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292 THINGS IN GENERAL.
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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Transcript
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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.
I Am That —No In Matter Common Who With ...
whimsical earnestness , consists in marrying * and giving in marriage . There is a beloved queen in that countrywhose little children are
by turns infant prodigies and enfants terribles , ; and there is a prime minister who is for ever laying secret plots withthe dilomates of
other countries . Innumerable exciting events are , always p turning up in that land , and nothing is thought worth a passing word unless
it passes the fine line which divides our earthly common-place from the mysterious and the horrible . Murdershostsand deadly
, g , quarrels are the occurrences of every hour , and the mercantile houses are always on the brink of failure , or making a million of
money a day . The very air is full of whispers , low and loud , soft and thrilling ; they are wafted about on the tree topsand may be
, seen floating in a mist round the heads of the inhabitants , sometimes hiding them from each other , sometimes blinding their eyes
and causing their steps to go astray . But perhaps the most remarkable and even awful phenomenon connected with this Land of
Gossip is , that each of the inhabitants is a duplicate of one of our own human race . YouO my dear readerare copied thereand
so is your husband , and , so am I ; or rather , they are not duplicates , , but such distorted representations as we might behold in one of those
concave or convex mirrors which were at once the delight and terror of our childhood . Such a one I remember hanging on a nail in a
quiet room in the country , a room filled with old books ; the scent of sweet peas flowing in with the sunshine in summer , and scarlet
flowers of the Virginian creeper making the -desolate autumn bright . This mirror was so constructedthat when you looked in the glass
on the one side saw face , widened from ear to earlike the pictorial representations you your of little Jack Horner , or elongated , from
forehead to chin like the tragic muse in a pantomime . * The mother who bore you' would hardly have known that face for her own
child ' s , so queer , so quaint , so lamentable , so pathetic , and so awfully unlike yourself was it ? with yet an unmistakable vestige
of individual identity , which made it a travestie of you _, and of nobody else . Such , my dear friend _, is your Double in the Land
of Gossip . " I have read in fantastic German romances of travelling knights ,
who , when riding through the green dark alleys of a forest , would suddenly see a figure pacing slowly tomeet themwho on a nearer
. , view was indeed another self , —or demon wearing the same aspect , — who taunted them in battlesand crossed them in loveand ever came
just in the nick of the moment , when it could do a mischief , . I have heard also of that poet who was one day summoned by his servant ,
saying * a stranger waited to speak with him ; ' and the poet rose and left the study , and began slowly descending the stairs of his house
towards an unknown man at the bottom , who kept his face shrouded in his cloakand when the poet came close to himthe strange man
dropped his , cloak , and the face which the poet beheld , was his own ;
and he turned and fled .
292 Things In General.
292 THINGS IN _GENERAL .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), July 1, 1859, page 292, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01071859/page/4/
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