Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/295

Rh. Surely it is best to hide our fires, and drape our savagery, and bury our snags and dust the white snow over all that is rugged and gloomy and ungentle.

Or—to revert to our former illustration, if we have hair on our heels, which is best, to expose it, or, like the Queen of Sheba, let down our skirts over it?

When our temper is ruffled, we do not fret with it those we meet—when our heart is bitter, we do not spit our gall in the faces of our friends—when our blood boils in our veins we are careful to let none of it squirt on and blister the hand that is extended to us. A man may smile, and smile, and be a villain—that is true, but a man or a woman may smile, and smile, and be exceedingly sorrowful, may dance and laugh with an aching heart. Who does not remember Andersen's story of the little mermaid, who obtained from the witch power to shed her squamous tail at the cost of feeling knives pierce her soles every footstep she took? And the little mermaid danced at the prince's wedding at the wedding of the prince whom she had once held to her heart, and for the love of whom she had shed her fish's tail, and danced with a rosy face, though every step was a mortal agony. Do we not love and venerate the little mermaid, because, instead of howling or whining, and holding up her bleeding soles to extract commiseration from all, she dropped her skirts over them, and danced and warbled, and flushed as the rose, so that none supposed she leaped with pain, and sang to still her heart, and flushed with stress of anguish? So is it with all who have gone through the great discipline of culture; they no more expose their wounds and cry out for sympathy than they expose deformities.

I remember the bridge over the Gave at Pau, on each side of which through its entire length sat beggars exhibiting sores and soliciting alms. But these were men and women in rags, and those who wear only the rags of culture do the