of fault with you, do I not? But I cannot
help it. You have been so written and talked and sung and flattered
into absurdity and falsehood, that there is nothing left but to stab
you with short, sharp words. If I chide you without cause, if I
censure that which is censurable, if I attribute to a class that which
belongs only to individuals, if I intimate that ungentle voices,
uncultivated language, and unpleasing manners are common when they are
really uncommon, if I assume to demand more than every person who loves
his country and believes his countrywomen has a right to demand, on me
be all the blame. But for ten persons who give you flattery and
sneers, you will not find one who will tell you wholesome truths. I
will tell you what seems to me true and wholesome. Poetasters and
cheap sentimentalists will berhyme and beguile you: I cannot help it;
but I will at least attempt to administer the corrective of what should
be common sense. The Magister was forced to let Von Falterle have a
hand in Albano's education, but he "swore to weed as much out of him
every day as that other fellow raked in. Dilettanteism prattles
pleasant things to you: I want you to BE everything that is pleasant.
Where a fulsome if not a false adulation praises your slender grace, I
shall not hesitate to tell you that I see neither slenderness nor
grace, but ribs crushed in, a diaphragm flattened down, liver and
stomach and spleen and pancreas jammed out of place, out of shape, out
of use; and that, if you were born so, humanity would dictate that you
should pad liberally, to save beholders from suffering; but of malice
aforethought so to contract yourselves is barbarism in the first
degree. And all the while I am saying these homely things, I shall
have ten thousand times more real regard and veneration for you than
your venders of dainty compliments. Regard? Jenny, Lilly, Carry,
Hetty, Fanny, and the rest of you, dearly beloved and longed
for,--Mary, my queen my singing-bird, a royal captive, but she shall
come to her crown one day,--my two Ellens, graceful and brilliant, and
you, my sweet-mouthed, soft-eyed islander, with your life deep and
boundless like the sea that lulled you to baby-slumbers,--knowing you,
shall I talk of regard? Knowing you, and from you, all, do I not know
what girls can be? Sometimes it seems as if no one knows girls EXCEPT
me. If the world did but know you, if it knew what deeps are in you,
what strength an