Mrs. Ransome. Oh, I promise you, Mr. Tanner, not a soul will know of it. We’ll take our dyin’ oaths, sir, all of us.
Tanner. All right. But first let me lend your daughter this prayer-book. (Takes prayer-book out of pocket; addressing Janet.) Here’s a prayer-book, Miss Ransome. I’ll go with your mother now into the back-parlor, and meanwhile I want you to read over this prayer. Try to seek its inner meeting. Come, Mrs. Ransome, you can carry the register, and we’ll come back later and discuss the funeral arrangements.
Mrs. Ransome (Takes the marriage register). Oh, Mr. Tanner, I don’t know how to thank you.
Tanner. Well, Mrs. Ransome—I shall expect your husband to send us something for our new mission to spread Christianity amongst the Chinese.
(Exit Tanner and Mrs. Ransome. Janet closes the door. She walks towards the couch, looks at the prayer-book, then at the couch. She flings the prayer-book to the other end of the room, smashing some of the ornaments on the mantle-shelf, and throws herself upon the side of the couch, sobbing wildly.)
Slow Curtain.
“The Immutable”
Margaret C. Anderson
In a world where flippancies arrange an effective concealment of beauty there are still major adventures in beauty to be had beneath the grinning surface. One of them is the discovery of those rare persons to whom flippancies are impossible—those splendid persons who take life simply and greatly. Several months ago I tried to write an impression of Emma Goldman, from an inadequate background of having merely heard two of her lectures. Since then I have met her. One realizes dimly that such spirits live somewhere in the world: history and legend and poetry have proclaimed them, and at times we hear of their passing; but to meet one on its valiant journey is like being whirled to some far planet and discovering strange new glories.
Emma Goldman is one of the world’s great people; therefore, it is not surprising to find her among the despised and rejected. Of course she is as different from the popular conception of her as anyone could be. The first thing you feel in meeting her is that indefinable something which all great and true people have in common—a quality which seems to proceed on some a priori principle that anything one feels deeply is sublime. Then a sense of her great humanity sweeps upon you, and the nobility of the idealist who wrenches her integrity from the grimest depths. A terrible sadness is in her face—as though the suffering of centuries had concentrated there in some deep personal struggle; and through it shines that capacity for joy which becomes colossal in its intensity and tragic in its disappointments. But the thing which takes your heart in a grip, and thrusts you quickly into the position of the small boy who longs to die for the object of his worship, is that imperative gift of motherhood which is hers and which spends itself with such utter prodigality upon all those who come to her for inspiration. Emma Goldman has ministered to every kind of human being from convicts to society women. She has no more idea of conservation than a lavish springtime; and where she draws courage and endurance and inspiration for it all will remain one of those mysteries which only the artist can explain. A mountain-top figure, calm, vast, dynamic, awful in its loneliness, exalted in its tragedy—this is Emma Goldman, “the daughter of the dream,” as William Marion Reedy called her in an appreciation written several years ago. “A dream, you say?” he asked, after sketching her gospel. “Yes; but life is death without the dream.” In that rich book of Alexander Berkman’s, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, she is given a better name. “I have always called you the Immutable,” is the way the author closes one of his letters to her. And this is the quality which distinguishes Emma Goldman—a kind of eternal staunchness in which one may put his fundamental trust.