The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress Read Online Free PDF Page B

passion and position and she needed, too, a strain of romance. No such kind of a man had really come to her and Julia was all ripe for real experience, for even with her well guarded life she had found the sickened sense that comes with learning that some men do wrong. Passionate tempers have greatly this advantage of the unpassionate variety; you can never guard them with such care but that they find themselves full up with real experience and with the after-taste of disillusion, but vitally as they are always hit they always rise and plunge once more, while their poorly passionate fellows who receive a vital blow never rise to faith again.
     Julia as a little girl had had the usual experiences of governess guarded children. She was first the confidant, then the advisor, and last the arranger of the love affairs of her established guardians. Then at her finishing school she became acquainted with that dubious character, the adventuress, the type to be found always in all kinds of places, a character eternally attractive in its mystery and daring, and always able to attach unto itself the most intelligent and honest of its comrades and introduce them to queer vices.
     And so Julia Dehning, like all other young girls, learnt many kinds of lessons, and she saw many of the kinds of ways that lead to wisdom, and always her life was healthy vigorous and active. She learnt very well all the things young girls of her class were taught then and she learnt too, in all kinds of ways, all the things girls always can learn, somehow, to be wise in. And so Julia was well prepared now to be a woman. She had singing and piano-playing and sport and all regular school learning, she had good looks, honesty, and brilliant courage, and in her young way a certain kind of wisdom.
     Always Julia was a passionate young woman and she had too a heroical kind of sweetness in her way of winning. She was a passionate young woman in the sense that always she was all alive and always all the emotions she had in her being were as intense and present to her feeling as a sensation like a pain is to others who are less alive in their living. And all this time too, Julia Dehning was busily arranging and directing the life and aspirations of her family, for she was strong always in her good right to lead them.
     And so Julia Dehning when she was seventeen came out upon the world, and she was filled full with courage and experience and wisdom, and she was well ready now with this energy and wisdom to cope with and conquer all the world and all men and women.
     There is nothing more joyous than being healthful young and energetic, and loving movement sunshine and clean air. Combine all this with owning of a horse and courage enough to ride him wildly, and God is good to overflowing to his children. It is pleasant too to have occasionally a sympathetic comrade on such rides. Jameson was a pleasant man of thirty five or thereabouts, a good free rider and an easy talker. Julia knew him first at home and met him usually while riding to the station to meet her father and the city train. They would then either gallop home together or go about riding through the glowing meadows of low oaks, racing cheerily along the country roads, and dipping here and there into a pleasant wood that broke the open country into shadow. They met too, occasionally, in riding parties that went in search of new country to discover and explore. It was all very pleasant and unaggressive, but Julia began to notice that Mrs. Jameson frowned on her in anger now, whenever they all met together. Then too Jameson grew gradually less comradely, more intimate, and gross. Julia understood at last and did not ride with him again.
     Such incidents as these are common in the lives of all young women and only are important in those intenser natures that, by their understanding, make each incident into a situation. Such natures suck a full experience from every