Word: backslid
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Scotland in those times (early 19th Century) speculation about "love'' was not encouraged. But the hard winter trip to their new home discouraged her, and when they were settled in the little Highland fishing village she did not find it cheerful. The people were dourly suspicious and backslid into heathenry at the slightest excuse; the weather and the scenery were both melancholy. Hamish's days were excitingly full of preaching, coaxing, denunciation; Allison found time to wish there were something more. Then came Andrew, wandering artist, man-of-the-great-world, wounded veteran of Waterloo. Hamish...
...morally and thriftily in the garret of a bordello and studying to be an insurance actuary. Actress Helen Menken is a wan creature who faints on his doorstep. He befriends her to the extent of a bed, a portion of his gruel and the services of a doctor. The backslid daughter of a scholar, she can quote reams of the pious Carlyle, but she compares her own way of life to that of Aspasia, most successful of the Athenian courtesans. The Scotsman talks of her soul; he signs another man's name on his own examination paper in order...