The flower is pressed to the bosom with intense emotion, but in the home of love it withers and is cast away.
The gem is worn with less love, but with more pride; if we enjoy its sparkle, the joy is partly from calculation of its value; but if it be lost, we regret it long.
For myself, my name is Pearl.[42] That lies at the beginning, amid slime and foul prodigies from which only its unsightly shell protects. It is cradled and brought to its noblest state amid disease and decay. Only the experienced diver could have known that it was there, and brought it to the strand, where it is valued as pure, round, and, if less brilliant than the diamond, yet an ornament for a kingly head. Were it again immersed in the element where first it dwelt, now that it is stripped of the protecting shell, soon would it blacken into deformity. So what is noblest in my soul has sprung from disease, present defeat, disappointment, and untoward outward circumstance.
For you, I presume, from your want of steady light and brilliancy of sparks which are occasionally struck from you, that you are either a flint or a rough diamond. If the former, I hope you will find a home in some friendly tinder-box, instead of lying in the highway to answer the hasty hoof of the trampling steed. If a diamond, I hope to meet you in some imperishable crown, where we may long remain together; you lighting up my pallid orb, I tempering your blaze.
Dried Ferns about my Lamp-shade.—"What pleasure do you, who have exiled those paper tissue covers, take in that bouquet of dried ferns? Their colors are less bright, and their shapes less graceful, than those of your shades."
I answer, "They grew beneath the solemn pines. They opened their hearts to the smile of summer, and answered to the sigh of autumn. They remind me of the wealth of nature; the tissues, of the poverty of man. They were gathered by a cherished friend who worships in the woods, and behind them lurks a deep, enthusiastic eye. So my pleasure in seeing them is 'denkende' and 'menschliche.'"
"They are of no use."
"Good! I like useless things: they are to me the vouchers of a different state of existence."
Light.—My lamp says to me, "Why do you disdain me, and use that candle, which you have the trouble of snuffing every five minutes, and which ever again grows dim, ungrateful for your care? I would burn steadily from sunset to midnight, and be your faithful, vigilant friend, yet never interrupt you an instant."
I reply, "But your steady light is also dull,—while his, at its best, is both brilliant and mellow. Besides, I love him for the trouble he gives; he calls on my sympathy, and admonishes me constantly to use my life, which likewise flickers as if near the socket."