It was of some one I had never seen. I raised the lamp above
my head and scrutinized it. It was a beautiful face, but one of cold,
passive loveliness. There was something in the handsome mouth which
made me wince as I looked upon it, and those large speaking eyes. What
a depth theirs was, too deep, I thought, too alluring, might not one
get lost in such labyrinths as these?
I gazed upon the picture until my hand, exhausted, trembled with the
lighted lamp it held, and even then I had not seen it half enough but
I turned away and went on in moody thoughtfulness with my final
preparations for retiring.
I knelt and said my evening prayers, with many a struggle against
teasing distractions, I must admit.
Such a queer nature was mine! I do not know whether others resemble me
or not in this respect, but from my young girlhood, I have always been
led away by those faces, books, sounds or pictures, that are
suggestive of any kind of deep or pent up emotion. I know not exactly
whether it be that I look upon them as associated in some dim distant
way with my own uneventful life, yet how could that be? What have
vagrant strains of unfamiliar music conceived by unknown minds, and
played by unseen hands to do with the mechanism of one undreamt of
human soul? What can those heart-moving pages of the authors I love,
have to do with the issue of an existence of which they have never
heard nor thought? What part could these fascinating faces have played
in the personal drama of my life, when they have never been called
upon to bestow even the tame smile of conventional greeting upon me?
What bearing could those speaking pictures have upon the story of my
individual experience when they are often the only reflection of days
long past and forgotten, children of some pensive artist's fancy that
never had another life outside of his conception, than that infused by
brush or chisel? Yet it always seems to me that as I look into those
books and faces, or as I lend my ear to those engaging sounds, some
chord vibrates within me that makes me feel as if my memory were
struggling to awake from some lethargy: scenes and sorrows of my
yesterdays come back for a short moment to my vivid recollection, and
seem to hang around these powerful incentives in a misty halo.
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