While yet
sustaining the name of Jigbee, she had achieved a high reputation in
private circles as a merciless judge of music. But her conversation had
been, from earliest girlhood, her chief attraction. She possessed the
extraordinary faculty of talking with a dozen persons upon a dozen
different subjects at the same time.
Unlike many people similarly endowed, she did not exercise this
wonderful gift for the brutal purpose of putting down feebler
intellects, but only to elicit TRUTH, which she often declared to be the
sole object of her existence. When, by her alliance with Mr. Slapman, a
thrifty speculator in real estate, she was installed as mistress of a
fine house and furniture, and a few thousand a year, the lady naturally
gathered about her a still larger circle of admirers. Her researches for
TRUTH were met halfway by people that were supposed to deal in that
article, abstractly considered; such as poets, painters, sculptors,
reformers, inventors. Anybody with a new idea was sure to be understood
and encouraged by her. Her fondness for new ideas was as keen as an
entomologist's for new bugs or butterflies.
Pages:
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99