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this frees woman |
poverty and crime will be childless |
it is far better to be free to leave the forts and barricades of fear to stand erect and face the future with a smile |
the gentleman had not even needed to sit down to become interested apparently he had taken up the volume from a table as soon as he came in and standing there after a single glance round the apartment had lost himself in its pages |
that has an unflattering sound for me said the young man |
she is willing to risk that |
just as i am the visitor inquired presenting himself with rather a work a day aspect |
he was tall and lean and dressed throughout in black his shirt collar was low and wide and the triangle of linen a little crumpled exhibited by the opening of his waistcoat was adorned by a pin containing a small red stone |
in spite of this decoration the young man looked poor as poor as a young man could look who had such a fine head and such magnificent eyes |
those of basil ransom were dark deep and glowing his head had a character of elevation which fairly added to his stature it was a head to be seen above the level of a crowd on some judicial bench or political platform or even on a bronze medal |
these things the eyes especially with their smouldering fire might have indicated that he was to be a great american statesman or on the other hand they might simply have proved that he came from carolina or alabama |
and yet the reader who likes a complete image who desires to read with the senses as well as with the reason is entreated not to forget that he prolonged his consonants and swallowed his vowels that he was guilty of elisions and interpolations which were equally unexpected and that his discourse was pervaded by something sultry and vast something almost african in its rich basking tone something that suggested the teeming expanse of the cotton field |
and he took up his hat vaguely a soft black hat with a low crown and an immense straight brim |
well so it is they are all witches and wizards mediums and spirit rappers and roaring radicals |
if you are going to dine with her you had better know it oh murder |
he looked at missus luna with intelligent incredulity |
she was attractive and impertinent especially the latter |
have you been in europe |
no i haven't been anywhere |
she hates it she would like to abolish it |
this last remark he made at a venture for he had naturally not devoted any supposition whatever to missus luna |
are you very ambitious you look as if you were |
and missus luna added that now she was back she didn't know what she should do |
one didn't even know what one had come back for |
besides olive didn't want her in boston and didn't go through the form of saying so |
that was one comfort with olive she never went through any forms |
she stood there looking consciously and rather seriously at mister ransom a smile of exceeding faintness played about her lips it was just perceptible enough to light up the native gravity of her face |
her voice was low and agreeable a cultivated voice and she extended a slender white hand to her visitor who remarked with some solemnity he felt a certain guilt of participation in missus luna's indiscretion that he was intensely happy to make her acquaintance |
he observed that miss chancellor's hand was at once cold and limp she merely placed it in his without exerting the smallest pressure |
i shall be back very late we are going to a theatre party that's why we dine so early |
missus luna's familiarity extended even to her sister she remarked to miss chancellor that she looked as if she were got up for a sea voyage |
miss chancellor herself had thought so much on the vital subject would not she make a few remarks and give them some of her experiences |
how did the ladies on beacon street feel about the ballot |
perhaps she could speak for them more than for some others |
with her immense sympathy for reform she found herself so often wishing that reformers were a little different |
olive hated to hear that fine avenue talked about as if it were such a remarkable place and to live there were a proof of worldly glory |
all sorts of inferior people lived there and so brilliant a woman as missus farrinder who lived at roxbury ought not to mix things up |
she knew her place in the boston hierarchy and it was not what missus farrinder supposed so that there was a want of perspective in talking to her as if she had been a representative of the aristocracy |
she wished to work in another field she had long been preoccupied with the romance of the people |
this might seem one of the most accessible of pleasures but in point of fact she had not found it so |
charlie was a young man in a white overcoat and a paper collar it was for him in the last analysis that they cared much the most |
olive chancellor wondered how missus farrinder would treat that branch of the question |
if it be necessary we are prepared to take certain steps to conciliate the shrinking |
our movement is for all it appeals to the most delicate ladies |
raise the standard among them and bring me a thousand names |
i look after the details as well as the big currents missus farrinder added in a tone as explanatory as could be expected of such a woman and with a smile of which the sweetness was thrilling to her listener |
said olive chancellor with a face which seemed to plead for a remission of responsibility |
i want to be near to them to help them |
it was one thing to choose for herself but now the great representative of the enfranchisement of their sex from every form of bondage had chosen for her |
the unhappiness of women |
they were her sisters they were her own and the day of their delivery had dawned |
this was the only sacred cause this was the great the just revolution it must triumph it must sweep everything before it it must exact from the other the brutal blood stained ravening race the last particle of expiation |
they would be names of women weak insulted persecuted but devoted in every pulse of their being to the cause and asking no better fate than to die for it |
it was not clear to this interesting girl in what manner such a sacrifice as this last would be required of her but she saw the matter through a kind of sunrise mist of emotion which made danger as rosy as success |
when miss birdseye approached it transfigured her familiar her comical shape and made the poor little humanitary hack seem already a martyr |
olive chancellor looked at her with love remembered that she had never in her long unrewarded weary life had a thought or an impulse for herself |
she had been consumed by the passion of sympathy it had crumpled her into as many creases as an old glazed distended glove |
poor ransom announced this fact to himself as if he had made a great discovery but in reality he had never been so boeotian as at that moment |
the women he had hitherto known had been mainly of his own soft clime and it was not often they exhibited the tendency he detected and cursorily deplored in missus luna's sister |
ransom was pleased with the vision of that remedy it must be repeated that he was very provincial |
he was sorry for her but he saw in a flash that no one could help her that was what made her tragic |
she could not defend herself against a rich admiration a kind of tenderness of envy of any one who had been so happy as to have that opportunity |
his family was ruined they had lost their slaves their property their friends and relations their home had tasted of all the cruelty of defeat |
the state of mississippi seemed to him the state of despair so he surrendered the remnants of his patrimony to his mother and sisters and at nearly thirty years of age alighted for the first time in new york in the costume of his province with fifty dollars in his pocket and a gnawing hunger in his heart |
it was in the female line as basil ransom had written in answering her letter with a good deal of form and flourish he spoke as if they had been royal houses |
if it had been possible to send missus ransom money or even clothes she would have liked that but she had no means of ascertaining how such an offering would be taken |
olive had a fear of everything but her greatest fear was of being afraid |
she had erected it into a sort of rule of conduct that whenever she saw a risk she was to take it and she had frequent humiliations at finding herself safe after all |
she was perfectly safe after writing to basil ransom and indeed it was difficult to see what he could have done to her except thank her he was only exceptionally superlative for her letter and assure her that he would come and see her the first time his business he was beginning to get a little should take him to boston |
he was too simple too mississippian for that she was almost disappointed |
of all things in the world contention was most sweet to her though why it is hard to imagine for it always cost her tears headaches a day or two in bed acute emotion and it was very possible basil ransom would not care to contend |
when he came from the bath proclus visited him again |
but hermon was not in the mood to share a joyous revel and he frankly said so although immediately after his return he had accepted the invitation to the festival which the whole fellowship of artists would give the following day in honour of the seventieth birthday of the old sculptor euphranor |
she would appear herself at dessert and the banquet must therefore begin at an unusually early hour |
so the artist found himself obliged to relinquish his opposition |
the banquet was to begin in a few hours yet he could not let the day pass without seeing daphne and telling her the words of the oracle |
he longed with ardent yearning for the sound of her voice and still more to unburden his sorely troubled soul to her |
since his return from the oracle the fear that the rescued demeter might yet be the work of myrtilus had again mastered him |
the approval as well as the doubts which it aroused in others strengthened his opinion although even now he could not succeed in bringing it into harmony with the facts |
then he went directly to the neighbouring palace the queen might have appeared already and it would not do to keep her waiting |
hitherto the merchant had been induced it is true to advance large sums of money to the queen but the loyal devotion which he showed to her royal husband had rendered it impossible to give him even a hint of the conspiracy |
when hermon entered the residence of the grammateus in the palace the guests had already assembled |
the place by hermon's side which althea had chosen for herself would then be given up to arsinoe |
true an interesting conversation still had power to charm him but often during its continuance the full consciousness of his misfortune forced itself upon his mind for the majority of the subjects discussed by the artists came to them through the medium of sight and referred to new creations of architecture sculpture and painting from whose enjoyment his blindness debarred him |
a stranger out of his own sphere he felt chilled among these closely united men and women to whom no tie bound him save the presence of the same host |
crates had really been invited in order to win him over to the queen's cause but charming fair haired nico had been commissioned by the conspirators to persuade him to sing arsinoe's praises among his professional associates |
his son had been this royal dame's first husband and she had deserted him to marry lysimachus the aged king of thrace |
the king's sister the object of his love cried hermon incredulously |
we women are only as old as we look and the leeches and tiring women of this beauty of forty practise arts which give her the appearance of twenty five yet perhaps the king values her intellect more than her person and the wisdom of a hundred serpents is certainly united in this woman's head |
the three most trustworthy ones are here amyntas the leech chrysippus and the admirable proclus |
let us hope that you will make this three leaved clover the luck promising four leaved one |
your uncle too has often with praiseworthy generosity helped arsinoe in many an embarrassment |
how long he kept you waiting for the first word concerning a work which justly transported the whole city with delight |
when he did finally summon you he said things which must have wounded you |
that is going too far replied hermon |
he winked at her and made a significant gesture as he spoke and then informed the blind artist how graciously arsinoe had remembered him when she heard of the remedy by whose aid many a wonderful cure of blind eyes had been made in rhodes |
the royal lady had inquired about him and his sufferings with almost sisterly interest and althea eagerly confirmed the statement |
hermon listened to the pair in silence |
the rhodian was just beginning to praise arsinoe also as a special friend and connoisseur of the sculptor's art when crates hermon's fellow student asked the blind artist in behalf of his beautiful companion why his demeter was placed upon a pedestal which to others as well as himself seemed too high for the size of the statue |
yet what mattered it even if these miserable people considered themselves deceived and pointed the finger of scorn at him |