Susan Glaspell

“ They just stuck in a little pocket of learning—put their heads deeper and deeper and deeper in scholarship that there might not be anything of themselves left for—for moments of wonder out of which vision comes—for that greater sensitiveness to life which was man's one chance to justify man. Heads buried in learning as other heads were buried in emotion, or in money-making, or in the house beautiful. And they had the goods, as it were. Here was he studying India—India, of all things!—and instead of this helping him to know what was in his own soul he—why, he just studied India! ”

“ She took you from the thing you wanted to be thinking.
"Eight!" she squealed.
"Eight?" he repeated, helplessly, for the wind played lightly with her hair and through the nasturtium leaves—she made the Hindus remote. That was the trouble with her. She made things remote.
"Eight," she said again, and her hands came up and fluttered with the leaves—fluttering Sanskrit back into obscurity!
"Eight," he announced after her, as if to let her know he was quite aware of the number of pigs the neighbor's pig had had. She continued to stand there, letting the breeze try this and that with her hair. ”

“ But there's the new thing—the ever-extending edge—where we push realizing on a little further than it has ever been before. There's the thing that makes the eternal reliving worth while. To get up to that point where we—go further. What feeling might be is a road, and a road that makes itself as it goes. ”

“ If there was anything more ridiculous than a nervous pig, it was a nervous man! He was determined to stop thinking, for there was something there he'd think if he went on thinking. He knew it was there; he could fairly smell it—as a cat a mouse. Only he didn't know just what it was—and he didn't want to know! With great persistency he turned his thoughts to his sister Gertrude. Confound that pig! What did she mean by making him turn and look at people's lives like this? It was Vivian had brought this down upon him—bringing pigs into the house, so to speak. She was an interfering person—Vivian. ”

“ But as he passed through the hall:
"Horace," called Gertrude, as one who imparts a pleasant bit of news, "Mr. Moon's pig has eight little pigs."
"I know it," snapped Horace. He heard a laugh—Vivian's!
He went back and wrote some very severe things about the women who had once lived in India. Women never had been—what they should be!
But by evening it pleased him to be satiric. When his brother-in-law, getting home from the city, drove up to the door, Horace rose from his place on the veranda and called, excitedly: "Ben! Ben! What do you think? Mr. Moon's pig has eight little pigs!" ”

“ Perhaps the reason most scholars aren't good-looking is that the good-looking ones aren't permitted to be scholars. If you are very good-looking and determined to be a scholar—there is struggle in your life. There was struggle to-night in the life of Horace Caldwell. The reason he had spoken these harsh words about being emotional was, not so much that Vivian was emotional, as that Vivian made him emotional. ”

“ She got so nervous having the beautiful house in which one might live beautifully that she quelled the thing in her that could live beautifully, for fear it would squeal, or something of the sort. He lay on the grass and brandished his stick and elaborated on the case of Gertrude, the case of Gertrude which stood between him and himself. He supposed there were lots of Gertrudes. There should be some ugly things in every house—a law about it, if necessary. Then the house beautiful would be an unattainable ideal—and many little pigs would be spared. ”

“ It was no way for a mother to act. No, not even a nervous mother—though she admitted mothers had enough to make them nervous. Ben said it was fortunate most sows weren't so highly strung—for pigs were too valuable to be eaten by other pigs. Vivian—Vivian said little. Sometimes she said, "It's so terrible!" and her eyes—well, Vivian was emotional—not a doubt of that.
The pig who ate her little pig turned Mr. Caldwell to reflections on life. As a matter of fact, he hadn't reflected much on life, for he had always been studying some particular thing. ”

“ Ben eats the pigs up as fast as they squeal. Every one does—'most every one. That's why there's so much indigestion."
Beset by the idea that he himself had indigestion, he got up and started briskly for home—as if walking away from something—indeed, quite rudely walking away from Vivian, who followed.
To get away from individual cases—they having a dangerous proximity to a certain individual, he generalized. "And then there are the countries that get so rasped having democracy that they eat up the squealing pigs to which democracy has given birth!" ”

“ The furthest edge of experience. The furthest reach of consciousness—further than it has ever reached before. The other—that's old stuff. Falling in love—living together, and all that—that's been lived and lived and relived. ”

“ Caldwell's distance from the apes might have been shortened then and there—the sound of the returning motor.
Horace and Vivian continued to stand there. "Well," said Ben, "I suppose you two have been talking about pigs?"
"Apes," said Vivian, in an emotional voice.
"Apes?" repeated Gertrude. "Apes make me nervous. They look too much like us." ”