Seaboard Parish, vol 1 | Page 7

expression and sense. Not that that applies to Mrs.
Hemans. She is simple enough, only diluted to a degree. But I hold that

whatever mental food you take should be just a little too strong for you.
That implies trouble, necessitates growth, and involves delight."
"I sha'n't mind how difficult it is if you help me, papa. But it is anything
but satisfactory to go groping on without knowing what you are about."
I ought to have mentioned that Constance had been at school for two
years, and had only been home a month that very day, in order to
account for my knowing so little about her tastes and habits of mind.
We went on talking a little more in the same way, and if I were writing
for young people only, I should be tempted to go on a little farther with
the account of what we said to each other; for it might help some of
them to see that the thing they like best should, circumstances and
conscience permitting, be made the centre from which they start to
learn; that they should go on enlarging their knowledge all round from
that one point at which God intended them to begin. But at length we
fell into a silence, a very happy one on my part; for I was more than
delighted to find that this one too of my children was following after
the truth--wanting to do what was right, namely, to obey the word of
the Lord, whether openly spoken to all, or to herself in the voice of her
own conscience and the light of that understanding which is the candle
of the Lord. I had often said to myself in past years, when I had found
myself in the company of young ladies who announced their
opinions--probably of no deeper origin than the prejudices of their
nurses--as if these distinguished them from all the world besides; who
were profound upon passion and ignorant of grace; who had not a
notion whether a dress was beautiful, but only whether it was of the
newest cut--I had often said to myself: "What shall I do if my daughters
come to talk and think like that--if thinking it can be called?" but being
confident that instruction for which the mind is not prepared only lies
in a rotting heap, producing all kinds of mental evils correspondent to
the results of successive loads of food which the system cannot
assimilate, my hope had been to rouse wise questions in the minds of
my children, in place of overwhelming their digestions with what could
be of no instruction or edification without the foregoing appetite. Now
my Constance had begun to ask me questions, and it made me very
happy. We had thus come a long way nearer to each other; for however
near the affection of human animals may bring them, there are abysses
between soul and soul--the souls even of father and daughter--over

which they must pass to meet. And I do not believe that any two human
beings alive know yet what it is to love as love is in the glorious will of
the Father of lights.
I linger on with my talk, for I shrink from what I must relate.
We were going at a gentle trot, silent, along a woodland path--a brown,
soft, shady road, nearly five miles from home, our horses scattering
about the withered leaves that lay thick upon it. A good deal of
underwood and a few large trees had been lately cleared from the place.
There were many piles of fagots about, and a great log lying here and
there along the side of the path. One of these, when a tree, had been
struck by lightning, and had stood till the frosts and rains had bared it
of its bark. Now it lay white as a skeleton by the side of the path, and
was, I think, the cause of what followed. All at once my daughter's
pony sprang to the other side of the road, shying sideways; unsettled
her so, I presume; then rearing and plunging, threw her from the saddle
across one of the logs of which I have spoken. I was by her side in a
moment. To my horror she lay motionless. Her eyes were closed, and
when I took her up in my arms she did not open them. I laid her on the
moss, and got some water and sprinkled her face. Then she revived a
little; but seemed in much pain, and all at once went off into another
faint. I was in terrible perplexity.
Presently a man who, having been cutting fagots at a little distance, had
seen the pony careering through the wood, came up and asked what he
could do