Page:The story of Mary MacLane (IA storyofmarymacla00macliala).pdf/137

 narrow minds. It is like the two heavy leaden hands. It is not seen—it is not tangible. It is felt.

Once I took away my own silver-handled tooth-brush from the bathroom ledge, and kept it in my bedroom for a day or two. I thought to lessen the effect of the six.

I put it back in the bathroom.

The absence of one accentuated the significant damnation of the others. There was something more forcibly maddening in the five than in the six tooth-brushes. The damnation was not worse, but it developed my feeling about them more vividly.

And so I put my tooth-brush back in the bathroom.

This house is comfortably furnished. My mother spends her life in the adornment of it. The small square rooms are distinctly pretty.

But when I look at them seeingly I think of the proverb about the dinner of stalled ox.