gleam of it
led to the prohibited passages of life. The poor lady was afflicted
so keenly that, in instances where one of her sex and position in the
social scale is bound to perish rather than let even the shadow of a
laugh appear, or any sign of fleshly perception or sympathy peep out,
she was seen to be mutely, shockingly, penitentially convulsed: a
degrading sight. And albeit repeatedly remonstrated with, she, upon
such occasions, invariably turned imploring glances--a sort of frowning
entreaty--to the ladies, or to any of her sex present. "Did you not
see that? Oh! can you resist it?" she seemed to gasp, as she made those
fruitless efforts to drag them to her conscious level. "Sink thou, if
thou wilt," was the phrase indicated to her. She had once thought her
propensity innocent enough, and enjoyable. Her nieces had almost cured
her, by sitting on her, until Mrs. Chump came to make her worst than
ever. It is to be feared that Mrs. Chump was beginning to abuse her
power over the little colourless lady. We cannot, when we find ourselves
possessed of the gift of sending a creature into convulsions, avoid
exercising it. Mrs. Lupin was one of the victims of the modern feminine
'ideal.' She was in mind merely a woman; devout and charitable, as her
nieces admitted; but radically--what? They did not like to think, or to
say, what;--repugnant, seemed to be the word. A woman who consented
to perceive the double-meaning, who acknowledged its suggestions of a
violation of decency laughable, and who could not restrain laughter,
was, in their judgement, righteously a victim. After signal efforts to
lift her up, the verdict was that their Aunt Lupin did no credit to
her sex. If we conceive a timorous little body of finely-strung nerves,
inclined to be gay, and shrewdly apprehensive, but depending for her
opinion of herself upon those about her, we shall see that Mrs. Lupin's
life was one of sorrow and scourges in the atmosphere of the 'ideal.'
Never did nun of the cloister fight such a fight with the flesh, as this
poor little woman, that she might not give offence to the Tribunal
of the Nice Feelings which leads us to ask, "Is sentimentalism in
our modern days taking the place of monasticism to mortify our poor
humanity?" The sufferings of the Three of Brookfield under Mrs. Chump
was not comparable to Mrs. Lupin's. The good little woman's soul
withered at the self-contempt to which her nieces helped her daily.
Laughter, far from