Successful mercantile women,
seeing the furnace glare of the South Chicago steel mills
flaring a sullen red against the lowering sky, do not draw a
disquieting mental picture of men toiling there, naked to
the waist, and glistening with sweat in the devouring heat
of the fires.
I don't know how she tricked herself. I suppose she
said it was the city's appeal to the country dweller,
but she lied, and she knew she was lying. She must have
known it was the spirit of Molly Brandeis in her, and of
Molly Brandeis' mother, and of her mother's mother's mother,
down the centuries to Sarah; repressed women, suffering
women, troubled, patient, nomadic women, struggling now in
her for expression.
And Fanny Brandeis went doggedly on, buying and selling
infants' wear, and doing it expertly. Her office desk would
have interested you. It was so likely to be littered with
the most appealing bits of apparel--a pair of tiny,
crocheted bootees, pink and white; a sturdy linen smock; a
silken hood so small that one's doubled fist filled it.
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