Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Second Generation by David Graham Phillips
page 80 of 403 (19%)
close-mouthed Ellen Ranger thought this the quintessence of indiscretion
and vulgarity. But Hiram liked her, was amused by her always interesting
and at times witty thrusts at the various members of her family,
including herself. So, Mrs. Ranger, clutching at anything that might
lighten the gloom thick and black upon him, let her in and left them
alone together. With so much to do, she took advantage of every moment
which she could conscientiously spend out of his presence.

At sight of Henrietta, Hiram's face brightened; and well it might. In
old-fashioned Saint X it was the custom for a married woman to "settle
down" as soon as she returned from her honeymoon--to abandon all
thoughts, pretensions, efforts toward an attractive exterior, and to
become a "settled" woman, "settled" meaning purified of the last grain of
the vanity of trying to please the eye or ear of the male. And
conversation with any man, other than her husband--and even with him, if
a woman were soundly virtuous, through and through--must be as clean
shorn of allurement as a Quaker meetinghouse. Mrs. Fred had defied this
ancient and sacred tradition of the "settled" woman. She had kept her
looks; she frankly delighted in the admiration of men. And the fact that
the most captious old maid in Saint X could not find a flaw in her
character as a faithful wife, aggravated the offending. For, did not her
devotion to her husband make dangerous her example of frivolity retained
and flaunted, as a pure private life in an infidel made his heresies
plausible and insidious? At "almost" forty, Mrs. Hastings looked "about"
thirty and acted as if she were a girl or a widow. Each group of gods
seems ridiculous to those who happen not to believe in it. Saint X's set
of gods of conventionality doubtless seems ridiculous to those who knock
the dust before some other set; but Saint X cannot be blamed for having a
sober face before its own altars, and reserving its jeers and pitying
smiles for deities of conventionality in high dread and awe elsewhere.
DigitalOcean Referral Badge