I
cannot translate it into words,--only into feelings; and these I have
attempted to shadow by showing that her face hinted that revelation of
something we are close to knowing, which all imaginative persons are
looking for either in this world or on the very threshold of the next.
You shake your head at the vagueness and fanciful incomprehensibleness of
my description of the expression in a young girl's face. You forget what
a miserable surface-matter this language is in which we try to reproduce
our interior state of being. Articulation is a shallow trick. From the
light Poh! which we toss off from our lips as we fling a nameless
scribbler's impertinence into our waste-baskets, to the gravest
utterances which comes from our throats in our moments of deepest need,
is only a space of some three or four inches. Words, which are a set of
clickings, hissings, lispings, and so on, mean very little, compared to
tones and expression of the features. I give it up; I thought I could
shadow forth in some feeble way, by their aid, the effect this young
girl's face produces on my imagination; but it is of no use.
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