Now Lent has come, and I am thankful for the rest from parties and dancing; but yet Lent makes me blue, because it gives me some time to think; and besides that, when all this whirligig stops awhile, I feel how dizzy and tired it has made me. And then I think of all that you used to tell me about the real object of life, and all that I so sincerely resolved in my school-days that I would do and be, and I am quite in despair about myself.
It is three years since I really "came out," as the phrase goes. Up to that time I was far happier than I have been since, because I satisfied myself better. You always said, dear friend, that I was a good scholar, and faithful to every duty; and those days, when I had a definite duty for each hour, and did it well, were days when I liked myself better than now. I did enjoy study. I enjoyed our three years in Europe, too, for then, with much variety and many pleasures, I had regular studies; I was learning something, and did not feel that I was a mere do-nothing.
But since I have been going into company I am perfectly sick of myself. For the first year it was new to me, and I was light-headed and thought it glorious fun. It was excitement all the time—dressing, and going, and seeing, and being admired, and, well—flirting. I confess I liked it, and went into it with all my might,—parties, balls, opera, concerts all the winter in New York, and parties, balls, etc. at Newport and Saratoga in Summer. It was a sort of prolonged delirium. I didn't stop to think about anything, and lived like a butterfly, by the hour. Oh! the silly things I have said and done! I find myself blushing hot when I think of them, because, you see, I am so excitable, and sometimes am so carried away, that afterward I don't know what I may have said or done!
And now all this is coming to some end or other. This going into company can't last forever. We must be married—that's what we are for, they say; that's what all this dressing, and dancing, and flying about has got to end in. And so mamma and Aunt Maria are on thorns, to get me off their hands and well established. I have been out three seasons. I am twenty-three, and Alice has just come out, and it is expected, of course, that I retire with honor. I will not stop to tell you that I have rejected about the usual number of offers that young ladies in my position get, and I haven't seen anybody that I care a copper for.
Well, now, in this crisis, comes this Mr. Sidney, who proposed to me last Fall, and I refused point-blank, simply and only because I didn't love him, which seemed to me at that time reason enough. Then mamma and Aunt Maria took up the case, and told me that I was a foolish girl to throw away such an offer: a man of good character and standing, an excellent business man, and so immensely rich—with such a splendid place at Newport, and another in New York, and a fortune like Aladdin's lamp!
I said I didn't love him, and they said I hadn't tried; that I could love him if I only made up my mind to, and why wouldn't I try? Then papa turned in, who very seldom has anything to say to us girls, or about any family matters, and said how delighted he should be to see me married to a man so capable of taking care of me. So, among them all, I agreed that I would receive his visits and attentions as a friend, with a view to trying to love him; and ever since I have been banked up in flowers and confectionery, and daily drifting into relations of closer and closer intimacy.
Do I find myself in love? Not a bit. Frankly, dear friend, to tell the awful truth, the thing that weighs down my heart is, that if this man were not so rich, I know I shouldn't think of him. If he were a poor young man, just beginning business, I know I should not give him a second thought; neither would mother, nor Aunt Maria, nor any of us. But here are all these worldly advantages! I confess I am dazzled by them. I am silly, I am weak, I am ambitious. I like to feel that I may have the prize of the season—the greatest offer in the market. I know I am envied and, oh, dear me! though it's naughty, yet one does like to be envied. Besides, to tell the truth, though I am not in love with him, I am not in love with anybody else. I respect him, and esteem him, and all that, in a quiet, negative sort of way, and mother and Aunt Maria say everything else will come—after marriage. Will it? Is it right? Is this the way I ought to marry?
But then, you know, I must marry somebody—that, they say, is a fixed fact. It seems to be understood that I am a sort of helpless affair, to be taken care of, and that now is my time to be disposed of; and they tell me every day that if I let this chance go, I shall regret it all my life.
Do you know I wish there were convents that one could go out of the world into? Cousin Sophia Sewell has joined the Sisters of St. John, and says she never was so happy. She does look so cheerful, and she is so busy from morning till night, and has the comfort of doing so much good to a lot of those poor little children, that I envy her.
But I cannot become a Sister. What would mamma say if she knew I even thought of it? Everybody would think me crazy. Nobody would believe how much there is in me that never comes to light, nor how miserable it makes me to be the poor, half-hearted thing that I am.