The Precipice, page 149 by Elia W. Peattie
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moderate? I love suffrage because it gives me something to care about and to work for. The last generation has destroyed pretty much all of the theology, hasn't it? Service of man is all there is left--particularly that branch of it known as the service of woman. Isn't that what all of the poets and playwrights and novelists are writing about? Isn't that the most interesting thing in the world at present? You've all urged me to go into it, haven't you? Very well, I have. But I can't stay in it if I'm to be tepid. You mustn't expect me to modify my utterance and cut down my climaxes. I've got to make a hot propaganda of the thing. I want the exhilaration of martyrdom--though I'm not keen for the discomforts of it. In other words, dear lady, because you are judicious, don't expect me to be. I don't want to be judicious--yet. I want to be fervid."
"You are a dear girl," said the elder woman, "but you are an egotist, as of course you know."
"If I had been a modest violet by a mossy stone," laughed Kate, "should I have taken up this work?"
"I'm free to confess that you would not," said the other, checking a sigh as if she despaired of bringing this excited girl down to the earth. "Yet I am bound to say--" She hesitated and Kate took up the word.
"I do know--I really understand," she cried contritely. "You are not an egotist at all, dear lady. Though you have held many positions of honor, you have never thought of yourself. Your sacrifices have been bona fide. You who are so delicate and tender have done things which men might have shrunk from. I know what you mean by sincerity, and I am aware that you have it completely and steadily, whereas I have more enthusiasm than is good either for myself or the cause. But you wouldn't want me to form myself on you, would you now? Temperament is just as much a fact as physique. I've got to dramatize woman's disadvantages if I am to preach on the subject. Though I really think there are tragedies of womanhood which none could