ndred years and
more. Ah, gentlemen--"
He sat erect on the edge of his great chair. Back of the thick lenses of
his spectacles he had eyes that still could flash.
"This is not an era of romance," he said. "Our people grub in the dirt
for the dollar. Their visions perish. Their souls grow stale. Yet, now
and then, at most inopportune times, comes the flash that reveals to us
the glories that might be. A gentleman of my acquaintance caught a
glimpse of perfect happiness while he was in the midst of an effort to
corner the pickle market. Another evolved the scheme of a perfect ode to
the essential purity of woman in--a Broadway restaurant. So, like
lightning across the blackest sky, our poetic moments come."
Mr. Bland wrapped his gay quilt more securely about him. Mr. Magee
smiled encouragement on the newest raconteur.
"I shall be brief," continued Professor Bolton. "Heaven knows that
pedagogic room was no place for visions, nor were those athletic young
men fit companions for a soul gone giddy. Yet--I lost my head. As I read
on there returned to my heart a glow I had not known in forty years. The
bard spoke of her hair:
"'Her yellow lockes, crisped like golden wyre,
About her shoulders weren loosely shed'
and I saw, as in a dream--ahem, I can trust you, gentlemen--a girl I
supposed I had forever forgot in the mold and dust of my later years. I
will not go further into the matter. My wife's hair is black.
"And reading on, but losing the thread of the poet's eulogy in the
golden fabric of my resurrected dream, it came to me to compare that
maid I knew in the long ago with the women I know to-day. Ah, gentlemen!
Lips, made but for smiling, fling weighty arguments on the unoffending
atmosphere. Eyes, made to light with that light that never was by land
or sea, blaze instead with what they call the injustice of woman's
servitude. White hands, made to find their way to the hands of some
young man in the moonlight, carry banners in the dusty streets. It
seemed I saw the blue eyes of that girl of long ago turned, sad,
rebuking, on her sisters of to-day. As I finished reading, my heart was
awhirl. I said to the young men before me:
"'There _was_ a woman, gentlemen--a woman worth a million suffragettes.'
"They applauded. The fire in me died down. Soon I was my old meek,
academic self. The vision had left no trace. I dismissed my class and
went home. I found that my wife--she of the black hair--had left m
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