{"id":"01KG8AN1SFE0K38JQ52999N8D9","cid":"bafkreiadz7snmkevjjgrmrih3o6fnmxfo7gyrcklkiwgd7lspajgzsvju4","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":9703,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":9653,"text":"reference to the young, ardent hours of its earliest manifestations.\r\n\r\nBut as the advancing fruit itself extrudes the beautiful blossom, so in\r\nmany cases, does the eventual love for the other sex forever dismiss the\r\npreliminary love-friendship of boys. The mere outer friendship may in\r\nsome degree--greater or less--survive; but the singular love in it has\r\nperishingly dropped away.\r\n\r\nIf in the eye of unyielding reality and truth, the earthly heart of man\r\ndo indeed ever fix upon some one woman, to whom alone, thenceforth\r\neternally to be a devotee, without a single shadow of the misgiving of\r\nits faith; and who, to him, does perfectly embody his finest, loftiest\r\ndream of feminine loveliness, if this indeed be so--and may Heaven grant\r\nthat it be--nevertheless, in metropolitan cases, the love of the most\r\nsingle-eyed lover, almost invariably, is nothing more than the ultimate\r\nsettling of innumerable wandering glances upon some one specific object;\r\nas admonished, that the wonderful scope and variety of female\r\nloveliness, if too long suffered to sway us without decision, shall\r\nfinally confound all power of selection. The confirmed bachelor is, in\r\nAmerica, at least, quite as often the victim of a too profound\r\nappreciation of the infinite charmingness of woman, as made solitary for\r\nlife by the legitimate empire of a cold and tasteless temperament.\r\n\r\nThough the peculiar heart-longings pertaining to his age, had at last\r\nfound their glowing response in the bosom of Lucy; yet for some period\r\nprior to that, Pierre had not been insensible to the miscellaneous\r\npromptings of the passion. So that even before he became a declarative\r\nlover, Love had yet made him her general votary; and so already there\r\nhad gradually come a cooling over that ardent sentiment which in earlier\r\nyears he had cherished for Glen.\r\n\r\nAll round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter's ambush,\r\nto pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking\r\nrifles of the realities of the age. If the general love for women, had\r\nin Pierre sensibly modified his particular sentiment toward Glen;\r\nneither had the thousand nameless fascinations of the then brilliant\r\nparadises of France and Italy, failed to exert their seductive influence\r\non many of the previous feelings of Glen. For as the very best\r\nadvantages of life are not without some envious drawback, so it is among\r\nthe evils of enlarged foreign travel, that in young and unsolid minds,\r\nit dislodges some of the finest feelings of the home-born nature;\r\nreplacing them with a fastidious superciliousness, which like the\r\nalledged bigoted Federalism of old times would not--according to a\r\npolitical legend--grind its daily coffee in any mill save of European\r\nmanufacture, and was satirically said to have thought of importing\r\nEuropean air for domestic consumption. The mutually curtailed,\r\nlessening, long-postponed, and at last altogether ceasing letters of\r\nPierre and Glen were the melancholy attestations of a fact, which\r\nperhaps neither of them took very severely to heart, as certainly,\r\nconcerning it, neither took the other to task.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AKTMST8DGQPXYV857P8DN","peer_type":"subsection","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AN1SFBBTH6CAFZ4736TC8","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AN2ADDSD5AARSRQ0FW46H","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:57.135Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:25.007Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}