"She had a whole nest of sparkling, scintillating birds in her hat, which would have puzzled an ornithologist to classify."
Here is another one I quote:
"Her gown of unrelieved black was looped up with blackbirds and a winged creature so dusky that it could have been intended for nothing but a crow reposed among the strands of her hair."
Public sentiment in American womanhood eventually rescued the songsters of the world—in part, at any rate. The heavenly orchestra, with its exquisite prelude of dawn and its tremulous evensong, was spared.
Many years ago Thomas Carlyle described us as "forty million Americans, mostly fools." He declared we would flounder on the ballot-box, and that the right of suffrage would be the ruin of this Government. The "forty million of fools" had done tolerably well for the small amount of brain Carlyle permitted them.
Better and better did America become to me as the years went by. I never wanted to live anywhere else. Many believed that Christ was about to return to His reign on earth, and I felt confident that if such a divine descent could be, it would come from American skies. I did not believe that Christ would descend from European skies, amidst alien thrones. I foresaw the time when the Democracy of Americans would be lifted so that the President's chair could be set aside as a relic; when penitentiaries would be broken-down ruins; almshouses forsaken, because all would be rich, and hospitals abandoned, because all would be well.
If Christ were really coming, as many believed, the moment of earthly paradise was at hand.