rundy. The world might be
more profitably engaged in mending its own tortuous and mendacious
ways, and allowing poor solitary wretches to fondle their whims and
caprices. If Mrs. Gerome does not choose to receive visitors, what
right has the public to grumble, or even discuss the matter?"

As Salome spoke, she plunged her stiletto vigorously into a piece of
cambric, and her thin lip curled contemptuously.

"Abstractly true, my dear child; but, from the beginning of time,
people have meddled; and, since gossip she must, even Eve chatted too
freely with serpents. Besides, since we are in the world, we should
not turn eremites, and bristle at the sight of one of our own race;
for society has a few laws that are inexorable,--that cannot be
violated without subjecting the offender to being stung to death by
venomous tongues; and one of these statutes is, that all shall see and
be seen, shall talk and be talked about, and shall visit and be
visited. When a woman unaccountably turns recluse, she is at the mercy
of public imagination, stimulated by disappointed curiosity; and very
soon the verdict goes forth that she is either deformed or deranged."

"I dispute the prerogative of the public to dictate in such matters,
and I shall rebel whenever it presumes to lay even a little finger
across my path. What, pray tell me, is the world, but an aggregation
of persons like you and me, and what possible concern can you or I
have with the fact that Mrs. Gerome burrows like a mole, beyond our
sight? If she sees fit to found a modern sect of Troglodytes, I can't
understand that the wheels of society are thereby scotched, or that
the public has a shadow of right to raise a hue-and-cry and strive to
unearth her, as if she were a fox, a catamount, or a gopher. It is
useless for society to constitute itself a turning-lathe for rounding
off all individual angularities, and grinding people down to dull
uniformity until they are as indistinguishable as a bag of unpainted
marbles or of black-eyed peas; and, if God had intended that we should
all invariably think, feel, and act after one pattern, He would have
populated the world with Siamese twins; whereas, the first couple that
were born on earth were so dissimilar that all the universe was not
wide enough to hold them both, and manslaughter began when the race
only numbered a quartette. If mankind had not arrogated the privilege
of being its 'brother's keeper,' it would never have been force