The Jasper weekly courier. [volume] (Jasper, Ind.) 1858-1922, 1872-02-23

man; she was far more at ease than you
WERE"
This was as true As il Wa disagree
able: and Shirley chewed the bitter
cud Of il in silence till he reached his
room.
A woman hateI Is made, not born.
The leaning of the natural heart Of man
is to place the other sex only q little
lower than the angels and, when this
order of things il reversed. he has either
been ruthlessly Tilted, or the twig was
bent early by a firm hand.
Bombay Shirley was woman-hAtsr of
the most aggressive kind. He not only
cherished unreasonable contempt on
his own part, but tried to convert his
friends to the same way of thinking !;
and yet, "the pity Of it, Iagom for he
had everything pertaining to the outer
man. which would draw and hold illogi.
cal feminine regard. He might have
been a young viking (if the ordinary
notion of 4 viking was a true one) with
the
Knctted column OF his throat
The massive square Of his heroic brsAss."
He was like Saul among other men,
taller by head, and looked taller than
he was, by reason of great mop of
chestnut hair, which could not have
curled tighter if he had wound it up in
papers every night of his life. IL actu-
ally made one feel warm on q frosty
morning, to look at Shirley's hair as he
went To "prayers." He had suffered
agonies with it in trying to take out
the curl,-it looked so womanish,-
till there came that welcome fashion
of cropping the manly head into the
semblance Of baboon's; then his soul
had rest,
He had never been I" disappointed"
as the phrase is, and yet there was
woman at the bottom of his cynicism. as
there is at the bottom of most mischief.
The blame lay at the door of Miss Tenn
perance Strong, the only woman with
whom Shirley had any acquaintance;
yet she was that one good woman Of a
thousand whom Solomon might have
found counting one by one" if she
had lived in his day, and he had not
shut his eyes to all but giddy Egyptians
and the fair Moabitish woman. Her
price was far above rubies; so far, in
deed, that no man had ever offered
anything approaching to it; and she
had continued Miss Strong for more
than threescore years. She always told
her age at the first interview, so as to
guard against the suspicion of wishing to
hide it.
But to begin at the beginning. Bonn
bay Shirley was born at sea, and cost
his mother her life; but being a lusty,
hard-6sted baby from the first, bound
to thrive on hard bread and water if
nothing else served, he came to the
turning-point of jacket and trousers on
shipboard.
Capt Shirley professed to scorn all
learning that could not be at once ap-
piled to practical use: and the rlost
contemptuous thing he could say Of a
botched piece of work was, that il
looked as if it had been done by 3
"collegian." No one familiar with
sailor-nature (which does not entirely
come under the head of human nature.
but
Suffers q sea-change.
Into something rich and stra.Age,'D
felt any surprise that he aad set his
heart on his sons going to college. In
selecting preparatory school, he passed
over all those acaderlies formerly as
plenty as blackberries in New England.
where boys and r.rls were educated
together "eourtir e schools" he called
them and settle d him in the family of
q solemn old n.Inister.
Two or tree motherless boys and
Miss Temp france made up the family.
1 don't Know whether she liked Bonn
bay any better for having taken his
first sep off Madagascar, and spoken
his fIrst word near Cape Horn, but he
Sc emed to bring into her life the fresh
less Of the rade-winds,-ab breezy flavor
that she had never felt before. He had
known no other woman and his affec-
ton, slightly tempered with awe, was
deeply grateful to her.
As for Miss Temperatures she reminded
him Of a ships figure head, carved out
of heart of oak, that had breasted all
weather till its first good looks are bat
tered out of all shape of comeliness.
She had bowels Of compassion for all
the weaknesses that boy flesh is heir to,
her heart would have held the fifty
sons of Priam but all women were
faithless as Helen in her eyes. or would
be if they had opportunity. She looked
upon young girls, and their ways. with
eyes Of such fierce condemnation, that
not one had ever darkened her doors in
Shirley's time. In the nature of things,
Miss Temperance must once have been
girl herself but she could never have
been "of girls, girlish.''
Shirley cherished q certain bashsul
worship for all women in his boyhood.
He had lived among sailors in cabin and
forecastle; he had touched pitch, but he
had not been defiled the most aban-
doned wretch among them had held up
to the boy only the true sailor-ideal Of
lood xrhich saoxae faila him