"
Pauline shook her head. "I cannot see it so. It seems to me an
interference which may make us seem ridiculous in the eyes of the
English, as well as offensive to them. I am sorry, Selma, not to be able
to do as you wish."
Selma rose with burning cheeks, but a stately air. "If that is your
decision, I must do without your name. Already we have many signatures,
and shall obtain hundreds more without difficulty. We look at things
differently, Pauline. Our point of view has never been the same.
Ridiculous? I should be proud of the ridicule of people too selfish or
too unenlightened to heed the outcry of aspiring humanity. If we had to
depend on your little set to strike the note of progress, I fear we
should sit with folded hands most of the time."
"I do not know what you mean by my little set," said Pauline with a
smile. "I am too busy with my college duties to belong to any set. I see
my friends occasionally just as you see yours; and as to progress--well,
I fear that you are right in your statement that we shall never look at
things alike. To me progress presupposes in the individual or the
community attaining it a prelude of slow struggle, disheartening doubts,
and modest reverence for previous results--for the accumulated wisdom of
the past.
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