E-text prepared by Jen Haines, Suzanne Shell, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) THE BETH BOOK Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure A Woman of Genius by SARAH GRAND IAGO. Come, hold your peace. EMILIA. 'Twill out, 'twill out:--I hold my peace, Sir? no; I'll be in speaking, liberal as the air: Let heaven, and men, and devils, let them all All, all, cry shame against me, yet I'll speak. SHAKESPEARE New York: D. Appleton 1897. "_I cannot gather the sunbeams out of the east, or I would make them tell you what I have seen; but read this and interpret this, and let us remember together. I cannot gather the gloom out of the night sky, or I would make that tell you what I have seen; but read this and interpret this, and let us feel together. And if you have not that within you which I can summon to my aid, if you have not the sun in your spirit and the passion in your heart which my words may awaken, though they be indistinct and swift, leave me, for I will give you no patient mockery, no labouring insults of that glorious Nature whose I am and whom I serve._"--RUSKIN. "_The men who come on the stage at one period are all found to be related to one another. Certain ideas are in the air. We are all impressionable, for we are made of them; all impressionable, but some more than others, and these first express them. This explains the curious temporaneousness of inventions and discoveries. The truth is in the air, and the most impressionable brain will announce it first, but all will announce it a few minutes later. So women, as most susceptible, are the best index of the coming hour._"--EMERSON. CHAPTER I