If it served no other purpose, it made the men look so full of youth,
warm blood, and hope, and the women--such of them, at least, as were
anywise convertible by its magic--so very beautiful, that I would
cheerfully have spent my last dollar to prolong the blaze. As for
Zenobia, there was a glow in her cheeks that made me think of Pandora,
fresh from Vulcan's workshop, and full of the celestial warmth by
dint of which he had tempered and moulded her.
"Take your places, my dear friends all," cried she; "seat yourselves
without ceremony, and you shall be made happy with such tea as not
many of the world's working-people, except yourselves, will find in
their cups to-night. After this one supper, you may drink buttermilk,
if you please. To-night we will quaff this nectar, which, I assure
you, could not be bought with gold."
We all sat down,--grizzly Silas Foster, his rotund helpmate, and the
two bouncing handmaidens, included,--and looked at one another in a
friendly but rather awkward way. It was the first practical trial of
our theories of equal brotherhood and sisterhood; and we people of
superior cultivation and refinement (for as such, I presume, we
unhesitatingly reckoned ourselves) felt as if something were already
accomplished towards the millennium of love. The truth is, however,
that the laboring
oar was with our unpolished companions; it being far easier to
condescend than to accept of condescension. Neither did I refrain
from questioning, in secret, whether some of us--and Zenobia among
the rest--would so quietly have taken our places among these good
people, save for the cherished consciousness that it was not by
necessity but choice.
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