But, with sound legs under him, he may run away,
and meet with a new pressure. He may continue running, each new
pressure prodding him as he goes, until he dies and his final form will
be that predestined of the many pressures. An exchange of
cradle-babes, and the base-born slave may wear the purple imperially,
and the royal infant begs an alms as wheedlingly or cringe to the lash
as abjectly as his meanest subject. A Chesterfield, with an empty
belly, chancing upon good fare, will gorge as faithfully as the swine
in the next sty. And an Epicurus, in the dirt-igloo of the Eskimos,
will wax eloquent over the whale oil and walrus blubber, or die.
Thus, in the young Northland, frosty and grim and menacing, men
stripped off the sloth of the south and gave battle greatly. And they
stripped likewise much of the veneer of civilization--all of its
follies, most of its foibles, and perhaps a few of its virtues. Maybe
so; but they reserved the great traditions and at least lived frankly,
laughed honestly, and looked one another in the eyes.
And so it is not well for women, born south of fifty-three and reared
gently, to knock loosely about the Northland, unless they be great of
heart. They may be soft and tender and sensitive, possessed of eyes
which have not lost the lustre and the wonder, and of ears used only to
sweet sounds; but if their philosophy is sane and stable, large enough
to understand and to forgive, they will come to no harm and attain
comprehension.
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