Then, at the best, pleasure and
pain are mere oscillations; but the first movement is downwards, for we
cry when we come into the world; and the last is also downwards, for we
groan when we go out of it. It is the old rhyme--
'We scream when we're born,
We groan when we're dying;
And all that's between
Is but laughing and crying.'"
A parade of philosophy all this which at another time might have had but
a small effect upon a youthful mind, but Rachel was in the meantime
occupied by looking at the inscription on the fatal toy; and we all know
that the feeling of the dominant idea of the moment assimilates to its
own hue the light or shade of all other ideas of a cognate kind; and
there is in this process also a selection and rejection whereby all
melancholy ideas cluster in the gloomy atmosphere, if we may so term it,
of the prevailing depression, and all joyful ones come together by the
attraction of a joyful thought; and so Rachel was impressed by views
which, if they had been modified by the comforting doctrines of
Christianity, might have enabled her at once to bear and to hope. Even
when Paul had finished, she was still gazing on the locket. A moment or
two more, and she laid it down with a deep sigh, saying, almost
involuntarily, "If my name had been there, I would not have repined at
the loss of all my expected fortune.
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