Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/324

 Happy in this, she is not yet so old But she may learn; and happier than this, She is not bred so dull but she can learn; Happiest of all, in that her gentle spirit Commits itself to yours to be directed, As from her lord, her governor, her king."

Does this language seem to you slavish and old-fashioned? And do you, madam, declare that you never saw the man yet for whom you would so demean yourself? Then I shall know that just at present you are not in love. Perhaps you never have been; for it is the perfect language of a woman's first hours which follow love's declaration, when she feels that her life and soul are to be made complete by marriage. She storms herself with questions never before suggested. What could he see in her? What has she got with which to repay this exquisite flattery, this shuddering delight at being summoned out of millions of her sex? The first impulse is to spill the soul in a libation to the deity of the hour: let the whole of it drench my lover; let me not dare to reserve a portion to teach me a first selfish lesson. All, all is yours, my king! Come, drain it at the chalice of my lips!

An emotion far shallower than this is quite enough in any age to trump up a marriage with; but it is a funeral bak'd meat growing colder still at the wedding-breakfast. It is often frozen stiff before it gets there. Half-ripened girls fancy that their simmering preference will have the sunburst of love; but the blossom is still in its sheath: when it matures, that first greenness is pushed off. But, if it was rubbed off, the blossom, exposed to unseason