A woman so drunk as to fall and reel about is always an exquisitely
shameful thing. And when I think of how she’s tossed into the
wagon--to mention but one item--
But it’s a matter of the human equation. Doubtless it is all
relative. The Finn woman is not aware of how she is knocked about,
and if she were she would not regard it with any of my imagination.
So what matter?
A likeable and admirable person is Josephina. A so strong fine
businesslike worker, a so thoroughbred sport, a so splendid drunkard,
and asking no odds of God or man. In her stolid Finn fashion she
likes me as she has proven, and I like her though she makes me feel
inferior.
--if Josephina could and would write _her_ inner isolated world of
thoughts--the saga of her one horrid gown! There would be a book. All
blacks and carmines--all stolidly sober and brilliantly drunk--all
dingily bathless: deeply savagely quietly human.
It would be a book savoring not of white alcohol but of the salty
unshed Tears, the dry artistic Griefs of Josephina.
_Beneficent bedlam_