Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[33]

VII. vacations for saints.

“It is so tiresome,” said once a certain lady of my acquaintance, “to be a saint all the time! There ought to be vacations.” And as it was once my pleasant lot to be the house-mate of a saint when enjoying one of these seasons of felicity, I know what my friend meant by it. The saint in question was one of the most satisfactory and unquestionable of her class; she was the wife of a country clergyman, a woman of superb physique, great personal attractiveness, and the idol of her husband's large parish, from oldest to youngest. I had always supposed it to be mere play for her to be a saint, but you could see what her life in that direction had cost her by the way she tool her vacation, as you know how the bow has been bent when you see the motion of the arrow. Off from her shapely shoulders fell the whole world of ministers' meetings, and missionary meetings, and mothers' meetings. I do not know why they all begin with an m, unless it is because that letter, by its very shape, best designates that which is reiterated