Gideon's Band: A Tale of the MississippiCable, George Washington
General
Gideon's Band: A Tale of the Mississippi
Cable, George Washington
Mississippi River -- Fiction
The Gilmores' hearts she had won largely by the way in which her talks
with them revealed the sweet charities of a soul unwarped by the
tyrannous prohibitions under which she had been "born and raised" and to
which she was still loyal; and she had crowned the conquest by a gentle,
inflexible refusal to "brother" John the Baptist. In their lively minds
she reawakened the age-old issue between artist and pietist. Said the
amused Gilmore:
"Humiliate me? Not in the least. She only humbles me; she's such a
beautiful example of----"
"Yes, but, goodness, don't say it here!" said his wife. "Harriet" and
the exhorter were already trouble enough.
Nevertheless, "What lovely types of character," insisted Gilmore, "come
often, _so_ often, from ugly types of faith!"
The wife flinched and looked about but he persisted: "So much better, my
love--this is only my humble tribute to her--so _much_ better is
religion, even her religion, without the liberal arts than the liberal
arts without religion. Faith is the foundation, they are the upper
works."
"Dear, you should have been a preacher!"
"No, I'd always be preaching that one sermon. If I didn't tell it to
you, I'd have to tell it to her, or make you tell her."
Mrs. Gilmore had not told her, but between the two women, across the
gulf between them, there had grown such a commerce of silent esteem that
neither Hugh nor Ramsey knew which one's modest liberalism to admire
most. To Ramsey it was nothing against the matron that she was not
nursing the immigrant sick. Only Madame Hayle was allowed to do that,
and the parson's wife, being quite without madame's art of doing as she
pleased, had had to submit conscience and compassions to the captain's
forbiddal, repeated by the commodore and Hugh. But after the play she
had insisted, "strict orders or none, and whether her children were four
or forty-four," on entering the service of the busy Gilmores, "no matter
how," and was now, with old Joy, in the pilot-house, a most timely
successor to the actor's wife in the social care of Ramsey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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