Charles Frederic Goss

“ I do not mean to condemn you. I do not mean to act or feel as if I were any less guilty than you are in all this wrong. But when one has to face something awful without preparation, it is very hard. No wonder that we do not know what to do. Who but God can extricate us from this trouble? We are both guilty, David. I think that it is because I have had so large a share in all the rest that has been wrong that I cannot now feel towards you as I think I ought. It is true that you have injured me terribly and irretrievably. It is true that your hands are stained with blood, and yet I love you! ”

“ Now we must obey them."
"But, Pepeeta," he continued, "you do not really think that you have the power to suppress the love you feel for me?"
"I shall not try," she answered.
"But can you not see that this passion of ours will bring us together again? Sooner or later, love will conquer. It conquers or crushes. Everything gives way to it at last. It disrupts the most solemn contracts. It burns the strongest bonds like tow. Always and everywhere, men and women who love will come together. It is the law of life, it is destiny. We cannot remain apart, we are linked together for time and eternity." ”

“ David was a lover of trees. From the summits of the hills he had often gazed down upon the forests and observed how "all the tree tops lay asleep like green waves on the sea." He had harvested the fruits of the apple and peach, clubbed the branches of the walnut, butternut and beach, and boiled the sap of the maple. He had seen the trees offer their hospitable shelter to the birds and the squirrels, had basked beneath their umbrageous shadows and had listened to their whispers in the summer, and to their wild music "when winter, that grand old harper, smote his thunder-harp of pines." ”

“ So tender an appeal would have broken a heart like David's, except for the madness of illicit love.
"Judge!" he cried, striking the table with his fist, "I did not come here for advice, I came for help. I am determined to have this woman. She is mine by virtue of my desire and my capacity to acquire her! I must have her! I will have her, by fair means or foul. And, Judge, in this case, the foulest means are fair. What seems an act of injustice is in reality an act of mercy. You know her husband, and you know as well as I do that her life with him will be her ruin. ”

“ Pepeeta continued to press his hand and that gentle sign of love revived his drooping courage. Perhaps there is no other act so full of reassuring power as the pressure of a human hand. Neither a glance from the eye nor a word from the lips can equal it. The fainting pilgrim, the departing friend, the discouraged toiler, the returning prodigal welcome it beyond all other symbols of helpfulness or love, and the dying saint who leans the hardest on the "rod and the staff of God" as he goes down into the dark valley finds a comfort scarcely less sweet in the warm clasp of a human hand. ”

“ And now on top of the rest came the bold skepticism of the quack, and the bewildering beauty of the gypsy.
Yes, the preliminary work had been done! We never know how rotten the tree is until it falls, nor how unstable the wall until it crumbles. And so in the moral natures of men, subtle forces eat their way silently and imperceptibly to the very center.
A summer breeze overthrows the tree, the foot of a child sets the wall tottering; a whisper, a smile, even the sight of a serpent, is the jar that upsets the equilibrium of a soul.
The Quaker rose from his seat in a fever of excitement. ”

“ I was only a woman after all, David. Love is stronger than woman! Oh! it was I who wronged you. I ought not to have forsaken you. Ought I? I do not know, even now. Who can tell me what is right? Who can lead me out of this frightful labyrinth? If I did wrong in seeking you, I humbly ask the pardon of God, and if I did wrong in abandoning you, I ask forgiveness in all lowliness and meekness from the man I wronged."
"No, Pepeeta, you have never wronged me; I alone have been to blame. The result could not have been really different, no matter what course you took. ”

“ If I should start off with you, I should never be able to follow you. My old self would get the victory. In the long run, a man will be himself. 'Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome—seldom extinguished.'"
"What a mood you are in, Mantel! It makes me shiver to hear you talk so. Here I am, full of hope and purpose; my heart on fire; believing in life; confident of the outcome; and you, a better man by nature than I am, sitting here, cold as a block of ice, and the victim of despair! ”

“ His open countenance, bronzed with the sun, was lighted with love and adoration; his lips smiled; his eyes glowed; he lifted them to the heavens in an unspoken prayer for the benediction of the great life-giver; he drew into his nostrils the sweet odors, into his lungs the pure air, into his soul the beauty and glory of the world, and then, filling his hand with the golden grain, he flung it into the bosom of the waiting earth.
All day long he strode across the clearing and with rhythmical swinging of his brawny arm lavishly scattered the golden grain. ”

“ It was this sob and these footsteps which David heard.
Plunging into the depths of the forest as a wounded animal would have done, he cast himself upon the bosom of the earth at the foot of a great tree, to find solitude and consolation.
There are wounds in the soul too deep to be healed by the balm which exudes from the visible elements of Nature. There are longings and aspirations which the palpable and audible cannot satisfy. Not what he sees and touches, but what he hopes and trusts, can save man in these dark moments from the final despair and terror of existence. ”

“ David looked his admiration.
"How do you support yourself?" asked Mantel, to whom such a man was a phenomenon.
"We do not any of us support ourselves so much as we are supported," he replied.
"And this life of toil and self-denial had its origin in those words I spoke in the empty lumber camp?" asked David, incredulously.
"It is not a life of self-denial, but that was its beginning."
"It is a mystery. I lost my faith and you found it, and now perhaps you are going to give it back again!" David said. ”

“ To have God dwell thus in the soul is to enjoy perfect peace. This life is a life of bitterness to those who struggle against God, a world of sorrow to those who doubt Him, and of darkness to those who refuse His sweet illumination. But the sorrow and the struggle end, and the darkness becomes the dawn to every one who loves and trusts the heavenly Father, for He bestows upon all a Divine gift. This gift is the 'inner light,' the light which shines within the soul itself and sheds its rays upon the dark pathway of existence. ”

“ It had been enhanced by sorrow, for the human countenance, like the landscape, requires shadow as well as sunshine to perfect its charms. But the burst of sunshine which had come with David's return had brought it a final consummation which transfigured even the Quaker dress she had adopted. Her bonnet would never stay over her face but fell back on her shoulders, her animated countenance emerging from this envelope like the bud of a rose from its sheath. She was as a butterfly at that critical instant when it is ready to leave its chrysalis and take wing. ”