He has inherited his taste and talent in this particular, as in many others from her. Their voices chord in song delightfully—would that I could join them!—but, for the gift of hearing, and loving music, God be thanked! it brings with it a pure and sweet satisfaction, and where the expression of it has been denied, the reception of it is surely the next most joyous thing!

“I think no human heart ever conceived a love that equalled, or in any way resembled, the love I have for Weare. Can I analyze this love? It is not like that my friend who married yesterday has for her husband, nor anything like it, I am sure. I am far from adoring him blindly. Yet his countenance shone before me, when I first beheld it, like the face of an angel; and it has never lost that angelic, glorious look to me. His reverential regard for his mother is the most complete offering of filial affection I have ever beheld. It is the deepest, sincerest, purest. He is himself beautiful, and pure, and good, and he is strong, too, in a way. He gives far nobler proof of manliness than my friend can possibly find in the man she so passionately adores. Yet could I never worship Weare. I can conceive of, though I have never seen such, a less perfect, though really stronger,

grander manhood. I can conceive, too, of a love more absorbing, and more satisfactory, perhaps, but not of a love more beautiful, than I have for him. I have not given him the affection called fraternal—or not that merely: I never have found myself voiceless, will-less, trembling before him, as though I had in him a master— as it is said women often find to be true of the men they love. I believe, indeed, that when we were younger, I could understand him much more readily and intimately than now; for since my own knowledge of self, and this new ambition has roused to life within me, and my nature has begun to unfold itself from the very Heart of Life, I have found myself at times looking with wonder on him. It almost seems as though I had passed beyond him—as though I were standing in a new light—as though, in looking backward and forward, I were looking through a new medium, and not with my old understanding. An impeding something—and what, what is it?—has grown up within me. I do not see, as once, with his eyes. There seems to be a necessity laid upon us, compelling us to differ. We certainly are not one.

“At my dear mother-friend’s suggestion, which she gave, I know, because she perceived my earnest inclination, I have begun to read more

38

AMBITION VS. LOVE.

closely, to study more intensely, and there has been, in consequence, an entire change in the current of my thoughts. Is it because they rest less often on him, the real, and turn more frequently to the imaginative and the abstract? Are my thoughts, then, becoming alienated from him? Nay! Gould ambition destroy love? that certainly would not be possible. But is it, can it be true, that I am turning, or that it would be possible for me to turn with pride, or with unwomanly self-reliance, from him? That can not be. Self-reliance, yes, self-reliance, is a very grand thing; but the grandeur of all its possibilities would be lost to me, if it permitted me to live in peace away from him for ever.

"How shall I ever, in the least degree, repay my mother for her kindness of the past? Or, how be sufficiently grateful for this new-suggested force in, and inclination for, study? It seems as though I were indebted for all to her. Yet—did she give me this mind to cultivate? N0! she has not given me the power, but the opportunity. She might have kept me in ignorance of the great world of hidden knowledge, and still have done her duty by me in the way that a thousand others, in similar circumstances, would and do perform it. But that has not been her way. She has seen in me one of God’s creatures, or a

POWER VS. OPPORTUNITY,

39

creature endowed with intellect as well as life, with capacity for a higher range of enjoyment, that has little to do with the mere animal nature. She has felt bound, apparently, the blessed, glorious woman! to heap blessing on blessing; and no one was ever bound by a stronger tie of love to another than I to her. Even as her son is, she has permitted me to be a student and a thinker—a busy student, a close and energetic thinker.

“And studying so much together, we have learned in the most favorable way. We have done much toward unfolding each other’s mind. Thus we have been united in a really closer and more intimate bond of fellowship than we could otherwise have been. We have gone over a vast field of thought together; and I can not help perceiving, neither can he, how diverse our natures are proved by this process. We have not seen truth with the same degree of vision, nor always in the same light. Our ambition, I am convinced, became first aroused in these multitudinous discussions—my ambition rather. I am not certain that he has what is called ambition; but there has certainly been with both of us an earnest and an honest desire to improve ourselves. An unbounded desire to learn all things has marked my way as a student thus far, and so it

40

THE STRANGE WORD.

has marked his. The attainments we made, of themselves, served to excite us mutually.

"We have had extraordinary discussions; and some of them of such a nature that they must with us be endless. Our restlessness has done for each other that which time usually accomplishes for the student. We have developed each other’s intellects, have forced each other on to conclusions we might otherwise have been years in reaching; and now, here I have fallen on this word, this strange word, LOVE ...!

“Baffled and awed by its mystic sound, my heart, soul, and mind, repeat it, hour by hour. I can not make out the meaning of the word when it points toward him. Why have I not, or rather, why can I not, why should I not, go to him, and argue, as in other matters, about its nature? Why is it, that we have never once by chance, touched on this word love, LOVE?"