Edward Payson Roe

“ Look into the gentle, serene eyes of Mary Magdalene, once so desperate and clouded by evil, and then know whether he brings sorrow or joy to the world. Just as the sun follows the night that it may bring the day, so the Sun of Righteousness seeks out all that is dark in our lives that he may shine it away. Gladness, then, should be the rule of our lives. Nothing to him is so pleasing as gladness, if it comes from the heart of pilgrims truly homeward bound; but if sorrow comes, oh, turn not to the world, for the best thing in it can give no peace, no rest. ”

“ There's life for you, Mr. Morton—full, overflowing, innocent life—in the boy and in the horse. Existence, motion, is to them happiness. It seems a pity that both must grow old and weary! My hand fairly tingles yet from my touch of Dapple's neck, he was so alive with spirit. What is it that animates that great mass of flesh and blood, bone and sinew, making him so strong, yet so gentle. At a blow he would have dashed everything to pieces, but he is as sensitive to kindness as I am. I sometimes half think that Dapple has as good a right to a soul as I have. ”

“ I believe thee can live, and grow strong and good and noble, if thee will."
"Oh, Mrs. Yocomb, how you must despise me! If you but knew how I loathe myself."
"No, I'm sorry for thee from the depths of my heart. If thee's doing thy best, I've not a word to say; but thee should know the truth. As Emily said, thee has the power either to embitter her life or to add very much to its happiness."
"Well," I said, "if I have not the strength to overcome this unmanly, contemptible weakness, I ought to die, and the sooner the better. If I'm worth life, I shall live." ”

“ Would you drag her into the turmoil of your world because she would be a solace? Would you disturb the maidenly serenity of that brow with knowledge of evil and misery, the nightly record of which you have collated so long that you are callous? You, whose business it is to look behind the scenes of life, will you disenchant her also? It is your duty to unmask hypocrisy, and to drag hidden evil to light, but will you teach her to suspect and distrust? Should you not yourself become a better, truer, purer man before you look into the clear depths of her blue eyes? ”

“ As far as I can make out, Nature is more to blame than the girl. There is not a bat blinking in the sunlight more blind than she to every natural beauty of this June day; and yet her eyes are microscopic, and she sees a host of little things not worth seeing. A true womanly moral nature seems never to have been infused into her being. She detests children, her little sister shrinks from her; she speaks and surmises evil of the absent; to strut down Fifth Avenue in finery, to which she has given her whole soul, is her ideal of happiness—there, stop! ”

“ I blessed the fair June face, that was as far removed from the seething turmoil of my world as the rosebuds under her home-windows.
Surely I had drifted out of the storm into the very haven of rest and peace, and yet one might justly dread lest the beauty which bound my eyes every moment in a stronger fascination should evoke an unrest from which there might be no haven. Young men, however, rarely shrink from such perils, and I was no more prudent than my fellows. Indeed, I was inclining toward the fancy that this June day was the day of destiny with me ”

“ Can there be peace in a world wherein we can never escape these sad, terrible, discordant sounds? The words that I have repeated were spoken in just such a world when the din of evil was at its worst, and to those who must soon suffer all the wrong that the world could inflict."
After a brief pause of silent waiting she continued:
"But is the turmoil of the world a far-away sound, like the sullen roar of angry waves beating on a shore that rises high and enduring, securing us safety and rest? Beyond the deep disquietude of the world at large is the deeper unrest of the human heart. ”

“ The truth that I had not was so vivid that it led to the thought that, like the first man, I had seen in the garden the one woman of the world, the mistress of my fate. A second later I was conscious of a sickening fear. To love such a woman, and yet not be able to win her—how could one thereafter go on with life! Beware, Richard Morton! On this quiet June evening, in this home of peace and the peaceful, and with hymns of love and faith breathed sweetly into your ears, you may be in the direst peril of your life. From this quiet hour may come the unrest of a lifetime. ”

“ I took off my hat, as I replied, with a smile, "A garden, Miss Warren, was the first sacred place of the world, and never were sincerer words spoken in that primal garden."
She looked at me a moment wistfully, and even tearfully. "I wish you were right," she said, slowly shaking her head; "your strange mood has infected me, I think; and I will admit that to be true is the struggle of my life, but the effort to be true is often hard, bitterly hard, in New York. I admit that for years truthfulness has been the goal of my ambition. ”

“ The devil is scarcely more cruel than the Church, for ages, taught that God was. It's true that Christ's life was one of self-sacrifice; but was there any useless, mistaken self-sacrifice in it? If God is anything like Mrs. Yocomb, nothing could be more repugnant to him than blunders of this kind."
She looked at me with a startled face, and I saw that my words had unsettled her mind.
"If conscience cannot guide, what can?" she faltered. "Is not conscience God's voice within us?"
"No. Conscience may become God's worst enemy—that is, any God that I could worship or even respect." ”

“ I never have a good time with Adah."
"There, mother, let her have her own way," said Adah, pettishly. "Emily Warren, thee shouldn't pet her so if thee doesn't want to be bothered by her."
"She does not bother me at all," said Miss Warren quietly. "I like her."
The little girl that had been ready to cry turned to her friend a radiant face that was eloquent with the undisguised affection of childhood.
"Zillah evidently likes you, Miss Warren," I said, "and you have given the reason. You like her."
"Not always a sufficient reason for liking another," she answered. ”

“ Oh, the gentle, inexorable woman! Satan himself might well tremble before her. There is but one that I fear more, and that's the woman I love most. Gentle, tender-hearted as she is, she is more inexorable than Mrs. Yocomb. It's a little strange, but I doubt whether there is anything in the universe that so inspires a man with awe as a thoroughly good, large-minded woman."
I could not sleep that afternoon, and at last I became so weary of the conflict between my hope and fear that I was glad to hear Miss Warren at the piano, playing softly some old English hymns. ”

“ Am I overwrought, morbid, fanciful, deluded by an excited imagination into beliefs and moods that will vanish in the clear sunlight and clearer light of reason? or has the vivid lightning revealed with absolute distinctness the woman on whom I can lean in perfect trust, and yet must often sustain in her pathetic weakness? The world would say we are strangers; but my heart and soul and every fibre of my being appear to recognize a kinship so close that I feel we never can be strangers again. It is true the lightning fuses the hardest substances, making them one ”

“ I shall go back the wiser and stronger for this day's folly, and infinitely better for its rest, and I marched down the moody stairway, feeling that I was not yet a crushed and broken man, and cherishing also a secret complacency that I had at last outgrown my leanings toward sentimentality.
As I approached the door of the wide, low-browed parlor, I saw Miss Warren reading a paper; a second later and my heart gave a bound: it was the journal of which I was the night editor, and I greeted its familiar aspect as the face of an old friend in a foreign land. ”