An impatient answer was on her tongue; but she checked its utterance, and spoke from a better spirit.
Not even as a lover had Hartley shown more considerate tenderness than marked all his conduct toward Irene this evening. His mind was in a clear-seeing region, and his feelings tranquil. The sphere of her antagonism failed to reach him. He did not understand the meaning of her opposition to his wishes, and so pride, self-love and self-will remained quiescent. How peacefully unconscious was he of the fact that his feet were standing over a mine, and that a single spark of passion struck from him would have sprung that mine in fierce explosion! He read to Irene from a volume which he knew to be a favorite; talked to her about Ivy Cliff and her father; suggested an early visit to the pleasant old river home; and thus charmed away the evil spirits which had found a lodgment in her bosom.
But how different it might have been!
CHAPTER XIII.
THE REFORMERS.
SOCIAL theories that favor our passions, peculiarities, defects of character or weaknesses are readily adopted, and, with minds of an ardent temper, often become hobbies. There is a class of persons who are never content with riding their own hobbies; they must have others mount with them. All the world is going wrong because it moves past them—trotting, pacing or galloping, as it may be, upon its own hobbies. And so they try to arrest this movement or that, or, gathering a company of aimless people, they galvanize them with their own wild purposes, and start them forth into the world on Quixotic errands.
These persons are never content to wait for the slow changes that are included in all orderly developments. Because a thing seems right to them in the abstract, it must be done now. They cannot wait for old things to pass away, as preliminary to the inauguration of what is new.
"If I had the power," we have heard one of this class say, "evil and sorrow and pain should cease from the earth in a moment." And in saying this the thought was not concealed that God had this power, but failed to exercise it. With them no questions of expediency, no regard for time-endowed prejudices, no weak spirit of waiting, no looking for the fullness of time could have any influence. What they willed to be done must be done now; and they were impatient and angry at every one who stood in their way or opposed their theories.
In most cases, you will find these "reformers," as they generally style themselves, governed more by a love of ruling and influencing others than by a spirit of humanity. They are one-sided people, and can only see one side of a subject in clear light. It matters little to them what is destroyed, so that they can build. If they possess the gift of language, either as writers or talkers—have wit, brilliancy and sarcasm—they make disciples of the less gifted, and influence larger or smaller circles of men and women. Flattered by this homage to their talents, they grow more ardent in the cause which they have espoused, and see, or affect to see, little else of any importance in the world. They do some good and much harm. Good, in drawing general attention to social evils that need reforming—evil, in causing weak people to forget common duties in their ambition to set the world right.