Theodore Winthrop

“ Often a timely trifle of a gentle word of admonition has struck a foully fair temptation dead. I know how the recurring fragrance of a flower that childhood loved, how the far-away sound of breakers on a beach where childhood wandered, how a weft of cloud, how the leap of a sunbeam, how the sudden jubilant carol of a bird, how a portrait of the pure Madonna on the wall, how a chance line on an open page, — how any such momentous trifle will save a wavering soul from a treachery or a crime, — will interpose an instant’s check, and rescue the life from a remorse, guarding it for a repentance. ”

“ She took me to see the belles for beauty, the belles for money, the belles for wit, the belles for magnetism, the belles for blood. And all of them she drew out to show their most attractive side, in fact, their better and more genuine nature. She persuaded each to reveal that the belle had not addled the woman. ”

“ Every man’s precious or costly experience belongs to every brother-man. No man may be a miser of the sorrows by which he has bought the power to be strong, to be tender, to pardon the weak and the guilty. ”

“ I quelled my uneasiness with the thought that the sensitive touch of innocence is warned away from poisoned blossoms by the clammy airs that hang about them, and so recoils, and will not pluck the flower or gather the fruit. I said that the mere dread of evil will instruct a virgin soul where are those paths of evil it must shun. ”

“ She was to me far more beautiful than any beauty, — infinitely more beautiful, always, than any of those round, full, red beauties who are steadily supplied to the city market, overt or covert, for wives or mistresses to the men who pay money for either, and have nothing but money to give. ”

“ I had seen Emma Denman frequently, then constantly; it was now every day.
Her fascination grew in power. There was a certain effort in it; but what man disputes a woman’s right to make effort to please him? ”

“ Thus, ignorant and rejecting the sure law of nature, I strove to create the uncreatable, to construct what should have come into being and grown strong without interference, even without consciousness of mine. ”

“ I perceived that he did not love wealth for itself, but as power; and that he used this power often judiciously, always generously. The vanity of exercising power, the mistake of fancying himself a being of higher order than men of lesser influence, he seemed to have outgrown. And the power, with its duties attached, he often found a weary burden. ”

“ And, justifying him, I even did injustice to the memory of the dead Clara. Who knew what undiscovered or unpublished sorrowful motive she might not have had for a suicide? The dead have no friends to justify them. ”