I was no longer
thrown recklessly upon the wooden summer-house bench. The gentle hands
that raised me in my dream and bore me heavenward, were not those of a
far-off angel, as I understood the term, they were the strong brawny
palms of a man of four-and-thirty years, not so strong that their
touch could not be as gentle as a mother's own, not so brawny that
they could not dry the tearful lids of a sleeping child without
disturbing its repose.
He had taken me in his arms and pillowed my drooping head upon his
manly breast. When I opened my eyes he was looking dreamily, half
sadly, half smilingly, into my face. He was not what you, reader,
would call a handsome man, for you never knew him. To you, and to all
the world perhaps but me, he would be no more than a man in a crowd.
But I need not here bring forward the wonderful power of association
which is the underlying beauty reflected from many a homely surface to
eyes that prize and cherish them. What though a thing possess not in
reality those charms with which it is identical in our minds and
hearts? That which we believe to be, is, as effectually for us as if
its existence were sanctioned and sustained by all mankind, and so far
as personal conviction goes there is no standard outside the
individual one. My idea of the beautiful is the only beautiful I can
ever really acknowledge or enjoy, and yet how far astray may it not be
from the concurrent idea of the majority, which is supposed to be the
only true standard.
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