Our host entertaineth us with
no loves of Strephon and Phillis, nor leads beneath shady arcades to a
vine-clad cottage, wherein is love and rich cream and homemade butter.
The three sisters, the dread Moirae, in their darksome cavern, spinning
the golden thread of destiny, reel from their distaff no bright soft
film of wedded happiness. The polished metal, many times refined, would
never show half its qualities were it not subject to unwonted tests. We
suffer according to our powers of endurance, and are tried according to
our gifts. Else why are the powers and the gifts given to us by a
Providence which never wasteth, nor doeth in freakish negligence. The
yoke of love is not weighty enough to bow sufficiently the curving neck.
With a love which cannot be satisfied comes the mighty temptation to sin
and disgrace. Even into this black chasm our beauties look with steady
eye, and meditate the step. It is a part of their self-sustaining nature
and towering spirit to wreak their own will. Once let them give their
love to man, and it is the passion of their lives. Of gossip and the
wagging tongue of scandal, and of that vague, shadowy phantom,
reputation, they reck not. These unsubstantial fleeting barriers are
dissipated in an instant before the mighty breath of their omnipotent
passion. Their love is the great fact of their lives. Why should it
yield to less powerful sentiments, to inferior satisfactions. If the
laws and sentiments of the commonalty of mankind oppose, why gain the
lesser, palling pleasure of a fair character among our fellows whom we
care not for, and lose the one joy of existence? Such, in all three of
these novels, to a greater or less extent, is the theory of action of
the female characters.
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