Feminism -- Fiction; Sex role -- Fiction; Women's rights -- Fiction
But when they got to the meetin’ and he see Polly settin’ like a lily
amongst flowers, and read in her lovely face the earnest desire to lift
the burden from the heavy laden, comfort the sorrowful, right the
wrong, and do what she could in her day and generation—
I spoze his eyes could only see her sweet face. But he couldn’t help
his ears from hearin’ the reasonable, eloquent words of earnest and
womanly wimmen, so full of good sense and truth and justice that no
reasonable person could dispute ’em, and when he contrasted all this
with the sneerin’ face, the sarcastic egotistic prattle of Maud, the
veil dropped from his eyes, and he see with the New Vision.
You know how it wuz with Saul the Scoffer who went breathin’ out
vengeance, and Eternal Right stopped him on his way with its great
light. Well, I spoze it wuz a bright ray from that same light that
shone down into Royal’s heart and made him see. He wuz always good
hearted and generous—men have always been better than the laws they
have made. He left Maud at her home not fur away and hastened back,
way-laid Polly, and bore her home in triumph and a thirty-horse-power
car.
It don’t make much difference I spoze how or where anybody is
converted. The Bible speaks of some bein’ ketched out of the fire, and
I spoze it is about the same if they are ketched out of the rain.
’Tennyrate the same rain that washed some of the color off Maud’s
cheeks, seemed to wash away the blindin’ mist of prejudice and
antagonism from Royal’s mental vision, leavin’ his sperit ready for the
great white light of truth and justice to strike in. And that very day
and hour he come round to Polly’s way of thinkin’, and bein’ smart as a
whip and so rich, I suppose he will be a great accusation to the cause.
Well, the next day but one the Allens met in a pleasant grove on the
river shore and we had a good growin’ time. Royal bein’ as you may say
one of the family, took us all to the grove in his big tourin’ car, and
the fourth trip he took Polly alone, and wuzn’t it queer that, though
the load wuz fur lighter, it took him three times as long as the other
three trips together? Why, they never got there till dinner wuz on the
table, and then they didn’t seem to care a mite about the extra good
food.
But I made allowances, for as I looked into their glowin’ faces I
knowed they wuz partakin’ of fruit from the full branches of first
love, true love. Rich fruit that gives the divinest satisfaction of any
this old earth affords. Food that never changes through the centuries,
though fashion often changes, and riotous plenty or food famine may
exalt or depress the sperit of the householder. Nothin’ but time has
any power over this divine fruitage. He gradually, as the light of the
honeymoon wanes, whets his old scythe and mows down some of the
luxuriant branches, either cuttin’ a full swath, or one at a time, and
the blessed consumers have to come down to the ordinary food of
mortals. But this wuz still fur away from them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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