Cydni’s Reviews > North and South > Status Update

I am afraid I have thought and wished too much—in that absorbing wilful way which is sure to be disappointed-or else gratified,to the letter,while in the spirit it gives no pleasure.
'But that's superstitious,Margaret.'
No,I don't think it is.Only it ought to warn me,and check me from giving way to such passionate wishes.I'm afraid my cry is,”Let me go to Cadiz,or else I die”.

After all it is right,hearing the voices of children at play while she was dressing.If the world stood still,it would retrograde and become corrupt.Looking out of myself,and my own painful sense of change,the progress all around me is right and necessary.I must not think so much of how circumstances affect me myself,but how they affect others,if I wish to have a right judgment,or a hopeful trustful heart.

'I begin to understand now what heaven must be—and, oh! the grandeur and repose of the words—"The same yesterday, today, and for ever." Everlasting! "From everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God." That sky above me looks as though it could not change, and yet it will. I am so tired—so tired of being whirled on through all these phases of my life, in which nothing abides by me, no creature, no place;

‘What other people may think of the rightness or wrongness is nothing in comparison to my own deep knowledge, my innate conviction that it was wrong. But we will not talk of that any more, if you please. It is done—my sin is sinned. I have now to put it behind me, and be truthful for evermore, if I can.'

Did you ever tell him the strong, instinctive motive?
'The instinctive want of faith, and clutching at a sin to keep myself from sinking,' said she bitterly.No!How could I? To put myself to rights in his good opinion, was I to tell him of the secrets of our family?Fred's last words had been to enjoin me to keep his visit a secret from all. I could bear the shame—I thought I could at least. I did bear it.

“Margaret was often left alone. Then her thoughts went back to Milton, with a strange sense of the contrast between the life there, and here. She was getting surfeited of the eventless ease in which no struggle or endeavour was required. She was afraid lest she should even become sleepily deadened into forgetfulness of anything beyond the life which was lapping her round with luxury.”

her absent father ran strangely in Margaret's head this night.She almost blamed herself for having felt her solitude(and consequently his absence) as a relief; but these two days had set her up afresh, with new strength and brighter hope.Plans which had lately appeared to her in the guise of tasks, now appeared like pleasures.The morbid scales had fallen from her eyes, and she saw her position and her work more truly

“Both must find it hard to realize a future of any kind; the one because the present is so living and hurrying and close around him; the other because his life tempts him to revel in the mere sense of animal existence, not knowing of, and consequently not caring for any pungency of pleasure for the attainment of which he can plan, and deny himself and look forward.'

“I suppose each mode of life produces its own trials and its own temptations. The dweller in towns must find it as difficult to be patient and calm, as the country-bred man must find it to be active, and equal to unwonted emergencies.”

“It is the town life, said she. 'Their nerves are quickened by the haste and bustle and speed of everything around them, to say nothing of the confinement in these pent-up houses, which of itself is enough to induce depression and worry of spirits. Now in the coun-try, people live so much more out of doors, even children, and even in the winter.’