Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1887

Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No.
118,
by Various

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August, 1887, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone
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Title: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1887
Author: Various
Release Date: November 13, 2006 [EBook #19779]
Language: English
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THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics.
VOL. XX.--AUGUST, 1867.--NO. CXVIII.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867 by TICKNOR
AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District
of Massachusetts.

Transcriber's note: Minor typos have been corrected.

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.
CHAPTER XXI.
MADNESS?
Mr. Clement Lindsay returned to the city and his usual labors in a state
of strange mental agitation. He had received an impression for which
he was unprepared. He had seen for the second time a young girl whom,
for the peace of his own mind, and for the happiness of others, he
should never again have looked upon until Time had taught their young
hearts the lesson which all hearts must learn, sooner or later.
What shall the unfortunate person do who has met with one of those
disappointments, or been betrayed into one of those positions, which do
violence to all the tenderest feelings, blighting the happiness of youth,
and the prospects of after years?
If the person is a young man, he has various resources. He can take to
the philosophic meerschaum, and nicotize himself at brief intervals into

a kind of buzzing and blurry insensibility, until he begins to "color" at
last like the bowl of his own pipe, and even his mind gets the tobacco
flavor. Or he can have recourse to the more suggestive stimulants,
which will dress his future up for him in shining possibilities that glitter
like Masonic regalia, until the morning light and the waking headache
reveal his illusion. Some kind of spiritual anæsthetic he must have, if
he holds his grief fast tied to his heart-strings. But as grief must be fed
with thought, or starve to death, it is the best plan to keep the mind so
busy in other ways that it has no time to attend to the wants of that
ravening passion. To sit down and passively endure it, is apt to end in
putting all the mental machinery into disorder.
Clement Lindsay had thought that his battle of life was already fought,
and that he had conquered. He believed that he had subdued himself
completely, and that he was ready, without betraying a shadow of
disappointment, to take the insufficient nature which destiny had
assigned him in his companion, and share with it all of his own larger
being it was capable, not of comprehending, but of apprehending.
He had deceived himself. The battle was not fought and won. There
had been a struggle, and what seemed to be a victory, but the
enemy--intrenched in the very citadel of life--had rallied, and would
make another desperate attempt to retrieve his defeat.
The haste with which the young man had quitted the village was only a
proof that he felt his danger. He believed that, if he came into the
presence of Myrtle Hazard for the third time, he should be no longer
master of his feelings. Some explanation must take place between them,
and how was it possible that it should be without emotion? and in what
do all emotions shared by a young man with such a young girl as this
tend to find their last expression?
Clement determined to stun his sensibilities by work. He would give
himself no leisure to indulge in idle dreams of what might have been.
His plans were never so carefully finished, and his studies were never
so continuous as now. But the passion still wrought within him, and, if
he drove it from his waking thoughts, haunted his sleep until he could
endure it no longer, and must give it some manifestation. He had

covered up the bust of Liberty so closely, that not an outline betrayed
itself through the heavy folds of drapery in which it was wrapped. His
thoughts recurred to his unfinished marble, as offering the one mode in
which he could find a silent outlet to the feelings and thoughts which it
was torture to keep imprisoned in his