Page:The New Penelope.djvu/31

Rh no statement could be more utterly false—unless they determine to construe ordinary politeness and friendliness into a covert advance. The cunning of the "father of lies" is brought to bear to entrap artless and inexperienced women into situations whence they are assured there is no escape without disgrace.

"During my first year of widowhood my feelings were several times outraged in this way; and at first I was so humiliated, and had such a sense of guilt, that it made me sick and unfit for my work. The guilty feeling came, I now know, from the consciousness I had of the popular opinion I have referred to, that there must be something wrong in my deportment. But by calling to mind all the circumstances connected with these incidents, and studying my own behavior and the feelings that impelled me, I taught myself at last not to care so very much about it, after the first emotions of anger had passed away. Still I thought I could perceive that I was not quite the same person: you understand?—the 'bloom' was being brushed away."

"What an outrage! What a shame, that a woman in your situation could not be left to be herself, with her own pure thoughts and tender sorrows! Was there no one to whom you could go for advice and sympathy?—none among all those who came to the country with you who could have helped you?"

"The people who came out with me were mostly scattered through the farming country; and would have been of very little use to me if they had not been. In fact, they would, probably, have been first to condemn me, being chiefly of an uneducated class, and governed more by traditions than by the wisdom of experience. There were two or three families whose acquaintance I had made after arriving in Portland, who were kindly disposed towards me, and treated me with great neighborliness; especially the family that was in the same tenement with me. To them I sometimes