I wish life wasn't just a choice between a little hard green apple
and a rotten big one!"
She leaned her elbows on the railing and watched the new moon dodging
behind the tree trunks and, as she watched, she grappled with the
problem of life, at first bitterly and rebelliously, then with a dawning
comprehension of its meaning. After all was the bishop, with his
conspicuous virtues and his well-known dislike of children, any better
than old Mr. Demry, with his besetting sin and his beautiful influence on
every child with whom he came in contact? Was Mr. Clarke, working
children under age in the factory to build up a great fortune for his
son, very different from Mr. Lavinski, with his sweat-shop, hoarding
pennies for the ambitious Ikey? Was Mrs. Clarke, shirking her duty to her
father, any happier or any better than Mrs. Snawdor, shirking hers to her
children? Was Mac, adored and petted and protected, any better than
Birdie, now in the state asylum paying the penalty of their joint
misdeed? Was the tragedy in the great house back of her any more poignant
than the tragedy of Dan Lewis bound by law to an insane wife and burdened
with a child that was not his own? She seemed to see for the first time
the great illuminating truth that the things that make men alike in the
world are stronger than the things that make them different. And in this
realization an overwhelming ambition seized her. Some hidden spiritual
force rose to lift her out of the contemplation of her own interests into
something of ultimate value to her fellowmen.
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