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Oh yes, there had been beauty here, & life here38 &Beauty was gone, & life was ended. & it was gone, & it was ended;
& Mrs. MacNab yet the living with their mops & their dusters
let issue on the grave of beauty, a this incongruous song, of the
twisted the crazed & the thwarted, who, one would think had
no reason to desire life, no gift to bestow, or [?]fire39 to take; & yet
as they lurch & leer, through the lurching & leering, at once
.as perform the [?]obsequious song sing the dirge elegy & they let rise up intertwined
with the dirge & the elegythere twined in
 with it this itself an incorrigible hope; a40
hope founded, in the case of Mrs. MacNab, certainly not on
reason, not on
.a hopenot founded on reason, not founded surely on satisfaction (for
she was the butt of the town[?]& outcast ) - [?]had41 but founded perhaps (here
as her wits were half crazed, all conjecture must be
distorted) (her cheeks were yellow & old) on the dumb persistency of the fountain of life, &
on moments (say they came obscurely, here & there, at the
wash tub, in with her children who had gone now to
America) of which breathed of illumination, when with the
breeze was in the west & the clouds white in the sun, &
standing at her & she & it was some the gift of life
.whatever it may be:

she understood what, in moments of high great emotion
great poets have said whatever it may be that then
appears to sweeten labour, & consolatory, & com
& beneficent42; it seemed better to live; it seemed as if
a channel were tunnelled in the heart of obscurity, &
the meaning & through the rift they made &
there issued peace, enough, when the grind & the
grit returned, to sweeten that barrenness; for
strangely as in her sidelong glance there was,
account for it as one may, the forgiveness of an
compl understanding mind.
.to make her lean
her heart against the
thorn & if she was
infinitely43 mournful,
& dirgelike as she[?]44
set in he |her| face

       How Mrs. MacNab, of all people, had come to
tolerate & g to forgive, who shall say – Mrs. MacNab, the

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