“Then see you’ll break your neck; but I have a worse fear for you than that, Gusty, a far worse fear for you than that. This Hagar, she is the talk of the whole neighborhood; her eccentricity, her improprieties, expose her to severe animadversions.” “Her originality you mean; her independence; her free, strong, glorious spirit! Oh! Hagar is a chamois! you cannot expect her to trot demurely to the music of her own grunting, from trough to straw, like any pig! Hagar is an eagle! you must not look to find her waddling lazily and feeding fatly with barnyard ducks and geese.” “A pretty way to speak of your neighbors, Mr. May.” “Well, then, let them let Hagar alone! Mother!” said Gusty, drawing in his breath _hard_ between his teeth, “the anger heats and swells in my heart like kindling fire in a bombshell, till it tears and splits and flashes, until I feel the fire and see the lightning, and some of these days it will explode and blow myself and some others up! when I hear these domestic animals sitting in sage judgment on my wild deer of the mountains! these barn-door poultry cackling their comments on my falcon sailing towards the sun! Pish! pshaw! tush! tut!” exclaimed Gusty, jumping up in a heat, and walking the floor. “Pretty way to talk of your neighbors again, I say, Mr. May!” “Well, then, let them let Hagar ALONE!” thundered Gusty, bringing his hand down on the table like a hammer on the anvil. “Beg your pardon, mother, I did not mean that _to_ you, but _of_ them; and if that old gander Gardiner Green don’t make his goose and gosling stop cackling about Hagar, he’ll get his neck twisted for him!” Now Emily laughed— “Poor Gardiner Green, it would be a sin and a shame to persecute him for what he has no hand in and can’t help. Don’t you know how he fears his wife?” “Does—does he? very well, I’ll meet fear with fear; he shall fear something else worse than his wife!” “Now, very seriously, Augustus, you will afflict me very much, if you commit any folly for the sake of Hagar Churchill.” “But I love Hagar Churchill—love her! sympathize with her.” “She has no pity for herself, why should others pity her?” “_Pity! pity!_ did I say _pity_, mother? pity Hagar Churchill! _pity_ that proud, free, glad spirit!” “Yes, _pity her_! that ‘proud, free, glad spirit’ is clothed with woman’s deep affections, prisoned in _woman’s_ fragile form, environed by woman’s circumstances, and chafes against them all—would break through them all! will break through them all! and then, high as that proud spirit soars, though her wings should glance in the atmosphere around the sun’s disk, she will be beaten back and down—_down!_ Glad as that high heart throbs, it will yet beat sobs that throw out tears for blood! Wide as that wild spirit wanders, it will yet cower, moaning upon the waste hearth of home.”