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Se Cr UP asta AAS a Wk nen tO yeh Bia RRA ames, 8 epee ad as SY Ss NS itecay Pets ae OM 4s, He mee ye es OF A oP er ere Lea Varn sine, ae r geese uh futiptewne Fe sears gi Laon ii Hestitiae tithe itn ithe ie pistes > ee nt Aitcae aia ye ctagien ren hibiceadl £1} Settee POU ircerriy nsen tbe bipaoe, CORA Case: ea i ages dee MPR ROM conne peste ooiee LAD shay ee veag, "Ueno en ae fala hasten ge S59 Atican! tT © prot afb Ape wet A ale NIE rat tire Ste ae ws Sti el PBR ATG poor gi . f er way errs eR 48 ib eons bed et a ND se 0 EO aga > THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY isan [Ss Ain ee CENTRAL CIRCULATION BOOKSTACKS The person charging this material is re- sponsible for its return to the library from which it was borrowed on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. TO RENEW CALL TELEPHONE CENTER, 333-8400 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN When renewing by phone, write new due date below previous due date. 78733 L162 re ETHEL’s LOoveE-LIFE. ETHEL’S LOVE-LIFE: A Hobe. BY Marcaret J. M. Sweat. NEW YORK: Rupp & CarLeTon, 310 Broapway. MDCCCLIX, Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by RUDD & CARLETON, ln the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. BE. CRAIGHEAD, Printer, Stereotyper, and Electrotyper, Caxton Building, 81, 83, and 85 Centre Street. rs \ ety f SP Ee ea at —_— — Go the Bender. Ir there is aught of truth within these pages, it will assert itself without assistance and without explana- tion. If there is any power of expression in these words, it will speak to the hearts which recognise it ; and if there is any charm of sentiment beneath the imperfect utter- (2.5 ance, it lays itself at the feet of those who give it welcome. é ALt™ 1S Wy 14 W Rok “J — > Poot +2 a i + a. § SF wae YF Ee ys ae Ms ae “I am a part of all which I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.” ‘TENNYSON. Ada a ate ed Jen Wats ETHEL’s LOVE-LIFE. LETTER FIRST. DEAREST AND TRUEST OF FRIENDS, You ask me to tell you something of my childhood and my home, with which, though know- ing me so well, you are still unfamiliar. Though the retrospect of vanished years must cause me pain, though the past has in it an eternal regret, which sits’ like the skeleton at an Egyptian feast, in the midst of the present joy that fills my heart, though tears rise to my eyes as I recall my sufferings, and self-reproach utters its mournful words as I recount my errors and my ignorances,—still I will not shrink from the reve- lation of my whole self to you. You who know my heart with all its strength and all its weakness, all its : + 10 Ethel’s Love-Life. intensity of feeling and all its impetuosity of action, should know also the history of my past influences, the external environments and inner springs which have*combined to make me what I now am. I will look back steadily upon my old self, and faithfully repeat to you what the past reveals to me. Two years ago you had never seen me; we who are now all in all to each other, whose pulses beat in magnetic sympathy, had never met. ‘T'wo years ago my inner self was changed, old things passed away, all things became new,—old deadness gave place to new vita- lity, old passions were extinguished, old loves and hatreds were outgrown and thrown aside in one fresh, vigorous, new-born impulse of my whole nature. Never since then have I disturbed their repose, but now, at the magic power of your word, I reanimate them to a galvanic existence. I will call up at your bidding, the forms of the past, which, though now but weird-like phantoms in the sunshine which surrounds me, and with its healthy glow shows them to be unsubstantial and harmless, were once the giants of my battle-field, and strode fiercely and relentlessly Ethel’s Love-Life. 11 upon their mighty errands to my soul. Once more they shall assume their grand proportions, and play their parts before your eyes. I shall no longer fear them, for the enchanter is near me to lay them again at rest. You shall know all that I had suffered when I met you, the master of my heart—all that made me the poor and prostrate thing I was when your love and your strength raised me again to life. For this I must recall my childhood and its externalities; I must paint the portrait of the little child, that you may bet- ter comprehend the woman; and show you the bud in which so many embryo leaves lay folded and almost invisible, that you may recognise the flower when it blooms into the fulness of glowing, panting, luxuriant life. The environments of our first years color our whole future, and, whatever that future may be, we never wholly forget or leave off the tone which we then acquired. The restraint of some of our grow- ing powers, and undue forcing of others, distort the mature, when that which first bent the child-plant is forgotten ; the crushing of sweet and tender feelings in a young and impressible heart will render the most 12 Ethel’s Love-Life. susceptible nature callous, or force it to keep silence when it would gladly speak. ‘Too much restraint and too rigid discipline distress and injure the eager nature of the child, break the natural impulsiveness, and produce disastrous results in later life; while the absence of all direction and control, the lack of judi- cious suggestion and loving vigilant aid, allow the young impulses to run riot; the weeds grow as fast as the flowers, and a wilderness instead of a garden is the result. All the influences which act upon the child, possess an enormous accumulative power for good or evil in the time to come. The mould, still plastic, may receive distortion, which will be always visible in the finished statue. My childhood was peculiarly calm in its external environments; all that made it individual and pheno- menal was hidden in the recesses of the little struggling consciousness within. Nursed in the lap of luxury, I was almost undisturbed by ungratified wishes, and rarely thwarted in my attempts to obtain anything that my childish tastes craved. Seldom required by _ circumstances or urged by temperament to go out of Ethel’s Love-Life. ee: myself, without companions of my own age with whom to compare my experiences, I accepted without wonder and without thought the daily pleasures of my life. Not inclined to the usual sports of children, and finding in my rare association with them neither sympathy nor satisfaction, I lost the frolic carelessness of childhood long before my cheek had parted with its infant roundness, or my form attained to any but the most tiny proportions. My mind was filled with vague questionings upon all mysterious subjects; I moved through an enchanted land, seeing and ponder- ing over many wonders full of strange fascination for me. I did not, however, feel inclined to say anything of these fancies to those about me, for an instinct told me that they were sacred to me alone, so I kept them in my own heart with simple and loving reverence. My precocity of imagination was accompanied by a grave and quiet demeanor and a reserve of manner which protected me from notice, and my peculiarities of thought remained almost unsuspected. I kept nearly all my questionings safe within my own breast, seeking their answer only in my books and in unre- 14 Ethel’s Love-Life. mitting observation of those older than myself. My eyes alone told the story of my eager quest, and I sometimes saw those I was watching grow uneasy beneath my strange glances; sometimes too I met, from those far older than myself, an answering look of sympathy, which, though I could not understand its full import, thrilled my child-heart with mysterious power. As I grew older, and intellectual cravings awoke within me, I found close at hand all that could occupy and satisfy my mind. My studies were active but desultory, continued but undirected, kept up only by my own eagerness, and devoid of all stimulus from outward difficulties, I felt no sharp mental needs which only my own hard-working ingenuity might hope to supply, but had merely to stretch forth my hand and grasp whatever seemed worth having. A too luxurious and easily obtained intellectual nourish- ment, enervates even while it cultivates the mind; it weakens the creative power, destroys originality, and substitutes an exotic fastidiousness for the strong, natural growth of intellectual acuteness. This becomes doubly dangerous when the passions are Ethel’s Love-Life. 15 growing up in their own strength, fed by the charms of dreamland fancies, and beneath the tropical influ- ences of highly-wrought romances and the passionate utterances of poetry. I grew to womanhood under a hot-house cultivation, intense, unceasing, but also undirected and undisciplined. Mine was naturally a hungry, grasping mind; it would have grown strong by labor and have taken care of itself, had there been nothing near to pamper it. The rough weather of deprivation would have made it rugged and vigorous; in anything less than the absolute lavishness of intel- lectual wealth which surrounded me, it would, I think, have followed some decided bias and have wrought out some positive result. It would have saved me much effort at self-discipline in later years, had I been trained in a more self-denying school, and been thrown more upon the native strength of my own mind. As it was, I revelled in utter freedom, and whiled away the precious hours in day-dreams over the hoarded labors of other minds, lazily following in paths made smooth and easy forme. My health was delicate, and though I was not often seriously ill, I 6 Bihel's “Tove. was always fragile in appearance and requiring care- ful watching, so that I was shut out from all those invigorating physical influences which ordinarily keep the balance between the child’s growing body and expanding mind. For the same reason all plan of formal scholarship, all routine of education, was for a long time impractica- ble. Had not my own insatiate love of knowledge led me to study, my first years would have been passed in quiet ignorance; as it was, my own instinct prompted me to sufficient intellectual industry. An occasional examination into my attainments by my mother more than satisfied her maternal ambition, and though she often wondered how I obtained my knowledge, and was really desirous that I should invigorate my bodily health by exercise,and leave my books for amusement out of doors, yet I was, on the whole, left to follow my own inclination. Indeed, the smile of pleasure which rose to her lips at any indication of quickness on my part, was a far more powerful stimulant to acquisition for me, than she was aware of, and completely _ destroyed the effect of her gentle suggestions of recrea- Ethel’s Love-Life. Ag tion N ot yet old enough to comprehend the differ- ence between knowledge and wisdom, I fancied that in books alone I could find all I needed, and many an hour when I was supposed to be in the playground, I was hidden behind the heavy window curtains of the library, studying some volume that had captivated my imagination. My father’s library was a very exten- sive one, the accumulation of many years and various tastes;—among the volumes were numerous old romances and histories, rare and quaint collections of voyages and travels, with all of which I made acquaintance, and over which I bent for hours, some- times with sagacious interest, sometimes only with puzzled fascination. I reasoned with Mentor and Telemachus in the island of Calypso, or travelled confidingly with Gulliver; I pondered upon the mysteries of the Church Catechism, or grew faint over the Book of Martyrs. The narratives of the Bible had a peculiar charm to me, and I was familiar with them all, long before I knew what relation in time or space they bore to my own life. I wept bitterly when I discovered that I was a Gentile and 18 Ethel’s Love-Life. lived a long way from Jerusalem. But nity sorrows as well as my questionings I kept within my own breast, and no one knew how busy my young mind was, or felt the quick beating of my heart when the conversation of those around me turned upon any of the subjects which filled me with eager interest. I had not that inborn genius which creates spontane- ously, and as a necessity unto itself, but I possessed a good deal of that active talent which makes constant use of the materials laid in its way, and builds them up into a thousand various forms. Yet I was, in the ordinary sense, extremely indo- lent. I lay wrapt for hours in dreams—sweet, but very vague and apparently unprofitable. As I grew older, this habit of aimless reverie took from me more and more my mental vigor, my imagination sub- dued my reason, my fancy enchained my intellect. Creating for myself a charmed atmosphere of romance, I breathed it till I was thoroughly im>ued with its spirit, and hardly knew which of my thoughts were really representative of my original self. My home was luxurious in the extreme, the abode Ethel’s Love-Life. 19 of wealth, not suddenly acquired, but of long heredi- tary descent, sitting easily and gracefully upon its possessors, and showing itself in the perfection of the general effect, and the refined harmony of the whole domestic movement, never obtruding itself coarsely and repulsively in vain and unmeaning ostentation. Every adornment, which a refined taste could sug- gest, was present; lavishness of expenditure showed itself in every direction, the only restraint upon luxury being that which the fastidiousness of care- fully and highly cultivated taste itself imposed. There was no over-loading of expensive upholstery and gaudy display of unnecessary finery, but a com- pleteness of finish, an elegance of detail, a solidity of comfort, a reality of splendor. It was in this extreme of luxury that my pleasant childhood pass- ed—for it was pleasant in spite of the sad hours which the sensitiveness of my temperament caused me, but which were independent of my environments, and often chased away by the buoyancy of my dispo- sition, which made my moods vary in most capricious fashion, and gave me the appearance of being strangely 20 Ethel’s Love-Life. contrastive in my manifestations. But for the reserve of my nature, which always more or less restrained my expression, the extremes to which my inner movement vibrated must have often excited astonish- - ment; as it was, a veil hung ever between me and my companions, and I walked on my own path with- out molestation, fulfilling the general courtesies of the child-life without difficulty, because I knew of nothing else within the serene atmosphere of my home. Everything around me was so delightful, so apparently spontaneous in its coming, that I was a complete Sybarite before I knew that I was in a position at all unusual, and in which a power beyond myself had placed me. I did not reason on the matter at all, but resigned myself without difficulty to enjoyment. My mind found enough to occupy and amuse itself in alternating seasons of eager acqui- sition and of silent reverie. For a long time my speculative and analytic faculties confined them- selves to the subjects which interested me in my books, and took little notice of the outside world; but after awhile a tendency to morbid doubt and restless Ethel’s Love-Life. 21 scepticism developed itself within me, and rose into stronger and stronger force till it gained complete mastery over me. What I have suffered from the analysis of my dearest hopes, the morbid distrust of . my truest and warmest faiths, the bitter questioning of my most generous impulses, no one, who has not suffered from the same cause, can understand. While still a child I was a victim to miserable doubts and fears which rarely assail any but mature minds, and experienced mental agony which I now look back upon with surprise, when I remember how young I then was. Unable to resist, yet always dreading and shrinking from the exercise of these demoniac facul- ties, I have gone from the light and glory of my new- born hopes into the utter darkness of my questionings and my doubts; have dissected and brought into naked exposure my trusts and faiths till their bare and bleeding nerves lost all life and beauty, and I threw them away as worthless; always more or less conscious that it was my own murderous process which had made them so—often weeping in the bitterness of full knowledge that they were originally 22 Ethel’s Love-Life. full of health and beauty, and ought to have been cherished and permitted to grow into their grand spiritual proportions. I have cast away the flowers that were budding at my side, seeing in them only vile weeds,—have tortured my own heart till analysis and doubt became a part of myself. I look back upon the earliest years of my life as the time when the sunshine was not yet obscured by these clouds— I look forward with undoubting hope to a time when, beneath the sunlight of your calm, high nature, I shall throw off the last vestige of this morbid gloom and sit down free for ever from its mocking shade. You have already done so much towards restoring my heart and mind to a healthy and vigorous tone, that I willingly resign my whole nature to you, to receive from you a new impulse and a new strength. But I am wandering away from the little narrative of my external life which I mean to lay before you, not with biographical minuteness of detail, but in frag- ments and detached sketches of those incidents and persons which seem, to my maturer judgment, to have had the most powerful influence upon me, and to Ethel’s Love-Life. 23 have done most towards forming my mind and heart. I must first paint the portraits of my immediate family, and set forth what I may call my inherited characteristics and peculiarities. My father has a disposition as easy as his circum- stances, his life is as equable as his serene brow betokens his spirit to be. His career has always been successful within the limits to which his calm and un- ambitious nature confines itself—his judgment is sound, his integrity undoubted, his sense of honor quick and keen. His imagination has always been subordinate to his slower sense, and he is rarely hurried into any impetuosity of speech or action. From him I inherit a certain quiet pertinacity, a per- severing patience, which forms the ground-work of both natures. With this is, naturally enough, con- nected great strength of prejudice and prepossession, tenacity in regard to impressions once thoroughly established in the mind, and great unwillingness to retreat from positions once asserted. Nothing short of an irresistible conviction can effect a change of opinion in either, but, once convinced, no false pride 24 Ethel’s, Love-Life. deters from frank and open acknowledgment of the first mistake. The apparent slowness with which our opinions are made up on matters of grave import and involving decided action, arises in him, from a general moderation of temperament and impartiality of judg- ment, in me from the activity of the analytical and sceptical faculties, which force me into extended and intimate relations with any subject which seems tc me of importance, and which admits of a variety of arguments. My father possesses a calm decision of manner and a dignity of aspect which command respect; a heart and hand “open as day to melting charity,” a tenderness of feeling quite marvellous in one who has seen so clearly and so much of the false- hood of the world. Hxempt by happy temperament from inward storms, by easy circumstances sheltered from outward struggle, he has yet not been unmind- ful of the commotion and jarring of the world about him. His observations, however, have tended to increase the natural contemplativeness of his cha- racter, and to produce a somewhat saddened acqui- escence in things as they are, rather than a determi- Ethel’s Love-Life. 25 nation to work for changes and reformations. He is supereminently a contented man, and moves always in a quiet little atmosphere of his own, which seems quite impenetrable to the influences which make others so restless. The resemblance I have mentioned, is the only one I bear to my father—in most other points I am singu- larly hke my mother, though even here the similarity ceases in some particulars deeply affecting my per- sonality. In fact, the existence of this element of patience, lying as it does in me deep down in my inner- most nature, beneath the impetuous and rapid current which flows upon the surface and seems to many to embrace my whole self, necessitates very marked dif- ferences between her vivacious temperament and my own. The external resemblance I bear to my ‘little mamma” you yourself have often noticed, and there are other interior similarities quite as remarkable. In the tone of our minds, in the keen quest for new light, the fearless confronting of intellectual problems, as well as in the predominance of an involuntary sarcasm, and the alternations of buoyant hopes and 2, 26 Ethel’s Love-Life. self-created despairs, in short, in most of those move- ments of being which seem to be, not so much the result of our own volition as the irrepressible manifes- tations of the inner soul—we are strangely alike. A sympathy almost mysterious, has often revealed to each the inmost workings of the other’s heart. Ina certain hauteur of manner and an unconscious cold- ness of demeanor in general intercourse, we are also much alike, as well as in a weakness of physical organization and susceptibility to all nervous impres- sions. Our general indifference of manner is merely the outside covering which masks hearts full of pas- sionate impulses, and alive to the most tender and delicate ministrations of love. Among our friends we become spontaneously expressional and self-forget- ful, so that we appear to possess highly contrastive, if not absolutely contradictory natures, one which the world at large comes in contact with, the other that which goes forth to meet the beloved circle of our friends. And although these friends sometimes mur- mur at the harshness of the judgment which the out- side world may pass upon us, in its ignorance of the Ethel’s Love-Life. 27 reverse side of our natures, and feel inclined to claim for us a more general love than we obtain, we our- selves have never quarrelled with the verdict. The love of those we love best has always been sufficient for us both, and it has never failed us in our need. A more general popularity, with its insatiate demands, would be a troublesome acquisition for either of us, and a poor exchange for the loyal devotion we win from those admitted to our inner circle. The great law of compensation is in nothing more perceptible than in the rigid justice with which nature supplies the heart—demands of her different children, and equalizes the claims which different temperaments make upon her. I always question the strength and genuineness of those emotions of which the possessors declare themselves unable to obtain any appreciation, and to win any return. The great cause of uneasiness among these sensitive hearts, arises from their desire to obtain a different kind of appreciation or admira- tion from that which the circumstances admit of. Those formed to attract a general but somewhat care- less approbation, sigh for the concentrated devotion 28 Ethel’s Love-Life. of a few lofty natures; those to whom a few cling with unswerving loyalty, but to whom the general world is indifferent, too often crave a wider circle of influence. In the absence of outward fluctuations, our family circle was kept in action by the marked contrasts existing among its members. Rarely is there a wider difference of character than existed between my father and my mother, and between my brother and myself; and the life and motion caused by the friction among ourselves were, when I was still quite a child, increased and varied by the entrance of two new and quite different elements in the persons of two orphaned cousins. My mother was all fire and impetuosity, enthusiastic in her sentiments, fluent in her expression —with a nervous organization so susceptible that it often threatened to shatter her slight frame ;—my father quiet, moderate, cool, and somewhat ponderous. The differences between my brother and myself were of a more subtle and delicate nature, and were often almost obliterated by the action of a few sympathetic impulses. Our intercourse, especially in my child- Ethel’s Love-Life. 29 hood, was almost always stormy, for I never could learn submission to his superior age—the difference between us being six or seven years—and it was not till we both grew older and calmer that our storms were made bearable by the halcyon days which were sure to follow,—days when the joyous and genial portions of our two natures came forth to greet each other, and gave us charming intervals of communion and sympathy. The foundation of earnest and devo- ted attachment was laid, when Death took him from me just when his beauty and his strength had matured into magnificent perfection, and when my heart had found in him a protector and a guide through the most perilous passage in my own life. Has loss was to me an irreparable one;—all the youthful differences of disposition had died out between us or been merged into those quite compatible with loving inter- course as man and woman ;—our habits of thought were growing daily more alike, and association had become healthful and invigorating to us both. His personal beauty was of the highest order. His dark grey eye was always changing as his moods changed, 30 Ethel’s Love-Life. the sunny and beaming glance of mirthful enjoyment was followed by the introverted gaze of the profound thinker, the serene glow of deep enthusiasm by the flashing glare of anger at continued resistance. His soft dark hair clustered in heavy masses above his broad, pale forehead, his frequent smile revealed his beautiful teeth in gleaming whiteness, his form was tall and athletic in health, and graceful and plant in his long illness. It brings tears to my eyes and sor- row to my heart that these have passed away for ever. When I was about ten years old my cousins Louisa and Emily came to reside with us. Louisa, the eldest, was about twenty, and possessed of remarkable per- sonal beauty. Even my childish admiration was roused by her charming face and animated manner, and while she remained in our family a degree of social gaiety much greater than usual prevailed. She wasa thorough coquette, and quite unscrupulous in regard to the result of the admiration she delighted to awaken. She laughed at the unsuccessful suitors whom yet she had previously exerted herself to win, and my poor father was worried continually Ethel’s Love-Life. 31 with the complaints of disappointed swains. It was a joyful day for him when she at length condes- cended to make a final choice, and the rapidity with which he disposed of the business arrange: ments of the marriage, which devolved on him as guardian, was so unlike his usual moderation, that it was evident he was momently apprehensive of a change of mood on the part of the bride elect. The wedding, however, took place before Louisa had been with us a twelvemonth, and before her caprices had completely worn out the patience of those whose difficult duty it was to remedy or to excuse her inconsistencies. After her marriage she learned to control her social manifestations, and is now a very charming woman, with vivacious man- ners and versatile accomplishments. She petted me fondly as a child, and has always met me with kindness and frank liking as a woman. I have in my turn always felt for her a strong personal sympathy, and recognise in her the capacity for much good, which, as the years go by, is evidently developing in her life. She has never been subjected to any decided disci- 32 Ethel’s Love-Life. pline, nor been forced to look at life beneath its surface by sorrow. My cousin Emily was two years younger than her sister. She had little beauty, but was of an unusually gentle disposition—her amiability often degenerated into weakness. She has retained her soft impres- sibility through many sorrowful experiences that in another would have roused antagonism or developed energy. She had great musical talent—her chief gift from nature. ‘Through this arose a certain degree of sympathy between her and myself, for, as you know, music has always been a passion with me, all the more powerful because, by a strange antagonism, I have always refused to study it technically, always reserved it as the one thing sacred from my analysing fingers. From my earliest childhood my suscepti- bility to musical impressions was remarked by all about me, and caused many prophetic assurances — of my future career as a musician, but my repug- nance to a near approach, to a practical acquaintance with its science, could never be overcome. It was yielded to at first as a childish whim, and is now one Ethel’s Love-Life. 33 of my most confirmed idiosyncrasies. My cousin’s talent was really wonderful, yet by a contradiction quite as marked as that in my own case, she was herself hardly conscious of the effects she achieved, at any rate except as scientific victories over merely scientific difficulties—the soul of music, the intan- gible, thrilling element, was nothing to her as it was all to me. I have seen her leave her instrument with an unmoved calmness and an unheightened color, after pouring forth strains that had electrified all who heard her, and which had brought hot tears to my eyes and stopped the very beating of my pulse. This calm immobility was her general mood; she was nearly stagnant in her daily life; the motion of the stream, if motion there were, was almost invisible. No sentiment more violent than a sort of helpless anxiety at the excessive excitement of others ever ruffled the tenor of her life while with us. I do not remember to have ever seen her angry, depress- ed, or exhilarated. Her only weapon in argument was silence, her only defence against wrath a sweet but not always appropriate smile JI, on the contrary, x 34 Ethel’s Love-Life. was fiery, impetuous, imperious; furious when roused, and ready to shed my heart’s blood in battle for a cause I loved. Circumstances afterwards changed my manifestations, and grafted on my original nature a habit of action and a restraint of expression utteriy at variance with my true self. Now that the pres- sure of those circumstances is lfted from my soul I am surprised to find how much of my original nature re-appears and asserts’ itself. My parents lost two children in infancy, and one of my first marked reminiscences is connected with death. When I was a wee little thing of some three years, my baby brother died, and the stillness of the house, the tears of my mother and father, the hush of the darkened room where the infant lay, as I thought asleep, affected me with a vague fear- fulness. The nurse took me by the hand and led me to the cradle—I started, for instead of my laughing, crowing, happy little brother, there was a cold, still image that would not open its eyes, and that chilled me when I put my hand upon the little cheek. The baby had been a source of wonder to Ethel’s Love-Life. 35 me all its life; I thought it very odd that it could neither stand up nor speak, since it looked so wise with its large, black, mournful eyes, and was so very much bigger than my largest doll; but now that quiet form, with closed eyes and moveless hands, was a still greater mystery—one which long haunted my childish imagination and suggested a thousand unan- swered questions. For years that chamber had the solemnity of death for me,—I did not understand the nature of my own feelings in regard to it, but in my wildest moods I never dared speak loudly there, and always trod softly and reverently over its floor. After this sorrow in my home, which was an incident of far more import to me than those about me supposed —for there is, after all, a wonderful degree of reserve in the childish heart in regard to its deepest feelings —there followed a long season of mingled shade and sunshine in my own individual life, and of peaceful ease and prosperity for the rest of the household. My sunshine came from what would be called a happy childhood, and reigned supreme when the childish, thoughtless element was uppermost; the 36 Ethel’s Love-Life. shade prevailed when the graver portion of my nature awoke, fillmg my imagination with dreams, and bringing shadows from the untried future to imbue my heart with a vague, nameless woe. As I look back upon this period in my life, I can trace the birth and growth of nearly all the passions and opinions that have since predominated over my whole being. But my lamp grows dim, silence and loneliness dwell throughout the house, it is long past midnight, I alone am a watcher,—so farewell for awhile; may the Everlasting Father bless and keep you with his peace till we meet again. He alone knows how much of my heart is with you, how all my hopes and all my fears, my joys and anxieties, are now bound up in your most beloved self ;—once more farewell. ETHEL SUTHERLAND. LETTER SECOND. I WRITE to you from the gloomy solitude of my own room, amid the wrathful sounds of sea and sky. A terrific storm is raging about me; the rain pours in torrents from a leaden sky ; the roaring of the angry sea sounds hoarsely from the distant shore, and the winds howl like a pack of devils at my windows, clamorous to be let in, shaking and rattling my closed sashes as if to break through in spite of me. I mock. at their vain attempts, secure from their attack, and with baffled rage they turn and rush among the trees, flinging the branches hither and thither in wild fury —the old elms quiver like reeds before the strong hands of the Spirits of the Storm who march forth to- day triumphant. Itisaday for dark deeds. I would choose such a one had I a crime to accomplish. The air breathes despair through all things—something 38 Ethel’s Love-Life. beyond depression, beyond discouragement—full of settled energy, of despairing recklessness, of longing for action ;—it would supply to a vicious nature the very stimulus needed to bring evil deeds into strong and active life from the dark stillness of evil thoughts. You know how miserably atmospheric I am, how a long season of dull grey skies and drizzling rain and dense fog, so common in our climate, can sink me from one depth of depression to another, till all sun- shine is forgotten, all hope crushed, all earth darkened, and all heaven shut out. But that quiet hopelessness is more tolerable than the frenzy that assails me during these wild, furious tempests. Then I grow mad, tiger-like, memory becomes as a fiend calling up the irrevocable past, with all hideous spectres to appal my shrinking sight. Distorted and exaggerated, every fault and every folly comes forth to accuse me; I seem to myself as a poor criminal amid the ghosts of his sins allowed to torture him with the rehearsal of his crimes. Ah! then I need your strong and healthful and true nature near me ;—your smile only can chase away these phantoms, only in your love can I find Ethel’s Love-Life. 39 rest and peace. Do you remember that day last autumn when you found me so utterly overwhelmed by these influences—when you wondered at finding so different a being from the one you had left so short a time before happy and hopeful? J shall not soon forget how you won me step by step from my depres- sion, and brought me, first the relief of tears, and then the returning serenity of peace. The gratitude I felt was unutterable,—I knew that this experience was an assurance for the future, a seal, as it were, set upon our love to stamp it -with a higher and hoher meaning, to raise it above the earthliness of passion, and give us promise of entire union in our whole natures. The glorious fulness of your sympathy, the entering of your spirit into the innermost depths of my conscious- ness, the wise tenderness of your treatment of the sick soul, and the calm power with which you restored the balance of my inner forces which had scorned my own attempts at control—all this was something very marvellous to me, something for which I had pined in vain in all my friendships. It was so unlike the forced utterances and the useless consolations which 40 Ethel’s Love-Life. had always fallen with such a cold, dead weight upon me, when in such moods. From that moment I have trusted myself wholly unto you, I have gloried in the knowledge that your strength of soul is so far above mine, while your gentle tenderness can still sympa- thize in my weakness. Since that time I have felt nothing but repose in my love for you, and I offer you ever the most loyal trust, I bring you tribute of all that is most worthy in myself. It is singular in what different ways different per- sons are affected by these atmospheric. changes, which are such palpable realities to persons of my tempera- ment. ‘To some a beautiful day, when the beneficent sun shines lovingly into the heart, is suggestive of nothing grander than a boisterous pic-nic in the woods, with its accompaniments of cold chicken and warm flirtations. ‘The riotous winds of March are only rude enemies of their delicate complexions to most women: they hear nothing of the pouring forth of long pent-up glee among the trees, as the breeze comes shouting aloud to them of the returning Spring, and then flies off to carry, with wild mirth, the same Ethel’s Love-Life. 41 glad tidings to the still frozen streams. ‘To some the violent storm suggests ideas of their own comforts within-doors, heightened by the contrast from without, causes a more complacent survey of the bright fire, the thick carpets, the heavy curtains closed to exclude the night air,—induees a lazier stretch into the luxu- rious depths of the comfortable arm-chair,—some- times the undefined impression that all these luxuries must, in some way, be the reward of their own merits, a conclusion adapted to render them still more valuable. But to me there comes a fierceness with the storm; the winds claim kindred with me as they hoarsely shout; magnetic influences sway me; I become, as it were, a portion of the storm, feeling its wild unrest, responding to its unearthly voices, obey- ing its weird suggestions; my sympathies, my heart, my very life, are mysteriously absorbed into it. Every rushing of the blast, every sobbing of the rain, echoes and vibrates through my inmost consciousness, as the harp-string quivers and gives forth its tones when tl:e breeze sweeps across it. The storm to-day has brought before me one 42 Ethel’s Love-Life. remembrance of the past with peculiar force. I will endeavor to relate it to you as one more link in the history of my life. You see that, for one like me, a steady and continuous narrative of incidents is quite out of the question, nor would such a one, however minute in external details, help you to a full under- standing of myself. I must be fragmentary and irre- gular in my story, for my life has been episodical and violently contrasted. My inner struggles, my various psychological phases, my soul-lfe, are what you wish, for they are myself: the external frame-work with which they have been built up into visible existence is valuable chiefly as a means for arranging them in some degree of definiteness, and of displaying the connection they have with one another. Hxternal changes and external sounds and sights have often passed before me as a panorama, tame and spiritless compared to the turmoil and excitement which filled my inner world, that world to which so few have been admitted, but wherein those few have ever been welcomed as right royal guests. But to return to the remembrance suggested by the Ethel’s Love-Life. 43 storm. You once asked me why I always shuddered and grew pale at the mention of Sidney Clarkson’s name. I did not tell you then, but promised that, at some future time, I would tell you a long story about him and myself} and you should cease to wonder at a re- pugnance I am wholly unable to conceal. You know him only as a plausible, agreeable, handsome man of the world, full of outward courtesy and grace, and ap- parently careless and thoughtless of all grave and deep matters. Yet [remember you once said, that you could hardly understand how such a man as Clarkson seemed to be, could have such an eagle eye and such sharp-cut, firmly-closed lips; and that there was something in his smile that made youshiver. The truth is, that Sidney Clarkson is not what he seems to the world to be: he is a deep, unscrupulous, daring man, utterly devoid of principle, who hides his real nature behind a con- ventional mask, only that he may pursue, unmolested and unsuspected, the dark and tortuous paths of his own plans. He won the hand of Hleanor Walsing- ham in spite of herself; he conquered her, and she quailed before him, fearing even while she seemed to 44. Ethel’s Love-Life. love him; her feeling for him was not love—it was a fascination, a subduing. Their courtship was a trial of strength between them; he won the victory, and led her like a slave—the beautiful trophy for the crowd to gaze at. How it happened that he thought it worth his while to struggle so hard for a prize which, with his cold worldly views and boundless ambition, could have been of little worth to him, must, I suppose, be explained by his liking for the struggle itself, and by the impossibility of gaining any victory without first establishing a closer intimacy than could exist with so proud and haughty a woman as Hleanor, without an open suitorship, an acknowledged engage- ment. Natures like his seem often to be, in their turn, dominated over by an irresistible necessity—they . must give battle whenever they meet those possessing a certain degree of antagonism to themselves. ‘l'o him the meeting with Eleanor was a direct challenge, which he had no power to resist; the contest must be fought, the victory must be decided. ‘To a nobler mind than his the prize might have seemed a glorious one; but he was incapable of appreciating the great Ethel’s Love-Life. 45 capabilities of her nature, and he passed like a blight- ing wind over her youth, and changed her fresh vigo- rous promise into dying helplessness. I used to won- der what had become of her overweening pride, her haughty coldness, her superb self-assertion, when I saw her bow down like a timid child before his cold, courteous requests. I did not then know the iron will which she saw beneath those few, well-chosen words. It was during a visit I made at their charming country residence about a year after their marriage, that I learned myself to know what Clarkson really was. It was the attainment of this knowledge, involving as it did a severe struggle between us, that caused the cessation of all intercourse. It was on just such a day as this that the crisis came, and the differ- ent stages of the battle are associated in my memory with the rising or the lulling of the storm, the howl- ing of the wind, or the hushed piteousness of the weary rain. He had frequently annoyed me by too personal an interest in my affairs, too keen a scenting into my modes and habits of life. He delighted in asking leading questions in regard to myself, boasted quietly | 46 Ethel’s Love-Life. of having wrung from Eleanor various particulars of my past life, which it was positively painful to me that he should know, and declared himself magneti cally able to read in my countenance the most subtle changes of my emotional nature. He was fond of planning conversational surprises, commencing with harmless topics and by abrupt transition reverting to something touching myself, looking sharply at me all the while, to note any change of countenance or any unguarded remark—determined to break down in some way what he termed my unaccountable reserve. Eleanor’s knowledge of me was itself imperfect, and, certain that his could be no greater, I thanked the constitutional reserve that had always prevented me from any but slight confidences and unimportant reve- lations of myself. What he knew had only awakened what I considered at first an idle curiosity particularly unbecoming an intellectual man. But his appetite for mental conflict was aroused, his enjoyment of struggling was at work, he knew enough of my indi- viduality to see that it was one even more difficult of conquest than that of his wife; his spirits rose and Ethel’s Love-Life. 47 his strength developed at each repulse he received, and he was confident that by putting forth all his reserved power, he must, eventually, bear down my bravest opposition; so he was disposed to prolong the stratagems and the skirmishes preliminary to march- ing into possession of the conquered country. He skilfully attempted to win my willing confidence by delicate expression of his sympathy for what I had suffered, and for aught he knew was still suffering ; referred with tears in his eyes to his first meetings with me, declaring to my infinite astonishment that there had arisen from the first, a wonderful degree of sym- pathy between us, and, with suggestions so impalpa- ble that at times they seemed never to have been really uttered, hinted touching regrets that we had not met before the existence of ties on both sides necessitated a conclusion which he expressed only by a deep-drawn sigh. Bnt this Werterian aspect was too transient and too intangible for any action on my part, and while maintaining the existence of mutual affinity and his thorough understanding of my nature, he explained, with eloquent fervor, that his excess of 48 Ethel’s Love-Life. reverence had always prevented him from entering into the inner sanctuary of my feelings, though know- ing that he held in his hand its master-key. When I laughed at his rhapsodies he grew angry and sarcastic ; when I was silent he became penitent and reverential again. At intervals he would lay aside all these per- sonalities and be for days what he knew so well how to be—the most agreeable of companions, the most courteous of hosts; would captivate all who were within his home-circle by the charm of his manner, the bril- liancy of his wit, and the variety of his accomplish- ments. So contrastive an organization I have never met in any one else, or one so completely under the control of its owner. His peculiarities extended into every aspect of life. Princely in his expenditure, magnificent in all his tastes, shrewd in acquisition though daring in speculation, and reckless of all established rules, he gloried in living upon the very crater of a volcano, and was exhilarated by the con- stant watchfulness and innumerable stratagems which his pecuniary affairs required. Even when the crash came he showed a fierce enjoyment of the new form ag Ethel’s Love-Life. 49 which his excitement took, and held his poverty with the same iron grasp with which for a time he had held his wealth. On the day to which I refer, he had roused me beyond myself, by his ever-changing yet pertinacious attacks, and I was chafing with an inward rage which it required all my efforts to conceal. The hours passed on, the storm with its powerful influences was oppressing my very soul, and I longed for the solitude of my own room, yet knew that he would regard my retreat as an acknowledgment of cowardice, which I did not really feel; as dread of a battle which, as I was now sure it must come some time, might as well come then. So I kept my storm-susceptibilities as quiet as possible, and my manner as serene as usual, while I inwardly prepared my forces for desperate conflict. What result he looked for in case of my ultimate surrender I did not ask myself—I doubt if he exactly knew himself. He fought for the sake of the battle, and would wait for the inspiration of the victory to suggest the disposition of the spoils. I fought for my soul’s life, and with every energy I 3 50 | Ethel’s Love-Life. possessed, and yet through it all I never felt one pang of fear or one doubt of myself. I even enjoyed a sort of pleasurable excitement such as a spectator may feel in watching the movements of a champion on whom he feels an immutable reliance. I hardly knew what I was struggling against, yet with the unquestioning obedience I always offer to my instinc- tive perceptions, which warn me when I am in the presence of dark and bad natures, I buckled on my armor and kept my sword in my hand. My questions I put aside till, the battle over, I should be able to examine and answer them in fuller knowledge and more serene certainty. Our spirits rose as the warfare continued, till it was hand to hand and life for life. I kept guard over myself with all my power, my old discipline standing me in good stead; neither by taunt nor by entreaty, by question nor assumption of acqui- escence in his proposed conclusions, would I reveal one glimpse of my heart, either in its past or its pre- sent, or allow that I had ever perceived any affinity of nature, of intellect, or of heart, between him and myself. What had at first involved only my intrust- Ethel’s Love-Life. 51 ing him with my personal confidence grew to include the revelation and surrender of my consciousness and free will. For hours the wordy conflict lasted ; I did not waver and he did not fall back. But he lost, to some extent, his power over himself, and as his excite- ment increased and his self-revelations became more decided, I grew, by very reaction, colder and calmer and better able to comprehend and fathom him. As he grew eloquent I grew impassive, as he lost self- command I grew serene, as passion made him weak just in proportion as it made him sincere, so all fear, all excitement died away within me, and I smiled to think how much I had really dreaded the encounter. Now I knew that there was no affinity between us; that the mere similarity of tastes, the outside likings of the intellect which by their resemblance had some- times troubled me, were not incompatible with an actual separation of the two natures, as wide, as deep as, in this moment, I was proud to assert it. He had not followed my change of mood as closely as I had his; absorbed in his own feelings he was no longer cool enough for observation, and his astonishment was 52 Ethel’s Love-Life. excessive when, interrupting him in the middle of a most romantic, and under other circumstances, a really touching appeal, I rose, and standing before him, gazed so steadily at him that his eyes fell beneath mine, and, slowly, calmly, scornfully I defied him and his wrath. I told him what I saw in him of serpent- cunning and of vilest wickedness; that he moved my will no more than the idle prattle of a child could do; and that, though at first I bore with him, as only half- understanding his crooked nature, he now stood revealed to me as only worthy of my scorn. I must have spoken strongly and daringly, for the change in him was instantaneous, and he attempted no remon- strance. Only he rose from the low seat on which he had been sitting, and bending his face to mine, he looked into my eyes asif to read my very soul. How I bore that intense gaze I do not know, but a power within me seemed to give me strength, and I did not quail or move—till, sinking once more upon the little seat, he covered his face with both his hands, murmur- ing as he did so, “Always yourself! I might have known you could not be as others !” Ethel’s Love-Life. 53 I turned away from him, and, without another word, left the room. He made no attempt to detain me, and I gained my own room unmolested. It was long past midnight, as the striking of the old hall clock told me as I went up the staircase. I remem- ber only that I found my chamber door open, and that I mechanically closed and bolted it. I must have fainted immediately after, for, before the early sum- mer morning broke, I found myself lying in the middle of the floor and suffering from such exhaustion that I could not at first recall any of the occurrences of the previous day, or comprehend how I came to be in such a condition. The shock to my nervous system had been so great, the tension of all my facul- ties so violent, that the reaction was fearful. I undressed myself, however, and went to bed and lay for a long while planning an immediate escape from the trying circumstances about me. It was impossible for me to risk seeing Mr. Clarkson again: yet I loved Eleanor too well to do anything which should cause her pain, and I had always reverenced the womanly reserve that had surrounded her every 54. Ethel’s Love-Life. mention of her husband’s name, so that I did not know how little or how much she understood him, or how much trust she might feel in my own loyalty to herself. Her health, even then very delicate, obliged her to keep early hours, so that she had retired the evening previous some time before the conversation between Mr. Clarkson and myself had passed beyond the bounds of courteous argument; but I knew that she would, as usual, come to my room in the morn- ing and chat with me as, in my indolent way, I made my very gradual toilette. I soon heard her knock at my door, and her “‘Good morning, Ethel; are you up yet?” in which I could detect little change from her usual tone. I replied, through the closed door, that I was not very well, but would be down stairs soon after breakfast. She admitted the excuse, but added that her husband had left home at daybreak to visit a farm he owned some miles distant, and would be absent two days, Before those two days were past I had bidden farewell to poor Eleanor, who clung to me with most expressive fondness, and was on my way to my own home. It was long before I was able Ethel’s Love-Life. 55 to recover my usual tone, and the complete exhaustion I experienced was proof that the struggle had been greater than I had imagined: the demand upon my strength more stringent than I had any idea of at the time. I have never been able to resist the paleness and the shudder which you noticed, when I am reminded of it, and I feel even now a sensation of exhaustion stealing over me at the memory. I have never referred to it, save in my own heart, and have kept the seal of secresy upon it all, even in my corre- spondence with Eleanor, which continued as friendly as ever for some time after my return. I never saw her or Mr. Clarkson again ; they quarrelled soon after, and her friends insisted upon a separation. His affairs were in hopeless disorder, and her little fortune was swallowed up in the general ruin, while his character suffered severely in the investigations which followed his bankruptcy. He wore the same cold and haughty mien through all, however, and, after a year of sepa- ration, he, by his strange magic, brought his wife once more to his feet.. Her naturally delicate frame had received terrible injury from the mental suffer 56 Ethel’s Love-Life. ing she had endured, her proud spirit was broken by shame and misfortune, and she died very soon after her return to her husband. He has never crossed my path since, and the scenes which, in the passing, were so full of interest and action, have now faded into the past,—but they will never quite lose their painful power over me, or be for me an utterly dead remem- brance. Poor Eleanor! her love and trust in me were very precious to me; and by a loving message sent to me from her death-bed I knew that she had understood all, and that she held me high in honor through an experience on which her wifely dignity imposed silence between us. ETHEL. LETTER THIRD. I HAVE been ill, my beloved, ill in soul and body —I have needed you, and you were not nigh—but the thought of you has never left me. Your picture hangs by my bedside, and I have lain, hushed and still, gazing upon it, till the soul I knew so well has seemed to speak through those calm eyes, and I have held communion with you througk that mute image of yourself. And now I am able to read your letters, which mistaken friends kept- from me for awhile,—ah! they have done me more good in both my maladies, than all the draughts I swallowed, all the slumber I could grasp. JI am _ growing stronger every day, and my mind is recovering its tone; before you are able to reach me I shall be quite well, and we will spend the summer-time, which waits but for your coming to make it com- | 2% 58 Ethel’s. Love-Life. pletely beautiful, in delicious wanderings by the seashore and amid our grand old woods. I look with longing for you, my beloved; my heart is hungry and my spirit is athirst for you,—only in your presence am I entirely myself. The fulness and freedom with which the magnetic current flows through my veins when you are near me, is won- derful even to me, who am so subject to its influ- ences, so responsive to its changes. The subtle element is always at work within me; always demanding some outlet of expression, some posi- tive direction for its action. When poured forth too freely it produces an exhaustion so entire, a prostration so universal as to be fearful. Only once _or twice in my life have I thus lost command of myself, thus abandoned my individuality, and then it seemed as if recovery were impossible, as if the physical frame so shared the suffering of the spirit that its weary weakness could never more become strength and health. When pent up within myself too closely, and denied utterance, as it has been in several arid seasons in my life, this magnetic force Ethel’s Love-Life. 59 accumulates and flows back upon myself, chafing and wearing at the very fountain of my life. Never has it found such harmonious and healthful outlet as through my love for you, never have I felt such deli- cious and invigorating movement through my inner life as when it mingles with your own equally strong but far better directed forces, I remember once talking with a very dear friend upon this very subject; a friend made such with a rapidity which the pressure of outward circumstances added to inward attraction, could alone explain. We were placed in circumstances of peculiar isola- tion, thrown into each other’s hearts for shelter from the weary conyentionalism of all around us, and our love grew, as it were, in a hot-house atmosphere with all the cold winds shut out. We lived within our own little love-dwelling, with none to even ask for entrance. In one of the many long and confidential conversations which we held together, after perfect freedom had been established between us, I said, “Do you believe that any person has power really to infuse his own vitality into another, really to 60 Ethel’s Love-Life. supply fresh impulse to another’s exhaustion, and to feed and refresh with renewing force those who have ceased for a time to supply their own needs?” “How should I not believe it,” was the reply, ‘when I have myself experienced it? Have not you ‘infused vitality’ into me? When we first met, was not I in a state of deplorable and utter stagnation and depression—and have not you lifted and restored me to myself? Have you not poured the warm cur- rent of life into my cold, faint pulses, and made my blood throb full and strong again? The shadows that encompassed me are fled, and I stand in the clear sunlight. The chilling atmosphere of indiffer- ence is dispelled, and I revel in the more than tropic ‘warmth of living love. How or why it is that you have done all this, or why, with your brave strong nature, you have stooped to love so poor and weak a thing as I am, I ask not—I care not—it is enough for me to acknowledge and to feel grateful for it. But I tremble to think that the time is coming when our parting must throw me into a sadder state than ever; sadder it must be, for I have known such joy Ethel’s Love-Life. 61 and peace of late that the darkness must seem still deeper by force of contrast. Therefore do not leave me utterly, but in some way let me feel, from time to time, that you are not all lost tome. You will not need me, but I shall need you, oh, so much !” And so I am ever conscious of this strange, incom- prehensible spiritual influence within myself. Only rarely do I exercise it outwardly, only rarely do I give it position and new direction with my will. Usually -I satisfy its needs by letting it flow along through the old channels of my established friend- ships; but when, as in the case I have just told you of, I meet with such a temptation to do good, I rejoice to give of my abundance to one who is perishing from want. There is need, of course, of some stimu- lus through the affections; I feel attracted by the individual or my will remains dormant ;—I know not even that I could give of my own vitality unto one I did not love, or if it could be received into a nature antagonistic to my own. But when there exists a sympathy between the emotional natures, my will can send a living flood through the heart, and I 62 Ethel’s Love-Life. thrill with an answering joy and rise to a higher delight as I see the renewing of the life of my friend. In this instance the process was peculiarly apparent and full of interest tome. The physical sympathies were very ready in the organism of my friend, my own sensational powers were at that time in full strength, and the attraction which drew our spiritual natures together was followed by a mingling of some of my superfluous inner energies with her prostrate and enervated susceptibilities. It is quite extraordinary how great a difference there is, not only in the proportion of active, outgoing, magnetic power in different individuals, but also in the simply receptive element. Some who can give seem absolutely incapable of receiving—the most delicate and subtle returning fluid fails to win entrance at the door which opens but for egress to those within. Those persons strike us as hard and cold of nature, and even in subduing others, they chill and mortify the grateful and generous impulses which would come forth to meet and pay them homage. Others seem to have so large a capacity of reception and are so open Ethel’s Love-Life. 62 e) to all floating magnetic forces, that it is matter of continual wonder that the accumulation does not of itself become active and pour forth of its abundance upon the other lives which stand about it in bitter need. But the two powers in persons of each class remain always distinct; the first cannot receive, the second cannot give; the want of wholeness of nature, of harmony of development, from time to time reveals itself, and disappoints those who had hoped for higher and grander manifestation. There are, how- ever, exceptional natures capable of both giving largely and receiving fully, in which the flux and reflux of the magnetic element is as the mighty tide of ocean, not like the tributary flowing of the river, bound on its unreturning errand to the sea. These natures move grandly on through their own orbits, rejoicing in their own fulness and planetary serenity of steady force, and render a large obedience to the great laws which regulate the universe an obedience as full of grandeur and of power as their own sovereignty over lesser things is complete. These spherical natures are very rare, and have almost 64 Ethel’s Love-Life. infinite influence over the inferior ones brought in contact with them; and it is fortunate that their very greatness necessitates a loyal and noble truthfulness to great principles, and that they would scorn to use their strength for any but the noblest and most ele- vated objects. I do not hesitate to write to you, beloved Ernest, all my thoughts about this magnetic element, so little understood, so little even guessed at by careless natures. ‘Tio me it seems one of the grandest and most effective of all psychological forces, the master-key of our human nature, the manifesta- tion of our sympathy with the divine mind, the power by which all spiritual attainment both for the individual and for the mass is to be harmoniously and profitably directed and carried on. In its grandest development it is the propelling power of the universe, in its lesser expression it warms the heart and modi- fies the life. It is great enough for the first, and it does not disdain to render beautiful the last. Its diversity and inequality make its social movement; its possessors are lords and peers among men, and none are degraded by paying them reverence, for their Ethel’s Love-Life. 65 dignity comes from no accidental circumstance, but is of divine ordaining. . Its possession brings a responsi- bility quite commensurate with its value, and weighs down to sadness even the strongest and most hopeful. I know that you regard it as I do; that you share as largely as myself, in the possession of this wonderful intangibility ; and that although we rejoice in our gift, yet we can never lightly use it and never dare to dese- crate it. Neither can we sit down contented with our- selves and leave it in inaction. ‘Those who possess it, and in whom it moves, as the Spirit of God once moved over the face of the waters, are ever looking earnestly for the light, and striving to create order out of the chaos about them. Susceptibility of this kind is almost always accom- panied by a high degree of susceptibility through the imaginative and even through the sensational nature. All impressions are readily received, whether they come in the tangible form of daily variety, or in the subtle and invisible essence of mental phenomena. In delicate physical organizations this vibration of impressions becomes more visible than in stronger 66 Ethel’s Love-Life. and more robust natures. In me it is constantly per- ceptible, at least to myself. It is an ever present influence, which throbs within me as the waves of the ocean surge and swell; it continues even during my sleep. The character of my slumber is as that of my waking hours to those who know me beneath my external seeming, and see the movement under the apparent stillness. My repose is physically quiet, to a remarkable degree ; not a finger moves, not a breath is quickened, as I have been told by those who have watched my sleep till they have wakened me, out of very fear that it was sleep no longer. But in my heart and brain a storm may even then be raging, or a delirium of enjoyment swaying me hither and thither. I hear the muttering of thunder and the hoarse murmur of the threatening winds, or I melt in deepest ecstasy over Elysian fancies, and glow beneath the fiery excitement of my dream-creations. It was but yester-night that I was visited by fair and beautiful and joy-giving dreams. Whether they arose from your loving letter, which lay near my heart, and were obeying the impulses which distort Ethel’s Love-Life. 67 conclusions a great way from their legitimate premises, as often happens in dream phenomena, I do not know. But with such a garb of glory did they invest the night, that I mourned when the rude touch of morn- ing rent in pieces the delicate rainbow-tinted fabric. Past my rapt senses swept a train of visionary joys; through the charmed atmosphere swelled the AXolian dream-music, and through my tranced soul thrilled passions and emotions and sensations, glowing, tre- mulous, intense, as the most subtle inspiration of Hasheesh. I caught such glimpses of the olden days as they lay far away in the faint dawnings of the Eastern sky—such scintillations of the future, as it gleamed in the golden glory of the Western clouds, that the brazen hardness of the garish noon-tide, which is really above my head, and beneath which I pant so wearily, passed into happy forgetfulness, Sometimes these dreams were vague but delicious, unreasoning and without order or regularity. At other times they took tangible forms, and I lived through them a life-like experience; my _ heart throbbed quick and strong, as in seasons of actual and 68 Ethel’s Love-Life. concentrated emotion. You will smile, when I retrace the most vivid of these, to see what form its presiding spirit chose to take. I seem to find in the circum- stance one more confirmation of the theory, which, though I shrink from it, I cannot but believe in—that however free we may be in forming and beginning our heart-ties, and creating our friendships, our free- dom cannot extend to their destruction after they have really obtained an existence. We may make the image if we will, but, if it prove hideous, we cannot rid ourselves of it when we weary of it or dis- cover its enormity—it clings to us as the monster to Frankenstein, and appears from time to time to prove to us that it is ours. So, if a friendship is once formed, once incorporated into our being, we can never utterly destroy it, nor be as if it had never been. The subtle life-spirit, once evoked, will not die; its influence will not entirely fade away. ‘This restraint upon our volition, I remember, you once indignantly denied, but afterwards acknowledged with a sigh. Well, my dream seems a confirmation of this matter, —an assertion that, when the conscious and directing Ethel’s Love-Life. 69 powers are in abeyance, when spontaneous and unre- strained impulses are at work within, the images and the heart-realities we thought laid asleep for ever can rise up in their old strength and declare to us their continued dominion. This dream will long linger in my memory: I was, as I thought, lying on my couch in a delicious reverie; summer perfumes were about me; the breath of roses entered at the open window; the hum of bees made the air musical, and their soft droning sound wove itself into my musings with a sweet and soothing power. As I lay thus in. a trance of quiet bliss, the door opened quickly, and Leonora entered, with that peculiar rushing step, which, with her, is always an indication of intense excitement, and produces such effect from its con- trast with her usual quiet movements and almost pas- sionless manner—that manner with which she strives to hide that stormy, fiery, tempestuous nature of hers. Turning her eyes upon me with all that intense expression of passionate love with which she used to greet me after an absence from me, and which I never saw in any mortal eyes but hers, set forth with such 70 Ethel’s Love-Life. glowing, almost painful, intensity, she threw herself upon my neck, and clasping me with the fierce fond- ness of a lioness to her heart, till I felt its throbbings against my own, she bent over me with that longing, burning look, as if toread my very soul. Inamoment, however, that look changed to one of dewy softness and timid supplication, and sinking on her knees, with her arms still around my neck, she smothered me with hot kisses, and murmured in my ear, “Is it not all forgotten, my beloved Ethel? say it is all forgot- ten!” And as those sweet tones of entreaty fell upon the air, a magic spell came over all things, and it was all forgotten, and I pressed her once more to my heart and soothed her with words of endearment, till I hushed those tremulous beatings into stillness, and she rested in my arms as a little child. And, as we lay there side by side for uncounted hours, as it seemed, the charm of the old days came back upon us; the thrill of old loving returned; we felt that there was no longer any need of asking or of giving pardon for the old offences, but that they might pass into a deep, unbroken slumber. And then ensued Ethel’s Love-Life. 71 such passionate outpourings of her long pent-up love, such eloquent prayers from her sweet lips, such tears from her wonderful eyes, that all the past rose up in new strength, and I knew that a strange and irrevocable tie still bound us two together, and we could never really part. I gave myself up with delirious joy to this impres sion; for a time I lived but for her and her love, and grew proud and happy as I saw the light in her - eyes become once more the soft, sweet trustfulness oF the old time. She seemed to resign herself once more utterly to me, to have no consciousness but mine, to live through my life, and even while leaving off all her own strong individuality, to thrill me with a sense of renewed and increased vitality, to throw her own rapid pulses into the calmer current of my veins, and make me, in spite of myself, share in her own super- abundant passion. And when, at last, I woke and found myself alone, I could not believe that the cloud which is between us was not dispelled, the coldness was not gone, the wrongs were not lying in slumber, and our hearts were not beating in 72 Ethel’s Love-Life. unison. A sensation of sickness came over my heart, an irrepressible longing weighed me down; I yearned, for a moment, with an overpowering desire for one more hour with her I had loved so well. But I looked up at your picture, my beloved Ernest, and in that one instant I regained my calmness,— I was once more myself, and dream-fancies fled away before the magical influence of your serene gaze. I bless the artist every day of my life for the faithful- ness with which he has portrayed your worshipped image. There is in the picture the same marvellous strength and calm earnestness, which is so predo- minant in yourself—how should I live without it when you are far from me? The image of Leonora faded away, her strange fascination was at an end, her moral image seemed to emerge from her bewil- deringly beautiful physical one, and to stand forth for my condemnation as a traitorous and unworthy nature. But was it not strange she should come to resume her influence over me and acknowledge the supremacy of mine over her, in moments when all voluntary disguises are laid aside and the heart seems Ethel’s Love-Life. 73 able to assert itself without restraint or direction from the will? Does it not prove that I am right when I say that spite of the coldness which I myself have maintained in my relations with her, spite of the contempt I feel for her, and which she knows I feel, spite of absence, of silence, of estrangement, we are, after all, not utterly separated? Strange, wayward, beautiful serpent that she was, that same invisible bond united us on the higher ground on which she walked erect so long, that it seemed she could never fall. The faithful reproduction of so many of the old elements of our connexion, made my dream most vivid; and the peculiarity which these dreams of mine often possess of allowing a sort of double consciousness in myself, through which I am able to pause and examine, as it were, each subtle change in emotion, quite impossible when waking hours are swayed by any strong im- pulse, imparts a strange power to these dream-epi- sodes. They seem, in the retrospect, quite as real as any true and actual experience of the past—they exhilarate or they depress, excite or subdue my whole 4 74 Ethel’s Love-Life. spirit. My dreams of you are always thus vivid; they are so free from any distorted exaggerations, you come to me with words and looks so like your own, that I sometimes think that absence is cheated of half its sadness, and that you really do visit me on . the wings of the night-wind. It would gladden your very heart within you, sometimes, and bring your most loving smile to your lips, to be really present at one of these intangible interviews. I will not tell you all their sweetness till you come yourself to fill out the grand proportions of this ideal being who comes through barred windows and bolted doors, in spite of storm and darkness, and heedless of distance and time and space, to cheer the heart which the long day has made dreary and desolate. Come still unto my dreams, true heart!—the inmost recesses of my own stand open with a weleome— no door is closed, no corner hidden from ycur eyes. I am all yours, and sleeping or waking I ain ever ready for the entrance of my king. ETHEL. LETTER FOURTH. HITHER my last letter to you, dear Ernest, or the dream which I related to you in it, has brought up the remembrance of Leonora to my mind so forcibly, that I have not been able to banish her from my waking or my sleeping thoughts, without going over step by step and memory by memory, that portion of my past which is so closely connected with her. I always find this the best way to get rid of fancies which haunt and annoy me—allow them full sway for awhile, let them carry me whither they will, and as long as they will, by their own impulse,—neither hurry nor retard them in their progress, and after a time, their force is spent and the whole matter sub- sides into its true place. The evil spirit is exorcised, and I am at peace without the wearisome struggle by which alone I could have combated and conquered 76 Ethel’s Love-Life. them. I have, therefore, been dwelling much upon the past since I last wrote you, have been recalling the incidents in which Leonora bore so prominent a part, living over again the vehement emotions which then tore my heart; and in connexion with this, have once more indulged the habit of analysis so natural to me, and against which you so lovingly caution me. It is my first transgression, dearest, and I believe that, in this instance, you would sanction my course as the one best adapted to restore to me a degree of content- ment and acquiescence in the circumstances which took her from me. I am steadfast in my nature, as you know, and strong attachments once rooted in my heart are not readily eradicated; and it is only through repeated proof of the poisonous nature of the plant I have cherished, that I find power to tear it out from my life. The more I think of Leonora, the more extra- ordinary contradiction does she appear to me; the more do I wonder how I had strength to carry me through the struggle that ended in my putting her from me forever. You must not think from this that Ethel’s Love-Life. 77 I regret the course I felt obliged to follow, or that I would swerve from it, were it to be done again —but, oh, Ernest, I do wish that it had never been necessary, or that at least I might have broken the bond more tenderly—for I know she loved me in spite of all; and even in what she did, those strange, contradictory attributes of hers enabled her to sepa- rate the friend whom she was loving from the woman whom she was injuring. Her duplicity seems to me an unfortunate gift of nature, by which she was com- pelled to live a dual life, and in each aspect of it to be acting a lie. Her whole existence was vibratory ; she swung hither and thither almost at random, tra- versing all extremes of loving sweetness and pathetic tenderness, as well as of revengeful bitterness and stormy passion. Her intercourse with me was one unbroken manifestation of the better and more beau- tiful part of her nature, and I had seen so many glori- ous capabilities that I felt within myself a tender sorrow at her sin rather than an anger at being the one injured by it. Yet we both know, Ernest, do we not? that any- 78 Ethel’s Love-Life. thing less than the stern words spoken, the entire- ness and severity of my condemnation of her, would have been worse than useless). How I did it all is now a mystery to me, and my brain reels to think of it. She had been so much to me, and had so carefully guarded, as she thought, against all possi- bility of my discovering aught in her save the loving, sunny side of her nature which she turned towards me, that I sometimes think she might have learned to really love and feel the purity and truthfulness she was striving to make me see in her, and that her words were true when she said, ‘I am better when with you, Kthel, than I am at any other time, there- fore keep me with you, and do not leave me to my- self.” But when I grieve myself with thinking that I may have thrown away the only opportunity for raising and ennobling her, and charge myself with selfish disregard of her better aspirations, the recol- lection of what I know of her in other relations of her life, proves to me that her apparently noble moments were but episodes in a life full of dark and degrading impulse and unworthy action. It needed Ethel’s Love-Life. 79 no other proof of her extraordinary mental power and strong discipline than to see, as I did, how she could keep out of sight during our long seasons of intimate intercourse, every one of those, at other apparently uncontrollable evil impulses of hers, which broke out in such savage and peculiar directions. The serpent slept while the flowers blossomed about him, and the gleaming of his glossy skin seemed only the sunshine lying on their fresh sweet leaves. It pleased her so much to think I only knew her in her relations to myself, only in the present that existed for us both, and which was, from a combination of pecu- liar circumstances, entirely disjoined from her own actual past—that I had not the heart to tell her how thoroughly her antecedents were known to me, how vividly the picture of her whole past had been painted for me by that quaint colorist and far-seeing Everard Stanley. He used to delight himself and annoy me with revelations of every possible kind in regard to Leonora, and urged his sister to say what he dared not utter; and though I could not but regret that there was so much for them to tell, I kept their secret to the last, and she So Ethel’s Love-Life. has never known how I became possessed of her his- tory, as I felt. it my duty, when we separated, to let her know that I was. I knew that Everard and Alice were true as truth itself; I knew that he regret- ted nearly as much as I the crooked falseness of Leo- nora, even while my apparent incredulity tempted him into more and more graphic details, and piqued him to a greater accumulation of facts; but I clung to a secret hope that the present might be a turning- point in Leonora’s life, and I wished her to know that I would stand her friend, in spite of her past, if she would but remain loyal to me, against whom she had then never sinned, not so much for the effect it might have upon myself, as because an unswerving loyalty to me would imply a promise of and a longing for something higher and truer in her whole future. I did not feel myself to be compromised in this, for I felt that my complete knowledge was itself a sufficient protection, and I ever held certain portions of myself aloof from her touch, keeping sacred much of my dearest and most interior soul-life.. It was chiefly in my intellectual nature that she came closest tome; and Ethel’s Love-Life. 81 although there were, as I have-said, certain other strong affinities between us, making daily intercourse full of charm—yet I should never have depended entirely upon her or felt willing to lift for her the cur- tain of my innermost reserves. I had no need of her, however, in this way ; I was already rich in true friends, and my nature does not require to pour itself forth in unreserved expression to each new claimant of my heart's hospitality. The deepest love of my heart, the richest gift of my soul, the offering of my past sorrow and the trembling hope of coming peace, had been laid at your feet, and I could crown but one king within my heart—to him and to him alone, could I reveal myself completely—yet though I wish not to worship but one, I could have loved her and enjoyed much with her on a different level.| I would not and could not have made of her a planet in my heaven, on which to depend for the regulation of my inner forces, nor yet have placed her among those few fixed stars from whose clearness and calmness I learn lessons of spiritual serenity—but she might at least have been something better than a meteor shooting with brilliant 4% 82 Ethel’s Love-Life. flash across my sky, to fall at last a dark and useless heap of stones. \ The study and analysis of such an organism as hers are full of interest to one who possesses the key to its contradictions. The inconsistencies of women are generally more subtle than those of men, and affect their actions with a more delicate and intangible power. Women often love each other with as much fervor and excitement as they do men. When this is the case, there is generally rare beauty both in the feeling and in its manifestations, great generosity in its intuitions, and the mutual intercourse is marked by charming undulations of feeling and expression. The emotions awakened heave and swell through the whole being as the tides swell the ocean. Freed from all the grosser elements of passion, as it exists between the sexes, it retains its energy, its abandonment, its flush, its eagerness, its palpitation, and its rapture— but all so refined, so glorified, and made delicious and continuous by an ever-recurring giving and receiving from each to each. -The electricity of the one flashes and gleams through the other, to be returned not only Ethel’s Love-Life. 83 in degree as between man and woman, but in kind as between precisely similar organizations. And these passions are of much more frequent occurrence than the world is aware of—generally they are unknown to all but the parties concerned, and are jealously guarded by them from intrusive comment. ‘There is a gloom in deep love as in deep water,” and silence and mystery help to guard the sacred spot where we go to meet our best-beloved friends. The world sees only the ordinary appearances of an _ intimate acquaintanceship, and satisfies itself with a few com- mon-place comments thereon—but the joy and beauty of the tie remain in sweet concealment—silent and inexpressive when careless eyes are upon it, but leap- ing into the sunlight when free from cold and repel- ling influences. I have had my passionate attachments among women, which swept like whirlwinds over me, some- times scorching me with a furnace-blast, but generally only changing and renewing the atmosphere of my life. I have loved so intensely that the daily and nightly communion I have held with my beloved ones 84 Ethel’s Love-Life. has not sufficed to slake my thirst for them, nor the lavishness of their love for me been able to satisfy the demands of my exacting nature. I would “have drunk their soul as ’twere a ray from heaven”—hayve lost myself and lived in them—and this too in spite of that trait of non-absorption which you so often tell me I possess. I absorb others, yet am never absorbed by them; but I have longed to be so, have yearned to leave off for a little while this burden of individuality which cuts into the very soul of me as sackcloth grates upon the shrinking flesh. Oh, how I have at times wished to lie down and fall asleep in another’s consciousness, and give my panting, quivering vitality a little rest. There have been seasons when this unattainable desire to leave off my own separate exist- ence with its too intense experience, and merge my ) own heart-life in the less fluctuating and less extensive alternations of another, has exhausted every energy of my soul, and made my inner self rise up before me in gigantic and frightful proportions, seeming like some fearful phantom ever walking by my side and holding me bound fast in strong but invisible bonds. Ethel’s Love-Life. 85 I loved Claudia thus—loved?—nay, I worshipped her, I poured out at her feet all the wealth of my young girlish heart; and what a glorious life I led with her strong high soul, which took me into such lofty companionship—so far above me as she was— and yet the greatness of my love lifted me to her. My soul sought and found im her every emotion which passed over it, and my confidence flowed forth in one unswerving, unfaltering trust to her. The proof of the grandeur and truth of this love of mine was not only in the length of time it continued, but still more in the fact that it grew up side by side with another grand passion which devastated my nature, and destroyed for a while in me the very fountain of my inner life. Had not Claudia been the truest and most loving of friends, my heart would have withered and died out in the struggles of that time. Leonora could never have been to me what Claudia has been—the serene loftiness, the entire truthfulness, the unselfish devotion, which made Claudia so perfect in all the relations of friendship, were all wanting in Leonora. But there was a great deal in the feminine 86 Ethel’s Love-Life. beauty, the bewitching grace, the delightful piquancy, and the brilliant intellect of Leonora to fascinate and to subdue. She disarmed judgment by her charming ways, she overpowered coldness by her magnetic attraction. Our intercourse was delightful—there was no repose in it, but the action was of that delicious, self-sustaining sort that never wearied or exhausted either. When I think of the hours we have spent together, a smile, as at the recollection of an intense pleasure, rises to my lips. She acted as a continual spur to my intellectual activity, and was always ready to join me in the race after an intellectual prize. The demands she made upon me, she made also upon her- self; and the amount of brain-work which she exacted from herself to remedy the insufficiency of her early education, was really astonishing. You knew her only as a handsome coquette, a somewhat daring inquirer into men and things, a not over-scrupulous searcher after experience; you could never see her as I have seen her, when all the higher and better parts of her contradictory nature were in full force. You never saw the gay and vain ball-room belle of the Ethel’s Love-Life. 87 evening transformed into the serious student of the morning; or heard the lips that seemed formed for repartee and gay nonsense grow eloquent upon great themes. If her heart had been as true as her mind was comprehensive, she would have been a rarely- gifted woman, but her flight into the heavens was impeded by sordid chains and mean obstacles. She had not even truth enough to be really sincere in deploring her own deficiencies, or to make any hearty efforts towards a higher plane. Her aspirations were strong, and lifted her at times to an apparent height; but they were not true, and did not really raise her above herself, and after the momentary effort was over, she returned to her earthliness and was contented in that as before. Hach mood was an episode, each impulse valuable to her as supplying new sensations, and all in turn lost their value and their meaning when they lost their freshness and ceased to bring her» exciting experiences. She seemed not under her own control in these matters, and in spite of her unusually powerful will, which bent to her purposes nearly all those with whom she came in contact, she was often 88 Ethel’s Love-Life. swayed herself by influences to which she scorned to acknowledge her susceptibility. To be sure, these influences seemed always to have their birth within herself, they rose as vapors from the soil, and she was marble to all external forces, impenetrable to persuia- sion, untouched by entreaty, unmoved even by open scorn in her daily intercourse with others. It was something to be proud of, after all, to be able to bend her iron will to my own, to force my own volition through her thoughts and acts as I have often done. And the proud humility with which she could submit, the loving glance with which she gave her obedience, were full of an indescribable charm to one with a tem- perament like my own, full of its own strong contrasts and antagonisms. You know all the circumstances which revealed her whole nature to me and brought our intimate commu- nion to a sudden stop. I rejoice that you were near me to sanction all my words, to sustain me through the pain I suffered at first, and to encourage me in the despondency which followed. You forgave my many evidences of weakness, had patience with my Ethel’s Love-Life. 89 complaints over my loss, and soothed the regrets I could not help but feel. It was my first quarrel—it was the first time I had been called upon to express contempt for any one for whom I had felt love—pray Heaven it be the last !—and but that indignation sup- plied the necessary impetus to my expression, I might have kept silence. I have sometimes, on minor mat- ters, had seasons of quite refreshing indignation, but they have almost always been in behalf of others or for matters not really interwoven with my own con- sciousness. ‘l'o those who have crossed my orbit at those rare intervals when Mars has been in the ascendant, I have sometimes spoken or written harsh things with a momentary enjoyment. When I speak them, it is always in a low voice and with apparent calmness, the result, I suppose, of the concentration of my emotions upon a given point; when I write them I always write boldly, freely and rapidly, dash on the ink and spread open my pen that the venom may flow forth with the black fluid. My page assumes a hard- ness and sharpness of outline in consonance with my feelings, and it affects the motion of my hand to such go Ethel’s Love-Life. a degree, that I cannot immediately divest myself of it, but continue for days to write in a large, bold hand. The very contrast which this affords to my usually unexpressional nature supples a kind of fiery enjoy- ment for the moment. There is a charm in honest anger, a pleasure in its outburst, when there is no motive for its concealment. Such seasons of tempest are very exhausting to me, however, and itis well that they come but seldom. Anger is not a common feel- ing with me, and when it comes, it implies a long, or at least an intense previous experience. I am so generally indifferent to those matters which rouse anger in others, that I often seem amiably self-pos- sessed when I am merely unconscious. But the effect of this is an accumulation within of a concen- trated power of expression when the real occasion comes. When I am roused I rush fiercely and warmly into the conflict, I feel completely awake, my brain grows active, my words come fluently and with more point and pithiness than at other times, I fancy my perceptions are keener, my mental faculties are all on the alert, I like the conflict while it is fresh .and Ethel’s Love-Life. gl new, and until I am tired of wz, I can do battle with vigor and effect. But almost always I get weary of the whole matter, and am the first to smile at my vehemence—very, very rarély have I felt long-con- tinued anger—only once or twice in my whole life has positive passion pervaded me with its white heat of power. Then it has burned even my own nature, after scorching those on whom its first blaze lighted, and eaten into my own energies like a subtle poison which destroys even while it exhilarates. Leonora has passed out of my daily and active life —TI shut her out also from my heart, yet she does and she will meet me sometimes in my inner conscious- ness, when I abandon myself to reverie, or when night brings me dreams. I shall probably never see her face again, I would not if I could; if we meet it will be as strangers, and yet the niche in my heart and life which she filled remains unoccupied; and I know, though my name may never cross her lips, that I visit her in the night hours as she visits me—that a wailing cry for the love she has lost sometimes escapes her—that there is an invisible bond which still unites g2 Ethel’s Love-Life. each to the other. If repentance and regret could have availed aught in such a case, there was no lack of either on her part, [am sure. Our subtle essences mingled and assimilated too thoroughly ever to be entirely disunited. I do not miss her in my daily walk in the world, for in the world we were little associated together; but in my dreamy hours, or in my intellectual labor, I turn involuntarily for her assistance, her sympathy, her quick appreciation. I would like at some time to discuss more at length with you this peculiar relationship of one individuality to another, with its apparent indestructibility, and in con- nexion with it to know what you think of the influ- ence of character upon affection, as it shows itself in our likes and dislikes, and enters or remains on the outside of our deepest heart-experiences. It is a sub- ject full of contradictions, and, as it seems to me, involving many spiritual phenomena and concealing great spiritnal truths. And now, dear Ernest, that I have exorcised this haunting demon Leonora, have laid her to sleep again, we will turn from her and the traitorous air she Ethel’s Love-Life. 93 breathes to our own warm and pure atmosphere of life and love and truth. How the remembrance of those sunny summer days we spent together comes over me now with life-giving beauty! And how those pictures of the woods and streams by which we wandered, come up in this dark, sad, winter-time,— when I am doubly widowed of you and of beautiful Nature—to gladden and encourage me. Your letters are like the summer flowers to me, your love is as the great ocean by which we sat so often and whispered our whole souls unto each other. Summer is coming again, my Ernest, and with her comes my summer’s crown of life and light—yourself. Oh, how my heart expands beneath the blue and open sky, how it fills itself with glory and with bliss, as the summer breeze brings me your words of love mingling with the soft wooing air! Oh, come, sweet summer, and, oh, come my sweeter love! Your own ETHEL. LETTER FIFTH. MY OWN DEAR ERNEST, As the snows of winter wear away, as the stern coldness yields little by little to the wooing sun, as the bits, of grass show themselves with a whispered promise that they will ere long be green and bright once more—the thought of you comes with more of welcome, more of renewal, more of promise to my heart than even summer can offer to weary Nature. It is a source of joy to me that your image is so inter- woven with my summer dreams, that our interviews, our mutual associations are so completely removed from the sphere of ordinary conventionalisms and all ‘social fictions,” and lifted into the purer and more serene atmosphere of external nature. Our hearts have learned to love and trust each other—not in the midst of gaiety and fashion, not in the ball-room, nor Ethel’s Love-Life. 95 even by the fireside with its pleasant and genial but also varied and broken inner life—but in the clear air of heaven, and amid the sweet influences of the glorious summer. We have worshipped in a hype- thral temple, and the sun has beamed upon us with warm and loving glances as we have grown to love each other, or the moon has smiled on us as we have acknowledged that love, while the sea has chanted its sweetest, grandest, fullest anthem, as we have hushed our hearts into awe-struck but happy silence. We have joined in its great Te Deum, though our lips have not moved, and in our devotion to each other we have not forgotten the Great Father from whom our love and our joy have come. I should have loved you, doubtless, had all environments been otherwise ; my hand would have thrilled in yours had it been clasped in the gayest dance, my heart would have gone forth to meet you had we been hedged in by the most formal courtesy, and my whole soul would have melted beneath the fire of your glance had it fallen on me only as I stood amid the crowd. But it is beautiful not to struggle with these adverse influences, 96 Ethel’s Love-Life. —beautiful to have been spared all these drawbacks, all these chilling and dwarfing environments. It has been the more delightful to me because my heart was already so weary with those outside shows; that it longed so for relief from what had weighed it down tillit seemed there was never more to be any freedom for it. And, more than all, dear Ernest, there has been the sense of contrast to me in all our intercourse: the contrast with that first feverish dream of mine. How can I be thankful enough that I dare speak of the past to you as to my ownsoul; that you know even as I know, just what that experience was; that you under- stand just how much of my heart and life were absorbed by it, and just how much remained un- touched! Above all, that you recognise as Ido, how powerful that experience has been in developing, in strengthening, and in bringing out all of myself which is best worth knowing and being. A less generous man than yourself would have reproached me when I have sometimes trembled at my recollections; a less loving one would not have forgiven my first wayward Ethel’s Love-Life. 97 struggles against your growing influence over me; a less noble, a less wise, a less far-seeing man, would never have understood, have sympathized with, assisted and trusted me, as you have done. You can never know how full of grandeur your position towards me has been, for a portion of its beauty has consisted in the very unconsciousness and simplicity with which you have acted out your own self. And the reward is yoursin all its fulness. The dream is passed and powerless; more than all, it is known to have been a dream, and the reality of my whole life has been almost untouched ; the strength of my whole soul has been unimpaired; the fire and earnestness of my whole being have been unexhausted, that I might stand forth in full knowledge of myself, and give myself to you for ever. How every feverish emotion, every childish impulse, every extravagant outburst, fade away into fantastic shadows, and pale before the clear and glowing sunlight of my great love for you. Now I know what itis to love. Ismile to think what I once imagined it to be. I was so young when all that I now call “ the past ” 5 9S Ethel’s Love-Life. happened to me! It seems so far away, so mist-like and vague, compared to the sharp-cut and real emo- tions of the present. I was but. sixteen when I first met Percy Hamilton. Was he not a fitting hero for a young girl’s romance? I look at him now from a simply zesthetic point of view, and I cannot wonder that, upon an impressible, enthusiastic girl like me, he produced the effect of a god-like apparition. I wonder at this no more than I do at my perfect calm- ness in looking back upon it, or at the utter power- lessness for influence which such a person would have upon me now. How magnificently handsome he was! The very absence of manly energy was an additional charm to that delicate, spiritual, poetic face of his; to my inexperienced judgment it told, not of weakness and inaptitude for a world of reality, but only of refined ideality and poetry. The dreamy languor of those large soft eyes seemed so in keeping with the sweet low voice, the slight and fragile figure, and even those small white hands which many a woman envied. But I think, after all, the great fascination he exercised over me, apart from the charm of his Ethel’s Love-Lite. 99 long-continued wooing, lay in the fact that with me he was so utterly unlike what he was in the world at large. . His calm and high-bred indifference and lan- guor were exchanged for a timid eagerness, an excite- ment almost uncontrollable; his voice would tremble when he spoke to me, even in the presence of others. I have seen him turn pale when I entered the room, even though it seemed impossible that he could, from his position, have observed my entrance; and have seen his countenance vary In apparent response to what I have said to others, at so great a distance as to preclude all possibility of his haying heard the words I uttered. Whenever I was in the crowd I knew that he saw me, though he never attracted the attention of those about him by appearing to follow my moye- ments; his languid and somewhat careless general manner never varied so as to be perceptible to a stran- ger. I never saw him really look at any other woman, or appear to be aware of the gaze of others upon him; though he was a decided favorite in general society, he seemed only sufficiently conscious of the presence of others to go through the external forms of polite- - - 100 Ethel’s Love-Life. ness in his own graceful way, remaining, so far as their individuality was concerned, in the complete solitude of his own soul. But when his eye met mine it was as if his whole heart longed to pour itself forth in one glance. I used to tremble at his look, spite of my delight at calling it forth; the intensity of that mournful longing, the depth of that sad bitterness which dwelt there when he thought me cold to him, or the triumphant gleam, the fiery exultation, which flashed like lightning over me if he won any expres- sion of love from me,—oh, it was all so strange from him, and so different from what the world saw in him, that there was all the charm of mystery, all the piqnancy of exclusiveness to heighten it for me. I never had time for thought, he wrapped me up in the whirlwind of his own passion, and swept me along so rapidly that I lost breath as it were in the flight. I had little opportunity for self-questioning or examination, for sensation followed sensation and action succeeded action—lI had no time to study him dispassionately, for his phases changed with every interview, and he varied in everything but in his love Ethel’s Love-Life. 101 for me; he used to say that his love was really him- self, and that all his other feelings, actions, words, were but as the garments which he put on-for a day or for an occasion. Yet I could always soothe his wildest excitement even as I roused it, and a storm of reproaches about some trifle, or the intensest out- pouring of passion which would follow some fancied injustice towards him, would yield to the sweetest and most confiding trust, the most entire and unques- tioning self-surrender. He was of a most jealous temper too—I was continually in fear of a scene— perhaps needlessly so, since the conventional self- control he had acquired through so much intercourse with society, never really deserted him, and his pride also stood him in good stead;—but when we were alone together, the paroxysms of his jealous rage were frightful—and yet I never loved him half so well as when I needed all my own energy to with- stand him, and when he was lifted up from the posi- tion of a suppliant lover into that of an imperious tyrant. You may imagine what a strange and change- able intercourse we had—I was in a kind of delirium 102 Ethel’s Love-Life. of excitement all the time, there was no lack of romance, no deficiency of sentiment; I thought there was in the world no grander and no truer love. I sometimes think there was incipient madness in his veins, for storm followed calm and calm followed storm faster than the clouds pass over the face of heaven. I have dreaded sometimes that in his fear of losing me he would kill both himself and me—he often threatened to do this; for he declared, in moments of despondency, that he knew that Fate would sepa- rate us unless he put it out of the power of Fate to do so. Do you not think he meant to do it at the last? I think so, though I have never breathed the thought to any but yourself. . And when Fate, or, as I am glad to think, the good God—took up this thread of my life and lifted it far out of his reach or of my own, when human words and human deeds were alike powerless—when Heaven seemed to point its finger with a gesture not to be mistaken or disobeyed, and when with stream- ing eyes and yearning heart I turned away from him, to follow in the Heaven-directed path—a strange Ethel’s Love-Life. 103 calmness came over him—from which, fool that I was, I augured well. I left him with a heart full of hope for him, I fancied that I had in some way over-esti- mated the strength and violence of his passion, and in the satisfaction which this thought gave me came the first gleam of consciousness that my own love was not my life as I had always imagined it to be. Six hours afterwards I stood beside his corpse, feel- ing myself a murderess as I gazed on that pale brow and kissed those closed eyes which had never looked on me in aught but love. I had never dreamed of this horrible termination of our love, even though he had often sworn to part from me only with his life, for I had become so accustomed to his fiery expres- sions that I looked upon them as a part of himself, harmonious with his general intensity of tone, and not indicating any settled purpose of action. But the letter which he wrote after leaving me in the morning, the careful arrangement of all the minor details of the fearful deed, and the journal which was sent me with all his other papers in accordance with his will—all revealed his long-formed determination. Can you 104 Ethel’s Love-Life. wonder that the thought of doubt with which I had parted from him, the faint suspicion that entered into my mind as to the entireness of my devotion to him, should have seemed the blackest treason to my dead lover, and that remorse and reaction should have brought back all my tenderness? It seemed but a poor return for his own great love. The horror of the circumstances, the shock and mystery of such a sudden ‘death in life,” the bitter anguish of knowing that he died by his own hand and went, stained with blood, to meet his God,—and then the thought that but for me all this would not have been—came upon me with such mighty power that I sank under it. For months I lay hovering between life and death— the first violence of delirium changed into a settled and silent melancholy, in which I prayed only for death, and it seemed to those who loved and watched over me, during that long and dreary time, that my sun of life was setting, even before the noon had come. But in these long hours of silence, self- questioning arose within me; I lived many years of thought, I began to learn the secret of my life, and Ethel’s Love-Life. ? 105 very gradually and very sadly to prepare myself, not for the death for which at first I had so vehemently prayed, but for a joyless, though not aimless life. I learned to know, as a truth personal to myself, that God had ordered all things well, that I was but an instrument for some great purpose, and that out of seeming evil, I could hope to bring actual and great good. I learned to look at my own love for Hamil- ton in its true light, and to accept its ministration to my heart. And although I found that it had not destroyed in me the deepest energies of my nature, it did not lose its dignity and truth, but remained, as it must always remain, an honest but an insufficient reality. In its birth it was the quick enthusiasm of my own heart, responsive to the demands of another, in its death it retained its beauty, though it lost its active influence. As my physical strength returned to me, my mental balance was completely restored. I felt as if awaking from a long and vivid dream, a night-mare of the consciousness. Very slowly I returned to active life, very gently was I led from the seclusion of my cham- 5* 100 Ethel’s Love-Life. ber and the silence of its darkness to the fair scenes of the nature I loved so well. I cannot describe my emotion when I first breathed the external air, first lifted my eyes to the blue sky, first felt the delicious warmth of the sun. It was an unmingled delight, though I was exhausted and silent from my extreme weakness, which made even this an excitement greater than I could bear. But I was soon able to drink in large draughts of the renovating air, to enjoy to the utmost the sunshine and the breeze. In the scenes of nature there was nothing to jar upon me, nothing to awaken sudden and startling images of the past. My intercourse with Hamilton had always been in the midst of society and city life. My remembrances of him were associated with lighted halls and gay music; my most quiet recollections of him were connected with my own city home, and mingled with a thousand gay and changing externalities. Our nearest approach to solitude had been amid books and pictures, our isolation had been self-created and never wholly dis- sociated from companionship. My mother now took me to the seashore, and I spent all the hours of that Ethel’s Love-Life. 107 long and thoughtful summer with the sound of the eternal sea mingling in my dreams by night and in my thoughts by day. From that sound itself there seemed at last to come forth a promise that I should emerge from the stagnation of my sorrow and some- time arise to renewed life and effort, and when I grew stronger and could sit by the shore itself, I drew in with each breath renewed vitality and hope through sight and sound of the wonderful ocean. And the summer sun warmed the cold pulses of my blood, and I grew in that sweet solitude once more myself, or not myself alone, but a new power had been added to me. I was myself, but with new, and better, and higher prin- ciples of life; the gay and thoughtless exuberance of my old spirit had grown up to a more settled and earnest purpose, the keen susceptibility to all emotions, though saddened, was not subdued; the intellectual power, though chastened, was not weakened. All that the seaand sky said to my sick heart during those months of communion I may never hope to tell; but you know now why I love the sea and the summer- time so well—I owe my life to them. 108 Ethel’s Love-Life. The following winter I spent in my home again, but in the strictest seclusion. My friends all acqui- esced in my desire for repose, and I am grateful still for the gentle consideration, the kindly neglect (sym- pathy I could not then have borne) of those about me. When the spring opened once more, another fearful blow fell upon me—my brother Eustace died. He was the only one from whom sympathy and pity had been tolerable to me at the time of Hamilton’s death; the only one to whom my heart had gone forth in my hour of desolation, as he was the only one who had dared to come to me with all the cruel but necessary details of that tragedy. From him I had first learned that another drop of bitterness was added to my cup— that the death of my lover had made me wealthy to excess. Hamilton, who loved and trusted him before I had learned to do so, had implored him to keep secrecy upon the tenor of his will, made some six months before his death, when the severe illness which had threatened to terminate fatally, suggested to him the absence of all legal claim which the woman he loved had upon aught that he possessed. He Ethel'’s Love-Life. 109 seems even then to have had a presentiment that I should never be his wife, and in the impulsive gen- erosity of his nature, made a will by which he settled all his great wealth unconditionally upon me. I could not keep that wealth; it was impos- sible for me to regard it as any thing but a sacred trust. With my brother’s aid I therefore executed all the legal instruments for conveying the pro- perty into those channels which I thought most in unison with the tastes and habits of poor Hamilton. I would have given it all to his few and distant rela- tives, had I not known that they did not need it, and that he neither loved nor had reason to love them. For the honor of his name, however, I gave them a portion of the family estate, but after that claim was satisfied I felt that I might guide myself entirely by my knowledge of his sentiments on all subjects of charity and objects of liberality. I reserved for myself only his choice library, a few of his favorite paintings, and several trifles especially associated with my own intercourse with him. To my brother I gave the beautiful horse which was Percy’s pride, 110 Ethel’s Love-Life. and his huge dog, who is savage to all the world but me, still remains the companion of all my rambles, the guard of my s.umbers, and the terror of all my more timid friends. I receive a richer income from my own heart, and a more lavish pleasure from look- ing at those who have thriven under the bounty which has thus passed through my hands, than from all which that wealth might have purchased of selfish enjoyment. I even dare to feel certain that he has looked on approvingly at all that I have done in his name. It was in the intimate communion which these arrangements brought about between Eustace and myself that I first learned to appreciate the true nobility of his nature, to look beneath his cold reserve of manner to his strong manly heart, and to love him with amore intense and individual devotion than the | blind affection common between brother and sister, His sympathy was so unexpected, his understanding of and reverence for my feelings so complete, his consolations so delicate, and his counsels so manly and straightforward, that I trusted him implicitly, and learned to love him with intense fondness. We Ethel’s Love-Life. 111 would gladly have left the will a secret, but circum- - stances rendered it utterly impossible; and you may imagine how hard an ordeal it was for me to come a second time before the world in the character of a heroine, while my heart was so sad and my spirit so weak within me. But Hustace was always near to shield or to cheer and support me. When he became ill I knew that he must die; from the first moment I had seen the shadow of death upon him. He, too, felt the warning, and to me, but to none else, could he speak of it; the atmosphere of sorrow and death in which I had so long dwelt made our conversation less jarring and less unnatural than it could be with those to whom gloom and darkness are new experiences; there were already so many sources of sympathy established between us, too, that we felt no reserve in speaking with each other. It seemed to me my heart must break as I watched him, day by day, releasing more of his hold on life, break- ing link by link the chain which bound him to earth, and serenely adjusting all his personal affairs, as if glad to be able to relieve others of any charge in 112 Ethel’s Love-Life. regard to them. He arranged with scrupulous care all his private papers, closed up all his business con- nections with the outside world, with the same calm and even cheerful countenance with which he came to talk with me of his hopes and his faith in the future. How much he taught me during that sad season God alone, to whom he led me, can ever know. How his weak and failing nature, wrung by torturing pains, imparted strength and courage to her who should have been strong enough to give to him, in that dark hour, the Power from whom he drew his strength can alone tell. So well did I learn my lesson that I was able to lay him in the dust with a calmness that surprised all who knew how dearly I had loved him, yet did not know the sources of my inward strength. I wrestled with my two great griefs in silence and alone, but my health did not again sink under my sorrow. I seemed lifted by it above physical ills or susceptibilities, to live my outer life only as subor- dinate to the inner, and as removed from it by a barrier impassable to my own consciousness, I asked no Ethel’s Love-Life. 110 friendly sympathy as yet, I wished only for solitude and freedom, to solve, if possible, the still perplexed problem of my own experience—to regain the balance within myself,.and to look steadfastly at the past and the future. My twenty years of life must be spread fairly out before me as a chart for study; and the apparent incongruities and contradictions of feeling which marked it must be reconciled and explained to myself, or the future would have no guiding know- ledge, no assured path. Again I sought the seashore —again I met the calm, serene summer-time. And, more than all, oh! Ernest, I met you. For a long time I did not heed those calm dark eyes, nor hear that deep-toned voice, nor in the selfish seclusion of my sorrow recognise the presence of a spirit that was, ere long, to obtain so powerful an influence over me. But as the summer weeks went by, and you were still near me, offering the unobtrusive courtesies of daily life, and quietly respecting my evident desire for soli- tude, when my heart renewed its sad memories, I gradually emerged from my isolation, and recognising your truth of character and your superiority of intel- 114 Ethel’s Love-Life. lect, learned, as I said to myself, to esteem you highly as a friend—to prize the occasional hours which you bestowed upon meas rich gifts of intellectual treasure. Oh, Ernest, how blind I was, and how patient you were through all those summer days and all those sweet autumn scenes! How you bore with me when, at last, I would have scorned you as a friend, because you prayed to be my lover—when I indignantly denied your laughing assertion that I did not know my own heart, as I told you that the future would be for me only the grave of the past. And when we sat together upon those seashore rocks, beneath that calm blue sky, and I told you that my heart was utterly dead within me, and related with my own lips the history you had before only learned from others, and revealed even more than I was aware existed within me, of life which that past had not exhausted, you did not alarm me by showing that you discerned the germ and possible promise of a new love in my heart, but controlling your own pardonable exultation, you kept to the strictest office of a friend and spoke no word of the passion I had bidden you to check. (It Ethel’s Love-Life. 115 must be confessed, Ernest, that you made yourself most bounteous amends afterwards!) And I went on in my proud unconsciousness, thinking I could do without you when the near hour of your departure should come, and yet strangely contented that that hour should so mysteriously postpone itself. And when we parted I would not own, even to-myself, how bitterly lonely I felt, or acknowledge how much you had been to me, but returned to my old home-routine, thinking to find among old friends even more than I had found in you. But that winter unveiled me more and more unto myself, and as my heart grew hopeful and my griefs faded into a holy slumber, I could visit the graves in which the beloved ones slept, and feel that it was well with them, and that they would that it might be well with me. And so gradually did your image weave itself into my life, so much did I associate you with my beloved dead, that there was no shock to me when the full knowledge came that you were something more to me than even they could ever have been. There was no conflict in my thought as I was able to discern the relation of myself to the 116 Ethel’s Love-Life. past in a true and less exaggerated aspect than the first bewilderment of affliction would allow. They stood as near as ever to my heart, those two noble spirits, but their companionship was peace and strength now, not hopeless sorrow or blind dismay. I think I was almost happy that long cold winter, for summer was coming to my heart, and the warmth of renewed vitality quickened in my veins. Again you followed me to the sea-shore, though you had religiously obeyed my request not to come to mein my own home. [I shall never forget the intense eagerness of your first glance at me, nor the trembling of your strong hand as it grasped mine. The winter had been a sad trial-time for you, my beloved; you knew not of my rapidly growing love for you, saw not the hopes and the aspirations which arose within me, had no assurance of the result for which you prayed. Forgive me that I still delayed for a little while that full assurance for which you longed so feverishly. The pleasant hours wore away, the sun- shine and the sea grew even more dear to me, and at length I told you of my winter-life, and once more Ethel’s Love-Life. 117 seeking the memories of the past to reveal their new significance to me, I stood forth in the presence of my dead lover and my dead brother, with no disloyalty to them in my heart, as I confessed my love for you; I felt in my inmost soul a sweet assurance that they sanctioned and approved. That conviction has never left me; my young, passionate, girlish love, and my trusting, reverent, sisterly affection have led the way and prepared my heart for the reception of the great love which is to be the master-principle of my true being, the crown and beauty of my mature life. Ihad found out, too, that it was yourself, more than sea or shore, that had brought back my life to me; but I did not love my ocean or my summer less—they com- bined themselves with your own image, mingled with my thoughts of you and with my recollections of your words and looks—and now, at least, you will not quarrel with me for loving them so well. Were they not by when you told me that you must speak again, and that your words must be of love? . Did they not whisper to you, before I dared do so, that you might speak with no fear of a second repulse? 118 Ethel’s Love-Life Did they not listen as intently as I did to every word that fell from your lips, did they not hear the throb- bing of my heart, and did not the sea give to the shore the same exulting kiss as that which burned upon my cheek? Did not the sun smile upon us as we sat side by side, and the summer breeze whisper its knowledge of our happiness? Oh, yes! and you too love the summer and the sea even as I love them. And we shall have our first home by the sea, as you say, and our first unbroken communion shall be, as our first, young, timid utterances were—witnessed and hallowed by those loving influences. I have learned to trust myself so entirely to you, to live so in your being, that, in some sense, summer and winter, seashore and city, are now alike to me; but I confess that another joy seems added to the picture of my future, when I think that we can leave the world behind us for awhile, and that you, like myself, find pleasure in the thought that the first months of that united love that shall so soon commence, to be ended neither on earth nor in heaven, will be passed with only Nature as companion unto us. Ethel’s Love-Life. 119 How can I be glad enough, dearest, that I have learned to know myself before I really give myself away? Above all, how can I be glad enough that you, to whom I give myself, know what you are taking, without disguise, without reserve, without one shadow which might else rise up to dim our future as it has that of many another life. I am glad that you will have me thus go over and study out my past; I rejoice to reveal all that it contains to your searching but loving gaze. I lay it all, with my heart, at your feet—take of it as it shall please you—it has all tended to ennoble, as it is all included in, my devotion to yourself. Your own ETHEL. LETTER SIXTH. You tell me, dear Ernest, that you are not yet weary of my chaotic reminiscences, that you can even make order and sequence out of them, and seem to arrive, little by little, at a more thorough understanding of my inner soul as I reveal more and more the past history of my inward consciousness. I am glad that it is so with you, and that you ask from me, not so much a recital of events, as of states of feeling and contrasted moods of mind, which, in one constituted as I am, are of infinitely greater value in forming a true estimate of my individual attitude in regard even to the externalities by which I am surrounded. I would have you know me thus deeply, thus thoroughly; I would spread out before you those isolated but strongly painted pictures of my past, which represent me when the accumulation of influences from without Ethel’s Love-Life. 121 and from within have brought about a crisis of my heart, have concentrated into visibility the usually unseen emotions which sway the inner pulses. These pictures I place before you just as they come up to my Own memory, without arrangement and almost without date; it matters little when an incident took place so long as the results of that incident upon the character are clearly perceived and fairly allowed. I must only regulate myself by those sympathetic influences which arise within me as I look back upon “the days that are no more,” and which, at different times, cause different recollections to come with more power and demand more minute description. There- fore you have in my letters, not only the relation of the past, but, running parallel with that, a transcript of the present state of my mind, through the selection which I involuntarily make from the many different scenes through which I take you. We learn little of an individual nature from seeing, even with a great degree of intimate intercourse, only the daily, external life one leads; we learn much, if even for a moment he lifts the veil which covers and conceals 6 122 Ethel’s Love-Life. the working of his motives, the springs of his feelings, the sources of his inspiration and the result for which he labors. Just in proportion as our friends reveal unto us their inner mechanism, just in proportion as they can impart and we attain to a true knowledge of the interior nature which lies behind all their visible life, just so much are they really ours. If the capability of this understanding be mutual and spon- taneous, we see the most holy and beautiful friendship that can exist—its very rarity makes it seem more fair—its superiority to all low obstacles and clogging earthliness, makes us recognise its inherent immor- tality. It seems to me, beloved Ernest, that between us two it may exist in perfection, that we can each infuse into the other, in a wonderful degree, those influences which modify or control each of our minds, that we, to an unusual extent, find ourselves swayed by similar emotions at the same moment, that the natural current of our psychological forces flows without effort in the same direction, governed by. the same impulses, and responding to the same magnetic vibrations. Oh, do you know what peace I find in Ethel’s Love-Life. 123 this thought—what a beautiful future it opens before us? That there should be no need of struggle betweer us, no yielding upon one side because there shall be no conquering upon the other,—how serenely joyful it will be to us who have already had enough of struggle and enough of victory. Sometimes I wonder at your almost feminine intuitions, your exquisite appreciation of the most delicate shades of feeling—-since your life has been no idle summer dream, no mere poetic fancy; but a hard fought bat- tle with the stern reality of things. How can I be glad enough that through all you have kept this truth of heart, this quick spiritual insight, this warm and ready sympathy, and that now it is all for me! What am I, oh, Ernest, that Heaven should grant me such a boon? I almost tremble at the richness of my treasure, when I remember the poorness of my own desert; but I glory in the possession of a heart so strong and high, a nature so full and great as yours. None less than thine could give repose to mine, none less responsive supply the feverish haste of my own longings in the dark hours of my soul’s 124 Ethel’s Love-Life. - life. Thou must be to me a perennial fountain, else I shall perforce drain thy heart. A fate is on me hitherto that I should draw so relentlessly upon my loves that I have learned shame of myself at finding — how soon there was nothing left to slake my thirst, and have questioned if they were really “shallow cisterns holding no water,” or if I were a guilty spendthrift of their precious gifts. But with you, Ernest, I am at last at peace—I seem to have turned away from the streams which bubbled in the careless sunshine long ago, to have outrun the rivers that flowed noisily on their way, only to find myself upon the glorious ocean, to rest in the unfathomable depth of your noble nature. What can even the mighty torrent of my own free, mountain-born stream add to the grandeur of your swelling tides? I lose myself in you with joy! But I look in vain for reasons why you should be all mine—I find but one most selfish one, and that is, the greatness of my need of you, the deep unsatisfied longing, the bitter loneliness that must have been mine had you not been sent unto me. You tell me Ethel’s Love-Life. 125 very sweetly that the readiness, the absolute eager- ness of response I meet in you, is owing to your hay- ing never loved before, that all your better nature, rigidly locked up within itself, needed but the master- key to open the gateway to the pent-up flood; you laughingly caution me against my danger of drown- ing from the accumulations which, in others, have been gradually disposed of in minor loves and more vari- ous passions, but in you have never had but this one outlet. Pour forth the swelling floods without measure and without stint, oh, rarest heart—I ride upon the mounting waves, I revel in the rushing waters, the noise of the surging billows is music in my ears and strength unto my heart. How amid the self-seclusion of your heart-life, the self-imposed silence of your emotional nature, you have kept your susceptibilities so keen, your sympa- thies so ready, and your expressional power so full and rich—how you have avoided doubt and distrust and sceptical analysis, I, with my tendency to morbid weakness, can hardly comprehend. With so much to contend against, so many obstacles to conquer, and so 126 Ethel’s Love-Life. much hard work to be done, why have not you, like other men, grown hard and cold and scornful and bitter? With a man’s strength you have kept a woman’s tenderness, with the voice which can speak the sternest words I ever heard, when there needs to be a stern word spoken,—you can whisper the sweetest and most gentle message of encouragement and help. I have never, for a moment, seen the ten- derness tinged with the sternness, and never known the sternness weakened by a misplaced tenderness, Yes, you are indeed like my own ocean, Ernest ;—no petty breezes ruffle your serenity, but the sunshine finds its own calmness reflected in you, and only the mightiest winds and the solemn murmur of the waves are like your wrath when the storm is really awakened. I should love your tenderness less and rejoice in your gentleness with more of doubt, did I not also know this other side of your strong manly nature. I should nestle in the sunshine less securely, did I not know the power of the storms that have raged, for in both your aspects I find equal sympathy for my own way- ward and contrastive moods. You have my contrasts Ethel’s Love-Life. 127 without my waywardness, you have greater power of direction than IJ, and you shall guide me as you guide yourself, not by repressing and condemning even the power of anger and of contempt, but by giving it honest work to do and lofty sweep of action. May I but fill the loving part of your nature with genial tenderness, as you fill my weak heart with strength, and thus make up to you in your future for all the isolation of your past! Such an external barrenness as surrounded your early life in reality, I used, in my morbid seasons, to fancy was about myself. I have told you of my tendency to reverie, and of my long-continued day- dreams, but I have not told you how bitterly I suffered for a long while. from the hopelessly gloomy coloring which they finally acquired. I suppose the delicate state of my health must have had something to do with this morbid sensibility, and at any rate it increased my inability to struggle against it. It how- ever became so much a part of myself, it interwove itself so thoroughly into the very texture of my heart’s life, as to enslave every perception I possessed, and to 128 Ethel’s Love-Life. dominate over every impression I received. Nothing but the living actuality of abundant and most patient love, poured on me with no niggard hand, conquered this misanthropic bitterness and -drove away this moral gloom. You have seen me only since this ten- dency has been dead within me, and can hardly understand how it once tyrannized over me and what danger I was in. It was even worse than my habit of analysis, and for a time seemed less likely to be subdued. It reigned paramount in my days of earliest womanhood, and perhaps nothing short of my somewhat stormy experiences would have sufficed to drive out the demon. I sometimes indulged these fancies with a kind of desperate enjoyment, but gen- erally I struggled heartily against them, thongh in vain. Unlike other spiritual and intellectual difficul- ties, the power to conquer came from without. The wayward imaginations which filled me with bitterness, the conviction that weighed me down in those days of presumptuous ignorance, haunted me with the belief that I was born for misery and loneliness, and must go through life unknowing and unknown to the sweet Ethel’s Love-Life. 129 influences of a noble friendship or a true love. I know that it 1s very common for the young to have passing fancies similar to this, and to imagine it a proof of greatness to be unhappy; to find a strange charm in unsatisfied longings, and to turn from happi- ness as too common-place; but there was none of this affectation of sentiment in my misery; it was a dark reality, at which I often rebelled with all my strength, which crushed my soul within me, in spite of all my efforts to escape from its galling bondage. It assumed every variety of form, and tinged every emotion I experienced. Sometimes it seemed to me that there was really no heart within me; no warm and kindly blood in my pulseless, passionless frame; no out-going energy, and no capacity for reception of it from without. I seemed to myself a completely exceptional organization, outside of the laws which governed those about me; impenetrable to the influ- ences which swayed their existence. I had no feeling save that of stupid and cold indifference. These seasons of torpor were so heavy that there was no power-in imagination to paint pictures fair enough to 6* 130 Ethel’s Love-Life. awaken one emotion of interest or rouse one thrill of expectation; nor could the most -vivid image of suffering or prophecy of woe cause any shrinking or any dread. All was vague and shadowy; happiness was an insane fancy, sorrow only a disagreeable sound. I could never enjoy the one, and I need never fear the other. The strongest passions and the truest attachments were only dreamy speculations, varied involuntarily by the temperament and position of the individual nature in which they arose. I lost all heart and hope and faith in others and myself. I doubted all capacity in my own heart, and all exist- ence in others, of any active, spontaneous, ennobling emotion. I finally sat down, contented, as I thought, in my miserable delusion, trying to persuade myself, not only, that all was hollow and unreal, but that I was satisfied that it should be so: and that I asked for nothing else. I reasoned myself into a state of nega- tion so thorough that I neither loved nor hated, desired nor dreaded. I was a sort of moral. som- nambulist, walking through the world with my eyes open, but my perceptions closed. The daily life Ethel’s Love-Life. 131 around me, the home-circle in which I dwelt, were all shadows; people belonging to it came and went before me as a pageant on which I looked with passive indifference. It seemed to me that I pos- sessed complete control over my own organism; that I could do anything within my consciousness except be happy, and that being an impossibility for any one whose spiritual eyes had been opened, I had no reason to complain over an inevitable necessity. I fancied there was no misfortune that would call forth a tear; no loss which would be worth a sigh; no hope which could make my leaden heart beat quicker than its wont, but that I could maintain the same immovable indifference, the same unshaken pulse, through any possible experience. Had this condition been pro- duced by any actual disappointment, any acute suffer- ing, or any really discouraging circumstances, it would have been followed at some time by a natural revulsion of feeling; it would, like a fever, have had its crisis and its limit, beyond which its violence could not go, and after which, in one so young, it would have retraced its steps and brought me to a more health- 132 Ethel’s Love-Life. ful and biioyant condition. But in my case it came on without apparent cause, and so gradually, that it seemed merely the development of some inborn quality; it raged with no violence, roused little antagonism, was content without manifestation, and asked for no relief in sympathy; in short, it was a subtle poison breathing through my whole being. There was danger that this would always remain the prevailing tone of my mind. Still there was behind all a timid hope, not quite dead, though mainly silent, and only at rarest intervals appearing even to my own heart, of something better. I dared not quite believe that there was no blue sky high up above the darkening clouds that closed in over my head. I would have welcomed any storm that would have broken those dark rifts; but I would not acknowledge or believe this till I felt the glad rebound of my heart when the clear sunshine at last burst forth upon me. Sometimes this morbid disposition took another form, and induced seasons of intense suffering. It was no longer indifference that I felt—I was no longer in a state of stagnant unconsciousness, but in a Ethel’s Love-Life. ie Te felt darkness and desolation. My heart was not senseless, but only too keenly alive. The least jar gave me exquisite pain; a careless word stung me to the quick, and a loving one brought unbidden tears to my eyes—the tension of my whole nature was frightful. I lost the balance of my faculties, and sought the completest solitude and the strictest silence to conceal my wanderings from the knowledge of others. My dreams grew fanciful with horror or radiant with intangible delight. I revelled in ima- ginings of the bliss I was capable of, only to turn with loathing from their impossible suggestions. I shrank with affright from the fearful agony that visited me at other times and thrilled through every fibre of my being. And though in the movement of my daily life I emerged from these paroxysms into the more real experiences from which I could not quite seclude myself, it was only to complain within my own heart of the common-placeness of my every- day comfort. The happiness which satisfied others, and which seemed to be equally within my own reach, was too prosaic to be worth grasping,—I 134 Ethel’s Love-Life. would have none of it—I.would prefer the brilliant lies of my dreams, and pay the penalty of their alter- nating terrors. J grew very wretched, as I thought that I must wander through a world externally so beautiful, and never find in it the nourishment I craved—never obtain the bliss I knew myself capable of feeling, never meet with hearts that could really answer unto mine. I scorned what the rest of the world seemed to find well enough. I asked for friendship higher and purer, sympathy more vast and elevated than any one seemed able to give me—I demanded love far more passionate and far-more holy than the ignorant admiration of those of my social circle, who approached me with their homage, appear- ed capable of experiencing. How dark the heavens were above me—how the * summer air chilled me—how coldly the sun smiled at me, and how far-off the stars seemed! I met no glance of pity for the intense, unsatisfied longings of my young heart, and I wept bitter tears of anguish. But this state was more hopeful than the first, because it was more active and more extravagant—it bore Ethel’s Love-Life. 135 within itself the seeds of a revulsion—the promise of a change. I was indeed destined to awake from this abnormal condition of mind and heart, through a personal experience which I could not deny or put aside, as I had always done the less obtrusive suggestions of my calm daily life. I had doubted the existence of every- thing beautiful and true in the human life—I was destined to see that which I had despised rise up in grandeur before me. I had doubted the possibility of friendship, and Claudia was to come to me and prove my doubt a treason against truth. I had persuaded myself that the natural affections of family and kindred were merely the result of monotonous habit, in which we acquiesce, partly from indolence and partly from fear of finding nothing better if we gave it up,—I was destined to behold the very heart-beats of a mother’s love—the strong pulsation of a father’s devotion. I had questioned my own susceptibility and my own dependence—I was to find myself a helpless infant in the strong arms of love, a thing of nerves and sensibilities that every wind of heaven 136 Ethel’s Love-Life. could awaken. And this new life was given me, not through the sharp and stern lessons of sorrow and affliction, not through lacerated or crushed affections, not even through severe mental conflict—but amid physical suffermg and utter helplessness which, though hard to endure in the passing, seem to my remembrance but as the throes which were necessary to usher into existence my new-born soul. I was about sixteen when this terrible illness attacked me. Perhaps my mental condition aggravated the violence of the disorder; however that may be, the fever assumed a contagious and most malignant form. For a long time my delirium was frightful, my agony intolerable, no words can express what I endured of torture and of horror. Visions of all fear- ful things, dreams of darkness and phantoms of dread hung over my couch as I lay there helpless for long weeks. It was on emerging from my delirious state that I was able to realize how much I was beloved by those to whom, in my distrust, I had done so much injustice. Long before I could utter the simplest words of gratitude I had read whole volumes of love Ethel’s Love-Life. 137 and prayed long prayers of true repentance. The time of my delirium had been no blank in my consciousness. J could, to be sure, recall only in a confused way my own sensations and expressions, but what others had done remained before my eyes as a freshly painted picture, at which I was now able to gaze with understanding interest. The faces that had clustered around my bed with all their variety of anxious and awe-struck expression—my mother’s pale face and tearful eyes, my father’s prostrate grief, my brother’s vain attempts at self-control, and my cousin Kmily’s quiet but evident distress, were indeli- bly impressed upon my memory at the moment when they supposed me beyond all sensation and passing into the silent unconsciousness of death. I knew that all this anxiety and grief were for me, and yet I hardly understood why it was, at that moment, brought to such culmination of expression. All I was conscious of was a sudden thrill passing over me, a delicious sense of joy in the possession of so much love. I think it saved my life, for it infused such new energy into my heart, that against all prophecy, 138 Ethel’s Love-Life. against all precedent, I turned away from death’s open gate, to re-enter on the path of life. In the long interval which elapsed before I recovered my strength, I had leisure to review and analyse more truly my past, and to make fresh resolutions for my future. How could I ever repay so much love, which, now that the veil had been lifted from my eyes, in that hour of revelation, had continually renewed its manifestations ? What was there in me that could merit such layishness of affection, such fulness of love as that on which I fed from day to day, as a plant feeds on the air in which it grows? How beautiful it was to be so watched over, so cared for, every moment of the day and of the night. How trans- figured in the light and glory of their unselfish love stood all those who bent over me with their unwearied devotion to the helpless sufferer! How my heart throbbed when I was told that not one of all those around me had been afraid of risking life in remain- ing near me—that danger had lurked in every breath in that sick chamber, yet that its close and heavy atmosphere had been dearer to them than the air of Ethel’s Love-Life. 139 heaven. How I wondered that I had never before detected the clear love-light which beamed in my mother’s soft, hazel eyes every time she looked at me, never discovered how much her beauty was enhanced by the depth of affection which beamed from every look, now that I sought for it instead of turning from it. How I trembled with pleasure to notice the softening of my father’s voice when he spoke to me, the tenderness of his glance when he thought me asleep and dared to look at me without the assumed cheerfulness he put on whenever he saw that I observed him. How I longed to be well again that I might do something more than receive all this love so bounteously bestowed. I bless God that He has enabled me, since then, to prove my gratitude and repay a portion of my pleasant debt. Until this illness, Claudia had’ been only an acquaintance, whom I regarded as somewhat more noble and true than the world in general, because circumstances had made me acquainted with several instances of her magnanimity and generous self-denial. I had seen too that she was not only attractive of 140 Ethel’s Love-Life. more love and reverence from others than she was inclined to give them in return, but that she treated me, in our not very frequent meetings with each other, in a manner totally unlike that which she manifested towards any one else. I had even noticed with a faint surprise, that she seemed strangely conversant with my tastes and habits of mind, that her mood was often in unexpected unison with my own, and that she not unfrequently gave utterance to the very thoughts which I supposed shut up in my own heart. But I was so weighed down with my morbid fancies, so utterly inert in my misanthropy, that I permitted her image to pass by in the dream-procession which moved before my mind with little more perception of © her than of the rest. I remember that I thought it very singular when I looked round on the sorrowful group awaiting my’ last breath, to see Claudia among them, and to disco- ver in her face a depth of agony quite as intense as that which revealed itself upon the features of my rela- tives. But I was too weak for anything but the most transient emotion of surprise, and I fell into the habit Ethel’s Love-Life. 141 of depending upon her without asking how it hap- pened that she had ever begun to nurse me, or whether there need be any termination to her atten- tion. Of much greater physical strength than my mother and clearer mental judgment than my cousin, she soon became the chief companion of my convales- cence. She was the very sunshine of my day before I knew that she was aught but the kindest and most patient of nurses. It was not till a month after the fever had left me, that I learned that she had come to my mother, upon the first intelligence of my illness, and besought her with tears to let her be with me. For ten weeks she hardly left my bedside. And as I grew better she would talk to me for hours in her sweet, | low, soothing voice, as I lay quietly happy on my bed, of how she grew to love and know me in spite of myself, drawn by what she playfully called my irresistible magnetic attraction,—how she had suffered atmy unfeigned indifference and yet never lost faith that her great love must meet with ultimate recognition and return, and finally that my illness had seemed to her the appointed way for our friendship. 142 Ethel’s Love-Life. That convalescence was a pleasant time in my life, dear Ernest,—the whole earth seemed new to me, and fair as new. Such a wealth of love was awakened within me, that my whole life seemed too short for its expression, my whole heart too small for its dwell- ing-place. But above this general beneficence of mood, aside from this universal kindness which clothed my every-day life, there rose up within me a passionate love for Claudia, which seemed to take root in the very depths of my being. Every day revealed her noble nature to me more clearly, every day I looked deeper into her loving and true heart, and learned better to appreciate her high intellectual gifts. The reserve she maintained towards others © melted utterly away for me, and nothing could be more charming than the transition from her usual manner in society to the delicious abandon and merry carelessness that accompanied her every word and motion in the seclusion of our mutual intercourse. I found that she had been a busy student among the books I loved the best, a thinker upon subjects that had interested my whole soul, and that, in spite of Ethel’s Love-Life. 143 the many points of difference in our characters, we were in matters of intellectual king wonderfully agreed. She read aloud finely, and many of my favorite books have the pleasant echo of her flexible and musical voice still lingering among their pages. Certain passages of poetry are inseparably associated in my memory with the soft rich tones with which she repeated them to me, while I was lying, languid but not suffering, during my convalescence. Her talent for drawing, too, she brought into requisition for the amusement of my invalid hours, and it was like a sweet breath of country air to look at one of her sunny landscapes, and hear her description of the scene where she sketched it. It was in her drawings that the peculiar characteristics of her ideal nature showed themselves most decidedly, and her portfolio was full of strange and almost supernatural pictures, which seemed doubly wild and fearful by the side of the sweet and serene scenes which she always selected when she sketched directly from nature. She grew very eloquent when explaining to me the meaning of her imaginary pictures,—they always had some deep 144 Ethel’s Love-Life. meaning hidden in them, and the key to this once supphed, they became full of interest and fascination. They furnished the undercurrent of my dreams very often, at the time, and even now recur to me occasion- ally with vivid power. Claudia was in every respect a most delightful companion, full of delicate tact and simple kindliness, rich in resources, but never exhaust- ing one’s patience by the display of her accomplish- ments. She never wearied me even in my hours of gréatest prostration ; whether she spoke or whether she remained silent, she was always a pleasant and posi- tive adjunct to the scene. This wonderful gift of fit- ness at all times, to the necessities of the moment, might have been partly an acquirement in her, for she had seen much of the world, but it seemed to be all nature, and made her the most delightful person imaginable when she was in a situation 1n consonance with her own tastes. The days flew by on wings of light while she devoted herself to me, and played by turns the careful and gentle nurse, and the brilliant and intellectual companion. Her tastes were somewhat too decided and peculiar to allow of her being a very Ethel’s Love-Life. 145 general favorite among her casual acquaintances, but her very exclusiveness was an additional charm to me. It was about this time, too, that I first met Ham- ilton. My brother brought him to the house as an old college friend of his own, the first evening that my physician allowed me to join the family circle for a little while. J imagined that it was merely my exces- sive paleness and extreme languor that made him turn his eyes so often upon me, and the involuntary pity of a healthy organization for one so weak and shat- tered, that made him, from the first, assume an appa- rently unconscious tenderness of manner towards me. From that first visit he was an established friend of the whole house. My brother already loved and esteemed him, and had told me often of his accom- plished and poetical mind, and his fastidious tastes, sometimes laughingly asserting that his fastidiousness reached nearly to the extreme which my own was supposed to attain unto—for this charge against me was a common jest in the family. My mother was charmed by Percy’s graceful deference to herself, my cousin Emily was won by his ready appreciation of 146 Ethel’s Love-Life. her musical gifts, and even my father would lay down his newspaper to hear what Mr. Hamilton had to say on any subject, emphatically pronouncing him ‘a very sensible fellow in spite of his handsome face.” I withstood the general fascination longer than any- one, for even Claudia caught the infection and became enthusiastic in his behalf. I used to smile as she built up sumptuous castles in the air and described their splendors to me, for they were always to be inhabited by Percy and me, whom she had placed together from the hour of his advent among us. She saw, sooner than any one, how he turned to me even while speaking to others, how uneasy he became when I left the room, and how his face lighted up when he found me growing better and stronger in health. His constant and delicate devotion to me, and his pas- sionate utterance of it, completed the cure of every symptom of my old misanthropy and doubt. ‘There was absolutely no room for questions in my happy life, no excuse for scepticism; the love and trust of those about me taught me to judge the whole world more kindly, and to see in the whole human nature . < oe ee oa Ethel’s Love-Lite. 147 more of truth, of grandeur, and of beauty, than I had ever guessed at in the old days. I have never retraced my steps—have never felt the chill of doubt returning upon me; and now I can sit down without fear in the serene sunlight of my love for you—a love which is the crowning point of all my efforts, for which all my other loves seem to have educated and prepared me—a love which is, as it were, only the development and accomplishment of myself. Look back kindly with me, dear Ernest, on all which has served to prove and try me, rejoice with me that I have been so taught, rejoice with me still more that I have been so richly rewarded. I would that heart and life were worthier, for both are yours. ETHEL. LETTER SEVENTH. I come again and again unto you, true heart, as the bird flies back to its mate, and in writing to you of myself, I seem not so much a selfish egotist as a willing recorder of that which you please me by setting so high a value upon, You tell me what you find in me now; you recount my “capabilities for greatness,’ as you call them; you describe my many peculiarities quite as minutely and faithfully as I could do, only you always throw a beautiful rosy veil | over these last, while I should often drag them piti- lessly out into the sunshine and make them show themselves anything but charming. But, though you know me so well in the present and can prognosticate wisely for the future, the past does not thereby become unmeaning for you, nor its incidents fail to increase the light thrown upon my character and habits. So I have gone on from one reminiscence to another, pleas- Ethel’s Love-Life. 149 ing myself, and, I trust, not wearying you. It has indeed been pleasant to me to revisit the old scenes of my life; and though my letters have jotted down so many of my recollections, yet my thoughts have by no means stopped short where my pen has. A thou- sand little things, too small and unimportant in them- selves to be worth the labor of my writing or of your reading, but which nevertheless have retained enough vitality and individuality to prevent them from fall- ing into oblivion, have taken occasion to present themselves before me, just as the rabble follow at the heels of the great man and manage to obtain footing when the doors are opened to allow his entrance. Words and deeds have returned to me since I com- menced my little history, that would seem to have been of no value or meaning except at the very moment of utterance; and persons who flitted in the most transient manner across my life, when that life was most various and full of external changes, come smiling and bowing or frowning upon me as they present themselves under shelter of some reference to the past. 150 Ethel’s Love-Life. I should probably never have really unearthed the past but for your expressed wish, but now that I have been busy in the process I find it strangely charming. The incidents of each life may be trivial and common-place enough, viewed simply as incidents, - but set in the stronger light of their interior meaning to the soul of the individual, they grow into some- thing of more importance and become worthy of the study of the person to whom they belong. It is by looking back that we learn to look . forward, for, having studied ourselves in the past, we are able, upon the knowledge thus acquired, to give definite- ness to our ideas of the future; becoming familiar with our own aspect in the events which have filled _ up the by-gone days, we can, by simple transposition, in time, determine how we may be affected in the future. And, although we may find much to help us forward, by seeing how much we have already advanced, still self-study in the past is, in the main, a somewhat saddening occupation. We see so many instances wherein we might have acted more wisely, or more kindly, or more truly. We see how small Ethel’s Love-Life. . 1§1 the groundwork of our most violent prejudices and prepossessions really was, and wonder how they could have hurried us into such extravagance of action. You must often have noticed how impossible it is, after a night of sound sleep, to retain the same degree of violence and excitement upon a matter, which seemed, the night before, to be perfectly legiti- mate, and only proportionate to the demand of the oceasion. And this becomes ten-fold more manifest when not only a night, but years, have passed since the occurrence of that which, when new and fresh, moved us in the very depths of our being. It is fortunate that this is the case, for we could never bear the fearful strain upon our natures which would ensue upon a greater steadfastness of emotion. If the recollection of an excitement restored the excitement. itself in its pristine force, we should be for ever sway- ing in the blasts of passion. It is amusing, in looking back over a young girl’s life, to see what a large proportion of its movement comes trom the presence of love in its various mani- festations. It seems actually to be the very Master 152 Ethel’s Love-Life. of Ceremonies, and to determine all the social eti- quette and all the machinery by which the connection with the world at large is maintained. The homage of those to whom a woman remains personally indif- ferent has some positive influence upon her develop- ment; the love which, though she does not respond to it, yet which wins her respect and esteem, has still more; and when the crowning sentiment of her life, the absorbing and delicious reality of love, comes, then she is placed beneath a formative influence indeed. Much of a woman’s character may be learned only from knowledge of the men she attracts about her, and from the manner in which she comports her- self towards them. It is by the active antagonisms or attractions which enter into her sphere from this source that she obtains some little amount of know- ledge of the world and some insight into character, which, from the sheltered position assigned to her sex, she has lamentably small opportunities for acquir- ing in other ways. While a boy is thrown at once into the arena, and allowed to look about him and prepare himself for the conflict of his life by the con- Ethel’s Love-Life. 153 templation of his battle-field, and the study of warfare by seeing it before his very eyes, girls are still shut up in the secluded unconsciousness of their homes, and see human life and human passion only as its manifestation bears upon their own personal exist- ence. The opportunities for studying character come in isolated instances, and it is only when they embrace strongly contrastive natures that her oppor- tunities are at all commensurate with her needs. In the less serious aspect of her life, in the merely social career which she pursues as her young lady- hood progresses, this love-element is also of prominent importance and it needs not that she bevery senti- mental or that she be coquettishly inclined, for it to produce very positive and inevitable results upon her. Her manner unconsciously moulds itself into greater self-possession, her energies come forth to sustain her, and she walks with a step quite as maidenly but more assured as she finds out her inherent power as a woman to influence men who are deeply engaged in the work of their own lives, and who, ata first glance, would seem to be altogether too much absorbed in 1 bs 1 54, Ethel’s Love-Life. that work to be turned aside by any but the most powerful influences. It is only in shallow natures that much devotion from men produces silly vanity ; when the tone of character is pure and high, the effect is elevating, and women become more and more worthy of the sentiments they call forth, and it is no shame to the most true-hearted man to yield to the charm which such women exercise. No woman of a strong, true nature can listen to the earnest and honest utterance of a manly love, without rising higher than all womanly vanity, and finding within herself the power to console and to encourage even while she steadfastly denies; and such a woman may almost always, in time, exchange the impassioned and disap- pointed lover for a firm and admiring friend. Women almost invariably regard their discarded lovers with a degree of kindly liking, and are keen to discern and remark upon any noble traits of character in them: and even if this comes from no loftier motive than a reversionary self-admiration, it is good so far as it extends, and often helps to heal the wounds of the past. The fact that most of the supposed eternal Ethel’s Love-Life. 155 attachments of young hearts have really a singularly brief existence, does not necessarily divest them of all their dignity while they are still alive. Itis only a merciful arrangement for the relief of the general wear and tear of the human heart. This is generally well enough understood by women, and they are frankly glad to see a man they cannot love meet with a heartier recognition from some other woman. I have known the greatest friendliness arise among the three concerned in one of these little dramas. 9~—-— Much of this long chapter upon love has been sug- gested to me, dear Ernest, by the pleasant tidings I have received from Grahame Elliott, of his rapturous happiness in his newly wedded life. I have never told you what a frantic’ little lover of my own he once was, but now that he is in a position to smile as freely at his past extravagances as I myself am, I will give you a little outline of the episode. It was not a very long, but a most violent and extraordinary one. It is only a year ago that the poor fellow actually thought himself dying of love for me, and felt himself bitterly aggrieved when I refused to believe in his 156 Ethel’s Love-Life. approaching end. Our acquaintance commenced during my visit at L., which you remember. He was a student in the office of my host, and being the orphan son of an old friend, was received as a resident in the house, so that, although my visit there lasted but a month, we were thrown very much together. As I, intrenched in the majesty of my one-and-twenty years, first looked upon the pale and delicate youth of twenty, I felt an almost motherly impulse of Ixind- ness steal over my heart, for I knew that he was alone in the world. As our acquaintance progressed, and I found his intellect was that of a full-grown man, I learned a little more deferential feeling for him, but still felt myself to be in a very safe degree of seniority to him. We studied German together, a language of which we were both extremely fond, and really our progress in it was marvellous for the length of time we devoted to it. He read aloud the impassioned verses of our favorite authors, till he caught the infec- tion, and fell to making poems for himself—which, at first, I supposed from simple courtesy to his fel- low-student, he addressed to me. I hardly noticed Ethel’s Love-Life. 157 that his strains grew more and more intense as they grew more and more personal to their object. I did not even apply to myself a charming little poem he one day brought me, which contained the most exquisite history of an intimacy like our own, and of which the denouement, though left in uncertainty, was suggested with delicate and timid entreaty for my indulgence. I frankly admired the poem, and even praised the poetic skill with which he had rescued himself and his hero from the ordinary and stereo- typed conclusions of such romances. I saw him change color and look at me with a very peculiar expression; but so much had I deceived myself in the beginning, by the simple misunderstanding of a remark of his own, prophetic of an unsuccessful love he declared himself doomed to suffer from, that I believed the love to have been in existence before my coming, and interpreted every subsequent reference to it in accordance with my self-created theory of the matter. So I continued my pleasant intercourse with him, never dreaming of the result which followed, and believing that, although the world was ignorant of 158 Ethel’s Love-Life. the tie which united me to you, yet that my manner and my indifference to society were sufficient indi- cations that my heart had already found satisfaction for its needs. I must do myself the justice to say, that even in the moment of Grahame’s most uncon- trollable excitement, he acknowledged.that my manner had always warned him of this, but that he had refused to heed its warning, and had remained wil- fully blind to many things that he knew were sufii- cient to prove the impossibility of success in his suit. At last, a short time before the day appointed for my leaving L., as we sat upon the piazza one charming moonlight evening, and I was vainly endeavoring to keep my thoughts—which would wander off after you, wondering what your own occupation might just then be—upon the subject of conversation between us, so as to pay him a proper degree of attention when he spoke,—he suddenly broke off in the middle of a poem he was reciting and commenced a most impas- sioned declaration of love to myself. His words came so impetuously that I could not stop their utterance, and when at last he actually threw himself upon his Ethel’s Love-Life. 159 knees before me, and seized my hand in the manner of the knights in the German stories we had been read- ing, my first idea was that the scene was superlatively ludicrous. But as he went on, and his first passionate outburst subsided into a»more simple though hardly less violent language, I saw that it was no high-flown romance, but a most unfortunate fact. When he would let me speak, I strove, first of all, to calm his agitation and to lessen his excitement. But it wasa long while before I could soothe him into a condition to hear reason. He swore that he would win me or die, and threw out violent menaces against some imaginary individual whom he called his rival. He was sure of winning me by his faithful and great love, he said, if only I would not send him away for ever, and would say that I- was not bound irrevocably to any other. He would go away at once, if I said that he must; would gain fame and wealth somewhere and ‘somehow,—he should be sure of doing so if only he might seek them for my sake,—and he would come back to lay them and himself at my feet, even though 160 Ethel’s Love-Life. years must pass in absence and solitary effort. All this was poured forth with the vehemence and poetry natural to an intellectual and impetuous boy, and when I strove to bear with him as such, and waited patiently for the violence of the’storm to wear itself out, he reproached me for looking upon him asa boy, when he was, as I ought well'to know, a man in all but years and hardness of nature. My patience, however, at length received its reward, and he sat down upon the low step on which he had been kneel- ing, and with a somewhat subdued manner, begged me to tell him what his fate must be, but to be very gentle in the telling, if there was to be no hope for him even in the remote future. So I told him that ~ there was no hope, and tried to make him see the absurdity of his wish, dwelling upon my superior age, and exaggerating it as much as possible, by asserting that though but a twelvemonth in point of fact, it was, as existing between him and me, ten-fold greater, since he knew nothing of the world, and I had lived for years in its experiences. All this, however, had no effect, nor could I paint the hopelessness of any Ethel’s Love-Life. 161 practical result to his devotion, before the lapse of years should place him fairly among men, and give him a right to woo a woman as his wife, with sufficient power to chill the ardor of his hopes and subdue his ambitious fancies to any degree of possible accom- plishment. At last, despairing of success in any other way, I told him that I loved and was betrothed to another, long before I had seen him; and that if he had not been absorbed in his own romantic fancies, he must have seen innumerable indications of the fact in my speech and manner—for though I sought no pub- licity, yet I shrank from no simple and _ honest acknowledgment, in my domestic and friendly rela- tions. AsI went on he grew calmer and more reason- able, though he trembled visibly, and looked so very wretched that my heart was full of pity for him, even while my experience told me that his suffering would be more transient than he could then believe possible. I spoke very kindly, even affectionately to him, and in one or two subsequent interviews, did my best to console him, and reconcile him to the life which he declared ‘ntolerable to him. My efforts were not very 162 Ethel’s Love-Life. successful, however, and I left him in a state of apparent despair. He wrote me several impassioned letters, afterwards, and even came to see me two or three months later ;—I treated him as I would have done a sick child who needed only to be kindly cared for, to get well of himself. Some four months ago I had a letter from him, written in a much more cheer- ful strain, in which he gave me most eloquent thanks for my long forbearance with him, declared himself more than ever persuaded that the world did not con- tain another woman comparable to myself, but avow- ing that he was doing his best to conquer a passion that he knew to be hopeless. I replied to this letter —I had left all his others unanswered—and told him that the conclusion of his letter gave me the most heartfelt pleasure, and that I hazarded a prophecy that the future had in store for him, greater happiness than any he had yet dreamed of. My prophecy has already proved a true one, for I received yesterday, a half dozen sheets from him, filled with the story of his new love, its successful wooing and rapid consumma- tion. He had been married three days to ‘‘a woman, Ethel’s Love-Life. 163 or rather a child, of sixteen, not as yet like the peer: ~ less Ethel, but in time I trust to grow somewhat like her, if I read the promise in her charming face aright.” This last act of homage to myself was very gracefully done, was it not? and were I less willing than I am, to abdicate the throne of such a sovereignty, it might help to reconcile me to my fate. He is an honest- hearted fellow with all his rash impulsiveness, and I doubt not will remain loyal to his new love, for, from all I can learn, it is likely to be the real love of his life. He will bring her to see me in a few days, having, as he tells me, honestly laid before her the story of his first love and all its extravagant manifes- tations. I fancy that in addition to his wish, that two women whom he values should meet, he is not averse to the opportunity it will afford him, of proving to his pretty little wife, that the old love was really ‘off’ before he was “on with the new,” and in that belief I shall do my utmost to assist him in dispelling every suspicion of jealousy which may arise in his wife’s mind, and which the shortness of her own acquaintance with him would render quite natural in 164 Ethel’s Love-Life. her. And thus ends, as all such romances should end, the episode of Grahame Ellot and Ethel Suther- land, which I relate for your edification and amuse- ment. It shall not lead me any longer ramble into the tangled wild-wood of romance, or entail upon you just now, any more of the minor “affaires du coeur,” which have sprung up into mushroom existence along my path, as they do in that of most women who move much in society, and are not positively incapacitated from influencing those who are brought into relation- ship with them. These experiences, transient as they are, and without any very marked results, have yet some effect upon the character of both parties, and may be made of service in self-study. Our inter- course with others becomes, of necessity, of some importance to us, the moment it passes beyond the bounds of ordinary conventionality ; and it is for this reason that even the most transitory connection between persons who are brought into intimate per- sonal relations which reveal the real nature clearly, often assumes proportions grander than our ordinary acquaintanceships ever attain to. We all know how Ethel’s Love-Life. 165 fast friendship developes out of acquaintance under the influence of isolation from the outside world, how readily the heart reveals itself to any one who has gained our confidence ever so recently, if the times and seasons of communion are undisturbed by jarring interruptions. Even the external environments aid or restrain the growth of friendship, and that which strengthens and expands in summer rambles and twilight loneliness might never have found expression, —if hedged in by the formalities of social etiquette. The true man who stands before a woman with an honest love for her in his heart, seldom fails to utter words worthy of a manly nature. If there be any latent strength or beauty in him, it is transfigured in the light of his sentiment; he is lifted by it above the ordinary restraint of personality, and lays aside the rigid rules which regulate his expressional nature before the world. He has a right to speak and to be heard—he assumes, for the time, an entirely different position in regard to the object of his love from that which prevails in the daily atmosphere of social intercourse. 166 Ethel’s Love-Life. You see, dear Ernest, that in these days of qu.et which surround me now, my mind wanders about in all directions, swayed only by the caprice of the moment. ‘There is a certain fascination for me in fol- lowing out any train of thought which suggests itself, no matter whether or not it appear very well worth attention in the beginning. I rest my mind in this way, after a season of close study and concentrated thought, just as I rest my body by a walk, after a long seclusion within-doors. In these rambles I pick up at random whatever catches my eye at the instant, it may be nothing better than a blade of grass, or it may be a fair flower worth examination,—a pebble from the wayside, or a gem hidden beneath a rough exterior. I return home laden with my spoils, and in my letters I spread them all out before you, recall- ing, by their aid, all the little incidents of my walks, all the thoughts that have been suggested by them. You will not scorn them because they are so often of little worth, but find some value in them all as expressions of myself. It is a delight to me to find in myself such freedom of utterance towards you, to Ethel’s Love-Life. 167 feel no hesitation in expressing the most passing thought, no fear as to your sympathy and interest. To you as to my own heart I come, and always find you ready to listen and to respond. More than all, you give to me the same full confidence in return, and when I find such deep enjoyment in the smallest fragment of your daily thought, I am sure that you are also glad to know of mine. How fast we learn to know each other in our heart of hearts! How full of pleasure does the future seem in the light of this knowledge! Every day brings new confirmation and new increase to our love. We shall grow stronger and stronger in this atmosphere of serene trust, and learn to fear nothing in the future, for we are one for time and for eternity. Your own ETHEL. LETTER EIGHTH. My own beloved, I am still dizzy with the excitement and hurry of your visit, and the confused sorrow at your departure. I ask myself, again and again, if you have really been with me, if I have seen you, and, above all, if I have in truth had strength to bid you farewell for such a long and weary time. I could doubt it all with pleasure, and bring myself to a half- persuasion of its falsehood, did not an ever-present loneliness oppress me with its leaden weight. I can- not shake it off even in my sleep, it makes my slum- ber feverish and my waking like the rousing from some distressing dream. I have striven, from the first, against the depression that assails me, sure that you wish me to be strong and hopeful in this trial- time of our love. I say over to myself all the precious words of strength that you whispered to my dull ears in those last hours that we spent together. Ethel’s Love-Life. 169 I wear that tiny note of farewell that reached me after you yourself were gone, as an amulet, next my heart till it seems to hush its throbbings and grow more and more calm. I see, whenever I close my eyes, the picture of a steamer parting from the land while eager hands stretch out to it in vain. I watch the crowd upon its deck, and single out one form that towers high above the rest, one face that looks steadily upon the shore, and seems to know that the poor shrinking, weeping woman standing there, is murmur- ing blessings on him as he goes. The sunshine gleams upon the gladsome waters, the vessel rides proudly over the waves, the people who came to gaze idly upon her departure go away one by one, till none are left but her who sends forth her heart in one long last look, as the huge steamer melts away to a mere speck in the distance. Where shall she find strength and patience for the coming days? Alas, she sees no brightness in the sunshine, no beauty in the sea. Forgive her for a little while; though she faint in the outset she will prove herself, by-and-by, not all a coward. 170 Ethel’s Love-Life. I have retraced, step by step, that last walk we took together, and lived over again all that we said and did in that last day. Sometimes I close my eyes that I may fancy you still sitting in the arm-chair, or stand- ing by the western window, where you and I haye stood so often. I almost hear your last words, through the hush of twilight, as I sit alone and think of you. I thought, when you were indeed with me, and we looked forward into the desolate waste of absenee, - that I realized all that was involved in that sad fare- well; but now that you are gone, I seem to have just learned its meaning. Now that I think of the lengthening miles between us, I see all the threat- ening possibilities that may arise in our separation. Were it not for the deep and fervent faith I have in our love, as a reality for all eternity, and in its immor- tal essence raised above the reach of time, I should be bowed to the dust at thought of these months that must grow up between us. You were absent from me before, to be sure, but then you were not far awa’ ; when the length of the journey between us could be reckoned by hours, you seemed not hope- Ethel’s Love-Life. 171 lessly removed, but now that hours have expanded into days, and miles are counted by thousands, I do indeed feel bitterly alone. There was so little time for preparation after your decision was made, that I lost all power of making allowance for the length of time so generously given you before action was neces- sary. While a matter remains vibrating in uncer- tainty it is nearly impossible to regard it as it will appear when it is settled in permanency, or to pur- sue the trains of thought which will follow inevita- bly upon its conclusion. So, although the prophecy of your going was in my mind, and the dread of it in my heart, I did not really grasp the idea of absence, of distance, and of withdrawal, until the words were spoken which rendered it at last an indis- putable fact. Your letter, therefore, announeing your decision, came upon me with almost the suddenness it would have possessed, had I never heard of the plan: yet I had known and written and thought so much of it that I fancied myself familiar with its every aspect. All the while, however, I had left out the living soul which should give vitality to the dry and senseless 172 Ethel’s Love-Life. form, had never dared to place your own actual self in the midst of all this array of circumstances that I was contemplating with such attention. Every little detail was carefully enough planned in my imagin- ation, all the movements of some unnamed individual were mapped out; but it was not you, not my own beloved Ernest, that was to go forth alone and leave me. Therefore all my elaborate imaginings were useless, my preparations of no avail; I was found shelterless and bewildered when the storm fell on me. To have but one week together was a very niggard gift of fortune, and yet I fear that the courage I had nerved myself to show would have broken down utterly if [ had been obliged to stand longer face to face with a sorrow ever close at hand. I was spared the shame of distressing you by unworthy weakness, I spoke no retaining word which might have made you hesitate to go forward; thank Heaven, I was even able to say a worthier and less selfish utterance at the last. How should I now take shame upon myself had I weakly yielded to my fears, and urged you to leave undone a work so noble, and for which Ethel’s Love-Life. 173 so few are fitted! I stand erect in the knowledge of my love for you, and it is tested more by this trial of my strength than most loves are in a long and equable lifetime. The privilege, though a sad one, is a glori- ous one, and through all my first prostration and all my subsequent depression, I have felt a secret pride at being able to prove to you that even in the power of endurance and forgetfulness of self, I may stand by your side, my noble lover. If good wishes may have any genial power on the elements, or any ameliorating effect upon obstacles, your path over the deep must have been unbroken sunshine, your progress in your errand will be one unmingled triumph. You won many hearts in that little week here, and from them all you have a kindly Godspeed on your journey. I find on all sides of my daily life a quicker, readier sympathy than ever, since you have been amongst us, and have become for others a reality instead of a faith. You are one of those who, almost at first sight, iidividualize the impressions that they make upon others; you never merge yourself in the crowd, but, once seen, once 1 74 Ethel’s Love-Life. heard, you are known and remembered. After this first moment, everything you do helps to deepen and confirm the impression, and I am surprised to see how clearly you define yourself in social intercourse, without appearing too self-conscious, without seeming to put others aside in the least. It is an inherent quality in some persons, and is quite unattainable by those who do not possess it by nature; it is as distinct from vanity and forwardness, as it is from diffidence and self-distrust. In a man, especially, it is a gift for which he may be very grateful, and to one called out to take an active part in the world’s work, needed to influence others and to go straight to their hearts, it is most invaluable.. Your serenity in yourself, and the quiet certainty of your speech and manner, carry conviction to many minds to whom any self-originated certainty is unattainable, and who require that, as each separate subject comes before them, it should he decided for them by some other and stronger mind. The self-reliance that you have is a glorious gift; your intuitions never fail, and the time that so many need to spend upon the preliminaries of any Ethel’s Love-Life. | Lys great work, is at your disposal for the work itself. You seem to others strangely at ease when they are discomposed and undecided beneath the influence of contradictory demands, simply because, from the first, you are prepared to act upon a decision which comes to you simultaneously with the question itself. There are a great many matters upon which it is customary for a man to deliberate, and take credit to himself for his deliberation, upon which quick decision and prompt action would be far higher and nobler. The true and keen insight of an uncompromising spirit cuts the Gordian knot of circumstances and doubts and uncertainties, and sees but two clear and distinct aspects—the right and the wrong. This world needs a score or two of such clear-headed men as yourself, in each hemisphere, to cut short the long discussions of the time, and substitute for them the simple ‘principles which they cover up and obscure, till the crowd forgets that there is any principle at all involved, and looks eagerly upon some issue quite aside from the original question. The man who has the gift from Heaven to speak from his own heart ) 176 Ethel’s Love-Life. straight to the hearts of others, is responsible for every word he utters, and needs not only quickness of intuition, that no time may be lost, but also an interior calmness which shall balance and direct his promptest action. I fully participate in all the hopes that brighten your path, and share the satisfaction you cannot but feel in the greatness of the work to which you are called. Help me, henceforth, to lay aside all the selfish egotism of my love, and to rise to a higher plane, from which I may see all connected with you in the light of your duty and in the greatness of your power of accomplishment. Help me to put off all personal fear and all distrust that may arise in my woman’s weakness. I would that my love should be ever your solace and delight, never your weakness or _ your restraint. The strength that you impart to me I would, in some small measure, give to you, through other avenues and in other seasons of need,—the sympathy with which you ever gladden my heart I would make a perennial fountain, at which you may always find wherewith to slake your thirst. Ethel’s Love-Life. 177 I long for your first letter, Hrnest,—it will put the seal upon my certainty of your absence. IL trace over the letters of your foreign address with a kind of dreamy wonder, until it becomes a sort of hieroglyphic inscription to me. Alas! the meaning of it always returns to me and speaks of distance and of peril. Thanks to the magic of the pen, we can still approach each other, and count the peevines of each other’s hearts. When I sit in my little room with all sights and sounds shut out, [am with you, from the moment that I take my pen; my thoughts flow forth fast and without reserve, and I seem to catch the response of yours, as if no distance intervened between. I can utter on paper, too, many words of love that rush to my heart, that my lips might refuse to form if your passionate look were on me, and your eager ear were bent to listen. I cannot always speak the thoughts of which my heart is full, nor put into clear utterance the emotions that thrill me with their power. You know: that you sometimes see me apparently cold, just when you are sure that I am, in reality, most moved, and that I seek to shelter myself from the g* 178 Ethel’s Love-Life. violence of my emotions by silent repression of their utterance. -I rejoice that you are keener of sight than most of those who surround me,—that you know that I do this as a protection against my own self, not as a guard against others, and that often my only safety against the most passionate outbreak of. feeling, is in the impassible manner with which I cover up the first movement of the inner flood. I would not have you think me really cold, as others do, and it is well that between us there have been peculiar influences, strong enough to break down every barrier of heart- reserve, and to reveal me, almost in spite of myself, as the organization of fire and flame that I really am. You do not regret that to the world outside I seem — but ice beneath a powerless sun. It is strange how easily the world is deceived in such matters, and how readily it accepts any representation of yourself that you may voluntarily or involuntarily present to it, and how faithfully it adheres to the first picture, even when you are continually contradicting it by subsequent ones. Once establish yourself before the little circle which for you represents the world, either Ethel’s Love-Life. 179 as cold or sympathetic, frank or reserved, and you may stand upon that ground and win praise or blame accordingly, with little actual confirmation from your- self of the awarded judgment. Even in our deeper experiences, the semblance often exists long after the insufficient reality is gone, and-habit has power to retain us in observance of much that has ceased to possess any inner power of its own over us. How many act upon the supposition of continued love, long after a positive mdifference has usurped its place! How many tremble at imagined coldness when that: coldness has changed gradually into ever-growing love; how many continue to entrust confidences long after the first faith, which prompted and inspired them, has grown weak and useless! A part of this is doubtless owing to the shame one feels at acknow- ledging the fickleness implied in change; it is like giving the lie ta one’s own heart to confess that what was once of priceless worth to us, has ceased to have any value for us, or that what we once cast aside as valueless, has insinuated itself into our inmost hearts. To question the reality of the past seems tq attack 180 Ethel’s Love-Life. the possibilities of the future; to give up our hold-on the old feeling is to cast a doubt upon the duration of all future emotions; to acknowledge present vibration implies the chance of never-ending vacillation. We go on, therefore, striving to seem the same even to ourselves, when everything in us has changed—we play at summer when there is winter in our hearts, or shiver and pretend that we are chilled, when every leaf and bud in our being is longing to burst into full life. Sometimes this process is no impeachment to our honesty, for it is mainly involuntary and inevitable—the change comes on so gradually that we do not perceive what we are doing, and are not aware that a new feeling has crossed our threshold until we discover it enthroned in the highest place within. This is especially true in regard to a growing love, which sometimes has birth amid a crowd of preju- dices and antagonistic circumstances, so adverse to it that its advent seems impossible. But love scorns antagonisms, it delights in contradictions and incon- sistencies, it has a sweet logic of its own, by which it makes all things which happen quite reasonable, Ethel’s Love-Life. 181 and persuades us that those attachments which nobody could have expected, are, after all, the most simply natural things in the world. I cheat myself into transient forgetfulness of the present by these unconnected thoughts, dear Ernest, and bring you nearer to me by indulgence of their expression to you. I seem to wait for your reply after each new sentence, and I know you now so well that I can prophesy your answer with such certainty, that I am continually incited to new questionings, if only that I may have the delight of replying to them in your name. ‘The external life flows on for me just now so noiselessly, that it does not take me out of myself, but leaves me ample time for undisturbed communion with you, in the poor insufficient way possible through letters, which are, by turns, the most charming or the most provoking things in the world; the most charming when they offer themselves as messengers of burning thoughts which are debarred all other mode of expression, the most provoking when, their first fresh glory faded, they bring the after thought of their insufficiency as conveyances for 182 Ethel’s Love-Life. the ever-changing moods and fancies of the heart that longs to lay.its whole self before another. The short, dull days of Winter are upon us, the long nights close around us with a tightening grasp. I do not love winter, for it shuts up the bounteous hand of Nature, and chills my heart till it grows sick and weary with longing for the flowers and the sunshine. I wish for the freedom and expansiveness of summer, and pine for the sweet influences of warmth and freshness. This winter I shall, however, lead a life comparatively independent of the season. I set apart a certain portion of each day for exercise, —not a large portion, for I am still indolent in that respect, spite of all your good advice. The rest of the time I abandon myself altogether to the sway of inner influences, and surround myself with a magic circle, within whose precincts few practicabilities dare enter. This arrangement is not only in accordance with my inclination, but is, to some extent, a necessity, for although I find my health slowly and surely rées- tablishing itself, 1 am not yet strong enough for long- continued exertion, and do not forget your oft. Ethel’s Love-Life. 183 repeated cautions against imprudence. I learn to be very docile beneath the loving restraints of those about me in this matter, for I think of the terrible suffering and anxiety I should subject you to, were I to be ill while you are away. Therefore I lay aside the more active duties of society, and content myself with more quiet occupations. I resign to Claudia the discharge of all my outside charities, and with so faith- ful an almoner, am willing to devote myself for awhile to more selfish enjoyment. You shall see with how much profit to myself I shall spend these winter months in study and in thought. My life, which was so long swayed by changing impulses from without and from within, has learned, ere this, to steady itself into greater concentration. I, who once wandered hither and thither as the mood suggested, have learned to make each successive mood help on the general movement. My external life, once so full of change and excitement, has, since I have known you, calmed itself into repose and afforded me the oppor- tunity I needed for ascertaining my own powers and for giving them some assured direction. I am still 184 Ethel’s Love-Life. busy at the work, still striving to attain, and therefore quiet hours.are needful for me. While waiting for you I must not be idle, but as you have for a time left far behind your native land and home and friends, so would I also leave all past restraint and press on to a new land of effort and of labor. I would there were new words in which to clothe my love and trust in you, beloved—the old are all I have to utter. They strive in vain to say all that is in my heart, and to convey my soul’s longings to you. Were it not that love transfigures them into greatness, it were useless to speak them; were it not that time hallows and intensifies them, they were indeed worn out; were it not that you know all that they fail to say, silence were better than words, but now each syllable is rich with meaning from my heart to yours— ‘“ ETHEL, LETTER NINTH. My heart yearns after you, my own beloved wanderer, and follows step by step the path you are taking over such wide earth-spaces. With one effort of my thought, and in one moment of time, I come where it has taken you weeks to arrive by the slower methods of ordinary travelling, so much faster and less encumbered is the movement of the heart when it is impelled to go forth upon long journeys. But my return is as rapid as my going, and just as I am settling myself fairly into the belief that Iam with you and that you are about to speak to me, something, pertaining to the immediate present, starts up to assure me that I am still at home and you are still away, and that the distance between us is really none the less because I have spanned it, for a moment, with a pretty dream-bridge strong enough to transport a 186 Ethel’s Love-Life. host of pleasant fancies over, but not sufficient for any more substantial purpose. Then I revert to your delicious letters, which come to me all breathing with love, all palpitating with strong, fresh life. I read them so many times over, that not only does every word in them become familiar, but I am able to enjoy them in a great variety of ways, and after having fed my heart with their loving meaning, I find another satisfaction in their intrinsic beauty, and delight my intellectual fastidiousness with their brilliant style and their clear-cut excellence. Your foreign sketches and picturesque descriptions charm me not only as a lover but as an artiste. So far as they extend over ground familiar to me, they bear the additional charm of asso- ciation, and suggest a thousand lively reminiscences of my own European experiences; and now that you are moving on far out of the range of my personal knowledge, I am quite as happy in having all my information come through the freshness and piquaney of your description. In fact, so well do I see the pic- tures which you paint for me, that the actual limit of my own travelled line is becoming dangerously dim, Ethel’s Love-Life. 187 and I fear that in some unguarded moment I shall actually proclaim myself to have been a traveller over many lands, whereon I have as yet never set my foot. it pleases me to find how very often, in going where I have been, you have been attracted by those things which interested me the most, and impressed with those aspects of the old-world life which roused me to the most observing attention, but which many travellers either do not see at all, or notice only with a careless indifference. I seemed once more to walk the crowded streets of Paris, when I read your letter written thence — once more to study the meaning of those many faces which passed by, unconscious of my gaze, and to see in the magnificent incarnation of physical and sensational existence which Paris, above all cities, presents, a problem as unanswerable as it is fascinating. Again the ponderous gloom of London weighed me down to depression, and the gaunt spectres of its midnight beggary and vice affrighted me. Again I floated dreamily over the Rhine, and peopled the ruins on its banks with mailed knights, and its laughing vine- 188 Ethel’s Love-Life. yards with blushing peasant girls. Again I stood hushed beneath the awful grandeur of Mont Blare, as the sun came forth to do it reverence after its lonely converse with the majesty of darkness; or gazed enraptured, as the same sun, grown bolder by his long beholding, dared at parting to cast a burning glance upon its snowy beauty, that brought a divine and rosy blush upon the white brow of the mountain. Pictures, and statues, and people, have all passed again before me, as your letters call up, one after another, the different episodes of my own pleasant travelling experience. The separate incidents of travel have each a distinct meaning and a different beauty to him to whom they belong as personal remembrances, and are apt to break up one’s memory of past journeys into fragmentary and inharmonious reminiscences, so that the narration of them becomes tedious to a listener, long before they lose their zest to those to whom they have been living realities. But the true use and meaning of extensive travel to the individual is, not that by it he shall have beheld so many more cities and people, and dwelt in so many more climates Ethel’s Love-Life. 189 than others have done, but that, by these experiences, he shall have infinitely widened his views of life, cultivated his tastes, and increased and made wiser his sympathy with humanity at large. The elements of the variety he has met should be absorbed into his mental and spiritual circulation, to cause a freer and heartier and ruddier glow. The different modes of his life should be fused into one grand whole, and he should develope into a larger-hearted, a more wise, more genial, more harmonious, and more serene man; not merely into one rich in anecdote and gifted with a variety of tongues. The rough points of character and disposition should be rounded off into graceful proportions by attrition with the world, and a wider charity be learned through observation of the innu- merable aspects which this human life presents to a thoughtful person, the endless involutions of circum- stance and temperament, of races and of climates. I’ sometimes think a travelled man should be a some- what saddened one, for truly this world of ours is no easily-read riddle, no childish play-ground, no sum- mer dream. The questions, which intercourse with 190 Ethel’s Love-Life. it rouse in the mind, are apt to press heavily in hours of thoughtfulness; the scenes of vice and misery, and even the pictures of enjoyment and happiness, through which it takes us, seem to have a hidden meaning, unto which, with all our study, we cannot be quite sure we attain. We cannot always resolve the clouds into angel-faces, though sure that the Great Artist is true to his work. If there be any. groundwork of true thoughtfulness in a man’s nature, a life of movement must (unless utterly without sea- sons of quiet and repose) serve to eliminate it into positive manifest existence. And you, dear Ernest, are having such glorious opportunity for all this cultivation, all this harmoniz- ing of your own inner and outer life. Your years of study have so prepared you to understand the mean- ing of what you see, that you need fear no over accu- mulation of facts, which, when heaped up in a less cultivated and less philosophic mind, might produce a complete and hopeless chaos. Your knowledge of your own country enables you to institute compari- sons, and to make deductions, which will prevent all Ethel’s Love-Life. 191 one-sidedness of result; and your magnetic force of character and wonderful discriminative powers will open before you a thousand paths, which to the mere external traveller would never be suspected. I see in your letters the working of all these forces, and you lead me with you through all your wanderings, whether they take your external sense through pal- pable scenes of life, or entice your imagination into labyrinths of speculation.. With you to guide me, I am superior to all fatigue; with you to teach me the meaning of what I see, I grow wiser than myself, and find unceasing interest in each new glimpse of the active life in which you mingle, and each new revela- tion of the thoughts which visit your mind when it withdraws into itself. I hush the piteous wailings of my heart when I remember that it is only at the cost of absence and separation and distance that all this is to be won; but there are times when an inex- pressible agony assails me, or when the longing to behold you rises into a horror of painfulness, and bows me to the very dust with inconsolable wretched- ness. Do I not, my best beloved, see traces of a 192 Ethel’s Love-Life. similar yearning in some of the sweet words of your last letter? You think it no shame to confess that your own great heart grows faint at thought of the time and space that intervéne between us. Oh, Ernest, you are always noble, always true, always grand | For it is, indeed, grand to so embrace within the limits of one heart all the noble manliness of unflag- ging aspiration, and all the sweet and gentle tender- ness of timid, trembling love. You never tremble for yourself, nor quail at any danger which threatens but yourself, yet you quiver with apprehension at the thought of even a rude breath upon my unworthy self. ‘Your prayer goes up to heaven on the sweet night air, and the tears of loving weakness tremble in your eyes just as my woman’s heart lies prostrate in its own supplications, and my courage dies away within me as I look in vain for you. Only in that prayer of utter weakness to the Hclp that never fails, can I find returning peace and happiness. In that I come forth into the summer region of my love and trust; I see you strong and hopeful by my side; I — hear your prephecy of safe return; I glow with Ethel’s Love-Life. 193 happy anticipation, and come forth again to resume with new energy my daily work. Your pleasant and wise plans for occupation Tam carrying out with religious faithfulness, and it is to them that I owe it that my hours of despondency have been comparatively so few. I labor at my studies as earnestly as if you saw each page that I turn over; I paint my pictures with as eager enthu- siasm as if you were to see them before the colors are dry, and I walk forth every day with a stride as strong and rapid as if I were to meet you somewhere on the way. Every book that I open speaks to me of you, the perfume left by your cigar grows poetical as Araby’s soft airs in the magic light of association, your pencil-marks are sweet illuminations of my text, a word of comment at the bottom of the page is a volume of new meaning to me. Every criticism, every suggestion that you have made to me in art, is, as it were, engraved upon my memory in golden let- ters, and glows and beams upon me as I work. And in my walks, I tread in our old footsteps, and every moment I hear your voice repeating some pleasant 194. Ethel’s Love-Life. word, or see you smile as the sunlight comes forth and lights up some point that you have loved to look at with me. J am rich in associations, dearest, and have not wholly lost your presence. This same power of association, how rich it is and over what endless paths of beauty it leads us! Such tiny trifles as it makes important, such charming meaning as it gives to simplest deeds! The gleam of sunlight on the grass, the breath of some common flower, the strain of simple music, are fraught with deepest significance to the heart to which they speak the mystic language of association. Some of the most ordinary articles of our daily surroundings are glorified into an upper region of sacredness by some little memory which clings lovingly to them, as if to shield them from desecration, when their more practi- cal usefulness is passed. How we treasure up some cumbrous and unsightly piece of furniture if a beloved form has rested upon it, or find an inner beauty in something uncongenial to our natural tastes, if one we love has praised or loved it! I strive to associate with those I love, those things which have an inherent Ethel’s Love-Life. 195 beauty however, not only from zsthetic instincts, but from loving homage to those upon whose shrines I lay my twining garlands of association. Though every hour of my day brings me some thought of you, more or less interior and pervading, yet I have so inter- woven my soul with yours in one direction that it can never be dissociated therefrom—lI dedicate to you the expanse of the western sky as twilight falls over the weary earth. It matters not whether that sky be glorious with crimson and gold, or gay with mists and clouds, whether it be softly luminous with summer’s quivering heats or chill and clear with winter's frosts. I see it, though the close city streets shut it out from my eyes, as I behold it when there is naught between me and the horizon’s utmost verge. And you stand before me then and I look down deeper and deeper into the unfathomable depths of your calm eyes, and seem to float at once into your soul and into that far-off western realm, to reach the very abode of sunset, as 1 feel your strong hands holding me, and learn more and more that beauty is unity, and that its mission is not to the senses, be they ever so delicate, but to the 196 Ethel’s Love-Life. soul, which must respond and lift itself ever higher and higher unto the central source of all beauty. The perception of beauty grows with our using of it in ourselves, and becomes more and more a medium of truth, as we listen heedfully and reverently to its utterances. As it becomes dearer to us it becomes ideal, and from ideality it gains spiritual meaning, and from spiritual it passes on to heavenly meaning. That is no love of Beauty which the vulgar feel when their admiration is called forth, nor when the earthy sense is pleased with pleasant sights and sounds—but the true sentiment is twin-sister to the religious faith, and delights to glorify and adorn its manifestations in our human life. In Heaven it may be absorbed into our worship, and become inseparable from our soul- life. Not in vain has the world built its fair temples and rung out its grand anthems and painted its glori- ous pictures, any more than it is in vain that God has made the whole earth beautiful with trees and flowers, with seas and mountains. And I strive ever in dim and somewhat uncertain wise to mingle my thought of you with ever growing Ethel’s Love-Life. 197 aspiration for myself—to surround your image with all that I can feel of loftiest beauty and truthfulness. All the other loves and friendships of my life have fallen far below the standard I strive to attain unto with you. Though some have been helpful to me, though some have been ennobling, none have reached the elevation to which I mount with you as on the wings of the morning. Apart from the deep, passion- ate, impulsive love in our hearts, there has been so much of spiritual effort, so much of reverent search, so much of true soul-companionship, that heart and _ life and soul, this world and the next, are all mingled in one indissoluble bond. No niggard response have you made to my heart, but rather outrun my eager demand—no cold forbearance have you granted to the earnest questionings of my soul, but rather, joining in the search after truth and life, have steadied my trem- bling steps and borne me with loving arms over the rough and stony places of my soul’s pilgrimage. The sorrowful and weary paths, which others have to tread alone, have been made merciful by your companionship, and now we can never either of us be any more alone. 198 Ethel’s Love-Life. What shall I tell you of myself in these long days when I cannot see you? Shall 1 tell you more of the old past or content myself with hasty glimpses of the present? Shall I paint for you a gallery of por- traits of the people by whom I am surrounded, that when you come you may already know them, or shall I still continue the heroine of my own story, and fill up all but the corners of the sheets I send you, with continually repeated pictures of myself? You have had me already in nearly every possible aspect, every variety of light and shade. Do you never grow weary of contemplating this face that so pertinaciously places itself before you, every lineament of which you must ere this be familiar with, and which always looks back upon you with an unvarying glance of trusting love ? You say that my moods vary, and that although you know me to be steadfast, yet you never find me twice exactly alike, either in look or manner; but to myself I seem, so far as regards you, to be in one unvarying attitude, and sometimes dread lest even my earnest love may not always be able to redeem that sameness from weariness to you. Were it not that when with you Ethel’s Love-Life. 199 I find myself ever moving along with you, and that then life seems not only full of sweetness and of love, but overflowing with rich variety and delicious changes, I should indeed have reason to fear this con- stant revolution of my heart about you as its centre. But I am glad that you find me various enough, as you say you do, for it is your own gift to sway me as you will, and I trust never to lose this responsiveness which makesmesohappy. ‘To tell the truth, I do not myself like those persons who seem unsusceptible to a change of mood, and are consequently unsympathetic and unresponsive. ‘The faculty of vibration by no means implies the necessity of weakness, and because we sometimes see the bird sitting motionless upon the nest, we do not conclude that he cannot therefore fly out into the upper air and wing his way aloft till the eye aches with following him. So, though I am still and hushed when I brood over my love for you, I love to wander hither and thither, wherever the whim takes me, in all the other aspects of my life. Even in my most ordinary avocations I seek an impulse to move me in any particular direction, and 200 Ethel’s Love-Life. am full of method in a most unmethodical way. I do with zest and pleasure—not the work which most persons would declare appropriate to the times and seasons—but that which there is at the moment a will within me to do. / The harness of prescribed routine galls and wearies me, and the supposed necessity for doing a particular thing at a particular moment is sometimes enough in itself to render the doing irk some. |I have known many persons who, in conse- quence of putting this self-imposed yoke upon their necks, seemed actually never to do what, at the time, they wished to do, for, as the order of nature goes calmly on without regard to petty individual plans, stupid and prosaic in-door occupations were sure to come, upon their chart, just when the loveliest days wooed to enjoyment of outside beauty, and their pre- scribed seasons for exercise and recreation fell upon times of storm and dulness. We are sufficiently inured to the general routine of habit to accomplish, in the long run, most of the really important matters of daily work and conventional needs, without a too slavish obedience to that routine developed into wea: Ethel’s Love-Life. 201 risome details of days and hours, and a certain degree of freedom and laissez-faire, in regard to them, makes life easier and simpler to a degree that few seem to under- stand. It always amuses me to see this reverence of me- thod in trifles carried into the domain of lofty conscien- tiousness, as it is very apt to be by my own sex, and to hear the tone of lamentation with which positive and easily attained pleasures for themselves, and much gratification for those who love them, are put aside, because, in the regularly arranged plan of the week, the time has arrived for them to attend to something which, to put it on its highest possible ground, is a mere negative and unimportant virtue. For myself, the presence of an individual impulse carries me at once half-way over the labor that is to be accom- plished, and I have never yet found that the impulse failed to appear for each successive need, in season to prevent any serious consequences from delay, even though I might appear culpably dilatory to those who follow closely upon their carefully prescribed routine. It is only in those matters, which rise into the higher and nobler portions of life, that I feel willing to yield Q* 202 Ethel’s Love-Life. an unquestioning obedience at any hour when they may call, and in them I recognise, without repug- nance, the additional dignity and beauty they receive from being harmoniously arranged. Perhaps it is only another manifestation of my dominant spirit of exclusiveness, which leads me to draw a line between the trivial and accidental employments of life and those higher and grander duties which, in’ their very movement, elevate us and make us more and more free, just as I put aside, for a more careless notice, the claims of my ordinary and casual acquaintances, and think it no harm occasionally to ignore their exist- ence, while the inner circle of my friends forms an ever-present regulating influence on my every thought and deed. Presence and absence become, in this light, less stringent, less descriptive terms, for there is always present with me a something representative of my friend, even when wide distances separate the tangible daily life. Some one says, that what we really love we really own, and I seem to myself, in this sense, to hold complete possession of my friends—the concentration of my affection upon a Ethel’s Love-Life. < 202 few seems to bring those few always within my reach; one is never crowded out by another, for where the guests are few and honored, there is room for all close by the host. I have but to stretch forth my hand to touch each member of my little household in the man- sion into which my friendliness has welcomed them. And though they sometimes go away in the body, as you are now doing, yet in the spirit they are still sitting within the four walls of my little friendship- home, and meet me with a smile every morning and every evening. I send forth a dove over the waste of waters, bearing to you allthe best wishes of my heart. She is freighted with loving words, almost too sweet to be uttered save in the deepest and most private recesses of the imagination; the blushing of the dawn is not fairer than the tender glances she would bring to you, the mid-day glory is not purer than the atmosphere of love through which she flies, and the hush of twi- light is not holier than the trustful impulse, half prayer, and half-acknowledgment, which she bears from my very heart itself unto you, Her wing is 204. Ethel’s Love-Life. strong, and she knows her errand, she flies straight and fast to you, sure of a welcome, and thrilling her. self with the joy that her tidings will bring to your own loving heart. Oh, weeks and months that are to come! I could almost implore you to leap at once into the past, that I might find close at hand the coming of my absent one; but I check the wish: before it is uttered; I accept the tedious unfolding of these passing days, and turn without repining to learn the lessons which they would teach. They shall not be days of stagnation, hardly days of sad- ness, for I will make them ministrant of all good influences to you and to myself. God is near to both of us, and in Him we are near unto each other. He will guide and guard us till we meet again; to Him I speak of you, unto Him I trust you, and through Him I bless you. ETHEL. - LETTER TENTH. THE days of absence wear slowly away, beloved Ernest, and my thought at morning, and my prayer at night, begin and end with your beloved name. Perhaps I learn to know you even better through absence than I could have done in your continued presence, for my thoughts dwell upon you now in each separate aspect of your life and being, with a more unbroken attention than they could possibly have done when you were by, to substitute one im- pression for another, and to change the direction of my thought, even if the object of it remained the same. In absence we call up the image of one we love, as it appears in the light of some particular quality, or as developed in one style of action; it stands before us as a statue would do, and we study it in all its proportions, make ourselves familiar with 206 Ethel’s Love-Life. every feature, and draw from it a complete and satis factory impression; and as time passes, we collect a series of these impressions as various as the charac- teristics of our friend, and finally obtain, from the accumulation of sketches, a perfect picture. But when life flows on in the presence of our dear ones, it becomes so full of action, that there is no time for steady thought; we catch a glimpse, it may be, at one moment, of something in character or heart on which we would fain dwell with fond attention, but soon the current bears us on, and we are both in new circumstances, and new qualities become prominent. It is not unusual to find members of a family much less conversant of the deeper nature of each other, than many who stand outside, for the reason that the daily life glides on too fast, and usurps, with its trivialities, the time which we give to our friends, while only those words or those deeds, which express the stronger characteristics, are brought into visibility for the world at large. Some action or some thought put in words, gives to a passing looker-on a more sharp-cut outline of a man’s mind or heart, than those, Ethel’s Love-Life. 207 who meet him every day, can form from the too numerous and contradictory impressions, which his careless daily act or word may give. The best friends are apt to lose, in constant intercourse, the perception of salient points in each other, and the influence of present love is to soften and assimilate much that in absence becomes distinct and prominent. You see that I strive hard, dear Ernest, to win some com- pensation from the hard present, which has put such wide and hopeless gulfs of time and distance between our daily lives. I am trying to paint your heart and soul upon the walls of my inner life, just as I am busy with painting the face which is ever before my imagination, by the help of memory alone. I have covered for a little while the portrait which hangs in my room, and I sit down each day at my easel, work- ing earnestly, lovingly, and as I think, most success- fully, upon another portrait of you, which shall be even more faithful than the one I have had so long. And as I call up your features and remember how you looked at different times when we have been together, I also summon up an image of your inner 208 Ethel’s Love-Life. self as it has been set forth in some noble deed or generous word; I see your whole soul reveal itself in some grand enthusiasm, your heart in the sweet and tender beauty of some kindly act. I hardly know which picture I prize most, the one that daily grows _ beneath my fingers, or that which develops itself invisibly to all eyes but my own, and renders beauti- ful the inner temple of my heart. I have found more delight in these hours thus spent with your imagined presence near me, than I thought myself capable of feeling when you are really far away. ‘The half- finished portrait greets me every morning with a look of love; the heart-picture I behold through midnight darkness as in noonday light. The outward world goes on as ever with its routine of daily events, none of which affect especially either myself or my environments. The love of others makes each day pleasant to me, and I strive to return a grateful response to those who seek to make me happy, rather than to let the inner loneliness of my heart, without you, make me selfishly regardless of the claims of others upon me. That were but a poor Ethel’s Love-Life. 209 and miserable love, which narrowed the nature into only one channel of expression, and for my own part, I find that in loving and working for all who should be dear to me, I seem ever to express, under some new phase, the love that finds its truest, and happiest, and fullest outlet towards yourself. What I do for others seems to me not only a pleasant duty towards them, but a loving homage to you; and even the charities, that call me out of myself to supply the needs of others, weave themselves into mystical and pleasant connexion with yourself. Summer comes on with rapid steps, for which I listen almost as lovingly as for your own, my Ernest, —perhaps because I trust that I shall hear them both together. Your letters tell me that I may hope for this—indeed, J fancy I should do so in spite of all that might discourage my expectation. I take to my heart all the meaning of this forced absence from each other, and though it has often made me very sad, I trust it has not made me weak. It is difficult to realize that what we suffer and enjoy, what we do and what we love, are to the heart as the air and the 210 Ethel’s Love-Life. rain, the sunshine and the dew to the plant—that their alternation is necessary to the growth of each, and that the heart can no more thrive and blossom without tears, than the flower without rain. In the deep silence of my soul I receive the sadness of my lonely hours, and seek to make of them all that they are intended to become to me. My heart loves the sunshine, and longs for its return, as it yearns for your presence, and feels but half itself when out of your companionship; but it.will-not, therefore, spend itself in weak complaint or idle repining. Go on, my own beloved, in your great work; let my prayers help you more than my tears restrain you; believe that the former are the expression of my higher self, the latter the necessary and unhurtful weakness of a loving woman’s heart. } I think, my Ernest, that as the days go by and I | dwell in the holy seclusion of my love for you, I catch some faint reflection of your own calmness,—my heart learns to regulate more and more its once spasmodic impulse, and I grow stronger and more assured with- in myself. I do not find my enthusiasms lessen in Ethel’s Love-Life. JT themselves, but I find myself less hasty in falling into new ones—though the old, established ones grow ever grander and more absorbing, as I find them true and worthy. I lay aside, as it seems to me, some of the useless and trivial excitements of the hour, to concen- trate more and more upon the great work of the day. I think of you and your own grand object till I feel that I, too, can labor and press on without weariness, as you are doing, Would that I were with you in every deed; in every step forward that you take, my heart and hope are with you, and I know that you sometimes feel my presence at your side. Your let- ters are so hopeful, that I have long since laid aside all fear as to your ultimate success, and now have but to be patient with the necessarily slow motions of your plans. You say the denouement will seem sud- den at the last, for much secrecy of detail has been necessary, to insure undisturbed action; it cannot be too sudden, for it will allow of your immediate return to me. I would the diplomatic clock were in my keeping for a little while, and I might make its ponderous wheels move a little faster towards the 212 Ethel’s Love-Life. hour which shall strike forth the completion of your work. Have patience with me, Ernest; these are but the harmless ejaculations of my sometimes impa- tient spirit—you know that my soul is strong within me, and not wholly unworthy to mate with yours. Were I with you and able to do battle at your side, you should hear nothing but triumphant strains from my lips ;—it is the loneliness, the distance, that make me a little cowardly at times. When I think of the black abyss of ocean that lies between us, and then of the long waste of land—a waste to me, though full of populous and busy life—my heart indeed grows weak and dizzy, and I tremble and shed tears. None but your own kind and thoughtful self would find time, among so many distracting occupations and harassing cares, for such long and interesting accounts of your present environments. How do you retain, amid so much that is difficult and prosaic, all your keen susceptibility to the most delicate and subtle manifestations of the Beautiful? How, in the most transient glance at the faces around you, can you read so much of the character of the individual, and Ethel’s Love-Life. 213 in the rapid movement of your life succeed in show: ing forth so clearly your own warm sympathetic heart, till you win those who approach you wholly to . yourself? I see that you do this, not by means of any positive narrative that you set before me, but by the frequent mention of kindnesses received, and the pleasant nature of every new association that you form. Your manner is such a singular mixture of personal reserve with frank cordiality, that you first attract attention and finally win unlimited confidence. It is, perhaps, because you make so few word-professions, that people rely so implicitly upon what you do say ; and you seem so entirely competent to guard your own secrets from intrusive attention, that it is taken for granted that you will be quite able to protect those which others intrust to you. I watch with intense interest your present position, for utterly isolated from your own countrymen and thrown upon the hospi- tality of foreigners, you must, more than ever, assume and assert your own unassisted individuality—that individuality which you have always been successful in maintaining, in a marked degree, at home. Every 214 Ethel’s Love-Life. detail, however minute, is full of interest to me, and J rejoice that you have patience to set them down for me with such loving mmuteness. Yours is a love that disdains no trifle and fears no labor in the ser- vice of the one you love. The harmony of your nature is shown not only in the greatness of what you accomplish, but in the gracefulness with which you adorn the daily life with delicate and almost nameless charms. You store your memory so richly with images, that every day is a new treasure-house for you, and you are as prodigal in spending your intellectual wealth as you are indefatigable and suc- cessful in adding to it. I seem so near you when [I read your letters, the incidents you relate seem to - have happened but a moment before—the persons you describe seem to have just left the room, the atmosphere you breathe in your walks is sweeping at the moment past my brow. You think then that the suecess of this visit will insure your return to the present scene of your labors at no distant day, and that I too must make up my mind to wander for a while over the face of the earth ? Ethel’s Love-Life. 215 - . The prospect has no pain in it, save the regret insepa: rable from the parting with family and friends, and even that is wonderfully lessened for me by the opportunity of motion, and above all, by the means it will give me of still better understanding that which must, for the present, absorb your own activity. Iam, however, so absorbed in the more immediate prospect of your return, that save in the way of practical pre- paration for so important a movement, my thought stops short at the instant in which you set your foot once more within my dwelling. I can as yet see nothing beyond that; the sunshine of that moment blinds my dazzled eyes; I must wait till I can bear the splendor of that picture before I can turn to the examination of any other. In the mean time I trust allto you. Were it to Sahara’s midmost sands that you proposed to take me, I should feel sure that you would discover there some fairy oasis, where life would be delicious, and healthful change supply itself in the midst of eternal sameness. I strive to see more and more clearly the people among whom I am to cast my lot, and for this purpose your sketches of 216 Ethel’s Love-Life. © character are invaluable. Already I have a select circle of friends in your far-off capital, and can tell in which direction my heart will quickest take root and find nourishment. I am succeeding better and better, too, in reconciling others to the impending change, and making them regard with less horror a plan which involves such a wide and long separation from them. At first the dismay was unmitigated, but as the idea grows familiar, it asserts its advantages and even brings into visibility its charms. So that now, instead of being a victim, I am a heroine, in the eyes of the home-circle. I have not the heart even to check the vastness of the preparations which my mother is making for my wardrobe conveniences, or to attempt to stem the torrent of practicabilities in which she submerges herself with such delight. One would fancy that I was going to some far-off island, dnly approachable by civilized man once in a score or two of years, and that the same island not only passed through every variety of climate, from the Arctic to the Torrid zone, but that, through all its Vicissitudes of temperature and inaccessibility of Ethel’s Love-Life. 217 position, the goddess of Fashion reigned with as relentless a sway as that she exercises in mid-season at the most gay watering-places. I trust the ward- robe fever will subside before the transportation of my effects becomes necessary, or that information will come, from a source my mother is more in the habit of relying upon in these particulars, than she is upon my own somewhat random remarks as to my clothes-necessities, to persuade her that it will be quite possible for me to supply all my needs in my new home. You must write her a fashion-letter, Ernest, and give her an elaborate description of the toilettes you see at Court, and then ingeniously introduce an account of the facilities your present home affords for supplying any prettinesses, which we in our transatlantic region regard as difficult of purchase. If something of this sort be not successfully accomplished, you may as well make up your mind to leave behind you a poor maid- en so encumbered with merchandise asI shall be. I am not sure that my dear little marnma, in the exer- cise of her superabundant energies, will not wish you to send home your own measure, that she may com- 10 218 Ethel’s Love-Life. mence the accumulation of a mountain of masculine garments, which shall be twin to that which now I behold rising before my own eyes. ‘All this, however, serves as an admirable “escape” for her excitement in regard to my leaving her, and which might else take a form more painful for me to witness, and more sorrowful for her to experience. My letter, though so long, has failed to utter half my heart would say to you, and were I to write twice as much, I should be as far as ever from the end of what I wish to say. Read it with your heart as I have written it with mine, and then it will not be altogether meaningless to you. Good night, and may all good angels guard you, and all skies be serene above your head. May the day biess you with its sunshine, and the night refresh you with its holy serenity. More than all, may the sweetest wirds of heaven waft you on your way to me, who long for you with all the strength and all the fear, that can thrill through a loving and devoted heart. 3 ETHEL. LETTER ELEVENTH. Ou, Ernest! can such pleasant words be true? Have I really only one week more of waiting, after all this long and weary time of absence? ‘The letter telling me of your safe arrival reached me the same day that the papers announced the successful issue of your public mission, and I did not know how much pride was mingled in my love for you, till I felt the throb of exultation within me, as my father read aloud the words of praise with which your name was coupled. But my first, and strongest, and hap- piest thought is, that you are at home again, and soon to be with me. This thrills me through and through with renovated life, and fills me with a joy for which I find no fitting words. I think I should love you quite as well if no one but myself ever knew how truly great and good you are; but in my 220 Ethel’s Love-Life. present genial and beneficent mood, I do not find it in my heart to quarrel with the world for having ) also found you out, and greeted you with its honors. While I knew you to be upon the way, I was miserably restless and anxious for your safety; every blast seemed to murmur of a storm at sea; every newspaper seemed to be freighted with tidings of some new disaster; every face to betray some restrained horror. All omens assailed my timorous heart, grown superstitious for your beloved sake. I was a coward in the sight of Heaven, and trem- bled lest the providence of God should fail me in the hour of my need. I should be ashamed to tell you all my pusillanimous imaginings, were it not that you, too, are tenderly susceptible to alarms for those you love, and know to what extremity of anguish, and blasphemy of terror, prolonged sus- pense will drive a loving heart. Thank God, you are safe, heart of my heart, life of my life! And yet, oh Ernest, I was brave, amid all my fears, for I dared to look’ steadily at a woe that now I tremble even to name. I gazed through the long night- Ethel’s Love-Life. 22) hours upon that huge steamer, bearing on through darkness and storm its precious freight of human life, all concentrated for me in one beloved form. I dreamed of danger in a thousand shapes; I lived through agonies of dread; I saw all fearful sights of death, and I grew rigid in despair, for I still looked on with fascinated gaze. At one word, all these fears are dissipated, and I am as full of joy as then of misery. And now that I am at peace, and know you to be safe and well, my heart grows proud and glad at your success, and thrills and glows to know that you are also happy. I did not lack for sympathy in my nervous fears, nor do I now in my delight. The household is alive, from first to last, with your name, and the note of pre- paration for your advent echoes from all quarters. The general satisfaction seeks expression in the elaborations of hospitality, and were you to bring with you a whole regiment of “German mercena- ries,” instead of the one “slight, pale student” you describe, they would be made welcome, and all their wants amply supplied, so active is, at present, the 222 Ethel’s Love-Life. practical element in the whole ménage. And there is pleasant meaning in all this activity, and an under-current of love and sympathy beneath this bustle, which makes it very welcome to me. I have written to you long chapters of the past, dear Ernest, but that was when the passing moment held no immediate expectation, and was fraught with no especial meaning. While you were far off, my mind went backward without reluctance, and memory led me by the hand, a willing visitor, among the chambers of the past; but now the present fills me with occupation, and the future thrills me with anticipation. Now that you are coming, I have thoughts for nothing else; I count the hours again and again, glad at each repetition to drop off one more from the shortening chain; I become excited when I sit down to think; I catch myself smiling, when no word has been spoken; and as I passed the mirror this morning, I saw a blush rise to my cheek, so vivid that, had you been present, you must have ceased to chide me for my excessive paleness. Verily, the heart plays strange pranks with the features, Ethel’s Love-Life. . 223 Krnest, for the face which greets me from the mirror now, is far other than the woe-worn, anxious visage it has shown me of late. Happiness is a skilful physician, and the frame grows strong and the eye brilliant, when the heart is light. Your letter tells me that you are bronzed by travel, and that your stalwart form and broad shoulders will, more than ever, form a striking contrast to my own somewhat petite proportions. I like it thus, my giant lover. I would have you thus stalwart and thus strong; I am glad that health glows upon your cheek, and that you tremble at no wind that blows. The picture that you sent my mother, produced a great sensation. The foreign dress was pronounced wonderfully be- coming, and the only comment which my regard for your modest diffidence allows me to repeat to you, was that of my cousin Emily, who said, ‘How extremely handsome he would be, if he would not wear such an enormous beard!” The beard, as you may remember, ranks with her among the cardinal sins, I try to beguile the intervening days with a thou- 224 Ethel’s Love-Life. sand little arrangements for your pleasure when you come, and thus give myself the pleasant task of recalling all your peculiar tastes, and bringing you continually before me in different attitudes. All the important preparations for the grand event are taken perforce from off my hands, by my busy mother, who, with half a smile and half a sigh, bids me not to lighten these her last labors for her daugh- ter, and not to make myself weary and pale, and so win her a scolding from one who is coming. My poor Mother! happy as she really is in her child’s happiness, her heart yearns for me when I am away, and she cannot but miss me sadly when I leave her. But she gives me hopeful and earnest words of coun- sel, and blesses me with sweet and loving tenderness. She will have two children instead of one, henceforth, for she already loves you as a son. She is very proud, too, of the distinction you have achieved, and tells your story with infinite enjoyment of its pictu- resque details. You will be received with all the honors of a victorious general, and must prepare yourself for a little tiresome admiration from our Ethel’s Love-Life. 225 outside acquaintance. I shall keep the day of your arrival secret, that | may be sure of having you a little while to myself, —I cannot let others see you till I have satisfied my own eager eyes. My father looks at me so fondly in these last days, that my eyes overflow with tears; thoughts of the home I am to leave assume a tone of melancholy, as the little daily pleasantnesses are renewed to form them- selves into farewell memories; those about me say many common-places about past freedom and coming cares—but, for myself, I feel no sadness, and I regret no freedom—I am lifted above the routine of my daily thought, and breathe a higher atmosphere wherein I see things in truer propor- tions. My true freedom commenced with my love for you, and sadness finds no place in the earnest hope- fulness with which I look forward to my life with you and its wider opportunities for action. I have had enough of seclusion, enough of contemplation; my heart has learned its own secrets well, and my thoughts have dwelt lang enough upon the inner aspects of my soul to be ready to commence, almost 10% 226 Ethel’s Love-Life. to crave for, something on which to expend its accu- mulated energies. In this conscious need of new expression in outward life, I rejoice that your honor and your duty call you away from study, away even from quiet. After your.brief vacation, which, thank heaven, comes just in this heart of summer’s warmth and beauty, and during which we will enjoy to its utmost our long-planned seashore delights, we will enter cheerfully on your new sphere, and find therein as much of mutual love and mutual sympathy, and help in the active and varied life that: beckons to you, as we have already enjoyed in those quiet hours, which have given us so fully and entirely unto each other. I might have trembled at the prospect of a busy life with its mtrusive urgencies, had it followed immediately upon our first avowals of love, and ab- sorbed us before we had had time for studying each other’s natures, and growing into each other’s hearts. The time of waiting, which seemed then to stretch tediously far into the future, has proved of infinite value to us, for in it we have learned as well as loved each other, and now we understand all our points of Ethel’s Love-Life. 229 sympathy and likeness, and see clearly, and without exaggeration, all the peculiarities of individual tem- perament, which, well understood, will serve only to create a pleasant and healthful motion in our life-cur rent, but which, ignored or half comprehended, might have caused pain and surprise. Do you know how great cause for rejoicing we have that our tastes and habits of life are as similar as they are decided—that our minute antagonisms are so unusually few? ‘The number is small of those, who, even in loving most fondly, and finding their happiness most completely in each other, have not to ignore their own separate tastes, and change their own personal habitudes, if they would attain to entire communion with those they love. One or the other must lay aside something of himself and assume new tastes and interest himself in new pursuits, which, save through their attraction to the other, would be utterly devoid of charm. And poor human nature, though in its moments of exalta- tion it welcomes and glories in opportunities for self- abnegation, and imagines that always its greatest delight must be to live only in the sensations of its 228 Ethel’s Love-Life. beloved, yet after a little while it grows weary of flying against an unnatural atmosphere, the wings droop, the breath fails, and it turns of necessity to its old and easy course, mourning that its beloved must by the same instinct pursue a different one. I have often seen those who love each other very deeply, quite unable, from intrinsic unlikeness of nature, to enjoy much in each other’s companionship, obliged to shut out all action and all movement, and to restrict themselves to the simple act of loving, or to lose the power of continuing side by side. But we, who before we met were both upon the same path, whose daily habits of thought and life were strangely similar, and whose likes and dislikes seem to be magnetically united, ah, we hardly know our blessedness and the peace and pleasure of which our daily life may be full. Now, that we not only love, but know each other, we may go out into the great world, and meet, unfaltering, all the manifold influences, which, with less of love and less of knowledge, might have been fearful antagonists for us. Weshall go forward side by side, you sustain- ing me at your own height, and the confidence between Ethel’s Love-Life. 229 us shall be, as it has ever been, entire and unreserved. You will not even disdain my help, for you have taught me how to be strong and helpful. I would be not merely the companion of your leisure hours, but would share your hardest labor, and be by you in your busiest and most anxious seasons. You gave me the deepest pleasure that my heart can feel, dearest, when you told me how very much you expect from me. Claudia asks me if I do not tremble at the thought of the social ordeal through which I am to pass, and shrink from the difficult duties of the position I am to assume. I trust it is something better than a vain self-confidence which impels me to say that I feel no fear, but rather a secret joy. I confess my suscepti- bility to ambition for you, and I rejoice that you are to be placed where your talents will have full scope for their activity, your heart be able to carry out some of the grand schemes which it has planned. Not for worlds would I utter one word of dissuasion from.such a noble career, but gladly encourage, and share in all that it implies of effort and of self-denial. 230 Ethel’s Love-Life. I believe this to be no vulgar ambition, for your sphere of usefulness increases with its elevation, and in your plans there enter all the most glorious ele- ments of human progress. God’s blessing will be on us as we strive diligently and truly in the path to which He points us. The hours of my maiden life are ebbing fast away, the ties of kindred lose their hold upon my outer life, as the new and more absorbing tie comes nearer and nearer to claim my obedience. I am surprised at the serenity of my own faith in our future; I feel no exaggerated emotional excitement, no nervous doubts and fears; I dream no visions of impossible, super- human bliss, but calmly and clearly I look upon a future which stretches out before me, a future such as I would have it, full of active energy, of variety, of labor, full too, as I believe, of success and of noble rewards. Isee myself leaning through all upon your faithful arm, resting in your tried love, and protected by a strong, true heart. I find in you the consum- mation of my: being—the development of my mind in your grand intellectual nature, the fulfilment of my Ethel’s Love-Life. 231 heart’s deepest yearnings in your noble and generous manliness. I behold no sky without a cloud, no perennial summer-time of flowers and of sunshine; no fairy-land inanities woo me with their blandishments, but I see a path which, though somewhat dusty, and world-travelled, has still its charms and its promises, and on which we can walk erect, and side by side; it leads us where, as strong and willing and hopeful souls, ready to put forth our strength in all worthy effort, we would fain go. We leave the past behind us, keeping only its lessons near our hearts; hence- forth every step shall be for us an onward one. The dawn is past, and we have had all that it could give of crimson clouds and golden mists; now we are strong for the mid-day toil, and turn our faces to- wards the kindling glories of the western skies. Though still young in years, we have both lived much, thought much, suffered much. We have lost no power of keen enjoyment, but rather learned to know how to enjoy; we have lost no faith, but rather won a firmer hold on all high and noble things; we have lost no strength, but have rather been disciplined 232 Ethel’s Love-Life. to a more skilful and successful warfare; the past has been for us a prophecy and preparation, not a defeat or a disappointment. And now, each completed in the other’s being, each living in the other’s life, each throbbing in the other’s quickened pulsation, we will give no empty thanks for our great happiness, no noisy welcome to our joy. ‘The whole of our future shall be consecrated unto noblest uses, and our happi- ness be equalled by our earnest labor. Our thanks- givings shall mingle with aspirations, and in our union, we will lift our hearts above themselves. Be- fore the world we give ourselves unto each other, before our God we give ourselves to Him. 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