selfness-and-sameness

Updated: May 9, 2025

If it were not for this mysterious selfness-and-sameness which makes this wild, wandering, uncanonical sailor, James Marvyn, so intimate and internal, if his thread were not knit up with the thread of her life, were it not for the old habit of feeling for him, thinking for him, praying for him, hoping for him, fearing for him, which woe is us! is the unfortunate habit of womankind, if it were not for that fatal something which neither judgment, nor wishes, nor reason, nor common sense shows any great skill in unravelling, we are quite sure that Mary would be in love with the Doctor within the next six months; as it is, we leave you all to infer from your own heart and consciousness what his chances are.

Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 19, May, 1859