"It is better to be utterly bad than to speak ill of another," he thought.
For the first time he realised another side of village life. In fancy he
saw going past him on the dark road a long file of women, women with
coarse unlighted faces and dead eyes. Many of the faces he knew. They were
the faces of Caxton wives at whose houses he had delivered papers. He
remembered how eagerly they had run out of their houses to get the papers
and how they hung day after day over the details of sensational murder
cases. Once, when a Chicago girl had been murdered in a dive and the
details were unusually revolting, two women, unable to restrain their
curiosity, had come to the station to wait for the train bringing the
newspapers and Sam had heard them rolling the horrid mess over and over on
their tongues.
In every city and in every village there is a class of women, the thought
of whom paralyses the mind. They live their lives in small, unaired,
unsanitary houses, and go on year after year washing dishes and clothes--
only their fingers occupied. They read no good books, think no clean
thoughts, are made love to as John Telfer had said, with kisses in a
darkened room by a shame-faced yokel and, after marrying some such a
yokel, live lives of unspeakable blankness.
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