But in healthy natures, this time of moral teething passes quickly
of itself, and is easily alleviated by fresh interests; and
already, in the letter to Frank Scott, there are two words of hope:
his friends in London, his love for his profession. The last might
have saved him; for he was ere long to pass into a new sphere,
where all his faculties were to be tried and exercised, and his
life to be filled with interest and effort. But it was not left to
engineering: another and more influential aim was to be set before
him. He must, in any case, have fallen in love; in any case, his
love would have ruled his life; and the question of choice was, for
the descendant of two such families, a thing of paramount
importance. Innocent of the world, fiery, generous, devoted as he
was, the son of the wild Jacksons and the facile Jenkins might have
been led far astray. By one of those partialities that fill men at
once with gratitude and wonder, his choosing was directed well. Or
are we to say that by a man's choice in marriage, as by a crucial
merit, he deserves his fortune? One thing at least reason may
discern: that a man but partly chooses, he also partly forms, his
help-mate; and he must in part deserve her, or the treasure is but
won for a moment to be lost.
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