For the Thirteenth
Maid or the Thirteenth Man, both alike, rarely come as we had expected.
There seems no fitness in their arrival. It seems so ridiculously
accidental, as I suppose the hour of death, whenever it comes, will
seem. One had expected some high calm prelude of preparation, ending in
a festival of choice, like an Indian prince's, when the maids of the
land pass before him and he makes deliberate selection of the fateful
She. But, instead, we are hurrying among our day's business, maybe, our
last thought of her; we turn a corner, and suddenly she is before us. Or
perhaps, as it fell with Narcissus, we have tried many loves that proved
but passions; we have just buried the last, and are mournfully leaving
its grave, determined to seek no further, to abjure bright eyes, at
least for a long while, when lo! on a sudden a little maid is in our
path holding out some sweet modest flowers. The maid has a sweet mouth,
too, and, the old Adam being stronger than our infant resolution, we
smell the flowers and kiss the mouth--to find arms that somehow, we know
not why, are clinging as for life about us. Let us beware how we shake
them off, for thus it is decreed shall a man meet her to have missed
whom were to have missed all. Youth, like that faithless generation in
the Scriptures, always craveth after a sign, but rarely shall one be
given. It can only be known whether a man be worthy of Love by the way
in which he looks upon Duty.
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