or roving in the free air of the country; now out watching the moon, with weary but sleepless eyes, the uninvited, awaiting the return of invited guests from some party or masquerade; in brief, spending and being spent in the service of perhaps a sister, a cousin, or a niece, whose return for untiring, disinterested affection, is the selfish love that considers its recipient invaluable, not as a gentle, unpretending associate, but as a reliable convenience!
But let us look at the causes, as well as effects, of single life in women. If the histories of all old maids were written, what disclosures of female heroism would be made! In how many cases could celibacy be traced, not to want of personal or mental attractions; nor of admiration or love; but to that heroic nature which, though capable of the deepest and most enduring passion, has the fortitude to live alone, rather than be bound, not united, to an uncongenial being. And if “He that ruleth his spirit be greater than he that taketh a city,” surely she that ruleth her heart is greater than she that taketh a name for the sake of a name; or to avoid one stigmatized indiscriminately.
Love is the instinct of the female heart: almost every woman who has lived to see thirty years, has felt the outgoings of affection’s well-spring; but hers is not often the power of choosing, though it is of refusing. Who may tell the inward conflicts, the unuttered agonies, the protracted soul-sickness of conquered passion? But when a true woman once triumphs over an inexpedient or unreciprocated attachment, she triumphs over self, and becomes, that noblest of feminine spirits, the disinterested friend of mankind! Be sure that the scandal-monger, the tart-mouthed old maid, is one whose inner heart has never felt the wound that opens a passage for human sympathies to flow out; but is smarting under superficial mortifications, that, like poison introduced only skin-deep, fester and irritate continually. Rare are such cases, and yet few as they are, they infect the general mind, so that old maid, thus considered, is a noun of multitude, including all who choose or are destined to live single lives. And how many unhappy marriages are the consequence of this opprobrium!
Even the single-hearted piety of unmarried females is derided.
