The Surprise

If it had been the Queen a-coming in.

      There is a sudden joy and ecstatic heart-beat in the very welcome surprise that sometimes overtakes us, but who would exchange it for the long-drawn-out sweetness of that expectation in which we count the days, the hours, the moments, picture to ourselves the truth, gloat over every item of the coming joy, live it and re-live it, and extract the last drop of its deliciousness before it is actually here? The surprise is precious, doubtless; it lasts a moment. The expectation is equally precious, it lasts for hours. Our heart goes out and flies before the ship that is coming into harbor, goes out to greet the guest, goes out to receive the blessing, and is doubly dowered with every reasonable day's delay. To expect sorrow, and supreme sorrow, surely to expect it, is as wearing and wearying and unendurable as the suffering is when the blow falls; to expect joy, and surely to expect it, is to enjoy it by so much the longer and by so much the more exquisitely as it may happen with us that the ideal in our being exceeds the real. Thus it may be seen that happy expectation, almost another name or content, is an important factor in our happiness. I suppose it was a lesson of content in the present and of joy in the future, of the delight of vague expectancy and constant hope, that Mrs Mulgrave had when looking at her new house in process of construction, she saw what she described as "Two Sides to a Bureau." 

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