Tenderness

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Trash (1988)

  But my aunt supported her. “It’s a miracle she’s alive, girl. She was such a sickly child, still a child when she had you, and then there was the way you were born.” “How’s that?” “Assbackwards,” Aunt Alma was proud to be the first to tell me, and it showed in the excitement in her voice. “Your mama was unconscious for three days after you were born. She’d been fast asleep in the back of your Uncle Lucius’s car when they hit that Pontiac right outside the airbase. Your mama went right through the windshield and bounced off the other car. When she woke up three days later, you were already out and named, and all she had was a little scar on her forehead to show what had happened. It was a miracle like they talk about in Bible school, and I know there’s something your mama’s meant to do because of it.” “Oh yeah.” Mama shrugged when I asked her about it. “An’t no doubt I’m meant for greater things—bigger biscuits, thicker gravy. What else could God want for someone like me, huh?” She pulled her mouth so tight I could see her teeth pushing her upper lip, but then she looked into my face and let her air out slowly. “Your aunt is always laying things to God’s hand that he wouldn’t have interest in doing anyway. What’s true is that there was a car accident and you got named before I could say much about it. Ask your aunt why you’re named after her, why don’t you?” On my stepfather’s birthday I always think of my mother. She sits with her coffee and cigarettes, watches the sun come up before she must leave for work. My mama lives with my stepfather still, though she spent most of my childhood swearing that as soon as she had us up and grown, she’d leave him flat. Instead, we left, my sister and I, and on my stepfather’s birthday we neither send presents nor visit. The thing we do—as my sister has told me and as I have told her—is think about Mama. At any moment of the day we know what she will be doing, where she will be, and what she will probably be talking about. We know, not only because her days are as set and predictable as the schedule by which she does the laundry, we know in our bodies. Our mother’s body is with us in its details. She is recreated in each of us; strength of bone and the skin curling over the thick flesh the women of our family have always worn.

• From Trash (1988)

  Mattie had small quick hands and a terror of the speeding shuttles. She kept her lower lip clenched in her teeth while she worked to untangle the bunched and knotted threads. Bo was clumsy and spent most of his time crawling underneath frames to grease the wheels that turned the bobbin belts. Sometimes he would crawl right up under Mattie’s hands and hiss up at her to get her attention. Both of them avoided their father. When their mother came to work in May, they avoided her too, but that was easier. Shirley had been transferred from the carding room to finishing. Safely separated from the rest of the mill by a wire-and-glass wall, Shirley and twelve other women ran up towels, aprons, and simple skirts from the end runs of same-fabric bolts. “You see what I mean?” Shirley’s mouth had grown so tight she seemed to have no lips at all. “Quality always shows, always finds its place. That foreman knows who I am.” Mattie sucked her gums and thought of the women at the mill who stepped aside when her mama passed. Everybody said Shirley Boatwright believed her piss was wine. Everybody said she repeated whatever she heard to the foreman on the second shift. And if Shirley Boatwright pissed wine, then there was no doubt that nasty son of a bitch pissed store-bought whiskey. “When we grow up . . .” Bo started whispering every night, and each child would finish the line in turn. “I’m gonna move to Texas.” “I an’t never gonna eat tripe no more.” “I’m gonna have six little babies and buy them anything they want.” “Gonna treat them good.” “Gonna tell them how pretty they are.” “Gonna love them, love them.” Sometimes, Mattie would let the youngest, Billy, climb up onto her lap. She’d hug and stroke him and quietly sing some gospel song for him, making up the words she couldn’t remember. “When we grow up,” Bo kept whispering. “When we grow up . . .” That too could have been a song. None of them knew what they might not do. Only Mattie had an idea that it was possible to do anything at all. Walking to work every morning, she passed the freight siding where James Gibson pulled barrels off his father’s wagon. The Gibsons ran a lumber business and most of the cane syrup shipped out of Greenville went out in their barrels. If he was there, James stopped and watched her walk by. Every time he saw her pass, he smiled. “I’ve got nine brothers,” he told her one morning. “But not one sister. Lord, I do love to look at pretty girls.”

• From Trash (1988)

  Much later, I would realize that she cleaned her glasses whenever she needed a quiet moment to regain her composure, or more often, just to put everything around her at a distance. Without glasses, the world became a soft blur, but she also behaved as if the glasses were all that made it possible for her to hear. Commotion or insults made while she was cleaning her glasses never seemed to register at all. It was a valuable trick when you were the object of as much ridicule as Shannon Pearl. Christian charity, I knew, would have had me smile at Shannon but avoid her like everyone else. It wasn’t Christian charity that made me give her my seat on the bus, trade my third-grade picture for hers, sit at her kitchen table while her mama tried another trick on her wispy hair—“Egg and cornmeal, that’ll do the trick. We gonna put curls in this hair, darling, or my name an’t Roseanne Pearl”—or follow her to the Bushy Creek Highway Store and share the blue Popsicle she bought us. Not Christian charity, my fascination with her felt more like the restlessness that made me worry the scabs on my ankles. As disgusting as it all seemed, I couldn’t put away the need to scratch my ankles, or hang around what Granny called “that strange and ugly child.” Other people had no such problem. Other than her mother and I, no one could stand Shannon. No amount of Jesus’s grace would make her even marginally acceptable, and people had been known to suddenly lose their lunch from the sight of the clammy sheen of her skin, her skull showing blue- white through the thin, colorless hair and those watery pink eyes flicking back and forth, drifting in and out of focus. “Lord! But that child is ugly.” “It’s a trial, Jesus knows, a trial for her poor parents.” “They should keep her home.” “Now, honey. That’s not like you. Remember, the Lord loves a charitable heart.” “I don’t care. The Lord didn’t intend me to get nauseous in the middle of Sunday services. That child is a shock to the digestion.” Driving from Greenville to Greer on Highway 85 past the Sears, Roebuck warehouse, the airbase, the rolling green-and-red mud hills—a trip we made almost every other day—my stepfather never failed to get us all to sing like some traveling gospel family. WHILE I WAS SLEEPING SOMEBODY TOUCHED ME, WHILE I WAS SLEEPING, OH! SOMEBODY TOUCHED ME . . . MUST’HA BEEN THE HAND OF THE LORD . . . Full-voice, all-out, late-evening gospel music filled the car and shocked the passing traffic. My stepfather never drove fast, and not a one of us could sing worth a damn. My sisters howled and screeched, my mama’s voice broke like she, too, dreamed of Teresa Brewer, and my stepfather made sounds that would have scared cows.

• From Trash (1988)

  But none of them seemed to have seen us, and they all quickly disappeared into the audience. I felt Cass slip her hands around my waist and turned my face into the shelter of her neck. “Where do they all come from?” I was only half serious. There were more women in the audience than I’d seen at any demonstration up at the capitol building. “Oh, these only come out for the music,” Cass laughed. “Just like me.” “You know, culture, women’s culture.” Cass’s friend Billy leaned over us, her hand sliding past my butt on its way to the bottle in Cass’s pocket. “An’t you heard about women’s culture?” I looked down at the black ink tattoos standing out all over her forearms. Billy was wearing her usual uniform—jeans so old and worn they looked like gray sky over the ocean at dawn, and a denim vest buttoned up tight to flatten her breasts. Her arms were bare, and every time she stretched her hand out, I could see white flash under her armpit from skin that was never exposed to the sun. “You mean to tell me we an’t here to listen to rock and roll?” Cass slapped Billy’s shoulder and giggled. It had taken two weeks of teasing and arguing before Cass had agreed to come to this event, and she’d insisted on getting Billy and her girlfriend Roxanne to come, too. “Got to have somebody to talk to,” she’d insisted. Billy had thought the whole notion a hoot. “They don’t know how to dress,” she kept saying, “but some of these chicks an’t bad-looking.” Roxanne just kept biting the lipstick off her lips and kicking her heels against the wall behind us. “I don’t see nothing here anybody’d want to take home with ’em.” She lit a cigarette and gave me a look of pure malevolence. I wondered if she had seen Billy’s hand on my ass. I leaned back into Cass’s embrace and tried to look happily innocent of any interest in Roxanne’s woman. That wasn’t too hard. Cass was just about the sexiest woman in the crowd, big and rough-looking in her worn denim jacket with her black hair cut close around her ears, but with soft brown eyes and a quick smile. She was a good- natured woman who liked me more than she was sure she wanted to. More important, she didn’t seem to feel the need to push her girlfriends around that Billy did. I loved having a woman in my life who prowled like a big old tiger, yet cuddled me close like a kitten licking mama’s ears.

• From Trash (1988)

  He had an ugly scar under his chin and a gruff voice. Mostly, he didn’t talk. He worked at the garage, making do with hand gestures and a stern open face. Only with Jo did he let himself relax. He didn’t drink except for twice a year—each time he asked Jo to marry him, and every time she said no. Then Jay went and got seriously drunk. Jo didn’t let anyone say a word against him, but she also refused to admit he was little Beth’s daddy, though they were as alike as two puppies from the same litter. “To hell with boots,” Jo joked at me over Jay’s shoulder. “Old Jaybird’s all I really need.” She gave him another kiss and a fast tug on his dark blond hair. He wiggled against her happily. I hugged the worn cotton sheet in my arms. I’d hate it if Jo ran Jay off, but maybe she wouldn’t. Sometimes Jo was as tender with Jay as if she intended to keep him around forever. Arlene lived at Castle Estates, an apartment complex off Highway 50 on the way out to the airport. It looked to me like Kentucky Ridge where she was two years ago, and Dunbarton Gardens five years before that. Squat identical two-story structures, dotted with upstairs decks and imitation wood beams set in fields of parking spaces and low unrecognizable blue-green hedges. Castle Estates was known for its big corner turrets and ersatz iron gate decorated with mock silver horseheads. It gleamed like malachite in the Florida sunshine. When I visited last spring, I went over for a day and joked that if I wanted to take a walk, I’d have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find my way back. Arlene didn’t think it was funny. “What are you talking about? No one walks anywhere in central Florida. You want to drown in your own sweat?” In Arlene’s apartments, the air conditioner was always set on high and all the windows sealed. The few times I stayed with her, I’d huddle in her spare room, tucked under her old Bewitched sleeping bag, my fingers clutching the fabric under Elizabeth Montgomery’s pink-and-cream chin. Out in the front room the television droned nondenominational rock and roll on the VH-1 music channel. Beneath the backbeat, I heard the steady thunk of the mechanical ratchets on the stair-stepper. Since she turned thirty, Arlene spends her insomniac nights climbing endlessly to music she hated when it was first released. The night before we moved Mama into MacArthur, the thunking refrain went on too long. I made myself lie still as long as I could, but eventually I sneaked out to check on Arlene.

• From Trash (1988)

  Jo wouldn’t say, but Mama swore Pammy’s daddy was a kid barely out of junior high. “Your sister likes them young,” she complained. “Too young.” Jay was a vet. He had an ugly scar under his chin and a gruff voice. Mostly, he didn’t talk. He worked at the garage, making do with hand gestures and a stern open face. Only with Jo did he let himself relax. He didn’t drink except for twice a year—each time he asked Jo to marry him, and every time she said no. Then Jay went and got seriously drunk. Jo didn’t let anyone say a word against him, but she also refused to admit he was little Beth’s daddy, though they were as alike as two puppies from the same litter. “To hell with boots,” Jo joked at me over Jay’s shoulder. “Old Jaybird’s all I really need.” She gave him another kiss and a fast tug on his dark blond hair. He wiggled against her happily. I hugged the worn cotton sheet in my arms. I’d hate it if Jo ran Jay off, but maybe she wouldn’t. Sometimes Jo was as tender with Jay as if she intended to keep him around forever. Arlene lived at Castle Estates, an apartment complex off Highway 50 on the way out to the airport. It looked to me like Kentucky Ridge where she was two years ago, and Dunbarton Gardens five years before that. Squat identical two-story structures, dotted with upstairs decks and imitation wood beams set in fields of parking spaces and low unrecognizable blue-green hedges. Castle Estates was known for its big corner turrets and ersatz iron gate decorated with mock silver horseheads. It gleamed like malachite in the Florida sunshine . When I visited last spring, I went over for a day and joked that if I wanted to take a walk, I’d have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find my way back. Arlene didn’t think it was funny. “What are you talking about? No one walks anywhere in central Florida. You want to drown in your own sweat?” In Arlene’s apartments, the air conditioner was always set on high and all the windows sealed. The few times I stayed with her, I’d huddle in her spare room, tucked under her old Bewitched sleeping bag, my fingers clutching the fabric under Elizabeth Montgomery’s pink-and-cream chin. Out in the front room the television droned nondenominational rock and roll on the VH-1 music channel. Beneath the backbeat, I heard the steady thunk of the mechanical ratchets on the stair-stepper. Since she turned thirty, Arlene spends her insomniac nights climbing endlessly to music she hated when it was first released.

• From Trash (1988)

  Paula sips her wine and looks toward the clock over the bar. She wipes her mouth with her napkin and carefully avoids my eyes. “I’m gonna be late, you know.” “Oh?” Margaret looks up to the clock on the wall and jumps in her seat. “Oh, yeah. I’ve got to get home, too.” She finishes her margarita in a gulp but doesn’t move. “Look, do you think maybe we could hold a rent party for Jackie, get her some money to fix her place back up?” Paula looks impatient and starts gathering up her stuff. “Oh, I don’t think we should do that. Not while they’re still in arbitration. And anyway, we have so many important things we have to raise money for this spring—community things.” “Jackie’s a part of the community,” I hear myself say. “Well, of course.” Paula stands up. “We all are.” The look she gives me makes me wonder if she really believes that, but she’s gone before I can say anything else. “I want to do something,” Margaret tells me. It looks like there are tears in her eyes. “I’m tired of not doing anything when these things happen, just talking about how horrible it all is and then going on with our lives. I want to call Jackie, or maybe even Fawn and Pris.” “No, not them.” I get a cold chill down my back, imagining Fawn and Pris walking in on Margaret’s mama some day. “That rent party idea is a good notion. I’ll give Jackie a call, and you and I can set it up. It’ll be like old times.” Margaret’s face relaxes. She stands up, but then stops and leans across the table to kiss me on the cheek. “Old times,” she laughs. “I’ve had some of my best times with you, you know.” “I know.” I watch Margaret walk away and shake my head. Margaret has gotten so skinny, she almost has no ass at all anymore. When I first met her she looked just like a Botticelli virgin, all lush and pink and full. I’d flirted with her for two years until she would go to bed with me, but then we’d spent the night in giggles. “Get serious,” I’d kept insisting, but neither of us could. After a while we’d given up the idea of sex and just relaxed into cuddling and telling stories. Once every few years we try it again, but with the same result. “Maybe it’s how we smell to each other,” Margaret once suggested. “I read about that somewhere. Or maybe we just know each other too well, huh?” I’d been laughing so hard at the time, I hadn’t been able to reply. I don’t really care anymore what it is that makes us so unsuited as lovers. We’ve become the best of friends. Not like Paula and me: we’ve been snipping at each other ever since we stopped being lovers.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The woman was a kindly soul, and after leaving her for a while in the cottage whilst she quickly gathered up her nets, she returned and wrapped her from head to foot in her own cloak, then took her with her to Susa. And on arriving in the town, she said: ‘Gostanza, I am going to take you to the house of a very kind Saracen lady, who employs me regularly on various errands. She is elderly and tender-hearted: I shall commend you to her as warmly as I possibly can, and I am quite certain that she will gladly take you in and treat you as a daughter. Once you are under her roof, you are to serve her as loyally as you can, so as to win and retain her favour until such time as God may send you better fortune.’ Carapresa was as good as her word. When the lady, who was getting on in years, had heard her story, she looked into Gostanza’s eyes, burst into tears, gathered her in her arms and kissed her on the forehead. Then she led her by the hand into the house, where she lived with certain other women, isolated from all male company. The women worked with their hands in various ways, producing a number of different objects made of silk, palm, and leather, and within a few days, the girl, having learned to make some of these objects, was sharing the work with the others. Her benefactress and the other ladies were remarkably kind and affectionate towards her, and before very long they had taught her to speak their language. Now, whilst the girl was living in Susa, having long been given up as dead by her family, it happened that the King of Tunis, whose name was Mulay Abd Allah, was threatened by a powerful young grandee, who came from Granada, and who claimed that the kingdom of Tunis belonged to him. And having assembled an enormous army, he marched against the King to drive him from the realm. Tidings of these events came to the ears of Martuccio Gomito as he lay in prison, and as he was well versed in the language of the Saracens, on learning that the King of Tunis was making strenuous efforts to defend himself, he said to one of the men who were guarding him and his companions: ‘If I could speak to the King, I am sure I could advise him how to win this war of his.’ The gaoler reported Martuccio’s words to his superior, who immediately passed them on to the King. The King therefore ordered Martuccio to be brought before him, and asked him what advice he had in mind.

• From Trash (1988)

  She stepped around me and took her place on the other side of the bed. Jo dropped her head forward. I let my breath out slowly. Mama’s hand in mine was loose. Her mouth had gone slack, though it seemed to quiver now and then, and when it did I felt the movement in her fingers. Across from me Arlene put her right hand on Mama’s shoulder. She didn’t flinch when Mama’s bloody left eye rolled to the side. The good eye stared straight up, wide with profound terror. Arlene began a soft humming then, as if she were starting some lullaby. Mama’s terrified eye blinked and then blinked again. In the depths of that pupil I seemed to see little starbursts, tiny desperate explosions of light. Arlene’s hum never paused. She ran her hand down and took Mama’s fingers into her own. Slowly, some of the terror in Mama’s face eased. The straining muscles of her neck softened. Arlene’s hum dropped to a lower register. It resounded off the top of her hollow throat like an oboe or a French horn shaped entirely of flesh. No, I thought. Arlene is what she has always wanted to be, the one we dare not hate. I wanted Arlene’s song to go on forever. I wanted to be part of it. I leaned forward and opened my mouth, but the sound that came out of me was ugly and fell back into my throat. Arlene never even looked over at me. She kept her eyes on Mama’s bloody pupil. I knew then. Arlene would go on as long as it took, making that sound in her throat like some bird creature, the one that comes to sing hope when there is no hope left. Strength was in Arlene’s song, peace its meter, love the bass note. Mama’s eye swung in lazy accompaniment to that song—from me to Jo, and around again to Arlene. Her hands gripped ours, while her mouth hung open. From the base of the bed, Jo reached up and laid her hands on Mama’s legs. Mama looked down once, then the good eye turned back to our bird and clung there. My eyes followed hers. I watched the thrush that beat in Arlene’s breast. I heard its stubborn tuneless song. Mama’s whole attention remained fixed on that song until the pupil of the right eye finally filled up with blood and blacked out. Even then, we held on. We held Mama’s stilled shape between us. We held her until she set us free. This page constitutes an extension of the copyright page. “Deciding to Live.” Writing Women’s Lives: An Anthology of Autobiographical Narratives by Twentieth-Century Women Writers, edited by Susan Cahill. HarperPerennial, 1994. “Demon Lover.” Off Our Backs: A Women’s Liberation Bi-Weekly. Fiction/Poetry Supplement, July 1979. “Gospel Song.” Downhome: An Anthology of Southern Women Writers, edited by Susie Mee. Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1995. “Her Thighs.” The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, edited by Joan Nestle. Alyson Publications, 1992.

• From Trash (1988)

  Jay was a vet. He had an ugly scar under his chin and a gruff voice. Mostly, he didn’t talk. He worked at the garage, making do with hand gestures and a stern open face. Only with Jo did he let himself relax. He didn’t drink except for twice a year—each time he asked Jo to marry him, and every time she said no. Then Jay went and got seriously drunk. Jo didn’t let anyone say a word against him, but she also refused to admit he was little Beth’s daddy, though they were as alike as two puppies from the same litter. “To hell with boots,” Jo joked at me over Jay’s shoulder. “Old Jaybird’s all I really need.” She gave him another kiss and a fast tug on his dark blond hair. He wiggled against her happily. I hugged the worn cotton sheet in my arms. I’d hate it if Jo ran Jay off, but maybe she wouldn’t. Sometimes Jo was as tender with Jay as if she intended to keep him around forever. Arlene lived at Castle Estates, an apartment complex off Highway 50 on the way out to the airport. It looked to me like Kentucky Ridge where she was two years ago, and Dunbarton Gardens five years before that. Squat identical two-story structures, dotted with upstairs decks and imitation wood beams set in fields of parking spaces and low unrecognizable blue-green hedges. Castle Estates was known for its big corner turrets and ersatz iron gate decorated with mock silver horseheads. It gleamed like malachite in the Florida sunshine. When I visited last spring, I went over for a day and joked that if I wanted to take a walk, I’d have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find my way back. Arlene didn’t think it was funny. “What are you talking about? No one walks anywhere in central Florida. You want to drown in your own sweat?” In Arlene’s apartments, the air conditioner was always set on high and all the windows sealed. The few times I stayed with her, I’d huddle in her spare room, tucked under her old Bewitched sleeping bag, my fingers clutching the fabric under Elizabeth Montgomery’s pink-and-cream chin. Out in the front room the television droned nondenominational rock and roll on the VH-1 music channel. Beneath the backbeat, I heard the steady thunk of the mechanical ratchets on the stair-stepper. Since she turned thirty, Arlene spends her insomniac nights climbing endlessly to music she hated when it was first released.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "Permit me to say that I have never had any thing to do either with the affair of Reuchlin or with the cause of Luther. I have never taken any interest in the Cabbala or the Talmud. Those virulent contentions between Reuchlin and the party of Hochstraten have been extremely distasteful to me. Luther is a perfect stranger to me, and I have never had time to read his books beyond merely glancing over a few pages. If he has written well, no praise is due to me; if not, it would be unjust to hold me responsible .... Luther had written to me in a very Christian tone, as I thought; and I replied, advising him incidentally not to write any thing against the Roman Pontiff, nor to encourage a proud or intolerant spirit, but to preach the gospel out of a pure heart .... I am neither Luther’s accuser, nor advocate, nor judge; his heart I would not presume to judge—for that is always a matter of extreme difficulty—still less would I condemn. And yet if I were to defend him, as a good man, which even his enemies admit him to be; as one put upon his trial, a duty which the laws permit even to sworn judges; as one persecuted—which would be only in accordance with the dictates of humanity—and trampled on by the bounden enemies of learning, who merely use him as a handle for the accomplishment of their designs, where would be the blame, so long as I abstained from mixing myself up with his cause ? In short, I think it is my duty as a Christian to support Luther in this sense, that, if he is innocent, I should not wish him to be crushed by a set of malignant villains; if he is in error, I would rather see him put right than destroyed: for thus I should be acting in accordance with the example of Christ, who, as the prophet witnesseth, quencheth not the smoking flax, nor breaketh the bruised reed." To Pope Leo X., from Louvain, Sept. 13, 1520 (three months after the excommunication of Luther, June 15): –

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Sin, therefore, is the mother of servitude and first cause of man’s subjection to man; yet this does not come to pass except by the judgment of God, with whom there is no injustice, and who knows how to adjust the various punishments to the merits of the offenders .... The apostle exhorts the servants to obey their masters and to serve them ex animo, with good will; to the end that, if they cannot be made free from their masters, they may make their servitude a freedom to themselves by serving them not in deceitful fear, but in faithful love, until iniquity be overpassed, and all man’s principality and power be annulled, and God be all in all.204 As might be expected, after the conversion of the emperors, and of rich and noble families, who owned most slaves, cases of emancipation became more frequent.205 The biographer of St. Samson Xenodochos, a contemporary of Justinian, says of him: "His troop of slaves he would not keep, still less exercise over his fellow servants a lordly authority; he preferred magnanimously to let them go free, and gave them enough for the necessaries of life."206 Salvianus, a Gallic presbyter of the fifth century, says that slaves were emancipated daily.207 On the other hand, very much was done in the church to prevent the increase of slavery; especially in the way of redeeming prisoners, to which sometimes the gold and silver vessels of churches were applied. But we have no reliable statistics for comparing even approximately the proportion of the slaves to the free population at the close of the sixth century with the proportion in the former period. We infer then, that the Christianity of the Nicene and post-Nicene age, though naturally conservative and decidedly opposed to social revolution and violent measures of reform, yet in its inmost instincts and ultimate tendencies favored the universal freedom of man, and, by elevating the slave to spiritual equality with the master, and uniformly treating him as capable of the same virtues, blessings, and rewards, has placed the hateful institution of human bondage in the way of gradual amelioration and final extinction. This result, however, was not reached in Europe till many centuries after our period, nor by the influence of the church alone, but with the help of various economical and political causes, the unprofitableness of slavery, especially in more northern latitudes, the new relations introduced by the barbarian conquests, the habits of the Teutonic tribes settled within the Roman empire, the attachment of the rural slave to the soil, and the change of the slave into the serf, who was as immovable as the soil, and thus, in some degree independent on the caprice and despotism of his master. 5. The poor and unfortunate in general, above all the widows and orphans, prisoners and sick, who were so terribly neglected in heathen times, now drew the attention of the imperial legislators.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The Abbot, on hearing his fine, precise way of talking and observing his manners more closely, judged him to be a gentleman despite the lowly nature of his past occupation, and became even more enraptured with him. Being filled with compassion by the tale of Alessandro’s misfortunes, he began to console him in tones of deep affection, telling him not to lose hope; for if he kept his courage, God would not only restore him to the position from which he had been toppled by Fortune, but set him even higher. The Abbot then said that he too was making for Tuscany, and invited Alessandro to join his party. Alessandro thanked him for his kind words, and declared his readiness to do whatever he was asked. So the Abbot rode on, becoming more and more fascinated by what he saw of Alessandro. And after a few days, they arrived at a small town, not very richly endowed with inns, where the Abbot wished to put up for the night. Alessandro persuaded the Abbot to dismount at a place run by a very good friend of his, and saw that he was given a room in the most comfortable part of the house. By this time, Alessandro, being a very experienced traveller, had become a sort of major-domo to the Abbot, and he searched high and low to find accommodation in the town for the whole of the Abbot’s retinue, lodging some in one place, some in another. By the time he returned to the inn, the Abbot had supped, the hour was very late, and everyone had gone off to bed. He asked the landlord where he could sleep, and the landlord replied: ‘I really don’t know. As you can see, the place is completely full, and my family and I are having to sleep on benches. But in the Abbot’s room there are some cupboards for storing grain. If you like, I’ll show you where they are and fix you up some sort of bed in there to sleep the night on as best you can.’ ‘How am I to squeeze into the Abbot’s room?’ said Alessandro. ‘You know how tiny it is. There wasn’t even any space in there for a single one of his monks to lie on the floor. If only I had noticed those cupboards when the Abbot’s bed-curtains were drawn! His monks could have slept in those, and I could have lodged where the monks are staying.’ ‘Well, that’s how matters stand,’ said the landlord. ‘Once you resign yourself to it, you’ll sleep like a top in there. The Abbot is asleep, and the curtains are drawn in front of his bed. I’ll slip in quietly, and put down a nice mattress for you to sleep on.’ When he saw that it could all be arranged without disturbing the Abbot, Alessandro fell in with the scheme, and, making as little noise as possible, he bedded down where the landlord had suggested.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Next morning, the kinsfolk of the two young men, hearing the truth of the case and knowing the ill that might ensue thereof for the imprisoned youths, should Giacomino choose to do that which he reasonably might, repaired to him and prayed him with soft words to have regard, not so much to the affront which he had suffered from the little sense of the young men as to the love and goodwill which they believed he bore to themselves who thus besought him, submitting themselves and the young men who had done the mischief to any amends it should please him take. Giacomino, who had in his time seen many things and was a man of sense, answered briefly, 'Gentlemen, were I in mine own country, as I am in yours, I hold myself so much your friend that neither in this nor in otherwhat would I do aught save insomuch as it should please you; besides, I am the more bounden to comply with your wishes in this matter, inasmuch as you have therein offended against yourselves, for that the girl in question is not, as belike many suppose, of Cremona nor of Pavia; nay, she is a Faentine,[277] albeit neither I nor she nor he of whom I had her might ever learn whose daughter she was; wherefore, concerning that whereof you pray me, so much shall be done by me as you yourselves shall enjoin me.' [Footnote 277: _i.e._ a native of Faenza (_Faentina_).] The gentlemen, hearing this, marvelled and returning thanks to Giacomino for his gracious answer, prayed him that it would please him tell them how she came to his hands and how he knew her to be a Faentine; whereto quoth he, 'Guidotto da Cremona, who was my friend and comrade, told me, on his deathbed, that, when this city was taken by the Emperor Frederick and everything given up to pillage, he entered with his companions into a house and found it full of booty, but deserted by its inhabitants, save only this girl, who was then some two years old or thereabouts and who, seeing him mount the stairs, called him "father"; whereupon, taking compassion upon her, he carried her off with him to Fano, together with all that was in the house, and dying there, left her to me with what he had, charging me marry her in due time and give her to her dowry that which had been hers. Since she hath come to marriageable age, I have not yet found an occasion of marrying her to my liking, though I would gladly do it, rather than that another mischance like that of yesternight should betide me on her account.'

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Of all those who sought them out that summer, the most cordial were Lady Massey and her daughter. Lady Massey was a delicate, elderly woman who, in spite of poor health and en- croaching years, was untiring in her search for amusement — it amused her to make friends with celebrated people. She was rest- less, self-indulgent and not over sincere, a creature of whims and ephemeral fancies; yet for Stephen and Mary she appeared to evince a liking which was more than just on the surface. She would ask them up to her sitting-room, would want them to sit with her in the garden, and would sometimes insist upon com- munal meals, inviting them to dine at her table. Agnes, the daugh- ter, a jolly, red-haired girl, had taken an immediate fancy to Mary, and their friendship ripened with celerity, as is often the way dur- ing idle summers. As for Lady Massey she petted Mary, and moth- ered her as though she were a child, and soon she was mothering Stephen also. She would say: ‘ I seem to have found two new children,’ and Stephen, who was in the mood to feel touched, grew quite at- tached to this ageing woman. Agnes was engaged to a Colonel Fitzmaurice who would probably join them that autumn in Paris. 424 THE WELL OF LONELINESS If he did so they must all foregather at once, she insisted — he greatly admired Stephen’s book and had written that he was longing to meet her. But Lady Massey went further than this in her enthusiastic proffers of friendship — Stephen and Mary must stay with her in Cheshire; she was going to give a house party at Branscombe Court for Christmas; they must certainly come to her for Christmas. Mary, who seemed elated at the prospect, was for ever dis- cussing this visit with Stephen: * What sort of clothes shall I need, do you think? Agnes says it’s going to be quite a big party. I sup- pose Ill! want a few new evening dresses? ° And one day she in- quired: ‘ Stephen, when you were younger, did you ever go to Ascot or Goodwood? °

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Collins stared: ‘Good gracious, whatever’s the matter? Whatever have you been doing, Miss Stephen?’ Then Stephen said, not without pardonable pride: ‘I’ve been getting a housemaid’s knee, like you, Collins!’ And as Collins looked stupid and rather bewildered—‘You see, I wanted to share your suffering. I’ve prayed quite a lot, but Jesus won’t listen, so I’ve got to get housemaid’s knee my own way—I can’t wait any longer for Jesus!’ ‘Oh, hush!’ murmured Collins, thoroughly shocked. ‘You mustn’t say such things: it’s wicked, Miss Stephen.’ But she smiled a little in spite of herself, then she suddenly hugged the child warmly. All the same, Collins plucked up her courage that evening and spoke to the nurse about Stephen. ‘Her knees was all red and swollen, Mrs. Bingham. Did ever you know such a queer fish as she is? Praying about my knee too. She’s a caution! And now if she isn’t trying to get one! Well, if that’s not real loving then I don’t know nothing.’ And Collins began to laugh weakly. After this Mrs. Bingham rose in her might, and the self-imposed torture was forcibly stopped. Collins, on her part, was ordered to lie, if Stephen continued to question. So Collins lied nobly: ‘It’s better, Miss Stephen, it must be your praying—you see Jesus heard you. I expect He was sorry to see your poor knees—I know as I was when I saw them!’ ‘Are you telling me the truth?’ Stephen asked her, still doubting, still mindful of that first day of Love’s young dream. ‘Why, of course I’m telling you the truth, Miss Stephen.’ And with this Stephen had to be content. 3Collins became more affectionate after the incident of the housemaid’s knee; she could not but feel a new interest in the child whom she and the cook had now labelled as ‘queer,’ and Stephen basked in much surreptitious petting, and her love for Collins grew daily.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The band struck up a onestep. Dickie still danced, but with Pat, for Wanda was now beyond dancing. But Stephen would not dance, not among these men, and she laid a restraining hand upon Mary. Despite her sense of their terrible affliction, she could not dance in this place with Mary. A youth passed with a friend and the couple were blocked by the press of dancers in front of her table. He bent forward, this youth, until his face was almost on a level with Stephen’s—a grey, drug-marred face with a mouth that trembled incessantly. ‘Ma sœur,’ he whispered. For a moment she wanted to strike that face with her naked fist, to obliterate it. Then all of a sudden she perceived the eyes, and the memory came of a hapless creature, distracted, bleeding from bursting lungs, hopelessly pursued, glancing this way, then that, as though looking for something, some refuge, some hope—and the thought: ‘It’s looking for God who made it.’ Stephen shivered and stared at her tightly clenched hands; the nails whitened her flesh. ‘Mon frère,’ she muttered. And now some one was making his way through the crowd, a quiet, tawny man with the eyes of the Hebrew; Adolphe Blanc, the gentle and learned Jew, sat down in Dickie’s seat beside Stephen. And he patted her knee as though she were young, very young and in great need of consolation. ‘I have seen you for quite a long time, Miss Gordon. I’ve been sitting just over there by the window.’ Then he greeted the others, but the greeting over he appeared to forget their very existence; he had come, it seemed, only to talk to Stephen. He said: ‘This place—these poor men, they have shocked you. I’ve been watching you in between the dances. They are terrible, Miss Gordon, because they are those who have fallen but have not risen again—there is surely no sin so great for them, so unpardonable as the sin of despair; yet as surely you and I can forgive. . . .’ She was silent, not knowing what she should answer. But he went on, in no way deterred by her silence. He spoke softly, as though for her ears alone, and yet as a man might speak when consumed by the flame of some urgent and desperate mission. ‘I am glad that you have come to this place, because those who have courage have also a duty.’ She nodded without comprehending his meaning.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Mrs. Breakspeare sent for Stephen one morning; she was sitting at a Louis Quinze writing-table which had somehow survived the wreck of the château and was now in her gloomy, official dug-out. Her right hand reposed on an ordnance map, she looked like a very maternal general. The widow of an officer killed in the war, and the mother of two large sons and three daughters, she had led the narrow, conventional life that is common to women in military stations. Yet all the while she must been filling her subconscious reservoir with knowledge, for she suddenly blossomed forth as leader with a fine understanding of human nature. So now she looked over her ample bosom not unkindly, but rather thoughtfully at Stephen. ‘Sit down, Miss Gordon. It’s about Llewellyn, whom I asked you to take on as second driver. I think the time has now arrived when she ought to stand more on her own in the Unit. She must take her chance like every one else, and not cling quite so close—don’t misunderstand me, I’m most grateful for all you’ve done for the girl—but of course you are one of our finest drivers, and fine driving counts for a great deal these days, it may mean life or death, as you yourself know. And—well—it seems scarcely fair to the others that Mary should always go out with you. No, it certainly is not quite fair to the others.’ Stephen said: ‘Do you mean that she’s to go out with every one in turn—with Thurloe for instance?’ And do what she would to appear indifferent, she could not quite keep her voice from trembling. Mrs. Breakspeare nodded: ‘That’s what I do mean.’ Then she said rather slowly: ‘These are strenuous times, and such times are apt to breed many emotions which are purely fictitious, purely mushroom growths that spring up in a night and have no roots at all, except in our imaginations. But I’m sure you’ll agree with me, Miss Gordon, in thinking it our duty to discourage anything in the nature of an emotional friendship, such as I fancy Mary Llewellyn is on the verge of feeling for you. It’s quite natural of course, a kind of reaction, but not wise—no, I cannot think it wise. It savours a little too much of the schoolroom and might lead to ridicule in the Unit. Your position is far too important for that; I look upon you as my second in command.’ Stephen said quietly: ‘I quite understand. I’ll go at once and speak to Blakeney about altering Mary Llewellyn’s time-sheet.’ ‘Yes, do, if you will,’ agreed Mrs. Breakspeare; then she stooped and studied her ordnance map, without looking again at Stephen.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "Grace and peace in Christ, my dear little boy. I am pleased to see that thou learnest thy lessons well, and prayest diligently. Go on thus, my dear boy, and when I come home, I will bring you a fine fairing. I know of a pretty, delightful garden, where are merry children that have gold frocks, and gather nice apples and pears, cherries and plums under the trees, and sing and jump and are happy; they also ride on fine little horses with gold bridles and silver saddles. I asked the man who owns the garden, who the children were. He said, ’These are the children who love to pray and to learn, and are good.’ Then I said, ’Dear man, I also have a son who is called Hans Luther. May he not come to this garden and eat such pretty apples and pears, and ride on such fine little horses, and play with these children?’ The man said, ’If he likes to pray and to learn, and is pious, he may come to the garden, and Lippus595 and Jost596 may come also; and if they all come together, they shall have pipes and drums and lutes and fiddles, and they shall dance and shoot with little crossbows.’ "Then he showed me a smooth lawn in the garden laid out for dancing, and there hung the golden pipes and drums and crossbows. But it was still early, and the children had not dined; therefore I could not wait for the dance. So I said, ’Dear sir, I will go straight home and write all this to my little boy; but he has an aunt, Lene,597 that he must bring with him.’ And the man answered, ’So it shall be; go and write as you say.’ "Therefore, dear little boy Johnny, learn and pray with a good heart, and tell Lippus and Jost to do the same, and then you will all come to the garden together. And now I commend you to Almighty God. Give my love to aunt Lene, and give her a kiss for me. Anno 1530. Thy loving father, "Martinus Luther"

• From The Decameron (1353)

  I say, then, that there dwelt once in the city of Fano two Lombards, whereof the one was called Guidotto da Cremona and the other Giacomino da Pavia, both men advanced in years, who had in their youth been well nigh always soldiers and engaged in deeds of arms. Guidotto, being at the point of death and having nor son nor other kinsmen nor friend in whom he trusted more than in Giacomino, left him a little daughter he had, of maybe ten years of age, and all that he possessed in the world, and after having bespoken him at length of his affairs, he died. In those days it befell that the city of Faenza, which had been long in war and ill case, was restored to somewhat better estate and permission to sojourn there was freely conceded to all who had a mind to return thither; wherefore Giacomino, who had abidden there otherwhile and had a liking for the place, returned thither with all his good and carried with him the girl left him by Guidotto, whom he loved and entreated as his own child.