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CONSTANCY MISPLACED. 91
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
•The Pastor Replied: " Dear Elise, I Wil...
at home with my own thoughts . " Poor girl , your own thoughts were often but dreary company ! In every further attempt to
include Elise in the social intercourse of the neighbourhood , she conducted herself with so much hauteur and received the guests under
her own roof with so much coldness , that the parsonage was very soon unvisited ; grass grew in the courtand moss upon the
inhospitable threshold . The Pastor , who , accepted no attentions which it was out of his power to return , and secretly fearing the
g as loomy he could looks of enj his oy wife in public , _confined ; but him when self to his such little social daug intercourse hter was
late growing and joy up , less he his felt home again was with not deep even bitterness affording of an heart opportunity , how deso to
-, the child of seeing a companion of its own class . Julie had no consciousness of this want ; she played very happily with the village
children , who treated her with great love and attention . The father made himself content when he observed how innocent and ..
good mannered their play was ; the mother , who had found 1 amusement in her childhood only from books and the sweet dreamy
wanderings which she had shared with her beloved brother , considered the zest with which the child entered into lively games as
only another proof of the inferiority of her nature , and allowed her to do as she liked . The Pastor's mother was quite wrapped up in
her little grand-daughter . She lived in a small town which _, offered greater educational advantages than the village where
Julie lived , and as she became older and more infirm , the Pastor determined upon a hard sacrificeto give up the light of his eyes
, , the only flower which sprang up in the dreary waste of his domestic life , and to allow the child to live with her grandmother .
Elise made no objection ; she entertained no hope of ever awakening her to sympathy with her own high wrought feelings ; she
almost felt relieved when with Julie ' s departure the last tie was cut which bound her to the present ; for her intercourse with
her husband had become gradually so cool and distant , that he had no longer the slightest share in her inward life _.
Several ' years had passed in this way over the parsonage . tt >" stood petrified and overgrown like the _jDalace of the Sleeping ;
Beauty ; but alas ! the hearts within did not slumber in unfadingyouth , awaiting only the awakening kiss ; They themselves had
run to waste ; even the memory of the love of her youth stood in the heart of Elise like a cold gravestone , around which no rose
bloomed , nor any ivy entwined itself ; it was only on rare occasions that the buried grief awoke to life and looked her in the face . The
people of the neighbourhood had ceased to trouble themselves about the inexplicable relationship between this man and wife :
tired of conjecturing , they let them alone , only there was much commiseration expressed for the young Vicar when his fate led him
under this unfriendly roof , when the weak state of the Pastor ' s
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Constancy Misplaced. 91
CONSTANCY MISPLACED . 91
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), April 1, 1863, page 91, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01041863/page/19/
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