Of course, if I could, I
would have blotted out every meanness before I showed him to you;
I would have told you Margret was an impetuous, whole-souled
woman, glad to throw her life down for her father, without one
bitter thought of the wife and mother she might have been; I
would have painted her mother tender, (as she was,) forgetting
how pettish she grew on busy days: but what can I do? I must
show you men and women as they are in that especial State of the
Union where I live. In all the others, of course, it is very
different. Now, being prepared for disappointment, will you see
my hero?
He had sauntered out from the city for a morning walk,--not
through the hills, as Margret went, going home, but on the other
side, to the river, over which you could see the Prairie. We are
in Indiana, remember. The sunlight was pure that morning,
powerful, tintless, the true wine of life for body or spirit.
Stephen Holmes knew that, being a man of delicate animal
instincts, and so used it, just as he had used the dumb-bells in
the morning. All things were made for man, weren't they? He was
leaning against the door of the school-house,-- a red, flaunting
house, the daub on the landscape: but, having his back to it, he
could not see it, so through his half-shut eyes he suffered the
beauty of the scene to act on him. Suffered: in a man, according
to his creed, the will being dominant, and all influences, such
as beauty, pain, religion, permitted to act under orders.
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