A Maid and a Million Men: the candid confessions of Leona Canwick, censored indiscreetly by James G. Dunton — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
A Maid and a Million Men: the candid confessions of Leona Canwick, censored indiscreetly by James G. Dunton
John Stuart Mill · en
My education went forward by leaps and bounds under the guidance of
Jay-Jay and his friends and I must have changed considerably in a very
short time, because Aunt Elinor soon got into the habit of remarking
upon the fact that my language wasn’t all that it should be and that I
used it to express ideas which I certainly never thought up under her
roof. I must admit that Jay-Jay had a broadening influence upon me: he
introduced me to risqué anecdotes and bedroom ballads; I heard all the
conventional off-color jokes that are in existence and a few that were
quite unconventionally original; I became sophisticated in a certain
way, after discovering that when some man tried to tell you that “every
bowlegged girl is pleasure bent” or some other such bit of drivel, he
was not necessarily insulting you by the very act of telling you such
things; I became so wise that I could listen unblushingly to even such a
story as the one about the good wife who assaulted the minister for
saying, “There is no balm in Gilead” and explained her resentment by
declaring, “’Tain’t Gil’s fault nohow. Nuther of us wants brats to
bother with!”
I was still a tomboy at heart but my outlook had changed considerably;
or rather, I had begun to be resigned to the fate of being a girl. I had
the feeling most of the time that I might as well make the best of
it—and Jay-Jay happened to be the best at the moment.
But to show what influence will do to a person: I even harbored hopes of
taking Aunt Elinor on one of our parties for the sole purpose of getting
her plastered—just for something to do that would be different. The
only thing that kept me from doing it was the certainty that if she ever
saw how disgustingly unsteady her “choice” could be, that would be the
end of my affair with Jay-Jay, because her Puritan prudishness would
override any momentary ambitions as a matchmaker.
So I contented myself by getting Jay-Jay to take Leon with us to one of
his studio jamborees. I hoped the twin would drink more than he could
handle. I wanted to see him completely piffed—I figured that if he once
got utterly pickled it might cure him of being so obnoxiously poetic. Of
the two—being pickled or being poetic—I much preferred the briny
state.