human
Look at our output, Sarah Maitland used to brag to her general manager, Mr. Robert Ferguson;
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We need more jails than any town, east or west,
human
You just wait! We'll be the most important city in this country yet, because we will hold the commerce of the world right here in our mills! She put out her great open palm, and slowly closed the strong, beautiful fingers into a gripping fist.
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The commerce of the world, right _here_!
human
What's the use? he said;
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For his part, he believed the Eleventh Commandment was,
human
Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, because he'll get it.
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Read your Bible! Mrs. Maitland retorted;
human
Bible? It's all I can do to get time to read my paper. I'm worked to death, he reproached her. But in spite of being worked to death he always found time on summer evenings to weed the garden in his back yard, or on winter mornings to feed a flock of Mercer's sooty pigeons; and he had been known to walk all over town to find a particular remedy for a sick child of one of his molders. To be sure he alleged, when Mrs. Maitland accused him of kindness, that, as far as the child was concerned, he was a fool for his pains, because human critters (
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I'm one of 'em myself,
human
Oh, you have a fine bark, friend Ferguson, she said,
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Kiss? said Robert Ferguson, horrified;
human
was his employer's strong point. Mrs. Maitland kept the Fourth Commandment with passion. Her Sundays, dividing each six days of extraordinary activity, were arid stretches of the unspeakable dullness of idleness. When Blair grew up he used to look back at those Sundays and shudder. There was church and Sunday-school in the morning, then a cold dinner, for cold roast beef was Mrs. Maitland's symbol of Sabbatical holiness. Then an endless, vacant afternoon, spent always indoors. Certain small, pious books were permitted the two children--_Little Henry and His Bearer, The Ministering Children_, and like moral food; but no games, no walks, no playing in the orchard. Silence and weary idleness and Little Henry's holy arrogances. Though the day must have been as dreary to Mrs. Maitland as it was to her son and daughter, she never winced. She sat in the parlor, dressed in black silk, and read _The Presbyterian_ and the Bible. She never allowed herself to look at her desk in the dining-room, or even at her knitting, which on week-days when she had no work to do was a great resource; she looked at the clock a good deal, and sometimes she sighed, then applied herself to _The Presbyterian_. She went to bed at half-past seven as against eleven or twelve on other nights, first reading, with extraordinary rapidity, her
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Chapter. Mrs. Maitland had a