"And by which of my qualities," inquired he, "can you suppose me fitted

for this awful ministry?"

"By your tenderness," I said. "It seems to me the reflection of God's

own love."

"And you call me tender!" repeated Hollingsworth thoughtfully. "I

should rather say that the most marked trait in my character is an

inflexible severity of purpose. Mortal man has no right to be so

inflexible as it is my nature and necessity to be."

"I do not believe it," I replied.

But, in due time, I remembered what he said.

Probably, as Hollingsworth suggested, my disorder was never so serious

as, in my ignorance of such matters, I was inclined to consider it.

After so much tragical preparation, it was positively rather mortifying

to find myself on the mending hand.

All the other members of the Community showed me kindness, according to

the full measure of their capacity. Zenobia brought me my gruel every

day, made by her own hands (not very skilfully, if the truth must be

told), and, whenever I seemed inclined to converse, would sit by my

bedside, and talk with so much vivacity as to add several gratuitous

throbs to my pulse. Her poor little stories and tracts never half did

justice to her intellect. It was only the lack of a fitter avenue that

drove her to seek development in literature. She was made (among a

thousand other things that she might have been) for a stump oratress.

I recognized no severe culture in Zenobia; her mind was full of weeds.

It startled me sometimes, in my state of moral as well as bodily

faint-heartedness, to observe the hardihood of her philosophy. She

made no scruple of oversetting all human institutions, and scattering

them as with a breeze from her fan. A female reformer, in her attacks

upon society, has an instinctive sense of where the life lies, and is

inclined to aim directly at that spot. Especially the relation between

the sexes is naturally among the earliest to attract her notice.

Zenobia was truly a magnificent woman. The homely simplicity of her

dress could not conceal, nor scarcely diminish, the queenliness of her

presence. The image of her form and face should have been multiplied

all over the earth. It was wronging the rest of mankind to retain her

as the spectacle of only a few. The stage would have been her proper

sphere. She should have made it a point of duty, moreover, to sit

endlessly to painters and sculptors, and preferably to the latter;

because the cold decorum of the marble would consist with the utmost

scantiness of drapery, so that the eye might chastely be gladdened with

her material perfection in its entireness.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024