A Marriage - Page 2

in escorting her home, they all fell down in the mud. My wrath
against the bridegroom is somewhat calmed by finding that it is
considered bad luck if he does not get tipsy at his wedding."

Those readers of Miss Procter's poems who should suppose from their
tone that her mind was of a gloomy or despondent cast, would be
curiously mistaken. She was exceedingly humorous, and had a great
delight in humour. Cheerfulness was habitual with her, she was very
ready at a sally or a reply, and in her laugh (as I remember well)
there was an unusual vivacity, enjoyment, and sense of drollery.
She was perfectly unconstrained and unaffected: as modestly silent
about her productions, as she was generous with their pecuniary
results. She was a friend who inspired the strongest attachments;
she was a finely sympathetic woman, with a great accordant heart and
a sterling noble nature. No claim can be set up for her, thank God,
to the possession of any of the conventional poetical qualities.
She never by any means held the opinion that she was among the
greatest of human beings; she never suspected the existence of a
conspiracy on the part of mankind against her; she never recognised
in her best friends, her worst enemies; she never cultivated the
luxury of being misunderstood and unappreciated; she would far
rather have died without seeing a line of her composition in print,
than that I should have maundered about her, here, as "the Poet", or
"the Poetess".

With the recollection of Miss Procter as a mere child and as a
woman, fresh upon me, it is natural that I should linger on my way
to the close of this brief record, avoiding its end. But, even as
the close came upon her, so must it come here.

Always impelled by an intense conviction that her life must not be
dreamed away, and that her indulgence in her favourite pursuits must
be balanced by action in the real world around her, she was
indefatigable in her endeavours to do some good. Naturally
enthusiastic, and conscientiously impressed with a deep sense of her
Christian duty to her neighbour, she devoted herself to a variety of
benevolent objects. Now, it was the visitation of the sick, that
had possession of her; now, it was the sheltering of the houseless;
now, it was the elementary teaching of the densely ignorant; now, it
was the raising up of those who had wandered and got trodden under
foot; now, it was the wider employment of her own sex in the general
business of life; now, it was all these things at once. Perfectly
unselfish, swift to sympathise and eager to relieve, she wrought at
such designs with a flushed earnestness that disregarded season,
weather, time of day or night, food, rest. Under such a hurry of
the