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The play is full of striking pictures, groups in light and shade, pictorial appeals to terror and pity. The fault of the drama lies in the uncertain conception of the characters, and particularly of that of the Matriarch herself. Inger is described to us as the Mother of the Norwegian People, as the one strong, inflexible and implacable brain moving in a world of depressed and irritated men.
"This'll be good-by ter Brother Abe," Aunt Nancy had sniffed when the news came over the telephone the day before; and though Miss Abigail had assured her that she knew Abe would come to see them real often, the matriarch still failed to be consoled. "Hain't you noticed, gals," she persisted, "that thar hain't been a death in the house sence we took him in?
How’s any one to know whether you got a figure or not, in a thing that never hits you anywhere?" questioned the matriarch, not without a touch of pride anent her own fine proportions. "You really ought to have a shirt-waist, Mrs. Yellett. You’ve no idea of the comfort of them, till you’ve worn them." "I don’t see but I’ll have to come to it."
It’s all gone, and I can’t have you sick on my hands." But Mr. Yellett continued to splutter and flare and use violent language, whereupon the matriarch went into the tent and returned with a drink of condensed-milk and water, "to wash down the nasty taste," she told him, soothingly.
A picture of the period displays the royal family collected together in one of the great rooms at Windsor a crowded company of more than fifty persons, with the imperial matriarch in their midst. Over them all she ruled with a most potent sway. The small concerns of the youngest aroused her passionate interest; and the oldest she treated as if they were children still.
"Cap'n Rose," the matriarch proceeded, as in the earnestness of her indignation she arose, trembling, in her seat and stood with her palsied and shaking hands on the board, "Cap'n Rose, yer conduct with this here Mis' Betsey Ann Blossom has been somethin' reediculous! It's been disgraceful!"
Archer entirely approved of family solidarity, and one of the qualities he most admired in the Mingotts was their resolute championship of the few black sheep that their blameless stock had produced. No, he felt as old Sillerton Jackson felt; he did not think the Mingotts would have tried it on! Manson Mingott, the Matriarch of the line, would dare. Old Mrs.
Yellett," she said, with her disarming smile, "except that there is not quite enough to go around." The matriarch had the air of gathering herself together for something really worth while. Then she tossed off: "’’Tain’t always the quality of the grub that confers the flavor, but sometimes the scarcity thereof.’"
The matriarch had sustained a breakdown, and arrived, in consequence, when the dance was half over, but she was philosophical, as always, in the face of misfortune, and loudly attested her pleasure in the renowned pedal feats of her partner, Costigan. Behind came Mary Carmichael, looking brown and happy.
There be Lovelaces and Cagliostros and Calibans; but prithee, good sir, let us judge our kind by the nobler instead of the baser standards. Josephs and St. Anthonys are not plentiful I grant you; but neither are such brutish husbands as those you denounce. Love and poetry and chivalry still have an abiding-place in the heart of man, and the mother and matriarch of this triune is woman. Prof.
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