The
books open to her a new world of emotions. Ere her bridal veil was
dyed black she had read of life and creation as inexpressibly joyous.
The lesson was always that she should look upon the glories of nature
and give thanks.

Now the title of each chapter is "Sorrow." The omniscient Shakespeare
preaches of sorrow. The tender and beautiful Richter teaches of the
nightingale. Tennyson, Longfellow, Carlyle, Beecher, Bovee, the great
ancient stoics, the Bible itself, becomes a discourse on that tragic
phenomenon of the soul, where peace goes out, where longing takes the
place of action, where the will sets itself against the universe.

"Sorrow," she reads, "like a heavy hanging bell, once set on ringing,
with his own weight goes."

"How true! How true!" she weeps. She turns to "Hamlet." She reads
that drama of sorrow. She accepts that eulogium of the dead as
something worthy of her lost husband.

She gloomily reviews the mistakes of her earlier life. She had been
restricted in nature to the attentions of a few men. She had found her
lord and master. The sublime selfishness of human pride had driven her
on the rocks of destruction. This she can now charge to herself. Had
she sufficiently valued David Lockwin; had she counseled him to live
for himself, to study those inclinations which she secretly understood
and never encouraged--had she begged him to turn student rather than to
court politics and popularity--then she might yet have had him with her.

The heavy bell of sorrow clangs loudly upon this article of her pride,
ambition and lack of address to the true interests of her dead lord.

"Davy would not have died if politics had not been in the way. And
then that dreadful fever! That month of vigil! How strangely he spoke
in his delirium! How lonesome he was! How he begged for a companion
to share his grief! Oh, David! David! David! Come back! Come back!
Let me lay my head on your true heart and tell you how I love you. Let
me tell you how I honor you above all men! You who had so much love
for a foundling--oh, God bless you! Keep you in heaven for me!
Forgive the hard heart of a foolish woman whose love was so slow!
Come, holy spirit, heavenly dove, with all thy quickening power! Our
Father, which art in heaven, which art in heaven!"

The knolling of the heavy bell grows softer. The paroxysm passes.
Religion, the early refuge of the sex--the early refuge, too, of the
higher types of