table.--Those are the sentiments of Washington's Farewell Address.
Nothing better than that since the last chapter in Revelations.
Five-and-forty years ago there used to be Washington societies, and
little boys used to walk in processions, each little boy having a copy
of the Address, bound in red, hung round his neck by a ribbon. Why don't
they now? Why don't they now? I saw enough of hating each other in the
old Federal times; now let's love each other, I say,--let's love each
other, and not try to make it out that there is n't any place fit to
live in except the one we happen to be born in.
It dwarfs the mind, I think,--said I,--to feed it on any localism. The
full stature of manhood is shrivelled--
The color burst up into my cheeks. What was I saying,--I, who would not
for the world have pained our unfortunate little boarder by an allusion?
I will go,--he said,--and made a movement with his left arm to let
himself down from his high chair.
No,--no,--he does n't mean it,--you must not go,--said a kind voice next
him; and a soft, white hand was laid upon his arm.
Iris, my dear!--exclaimed another voice, as of a female, in accents
that might be considered a strong atmospheric solution of duty with very
little flavor of grace.
She did not move for this address, and there was a tableau that lasted
some seconds. For the young girl, in the glory of half-blown womanhood,
and the dwarf, the cripple, the misshapen little creature covered with
Nature's insults, looked straight into each other's eyes.
Perhaps no handsome young woman had ever looked at him so in his life.
Certainly the young girl never had looked into eyes that reached
into her soul as these did. It was not that they were in themselves
supernaturally bright,--but there was the sad fire in them that flames
up from the soul of one who looks on the beauty of woman without hope,
but, alas! not without emotion. To him it seemed as if those amber gates
had been translucent as the brown water of a mountain brook, and through
them he had seen dimly into a virgin wilderness, only waiting for the
sunrise of a great passion for all its buds to blow and all its bowers
to ring with melody.
That is my image, of course,--not his. It was not a simile that was
in his mind, or is in anybody's at such a moment,--it was a pang of
wordless passion, and then a silent, inward moan.
A lady's wish,--he said, with a certain gallantry of manner,--makes
slaves of us al
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