Evolution of Expression Volume Ii Part 8

8. "Why, Jane, what can I do? Mr. Tulliver doesn't like his dinner before two o'clock, but I put it half an hour earlier because o' you."

"Yes, yes, I know how it is with husbands--they're for putting everything off--they'll put the dinner off till after tea, if they've got wives as are weak enough to give in to such work; but it's a pity for you, Bessy, as you haven't got more strength o' mind. It'll be well if your children don't suffer for it. And I hope you've not gone and got a great dinner for us. A boiled joint, as you could make broth of for the kitchen," Mrs. Glegg added, in a tone of emphatic protest, "and a plain pudding, with a spoonful o' sugar, and no spice, 'ud be far more becoming."

9. With sister Glegg in this humor, there was a cheerful prospect for the day. Mrs. Tulliver never went the length of quarrelling with her, but this point of the dinner was a tender one, and not at all new, so that she could make the same answer she had often made before.

"Mr. Tulliver says he always _will_ have a good dinner for his friends while he can pay for it," she said, "and he's a right to do as he likes in his own house, sister."

10. "Well, Bessy, _I_ can't leave your children enough out o' my savings, to keep 'em from ruin. And you mustn't look to having any o'

Mr. Glegg's money, for it's well if I don't go first--he comes of a long-lived family; and if he was to die and leave me well for my life, he'd tie all the money up to go back to his own kin."

11. The sound of wheels while Mrs. Glegg was speaking was an interruption highly welcome to Mrs. Tulliver, who hastened out to receive sister Pullet--it must be sister Pullet, because the sound was that of a four-wheel.

PART II.

1. Sister Pullet was in tears when the one-horse chaise stopped before Mrs. Tulliver's door, and it was apparently requisite that she should shed a few more before getting out, for though her husband and Mrs.

Tulliver stood ready to support her, she sat still and shook her head sadly, as she looked through her tears at the vague distance. "Why, whativer is the matter, sister?" said Mrs. Tulliver.

2. There was no reply but a further shake of the head, as Mrs. Pullet slowly rose and got down from the chaise, not without casting a glance at Mr. Pullet to see that he was guarding her handsome silk dress from injury. Mr. Pullet was a small man with a high nose, small twinkling eyes, and thin lips, in a fresh-looking suit of black and a white cravat, that seemed to have been tied very tight on some higher principle than that of mere personal ease.

3. It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of the complexity introduced into the emotions by a high state of civilization--the sight of a fas.h.i.+onably drest female in grief. Perceiving that the tears are hurrying fast, she unpins her strings and throws them languidly backward--a touching gesture, indicative, even in the deepest gloom, of the hope in future dry moments when cap-strings will once more have a charm.

4. Mrs. Pullet brushed each doorpost with great nicety, about the lat.i.tude of her shoulders (at that period a woman was truly ridiculous to an instructed eye if she did not measure a yard and a half across the shoulders), and having done that, sent the muscles of her face in quest of fresh tears as she advanced into the parlor where Mrs. Glegg was seated.

5. "Well, sister, you're late; what's the matter?" said Mrs. Glegg, rather sharply, as they shook hands.

Mrs. Pullet sat down--lifting up her mantle carefully behind, before she answered--

"She's gone. Died the day before yesterday, an' her legs was as thick as my body," she added, with deep sadness, after a pause. "They'd tapped her no end o' times, and the water--they say you might ha' swum in it, if you'd liked."

6. "Well, Sophy, it's a mercy she's gone, then, whoever she may be,"

said Mrs. Glegg, with the prompt.i.tude and emphasis of a mind naturally clear and decided; "but I can't think who you're talking of, for my part."

"But _I_ know," said Mrs. Pullet, sighing and shaking her head; "and there isn't another such a dropsy in the parish. _I_ know as its old Mrs. Sutton o' the Twentylands."

"Well, she's no kin o' yours, nor much acquaintance as I've ever heared of," said Mrs. Glegg, who always cried just as much as was proper when anything happened to her own "kin," but not on other occasions.

7. "She said to me, when I went to see her last Christmas, she said, 'Mrs. Pullet, if ever you have the dropsy, you'll think o' me.' She _did_ say so," added Mrs. Pullet, beginning to cry bitterly again; "those were her very words. And she's to be buried o' Sat.u.r.day, and Pullet's bid to the funeral."

"Sophy," said Mrs. Glegg, unable any longer to contain her spirit of rational remonstrance--"Sophy, I wonder _at_ you, fretting and injuring your health about people as don't belong to you. Your poor father never did so, nor your aunt Frances neither, nor any o' the family as I ever heard of. You couldn't fret no more than this, if we'd heared as our cousin Abbott had died sudden without making his will."

8. Mrs. Pullet was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather flattered than indignant at being upbraided for crying too much.

"Ah!" she sighed, shaking her head at the idea that there were but few who could enter fully into her experiences. "Sister, I may as well go and take my bonnet off now. Did you see as the cap-box was put out?" she added, turning to her husband.

Mr. Pullet, by an unaccountable lapse of memory, had forgotten it, and hastened out, with a stricken conscience, to remedy the omission.

9. "They'll bring it up-stairs, sister," said Mrs. Tulliver, wis.h.i.+ng to go at once, for she was fond of going up-stairs with her sister Pullet, and looking thoroughly at her cap before she put it on her head, and discussing millinery in general. This was part of Bessy's weakness, that stirred Mrs. Glegg's sisterly compa.s.sion: Bessy went far too well drest, considering.

But when Mrs. Pullet was alone with Mrs. Tulliver up-stairs, the remarks were naturally to the disadvantage of Mrs. Glegg, and they agreed, in confidence, that there was no knowing what sort of fright sister Jane would come out next.

GEORGE ELIOT.

AFTER THE MARCH RAIN.

I.

The c.o.c.k is crowing, The stream is flowing, The small birds twitter, The lake doth glitter, The green field sleeps in the sun; The oldest and youngest Are at work with the strongest; The cattle are grazing, Their heads never raising; There are forty feeding like one!

II.

Like an army defeated The snow hath retreated, And now doth fare ill On the top of the bare hill; The ploughboy is whooping--anon--anon: There's joy in the mountains; There's life in the fountains; Small clouds are sailing, Blue sky prevailing; The rain is over and gone!

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

_CHAPTER III._

SLIDE IN VOLUME.

FIRST BATTLES OF THE REVOLUTION.

I.

1. We have cause for honest complacency, that when the distant citizen of our own republic, when the stranger from foreign lands, inquires for the spots where the n.o.ble blood of the Revolution began to flow, where the first battle of that great and glorious contest was fought, he is guided through the villages of Middles.e.x, to the plains of Lexington and Concord. It is a commemoration of our soil, to which ages, as they pa.s.s, will add dignity and interest; till the names of Lexington and Concord in the annals of freedom, will stand by the side of the most honorable names in Roman or Grecian story.

2. It was one of those great days, one of those elemental occasions in the world's affairs, when the people rise and act for themselves. Some organization and preparation had been made; but from the nature of the case, with scarce any effect on the events of that day.

3. It may be doubted whether there was an efficient order given, the whole day, to any body of men as large as a regiment. It was the people, in their first capacity, as citizens and as freemen, starting from their beds at midnight, from their firesides and from their fields, to take their own cause into their own hands.

4. Such a spectacle is the height of the moral sublime; when the want of everything is fully made up by the spirit of the cause, and the soul within stands in place of discipline, organization, and resources. In the prodigious efforts of a veteran army, beneath the dazzling splendor of their array, there is something revolting to the reflective mind.

5. The ranks are filled with the desperate, the mercenary, the depraved; an iron slavery, by the name of subordination, merges the free will of one hundred thousand men in the unqualified despotism of one; the humanity, mercy, and remorse, which scarce ever desert the individual bosom, are sounds without a meaning to that fearful, ravenous, irrational monster of prey, a mercenary army. It is hard to say who are most to be commiserated, the wretched people on whom it is let loose, or the still more wretched people whose substance has been sucked out to nourish it into strength and fury.

6. But in the efforts of the people,--of the people struggling for their rights, moving, not in organized, disciplined ma.s.ses, but in their spontaneous action, man for man, and heart for heart,--there is something glorious. They can then move forward without orders, act together without combination, and brave the flaming lines of battle, without intrenchments to cover or walls to s.h.i.+eld them.

7. No dissolute camp has worn off from the feelings of the youthful soldier the freshness of that home, where his mother and his sister sit waiting, with tearful eyes and aching hearts, to hear good news from the wars; no long service in the ranks of a conqueror has turned the veteran's heart into marble; their valor springs not from recklessness, from habit, from indifference to the preservation of a life knit by no pledges to the life of others. But in the strength and spirit of the cause alone they act, they contend, they bleed. In this they conquer.

8. The people always conquer. They always must conquer. Armies may be defeated, kings may be overthrown, and new dynasties imposed, by foreign arms, on an ignorant and slavish race, that care not in what language the covenant of their subjection runs, nor in whose name the deed of their barter and sale is made out. But the people never invade; and, when they rise against the invader, are never subdued.

9. If they are driven from the plains, they fly to the mountains. Steep rocks and everlasting hills are their castles; the tangled, pathless thicket their palisado, and G.o.d is their ally. Now he overwhelms the hosts of their enemies beneath his drifting mountains of sand; now he buries them beneath a falling atmosphere of polar snows; he lets loose his tempests on their fleets; he puts a folly into their counsels, a madness into the hearts of their leaders; and never gave, and never will give, a final triumph over a virtuous and gallant people, resolved to be free.

EDWARD EVERETT.

THE ANTIQUITY OF FREEDOM.