see.?The clasp on this gutta percha case?Locks them together.?They were locked together in life.?And a hasp of brass?Keeps their shadows face to face in the case?Which has been handed down--?(The pictures of noble ancestors,?Showing what strains of gentle blood?Flow in the third generation)--?From Massachusetts to Illinois. ...
Long ago it was over for them,?Massachusetts has done its part,?She raised the seed?And a wind blew it over to Illinois?Where it has mixed, multiplied, mutated?Until one soul comes forth:?But a soul all striped and streaked,?And a soul self-crossed and self-opposed,?As it were a tree which on one branch?Bears northern spies,?And on another thorn apples. ...
Come Weissmann, Von Baer and Schleiden,?And you Buffon and De Vries,?Come with your secrets of sea shore asters?Night-shade, henbanes, gloxinias,?Veronicas, snap-dragons, Danebrog,?And show us how they cross and change,?And become hybrids.?And show us what heredity is,?And how it works.?For the secret of these human beings?Locked in this gutta percha case?Is the secret of Mephistos and red Campions.
Let us lay out the facts as far as we can.?Her eyes were black,?His eyes were blue.?She saw through shadows, walls and doors,?She knew life and hungered for more.?But he lived in the mists, and climbed to high places?To feel clouds about his face, and get the lights?Of supernal sun-sets.?She was reason, and he was faith.?She had an illumination, but of the intellect.?And he had an illumination but of the soul.?And she saw God as merciless law,?And he knew God as divine love.?And she was a man, and he in part was a woman.?He stood in a pulpit and preached the Christ,?And the remission of sins by blood,?And the literal fall of man through Adam,?And the mystical and actual salvation of man?Through the coming of Christ.
And she sat in a pew shading her great eyes?To hide her scorn for it all.?She was crucified,?And raged to the last like the impenitent thief?Against the fate which wasted and trampled down?Her wisdom, sagacity, versatile skill,?Which would have piled up gold or honors?For a mate who knew that life is growth,?And health, and the satisfaction of wants,?And place and reputation and mansion houses,?And mahogany and silver,?And beautiful living.?She hated him, and hence she pitied him.?She was like the gardener with great pruners?Deciding to clip, sometimes not clipping?Just for the dread.?She had married him--but why??Some inscrutable air?Wafted his pollen to her across a wide garden--?Some power had crossed them.?And here is the secret I think:?(As we would say here is electricity)?It is the vibration inhering in sex?That produces devils or angels,?And it is the sex reaction in men and women?That brings forth devils or angels,?And starts in them the germs of powers or passions,?Becoming loves, ferocities, gifts and weaknesses,?Till the stock dies out.?So now for their hybrid children:--?She gave birth to four daughters and one son.
But first what have we for the composition of these daughters? Reason opposed and becoming keener therefor.?Faith mocked and drawing its mantel closer.?Love thwarted and becoming acid.?Hatred mounting too high and thinning into pity.?Hunger for life unappeased and becoming a stream under-ground Where only blind things swim.?God year by year removing himself to remoter thrones?Of inexorable law.?God coming closer even while disease?And total blindness came between him and God?And defeated the mercy of God.?And a love and a trust growing deeper in him?As she in great thirst, hanging on the cross,?Mocked his crucifixion,?And talked philosophy between the spasms of pain,?Till at last she is all satirist,?And he is all saint.
And all the children were raised?After the strictest fashion in New England,?And made to join the church,?And attend its services.?And these were the children:
Janet was a religious fanatic and a virago,?She debated religion with her husband for ten years,?Then he refused to talk, and for twenty years?Scarcely spoke to her.?She died a convert to Catholicism.?They had two children:?The boy became a forgerer?Of notorious skill.?The daughter married, but was barren.
Miranda married a rich man?And spent his money so fast that he failed.?She lashed him with a scorpion tongue?And made him believe at last?With her incessant reasonings?That he was a fool, and so had failed.?In middle life he started over again,?But became tangled in a law-suit.?Because of these things he killed himself.
Louise was a nymphomaniac.?She was married twice.?Both husbands fled from her insatiable embraces.?At thirty-two she became a woman on a telephone list,?Subject to be called,?And for two years ran through a daily orgy of sex,?When blindness came on her, as it came on her father before her, And she became a Christian Scientist,?And led an exemplary life.
Deborah was a Puritan of Puritans,?Her list of unmentionable things?Tabooed all the secrets of creation,?Leaving politics, religion, and human faults,?And the mistakes most people make,?And the natural depravity of man,?And his freedom to redeem himself if he chooses,?As the only subjects of conversation.?As a twister of words and meanings,?And a skilled welder of fallacies,?And a swift emerger from ineluctable
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