“We expect gratitude from all such favored parties; and Eusedora proved the most grateful of the grateful. She as readily took to the shallow limpidity of Mr. Little, alias Tommy Moore, as ever did callow cygnet to the drains of a Holland flat.
“She possessed, indeed, a marvellous gift of sentiment—a sacchariferous faculty, that would have caused Cerberus himself to have licked his jagged lips. She was accordingly encouraged to cultivate transcendental tendencies, exchanged with the Dial, and, after a few months’ exercise, she spoke like a veritable Pythoness.
“Considering that she had now made herself sufficiently familiar with
‘The celestial syren’s harmony,’
to make her of value to us abroad, we placed her on our pension-list, and turned her loose upon society.
“This step the Committee have never had cause to regret. She leaped upon the social stage, a specimen of what the factory system could produce—achieved the lioness at once, and had the honour of being hailed in all circles, a phenomenon, a lusus naturæ—the world was undecided which, considering she was nothing but a factory-girl. They must be eminent institutions surely, since they could turn out young ladies who talked so ‘divinely,’ possessed ‘such’ command of language, and were such favorites with the gentlemen!
“There was a society, too, not very far off from this, into which she had forced her way, and which haughtily called itself ‘the best,’ that held its court in houses with dingy outsides, that lined the back-alleys; but, amidst garish and sickening splendors within, the ‘highly intellectual’ character of the hollow-eyed and painted queens who presided there, was equally owing to the educations they had received at the same ‘eminent’ institutions—only they had had more soul and less cunning than Eusedora Polypheme, and would not, therefore, have been so available to the Committee.
“When a class is already sunk as low as it can sink, it is not our policy to go aside to interfere with them, for they are sure to fecundate in degradation fast enough; our sole aim is to drag the grades above down to their level, which we consider a safe one.
“There is nothing so dangerous to the designs of the Committee of Disorganisation, as soul—what the world calls heart. To an executive power, these are always considered intrusive and distasteful superfluities; and it was because Eusedora has managed, by some surprisingly efficient process, to rid herself of both, that she is to be so trusted.
“Besides parading her accomplishments everywhere, as merely a fair average of the education of a factory-girl, she very soon mapped out for herself a very peculiar field for operations. She became the leader of a new school of Platonic Sentimentalism, in New England. This was an achievement—a decided triumph. She soon gathered around her a host of feminine disciples—principally young and unmarried, with premature wrinkles on their brows.