Chapter 38
chapter thirty-eight of i mary mclean by mary mclean this liprivox recording is in the public domain recording by lynn thompson chapter thirty-eight in my black dress and my still room to-morrow i have fits of laughter all to myself the world is full of funny things all to myself i laugh at them i lounge at my desk in the small night hours and i finger a pencil or a box or a rubber or a knife and rest my chin on my hand and sit on my right foot and laugh intermittently at this or that ha ha ha i say inwardly with all my heart relishingly i laugh at the thought of a mouse i once encountered lying dead so neat so virtuous though soft and o'erlong dead with its tail folded around it in a porcelain teapot a strong inimical anomaly to all who viewed it it had a look of a saint in effigy in a whited sepulchre looked at as a mouse it seemed out of place looked at as a saint it was perfect i laugh of the recollection of a lady i once met who had thick black furry eyebrows incongruous to her face which she took off at night and laid on her bureau
they were at once detached and detachable itself a subtle phenomenon she referred to her mind as her intellects and talked with a quaint bogus learnedness and in remarkable grammar of the sweden borgian doctrines looked at as a person she was inadequate looked at as a conundrum she was gifted and profound i laugh at the extraordinary tailor in the mother goose rhyme him whose name was stout who cut off the petticoats of the little old woman round about herself having recklessly fallen asleep on the public highway the tale leaves me the impression that such were the straitly economic ideas of the tailor that he obtained all his cloth by wandering about with his shears until he happened upon persons slumbering thus publicly and vulnerably looked at in any light that tailor is ever surprising ever original ever rarely delectable i laugh at william jennings bryan how william jennings bryan may look at the country and world at large i have never much considered it is all in the angle of view st simeon's stylites may seem rousingly funny to some old king cole may have been a frosty dullard to those who knew him best
to me william jennings bryan means bits of my relishingest brand of gay mournful laughter the ensemble and detail of william jennings bryan and his career as a public man viewed him personally as one looks at the moon is something hectic as hell's bells i remember william jennings bryan when his star first rose it was before theodore roosevelt was more than a name before the battleship maine was sunk at havannah before lanky bob wrested the heavy-weight title from gentleman jim at carston before aeroplanes were and automobiles were more than rare thin wheeled restless buggies before the song my gal she's a high-born lady had yet waned before one carry nation had hewn her way to fame with a hatchet i was a short-skirted little girl devouringly reading and observing everything and i took note of all those so i took note of william jennings bryan nominated for president by the democratic convention in eighteen ninety six the zealous democratic newspapers referred to him though he was then thirty-six as the boy orator of the plat looked at as a grown man advocating free coinage of silver at sixteen to one a daring dashing democrat he was a plausible thing and even romantic
looked at as a boy orator he turned at once into a bold and aged lad oddly flavoured with the essence of dare-devil dick of the boy on the burning deck of a kind of political fauntleroy madly matured long years later with the top of his hair and his waistline buried deep in his past he became secretary of state and at the same time a chautauqua circuit lecturer entertaining placid satisfied audiences alternately with a troop of swiss yodellers of all things yodellers politics makes strange bedfellows and always did but never before has the american department of state confined and vied with the yodellers art to entertain and instruct looked at as a monologist he might pass if sufficiently interpolated with ali e and ali o o looked at as secretary of state he is grilling and gruelling to the senses a frightful figure quite surpassing a mouth softly dead in a teapot a pair of detachable fuzzy swedenborg addicted eyebrows a presumptuously economical tailor and he entertained the foreign ministers at a state dinner did this unusual man and he gave them to drink
what but grape juice grape juice in its virginity plain water might have seemed the crystalline expression of a rigid puritanic spirit baudoisier beer bitter and bourgeois might have been possible though surprising but grape-juice served to seasoned latin titles and greybeards and gold braid long tamely familiar with the widow cleco that in truth seems after all the years boyishly oratorical wildly and darkly nebrascan looked at as an appetizing wash for a children's white-collared and pink-sashed party or for anybody on a summer afternoon grape-juice is satisfactory in the careless hands of william jennings bryan with his soul so unscrupulously at peace the virgin grape-juice becomes a vitriolic thing a defluent purple river crushing one's helpless spirit among its rocks and rapids a terrible american william jennings bryan he is for peace at any price there were some long and long ago who suffered and endured one starveling winter in camp at valley forge that william jennings bryan might wax nebrascally fat
and he is valiantly for peace at any price for that my laughter is tinged with fulfilling hatred rich hot-livered laughter must have in it essential love or hatred to william jennings bryan everything he has done in his political career must seem all right it is all right undoubtedly just that that silver-tongued boy orator those yodelers that peerless leader that grape-juice they come breaking into my melancholy night-hounds with an odd high-seasoned abruptness i wonder what god thinks of him it might be god thinks well of him but i in my black dress and my still room i say inwardly and willy-nilly and with all my heart and relishingly ha ha ha chapter thirty eight
