He smiled enigmatically and went on rocking.
“But you’re a republican?”
“Yes, I’m a republican.”
“And he’s a republican?”
“Yes.”
“Well, politics must certainly be stirring things out here,” I commented.
He chuckled silently, like an old rooster in a garden, the while he moved to and fro in his rocker, ruminating his chew of tobacco, and then finally he added, “It’ll do for him sure.”
I had to smile. The idea of stirring up a fight over so pornographic a document in a strictly religious community, and thus giving it a wider circulation than ever it could have in any other way, by a man who would have called himself religious, I suppose, had an element of humor in it.
At breakfast it was that I met the girl who refused to greet me the night before. As I looked at her for the first time, it struck me that life is constantly brewing new draughts of femininity, calculated to bewray or affright the world—Helens or Circes. The moralists and religionists and those who are saintly minded and believe that nature seeks only a conservative or coolly virtuous state have these questions to answer:
(1) How is it that for every saint born into the world there is also a cruel or evil minded genius born practically at the same time? The twain are ever present.