love he was as sweet as honey and as soft as butter. His old friends
that he used so to trample upon scarcely recognised him. They had
sometimes seen men converted, but they had never seen such an immediate
and such a complete conversion as this. He actually invited correction,
and reproof, and advice, and assistance, who had often struck at you with
his hands and his feet when you even hinted at such a thing to him. The
best upbringing, the best books, the best preaching, the best and most
obedient life, taken all together, had not done for other men what a
woman's smile and the touch of her hand had in a moment done for this
once so obstinate man. He would read anything now, and especially the
best books. He would hear and enjoy any preacher now, and especially the
best and most earnest in preaching. His old likes and dislikes,
prejudices and prepossessions, self-opinionativeness and
self-assertiveness all miraculously melted off him, and he became in a
day an open-minded, intelligent, good-mannered, devout-minded gentleman.
He who was once such a mule to everybody was now led about by a child in
a silken bridle. All old things had passed away, and all things had
become new. For a time; for a time. But time passes, and there passes
away with it all the humility, meekness, pliability, softness, and
sweetness of the obstinate man. Till when long enough time has elapsed
you find him all the obstinate and mulish man he ever was. It is not
that he has ceased to love his wife and his children. It is not that.
But there is this in all genuine and inbred obstinacy, that after a time
it often comes out worst beside those we love best. A man will be
affable, accessible, entertaining, the best of company, and the soul of
it abroad, and, then, instantly he turns the latch-key in his own door he
will relapse into silence, and sink back into utter boorishness and
bearishness, mulishness and doggedness. He swallows his evening meal at
the foot of the table in silence, and then he sits all night at the
fireside with a cloud out of nothing on his brow. His sunshine, his