I can't say how many walks she and I had taken together before this one. I found the effect of going out every morning was decidedly favorable on her health. Two pleasing dimples, the places for which were just marked when she came, played, shadowy, in her freshening cheeks when she smiled and nodded good-morning to me from the school-house steps.
I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. At any rate, if I should try to report all that I said during the first half-dozen walks we took together, I fear that I might receive a gentle hint from my friends the publishers, that a separate volume, at my own risk and expense, would be the proper method of bringing them before the public.
---I would have a woman as true as Death. At the first real lie which works from the heart outward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into a better world, where she can have an angel for a governess, and feed on strange fruits which will make her all over again, even to her bones and marrow, whether gifted with the accident of beauty or not, she should have been moulded in the rose-red clay of Love, before the breath of life made a moving mortal of her. Love-capacity is a congenital endowment; and I think, after a while, one gets to know the warm-hued natures it belongs to from the pretty pipe-clay counterfeits of them.
---Proud she may be, in the sense of respecting herself; but pride, in the sense of contemning others less gifted than herself, deserves the two lowest circles of a vulgar woman's Inferno, where the punishments are Smallpox and Bankruptcy. She who nips off the end of a brittle courtesy, as one breaks the tips of an icicle, to bestow upon those whom she ought cordially and kindly to recognize, proclaims the fact that she was not merely of low blood, but of bad blood. Consciousness of unquestioned position makes people gracious in proper measure to all; but if a woman put on airs with her real equals, she has something about herself, or her family she is ashamed of, or ought to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged people, who know family histories, generally see through it. An official of standing was rude to me once. Oh, that is the maternal grandfather, said a wise old friend to me, he was a boor. Better too few words from the woman we love, than too many; while she is silent, Nature is working for her; while she talks, she is working for herself. Love is sparingly soluble in the words of men; therefore they speak much of it; but one syllable of woman's speech can dissolve more of it than a man's heart can hold.
Whether I said any or all of these things to the schoolmistress, or not, whether I stole them out of Lord Bacon, whether I cribbed them from Balzac, whether I dipped them from the ocean of Tupperian wisdom, or whether I have just found them in my head, laid there by that solemn fowl, Experience (who, according to my observation, cackles oftener than she drops real live eggs), I cannot say. Wise men have said more foolish things, and foolish men, I don't doubt, have said as wise things. Anyhow, the schoolmistress and I had pleasant walks and long talks, all of which I do not feel bound to report. . . .
Books we talked about, and education. It was her duty to know something of these, and of course she did. Perhaps I was somewhat more learned than she, but I found that the difference between her reading and mine was like that of a man's and a woman's dusting a library. The man flaps about with a bunch of feathers; the woman goes to work softly with a cloth. She does not raise half the dust, nor fill her own eyes and mouth with it, but she goes into all the corners and attends to the leaves as much as to the covers. Books are the negative pictures of thought, and the more sensitive the mind that receives their images, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced. A woman (of the right kind), reading after a man, follows him as Ruth followed the reapers of Boaz, and her gleanings are often the finest of the wheat.
But it was in talking of Life that we came most nearly together. I thought I knew something about that, that I could speak or write about it somewhat to the purpose.
To take up this fluid earthly being of ours as a sponge sucks up water, to be steeped and soaked in its realities as a hide fills its pore lying seven years in a tan-pit, to have winnowed every wave of it as a mill-wheel works up the stream that runs through the flume upon its float-boards, to have curled up in the keenest spasms and flattened out in the laxest languors of this breathing sickness, which keeps certain parcels of matter uneasy for three or four score years, to have fought all the devils and clasped all the angels of its delirium, and then, just at the point when the white hot passions have cooled down to a cherry-red, plunge our experience into the ice-cold stream of some human language or other, one might think would end in a rhapsody with something of spring and temper in it. All this I thought my power and province.
The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a while one meets with a single soul greater than all the living pageant which passes before it. As the pale astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and thin fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a balance, so there are meek, slight women who have weighed all which this planetary life can offer, and hold it like a bauble in the palm of their slender hands. This was one of them. Fortune had left her, sorrow had baptized her; the routine of labor and the loneliness of almost friendless city-life were before her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil face, gradually regaining a cheerfulness which was often sprightly, as she became interested in the various matters we talked about and places we visited, I saw that eye and lip and every shifting lineament were made for love, unconscious of their sweet office as yet, and meeting the cold aspect of Duty with the natural graces which were meant for the reward of nothing less than the Great Passion.
I never addressed one word of love to the schoolmistress in the course of these pleasant walks. It seemed to me we talked of everything but love on that particular morning. There was, perhaps, a little more timidity and hesitancy on my part than I have commonly shown among our people at the boarding-house. In fact, I considered myself the master at the breakfast-table; but, somehow, I could not command myself just then so well as usual. The truth is, I had secured a passage to Liverpool in the steamer which was to leave at noon, with the condition, however, of being released in case circumstances occurred to detain me. The schoolmistress knew nothing of all this, of course, as yet.
It was on the Common that we were walking. The mall, or boulevard of our Common, you know, has various branches leading from it in different directions. One of these runs down from opposite Joy Street southward across the whole length of the Common to Boylston Street. We called it the long path, and were fond of it. I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably robust habit) as we came opposite the head of this path on that morning. I think I tried to speak twice without making myself distinctly audible. At last I got out the question, Will you take the long path with me? Certainly, said the schoolmistress, with much pleasure. Think, I said before you answer; if you take the long path with me now, I shall interpret it that we are to part no more! The schoolmistress stepped back with a sudden movement, as if an arrow had struck her. One of the long granite blocks used as seats was hard by, the one you may still see close by the Gingko-tree. Pray, sit down, I said. No, no, she answered, softly, I will walk the long path with you!
The old gentleman who sits opposite met us walking, arm in arm, about the middle of the long path, and said, very charmingly,-"Good morning, my dears!"
(From the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table)
I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. At any rate, if I should try to report all that I said during the first half-dozen walks we took together, I fear that I might receive a gentle hint from my friends the publishers, that a separate volume, at my own risk and expense, would be the proper method of bringing them before the public.
---I would have a woman as true as Death. At the first real lie which works from the heart outward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into a better world, where she can have an angel for a governess, and feed on strange fruits which will make her all over again, even to her bones and marrow, whether gifted with the accident of beauty or not, she should have been moulded in the rose-red clay of Love, before the breath of life made a moving mortal of her. Love-capacity is a congenital endowment; and I think, after a while, one gets to know the warm-hued natures it belongs to from the pretty pipe-clay counterfeits of them.
---Proud she may be, in the sense of respecting herself; but pride, in the sense of contemning others less gifted than herself, deserves the two lowest circles of a vulgar woman's Inferno, where the punishments are Smallpox and Bankruptcy. She who nips off the end of a brittle courtesy, as one breaks the tips of an icicle, to bestow upon those whom she ought cordially and kindly to recognize, proclaims the fact that she was not merely of low blood, but of bad blood. Consciousness of unquestioned position makes people gracious in proper measure to all; but if a woman put on airs with her real equals, she has something about herself, or her family she is ashamed of, or ought to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged people, who know family histories, generally see through it. An official of standing was rude to me once. Oh, that is the maternal grandfather, said a wise old friend to me, he was a boor. Better too few words from the woman we love, than too many; while she is silent, Nature is working for her; while she talks, she is working for herself. Love is sparingly soluble in the words of men; therefore they speak much of it; but one syllable of woman's speech can dissolve more of it than a man's heart can hold.
Whether I said any or all of these things to the schoolmistress, or not, whether I stole them out of Lord Bacon, whether I cribbed them from Balzac, whether I dipped them from the ocean of Tupperian wisdom, or whether I have just found them in my head, laid there by that solemn fowl, Experience (who, according to my observation, cackles oftener than she drops real live eggs), I cannot say. Wise men have said more foolish things, and foolish men, I don't doubt, have said as wise things. Anyhow, the schoolmistress and I had pleasant walks and long talks, all of which I do not feel bound to report. . . .
Books we talked about, and education. It was her duty to know something of these, and of course she did. Perhaps I was somewhat more learned than she, but I found that the difference between her reading and mine was like that of a man's and a woman's dusting a library. The man flaps about with a bunch of feathers; the woman goes to work softly with a cloth. She does not raise half the dust, nor fill her own eyes and mouth with it, but she goes into all the corners and attends to the leaves as much as to the covers. Books are the negative pictures of thought, and the more sensitive the mind that receives their images, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced. A woman (of the right kind), reading after a man, follows him as Ruth followed the reapers of Boaz, and her gleanings are often the finest of the wheat.
But it was in talking of Life that we came most nearly together. I thought I knew something about that, that I could speak or write about it somewhat to the purpose.
To take up this fluid earthly being of ours as a sponge sucks up water, to be steeped and soaked in its realities as a hide fills its pore lying seven years in a tan-pit, to have winnowed every wave of it as a mill-wheel works up the stream that runs through the flume upon its float-boards, to have curled up in the keenest spasms and flattened out in the laxest languors of this breathing sickness, which keeps certain parcels of matter uneasy for three or four score years, to have fought all the devils and clasped all the angels of its delirium, and then, just at the point when the white hot passions have cooled down to a cherry-red, plunge our experience into the ice-cold stream of some human language or other, one might think would end in a rhapsody with something of spring and temper in it. All this I thought my power and province.
The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a while one meets with a single soul greater than all the living pageant which passes before it. As the pale astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and thin fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a balance, so there are meek, slight women who have weighed all which this planetary life can offer, and hold it like a bauble in the palm of their slender hands. This was one of them. Fortune had left her, sorrow had baptized her; the routine of labor and the loneliness of almost friendless city-life were before her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil face, gradually regaining a cheerfulness which was often sprightly, as she became interested in the various matters we talked about and places we visited, I saw that eye and lip and every shifting lineament were made for love, unconscious of their sweet office as yet, and meeting the cold aspect of Duty with the natural graces which were meant for the reward of nothing less than the Great Passion.
I never addressed one word of love to the schoolmistress in the course of these pleasant walks. It seemed to me we talked of everything but love on that particular morning. There was, perhaps, a little more timidity and hesitancy on my part than I have commonly shown among our people at the boarding-house. In fact, I considered myself the master at the breakfast-table; but, somehow, I could not command myself just then so well as usual. The truth is, I had secured a passage to Liverpool in the steamer which was to leave at noon, with the condition, however, of being released in case circumstances occurred to detain me. The schoolmistress knew nothing of all this, of course, as yet.
It was on the Common that we were walking. The mall, or boulevard of our Common, you know, has various branches leading from it in different directions. One of these runs down from opposite Joy Street southward across the whole length of the Common to Boylston Street. We called it the long path, and were fond of it. I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably robust habit) as we came opposite the head of this path on that morning. I think I tried to speak twice without making myself distinctly audible. At last I got out the question, Will you take the long path with me? Certainly, said the schoolmistress, with much pleasure. Think, I said before you answer; if you take the long path with me now, I shall interpret it that we are to part no more! The schoolmistress stepped back with a sudden movement, as if an arrow had struck her. One of the long granite blocks used as seats was hard by, the one you may still see close by the Gingko-tree. Pray, sit down, I said. No, no, she answered, softly, I will walk the long path with you!
The old gentleman who sits opposite met us walking, arm in arm, about the middle of the long path, and said, very charmingly,-"Good morning, my dears!"
(From the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table)
Oliver Wendell Holmes
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