Tigress-like

Extinct are those smiles, with that beautiful countenance, with which (for thou wert the Nireus formosus of the school), in the days of thy maturer waggery, thou didst disarm the wrath of infuriated town-damsel, who, incensed by provoking pinch, turning tigress-like round, suddenly converted by thy angel-look, exchanged the half-formed terrible “bl⁠⸺,” for a gentler greeting—“bless thy handsome face!”

A positive ‘effect’ causes us to infer experientially a positive cause. A negative ‘effect’ causes us to infer there is no such cause as we supposed existed. Lady Macbeth declares to her husband that if he will but ‘look up clear,’ she will do all else. Here is a positive ‘effect,’ in which we read such tigress-like ferocity that we are persuaded she can and will do the deed alone. But after we believe and expect, she proves even with the help of drink—unequal to the murder.

One moment she is frank,—light-hearted, and just like a bright American girl; the next, without any apparent reason, she has changed into a tigress-like creature, cold and mysterious, with a foreign grace that makes one fear her.