I have grown strangely romantic since I have fallen
in love with Charlotte Halliday. The time was
when I should have felt nothing but a flippant ignorant
contempt for poor Haygarth’s feeble sighings
and lamentings; but now I think of him with a sorrowful
tenderness, and am more interested in his poor commonplace
life, that picture, and those two locks of hair, than
in the most powerful romance that ever emanated from
mortal genius. It has been truly said, that truth
is stranger than fiction: may it not as justly
be said, that truth has a power to touch the human
heart which is lacking in the most sublime flights
of a Shakespeare, or the grandest imaginings of an
Aeschylus? One is sorry for the fate of Agamemnon;
but one is infinitely more sorrowful for the cruel
death of that English Richard in the dungeon at Pomfret,
who was a very insignificant person as compared to
the king of men and of ships.
HUNTING THE JUDSONS.
Oct. 10th. Yesterday and the day before
were blank days. On Saturday I read Mrs. Rebecca’s
letters a second time after a late breakfast, and
spent a lazy morning in the endeavour to pick up any
stray crumbs of information which I might have overlooked
the previous night. There was nothing to be found,
however; and, estimable as I have always considered
the founder of the Wesleyan fraternity, I felt just
a little weary of his virtues and his discourses,
his journeyings from place to place, his love-feasts
and his prayer-meetings, before I had finished with
Mrs. Haygarth’s correspondence. In the afternoon
I strolled about the town; made inquiries at several
inns, with a view to discover whether Captain Paget
was peradventure an inmate thereof; looked in at the
railway-station, and watched the departure of a train;
dawdled away half an hour at the best tobacconist’s
shop in the town on the chance of encountering my
accomplished patron, who indulges in two of the choicest
obtainable cigars per diem, and might possibly repair
thither to make a purchase, if he were in the place.
Whether he is still in Ullerton or not I cannot tell;
but he did not come to the tobacconist’s; and
I was fain to go back to my inn, having wasted a day.
Yet I do not think that George Sheldon will have cause
to complain of me, since I have worked very closely
for my twenty shillings per week, and have devoted
myself to the business in hand with an amount of enthusiasm
which I did not think it possible for me to experience
—except for—
I went to church on Sunday morning, and was more devoutly
inclined than it has been my habit to feel; for although
a man who lives by his wits must not necessarily be
a heathen or an atheist, it is very difficult for
him to be anything like a Christian. Even my devotion
yesterday was not worth much, for my thoughts went
vagabondising off to Charlotte Halliday in the midst
of a very sensible practical sermon.
