Mrs. Warren's Daughter: A Story of the Woman's MovementJohnston, Harry
General
Mrs. Warren's Daughter: A Story of the Woman's Movement
Johnston, Harry
Feminism -- Fiction; Mothers and daughters -- Fiction; Women's rights -- Fiction
Then he made his appeal to the women. He spoke of the dangers of
this hysteria; the need there was for level-headed house-keeping
women in our councils; how they should first qualify for and then
demand the suffrage, having already attained the civic vote. (Here
some of the employers of labour disapproved, plucked at his arm or
hem of his reefer jacket, and one squire lumbered off the platform.)
But he held on, warming with a theme that hitherto had hardly
interested him. His speeches were above the heads of his peasant
audiences; but they were a more sensitive harp to play on than the
average Anglo-Saxon audience. Many women wept, only decorously, as
he outlined their influence in a reformed village, a purified
Principality. The men applauded frantically because, despite some
prudent reserves, there seemed to be a promise of revolt in his
suggestions. David felt the electric thrill of the orator in harmony
with his audience; who for that reason will strive for further
triumphs, more resounding perorations. He introduced scraps of
Welsh--all his auto-intoxicated brain could remember (How physically
true was that taunt of Dizzy's--"Inebriated with the exuberance of
his own verbosity!").
And the delighted audience shouted back "You're the man we want!
Into Parliament you shall go, Davy-bach" and much else. So David
restored the five villages to sobriety in life and faith, yet left
them with a new enthusiasm kindled. Before he departed on his return
to London and the grind of his profession, he had effected another
change. Because he had spoken as he had spoken and touched the
hearts of emotional people, they came trickling back to his father's
church, to the "British" Church, as David now called it. Little
Bethel was empty, and the pastor-blacksmith not yet out of the
asylum at Swansea. The Revd. Howel Williams trod on air. His sermons
became terribly long and involved, but that was no drawback in the
minds of his Welsh auditory; though it made his son swear inwardly
and reconciled him to the approaching return to Fig Tree Court. The
old Druid felt inspired to convince the hundred people present that
the Church they had returned to _was_ the Church of their fathers,
not only back to Roman times, when Glamorganshire was basking in an
Italian civilization, but further still. He showed how the Druids
were rather to be described as Ante-Christian than Anti--with an
_i_; and played ponderously on this quip. In Druidism, he
observed--I am sure I cannot think why, but it was his hobby--you
had a remarkable foreshadowing of Christianity; the idea of the
human sacrifice, the Atonement, the Communion of Saints, the mystic
Vine, which he clumsily identified with the mistletoe, and what not
else. He read portions of his privately-published _Tales of
Taliessin_. In short such happiness radiated from his pink-cheeked
face and recovered eyes that David regretted in no wise his own
lapses into conventional, stereotyped religion. The Church of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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