Life — December 26, 1889 — page 33: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Pretty (but unsuccessful) Rival: ANO DO YOU REALLY THINK HE { The Fiancée: OW, YES, AS LOVE GOES IN THESE DEGE: The Rival; He TOLD JACK HE WANTED TO, BUT brusque sentences: ‘She's man and woman in brains, and legged like a deer, and breasted like a swan, and a regular sheaf of arrows in her eyes. Her one error was that marriage of hers.'” “Sir Lukin and you have pointed the way to her greatest fault,” said Adrian, ‘If she had been the right sort of woman she would have made a charming husband out of Warwick instead of wrecking his life. He had the stuff of an English gentleman in him.” “He had inherited the prejudices of six or eight generations of social prigs, and he never could have appreciated a bright and starry spirit like Diana.” “She was weak, vain, emotional, and, like most women, betrayed first important secret that was intrusted to her,” said Adrian. “She was sincere, affectionate, and benevolent, She tried hard to make a bright corner in a cruel world which loves falsehood and the dark. I'll admit she failed, wofully and disastrously ; but on a Christ- mas Day like this, when your cltruism ought to come tothe surface, you hould give credit to her idezlism. The failure of such a woman is not anti-climax. I like to think of Tom Redworth as the happiest of men with Diana as his wife. The mistletoe hanging to th st tree over there by the roadside calls up a Christmas picture in great contrast to this fra- grant, flower-scented place, I can see ‘ The Crossways on the Downs, covered with snow—a bleak and wintry English andscape. But be- DAYS, LOVES YOU ? 1 EVEN THOUGHT HE WAS GOING TO KISS ME LAST NIGHT. yond the threshold of the Crossways you enter into warmth, cheeriness, good-fellowship. The rooms are decked with mistletoe and holly ; Emmy's godchild is dancing in joy before a tree hung with the treas- ures of fairy land; Lukin, Redworth, Arthur Rhodes, Whitmonby, and Harry Wilmers are tossing wit and story back and forth, feathered with laughter. And on the hearth before the grate kneels Diana, with the ‘firstefire glow’ ures as it did one bleak night, y imagi Jd black Spanish canvas,’ She is holding the hand of a sweet-faced invalid, who rests beside her in an easy-chair, and I believe it is that blessed woman, Zmmy, who still serenely lingers ‘on the dark decline of the unillumined verge between the two worlds.’ Outside, the Christmas bells are ringing.” “Come, Dupont, you have been dreaming,” said Adrian. Those are the chimes in the old tower of Carmello Mission, brought a cent- ury ago from Spain, Let me call you back to this continent with those lines of Stevenson’ in the library Sv touching her feat- ursago. Now, as then, Kedtoorth s her ‘a Madonna on an “* Now that you have spelt your lessoa, lay it down and go and play, Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Montere Watching all the mighty whalebones lying buried ‘Tiny sandypipers, and the huge Pacifi the breeze, Seas. Robert Droch, comicbooks.com