An Old Maid.
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n old maid! Was there ever woman so wise that she could hear the obnoxious title applied to herself without a suppressed sigh? Though few are the old maids who might not have been wives if they had so willed, the sense of incompleteness, of undeveloped capacities, of unfulfilled duties, perforce will cause a passing pang.
But who that knows Miriam Pleasance feels that the life of an old maid is necessarily dreary, profitless, colorless? And is Miriam an old maid? Damsels, in the primrose season of youth, for whom the wedding ring binds, in its charmed circle, the manifold joys of an ideal Elysium, mockingly call her so; happy mothers, about whose necks twine the chubby arms of cherub childhood, keeping "low and wise" the "vines that bear such fruit," pityingly call her so; broken-hearted wives whose shattered idols prove all clay and ashes, whose pale lips, wreathed in smiles, veil, with Spartan heroism, the vulture preying on their souls, indignantly call her so. But mark how men, intellectual, thinking, feeling men, hesitate
(81)
