Tales for Fifteen; Or, Imagination and HeartCooper, James Fenimore
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Tales for Fifteen; Or, Imagination and Heart
Cooper, James Fenimore
Girls -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Juvenile fiction
Many years have rolled by since the occurrence of
these events, and Miss Henley continues the same
in every thing but appearance. The freshness of her
beauty has given place to a look of intelligence.
and delicacy that seems gradually fitting her for her
last and most important change. The name of
George Morton is never heard to pass her lips. Mrs.
Delafield declares it to be a subject that she never
dares to approach, nor in her repeated refusals of
matrimonial offers has Charlotte ever been known
to allude to the desolation of her own heart. Her
father is dead; but to her mother Miss Henley has
in a great measure supplied his loss. With her
friends she is always cheerful, and apparently
happy, though the innocent gaiety of her childhood
is sensibly checked, and there are moments that
betray the existence of a grief that is only the more
durable, because it is less violent. In short, she
lives a pattern for her sex, unfettered by any
romantic and foolish pledges, discharging all the
natural duties of her years and station in an
exemplary manner, but unwilling to incur any new
ones, because she has but one heart, and that was
long since given with its purity, sincerity, and truth,
to him who is dead, and can never become the
property of another.
When Charlotte Henley dies, although she may not
have fulfilled one of the principal objects of her
being, by becoming a mother, her example will
survive her; and those who study her character and
integrity of feeling, will find enough to teach them
what properties are the most valuable in forming
that sacred character--while her own sex can learn
that, though in the case of Miss Henley, Providence
has denied the full exercise of her excellences, it
has at the same time rendered her a striking
instance of female dignity, by exhibiting to the
world the difference between affection and caprice,
and by shewing how much imagination is inferior to
Heart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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