Social problems -- Fiction; War stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
But Jimmie was more careful now in his agitations. He had brought
such distress into his home by his jail sentence, that he had been
forced to make promises to Lizzie. Her anxiety for her children
could no longer be kept to herself; and this caused a certain amount
of friction between them, and sent Jimmie out grumbling at his lot
in life. What was the use of trying to educate a woman, who could
see no farther than her own kitchen-stove? When you wanted to be a
world-saviour, to walk tip-toe on the misty mountain-tops of
heroism, she dragged you down and chained you to the commonplace,
taking all the zest and fervour out of your soul! The memories of
“seam-squirrels” and of thin coffee and ill-smelling and greasy soup
had slipped somewhat into the background of Jimmie's mind, and he
lived again the sublime hour when he had confronted the court and
stood for the fundamental rights of an American citizen. He wanted
to have that act of daring appreciated at its true value. Poor,
blind, home-keeping Lizzie, who could not fulfil these deeper needs
of her husband's soul!
Jimmie had been, so far in his married life, as well domesticated as
could be expected of a proletarian propagandist. He had yearned to
own a home of his own, and meantime had manifested his repressed
wish by getting a big packing-box and some broken shingles, and
building a model play-house for Jimmie Junior in the back yard. He
had even found time on his tired and crowded Sundays to start a
garden in midsummer, the season when the local was least active. But
now, of course, the war had come to obsess his mind, driving him to
terror for the future of humanity, tempting him to martyrdoms and
domestic irritations.
II
It was at this critical period in Jimmie's life that there appeared
in Leesville a vivid young person by the name of Evelyn Baskerville.
Evelyn was no tired kitchen slave--with her fluffy brown hair, her
pert little dimples, her trim figure, her jaunty hat with a turkey
feather stuck on one side of her head. Evelyn was a stenographer and
proclaimed herself an advanced feminist; at her first visit she set
the local upside down. It happened to be “social evening”, when all
the men smoked, and this “free” young thing took a cigarette from
her escort and puffed it all over the place. This, of course, would
not have made a stir in great centres of culture such as London and
Greenwich Village; but in Leesville it was the first time that the
equality of women had been interpreted to mean that the women should
adopt the vices of the men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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