In all her
household arrangements, she had the same thrift and order which
characterized her husband; but hers was a mind of a finer and higher
stamp than his.
In her bed-room, near by her work-basket, stood a table covered with
books,--and so systematic were her household arrangements, that she
never any day missed her regular hours for reading. One who should have
looked over this table would have seen there how eager and hungry a mind
was hid behind the silent eyes of this quiet woman. History, biography,
mathematics, volumes of the encyclopaedia, poetry, novels, all alike
found their time and place there,--and while she pursued her household
labors, the busy, active soul within travelled cycles and cycles of
thought, few of which ever found expression in words. What might be that
marvellous music of the _Miserere_, of which she read, that it convulsed
crowds and drew groans and tears from the most obdurate? What might be
those wondrous pictures of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci? What would it
be to see the Apollo, the Venus? What was the charm that enchanted the
old marbles,--charm untold and inconceivable to one who had never seen
even the slightest approach to a work of art? Then those glaciers of
Switzerland, that grand, unapproachable mixture of beauty and sublimity
in her mountains!--what would it be to one who could see it? Then what
were all those harmonies of which she read,--masses, fugues, symphonies?
Oh, could she once hear the Miserere of Mozart, just to know what music
was like! And the cathedrals, what were they? How wonderful they must
be, with their forests of arches, many-colored as autumn-woods with
painted glass, and the chants and anthems rolling down their long
aisles! On all these things she pondered quietly, as she sat often on
Sundays in the old staring, rattle-windowed meeting-house, and looked at
the uncouth old pulpit, and heard the choir faw-sol-la-ing or singing
fuguing tunes; but of all this she said nothing.
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