Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

pearing. To Mrs. Holland: “I’m so glad you are not a blossom, for those inmy garden fade, and then a ‘reaper whose name is Death’ has come to geta few to help him make a bouquet for himself, so I’m glad you’re not a rose. …”And several years later: “Death! Ah! democratic Death! … Say, ishe everywhere? Where shall I hide my things? Who is alive? The woodsare dead. Is Mrs. H. alive? Annie and Katie—are they below, or received tonowhere?”And to Mrs. Holland twenty-one years later: “God’s little BlondBlessing—we have long deemed you, and hope that his so-called ‘Will’—willnot compel him to revoke you.”She explained this idiosyncrasy to Colonel Higginson (who hadgone off to war and received the foreboding message in his camp) saying:“Perhaps death gave me awe for friends, striking sharp and early, for I heldthem since in brittle love, of more alarm than peace. I trust you may pass thelimit of war …”; but the explanation is insufficient. No long experience oflife is necessary to alert us to the fact that there is an element of latent crueltyin these manifestations. They confirm our sense of how deep a wound shehad received.These are the characteristic expressions of the envious and of thosewho feel themselves to have been “shut out” from life’s major prizes. (I onceheard a woman say to another: “What darling little boys you have! We allhope—don’t we?—that there’ll be none of these dreadful wars fifteen yearsfrom now.”) One last example: What was Mrs. Holland to make of the followingeffusion, received at a time when she was occupied with three childrenand with furthering the career of her husband, who, after long struggles, wasbeginning to be regarded as one of the most popular writers and lecturersin the country? “How kind of some to die, adding impatience to the raptureof our thought of Heaven!” Here she inserts a poem beginning “As by thedead we love to sit,” and continues:I had rather you lived nearer—I would like to touch you. Pointedattentions from the Angels, to two or three I love, make me sadlyjealous.The inappropriateness here is so great that we may well ask ourselveswhether this is love at all or rather a dangerous self-indulgence inpurely subjective emotion, perhaps an effort to ignite a real affection withinherself—a phenomenon we occasionally find in those whose love has sufferedshipwreck or been frozen with fright early in life. That she could and222