Whats Mines Mine, vol 1 | Page 6

never seen. He did not
read it now, but accepting her suggestion, named the boy Christian.
When a daughter came, he would have had her Christiana, but his wife
persuaded him to be content with Christina. They named their second
son Valentine, after Mr. Valiant-for-truth. Their second daughter was
Mercy; and for the third and fourth, Hope and Grace seemed near
enough. So the family had a cool glow of puritanism about it, while
nothing was farther from the thoughts of any of them than what their
names signified. All, except the mother, associated them with the
crusades for the rescue of the sepulchre of the Lord from the pagans;
not a thought did one of them spend on the rescue of a live soul from
the sepulchre of low desires, mean thoughts, and crawling selfishness.

CHAPTER III
.
THE GIRLS' FIRST WALK.

The Governor, Peregrine and Palmer as he was, did not care about
walking at any time, not even when he HAD to do it because other
people did; the mother, of whom there would have been little left had
the sweetness in her moral, and the house-keeping in her practical
nature, been subtracted, had things to see to within doors: the young
people must go out by themselves! They put on their hats, and issued.
The temperature was keen, though it was now nearly the middle of
August, by which time in those northern regions the earth has begun to
get a little warm: the house stood high, and the atmosphere was thin.
There was a certain sense of sadness in the pale sky and its cold
brightness; but these young people felt no cold, and perceived no
sadness. The air was exhilarating, and they breathed deep breaths of a
pleasure more akin to the spiritual than they were capable of knowing.
For as they gazed around them, they thought, like Hamlet's mother in
the presence of her invisible husband, that they saw all there was to be
seen. They did not know nature: in the school to which they had gone
they patronized instead of revering her. She wrought upon them
nevertheless after her own fashion with her children, unheedful whether
they knew what she was about or not. The mere space, the mere height
from which they looked, the rarity of the air, the soft aspiration of earth
towards heaven, made them all more of children.
But not one of them being capable of enjoying anything by herself,
together they were unable to enjoy much; and, like the miser who,
when he cannot much enjoy his money, desires more, began to desire
more company to share in the already withering satisfaction of their
new possession--to help them, that is, to get pleasure out of it, as out of
a new dress. It is a good thing to desire to share a good thing, but it is
not well to be unable alone to enjoy a good thing. It is our enjoyment
that should make us desirous to share. What is there to share if the
thing be of no value in itself? To enjoy alone is to be able to share. No

participation can make that of value which in itself is of none. It is not
love alone but pride also, and often only pride, that leads to the desire
for another to be present with us in possession.
The girls grew weary of the show around them because it was so quiet,
so regardless of their presence, so moveless, so monotonous. Endless
change was going on, but it was too slow for them to see; had it been
rapid, its motions were not of a kind to interest them. Ere half an hour
they had begun to think with regret of Piccadilly and Regent street--for
they had passed the season in London. There is a good deal counted
social which is merely gregarious. Doubtless humanity is better
company than a bare hill-side; but not a little depends on how near we
come to the humanity, and how near we come to the hill. I doubt if one
who could not enjoy a bare hill-side alone, would enjoy that hill-side in
any company; if he thought he did, I suspect it would be that the
company enabled him, not to forget himself in what he saw, but to be
more pleasantly aware of himself than the lone hill would permit him to
be;--for the mere hill has its relation to that true self which the common
self is so anxious to avoid and forget. The girls, however, went on and
on, led mainly by the animal delight of motion, the two younger
making many a diversion up the hill on the one side, and down the hill
on the other, shrieking at everything fresh that