GETTING OVER IT.

Evening Star, Issue 4178, 18 July 1876, Page 4

GETTING OVER IT.

. {From the Queen). “ You -will -get over it.” Of all the styptics applied to a bleeding heart, a wounded soul, this sounds the most miekbfaVis/ih fact, the most wholesome; The reparative power of nature -—that vis medicatrur, of which schoolmen talked such marvellous nousence in the ..days when ideas stood where facts stand now—is as true of the human mind as it 16 of the body ; and shattered joys ; repairs itself, happiness is restored after mutiliation, wounded affection is healed,'and scars take the place -of sores, all the same in the life of man as in the life of the world—in souls as in plants. It is wonderful, when we think of. it, what we do get* over ; some of us, certainly, with more trouble, and taking a longer time about it than others ; but we all, with few exceptions, get over everything in .time, rand after the. due amount of despair has been undergone, the due number of tears have been shed. /; . :.

It is easy to understand the passionate desperation of inexperienced youth when things go. .wrong, and disappointment comes to shatter the fairy shrine that hope and fancy had busied themselves in building up out of mist wreaths and rainbows. The boy’s fever-fit of despair when cruel parents interpose with their; vile prosaic calculations .of how much for house - rent, and how much for the butcher and baker, with the maddening defeit against the . artist’s income that is to provide food and a home for the beloved, and consequent denial of the daughter’s hand, and inteiTuption of all intercourse for the good of both well, he thinks that he shall never get over it! It has broken his heart, destroyed his life, ruined his happiness for ever, and there is nothing worth living for now, since Ayaminta is impossible. On her side,'Araminla holds that it would be very nice to die and have done with the trouble of dressing for balls when Bertie is not there to see her—where, # if he is there, he is not to dance with her, make sweet love, in the conservatory, on the stairs, over the ices, the champagne; ‘ She thinks that, Bertie denied,' her- womanhood will have no more sweetness, bring her no more hope; she will never get over it never, shesayaweeping to her confident; but next year she is the radient wife of ft well-to-do stock broker, ami Bertie's artistry and lovO*«mking are no more substantial than her childish dreams of dolls and dolls’ houses. Bertie too laughs at his former self, when he is a prosperous K.A., painting for guineas where formerly he was not paid in penpe, and m?e(s with Araminta at tho private view—she a British matron

’■'-li q .dc /lfcJh i, -

with her quiver, full and her brown hair grey; he also the father of a family, who has done with dreams even in his art, and who paints what will sell rather than what he thinks to be the best. Ah ! the Berties and A rarainfcas of life get over their romances with humiliating celerity ; and: that vis me■dicatrix is sometimes quicker and more thorough in its operation than is quite satisfactory to the self-love of either. Submission to the inevitable is all very well in its way ; but nobody likes that submission to ; be too entire when it involves the loss of himself.

The man’s deeper disappointment—the woman’s life-long sorrow—even these are got over in a way, if the scars never heal quite so kindly as with Bertie and Araminta. The older one grows the deeper the wounds and the more pain they cause ; though also all of us, if wise, know that these wounds "will be got over in time, that this pain will cease to ache. Nevertheless, for the time being it is bad to bear, and the healing process is slower. Loss of fortune, of friends, of the dearest twin of yoyr life-r-that second self without whom it seems to you now that you cannot exist at all—the child from the mother’s breast, the boy from the father’s side, the prop of your old ago, the companion of your soul and the joy of your eyes—all these go from you and fling you into the abyss of despair; but you get over it. A few years of troubled health may be, of tears starting to your eyes on small occasions, of the constant presence of gloom, and the daily thought of death—-and then by degrees the clouds lift gradually, bit by bit, step by step, till you drift under the serene blue sky again, where, if all things, are not as they were before the storm came which broke yeur flowers and beat down your temple,' they are at the least beautiful to look at and good to: live with. We grant it—great sorrows le sve traces that are ineffaceable, and life is never entirely the same after them as it was before ; but for all that we get over even the deepest of these sorrows, and go on in the old grooves, with here and there sad places as reminders, but substantially everything the same as heretofore. We get over even that loss of health and strength which leaves the citadel sound if, the outworks are sapped and taken. The strong man and mighty hunter learns to live as a cripple—as a .living death, paralysed and bound to. his chair for the remainder of his time. When it was first told him that he was maimed and ruined, he felt that he could not get over it—that he should die of the anguish which only strong know. But the blessed vis medicatrix, which could do nothing for his body, does all for his mind, and he wears down into his sorrowful place, aud gets over it in the best way he can. He finds consolation—“ compensation,” as Emerson says—and, like a vine pruned to the quick, puts forth fresh tendrils, new leaves, and even bears good fruit to the end. It is a daily amazement to his friends, who knew him in the days of his powerful manhood and lusty strength, to see how well he has got over it; but the power which is good for one thing is for the most part good for another, and the resignation of 4 a strong man to the inevitable is as brave as Used to be -bis courage in. tlie presence of danger, as . vital as was his energy against obstacles, and difficulties.