs. Believe me, tears 
 like these are not good to mingle with love ; 
 they are too bitter, too scorching; they
 
 206 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 blister love's wings, and fall too heavily on 
 love's heart. 
 
 It seemed to me then as if half the world 
 were dead, every bright face darkened, as 
 if beneath a leaden sky, with stars and moon 
 and sun gone out, every flower was withered, 
 every hope extinguished. 
 
 It was something of a bore, at first, to 
 take up the old round of ceaseless gayety 
 and levity. He had taught me to find 
 amusement and occupation in so many 
 things that were better and higher than any 
 pleasures or pursuits I had known before. 
 I shall always remember it, and show, in 
 my acquirements and manner of living, the 
 good effects of the hours we had been to 
 gether. At times it would come over me 
 like a blast of icy air that I could never talk 
 over things with him again. No more of 
 those journeys to picture galleries and 
 book-stores, no more tete-a-tete luncheons, 
 no more long rides across the country. At 
 least it was an education to have known and 
 loved such a man. It has fixed my ideals, 
 and deepened my sense of the possible 
 beauty of existence.
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 207 
 
 The brilliant, distracting summer that 
 followed was spent at a beautiful, attrac 
 tive place in an elevated mountain region, 
 where one meets the most cordial society 
 in the world, charming people, who meet 
 as the seaweed meets on the crest of the 
 wave of many colors from many distant 
 depths, intermingling for a time in the 
 motion of the waters, to part company, 
 under the driving of the north wind, 
 drifted at last, forgetful of each other, by 
 tides and currents to the opposite ends of 
 the earth. 
 
 Amid these brilliant, shifting scenes, there 
 were days of utter weariness, when longing, 
 aching arms were stretched out to empty 
 space, when my heart seemed hungry, with 
 only stones for food, days when flowers 
 seemed without scent or color, trees bare 
 of foliage, birds with no note of song, and 
 all glad things were turned to mocking 
 memories ; days when underlying the 
 dance- music was an indescribable pathos, 
 a heart-ache behind all the laughter, a 
 weariness below all the rapid movement,
 
 208 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 a question, a doubt, a misgiving under all 
 the radiance and joy. But in time, 
 shall I confess it ? I, too, have learned 
 to forget. There are some who carry 
 piteous records of their dreary pilgrimage 
 to their dying day, some whom even pres 
 ent prosperity will never cheat into utter 
 oblivion of a bitter past ; but with most, the 
 dark days are forgotten in the warmth of 
 household fires. They have only a scar 
 or two to remind them of the wounds that 
 had once caused them such cruel throbs of 
 agony. Time is a great healer, a wonder 
 ful adjuster of relations and events. How 
 quickly he fills up the gaps ! How short 
 a time is required for men and women to 
 forget ! 
 
 We gladly put all responsibility of change 
 and loss on poor old Time, with his back 
 already bowed and bent, who must yet bear 
 all that coming generations may elect to 
 put upon him. In turn, we flatter and 
 abuse him ; trust to him to heal all wounds, 
 and effusively give him the credit, when the 
 scars grow fainter and fainter until they are
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 209 
 
 lost to sight ; or else we belabor him, and 
 say it is he who, with relentless and un 
 seemly haste, demands that new faces shall 
 replace the old ; fresh loves fill the void 
 left by those that are ended. Poor, patient 
 old Time ! but, abused as he is, how many 
 wonderful lessons he can teach ! how 
 many rough corners grow smooth under 
 his care ! what jagged edges are polished 
 down ! 
 
 How quickly time passes in summer ! 
 With no hurry, but with graceful celerity, 
 the lovely days glide past in their rich 
 robes of dark green and sky blue. The 
 genii of summer play about us, fling roses 
 at our feet, and strew the grass with dia 
 monds. They offer us happiness, show it 
 to us, whisper insinuatingly, " Take it ; ah, 
 take it ! " And some would gladly obey, 
 but their hands seem bound; and others 
 of us remember how we once on just such 
 enchanting summer days stretched out our 
 hands in eager longing for the roses, and 
 at our touch the roses vanished, leaving only 
 the thorns in our grasp ; and we turn away 
 
 14
 
 210 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 with mistrustful sighs. Others examine the 
 offered joy hesitatingly, critically ; refuse to 
 decide, linger, and wait; and before they 
 are aware, the beneficent genii have van 
 ished, autumnal blasts have driven them 
 away with the roses and the foliage. The 
 sun shines no longer, the skies are gray ; 
 and as the cold wind sings a shrill song of 
 scorn in my ears, I realize that the love 
 that had so filled my life, coloring every 
 thought and deed, has become only one of 
 those memories that steal over me when 
 the twilight deepens, and the first purple 
 stars come shyly into the heavens. Then 
 I like to be alone ; that no word may dis 
 turb the faint after-glow of a deep, warm joy, 
 which is now tinged with no passion of 
 regret, but is only the dim, peaceful light 
 that follows the lurid fire of red gold in the 
 evening sky after the sun has sunk from 
 sight. 
 
 The sadness of love is love grown cold ; 
 and the bitterest sorrow in life seems 
 sweet compared to the knowledge that the 
 grand passion that lent glory and glow and
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 211 
 
 splendor to life is surely fading, leaving 
 only the dull, gray groundwork of the 
 commonplace. 
 
 Of course no one is the same afterwards, 
 no one is the same after any sorrow. It 
 would be a poor result of all our anguish 
 and all our wrestling, if we were nothing 
 but our old selves at the end of it, the 
 same self-confidence, the same light thoughts 
 of human suffering, the same frivolous gos 
 sip over blighted human lives, the same 
 feeble sense of the Unknown, toward which 
 we have sent irrepressible cries in our 
 loneliness. 
 
 Sorrow lives in us as an indestructible 
 force, only changing its form, as forces do ; 
 passing from pain to sympathy, the one 
 poor word which includes all our purest 
 insight and best love. 
 
 But I am sad to-day, love, because I can 
 not even sorrow that I have lost you. 
 
 I am half incredulous to think that I 
 am glad to be alive, and you not with 
 me. 
 
 It seems a shameful desecration of lost
 
 212 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 dreams; but heart and brain have grown 
 quiescent, and though it hurts me to think 
 it, I am content. It seems to me now that 
 I would not care for that first love to have 
 dragged itself through all the thorny years, 
 until it was torn to rags. A flash out of a 
 cloud, a sudden sweetness that lasts but a 
 day, but lives in the memory a lifetime, 
 that was perfect, that was my dream, that 
 was divine. Books say, every one of ex 
 perience tells us, that first loves are as apt 
 to float away from us as thistledown upon a 
 summer's breeze. 
 
 A man's fancy, a maiden's love dream, 
 of what value are they in history ? 
 
 The question next arises, what shall be 
 done with our lost dreams, our first loves ? 
 
 " Whom first we love, you know we 
 seldom wed; " and where shall we store 
 these memories of "the first girl I ever 
 loved," "the man whom I once thought 
 perfect " ? Is it safe for a man now a 
 husband to go to the end of time with 
 tender thoughts of her who first waked 
 sentiment within him? Should he some-
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 213 
 
 times in the evening, before the lamps are 
 lighted, when the tasks for the day are 
 done, when resting-time steals over him at 
 sundown, should he recall the memories 
 and the longings and the ecstasies of that 
 earlier time? When he hears again the 
 name of that woman, now severed from 
 him by years of life and mountains of cir 
 cumstances, dare he allow the blood to 
 quicken in his veins, the eye to brighten, 
 the voice to tremble and soften? 
 
 The woman who is now a mother, who 
 has long been a true wife of the husband 
 of her choice, shall she not think, now and 
 then, of the man who surely loved her in 
 the days of yore ; and when she notes the 
 progress he has made and the friends he 
 has won, and the deeds he has done, shall 
 she not go back to the past, and live over 
 again the moments when she was the guid 
 ing star, the inspiration of his life? Shall 
 she not keep a chamber somewhere in the 
 castle of her thoughts, where one man 
 rests and is never disturbed, where he 
 never grows old and never changes, but is
 
 214 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION. 
 
 the same tender, considerate lover he was 
 in the days of youth ? She may not keep 
 his letters (society seems to have settled 
 that), and she may not retain any of the 
 treasures that once bound them together. 
 But may she not think of him, may she 
 not look back with innocent delight at 
 the strong pressure of his hand that day, 
 at the tender touch of his lips that night ? 
 
 Surely the heart that is pure may keep 
 forever the tokens of that brighter time, 
 when youth gilded all things, and the seeds 
 of hope were planted that have ripened 
 into the full harvest of life. They are 
 really the best moments in this grim old 
 world, and should be no more discouraged 
 or frowned down than the love of that 
 music of childhood which has been silenced 
 so long, and whose echoes are never waked 
 save on the golden harp-strings touched by 
 silence and sunset. 
 
 And this is what we shall do with our first 
 loves. Cherish them till the twilight of 
 earth brightens towards the full radiance 
 of eternal day. Cherish them in the
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 215 
 
 beauty of truth, and prove to that ideal, 
 now fading away in the vistas of the past, 
 that you were worthy of what you then 
 believed him, by keeping him ever so ; not 
 wishing to draw him near, for the con 
 tamination of evil, nor sending him farther 
 away into the chilling avenues of change. 
 
 The recollection of a deep and true 
 affection is rather a divine nourishment for 
 a life to grow strong upon than a passion 
 to destroy it. 
 
 Life is better for a past like this. Earth 
 is purer, and heaven is nearer ; and duties 
 can be resumed after these reflections with 
 stronger heart and clearer purpose than if 
 all the glory and loveliness that crowned 
 those other days were swept away by the 
 ruthless hand of an inward fear. 
 
 The world, with its whirl and roar, is 
 deafening the sweet, distant notes that come 
 up through the old channels of the affec 
 tions. And the months and years slip by. 
 We have mourned enough to smile at the 
 violent mourning of others, and have en 
 joyed enough to sigh over their little 
 eddies of delight.
 
 2 1 6 IN MAIDEN MEDITA TION. 
 
 Dark shades and delicious streaks of 
 crimson and gold color lie upon our lives ; 
 and hearts with all their weight of ashes 
 can yet quicken at the sound of a step, 
 and faces will brighten with joyous smiles 
 and sweet hopes. 
 
 But, amid all, there will float over us, 
 from time to time, memories in which we 
 will hear again with thirsty ear the witch 
 ing melody of the days that are no more. 
 
 " And neither heat nor frost nor thunder 
 Can wholly do away, I ween, 
 The marks of that which once hath been." 
 
 And to-day I have cherished my dead 
 love. 
 
 Far down in my nature, the strings of 
 a forgotten poetry have vibrated softly, 
 as though they would make music if they 
 dared. 
 
 Far back in the chain of memories, the 
 memory once best loved has almost waked 
 once more, the link of once clasped hands 
 has almost lived again, the tender pressure 
 of fingers now dead to me are again almost
 
 AFTER ONE SUMMER. 217 
 
 a reality, able to thrill body and soul, al 
 though the certainty confronts me that these 
 things are gone forever. 
 
 The wind whistling dismally at the win 
 dow panes, the soft, steady downpour of 
 the rain, the whispering of the trees, low 
 hung against a despondent sky, have pro 
 duced sounds melodious or powerful, sono 
 rous or melancholy, and seemed in a few 
 moments to have run through the whole 
 range of earth's joy and sorrow, its strength 
 and its melancholy. They have stirred the 
 depths of my soul, then died away, like 
 the voices of celestial spirits that pass 
 and disappear. 
 
 THE END.
 
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