Marietta Holley

“ If we could reach it, if we could once reach out our longing arms, and touch that wonderful, illusive soul of beauty, if we could hold it with our weak, mortal grasp, and look upon it face to face—can you tell me, Kellup, what it would be? Can you tell me how pure, and holy, and divine a shape it would be? The Ideal of Beauty that forever rises before us—this longing for perfection implanted in our souls? We cannot believe by bad spirits, but by the Ever Good. ”

“ So little is worldly judgment to be relied upon. But nobody believed it, and if they had, I shouldn’t have cared, no more than I should have cared for the murmurin’ of the summer breeze. When the conscience is easy, the mind is at rest. I knew there was three that knew the truth on’t: the Lord, Elder Judas Wart, and myself. I count Josiah and me as one, which is lawful, though Josiah says that I am the one the biggest heft of the time. ”

“ What is this spirit of beauty—there is something, some hidden spirit, some soul of inspiration, in all beautiful things, pictures, poetry, melody—a spirit that forever eludes us, flies before us, and yet smiles down into our souls forever with haunting, glorious eyes. What is this wonderful spirit, this insperation that thrills us so in all sweetest and saddest melodies, in lovely landscapes, in the soft song of the summer wind, and the mournful refrain of ocean waves, in sunset, and the weird stillness of a starry midnight? ”

“ She could think that all her burdens of sorrows and wrongs would drop from her into the grave; and in that land where all tears are wiped away—that land of eternal beauty—of sweet consolation for the weary—she could find rest. But this last hope of the broken-hearted, your accursed doctrine has destroyed. Your infamous belief teaches that if a woman won’t do wrong, won’t submit to man’s tyrannical will on earth, commit sin for his sake, he won’t let her go to heaven! ”

“ But if this does not happen to him, if his sweetheart lives on beside him, he finds that this mighty presence steals away—not love, for that is a bit of the infinite dropped down into our souls unbeknown to us, and so is immortal; but he steals the golden sheen of the hair, the eye’s bright luster, the young form’s strength and rounded beauty. Every day, every hour, he is losing something of what he proudly called his own. ”

“ Good land, it makes me sweat jest to think on’t. How could I test the strength of that mighty network of resistless influences that draws that soul by a million links up toward Goodness and down toward Evil—binds it to the outside world, and the spiritual and divine? ”

“ No other hand but hers has such power to unlock the very doors of heaven and send down into our hearts heaven’s peace and glory. Don’t I know this? don’t I know that in the hour of our bitterest sorrow, our deepest affliction, when the 431one that made our world lies silent before us, deaf for the first time to our tears and our sorrow; when all the world looks black and desolate, and hatred and envy and malice seem to surround us, and our human strength is gone, and human help is vain ”

“ We can’t get away from ourselves, and get a real change, nohow, unless we knock our heads in and make idiots and lunys of ourselves. Movin’ our bodies round here and there is only a shadow of a change, a mockery, as if I should dress up my Josiah in soldier coats or baby clothes. ”

“ How can a child honor a parent whose hands are stained with innocent blood, who is enriched by theft and rapine, who is living in open shame—in open defiance to the commonest rules of morality—who breaks all the commandments of God, and calls it religion? ”

“ If we bar this angel from our door, resist her gentle voice pleadin’ at our heart, woe be to us; for she can come as a avenger, a destroyer. But if we greet her as indeed a heavenly visitant, believe that God sent her, hold her in our weak arms close to our hearts, she gives us divinest strength. ”

“ We smile at the robin, with our wise, amused pity, who builds her tiny nest with such laborious care high up, out on the waving tree-top, swinging back and forth, back and forth, in every idle wind. Gathering her straws and bits of wood with such patient and tireless care to weave about the frail homes that are to be 369blown away by the chilly autumn winds, and they also to be driven southward before the snows. ”

“ And those who love to put beauty into their own lives, are often the ones who love to bless other lives—are the ones whose hearts ache at the pleading of a sorrowful eye—whose hearts thrill clear to their center at the voice of a hungry child. ”

“ Some fleetin’ echo of whose voice we fancy we have caught in the lofty refrain of some heavenly melody—but, e’er our soul could hardly listen, the sweet strain was drowned in the discord of human voices. ”

“ If it was your husband, Cassandra, nobody would wonder at it, such a splendid, noble-appearin’ gentleman as he is. But Josiah Allen was always a poor, insignificant-lookin’ creeter; and now he is the humbliest, and foolishest, and meachin’est-lookin’ creeter I ever see in human shape. And he looks as old as Grandfather Rickerson, every mite as old, and he is most ninety. And he is vain as a peahen.”
I jest glanced round at Josiah, and then instinctively I looked away agin. His countenance was perfectly awful. Truly, the higher we are up the worse it hurts us to fall down. ”

“ When I think of the fate of Sofier, when I think of the deadly blows my conscience dealt to me every minute, as I drove her hearse to the buryin’-ground—then I feel as if I had almost ruther lose ten cents than go through it agin with Marier. ”

“ Then to think of the countless millions on earth, and who sleep in its bosom—and the countless, countless worlds that fill endless and boundless space, the unnumbered hosts of the ageless past, and the endless future—the Eternity—and jest to speak that word almost takes away my breath—and then to think of us, poor, blind little aunts, on a aunt-hill, deciding on this mighty mystery, writin’ books, preachin’ sermons, givin’ lectures, one way and another, judgin’ the fate of these souls, and where they are goin’ to, and quarrelin’ over it. ”

“ But are not our homes, the sweet homes of our tenderest love, built upon just as insecure foundations, hanging over more mysterious depths, rocking to and fro, and swept to their ruin by a breath from the Unknown? ”

“ That deed was restin’ on self-seekin’, ambitious littleness.
Yes, we are blind creeters. And there is but One who holds the key to the terror, the glory, and the mystery of a soul. He, only, can see and judge. He whose age is ageless, and who can therefore alone judge of the mighty flood of influences that pour down upon the soul from that ageless past, swayin’ it with mysterious power. He whose life fills that boundless future—Eternity—He alone knows the strength of those mighty forces drawin’ us thither. ”

“ Never was a character’s lines drawn more distinctly than that of Josiah’s wife, and her originals will be found among the acquaintances of many. Cute, wise, shrewd and observing, with a vein of strong common sense, yet simple and innocent as a child, she will keep the reader crammed with sharp hits and funny observations. ”

“ The little blue potato-blossom laid upon the pillow of the sick by the child of poverty—we think the perfume of that little odorless flower will rise to Heaven as sweet as the most royal blossom given by the children of kings. ”

“ And superintendents of Sabbath-schools and Young Men’s Christian Associations will make excursions to admire them and their iniquity, to imbibe bad thoughts and principles unconsciously, but certainly, as one inevitably must when they behold a crime masked in beauty, in garments of peace and order and industry. ”

“ Who calmly looked on and beheld its ships bear to our shores hundreds and thousands of the ignorant peasantry of the old world—fair-faced Swedish and Danish maidens, blue-eyed German girls, and bright English and Irish lassies—lookin’ with innocent, wonderin’ eyes toward a new life—innocent youth, deceived by specious falsehoods, pourin’ onto our shores like pure rills of water, to fall into that muddy gulf of corruption and become putrid also—and our Government lookin’ calmly on, happy as a king, and pretendin’ to be religious. ”

“ And though he calls her his own, yet he must feel, if he knows anything, that she is not his own; he must know that he has to dispute for the possession of her daily with one stronger than he is. And if he is tender-hearted and sensitive, the haunting fear must almost rack his soul ”

“ The awful consequences, the sin, and the woe that followed that one irreverent, thoughtless act might well make us all more thoughtful, more mindful of the terrible responsibility that follows all our acts, the smallest as well as the greatest. We can’t shake off that personal responsibility. It follers us tight as our shadders even into our hours of recreation, showin’ us that we should not only work nobly, but recreate nobly and innocently and reverently. ”

“ Her eyes have a sorry look for us, that make our tears flow, and then we see that those sad, sweet eyes are looking up from earth to where our own, tear-blinded, are fain to follow—up beyond the vail, into that beautiful city where our treasures and our hopes are. ”

“ And then, those who love him tell him that the loving hands were unclasped from his that he might forever reach upward, yearning, longing to clasp them again, that he might make his own hands purer, fitter to clasp an angel’s fingers. ”

“ One man’s heart hain’t of much account, viewed in a permiscus way, but to the woman that loves him it’s a good deal, it is all. Wimmen are foolish about some things, and this is one of ’em. Her love is to her the very breath she breathes—it is the best part of her. Men don’t feel this way as a general thing (my Josiah duz, but he is a shinin’ exception) . But as a general thing love is to them a sort of a side-show, a tolerable good entertainment, but it hain’t the hull circus. ”

“ But as a general thing, the people who deny themselves all the beauty and brightness of life, are the very ones who deny it to others. Those who talk the most about others’ extravagance, and what great things they would do if they was in other folks’es places, are the very ones who, if they wuz there, wouldn’t do nothin’. It is the tight ones of earth who talk the most about looseness: how awful loose they would be under certain circumstances. But I believe, and Josiah duz, that they wouldn’t under the very loosest circumstances ever be loose, but would always be tight. ”

“ And God bless those tender hearts where-ever they are; those who in lofty places organize the great charities whose benefactions bless the nations in famine, in war, and in the calamity of national sickness and distress. And Heaven bless the lowly toilers of life, whose humble gifts out of their scanty means are in God’s sight equally as great. ”

“ But the state of matrimony is far curiouser. It is curiouser in the beginning—some like a conundrum. States have to be admitted into the Union; a union admits you into that state. And then, it is bounded on every side by divinest possibilities of happiness, or the most despairin’ ones, and no knowin’ which will break over the frontier, and capture you. Sweetest and most rapturous joys may cover its soil as thick as blossoms on a summer prairie, or angry passions and disappointments and cares may crunch ’em down under foot, and set fire to ’em. ”

“ Nobody but a fool or a luny is in the habit of blamin’ folks for doin’ what they can’t help doin’, and bein’ what they can’t help bein’. Blame the childern! Why, good land!” says I, “I should jest as soon set out and scold a mornin’-glory or a white violet for the looks of the ground they sprung from. God’s own purity is writ in the clear eyes of babyhood, and in the blue heart of them mornin’-glories. Blossoms of light, mornin’-glories, springin’, God knows how or why, out of the black mould, out of darkness and decay. ”

“ But I was calm and peaceful, knowin’ the table-cloth was on, and Josiah would act first-rate. And then, when a tempest is a howlin’ and a actin’ out-doors, it seems as if I enjoy more than ever the safety and sweet repose and happiness of my own hearth-stun (which last is a poetical simely, our hearth not bein’ stun at all, but iron, with a nickel platin’ round it) .
Wall, there I sot, feelin’ well and lookin’ well. I had combed my hair slick, and put on a clean gingham dress,—when Josiah Allen opened the door and walked in. ”

“ The love of parents, wives, and children, like golden rings, bindin’ the hearts to the happy hearth-stone, and then widenin’ out in other golden rings, bindin’ them hearth-stones to loyalty and patriotism, love of country, love of law and order, and love of Heaven, why, them gold rings within rings, they all make a chain that can’t be broke down; they twist all together into a rope that binds this crazy old world to the throne of God. ”

“ But as it is, from Jonesville clear to the Antipithies, the puzzlin’ perplexities, the woes, and the cares of the old world foller right on after us tight as our shadders. Our pure and soarin’ desires, our blind mistakes, and deep despairs; our longin’s, strivin’s, memories, heartaches; all the joys and burdens of a soul, has to be carried by us up the steepest mountains or down into the lowest vallies. The same emotions that was a performin’ inside of our minds down in the Yo Semity, will be a performin’ jest the same up on the Pyramids. ”

“ A woman can lose all that is sweet and lovely in her nature—all the traits that make her so attractive, her tenderness, her affection, her constancy, her modesty, her purity. She can get very low down in the scale of being, lower, I think, than a man can get. ”