But as this new idea became credible and
familiar, her unaffected desire to comply with all that was expected
from her drew out her hitherto undeveloped powers of conversation, and
enabled me day by day to appreciate more thoroughly the real
intelligence and soundness of judgment concealed at first by her
shyness, and still somewhat obscured by her childlike simplicity and
absolute inexperience. In the latter respect, however, she was, of
course, at the less disadvantage with a stranger to the manners and
life of her world. A more perfectly charming companion it would have
been difficult to desire and impossible to find. If at first I had
been secretly inclined to reproach her with exaggerated timidity, it
became more and more evident that her personal fears were due simply
to that nervous susceptibility which even men of reputed courage have
often displayed in situations of sudden and wholly unfamiliar peril.
Her tendency to overrate all dangers, not merely as they affected
herself, but as they might involve others, and above all her husband,
I ascribed to the ideas and habits of thought now for so many
centuries hereditary among a people in whom the fear of
annihilation--and the absence of all the motives that impel men on
earth to face danger and death with calmness, or even to enjoy the
excitement of deadly peril--have extinguished manhood itself.
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