Rosalind

“ ROSALIND. Why, horns; which such as you are fain to be beholding to your wives for; but he comes armed in his fortune, and prevents the slander of his wife. ORLANDO. Virtue is no horn-maker; and my Rosalind is virtuous. ROSALIND. And I am your Rosalind. CELIA. It pleases him to call you so; but he hath a Rosalind of a better leer than you. ROSALIND. Come, woo me, woo me; for now I am in a holiday humour, and like enough to consent. What would you say to me now, an I were your very very Rosalind? ORLANDO. I would kiss before I spoke. ROSALIND. Nay, you were better speak first ”

“ Astronomy being Rosalind's favorite science, was a subject which called forth most the brilliancy of her intellect. The wonders there unfolded were adapted to her ardent thirst for novelty and grandeur, and sufficient to engage the intense activity of her brain. She was fascinating to observe, when, on a keen frosty night, she came in with her father after they had been out to trace the constellations, her eyes beaming with delight and her cheeks glowing with the rosy hues of health, a good model for a picture of youth and happiness.
She never possessed the quiet beauty of her mother ”

“ O Rosalind, I love you, I adore you, would that there were a word stronger than that! I have never loved, I have never adored any woman but you;—I prostrate myself, I annihilate myself before you, and I would like to compel all creation to bend the knee before my idol; to me you are more than all nature, more than myself, more than God;—indeed, it seems strange to me that God does not come down from heaven to be your slave. Where you are not, everything is a desert, everything is dead, everything is black ”

“ Rosalind knew that she could not get a perfect husband.
To do the pretty Bonair girls justice, they were eager for the match, because they believed that marriage would reform their brother. And who so suitable a bride as Rosalind, their school friend, well-born, well dowered, beautiful, queenly, and secretly adoring the handsome prodigal!
So, among them all, they set a snare for Charley, and tripped him up. His battered heart succumbed easily. Rosalind had scored a triumph over all the beauties! Both families were charmed, and looked eagerly forward to the wedding day. ”

“ Amory had loved Rosalind as he would never love another living person. She had taken the first flush of his youth and brought from his unplumbed depths tenderness that had surprised him, gentleness and unselfishness that he had never given to another creature. He had later love-affairs, but of a different sort: in those he went back to that, perhaps, more typical frame of mind, in which the girl became the mirror of a mood in him. Rosalind had drawn out what was more than passionate admiration; he had a deep, undying affection for Rosalind. ”

“ Dear, innocent Rosalind!—How pure and beautiful your face looks in the bright moonlight!—But, alas! I know that very sinful faces may look just as fair. There is no truth to rest on. In the whole wide world, Rosalind, there is not honesty enough whereon to set a foot, that one may look around and believe, at least, that what one sees, one sees. But this is a perfection of holiness—a species of palpable and present divinity, that is only granted to mortals in their multiplication tables.—Twice two are four—I feel sure of it,—but my faith goes no farther. ”

“ I really believe that I am liking you better all the time, Mr. Donovan."
"My heart is swollen with gratitude. You heard my talk with your father at his cottage last night. And then you flew back to Miss Pat and played the hypocrite with the artlessness of Rosalind—the real Rosalind."
"Did I? Then I'm as clever as I am wicked. You, no doubt, are as wise as you are good." ”

“ Rosalind has reason to be satisfied, and if I read her face aright she has succeeded even in her own eyes in bringing Christmas, with its fragrant memories and its heavenly visions, into the study. I cannot help thinking, as I watch her piling up the fire for a blaze of unusual splendor, that if more studies had their Rosalinds to bring in the genial currents of life there would be more cheer and hope and large-hearted wisdom in the books which the world is reading to-day. ”

“ There was too much clashing of the elements, too much of the restless spirit of enquiry for the meek, sustaining eye of Faith, calmly to steer her course in such a complicated organization as Rosalind's.
It was not thus with Walter who resembled his mother. Nature seemed to have cast him in an even mould and bestowed on him her rarest gifts. Rosalind excelled in intellectual capacity; he, in intuitive knowledge. The truths others gained by reasoning, he knew by intuition. The triumphs others won by continued effort and stern self-denial, were but the natural unfolding of his own character. ”

“ Rosalind scarcely sensed the pounding of the hail. She and the boatman had almost clasped hands with death, and the memory of it drove other thoughts from her mind.
The trivial parts of the affair occupied a curiously exaggerated importance in her reflections. She realized that it was absurdly insignificant, yet she found herself considering chiefly, not the fact that by any effort truly astonishing he had flung her to a refuge far above the boiling river, but the mere incident that while she lay in his arms his scrawny beard, cold and wet, had brushed her cheek—yes, even his mustache. ”

“ The blue book which was serving as a model, Rosalind had found on her aunt's table, and asked permission to use.
"Well, then, 'Article II. The object of this Society shall be, To remember the Secret of the Forest; to bear hard things bravely; to search for the ring—' Anything else?"
"Maurice, that is beautiful. Is there anything else?" Rosalind pressed her lips with a forefinger.
"Belle wanted to have 'to help the needy,' or something of the kind."
"The down-trodden," said Rosalind, laughing. "I don't like that, do you?"
"Let's wait; we may think of something after a while. ”

“ Sally had an existence of her own quite independent of her origin. She was his and Rosalind's—a part of their existence, a necessity. It was easy and natural for him to dissociate the living, breathing reality that filled so much of their lives from its mere beginnings. It was less easy for Rosalind, but not an impossibility altogether, helped by the forgiveness for the past that grew from the soil of her daughter's love. ”

“ Rosalind studied me with her frank, merry eyes; then she bent forward and addressed me with something of that prescient air with which my sisters used to lecture me.
"Mr. Donovan, I fear you are a little mixed in your mind this morning, and I propose to set you straight."
"About what, if you please?"
The conceit in man always rises and struts at the approach of a woman's sympathy. My body ached, the knife slash across my ribs burnt, and I felt myself a sadly abused person as Rosalind addressed me. ”

“ I confess that all my dreams came to one ending; that I should suddenly awake in some golden hour and really know Rosalind. Of course I had been coming through all these years to know something about Rosalind; but in this busy world, with work to be done, and bills to be paid, and people to be seen, and journeys to be made, and friction and worry and fatigue to be borne, how can we really come to know one another? We may meet the vicissitudes and changes side by side; we may work together in the long days of toil; our hearts may repose on a common trust, our thoughts travel a common road ”

“ Rosalind!
ROSALIND: Oh, we’re so darned pitiful!
AMORY: Rosalind!
ROSALIND: Oh, I want to die!
AMORY: Rosalind, another night of this and I’ll go to pieces. You’ve been this way four days now. You’ve got to be more encouraging or I can’t work or eat or sleep. (He looks around helplessly as if searching for new words to clothe an old, shopworn phrase.) We’ll have to make a start. I like having to make a start together. (His forced hopefulness fades as he sees her unresponsive.) What’s the matter? (He gets up suddenly and starts to pace the floor.) It’s Dawson Ryder, that’s what it is. ”

“ As she lay back in her chair, too weary to think; through her mind floated Rosalind's words, "Things always come right in the Forest."
It was after dinner. The sun had set, leaving the sky full of opal tints. The delicate leaves of the white birch barely moved, so still was the air. The whir of the last locust had died away, and the soft splash of the fountain was the only sound, as Rosalind in her white dress flitted past the griffins and joined her uncle on the garden bench. He welcomed her with a smile, and smoked on in silence. They were too good comrades to need to talk. ”

“ She was a sprightly young woman, very smart and merry and decorously voluptuous, and of that fascinating prettiness that wins the hearts of boys and storms the footlights. One of her characteristics soothed the heart of Rosalind. ”

“ To the other women in the car, to Rosalind and the others the act said something. It was as though the woman's voice had said aloud, "He is mine. Do not draw too close to him."
There was no doubt that Rosalind was awakening out of the Willow Springs torpor in which she had lived out her young womanhood. The city had at least done that for her. The city was wide. It flung itself out. One had but to let his feet go thump, thump upon the pavements to get into strange streets, see always new faces.
On Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday one did not work. ”

“ When Rosalind's face commands,
how vain the essays of man?
She frowns, we break love's silken bands,
she smiles, we love again.
But yet ye fair be not inclin'd,
like her your power to prove;
Few nymphs can charm like Rosalind,
few swains like me can love.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ The magician read it slowly through, then he smiled at Rosalind over his glasses. "That's so," he said. "It is hard to keep out of the desert sometimes, but it all comes right in the end. Why, the other day I was—" here he shook his head and put on a woe-begone expression of countenance that made his meaning plain, and caused Rosalind to laugh—"and I looked up and there you stood in the door and pointed to the motto, 'Good in everything,' and I felt better." ”

“ Helen, I reflected, did not laugh so readily. Rosalind was beautiful, she was charming; and yet her likeness to Helen failed in baffling particulars. Even as she came through the daisy meadow there had been a difference—at least I seemed to realize it now. The white butterflies symbolized her Ariel-like quality; for the life of me I could not associate those pale, fluttering vagrants with Helen Holbrook. ”

“ This impressive calculation had a great effect on poor Rosalind; and it is a secondary matter that it and its accompanying wisdom may have less weight with the reader, as for the moment Rosalind was my one concern.
"But, of course, we have perfect trust in each other," said Rosalind presently, with charming illogicality.
"No doubt," I said; "but Love, like a good householder (ahem!) , does well not to live too much on trust."
"But surely love means perfect trust," said Rosalind. ”

“ Hour after hour wore away; still Rosalind remained at the window. As there was no inclination to sleep, she determined to remain in her position until morning. She knew that it must be far beyond midnight, and at the thought there sprung up a faint hope within her breast. But she was startled by the dismal hoot of an owl. She sprang up, with a beating heart, listening intently and painfully; but no other sound was heard. Trying to smile at her trepidation, she again seated herself and listened; in a moment that cry was repeated, now in an opposite direction from which the first note was heard. ”

“ The men began weaving in and out to the right, the women to the left. Rosalind was driven onward remorselessly by the necessity of saving her heels from being stepped on. She did not look like a lady who enjoyed being among the peasants and humble villagers. Her jaw was set at too grim an angle.
The whistle blew again at an instant when Rosalind's left hand was grasped firmly by one knight of the white shirt-front, while her right had just been seized by another. The signal, she knew, meant another partner. ”

“ This she took to her cousin, who looked a pretty beardless boy in her disguise of Ganymede, and bade her read it. Then it turned out that Rosalind was not a whit more sensible than Orlando, except that being a woman, she could dissemble better, but loved the handsome youth after the same fashion that he loved her. What should she do next but set out in the forest to meet Orlando, still in her disguise, and having met him, engaged him for a talk, in which she played the saucy stripling to perfection. She accused him of being in love, and he confessed it. ”

“ Now, Orlando could think of nothing but Rosalind, and he went about the forest carving her name on trees, and writing love sonnets and hanging them on the bushes, and there Rosalind and Celia found them. One day Orlando met them, but he did not know Rosalind in her boy's clothes, though he liked the pretty shepherd youth, because he fancied a likeness in him to her he loved.
"There is a foolish lover," said Rosalind, "who haunts these woods and hangs sonnets on the trees. ”