One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
for conquering is the one who can last and has the open
brain;—and there you have a point against alcohol. Yes, and
Miss Graves, if she would press it, with her natural face, could
be pleasant and persuasive: and she ought to be told she ought
to marry, for the good of the country. Women taking liquor:
Skepsey had a vision of his wife with rheumy peepers and
miauly mouth, as he had once beheld the creature:—Oh!
they need discipline not such would we have for the mothers
of our English young. Decidedly the women of principle are
bound to enter wedlock; they should be bound by law.
Whereas, in the opposing case—the binding of the unprincipled
to a celibate state—such a law would have saved
Skepsey from the necessitated commission of deeds of discipline
with one of the female sex, and have rescued his progeny
from a likeness to the corn-stalk reverting to weed. He
had but a son for England’s defence; and the frame of his
boy might be set quaking by a thump on the wind of a drum;
the courage of William Barlow Skepsey would not stand
against a sheep; it would wind-up hares to have a run at him
out in the field. Offspring of a woman of principle! … but
there is no rubbing out in life: why dream of it? Only that
one would not have one’s country the loser!
Dwell a moment on the reverse—and first remember the
lesson of the Captivity of the Jews and the outcry of their
backsliding and repentance:—see a nation of the honourably
begotten; muscular men disdaining the luxuries they will
occasionally condescend to taste, like some tribe in Greece;
boxers, rowers, runners, climbers; braced, indomitable; magnanimous,
as only the strong can be; an army at word, winning
at a stroke the double battle of the hand and the heart:
men who can walk the paths through the garden of the pleasures.
They receive fitting mates, of a build to promise or aid
in ensuring depth of chest and long reach of arm for their
progeny.
Down goes the world before them.
And we see how much would be due for this to a corps of
ladies like Miss Graves, not allowed to remain too long on
the stalk of spinsterhood. Her age might count twenty-eight:
too long! She should be taught that men can, though truly
ordinary women cannot, walk these orderly paths through
the garden. An admission to women, hinting restrictions,
on a ticket marked ‘in moderation’ (meaning, that they may
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