A TWENTIETH CENTURY IDYLL.
Lazily, dreamily, we floated down the pellucid stream, Aspasia at the single thwart, I, her loved one, at the tiller. The last gleaner had left the fields. Over the grave of the dead sun I saw the eye of Hesperus, early and thoughtful. The words of the Poet Laureate came back to me; it seemed that "in yonder Orient star a hundred spirits whispered
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"Peace!" Now the light shallop trembled to the stroke of ASPASIA'S sculls, and the brawny muscles lifted beneath her flannel suiting. Myself so frail, I adore the pride and prowess of womanhood, that moves through the world conquering and to conquer. This life of the open air, so free, so expansive, that despises the thought of
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control or seclusion, how different from that of men, studiously repressed in a hothouse atmosphere of fashion and traditional proprieties. We only guess of their world from hearsay or from books. And most of these are by women for women, and Papa says they are not fit for innocent men to read. And so we have to be content to study dress and the lures that fascinate the other sex. But they—they go forth to fight our battles, make our laws, have their part in the stir and excitement of
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the world, while we sit at home and tattle over the tea-things and marry when we're asked. And, à propos, how I longed to tell Aspasia that my heart is hers! But I am a man; it was for her to speak.
At last she pulled herself together with the self-assurance of a woman who knows that
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the weaker sex is at her mercy. "Dear Ariel," she began, and her deep mulierile notes vibrated through my fluttering chest; "dear Ariel, this halcyon eve, this ethereal air that breathes the subtle incense of eucalyptus—all, all, invite me to offer you
[LITTLE TEASERS.—For the liver. As used in the Russo-Japanese negotiations. The Arch-Prince General von Schplitviski sends us the following despatch:—"Plenipotentiary Ita Bino had a difference with me on the question of a peninsula. Two of your LITTLE TEASERS, however, came home to him, and he is now more amenable. You have my authority for stating that your system of internal adjustment has averted a disastrous and even stupid war."
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