And so she stopped invigglin’, and went off.
And then again in Betsey’s poetry (though as a neighbor and a female author I never would speak a word aginst it, and what I say I say as a warrior, and would wish to be so took) I would say in kindness, and strictly as a warrior, that besides the deep under-current of foolishness that is runnin’ through it, there is another thought that I deeply condemn. Betsey sot out in married life expectin’ too much. Now, she didn’t marry in the right way, and so she ort to have expected tougher times than the usual run of married females ort to expect; more than the ordinary tribulations of matrimony. But she didn’t; she expected too much.
And it won’t do to expect too much in this world, anyway. If you can only bring your mind down to it, it is a sight better to expect nothing, and then you won’t be disappointed if you get it, as you most probable will. And if you get something it will be a joyful surprise to you. But there are few indeed who has ever sot down on this calm hite of filosify.
Folks expect too much. As many and many times as their hopes have proved to be uronious, they think, well now, if I only had that certain thing, or was in that certain place, I should be happy. But they hain’t. They find when they reach that certain gole, and have clim up and sot down on it, they’ll find that somebody has got onto the gole before ’em, and is there a settin’ on it. No matter how spry anybody may be, they’ll find that Sorrow can climb faster than they can, and can set down on goles quicker. Yes, they’ll find her there.
It hain’t no matter how easy a seat anybody sets down in in this world, they’ll find that they’ll have to hunch along, and let Disappointment set down with ’em, and Anxiety, and Weariness, and et cetery, et cetery.
Now, the scholar thinks if he can only stand up on that certain hite of scientific discovery, he will be happy, for he will know all that he cares about or wants to. But when he gets up there, he’ll see plain; for the higher he is riz above the mists of ignorance that floats around the lower lands, the clearer his vision; and he will see another peak right ahead of him, steeper and loftier and icier than the last, and so on ad infinitum, ad infinity.
Jest as it was with old Miss Peedick, our present Miss Peedick’s mother-in-law. She said (she told me with her own lips) that she knew she should be happy when she got a glass butter-dish. But she said she wasn’t; she told me with her own lips that jest as quick as she got that she wanted a sugar-bowl.
The lover thinks when he can once claim his sweetheart, call her his own, he will be blessed and content; but he hain’t. No matter how well he loves her, no matter how fond she is of him, and how blest they are in each other’s love, they must think, anyway, that the blessedness lacks one thing—permanence.
And though he calls her his own, yet he must feel, if he knows anything, that she is not his own; he must know that he has to dispute for the possession of her daily with one stronger than he is. And if he is tender-hearted and sensitive, the haunting fear must almost rack his soul; the horrible dread of seeing her slip away from him altogether; of sometime reaching out his arms, and finding that nowhere, nowhere can he find her; that in place of her warm, beating heart, whose every throb was full of love for him, is only the vacant spaces, the mysterious wave-beats of emptyness and void; in place of the tender sweetness of her voice, the everlasting silences of eternity.
And though he seek her forever and forever, he can never meet her; never, never, through all this earthly life, find her again. She, the nearest and the dearest, so lately a part of his own life, his own soul, gone from him so swiftly and so utterly, over such a trackless road, as to leave no trace of her footsteps that he may follow her. And though he throw himself upon the turf that covers her, and weary the calm heavens with his wild prayers and questionings, no answer comes; his words fall back again upon his heart, like dust upon dust.