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Then, no doubt, the innocent charms and rhyming prayers of the old religion were regarded as incantations, and twisted into evidence against miserable beldames who mumbled over in their dotage what they had learned at their mother's knee. It is plain, at least, that this was one of Agnes Simpson's crimes.
The dump of boots outside, the croaking of old beldames from attic to attic, the dull murmur of morning, unnerved him, and, dozing, he slumped in his chair, his brain, overladen with sound and color, working intolerably over the imagery that stacked it. In this restless dream of his he was one of a thousand groaning bodies crushed near the sun, a helpless bridge for the strong-eyed Apollo.
"In none of the slave States which I have visited," says Professor Stowe, "have I ever seen negro women drudging in such toilsome out of door labors, as fall to the lot of the laboring women in Germany and in France." "Haggish beldames fill all our markets," says Chevalier, "and three-fourths of our fields."
The doctor nodded. Messner's gray eyes were mildly curious as he went on: "That was to be expected two sides to the shield. Living in Berkeley I only got the one side. She was a great deal in San Francisco, it seems." "Some coffee, please," Haythorne said. The woman refilled his mug, at the same time breaking into light laughter. "You're gossiping like a pair of beldames," she chided them.
It is impossible for us to realize the hideous ferocity of such a state of society as this; the women were as bad as the men, furious beldames, dangerous as wild beasts, without pity, without shame, without remorse; and finding life so cheerless, so hopeless, so very very dark and miserable, that when there was nothing to be gained by killing any one else they killed themselves.
The women were cooking oatmeal on iron girdles, but the fire burned smokily, and the cake I got was no better than dough. They were a disjaskit lot, with tousled hair and pinched faces, in which shone hungry eyes. Most were barefoot, and all but two three were ancient beldames who should have been at home in the chimney corner.
The critic at once goes on to state that in his opinion this description, drawn by the person who ought to know best, is, in the main, a correct one. What better account could you expect, he asks, of a man who put faith in dreams and portents and auguries; who believed fully in the utterances of crazy beldames, who saw ghosts, and who believed he was attended by a familiar demon?
Zuloaga relates that the beldames screeched and fought in his studio when he posed them. You exclaim while looking at them: "How now, you secret black and midnight hags!" Hell hovers hard by; each witch of the unholy trio has the evil eye. As a painter of dwarfs Zuloaga has not been surpassed by any one but Velasquez.
Nine times he counted the tinkling sound. "The ninth day, the ninth day, and the king shall take Ely," said one in a cracked scream, rising, and shaking her fist toward the isle. Hereward was more than half-minded to have put his dagger the only weapon which he had into the two old beldames on the spot. But the fear of an outcry kept him still.
He showed me the chinks in the sides through which the kirk seemed "all in a bleeze," and he pointed out the identical place on the wall where Old Nick was presiding over the midnight revels of the beldames when "Louder and louder the piper blew, Swifter and swifter the dancers flew." After the old man had finished his recital, I asked him whether he had ever seen the poet.
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