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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Painted Windows, by Elia W. Peattie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Painted Windows
+
+Author: Elia W. Peattie
+
+Posting Date: November 3, 2008 [EBook #1875]
+Release Date: September, 1999
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAINTED WINDOWS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Judy Boss
+
+
+
+
+
+PAINTED WINDOWS
+
+By Elia W. Peattie
+
+
+
+
+     Will you come with me into the chamber of memory
+     and lift your eyes to the painted windows where the figures
+     and scenes of childhood appear? Perhaps by looking with
+     kindly eyes at those from out my past, long wished-for
+     visions of your own youth will appear to heal the wounds
+     from which you suffer, and to quiet your stormy and
+     restless heart.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+       I NIGHT
+
+      II SOLITUDE
+
+     III FRIENDSHIP
+
+      IV FAME
+
+       V REMORSE
+
+      VI TRAVEL
+
+
+
+
+PAINTED WINDOWS
+
+
+
+
+I. NIGHT
+
+YOUNG people believe very little that they hear about the compensations
+of growing old, and of living over again in memory the events of the
+past. Yet there really are these compensations and pleasures, and
+although they are not so vivid and breathless as the pleasures of
+youth, they have something delicate and fine about them that must be
+experienced to be appreciated.
+
+Few of us would exchange our memories for those of others. They have
+become a part of our personality, and we could not part with them
+without losing something of ourselves. Neither would we part with our
+own particular childhood, which, however difficult it may have been at
+times, seems to each of us more significant than the childhood of any
+one else. I can run over in my mind certain incidents of my childhood
+as if they were chapters in a much-loved book, and when I am wakeful
+at night, or bored by a long journey, or waiting for some one in the
+railway-station, I take them out and go over them again.
+
+Nor is my book of memories without its illustrations. I can see little
+villages, and a great city, and forests and planted fields, and familiar
+faces; and all have this advantage: they are not fixed and without
+motion, like the pictures in the ordinary book. People are walking up
+the streets of the village, the trees are tossing, the tall wheat and
+corn in the fields salute me. I can smell the odour of the gathered hay,
+and the faces in my dream-book smile at me.
+
+Of all of these memories I like best the one in the pine forest.
+
+I was at that age when children think of their parents as being
+all-powerful. I could hardly have imagined any circumstances, however
+adverse, that my father could not have met with his strength and wisdom
+and skill. All children have such a period of hero-worship, I suppose,
+when their father stands out from the rest of the world as the best and
+most powerful man living. So, feeling as I did, I was made happier than
+I can say when my father decided, because I was looking pale and had a
+poor appetite, to take me out of school for a while, and carry me with
+him on a driving trip. We lived in Michigan, where there were, in the
+days of which I am writing, not many railroads; and when my father, who
+was attorney for a number of wholesale mercantile firms in Detroit, used
+to go about the country collecting money due, adjusting claims, and so
+on, he had no choice but to drive.
+
+And over what roads! Now it was a strip of corduroy, now a piece
+of well-graded elevation with clay subsoil and gravel surface, now a
+neglected stretch full of dangerous holes; and worst of all, running
+through the great forests, long pieces of road from which the stumps had
+been only partly extracted, and where the sunlight barely penetrated.
+Here the soaked earth became little less than a quagmire.
+
+But father was too well used to hard journeys to fear them, and I felt
+that, in going with him, I was safe from all possible harm. The journey
+had all the allurement of an adventure, for we would not know from day
+to day where we should eat our meals or sleep at night. So, to provide
+against trouble, we carried father's old red-and-blue-checked army
+blankets, a bag of feed for Sheridan, the horse, plenty of bread, bacon,
+jam, coffee and prepared cream; and we hung pails of pure water and
+buttermilk from the rear of our buggy.
+
+We had been out two weeks without failing once to eat at a proper
+table or to sleep in a comfortable bed. Sometimes we put up at the
+stark-looking hotels that loomed, raw and uninviting, in the larger
+towns; sometimes we had the pleasure of being welcomed at a little inn,
+where the host showed us a personal hospitality; but oftener we were
+forced to make ourselves "paying guests" at some house. We cared nothing
+whether we slept in the spare rooms of a fine frame "residence" or crept
+into bed beneath the eaves of the attic in a log cabin. I had begun to
+feel that our journey would be almost too tame and comfortable, when one
+night something really happened.
+
+Father lost his bearings. He was hoping to reach the town of Gratiot by
+nightfall, and he attempted to make a short cut. To do this he turned
+into a road that wound through a magnificent forest, at first of oak and
+butternut, ironwood and beech, then of densely growing pines. When we
+entered the wood it was twilight, but no sooner were we well within
+the shadow of these sombre trees than we were plunged in darkness,
+and within half an hour this darkness deepened, so that we could see
+nothing--not even the horse.
+
+"The sun doesn't get in here the year round," said father, trying his
+best to guide the horse through the mire. So deep was the mud that it
+seemed as if it literally sucked at the legs of the horse and the wheels
+of the buggy, and I began to wonder if we should really be swallowed,
+and to fear that we had met with a difficulty that even my father could
+not overcome. I can hardly make plain what a tragic thought that was!
+The horse began to give out sighs and groans, and in the intervals of
+his struggles to get on, I could feel him trembling. There was a note of
+anxiety in father's voice as he called out, with all the authority and
+cheer he could command, to poor Sheridan. The wind was rising, and
+the long sobs of the pines made cold shivers run up my spine. My teeth
+chattered, partly from cold, but more from fright.
+
+"What are we going to do?" I asked, my voice quivering with tears.
+
+"Well, we aren't going to cry, whatever else we do!" answered father,
+rather sharply. He snatched the lighted lantern from its place on the
+dashboard and leaped out into the road. I could hear him floundering
+round in that terrible mire and soothing the horse. The next thing I
+realised was that the horse was unhitched, that father had--for the
+first time during our journey--laid the lash across Sheridan's back, and
+that, with a leap of indignation, the horse had reached the firm ground
+of the roadside. Father called out to him to stand still, and a moment
+later I found myself being swung from the buggy into father's arms.
+He staggered along, plunging and almost falling, and presently I, too,
+stood beneath the giant pines.
+
+"One journey more," said father, "for our supper, and then we'll bivouac
+right here."
+
+Now that I was away from the buggy that was so familiar to me, and that
+seemed like a little movable piece of home, I felt, as I had not felt
+before, the vastness of the solitude. Above me in the rising wind tossed
+the tops of the singing trees; about me stretched the soft blackness;
+and beneath the dense, interlaced branches it was almost as calm and
+still as in a room. I could see that the clouds were breaking and the
+stars beginning to come out, and that comforted me a little.
+
+Father was keeping up a stream of cheerful talk.
+
+"Now, sir," he was saying to Sheridan, "stand still while I get this
+harness off you. I'll tie you and blanket you, and you can lie or stand
+as you please. Here's your nose-bag, with some good supper in it, and if
+you don't have drink, it's not my fault. Anyway, it isn't so long since
+you got a good nip at the creek."
+
+I was watching by the faint light of the lantern, and noticing how
+unnatural father and Sheridan looked. They seemed to be blocked out in a
+rude kind of way, like some wooden toys I had at home.
+
+"Here we are," said father, "like Robinson Crusoes. It was hard luck for
+Robinson, not having his little girl along. He'd have had her to pick up
+sticks and twigs to make a fire, and that would have been a great help
+to him."
+
+Father began breaking fallen branches over his knee, and I groped round
+and filled my arms again and again with little fagots. So after a few
+minutes we had a fine fire crackling in a place where it could not catch
+the branches of the trees. Father had scraped the needles of the pines
+together in such a way that a bare rim of earth was left all around the
+fire, so that it could not spread along the ground; and presently the
+coffee-pot was over the fire and bacon was sizzling in the frying-pan.
+The good, hearty odours came out to mingle with the delicious scent
+of the pines, and I, setting out our dishes, began to feel a happiness
+different from anything I had ever known.
+
+Pioneers and wanderers and soldiers have joys of their own--joys of
+which I had heard often enough, for there had been more stories told
+than read in our house. But now for the first time I knew what my
+grandmother and my uncles had meant when they told me about the way they
+had come into the wilderness, and about the great happiness and freedom
+of those first days. I, too, felt this freedom, and it seemed to me as
+if I never again wanted walls to close in on me. All my fear was gone,
+and I felt wild and glad. I could not believe that I was only a little
+girl. I felt taller even than my father.
+
+Father's mood was like mine in a way. He had memories to add to his
+emotion, but then, on the other hand, he lacked the sense of discovery
+I had, for he had known often such feelings as were coming to me for
+the first time. When he was a young man he had been a colporteur for the
+American Bible Society among the Lake Superior Indians, and in that
+way had earned part of the money for his course at the University of
+Michigan; afterward he had gone with other gold-seekers to Pike's Peak,
+and had crossed the plains with oxen, in the company of many other
+adventurers; then, when President Lincoln called for troops, he had
+returned to enlist with the Michigan men, and had served more than three
+years with McClellan and Grant.
+
+So, naturally, there was nothing he did not know about making himself
+comfortable in the open. He knew all the sorrow and all the joy of
+the homeless man, and now, as he cooked, he began to sing the old
+songs--"Marching Through Georgia," and "Bury Me Not on the Lone
+Prairie," and "In the Prison Cell I Sit." He had been in a Southern
+prison after the Battle of the Wilderness, and so he knew how to sing
+that song with particular feeling.
+
+I had heard war stories all my life, though usually father told such
+tales in a half-joking way, as if to make light of everything he had
+gone through. But now, as we ate there under the tossing pines, and the
+wild chorus in the treetops swelled like a rising sea, the spirit of the
+old days came over him. He was a good "stump speaker," and he knew how
+to make a story come to life, and never did all his simple natural gifts
+show themselves better than on this night, when he dwelt on his old
+campaigns.
+
+For the first time I was to look into the heart of a kindly natured man,
+forced by terrible necessity to go through the dread experience of war.
+I gained an idea of the unspeakable homesickness of the man who leaves
+his family to an unimagined fate, and sacrifices years in the service
+of his country. I saw that the mere foregoing of roof and bed is an
+indescribable distress; I learned something of what the palpitant
+anxiety before a battle must be, and the quaking fear at the first
+rattle of bullets, and the half-mad rush of determination with which men
+force valour into their faltering hearts; I was made to know something
+of the blight of war--the horror of the battlefield, the waste of
+bounty, the ruin of homes.
+
+Then, rising above this, came stories of devotion, of brotherhood, of
+service on the long, desolate marches, of courage to the death of those
+who fought for a cause. I began to see wherein lay the highest joy of
+the soldier, and of how little account he held himself, if the principle
+for which he fought could be preserved. I heard for the first time the
+wonderful words of Lincoln at Gettysburg, and learned to repeat a part
+of them.
+
+I was only eight, it is true, but emotion has no age, and I
+understood then as well as I ever could, what heroism and devotion and
+self-forgetfulness mean. I understood, too, the meaning of the words
+"our country," and my heart warmed to it, as in the older times the
+hearts of boys and girls warmed to the name of their king. The new
+knowledge was so beautiful that I thought then, and I think now, that
+nothing could have served as so fit an accompaniment to it as the
+shouting of those pines. They sang like heroes, and in their swaying
+gave me fleeting glimpses of the stars, unbelievably brilliant in the
+dusky purple sky, and half-obscured now and then by drifting clouds.
+
+By and by we lay down, not far apart, each rolled in an army blanket,
+frayed with service. Our feet were to the fire--for it was so that
+soldiers lay, my father said--and our heads rested on mounds of
+pine-needles.
+
+Sometimes in the night I felt my father's hand resting lightly on my
+shoulders to see that I was covered, but in my dreams he ceased to be my
+father and became my comrade, and I was a drummer boy,--I had seen the
+play, "The Drummer Boy of the Rappahannock,"--marching forward, with set
+teeth, in the face of battle.
+
+Whatever could redeem war and make it glorious seemed to flood my soul.
+All that was highest, all that was noble in that dreadful conflict came
+to me in my sleep--to me, the child who had been born when my father
+was at "the front." I had a strange baptism of the spirit. I discovered
+sorrow and courage, singing trees and stars. I was never again to think
+that the fireside and fireside thoughts made up the whole of life.
+
+My father lies with other soldiers by the Pacific; the forest sings
+no more; the old army blankets have disappeared; the memories of the
+terrible war are fading,--happily fading,--but they all live again,
+sometimes, in my memory, and I am once more a child, with thoughts as
+proud and fierce and beautiful as Valkyries.
+
+
+
+
+II. SOLITUDE
+
+AMONG the pictures that I see when I look back into the past, is the one
+where I, a sullen, egotistic person nine years old, stood quite alone
+in the world. To be sure, there were father and mother in the house, and
+there were the other children, and not one among them knew I was
+alone. The world certainly would not have regarded me as friendless or
+orphaned. There was nothing in my mere appearance, as I started away to
+school in my clean ginghams, with my well-brushed hair, and embroidered
+school-bag, to lead any one to suppose that I was a castaway. Yet I
+was--I had discovered this fact, hidden though it might be from others.
+
+I was no longer loved. Father and mother loved the other children; but
+not me. I might come home at night, fairly bursting with important news
+about what had happened in class or among my friends, and try to relate
+my little histories. But did mother listen? Not at all. She would nod
+like a mandarin while I talked, or go on turning the leaves of her book,
+or writing her letter. What I said was of no importance to her.
+
+Father was even less interested. He frankly told me to keep still, and
+went on with the accounts in which he was so absurdly interested, or
+examined "papers"--stupid-looking things done on legal cap, which he
+brought home with him from the office. No one kissed me when I started
+away in the morning; no one kissed me when I came home at night. I
+went to bed unkissed. I felt myself to be a lonely and misunderstood
+child--perhaps even an adopted one.
+
+Why, I knew a little girl who, when she went up to her room at night,
+found the bedclothes turned back, and the shade drawn, and a screen
+placed so as to keep off drafts. And her mother brushed her hair twenty
+minutes by the clock each night, to make it glossy; and then she sat by
+her bed and sang softly till the girl fell asleep.
+
+I not only had to open my own bed, but the beds for the other children,
+and although I sometimes felt my mother's hand tucking in the bedclothes
+round me, she never stooped and kissed me on the brow and said, "Bless
+you, my child." No one, in all my experience, had said, "Bless you, my
+child." When the girl I have spoken of came into the room, her mother
+reached out her arms and said, before everybody, "Here comes my
+dear little girl." When I came into a room, I was usually told to do
+something for somebody. It was "Please see if the fire needs more wood,"
+or "Let the cat in, please," or "I'd like you to weed the pansy bed
+before supper-time."
+
+In these circumstances, life hardly seemed worth living. I decided that
+I had made a mistake in choosing my family. It did not appreciate me,
+and it failed to make my young life glad. I knew my young life ought to
+be glad. And it was not. It was drab, as drab as Toot's old rain-coat.
+
+Toot was "our coloured boy." That is the way we described him. Father
+had brought him home from the war, and had sent him to school, and
+then apprenticed him to a miller. Toot did "chores" for his board and
+clothes, but was soon to be his own man, and to be paid money by the
+miller, and to marry Tulula Darthula Jones, a nice coloured girl who
+lived with the Cutlers.
+
+The time had been when Toot had been my self-appointed slave. Almost my
+first recollections were of his carrying me out to see the train pass,
+and saying, "Toot, toot!" in imitation of the locomotive; so, although
+he had rather a splendid name, I called him "Toot," and the whole town
+followed my example. Yes, the time had been when Toot saw me safe to
+school, and slipped little red apples into my pocket, and took me out
+while he milked the cow, and told me stories and sang me plantation
+songs. Now, when he passed, he only nodded. When I spoke to him about
+his not giving me any more apples, he said:
+
+"Ah reckon they're your pa's apples, missy. Why, fo' goodness' sake,
+don' yo' he'p yo'se'f?"
+
+But I did not want to help myself. I wanted to be helped--not because
+I was lazy, but because I wanted to be adored. I was really a sort of
+fairy princess,--misplaced, of course, in a stupid republic,--and I
+wanted life conducted on a fairy-princess basis. It was a game I wished
+to play, but it was one I could not play alone, and not a soul could I
+find who seemed inclined to play it with me.
+
+Well, things went from bad to worse. I decided that if mother no longer
+loved me, I would no longer tell her things. So I did not. I got a
+hundred in spelling for twelve days running, and did not tell her!
+I broke Edna Grantham's mother's water-pitcher, and kept the fact a
+secret. The secret was, indeed, as sharp-edged as the pieces of the
+broken pitcher had been; I cried under the bedclothes, thinking how
+sorry Mrs. Grantham had been, and that mother really ought to know.
+Only what was the use? I no longer looked to her to help me out of my
+troubles.
+
+I had no need now to have father and mother tell me to hurry up and
+finish my chatter, for I kept all that happened to myself. I had a new
+"intimate friend," and did not so much as mention her. I wrote a poem
+and showed it to my teacher, but not to my uninterested parents. And
+when I climbed the stairs at night to my room, I swelled with loneliness
+and anguish and resentment, and the hot tears came to my eyes as I heard
+father and mother laughing and talking together and paying no attention
+to my misery. I could hear Toot, who used to be making all sorts of
+little presents for me, whistling as he brought in the wood and water,
+and then "cleaned up" to go to see his Tulula, with never a thought of
+me. And I said to myself that the best thing I could do was to grow up
+and get away from a place where I was no longer wanted.
+
+No one noticed my sufferings further than sometimes to say impatiently,
+"What makes you act so strange, child?" And to that, of course,
+I answered nothing, for what I had to say would not, I felt, be
+understood.
+
+One morning in June I left home with my resentment burning fiercely
+within me. I had not cared for the things we had for breakfast, for I
+was half-ill with fretting and with the closeness of the day, but my
+lack of appetite had been passed by with the remark that any one
+was likely not to have an appetite on such a close day. But I was so
+languid, and so averse to taking up the usual round of things, that I
+begged mother to let me stay at home. She shook her head decidedly.
+
+"You've been out of school too many days already this term," she said.
+"Run along now, or you'll be late!"
+
+"Please--" I began, for my head really was whirling, although, quite as
+much, perhaps, from my perversity as from any other cause. Mother turned
+on me one of her "last-word" glances.
+
+"Go to school without another word," she said, quietly.
+
+I knew that quiet tone, and I went. And now I was sure that all was over
+between my parents and myself. I began to wonder if I need really wait
+till I was grown up before leaving home. So miserably absorbed was I
+in thinking of this, and in pitying myself with a consuming pity,
+that everything at school seemed to pass like the shadow of a dream. I
+blundered in whatever I tried to do, was sharply scolded for not hearing
+the teacher until she had spoken my name three times, and was holding on
+to myself desperately in my effort to keep back a flood of tears, when I
+became aware that something was happening.
+
+There suddenly was a perfect silence in the room--the sort of silence
+that makes the heart beat too fast. The mist swimming before me did not,
+I perceived, come from my own eyes, but from the changing colour of the
+air, the usual transparency of which was being tinged with yellow. The
+sultriness of the day was deepening, and seemed to carry a threat with
+it.
+
+"Something is going to happen," thought I, and over the whole room
+spread the same conviction. Electric currents seemed to snap from one
+consciousness to another. We dropped our books, and turned our eyes
+toward the western windows, to look upon a changed world. It was as if
+we peered through yellow glass. In the sky soft-looking, tawny clouds
+came tumbling along like playful cats--or tigers. A moment later we saw
+that they were not playful, but angry; they stretched out claws, and
+snarled as they did so. One claw reached the tall chimneys of the
+schoolhouse, another tapped at the cupola, one was thrust through the
+wall near where I sat.
+
+Then it grew black, and there was a bellowing all about us, so that the
+commands of the teacher and the screams of the children barely could be
+heard. I knew little or nothing. My shoulder was stinging, something had
+hit me on the side of the head, my eyes were full of dust and mortar,
+and my feet were carrying me with the others along the corridor, down
+the two flights of wide stairs. I do not think we pushed each other or
+were reckless. My recollection is only of many shadowy figures flying on
+with sure feet out of the building that seemed to be falling in upon us.
+
+Presently we were out on the landing before the door, with one more
+flight of steps before us, that reached to the street. Something so
+strong that it might not be denied gathered me up in invisible arms,
+whirled me round once or twice and dropped me, not ungently, in the
+middle of the road. And then, as I struggled to my knees and, wiping the
+dust from my eyes, looked up, I saw dozens of others being lifted in
+the same way, and blown off into the yard or the street. The larger
+ones were trying to hold on to the smaller, and the teachers were
+endeavouring to keep the children from going out of the building, but
+their efforts were of no avail. The children came on, and were blown
+about like leaves.
+
+Then I saw what looked like a high yellow wall advancing upon me--a
+roaring and fearsome mass of driven dust, sticks, debris. It came over
+me that my own home might be there, in strips and fragments, to beat me
+down and kill me; and with the thought came a swift little vision out of
+my geography of the Arabs in a sand-storm on the desert. I gathered up
+my fluttering dress skirt, held it tight about my head, and lay flat
+upon the ground.
+
+It seemed as if a long time passed, a time in which I knew very little
+except that I was fighting for my breath as I never had fought for
+anything. There were more hurts and bruises now, but they did not
+matter. Just to draw my own breath in my own way seemed to be the only
+thing in the world that was of any account. And then there was a shaft
+of flame, an earsplitting roar, and the rain was upon us in sheets, in
+streams, in visible rivers.
+
+I imagined that it would last a long time, and wondered in a daze how
+I could get home in a rain like that--for I should have to face it. I
+could see that in a few seconds the gutters had begun to race, the road
+where I lay was a stream, and then--then the rain ceased. Never was
+anything so astonishing. The sky came out blue, tattered rags of cloud
+raced across it, and I had time to conclude that, whipped and almost
+breathless though I was, I was still alive.
+
+And then I saw a curious sight. Down the street in every direction came
+rushing hatless men and women. Here and there a wild-eyed horse was
+being lashed along. All the town was coming. They were in their work
+clothes, in their slippers, in their wrappers--they were in anything
+and everything. Some of them sobbed as they ran, some called aloud names
+that I knew. They were fathers and mothers looking for their children.
+
+And who was that--that woman with a white face, with hair falling about
+her shoulders, where it had fallen as she ran--that woman whose breath
+came between her teeth strangely and who called my name over and
+over, bleatingly, as a mother sheep calls its lamb? At first I did not
+recognise her, and then, at last, I knew. And that creature with the
+rolling eyes and the curious ash-coloured face who, mumbling something
+over and over in his throat, came for me, and snatched me up and wiped
+my face free of mud, and felt of me here and there with trembling
+hands--who was he?
+
+And breaking out of the crowd of men who had come running from the
+street of stores and offices, was another strange being, with a sort of
+battle light in his eyes, who, seeing me, gathered me to him and bore me
+away toward home. Looking back, I could see the woman I knew following,
+leaning on the arm of the boy with the rolling eyes, whose eyes had
+ceased to roll, and who was quite recognisable now as Toot.
+
+A happiness that was almost as terrible as sorrow welled up in my heart.
+I did not weep, or laugh, or talk. All I had experienced had carried me
+beyond mere excitement into exultation. I exulted in life, in love. My
+conceit and sulkiness died in that storm, as did many another thing. I
+was alive. I was loved. I said it over and over to myself silently, in
+"my heart's deep core," while mother washed me with trembling hands in
+my own dear room, bound up my hurts, braided my hair, and put me, in a
+fresh night-dress, into my bed. I do not recall that we talked to
+each other, but in every caress of her hands as she worked I felt the
+unspoken assurances of a love such as I had not dreamed of.
+
+Father had gone running back to the school to see if he could be of any
+assistance to his neighbours, and had taken Toot with him, but they were
+back presently to say that beyond a few sharp injuries and broken bones,
+no harm had been done to the children. It was considered miraculous that
+no one had been killed or seriously injured, and I noticed that father's
+voice trembled as he told of it, and that mother could not answer, and
+that Toot sobbed like a big silly boy.
+
+Then as we talked together, behold, a second storm was upon us--a sharp
+black blast of wind and rain, not terrifying, like the other, but with
+an "I've-come-to-spend-the-day" sort of aspect.
+
+But no one seemed to mind very much. I was carried down to the
+sitting-room. Toot busied himself coming and going on this errand and
+on that, fastening the doors, closing the windows, running out to see
+to the animals, and coming back again. Father and mother set the table.
+They kept close together; and now and then they looked over at me,
+without saying anything, but with shining eyes.
+
+The storm died down to a quiet rain. From the roof of the porch the
+drops fell in silver strings, like beads. Then the sun came out and
+turned them into shining crystal. The birds began to sing again, and
+when we threw open the windows delicious odours of fresh earth and
+flowering shrub greeted us. Mother began to sing as she worked. And I
+sank softly to sleep, thrilled with the marvels of the world--not of the
+tempest, but of the peace.
+
+The sweet familiarity of the faces and the walls and the furniture and
+the garden was like a blessing. There was not a chair there that I would
+have exchanged for any other chair--not a tree that I would have parted
+with--not a custom of that simple, busy place that I would have changed.
+I knew now all my stupidity--and my good fortune.
+
+
+
+
+III. FRIENDSHIP
+
+WHEN I look back upon the village where I lived as a child, I cannot
+remember that there were any divisions in our society. This group went
+to the Congregational church, and that to the Presbyterian, but each
+family felt itself to be as good as any other, and even if, ordinarily,
+some of them withdrew themselves in mild exclusiveness, on all occasions
+of public celebration, or when in trouble, we stood together in the
+pleasantest and most unaffected democracy.
+
+There were only the "Bad Madigans" outside the pale.
+
+The facts about the Bad Madigans were, no doubt, serious enough, but
+the fiction was even more appalling. As to facts, the father drank,
+the mother followed suit, the appearance of the house--a ramshackle old
+place beyond the fair-grounds--was a scandal; the children could not be
+got to go to school for any length of time, and, when they were there,
+each class in which they were put felt itself to be in disgrace, and the
+dislike focused upon the intruders, sent them, sullen and hateful, back
+to their lair. And, indeed, the Madigan house seemed little more than a
+lair. It had been rather a fine house once, and had been built for the
+occupancy of the man who owned the fairgrounds; but he choosing finally
+to live in the village, had permitted the house to fall into decay,
+until only a family with no sense of order or self-respect would think
+of occupying it.
+
+When there occurred one of the rare burglaries in the village, when
+anything was missing from a clothes-line, or a calf or pig disappeared,
+it was generally laid to the Madigans. Unaccounted-for fires were
+supposed to be their doing; they were accorded responsibility for
+vicious practical jokes; and it was generally felt that before we were
+through with them they would commit some blood-curdling crime.
+
+When, as sometimes happened, I had met one of the Bad Madigans on the
+road, or down on the village street, my heart had beaten as if I was
+face to face with a company of banditti; but I cannot say that this
+excitement was caused by aversion alone. The truth was, the Bad
+Madigans fascinated me. They stood out from all the others, proudly and
+disdainfully like Robin Hood and his band, and I could not get over
+the idea that they said: "Fetch me yonder bow!" to each other; or, "Go
+slaughter me a ten-tined buck!" I felt that they were fortunate in not
+being held down to hours like the rest of us. Out of bed at six-thirty,
+at table by seven, tidying bedroom at seven-thirty, dusting sitting-room
+at eight, on way to school at eight-thirty, was not for "the likes of
+them!" Only we, slaves of respectability and of an inordinate appetite
+for order, suffered such monotony and drabness to rule. I knew the
+Madigan boys could go fishing whenever they pleased, that the Madigan
+girls picked the blackberries before any one else could get out to them,
+that every member of the family could pack up and go picnicking for days
+at a time, and that any stray horse was likely to be ridden bareback,
+within an inch of its life, by the younger members of the family.
+
+Only once however, did I have a chance to meet one of these modern
+Visigoths face to face, and the feelings aroused by that incident
+remained the darling secret of my youth. I dared tell no one, and I
+longed, yet feared, to have the experience repeated. But it never was!
+It happened in this way:
+
+On a certain Sunday afternoon in May, my father and mother and I went to
+Emmons' Woods. To reach Emmons' Woods, you went out the back door,
+past the pump and the currant bushes, then down the path to the
+chicken-houses, and so on, by way of the woodpile, to the south gate.
+After that, you went west toward the clover meadows, past the house
+where the Crazy Lady lived--here, if you were alone, you ran--and then,
+reaching the verge of the woods, you took your choice of climbing a
+seven-rail fence or of walking a quarter of a mile till you came to the
+bars. The latter was much better for the lace on a Sunday petticoat.
+
+Once in Emmons' Woods, there was enchantment. An eagle might come--or
+a blue heron. There had been bears in Emmons' Woods--bears with rolling
+eyes and red mouths from which their tongues lolled. There was one place
+for pinky trillium, and another for gentians; one for tawny adders'
+tongues, and another for yellow Dutchman's breeches. In the sap-starting
+season, the maples dripped their luscious sap into little wooden cups;
+later, partridges nested in the sun-burned grass. There was no lake or
+river, but there was a pond, swarming with a vivacious population, and
+on the hard-baked clay of the pond beach the green beetles aired their
+splendid changeable silks and sandpipers hopped ridiculously.
+
+It was, curiously enough, easier to run than to walk in Emmons' Woods,
+and even more natural to dance than to run. One became acquainted with
+squirrels, established intimacies with chipmunks, and was on some sort
+of civil relation with blackbirds. And, oh, the tossing green of the
+young willows, where the lilac distance melted into the pale blue of the
+sky! And, oh, the budding of the maples and the fringing of the oaks;
+and, oh, the blossoming of the tulip trees and the garnering of the
+chestnuts! And then, the wriggling things in the grass; the procession
+of ants; the coquetries of the robins; and the Beyond, deepening,
+deepening into the forest where it was safe only for the woodsmen to go.
+
+On this particular Sunday one of us was requested not to squeal and run
+about, and to remember that we wore our best shoes and need not mess
+them unnecessarily. It was hard to be reminded just when the dance was
+getting into my feet, but I tried to have Sunday manners, and went along
+in the still woods, wondering why the purple colours disappeared as
+we came on and what had been distance became nearness. There was a
+beautiful, aching vagueness over everything, and it was not strange
+that father, who had stretched himself on the moss, and mother, who was
+reading Godey's Ladies' Book, should presently both of them be nodding.
+So, that being a well-established fact--I established it by hanging over
+them and staring at their eyelids--it seemed a good time for me to let
+the dance out of my toes. Still careful of my fresh linen frock, and
+remembering about the best shoes, I went on, demurely, down the green
+alleys of the wood. Now I stepped on patches of sunshine, now in pools
+of shadow. I thought of how naughty I was to run away like this, and of
+what a mistake people made who said I was a good, quiet, child. I knew
+that I looked sad and prim, but I really hated my sadness and primness
+and goodness, and longed to let out all the interesting, wild, naughty
+thoughts there were in me. I wanted to act as if I were bewitched, and
+to tear up vines and wind them about me, to shriek to the echoes, and
+to scold back at the squirrels. I wanted to take off my clothes and
+rush into the pond, and swim like a fish, or wriggle like a pollywog.
+I wanted to climb trees and drop from them; and, most of all--oh, with
+what longing--did I wish to lift myself above the earth and fly into the
+bland blue air!
+
+I came to a hollow where there was a wonderful greenness over
+everything, and I said to myself that I would be bewitched at last. I
+would dance and whirl and call till, perhaps, some kind of a creature as
+wild and wicked and wonderful as I, would come out of the woods and join
+me. So I forgot about the fresh linen frock, and wreathed myself with
+wild grape-vine; I cared nothing for my fresh braids and wound trillium
+in my hair; and I ceased to remember my new shoes, and whirled around
+and around in the leafy mould, singing and shouting.
+
+I grew madder and madder. I seemed not to be myself at all, but some
+sort of a wood creature; and just when the trees were looking larger
+than ever they did before, and the sky higher up, a girl came running
+down from a sort of embankment where a tornado had made a path for
+itself and had hurled some great chestnuts and oaks in a tumbled mass.
+The girl came leaping down the steep sides of this place, her arms
+outspread, her feet bare, her dress no more than a rag the colour of the
+tree-trunks. She had on a torn green jacket, which made her seem more
+than ever like some one who had just stepped out of a hollow tree, and,
+to my unspeakable happiness, she joined me in my dance.
+
+I shall never forget how beautiful she was, with her wild tangle of dark
+hair, and her deep blue eyes and ripe lips. Her cheeks were flaming red,
+and her limbs strong and brown. She did not merely shout and sing; she
+whistled, and made calls like the birds, and cawed like a crow, and
+chittered like a squirrel, and around and around the two of us danced,
+crazy as dervishes with the beauty of the spring and the joy of being
+free.
+
+By and by we were so tired we had to stop, and then we sat down panting
+and looked at each other. At that we laughed, long and foolishly, but,
+after a time, it occurred to us that we had many questions to ask.
+
+"How did you get here?" I asked the girl.
+
+"I was walking my lone," she said, speaking her words as if there was a
+rich thick quality to them, "and I heard you screeling."
+
+"Won't you get lost, alone like that?"
+
+"I can't get lost," she sighed. "I 'd like to, but I can't."
+
+"Where do you live?"
+
+"Beyant the fair-grounds."
+
+"You're not--not Norah Madigan?"
+
+She leaned back and clasped her hands behind her head. Then she smiled
+at me teasingly.
+
+"I am that," she said, showing her perfect teeth.
+
+I caught my breath with a sharp gasp. Ought I to turn back to my
+parents? Had I been so naughty that I had called the naughtiest girl in
+the whole county out to me?
+
+But I could not bring myself to leave her. She was leaning forward and
+looking at me now with mocking eyes.
+
+"Are you afraid?" she demanded.
+
+"Afraid of what?" I asked, knowing quite well what she meant.
+
+"Of me?" she retorted.
+
+At that second an agreeable truth overtook me. I leaned forward, too,
+and put my hand on hers.
+
+"Why, I like you!" I cried. She began laughing again, but this time
+there was no mockery in it. She ran her fingers over the embroidery on
+my linen frock, she examined the lace on my petticoat, looked at the
+bows on my shoes, and played delicately with the locket dangling from
+the slender chain around my neck.
+
+"Do you know--other girls?" she almost whispered.
+
+I nodded. "Lots and lots of 'em," I said. "Don't you?"
+
+She shook her head in wistful denial.
+
+"Us Madigans," she said, "keeps to ourselves." She said it so haughtily
+that for a moment I was almost persuaded into thinking that they lived
+their solitary lives from choice. But, glancing up at her, I saw a blush
+that covered her face, and there were tears in her eyes.
+
+"Well, anyway," said I quickly, "we know each other."
+
+"Yes," she cried, "we do that!"
+
+She got up, then, and ran to a great tree from which a stout grape-vine
+was swinging, and pulling at it with her strong arms, she soon had it
+made into a practical swing.
+
+"Come!" she called--"come, let's swing together!"
+
+She helped me to balance myself on the rope-like vine, and, placing her
+feet outside of mine, showed me how to "work up" till we were sweeping
+with a fine momentum through the air. We shrieked with excitement, and
+urged each other on to more and more frantic exertions. We were like two
+birds, but to birds flying is no novelty. With us it was, which made us
+happier than birds. But I, for my part, was no more delighted with
+my swift flights through the air than I was with the shining eyes and
+flashing teeth of the girl opposite me. I liked her strength, and the
+way in which her body bent and swayed. Once more, she seemed like a
+wood-child--a wild, mad, gay creature from the tree. I felt as if I had
+drawn a playmate from elf-land, and I liked her a thousand times
+better than those proper little girls who came to see me of a Saturday
+afternoon.
+
+Well, there we were, rocking and screaming, and telling each other that
+we were hawks, and that we were flying high over the world, when the
+anxious and austere voice of my mother broke upon our ears. We tried to
+stop, but that was not such an easy matter to do, and as we twisted and
+writhed, to bring our grape-vine swing to a standstill, there was a slow
+rending and breaking which struck terror to our souls.
+
+"Jump!" commanded Norah--"jump! the vine's breaking!" We leaped at the
+same moment, she safely. My foot caught in a stout tendril, and I fell
+headlong, scraping my forehead on the ground and tearing a triangular
+rent in the pretty, new frock. Mother came running forward, and the
+expression on her face was far from being the one I liked to see.
+
+"What have you been doing?" she demanded. "I thought you were getting
+old enough and sensible enough to take care of yourself!"
+
+I must have been a depressing sight, viewed with the eyes of a careful
+mother. Blood and mould mingled on my face, my dress needed a laundress
+as badly as a dress could, and my shoes were scratched and muddy.
+
+"And who is this girl?" asked mother. I had become conscious that Norah
+was at my feet, wiping off my shoes with her queer little brown frock.
+
+"It's a new friend of mine," gasped I, beginning to see that I must lose
+her, and hoping the lump in my throat wouldn't get any bigger than it
+was.
+
+"What is her name?" asked mother. I had no time to answer. The girl did
+that.
+
+"I'm Norah Madigan," she said. Her tone was respectful, and, maybe, sad.
+At any rate, it had a curious sound.
+
+"Norah Mad-i-gan?" asked mother doubtfully, stringing out the word.
+
+"Yessum," said a low voice. "Goodbye, mum."
+
+"Oh, Norah!" cried I, a strange pain stabbing my heart. "Come to see
+me--"
+
+But my mother's voice broke in, firm and kind.
+
+"Good-bye, Norah," said she.
+
+I saw Norah turn and run up among the trees, almost as swiftly and
+silently as a hare. Once, she turned to look back. I was watching, and
+caught the chance to wave my hand to her.
+
+"Come!" commanded mother, and we went back to where father was sitting.
+
+"What do you think!" said mother. "I found the child playing with one of
+the Bad Madigans. Isn't she a sight!"
+
+The lump in my throat swelled to a terrible size; something buzzed in my
+ears, and I heard some one weeping. For a second or two I didn't realise
+that it was myself.
+
+"Well, never mind, dear," said mother's voice soothingly. "The frock
+will wash, and the tear will mend, and the shoes will black. Yes, and
+the scratches will heal."
+
+"It isn't that," I sobbed. "Oh, oh, it isn't that!"
+
+"What is it, then, for goodness sake?" asked mother.
+
+But I would not tell. I could not tell. How could I say that the
+daughter of the Bad Madigans was the first real and satisfying playmate
+I had ever had?
+
+
+
+
+IV. FAME
+
+AS I remember the boys and girls who grew up with me, I think of them as
+artists, or actors, or travellers, or rich merchants. Each of us, by the
+time we were half through grammar school, had selected a career. So far
+as I recollect, this career had very little to do with our abilities.
+We merely chose something that suited us. Our energy and our vanity
+crystallised into particular shapes. There was a sort of religion abroad
+in the West at that time that a person could do almost anything he set
+out to do. The older people, as well as the children, had an idea that
+the world was theirs--they all were Monte Cristos in that respect.
+
+As for me, I had decided to be an orator.
+
+At the time of making this decision, I was nine years of age, decidedly
+thin and long drawn out, with two brown braids down my back, and a
+terrific shyness which I occasionally overcame with such a magnificent
+splurge that those who were not acquainted with my peculiarities
+probably thought me a shamefully assertive child.
+
+I based my oratorical aspirations upon my having taken the prize a
+number of times in Sunday-school for learning the most New Testament
+verses, and upon the fact that I always could make myself heard to the
+farthest corner of the room. I also felt that I had a great message to
+deliver to the world when I got around it, though in this, I was in
+no way different from several of my friends. I had noticed a number
+of things in the world that were not quite right, and which I thought
+needed attention, and I believed that if I were quite good and studied
+elocution, in a little while I should be able to set my part of
+the world right, and perhaps even extend my influence to adjoining
+districts.
+
+Meantime I practised terrible vocal exercises, chiefly consisting of a
+raucous "caw" something like a crow's favourite remark, and advocated
+by my teacher in elocution for no reason that I can now remember; and
+I stood before the glass for hours at a time making grimaces so as to
+acquire the "actor's face," till my frightened little sisters implored
+me to turn back into myself again.
+
+It was a great day for me when I was asked to participate in the Harvest
+Home Festival at our church on Thanksgiving Day. I looked upon it as the
+beginning of my career, and bought crimping papers so that my hair could
+be properly fluted. Of course, I wanted a new dress for the occasion,
+and I spent several days in planning the kind of a one I thought best
+suited to such a memorable event. I even picked out the particular
+lace pattern I wanted for the ruffles. This was before I submitted the
+proposition to Mother, however. When I told her about it she said she
+could see no use in getting a new dress and going to all the trouble of
+making it when my white one with the green harps was perfectly good.
+
+This was such an unusual dress and had gone through so many
+vicissitudes, that I really was devotedly attached to it. It had, in the
+beginning, belonged to my Aunt Bess, and in the days of its first
+glory had been a sheer Irish linen lawn, with tiny green harps on it at
+agreeable intervals. But in the course of time, it had to be sent to
+the wash-tub, and then, behold, all the little lovely harps followed
+the example of the harp that "once through Tara's hall the soul of music
+shed," and disappeared! Only vague, dirty, yellow reminders of their
+beauty remained, not to decorate, but to disfigure the fine fabric.
+
+Aunt Bess, naturally enough, felt irritated, and she gave the goods to
+mother, saying that she might be able to boil the yellow stains out of
+it and make me a dress. I had gone about many a time, like love amid the
+ruins, in the fragments of Aunt Bess's splendour, and I was not happy in
+the thought of dangling these dimmed reminders of Ireland's past around
+with me. But mother said she thought I'd have a really truly white
+Sunday best dress out of it by the time she was through with it. So
+she prepared a strong solution of sodium and things, and boiled the
+breadths, and every little green harp came dancing back as if awaiting
+the hand of a new Dublin poet. The green of them was even more charming
+than it had been at first, and I, as happy as if I had acquired the
+golden harp for which I then vaguely longed, went to Sunday-school
+all that summer in this miraculous dress of now-you-see-them
+and-now-you-don't, and became so used to being asked if I were Irish
+that my heart exulted when I found that I might--fractionally--claim to
+be, and that one of the Fenian martyrs had been an ancestor. For a year,
+even, after that discovery of the Fenian martyr, ancestors were a
+favorite study of mine.
+
+Well, though the dress became something more than familiar to the eyes
+of my associates, I was so attached to it that I felt no objection to
+wearing it on the great occasion; and, that being settled, all that
+remained was to select the piece which was to reveal my talents to a
+hitherto unappreciative--or, perhaps I should say, unsuspecting--group
+of friends and relatives. It seemed to me that I knew better than my
+teacher (who had agreed to select the pieces for her pupils) possibly
+could what sort of a thing best represented my talents, and so, after
+some thought, I selected "Antony and Cleopatra," and as I lagged
+along the too-familiar road to school, avoiding the companionship of my
+acquaintances, I repeated:
+
+     I am dying, Egypt, dying!
+        Ebbs the crimson life-tide fast,
+     And the dark Plutonian shadows
+        Gather on the evening blast.
+
+Sometimes I grew so impassioned, so heedless of all save my mimic sorrow
+and the swing of the purple lines, that I could not bring myself to
+modify my voice, and the passers-by heard my shrill tones vibrating
+with:
+
+     As for thee, star-eyed Egyptian!
+        Glorious sorceress of the Nile!
+     Light the path to Stygian horrors
+        With the splendour of thy smile.
+
+I wiped dishes to the rhythm of such phrases as "scarred and veteran
+legions," and laced my shoes to the music of "Though no glittering
+guards surround me."
+
+Confident that no one could fail to see the beauty of these lines, or
+the propriety of the identification of myself with Antony, I called upon
+my Sunday-school teacher, Miss Goss, to report. I never had thought
+of Miss Goss as a blithe spirit. She was associated in my mind with
+numerous solemn occasions, and I was surprised to find that on this day
+she unexpectedly developed a trait of breaking into nervous laughter.
+I had got as far as "Should the base plebeian rabble--" when Miss Goss
+broke down in what I could not but regard as a fit of giggles, and I
+ceased abruptly.
+
+She pulled herself together after a moment or two, and said if I would
+follow her to the library she thought she could find something--here she
+hesitated, to conclude with, "more within the understanding of the other
+children." I saw that she thought my feelings were hurt, and as I
+passed a mirror I feared she had some reason to think so. My face was
+uncommonly flushed, and a look of indignation had crept, somehow, even
+into my braids, which, having been plaited too tightly, stuck out in
+crooks and kinks from the side of my head. Incidentally, I was horrified
+to notice how thin I was--thin, even for a dying Antony--and my frock
+was so outgrown that it hardly covered my knees. "Ridiculous!" I said
+under my breath, as I confronted this miserable figure--so shamefully
+insignificant for the vicarious emotions which it had been housing.
+"Ridiculous!"
+
+I hated Miss Goss, and must have shown it in my stony stare, for she put
+her arm around me and said it was a pity I had been to all the trouble
+to learn a poem which was--well, a trifle too--too old--but that she
+hoped to find something equally "pretty" for me to speak. At the use of
+that adjective in connection with William Lytle's lines, I wrenched away
+from her grasp and stood in what I was pleased to think a haughty calm,
+awaiting her directions.
+
+She took from the shelves a little volume of Whittier, bound in calf,
+handling it as tenderly as if it were a priceless possession. Some
+pressed violets dropped out as she opened it, and she replaced them
+with devotional fingers. After some time she decided upon a lyric lament
+entitled "Eva." I was asked to run over the verses, and found them
+remarkably easy to learn; fatally impossible to forget. I presently
+arose and with an impish betrayal of the poverty of rhyme and the
+plethora of sentiment, repeated the thing relentlessly.
+
+     O for faith like thine, sweet Eva,
+     Lighting all the solemn reevah [river],
+     And the blessings of the poor,
+     Wafting to the heavenly shoor [shore].
+
+"I do think," said Miss Goss gently, "that if you tried, my child, you
+might manage the rhymes just a little better."
+
+"But if you're born in Michigan," I protested, "how can you possibly
+make 'Eva' rhyme with 'never' and 'believer'?"
+
+"Perhaps it is a little hard," Miss Goss agreed, and still clinging to
+her Whittier, she exhumed "The Pumpkin," which she thought precisely
+fitted for our Harvest Home festival. This was quite another thing from
+"Eva," and I saw that only hours of study would fix it in my mind. I
+went to my home, therefore, with "The Pumpkin" delicately transcribed
+in Miss Goss's running hand, and I tried to get some comfort from the
+foreign allusions glittering through Whittier's kindly verse. As the
+days went by I came to have a certain fondness for those homely lines:
+
+     O--fruit loved of boyhood!--the old days recalling,
+     When wood grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!
+     When wild, ugly faces we carved in the skin,
+     Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!
+
+     When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune,
+     Our chair a broad pumpkin--our lantern the moon,
+     Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam
+     In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team!
+
+On all sides this poem was considered very fitting, and I went to the
+festival with that comfortable feeling one has when one is moving with
+the majority and is wearing one's best clothes.
+
+I sat rigid with expectancy while my schoolmates spoke their "pieces"
+and sang their songs. With frozen faces they faced each other in
+dialogues, lost their quavering voices, and stumbled down the stairs
+in their anguish of spirit. I pitied them, and thought how lucky it was
+that my memory never failed me, and that my voice carried so well that I
+could arouse even old Elder Waite from his slumbers.
+
+Then my turn came. My crimps were beautiful; the green harps danced on
+my freshly-ironed frock, and I had on my new chain and locket. I relied
+upon a sort of mechanism in me to say: O greenly and fair in the lands
+of the sun, The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run.
+
+In this seemly manner Whittier's ode to the pumpkin began. I meant to
+go on to verses which I knew would delight my audience--to references to
+the "crook-necks" ripening under the September sun; and to Thanksgiving
+gatherings at which all smiled at the reunion of friends and the bounty
+of the board.
+
+     What moistens the lip and brightens the eye!
+     What calls back the past like the rich pumpkin pie!
+
+I was sure these lines would meet with approval, and having "come down
+to the popular taste," I was prepared to do my best to please.
+
+After a few seconds, when the golden pumpkins that lined the stage had
+ceased to dance before my eyes, I thought I ought to begin to "get
+hold of my audience." Of course, my memory would be giving me the right
+words, and my facile tongue running along reliably, but I wished to
+demonstrate that "ability" which was to bring me favour and fame. I
+listened to my own words and was shivered into silence. I was talking
+about "dark Plutonian shadows"; I was begging "Egypt" to let her arms
+enfold me--I was, indeed, in the very thick of the forbidden poem. I
+could hear my thin, aspiring voice reaching out over that paralysed
+audience with:
+
+     Though my scarred and veteran legions
+        Bear their eagles high no more;
+     And my wrecked and scattered galleys
+        Strew dark Actium's fatal shore.
+
+My tongue seemed frozen, or some kind of a ratchet at the base of it
+had got out of order. For a moment--a moment can be the little sister
+of eternity--I could say nothing. Then I found myself in the clutches of
+the instinct for self-preservation. I felt it in me to stop the giggles
+of the girls on the front seat; to take the patronising smiles out of
+the tolerant eyes of the grown people. Maybe my voice lost something of
+its piping insistence and was touched with genuine feeling; perhaps some
+faint, faint spark of the divine fire which I longed to fan into a flame
+did flicker in me for that one time. I had the indescribable happiness
+of seeing the smiles die on the faces of my elders, and of hearing the
+giggles of my friends cease.
+
+I went to my seat amid what I was pleased to consider "thunders of
+applause," and by way of acknowledgment, I spoke, with chastened
+propriety, Whittier's ode to the pumpkin.
+
+I cannot remember whether or not I was scolded. I'm afraid, afterward,
+some people still laughed. As for me, oddly enough, my oratorical
+aspirations died. I decided there were other careers better fitted to
+one of my physique. So I had to go to the trouble of finding another
+career; but just what it was I have forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+V. REMORSE
+
+IT is extraordinary, when you come to think of it, how very few days,
+out of all the thousands that have passed, lift their heads from
+the grey plain of the forgotten--like bowlders in a level stretch of
+country. It is not alone the unimportant ones that are forgotten; but,
+according to one's elders, many important ones have left no mark in the
+memory. It seems to me, as I think it over, that it was the days that
+affected the emotions that dwell with me, and I suppose all of us must
+be the same in this respect.
+
+Among those which I am never to forget is the day when Aunt Cordelia
+came to visit us--my mother's aunt, she was--and when I discovered evil,
+and tried to understand what the use of it was.
+
+Great-aunt Cordelia was, as I often and often had been told, not only
+much travelled, rich and handsome, but good also. She was, indeed, an
+important personage in her own city, and it seemed to be regarded as
+an evidence of unusual family fealty that she should go about, now and
+then, briefly visiting all of her kinfolk to see how they fared in the
+world. I ought to have looked forward to meeting her, but this, for
+some perverse reason, I did not do. I wished I might run away and hide
+somewhere till her visit was over. It annoyed me to have to clean up the
+play-room on her account, and to help polish the silver, and to comb
+out the fringe of the tea napkins. I liked to help in these tasks
+ordinarily, but to do it for the purpose of coming up to a visiting--and
+probably, a condescending--goddess, somehow made me cross.
+
+Among other hardships, I had to take care of my little sister Julie all
+day. I loved Julie. She had soft golden-brown curls fuzzing around on her
+head, and mischievous brown eyes--warm, extra-human eyes. There was a
+place in the back of her neck, just below the point of her curls, which
+it was a privilege to kiss; and though she could not yet talk, she had a
+throaty, beautiful little exclamation, which cannot be spelled any more
+than a bird note, with which she greeted all the things she liked--a
+flower, or a toy, or mother. But loving Julie as she sat in mother's
+lap, and having to care for her all of a shining Saturday, were two
+quite different things. As the hours wore along I became bored with
+looking at the golden curls of my baby sister; I had no inclination to
+kiss the "honey-spot" in the back of her neck; and when she fretted from
+heat and teething and my perfunctory care, I grew angry.
+
+I knew mother was busy making custards and cakes for Aunt Cordelia, and
+I longed to be in watching these pleasing operations. I thought--but
+what does it matter what I thought? I was bad! I was so bad that I was
+glad I was bad. Perhaps it was nerves. Maybe I really had taken care
+of the baby too long. But however that may be, for the first time in my
+life I enjoyed the consciousness of having a bad disposition--or perhaps
+I ought to say that I felt a fiendish satisfaction in the discovery that
+I had one.
+
+Along in the middle of the afternoon three of the girls in the
+neighbourhood came over to play. They had their dolls, and they wanted
+to "keep house" in the "new part" of our home. We were living in a roomy
+and comfortable "addition," which had, oddly enough, been built before
+the building to which it was finally to serve as an annex. That is to
+say, it had been the addition before there was anything to add it to. By
+this time, however, the new house was getting a trifle old, as it waited
+for the completion of its rather disproportionate splendours; splendours
+which represented the ambitions rather than the achievements of the
+family. It towered, large, square, imposing, with hints of M. Mansard's
+grandiose architectural ideas in its style, in the very centre of a
+village block of land. From the first, it exercised a sort of "I dreamt
+I dwelt in marble halls" effect upon me, and in a vague way, at the back
+of my mind, floated the idea that when we passed from our modest home
+into this commanding edifice, well-trained servants mysteriously would
+appear, beautiful gowns would be found awaiting my use in the closets,
+and father and mother would be able to take their ease, something after
+the fashion of the "landed gentry" of whom I had read in Scotch and
+English books. The ceilings of the new house were so high, the sweep of
+the stairs so dramatic, the size of the drawing-rooms so copious, that
+perhaps I hardly was to be blamed for expecting a transformation scene.
+
+But until this new life was realised, the clean, bare rooms made the
+best of all possible play-rooms, and with the light streaming in through
+the trees, and falling, delicately tinged with green, upon the new
+floors, and with the scent of the new wood all about, it was a place
+of indefinable enchantment. I was allowed to play there all I
+pleased--except when I had Julie. There were unguarded windows and
+yawning stair-holes, and no steps as yet leading from the ground to the
+great opening where the carved front door was some time to be. Instead,
+there were planks, inclined at a steep angle, beneath which lay the
+stones of which the foundation to the porch were to be made. Jagged
+pieces of yet unhewn sandstone they were, with cruel edges.
+
+But to-day when the girls said, "Oh, come!" my newly discovered badness
+echoed their words. I wanted to go with them. So I went.
+
+Out of the corner of my eye I could see father in the distance, but I
+wouldn't look at him for fear he would be magnetised into turning my
+way. The girls had gone up, and I followed, with Julie in my arms. Did I
+hear father call to me to stop? He always said I did, but I think he was
+mistaken. Perhaps I merely didn't wish to hear him. Anyway, I went on,
+balancing myself as best I could. The other girls had reached the top,
+and turned to look at us, and I knew they were afraid. I think they
+would have held out their hands to help me, but I had both arms clasped
+about Julie. So I staggered on, got almost to the top, then seemed
+submerged beneath a wave of fears--mine and those of the girls--and
+fell! As I went, I curled like a squirrel around Julie, and when I
+struck, she was still in my grasp and on top of me. But she rolled
+out of my relaxing clutch after that, and when father and mother came
+running, she was lying on the stones. They thought she had fallen that
+way, and as the breath had been fairly knocked out of her little body,
+so that she was not crying, they were more frightened than ever, and ran
+with her to the house, wild with apprehension.
+
+As for me, I got up somehow and followed. I decided no bones were broken,
+but I was dizzy and faint, and aching from bruises. I saw my little
+friends running down the plank and making off along the poplar drive,
+white-faced and panting. I knew they thought Julie was dead and that I'd
+be hung. I had the same idea.
+
+When we got to the sitting-room I had a strange feeling of never having
+seen it before. The tall stove, the green and oak ingrain carpet, the
+green rep chairs, the what-not with its shells, the steel engravings
+on the walls, seemed absolutely strange. I sat down and counted the
+diamond-shaped figures on the oilcloth in front of the stove; and after
+a long time I heard Julie cry, and mother say with immeasurable relief:
+
+"Aside from a shaking up, I don't believe she's a bit the worse."
+
+Then some one brought me a cupful of cold water and asked me if I was
+hurt. I shook my head and would not speak. I then heard, in simple and
+emphatic Anglo-Saxon the opinions of my father and mother about a girl
+who would put her little sister's life in danger, and would disobey her
+parents. And after that I was put in my mother's bedroom to pass the
+rest of the day, and was told I needn't expect to come to the table with
+the others.
+
+I accepted my fate stoically, and being permitted to carry my own chair
+into the room, I put it by the western window, which looked across two
+miles of meadows waving in buckwheat, in clover and grass, and sat
+there in a curious torpor of spirit. I was glad to be alone, for I had
+discovered a new idea--the idea of sin. I wished to be left to myself
+till I could think out what it meant. I believed I could do that by
+night, and, after I had got to the root of the matter, I could cast the
+whole ugly thing out of my soul and be good all the rest of my life.
+
+There was a large upholstered chair standing in front of me, and I put
+my head down on the seat of that and thought and thought. My thoughts
+reached so far that I grew frightened, and I was relieved when I felt
+the little soft grey veils drawing about me which I knew meant sleep.
+It seemed to me that I really ought to weep--that the circumstances were
+such that I should weep. But sleep was sweeter than tears, and not only
+the pain in my mind but the jar and bruise of my body seemed to demand
+that oblivion. So I gave way to the impulse, and the grey veils wrapped
+around and around me as a spider's web enwraps a fly. And for hours I
+knew nothing.
+
+When I awoke it was the close of day. Long tender shadows lay across the
+fields, the sky had that wonderful clearness and kindness which is like
+a human eye, and the soft wind puffing in at the window was sweet with
+field fragrance. A glass of milk and a plate with two slices of bread
+lay on the window sill by me, as if some one had placed them there
+from the outside. I could hear birds settling down for the night, and
+cheeping drowsily to each other. My cat came on the scene and, seeing
+me, looked at me with serious, expanding eyes, twitched her whiskers
+cynically, and passed on. Presently I heard the voices of my family.
+They were re-entering the sitting-room. Supper was over--supper, with
+its cold meats and shining jellies, its "floating island" and its fig
+cake. I could hear a voice that was new to me. It was deeper than my
+mother's, and its accent was different. It was the sort of a voice that
+made you feel that its owner had talked with many different kinds of
+people, and had contrived to hold her own with all of them. I knew it
+belonged to Aunt Cordelia. And now that I was not to see her, I felt
+my curiosity arising in me. I wanted to look at her, and still more I
+wished to ask her about goodness. She was rich and good! Was one the
+result of the other? And which came first? I dimly perceived that if
+there had been more money in our house there would have been more help,
+and I would not have been led into temptation--baby would not have been
+left too long upon my hands. However, after a few moments of self-pity,
+I rejected this thought. I knew I really was to blame, and it occurred
+to me that I would add to my faults if I tried to put the blame on
+anybody else.
+
+Now that the first shock was over and that my sleep had refreshed me, I
+began to see what terrible sorrow had been mine if the fall had really
+injured Julie; and a sudden thought shook me. She might, after all, have
+been hurt in some way that would show itself later on. I yearned to look
+upon her, to see if all her sweetness and softness was intact. It seemed
+to me that if I could not see her the rising grief in me would break,
+and I would sob aloud. I didn't want to do that. I had no notion to call
+any attention to myself whatever, but see the baby I must. So, softly,
+and like a thief, I opened the door communicating with the little
+dressing-room in which Julie's cradle stood. The curtain had been drawn
+and it was almost dark, but I found my way to Julie's bassinet. I could
+not quite see her, but the delicate odour of her breath came up to me,
+and I found her little hand and slipped my finger in it. It was gripped
+in a baby pressure, and I stood there enraptured, feeling as if a flower
+had caressed me. I was thrilled through and through with happiness,
+and with love for this little creature, whom my selfishness might have
+destroyed. There was nothing in what had happened during this moment or
+two when I stood by her side to assure me that all was well with her;
+but I did so believe, and I said over and over: "Thank you, God! Thank
+you, God!"
+
+And now my tears began to flow. They came in a storm--a storm I could
+not control, and I fled back to mother's room, and stood there before
+the west window weeping as I never had wept before.
+
+The quiet loveliness of the closing day had passed into the splendour of
+the afterglow. Mighty wings as of bright angels, pink and shining white,
+reached up over the sky. The vault was purple above me, and paled to
+lilac, then to green of unimaginable tenderness. Now I quenched my
+tears to look, and then I wept again, weeping no more for sorrow and
+loneliness and shame than for gratitude and delight in beauty. So fair a
+world! What had sin to do with it? I could not make it out.
+
+The shining wings grew paler, faded, then darkened; the melancholy sound
+of cow-bells stole up from the common. The birds were still; a low
+wind rustled the trees. I sat thinking my young "night thoughts" of
+how marvellous it was for the sun to set, to rise, to keep its place in
+heaven--of how wrapped about with mysteries we were. What if the world
+should start to falling through space? Where would it land? Was there
+even a bottom to the universe? "World without end" might mean that there
+was neither an end to space nor yet to time. I shivered at thought of
+such vastness.
+
+Suddenly light streamed about me, warm arms enfolded me.
+
+"Mother!" I murmured, and slipped from the unknown to the dear
+familiarity of her shoulder.
+
+It was, I soon perceived, a silk-clad shoulder. Mother had on her best
+dress; nay, she wore her coral pin and ear-rings. Her lace collar was
+scented with Jockey Club, and her neck, into which I was burrowing, had
+the indescribable something that was not quite odour, not all softness,
+but was compounded of these and meant mother. She said little to me as
+she drew me away and bathed my face, brushed and plaited my hair, and
+put on my clean frock. But we felt happy together. I knew she was as
+glad to forgive as I was to be forgiven.
+
+In a little while she led me, blinking, into the light. A tall stranger,
+a lady in prune-coloured silk, sat in the high-backed chair.
+
+"This is my eldest girl, Aunt Cordelia," said my mother. I went forward
+timidly, wondering if I were really going to be greeted by this person
+who must have heard such terrible reports of me. I found myself caught
+by the hands and drawn into the embrace of this new, grand acquaintance.
+
+"Well, I've been wanting to see you," said the rich, kind voice. "They
+say you look as I did at your age. They say you are like me!"
+
+Like her--who was good! But no one referred to this difference or said
+anything about my sins. When we were sorry, was evil, then, forgotten
+and sin forgiven? A weight as of iron dropped from my spirit. I sank
+with a sigh on the hassock at my aunt's feet. I was once more a member
+of society.
+
+
+
+
+VI. TRAVEL
+
+IT was time to say good-bye.
+
+I had been down to my little brother's grave and watered the sorrel that
+grew on it--I thought it was sorrow, and so tended it; and I had walked
+around the house and said good-bye to every window, and to the robin's
+nest, and to my playhouse in the shed. I had put a clean ribbon on the
+cat's neck, and kissed my doll, and given presents to my little sisters.
+Now, shivering beneath my new grey jacket in the chill of the May
+morning air, I stood ready to part with my mother. She was a little
+flurried with having just ironed my pinafores and collars, and with
+having put the last hook on my new Stuart plaid frock, and she looked
+me over with rather an anxious eye. As for me, I thought my clothes
+charming, and I loved the scarlet quill in my grey hat, and the set of
+my new shoes. I hoped, above all, that no one would notice that I was
+trembling and lay it down to fear.
+
+Of course, I had been away before. It was not the first time I had left
+everything to take care of itself. But this time I was going alone, and
+that gave rather a different aspect to things. To go into the country
+for a few days, or even to Detroit, in the company of a watchful parent,
+might be called a "visit"; but to go alone, partly by train and partly
+by stage, and to arrive by one's self, amounted to "travel." I had an
+aunt who had travelled, and I felt this morning that love of travel ran
+in the family. Probably even Aunt Cordelia had been a trifle nervous, at
+first, when she started out for Hawaii, say, or for Egypt.
+
+Mother and I were both fearful that the driver of the station 'bus
+hadn't really understood that he was to call. First she would ask
+father, and then I would ask him, if he was quite sure the man
+understood, and father said that if the man could understand English at
+all--and he supposed he could--he had understood that. Father was right
+about it, too, for just when we--that is, mother and I--were almost
+giving up, the 'bus horses swung in the big gate and came pounding
+up the drive between the Lombardy poplars, which were out in their
+yellow-green spring dress. They were a bay team with a yellow harness
+which clinked splendidly with bone rings, and the 'bus was as yellow
+as a pumpkin, and shaped not unlike one, so that I gave it my instant
+approval. It was precisely the sort of vehicle in which I would have
+chosen to go away. So absorbed was I in it that, though I must have
+kissed mother, I have really no recollection of it; and it was only when
+we were swinging out of the gate, and I looked back and saw her standing
+in the door watching us, that a terrible pang came over me, so that for
+one crazy moment I thought I was going to jump out and run back to her.
+
+But I held on to father's hand and turned my face away from home with
+all the courage I could summon, and we went on through the town and
+out across a lonely stretch of country to the railroad. For we were an
+obstinate little town, and would not build up to the railroad because
+the railroad had refused to run up to us. It was a new station with a
+fine echo in it, and the man who called out the trains had a beautiful
+voice for echoes. It was created to inspire them and to encourage them,
+and I stood fascinated by the thunderous noises he was making till
+father seized me by the hand and thrust me into the care of the train
+conductor. They said something to each other in the sharp, explosive way
+men have, and the conductor took me to a seat and told me I was his girl
+for the time being, and to stay right there till he came for me at my
+station.
+
+What amazed me was that the car should be full of people. I could not
+imagine where they all could be going. It was all very well for me,
+who belonged to a family of travellers--as witness Aunt Cordelia--to be
+going on a journey, but for these others, these many, many others, to be
+wandering around, heaven knows where, struck me as being not right. It
+seemed to take somewhat from the glory of my adventure.
+
+However, I noticed that most of them looked poor. Their clothes were
+old and ugly; their faces not those of pleasure-seekers. It was very
+difficult to imagine that they could afford a journey, which was, as
+I believed, a great luxury. At first, the people looked to be all of a
+sort, but after a little I began to see the differences, and to notice
+that this one looked happy, and that one sad, and another as if he had
+much to do and liked it, and several others as if they had very little
+idea where they were going or why.
+
+But I liked better to look from the windows and to see the world. The
+houses seemed quite familiar and as if I had seen them often before. I
+hardly could believe that I hadn't walked up those paths, opened those
+doors and seated myself at the tables. I felt that if I went in those
+houses I would know where everything was--just where the dishes were
+kept, and the Bible, and the jam. It struck me that houses were very
+much alike in the world, and that led to the thought that people, too,
+were probably alike. So I forgot what the conductor had said to me about
+keeping still, and I crossed over the aisle and sat down beside a little
+girl who was regrettably young, but who looked pleasant. Her mother and
+grandmother were sitting opposite, and they smiled at me in a watery
+sort of way as if they thought a smile was expected of them. I meant to
+talk to the little girl, but I saw she was almost on the verge of tears,
+and it didn't take me long to discover what was the matter. Her little
+pink hat was held on by an elastic band, which, being put behind her
+ears and under her chin, was cutting her cruelly. I knew by experience
+that if the band were placed in front of her ears the tension would
+be lessened; so, with the most benevolent intentions in the world, I
+inserted my fingers between the rubber and her chubby cheeks, drew it
+out with nervous but friendly fingers, somehow let go of it, and snap
+across her two red cheeks and her pretty pug nose went the lacerating
+elastic, leaving a welt behind it!
+
+"What do you mean, you bad girl?" cried the mother, taking me by the
+shoulders with a sort of grip I had never felt before. "I never saw such
+a child--never!"
+
+An old woman with a face like a hen leaned over the back of the seat.
+
+"What's she done? What's she done?" she demanded. The mother told her,
+as the grandmother comforted the hurt baby.
+
+"Go back to your seat and stay there!" commanded the mother. "See you
+don't come near here again!"
+
+My lips trembled with the anguish I could hardly restrain. Never had a
+noble soul been more misunderstood. Stupid beings! How dare they! Yet,
+not to be liked by them--not to be understood! That was unendurable.
+Would they listen to the gentle word that turneth away wrath? I was
+inclined to think not. I was fairly panting under my load of dismay and
+despondency, when a large man with an extraordinarily clean appearance
+sat down opposite me. He was a study in grey--grey suit, tie, socks,
+gloves, hat, top-coat--yes, and eyes! He leaned forward ingratiatingly.
+
+"What do you think Aunt Ellen sent me last week?" he inquired.
+
+We seemed to be old acquaintances, and in my second of perplexity I
+decided that it was mere forgetfulness that made me unable to recall
+just whom he was talking about. So I only said politely: "I don't know,
+I'm sure, sir."
+
+"Why, yes, you do!" he laughed. "Couldn't you guess? What should Aunt
+Ellen send but some of that white maple sugar of hers; better than ever,
+too. I've a pound of it along with me, and I'd be glad to pry off a few
+pieces if you'd like to eat it. You always were so fond of Aunt Ellen's
+maple sugar, you know."
+
+The tone carried conviction. Of course I must have been fond of it;
+indeed, upon reflection, I felt that I had been. By the time the man
+was back with a parallelogram of the maple sugar in his hand, I was
+convinced that he had spoken the truth.
+
+"Aunt Ellen certainly is a dear," he went on. "I run down to see her
+every time I get a chance. Same old rain-barrel! Same old beehives! Same
+old well-sweep! Wouldn't trade them for any others in the world. I like
+everything about the place--like the 'Old Man' that grows by the gate;
+and the tomato trellis--nobody else treats tomatoes like flowers; and
+the herb garden, and the cupboard with the little wood-carvings in it
+that Uncle Ben made. You remember Uncle Ben? Been a sailor--broke both
+legs--had 'em cut off--and sat around and carved while Aunt Ellen taught
+school. Happy they were--no one happier. Brought me up, you know. Didn't
+have a father or mother--just gathered me in. Good sort, those.
+Uncle Ben's gone, but Aunt Ellen's a mother to me yet. Thinks of me,
+travelling, travelling, never putting my head down in the same bed two
+nights running; and here and there and everywhere she overtakes me with
+little scraps out of home. That's Aunt Ellen for you!"
+
+As the delicious sugar melted on my tongue, the sorrows melted in my
+soul, and I was just about to make some inquiries about Aunt Ellen,
+whose personal qualities seemed to be growing clearer and clearer in my
+mind, when my conductor came striding down the aisle.
+
+"Where's my little girl?" he demanded heartily. "Ah, there she is, just
+where I left her, in good company and eating maple sugar, as I live."
+
+"Well, she hain't bin there all the time now, I ken tell ye that!" cried
+the old woman with a face like a hen.
+
+"Indeed, she ain't!" the other women joined in. "She's a mischief-makin'
+child, that's what she is!" said the mother. The little girl was looking
+over her grandmother's shoulder, and she ran out a very red, serpent-like
+tongue at me.
+
+"She's a good girl, and almost as fond of Aunt Ellen as I am," said the
+large man, finding my pocket, and putting a huge piece of maple sugar in
+it.
+
+The conductor, meantime, was gathering my things, and with a "Come
+along, now! This is where you change," he led me from the car. I glanced
+back once, and the hen-faced woman shook her withered brown fist at me,
+and the large man waved and smiled. The conductor and I ran as hard as
+we could, he carrying my light luggage, to a stage that seemed to be
+waiting for us. He shouted some directions to the driver, deposited me
+within, and ran back to his train. And I, alone again, looked about me.
+
+We were in the heart of a little town, and a number of men were standing
+around while the horses took their fill at the watering-trough. This
+accomplished, the driver checked up the horses, mounted to his high
+seat, was joined by a heavy young man; two gentlemen entered the inside
+of the coach, and we were off.
+
+One of these gentlemen was very old. His silver hair hung on his
+shoulders; he had a beautiful flowing heard which gleamed in the light,
+the kindest of faces, lit with laughing blue eyes, and he leaned forward
+on his heavy stick and seemed to mind the plunging of our vehicle. The
+other man was middle-aged, dark, silent-looking, and, I decided, rather
+like a king. We all rode in silence for a while, but by and by the old
+man said kindly:
+
+"Where are you going, my child?"
+
+I told him.
+
+"And whose daughter are you?" he inquired. I told him that with pride.
+"I know people all through the state," he said, "but I don't seem to
+remember that name."
+
+"Don't you remember my father, sir?" I cried, anxiously, edging up
+closer to him. "Not that great and good man! Why, Abraham Lincoln and my
+father are the greatest men that ever lived!"
+
+His head nodded strangely, as he lifted it and looked at me with his
+laughing eye.
+
+"It's a pity I don't know him, that being the case," he said gently.
+"But, anyway, you're a lucky little girl."
+
+"Yes," I sighed, "I am, indeed."
+
+But my attention was taken by our approach to what I recognised as an
+"estate." A great gate with high posts, flat on top, met my gaze, and
+through this gateway I could see a drive and many beautiful trees. A
+little boy was sitting on top of one of the posts, watching us, and I
+thought I never had seen a place better adapted to viewing the passing
+procession. I longed to be on the other gatepost, exchanging confidences
+across the harmless gulf with this nice-looking boy, when, most
+unexpectedly, the horses began to plunge. The next second the air was
+filled with buzzing black objects.
+
+"Bees!" said the king. It was the first word he had spoken, and a true
+word it was. Swarming bees had settled in the road, and we had driven
+unaware into the midst of them. The horses were distracted, and made
+blindly for the gate, though they seemed much more likely to run into
+the posts than to get through the gate, I thought. The boy seemed to
+think this, too, for he shot backward, turned a somersault in the air,
+and disappeared from view.
+
+"God bless me!" said the king.
+
+The heavy young man on the front seat jumped from his place and began
+beating away the bees and holding the horses by the bridles, and in a
+few minutes we were on our way. The horses had been badly stung, and the
+heavy young man looked rather bumpy. As for us, the king had shut the
+stage door at the first approach of trouble, and we were unharmed.
+
+After this, we all felt quite well acquainted, and the old gentleman
+told me some wonderful stories about going about among the Indians and
+about the men in the lumber camps and the settlers on the lake islands.
+Afterward I learned that he was a bishop, and a brave and holy man whom
+it was a great honour to meet, but, at the time, I only thought of how
+kind he was to pare apples for me and to tell me tales. The king seldom
+spoke more than one word at a time, but he was kind, too, in his way.
+Once he said, "Sleepy?" to me. And, again, "Hungry?" He didn't look out
+at the landscape at all, and neither did the bishop. But I ran from one
+side to the other, and the last of the journey I was taken up between
+the driver and the heavy man on the high seat.
+
+Presently we were in a little town with cottages almost hidden among the
+trees. A blue stream ran through green fields, and the water dashed over
+a dam. I could hear the song of the mill and the ripping of the boards.
+
+"We're here!" said the driver.
+
+The heavy man lifted me down, and my young uncle came running out with
+his arms open to receive me. "What a traveller!" he said, kissing me.
+
+"It's been a tremendously long and interesting journey," I said.
+
+"Yes," he answered. "Ten miles by rail and ten by stage. I suppose
+you've had a great many adventures!"
+
+"Oh, yes!" I cried, and ached to tell them, but feared this was not the
+place. I saw my uncle respectfully helping the bishop to alight, and
+heard him inquiring for his health, and the bishop answering in his
+kind, deep voice, and saying I was indeed a good traveller and saw all
+there was to see--and a little more. The king shook hands with me, and
+this time said two words: "Good luck." Uncle had no idea who he was--no
+one had seen him before. Uncle didn't quite like his looks. But I did.
+He was uncommon; he was different. I thought of all those people in
+the train who had been so alike. And then I remembered what unexpected
+differences they had shown, and turned to smile at my uncle.
+
+"I should say I have had adventures!" I cried.
+
+"We'll get home to your aunt," he said, "and then we'll hear all about
+them."
+
+We crossed a bridge above the roaring mill-race, went up a lane, and
+entered Arcadia. That was the way it seemed to me. It was really a
+cottage above a stream, where youth and love dwelt, and honour and
+hospitality, and the little house was to be exchanged for a greater one
+where--though youth departed--love and honour and hospitality were still
+to dwell.
+
+"Travel's a great thing," said my uncle, as he helped me off with my
+jacket.
+
+"Yes," I answered, solemnly, "it is a great privilege to see the world."
+
+I still am of that opinion. I have seen some odd bits of it, and I
+cannot understand why it is that other journeys have not quite come up
+to that first one, when I heard of Aunt Ellen, and saw the boy turn
+the surprised somersault, and was welcomed by two lovers in a little
+Arcadia.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Painted Windows, by Elia W. Peattie
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