The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1890-10-17
CHAPTER V.
AN INTERCEPTION,


The course of true love- if it never runs
smooth, very often runs slowly. No one can
say that Car or Sibyl Temple married for
love; we need not assert that they sold them
selves; marriages such as theirs are made
every day, with the sanction of the church
and the praise of the world; but they are not
ideal marriages, not romantic-not the stuff
out of which love can be made Sweet
Sophia Temple, the beauty and heroine of
this tale, was not proposed to so abruptly,
nor married SO hastily.
Young Brent was shy To increase his shy
ness he was passionately in love, and love
made thousand things delights to him which
well-informed modern man might do for
his lady once, but not twice, certainly For
instance, young Brent would stroll about the
town half morning waiting for a chance
meeting; and if, after he had executed q
perfect walking match in slow time, he met
Sophia, and she gave him a smile, or ex-
changed few words, he would return home
all aglow, and could hardly sit down to his
geology, so hot his fame would burn. Week
after week this went on. Silly young fellow,
when he might have been bathing in the full
tide OF courtship, to be thus timidly treading
the margin of the golden seal Yet perhaps
that loves preludes are so delicious that they
may well be heightened; and some say that
the water is pellucid near the shore and tur-
bid when we venture further out
This will say in defense of him. Sophia,
more than most women, was fitted for this
slow, worshiping kind of courtship 1t often
struck me that she was already what one
might imagine good, warm-hearted and
h0o rfryI
allied state of existence. She had the gold of
our nature. with very little of its dross From
her, more than from any woman I ever
knew, or man either, did learn how comely
human nature may be when tremendously
developed; how various qualities of mind and
soul, which we are apt to think conflicting,
such as humor and devotion, passion and
purity, may, when combined in proper pro-
portions, be each the complement of the
other Sophia changed from mood to
mood with an ease, an absence of
constraint, which was the sign of a
nature reconciled to life in the best sense.
am going to mention trivial occurrence,
one morning greatly interested in an account
OF wedding robe its color, tri INNINGS, and
the usual sequels-just as serio usly inter-
$1,000 - ~AAS AA.S'Ss "a Sooy VI AST nave
been. A little while after, when piece Of
poetry was read aloud by somebody in the
company-one of Tom Hoods, think, lust
published, a little fragment written in that
note Of mingled humor and sadness which
was so much his OWL saw Sophia's face
with ripple of fun on it passing, with the
poem, into seriousness 1t seemed as il the
soul of the poet, in its double mood of laugh
ter and tears, were expressing itself in her
lovely features. 1t is small matter to mem
tion-laughable, perhaps-but it impressed
me, and it was indeed disclosure of her char
acter. She had q frank, spontaneous SYM
pathy with life all round and in every part.
such as l never met in any one beside herself.
By reason Of this virtue she was always IL
terested in what was going on, and the very
quality which subdued her individuality in
one way made her character fresh and de-
Eghtful in another. Sophia charmed, by her
constellation of charms, the grouping of viz
mes and graces of body and mind, which
seemed to make her sympathetic with the
most opposite persons, and at home in the
most various scenes
Was there key to all thisa or was she a
Phoenix in muslin, paragon, admirable and