Page:Marriage as a Trade.djvu/207

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MARRIAGE AS A TRADE
199

his own genius, but of the national spirit of Puritanism—which was the desire to establish the kingdom of God upon earth. Dante, to us, is the man who ascended into heaven and descended into hell and wrote of what he saw; but it was not for these things, but for his partisanship of a losing cause, that he ate the bread of a stranger and found it salt. Few, if any, of the great ones of all time have stood apart in spirit from their own world with its hopes and its seething discontents; they spoke of it because they lived in it, loved it and wondered at it. It is significant that one of the few women whose written words have stood the test of centuries—St. Teresa—was one whose aspirations were not narrowed to the duties of a husband's dwelling, who was passionately conscious of her part in the life of a great community, who made herself a power in the public life of the day—a woman capable of organization and able to bend men and systems to an indomitable will.

My meaning, I hope, will not be misinterpreted or narrowed. I do not look upon the British House of Commons or the American