How could it be otherwise? Passion is akin to pain. Love never yet
penetrated an intense nature and made the heart light; sentiment has its
smiles, its blushes, its brightness, its words of fancy and feeling,
readily and at will; but when the internal sub-soiling is broken up, the
heart swells with a steady and tremendous pressure till the breast feels
like bursting; the lips are dumb, or open only to speak upon indifferent
themes. Flowers may be played with, but one never yet cared to toy with
flame.
There are souls that are created for one another in the eternities,
hearts that are predestined each to each, from the absolute necessities
of their nature; and when this man and this woman come face to face,
these hearts throb and are one; these souls recognize "my master!" "my
mistress!" at the first glance, without words uttered or vows
pronounced.
These two young lives, so fresh, so beautiful; these beings, in many
things such antipodes, so utterly dissimilar in person, so unlike, yet
like; their whole acquaintance a glance on a crowded street and these
few hours of meeting,--looked into one another's eyes, and felt their
whole nature set each to each, as the vast tide "of the bright, rocking
ocean sets to shore at the full moon."
These things are possible. Friendship is excellent, and friendship may
be called love; but it is not love. It may be more enduring and placidly
satisfying in the end; it may be better, and wiser, and more prudent,
for acquaintance to beget esteem, and esteem regard, and regard
affection, and affection an interchange of peaceful vows: the result, a
well-ordered life and home.
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