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    THE RECORD OF A VANISHED LIFE. 121

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    It Is The Afternoon Of A Hotfull Summer ...

    I had no purpose of marriage , no hope of love . Did I think of such thingsdream of such thingslong for such things ? Yes !

    how often , and , how eagerly ! But , I fancied they were not for meand I schooled myself to resignation . I thought it selfish

    whil , e so unhappy—while I had so little chance of any successto seek to win any other life to share mine . My life was so

    unnatural that , many of my feelings were , I know , morbid and exaggerated . Perhaps it was not wonderful that in that Malebolge

    of business life , I should have ceased to trust in God . When we Perhaps fail to trust however , hope it fails is little us . to be wondered at that reliious

    _feeling should , grow , dim in a man who , created with a sense g of better condemned things to , th with at low a thirs world t for of , bu the iness nobler Mercantile aims of life morality , is yet

    s . is a conventionality ; a thing apart . It ' combines lip worship with practical infidelity . Men of businessthe demigods of the

    mart , may be , and often are , high religious , professors ; but their dealings are a systematic violation of the sublime doctrines they

    profess to hold . They think nothing—in business—of wronging their

    neighany bour advantage , or grinding , competing the faces dishonourabl of the poor . y , Unjust are the dealing daily practices ,

    takingwhich practical men "—in business—enjoin and follow . -That theorem of life which they translate into actual practiceis

    Mammon worship and self-interest . Their pursuits are , not ennobled by care for the interests of the community , or the

    rights of individuals . How many high and gentle natures are sacrificed in the crushing strain of brutal greed ! The heavy

    treasures of the monarchs of the mart are heavier still with the wei And ght of yet human amid tears the . loathing which the gold seekers inspire

    steals a sense of pity . Such men kill their own souls within wrongs them , and they must commit , eventuall suffer someth y at least ing of , feel the misery the recoil the _} r of create the .

    To them all things , divine and noble must be empty and unmeaning forms . All heroisms must be hollow mockeries . All

    ideals mint be unreal . Vainly for them has earth been visited by Divinity , or made more beautiful by gentleness or honour , by

    noble thoughts or heroic deeds . Vainly for them have Shaks-The peare victors , Sidney in — not business to nam " e are One , perhap highest s , more name— worth lived y p and ity died than _,.

    the victims . in did And writing it . yet My , two throug innate books h all love . this I of can harass art scarcel must , depression y have understand been , car very e , now I succeeded strong how to I

    struggle through such difficulties . Dating from my obscure lodging , and unfurnished with any introduction , I offered my

    VOL . XIII . I

    The Record Of A Vanished Life. 121

    THE RECORD OF A VANISHED LIFE . 121

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), April 1, 1864, page 121, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01041864/page/49/