The End of Innocence Read Online Free PDF Page A

Sanger in New York to learn how to provide health care for the women of the tenements. There she wrote, published, and distributed information about preventing pregnancy, tracts intended for the poor of New York’s Lower East Side. The federal government had recently indicted both women and several of their friends under the Comstock Act for violating postal obscenity laws. This had prompted Helen’s father to demand his wife’s return to Boston while she awaited trial. But as soon as Merriam returned to Boston, she began to mail this type of information from their parlor, leading to a second arrest on the steps of Boston City Hall for violation of the state’s postal obscenity laws. This time the news made the pages of the Boston Evening Transcript . Only the eruption of war in Europe had been able to push it off the front pages.
    Helen wished they could just leave the dance. The people might look elegant, but they lacked any semblance of grace. At least, toward her.
    She watched her mother, clad in a gray silk dress that nearly matched her lips, stand at the contributions table with the proud air of a woman used to carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.
    Helen’s father, Jonathan Brooks, on the other hand, who rarely carried more than the weight of a good history book in his hands, looked longingly in a different direction, toward a group of his friends standing by the drinks. He shifted restlessly in his starched collar and black jacket and looked as if he were a bit embarrassed by the entire evening. He had made the case just that morning that he preferred to sit in his study with a new book, The Mechanics of the Horseless Carriage .
    It wasn’t, Helen knew, that her father was against merriment. It was just that he had all the friends he needed and didn’t think he’d like anyone he’d not yet met. She, on the other hand, liked very few of the people she’d met and looked forward to meeting new ones at college in the fall.
    Helen glanced farther around the room. Caroline and Frank, the newly engaged, stood nearby in a circle of admirers close to the musicians. Not far away, in the corner, she spied her longtime friend, the broad-shouldered, dark-eyed Robert Brown, nodding while escorting a great-aunt to a seat near the window. He could not stand dances, she knew, and he had told her he’d been mortified by his mother’s interference regarding their future prospects together. Not that his protests mattered.
    â€œFather,” asked Helen, as he stood beside her at the edge of the ballroom, “don’t you think it’s a bit untoward to have a celebration like this when the world is in such peril? The British are being blown up and here we are at a party.”
    Her father opened his mouth, only to think better of it and shut it quickly. His eyes dulled. “Helen, try to imagine yourself having a good time. That’s what I am doing.”
    â€œPerhaps we could leave?”
    â€œI tried to negotiate that into the agreement I made with your mother this morning. We must stay. The ties that bind and all.” But his weary face, with its widening whiskers and graying hair, spoke what he wouldn’t say aloud.
    They stood in bored silence for a good ten minutes, watching the scene before them. When a person came by to greet them, Mr. Brooks would give a nice smile and engage in brief small talk about the weather or how Harvard, his own alma mater, was predicted to do in the annual football game against Yale. In those short exchanges Helen would dutifully nod in feigned interest, feeling each time as if she were a hypocrite. None of these people had paid a call on their family since her mother’s arrest, and several had been too busy with other things to even inquire as to how they were managing. She especially had a hard time even choking out words of greeting to Mrs. Peabody, who had been exceptionally vocal at church in her concern for