One of the strangest stories of the kind is that of a friend of mine, which I propose to tell. From a mere boy the name of Irene had for him a prophetic beauty. Whenever he saw a beautiful face he felt certain that the only name worthy of it must be—Irene. He said to himself that he would marry no woman whose name was not Irene, and, that if a little girl-child should come to them she must be called Irene. It will not in any way spoil my story to say that he is long since happily married to a wife whose name is—not Irene, and that his offspring consisting only of three boys, he has had no opportunity to make use of his name beautiful. But this is merely a parenthesis. Long before life brought him to these conclusions, he dreamed of, and even deliberately sought, his Irene. Strange as it may sound nowadays, among all his researches he never came upon a girl whose name was Irene; nor did any gentle accident ever bring a single Irene into his orbit. Every other woman’s name in the appendix to the dictionary he seemed, at one time or another, to encounter—but Irene never!
You can hardly wonder that this negation of Irenes in his experience tended to deepen his original superstition; and make him more certain than ever that life was thus sifting out for him the other names one by one, till at last no other name was left but—Irene.
Meanwhile, he carried ever in his heart a picture of what the girl answering to the name of Irene would be like. The name to him suggested a combination of tall lithe grace, exquisite refinement, blonde hair in coiled masses of gold, blue eyes domestically kind, a gift for arranging flowers—and a hundred other ideal characteristics which may best be symbolised by an Easter lily.
An Easter lily—with a light upon it seeming to fall from some hidden window in heaven: in fact a creature exquisitely blended of celestial purity and skillful house-wifery.
How much more the name Irene meant to him I need not say—because I cannot; for the name of every man’s love is as we have quoted before, as that of Dante’s Beatrice. She is called Jane or Elizabeth or Kate—or Irene—by those who know not wherefore. Only one man in the world knows why Jane is called Jane, only one man knows why Irene is called Irene.
The least superstitious must admit it strange that, with all his eager listening for his predestined name, even, one might say, with all his experimental pursuit of it, he never met it till at last.... Well, I am anticipating. Being a man of leisure, he visited many countries, seeking his name; there was not a country of Europe in which he had not sought it, and even in Asia he had pursued it like a rare butterfly.
Common materialistic friends of his maintained that it was quite a common name. “If it be so common,” he said, “how is it that in all my wanderings I have never yet met a woman with that name?”
At last a friend suggested that he had not tried America!
“America!” he exclaimed, “America! wonderful country I know—but is it likely that in so new a world, a world so busy making its own beautiful names, that I shall find this rare old name of an ancient world? Surely I might as well expect to dig up a Roman coin in some back garden in Omaha!”
“Never mind!” said the friend of my friend. “Try America.”