Or would she not rather have gone
to sleep altogether, under the dreary fascination of the slug monster,
had she not had a severe landlady, who would be paid punctually,
or turn her out? Anyhow, every time and all the time she sat in
the chapel, she was brooding over ways and means, calculating pence
and shillings--the day's charing she had promised her, and the
chances of more--mingling faint regrets over past indulgences
--the extra half pint of beer she drank on Saturday--the bit
of cheese she bought on Monday. Of this face of care, revealing
a spirit which Satan had bound, the schoolmaster caught sight,--
caught from its commonness, its grimness, its defeature, inspiration
and uplifting, for there he beheld the oppressed, down trodden,
mire fouled humanity which the man in whom he believed had loved
because it was his father's humanity divided into brothers, and
had died straining to lift back to the bosom of that Father. Oh
tale of horror and dreary monstrosity, if it be such indeed as the
bulk of its priests on the one hand, and its enemies on the other
represent it! Oh story of splendrous fate, of infinite resurrection
and uplifting, of sun and breeze, of organ blasts and exultation,
for the heart of every man and woman, whatsoever the bitterness
of its care or the weight of its care, if it be such as the Book
itself has held it from age to age!
It was the mere humanity of the woman, I say, and nothing in her
individuality of what is commonly called the interesting, that
ministered to the breaking of the schoolmaster's trance.
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