May 12.
Last night I went to a ‘reception,’ that is the next thing after a wedding. At seven o’clock Miss ——, daughter of a German, once Professor, was united to a German merchant, in the presence of about seventy friends, in their drawing-room. I went, and found the groomsman at the door; he took me up, led me to the end of the room, where stood the newly-married lady, holding white flowers in her hand. I made my bow, turned to the right, and presented my congratulations to the lady’s mother, and retired. And so the thing went on for a couple of hours nearly. It is quite the old custom, older a great deal than ours, which only dates from the time when the law was passed enacting that all marriages should be performed before twelve at noon, some time in the middle of 1700-1800.
The most agreeable part of the proceeding was the leave-taking of the young people, who were her friends, which began towards the end of the evening.
On the whole, I do think that pupilising and writing is my proper vocation, and that if I could afford to stick to it, and do whatever work is offered me really well, I should in time be well paid for it. People talk in their sanguine way, but they don’t know how hard it is for the unfortunate solitary schoolmaster to get through his work from day to day: they don’t know how, with no real affection to recur to when he is overworked, he is obliged to run no chances of overworking himself; how he must, as it were, use only his left hand to work with, because he has to hold on with his right for fear of falling altogether. This is not indolence, and so forth.
Eile mit Weile: das war selbst Kaiser Augustus’ Devise.
I send some lily of the valley, which does not grow wild, however and is not native to America.
May 21.
A man who doesn’t go much into the kind of society where people have the chance of going backwards and forwards, and experimenting, and learning their own minds and other people’s minds, and correcting their views by finding out the feelings of others, runs into mistakes more flagrant and irretrievable than hundreds quite as bad really which occur continually. Because he has lived quietly and done his daily duties, and not gone into dancing and flirtation, he has known less about feminine feelings than worse men do, less perhaps also about his own. The mere man’s idea of a wife as a helpmate in duty is not in my judgment an insult to womankind, though it may require modification and correction. But if that were the worst sin committed against womankind the world would be better than it is; and many women, it appears to me, have been misled by their natural aversion to this into accepting worse things. It is a sad thing for a man to feel that by his very steadiness and self-sacrificing in doing his plain duty, he has cut himself off from the happiness which women, alas! are often ready to accord to the indolent and self-indulgent. Indeed, but I fear it is so, very often.
East winds and rain; such is our present not at all pleasant dispensation. September, October, November are said to be the most agreeable months here, and April and May the worst. People fly from Boston in the spring, if they are at all consumptive.
Shady Hill, Cambridge: June 4.