Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880.Various
Science
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880.
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
The spoiled child blossoms into perfection as a young lady. That is her
destiny, and to the proper fulfilment of it her family and friends stand
ready to devote themselves. It may be they are a trifle weary of her
incalculable temper, that her fascinations have palled a little upon
them, and that her mysterious inability to put up with the lot of
every-day mortals and bear disagreeables contentedly has worn out their
patience. They want her to marry, and, without wasting any empty wishing
upon a result so certain to come, she wants to marry herself. She is not
likely to have unattainable ideals: what she demands is a continuation
of her petted existence--a lifelong adorer to minister to her vanity and
desires, to find her always beautiful, always precious, and to smooth
away the rough places of life for her.
Nothing can be more bewitching than she is on her entrance into society.
Nothing could seem more desirable to an admirer than the possession of
the beautiful creature, who, with her alternations of sweetness and
imperiousness, tenderness, and cruelty, stimulates his ardor and appears
more like a spirit of fire and dew than a real woman. It seems to him
the most delightful thing in the world when she confesses that she never
likes what she has, but always craves what she has not--that she hates
everything useful and prosaic and likes everything which people declare
she ought to renounce. She is unreasonable, and he loves her
unreason--it bewitches him: she is obstinate, and he loves to feel the
strength of her tiny will, as if it were the manifestation of some
phenomenal force in her nature. Her scorn for common things, her
fastidiousness, her indifference to the little obligations which compel
less dainty and spirited creatures,--all act as chains and rivet his
attachment to her.
A few months later, when she has become his wife, and he is forced to
look at her tempers and her caprices, at her fastidiousness and
expensiveness, from an altered standpoint, her whole character seems to
be illuminated with new light. He no longer finds her charming when she
has an incurable restlessness and melancholy: her pretty negations of
the facts life present to her begin to seem to him the product of a mind
undisciplined by any actual knowledge that she is "a human creature,
subject to the same laws as other human creatures." He has hitherto
considered that her scorn for the common and usual indicated an
appreciation of the rarest and loftiest, but she seems to have no
appreciation for anything save enjoyment. She has no idea of the true
purposes of life: she likes everything dwarfed to suit her own stature.
It is not by compliance that her husband can give her more than
temporary pleasure. If she wants to see Europe, Europe will not satisfy
her. "Sense will support itself handsomely in most countries," says
Carlyle, "on eighteen pence a day, but for fantasy planets and solar
systems will not suffice."
L.W.
PRAYER-MEETING ELOQUENCE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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