They have an idol to which they consecrate themselves
high-priest, and deem it holy work to offer sacrifices of whatever is
most precious; and never once seem to suspect--so cunning has the Devil
been with them--that this false deity, in whose iron features,
immitigable to all the rest of mankind, they see only benignity and
love, is but a spectrum of the very priest himself, projected upon the
surrounding darkness. And the higher and purer the original object,
and the more unselfishly it may have been taken up, the slighter is the
probability that they can be led to recognize the process by which
godlike benevolence has been debased into all-devouring egotism.
Of course I am perfectly aware that the above statement is exaggerated,
in the attempt to make it adequate. Professed philanthropists have
gone far; but no originally good man, I presume, ever went quite so far
as this. Let the reader abate whatever he deems fit. The paragraph
may remain, however, both for its truth and its exaggeration, as
strongly expressive of the tendencies which were really operative in
Hollingsworth, and as exemplifying the kind of error into which my mode
of observation was calculated to lead me.
The issue was, that in
solitude I often shuddered at my friend. In my recollection of his
dark and impressive countenance, the features grew more sternly
prominent than the reality, duskier in their depth and shadow, and more
lurid in their light; the frown, that had merely flitted across his
brow, seemed to have contorted it with an adamantine wrinkle. On
meeting him again, I was often filled with remorse, when his deep eyes
beamed kindly upon me, as with the glow of a household fire that was
burning in a cave. "He is a man after all," thought I; "his Maker's
own truest image, a philanthropic man!--not that steel engine of the
Devil's contrivance, a philanthropist!" But in my wood-walks, and in my
silent chamber, the dark face frowned at me again.
When a young girl comes within the sphere of such a man, she is as
perilously situated as the maiden whom, in the old classical myths, the
people used to expose to a dragon. If I had any duty whatever, in
reference to Hollingsworth, it was to endeavor to save Priscilla from
that kind of personal worship which her sex is generally prone to
lavish upon saints and heroes. It often requires but one smile out of
the hero's eyes into the girl's or woman's heart, to transform this
devotion, from a sentiment of the highest approval and confidence, into
passionate love. Now, Hollingsworth smiled much upon Priscilla,--more
than upon any other person. If she thought him beautiful, it was no
wonder.