Paulina's Ambition

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. A TIME TO LAUGH AND A TIME TO WEEB. DID any one ever yet arrive at anything like a right and just appreciation of his or her own importance ? Nay, more, is it possible for any one to do so. To see ourselves as others see us is a point to which we may at times attain, but though by so doing the...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. A TIME TO LAUGH AND A TIME TO WEEB. DID any one ever yet arrive at anything like a right and just appreciation of his or her own importance ? Nay, more, is it possible for any one to do so. To see ourselves as others see us is a point to which we may at times attain, but though by so doing the value we set on our own opinions and powers may be greatly lessened, and we may grow smaller and more insignificant in our own eyes, it is by no means certain that our view of ourselves, our circumstances, or talents may be any the more just on that account. For friends may be partial, mere acquaintances know little of our circumstances, strangers have no real knowledge of our character. What, therefore, many who do not know us would be likely to consider a crushing calamity may, in reality, be to us an indescribable relief, and what one friend, through an exaggerated view of our powers, may urge us to attempt, an- other, or we ourselves, may be perfectly well aware we can never accomplish. So mistakes arise, and doubtless it often proves fortunate for us that when sorrows come upon us which we would fain hide, but which we despair of concealing from the cold scandal-loving eye of the world, they pass by unnoticed because tears drawn by some like trouble have dimmed the eyes that at any other moment would have been keenest to spy out our shame. Mrs. Hornby had spent a miserable evening, and still more miserable night after that conversation with her husband, brooding over the great sorrow that had driven away all smaller ones, and made her anxiety for her eldest son and her sickly daughter appear trifles indeed. Herbert must come home; to leave him where he was was clearly impossible, but dearly as she loved having the boy at home, in this emergency Mrs. Hornby now ...