don’t see my way out. It seems to me that
my reason has some right to satisfaction, and that,
if I am a woman grown, I can’t be satisfied
with the assurances they would give to little girls—that
everything is going on well. Any one can see that
things are not going on well. There is more and
more wretchedness of every kind, not hunger of body
alone, but hunger of soul. If you escape one,
you suffer the other, because, if you have a
soul, you must long to help, not for a time, but for
all time. I suppose,” she asked, abruptly,
“that Mrs. Makely has told you something about
me?”
“Something,” I admitted.
“I ask,” she went on, “because I
don’t want to bore you with a statement of my
case, if you know it already. Ever since I heard
you were in New York I have wished to see you, and
to talk with you about Altruria; I did not suppose
that there would be any chance at Mrs. Makely’s,
and there wasn’t; and I did not suppose there
would be any chance here, unless I could take courage
to do what I have done now. You must excuse it,
if it seems as extraordinary a proceeding to you as
it really is; I wouldn’t at all have you think
it is usual for a lady to ask one of her guests to
stay after the rest, in order, if you please, to confess
herself to him. It’s a crime without a
name.”
She laughed, not gayly, but humorously, and then went
on, speaking always with a feverish eagerness which
I find it hard to give you a sense of, for the women
here have an intensity quite beyond our experience
of the sex at home.
“But you are a foreigner, and you come from
an order of things so utterly unlike ours that perhaps
you will be able to condone my offence. At any
rate, I have risked it.” She laughed again,
more gayly, and recovered herself in a cheerfuller
and easier mood. “Well, the long and the
short of it is that I have come to the end of my tether.
I have tried, as truly as I believe any woman ever
did, to do my share, with money and with work, to
help make life better for those whose life is bad;
and though one mustn’t boast of good works,
I may say that I have been pretty thorough, and, if
I’ve given up, it’s because I see, in our
state of things, no hope of curing the evil.
It’s like trying to soak up the drops of a rainstorm.
You do dry up a drop here and there; but the clouds
are full of them, and, the first thing you know, you
stand, with your blotting-paper in your hand, in a
puddle over your shoe-tops. There is nothing
but charity, and charity is a failure, except for the
moment. If you think of the misery around you,
that must remain around you for ever and ever, as
long as you live, you have your choice—to
go mad and be put into an asylum, or go mad and devote
yourself to society.”
