When I read the Lady's letter printed some time since, I could not help
honoring the feeling which prompted her in writing it. But while I
respect the innocent incapacity of tender age and the limitations of the
comparatively uninstructed classes, it is quite out of the question to
act as if matters of common intelligence and universal interest were the
private property of a secret society, only to be meddled with by those
who know the grip and the password.
We must get over the habit of transferring the limitations of the nervous
temperament and of hectic constitutions to the great Source of all the
mighty forces of nature, animate and inanimate. We may confidently trust
that we have over us a Being thoroughly robust and grandly magnanimous,
in distinction from the Infinite Invalid bred in the studies of sickly
monomaniacs, who corresponds to a very common human type, but makes us
blush for him when we contrast him with a truly noble man, such as most
of us have had the privilege of knowing both in public and in private
life.
I was not a little pleased to find that the Lady, in spite of her letter,
sat through the young man's reading of portions of his poem with a good
deal of complacency. I think I can guess what is in her mind. She
believes, as so many women do, in that great remedy for discontent, and
doubts about humanity, and questionings of Providence, and all sorts of
youthful vagaries,--I mean the love-cure.
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