I tried to dismiss the incident, but it would not leave me, and
later that same evening something else occurred that fixed it still
clearer in my thoughts. I had taken out two or three books at
random with which to amuse myself, and turning over the leaves of
one of them, a volume of verses by some obscure poet, I found its
sentimental passages much scored and commented upon in pencil as
was common fifty years ago--as may be common now, for your Fleet
Street cynic has not altered the world and its ways to quite the
extent that he imagines.
One poem in particular had evidently appealed greatly to the
reader's sympathies. It was the old, old story of the gallant who
woos and rides away, leaving the maiden to weep. The poetry was
poor, and at another time its conventionality would have excited
only my ridicule. But, reading it in conjunction with the quaint,
naive notes scattered about its margins, I felt no inclination to
jeer. These hackneyed stories that we laugh at are deep
profundities to the many who find in them some shadow of their own
sorrows, and she--for it was a woman's handwriting--to whom this
book belonged had loved its trite verses, because in them she had
read her own heart.
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