Dixon Scoring Lines & Ladies

[Terrance Flaherty]

> 
> Mason's reply "I only hope you're not suggesting anyone in our immediate
> Company,--....
> 
> and this is when he notices that Dixon has developed a paunch or a globe
> or whatever.

And do note, while my fancy is working here, that parenthetical

"(the Figure of it indeed changing, one day to the next, the rest of us
watching in some alarm its Transition from a Spheroid vertically
disposed, to one more wide than high)"

Now I'm not a midwife (gen. obstetrics, lit. "one who stands opposite
the woman giving birth") or a doctor or an astronomer, but Mason is and
he says, 

"I'm an astonomer,--trust me, 'tis gone well to oblate." 

I taught pregnant teens for a while in NYC. These young ladies were
often rather uncomfortable, their bladders being crushed, back spasms,
they would have plenty of excuses to get out of class, but unless I saw
that belly moving from up on high to a lower position, I was to keep
them in class. 

And Judy, I think down in Baltimore there are still the Oblate Sisters,
Catholic Nuns. 
What have they to do with Quakers and African-Americans? 
That's worth looking into.