If we had but chosen to see it,--if
we only had chosen!
CHAPTER V.
Now that I have come to the love part of my story, I am suddenly
conscious of dingy common colors on the palette with which I have
been painting. I wish I had some brilliant dyes. I wish, with
all my heart, I could take you back to that "Once upon a time" in
which the souls of our grandmothers delighted,--the time which
Dr. Johnson sat up all night to read about in "Evelina,"--the
time when all the celestial virtues, all the earthly graces were
revealed in a condensed state to man through the blue eyes and
sumptuous linens of some Belinda Portman or Lord Mortimer. None
of your good-hearted, sorely-tempted villains then! It made your
hair stand on end only to read of them,--going about perpetually
seeking innocent maidens and unsophisticated old men to devour.
That was the time for holding up virtue and vice; no trouble then
in seeing which were sheep and which were goats! A person could
write a story with a moral to it, then, I should hope! People
that were born in those days had no fancy for going through the
world with half-and-half characters, such as we put up with; so
Nature turned out complete specimens of each class, with all the
appendages of dress, fortune, et cetera, chording decently. The
heroine glides into life full-charged with rank, virtues, a name
three-syllabled, and a white dress that never needs washing,
ready to sail through dangers dire into a triumphant haven of
matrimony;-- all the aristocrats have high foreheads and cold
blue eyes; all the peasants are old women, miraculously grateful,
in neat check aprons, or sullen-browed insurgents planning
revolts in caves.
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