Oh, this love! what a strange power it exercises over the actions and the minds of the human race. What blindness it produces in our mental visions—how it changes defects into beauties, and magnifies ant-hillocks to mountains—what floods of blood and floods of ink it has shed in this world, and is doomed still to shed—how it makes virtue vice and vice virtue—how it lights the torch of discord, and yet throws around the soft and beaming light of harmony—how it makes wise men idiots, and converts brave men into cowards. In a word, how it agitates, distracts, soothes, but generally succeeds best in causing men to stultify themselves, at any rate for a given time.
The evening sped joyously on. Few envied, more rejoiced in the apparent future happiness, and, as it was termed, rare good fortune of the bride elect, whose cheeks maintained a constant rivalry with the rich roses of the fragrant boquet, as time and again some sly inuendo or more open remark reached her ear. Her mother received the more direct congratulations which were lavished upon her, with a quiet ease, in which she endeavored to veil the entire satisfaction which the prospective nuptials afforded her. Thus almost all were pleased. The mother, that her maternal cares were so soon to cease, and the gay pleasure-seekers were satisfied that a new and splendid establishment would in another season be opened to them, and if a feeling of any kind crossed the heart of Laura Bridgeman, that the prize which she once thought within her grasp had fallen to another, she turned to her new admirer, and in the contemplation of his superb mustache forgot, or tried to do so, the vision of the beautiful establishment which had once flitted through her imagination.
Shift we the scene. A few months have passed—the gay festivities of the winter are over—summer now usurps her sway, and nature, decked in her holiday attire, woos to contemplation and quiet enjoyment. The magic words which were to fix for life the destinies of the fair Maria had been spoken; the nuptial benediction pronounced, and in a beautiful villa, a few miles removed from the city, she was passing the first weeks of her bridal life, a loved and loving wife. There are few things in the world more touching than the love of a young, pure wife. The feelings which she entertained for the lover were constrained by a sense of propriety, but now they may pour themselves forth unchecked, in one o’ergushing flood of tenderness. Then she must await his approach, now she may go forth to meet him—then she must check her feelings as they rose, lest, forsooth, she might be thought forward, indelicate. Now she may take the initiative, and her soft hand may push back the locks from the brow on which she may implant a kiss of pure, almost unearthly love. Now she may watch to gratify those little tastes or fancies which then were passed unnoticed.
And never were the gushings of a warm, devoted heart poured forth more tenderly than they were by Maria Dawson for her husband. Nor on his part was the devotion less entire. The villa had been fitted up in every way to gratify her taste and fancy; and between the ride, or the drive, or the wandering about the grounds or in the garden, or music and reading and conversation, the summer passed all too rapidly away, and she almost sighed when the frosts of autumn notified her to prepare to take possession of her luxurious mansion in the city.
Marriage seems to be necessary, as a general rule, to the full development of the characters of women. Circumstances of course have a large share in it, but still it seems almost necessary to the full development of the perfect character of woman that she should be seen in her double position of wife and mother. Germs which have lain dormant are then brought into life; new faculties are called into play; the disposition is fully unfolded, and she exhibits herself frequently in a new and entirely different light from what she was regarded in the days of her girlhood. The timid girl becomes self-reliant; far from being dependent on the views and wishes of those to whom she has been accustomed to look for counsel and guidance, she finds herself called upon to act and decide for others now dependent on her—this gives a vigor to her mind, a firmness to her views, a decision to her actions, which, without some such cause for their development, they would in all probability never have attained.
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CHAPTER II.
“Things look blue.”
“Yes; never saw such unpromising appearances.”