“Not so, Mr. Chillingly. But the fact is,
that when I wrote that book of which you speak I was
young, and youth is enthusiastic and one-sided.
Now, with the same disdain of the excesses to which
love may hurry weak intellects, I recognize its benignant
effects when taken, as I before said, rationally,—taken
rationally, my young friend. At that period of
life when the judgment is matured, the soothing companionship
of an amiable female cannot but cheer the mind, and
prevent that morose hoar-frost into which solitude
is chilled and made rigid by increasing years.
In short, Mr. Chillingly, having convinced myself
that I erred in the opinion once too rashly put forth,
I owe it to Truth, I owe it to Mankind, to make my
conversion known to the world. And I am about
next month to enter into the matrimonial state with
a young lady who—”
“Say no more, say no more, Mr. Roach. It
must be a painful subject to you. Let us drop
it.”
“It is not a painful subject at all!”
exclaimed Mr. Roach, with warmth. “I look
forward to the fulfilment of my duty with the pleasure
which a well-trained mind always ought to feel in recanting
a fallacious doctrine. But you do me the justice
to understand that of course I do not take this step
I propose—for my personal satisfaction.
No, sir, it is the value of my example to others which
purifies my motives and animates my soul.”
After this concluding and noble sentence, the conversation
drooped. Host and guest both felt they had had
enough of each other. Kenelm soon rose to depart.
Mr. Roach, on taking leave of, him at the door, said,
with marked emphasis,—
“Not for my personal satisfaction,—remember
that. Whenever you hear my conversion discussed
in the world, say that from my own lips you heard
these words,—NOT FOR MY PERSONAL SATISFACTION.
No! my kind regards to Welby,—a, married
man himself, and a father: he will understand
me.”
ON quitting Oxford, Kenelm wandered for several days
about the country, advancing to no definite goal,
meeting with no noticeable adventure. At last
he found himself mechanically retracing his steps.
A magnetic influence he could not resist drew him back
towards the grassy meads and the sparkling rill of
Moleswich.
“There must be,” said he to himself, “a
mental, like an optical, illusion. In the last,
we fancy we have seen a spectre. If we dare not
face the apparition,—dare not attempt to
touch it,—run superstitiously away from
it,—what happens? We shall believe
to our dying day that it was not an illusion, that
it was a spectre; and so we may be crazed for life.
But if we manfully walk up to the phantom, stretch
our hands to seize it, oh! it fades into thin air,
the cheat of our eyesight is dispelled, and we shall
never be ghost-ridden again. So it must be with
this mental illusion of mine. I see an image
strange to my experience: it seems to me, at first
