The Other GirlsWhitney, A. D. T. (Adeline Dutton Train)
General
The Other Girls
Whitney, A. D. T. (Adeline Dutton Train)
Family life -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
"Of what you might make this place."
"What would you make of it?"
They were a little apart, by themselves, again. It kept happening
so. Miss Kirkbright and Sylvie had a great deal to say to each
other.
"I would make it a moral sanatorium. I would take people in here,
and nurse them up by beautiful living, till they were ready to begin
the world again; and then I would have the little new world, of work
and business, waiting just outside. I would have rooms for them
here, that they should feel the _own-ness_ of; flowers to tend;
ferneries in the windows; they could make them from these beautiful
woods, and send them away to the cities; that would be a business at
the very first! I would have all the lovely, natural ways of living
to win them back by,--to teach them pure things; yes,--and I would
have the chapel to teach them the real gospel in! That bird-cage in
the gallery window made me think of it all, I believe," she ended,
bringing herself back out of her enthusiasm with a recollection.
"I knew you could tell me how," said Mr. Kirkbright, quietly.
"How Hazel would rejoice in this place! It is a place to set any one
dreaming, I think; because, perhaps, as Miss Kirkbright said, the
man was in a dream when he planned it."
"I mean to try if one dream cannot be lived," said Christopher
Kirkbright. "At any rate, let us have the _vision_ out, while we are
about it! What do you think of brickmaking for the hard, rough
working men, with families, with those cottages and more like them
to live in; and paper-making, in mills down there, for others; for
the women and children, especially. Paper for hangings, say; then,
some time or other, the printing works, and the designing? Might it
not all grow? And then wouldn't we have a ladder all the way up, for
them to climb by,--out of the clay and common toil to art and
beauty?"
"You can dream delightfully, Mr. Kirkbright."
"I will see if I cannot begin to turn it into fact, and make it
pay," he answered. "Pay itself, and keep itself going. I do not need
to look for my fortune from it. The fortune is to be put into it.
But I have no right to lose,--to throw away,--the fortune. It must
come by degrees, like all things. You know some people say that God
dreamed the heavens and the earth in those six wonderful days, and
then took his millions of years for the everlasting making, with the
Sabbath of his divine satisfaction between the two. If I cannot do
the whole, there may be others,--and if there are, we shall find
them,--who would help to build the city."
"I know who," said Desire, instantly. "Dakie Thayne, and Ruth! It is
just what they want."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account