_Who Has Learned Her Origin_
Your despairing letter lies before me. I wish you were here, my dear
child, that I might talk from my heart, instead of writing from it. I am
sorry that the secret, so long hidden, has been revealed to you, and in
such a despicable manner.
An anonymous letter always carries with it the venom of a serpent. I
have long known your history, though the world generally believed you to
be the actual daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Marchmont, who adopted you when
you were scarcely one week old.
No daughter ever received more affection or better care than these good
people gave you. Mrs. Marchmont lived always with a fear in her heart
that you might learn your history from some idle or malicious lip, and
before she died begged me to be your comforting friend, if that hour
ever came, which has now arrived.
As your mother's nearest friend, it is natural you should turn to me in
your crucial hour of pain. And in reply to your questions regarding the
truth of this anonymous assertion, I will tell you all I know.
Your own mother was well born, and a girl of great beauty and charm. She
was of foreign blood, and her parents, after the foreign custom,
selected for her, at the age of seventeen, a man of mature years and
unattractive personality, but some fortune. The family lived in a
seaport town, and your mother attracted the eye of a young seafaring
man, holding a government position. An intense and uncontrollable love
sprang up between them. Your mother had been kept in ignorance of God's
great law of sex attraction, its purpose and its results, and she was
like a new-born babe towed on the sea of her own suddenly awakened
emotion.
It was arranged that your mother was to elope with her lover on his next
arrival in port. All plans were to be made by him during the voyage on
which he went forth, after a stolen interview with your mother. He was
lost at sea, and all on board the ship perished with him. Mr. and Mrs.
Marchmont chanced to be sojourning in the place at the time of your
birth. Mr. Marchmont had longed for a child, and the tragic story came
to his ears through the physician of your mother's family, and he and
his wife decided to adopt you and take you to America.
I was the one friend who shared with Mrs. Marchmont the story of your
birth. Other friends knew she had adopted a child, and of course all
sorts of rumours were afloat for a time. Mr. Marchmont's nephew was
particularly unfriendly, I remember, as he had believed himself heir to
his uncle's estate until your adoption.
Some three years ago I chanced to be in the seaport town where you were
born, and I made quiet inquiries about your mother. I learned that she
had recently died, leaving a husband and three children. I hunted up the
children, and found them to be most uninteresting and ordinary. The
oldest daughter I met and studied. She was plain and commonplace in
appearance, and the other children were dull and unattractive.
The husband was the elderly man selected by your grandparents. Just how
he had been led to accept the second place in your mother's life, and
whether he had known of the tragedy, I could not learn without asking
more questions than I deemed wise.
But what I want to impress upon your mind by this recital is, _your own
divine inheritance of love,_ the inheritance which has bestowed upon you
physical beauty, mental power, and rare qualities of heart and soul. I
know few women so endowed by the Creator as you. I know of few young
girls--in fact, not one--I would so gladly and proudly claim as a
daughter, or wish a daughter to be like, as your lovely self.
When I read your letter, with its wild expressions of self-abasement and
despair and regret that you were in the world, where, you seemed to
believe, you had no right to be, I could not help picturing to myself
the dull face and disagreeable personality of your half-sister, the
child whom you no doubt believe has a greater right than yourself on
earth. Now whatever society has decided is legal and right for human
beings, you must not forget that God also has made rules, and that those
rules must first be obeyed, before the rules of man can be regarded as
perfect.
God's first law, regarding the propagation of the human species, is that
the _mother must be dominated by a supreme and ruling emotion to give to
the world the highest type of a child_.
Your mother loved your father with all her heart and soul. She was a
young girl, ignorant of the world. She thought of her lover as her
rightful mate, and lived but for the hour when he should rescue her
from the unhappy fate arranged by unwise and sordid-minded parents.
Your father loved her, and they were in God's sight more truly husband
and wife than the soulless and loveless ceremony of the law made her and
her legal husband afterward.
It is a great misfortune that your parents lacked the self-control which
is necessary to every well-balanced human being who seeks for the
fullest development. It is a sad thing that over your life this shadow
of unlegalized birth must rest.
But were I given the choice to-day to be what you are, or what your
sister is, and what thousands of children born of loveless marriages
are, I would not for one second hesitate in my choice.
The world needs marriage laws to keep any order in society.
The wisely reared and well-balanced woman will keep herself in womanly
reserve for her legal husband.
Your mother, by a moment's weakness and loss of self-control, left a
blight upon her life for ever, and a shadow upon yours.
But do not for one instant think of yourself as anything but _a child of
God_, endowed with all the wealth of the spiritual kingdom, whatever the
law may withhold from you here.
You are legitimized by love, your sister is legitimate by law. She is
illegitimate in the sight of heaven, you in sight of earth.
Be glad of your beautiful nature and beautiful qualities, and do not
spoil them by despondency or pessimism.
Think of yourself as if you were a child of Adam and Eve, born before
the serpent appeared, when there was no law but the law of love to
govern two souls, drawn together by irresistible attraction.
The best and highest qualities of two human beings meet and mingle in
your nature. Do you suppose the great Creator of all things regards you
as base born, when he has so endowed you with all that makes woman
lovable and charming.
Live up to your divine inheritance, my dear girl. Make the world better
for your presence in it, and bear your sorrow with that resignation and
philosophy which all human beings must cultivate if they do not wish to
become weak repiners when they face the sorrows of life.
Look the world squarely in the eyes, and feel no shame.
Your mother's marriage to the man she detested, and the birth of
children conceived in loathing, were acts which in my mind called for
more shame on her part than your own birth. Both were misfortunes for
her, since only by living an orderly, controlled, and lawful life can
any human being find happiness or self-respect in the world.
But when we come to the close analysis of motives and impulses, many an
act the world condemns is far less reprehensible than other acts which
meet its loud acclaim.
You have received from the vast spiritual realms about us your rarely
beautiful qualities. Go forth and give them to humanity.
Be strong, be good, be brave, be happy.
No one and nothing can harm you but your own mind.
The world, as we encounter it, is but an echo of our own strong
convictions. Respect yourself absolutely, believe in yourself
absolutely, and the world will respect you and believe in you.
Say to yourself every hour, "I am God's divine creature," and no one
will dare look you in the eyes and say you are anything less than that.
The arms of infinite love enfold you--have no fear.