Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/76

Rh I spent with, her the greater part of the two days while she yet remained in Havanna, partly with her in her own apartments, and partly in driving with her on the beautiful promenades around the city, and partly in my own room, where I sketched her portrait;—and I could not help once more loving her intensely. Beneath the palm-trees of Cuba we talked only of Sweden and our mutual friends there, and shed bitter tears together over the painful loss of others. We talked much about old friends and old connections in Sweden, nay, truly speaking, we talked of nothing else, because everything else—honour, reputation, wealth, all which she had obtained out of Sweden—did not seem to have struck the least root in her soul. I should have liked to have heard something about them, but she had neither inclination nor pleasure in speaking of them. Sweden alone, and those old friends, as well as religious subjects, lay uppermost in her soul, and of these merely had she any wish to converse. In certain respects I could not entirely agree with her; but she was always an unusual and superior character, and so fresh, so Swedish! Jenny Lind is kindred with Trollhätan and Niagara, and with every vigorous and decided power of nature, and the effects which she produces resemble theirs.

The Americans are enchanted with her beneficence. I cannot admire her for this, I can only congratulate her in being able to follow the impulse of her heart. But that Jenny Lind, with all the power she feels herself possessed of, with all the sway she exercises, amid all the praise and homage which is poured upon her, and the multitudes of people whom she sees at her feet, still looks up to something higher than all this, higher than herself, and in comparison with which she esteems herself and all this to be mean—that glance, that thirst after the holy and the highest, which during many changes always again returns and shows itself to be a dominant feature in