Middletown transcript., 1894-08-18

and it was that her husband kissed her
on the way from church. But ! knew
him fairly well, and cannot conceive
of hfs being guilty Of such brutality.
Well, there we were in that ola
house, with Anna and her mother be-
traying the innate brutality of our sex
to all the other people in it, and the
other people were for the most part
women, two of them at least being
young, bright and comely. | rec II
how you and / danced attendance on
those women for eedays; how sterhiy
we su pressed our natural brutality
and curbed our inherent fiendisbness,
and tried to make it pleasant for them,
and how, in spite of our efforts, the
horrible exposures, whatever they
were, of Anna and her mother began
TO effect the whole household.
Miss Van AlIendale painted-do you
remember her theoretical bouquets, ar
ranged according to Linnaens, and her
wild grasses laid out with a pair o1
compasses?-do you remember how on
the second day, when you sat down by
her easel, she got up with flush on
her face and went and called Anna's
mother into the room, and how that
woman sat there like an Assyrian
monument and glared at you, her
square jaw and her beetling eyebrow
saying what her lips dare not, namely:
"No violence while am in the room,
sir?"
Before that second day was ended |
think you and 1 understood perfectly
well that we belonged to a lower hie-
rarchy. and not only that, but that it
was a superfuous hierarchy. We
brought wood for the big fireplace.
We read Browning aloud. We sang
-'Larboard Watch" We offered to
hold skeins of silk and teach them
billiards, and 60 after the mail, but
our ill-disguised masculine depravity
would peep through our hypocrisy.
When you in an abandoned moment
referred at the dinner-table to the
mutton as "a Leg" Anna and her
mother exchanged glances. Their |
subtle instinct detected you. You
couldn't keep your vile nature tucked
in, even at the dinner-table.
And then those circled around the |
old fireplace. What knowledge of the |
world, what broad, unerring deductions |
from Anna; what clear, unassailable |
glimpses of eternal truth from Miss
Van Allendale! Evidently Anna had
encompassed the sum total of human
knowledge in six weeks and then dis
tributed it. Miss Van Allendale had
measured the universe with her COM
passes, and there was nothing in it for
woman.
On the third day 1 found you listen
ing to that spout in the billiard.room,
and apostrophizing it as a Delphic
,racle. But we had both of us yielded
It he point of the bayonet. All TIE
rpsisting power had been taken our al
Is. When Annals mother turned her
quick neck and asked if the record of
mans poltroonry did not begin will
Adam and promise to end only wi \
he day of Judgment, did you not bow
and declare that you had never heard
your own convictions so clearly tx
pressedp
Did not our ears tingle all that da,
with the metaphorical boxing they got
for being men? Did you not write in
my memorandum book when my back
was turned, and long before Sarah
Grand exposed US, that we were both
spotted toads and masculinity was a
failure? Did we not shake hands
secretly in the billiard room and swear
to live only for Art and Ambition, and
never outrage the race by aspiring to
win one of the superior sex?
Do you recall that morning when the
sun rose clear, and you came into my
room and pulled the bedclothes off, and
said with convict's whisper, "Get up.
Phoebus has opened the donjon door,
Maria will give US cup of coffee, a
slice of bacon and smile before the
superior sex is stirring. Get your rod,
| know where the speckled trout
hidesp''
Dear old fellow, there was boy
choir singing somewhere that morning.
| think you remarked reverentially in
the fields that it was comfort to know
that "God did not belong to The super.
ior sex" and Nature took special pains
To let us know she did not despise us.
Now | come to it-that girl picking
the wind feur-de-lis at O'Clock tn the
morning out of the little bayous on the
edge of scented swamp. We both
saw her at the moment, for we came
upon her suddenly, and she was to-
tally unprepared for us. She had taken
off her shoes, and was holding her
dress up, reaching for bunch of flow
ers, when we both struck an attitude
of admiration and discontinue.
When she saw US she couldn't let
her dress fall without getting it wet.
She looked at us inquiringly with some
confusion. and then down at her bare
ankles. Then she let out jolly laugh
that sounded at that hour very much
as if somebody had dropped a string of
golden eagles into tankard of cham.
pagne.
What kind of inspira ion as It that
told us this was not spirit wander
ing in the higher life, put part of
Natures plan, and even of her pageant?
I suggested that we cut and run. You
said .Never!' 1t was prophetic. You