- end_line
- 7034
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 6998
- text
- V.
"Though but one day hath passed, my brother, since we first met in life,
yet thou hast that heavenly magnet in thee, which draws all my soul's
interior to thee. I will go on.--Having to wait for a neighbor's wagon,
I arrived but late at the Sewing Circle. When I entered, the two joined
rooms were very full. With the farmer's girls, our neighbors, I passed
along to the further corner, where thou didst see me; and as I went,
some heads were turned, and some whisperings I heard, of--'She's the new
help at poor Walter Ulver's--the strange girl they've got--she thinks
herself 'mazing pretty, I'll be bound;--but nobody knows her--Oh, how
demure!--but not over-good, I guess;--I wouldn't be her, not I--mayhap
she's some other ruined Delly, run away;--minx!' It was the first time
poor Bell had ever mixed in such a general crowded company; and knowing
little or nothing of such things, I had thought, that the meeting being
for charity's sweet sake, uncharity could find no harbor there; but no
doubt it was mere thoughtlessness, not malice in them. Still, it made my
heart ache in me sadly; for then I very keenly felt the dread
suspiciousness, in which a strange and lonely grief invests itself to
common eyes; as if grief itself were not enough, nor innocence any armor
to us, but despite must also come, and icy infamy! Miserable returnings
then I had--even in the midst of bright-budding girls and full-blown
women--miserable returnings then I had of the feeling, the bewildering
feeling of the inhumanities I spoke of in my earlier story. But Pierre,
blessed Pierre, do not look so sadly and half-reproachfully upon me.
Lone and lost though I have been, I love my kind; and charitably and
intelligently pity them, who uncharitably and unintelligently do me
despite. And thou, _thou_, blessed brother, hath glorified many somber
places in my soul, and taught me once for all to know, that my kind are
capable of things which would be glorious in angels. So look away from
me, dear Pierre, till thou hast taught thine eyes more wonted glances."
"They are vile falsifying telegraphs of me, then, sweet Isabel. What my
look was I can not tell, but my heart was only dark with ill-restrained
upbraidings against heaven that could unrelentingly see such innocence
as thine so suffer. Go on with thy too-touching tale."
- title
- Chunk 1