to portray in the characters of Bella, or of Carry, neither my Aunt Tabithy nor any one else, should have learned such truth from any book of mine. There are griefs too sacred to be babbled to the world; and there may be loves, which one would forbear to whisper even to a friend.
No, no,—imagination has been playing pranks with memory; and if I have made the feeling real, I am content that the facts should be false. Feeling indeed has a higher truth in it, than circumstance. It appeals to a larger jury, for acquittal: it is approved or condemned by a better judge. And if I can catch this bolder and richer truth of feeling, I will not mind if the types of it are all fabrications.
If I run over some sweet experience of love, (my Aunt Tabithy brightened a little? must I make good the fact that the loved one lives, and expose her name and qualities, to make your sympathy sound? Or shall I not rather be working upon higher and holier ground, if I take the passion for itself, and so weave it into words, that you, and every willing sufferer may recognize the fervor, and forget the personality?
Life after all is but a bundle of hints, each suggesting actual and positive developement, but rarely reaching it. And as I recal these hints, and in fancy trace them
