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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE FLORENTINE ARITHMETICIAN. About three hundred and fifty years ago, when Venice was in the height of her power and the full flower of her glory, and when she was engaged in constant warfare with the Turk, there was among her senators one named Brabantio, who was held in honor by his fellows and by the Duke, or Doge, himself. The mistress of his household was his young daughter, Desdernona, whom he loved the more tenderly because her mother had died in her childhood, and the girl had grown to early womanhood watched over only by his fatherly eye, and had gradually come to fill a wife's and a daughter's place both in his household and in his heart. The lack of the restraint of a mother's solicitude and cautions had developed in Desdemona an independence of character and a self-reliance to which otherwise she might not have attained; and this independence her position as the head of the domestic establishment of a member of the proudest and most powerful oligarchy of modern Europe greatly strengthened and confirmed. Desdemona's nature was gentle, submissive, and self-sacrificing, but at the same time earnest, frank, and passionful; and the result of the influence of such a life as hers upon such a nature was a union of boldness, or rather of openness, both in thought and in action, with a warmth and tender- 102 ' STtDlES IN SHAKESPEARE. ness of feeling and a capacity of self-devotion which are found only in women of highly and delicately strung organizations. With an imagination which wrought out for her grand ideals, and a soul finely attuned to all the higher influences of life, she was yet a careful housekeeper, and gave herself up loyally to the duties imposed upon her by her position in her father's house. Notwithstanding her beauty, her rank, and her accomplis...

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