reality!--to the feeling of these young ladies it could be best
appreciated by those who had been born to it. In their opinion, they,
themselves, had been born to something vastly superior, so they
rebelled and made themselves disagreeable; hoping to mitigate the gloom
of the future by intensifying that of the present.

Their mother, whose heart yearned over her offspring, essayed to
comfort them, casting daily and hourly the bread of suggestion and
anticipation on the unthankful waters, whence it invariably returned to
her sodden with repinings. The young ladies set their grievances up on
high and bowed the knee; they were not going to be comforted, nor
pleased, nor hopeful, not they. The scheme was abominable, and no
aspect in which it could be presented rendered its abomination less;
they were hopeless, and helpless, and oppressed, and there was the end
of it.

Poor Mrs. Smith wished it might be the end, or anywhere near the end;
for the soul within her was "vexed with strife and broken in pieces
with words." The general could--and did--escape the rhetorical
consequences of his unpopular measure, but his wife could not: no club
afforded her its welcome refuge, no "down town" offered her sanctuary.
She was obliged to stay at home and endure it all. Norma's sulks,
Blanche's tears, the rapture of the boys--hungering for novelty as boys
only can hunger--the useless and trivial suggestions of friends, the
minor arrangements for the move, the decision on domestic questions
present and to come, the questions, answers, futile conjectures, all
formed a murk through which she labored, striving to please her husband
and her children, to uphold authority, quell mutiny, soothe murmurs,
and sympathize with enthusiasm; with a tact which shamed diplomacy, and
a patience worthy of an evangelist.