True, we read in the daily press quite often of a suicide resulting from a rebuff or a broken promise, but we seem to forget, unless perchance it touches our own home circle, and then the mother’s heart breaks for her tenderly reared son or daughter.
I believe the history of the world shows that men love deeply, and with an affection as lasting as that of women. Who can ever forget the undying affection of Sir Walter Scott for fair young Margaret? He met and loved her at nineteen, and for six years worked at his law drudgery, looking forward to a happy union with her. He said to a friend, “It was a proud night with me when I first found that a pretty young woman could think it worth while to sit and talk with me hour after hour, in a corner of the ball-room, while all the world were capering in our view.”
As his first year’s practice brought him but $125, his second $290, and his third $420, the young lady counselled waiting for better days.
Two years later Margaret was married to the eldest son of a baronet, afterward Sir William Forbes, and died thirteen years after her marriage. The cause of her change of mind is not known.
At first Scott felt that he had been wronged, but this feeling against Margaret soon subsided, and was replaced by an unchangeable affection. She became the heroine of “Rokeby” and of “Woodstock.”
Thirty years later, when Europe and America were filled with praise of Scott, he met the mother of his early love. He writes in his diary, after the meeting:
“I went to make a visit, and fairly softened myself like an old fool, with recalling old stories till I was fit for nothing but shedding tears and repeating verses for the whole night. This is sad work. The very grave gives up its dead, and time rolls back thirty years to add to my perplexities. I don’t care. I begin to grow case-hardened, and, like a stag turning at bay, my naturally good temper grows fierce and dangerous. Yet what a romance to tell, and told, I fear, it will one day be. And then my three years of dreaming and my two years of awakening will be chronicled, doubtless. But the dead will feel no pain.”
When he visited St. Andrews he recalled how thirty-four years before he had carved her name in runic characters on the turf beside the castle gate, and asked himself why, at fifty-six, that name “should still agitate his heart.”
I never read of stern and fearless Andrew Jackson without recalling his devoted love for Rachel Robards. With the world he was thought to be domineering and harsh, and was often profane; but with her he was patient, gentle, and deferential. Having no children, they adopted her nephew when but a few days old. When Jackson conquered at New Orleans and young ladies strewed flowers along the path of the hero, to have the commendation of Rachel was more than that of all the world beside. When he was elected President she said, “Well, for Mr. Jackson’s sake I am glad; for my own part I never wished it.”
Earnest in her religious convictions, he built a small brick church for her in the Hermitage grounds, that she might gather her neighbors and servants about her for worship. Mrs. Jackson died suddenly just after her husband’s election to the presidency. He could not believe that she was dead. When they brought a table to lay her body upon, “Spread four blankets upon it. If she does come to, she will lie so hard upon the table.”