"I am weary
Of the bewildering masquerade of life—
Where strangers walk as friends and friends as strangers,
Where whispers overhead betray false hearts;
And through the mazes of the crowd we chase
Some form of loveliness that smiles and beckons.
And cheats us with fair words, to leave us
A mockery and a jest, maddened, confused—
Not knowing friend from foe."
Every one who chooses to think at all has a thought in common on the question. In a biography of George Eliot, Hutton speaks of the manners of good society as "a kind of social costume or disguise which is in fact much more effective in concealing how much of depth ordinary characters have, and in restraining the expression of universal human instincts and feelings, than in hiding individualities the distinguishing inclinations, talents, bias and tastes of those who assume them. After all, what we care chiefly to know of men and women is not so much their special bias or tastes as the general depths and mass of the human nature that is in them—the breadth and power of their life, its comprehensiveness of grasp, its tenacity of instinct, its capacity for love and its need for trust."
I fear we will never find this among the leading men and women of our day. Great minds, like George Eliot's, when they wish to spend their genius in written books, will leave the lighted hall where refinement and bon-ton hold their nightly revels, and will descend to the huts of laborers and mechanics that form one distinct phase of English life. Like Charlotte Bronte, and some others, she seeks substance for her work in a true, open character, and that is rarely found among the educated classes, who learn from books to unlearn the lessons of nature.
We will now leave the "lollipop" darlings of material nature and pass on out of their dishevelled untidy rooms, leaving their painted faces and powdered heads to spin out the late morning among the blankets,—and seek gratification elsewhere. It is breakfast-time in Henry Rayne's house and the curling steam rises in graceful clouds from the hot tasty dishes that Mrs. Potts concocts with so much art. Honor, Nanette and Mr. Rayne are as usual the only participants of the wholesome things. Honor has just come in, fresh and rosy, all smiles as she steps up to Mr. Rayne's chair with a cheery good-morning. Then kneeling beside her guardian, and looking into his kindly face, she says shyly:
"I have something to tell you all, a surprise, and don't begin breakfast before you know it. If I were not a little orphan this morning, I would let it pass likely, but having only you and Nanette I must tell you, that you may not spare your kind wishes for me. To-day is my twentieth birthday!"
Mr. Rayne rose instantly to his feet and his eyes looked suspiciously moist as he kissed her tenderly on the brow. Then Honor turned to Nanette, but the poor woman was weeping mournfully in her blue handkerchief.
"I'll never forgive myself," she was saying, "to have forgotten your birthday above everything else, and your dear kind father when he gave you to me, a tiny thing in my arms, said, 'she will be a year the 24th February, don't ever forget the day,' and there it slipped from me this time and I never thought of it."
Honor flung her arms round the old creature's neck and drowned her reproaches in a volley of kisses.
"Don't mind that Nanny dear, say you wish me a good Christian life for the next year and you will have done your duty."
"God grant it you, my pretty child."