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It was fancifully said of one of these lovers, in the style of the age, that, "His book was his bride, and his study his bride-chamber." Many have voluntarily relinquished a public station and their rank in society, neglecting even their fortune and their health, for the life of self-oblivion of the man of letters.
Of course, the method thereof depends on character; a cheerful heart In one, a buoyant imagination in another, and the sweet self-oblivion which Faith imparts in a third, sentiment here and will there, work the same miracle.
Where one sees this beautiful self-oblivion, can he be a true philosopher, and assign any cause for it, save the existence of genuine love? She, who unites to this passion a provident self-possession, who is as calm, as she is keenly susceptible, will enter the marriage relation with the happiest omens of joy, and ever-growing success, in every coming duty.
Riley would laugh until in pure self-oblivion she smote her thigh with her palm, or laid her hand so smartly against his shoulder as to tip him half off his seat. "Ye didn't!" "Yes." "Ah! Get out wid ye, Raphael Ristofalo, to be telling me that for the trooth!" At one such time she was about to give him a second push, but he took the hand in his, and quietly kept it to the end of his story.
She grew sullen and contemptuous; she formed acquaintances of the most dangerous kind in defiance of his objections, his entreaties, and his commands; and, worst of all, she learned, ere long, after every fresh difference with her husband, to seek the deadly self-oblivion of drink.
'Ah, it is in my desk at the bureau. How annoying! I must send for it! 'No, Excellency, I cried, springing up in a self-oblivion the most complete, 'it is here. Touching the spring of a secret drawer, I opened it, and taking out the document he wished, handed it to him. It was not until I met his searching look, and saw the faint smile on his lips that I realised what I had done.
That girl, whose latest breath ascended in this sublime expression of self-oblivion, did not utter the word recant either with her lips or in her heart. No; she did not, though one should rise from the dead to swear it. Bishop of Beauvais! thy victim died in fire upon a scaffold thou upon a down bed. But for the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike.
The New Testament calls it 'preaching, proclaiming as a herald does. And both metaphors carry one common lesson of the manner in which the work should be done. With clear loud voice, with earnestness and decision, with faithfulness and self-oblivion, forgetting himself in his message, must the herald sound out the will of his King, the largess of his Lord.
Consider the effect of that personal faith on the speaker in bringing all his force to bear on his words; in endowing him for a time with many of the subsidiary qualities which make our words winged and weighty; in lifting to a height of self-oblivion, which itself is magnetic. Consider its effect on the hearers how it bows hearts as trees are bent before a rushing wind.
Again, the little ones in Christ's kingdom become great by self-forgetting service. 'He that will be great among you, let him be your minister. Self-regard dwarfs a man, self-oblivion magnifies him. If ever you come across, even in the walks of daily life, traces in people of thinking much of themselves, and of living mainly for themselves, down go these men in your estimation at once.
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