another of my all time favourite books,
its just so romantic and lovely!
“do you think i am an automaton? a machine without feelings?
and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup?
do you think, because i am poor, obscure, plain, and little, i am soulless and heartless?
you think wrong! i have as much soul as you and full as much heart!
and if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, i should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. i am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”
“it is a long way to Ireland, Janet, and i am sorry to send my little friend on such weary travels: but if i can't do better, how is it to be helped? are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?"
i could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was still.
"Because, he said, "i sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame.
and if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land some broad between us, i am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then i've a nervous notion i should take to bleeding inwardly.
as for you, - you'd forget me.”
oh, i love it so much
xxx