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Page 5
Miss Ludington was over sixty years of age and Paul was twenty-two when
he finished his course at college. She had naturally supposed that, on
going out into the world, mixing with young men and meeting young women,
he would outgrow his romantic fancy concerning Ida; but the event was
very different. As year after year he returned home to spend his
vacations, it was evident that his visionary passion was strengthening
rather than losing its hold upon him.
But the strangest thing of all was the very peculiar manner in which,
during the last vacation preceding his graduation, he began to allude to
Ida in his conversations with Miss Ludington. It was, indeed, so peculiar
that when, after his return to college, she recalled the impression left
upon her mind, she was constrained to think that she had, somehow,
totally misunderstood him; for he had certainly seemed to talk as if Ida,
instead of being that most utterly, pathetically dead of all dead
things--the past self of a living person--were possibly not dead at all:
as if, in fact she might have a spiritual existence, like that ascribed
to the souls of those other dead whose bodies are laid in the grave.
Decidedly, she must have misunderstood him.
Some months later, on one of the last days of June, he graduated. Miss
Ludington. would have attended the graduation exercises but for the fact
that her long seclusion from society made the idea of going away from
home and mingling with strangers intolerable. She had expected him home
the morning after his graduation. When, however, she came downstairs,
expecting to greet him at the breakfast-table, she found instead a letter
from him, which, to her further astonishment, consisted of several
closely written sheets. What could have possessed him to write her this
laborious letter on the very day of his return?
The letter began by telling her that he had accepted an invitation from a
class-mate, and should not be home for a couple of days. "But this is
only an excuse," he went on; "the true reason that I do not at once
return is that you may have a day or two to think over the contents of
this letter before you see me; for what I have to say will seem very
startling to you at first. I was trying to prepare you for it when I
talked, as you evidently thought, so strangely, about Ida, the last time
I was at home; but you were only mystified, and I was not ready to
explain. A certain timidity held me back. It was so great a matter that I
was afraid to broach it by word of mouth lest I might fail to put it in
just the best way before your mind, and its strangeness might terrify you
before you could be led to consider its reasonableness. But, now that I
am coming home to stay, I should not be able to keep it from you, and it
has seemed to me better to write you in this way, so that you may have
time fully to debate the matter with your own heart before you see me. Do
you remember the last evening that I was at home, my asking you if you
did not sometimes have a sense of Ida's presence? You looked at me as if
you thought I were losing my wits. What did I mean, you asked, by
speaking of her as a living person? But I was not ready to speak, and I
put you off.
"I am going to answer your question now. I am going to tell you how and
why I believe that she is neither lost nor dead, but a living and
immortal spirit. For this, nothing less than this, is my absolute
assurance, the conviction which I ask you to share.
"But stop, let us go back. Let us assume nothing. Let us reason it all
out carefully from the beginning. Let me forget that I am her lover. Let
me be stiff; and slow, and formal as a logician, while I prove that my
darling lives for ever. And you, follow me carefully, to see if I slip.
Forget what ineffable thing she is to you; forget what it is to you that
she lives. Do not let your eyes fill; do not let your brain swim. It
would be madness to believe it if it is not true. Listen, then:--
You know that men speak of human beings, taken singly, as individuals.
It is taken for granted in the common speech that the individual is the
unit of humanity, not to be subdivided. That is, indeed, what the
etymology of the word means. Nevertheless, the slightest reflection will
cause any one to see that this assumption is a most mistaken one. The
individual is no more the unit of humanity than is the tribe or family;
but, like them, is a collective noun, and stands for a number of distinct
persons, related one to another in a particular way, and having certain
features of resemblance. The persons composing a family are related both
collaterally and by succession or descent, while the persons composing an
individual are related by succession only. They are called infancy,
childhood, youth, manhood, maturity, age, and dotage.
"These persons are very unlike one another. Striking physical, mental,
and moral differences exist between them. Infancy and childhood are
incomprehensible to manhood, and manhood not less so to them. The youth
looks forward with disgust to the old age which is to follow him, and the
old man has far more in common with other old men, his own
contemporaries, than with the youth who preceded him. How frequently do
we see the youth vicious and depraved, and the man who follows him
upright and virtuous, hating iniquity! How often, on the other hand, is a
pure and innocent girlhood succeeded by a dissolute and shameless
womanhood! In many cases age looks back upon youth with inexpressible
longing and tenderness, and quite as often with shame and remorse; but in
all cases with the same consciousness of profound contrast, and of a
great gulf fixed between.
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