The modern theory is-and I confess it seems to Inc the wiser one--that the will itself is a part of the sacredness of our nature, and should no more be broken than the main shaft of a steam — engine. You shudder when your boy cries, “I will!” in the adjoining room, in that defiant tone which is a storm-signal to the parents' car. The fault is not, however, in the words; spoken in the right place and right tone, they represent the highest moral condition of which man is capable, since resignation itself is not a virtue so noble as is a concentrated and heroic purpose. How superbly does Tennyson state. the dignity of those words when he paints the marriage in “The Gardener's daughter!”
Autumn brought an hour
For Eustace, when I heard his deep I will
Breathed, like the covenant of a God, to hold
From thence through all the worlds.
There is one thing that I dread more for my little Maiden than to hear her say “I will,” namely, that she should lose the power of saying it. A broken, impaired, will-less nature — a life filled with memory's
