The father of Elsie Venner knew his duties and his difficulties too
well to trouble himself about anything others might think or say. So
soon as he found that he could not govern his child, he gave his life
up to following her and protecting her as far as he could. It was a
stern and terrible trial for a man of acute sensibility, and not
without force of intellect and will, and the manly ambition for
himself and his family-name which belonged to his endowments and his
position. Passive endurance is the hardest trial to persons of such a
nature.
What made it still more a long martyrdom was the necessity for bearing
his cross in utter loneliness. He could not tell his griefs. He could
not talk of them even with those who knew their secret spring. His
minister had the unsympathetic nature which is common in the meaner
sort of devotees,--persons who mistake spiritual selfishness for
sanctity, and grab at the infinite prize of the great Future and
Elsewhere with the egotism they excommunicate in its hardly more
odious forms of avarice and self-indulgence. How could he speak with
the old physician and the old black woman about a sorrow and a terror
which but to name was to strike dumb the lips of Consolation?
In the dawn of his manhood he had found that second consciousness for
which young men and young women go about looking into each other's
faces, with their sweet, artless aim playing in every feature, and
making them beautiful to each other, as to all of us.
Pages:
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265