Pray, who shall judge what we require if not we
ourselves? We require simply freedom; we require the lid to be taken off
the box in which we have been kept for centuries. You say it's a very
comfortable, cozy, convenient box, with nice glass sides, so that we can
see out, and that all that's wanted is to give another quiet turn to the
key. That is very easily answered. Good gentlemen, you have never been
in the box, and you haven't the least idea how it feels!"
The historian who has gathered these documents together does not deem it
necessary to give a larger specimen of Verena's eloquence, especially as
Basil Ransom, through whose ears we are listening to it, arrived, at
this point, at a definite conclusion. He had taken her measure as a
public speaker, judged her importance in the field of discussion, the
cause of reform. Her speech, in itself, had about the value of a pretty
essay, committed to memory and delivered by a bright girl at an
"academy"; it was vague, thin, rambling, a tissue of generalities that
glittered agreeably enough in Mrs. Burrage's veiled lamplight. From any
serious point of view it was neither worth answering nor worth
considering, and Basil Ransom made his reflexions on the crazy character
of the age in which such a performance as that was treated as an
intellectual effort, a contribution to a question. He asked himself what
either he or any one else would think of it if Miss Chancellor--or even
Mrs.
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