OLDTOWN FOLKS.
Moral earnestness.
It is noticeable, in every battle of opinion, that honest, sincere, moral earnestness has a certain advantage over mere intellectual cleverness.
Struggling for higher things.
Plato says that we all once had wings, and that they will tend to grow out in us, and that our burnings and aspirations for higher things are like the teething pangs of children. We are trying to cut our wings. Let us not despise these teething seasons. Though the wings do not become apparent, they may be starting under many a rough coat and on many a clumsy pair of shoulders.
Faith, not sight.
“I often think,” said Harry, listening for a moment, “that no one can pronounce on what this life has been to him until he has passed entirely through it, and turns around, and surveys it from the other world. I think then that we shall see everything in its true proportions; but, till then, we must walk by faith, not by sight,—faith that God loves us, faith that our Savior is always near us, and that all things are working together for good.”
God’s cordials.
But certain it is that there is a very near way to God’s heart, and so to the great heart of all comfort, that sometimes opens like a shaft of light between heaven and the soul, in hours when everything earthly falls away from us. A quaint old writer has said, “God keeps his choicest cordials for the time of our deepest faintings.” And so it came to pass that, as this poor woman closed her eyes and prayed earnestly, there fell a strange clearness into her soul, which calmed every fear, and hushed the voice of every passion, and she lay for a season as if entranced. Words of Holy Writ, heard years ago in church readings, in the hours of unconscious girlhood, now seemed to come back, borne in with a loving power on her soul.
Silent companionship.
The kind of silence which gives a sense of companionship.
Moral inheritance.
Esther was one of those intense, silent, repressed women, that have been a frequent outgrowth of New England society. Moral traits, like physical ones, often intensify themselves in course of descent, so that the child of a long line of pious ancestry may sometimes suffer from too fine a moral fibre, and become a victim to a species of morbid spiritual ideality.
Esther looked to me, from the first, less like a warm, breathing, impulsive woman, less like ordinary flesh and blood, than some half-spiritual organization, every particle of which was a thought.
Holiness of age.
Among all the loves that man has to woman, there is none so sacred and saint-like as that toward these dear, white-haired angels, who seem to form the connecting link between heaven and earth, who have lived to get the victory over every sin and every sorrow, and live perpetually on the banks of the dark river, in that bright, calm land of Beulah, where angels daily walk to and fro, and sounds of celestial music are heard across the water.
Such have no longer personal cares, or griefs, or sorrows. The tears of life have all been shed, and therefore they have hearts at leisure to attend to every one else. Even the sweet guileless childishness that comes on in this period has a sacred dignity; it is a seal of fitness for that heavenly kingdom, which whosoever shall not receive as a little child shall not enter therein.
Unity in conflict.
Has there ever been a step in human progress that has not been taken against the prayers of some good soul, and been washed by tears sincerely and despondently shed? But, for all this, is there not a true unity of the faith in all good hearts? And when they have risen a little above the mists of earth, may not both sides—the conqueror and the conquered—agree that God hath given them the victory in advancing the cause of truth and goodness?
Growth from within.
It has been the experience of my life that it is your quiet people who, above all other children of men, are set in their ways and intense in their opinions. Their very reserve and silence are a fortification behind which all their peculiarities grow and thrive at their leisure, without encountering those blows and shocks which materially modify more outspoken natures. It is owing to the peculiar power of quietness that one sometimes sees characters fashioning themselves in a manner the least to be expected from the circumstances and associates which surround them. As a fair white lily grows up out of the bed of meadow muck, and without note or comment rejects all in the soil that is alien from her being, and goes on fashioning her own silver cup side by side with weeds that are drawing coarser nutriment from the soil, so we often see a refined and gentle nature, by some singular internal force, unfolding itself by its own laws, and confirming itself in its own beliefs, as wholly different from all that surround it as is the lily from the ragweed. There are persons, in fact, who seem to grow almost wholly from within, and on whom the teachings, the doctrine, and the opinions of those around them, produce little or no impression.
Amusements.
It may be set down, I think, as a general axiom, that people feel the need of amusements less and less, precisely in proportion as they have solid reasons for being happy.
Repression.
Perhaps my readers may have turned over a great, flat stone some time in their rural rambles, and found under it little clovers, and tufts of grass pressed to earth, flat, white, and bloodless, but still growing, stretching, creeping towards the edges, where their plant-instinct tells them there is light and deliverance. The kind of life that the little Tina led, under the care of Miss Asphyxia, resembled that of these poor clovers. It was all shut down and repressed, but growing still.
Sympathy.
I felt a cleaving of spirit to him that I had never felt towards any human being before,—a certainty that something had come to me in him that I had always been wanting,—and I was too glad for speech.
Soul-relation.
Is it not true that, as we grow older, the relationship of souls will make itself felt?