The Wide, Wide World

The tone, in which there was a great deal both of love and decision, wound round Ellen's heart, and constrained her to answer immediately —

"I will not – I will not."

"Never parley with conscience; it's a dangerous habit."

"But then – it was only – "

"About trifles; I grant you; but the habit is no trifle. There will not be a just firmness of mind and steadfastness of action, where tampering with duty is permitted even in little things."

"I will try not to do it," Ellen repeated.

"No," said he, smiling, "let it stand as at first. 'I will not,' means something; 'I will try,' is very apt to come to nothing. 'I will keep thy precepts with my whole heart!' not 'I will try.' Your reliance is precisely the same in either case."

"I will not, John," said Ellen, smiling.

"What were you poring over so intently a while ago?"

"It was an old magazine – Blackwood's Magazine, I believe, is the name of it. I found two great piles of them in a closet upstairs the other day; and I brought this one down."

"This is the first that you have read?"

"Yes; I got very much interested in a curious story there; why?"

"What will you say, Ellie, if I ask you to leave the rest of the two piles unopened?"

"Why, I will say that I will do it, of course," said Ellen, with a little smothered sigh of regret, however; "if you wish it."

"I do wish it, Ellie."

"Very well, I'll let them alone then. I have enough other reading; I don't know how I happened to take that one up; because I saw it there, I suppose."

"Have you finished Nelson yet?"

"Oh yes! I finished it Saturday night. Oh, I like it very much? I am going all over it again, though. I like Nelson very much; don't you?"

"Yes; as well as I can like a man of very fine qualities without principle."

"Was he that?" said Ellen.

"Yes; did you not find it out? I am afraid your eyes were blinded by admiration."

"Were they?" said Ellen. "I thought he was so very fine in everything; and I should be sorry to think he was not."

"Look over the book again by all means, with a more critical eye; and when you have done so you shall give me your cool estimate of his character."

"Oh, me?" said Ellen. "Well, but I don't know whether I can give you a cool estimate of him; however, I'll try. I cannot think coolly of him now, just after Trafalgar. I think it was a shame that Collingwood did not anchor as Nelson told him to; don't you? I think he might have been obeyed while he was living, at least."

"It is difficult," said John, smiling, "to judge correctly of many actions without having been on the spot and in the circumstances of the actors. I believe you and I must leave the question of Trafalgar to more nautical heads."

"How pleasant this moonlight is!" said Ellen.

"What makes it pleasant?"

"What makes it pleasant! I don't know! I never thought of such a thing. It is made to be pleasant. I can't tell why; can anybody?"

"The eye loves light for many reasons, but all kinds of light are not equally agreeable. What makes the peculiar charm of those long streams of pale light across the floor? and the shadowy brightness without?"

"You must tell," said Ellen; "I cannot."

"You know we enjoy anything much more by contrast; I think that is one reason. Night is the reign of darkness which we do not love; and here is light struggling with the darkness, not enough to overcome it entirely, but yet banishing it to nooks and corners and distant parts, by the side of which it shows itself in contrasted beauty. Our eyes bless the unwonted victory."

"Yes," said Ellen, "we only have moonlight nights once in a while."

"But that is only one reason out of many, and not the greatest. It is a very refined pleasure, and to resolve it into its elements is something like trying to divide one of these same white rays of light into the many various coloured ones that go to form it; and not by any means so easy a task."

"Then it is no wonder I couldn't answer," said Ellen.

"No, you are hardly a full-grown philosopher yet, Ellie."

"The moonlight is so calm and quiet," Ellen observed admiringly.

"And why is it calm and quiet? I must have an answer to that."

"Because we are generally calm and quiet at such times!" Ellen ventured after a little thought.

"Precisely! we and the world. And association has given the moon herself the same character. Besides that her mild sober light is not fitted for the purposes of active employment, and therefore the more graciously invites us to the pleasures of thought and fancy."

"I am loving it more and more, the more you talk about it," said Ellen.

"And there you have touched another reason, Ellie, for the pleasure we have, not only in moonlight, but in most other things. When two things have been in the mind together, and made any impression, the mind associates them; and you cannot see or think of the one without bringing back the remembrance or the feeling of the other. If we have enjoyed the moonlight in pleasant scenes, in happy hours, with friends that we loved – though the sight of it may not always make us directly remember them, it yet brings with it a waft from the feeling of the old times, sweet as long as life lasts!"

"And sorrowful things may be associated too?" said Ellen.

"Yes, and sorrowful things. But this power of association is the cause of half the pleasure we enjoy. There is a tune my mother used to sing – I cannot hear it now without being carried swiftly back to my boyish days, to the very spirit of the time; I feel myself spring over the green sward as I did then."

"Oh, I know that is true," said Ellen. "The camellia, the white camellia, you know, I like it so much ever since what you said about it one day. I never see it without thinking of it; and it would not seem half so beautiful but for that."

"What did I say about it?"

"Don't you remember? you said it was like what you ought to be, and what you should be if you ever reached heaven; and you repeated that verse in the Revelation about 'those that have not defiled their garments.' I always think of it. It seems to give me a lesson."

"How eloquent of beautiful lessons all nature would be to us," said John musingly, "if we had but the eye and ear to take them in."

"And in that way you would heap associations upon associations?"

"Yes; till our storehouse of pleasure was very full."

"You do that now," said Ellen. "I wish you would teach me."