e time. She is sweet and beautiful and to be
desired; but, all the same, we had rather shake the loose leg of
bachelordom, if it might be. However it be, so we take her, or maybe it
is she takes us, with a feeling of martyrdom; but lo! when we are home
together, what wonderful new lights are these beginning to ray about
her, as though she had up till now kept a star hidden in her bosom. What
is this new morning strength and peace in our life? Why, we thought it
was but Thestylis, and lo! it is Diana after all. For the Thirteenth
Maid or the Thirteenth Man, both alike, rarely come as we had expected.
There seems no fitness in their arrival. It seems so ridiculously
accidental, as I suppose the hour of death, whenever it comes, will
seem. One had expected some high calm prelude of preparation, ending in
a festival of choice, like an Indian prince's, when the maids of the
land pass before him and he makes deliberate selection of the fateful
She. But, instead, we are hurrying among our day's business, maybe, our
last thought of her; we turn a corner, and suddenly she is before us. Or
perhaps, as it fell with Narcissus, we have tried many loves that proved
but passions; we have just buried the last, and are mournfully leaving
its grave, determined to seek no further, to abjure bright eyes, at
least for a long while, when lo! on a sudden a little maid is in our
path holding out some sweet modest flowers. The maid has a sweet mouth,
too, and, the old Adam being stronger than our infant resolution, we
smell the flowers and kiss the mouth--to find arms that somehow, we know
not why, are clinging as for life about us. Let us beware how we shake
them off, for thus it is decreed shall a man meet her to have missed
whom were to have missed all. Youth, like that faithless generation in
the Scriptures, always craveth after a sign, but rarely shall one be
given. It can only be known whether a man be worthy of Love by the way
in which he looks upon Duty. Rachel often comes in the grey cloak of
Leah. It rests with the man's heart whether he shall know her beneath
the disguise; no other divining-rod shall aid him. If it be as
Bassanio's, brave to 'give and hazard all he hath,' let him not fear to
pass the seeming gold, the seeming silver, to choose the seeming lead.
'Why, _that's_ the lady,' thou poor magnificent Morocco. Nor shall the
gold fail, for her heart is that, and for silver thou shalt have those
'silent silver lights undreamed of'