“It is a melody that angels only enjoy.”
“And art not thou an angel?”
“No, Jack, only a poor, confiding girl; one instinct with the affections and weaknesses of her sex, and one whom it must be your part to sustain and direct. If we begin by calling each other by these superhuman epithets, we may awake from the delusion sooner than if we commence with believing ourselves to be no other than what we really are. I love you for your kind, excellent, and generous heart, Jack; and as for these poetical beings, they are rather proverbial, I believe, for having no hearts at all.”
As Anna mildly checked my exaggeration of language—after ten years of marriage I am unwilling to admit there was any exaggeration of idea—she placed her little velvet hand in mine again, smiling away all the severity of the reproof.
“Of one thing, I think you may rest perfectly assured, dear girl,” I resumed, after a moment’s reflection. “All my old opinions concerning expansion and contraction are radically changed. I have carried out the principle of the social-stake system in the extreme, and cannot say that I have been at all satisfied with its success. At this moment I am the proprietor of vested interests which are scattered over half the world. So far from finding that I love my kind any more for all these social stakes, I am compelled to see that the wish to protect one, is constantly driving me into acts of injustice against all the others. There is something wrong, depend on it, Anna, in the old dogmas of political economists!”
“I know little of these things, Sir John, but to one ignorant as myself, it would appear that the most certain security for the righteous exercise of power is to be found in just principles.”
“If available, beyond a question. They who contend that the debased and ignorant are unfit to express their opinions concerning the public weal, are obliged to own that they can only be restrained by force. Now, as knowledge is power, their first precaution is to keep them ignorant; and then they quote this very ignorance, with all its debasing consequences, as an argument against their participating in authority with themselves. I believe there can be no safe medium between a frank admission of the whole principle—”
“You should remember, dear Goldencalf, that this is a subject on which I know but little. It ought to be sufficient for us that we find things as they are; if change is actually necessary, we should endeavor to effect it with prudence and a proper regard to justice.”
Anna, while kindly leading me back from my speculations, looked both anxious and pained.
“True—true”—I hurriedly rejoined, for a world would not tempt me to prolong her suffering for a moment. “I am foolish and forgetful, to be talking thus at such a moment; but I have endured too much to be altogether unmindful of ancient theories. I thought it might be grateful to you, at least, to know, Anna, that I have ceased to look for happiness in my affections for all, and am only so much the better disposed to turn in search of it to one.”