Amanda M. Douglas

“ I could not cry over you now, nor kiss you with effusive fondness; but I wish, oh, how passionately I wish, I could save you one pang! I wish I could die in her place! My life is of so little value"—
"I believe God is right," Sylvie answered with a great struggle. "She has used her life so well; she has garnered ripened sheaves of mercy and kindliness and good works. There is not only golden wheat, but the sweetness of rose and violet, the pungent purity and strength of heliotrope, the use, the beauty, every thing. She is ready." ”

“ Jack went homeward in a curiously speculative mood. He has always fancied for Sylvie some handsome, spirited knight, whose mental intuitions would be as delicate and refined as hers, whose enjoyment as intense. Little as he knew of love, he understood their friendship too thoroughly to be betrayed into any mistake. And he wondered now if he held the key to Sylvie's spiritual enfranchisement of all other men? If she had not loved Fred Lawrence, she had come too dangerously near it ever to free herself entirely from whatever thrall his soul had thrown over hers. ”

“ She would say, with her quiet, tender smile, "Will you do this or that, Sylvie? I believe I am growing indolent: I never thought to so like being waited upon."
The secret in Miss Barry's soul was well kept. In how many lives there comes a demand for heroism greater than that which led the martyrs of old to the stake, or the brave women in the reign of terror to the guillotine! Their inspiration to bravery was patent to all around: their cause was a lofty one, and they were apostles of that high creed of self-abnegation which leaves behind a memory in the hearts of all noble men and women. ”

“ Yet capital often takes as its right the best strength of the workman, the years of maturity and ability, and throws him off in his old age. I know labor retorts by carelessness, wastefulness, and utter indifference to the employer's welfare. One is a machine to grind labor into money; the other, to grind all he can out of capital. Perhaps my design is Utopian, but it seems as if something ought to be done before we train a whole generation of men to be paupers and thieves. Better that we should spend our money in labor experiments than supporting poorhouses and prisons. ”

“ I offered her my father's wealth, the home he had made, my own folly and arrogance and self-conceit; and then, Jack, she boldly admitted that you were her hero! When I consider the sort of man my training and surroundings made me, I am filled with disgust. And yet I was no worse than hundreds of others at the present day. When I look at my mother, Irene, and myself, I feel that we were the product of the so-called culture of the day, which substitutes shallow creeds, conventional manners, and systems, for all that is pure, strong, and noble in manhood or womanhood. ”

“ Sylvie and Miss Morgan felt that it was no longer an experiment. It would be put to wider uses, and perhaps was the corner-stone of a great work, sorely needed in this world; the same kind of work Jack Darcy had begun over in the mill yonder,—planting beacon-lights on the path where so many had stumbled and gone down for want of true and honest guidance.
"It will have to be remodelled somewhat," said Miss Morgan. "I can't have you working like a slave, even if it is in a good cause. There is something still higher for you." ”

“ Every poor man in the country had a better right to a cottage and garden and a few hours of leisure, than these few magnates to grasp every thing in their own hands, to roll in luxury, to feast in magnificence, to clothe their daughters in silks, velvets, and diamonds—it was to be noted that Mr. McPherson wore an immense diamond, but it was to be presumed that his wife or daughter did not. Everywhere one could see the rich growing richer, the poor poorer, the workman trodden down, brought to the level of slavery with his long hours and scanty wages. ”

“ But for one thing, he must have tried to cage the dazzling, elusive spirit: he, too, had a strong sense of honor toward his friend; and he could only imagine her playing sportively with the few who came within her radius, not setting herself to win any forbidden regard. What might have made some women sad and silent—the consciousness that an old lover had over-lived his passion—seemed to sting her into renewed effort.
Coming back to them, Jack Darcy was more than puzzled, set at sea in a bewildering way, without chart or compass. Had Fred ceased to care for Sylvie? Had she never loved him? ”

“ All these years had been filled with such good, honest boy-love.
"Good-by, old chap!" cried Jack suddenly; for the wrench must come, and lingering over it was painful. "I shall miss you lots! it seems so queer to be without you! Of course you'll succeed: there's no use wishing about that."
"It's a good wish from you, Jack. Good-by. I hate awfully to say it: I hate to think that our jolly boyish frolics are over."
"But we'll have many a good row on the river, and tramps through the woods. We can't outgrow every thing. And there'll be summers and summers." ”

“ Do you not understand that some people are so alike they run in parallels? there are no angles to create the intense friction of love, they are so evenly balanced that there is no desire for possessorship, they have just as wholesome an influence over each other remaining apart. There is hardly Sylvie's equal in the world. Half that I am, I owe her."
Had the night changed? Was the world flooded with a serene and tender light? Was the moaning ocean filled with the wondrous music of immortal love and longing, reaching out to glad fruition? ”

“ Every city and town, and nearly every individual, is in debt. If we could pay with promises to pay, we might tide over a while longer; but when interest reaches a certain point, it swallows capital. If we can meet our indebtedness everywhere, as fast as it matures, well and good: if not, then we have only nibbled at the crust of our bitter pie."
"Anyhow," cried Sylvie, with the woman's sanguine nature, "Yerbury is a great deal better off than it was [230] last winter. Every one admits there is much less suffering."
"There is more employment, and no broken bank," with a cheerful smile. ”

“ Lawrence was warmly attached to Sylvie. In his honest, inconsequent man-fashion, he [292] wondered why they could not always live together, as they were doing here.
Fred was strangely worn and thin, with the kind of nervous alertness that accompanies an intent watching of one's self.
"Hillo, old fellow!" cried Jack; "what have you been doing? Working yourself to a shadow? If high art is so exhaustive, there must be a little let-up. A man has no more right to kill himself in an artistic industrial way, than in any of the ruder forms of suicide." ”

“ Jack Darcy was a wonderful boy withal, a very prince of boys, who hated study and work, and loved play; who despised Sunday clothes and girls' parties; but who had not his equal for spinning a top, or raising a kite, and when it came to leap-frog, or short stop, he was simply immense. Then he always knew the best places to dig worms, and the little nooks where fish were sure to bite, the best chestnut and walnut trees; and, with years and experience, he excelled in baseball, skating, wrestling, leaping, and rowing. Jack Darcy was no dunce, either. ”

“ Jack flushed, and lapsed into dreams. Grandmother opposite was nodding in her chair, her knitting still in her fingers. Jack left his vision for a moment, to calculate if the old chest upstairs was not nearly full of stockings. His mother sat sewing some trifle, and just raised her eyes with that longing, beseeching glance mothers so often give to their sons.
"If women only did not care so much for one," thought Jack, "or if there had been a great family of us. And still I can't see the wonderful difference between going to college, and going to seek your fortune. ”

“ The men did not seem to work with a will. There were moody faces and discourteous greetings, half-insolent nods, and more than one wrangle at the workmen's meeting. Hurd felt anxious and discouraged. Yardley took a low fever, not severe enough to confine him to the house, but it made him irritable, and every sneer or innuendo cut him to the quick. Cameron was a great comfort to Jack, with his queer, wrinkled, grizzled face, and an expression that always puzzled you as to whether nature meant him to laugh or cry. ”

“ It does not concern capital, whether this man can support wife and children on such a pittance: what business has he with wife and children! If the man drops at the work-bench, the victim of long hours, exhaustive toil, insufficient food, the town will thrust him into a pauper's grave, and another will fill his place. Even negro-slavery was more noble than this: it was to the master's interest that the slave should be well fed. Capital was shrewd, selfish, experienced, astute, strong: labor was kept in ignorance lest it might learn its worth, its rights ”

“ Sylvie took her place, and began to tumble over the colored plates.
"I'm so tired of those Watteau things!" began Miss Lawrence disdainfully. "They all savor of bread-and-butter girls,—a shepherdess with her crook,—bah! And I've been Marie Stuart so many times. If it were a masquerade; but garden-parties are beginning to prove bores, after all. There is nothing new about them, only to out-shine every other woman. A high ambition, is it not, Mr. Darcy?" ”

“ No two men or six men, or company of any kind, had a right to band together to starve not only the men in their own town, but the laborers throughout the world, by so reducing wages for their own sole benefit; and every workman who submitted to have these chains forged around body and soul, no matter by what specious expedient, was a worse traitor, a more cruel oppressor of wife and children, than the red-handed capital that stood ready to make him a slave! ”

“ You will have a life of ease and leisure, and— Why, Sylvie, you can teach me,—you can help me up these glowing heights."
"I have answered you!"
She seemed to grow tall and regal as she stood there by the gate, the long, arrowy ray of lamp-light from within illumining her proud, cold face, that could flush with such bewildering warmth. He discerned in some dim way that she had access to a life far above his; an atmosphere like hoar-frost surrounded her, raying off fine points, that thrust him farther away into darkness and coldness. ”

“ He had a contempt for cheap and plain belongings, as leaning insensibly to vitiation of taste. Nothing modern met his approbation. The old-time philosophies won him with their subtile flavor. He could propound his theories eloquently, but they did not touch him deeply enough to rouse him into action of any kind. All that his education and culture had done for him so far was to develop an incapacity for any regular, wholesome work that would be of the slightest use to any human being.
Something of this passed through Sylvie's mind as she sat there. ”

“ And they will be suited in the farthest fibre of each soul."
"He is not half worthy of her!" growled Maverick.
"Who is?" There was a peculiar tender intonation in the voice. "Sylvie Barry's womanhood is unique, like some rare gem. She has the sparkle but not the hardness of a diamond; the warmth and vividness of the ruby, but not its heats; the serenity of the sapphire, and yet to me that is always cold. Rather I think she is a changeful opal with all hues and tints and surprises." ”

“ It is the pith of life. Poor father—he was very proud of me, he gave his life for our pleasure and grandeur and reckless extravagance, yet all the later years we were well-nigh strangers. Why can't people get nearer to each other, Jack, or is it only given to the very few? Does the greedy world swallow up every sentiment, every bit of tenderness, and make a mock of it? ”

“ His had been so long bound about with swaddling-clothes, airy, sensuous, fine as a gossamer web, yet strong in beliefs and prejudices. There were times when he felt, through that instinctive knowledge we can never wholly define or explain, that Sylvie Barry belonged to him, that they two could reach a point in mental and artistic life, that she and Jack would never attain. His whole soul cried out for her. With the charm of self-satisfying and blinding theories swept away, he clung passionately to the love that had been only a [276] complacent fancy three years ago. ”