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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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At table, Marie alluded to the incident of Prue. “I suppose you’ll think, cousin,” she said, “that we are all barbarians.” “I think that’s a barbarous thing,” said Miss Ophelia, “but I don’t think you are all barbarians.” “Well, now,” said Marie, “I know it’s impossible to get along with some of these creatures. They are so bad they ought not to live. I don’t feel a particle of sympathy for such cases. If they’d only behave themselves, it would not happen.” “But, mamma,” said Eva, “the poor creature was unhappy; that’s what made her drink.” “O, fiddlestick! as if that were any excuse! I’m unhappy, very often. I pre- sume,” she said, pensively, “that I’ve had greater trials than ever she had. It’s just because they are so bad. There’s some of them that you cannot break in by any kind of severity. I remember father had a man that was so lazy he would run away just to get rid of work, and lie round in the swamps, stealing and doing all sorts of horrid things. That man was caught and whipped, time and again, and it never did him any good; and the last time he crawled off, though he couldn’t but just go, and died in the swamp. There was no sort of reason for it, for father’s hands were always treated kindly.” “I broke a fellow in, once,” said St. Clare, “that all the overseers and masters had tried their hands on in vain.” |
