It would task language to say how placidly
you behold all this. In a place where you have taken some
root you are provoked out of your indifference; you have a
hand in the game--your friends are fighting with the army.
But in a strange town, not small enough to grow too soon
familiar, nor so large as to have laid itself out for
travellers, you stand so far apart from the business that
you positively forget it would be possible to go nearer;
you have so little human interest around you that you do
not remember yourself to be a man.
*
Pity was her weapon and her weakness. To accept the loved
one's faults, although it has an air of freedom, is to kiss
the chain.
*
Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts
light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness. They
have been so tried among the inconstant squalls and
currents, so often sailed for islands in the air or lain
becalmed with burning heart, that they will risk all for
solid ground below their feet. Desperate pilots, they run
their sea-sick, weary bark upon the dashing rocks. It
seems as if marriage were the royal road through life, and
realised, on the instant, what we have all dreamed on
summer Sundays when the bells ring, or at night when we
cannot sleep for the desire of living. They think it will
sober and change them. Like those who join a brotherhood,
they fancy it needs but an act to be out of the coil and
clamour for ever.
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