San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1890-12-24
Music Is sacred thing, my child" hc
tDOltld often SAP TO her.

"Music Is sacred thing, my child" h
tDOtttd often sag TO her.
What is more worthy the contempla
ton of a humane mind than the specta
Gle of pretty young woman? 1t is tn,
least selfish of all pleasures. BY learn
ing we seek to elevate ourselves above
our fellows; by philosophy, to console
ourselves for the past and to fortify our.
selves for the future; by religion las it j:
commonly practiced), to make ourselve.
respectable in this world and comfort.
able in the world to come. But he who
stands rapt in the fascination of girls
beauty enjoys the possession by another
of what he can never have himself, adj
mits his inferiority and generously ex-
ults in the existence of goodness for its
own sake. The sole drawback is the
risk he runs of falling in love-that is, of
wishing to restrict TO himself blessing
designed to rejoice mankind at large
1t might seem pity that such girl
us Beatrix Randolph should be so stu
ated as not to have it in her power to
confer upon every one the unselfsh
qualification whereof we speak But to
be rare and difficult of access are among
the conditions of mortal loneliness. In
no other way, perhaps, could the heavenly
aroma be preserved; and were we to be-
come callous to beauty, as we do to pain,
life would have nothing left to promise
us. On the other hand, dullness is
negative, delight positive, and single
day of glorious sunshine compensates
for whole blank week of lifeless land
scape and leaden sky.
But Beatrix, though delightful to look
upon, was not beauty in the abstract;
she was first of all distinct and con-
crete human person. 1t is fitting, there
fore, to consider not so much the loss the
world sustained by her seclusion, as its
effect upon herself Certainly she was
not of temperament naturally inclined
to solitude She was quick to feel
emotions of all kinds, and apt and simple
in the expression of them. Her proper
tions, both of the soul and the body,
were symmetrical and active: as she
moved easily and sweetly, so was she
sweetly and easily moved. Her life, in
spite of its circumscribed conditions,
showed an instructive love of largeness
and variety, and herein she was helped
by generous and lively magma
sion. She could not read story
81 watch the sun rise without cngender-
ing in her mind thousand fresh ideas
of the possibilities of existence. And
her body was in such fine harmony with
her spirit that you could see a stirring
thought turn to roses in her cheeks, or
conjure diamonds to her lovely eyes.
When she came forth in the morning
from her maiden chamber, having put
on, let us say, fresh, white gown, just
crisp enough to whisper as she stepped,
and pink or blue ribbon (as fancy
might dictate) at her throat and on her
hair, and her figure elastic and alert
with the wholesome vigor of nineteen
years, and a mouth that laughed
fragrance and music, and large brown
eyes, which besides being as beautiful as
possible in themselves were rendered
yet more so by being few shades dark
er than her rippled hair and *'*
and hands that were white wonders of
warm fiexibility and tapering softness;
when this exquisite young American
girl, in short-type of the most charm
ing and most intelligent womanhood in
the world-came dawning like Aurora
out of the room in which she had been
visions only less lovely than
herself, it did seem as if the Golden Age
were now about to begin, and as if moth
ing false or impure were henceforward
possible. She explained, without utter
ing a word, why the grass in spring
is so deliciously green, the sky
of so tender blue, why birds
sing and water is transparent, why
violets have perfume, and the sun
warmth. She was the spoken secret of
the universe-the Interpretation of its
fairest elements. By what mishap, then,
was such creature confined las she was)
to few square miles of village land in
the center of the state of New York?
Was such pearl created only to be cast
before cattle, and the village grocer's
son, and the hollow chested young
Unitarian minister, and the innkeepers
daughters? The world could not afford
it, and yet there she was, and just at the
time this story begins there seemed to be
rather less probability than usual of her
ever getting anywhere else.
She lived with her father in roomy
broad beamed, brown old house, en-
vironed by elm trees taller, but less an
tique, than itself. 1t was an American
Eighteenth century, hnnsa Some hero