Joseph Medill Patterson

“ Until he was brought back to her, Georgia felt savagely that there was something ridiculously primitive, something almost grotesque in the proceeding. To take her baby from her, she could hear him crying all down stairs, to a church a mile away, to be breathed on by a priest and touched with spittle and anointed with oil and wetted with water—how could such things make her perfect babe more perfect! ”

“ She was quite unfair in taking this tack with unhappy Stevens, who, however often he thought of his duty in these twisted premises, would surely not have done it if she beckoned him away. For she owned the only two hands in the world which he wanted to hold.
A woman, however, prefers to be the custodian of her own morals and it gratifies her at most no more than slightly to find that her lover has been plotting with himself to preserve her virtue. It is for the man to ask and for her to deny, sadly but sweetly—and she doesn't care to be anticipated. ”

“ Georgia, if you have another chance given you, don't be afraid to take life in your own hands," the old maid said gently, "if you know that you love him."
"I have always known that, since the beginning," the young woman answered slowly, "but even if by a miracle he still—does, it is too late now. I've taken three of the best years of my life away from him and wasted them, thrown them away. You know how it is with us women. We have only twenty years or so when men really want us. ”

“ For Al had observed Georgia's mysteries and evasions, her care before her mirror, her new hats and pretty ribbons, her day-long Sunday absences. Twice he had met her on the street, walking and chatting most gayly with some strange man. Besides his mother had plainly hinted that all might not be right.
"What do you think a fellow ought to do if a man's after his sister?" Al asked slowly. "This unwritten law thing don't seem to work any more except down South."
"You can't lay down no rule," said Moxey. "Depends on if you like your sister." ”

“ He knew that women aren't allowed to act according to their natures, if their natures are as natural as all that.
"I haven't seen Jim for over a year," she went on, "nor heard of him for ten months. He may be dead. He is the same as dead to me. My heart is the heart of a widow—grateful for her weeds. The Church may say otherwise—and I might obey unwillingly—but my own being tells me that there is nothing wrong in my love for Mason Stevens—any more than it's sin to breathe air or drink water. That's how we're made. When I lived with Jim, I played no tricks. ”

“ To live in the city is to diminish God and the seeming daily want of Him, for man built his own city of steel and steam and stone, unhelped, did he not?
God may have made the pansies, but He did not make "the loop." His majesty is hidden from its people by their self-sufficing skill, and they turn their faces from Him. West-siders do not pray for universal transfers.
Never had Georgia questioned her faith. ”

“ JIM REËNLISTS
Georgia smiled a little woefully over the transparent intention of Stevens' letter. He was so obviously trying to do her a great kindness and disguise it as business by his talk of six per cent.
She knew that with young men and small sums interest rates lose their meaning. Everybody would rather have a quarter down than a cent a year forever. Any young hustler on a salary would rather have $270 cash than an unsecured promise of $16 annually. ”

“ From the archbishop seated on his throne, wearing his two-horned mitre in sign of the two testaments, his emerald ring as spouse of the Church, his silken tunic and dalmatic, his gloves of purity; with his shepherd's crosier in his hand, his woolen pallium over his shoulders, bound with three golden pins in memory of the three nails which fastened Him; from the archbishop crowned with gold to the least acolyte in surplice of white to recall His life, and cassock of black to recall His sorrow, the hierarchical symbolism is complex, mysterious, complete, beautiful. ”

“ Whoever it was that invented the saying, "Life is just one damned thing after another"—he knew, he knew. Jim had bought three or four post-cards variously framing the sentiment and placed them upon his bureau, side by side, for Georgia to see. It was his criticism of life.
You politicians and publicists, if you want to know what the public wants, linger at the rack in your corner drug store and look over the saws and sayings on the post-cards. ”

“ I've four; one's learning to crawl, one to walk, one to read and the oldest," he made a vain effort to conceal his pride in such a son, "Oh—he's a boy. He can work his mother as easy as grease with a sore throat story whenever he wants to stay out of school. Pretty clever, eh, with a doctor right in the family? He'll be a great bunco steerer—or a great lawyer—some day and make his name—he's a junior—bristle in the headlines of 1950. That's the real life after death—our blood lives on, we don't."
"Yes," said Georgia tenderly glancing at the crib, "our blood lives on, it lives on." ”

“ Georgia was genuinely distressed, because she had grown very fond of Miss Frankland. There was no more cheerful person in the world, she thought, than this dry, twinkling old maid. And she had hoped her feeling was returned. Real friendships were too rare to be tossed away so suddenly. ”

“ She engaged herself with more appealing problems and a larger world. She deplored the litter of torn-up streets and the thunder of the loop, instead of the litter of the breakfast dishes and the squeak of the hinge. Not that clean dishes are less meritorious than clean streets, but, to such minds as hers had grown to be, less captivating. To change desks downtown was more fun than to change chairs at home. ”

“ Life is a battle. Therefore is it not well to be with the conqueror and share in the cut?
If he could now make good with Silverman, and, more especially, convince him that he was a live one who would keep on making good, the Jew would certainly recognize him in the reorganization. He had visions of tooling along the macadam in his Panno Six to a vined house in the suburbs, hidden by tall trees, where, in a trailing gown, Georgia would walk through her flowers to meet him, with a small hand clinging to each of hers. ”

“ The other aspect of Georgia's nature was that of the "new woman," the women hoped for in 1950. Bold, determined, taught to think, relentless in defense of her own personality, insistent that men shall have less and she shall have more sexual freedom, she is first of all herself and only next to that, something to a man.
When the woman of 1850 managed to get in a word about Jim and his fruitless wait at home, the woman of 1950 answered, "Shall you now be absurd enough to leave the man you love for one you hate?" ”

“ This shows why Mason Stevens did not fall in love with any woman, after the high school girl, until he fell most desperately in love with Georgia Connor.
He resisted love from conviction. One female ten years before had defeated his brains and his purpose by her charm. He wanted no more of that.
But he had to fight. Often enough as he walked through the long office through the double row of shirt-waisted figures bending over typewriters and desks, it seemed imperative for him to know them better, to wait for one of them after office hours and ride home with her on the car. ”

“ It is because the average man does not and cannot live without women which causes him to regard a priest with a species of awe. Reason as you will about it, justify the married clergy with the words of St. Paul and God's promptings within us, the fact remains that the Roman priest alone does what we can't do, lives as we couldn't live; he alone demonstrates that he is of somewhat different clay; he alone mystifies us; and mystery is the essence of sacerdotalism and authority.
"Georgia," resumed Father Hervey, "if all your pretty dreams have not come true, remember they never do in this life. ”

“ There were popular lectures by popular lecturers, a chorus of seven hundred voices, kindergartens, secondary schools, every sort of refined athletics, and perpetually running soda fountains.
There was neither zymotic disease, poverty, drunkenness, crime or police.
There was culture, kindness, cheapness, equality, in short what mankind has been striving for under the name of civilization, a foretaste of what human society might be, were it all in the light, with no suffering and no dark corners. ”

“ Do you honestly suppose that after you are dead, perhaps a long time dead, this mighty God will hunt for you through all the heavens, and when he has found you, you poor little atom of a dead dot, that he will torment and pester you forever and ever because you had once for a space no longer than the wink of an eye acted according to the nature he gave you? ”

“ Every morning just before nine, she punched the clock, which gave her a professional feeling; and hung her hat and jacket in locker 31, which seemed to her a better, a more self-respecting place for them to be than her small, untidy bedroom closet, all littered up with so many things—hers and Jim's.
Her mother, who kept house for them, was a good deal at loose ends, in Georgia's opinion. And it didn't seem quite the decent thing that a woman who had nothing else in the world to do should fail to keep a six-room flat in order. ”

“ THE DOCTOR TALKS
When the doctor arrived the convulsion had passed. Little Al was lying in his crib, asleep, breathing easily, the snarls in his nerves unravelled. Georgia explained what had happened.
"You did just the right thing," said the physician.
"Doctor," she asked slowly, "will he ever be well?"
"What do you mean by well?"
"I mean, when he grows up will he be as strong—and—and bright as other men?" ”

“ There were dark rings under her eyes and she felt ill and dispirited as she waited at Dearborn and Randolph for a North Clark Street car, which would drop her a block nearer her flat than the L would.
The car was slow in coming and a crowd of fifteen or twenty gathered to wait for it. Most of them were women homeward bound after the morning's shopping excitement. One of them also wore a long bluish-gray coat and Georgia remembered having seen her at the white goods remnant counter. ”

“ Georgia's restlessness and discontent increased as the summer went on, probably because she was affecting nobody else's destiny to any calculable extent. Her young brother Al kept away, perhaps warned by a deep race instinct that sisters are not meant to affect destinies. Her old mother was a settled case already. She wouldn't change; she couldn't change; she could hardly be modified, except by the weather or the rheumatism; she would merely grow old and die. No satisfaction for a young adventurous woman in experimenting on such a soul. ”

“ She knocked at the door of big Al's room.
"Al," she cried, "Al, Al, Al—wake up."
"What—eh, oh, what?" came a sleepy voice.
"Telephone the doctor, quick, quick, quick, the baby is—Oh, hurry, Al."
She ran to the bathroom and put her hand in the running stream from the faucet. Tepid, only tepid. Would it never get warm? If God ever wanted anything more from her—in the way of belief or devotion—let Him make this water hot, now, on the instant. ”

“ He came upon a household where one life was coming as another was going, and a little girl of twelve who could no longer contain the excitement of the day beneath her small bosom followed him into the entry way as he hastily backed out, and whispered between gasps to catch her breath her version of family history in the making. ”

“ Her horizon became smaller and less bold after she had slid her nickel over the glass to the spectacled cashier in the L cage and was herded for home on the jammed platform. Her boldness continuously diminished as station after station was called and she stood to her strap, glancing from the direct imperatives, "Uneeda Union Suit and We Can Prove It," "Hasten to the House of Hoopelheimer," "Smart Set Collars for Swell Spenders," "Blemishes Blasted by Blackfeeto," to the limp, sallow people who, like herself, had left their vitality downtown. ”

“ Thunderstorms meant that it was reckless to telephone; oats, wheat and corn, something they controlled on the board of trade; the melting of the snows showed the city hall was weak on the sewer side—what else could you expect of politicians?—the dying leaves presaged the end of the Riverview season and young Al's excitement over the world's series.
Living in the country puts a God in one's thoughts, for man did not make the country and its changes, yet they are there. Farmers pray for rain or its cessation according to their needs. ”

“ She didn't know a child was ever nursed a year. A year more of humbleness to Jim, of asking money from her brother, now called big Al, of fear that Mr. Kane might get annoyed and leave, of contriving and skimping and bill dodging. Another year of "womanly" womanhood, clinging to males for support.
The doctor saw her disappointment. "It's your sex' share of the world's work, you know," he said, "your duty to society."
"I have a baby and we're poor. If I'd had none, we'd be well off this moment," she said sharply. "If I really have done a duty to society why does society punish me for it?" ”

“ To go on living together when they neither like nor love each other——"
"How do you know? I never said that," Jim said humbly.
"It is not what you say that counts. We don't love each other any more; that was over long ago; that's the whole trouble; that's why we quarrel; that's why you drink and I'm hateful to you—and it'll get worse and worse and more degrading if we keep on. Oh, I feel no better than a woman of the streets when I——"
"Georgia," Mrs. Talbot raised her eyes significantly, glancing at Al, to warn her daughter against letting her son know a truth. ”

“ Outside-the-loop worked with its arms and hands—she worked merely with her fingers. The time might come when she would need to work only with her tongue—and triple her income. She was in line for that.
She was no mean citizen of no mean city throughout the day: at the lunch club where she coöperated; in the big white-tiled vestibule of her building where she exchanged ten words of weather prophecy with the elevator starter between clicks; in the rest room where they talked office politics, and shows, and woman suffrage, as well as beaux and hats ”