divers commentaries on the text, as she passed
in and out.

If she had risen to the full level of Joel's views, she might have
considered these views tinctured with radicalism, as they consisted in
the propriety of the immediate "impinging of the President." Besides,
(Joel was a good-natured man, too, merciful to his beast,) Nero-like, he
wished, with the tiger drop of blood that lies hid in everybody's heart,
that the few millions who differed with himself and the "Gazette" had
but one neck for their more convenient hanging. "It's all that'll save
the kentry," he said, and believed it, too.

If Margaret fell suddenly from the peak of outlook on life to the
homely labor of cooking supper, some of the healthy heroic flush of
the knightly days and the hearth-fire went down with her, I think. It
brightened and reddened the square kitchen with its cracked stove and
meagre array of tins; she bustled about in her quaint way, as if it
had been filled up and running over with comforts. It brightened and
reddened her face when she came in to put the last dish on the table,--a
cozy, snug table, set for four. Heroic dreams with poets, I suppose,
make them unfit for food other than some feast such as Eve set for the
angel. But then Margaret was no poet. So, with the kindling of her hope,
its healthful light struck out, and warmed and glorified these common
things. Such common things! Only a coarse white cloth, redeemed by
neither silver nor china, the amber coffee, (some that Knowles had
brought out to her father,--"thrown on his hands; he couldn't use
it,--product of slave-labor!--never, Sir!") the delicate brown fish that
Joel had caught, the bread her mother had made, the golden butter,--all
of them touched her nerves with a quick sense of beauty and pleasure.
And more, the gaunt face of the blind old man, his bony hand trembling
as he raised the cup to his lips, her mother and the Doctor managing
silently to place everything he liked best near his plate. Wasn't it
all part of the fresh, hopeful glow burning in her consciousness? It
brightened and deepened. It blotted out the hard, dusty path of the
future, and showed warm and clear the success at the end. Not much
to show, you think. Only the old home as it once was, full of quiet
laughter and content; only her mother's eyes clear shining again; only
that gaunt old head raised proudly, owing no man anything but courtesy.
The glow deepened, as she thought of it. It was strange,