The Tinder-Box by Maria Thompson Daviess
page 125 of 179 (69%)
page 125 of 179 (69%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
like a whole regiment out on a charge that was to be one of
extermination, or complete surrender. The Crag told me that evening that the Mayor's office of Glendale had reeked of brimstone, for hours, and the next Sunday Aunt Augusta sat in their pew at church, militantly alone, while he occupied a seat in the farthest limits of the amen corner, with equal militancy. But Uncle Peter's attitude during the time of Jane's campaign for general Equality in Glendale was pathetically like that of an old log, that has been drifting comfortably down the stream of life with the tide that bore its comrades, and suddenly got its end stuck in the mud so that it was forced to stem alone the very tide it had been floating on. Jane didn't throw any rocks at anybody's opinions or break the windows of anybody's prejudices. She had the most lovely heart to heart talks with the women separately, collectively, and in both small and large bunches. I had them in to tea in the combinations that she wanted them, and I must say that she was the loveliest thing with them that could be imagined. She was just her stiff, ugly self, starchily clad in the most beautifully tailored white linen, and they all went mad about her. The Pup and the Kit clutched at her skirts until anybody else would have been a mass of wrinkles, and the left breast of her linen blouse did always bear a slight impress of little Ned's head. The congeniality of Jane and that baby was a revelation to me and his colic ceased after the first time she kneaded it out of his fat little stomach with her long, slim, powerful hands according to a first-aid method she had learned in her settlement work, with Mamie looking on in fear and adoration. It may have been bloodless surgery but I suspect it of being partly hypnotism, because the same sort of surgery was used on the minds of all my women |
|