Graham's Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 1, January 1852Various
General
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 1, January 1852
Various
Literature -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals
Dora was the brunette daughter of an established lawyer in our inland
village. I see her as distinctly before me while I write, as if she
_was_ before me. She was some sixteen years of age—had the usual amount
of education and mind—was unaffected—warm-hearted—black haired and
eyed—rosy-lipped—woman-rounded form. Charley fell in
love—astonishingly in love with her. I was amazed. He was of an
intellectual, though impulsive nature; and she had no conversational
power—nothing in the world but a lively, natural, voluptuous sort of
beauty, to recommend her to him.
Astonishingly in love. He made love to her by flowers, and was accepted
in the same way, before he went to college. He was absent a year. The
very night of his return he went to a party at her father’s, which
happened that night. He got a seat near her toward the close of the
evening—in a low voice made a passionate appeal to her, although
surrounded by company—went home—wrote her a still more passionate
letter. He was too impulsive—frightened her—had his letter returned,
and came to me, and as we sat on a log in the moonlight, told me the
whole. He was about twenty years old then, and the affection had
quickened, expanded, strengthened his heart even more than that
chest-exercise had his lungs. There was a depth, and breadth, and force
about his affection for Dora which stirred up his whole being. It rolled
through him like a sea, deepening and washing out the sands of his heart
till that heart became deep and broad. For months that love lived and
worked in him; at last it died out like the steam from the engine of a
steamship.
When I see his hearty affection for his friends—his warm sympathy for
all among whom he mingles, which gives him his wonderful popularity, I
can trace it all back to that development of his heart under the hot
summer of that love of his for Dora Anson. I do believe that the genial
smile, the cordial manner, the melting persuasiveness of his tones, all
owe their development, if not their origin, to that culture of his
heart. The sun may have set which shone on his soul, but it left that
soul all ruddy and ripe from its warm rays. If Dora had jilted him, it
would have left him a soured man. If she had married him, it would have
left him a satiated man. In either case it would have injured him. But
she did not jilt him—did not marry him; he outgrew so sensuous a love
as that, and somehow or other they drifted apart.
I believe, however—and my wife, to whom I have just mentioned it,
agrees with me—that his connection with Mr. Nelson had very much to do
in making him the man he is.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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