We and Our Neighbors; or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

"Well, Mary, the best way to make her sensible and bring her to repentance is to treat her kindly and never bring up the past. Don't you see it does no good, Mary? It only makes her sullen, and gloomy, and unhappy, so that I can't get anything out of her. Now please, Mary, just keep quiet, and let me manage Maggie."

And then Mary would promise, and Eva would smooth matters over, and affairs would go on for a day or two harmoniously. But there was another authority in Mary's family, as in almost every Irish household,—a man who felt called to have a say and give a sentence.

Mary had an elder brother, Mike McArtney, who had established himself in a grocery business a little out of the city, and who felt himself to stand in position of head of the family to Mary and her children.

The absolute and entire reverence and deference with which Irish women look up to the men of their kindred is something in direct contrast to the demeanor of American women. The male sex, if repulsed in other directions, certainly are fully justified and glorified by the submissive daughters of Erin. Mike was the elder brother, under whose care Mary came to this country. He was the adviser and director of all her affairs. He found her places; he guided her in every emergency. Mike, of course, had felt and bitterly resented the dishonor brought on their family by Maggie's fall. In his view, there was danger that the path of repentance was being made altogether too easy for her, and he had resolved on the first leisure Sunday evening to come to the house and execute a thorough work of judgment on Maggie, setting her sin in order before her, and, in general, bearing down on her in such a way as to bring her to the dust and make her feel it the greatest possible mercy and favor that any of her relations should speak to her.

So, after Eva had hushed the mother and tranquilized the girl, and there had been two or three days of serenity, came Sunday evening and Uncle Mike.

The result was, as might have been expected, a loud and noisy altercation. Maggie was perfectly infuriated, and talked like one possessed of a demon; using, alas! language with which her sinful life had made her only too familiar, and which went far to justify the rebukes which were heaped upon her.

In his anger at such contumacious conduct, Uncle Mike took full advantage of the situation, and told Maggie that she was a disgrace to her mother and her relations—a disgrace to any honest house—and that he wondered that decent gentle-folks would have her under their roof.

In short, in one hour, two of Maggie's best friends—the mother that loved her as her life and the uncle that had been as a father to her—contrived utterly to sweep away and destroy all those delicate cords and filaments which the hands of good angels had been fastening to her heart, to draw her heavenward.

When a young tree is put in new ground, its roots put forth fibres delicate as hairs, but in which is all the vitality of a new phase of existence. To tear up those roots and wrench off those fibres is too often the destructive work of well-intending friends; it is done too often by those who would, if need be, give their very heart's blood for the welfare they imperil. Such is life as we find it.