A great passion is a trinitarian affair. And I sometimes have thought it
a matter of regret, as well as of wonder, that a strong man did not
appear on the scene and fall in love with the winsome Jeannie Welsh.
Conditions were ripe there for a great drama. I know it would have
blown the roof off that little house in Cheyne Row, but it might have
crushed the heart of Thomas Carlyle and made him a lover, indeed. After
death had claimed Jeannie as a bride, the fastnesses of the old Sartor
Resartus soul were broken up, and Carlyle paced the darkness, crying
aloud, "Oh, why was I cruel to her?" He manifested a tenderness toward
the memory of the woman dead which the woman alive had never been able
to bring forth.

Love demands opposition and obstacle. It is the intermittent or
obstructed current that gives power.

The finest flowers are those transplanted; for transplanting means
difficulty, a readjusting to new conditions, and through the effort put
forth to find adjustment does the plant progress. Transplanted men are
the ones who do the things worth while, and transplanted girls are the
only ones who inspire a mighty passion. Audrey transplanted might have
evolved into a Nell Gwynn or a Lady Hamilton.

In such immortal love-stories as Romeo and Juliet, Tristram and Isolde,
and Paolo and Francesca, a love so mad in its wild impetus is pictured
that it dashes itself against danger; and death for the lovers, we feel
from the beginning, is the sure climax when the curtain shall fall on
the fifth act.

The sustained popular interest in these tragedies proves that the
entranced auditors have dabbled in the eddies, so they feel a fervent
interest in those hopelessly caught in the current, and from the snug
safety of the parquette live vicariously their lives and the loves that
might have been.

But let us begin with a life-story, where love resolved its "moonshine"
into life, and justified itself even to stopping the mouths of certain
self-appointed censors, who caviled much and quibbled overtime. Here is
a love so great that in its beneficent results we are all yet
partakers.

* * * * *

About all the civilization England has she got from the Dutch; her
barbarisms are all her own. It was the Dutch who taught the English how
to print and bind books and how to paint pictures.

It was the Dutch who taught the English how to use the potter's wheel
and glaze and burn earthenware. Until less