Her features would in passport wording be called “regular.” The expression of her face when she lives in more prosperous communities, where salaries are and an assured future, is a stereotyped smile. In more uncertain life and less fortunate surroundings, her countenance shows a weariness of spirit and a homesickness for heaven that make your soul ache.
Her mind is too self-conscious on the one hand, and too set on lofty duties on the other, to allow much of coquetterie, or flirting, or a femininely accented camaraderie with men—such as the more elemental women of Chicago, Cincinnati, San Francisco, and New York enjoy. She is farthest possible from the luxuriant beauty of St. Louis who declared, “You bet! black-jack-diamond kind of a time!” when asked if she had enjoyed her social dash in Newport. This New England woman would, forsooth, take no dash in Aurovulgus. But falling by chance among vulgarities and iniquities, she guards against the defilement of her lips, for she loves a pure and clean usage of our facile English speech.
The old phase of the New England woman is passing. It is the hour for some poet to voice her threnody. Social conditions under which she developed are almost obliterated. She is already outnumbered in her own home by women of foreign blood, an ampler physique, a totally different religious conception, a far different conduct; and a less exalted ideal of life. Intermixtures will follow and racial lines gradually fade. In the end she will not be. Her passing is due to the unnumbered husbandless and the physical attenuation of the married—attenuation resulting from their spare and meagre diet, and, it is also claimed, from the excessive household labor of their mothers. More profoundly causative—in fact, inciting the above conditions—was the distorted morality and debilitating religion impressed upon her sensitive spirit. Mayhap in this present decay some Mœra is punishing that awful crime of self-sufficing ecclesiasticism. Her unproductivity—no matter from what reason, whether from physical necessity or a spirit-searching flight from the wrath of God—has been her death.
A NEW ENGLAND ABODE OF THE BLESSED
... ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρη
Ζεὺς Κρονίδης ποίησε δικαιότερον καὶ ἄρειον,
ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων θεῖον γένος, ...
τοῖς δὲ δίχ’ ἀνθρώπων βίοτον καὶ ἤθε’ ὀπάσσας
Ζεὺς Κρονίδης κατένασσε πατὴρ ἐς πείρατα γαίης·
—χαὶ τοὶ μὲν ναίουσιν ἀκηδέα θυμὸν ἔχοντες
—ἐν μαχάρων νήσοισι παῤ Ὠχεανὸν βαθυδίνην,
—ὄλβιοι ἡρωες· τοῖσιν μελιηδέα καρπὸν
—τρςὶ ἔτεος θάλλοντα φέρει ζείδωρος ἄρουρα.
Hesiod
Under bloudie Diocletian ... a great number of Christians which were assembled togither to heare the word of life ... were slaine by the wicked pagans at Lichfield, whereof ... as you would say, The field of dead corpses. Holinshed
A NEW ENGLAND ABODE OF THE BLESSED
Upon the broad level of one of our Litchfield hills is—if we accept ancient legend—a veritable Island of the Blessed. There heroes fallen after strong fight enjoy rest forever.