The newer type of Frenchwoman, breaking away from tradition, strong-willed, earnest, Maeterlinck is striving to depict in his later heroines, like Aglavaine and Ariane. His talented wife thus interprets them for us:
Apparently vainglorious, almost brazen, free, and unsubjected, marching in the light of day, without faith or principle, we are in reality the submissive slaves of to-morrow. Beneath our songs of gladness rises a sorrowful prayer, which no one hears. No one understands our obscure duty. Sprung from the present, we are daughters of the future, and it is but natural that the moment which created us should distinguish us but imperfectly. To hasten our work, would that men might understand us better, fear us less. Let them learn that for centuries and throughout the ages, there has been but one divine woman, lover, mother, sister. If at the present moment we appear different, rebellious, it is only that we may one day offer them stronger companions and nearer to perfection. For centuries men hailed in us a beauty that was all effacement. The women who charm the most in the past appear like those frescoes that old walls still offer to our eyes half-discolored, pale, ideal, frozen in contemplative attitude, with lilies in their hands. An abyss seems to separate these Griseldas from the Aglavaines and Arianes. And yet these two are loving handmaids of the future.... It is customary to say that woman, influenced by man, perfects herself according to his ideal. But to-day, grown clearer-sighted, she seems to look over the shoulder of her mate, and perceive what he does not yet descry on the horizon.
THE SCARBOROUGH SPOONS
A STORY FOR ENGLISH AND AMERICANS
(DOINGS ON PERILOUS)
BY LUCY FURMAN
Author of “Mothering on Perilous,” etc.
DURING their talks in the Eastern States one winter, the head workers of the Settlement School on Perilous met Emily Scarborough, the distinguished essayist and college professor, and one of them said to her casually:
“In our work in the mountains we come across numbers of good, even aristocratic, English names, and are always wishing we might trace the families back through their century and more in Kentucky, and their previous residence in Virginia, to their old English homes.