Part 36

It was long before Dubois recovered from the shock he had received; but he did finally recover. He began to accumulate fresh bibliographical treasures around him, and many pleasant evenings were spent in those old apartments. But his former enthusiasm never returned. Any new discovery in the field of his research no longer excited a rapid flow of ardent words, but was merely indicated by a faint smile. He was always kindly and genial, and was only roused to an occasional word or look of bitterness when some circumstance happened to remind him of the treasure he had lost. “To think that what I had been hunting for all my life should be found only to be lost in a pot of gelatine!” he would exclaim, indignantly. Then he would fall into a silence which no one ventured to disturb. But, with a slight sigh, and a quiver of his gray locks, he would soon dismiss the subject from his mind, and change the conversation.

If he ever felt regret at having expended all the energies of his life among the dim shadows of the past, no one ever heard him express the feeling. And this was wise; for his habits were too firmly fixed to be changed. He lived with his dear old volumes as with friends. The monotony of his life was soothed by a daughter’s love, and cheered by the kind attentions of his gay young nephew. His uncommon talents and learning left no traces behind them, and his name passed away as do the pleasant clouds of twilight. Hyppolite’s constant love was rewarded by the heart and hand of Marcelline; and the two who most reverenced the old man’s learning, and most tenderly cherished the memory of his genial character, lived to talk of them often to each other, and to teach them to their descendants.

TO ONE WHO WISHED ME SIXTEEN YEARS OLD.

BY ALICE CARY.

Suppose your hand with power supplied, Say, would you slip it ’neath my hair. And turn it to the golden side Of sixteen years? Suppose you dare,

And I stood here with smiling mouth, Red cheeks, and hands all softly white, Exceeding beautiful with youth, And that some tiptoe-treading sprite

Brought dreams as bright as they could be, To keep the shadows from my brow, And plucked down hearts to pleasure me, As you would roses from a bough.

What could I do then? Idly wear, While all my mates went on before, The bashful looks and golden hair Of sixteen years! and nothing more?

Nay, done with youth are my desires, Life has no pain I fear to meet; Experience, with its dreadful fires, Melts knowledge to a welding heat.

And all its fires of heart and brain, Where purpose into power was wrought, I’d bear, and gladly bear again, Rather than be put back a thought.

So, sigh no more, my gentle friend, That I am at the time of day When white hair comes, and heart-beats send No blushes through the cheeks astray.

For could you mould my destiny, As clay, within your loving hand, I’d leave my youth’s sweet company, And suffer back to where I stand.

* * * * *

THE SILVERY HEAD.

Though youth may boast the curls that flow, In sunny waves of auburn glow, As graceful, on thy hoary head, Has time the robe of honor spread, And there, O, softly, softly shed His wreath of snow.

FELICIA HEMANS.

GROWING OLD.

ADDRESSED TO UNMARRIED WOMEN.

From Miss Muloch’s “Thoughts about Women.”

It is a trying crisis in life to feel that you have had your fair half at least of the ordinary term of years allotted to mortals; that you have no right to expect to be any handsomer, or stronger, or happier than you are now; that you have climbed to the summit of life, whence the next step must necessarily be decadence. The air may be as fresh, the view as grand, still you know that, slower or faster, you are going down hill. It is not a pleasant descent at the beginning. It is rather trying when, from long habit, you unwittingly speak of yourself as a “girl,” to detect a covert smile on the face of your interlocutor; or, when led by some chance excitement to deport yourself in an ultra-youthful manner, some instinct warns you that you are making yourself ridiculous; or, catching in some strange looking-glass the face you are too familiar with to notice much, ordinarily, you suddenly become aware that it is not a young face, and will never be a young face again. With most people, the passing from maturity to middle age is so gradual as to be almost imperceptible to the individual concerned. There is no denying this fact, and it ought to silence many an ill-natured remark upon those unlucky ones who insist upon remaining “young ladies of a certain age.” It is very difficult for a woman to recognize that she is growing old; and to all, this recognition cannot but be fraught with considerable pain. Even the most sensible woman cannot fairly put aside her youth, with all it has enjoyed, or lost, or missed, and regard it as henceforth to be considered a thing gone by, without a momentary spasm of the heart.

To “grow old gracefully” is a good and beautiful thing; to grow old worthily is a better. And the first effort to that end is to become reconciled to the fact of youth’s departure; to have faith in the wisdom of that which we call change, but which is in truth progression; to follow openly and fearlessly, in ourselves and our daily life, the same law which makes spring pass into summer, summer into autumn, and autumn into winter, preserving an especial beauty and fitness in each of the four.

If women could only believe it, there is a wonderful beauty even in growing old. The charm of expression, arising from softened temper or ripened intellect, often atones amply for the loss of form and coloring; consequently, to those who could never boast of either of these latter, years give much more than they take away. A sensitive person often requires half a lifetime to get thoroughly used to this corporeal machine; to attain a wholesome indifference both to its defects and perfections; and to learn at last what nobody would acquire from any teacher but experience, that it is the mind alone which is of any consequence. With good temper, sincerity, and a moderate stock of brains, or even with the two former only, any sort of a body can in time be made a useful, respectable, and agreeable travelling-dress for the soul. Many a one who was absolutely plain in youth, thus grows pleasant and well-looking in declining years. You will seldom find anybody, not ugly in mind, who is repulsively ugly in person after middle life.

So it is with character. However we may talk about people being “not a whit altered,” “just the same as ever”; the fact is, not one of us is, or can be, for long together, exactly the same. The body we carry with us is not the identical body we were born with, or the one we supposed ours seven years ago; and our spiritual self, which inhabits it, also goes through perpetual change and renewal. In moral and mental, as well as in physical growth, it is impossible to remain stationary. If we do not advance, we retrograde. Talk of being “too late to improve,” “too old to learn”! A human being should be improving with every day of a lifetime; and will probably have to go on learning throughout all the ages of immortality.

One of the pleasures of growing old is, to know, to acquire, to find out, to be able to appreciate the causes of things; this gradually becomes a necessity and an exquisite delight. We are able to pass out of our own small daily sphere, and to take interest in the marvellous government of the universe; to see the grand workings of cause and effect; the educing of good out of apparent evil; the clearing away of the knots in tangled destinies, general or individual; the wonderful agency of time, change, and progress in ourselves, in those surrounding us, and in the world at large. In small minds, this feeling expends itself in meddling, gossiping, scandal-mongering; but such are merely abortive developments of a right noble quality, which, properly guided, results in benefits incalculable to the individual and to society. Undoubtedly the after-half of life is the best working-time. Beautiful is youth’s enthusiasm, and grand are its achievements; but the most solid and permanent good is done by the persistent strength and wide experience of middle age. Contentment rarely comes till then; not mere resignation, a passive acquiescence in what cannot be removed, but active contentment. This is a blessing cheaply bought by a personal share in that daily account of joy and pain, which the longer one lives the more one sees is pretty equally balanced in all lives. Young people enjoy “the top of life” ecstatically, either in prospect or fruition; but they are very seldom contented. It is not possible. Not till the cloudy maze is half travelled through, and we begin to see the object and purpose of it, can we be really content.

The doubtful question, to marry or not to marry, is by this time generally settled. A woman’s relations with the other sex imperceptibly change their character, or slowly decline. There are exceptions; old lovers who have become friends, or friends whom no new love could make swerve from the fealty of years; still it usually happens so. The society of honorable, well-informed gentlemen, who meet a lady on the easy neutral ground of mutual esteem, is undoubtedly pleasant, but the time has passed when any one of them is the one necessary to her happiness. If she wishes to retain influence over mankind, she must do it by means different from those employed in youth. Even then, be her wit ever so sparkling, her influence ever so pure and true, she will often find her listener preferring bright eyes to intellectual conversation, and the satisfaction of his heart to the improvement of his mind. And who can blame him? The only way for a woman to preserve the unfeigned respect of men, is to let them see that she can do without either their attention or their admiration. The waning coquette, the ancient beauty, as well as the ordinary woman, who has had her fair share of both love and liking, must show by her demeanor that she has learned this.

It is reckoned among the compensations of time that we suffer less as we grow older; that pain, like joy, becomes dulled by repetition, or by the callousness that comes with years. In one sense this is true. If there is no joy like the joy of youth, the rapture of a first love, the thrill of a first ambition, God’s great mercy has also granted that there is no anguish like youth’s pain; so total, so hopeless, blotting out earth and heaven, falling down upon the whole being like a stone. This never comes in after life; because the sufferer, if he or she have lived to any purpose at all, has learned that God never meant any human being to be crushed under any calamity, like a blind worm under a stone.

For lesser evils, the fact that our interests gradually take a wider range, allows more scope for the healing power of compensation. Also our loves, hates, sympathies, and prejudices, having assumed a more rational and softened shape, do not present so many angles for the rough attrition of the world. Likewise, with the eye of faith we have come to view life in its entireness, instead of puzzling over its disjointed parts, which were never meant to be made wholly clear to mortal eye. And that calm twilight, which, by nature’s kindly law, so soon begins to creep over the past, throws over all things a softened coloring, which transcends and forbids regret.

Another reason why woman has greater capacity for usefulness in middle life than in any previous portion of her existence, is her greater independence. She will have learned to understand herself, mentally and bodily; to be mistress over herself. Nor is this a small advantage; for it often takes years to comprehend, and to act upon when comprehended, the physical peculiarities of one’s own constitution. Much valetudinarianism among women arises from ignorance or neglect of the commonest sanitary laws; and from indifference to that grand preservative of a healthy body, a well-controlled and healthy mind. Both of these are more attainable in middle age than in youth; and therefore the sort of happiness they bring, a solid, useful, available happiness, is more in her power then than at any earlier period. And why? Because she has ceased to think principally of herself and her own pleasures; because happiness has itself become to her an accidental thing, which the good God may give or withhold, as He sees most fit for her, and most adapted to the work for which he means to use her in her generation. This conviction of being at once an active and a passive agent is surely consecration enough to form the peace, nay, the happiness, of any good woman’s life; enough, be it ever so solitary, to sustain it until the end. In what manner such a conviction should be carried out, no one individual can venture to advise. In this age, woman’s work is almost unlimited, when the woman herself so chooses. She alone can be a law unto herself; deciding and acting according to the circumstances in which her lot is placed. And have we not many who do so act? There are women of property, whose names are a proverb for generous and wide charities; whose riches, carefully guided, flow into innumerable channels, freshening the whole land. There are women of rank and influence, who use both, or lay aside both, in the simplest humility, for labors of love, which level all classes, or rather raise them all, to one common sphere of womanhood.