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DURING a month after Easter, I was, so to speak, in
a state of mental somnambulism, seeing the visible
things of this mortal life through an enchanted
medium, in which old, prosaic, bustling New York, with
its dry drudgeries and uninteresting details, became suddenly
vivified and glorified; just as when some rosy sunset
floods with light the matter-of-fact architecture of Printing-House
Square, and etherealizes every line, and guides
every detail, and heightens every bit of color, till it all
seems picturesque and beautiful.

I did not know what was the matter with me, but I felt
somehow as if I had taken the elixir of life and was breathing
the air of an immortal youth. Whenever I sat down
to write I found my inspiration. I no longer felt myself
alone in my thoughts and speculations; I wrote to another
mind, a mind that I felt would recognize mine; and then
I carried what I had written, and read it to Ida Van Arsdel
for her criticisms. Ida was a capital critic, and bad graciously
expressed her willingness and desire to aid me
in this way, to any extent. But was it Ida who was my
inspiration?

Sitting by, bent over her embroidery, or coming in accidentally
and sitting down to listen, was Eva; full of
thought, full of inquiry; sometimes gay and airy, sometimes
captious and controversial—always suggestive and
inspiring. From these readings grew talks protracted and
confidential, on all manner of subjects; and each talk was
the happy parent of more talks, till it seemed that there was
growing up an endless series of occasions for our having
long and exciting interviews; for, what was said yesterday,

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in the reflections and fancies of the night following, immediately
blossomed out into queries and consequences and
inferences on both sides, which it was immediately and
pressingly necessary that we should meet to compare and
adjust. Now, when two people are in this state of mind,
it is surprising what a number of providential incidents are
always bringing them together. It was perfectly astonishing
to us both to find how many purely accidental interviews
we had. If I went out for a walk, I was sure, first
or last, to meet her. To be sure I took to walking very
much in streets and squares where I had observed she
might be expected to appear—but that did not make the
matter seem to me the less unpremeditated.

I had been in the habit of taking a daily constitutional
stroll in Central Park, and the Van Arsdels were in the
habit of driving there, at orthodox fashionable hours. In
time, it seemed to happen that this afternoon stroll of mine
always brought forth the happy fruit of a pleasant interview.

There was no labyrinth or bower or summer-house, no
dingle or bosky dell, so retired that I did not find it occasionally
haunted by the presence of this dryad.

True she was not there alone; sometimes with Ida, sometimes
with Alice, or with a lively bevy of friends—but it
made no difference with whom, so long as she was there.

The many sins of omission and commission of which the
City Fathers of New York are accused, are, I think, wonderfully
redeemed and covered by the beauties of the provision
for humanity which they have made in Central Park
Having seen every park in the world, I am not ashamed
to glorify our own, as providing as much beauty and cheap
pleasure as can anywhere be found under the sun.

Especially ought all lovers par excellence to crown the
projectors and executors of this Park with unfading wreaths
of olive and myrtle. It is so evidently adapted to all the
purposes of falling in love and keeping in love that the only
wonder is that any one can remain a bachelor in presence

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of such advantages and privileges! There is all the peacefulness,
all the seclusion, all the innocent wildness of a
country Areadia, given for the price of a five cents' ride in
the cars to any citizen who chooses to be made moral and
innocent.

The Central Park is an immortal poem, forever addressing
itself to the eye and ear in the whirl and bubble of that
hot and bewildered city. It is a Wordsworth immortalized
and made permanent, preaching to the citizens.

Certainly during this one season of my life I did full justice
to the beauties of Central Park. There was not a nook
or corner where wild flowers unfolded, where white-stemmed
birches leaned over still waters, or ivies clambered over
grottoed rocks, which I did not explore; and when in the
winding walks of “the Ramble” I caught distant sight of a
white drapery, or heard through budding thickets the silvery
sounds of laughing and talking, I knew I was coming
on one of those pleasant surprises for which the Park
grounds are so nicely arranged.

Sometimes Eva would come with a carriage full of children,
and with the gay little fairies would pass a sunny
afternoon, swinging them, watching them riding in the
little goat-carriages, or otherwise presiding over their gaieties.
We had, under these circumstances, all the advantage
of a tête-à tête without any of the responsibility of seeking
or prolonging it. In fact, the presence of others was a
salvo to my conscience, and to public appearance, for, looking
on Eva as engaged to another, I was very careful not to
go over a certain line of appearances in my relations to her.
My reason told me that I was upon dangerous ground for
my own peace, but I quieted reason as young men in my
circumstances generally do, by the best of arguments.

I said to myself that, “No matter if she were engaged,
why shouldn't I worship at her shrine, and cherish her

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image as Dante did that of Beatrice, and Tasso that of
Eleanora d'Este?” and so on.

“To be sure,” I reflected, “this thing can never come to
anything; of course she never can be anything to you more
than a star in the heavens. But,” I said in reply, “she is
mine to worship and adore with the worship that we give
to all beautiful things. She is mine as are fair flowers,
and the blue skies, and the bright sunshine, which cheer
and inspire.”

I was conscious that I had in my own most sacred receptacle
at home, a little fairy glove that she had dropped, to
which I had no claim; but I said to myself, “When a leaf
falls from the rose, who shall say that I shall not gather it
up?” So, too, I had one of those wonderful, useless little
bits of fairy gossamer, which Eve's daughters call a pocket-handkerchief.
I had yet so little sense of sin that I stole
that too, kept the precious theft folded in my prayer-book,
and thought she would never know it. I began to understand
the efficacy that is ascribed to holy relics, for it
seemed to me that if ever any deadly trouble or trial
should come upon me, I would lay these little things upon
my heart, and they would comfort me.

And yet, all this while, I solemnly told myself I was
not in love,—oh, no, not in the least. This was friendship—
the very condensed, distilled essence of friendship, that
and nothing more. To be sure it was friendship set to a
heroic key—friendship of a rare quality. I longed to do
something for her, and often thought how glad I would be
to give my life for her. Having a very active imagination,
sometimes as I lay awake at night I perpetrated all sorts
of confusions in the city of New York, for the sole purpose
of giving myself an opportunity to do something for
her. I set fire to the Van Arsdel mansion several times, in
different ways, and, rushing in, bore her through the flames.
I inaugurated a horrible plot against the life of her father,
and rushing in at the critical moment, delivered the old
gentleman that I might revel in her delight. I became

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suddenly a millionaire by the death of a supposititious uncle
in the East Indies, and immediately proceeded to lay all my
treasures at her feet.

As for Mr. Wat Sydney, it is incredible the resignation
with which I saw him ship-wrecked, upset in stages, crushed
in railroad accidents, while I appeared on the scene as the
consoling friend; not that I had, of course, any purpose of
causing such catastrophes, but there was a degree of resignation
attending the view of them that was soothing.

I had in my heart a perfect certainty that Sydney was
unworthy of her, but of course racks and thumbscrews
should not draw from me the slightest intimation of the
kind, in her presence.

So matters went on for some weeks. But sometimes it
happens when a young fellow has long wandered in a beautiful
dream of this kind, a sudden and harsh light of reality
and of common-sense, every-day life, is thrown upon him
in an unforeseen moment; and this moment at last arrived
for me.

One evening, when I dropped in for a call at the Van
Arsdel mansion, the young ladies were all out at a concert,
but Mrs. Van Arsdel was at home, and for some reason,
unusually bland and motherly.

“My dear Mr. Henderson,” she said, “it is rather hard on
you to be obliged to accept an old woman like me, as a substitute
for youth and beauty; but really, I am not sorry, on
the whole, that the girls are out, for I would like a little
chance of having a free, confidential talk with you. Your
relations with us have been so intimate and kindly, I feel,
you know, quite as if you were one of us.”

I replied, of course, that `I was extremely flattered and
gratified by her kindness,” and assured her with effusion,
and if I mistake not, with tears in my eyes, that `she had
made me forget that I was a stranger in New York, and
that I should always cherish the most undying recollection
of the kindness that I had received in her family, and of
the pleasant hours I had spent there.'

[figure description] Page 295.[end figure description]

“Ah, yes, indeed!” she said, “Mr. Henderson, it is pleasant
to me to think that you feel so. I like to give young
men a home feeling. But after all,” she continued, “one
feels a little pensive once in a while, in thinking that one
cannot always keep the home-circle unbroken. Indeed, I
never could see how some mothers could seem to rejoice
as they do in the engagement of their daughters. There
is Mrs. Elmore, now, her feelings are perfectly inexplicable
to me.”

I assured her that I was quite of her way of thinking,
and agreed with her perfectly.

“Now,” she said, “as the time comes on, when I begin to
think of parting with Eva, though to the very best man in
the world, do you know, Mr. Henderson, it really makes me
feel sad?”

I began at this moment to find the drift of the conversation
becoming very embarrassing and disagreeable to me,
but I mustered my energies to keep up my share in it with
a becoming degree of interest.

“I am to understand, then,” said I, forcing a smile,
“that Miss Eva's engagement with Mr. Sydney is a settled
fact?”

“Well, virtually so,” she replied. “Eva is a verse to the
publicity of public announcements; but—you know how
it is, Mr. Henderson, there are relations which amount to
the same thing as an engagement.” Here Mrs. Van Arsdel
leaned back on the sofa and drew a letter from her pocket,
while the words of my part of the conversation did not
seem to be forthcoming. I sat in embarrassed silence.

“The fact is, Mr. Henderson,” she said, settling the
diamonds and emeralds on her white, shapely fingers, “I
have received a letter to-day from Mr. Sidney,—he is a noble
fellow,” she added, with empressment.

I secretly wished the noble fellow at Kamtschatka, but I
said, in sympathetic tones, “Ah, indeed?” as if waiting for
the farther communication, which I perceived she was
determined to bestow on me.

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“Yes,” she said, “he is coming to New York in a short
time, and then, I suppose, there is no doubt that all will be
finally arranged. I confess to you I have the weakness to
feel a little depressed about it. Did you ever read Jean
Ingelow's Songs of Seven, Mr. Henderson? I think she
touches so beautifully on the trials of mothers in giving up
their daughters?”

I said, “I only trust that Mr. Sydney is in some degree
worthy of Miss Van Arsdel; though,” I added with warmth,
“no man can be wholly so.'

“Eva is a good girl,” said Mrs. Van Arsdel, “and I
must confess that the parting from her will be the greatest
trial of my life. But I thought I would let you know how
matters stood, because of the very great confidence which
we feel in you.”

I found presence of mind to acknowledge politely my
sense of the honor conferred. Mrs. Van Arsdel continued
playing prettily with her rings.

“One thing more perhaps I ought to say, Mr. Henderson,
while your intimacy in our family is and has been
quite what I desire, yet you know people are so absurd,
and will say such absurd things, that it might not be out
of the way to suggest a little caution; you know one
wouldn't want to give rise to any reports that might be
unpleasant—anything, you know, that might reach Mr.
Sydney's ear—you understand me.”

“My dear Mrs. Van Arsdel, is it possible that anything
has been said?”

“Now, now, don't agitate yourself, Mr. Henderson; I
know what you are going to say—no, nothing of the kind.
But you know that we elderly people, who know the world
and just what stupid and unreasonable things people are
always saying, sometimes have to give you young folks
just the slightest little caution. Your conduct in this family
has been all that is honorable, and gentlemanly, and unexceptionable,
Mr. Henderson, and such as would lead us to
repose the most perfect confidence in you. In fact, I beg

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you to consider this communication with regard to Eva's
connection with Mr. Sydney, as quite in confidence.”

“I certainly shall do so,” said I, rising to take my leave,
with much the same sort of eagerness with which one rises
from a dentist's chair, after having his nerves picked at.
As at this moment the voices of the returning party broke
up our interview, I immediately arose, and excusing myself
with the plea of an article to finish, left the house and
walked home in a state of mind as disagreeable as my worst
enemy could have wished. Like all delicate advisers who
are extremely fearful of hurting your feelings, Mrs. Van
Arsdel had told me nothing definite, and yet had said
enough to make me supremely uncomfortable. What did
she mean, and how much did she mean? Had there been
reports? Was this to be received as an intimation from
Eva herself? Had she discovered the state of my feelings,
and was she, through her mother, warning me of my
danger?

All my little romance seemed disenchanted. These illusions
of love are like the legends of hidden treasures
guarded by watchful spirits which disappear from you
if you speak a word; or like an enchanting dream, which
vanishes if you start and open your eyes. I tossed to and
fro restlessly all night, and resolved to do precisely the
most irrational thing that I could have done, under the
circumstances, and that was to give up going to the Van
Arsdel house, and to see Eva no more.

The next morning, however, showed me that I could not
make so striking a change in my habits without subjecting
myself to Jim Fellows' remarks and inquiry. I resolved on
a course of gradual emancipation and detachment.

My Dearest Belle:—Since I wrote to you last there have
been the strangest changes. I scarcely know what to think.
You remember I told you all about Easter Eve, and a certain
person's appearance, and about the stolen glove and all

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that. Your theory of accounting for all this was precisely
mine; in fact I could think of no other. And, Belle, if I
could only see you I could tell you of a thousand little
things that make me certain that he cares for me more than
in the way of mere friendship. I thought I could not be
mistaken in that. There has been scarcely a day since our
acquaintance began when I have not in some way seen him
or heard from him; you know all those early services, when
he was as constant as the morning, and always walked
home with me; then, he and Jim Fellows always spend
at least one evening in a week at our house, and there
are no end of accidental meetings. For example, when we
take our afternoon drives at Central Park we are sure to
see them sitting on the benches watching us go by, and it
came to be quite a regular thing when we stopped the carriage
at the terrace and got out to walk to find them there,
and then Alice would go off with Jim Fellows, and Mr. H.
and I would stroll up and down among the lilac hedges and
in all those lovely little nooks and dells that are so charming.
I'm quite sure I never explored the treasures of the
Park as I have this Spring. We have rambled everywhere—
up hill and down dale—it certainly is the loveliest and
most complete imitation of wild nature that ever art perfected.
One could fancy one's self deep in the country in
some parts of it; far from all the rush and whirl and
frivolity of this great, hot, dizzy New York. You may
imagine that with all this we have had opportunity to
become very intimate. He has told me all about himself,
all the history of his life, all about his mother, and his
home; it seems hardly possible that one friend could speak
more unreservedly to another, and I, dear Belle, have
found myself speaking with equal frankness to him. We
know each other so perfectly that there has for a long time
seemed to be only a thin impalpable cob-web barrier between
us; but you know Belle, that airy filmy barrier is
something that one would not by a look or a word disturb.
For weeks I have felt every day that surely the next time
we meet all this must come to a crisis. That he would

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say in words what he says in looks—in involuntary actions—
what in fact I am perfectly sure of. Till he speaks I must
be guarded. I must hold myself back from showing him
the kindly interest I really feel. For I am proud, as you
know, Belle, and have always held the liberty of my heart
as a sacred treasure. I have always felt a secret triumph in
the consciousness that I did not care for anybody, and that
my happiness was wholly in my own hands, and I mean
to keep it so. Our friendship is a pleasant thing enough,
but I am not going to let it become too necessary, you
understand. It isn't that I care so very much, but my curiosity
is really excited to know just what the real state of
the case is; one wants to investigate interesting phenomena
you know. When I saw that little glove movement
on Easter Eve I confess I thought the game all in my own
hands, and that I could quietly wait to say “checkmate”
in due form and due time; but after all nothing came of it;
that is, nothing decisive; and I confess I didn't know what
to think. Sometimes I have fancied some obstacle or en
tanglement or commitment with some other woman—this
Cousin Caroline perhaps—but he talks about her to me in
the most open and composed manner. Sometimes I fancy
he has heard the report of my engagement to Sydney. If
he has, why doesn't he ask me about it? I have no objection
to telling him, but I certainly shall not open the subject
myself. Perhaps, as Ida thinks, he is proud and poor
and not willing to be a suitor to a rich young good-for-nothing.
Well, that can't be helped, he must be a suitor if
he wins me, for I shan't be; he must ask me, for I certainly
shan't ask him, that's settled. If he would “ask
me pretty,” now, who knows what nice things he might
hear? I would tell him, perhaps, how much more one true
noble heart is worth in my eyes than all that Wat Sydney
has to give. Sometimes I am quite provoked with him
that he should look so much, and yet say no more, and I
feel a naughty wicked inclination to flirt with somebody
else just to make him open those “grands yeux” of his a

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little wider and to a little better purpose. Sometimes I
begin to feel a trifle vindictive and as if I should like to
give him a touch of the claw. The claw, my dear, the little
pearly claw that we women keep in reserve in the “patte
de velours,” our only and most sacred weapon of defense.

The other night, at Mrs. Cerulean's salon, she was holding
forth with great effect on woman's right to court men—
as natural and indefeasible—and I told her that I considered
our right to be courted far more precious and
inviolable. Of course it is so. The party that makes the
proposals is the party that must take the risk of refusal,
and who would wish to do that? It puts me out of all
patience just to think of it. If there is anything that vexes
me it is that a man should ever feel sure that a woman's
heart is at his disposal before he has asked for it prettily
and properly in all due form, and, my dear, I have the fear
of this before my eyes, even in our most intimate moments.
He shall not feel too sure of me.

Wednesday Evening.

My dear Belle, I can't think what in the world is up now;
but something or other has happened to a certain person
that has changed all our relations. For more than a week
I have scarcely seen him. He called with Jim Fellows on
the usual evening, but did not go into Ida's room, and
hardly came near me, and seemed all in a flutter to leave
all the time. He was at the great Elmore wedding, and so
was I, but we scarcely spoke all the evening. I could see
him following all my motions and watching me at a distance,
but as sure as I came into a room he seemed in a perfect
flutter to get out of it, and yet no sooner had he done so
than he secured some position where he could observe me
at a distance. I was provoked enough, and I thought if
my lord wanted to observe, I'd give him something to see,
so I flirted with Jerrold Livingstone, whom I don't care a
copper about, within an inch of his life, and I made a

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special effort to be vasty agreeable to all the danglers and
moustaches that I usually take delight in snubbing, and
I could see that he looked quite wretched, which was a
comfort—but yet he wouldn't come near me till just as I
was going to leave, when he came to beg I would stay
longer and declared that he hadn't seen anything of me.
It was a little too much! I assumed an innocent air and
surveyed him “de haut en bas” and said, “Why, dear me,
Mr. Henderson, possible that you've been here all this time?
Where have you kept yourself?” and then I handed my bouquet
to Livingstone and swept by in triumph; his last look
after me as I went down stairs was tragical, you may
believe. Well, I can't make him out, but I don't care. I
won't care. He was free to come. He shall be free to go;
but isn't it vexatious that in cases of this kind one cannot
put an end to the tragedy by a simple common-sense question?

One doesn't care so very much, you know, what is the
matter with these creatures, only one is curious to know
what upon earth makes them act so. A man sets up a
friendship with you, and then looks and acts as if he
adored you, as if he worshiped the ground you tread on,
and then is off at a tangent with a tragedy air, and you are
not allowed to say “My dear sir, why do you behave so?
why do you make such a precious goose of yourself?”

The fact is, these friendships of women with men are all
fol-de-rol. The creatures always have an advantage over
you. They can make every advance and come nearer and
nearer and really make themselves quite agreeable, not to
say necessary, and then suddenly change the whole footing
and one cannot even ask why. One cannot say, as to
another woman, “What is the matter? what has altered
your manner?” She cannot even show that she notices the
change, without loss of self-respect. A woman in friendship
with a man is made heartless by this very necessity,
she must always hold herself ready to change hands and
make her chassé to right or left with all suitable

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indifference whenever her partner is ready for another move in the
cotillion.

Well, so be it. I fancy I can do this as well as another.
I never shall inquire into his motives. I'm sorry
for him, too, for he looked quite haggard and unhappy.
Well; it's his own fault; for if he would only be open with
me he'd find it to his advantage—perhaps.

You are quite mistaken, dear, in what you have heard
about his belonging to that radical party of strange creatures
who rant and rage about progress in our times. Like
all generous, magnanimous men, who are conscious of
strength, he sympathizes with the weak, and is a champion
of woman wherever she is wronged; and certainly in many
respects, we must all admit women are wronged by the
laws and customs of society. But no man could be nicer
in his sense of feminine delicacy and more averse to associating
with bold and unfeminine women than he. I must
defend him there. I am sure that nothing could be more
distasteful to him than the language and conduct of many
of these dreadful female reformers of our day. If I am out
of sorts with him I must at least do him this justice.

You inquire about Alice and Jim Fellows; my dear, there
can be nothing there. They are perfectly well matched; a
pair of flirts, and neither trusts the other an inch farther
than they can see. Alice has one of those characters that
lie in layers like the geologic strata that our old professor
used to show us. The top layer is all show, and display and
ambition; dig down below that and you find a warm volcanic
soil where noble plants might cast root. But at present
she is all in the upper stratum. She must have her run
of flirting and fashion and adventure, and just now a
splendid marriage is her ideal, but she is capable of a great
deal in the depths of her nature. All I hope is she will not
marry till she has got down into it, but she is starting under
full sail now, coquetting to right and left, making great
slaughter.

She looked magnificently at the wedding and quite

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outshone me. She has that superb Spanish style of beauty
which promises to wear well and bloom out into more splendor
as time goes on, and she has a good heart with all her
nonsense.

Well, dear, what a long letter! and must I add to it the
account of the wedding glories—lists of silver and gold tea
sets, and sets of pearls and diamonds? My dear, only fancy
Tiffany's counters transferred bodily, with cards from A.,
B., and C., presenting this and that; fancy also the young
men of your acquaintance silly-drunk, or stupid-drunk in
the latter part of the night in the supper-room; fancy, if
you can, the bridegroom carried up stairs, because he
couldn't go up on his own feet!—this is a wedding! Never
mind! the bride had three or four sets of diamond shoebuckles,
and rubies and emeralds in the profusion of the
Arabian Nights. Well, it will be long before I care for such
a wedding! I am sick of splendors, sated with nick-nacks,
my doll is stuffed with saw-dust, &c., &c., but I shall ever
be your loving

The confidential conversation held with me by Mrs. Van
Arsdel had all the effect on my mental castle-building
that a sudden blow had on Alnaschar's basket of glass ware
in the Arabian tales.

Nobody is conscious how far he has been in dreamland till
he is awakened. I was now fully aroused to the fact that
I was in love with Eva Van Arsdel, to all intents and purposes,
so much in love as made the nourishing and cherishing
of an intimate friendship an impossibility, and only a
specious cloak for a sort of moral dishonesty. Now I
might have known this fact in the beginning, and I scolded

[figure description] Page 304.[end figure description]

and lectured myself for my own folly in not confessing it
to myself before. I had been received by the family as a
friend. I had been trusted with their chief treasure, with
the understanding that it was to belong not to me but
another, and there was a species of moral indelicacy to
my mind in having suffered myself to become fascinated by
her as I now felt that I was. But I did not feel adequate
to congratulating her as the betrothed bride of another
man; nay, more, when I looked back on the kind of intimate
and confidential relations that had been growing up
between us, I could not but feel that it was not safe
for me to continue them. Two natures cannot exactly
accord, cannot keep time and tune together, without being
conscious of the fact and without becoming necessary to
each other; and such relations in their very nature tend to
grow absorbing and exclusive. It was plain to me that if
Eva were to marry Wat Sydney I could not with honor and
safety continue the kind of intimacy we had been so
thoughtlessly and so delightfully enjoying for the past few
weeks.

But how to break it off without an explanation, and how
make that explanation? There is a certain responsibility
resting on a man of conscience and honor, about accepting
all that nearness of access, and that closeness of intimacy
which the ignorant innocence of young girls often invites
From his very nature, from his education, from his position
in society, a young man knows more of what the full
significance and requirements of marriage are to be than a
young woman can, and he must know the danger of absorbing
and exclusive intimacy with other than a husband. The
instincts of every man teach that marriage must be engrossing
and monopolizing, that it implies a forsaking of all others,
and a keeping unto one only; and how could that be
when every taste and feeling, every idiosyncracy and individual
peculiarity made the society of some other person
more agreeable?

Without undue personal vanity, a man will surely know

[figure description] Page 305.[end figure description]

when there is a special congeniality of nature between
himself and a certain woman, and he is bound in conscience
and honor to look ahead in all his intimacies and see what
must be the inevitable result of them according to the laws
of the human mind. Because I had neglected this caution,
because I had yielded myself blindly to the delicious enchantment
of a new enthusiasm, I had now come to a place
where I knew neither how to advance nor recede.

I could not drop this intimacy, so dangerous to my peace
and honor, without risk of offending; to explain was, in
fact, to solicit. I might confess all, cast myself at her feet—
but supposing she should incline to mercy—and with
a woman's uncalculating disinterestedness accept my love
in place of wealth and station, what should I then do?

Had I been possessed of a fortune even half equal to Mr.
Sydney's; had I, in fact, any settled and assumed position
to offer, I would have avowed my love boldly and suffered
her to decide. But I had no advantage to stand on. I
was poor, and had nothing to give but myself; and what
man is vain enough to think that he is in himself enough to
make up for all that may be wanting in externals?

Besides this, Eva was the daughter of a rich family,
and an offer of marriage from me must have appeared to
all the world the interested proposal of a fortune-hunter.
Of what avail would it be under such circumstances to
plead that I loved her for herself alone? I could fancy
the shout of incredulous laughter with which the suggestion
would be received in the gay world.

Now, if there was anything that my pride revolted from
as an impossibility, it was coming as a poor suitor to a great
rich family. Were I even sure that Eva loved me, how
could I do that? Would not all the world say that to
make use of my access in the family to draw her down from

[figure description] Page 306.[end figure description]

a splendid position in life to poverty and obscurity was on
my part a dishonorable act? Could I trust myself enough
to feel that it was justice to her?

The struggle that a young man has to engage in to secure
a self-supporting position, is of a kind to make him keenly
alive to material values. Dr. Franklin said, “If you would
learn the value of money, try to borrow some.” I would
say rather, Try to earn some, and to live only on what you
earn. My own hard experience on this subject led me to
reflect very seriously on the responsibility which a man
incurs in inducing a woman of refinement and culture to
look to him as her provider.

In our advanced state of society there are a thousand absolute
wants directly created by culture and refinement; and
whatever may be said about the primary importance of personal
affection and sympathy as the foundation of a happy
marriage, it is undoubtedly true that a certain amount of
pecuniary ease and security is necessary as a background on
which to develop agreeable qualities. A man and woman
much driven, care-worn, and overtaxed, often have little that
is agreeable to show to each other. I queried with myself
then, whether, as Eva's true friend, I should not wish that
she might marry a respectable man, devoted to her, who
could keep her in all that elegance and luxury she was
so fitted to adorn and enjoy; and whether if I could do it,
I ought to try to put myself in his place in her mind.

A man who detects himself in an unfortunate passion
has always the refuge of his life-object. To the true man,
the thing that he hopes to do always offers some compensation
for the thing he ceases to enjoy.

It was fortunate therefore for me, that just in this crisis
of my life, my friendship with Bolton opened before me
the prospect of a permanent establishment in connection
with the literary press of the times.

p467-338

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