It would be like a gaily decorated mausoleum--bright to see,
but silent and dark within.
"Great excellences, my dear Prue," I sometimes allow myself to say,
"lie concealed in the depths of character, like pearls at the bottom
of the sea. Under the laughing, glancing surface, how little they are
suspected! Perhaps love is nothing else than the sight of them by one
person. Hence every man's mistress is apt to be an enigma to everybody
else. I have no doubt that when Aurelia is engaged, people will say
that she is a most admirable girl, certainly; but they cannot
understand why any man should be in love with her. As if it were at
all necessary that they should! And her lover, like a boy who finds a
pearl in the public street, and wonders as much that others did not
see it as that he did, will tremble until he knows his passion is
returned; feeling, of course, that the whole world must be in love
with this paragon who cannot possibly smile upon anything so unworthy
as he."
"I hope, therefore, my dear Mrs. Prue," I continue to say to my wife,
who looks up from her work regarding me with pleased pride, as if I
were such an irresistible humorist, "you will allow me to believe that
the depth may be calm although the surface is dancing.
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