Bildungsromans; City and town life -- Juvenile fiction; First loves -- Juvenile fiction; Religion -- Philosophy -- Juvenile fiction
nothing shut away from those who really make God's teaching a vital part
of themselves, but such men and women are no longer keen to selfishly
possess, and the good which they reach out for flows easily in for their
further distribution; in other words, they become what we were all
designed to be,--the outward manifestations of God's purpose, the living
breathing, blessed servants of His will.
How far this interpretation lay from poor Emily's comprehension the
reader knows.
She hurried along, her whole being bounding with joy over the simplicity
of the new lesson. It all seemed almost too story-book-like to be
happening in her stupid, commonplace life. She had spent so many long
hours in thinking over how things would never happen for her, that she
had entirely lost faith in their ever changing their ways and now, all
of a sudden, here was a complete reversal. Bonds were turned into wings;
that unattainable being, a live man, was not only at hand, but
available; she felt herself bidden not to doubt her power; she judged
herself advised to say frankly all the things that girls may never say.
This was the day of feminine freedom. To wish was to have. What one
wanted was the thing that was best for one. Emily--with all of Jane's
ideas swimming upside down in her head--felt superbly joyous and
confident. After all, being alive was a pretty good thing.
She turned a corner into the lane that led in a roundabout way to her
mother's back garden gate and walked swiftly. She was a fine, straight
girl with a lithe, springy walk. Perhaps Lorenzo Rath could not have
done better, from most standpoints, than to marry such an one. Many men
do worse. And there was old Mr. Cattermole's money, too. Some of these
views float in all human atmosphere to-day--float there securely,
because the world is a practical world, and an automobile is obvious,
while love and trust are absolutely unknown to many. "Ye cannot serve
God and Mammon too," and Mammon is very plain and practical, rolling on
rubber tires to the best restaurant. Emily could not have reduced her
roseate visions to any such sordid reasoning, but love to her meant
leaving town and having a good-looking and lively young man to take her
about. This was not really love, any more than the means by which she
expected to acquire it were the religion taught by Jane. We hear much of
the downfall of love and the downfall of religion in these days, but no
one even stops to realize that religion and love cannot possibly even
shake on their thrones. Their counterfeits may crumble and tumble, but
real truth can never fail. It was the counterfeits at which Emily, like
many another, grasped eagerly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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