How glorious to be dreaming of what we will do when we are women with wills and purses all our own!—with long rows of books in our libraries, elegant pictures in our drawing-rooms, and oh! such beautiful boudoirs, all, all of our own; or, at least, a room which shall be a sanctum sanctorum, where the fire on the hearth never smoulders, and where loving friends, beautiful mementos, and peaceful thoughts make us always happy. How fine to fancy longings achieved, and present desires gratified!
All dreams, yes; but they do sometimes come out better than true. The only thing wiser than dreaming is doing,—working in such a way as to bring the distant near, and getting out of the veriest commonplaces the joy we fancied lay only in the future, in other lands, or only in dreams.
Build castles and dwellings out of the commonplace, and you shall see them shine with splendor, and glow with beauties which can never be exhausted. She alone is rich who has estates in her soul.
VIII.
MOODS.
Blues, dumps, megrims, odd spells,—do they ever visit you? Drive them out of doors; chase them down the yard, over the fence, up the tree, till they go riding off on their own broomsticks, or vanish in thin air! If ever they come tapping on your window-pane again, don't open the casement; but turn your backs, stop up your ears, laugh as loud as you can, then seize the first piece of work which waits to be done. These demons are afraid of a laugh; and when they have the least suspicion that a smile wreathes the lips of a mortal, they will slink away and coil up in remote corners. They are equally alarmed by work, because it puts an armor of steel all over their opponents. This coat of mail is absolutely impenetrable, though blue imps should hurl their arrows of torture forever.
But, beware! Do not stop to think work and good cheer will put these creatures to flight. Sing your song, laugh your laugh, and make work, if none is at hand. Then only will these poor miserable prowlers shrivel up and crawl under ground.
What are gloomy moods good for? What are they not bad for? Why are we always making excuse for entertaining such company? If we are ashamed of them, let's send them packing, as we would any disreputable visitors, such as cheats, biting dogs, or poisonous insects.
How weak is our apology for enduring moods, when we blame some person, long since dead, for handing down to us an inheritance of megrims! We need not accept such a legacy, though of course we must fight very hard to resist its allurements. It may be convenient enough to censure inheritance for this or that oddity. Our grandmothers had strange moods,—spoke to people on some days and did not speak on other days,—so we have diligently doubled our bequest, and have spells odder yet,—find our friends quite delightful for a week or more, and then as distasteful for a still longer time.
The patrimony of evil can be, and will be, shamefully increased with every new generation, if good sense, sound principles, and a cheerful heart do not constantly defend the right and strive to annihilate inheritance. I am not going to discuss this matter of inheritance, girls, for there is much in it not well for us to consider at present. We are simply to remember to preserve and increase the good left us, and fight to the utmost all evil that may have come from ancestry. Every girl has peculiar forms of temptation; and what is hard for one to resist is easy for another to repel, because to the latter it is no temptation. If moods, grim moods, are worth any thing to us, they are simply worth conquering,—merely valuable for the strength we get from their defeat.