DROPPED IN HASTE.

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 697, 13 September 1876, Page 3

DROPPED IN HASTE.

I wonder if any one ever died of joy—l wonder if joy’s overflowing torrent ever burst down the feeble sluices of life—sluices that were all too weak and powerless to contain such a mighty current within their grasp. I wonder if life ever gave way to joy, as the fire is put out by the sun. Let me tell now what I have to say, I was brought up in a lonely country place among the Welsh mountains. I had lived there ever since I was born, with my father and mother. It is strange with what different feelings different people regard their parents. Sons usually give the larger share of their hearts to their mothers, to touch this string rarely fails to bring out a responsive chord. But the feelings with which fathers are regarded are more complex. Sons seldom know their own fathers, and this is still truer with regard to daughters. Many daughters know little more of their own fathers than they do of the merest stranger. They meet usually in the evenings, they take their meals in each other’s company, they help one another to fish and meat and pudding ; but their minds, their souls, never meet, they are as far apart as the poles; sometimes all the farther apart, because there is a certain similarity between them. So it goes on, and no chance ever offers of their approaching nearer the one to the other. Such was not the case with me. My father was a keeper at home, a man of books, who lived in his study, and to whose ears the sweetest of all music was the sound of Latin hexameters or the sonorous rise and fall of a Greek chorus. The earliest object on which my childish eyes rested with any degree of pleasure was on that thin pale statue-like face, leaning back iu the study chair, while strange sounds issued in harmonious murmurs from those half-closed lips. That face, with its high forehead, its large pointed cogitative nose, its noble thoughtful brow, seemed ever to rise before me and call me to higher things than I know' of elsewhere. My mother was a confirmed invalid, a martyr to sick headaches, and usually kept her room; so the greater part of the day I was left to roam about where I pleased, and I generally came to anchor in my father’s study. Occasionally I stopped my play, and gazed at the quiet figure before me with a strange mixture of awe, reverence, wonder, sympathy, and longing. Hush 1 those mysterious musical murmurs were beginning again, like the rise and fall of the slumbrous sea. I heard them now in the misty twilight: * Otium divos, rogat in patenti, Prensus HCg;co, simul arta nubes, Condidit lunam, neque certa fulgent, Sidera nautis.’ I listened and gazed, as we gaze at the crimson sunset of summer, which seems so near and is yet so far away. ‘Oh! papa,’ I cried, passionately, ‘teach me what you know. Make me like yourself.’ ‘ I will teach you as much as you like, Lina,’ he answered, looking up, ‘ when you are ready to learn it. At present you are not ready. You are too young.’ Yes 1 I was young, not more than nine years old, and very, very ignorant. I hardly knew how to read, but I determined to brace myselt for the effort, and to master those terrible two and three syllabled words which had been such a stumbling block to me, and which were now the first obstacle which divided me from my scholarly father. With the help of a governess, I slowly mastered the elements of the ‘ three It’s ’ and it was a proud day for me when I was at last handed over to my father for more advanced teaching. I went into the study for my first lesson with a heart trembling from mingled fear and joy. My first lessons were anything but a success. I was not a quick child, far from it. I took in ideas very slowly and with great difficulty. I longed with a desperate longing to be quicker than I was. It gave me the most acute pain to see my father flinging down the book impatiently when I made a wrong answer, or wincing as if he was hurt when I stammered out a false quantity and put a long ‘ e ’ for a short one. ‘ I don’t know why you are so stupid,’he said to me one morning, when I had been more than usually slow. ‘ I don’t think you can be a child of mine.’ This hurt me more than anything, I would—yes ! I would—show that something of his classical spirit kindled within me. After a while I made a start. I began to improve. I mastered the declensions, the delectus. I advanced to exercises. I began to read Cicero’s letters to his daughter Tullia. Ah! if I could only be another Tullia, and if my father would mourn for me when I was dead, as Cicero mourned for her. Things went on pleasantly in the study now. My father’s brow relaxed when I remembered some grammatical rule or gave some unexpected answer, and my heart leaped with triumph. I vvns proving that I was his child. How glorious, how animating the thought! Let him only wait a little, and the time would come when my proudest wish would be gratified, and I would read Plato by his side. It was strange that no one guessed how I loved him. Few caresses, few expresssions of endearment, passed between us ; when I went to bed every night, I kifised him, and he said, 1 Good night, dear,” and that was all. The ladies in the neighbourhood gave out ‘ That Mr Parnell was going to make a bluestocking of poor little Lina, and they quite pitied the child for having such hard lessons, and such a particular person always driving at her.’ How little they knew ! I was now seventeen and a half. 1 had lived a strange isolated life. I rarely met girls of my ovn age, and when I did I shrank from them. Sometimes a stray sehool-girl, home for the holidays, was brought up to our secluded laurel-shaded house, with the view of being company to poor Lina, but I hardly knew what to make of her. She was different from me. I wanted no one. My father was enough for me. Spring was just beginning, when my mother’s sister, Mrs Price, took a house about five miles from ours. She was gay and dressy, fond of society, fond of young people, and she often asked me over to Brookside for a week or a fortnight. At first I did not like going, but by degrees I began to like it better. My aunt said I was growing up a regular guy, a perfect figure of fun. She would not let me wear my old cashmere frock with its plain untrimmed skirt, but got me a new one made in the best fashion. Then as for gloves, I must get proper kid gloves for Sundays and for visiting, and not those brown cotton things, which I had thought good enough. 'Gracious heavens 1 ’ my aunt exclaimed, in dismay, 1 was there ever such a girl 1 ” To ie continued.