PEARL OF ORR’S ISLAND.
Neighbor’s influence.
Duty is never more formidable than when she gets on the cap and gown of a neighbor.
Reserve.
But it was not the little maiden’s way to speak when anything thwarted or hurt her, but rather to fold all her feelings and thoughts inward, as some insects, with fine gauzy wings, draw them under a coat of horny concealment.
True courage.
That kind of innocent hypocrisy which is needed as a staple in the lives of women who bridge a thousand awful chasms with smiling, unconscious looks, and walk, singing and scattering flowers, over abysses of fear, when their hearts are dying within them.
The reserve power of quietness.
Pliable as she was to all outward appearances, the child had her own still, interior world, where all her little notions and opinions stood up, crisp and fresh, like flowers that grow in cool, shady places. If anybody too rudely assailed a thought or suggestion she put forth, she drew it back again into this quiet, inner chamber, and went on. Reader, there are some women of this habit; there is no independence and pertinacity of opinion like that of those seemingly soft, quiet creatures, whom it is so easy to silence, and so difficult to convince. Mara, little and unformed as she yet was, belonged to the race of those spirits to whom is deputed the office of the angel in the Apocalypse, to whom was given the golden rod which measured the new Jerusalem. Infant though she was, she had ever in her hands that invisible measuring rod, which she was laying to the foundations of all actions and thoughts. There may, perhaps, come a time when the saucy boy, who now steps so superbly, and predominates so proudly in virtue of his physical strength and daring, will learn to tremble at the golden measuring rod held in the hand of a woman.
Sweetness.
“She’s got sweet ways and kind words for everybody, and it’s as good as a psalm to look at her.”
Woman’s life within.
No man—especially one that is living a rough, busy, out-of-doors life—can form the slightest conception of that veiled and secluded life which exists in the heart of a sensitive woman, whose sphere is narrow, whose external diversions are few, and whose mind, therefore, acts by a continual introversion upon itself. They know nothing how their careless words and actions are pondered and turned again in weary, quiet hours of fruitless questioning. What did he mean by this? and what did he mean by that?—while he, the careless buffalo, meant nothing, or has forgotten what it was, if he did.
Girls’ confidences.
“Come, now, can’t you jest tramp over to Pennel’s and tell Sallie I want her?”
“Not I, mother. There ain’t but two gals in two miles square here, an’ I ain’t a-goin’ to be the feller to shoo ’em apart. What’s the use o’ bein’ gals, an’ young, an’ pretty, if they can’t get together an’ talk about their new gowns an’ the fellers? That ar’s what gals is for.”
Maternal element in woman’s love.
Her love for Moses had always had in it a large admixture of that maternal and care-taking element, which, in some shape or other, qualifies the affection of woman to man.