—Oh, how much it would take of trial, to crush the strength out of the heart now!
You are looking, with an eye full of hopeful expression, out upon the world’s highway. Crowded as it is, you have no fears of there being no room for you. You are so full of self-reliance—to give it no harsher name—that you even think the world will need your services—that it can ill do without them.
—Immature fellow! You might die; and a thousand more of equal promise and hope, might die along with you; and yet your loss would never be felt by the world. There would be enough left to perform all you had in your heart resolved upon.
You think, as you pass on, and as the days begin to lag and grow more tedious, that you will need the sympathy of another, from which, as from a never-failing fountain, to feed your own. You sometimes, even now, have moments of weariness and exhaustion, although they are as fleeting as fleecy clouds; yet they suggest to you fears of weariness and exhaustion, in the battle of coming years—and you secretly resolve not to be taken unawares.
At the first, this is but a thought of expediency; or of something that looks as much to safety as to any thing else. Then it slowly and gradually takes form. Then it thrusts its bursting grain-head above the heart-soil; and it instantly becomes an existence—a living reality. Then it shoots and germinates rapidly; drawing strongly on the life for sustenance; and sucking up almost all the invigorating juices from the heart.
You are thrown off your guard by the most trifling cause—nay, by no causes at all. Your nerves become shattered, unstrung, and sadly out of tune. Your head swims with the slightest pretexts. Your eyes grow wild, and at times glassy, even to ghastliness. Your heart feels never so sad and so lonely; never so deeply in want of another’s sympathy.
You have brothers?—No—no.
Sisters?—Ah—but even that will not do. Something nearer even than brother or sister, is what this heart-hunger craves now.
And all this time—silly fellow!—your eyes are tightly shut. You see nothing. You are willing to grope your way thus in the dark. Yet if you would but exercise a little of the reason you have laid by as of no present service, in what a straight-forward way would you go at your purpose!
The sight of a pale ribbon, flirting in the wind, throws you in a panic. The faintest smile from ruby lips, makes you fairly go mad. The sudden glance of a twinkling dark eye, only intoxicates you. How the hot blood rushes up to the eyes—and then slowly ebbs back upon the heart again!