You have
also seen them together (occasionally) at Lenox and Newport, since
their marriage. Are you honestly of the opinion that if Tom had not
married Ellinor, these two young lives would have been a total
wreck?
Adam Smith, in his book on THE MORAL SENTIMENTS, goes so far as to
say that "love is not interesting to the observer because it is AN
AFFECTION OF THE IMAGINATION, into which it is difficult for a third
party to enter." Something of the same kind occurred to me in
regard to Tom and Ellinor. Yet I would not have presumed to suggest
this thought to either of them. Nor would I have quoted in their
hearing the melancholy and frigid prediction of Ralph Waldo Emerson,
to the effect that they would some day discover "that all which at
first drew them together--those once sacred features, that magical
play of charm--was deciduous."
DECIDUOUS, indeed? Cold, unpleasant, botanical word! Rather would
I prognosticate for the lovers something perennial,
"A sober certainty of waking bliss,"
to survive the evanescence of love's young dream. Ellinor should
turn out to be a woman like the Lady Elizabeth Hastings, of whom
Richard Steele wrote that "to love her was a liberal education."
Tom should prove that he had in him the lasting stuff of a true man
and a hero.
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