By this time Alan had moved on to another picture. "This represents an unhappy marriage," he explained. "At first sight you see nothing but two well-dressed people sitting at table; but as you look into the picture you perceive the misery in the woman's face and the cruelty in the man's, and you realize all that they mean."
"Well, I see nothing more at second sight," whispered Mrs. Hankey; "except that the tablecloth might have been cleaner. There's another of your grumbling fine ladies! Now for sure she'd nothing to grumble at, sitting so grand at table with a glass of sherry-wine to drink."
"The husband looks a cantankerous chap," remarked Caleb.
"Poor thing! it's his liver," said Mrs. Bateson, taking up the cudgels as usual on behalf of the bilious and oppressed. "You can see from his complexion that he is out of order, and that all that rich dinner will do him no good. It was his wife's duty to see that he had something plain to eat, with none of them sauces and fal-lals, instead of playing the fine lady and making troubles out of nothing. I've no patience with her!"
"Still, he do look as if he'd a temper," persisted Mr. Bateson.
"And if he do, Caleb, what of that? If a man in his own house hasn't the right to show a bit of temper, I should like to know who has? I've no patience with the women that will get married and have a man of their own; and then cry their eyes out because the man isn't an old woman. If they want meekness and obedience, let 'em remain single and keep lapdogs and canaries; and leave the husbands for those as can manage 'em and enjoy 'em, for there ain't enough to go round as it is." And Mrs. Bateson waxed quite indignant.
Here Tremaine took up his parable. "This weird figure, clothed in skins, and feeding upon nothing more satisfying than locusts and wild honey, is a type of all those who are set apart for the difficult and unsatisfactory lot of heralds and forerunners. They see the good time coming, and make ready the way for it, knowing all the while that its fuller light and wider freedom are not for them; they lead their fellows to the very borders of the promised land, conscious that their own graves are already dug in the wilderness. No great social or political movement has ever been carried on without their aid; and they have never reaped the benefits of those reforms which they lived and died to compass. Perhaps there are no sadder sights on the page of history than those solitary figures, of all nations and all times, who have foretold the coming of the dawn and yet died before it was yet day."'