Rose in Bloom: A Sequel to "Eight Cousins"Alcott, Louisa May
General
Rose in Bloom: A Sequel to "Eight Cousins"
Alcott, Louisa May
Cousins -- Fiction; Family life -- Fiction; Orphans -- Fiction
“Exactly. I always bring it up when anyone begins to lecture and it
works wonders. Uncle Mac turns pale, the aunts hold up their hands in
holy horror, and a general panic ensues. Then I magnanimously promise
not to disgrace the family and in the first burst of gratitude the dear
souls agree to everything I ask, so peace is restored and I go on my way
rejoicing.”
“Just the way you used to threaten to run off to sea if your mother
objected to any of your whims. You are not changed in that respect,
though you are in others. You had great plans and projects once,
Charlie, and now you seem to be contented with being a 'jack of all
trades and master of none'”.
“Boyish nonsense! Time has brought wisdom, and I don't see the sense of
tying myself down to one particular thing and grinding away at it year
after year. People of one idea get so deucedly narrow and tame, I've
no patience with them. Culture is the thing, and the sort one gets by
ranging over a wide field is the easiest to acquire, the handiest to
have, and the most successful in the end. At any rate, it is the kind I
like and the only kind I intend to bother myself about.”
With this declaration, Charlie smoothed his brow, clasped his hands over
his head, and, leaning back, gently warbled the chorus of a college song
as if it expressed his views of life better than he could:
“While our rosy fillets shed
Blushes o'er each fervid head,
With many a cup and many a smile
The festal moments we beguile.”
“Some of my saints here were people of one idea, and though they were
not very successful from a worldly point of view while alive, they were
loved and canonized when dead,” said Rose, who had been turning over a
pile of photographs on the table and just then found her favorite, St.
Francis, among them.
“This is more to my taste. Those worn-out, cadaverous fellows give me
the blues, but here's a gentlemanly saint who takes things easy and does
good as he goes along without howling over his own sins or making other
people miserable by telling them of theirs.” And Charlie laid a handsome
St. Martin beside the brown-frocked monk.
Rose looked at both and understood why her cousin preferred the
soldierly figure with the sword to the ascetic with his crucifix. One
was riding bravely through the world in purple and fine linen, with
horse and hound and squires at his back; and the other was in a
lazar-house, praying over the dead and dying. The contrast was a strong
one, and the girl's eyes lingered longest on the knight, though she said
thoughtfully, “Yours is certainly the pleasantest and yet I never heard
of any good deed he did, except divide his cloak with a beggar, while
St. Francis gave himself to charity just when life was most tempting and
spent years working for God without reward. He's old and poor, and in a
dreadful place, but I won't give him up, and you may have your gay St.
Martin if you want him.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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