Harriet Stowe - My Wife and I. Harry Henderson's History

Now the fact is, my mother might have saved herself her anxiety. Miss Ellery was perfectly willing to be my guiding star, my inspiration, my light, within reasonable limits, while making a visit in an otherwise rather dull town. She liked to be read to; she liked the consciousness of being incessantly admired, and would have made a very good image for some Church of the Perpetual Adoration; but after all, Miss Ellery was as incapable of forming an ineligible engagement of marriage with a poor college student, as the most sensible and collected of Walter Scott's heroines.

Looking back upon this part of my life, I can pity myself with as quiet and dispassionate a perception as if I were a third person. The illusion, for the time being, was so real, the feelings called up by it so honest and earnest and sacred; and supposing there had been a tangible reality to it – what might not such a woman have made of me, or of any man?

And suppose it pleased God to send forth an army of such women, as I thought her to be, among the lost children of men, women armed not only with the outward and visible sign of beauty, but with that inward and spiritual grace which beauty typifies, one might believe that the golden age would soon be back upon us.

Miss Ellery adroitly avoided all occasions of any critical commitment on my part or on her's. Women soon learn a vast amount of tact and diplomacy on that subject: but she gave me to understand that I was peculiarly congenial to her, and encouraged the outflow of all my romance with the gentlest atmosphere of indulgence. To be sure, I was not the only one whom she thus held with bonds of golden gossamer. She reigned a queen, and had a court at her feet, and the deacon's square, white, prosaic house bristled with the activity and vivacity of Miss Ellery's adorers.

Among them. Will Marshall was especially distinguished. Will was a senior, immensely rich, good-natured as the longest summer day is long, but so idle and utterly incapable of culture that only the liberality of the extra sum paid to a professor who held him in guardianship secured his stay in college classes. It has been my observation that money will secure a great variety of things in this lower world, and among others, will carry a very stupid fellow through college.

Will was a sort of favorite with us all. His good nature was without limit, and he scattered his money with a free hand, and so we generally spoke of him as "Poor Will;" a nice fellow, if he couldn't write a decent note, and blundered through all his recitations.

Will laid himself, so to speak, at Miss Ellery's feet. He was flush of bouquets and confectionery. He caused the village livery stable to import forthwith a turnout worthy to be a car of Venus herself.

I saw all this, but it never entered my head that Miss Ellery would cast a moment's thought other than those of the gentlest womanly compassion on poor Will Marshall.

The time of the summer vacation drew nigh, and with the close of the term closed the vision of my idyllic experiences with Miss Ellery. To the last, she was so gentle and easy to be entreated. Her lovely eyes cast on me such bright encouraging glances; and she accorded me a farewell moonlight ramble, wherein I walked not on earth, but in the seventh heaven of felicity. Of course there was nothing definite. I told her that I was a poor soldier of fortune, but might I only wear her name in my bosom, it would be a sacred talisman, and give strength to my arm, and she sighed, and looked lovely, and she did not say me nay.

I went home to my mother, and wearied that much-enduring woman, all through the vacation, with the hot and cold fits of my fever. Blessed souls! these mothers, who bear and watch and rear the restless creatures, who by and by come to them with the very heart gone out of them for love of another woman – some idle girl, perhaps, that never knew what it was either to love or care, and that plays with hearts as kittens do with pinballs!

I wrote to Miss Ellery letters long, overflowing, and got back little neatly-worded notes on scented paper, speaking in a general way of the charms of friendship.

But the first news that met me on my return to college broke my soap-bubble at one touch.

"Hurrah! Hal – who do you guess is engaged?"

"I don't know."

"Guess."

"I couldn't guess."

"Why, Miss Ellery – engaged to Bill Marshall."

Alnaschar, in the Arabian tale, could not have been more astonished when his basket of glass-ware fell in glittering nothingness. I stood stupid with astonishment.

" She engaged to Will Marshall! – why, boys, he's a fool!"

"But you see he's rich. Oh, it's all arranged; they are to be married next month, and go to Europe for their wedding tour," said Jim Fellows.

And so my idol fell from its pedestal – and my first dream dissolved.

Miss Ellery was sufficiently mistress of herself, and of circumstances, to close our little pastoral in the most graceful and amiable manner possible.

I received a beautiful rose-scented note from her, saying that the very kind interest in her happiness which I always had expressed, and the extremely pleasant friendship which had arisen between us, made her desirous of informing me, &c., &c. Thereupon followed the announcement of her engagement, terminating with the assurance that whatever new ties she might form, or scenes she might visit, she should ever cherish a pleasant remembrance of the delightful hours spent beneath the elms of X., and indulge the kindest wishes for my future success and happiness.

I, of course, crushed the rose-scented missive in my hand, in the most approved tragical style, and felt that I had been deceived, betrayed and undone. I passed forthwith into that cynical state of young manhood, in which one learns for the first time what a mere unimportant drop his own most terribly earnest and excited feelings may be in the tumbling ocean of the existing world.

This is a valley of humiliation, which lies, in very many cases, just a day's walk beyond the palace, beautiful with all its fascinations.

The moral geographer, John Bunyan, to whom we are indebted for much wholesome information, tells us that while it is extremely difficult to descend gracefully into this valley, and pilgrims generally accomplish it at the expense of many a sore trip and stumble, yet when once they are fairly down, it presents many advantages of climate and soil not other where found.

The shivering to pieces of the first ideal, while it breaks ruthlessly and scatters much that is really and honestly good and worthy, breaks up no less a certain stock of unconscious self conceit, which young people are none the worse for having lessened.

The very assumption, so common in the early days of life, that we have feelings of a peculiar sacredness above the comprehension of the common herd, and for which only the selectest sympathy is possible, is one savoring a little too much of the unregenerate natural man, to be safely let alone to grow and thrive.

Natures, in particular, where ideality is largely in the ascendant, are apt to begin life with the scheme of building a high and thick stone wall of reticence around themselves, and enthroning therein an idol, whose rites and service are to be performed with a contemptuous indifference to all the rest of mankind.

When this idol is suddenly disenchanted by some stroke of inevitable reality, and we discern that the image which we had supposed to be the shrine of a divinity, is only a very earthly doll, stuffed with saw-dust, one's pinnacles and battlements – the whole temple in short, that we have prided ourselves on, comes tumbling down about us like the walls of Jericho, not without a certain sense of the ridiculous. Though, like other afflictions, this is not for the present joyous, still the space thus cleared in our mind may be so cultivated as afterwards to bring forth peaceable fruits of righteousness.