Saint Mary's beacon. [volume] (Leonard Town, Md.) 1867-1983, 1894-10-04

believe it took the maternal part Of
the home establishment week tt
straighten her ont. Certainly il
was quite that length Of time before
she got her breath and her hair be,
gan TO lay fiat. Then she opened d
crusade against marriage, and began
q war to the knife against man.
] Her mother said she had conse.
Grated her life to opening the eyes oil
her deluded sisters. believe the
vow was taken on typewriter.
never knew, nor did you, what had
happened to her. That was one OF
the Elensinian mysteries that was
spoken only when the chamber
doors were shut and we were listen
ing to that spout in the billiard
room
Bob Granger had a theory that
her husband knocked her down at
the alter before the ceremony was
over and then jumped on her. But
| think he got that notion from his
aunt, and that it was mere work
ing theory, made for the billiard
room. Little Miss Bussy's theory
was a much more reasonable one,
and it was that her husband kissed
her on the way from church. But
knew him fairly well, and can
not conceive of his being guilty OF
such brutality.
Well, there we were in that old
house. with Anna and her mothor
betraying 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 come
ly. recall how you and | danced
attendance on those women for
three days: how sternly we suppressed
our natural brutality and curbed
inherent fiendishness, 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 Allendale painted-do
you remember her theoretical bou-
quets, arranged according to Lin
naeus, and her wild grasses laid ont
with a pair of cempasses?-do You
remember how on the second day,
when you sat down by her easel, she
got up with q flush on her face and
went and called Annals mother in
to the room, and how that woman
sat there like an Assyrian monu-
ment and glared at you. her square
jaw and her beetling eyebrow say
ing what her lips dare not, namely:
"No violence while | am in the
room, sir?''
Before that second day was ended
l think you and understood per-
fectly well that we belonged to a
lower hierarchy, and not only that,
but .hat it was superfuous hie-
rarchy. 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 90
after the mail, but our ill-disgnised
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 could
not 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 distributed it.
Miss Van Allendale had measured
the universe with her compasses,
and there was nothing in it for wo-
man.
On the third day / found you
listening to that spout in the bill.
liard-room, and apostrophizing il
as Delphic oracle. But we had
both of us yielded at the point oi
the bayonet. All the resisting
power had been taken out of us.
When Annals mother turned hel
quick neck and asked If the record
of mans poltroonry did not begin
with Adam and promise to end only
with the day of judgment, did you