But when a
man has gone through this sort of thing a couple of dozen times, he
becomes impressed with the monotony, the shallowness, and the racial
resemblance, so to speak, of the divine passion; and his own capacity
for indulging in it diminishes in proportion. If Miss Penrhyn is
capable of anything wider and deeper and higher than her average
sister, I have met her too late to be inspired with anything beyond
passing curiosity. In fact, I doubt if I could be capable of so much
as indulging in the surmise had I never known my grandmother. _There_
was a woman unique in her generation. So strong was her individuality
that I was forced to appreciate it, even in the days when I used
to make her life a burden by planting her silver spoons in the
rose-garden and re-setting her favorite cuttings wrong side up. I wish
she had lived longer; it would have been both a pleasure and a profit
to have studied and analyzed her. And how I should like to know her
history! That she had one there is no doubt. The lines of repression
in her face were the strongest I have ever seen, to say nothing of
the night I found her standing over the Byzantine chest with her hands
full of yellow papers.
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