“Stopping a war; that is, stopping actual military combat, is not stopping a war in all its factors. During continuous hard strain a human mind can hold up; and it is truly amazing how much it can stand. Day by day, with that war-strain of worry pulling it down, it staunchly holds aloof, as a mighty oak in facing a storm. But it has a limit!! With too much and too long strain, it will snap; just as that mighty oak will fall, in a long fight. Lady Gadsby will avoid such a snap though it is by a narrow margin.”
As this group sat in that holly-hung parlor, with that big cloth sign in big gold capitals; HAPPY CHRISTMAS, across its back wall; with horns tooting outdoors; with many a window around town aglow with tiny, dancing tallow-dip lights; with baby Lillian “all snuggling—so warm in a cot; as vision of sugar plums”— (and why shouldn’t a baby think of sugar plums on that night, almost Christmas?); as, I say, this happy group sat around Gadsby’s lamp, Mars, that grim old war tyrant, was far, far away. Upstairs, calmly snoozing on a big downy pillow, Lady Gadsby was now rapidly coming back again to that buxom, happy-go-lucky First Lady of Branton Hills.
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