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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rosemary and Rue, by Amber
+
+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: Rosemary and Rue
+
+Author: Amber
+
+Release Date: May 19, 2011 [EBook #36168]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROSEMARY AND RUE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Rosemary and Rue
+
+  By Amber
+
+
+  Chicago and New York:
+  Rand McNally & Company,
+  Publishers
+
+
+  Copyright, 1896, by Rand, McNally & Co.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+"Amber" was not to be classed with any society or any creed. In all
+respects she was an individual. In good-humored contempt she held all
+form, and with deep sincerity she revered all simple things. She smiled
+upon error and frowned upon pretense. Her life was largely made up of
+impulse and sacrifice. She was the constant "victim" of her own
+generosity, needing the money and the time which sympathy impelled her
+to give away. She was so devoted a lover of the moods of nature, noting
+so closely the changing of the leaf or a new note sounded by the
+whimsical wind, that her spirit itself must once have been an October
+day. Year after year she toiled, and her reward was not money, but a
+letter from the bedside of the invalid, telling of a heart that had been
+lightened, of a care that had been driven from the door. None of the
+newspaper writers of Chicago was more popular. Another column told the
+news of the day; her column held the news of the heart. Her best
+thoughts and warmest fancies are scattered throughout her prose. Her
+verses are pleasant, and many of them are striking, but meter often
+chained her fancy. But some of her unchained fancies, poetic conceits in
+the guise of prose, will live long after the clasp, holding the
+pretentious verses of a society laureate, shall have been eaten loose by
+the constant nibble of time.
+
+When a church was crowded with friends, come to bid "Amber" good-bye, a
+great thinker, a writer who knows the meaning of toil, said that she had
+succeeded by the force and the industry of her genius. And so she had.
+For others, influence searched out easy places, but "Amber" found her
+own hard place and maintained it, struggling alone. Her words were for
+the poor and the sorrowful, and they could but give a blessing. But in
+the end, a blessing from the poor may be brighter than the silver of the
+rich.
+
+  Opie Read.
+
+
+
+
+Rosemary and Rue.
+
+
+
+
+I WONDER.
+
+  I wonder, if I died to-night,
+    And you should hear to-morrow,
+  You'd mourn to think this one dear friend
+    Had bid good-bye to sorrow.
+
+  I wonder, if you saw a bird,
+    The hunter's dart outflying,
+  You'd lure it back with loving word
+    To danger, pain, and dying.
+
+  I wonder, if you saw a rose,
+    Plucked quick in June's surrender,
+  You'd wish it back upon the bough,
+    To wither in November.
+
+  I wonder, if you watched the moon,
+    The tempest's rack outstripping,
+  You'd grieve to see its silver prow
+    In cloudless ether dipping.
+
+  I wonder, if you heard a thrush
+    Laugh out amid the clover,
+  You'd weep because its cage door oped--
+    Its captive days were over.
+
+  I wonder, if, some happy day,
+    When you have found your haven,
+  You'll mourn to find this one dear friend
+    Had been so long in heaven.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When I die bury me by the sea. Let my first hundred years in the spirit
+be spent on a sunny sand-bank watching the sapphire tides break over a
+bluff of lifted rocks. What is any earthly trouble but a dissolving
+dream, when one may bury the face in golden moss and sniff the salt
+spume of the sea! Over the blue verge of the horizon lies Spain, and I
+build its castles hourly here in my heart. A distant echo rings in my
+ears of trucks driven over stony streets, of the crack of the cabman's
+whip and the shout of profane teamsters, but the only semblance to cruel
+driver and jaded beast of burden seen in the seaside paradise of which I
+write is a fat huckster and a still fatter donkey who draws the large
+man where he (the donkey) listeth. Here on this lifted moorland, if one
+wishes to go anywhere he rises up and goes forth on a carpet of crimson
+moss and yellow grass and is driven by a chariot of untired winds.
+Behind us are miles of purple moss swept by ragged shreds of September
+fog, and musical, here and there, with bells of grazing herds; while
+before us, behind us, and all around us stretches the boundless,
+unfathomable and mysterious sea.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Did you ever hear of the island of Avilion? That enchanted place where
+"falls not hail, or rain, nor ever wind blows loudly," whose orchard
+lands and bowery hollows lie lapsed in summer seas? I found it one day
+when I was sailing on Casco bay in a boat hardly bigger than a peanut
+shell. Tennyson found it long ago in a dream, and to it he sent the good
+King Arthur that he might "heal him of his grievous wound" within the
+balm of its heavenly peace. But I found it in reality, and to it I took
+a care-worn lady and a work-weary brain, that I might perchance renew
+under its sunny spell a strength that was well-nigh spent. I found my
+island under another name, to be sure, but I rechristened it within the
+first hour of my landing. It is not the place, my dear, for featherheads
+and butterflies, this island of Avilion. It is not the place for the
+descendants of Flora McFlimsy to go with their new gowns and their
+French heels. All such would vote my little island a bore, and run up a
+flag for the first inland-bound steamer to put into port and carry them
+away. It has no ball-room, no promenade-hall under cover, no brass band,
+no merry-go-round, but instead it has meadow-lands that are brimful of
+bird songs; it has wild strawberries that bring their ruby wine to the
+very lips of the laughing sea; it has such sunsets as visit the dreams
+of poets and the skies of Italy; it has great rocks that are woven all
+over with webs of wild convolvulus vine, whose airy goblets of pink and
+blue hold nectar for the booming bee to sip; and it has marguerite
+daisies by the tens of thousands, and wild roses that carry the tint of
+your baby's palm and the honey of sugar-sweet dew within the inclosure
+of their small curled cup. It is hardly bigger than a Cunarder, this
+little Chebeague island, whose name I changed to Avilion, and from
+wave-washed keel to flowery bowsprit the eye never lights upon a
+defilement or a stain. It is the only place in all my wanderings where I
+never found a peanut shell nor a tin can thrown out to defile nature's
+beauty.
+
+There was not a single bad odor on my island during the whole ten days
+of my tarrying, and I am told by those who are old inhabitants that
+such a thing never was known to it. A soft wind is always blowing, but
+the only merchandise it carries is wild thyme perfume and the fragrant
+airs that waft from meadow-lands and old-fashioned gardens full of spice
+pinks and cinnamon roses. Now and then a hunter's fog slips the leash of
+its viewless hounds and with noiseless "halloo" scours the island for
+the prey it tracks but seems never to corral. Now and then a sudden
+tumult seizes the tides that climb and fall on the shiny rocks and the
+air is full of the throb of soft drums and the music of flutes that are
+beat and blown a moment, then die away as quickly as they came, like a
+strolling band that marches through a village street, then over the
+hills and far away. Now and then a troop of crows rise silently from out
+the shadow of the pines and go sailing between the lazy eyes that follow
+and the sun, until, settling down upon some meadow stacked with new-cut
+hay, they break into clamorous laughter that taunts you with its shrill
+derision. Always, from dawn to dewfall, the world about little Chebeague
+is full of swallows that dart and soar and flit like shadows. They
+seldom sing, and yet the few notes they thread upon the air sparkle like
+diamonds where they fall. Some strange bird, with a low, sleepy song
+like the crooning of a child that is half asleep, or like a shepherd
+boy's pipe idly blown beneath the noonday willows, is always haunting
+the groves of Avilion with an undiscovered presence. I have spent hours
+looking for him, yet never found him. Sometimes I have been led to half
+believe the fellow exists only in the fancy of a spellbound idler like
+you and me.
+
+Just at sunset a little feathered violinist of the island whips out his
+fiddle and draws the bow so delicately across its vibrant strings, while
+the golden sun slips tranquilly beneath the tinted waters of Casco bay,
+that the soul of the listener is fairly attenuated like a high C
+diminuendo with the spell of so much beauty. I don't know the name of
+the bird either, but he is going to sing for us all in heaven later on.
+Such performers do not end all here any more than Beethoven did.
+
+It was my custom during the time I spent at Little Chebeague to devote
+the entire day to strolling or lying at length upon the rocks--
+
+  Nothing but me 'twixt earth and sky;
+  An emerald and an amethyst stone,
+  Hung and hollowed for me alone.
+
+I grew to love the solitude with all my heart, and the thought of
+returning to the mainland with its jargon and its bustle was like the
+thought of tophet to the poor little peri for whom the gate of paradise
+had swung. Sometimes I would board the small boat that two or three
+times a day threads in and out of the blue water-way and visit adjacent
+islands hardly less beautiful than my chosen home.
+
+There is Long Island, far more beautiful by reason of its East End,
+where as yet the tide of a full-fledged summer resort has not come.
+There is an old-fashioned country roadhouse, such as we knew before the
+landscape gardener and the boulevard fiend were turned loose upon our
+rural towns. To follow their windings is heaven enough for me. A fringe
+of buttercups to fence the way, thickets of underbrush to darken the
+near distance, constant little ups and downs where the road slips into
+hollow to follow the call of a romping brook or climb a hill to watch
+for the sea. Wintergreen berries and russet patches everywhere, and the
+snow of blackberry bushes in bloom far as the eye can travel.
+
+"There is an old-time rail fence!" cried a visitor from the booming west
+one day; "my God, let me get out and touch it! I haven't seen anything
+but barbed wire since I left New England!" And he did get out of the
+buckboard in which he was driving and chipped away a big brown fence
+sliver as a memento. These roads I am talking about lead nowhere in
+particular. They, as often as not, end in a fisherman's back dooryard,
+but they are sweet as a young girl's caprice while they last.
+
+One day we strolled across one of the islands and found a battlement of
+rocks on the seaside that it would have taken a solid month to explore.
+Oh, there was enough on the bar at ebb tide at Avilion to while away an
+age of idle time.
+
+Sometimes we took it into our heads to ride. Then the choice lay between
+Charlie the Christian--so named for his good behavior and gentle
+ways--and the one roadster the island produced, a nag in the rough, who
+held his head high and cavorted with the stride of a jamboreeing boy.
+
+The choice made, the hour must be watched to catch the low tide over to
+Big Chebeague, for there are no wagon roads in Avilion. Six hours of
+safety, as to the low water mark, is the limit of one day's riding, and
+much can be done in the way of riding in a half-dozen hours' time. A
+spin across the bar, the climbing of a rocky road, a sweep of
+seaward-facing pike, with dips into ferny hollows and ascents to
+pine-crowned bluffs, make the trip worth recording, and if to the
+exhilaration of the ride you add a dismount now and then to gather
+wintergreen and pick roses, with a loiter through a church-yard where
+many Hamiltons, both pre-Adamite and ante-historic, are sleeping the
+sleep of the just, you have the whole meaning of an afternoon outing on
+Big Chebeague.
+
+Every evening after supper there was a pilgrimage to the west side of
+the island, not to be dispensed with by descendants of those remnant
+tribes that once worshiped the sun. Ranging from north to south as far
+as the eye can sweep, from westward, fronting little Chebeague, lies
+Casco bay, the loveliest bit of water in all the world. I say
+unhesitatingly the loveliest, because I do not believe that Naples, nor
+Sorrento, nor any far-famed Italian watering-place can match the coast
+of Maine for beauty. Into this bay, like petals from a wind-shaken
+blossom tree, are dropped hundreds of islands. Far to the west the White
+mountains melt upon the horizon in airy outline of blue, and over all
+each day is repeated the ancient miracle of the sun's decline. Sometimes
+a single cloud, like a tomb, receives the bright embodiment of day and
+hides it from our sight behind such draperies as orient never wrought
+nor monarch dreamed. Sometimes this fair god lies at length upon a bier
+of purple porphyry, while flakes of crushed gems strew his couch with
+rainbow dust, and all the air is full of rose-red censers, edged with
+gold. Sometimes he drops below the verge, holding to the last a wine cup
+brimmed with sparkling vintage that spills and trickles down the hills.
+Sometimes he returns in an afterglow, as the dead come back to us in
+dreams, the tenderer and the sweeter for their second coming. However
+the sun may set in Avilion, each setting is the most beautiful and best
+to be desired.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I heard someone bewailing the death of a friend the other day. The staff
+on which he had leaned, the bread which had ministered to his needs, the
+very light that had filled his eyes seemed caught away, and he mourned
+as one for whom there was no comfort possible. I saw a mother leaning
+above an empty crib, whose dainty pillow no nestling head should ever
+press again. I marked the terrible yet voiceless grief that ate at a
+bereaved father's self-control, until no wind-blown reed was ever so
+shorn of self-reliant strength. I saw a wife whose love had sunk within
+the grave where her young husband was laid, as the sun sets within a
+cloud of stormy night. I saw an old man bow his snowy head because the
+faithful one whose hand had lain in his for more than fifty years had
+vanished from his sight forever. I heard a little child lamenting at
+bed-time the lullaby song which its dead mother's tender lips should
+never sing again. But sadder than all these things, more tragical than
+any death which merely picks the blossom of life and bears it onward to
+heaven, as the gardener plucks the choicest rose to grace some festival
+of joy, is the scene when a trusted friendship dies; when faith which
+has endured the test of years gives up the breath of loyal life and
+sinks to hopeless unawakened death. Never think that you have shed your
+bitterest tears until you have stood at such a death-bed. Think not the
+measurement of any mortal grief has been found until you have sunk the
+plummet-line of such a sorrow. That grave shall never burst its sheath
+to let the soul of friendship's betrayal free, like a lily on the Easter
+air. That door shall never swing like the bars of a cage to let a
+murdered faith flash forth like the plume of a singing bird to seek the
+stars. Over the grave of a dead and buried trust no resurrection-note
+can ever sound like a bugle-call across the dewy hills to rouse the
+sleeper from his couch. God pity all who linger by the heaped-up mound
+where love's forgotten dreams lie buried, and grant oblivion as the only
+surcease for their bitter sorrow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The days and nights swing equally upon the golden balance of time. The
+year is whitening with its crop of frost-blossoms from which no
+harvest-home has ever yet been called. Like an unwritten page, the new
+year lies before us in untrodden fields of shining snow. God grant the
+footsteps of Death be not the first to track the unbroken path that lies
+before us. May joy and peace and love, like the roots of the violets
+under the snow, quicken and blossom for all of us as the year advances,
+and may our progress be, like January's, right steadily onward unto
+June!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As I write there is a sudden break in the hush of night, and faint and
+clear and sweet upon the listening ear falls the sound of "taps" from
+the camp in Fort Sheridan woods. I drop my pencil and listen to it, as I
+always do, with almost a spirit of reverent awe. The hard day's work is
+done, the time for rest has come, and over all the busy camp silence
+falls like the shadow of a brooding wing. The new moon, half hidden by
+drifting clouds sends a rippling play of silver through the woodbine
+leaves, and from the top of the maple tree, a thrush dreams forth a bar
+of liquid music in its sleep. All the world is going to sleep, and God
+grant, say I, that when the time for the final good-night has come for
+you and for me the call for "taps," blown from some celestial bugle the
+other side the mystic gate may fall as sweetly upon our ears and find us
+as ready to sink to slumber.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Did you ever hunt for eggs in a haymow? If you did you can remember just
+how, with bated breath, you crept through the fragrant glooms of the old
+barn and searched the dusty place for nests. You can recall, perhaps,
+the shaft of sunlight that broke through the crevice of the door and
+showed you old speckle-top in her corner. You can hear again her furious
+cackle when you dislodged her from her nest and gathered the warm eggs
+she had hovered under her wings. You remember the excitement of the
+search and the perfection of content which settled within your soul as
+you gathered the basketful of milk-white eggs upon your arm and picked
+your way down the steep ladder which led to the main floor and "all out
+doors." Scarcely any excitement or exhilaration of later years can
+compare with the joy of hen's-nest hunting when you were young.
+
+Did you ever go berrying? With a tin pail swinging from your wrist and
+your oldest gown upon your back, have you climbed the hill, jumped the
+fences and sought the side-hill pasture where the blackberries grew
+purple in the shade? Can you recall much, in all the years that thread
+between that happy time and this, which can transcend the pleasure of
+those wildwood tramps? Even now I seem to fix my eyes upon a clump of
+bushes by the old rail fence. They are domed high with verdure and show
+dusky hollows underneath, where, my skilled eye tells me, lurk spoils
+fit for Bacchus and all his nymphs. I part the leaves, a snowy moth
+flutters out of the green dusk and wavers like a snowflake in the warm,
+sweet air. I carefully reach my hand away inside the fairy bower of
+crumpled leaf and twisted vine and draw it forth purple with the juice
+of overripe berries that dissolve at a touch. With these I fill my pail,
+and all too often, I blush to own it, my mouth also, until twilight
+sends me home saturated with sunshine, late clover blooms and berry
+juice.
+
+Ah, my dear, all this was fun while it lasted, but there is a more
+exciting quest than hunting eggs or finding berries, in which we all of
+us engage as the years of our mortal pilgrimage go hurrying by. It is
+the search for happiness--a search we never give up nor grow too old to
+maintain. Forgetting the disappointments and the satieties of the dead
+years, we look forward to the new as the hidden nestfull of unchipped
+shells of fresh experience and untried delights. God bless us all, and
+prosper us to find the eggs and the berries before we die. Perhaps the
+service of love we do others shall prove the bush that bears the
+sweetest and the ripest clusters, and the nestfull that shall develop
+the whitest store of all life's opportunities.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A genuine mother could no more raise a bad boy into a bad man than a
+robin could raise a hawk. When I say "genuine mother" I mean something
+more than a mother who prays with her boy, and teaches him Bible texts,
+and sends him to Sunday-school. All those things are good and
+indispensable as far as they go, but there is a lot more to do to train
+a boy besides praying with him, just as there are things necessary to
+the cultivation of a garden besides reading a manual. To succeed with
+roses and corn one must prune, weed and hoe a great deal. To make a boy
+into a pure man, a mother must do more than pray. She must live with him
+in the sense of comrade and closest friend. She must stand by him in
+time of temptation as the pilot sticks to the wheel when rapids are
+ahead. She must never desert him to go off to superintend outside duties
+any more than the engineer deserts his post and goes into the baggage
+car to read up on engineering, when his train is pounding across the
+country at forty miles an hour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A LITTLE GOLDENHEAD.
+
+  Gay little Goldenhead lived within a town
+  Full of busy bobolinks, flitting up and down,
+  Pretty neighbor buttercups, cosy auntie clovers,
+  And shy groups of daisies, all whispering like lovers.
+
+  A town that was builded on the borders of a stream,
+  By the loving hands of nature when she woke from winter's dream;
+  Sunbeams for the workingmen taking turns with showers,
+  Rearing fairy houses of fairy grass and flowers.
+
+  Crowds of talking bumblebees, rushing up and down,
+  Wily little brokers of this busy little town,
+  Bearing bags of gold dust, always in a hurry,
+  Fussy bits of gentlemen, full of fret and flurry.
+
+  Gay little Goldenhead fair and fairer grew,
+  Fed on flecks of sunshine, and sips of balmy dew,
+  Swinging on her slender foot all the happy day,
+  Chattering with bobolinks, gossips of the May.
+
+  Underneath her lattice on starry summer eves,
+  By and by a lover came, with his harp of leaves;
+  Wooed and won the maiden, tender, sweet and shy,
+  For a little cloud home he was building in the sky.
+
+  And one breezy morning, on a steed of might,
+  He bore his little Goldenhead out of mortal sight;
+  But still her gentle spirit, a puff of airy down,
+  Wanders through the mazes of that busy little town.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Where shall we go to find the fit symbol of Easter? To the encyclopedia
+that we may post ourselves as to word derivations and root meanings? As
+well send a child to a botanist to find the meaning of a rose! To fitly
+understand the true significance of Easter time, find some slope in
+early April that the sun has found a few short days before you. Lay your
+ear close to the ground that you may hear the fine, soft stir within the
+bosom of the warm earth. Note how the mold is filling with its new birth
+of flowers. There is not a covert in all the awakening woods that has
+not a little nestling head hidden behind the dead leaves. The breath of
+a sleeping child is not more peaceful than the sway of the wind flower
+upon its downy stem. The flush on a baby's cheek is not more delicate
+than the tint of each gossamer petal. To what shall we liken the grass
+blades already springing up along the loosened water ways? To fairy
+bowmen, led by Robin Hood's ghost through winding ways from forest on to
+the sparkling sea. To what shall we liken the violet buds spread thick
+beneath the country children's feet? To constant thoughts of God that
+bloom even in the grave's dark dust. To what shall we liken the
+twinkling leaves that shine in the dim depths of the woods? To lights
+at sea, that tell some fleet is sailing into port. To what shall we
+liken the shy unfolding of the lilac buds? To the poise of a slender
+maiden who leans from out her lattice to hearken to a lover's song. To
+what shall we liken the cowslip's valiant gold? To the shining of a
+contented spirit with a humble home. To what shall we liken the brooding
+sky and the warmth of the all-loving sun? To the potency of a gentle
+nature intent on doing good, and the yearning of a tender heart to bless
+and save. Is there a nook so dark and forbidding that the beautiful
+Easter sunshine cannot enter and woo forth a flower? Is there a rock so
+impervious that the April wind may not find lodgment for a seed in some
+crevice, and there uplift a bannered blossom? Is there a cold, resentful
+bank wherein the late snow lingers that shall not finally cast off its
+disdainful ice and flash into verdure in response to the patient shining
+of the sun? Is there a grave in all the land so new and desolate that
+Easter time cannot find a violet among its clods and paint a rainbow
+within the tears that rain above it? To nature's lovers, then, as to the
+truly Christian heart, the significance of Easter is found in the
+reviving garden and in the awakening woods. It means resurrection after
+death, blossom time after the bareness of woe, the cuckoo's cry after
+the silence of songless days, and the smile of a pitying All-Father
+after the orphan time of the soul's bereavement and seeming desertion.
+
+Another blessed thought to be gained in the contemplation of nature's
+sure awakening from the long lethargy of her winter's sleep is that,
+however fearful we may be that death's reign shall be eternal, as
+constant as day dawn after midnight, or shining after storm, shall be
+the Easter of the soul. We do not need to pray for April; it comes. Nor
+do we need to pray for release from the first dark dominion of fear and
+dread when our beloved are snatched from our arms. Such experience is
+only the transient reign of winter in the heart, while yet the soft wing
+of April stirs upon the horizon's misty verge and the promise of violets
+is in the lingering darkness of the air. Remember this: The same power
+that sends us November is planning an April to follow, and out of the
+snowfall evolves the whiteness of the annunciation lily.
+
+It has always seemed to me that, beautiful as Christ's birthday ought to
+be and full of tender significance as we may make the hallowed Christmas
+time, a deeper tenderness attaches to these Easter days. The Sinless One
+had lived out the span of his mortal years; he had suffered and been
+betrayed; had struggled through Gethsemane, up to the thorn-crowned
+heights of Calvary, and yet, through all, carried the whiteness of a
+saintly soul, to cast its dying petals, like a white rose, wind-shaken
+yet yielding perfume even in death, in the utterance of that prayer for
+universal forgiveness, the most wonderful that ever ascended from earth
+to heaven--"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" The
+song that ushered in the birthtime of those sanctified years was an
+invocation of peace and good will, beneath which the morning stars were
+shaken like banners before the oncoming of a glorious prince, but the
+prayer that ascended from Calvary was the plea of a betrayed and
+anguished soul for universal charity and forgiveness from God to man.
+Let us rejoice, then, when Christmas days bring gladness to our hearts
+and homes, but let us forgive and bless when Easter lays its stainless
+lily at our feet. There is constant need for charity and forgiveness in
+a world so full of self-blinded and ignorant evil-doers. They do not
+always know what they do, these rude and riotous betrayers of Christ;
+and all the more need, then, for compassion, and that divine pity that,
+even from the cross, could invoke heaven's pardoning love.
+
+If you have a friend who has wronged you, forgive him to-day, for
+Christ's sweet sake. If you have a boy who has gone astray, reach out
+your arm and win him back, while yet the Easter violets glow upon the
+chancel rail. If you have a daughter who has been undutiful, take her in
+your arms and ask God to forgive you both--you for your lack of
+sympathy, as well as her for her waywardness. So shall you understand
+the meaning of Easter, the resurrection time of love, the fulfillment of
+its promise from out the icy negation of the grave.
+
+A few thoughts about death before we turn to other symbolizations of the
+season. It is all a mistake, it seems to me, to make death a menace and
+a dread in the minds of the young. Does the farmer go forth with tears
+to plant the seed for the coming harvest? Does the scientist mourn above
+the chrysalis that lets a rare butterfly go free? Does the navigator
+rebel when a bark that has been tempest-tossed and storm-driven enters
+port? Teach the children that death is all that makes life endurable;
+that it is the sheaf of ripened wheat, or the budding flower, plucked
+from the earth's dark mold; that it is the flight of the bird, the home
+stretch of the yacht. We love each other, but what is it that makes
+human love any nobler than the chirruping of birds if not its duration?
+And it is only death that makes our loves immortal. Time enthrals them
+with fear and environs them with alarms; death lifts them into the
+region of eternal joy. Take away the reality of our faith in the life to
+come and Easter would mean no more to us than it means to the browsing
+cattle that munch the violet buds and trample the bright promises of the
+year under foot. The comforting view of it all is, that here we are only
+learning to love. We are like birds that sit upon the edge of the nest,
+and flutter, and chirp, and dread to fly away. What shall the bough
+whereon our nest was rocked with many a storm be when we have learned
+to spread these tiresome wings and rejoice in the blue space of the
+boundless air? The heroism of love, the faithfulness of love, the
+grandeur, patience and magnificence of love shall only be revealed when
+the soul has left the shadows and spread its wing in the empyrean of
+heaven's blue.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a small boy who lives at our house with whom I wage an unending
+warfare on the subject of clean hands. The sun never goes down nor yet
+arises upon a harmonious adjustment of the mooted question. There are
+more tears shed, more dire threats made, more promises broken, more
+anguish endured on that one account than upon any other under the sun.
+
+The boy dwells under a ban as somber as the seven-fold curse of Rome.
+His sisters nag him, his grandmother prays for him, his mother pleads
+with him, his girl friends flout him, but in spite of all he continues
+to wear his hands in half tints. But the other evening he made an
+announcement that caused even the young person to remark: "Well, I'd
+rather see you with your soiled hands than see you such a dude as that!"
+
+"Gee!" said the boy, "but some of the kids that go to our school are
+queer ducks!"
+
+"Don't use so much slang," cried his mother; "why can't you call a boy a
+boy as well as a 'kid' and a 'duck'; and whatever do you mean by 'Gee'?"
+
+"They bring little cushions to school," continued the boy with only a
+swift hug in answer to his mother's question, "and they put 'em under
+their hands when they play marbles, so's they won't get their hands
+dirty. Gee whiz, but I'm glad I ain't such a fool!"
+
+And in spite of her desire to see him a bit more solicitous
+as to personal elegance his mother could but echo the boy's
+self-congratulatory remark.
+
+What on earth is going to become of us if this awful wave of effeminacy
+which has struck the race does not soon subside? Earmuffs and galoshes,
+heated street cars in April and double windows up to rose time have done
+their best to make molly coddles out of men, but when we are starting a
+generation of boys to play marbles with cushions to rest their hands on
+the sex had better abolish hats and trousers and take to hoods and
+shoulder shawls. Give me a boy and not a pocket edition of an old woman.
+He need not be a tough nor a bully, nor need he be cruel nor untender
+because he is a boy, but I want him jolly and brave and up to every
+harmless prank that's going. I want him to use slang and wear muddy
+shoes, slam doors and make all sorts of futile feints at keeping his
+hands clean, provided, always, he appreciates the opportunity offered to
+show the gentleman that's in him by never appearing at table looking
+like a tramp. Even that is better, though, than being a "sissy." Give
+him time and the untidiest boy in the world will develop into a
+gentleman, but eternity itself could not evolve a man out of a boy who
+plays marbles with a cushion!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As I was walking down Dearborn street the other day, close upon the
+gloaming, I chanced to meet two pretty girls, not the only two in this
+big city, perhaps, but two of the fairest. One had hair like the tassel
+of ripe corn when the sunshine finds it; the other's head was crowned
+with dusky braids, and the eyes of the two were brimful of laughter as a
+goblet new-filled with wine. Surely such pretty girls should carry
+queenly hearts, thought I, and with my old trick of catching topics in
+the air, I loitered a little on my way to hear what such fair lips might
+be saying. Said one: "I really don't care to marry him; he is such a
+darned fool! but he will give me everything I want, and I suppose I
+shall." I stayed to hear no more. If I had caught a yellow-bird
+swearing, or seen the first robin appear in Joliet stripes, the
+revulsion from pleasure to disgust could not have been more sudden. Is
+this all the lesson the world has taught you, my pretty maiden? To soil
+your lips with slang and sell yourself for fine clothes and the chance
+of unlimited display! Forecasting the life of such a girl is like
+forecasting an April day that dawns in tints of purple and gold, and
+ends in tempest and the blackness of night. Beauty is a glorious
+heritage, indeed, but to see it worn by such types as you, my pretty
+dears, is like seeing a queen's crown on the head of a parrot, or a
+royal scepter in the grasp of a monkey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Niagara Falls! What heart is so stolid, what appreciative spirit so
+calloused over with the hard crust of stoicism not to rise and shout
+before the wonder of its magnificence? When a man or woman gets so blasé
+as to thrill no more over Niagara Falls, let them be salted down with
+last year's hams and hung on a hook in the quiet seclusion of a
+smokehouse.
+
+First we took our way over the bridge that leads to the beautifully kept
+Goat Island and, alighting from the carriage, stood for a time with the
+full splendor of the American fall in our faces. A fascination that
+could not be shaken off held the eyes upon that never-stayed torrent of
+sun-illumined jewels. Diamonds they were, and great uncut emeralds, with
+here and there a rain of fiery rubies, that tumbled from off the lifted
+ledge of imperishable rock. And where the volume widened, until it
+became an avalanche of snowy foam, shot through and through with needles
+of light, it seemed to us that the law of gravitation had been forever
+abandoned, and falling tons of water, losing kinship drop with drop,
+were floated skyward again to find a home in heaven. Down-shooting
+rockets of silver foam unfallen, yet always in the air! Canopies of
+cloud, dissolving into fine dust-like roadside pollen! Draperies of
+spray unrolled in noiseless splendor from the blue background of an
+endless day! Explosions in mid air of thunderous torrents that turned to
+carded wool on the way from heaven to earth! While I stood and watched
+it all somebody profaned the air with a vulgar word, and I looked for a
+flaming sword from the omnipotent hand to smite him where he stood. To
+swear, or even to think an unholy thought in such a holy of holies,
+deserves the penalty of death as much as did the desecration of the
+temple in ancient times.
+
+Shifting our place from point to point, we found ourselves at last
+standing on the very verge of the Horseshoe falls, where, crowned with
+living green, it slips over the crumbling ledge and loses itself in a
+dazzling whirl of spray. Although I have stood in that same spot many
+times I am proud to remark that I have never stood there yet without
+saying my prayers. The sight is too much for the puny ego that animates
+this little capricious whiff of dust we call our mortal body, and now,
+if never before, the soul that retains one particle of the divine within
+it turns to God as the sunflower follows the sun. While we stood
+entranced by the sublime beauty of the scene a mighty wind arose
+suddenly and great clouds were called across the sky to the sending of a
+swift alarm. Before the breath of the wind the mists were tumbled far
+and wide like feathers, and a rainbow that arched the whole was
+demolished into nothingness only to be kindled again as a flame in the
+whimsical breath of the riotous air. One moment the atmosphere was a
+fairy flower garden, full of violets, roses, green feathery ferns and
+passion-tinted tulips brimming over with gold. The next some giant hand
+reached forth and plucked and bore each flower away. A suffusion of
+color followed every flood of sunshine, as a pomegranate runs with juice
+at the touch of a knife, only to be succeeded by pale wafts of
+colorless, interminable spray, where a cloud caught the too eager sun
+within its soft eclipse.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If the Lord left any snakes in Paradise after the settlement of the
+primal fuss they took the shape of the man who is a confirmed cynic and
+pessimist. The man who has no faith, no enthusiasm, no candor, no
+sentiment. The man who laughs at the mention of good in the world, or
+virtue in women, or honor among men. The man who calls his wife a fool
+because she teaches his little children to say their prayers, and curls
+his lip at any belief in the world beyond the grave. The man who never
+saw anything worth admiring in the sky when the dawn touches it, or the
+stars illumine it, or the clouds sweep it, or the rain folds it in gray
+mists of silence. The man who lives in this sparkling, shining world as
+a frog lives in a pond or a toad in a cellar, only to croak and spit
+venom. The man who never saw anything in a rose aglint in the sunlight
+or in a lily asleep in the moonlight, but a species of useless
+vegetable, the inferior of the cabbage and the onion. The world is
+overfull of such men, and if I had the right sort of broom I'd sweep
+them away as the new girl sweeps spiders.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once I was sailing in a yacht close to the rock-bound coast of Maine.
+
+It was presumably a pleasure cruise, but if ever a poor wretch in
+purgatory had a harder time of it I am sorry for him.
+
+The fog was thick, the ground swell was enough to unsettle the seven
+hills of Rome, and something was wrong with the boat's machinery, so
+that for hours we lay in the trough of the sea, making no headway and
+fearful that each moment would be our last. Added to all this there came
+at short intervals a demoniac blast from a fog horn which rent the air
+with the clamor of a thousand tongues.
+
+"Look out!" it seemed to shriek over and over again. "Look out, poor
+fragile wisps of gossamer! The hour strikes for your destruction.
+Another wave, a little higher than the last, shall suck you down like a
+shred of foam into the blackness of the sea's dark vortex. Brace up and
+meet your doom. Look out! Look out! Look out!"
+
+I listened to that fog horn for hours, until the soul within me lay like
+a spent bird weary with futile beating of useless wings, and I came
+within a hair's breadth of madness. In fact, I think I had commenced to
+rave a bit when a brisk wind sprang up that blew the fog away, the crew
+succeeded in righting the craft and onward we flew out of sound of the
+terrible fog horn forever.
+
+There are many things in life that remind me of fog horns; there are
+many occasions that beat upon the soul with just such vociferous clamor.
+
+There are those old-fashioned Bible texts, shouting "hell fire" and
+"eternal damnation." What are they but fog horns warning us from off a
+mist-enveloped shore? We cannot shut our ears to them while we lie a
+furlong off the rocks and listen to their woeful reiteration. Perhaps
+some chance wind may blow us out to sea, there to escape for the present
+the unwelcome climax; but we know that underneath the shrouded stars and
+through the hush of midnight forever and forevermore sounds the crash of
+that brazen alarm. We may not heed it, but the fog horn is there, forget
+and disown it though we may.
+
+Then there are our birthdays after we grow old enough to understand
+their significance; what are they but fog horns that sound at intervals
+to denote that we are drawing near to the final doom of all mankind?
+
+"Sport on," they seem to say, "a little longer; weave your garlands and
+blow your pretty bubbles while you may, for to-morrow you shall surely
+die!"
+
+Each year the fog horn blows a louder blast, until finally the softened
+haze of creeping years, like a white fog in the sea air, muffles the
+sound, and we sink to rest at last, some of us with the wild clamor
+hushed to the measure of a good-night song.
+
+Then the holidays. Thanksgivings and Christmases with independence days,
+like wine-red roses dropped between, what are they but fog horns on the
+invisible shores of memory? How they mock us with the recollection of
+vanished joys, and warn us of barren years yet to be.
+
+Gone forever are the dear ones who made gala times and festival
+happenings bright, and still we linger like boats in the trough of a
+sullen sea, our motive power wrecked, our sails rent, and listen,
+listen, listen to the warning that sounds from far off the hazy shore.
+
+"Gone, forever gone," the fog horn cries; "gone down into the sea, the
+boats that kept you company when the bright-winged fleet put out from
+port! Lost forever, in storms it seems scarce worth the while to have
+weathered, since here you toss, alone at last, like driftwood on the
+chilly tide, and listen forever to the mournful warning of my voice from
+off the sandbars, warning you that not even love can withstand the beat
+of time's relentless years."
+
+Our desks are full of miniature fog horns in the shape of unanswered
+letters.
+
+Our closets hang full of fog horns of varying fabrics. They warn us of
+the folly of trusting to bargain sales of shoddy goods; they warn us
+against extravagant tastes when times are hard; they warn us against the
+lazy mood that neglects the stitch in time that saveth nine.
+
+Every time we are ill the occasion is a fog horn.
+
+Either we have disregarded some law of health and are in the trough of
+the sea in consequence, or we are flying on to the breakers with ears
+dulled to the fog horn's din.
+
+We speak with cruel harshness to the old mother who loves us, or to the
+little child who trusts us. We are sorry for it afterward, and that
+sorrow is the fog horn that warns us to keep off the reef of temper.
+
+"To-day may be the last day for the mother you have pained or the child
+you have wronged," it seems to say; "the bed they lie down upon to-night
+may be the bed of death. See to it, then, that you make each day of
+life, if possible, the last day of love's opportunity." Did you ever
+stop to think of what would become the instant concern of all this vast
+human race if a sudden edict should go forth that only twenty-four hours
+were left for each man to live? What if an angel should appear to-day at
+sunset and proclaim in a voice that should reach from world's center to
+world's rim, "To-morrow at set of sun this globe and all its race of
+sentient life shall be folded up like a scroll and effaced from heaven's
+chart!"
+
+What would we all begin to do then, I wonder? I think that everything
+would be forgotten but love. Envy and hatred, covetousness, jealousy,
+ambition, selfishness and cruelty would find no place in the hearts of
+men. We would improve love's latest opportunity to be kind one to
+another, tender-hearted and merciful. The husband would not be harsh
+with his wife, nor the wife show waspish temper to her husband, if the
+last day had come for both. The father would not strike his boy in
+uncontrolled temper, nor the mother rebuke her careless child, if the
+knowledge that the end of love's opportunity lay between the uplifted
+hand and the culprit. We should all be loving and fond and sweet if we
+only knew. My dear, this very thought, carried out, is but another fog
+horn. Perhaps death is already near, and the brazen clamor in our hearts
+which takes shape of an uneasy conscience or of a nameless dread is but
+the warning in the fog that we are close upon the fatal reef. Ah, the
+air is full of them! They sound in every waking moment, they mingle with
+our dreams, they greet our opening eyes, they accompany us when the
+tired lids fall in slumber. The shore is lined with them and their
+warning is as ceaseless as the beat of time's receding waves.
+
+But of what use is a fog horn to a vessel that gives no heed? Why uplift
+them on dangerous reefs if the ship's crew sleeps through their warning
+and the unconscious captain ignores their hoarse note of alarm?
+
+An unheeded fog horn might as well be silenced, and so, I sometimes
+think, if we allow our hearts to grow callous to the call that
+conscience makes, why not be thankful when the warning ceases and
+silence follows the useless repetition of an unavailing appeal? If I am
+to be shipwrecked at last I think I would rather run upon the reefs
+without warning than to drift to destruction to the mocking cadence of
+an alarm I would not heed. To go down with the sound in my ears of an
+admonition that might have saved me had I but listened would be the
+hardest sort of dying.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+HER CRADLE.
+
+  There are tears on the gentian's eyelids,
+    As they lift them, fringed and fair.
+  Do they mourn for the vanished brightness
+    Of my baby's golden hair?
+
+  There's a cloud a-droop in the heavens
+    That shadows their sunny hue.
+  Does it dream of the lovelight tender
+    In my baby's eyes so blue?
+
+  The golden rod pines in the forest,
+    The aster pales by the brook.
+  Do they miss her fairy footfall
+    In each dim and flow'ry nook?
+
+  Now, all through this beautiful weather,
+    Wherever I walk, I weep;
+  For I think of the desolate cradle
+    Where my baby lies asleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other night, as I was listening to "taps" in a neighboring military
+camp, a longing came over me for a silver bugle of my own, that I might
+blow a message to the drowsy world. We all listen to that fellow up at
+Fort Sheridan, when he gives the command for "lights out!" just because
+he blows it through a bugle. He might come out and say what he had to
+say in tones anywhere between a cornet and a clap of thunder, and the
+effect would be nothing to what it is when the notes filter through a
+silver mouthpiece. And how exquisitely the last strains of that nightly
+call linger on the ear! They melt into the starry glooms, and throb
+through the dim spaces of the woods like golden bubbles or the wavering
+flight of butterflies. Whenever we hear them we think of Grant, asleep
+in his grave by the mighty river, of his work well done, and the rest
+that dropped upon his pain-racked life at last like a soft and rainy
+shadow on a thirsty land. We think of hosts of brave men who fill
+soldiers' graves all over this blood-bought heritage of ours. We think
+of hearts that once beat high, for long years silent as stones to all
+our cries and tears. We think of a host of things, solemn and hushed,
+and sacred, and drop to sleep at last with an indistinct purpose in our
+hearts to so conduct ourselves that when the Death Angel blows "taps"
+for us, we shall leave a record behind us to be read through fond,
+regretful tears, and enshrined in golden characters upon the tablets of
+memory.
+
+Now, if I had a bugle instead of a pen, to work with, and if I could
+stand out under the stars on a hushed summer night and deliver my
+message through its silver throat, perhaps the world that reads me might
+be thrilled into earnest purpose more readily than it is when exhorted
+from a pencil point or a quill. The first message I should ring through
+that bugle of mine would be the command, "Don't fret!" However
+comfortless and forlorn you may be, don't add to your own and the
+world's misery by fretting. There never yet was a sorrow that could not
+be lived down; there never yet was one that could be cured by worry.
+When the cows get into the corn and the chickens into the flower-beds,
+the sensible man chases 'em out first, repairs the damage next, and,
+lastly, fastens up the break in the garden wall by which the marauders
+got in. What would you think of a farmer who went into his bedroom to
+pray before he chased out the cows, or of a woman who threw her apron
+over her head and wept long and loud because the hens were scratching up
+her pink roots, instead of "shooing" them a half-mile away with a broom?
+Most troubles come upon us as the cattle and the hens get into the corn
+and the garden patch, through a broken fence or a carelessly unguarded
+gate. It is our own fault half the time that we are tormented, and the
+sooner we repair the damage and mend the fence, the better. Time spent
+in useless bewailing, in worry and disquietude, is lost time, and while
+we wait the mischief thickens. Take life's trials one by one, as the
+handful of heroes met the host at Thermopylae, and you will slay them
+all; but allow them to marshal themselves on a broad field while you are
+crying over their coming or praying for deliverance, instead of arming
+yourselves to meet them, and they will make captives of you and keep
+you forever in the dungeon of tears. Is your husband too poor to buy you
+all the fine clothes you want, or to keep a carriage, or to surround you
+with pleasant society and congenial friends? Very well, that is
+certainly too bad, but what's the use of being forever in the dumps
+about it? Get up and help him keep the cows out of the corn, and perhaps
+you'll have a golden harvest yet. A sullen, discontented wife is a
+millstone around any man's neck, and he may be thankful when the good
+Lord delivers him from her. Whatsoever is worth having in this world's
+gifts is worth working for, and wedlock is like an ox-team at the plow.
+If the off-ox won't pull with the nigh one, it has no claim with him
+upon the possible future of a comfortable stall and a full bin. Out upon
+you, then, Madam Gruntle, if you sulk, and pout and fret your days away
+because your husband is a poor man and spends most of his time chasing
+the cattle, calamity and failure out of his wheat patch. He may possibly
+be one of fortune's numerous ne'er-do-wells, but in that case all the
+more reason you should not fail him. Bent reeds need careful handling,
+and smoking flax gentle tending, else they will perish on your hands
+and disappoint both you and heaven. All the more reason that you should
+be cheery and strong and ready to do your part, if the man you married,
+because you dearly loved him (remember!) is unable to do all that he
+promised. That is, always provided he is weak and unfortunate, rather
+than desperately wicked. A woman has no call to stand by any man if he
+is a wretch and shows no desire to be anything else. The Lord himself
+never helped a sinner until he showed some desire to be saved. Less
+repining, then, a little more forbearance with one another's
+shortcomings, and a little more loyalty to the promise "for better or
+for worse," will ease up much of the burden of dissatisfied and
+disappointed wedlock.
+
+Another message that I should blow through that bugle, if I had it at my
+lips to-night, would be: "Be true!" And I should ring it out so long and
+loud, I think, that the moon would stop to listen, and the sleepy heads
+in every home in the land would rise from their pillows like
+night-capped crocuses out of the snow. For heaven's sake, if you have a
+principle or a friend, be true to them. Make up your mind, whether or
+no your principle is solid and has God and justice on its side, and then
+be true to it right down to death, or, what is harder, through
+misunderstanding and obloquy. And if you have a friend, such as God
+sometimes gives a woman or a man, faithful through all betiding, staunch
+in your defense and tender in your blame, stand true to that friend
+until the grave's green canopy is spread between you. He may be
+unpopular and unfortunate, and all the feather-headed crew of society
+may ignore him, but if you have ever tested his worth as a friend, stand
+up for him, and stand by him forever. The sun may go down upon his
+fortunes, and calumny may cloud his name, and you may know in your heart
+that more than half the world says about him is true, but stand by the
+man who has once been your true friend. Ingratitude is the blackest
+crime that preys upon the human soul. The forgetfulness of a favor, or
+the effacement of a bond sealed with an obligation, is capable only to
+weak and cowardly natures.
+
+If you have a conviction, and are conscientious in the belief that you
+are right, be true to your professions. If you are a rebel, be a rebel
+out and out, and don't be a goat to leap nimbly back and forth over the
+fence. Never apologize for either your faith or your profession, unless
+you have reason to be ashamed of it; and, if you are ashamed of it,
+renounce it and get one that will need no apology.
+
+There are lots of other messages I would like to stand on a hill and
+blow through a bugle, but the weather is too warm to admit of further
+effort just now; so we'll postpone the topic for another hearing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I sat in a fashionable church the other day and listened to a sermon on
+"The Prodigal Son." How often I have heard the same old story told in
+the same old way. How familiar I have become with the kind father, the
+bad son, refreshingly human heir, the veal and the ring! But the last
+time I heard the story I felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to rise
+up in meeting and ask the question, "How does the treatment accorded to
+the prodigal son match the treatment we mete out to the prodigal
+daughter?"
+
+How far out of our way do we go to accompany his sister on her homeward
+faring after a season spent among the swine and the husks?
+
+Do we put an 18-karat ring on her poor little soiled finger and place
+her at the head of our table, even if by good chance she gains an
+entrance to the home? Do we not more often meet her at the back door
+when nobody is looking, rush her through the hallway and consign her to
+the little third story rear room, taking her meals to her ourselves, on
+the sly, that the neighbors may not find out the dreadful fact that she
+is at home again?
+
+"Keep yourself very close," we say to her, "and by no manner of means be
+seen at any of the windows, and you may stay here. You can wear some of
+your virtuous sister's cast-off clothing, and sleep on the lounge in the
+nursery, where the servants never think of going since the little folks
+have grown up, but you must be very penitent, and very humble, and very
+thankful to God for the mercy you so little deserve."
+
+I think somebody had better write a new parable and call it "The
+Prodigal Daughter." Perhaps a sermon might be preached from it to touch
+the unmoved heart.
+
+After all there are two sorts of prodigals--the prodigal who comes home
+because the cash gives out, and the prodigal who comes because his heart
+turns back to the old home with such longing as the thirsty feel for
+water. Neither boy nor girl who comes back for the first-named reason
+should find a maudlin love awaiting, nor partake of any banquet that the
+old folks have had to pay for, but the prodigal who returns because
+there is something left in his or her heart like the music in a shell,
+which nothing can destroy or hush away to silence, be that prodigal
+sinful man or erring woman, should find not only the home doors swung
+wide in welcome, but every doorway in the land wreathed with flowers to
+bid him enter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How few people know when to stop. If the preacher knew when to stop
+preaching, how much more satisfactory the result of his sermon might be.
+If the genial fellow knew just when to stop telling his good stories,
+how much keener their relish would be. If the moralizer knew just when
+to stop moralizing, how much longer the flavor of his philosophy would
+endure. If the friend knew when to keep still, how grateful his silence
+would be. If the candid creature who so glibly tells of our foibles knew
+when to hold his tongue, how much less strong our impulse to slap him
+would be. If the high-liver knew when to stop eating, how much less sure
+dyspepsia would be. If the popular guest knew when to withdraw, how much
+more regretfully we should see him go. If the politician knew when to
+retire into private life, how much whiter his record would be. If we all
+knew just when to die, and could opportunely bring the event about, how
+much truer our epitaphs would be. The court fool who prayed, "Oh God, be
+merciful to me, a fool!" prayed deeper than he knew, and the man who
+prays, "Oh God, teach me to know when I have said enough," prays deeper
+still.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You may talk about California all you will, but match, if you can, the
+beauty of spring as it comes to us in these northerly latitudes. There
+is the coy advance and retreat of a woman hard to win; there is the
+crescendo and diminuendo of heavenly harmonies; there is the dissolving
+view that glimmers and glows like an opal, or like the mirage of a misty
+sea. I was in California a year ago, in April time. I found the month
+that poets love in full splendor, like a queen who never doffs her
+crown. Violets, roses, lilacs and carnations came all together in a
+riotous rush. One did not have to woo the season; it was already won.
+Like a matron crowned with the mid-splendor of her years, the earth
+received the homage that is due achievement. Nobody caught the sound of
+the first robin on a rainy morning and heralded it with a shout; the
+first robin, like the first principle in creation, never existed, for
+the reason that he was always there. There were no foretellings of green
+along the watercourses; no prophetic thrills of violets in the air; no
+uplifting of the hypatica's downy head above the lattice of fuzzy
+leaves; everything was right where you discovered it, and had been all
+the year round. Without beginning and without end, spring exists
+forever, like a picture bound within a book, in the lovely land of the
+Gringos. But walk out some April morning in the suburbs that surround
+Chicago. Catch the tonic of the air, like wine ever so delicately
+chilled with ice. View the lake, like a gentian flower fringed with a
+horizon fine as silk. Scrape away the leaves and hail the valiant Robin
+Hood in his suit of green, leading his legion upward to the sun. Without
+the sound of a footfall or the gleam of a lance, they come to take
+possession of the earth. Woo the violet to turn her dewy eye upon you,
+and listen to the minstrel in the tower, where the winds are harping to
+the new buds. Mark the maple twigs, like silhouettes cut in coral, and
+the sheath of the wood lily, like a ribbon half unrolled. Rejoice in the
+flash of the blue bird's wing as it startles the still air, and then say
+to me, if you dare, that you prefer any other climate to this one that
+belts the zone of these northern lakes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thank the Lord, all ye who can call yourselves healthy. The day has gone
+by for physically delicate women. This age demands Hebes and young
+Venuses with ample waists and veritable muscles. Specked fruit and
+specked people go in the same category in the popular taste. To the
+question, "How are you to-day?" I for one, always feel like replying in
+the words of an old Irish servant we once had (God rest her faithful
+soul wherever it be this windy day!), "First-rate, glory be to God!" It
+is such a grand thing to be well and strong, to feel that your soul is
+riding on its way to glory in a chariot, and not in a broken-down old
+mud-cart. Talk about happiness! Why, a well beggar has a better time of
+it than a sick king, any day. If, then, like a bird, your strong wing
+uplifts you above the countless shafts of pain which that grim old
+sportsman, Death, is ever aiming at poor humanity, count yourself an
+ingrate if the song of thanksgiving is not always welling from your
+heart like the constant song of a bobolink singing for very joy above
+the clover.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What would be thought of a ship that was launched from its docks with
+flourish of music and flowing wine, built to sail the roughest and
+deepest sea, yet manned for an unending cruise along shore? Never
+leaving harbor for dread of storm. Never swinging out of the land-girt
+bay because over the bar, the waters were deep and rough. You would say
+of such a ship that its captain was a coward and the company that built
+it were fools.
+
+And yet these souls of ours were fashioned for bottomless soundings.
+There is no created thing that draws as deep as the soul of man; our
+life lies straight across the ocean and not along shore, but we are
+afraid to venture; we hang upon the coast and explore shallow lagoons or
+swing at anchor in idle bays. Some of us strike the keel into riches and
+cruise about therein, like men-of-war in a narrow river. Some of us are
+contented all our days to ride at anchor in the becalmed waters of
+selfish ease. There are guns at every port-hole of the ship we sail, but
+we use them for pegs to hang clothes upon, or pigeon-holes to stack full
+of idle hours. We shall never smell powder, although the magazine is
+stocked with holy wrath wherewith to fight the devil and his deeds. When
+I see a man strolling along at his ease, while under his very nose some
+brute is maltreating a horse, or some coward venting his ignoble wrath
+upon a creature more helpless than he, whether it be a child or a dog, I
+involuntarily think of a double-decked whaler content to fish for
+minnows. Their uselessness in the world is more apparent than the
+uselessness of a Cunarder in a park pond.
+
+What did God give you muscle and girth and brain for, if not to launch
+you on the high seas? Up and away with you then into the deep soundings
+where you belong, oh, belittled soul! Find the work to do for which you
+were fitted and do it, or else run yourself on the first convenient snag
+and founder.
+
+Some great writer has said that we ought to begin life as at the source
+of a river, growing deeper every league to the sea, whereas, in fact,
+thousands enter the river at its mouth, and sail inland, finding less
+and less water every day, until in old age they lie shrunk and gasping
+upon dry ground.
+
+But there are more who do not sail at all than there are of those who
+make the mistake of sailing up stream. There are the women who devote
+their lives to the petty business of pleasing worthless men. What
+progress do they make even inland? With sails set and brassy stanchions
+polished to the similitude of gold, they hover a lifetime chained to a
+dock and decay of their own uselessness at last, like keels that are
+mud-slugged. It is not the most profitable thing in the world to please.
+Suppose it shall please the inmates of a bedlam-house to see you set
+fire to your clothing and burn to death, or break your bones one by one
+upon a rack, or otherwise destroy your bodily parts that the poor
+lunatics might be entertained. Would it pay to be pleasing to such an
+audience at such a sacrifice? But the destruction of the loveliest body
+in the world is nothing compared to the demoralization of soul that
+takes place when women subvert everything lofty and noble within their
+nature to win the transient regard of a few worthless men of the world.
+They learn to smoke cigarettes because such men profess to like to see a
+pretty woman affect the toughness of a rowdy. They drink in public
+places and barter their honor all too often for handsome clothes in
+which to make a vain parade, all to please some heathen man, who in
+reality counts them a great way inferior to the value of a good horse.
+The right sort of a sweetheart, my dear, never desires to bring a woman
+down to his own level. He prefers to put her on a pedestal and say his
+prayers to her. Never think that you are winning an admiration that
+counts for much if you have to abate one whit of your womanhood to win
+it. Every time I see a woman drinking in a public resort, making herself
+conspicuous by loud talk and louder laughter, I think of some fair ship
+that should be making for the eternal city, with all its snow-white
+canvas set, rotting at its docks, or cruising, arm's length from a
+barren land. We were put into this world with a clean way bill for
+another port than this. Across the ocean of life our way lies, straight
+to the harbor of the city of gold. We are freighted with a consignment
+from quarter-deck to keel which is bound to be delivered sooner or later
+at the great master's wharf. Let us be alert, then, to recognize the
+seriousness of our own destinies and content ourselves no longer with
+shallow soundings. Spread the sails, weigh the anchor and point the prow
+for the country that lies the other side a deep and restless sea. Sooner
+or later the voyage must be made; let us make it, then, while the timber
+is stanch and the rudder true. With a resolute will at the wheel, and
+the great God himself to furnish the chart, our ship shall weather the
+wildest gale and find entrance at last to the harbor of peace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When you look at a picture and find it good or bad, as the case may be,
+whom do you praise or blame--the owner of the picture or the artist who
+painted it? When you hear a strain of music and are either lifted to
+heaven or cast into the other place by its harmonies or its discord,
+whom do you thank or curse for the benefaction or the infliction,
+whichever it may have proved to be--the man who wrote the score or the
+music dealer who sold it? You go to a restaurant and order spring
+chicken which turns out to be the primeval fowl. Who is to blame--the
+waiter who serves it or the business man of the concern who does the
+marketing? And so when you encounter the bad boy, whom do you hold
+responsible for his badness--the boy himself or the mother who trained
+him? I declare, as I look about me from day to day and see the men and
+women who play so poor a part in life, it is not the poverty of their
+performance that astonishes me so much as the fact that it is as good
+as it is.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I did think I would keep out of the controversy on the low-neck dress
+question. But there is just one thing I want to say. Did you ever know a
+sweet young girl yet, one who was rightly trained and modestly brought
+up, who took to decollete dresses naturally? Is not the first wearing of
+one a trial, and a special ordeal? It is after the bloom is off the
+peach that a young woman is willing to show her pretty shoulders and
+neck to the crowd; and who cares much for a rubbed plum or a brushed
+peach? I cannot imagine a sweet, wholesome-hearted woman, be she young
+or old, divesting herself of half her clothes and thrusting herself upon
+the notice of ribald men. I can sooner imagine a rose tree bearing frog.
+The conjunction is not possible. The cheek that will blush at the story
+of repentant shame, that will flame with indignant protest when the
+skirts of a Magdalene brush too near, yet deepens not its rose at
+thought of uncovering neck and bust in a crowded theater or public
+reception is not the cheek of modest and natural womanhood. It is not
+necessary to be a prude or a skinny old harridan either, to inveigh
+against the custom. I know full well how contemptible the affectations
+and hypocrisies of life are. Half that is yielded to evil was meant for
+good. The high chancellor of Hades has put his seal on much that was
+originally invoiced for the Lord's own people. But there are some things
+so palpably shameless that to argue about them is like trying to prove
+by demonstration that a crow is white. It needs no argument.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE VETERANS.
+
+  Scarce had the bugle note sounded
+    For the call of their last defeat;
+  And still on the lowland meadow
+    Lie the prints of their quick retreat.
+
+  Above us the bright skies sparkle,
+    And around us the same winds blow
+  That rippled their golden banners
+    In that battle so long ago,
+
+  When the southwind challenged winter,
+    And the rose-ranks routed the snow,
+  And the hosts of tiny gold coats
+    Sprang up from their campfires below,
+
+  To charge on the insolent frost king,
+    And shatter his lance of ice,
+  While back to the desolate northland
+    They wheeled him about in a trice.
+
+  The battle is hardly ended,
+    The victory only begun,
+  Yet I saw the gray-bearded vet'rans,
+    To-day, sitting out in the sun.
+
+  They nod by wind-rippled rivers,
+    They shake in the shade of the oak,
+  And all the day long they murmur
+    And whisper, and gossip, and croak.
+
+  And often in wondering rapture,
+    They recount the charge they made,
+  When down from the windy hillsides,
+    And up through the dewy glade,
+
+  The sheen of their golden bonnets
+    Shone out from the green of the leaves,
+  Like the flight of a glancing swallow,
+    Or the flash of a wave on the seas.
+
+  They muse in sleepy contentment,
+    Or flutter in endless dispute.
+  For this was a brave cadet, sir,
+    And that one a crippled recruit.
+
+  Fight over again your battles,
+    O veterans, withered and gray;
+  For a band of northwind chasseurs
+    To-morrow shall blow you away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once upon a time it came to pass that a woman, being weary with much
+running to and fro, fell asleep and dreamed a dream.
+
+And in her dream she beheld a mighty host, more than man could number.
+And of that host, all were women, and spake with varying tongues.
+
+And they bent the body, and sitting on hard benches wailed mightily, so
+that the air was full of the sound of lamentation, like a garden that
+wooeth many bees.
+
+And the woman who dreamed, being tender of heart and disposed kindly
+toward the suffering ones, lifted up her voice saying:
+
+"Why bendest thou the body, oh, daughters of despair, and why art thine
+eyelids red with tears?
+
+"Yea, why rockest thou like boats that find no anchor, and like poplars
+which the north wind smiteth?"
+
+And one from among the host greater than man could number made answer,
+saying:
+
+"Wouldst know who we are, and why we spend our days like a weaver's
+shuttle that flitteth to and fro in a web of tears?
+
+"Behold we are the faithless and unregenerate handmaids who have served
+thee, and women like unto thee, bringing desolation unto thy larders,
+and gray hairs among the braids with which nature hath crowned thee.
+
+"Yea, verily, by reason of our misdemeanors lift we the voice of
+lamentation in a land that knoweth not comfort."
+
+Now, the woman who dreamed, being full of amazement, replied anon, and
+these were the words that fell from her lips:
+
+"Sayest thou so? And dwellest thou and thy sisters in Hades by reason of
+the evil thou hast wrought?"
+
+"Nay, not forever," replied she who had spoken. "We remain but for a
+season, that our remorse may cleanse our record before we go hence to
+sit with the blessed ones in glory.
+
+"Not from everlasting unto everlasting is the duration of the penalty we
+pay for what we have done unto thee, else were there no peace between
+the stars by reason of our torment and our tears."
+
+And the woman who dreamed beheld many whose fame yet lingered within the
+shadows of her home.
+
+There was Ann, the fumble-witted, who piled the backyard high with
+broken china, yet stayed not her hand when rebuked therefor.
+
+There was Sarah, the high-headed, who refused to clean the paint because
+she had dwelt long in the tents of such as hired the housecleaning done
+by other hands, that the labors of the handmaid might be few;
+
+Yea, verily, with such as believed that Sarah and her ilk might have
+time wherein to be merry rather than toil.
+
+There was Karen, the Swede, who wrapped the bread in her petticoat and
+refused to be convinced of the error of her ways.
+
+There was Jane, the Erinite, who broke the pump, and Caroline, the
+Teuton, who combed her locks with the comb of the woman who dreamed.
+
+There was Adaline, the hoosier, who failed to answer the summons of the
+stranger who knocked at the gates unless she were in full dress and
+carried a perfumed handkerchief.
+
+There was Louise, who smote the youngest born of the household because
+he prattled of her dealings with the frequent cousin who called often
+and sought to deplete the larder.
+
+There was the girl who desired her evenings out and never came home
+before cock crow.
+
+There was the girl who threw up her place in the family of the woman who
+dreamed because she was asked to hurry her ways.
+
+There was the girl who wore the hose of her mistress, and took it as an
+affront when asked to desist.
+
+There was the girl who swore when the chariot of the sometime guest drew
+nigh, and likewise the girl who refused to remain over night in a
+dwelling where she was summoned to serve by means of a call bell.
+
+There was the girl who found it too lonesome in the country and left the
+garments in the washtub that she might hie her to the great city, the
+social center of which she was the joy and the pride.
+
+There was the girl who was made mad by means of the request that she
+wash her hands before breakfast.
+
+There was the girl who entertained her callers in the drawing-room while
+the family was afar off, sojourning in the hills or by the waves of the
+sea;
+
+Yea, who thought it no evil to bring forth the flesh-pot and the
+brandied comfit, that the heart of the district policeman might leap
+thereat, as the young buck leapeth at sight of the water courses.
+
+There was also the girl who wasted, and the girl who stole; the girl who
+never tried, and the girl who never cared.
+
+And seeing the multitude the spirit of the woman who dreamed arose
+within her and she asked of a certain veiled one who seemed to be in
+charge:
+
+"Tell me, O shrouded one, is there never to be any diminution in the
+throng that cometh to take their abode in these halls of penitential
+regret?"
+
+And the spirit in charge made answer, saying:
+
+"No, nor never shall be while fools live and folly thrives.
+
+"It is by reason of the babbling of busy-bodies that havoc has overtaken
+the land of thy forefathers.
+
+"There is honor in faithful service, and an uncorruptible crown awaiteth
+the forehead of her who serveth well.
+
+"It is no disgrace to the comely daughters of men who toil and are put
+to that they bring in the wherewithal to fill the mouths of the children
+who call them father--
+
+"It is no disgrace, I say unto you, if such maidens take unto themselves
+the position of servants in the family of him who prospereth,
+
+"Remembering that one who lived long since and has slept these many
+years in the tomb of his fathers, spake truly when he uttered these
+words, albeit framed in rhyme:
+
+  "Honor and shame from no condition rise;
+  Act well your part, there all the honor lies."
+
+And it came to pass that the woman who dreamed took comfort to herself
+by reason of her dream.
+
+And she arose from slumber like a strong man who desireth to run a race.
+
+And buckling on more tightly the armor wherein she moved, yea, even with
+a free hand buttoning the boot and drawing the string, she cogitated
+unto herself, and these were the words of her cogitation:
+
+"Behold, I will learn a new wisdom that I may be unto my handmaids a
+friend rather than a taskmistress, that in so doing I may win unto my
+household the damsel who hath intelligence. And my treatment of her
+shall be such that many wise ones who call that damsel friend shall
+decide to do even as she hath done and choose domestic service with a
+woman who is kind even to the showing of interest in her handmaid's
+affairs, rather than linger in bondage with the shop girl and her who
+rattles the tinkling keys of the typewriter machine.
+
+"So doing, my days shall increase mightily in the land, as also the days
+of her who cometh after me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Women are either the noblest creation of God or the meanest. A good
+woman is little less than an angel; a bad woman is considerably more
+than a devil. And by bad women I do not mean women who drink, or steal,
+or frequent brothels. The chief weapon of a bad woman is her tongue.
+With a lie she can do more deadly work than the fellow in the bible did
+with the jawbone of an ass. Untruth is the fundamental strata of all
+evil in a bad woman's nature, and with it she is more to be dreaded than
+many men with revolvers. There is absolutely no protection from a lie.
+The courts cannot protect from its venom, and to kill a defamer and a
+falsifier is not yet adjudged as legalized slaughter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is one awfully homely woman in Chicago. I met her the other day
+over in Blank's art gallery. Our acquaintance was brief but sensational.
+I looked at her, tucked her into my handbag and wept. She didn't seem to
+mind it, and when, a few hours later, in the seclusion of my chamber, I
+took her out of the bag and looked at her again, she was more hideous
+than before.
+
+"You horrible creature!" said I. "If you look like me, better that the
+uttermost depths of the sea had me."
+
+"But I do look like you," said she, and her voice was weak and low by
+reason of prolonged exposure to the sun and air, "and Mr. Blank says I
+will finish up very nicely."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me," I asked, "that my nose is as big as yours?"
+
+"Of course it is," said she; "pictures cannot lie. But comfort yourself
+with the assurance that a large nose is always an indication of
+intelligence."
+
+"Intelligence be blessed!" said I, for I was getting excited;
+"intelligence without beauty is like bread without butter, or a peacock
+without a tail! If I possess such a nose as yours, madam, I shall take
+to tract-distributing, galoshes and a cotton umbrella, and forget that I
+was ever human."
+
+"You talk wildly, as all the rest of them do," said my thin companion.
+"Listen, for my time on earth is short, I am rapidly fading away, and
+what I say must be said briefly. If you look about you you will see that
+there exists, more or less hidden in every breast, the belief of one's
+own beauty. The mirror, although a faithful friend, can never quite
+disabuse the mind of that belief, and when the honest camera holds up
+the actual presentation of one's self as an incontrovertible fact, the
+disappointment is keen and hard to bear."
+
+"All that may be true," said I, "but not all your assertions can ever
+make me believe that that dusky mass of hair, brushed back so wildly
+from those beetling brows, is like my own. You know that mine is soft
+and brown, and yours looks like the bristles of an enraged stove brush."
+
+"That's the way they all talk," responded the dissolving view, "but you
+do not stop to consider that under the artist's pencil the shadows will
+all be toned and softened. And let me say right here, that that
+'beetling brow' is a sign of rare intelligence, much more to be desired
+than the lower and more----"
+
+"Stop, right there!" I interrupted. "It is not necessary to have a brow
+like a plate-glass show-window, or like an overhanging cliff, or like a
+granite paving-stone, to denote intelligence! No, my friend, do not try
+to lift this shadow from my soul. That mouth that looks like a dark
+biscuit, that nose that looks like a promontory overhanging an unseen
+sea, that hair that looks like the ruff of an excited chicken, that brow
+that looks like a skating-rink, all make me sad. I shall never have my
+picture taken again. If I look like that it is time I died. In the round
+of an eventful life I may forget that I even saw you, but until I do I
+am a tired woman. My mirror may assuage my sorrow, for that either lies
+or catches me from a different point of view. Vanish then, oh, yellow
+shade of an unhappy reality. Back to oblivion with you, and heaven grant
+I never look upon your like again!" So saying, I calmly held the poor
+but hideous creature in the flame of a gas-jet and smilingly cremated
+her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A fairer day than last Sunday was never cradled to rest behind the
+curtains of night. It began with a flute obligato of sunrise, orbed
+itself into a full orchestra wherein color took the part of first and
+second violins, and declined at last into the hush of sunset like the
+mellow notes of a cello under old Paul Schessling's master touch. Such
+days visit the earth rarely. They are advance sheets of a story that is
+going to be told in heaven; preludes to a song that we shall hear in its
+perfection only when we have got through with the clattering discords of
+time. Thank God for all such days. They do us more good than we know.
+The sight of the woods, adorned as only queens are adorned for the court
+of the king, the sound of falling leaves and lonely bird songs, of
+hidden lutes, of unseen brooks, tremulous and sweet and low under the
+russet shadows, uplift our souls and help us to forget, for the time
+being at least, how tired we are, how worn with the fret of sordid toil
+and how tormented and misjudged and calumniated we are by those who fain
+would do us harm. I think if I had time to do some of the things I want
+to do the first consummation of that happy time would be to build me a
+little cabin in the woods, where, in utter loneliness, I could forget
+how full the world is growing to be of folks and how prone they are to
+do each other harm and hinder rather than help each other on the stony
+way to heaven.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other evening, while sitting in the gallery of the Auditorium and
+looking over the balcony edge at the crowd waiting for the curtain to
+rise, a strange thought came to my mind. How could hell be more quickly
+created than by the unmasking of such a crowd as this? Suddenly remove
+from humanity all power of self-control and conventional dissimulation;
+force men and women to be natural, and act out every evil impulse latent
+in their souls, and could Dante himself portray a blacker Inferno? The
+man whose heart is full of murderous hatred--tear off the mask that
+hides his perturbed soul, and what a demon would look forth! The woman
+behind whose amiable seeming lurks malicious envy and snarling temper
+and crafty deceit--what a pandemonium would ensue when such passion
+broke forth like straining dogs from the leash! The old man with the
+saintly face and the crown of hoary hair--could an open cage of foul
+birds send forth a blacker brood than should fly out from his soul when
+some omnipotent hand unlatched the bars of its prison and let the
+unclean thoughts go free? The young man with the perfumed breath and the
+suave and courtly manner--does any storied hell hold captive blacker
+demons than the cruel selfishness, the impurities and the secret vices
+that walk to and fro in his soul like tigers behind their bars? The
+young girl with face like a rose and the form of a Juno--could anything
+that hades holds strike greater dismay to the hearts of men than the
+unmasking of her hidden thoughts? Ah, when the hour strikes for
+unmasking time in life's parade ball, when death steps forth and with
+cool, relentless touch unties the knot that holds the silken thing in
+place that has hidden our true selves from our beautiful seeming, we
+shall find no more fiery hell awaiting us than that we have carried so
+long in our hearts.
+
+I would not like to be regarded as a pessimist from the writing of such
+a paragraph as the above. Sometimes I seek to turn my thoughts upon the
+crowd and unmask the angel as well as the demon. But I find that the
+angels, as a general thing, wear no face concealers. They go disguised
+in poor clothes and scant bravery of attire, but the angel within them
+is like a singing bird rather than like a silent and chained beast. It
+reveals itself in songs, like a caged lark. It looks from out the window
+of the eyes in loving glances and tender smiles; it manifests itself in
+sweet and cheerful service, like the sunshine that can neither be hidden
+nor concealed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of all the pleasant things to look upon in this fair earth, I sometimes
+query which is the best, a little child, a fruit orchard in early June,
+or a young girl. I think the latter carries the day. Did you ever watch
+a flock of birds sitting for a moment on the mossy gable of a sloping
+roof? How they flutter and fuss and chirp; how they preen their delicate
+feathers and get all mixed up with the sunshine and the shadow, until
+which is bird and which is sunbeam one can scarcely tell. There is a
+flock of girls with whom I ride every morning, and they make me think of
+birds and sunbeams. They are so bewitching with their changeful moods
+and graces that I sit and watch them as one listens to the twitter of
+swallows. They sweeten up life, these girls, as sugar sweetens dough;
+they fill it with music as sleigh bells fill a winter night. God bless
+the girls, the bonnie, sweet and winsome girls, and may womanhood be for
+them but as the "swell of some sweet time," morning gliding into noon,
+May merging into June.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are so many things in this world to be tired of! The poor little
+persecuted boy in pinafores, sent to school to get him out of the way,
+doomed to dangle his plump legs all day long from a hard bench, rubbing
+his grimy knuckles into his sleepy blue eyes and wondering if eternity
+can last any longer than a public school session, grows no more tired of
+watching the flies on the ceiling and the shadows on the wall than some
+folks get of life. Let me mention a few of the things I, for one, am
+horribly tired of, and see if before my bead is half strung you do not
+look up from the strand and cry, "Amber, I am with you!"
+
+My dear, I am tired to-day of civilization and all modern improvements.
+I am tired of the speaking tube within my chamber where the new girl and
+myself wage daily our battle of the new Babel. She speaks Volapuk, and I
+do not, consequently she takes my demand for coal as an insult or an
+encouraging remark, just as the mood may be upon her, and pays no more
+attention to my request for drinking water than the unweaned child pays
+to the sighing wind. I am tired of sewer gas and what the scientists
+call "bacteria" and "germs." I am tired of going about with frescoed
+tonsils, the result of the three. I am tired of gargling my own throat
+and the throats of my helpless babes, and the throat of the casual
+visitor within my gates, with diluted phenic acid to ward off deadly
+disease. I am tired of nosing drains and buying copperas and hounding
+the latent plumber that he adjust the water-pipes. I am tired of boiling
+the cistern water and waiting for it to cool. I am tired of skipping
+from Dan to Beersheba daily for men to remove the tin-cans, the ashes
+and the unsightly rubbish that have emerged from long retirement
+underneath the snow. I am tired of imploring the small boy to keep his
+mother's chickens off my porch. I am tired of digging graves upon the
+common wherein to bury useless potato-parings, the unsightly
+cheese-rind, and the shattered egg-shell. I am tired of being told that
+my neighbor's calf and my neighbor's pet cat, and my neighbor's blooded
+stock of poultry are dying because of the copperas I scatter broadcast
+about the mouth of drains. I am tired of being a martyr to hygiene and a
+monomaniac on the subject of sanitary science. I am tired of sharpening
+lead pencils. I am tired of speaking pleasantly when I want to be cross.
+I am tired of the ceaseless grind of life, which like the upper and
+nether mill-stones, wears the heart to powder and the spirit to dust. I
+am tired of being told that the mark on my left ear is a spot of soil,
+and of being implored in thrilling whispers to wipe it away. I am tired
+of last year's seed-pods in spring gardens and of all two-legged
+donkeys. I am tired of awaiting a change in the methods of doing
+business around at the postoffice, and for the dawn of that blessed day
+when I shall be permitted to dance upon the grave of the aged being who
+peddles stamps at the retail window. I am tired of hosts of things
+besides, but have no time to enumerate them all to-day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have tested the rainy weather dress reform. It was pouring when I
+started from my humble home in the morning, and in spite of the prayers
+of the Young Person and the sobs of the "Martyr," I arrayed myself in my
+new, highly sensible and demoniacally ugly suit and weathered the
+elements. Within two hours it stopped raining; the sun came out and the
+streets filled with festively attired men and women, and where was I?
+Stranded on a clear day in garments befitting a castaway! My flannel
+dress, short skirts and top-boots wasted on fair weather. "In the name
+of heaven," exclaimed a friend, as I bore down upon him beneath a
+cloudless sky, "what have you got on?" "Go home! for the love of
+humanity, go home!" said another. And what was I to do? Await another
+storm like a crab in its shell, or venture forth and become the byword
+of an overwrought populace, the scorn of old men and matrons? Next time
+I start out in a reform dress I will take along the robes of
+civilization in a grip-sack.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is something that is getting to be awfully scarce in this world.
+Shall I tell you what it is? It is girls. That is what is missing out of
+the sentient, breathing, living world just now. We have lots of young
+ladies and lots of society misses, but the sweet, old-fashioned girls of
+ever so long ago are vanished with the poke bonnets and the cinnamon
+cookies. Let me enumerate a few of the kinds of girls that are wanted.
+In the first place we want home girls--girls who are mothers' right
+hand; girls who can cuddle the little ones next best to mamma, and
+smooth out the tangles in the domestic skein when things get twisted;
+girls whom father takes comfort in for something better than beauty, and
+the big brothers are proud of for something that outranks the ability to
+dance or shine in society. Next, we want girls of sense--girls who have
+a standard of their own regardless of conventionalities, and are
+independent enough to live up to it; girls who simply won't wear a
+trailing dress on the street to gather up microbes and all sorts of
+defilement; girls who won't wear a high hat to the theater, or lacerate
+their feet and endanger their health with high heels and corsets; girls
+who will wear what is pretty and becoming and snap their fingers at the
+dictates of fashion when fashion is horrid and silly. And we want good
+girls--girls who are sweet, right straight out from the heart to the
+lips; innocent and pure and simple girls with less knowledge of sin and
+duplicity and evil-doing at twenty than the pert little school girl at
+ten has all too often; girls who say their prayers and read their Bibles
+and love God and keep his commandments. (We want these girls "awful
+bad!") And we want careful girls and prudent girls, who think enough of
+the generous father who toils to maintain them in comfort, and of the
+gentle mother who denies herself much that they may have so many pretty
+things, to count the cost and draw the line between the essentials and
+the non-essentials; girls who strive to save and not to spend; girls
+who are unselfish and eager to be a joy and a comfort in the home rather
+than an expensive and a useless burden. We want girls with hearts--girls
+who are full of tenderness and sympathy, with tears that flow for other
+people's ills, and smiles that light outward their own beautiful
+thoughts. We have lots of clever girls, and brilliant girls, and witty
+girls. Give us a consignment of jolly girls, warm-hearted and impulsive
+girls; kind and entertaining to their own folks, and with little desire
+to shine in the garish world. With a few such girls scattered around
+life would freshen up for all of us, as the weather does under the spell
+of summer showers. Speed the day when this sort of girls fill the world
+once more, overrunning the spaces where God puts them as climbing roses
+do when they break through the trellis to glimmer and glint above the
+common highway, a blessing and a boon to all who pass them by.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Is there any flower that grows that can compare with the pansy for color
+and richness? Others appeal more closely to the heart with fragrance
+that like a sweet and pure soul more than compensates for lack of
+exterior beauty, but in all the gorgeous category none rank this velvet
+flower that lies just now upon my window-sill. There is the purple of
+Queen Sheba mantled in its soft and shiny texture; the gold of Ophir was
+not more sumptuous; the light that breaks at dawn across a reef of
+dove-gray clouds was never more delicate than the violet heart of this
+lovely blossom. When I want to think of the ideal court of kings, of a
+royal meeting-place for blameless scions and unsullied princes of the
+blood, I do not think of old-world palaces and coronation halls--I think
+rather of a pansy bed in June in full and perfect bloom, a soft wind
+just bending bright heads crowned with crowns that never yet were
+pressed on aching brows, and fluttering mantles of more than royal
+splendor that never yet were wrapped above a corrupt and breaking heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MY ROSE AND MY CHILD.
+
+  I held in my bosom a beautiful rose,
+    All gay with the splendor of June;
+  Its dew-laden petals like sheen of soft snows,
+    Its blush like the sunshine at noon.
+
+  But e'en as I held it, I knew it must fade;
+    Its bloom was as brief as the hour.
+  The dews of the evening like soft tears were laid
+    On the grave of my beauteous flower.
+
+  I held in my bosom a beautiful child,
+    The splendor of love in her eyes;
+  No snow on high hills was more undefiled
+    Than her soul in its innocent guise.
+
+  But I knew that my angel in heaven was missed;
+    I knew, like my rose, she must go;
+  So with heartbreak and anguish her sweet lips I kissed--
+    She sleeps with my rose in the snow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not so very long ago that I chanced to overhear a lively young
+woman make this remark about her mother:
+
+"Oh, mamma is nearly always taken for my sister. She never seems like
+anything more than one of my girl friends."
+
+Poor child, thought I, your state is only another phase of orphanhood,
+for the young life that has no counsel of motherhood is bereft indeed.
+
+No girlish comradeship, however juvenile and delightful it may be, can
+possibly take the place of protecting, counseling, mother-love. Not but
+what the sweetest relationship possible exists where the mother keeps
+her heart young and in sympathy with her daughter, but there is
+something else requisite to mother-love.
+
+The best mothers are those who have roomy laps where the big girls love
+to sit while they whisper the confidences they never could reveal to
+sister-mothers. They have all-enfolding arms, these right kind of
+mothers, wherein they gather the tired girl, yes, and the tired boys,
+too, and rock them to rest and peace, long after their "feet touch the
+floor."
+
+They used to tell me I must never sit on anybody's lap after my feet
+reached the carpet, but, thank God, that rule never applied to my
+mother.
+
+You are never afraid of disturbing mother's "beauty sleep" when you come
+in late at night if she is of the good reliable sort, as far removed
+from frisky girl companionship as the moon is from its reflection.
+
+No matter how tardy your home-faring may be she is always up with a
+lunch and a warm fire in winter or a glass of something cool and fresh
+in summer to soothe your overexcited nerves, a thing she cannot do if
+she is forever dancing about with you in your youthful larks. She has a
+way of calming your tempers with a joke and a caress, of which the
+sister-mother never dreams. She has also a way of smoothing your hair,
+which your girl comrade never caught the trick of, for the reason that
+she is kept too busy curling her own love-locks. When your head aches,
+the right sort of mother knows just how to pet you to sleep and leave
+you in a darkened room with a rose on your pillow to greet your waking
+eyes; if you have a bad cold she knows the cuddly way to coax you to
+take bitter medicine. She bathes your feet and dries them on nice warm
+towels. She keeps the younger children from guying you, because your
+nose is red; in short, she does a thousand nice things of which the
+sister-mother has no knack whatever.
+
+When great trouble falls to your share, when sharp betrayal pierces your
+heart, and trusted affection turns to ashes in your hold of what good is
+the juvenile mother with her girlish tremors and tears? You want
+somebody next in tenderness to God, to hold you fast and tight. You want
+somebody who has suffered and grown strong, to soothe your breaking
+heart. Somebody who can be silent and brave and steady until your fever
+is passed. The shipwrecked sailor wants a rope rather than a feint of
+throwing one; the shipwrecked soul wants a heart like rock, rather than
+a handclasp and a promise. The sister-mother may be all right to go to
+parties with, but you want something stronger and more steadfast to lean
+upon in time of perplexity. You want a mother in all the holy
+significance of the name. However sweet the tie of sisterhood, it cannot
+be so blessed as the bond of patient, long-suffering, sanctified
+motherhood.
+
+Seek to keep yourself in sympathy with your girls, then, mothers, but be
+content to occupy a generation removed from the path they tread. Don't
+make up in emulation of their beauty; don't seek to win away their beaus
+and outdress them. Don't go decollete to parties where your girls should
+be the reigning belles; don't aim to vie with them in fascination or in
+charm. Be guider and ready counselor, but don't try to be rival. If God
+has given you a girl child, and that child has grown to womanhood,
+accept the condition of things and give over being a society belle
+yourself, abdicating your place for the infinitely sweeter one of
+mother. You cannot be the right sort of mother and ignore your duty to
+your child. That duty lies in giving her her rightful place in the line
+of march from which you are crowded out. Let her carry the banner while
+you fall back a little. Watch over her, make things easy for her, smooth
+the little difficulties out of her way, be on hand when she comes home
+tired and excited to soothe her to rest and calm; counsel her how to
+pick her way through the snares that are laid for youth and beauty, be a
+refuge where she can run when the rainy weather sets in, which is sure
+to fall in the summer time of youth, somewhere and somehow. In short, be
+just as sympathetic and chummy and sociable as possible, but at the same
+time make your daughter feel that you are older and stronger and wiser
+than she, by reason of your motherhood, and that next to God you stand
+ready to shield her, to guide her, to receive her in time of trouble, to
+forgive her if she needs forgiveness, and to shrive her if she needs
+confessing. Teach her that your love can never fail, that your heart is
+a rock and a fortress and a shield for her to seek in all life's
+bewilderment, far surer and more steadfast than any other love beneath
+the stars can ever yield.
+
+When I think of all it means to be a mother I tremble to think how far
+short of the standard the best of us fall. I would rather have it said
+of me when I die, "She was a good mother," than that men should get
+together and exploit my deeds as poet, reformer, artist or story-teller.
+I would rather feel the dewfall of a child's loving tear upon my face
+than wear a laureate's crown.
+
+Don't be critical, or censorious, or reserved with your daughters; don't
+hold them far off and cultivate respect and fear rather than love; don't
+be self-assertive and cause them to feel their dependence upon you in an
+unpleasant way; don't be too eager to keep them in the background in
+little things relating to the home, such as giving them no voice in the
+arrangement of the room and the domestic regulations. Indeed, I have
+known more attrition caused in the home circle from this last mentioned
+point of difference between mother and daughters than almost any other.
+I know a family, presided over by a good, unselfish woman, who, as a
+mother, is the most complete failure I ever ran across. Her daughter is
+of mature age and pronounced opinions, but she is kept in the background
+and her life rendered most unhappy by the dominant will of the mother
+whose old-fashioned views as to running the house are directly opposed
+to more modern customs. The two wrangle continually over the
+establishment of a dinner hour, the disposal of a light, the drapery of
+a window, the adjustment of furniture, until there is less harmony under
+the roof than there is music in a hurdy-gurdy. How much better it would
+be if that mother would yield a little to the wishes of her daughter;
+give the latter a chance to display her own taste and carry out her
+inclination. I don't believe in the mothers and fathers of grown-up
+daughters always insisting upon the occupancy of the front seats and the
+leadership of the orchestra.
+
+The mother who can preserve the respect of her children without chilling
+their love; who can be one with them, and yet apart, in the sense of
+guiding, aiding and consoling, who can hold their confidence while she
+maintains the superiority of her wisdom, is the happy and successful
+mother. The title is a sacred one, made by the chrism of pain and
+suffering, sanctified by the humanity of Christ and set apart as one of
+the three of earth's tenderest utterances: "Mother, home and heaven."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now that the days draw nigh for the return of the birds to our northern
+woods and dales it is borne in upon me to hold a little "love feast"
+with the boys. You know what a love feast is, if there was ever a
+Methodist in your family. It is a good, cozy talk among the brethren and
+sisters in regard to the best way of putting down the devil, and giving
+the good angels a chance. And if there was ever need of downing the
+devil it is in the particular instance of a boy's inhumanity to birds
+and beasts. I have expressed myself as to horses, and to-day I shall
+talk about birds. On these spring mornings, when the world is enveloped
+in a golden halo, from out of which, like angel voices from the quiet
+depths of heaven, the birds are singing their impromptu of praise,
+imagine a lot of half-grown men and brutal boys going forth with guns
+and sling-shots to break up the concert and murder the choristers. I
+would as soon turn a lot of sharp-shooters into a cathedral at early
+mass to bring down the surpliced boys and the chanting novices. I tell
+you, O race of good-for-nothing fathers and mothers, whom God holds
+directly responsible for the bad boys who desecrate this beautiful
+world, you are no more fit for the training of immortal souls than a
+hawk is fitted to teach music to a thrush. You ought to have had a
+bear-skin and been the trainer of cubs. That your boys develop into
+brutes and go to state's prison, and perhaps die at the end of a rope
+eventually, is nobody's fault but your own. If you chance to own a horse
+or a dog you show some care in its training, but God gives you a boy and
+you let him run wild. There is no more reason why a boy should be cruel
+than that a properly-broken colt should kick. The tendency may have been
+born with him, but good training eliminates it to a great extent, if not
+entirely. When I was a woman and lived at home, in the happy days before
+I entered the arena to fight for bread and butter, to say nothing of
+shoe leather and fuel, I used to gather the village boys about me every
+spring and try to sow the good seeds of tenderness with one hand, while
+carefully eliminating the tares with the other. I offered prizes for
+the best record at the end of the summer. I formed classes, the
+membership of which pledged themselves, to a boy, to abstain from
+sling-shots, to cultivate the birds' nests and to withhold their hands
+from the commission of a single deed of cruelty. Many is the gallon of
+ice-cream I have paid for to keep those youngsters in the narrow path of
+rectitude, and many is the time that I have patrolled the woods with my
+boy comrades, keeping watch over the family of a blue-bird or a robin,
+when the alarm went forth that some unregenerate boy was on the rampage.
+All the boys whom I could get to join the club I was sure of, for I know
+the way to a boy's heart, if I can only get the chance at him. For what
+other purpose did nature turn me out a born cook? And why did she make
+me a master hand at doughnuts and turnover pies? I have a large and
+undying faith in the boys, if you will only start them right. The first
+thing a boy needs is a good mother. He can get along without a
+father--and I was going to say without a God--for the first few years of
+his life, but he needs a mother. Not a mere nurse maid to look after
+his clothes and see that he has plenty to eat at the right intervals,
+but a good, sweet, companionable mother, with a good, soft breast for
+him to cry on and two arms to hug him with. He needs a mother who can
+talk with him and answer his questions, who is not stern and severe, but
+responsive and get-at-able. With such a mother our boys will be gentle
+and our birds will be safe.
+
+Try to think, boys, what a world this would be without any robins, or
+larks, or thrushes; without any songs in the apple trees getting all
+tangled up with the sunshine and the blossoms; without any canaries to
+sing in the window, or any meadow larks to whip out their flutes among
+the clover heads. If you should wake up some morning and experience the
+ghastly silence of a songless world you would want to hire somebody to
+thrash you that you ever used a sling-shot. Do you remember the minister
+down New York way whom they fined for shooting robins? I never wanted to
+get up on a mountain top so much in all my life and shout glory as I did
+over that verdict. I have heard of immorality among ministers, and I
+have heard of hypocrisy and lying and all sorts of offenses against
+good taste and morals, but I never heard of anything so contemptibly and
+causelessly mean as for one of God's especial teachers to get up in the
+morning, put on top boots, cross the river in the sunshine and dew of
+early morning, lift his gun, take deliberate aim and bring down a robin.
+If I was the Lord I would never forgive it. Men are not to blame
+sometimes when their blood gets too warm and they do impetuous things,
+but to deliberately descend to the ignominy of shooting a robin and
+calling it sport is to sink too low for justification.
+
+Whatever else you be, boys, be brave. If you must sail in and fight, if
+your superfluous zeal is too much for you, go out in the field and
+square off at a bull. There is some glory in whipping anything bigger
+and stronger than yourself, but to show fight to a bird is a little too
+much like sneaking out and tripping up a cripple in the dark. I am going
+to write down a verse for you to write in your copy books this very day,
+and then good-night to you:
+
+  "The bravest are the tenderest;
+  The loving are the daring."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Isn't it heavenly to see the primrose around again? And the daffodils?
+And the hyacinths? Last night I went home with a rose in my button which
+cost me just five cents. At that rate, by careful abstaining from
+anything more expensive than a ten-cent lunch, one can go on wearing
+roses until next November. The robins have come back, too, and this
+morning a couple of them awoke me with their "Cheer-up" song. The
+indications are that they are prospecting for spring housekeeping. If
+the cat kills them I shall kill the cat. I shall close my eyes and do
+the deed in the name of mercy, for I detest cats, both two-legged and
+four-legged, and I love robins both feathered and human.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I wonder why it is that the average woman can walk and talk, breathe and
+laugh, suffer and cry, and finally die and be buried, and all the way
+through make such a botch of her life! Why is it that we fall in love,
+so many of us, just on the verge of a life that opens like a summer's
+day, and change that life thereby, as a June morning is changed when
+great clouds rush into the sky and obscure the sun? Why are girls so
+proud to parade an engagement ring upon their finger, when the diamond
+is too often the danger-light thrown out above the breakers? Now and
+then, about as rarely as one picks up a ruby on the highway, or finds an
+enchanted swan circling over the duck pond, there is a happy
+marriage--at least such is the popular inference--as to the absolute
+certainty of the statement, ask the skeleton closet. I have lived a
+varied sort of life. I have wandered to and fro over the earth to some
+extent; I have known a great many people, and have found happiness in
+many ways, but looking back over all the path to-night and turning my
+little bull's-eye lantern of experience up to the present moment, I can
+neither remember nor record a dozen truly happy marriages. What
+constitutes happiness? Peace. What brings peace? Content. Who is
+contented? Not you and not I. What man or woman of all whom we know can
+we bring out into the full light of day and say of them, "Behold the
+contented one! The restful one! The happy pair!" You, my dear, have
+attained the ambition of your youthful dreams. You have married a man
+who dresses you splendidly, who gives you diamonds and never murmurs
+when the bills come in. But are you happy? Do you never walk to and fro
+with the restless countess in the sad old ballad, dreaming of "Alan
+Percy?" Do you never, when all is still, go down into that cemetery
+where life's "might have beens" lie buried in graves kept green forever
+with your tears, and walk and dream alone? And you, my friend, have
+married the man of your choice. Is there nothing in the handsome
+exterior that palls a bit now and then when you find how sordid and
+meager the soul is behind the smile you used to think so charming? Do
+you never find scorn creeping into your heart in place of adoration when
+you mark the unpaid bills and the shiftless endeavor that strew his idle
+way? And you, sir, have a merry and a pretty wife and the world calls
+you a lucky fellow. How many know of the sharp tongue that underlies her
+laughter and the feather-filled head that never yet has donated an
+earnest thought to the domestic economy? And you, my good sir, have
+married a blue stocking in the old acceptance of the term. She can
+swing off a leader or make a speech on a rostrum at short notice, but
+how would you like to rise right up here, poor dear, and tell just what
+comfort lies in being mated to a superior being who busies herself with
+work which shall be remembered perhaps when the dust on the center
+table, the holes in your stockings, the discomfort of the larder, and
+the untidiness of the household are forgotten? And you, my good fellow,
+have married a woman of "good form." She never does an indiscreet thing.
+She is "icily faultless" and splendidly stupid. She has the neck of a
+swan, the arms of a goddess, the foot of a patrician, and the soul of a
+mouse! The scent of a wayside lilac, perhaps, is sadder than tears to
+you, old comrade, when you look back across the years and see again the
+sweet dead face of one you trifled with, or whom you deserted for this
+woman with heart and body of snow, a purse filled with gold and a brain
+filled with feathers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is entire hopelessness to many women in the blank monotony of life
+after youth is past. An emotional nature, mercurial and restless, full
+of aspirations and longings, as the trees this perfect month are full of
+blossoms, and, like the trees, bearing a thousand blooms to one
+fruition, finds the destiny prepared for it almost unendurable, and
+often longs for death that shall end all. Because poverty grinds and
+hosts of menial duties accumulate, because the walls of an unquiet home,
+made unlovely perhaps by skeletons that no skill can quite conceal,
+close like a dungeon upon hope and all the sweet promises of youth,
+bright natures grow morose and bitter, warm hearts chill into apathy and
+gloom, and sunny brows darken under the cloud of almost perpetual
+irritability and discontent. It is useless to preach sermons to such
+cases--as useless as to read a book of etiquette in a prison ward or
+comfort the victims of a railroad disaster with a treatise upon reform
+in the management of roads. The worn, the wasted, the erring, and the
+cruelly maimed lie thick about us. Our business is to encourage, to
+love, to bind up, and cheer. God, in His own time, shall lift the
+discontented head above the power of conspiring cares to vex. It is for
+us to lend a helping hand down here where the "slough of despond" is
+deepest. When tides forget to obey the moon, or leaves to answer the
+will of the wind, then, and not sooner, shall these restless hearts of
+ours learn to be still, whatsoever destinies confront, or limitations
+thwart. In looking upon the lives of some women, the mother of six
+children, for instance, who takes boarders and keeps no help; the widow
+supporting her little brood by endless drudgeries; the big-hearted woman
+in whom the frolicsomeness and wit of girlhood die hard amid the sordid
+miseries of a poverty-stricken life; the sensitive, poetic soul, doomed
+to uncongenial companionships and the criticisms and ridicule of the
+unfriendly--I am reminded of the score of eagles I saw lately, chained
+in a dusty inclosure of Central Park. With clipped wings, and grand,
+homesick eyes, they sat disconsolate upon their perches, and moped the
+hours away. Would any sane being have reviled those sorry beings for a
+lack of spirit? Would not the gentle-hearted spectator have proffered a
+handful of fresh leaves rather, and turned away in pity that sympathy
+could do no more?
+
+For these unhappy sisters of mine, the discontented, yearning
+"Marthas," troubled with many cares, wherever my letter may find them
+between the great seas, I have a word of comfort in my heart to-day. In
+the first place, do not think, because you so often fall into
+irritability and impatient speech, that God despises you as a sinner. He
+understands, if friend, husband, or neighbor do not. Strive not to yield
+to fretfulness then, but, when overcome by it, remember always God
+understands it all. You may be able to see no light in all the shrouded
+way, no lifting of the shadow, no promise of the dawn; but rest assured,
+however long the probation, the infinite content of Heaven awaits us
+very soon, if we strive as much as lies within us to overcome the
+infirmities of our temper, and keep our faces set towards the shining of
+His love. I know, dear heart, indeed I do, that to-morrow and to-morrow
+are just alike to hopeless fancy--full of dish-washing, and drudging,
+and back-bending toil--that the sparkle and song of life were long ago
+merged in the humdrum beat of treadmill years; but through just this
+test is your character building--through just its hard process is
+shaping the conqueror's crown flashing with splendid light. As the root
+tarries in the dark mold to burst by-and-by into radiant bloom above it,
+so your poor life is hidden now to bloom to-morrow. You are not wicked
+because you sometimes murmur, but try and think so much of what is going
+to be that you shall forget what is. The Tender Heart above absolves
+your beaten spirit from willful sin, though you are sometimes swept away
+on currents of doubt and unfaith; but try and keep your eye fixed upon
+the headlight of His love, whatever currents drift you away. Remember
+how human parents deal with their children, and learn a lesson of God's
+dealings. If my little girl has the ear-ache, or any other tormenting
+ailment of childhood, do I stand over her and exact songs and smiles?
+And do you think that when God, for some good reason of his own, lays
+heavy burdens upon a life, He is going to demand unswerving sweetness of
+speech or ethereal mildness of temper? When I see one scrubbing who was
+fitted to adorn the drawing-room, washing dishes who was created an
+artist or a genius, darning small boys' linsey pants and homespun
+stockings who was intended by nature to reign the crowned priestess of
+some high vocation; when I mark the furrows and zigzag footprints that
+an army of besieging cares have left on the cheek that in girlhood
+outblushed the wayside rose, or note how the hands that once drew
+divinest music from obedient keys have twisted and warped in the
+performance of homely duties, I feel impelled to kiss the faded cheek
+with a love surpassing a lover's, to fold the poor hands in a reverent
+grasp, for I tell you, however often she may faint and falter by the
+way, however "fretty," and worn, and peevish she may become, the woman
+who perseveres in the performance of uncongenial duties, who struggles
+through the flatness of monotonous drudgeries, conquering adverse
+circumstances, poverty, and destiny, by patience, love, and Christian
+faith, is a heroine fit to rank with martyrs and saints. Remember, I am
+not talking to women who find the burdens hard to bear and do not bear
+them; to mere whimperers, who, because the road is full of stones, sit
+down and refuse to travel; but to the brave, true hearts who "press
+onward" although no rose blossoms and no bird sings, content to
+faithfully perform the task of life, hoping that the fullness of time
+shall read the riddle of incongruous destiny. I have seen the time when
+household work seemed newly cursed--the very dew of the primal
+malediction upon it; when to charge upon the dinner dishes, attack the
+lamps, or descend into the vortex of family patching, seemed to call for
+greater courage than average human nature possessed. And when I imagine
+that shrinking carried on through dry years of monotonous experience,
+the same formulas to be observed, the same distaste to be overcome
+throughout a lifetime of toil, yet no duty shirked, no obligation set
+aside, I wonder if Heaven holds a crown too bright for such faithful
+lives.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The time of the year for violets and also for tramps is drawing near.
+Did you ever stop and think just what it means to be a tramp? It means
+no work, no money, no home, no shelter, no friends. Nobody in all the
+world to care whether you live or die like a dog by the roadside. It
+means no heaven for such rags to crawl into, no grave to hide them out
+of sight and no hand stretched out in all the world to give the greeting
+and the good-by of love. It means nobody in all the world to feel any
+interest in you and no spot in all the world to call your own, not even
+the mud wherein your vagrant footprint falls, no prospect ahead, and no
+link unbroken to bind you to the past. I tell you, when we sit down and
+figure out just what the term means, it will not be quite so easy next
+time the wretched tramp calls at our door to set the dog upon him or
+turn him empty-handed away. Let them work, you say. Look here, my good
+friend, do you know how absolutely impossible a thing it is getting to
+be in this overcrowded country for even a willing man to find work? It
+used to be that "every dog had his day," but the dogs far outnumber the
+days in free America. I know well educated, competent men who have been
+out of employment for months and years. I know brave and earnest women,
+with little children to support, who have worn beaten paths from place
+to place seeking, not charity, but honest employment, and failed to find
+it. What chance is there for a ragged tramp when such as these fail?
+Remember, once in a while, if you can, that the most grizzled and
+wretched tramp that ever plodded his way to a pauper's grave was once a
+child and cradled in arms perhaps as fond as those that enfolded you and
+me. Remember that your mother and his were made sisters by the pangs of
+maternal pain, and perhaps in the heaven from which the saintly eyes of
+your mother are watching for you his mother is looking out for him.
+Perhaps--who knows?--the footfall of the ragged and despised tramp shall
+gain upon yours and find the gate of deliverance first, in spite of your
+money and your pride.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE BROOK.
+
+  Lifting its chalice of sun-kissed foam
+  Far up the heights where the wild winds roam,
+  Weaving a web of shadow and sheen
+  In lowland meadows of dewy green.
+
+  Murmuring over the mossy stones,
+  In cool green dells where the gold bee drones,
+  Sudden and swift the showery fall,
+  Startling the wood bird's madrigal.
+
+  Orbing itself in a crystal lake
+  Set round with thickets of tangled brake,
+  In waveless calm, an emerald stone,
+  In the lap of the dusky forest thrown.
+
+  Silver flakes of tremulous light
+  Showering down from the fields of night,
+  Where the great white stars like lilies glow--
+  Tossed on its tide as feathery snow.
+
+  Hastening onward through troubled ways,
+  Forgotten for aye its woodland days,
+  Sullen and silent its banks beside
+  The free brook wanders, a mighty tide.
+
+  Beyond where the forest's purple rim
+  Belts the horizon, hazy and dim,
+  Thundering down from the frowning steeps,
+  Into the arms of the sea it leaps.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Did it ever strike you, I wonder, this marvel of our individuality?
+Alone we are born, alone we live, alone we die, alone we pay the penalty
+or reap the reward of our evil or well doing. In the troubles that
+assail us we stand singly, however many councillors may flock to the
+door of our tent. Not one in all the world, the nearest, the dearest or
+the best, can bear one pang of life's experience for us, love us as they
+may. We often hear a mother say: "My child is so headstrong; she will
+not take my advice; she will go her own way." Of course she will, and
+she will not, simply because individual tact is the law of all
+experience. It is not being headstrong, it is merely fulfilling destiny.
+
+In the fight we wage we do not fight by platoons or squads, under a
+common leader, a thousand at a charge. We enter the lists one by one and
+fight single handed. We choose our own colors and there is little of
+pageantry or show. When we fall we fall as travelers disappear who walk
+across a coast that is honeycombed with quicksand. We vanish, not in
+crowds like men who are jostled out of life by earthquakes or flooded
+like rats by tidal waves, but we slowly succumb to the inevitable in
+solitudes where only the stars watch us and the spaces of a dim,
+unsounded sea catch the fret of our mortal moan.
+
+I have always thought that I should love to have the world come to an
+end, with a grand final bang, while I was yet living and sentient on the
+surface. I would like to be flashed out of being in the conglomerate of
+a mighty swarm, like the covey of birds a huntsman's rifle brings down
+or the multitude a Pompeiian doom overtakes. Such dying would be like
+riding out of an electric-lighted station, by the car full, rather than
+sneaking a place on the back platform like a tramp. But after all, death
+would not lose its awful individuality even then. Marshal the whole
+world, and aim a single bullet at a hundred million souls, with power to
+still each pulse beat in the same rifle flash of time, yet each man
+would die alone.
+
+There is one final lesson to be gained through the doleful contemplation
+of the world's flood-tide of sorrow, and that is the lesson of how to
+bear our troubles so as to react as little as possible upon those with
+whom life throws us in daily contact. Because the goblin bee has stung
+our own souls, shall we seek to share the pain of its stateless sting
+with all we meet? No more than we should endeavor to carry contagion in
+our garments or put poison in our neighbor's well. I knew a man once, a
+gallant, light-hearted soldier, who honored the blue and brass of his
+country's uniform by wearing it. An awful sorrow suddenly smote his
+life, like an Indian sortie from an ambush. Wife and children were swept
+from his arms by a swift disaster and he was left alone. His friends
+said: "He is a wrecked man! He will never lift his head again!" How did
+he fulfill this prophecy of woe? He entered the chamber of his darkened
+home and denied himself to everyone. He neither ate nor slept. He fought
+by himself a greater battle than call of bugle ever summoned to any
+field. He mastered his own soul, and emerged from that chamber after a
+certain number of days a conqueror over his own sorrow. His smile was as
+ready, his heart as tender, his genial speech as welcome at home and
+abroad as it had ever been, and only when the goblin bee of memory stung
+him in the silence of the companionless night did he live over again the
+experience of his sorrow. None knew when that sting came, or how it
+tarried; he bore it silently like a soldier and a man. The trifling
+world called him light of love and easily consoled, but I think he was a
+grand, unselfish hero, a benefactor rather than a destroyer of mankind.
+
+When we get so that we can hide our sorrow in a smile we attain that
+attitude that brings us closest to the divine. The man or the woman who
+goes up and down the ways of the world with a groan on his lips and a
+weed on his arm is an infliction worse than an out of tune hand organ.
+If the bee stings, hold still and bear the hurt by yourself as best you
+may, but don't talk it over with everyone you meet, like an old woman
+petitioning a recipe for a bad cough and flaunting her physical ailments
+forever in your face. When you have bright things to talk about and
+comforting things to say, talk; otherwise hold your peace. The reason, I
+think, why animals are never wrinkled and drawn of feature and gray like
+mankind is because they cannot talk. If they had the power of speech
+they would go around as humans do and disseminate unpleasant topics, as
+idle winds start thistle pollen. Silence is golden when you can find
+nothing better to do than to clamor your own troubles; speech only is
+blessed when, like a bird, it evolves a song or wings a feathered hope.
+
+It seems hardly the thing to do, perhaps, to single out the unhappy
+folks in a present world so full of jollity and talk with them awhile
+to-day. This bright autumn weather is so crowded with sights and sounds
+to dazzle and enchant that to obtrude the leaf of rue within the garland
+or breathe a minor tone into the music seems almost out of place. And
+yet, for some reason or other, as I sit here at my desk to-day, the
+thought of the hearts that are heavy in the midst of all the world's
+fair pageant, and the eyes that cannot see the banners by reason of
+their tears, come to me with a strong and resistless force.
+
+Alas, for the goblin bee that stings, yet all too often may not "state
+its sting"! We walk with a crowd, and yet are conscious that our way is
+not theirs. It lies apart, we know not why, and evermore dips into
+shadow and threads the dark defiles of gloom. There are so many more
+reasons for being sorry than for being glad, we think. Try to count the
+causes for laughter, and then, over against them, set the reasons for
+sorrow and see which way the balance falls. I take my seat on a bench
+out at the big show and watch the crowd for an hour. Do I see many faces
+that do not bear the scar of the "goblin bee"? From the little
+four-year-old who is bitterly crying because somebody has jostled its
+toy from its hand, to the woman whose eyes are sunken with sorrow
+because death has jostled the one whom she loved into his grave,
+everybody who passes, with but few exceptions, shows the scar of that
+stateless sting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Look at my window-garden, yonder! The sunshine, stealing in from the
+south, has wooed a dozen pansies into bloom--"Johnny-jump-ups," they
+used to call them when I was a girl. How bright and cheery and chatty
+they look. We have those sort of faces (some of us) every day about our
+breakfast tables. The little folks, God bless 'em! with their shining
+hair, their bright eyes, and the soft velvet of their cheeks, are the
+blessed heartsease of our home. And there is a fuchsia, turbaned like a
+Turk, behind the pansies. Just such sumptuous, graceful women we see
+every day. Like the fuchsia, they are beautiful and that is all. They
+yield no fragrance. They attract the eye but fail to reach the heart.
+Who wouldn't rather have mignonette growing in the window? There is a
+yellow blossom in the window that reminds one of the patient shining of
+certain homely souls I know, making sunshine in humble homes; cheerful
+old maid aunts, sweet-hearted elder sisters, yielding the honey of their
+hearts to others. A cluster of fading violets sets me thinking of frail
+invalids and the host of "shut-in" ones, whose delicate and dying beauty
+fills our eyes with unstayed tears and our hearts with the shadow of
+coming sorrow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are gates that swing within your life and mine from day to day,
+letting in rare opportunities that tarry but a moment and are gone, like
+travelers bound for points remote. There is the opportunity to resist
+the temptation to do a mean thing; improve it, for it is in a hurry,
+like a man whose ticket is bought and whose time is up. It won't be back
+this way, either, for opportunities for good are not like tourists who
+travel on return tickets. There is the opportunity to say a pleasant
+word to your wife, sir, or you, madam, to your husband, instead of
+venting your temper and your "nerves" upon each other. Love's
+opportunity travels by lightning express and has no time to dawdle
+around the waiting-room. If you improve it at all it must be while the
+gate swings to let it through.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My dear, let me implore you, whatever else you let go, hold on to your
+enthusiasm. Grow old if you must; grow white-headed and bent and
+care-furrowed, if such must needs be the process of years, but don't
+grow to be a stick. If you must pass on from the green time of your
+freshness, change into sweet hay and keep your fragrance. If the cage
+must grow rusty and lose its brightness, there is a bird within, that it
+were a pity to strangle to keep it from singing to the end. I don't care
+how successful, or rich, or learned a man becomes, if he maintains a
+grim repression of all romance and enthusiasm, and what some hard old
+"Gradgrinds" call the "nonsense" within him, he is nothing more than a
+fine cage with a dead bird in it. When I hear a person say of another,
+"Oh, he is a substantial fellow; no nonsense about him!" I picture a
+gold-fish in a glass globe. A glittering cuticle that covers anything so
+bloodless as the anatomy of a fish is not worth much. There are a good
+many types of men to be detected, but the bloodless, emotionless,
+heart-paralytic, is the worst. Polish up a golden ball all you like. It
+may ornament your mantel, or serve as a useless bit of glitter in some
+corner, but when you begin to feel hungry and faint, and in need of
+solace and cheer, you will turn from the golden ball and pick up the
+veriest old rusty coat apple from an orchard's windfall, that has
+mellowed under summer noon, and sweetened in summer rains and dews,
+praising God for its flavor and its juices, even if you can buy forty
+bushels of its counterpart, for the price of one of your polished golden
+balls. Cultivate the "nonsense" in you, then, if it tends to enthusiasm
+of the right sort. It is the sympathy we get from people, the
+heartsomeness and cheer that keep our souls nourished, rather than the
+mere dazzle of intellectual attainment, or the greatness of any worldly
+achievement. Heart rather than head; nature rather than art; genuineness
+rather than pretense; romance rather than absolute realism; enthusiasm
+rather than petrifaction, will make a man rather than a gold fish, a
+juicy apple rather than a ball of metallic and glittering nothingness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We were gathered at the Norfolk Station awaiting the train that was to
+carry us over the marshes to Virginia Beach and the sea. The crowd that
+surrounded us was very different from a Chicago crowd. There was no
+pushing, no bold assertiveness, no elbows. There were lots of pretty
+women, and as for me everybody knows I simply adore the open sky, a tree
+in blossom and a pretty woman. There were young girls with velvety brown
+eyes within whose dusky shadows one might look fathom deep as into a
+well of limpid water; girls with blue eyes like fringed gentians; women
+with grand free curves of figure that would have made Hebe look
+commonplace; women with shapely shoulders and long, aristocratic hands,
+tinted at the finger-tips as though fresh from picking ripe
+strawberries; girls all in white (for the day was warm), like June
+lilies; women with snowy teeth and adorable smiles to disclose them;
+little tots of girls with braided hair and soft, questioning eyes;
+queenly girls, like tulips in bloom, all chatting together in subdued
+but merry tones and laughing as delicately and airily as thrushes sing.
+Oh, I lost my heart to you, my pretty southern maidens, and count the
+time well spent I devoted to the contemplation of your many graces away
+down in that little station by the torrid bay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If I was a liar and wanted to reform I shouldn't quit lying all at once.
+I would start out with a covenant to occasionally tell the truth. By and
+by this spasmodic truth-telling, like the grain blown by the wind among
+stones, would, perhaps, yield sufficient harvest to send me not quite
+empty-handed up to St. Peter's gate. If I drank whisky I would commence
+to reform by swearing off on one glass out of three, and perhaps the
+manhood within me, having so much more chance to grow, would elbow its
+way into heaven. If I was a gossip I would try to hold my tongue from
+speaking evil half the time, and in that blissful interval perhaps my
+dwarfed soul would get a start skyward. It is not by sudden achievement
+that we consummate a long journey. It is step by step and mile by mile
+over a stony road that brings us to the goal, and it is not by mere
+resolving that we renounce the old and attain unto the new. He who
+travels but a few steps and keeps his face heavenward is on the way,
+and every small decision for the right, faithfully adhered to, is a
+notable step toward a consummated journey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am often struck with the selfishness displayed by people who are
+fortunate enough to be provided with umbrellas in time of sudden
+showers. They calmly behold hosts of unhappy beings battling their way
+through the storm, drenched to the bone, and with ruined garments, yet
+never think of saying, "Accept a share of my umbrella," or "Walk with me
+as far as our ways lie together." If I should hear such a speech I might
+drop senseless with surprise, but all the same I should hail it as the
+bugle note that heralded a new era of courteous kindness.
+
+We are not put into the world to be suspicious of one another. We were
+put here to make the world pleasanter for our tarrying, and to cultivate
+a fellowship with souls. If the guests at a mountain inn, sojourning
+together for a stormy night, spend the time in reviling one another, or
+in calling attention to each other's blemishes, we write them down as
+snobs; but what shall we call the tenants of transitory time who spend
+the span of mortal life in doing all they can to make one another
+uncomfortable? We have only a watch in the night to tarry together; let
+us try to make that hour a profitable one and a pleasant memory for
+others when we have journeyed on.
+
+I have often wondered how Christian people got round the gospel command,
+"Love thy neighbor as thyself." It doesn't say love him (or her) after a
+proper introduction, or if agreeable, or congenial, or of good family
+and established reputation--it simply gives the command on general
+principles. I don't pretend to be good enough to obey the mandate
+myself, for I honestly think it is a species of hypocrisy to say you
+love everybody. One might as well say one were fond of all fruit alike,
+whether specked, wormy or rotten. But let my good orthodox professor put
+this in his pipe and smoke it. Let him remember it next time he sees his
+neighbor plunged into an extremity, or handicapped by an annoyance of
+any kind. If we love our neighbor we are bound to help him, and neighbor
+in this sense means anyone who chances to be near us, whether black or
+white, raggedly disreputable or sanctimoniously frilled.
+
+There is more selfishness perpetrated in the world under guise of family
+ties than in almost any other way. The man who does good and unselfish
+deeds only for his own children and for the immediate circle housed
+beneath his roof, forgetful of the claims of the great, tormented,
+harassed and struggling world, is a selfish man and accountable to
+heaven for a great deal of meanness. I don't care how much he puts on
+his children's backs, or how many luxuries he surrounds them with, the
+Lord will not hold him guiltless if he does nothing for the stranger who
+tugs by him in the stress of life's uncertain weather, or for the
+neighbor who sits disconsolate outside his gates.
+
+I wish that vagabond and his dog who were brought before a west side
+justice yesterday for vagrancy would travel up my way. I like that sort
+of thing that leads a man to be faithful to his dog. It goes without
+saying that the dog is faithful to the man, but it is not often that the
+master shows the same spirit to the fond and steadfast brute. If the two
+should journey my way I think they would have one white day in the
+calendar. Good heavens, my dear, do you ever stop long enough in the
+midst of your golf-playing and your tennis tournaments, your yachtings
+and your outings to think what it is to be a tramp? To be unable to find
+a stroke of work; to be sick and starved and homeless! Like "poor Joe,"
+to be told to "move on" every time you stop to rest; to eat the
+grudgingly given crust of charity, and have no friend under the sun,
+moon or stars but a flea-bitten dog? Did you ever stop to think, my
+Christian friend, that that tramp is a neighbor whom you are to love?
+And if you are going to love him I will love his dog! No doubt the
+latter is the better man of the two.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Did you ever read of a battle siege in olden times? There were the
+full-armored warriors, resplendent in shining metal and plumed crests;
+there were the mighty battering rams, and the flash of battle axes, the
+thunder of advancing feet and the trumpet call before the gates. But
+more potent than all else in the doomed city's destruction was the
+secret work of the sappers and miners--the patient forces which wrought
+their work out of sight and hearing. And I have been thinking to-night,
+as I sit here, where the firelight weaves its delicate tapestry within
+the beautiful walls of home, that it is not going to be the pompous ones
+who shall march triumphant at last into the "City of Gold," but they who
+have worked patiently and humbly out of sight and with no need of
+praise. The man who has held to the dictates of his own conscience, not
+conforming to the company he marched with; the man who has dared to be
+himself in a world where men are labeled in lots; the man who has held
+it high honor to suffer for a principle or to be loyal to an unpopular
+friend or cause; the man who has erected a standard made up between his
+own heart and heaven, and, independent of the world's verdict of praise
+or blame, followed it to the end, is going to wear a crown by and by,
+when the epauletted general and the pompous staff are forgotten. Prayer
+is not always a genuflexion and an address. It is oftener hard work. The
+farmer praying at his weeds, the pilot praying from every spoke of his
+wheel, the mother whose daily life of unselfish toil and far-reaching
+influence is a prayer, do more to stir the divine heart, to keep the
+world's prow headed for heaven than half the solicitations or
+apologetic addresses made in our churches under the name of prayer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When you and I get rich, my dear, as some day we surely shall, what are
+we going to do with all our money? We will hunt up some of the
+improvident ones, those who could never make the two ends meet, those
+who through good heartedness, or lack of forethought or unselfish desire
+to make other folks happy, have never laid by a cent, and we will give
+those silly people such a good time they will carry its impress all
+through their after lives, as a pat of butter carries the print. We will
+slyly pay the bills for improvident ones who have grown gray in the
+effort to make a decent funeral for dead horses. They shall forget how
+to spell "care" and their new and happy dialect shall know no such words
+as "monthly payments," "righteous dues" or "can't afford it." I am
+convinced that as a rule it is not the sweet-hearted people who take on
+this world's gain. There is many a poor beggar with not a change of
+linen to his back who would make a more royal host, had the smiling
+face of fortune turned his way, than the rightful owner of the vast
+estates at whose gate he stands and begs. The big hearts too often go
+with the empty purse, and the little, wizened, skin-flint souls, that it
+would take a thousand of to crowd the passage through the eye of a
+needle, gain all the golden favors of the god of plenty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After dinner I said to the little folks, "Behold, I will buy me a pair
+of stockings and hire a bathing suit, and the afternoon shall be devoted
+to frolic and thee." So we went to the small booth, where an exceedingly
+meek young man sold ginger pop and fancy shells, and paralyzed him with
+a demand for ladies' hose. He didn't know what we meant until I came out
+boldly and unblushingly and asked for women's stockings. He said he
+didn't keep 'em. "Have you a mother?" said I. "No." "Have you a sister?
+Or is there a nearer one yet and a dearer, from whom I could buy or
+borrow a pair of stockings that I may go in bathing?" He didn't
+understand that either, but finally, with the aid of lucre, I made the
+matter clear so that he got me a pair of canary-striped woolen hose,
+evidently laid by for some farmer's winter use, and I bought them for a
+sum that made his eyes grow dim with rapture. We went down to the beach,
+and after a season of prayer with the young person to induce her to put
+on some horrid tights, we all went in and enjoyed such a dip as only
+salt water yields. In the midst of it we had to go on shore several
+times to stand the boy on his head and pump the ocean out of him, as he
+was constantly getting drowned in the surf, and one of my expensive and
+expansive stockings was captured out at sea and brought back by a son of
+Belial, who seemed greatly affected by its size, but in spite of such
+small drawbacks we had a glorious time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What is the matter, my darling?" asked John, the newly married, to the
+wife of his bosom.
+
+"Nothing whatever," replied Mrs. John.
+
+"But you look like a funeral," exclaimed he.
+
+"I am not aware that I look more than usually unamiable; I certainly
+never felt better," replied his wife, placidly folding down meanwhile
+the hem to a distracting little apron she is making. John seizes his
+hat, pushes it down over his eyes and rushes forth distracted with the
+conjecture as to what terrible thing he has been guilty of to make his
+wife look so like an injured martyr. For the time being love is dead,
+joy wiped from the face of the earth, hope crucified and peace
+assassinated, all because of bottled thunder. A word would have
+explained all, a look has ruined everything.
+
+"Don't put on your fresh muslin this afternoon," suggests the prudent
+mother.
+
+"But why not?" replied the sprightly Jane; "it is the only endurable
+dress this warm weather."
+
+"Oh, very well, do as you like, of course," meekly replied the parent in
+a tone that suggests a serpent's fang, a hoary head and a broken heart
+all in one.
+
+Now, in my opinion it is not conducive to domestic harmony to have too
+much of this sort of repression. It is like living in an exhaust
+chamber. One would be certain to choke up and burst very soon.
+Self-control does not consist in forever keeping one's mouth shut,
+alone. A look, a sneer, a drooping mouth, a tilted nose, will do as much
+mischief as a loosened tongue. Why I should go about like a disagreeable
+old martyr or like a sneering Saul of Tarsus, and call myself pleasant
+to live with, simply because I don't talk, is something not easily
+understood.
+
+I would far rather be a target for flying saucepans every time I popped
+my head into the kitchen than have a cook there who never says a word,
+but is sullen and ugly enough to carve me up like cold meat. I would
+rather be a constant attendant at funerals, a nurse in a fever-ward, a
+girl in a circus, or a street car horse, than live with proper folks who
+never make blunders, or commit indiscretions either of speech or manner,
+but look at you every time you sneeze as though your featherheadedness
+was the only thing that made life unbearable. Out with it then if you
+have cause for offense. Don't let the clouds hang a single hour, but
+turn on the weather faucet and let it rain. If your neighbor has
+insulted you, either ask her why or ignore it. Ten to one the fancied
+insult is only a wind cloud, and sunshine will break it away. If you
+feel mad sail right in for a tempest and have done with it. Thunder and
+lighten, blow and hail if you want to, but don't be a non-committal
+dog-day. Bottled thunder is a bad thing to keep on the family shelves.
+It is likely to turn sour on your hands, and before you get through with
+it, you will wish you had died young.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yonder goes a small and worthless yellow dog. He is young; you can tell
+that from the abnormal size of his paws, and a certain remnant of
+wistful trust in human kind, which displays itself in the furtive wag of
+his tail and the cock of his limp and discouraged ear. He is as
+absolutely friendless as anything to which God has granted life can be.
+Of his existence there is no thought in the mind of any man or woman
+beneath the stars. The boys grow mindful of him now and then, though,
+and their manifested interest has made of his life one terrible specter
+of cringing fear. He hears the hurrah of their cruel chase in every tone
+of sudden speech; he sees the menace of a blow in every shadow. Do you
+know, my dear, that I never spoke a truer word in all my life than when
+I say that underneath the hide of that forlorn and friendless little
+yellow dog there is something more valuable than beats under the
+broadcloth vests and silken waists of many of the men and women who pass
+him by! A grateful heart mindful of the smallest kindnesses, a faithful
+instinct which keeps dogs loyal even to cruel masters. I sometimes think
+I would rather take my chances with honest dogs than with half the men
+who own them. They may not be able to pass up the stamped ticket which
+transfers the human passenger from the earthly to the celestial railroad
+and carries him through on the passport of an immortal soul; but no
+ticket at all is quite as good as a forged or fraudulent one, as some of
+us will find out, I am thinking, when we hand up our worthless checks!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Which would you rather be in the orchestra of human life, a flute or a
+trombone? To be sure, the latter is heard the farthest, but the quality
+of the flute tone reaches deeper down into the soul and awakens there
+dreams without which a man's life is like bread without leaven, or a
+laid fire without tinder. I don't like noisy people, do you? People who
+talk and bluster and swagger. People who remind us of bladders filled to
+the point of explosion with wind. We like sensitive people,
+quiet-voiced, deep-hearted, earnest people, with the quality of the
+flute rather than that of the fog-horn in their make-up. And yet how
+much greater demand there is for bluster than there is for force.
+Sometimes I am inclined to think that life is a farce played with an
+earthly setting for the delectation of the angels, as we serve minstrel
+shows and burlesques. It isn't the shy and the timid who get the
+applause; the clown in tinsel and the end man in cork divide easy
+honors. And yet, thank God for flutes! Thank God the orchestra isn't
+entirely composed of trombones and bass drums.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+WHAT I MISS.
+
+  I can get used to my darling's dress
+    That hangs on the closet door;
+  And the little silent half-worn shoes
+    That patter no more on the floor.
+
+  I can get used to the hopeless blank
+    That greets my waking eyes,
+  As they meet the sight of the empty crib
+    Where no little nestling lies.
+
+  I can get used to the dreary hush,
+    In the home which my darling blest
+  With her prattling speech and her rippling laugh,
+    Ere we laid her away to rest.
+
+  But, ah! the touch of those little hands
+    That wandered o'er my face,
+  Like the wavering fall of rose-leaves soft,
+    In some sunlit garden place.
+
+  Those dimpled caressing baby hands!
+    I feel them again at night,
+  And in dreams I gather them back again
+    From their harp in the City of Light.
+
+  My hungry heart will claim them still;
+    I cannot let them depart.
+  So I gather them back again in dreams
+    To my desolate, breaking heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other day my strolling took me into a second-hand furniture shop. I
+wanted to find an ice chest. "Have you any second-hand chests?" I asked
+of the hoary-headed son of Erin who tended the place and raked in the
+shekels. He didn't answer a word, but silently arose and beckoned me to
+follow. Through ranks of withered tables and blighted chairs I picked my
+way until my guide dived down a gruesome stairway and then I stopped.
+Presently his head emerged like a grimy Jack-in-the-box.
+
+"Is it an ice chist yez want?" asked he. There was mold on his faded
+cheeks and a cobweb on his brow as he awaited my answer.
+
+"Must I go down there to find it?" I inquired. He replied in the
+affirmative.
+
+"Old man, I will go no further," said I, "but come back here and tell me
+the price of this lovely desk." So saying, I designated a delightful old
+claw-handled, brass-mounted, spider-legged piece of furniture, which
+might have been used by Adam to cast up his accounts on. There was a
+suggestion of secret drawers about it that was quite ravishing. The
+doors were oddly shaped little panes of mirror glass, within which I
+gazed pensively at a soot blemish on my nose. "Is it the price of that
+yez'd be afther knowing?" said the old man, in the tone of one who dealt
+with a harmless lunatic. "I thought it was ice chists yez was afther."
+"Yes," said I, drawing out two long slabs as I spoke, such as were used
+to support the shelf of the desk I remembered in my grandmother's house.
+"That bit of furnichoor," said the old-man, gazing sadly meanwhile at
+the grime of ages which I could not rub from off my nose, "is more than
+two hundred years old." He stopped for a moment to see if I would
+believe him, then went on: "Yis, ma'am, that same is nearer three
+hundred years old, all told."
+
+Here I gave him a look which stopped him at the threshold of the fourth
+century.
+
+"Yez may have it for $25," says he.
+
+"I'll give you five," says I.
+
+He turned away as one who found his mother tongue inadequate to express
+the deep-seated scorn of his soul. I followed.
+
+"Did yez say twenty?" he asked stopping abruptly and facing me with the
+blurred photograph of what was once an engaging smile.
+
+"I said five," I answered.
+
+"Well, take it thin," said he, "but it would be dirt chape at fifty.
+It's not a day less than four hun--"
+
+"Stop," said I, "if you add another century I'll only pay you two and a
+half for it."
+
+And so to-night it comes to pass that I am writing at my new old desk. I
+am half conscious, as my pencil glides along the paper, of a laughing
+face, half-hidden by showers of falling hair, that flickers like a
+shadow in and out of the soft gloom that enfolds me. Fingers, light as
+air, seem to follow the motion of my own, and the ghost of the mistress
+who thought and wrote at this same desk, one, two, three, four hundred
+years ago, seems whispering in my ear. I wonder what will be the effect
+if I read to that sweet, gentle woman of "ye olden time" a few bits from
+the morning paper.
+
+Madam, are you aware that a man kicked his wife to death yesterday
+because she failed to have his supper ready for him? Are you not to be
+congratulated that you are out of reach of this latter day development
+of the human brute? Do you know that the Blank concerts began this last
+week, and that the melodies that throng the beautiful hall yonder on the
+avenue are like bands of singing angels charming a world's sorrows to
+rest? Do not the gentle caprices of the flutes and the swing of the
+fiddles make even you, flake of airy nothingness that you are! dance
+like a thistle-down in a summer breeze? Madam, do you know, and how
+does it affect you to know, that there are bargain sales in town where
+you can buy a gown for a song, and a pair of all-wool blankets for the
+worth of a dream? In your long time disembodied state have you yet
+reached a point, I wonder, when such news as this can no longer thrill a
+woman's heart? If so, madam, you are truly and undeniably dead, and your
+room is better than your company. I bid you a gentle good evening.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the many things I shall be glad to find out some day will be why,
+in spite of heroic effort to keep it straight, my hat always gets
+crooked and my hair becomes disordered on the march. I thoroughly detest
+the sight of a typical "blue-stocking," or a literary woman who affects
+a sublime superiority to appearances, and yet Mrs. Jellyby was nowhere
+as to general demoralization of raiment compared to my unfortunate self.
+Taking my seat in a down-town restaurant the other day, I found myself
+surrounded by half a dozen girls as bright and pretty and jolly as
+girls go. No sooner was I seated than the whisper went round that a
+newspaper woman had invaded the party. "Looks like one," murmured the
+plumpest one of the lot, and I could have cried. "Girls," I wanted to
+say, "judge not by appearances. The best christians sometimes have red
+noses, just as the jolliest literary folks have frowsy hair and
+abandoned hats. They can't help it, my dears, any more than a black cat
+can help being somber. It is never safe to condemn anybody, not even a
+poor, miserable scribbler for the press, on circumstantial evidence. You
+see a crooked hat, electric hair, and that is all. Put on Titbottom
+spectacles and look deeper. Perhaps you will then see an
+anguish-stricken woman rising at 5 a. m. to make herself smart for the
+day. You will note how carefully she adjusts the feeble adjuncts to her
+toilet, how she places her hat on straight and secures it with a
+cast-iron cable! How she combs out her curls and sticks a feathery
+kerchief within her belt. Two hours later the cable hat-pin has been
+struck by a tidal-wave and swept from its anchorage; the curls have
+degenerated into wisps of wind-tossed hay; and the kerchief? Gone as a
+feather is gone when the summer tempest gets behind it! We mean well,
+girls. We want to look trim and slick and span. All of us poor literary
+people do, but we can't bring it about. Life is so everlastingly full,
+anyway, that it seems preposterous to spend more than half one's time in
+getting fixed up. Sometimes I am foolish enough to believe that good St.
+Peter, when we come toiling up to his gate, won't look so much to the
+condition of our hats and our hair as he will to the way we wear our
+souls. If they are tip-tilted and frowsy it may go a little bit hard
+with us. Of course, it is a good thing to be able to wear a hat
+straight, and be remarked for your pretty hair and generally pleasing
+appearance, but I declare to you if it comes to a question of mental
+array and soul-correction as opposed to style and good form, I am
+willing to choose the former and be laughed at now and then by saucy
+girls."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That's right. Stand on shore and beat him back when he attempts to make
+a landing. If necessary, club him under water and congratulate yourself
+that you are so self-righteous and everlastingly holy that nobody can
+get a chance to swing a club at you. What is this half-dead thing that
+is trying to force its way onto dry land from the whelming waters of
+temptation and misery? A rat? Oh, no; only a human creature like
+yourself. Sin overtaken and subdued by evil. He is young, perhaps, and
+never had a mother's care or a father's training. He has drifted with
+easy currents into dangerous waters, and the devil, who lurks beneath
+the flood, is trying to snatch him down to hell! Raise your club and
+give him a clip! The audacity of such a boy trying to be anything with
+such a record behind him! Oh, I am sick of you all, you omniverous
+feeders on reputation, you unveilers of past records of shame! I hope in
+my heart that if ever you get your own foot on the threshold of some
+haven of relief, after a tight tussle with danger and death, an angel
+will stand over against the doorway with a flaming sword and demand to
+see your credentials. No hope of that, though. Angels are not up to that
+sort of work; it is left to men, and sometimes--God pity us all!--to
+women.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If you expect to escape criticism, girls, in this world, you will put
+yourselves very much in the plight of flower-roots that expect to grow
+without the discipline of the hoe. Before we can amount to anything
+either in blossom or as fruit, we must undergo much honest criticism,
+and of such we need never be afraid. A candid and above-board enemy is
+of far more benefit, often, than a timid friend, who, seeing our faults,
+is afraid to tell us of them. The fact that boys stone certain trees and
+pass others by, is explained when we find that the stones are always
+thrown at the fruit-bearing trees. And so with character; the fact that
+we are criticized proves that we are something better than scrub-oak
+saplings. But all criticism that does not make us grow, and put forth
+fairer and richer blossoms, is like a hoe made of wood, or a cultivator
+without power applied to cause it to destroy the weeds. If the unanimous
+verdict of the community in which we live asserts that we are proud, or
+ill-natured, or lazy, we may be pretty sure that there is some cause
+for the application of that particular stroke of the hoe, and the sooner
+we set about seeking to remedy the evil, the better for our next world's
+crop of blossoms. Nobody (save One) was ever yet maligned without some
+little cause. Those who come in contact with you at home may not see
+little blemishes upon your conduct or character which those who meet you
+in business may detect. For instance, to the folks at home you never put
+on that indifferent and languid air to which you treat the customer who
+drops in to buy ribbon, or the woman who asks you a question at your
+office desk. The customer and the questioner go away with an estimate of
+your behavior very unlike the one held at home, where you are frank and
+cheerful, and willing to please. And, on the other hand, the party with
+whom you associate casually in business, or with whom you ride daily to
+and from your office and your home, has no conception how snappy and
+snarly you can be when none but familiar ears are open to your surly
+complaints.
+
+The statement from your little brother or sister that you are a "cross
+old thing" would hardly be believed by those who meet you away from
+home. And yet the hoe in the little hands strikes at a weed that
+threatens to make havoc in the garden. Better look to it, dearie, before
+the ugly thing quite overtops the mignonette and the pinks! Whenever you
+hear of an adverse criticism set to find the weed somewhere in your
+character. I believe firmly that every one of us was born into the world
+with capabilities for almost every evil under the sun if environment
+favors the development. Like a garden patch, the roots of the weeds lie
+already deep, the flower seeds must be sown. And no gardener ever
+struggled with "pusley" and burdock as we must struggle with the evil
+crop, heredity-sown. Thanks be to the quick eye, then, be it of friend
+or foe, who discerns the weed before we do, and whips out the hoe to
+attack it. We are not exactly pleased when it is borne in upon us
+through the criticism of some acquaintance or neighbor, that we are
+selfish in little things. Our folks don't say so, and we try to believe
+the charge is a libel. Next time you throw your banana skin heedlessly
+on the pavement, or crowd into a seat without a "by your leave," or
+refuse to move up in a crowded car, or open your window without asking
+if it be agreeable to the person behind you, or eat peanuts and throw
+the shucks on the floor instead of out of the window, or see a lady
+going by with a disarranged dress and don't tell her of it, or return an
+indifferent answer to a civil question, or refuse the sweet service of a
+smile and a gentle look to the humblest wayfarer that jostles you on the
+road, just remember the criticism, and see if there is not occasion for
+it. Set about correcting the little faults, and the great ones leave to
+God. He will keep you, no doubt, from theft, and murder, and perjury,
+but you don't ask or seem to stand in need of His help in getting rid of
+temptations to be mean and selfish, and discourteous and lazy.
+
+What would you think of a gardener who went about with a spade seeking
+to exterminate nothing but Canada thistles, and let all the rest of the
+weeds go? It is not often that so big and determinate a thing as a
+Canada thistle gets in among the roses, and when it does it is quickly
+disposed of. But oh, the wee growths! The tiny shoots that come up
+faster than flies swarm in dog-days, and need to be forever stood over
+against with a steady hand and a hoe. If my neighbor comes out and
+charges me with stealing a barrel of flour from her storehouse, or
+attacking her first-born with a meat-axe, I can quickly disprove that
+sort of a charge; but when she says that I am unprincipled because I
+steal in and coax her girl away from her with the offer of higher
+wages--how is that? Or that I am selfish because she sees me let my old
+mother wait on me to what I am able to get myself; or cross, because I
+am untender to the children; or untruthful, because I instruct the
+servant to say I am "not at home" when I am, how am I going to dispose
+of those charges? Sure as you live, there are weeds in front of such hoe
+strokes, and with heaven's help we'll get rid of 'em.
+
+Cultivate your critics, then, provided they be honest and fair-dealing.
+Avoid only such as strike in the dark. The man who goes out to hoe weeds
+in the night time is not to be trusted, and the enemy who resorts to the
+underhand methods of backbiting and scandal to do his work, is not worth
+talking about, much less heeding. Take criticism that is fair and open,
+as you occasionally take quinine, to tone up the system and dissipate
+the malaria of sloth and inertia. Only they shall come into the
+festival by and by, bearing garlands of roses, and wreaths of hearts'
+delight and balm, who have welcomed the strong stroke of the hoe at the
+root of every blossom to bear down the weeds and loosen the tough and
+sun-baked soil.
+
+As Charles Kingsley says:
+
+  "My fairest child, I have no song to give you;
+    No lark could pipe 'neath skies so dull and gray;
+  Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you
+          For every day:
+
+  "Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
+    Do noble things, not dream them, all day long,
+  And so make life, death and that vast forever
+          One grand, sweet song."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+See that half-grown man? He never will know as much again as he does now
+at the ripe age of twenty. When he gets to be fifty, when his hair is
+grizzled and his hopes are like the dead leaves that cling to November
+trees, he will look back upon these years of rare wisdom and colossal
+effrontery and blush a little, perhaps, at the recollection. Now he has
+no reverence for a woman or for God. He sneers at good in a world whose
+threshold he has barely crossed, as a year-old child might stand in the
+doorway of his nursery and denounce what was going on in the
+drawing-room. Most of the scathing things that are said about domestic
+felicity, and the sneers that are bestowed on love, and the gibes that
+are flung at purity, and the scoffs that are launched at established
+religions; all the jokes at the expense of noble womanhood and the
+witticisms that are lavished upon the old-fashioned virtues, spring from
+the gigantic brain of the youth of the period.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Often as I pass along the streets of this town I notice certain places
+which I do not burn down, nor tear down, nor otherwise demolish, merely
+because of inherent cowardice and inadequate strength. If I had a
+wide-awake, growing boy I would no more turn him loose in your town, Mr.
+Alderman, than I would cut his throat with my own hand. Not, certainly,
+if there was a spark of human nature within him, and a boy without such
+a spark is hardly worth raising. And more than that, I will say this,
+that what with your saloons and your wide-open gambling resorts, and
+your doorways of hell, wherein sit spiders luring flies, it has come to
+pass that every mother whose boy encounters harm thereby should be
+entitled to damages at least as great as juries award a careless
+pedestrian who gets his legs cut off at a railway crossing. You say that
+laws are inadequate to cope with evils of this kind; if that is so, then
+an outraged citizenhood should rise superior to law, and enter upon a
+crusade to destroy the infamous dens that decoy our boys. On a certain
+downtown street there is a newly opened resort, the windows of which are
+closely draped, and before the door of which a placard is suspended
+which invites only men to enter within. Now and then a hideously ugly
+man, with a yellow beard, comes to the ticket window and looks out like
+a tarantula from its hole, but in the main the place seems absolutely
+unfrequented.
+
+Take your stand and watch for awhile, though, and you will see young men
+and small boys, old men and slouching reprobates of all conditions and
+colors going in and coming out by dozens. Why doesn't some good citizen
+enter a complaint of that place and break it up? We would pounce upon a
+smallpox case soon enough wherever it might lurk, but we are strangely
+indifferent where the menace is only to the soul.
+
+How can we expect to keep our boys pure and raise them to lives of
+usefulness when such iniquitous places are run wide open on public
+streets at noonday, granting admission to all masculinity between the
+ages of 7 and 70?
+
+A well-guarded youth is supposed to be at home in the night time and not
+to be frequenting shy neighborhoods at any hour. So that we might feel
+comparatively safe about the boy we send out into the world at an early
+age to begin his career as errand boy or messenger if these pernicious
+decoys were maintained only at night and in low vicinities. When the
+trap is set, however, right in the business center of the town by
+daylight, what safety have we? Whenever I look into the face of an
+eager, bright, curious, thoroughly alive boy I feel like shaking every
+other duty of life and going forth to do battle with the devil for that
+lad's soul.
+
+Why should evil have so much greater chance than good? For one reason I
+don't believe we make the good attractive enough. The devil has stolen
+the trademark of light for half his wares. Why not have more fun and
+frolic in the home? Why not add a gymnasium and dancing hall to the
+Sunday school and filter some of the world's innocent sunshine inside
+its gloomy walls? Why may not the eager, active heart of youth find its
+good cheer and jollity somewhere else than in forbidden places and among
+smooth and unscrupulous knaves? If we made our churches less austere and
+their gatherings more alluring to the young, these low and vicious
+resorts might close for lack of patronage.
+
+God bless the boys. I love them next best to girls, and sometimes even a
+little better, when they are especially frank and brave and true. I am
+not going to see them harmed without a protest, either, and I would be
+one of a crowd this very day to march upon the resorts of evil that lie
+in wait, all over town, to destroy the bonnie fellows. If I had my way,
+every man or woman who makes money by pandering to the curiosity of a
+boy's nature, inciting to unworthy passion by means of lewd pictures
+and the like, should be consigned to instant perdition. The earth is too
+hallowed to receive their vile dust!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dear girls, if you would be beautiful with the beauty that strikes root
+in heaven, first of all be natural. Be true to something within you
+higher than any conventional code or worldly wise mandate. If it is your
+natural impulse to be courteous, and sympathetic, and sweet (and blessed
+be the fact, it is the natural impulse of most girls so to be!), don't
+let miserable conformity and its tricksters exchange your genuine
+blossom for a mere shred of painted muslin, fashioned though it be after
+even so perfect a similitude of a rose. The birds of the air nor the
+angels in heaven will ever be fooled by any artificial rose, let me tell
+you, however much dudes and society feather-heads may pretend to desire
+it. Grow for something better than this world; wear your sweetness in
+your heart rather than on your pocket handkerchief.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great drawback to domestic felicity often lies in the fact that we
+get too familiar with one another. There should be a certain reserve in
+the most intimate relationships. Sisters and brothers have no right to
+burst into one another's private rooms without knocking. Wives have no
+more right to search their husband's pockets than they have to do the
+same little service for a distant acquaintance. I have no right to read
+the Young Person's letters without permission, although I have a right
+to win her confidence so that she shows them freely. The Captain has no
+more right to visit the Boy's bank for pennies because he is her
+brother, than she has to abstract money from the grocery-man's till. You
+have no more right to obtrude your conversation upon your wife, nor she
+upon her husband, when either is in the middle of a thrilling story,
+than you or she would have to interrupt the Queen of England at her
+devotions. An "excuse me," if a mother is obliged to interrupt her
+youngest child's babble, is quite as good a way to teach the baby
+manners as a course of lectures later on etiquette. The man who gets up
+and slams shut the ventilator in a crowded car to suit his own
+convenience, or the woman who throws open a car-window regardless of the
+occupants of the seat behind her, is no ruder than Bess is when she
+ignores brother Tom's comfort at home, or Tom is when he pounces for the
+biggest orange on the plate when only Bess and he are at table. When
+either makes rude remarks to the other, they sin against the true code
+of etiquette more than when they are discourteous at a party or
+boisterously unkind with a comrade, just as he is more criminally
+careless who pounds a piano to pieces with a hammer than he who batters
+the pine case it was brought in. The greater the value of the article,
+the choicer we are supposed to be of it, and in the same line of
+argument, the dearer and closer the tie that binds us, the more
+considerate we should be in the handling of it. I may hurt the feelings
+of a society acquaintance, and there is restitution and forgiveness, but
+when I stab the dear old mother's heart with an unkind word, or wound my
+child's feelings with an injustice or a cruelty, or ridicule the
+sensitive feelings of a brother or a sister, not eternity itself shall
+be long enough to extract the sting from my memory when my dear ones are
+dead and love's opportunity is vanished forever.
+
+Study politeness, then, which is the bodyguard of love, and build up for
+yourself the structure of a happy home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Has it been borne in upon you what radiant mornings and September nights
+the last two weeks have brought in? Have you stopped, Mr. Busyman, to
+note the wonder of the skies, never so glorious as of late? Did you see
+the sunset the other evening when a gigantic cloud stood almost zenith
+high against the flaming west, and took on for a time the panoply of a
+king? Did you notice the purple center and the dazzling edge, with the
+rose blush that fringed its borders? Did you see it pale to gray and
+vanish like a ghost into the starry night? Do you ever stop, Mrs.
+Featherhead, to mark the beauty of our wayside clover or the sparkle of
+a buttercup in the dew? Have you found the nooks where, like shy
+children, the violets cluster? Did you mark a certain day, a week or so
+ago, when the heavens were full of cloud battalions, taking new shapes
+every minute, and often dissolving in long lines of purple rain, shot
+through with stitches of golden light? Have you seen the lake lately, as
+blue as a heather bell, as wild as a wood-bird, as peaceful as a
+brooding dove? Where were you the other night when out of the sullen
+storm cloud the "light that never was on land or sea" enfolded us, and
+the world hung like an emerald in a topaz sky?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No law of morals should be less arbitrary for men than it is for women.
+An impure heart, a riotous appetite, a profane tongue, are no more
+excusable in a man than they are in a woman. If a man is supposed to
+shrink from selecting his wife among the unclean in thought and immoral
+of practice, why should not a young girl be allowed an undefiled
+selection? When girls grow so queenly natured that they demand that
+their lover should be of the royal stock and never demean themselves to
+stoop to mate with impurity and profligacy just because it carries a
+handsome face and a well-filled pocketbook, there will be some chance
+for happiness in the married estate. It is this placing white flowers in
+smutty buttonholes, or, in other words, the wedding of pure women to
+blasé and wicked men, that sows the seed of the tare in what was meant
+by the primal law to be a harvest of golden grain. Do you pick
+slug-eaten roses and wind-fall blossoms? When you go forth to buy
+material for a new gown do you choose cotton warp fabrics and colors
+that will fade in the first washing? Your answers to all these question
+are prompt enough, but when I ask you what choice you make of gentlemen
+friends, you are not quite so ready with a reply. Do you choose the
+young man who has a clean record, who neither drinks nor wastes his
+money in riotous practices? How about the tobacco chewers and the
+swearers? How about the lewd jesters and the low-minded? Provided he
+wears fine clothes, can dance well and make a good appearance in
+society, and above all can give you a handsome diamond for an engagement
+ring, are you not willing to accept a lover in spite of his known
+reputation as a fast young man about town? Girls, you had much better
+choose a specked peach for canning than such a man for a husband. Do you
+imagine that by and by at the upper court, whither we are all hastening
+as quickly as the old patrol wagon of time can carry us, there will be
+any distinction made between men and women? Think you a man is going to
+get off easier than a sorrowful and sinful woman merely because the
+world falsely taught him that the exigencies of his nature demanded
+greater latitude than hers?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You may retouch a faded picture, you may patch up an old piano, you may
+mend a shattered vase, but you cannot make a plucked rose grow again; it
+will wither and die in spite of every effort to restore it to the stem
+from which it fell. And so with the heart from which a low desire in the
+guise of an alluring temptation has snatched the flower of innocence.
+That heart will fade into hopeless loss unless a greater love than yours
+or mine intervenes to save. An impure soul never started out impure from
+the first any more than a peach was decayed in the blossom. It is the
+small beginnings, dear girls, that lead up to the bitter endings. The
+impure book read on the sly, the questionable jest laughed at in secret,
+the talk indulged in with a schoolmate or a friend which you would be
+unwilling for "mother" to hear, the horrible card circulated under the
+desk or behind the teacher's back, those are the beginnings of an ending
+sadder than the blight of any desolation that storm or drought or frost
+can bring upon the blossoms. If I only could, how gladly I would dip my
+pen to-night in a light that should outshine the electric splendor of
+our streets and write a message against the dark background of the sky,
+to startle young girls into the realization of the danger that lurks in
+the first indulgence of thoughts and companionships that are not pure.
+Avoid all such as you would avoid the contagion of small-pox, and a
+thousand times more. Small-pox, at its worst, can only mar the body, but
+the friend who lends you bad books or tells you "smutty" stories
+proffers a contagion to your soul which all the fountains of all your
+tears can never cleanse away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THIS BABY OF OURS.
+
+  There's not a blossom of beautiful May,
+  Silver of daisy, or daffodil gay,
+  Nor the rosy bloom of apple tree flowers,
+  Fair as the face of this baby of ours.
+
+  You could never find, on a bright June day,
+  A bit of fair sky so cheery and gay;
+  Nor the haze on the hills in noonday hours,
+  Blue as the eyes of this baby of ours.
+
+  There's not a murmur of wakening bird--
+  The clearest, sweetest, that ever was heard
+  In the tender hush of the dawn's still hours--
+  Soft as the laugh of this baby of ours.
+
+  There's no gossamer silk of tasseled corn,
+  Nor the flimsiest thread of the shy wood fern--
+  Not even the cobwebs spread over the flowers--
+  Fine as the hair of this baby of ours.
+
+  There's no fairy shell by the sounding sea,
+  No wild rose that nods on the windy lea,
+  No blush of the sun through April's showers,
+  Pink as the palm of this baby of ours.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Don't you get awfully tired of people who are always croaking? A frog in
+a big, damp, malarial pond is expected to make all the fuss he can in
+protest of his surroundings. But a man! Destined for a crown, and born
+that he may be educated for the court of a king! Placed in an emerald
+world with a hither side of opaline shadow, and a fine dust of diamonds
+to set it sparkling when winter days are flying; with ten million
+singing birds to make it musical, and twice ten million flowers to make
+it sweet; with countless stars to light it up with fiery splendor, and
+white, new moons to wrap it round with mystery; with other souls within
+it to love and make happy, and the hand of God to uphold it on its
+rushing way among the countless worlds that crowd its path: what right
+has a man to find fault with such a world?
+
+When the woodtick shall gain a hearing, as he complains that the grand
+old century oak is unfit to shelter him, or the bluebird be hearkened to
+when he murmurs that the horizon is off color, and does not match his
+wings, then, I think, it will be time for man to find fault with the
+appointments of the magnificent sphere he inhabits.
+
+"It is a fine day!" remarks Miss Cherrylips.
+
+"Too cold," says the croaker; "beastly wind, not fit for a dog to
+breathe."
+
+Oh, yes, my dear, I heard him say it this very morning, and while I sat
+and listened to him I could but think to myself, "What would become of
+the croaker without the weather topic to fall back upon?" When all else
+failed him, he is sure to have something to find fault with within the
+range of this universal and inexhaustible topic. It is too warm or too
+cold; there is too much rain, or there is a drought; the winters are
+changing and microbes are on the increase; the peach buds are blighted
+by a cold snap in spring, and the potatoes have failed or are about to
+fail, owing to a wet June.
+
+That is the way the croaker holds forth whenever he can get anybody to
+listen to him. I sometimes wonder what he would do if he really had
+great things to fret about; if one of his beautiful children were to
+die, or the faithful wife he loves so well in his heart, perhaps, but
+never takes the trouble to acquaint with the fact, were to weary of his
+endless faultfinding and steal away from it all into the quietude of the
+grave. I wonder if he would not then look back upon these days of
+"croaking" with amazement that he was ever so blind and stupid a fool.
+
+I knew a woman once who was very, very charming. She could sing "Allan
+Percy" in a way that would melt the heart within you. She could paint on
+china and decorate the panels of doors, and on the whole she was
+calculated to enjoy life and make it enjoyable for others. But her home,
+on the contrary, was utterly devoid of peace and comfort. Her husband
+took no pleasure there, although he was lavish in the expenditure of
+money to render the place attractive. Her children were glad to get away
+from their home and find otherwhere the freedom and gaiety denied them
+there. Why was all this, when the mother was so eminently fitted by
+grace and accomplishments to create a beautiful and happy home? Simply
+because she was always fretting and fussing about trifles. She was a
+croaker and always finding fault. She fought flies until life was a
+burden to everybody who watched her. She said that they would spoil the
+paint, poison the food and ruin the curtains. She was after them at
+early dawn nor gave over the chase until late at night. She would leave
+the dinner table to chase a fly and kill it with a folded paper. She
+would stop the lullaby song she was singing to her pretty baby, to get
+up and call somebody to come in and hunt a stray blue-bottle that was
+bunting its stupid head against the window screen. She said that her
+life wasn't worth a farthing to her if the flies got into her home, and
+she would sooner jump in the river than submit to the pestilential
+infliction. Then she was forever prophesying some dreadful fate for
+herself by reason of the muddy footprints that occasionally found their
+way onto the carpets.
+
+"I declare," she would say, "if you boys don't stop tracking dirt into
+the house I'll die before my time. If there is anything I hate it is a
+careless boy!"
+
+And the boys took her at her word and stopped tracking mud. But they
+were gradually lured to stay away from home, and the soil they took into
+their hearts was perhaps harder to efface than the footmarks they left
+upon the floor of mother's neatly kept hallways.
+
+She was always anticipating trouble that never came. She knew the girl
+was going to leave. She was simply too great a treasure to keep. She was
+absolutely certain that the milkman was watering his milk, and the baby
+would get sick. She had no doubt whatever but what her husband was
+going to ruin himself on 'Change, and then what would become of them
+all? So she worried and fretted and fumed, until patience, like a hunted
+bird, spread its wings and flew away, and what might have been a happy
+home became a stranded wreck upon the rocks of contention.
+
+Oh, I tell you right now, girls, if you can only cultivate one
+accomplishment out of the many that wait to crown a perfect womanhood,
+cultivate a pleasant temper and cheerful disposition. The ability to
+speak many languages, to paint, to dance, to sing, or even to wield a
+graceful pen is nothing compared to the ability to make a lovely home.
+Nobody ever yet succeeded in that noblest endeavor without abjuring
+needless faultfinding, croaking and fretting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As a general thing I don't believe in sermons served as restaurants
+serve beef--in slices. I believe in teaching truths, rather, as one
+whips cream, dropping in the moral as an almost imperceptible flavoring.
+But I tell you there are times when I feel like mounting a pulpit and
+thundering with old Calvin, until the air emits sulphur. Especially when
+I see the inhumanities and outrages practiced upon children by witless
+parents, do I feel stirred to my soul's depths. If we treated our flower
+beds as we do our children there wouldn't be a blossom left in the
+world. If we served our meals as we do our children, there would be
+rampant indigestion and black-browed death at the heels of every one of
+us. Now and then you see a wise mother and sensible father, but the
+biggest half of humanity receive their children as youngsters receive
+their Christmas toys, to be played with when in a good humor, and
+bundled anywhere out of sight when out of sorts or engrossed with more
+important matters. We forget, half of us, that a little child's sense of
+injustice and sorrow and wrong is compatible with its own growth and
+experience rather than with our own. What to us is a paltry trial is the
+cause of keenest, unalleviated woe to the child of five. The possession
+of uncounted gold at forty will not be more precious than the possession
+at three of the apple or the book we so rudely snatch from the little
+hands without a word of apology. Take the time to explain to the little
+fellow why you deprive him of some cherished possession and you will
+save the tender bit of a heart a vast amount of unnecessary aching.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have many things to be thankful for this stormy winter night. One is
+that the coal bin is full and the lock on the outer door secure. Another
+is that the rooftree bends above an unbroken band, and that disease with
+its fell touch lingers the other side of the threshold of the little
+home. Another is that, as a family, we all have straight backs and
+moderately developed intellects; that we are neither dime museum freaks,
+lunatics, nor half-wits. Another is that none of us chew gum, carry
+around dogs, nor make expectoration the chief business of a day's
+outing. Another is that I am getting so used to the alarm clock that I
+sleep through its wild clamor and escape the duties that fall to the lot
+of that other member of the home circle whose ear and conscience are not
+so sadly seared as mine. Another is that I know enough to detect butter
+from oleomargarine, and am not roped in by Blank street vendors with
+their dollar and a half tubs. Another is that I am not the sort of
+fellow to be always hitting another fellow when he has been down and is
+trying to stand steady again. Another is that I am modest enough to
+question whether I could run a grip any better than he does? Another is
+that I got one answer to the "ad." wherewith I sought to capture a gold
+watch. It would have been an embarrassing thing to have received not one
+solitary little nibble. Another is that the elevator boy who
+occasionally carries me to the top floor and intermediate stations
+around at Blank's is kind and does not treat me with the haughty scorn
+he bestows on others. Another is that I have the serene equipoise of
+nerve which renders me calm and even cheerful under the knowledge that
+there is nothing in the house to eat, and two invited guests gently
+sleeping the happy hours away in the chamber above, dreaming perchance
+of toothsome viands not to be. Another is that in spite of weather I
+take no colds, and am as impervious to catarrhal or pneumonic affections
+as an eagle is impervious to the attack of tom-tits. Another is that I
+live in a town where people sell no beer; they may steal and backbite,
+and raise the old lad generally, but thank goodness the baleful glitter
+of a glass beer bottle has never yet eclipsed the moral splendor of the
+scene. Another is that I have been enabled to preserve a few staunch and
+trusty friends through the evolution of that rainy-weather costume which
+a few of my sex have joined me in essaying. I cannot speak for future
+tests, but so far my henchmen have stood firm. And right here let me say
+that any friend, man, woman or babe, who can remain loyal to you after
+you have been seen in public in a dress-reform garment is worth
+cultivating, and should be made the theme of special psalms of praise.
+Another is that the picture I had taken the other day looks worse than I
+do, and when I send it off to unsuspecting admirers I am not torn with
+the thought that when they see the original they will drop scalding hot
+tears of disappointment. This idea of raising false hopes in the minds
+of confiding strangers savors too much of Ananias and Sapphira. Another
+is that so far in life I have preserved a stern and unshaken resolution
+not to wear a false front. A woman in a store bang is next worse to a
+chromo in an art gallery, or a muslin rose among American beauties
+fresh from the rose gardens. Artificiality, my dear, pretense and
+assumption, are harder to put up with than anything else in the world,
+unless it is corns. But far ahead of all the above enumerated causes for
+gratitude is one which thrills me most profoundly, and which can be
+summed up in half a dozen words, the echo of which, perhaps, will find a
+lodgment in some other hearts. I am thankful, very, very thankful, that
+I am not the mother, nor the aunt, nor the half-sister, nor the first
+cousin, nor even the next-door neighbor, of the boy who kills sparrows
+for two cents bounty on the little heads. If I had such a boy within
+range of my voice to-night I should say to him, "Be poor, my man; be
+unsuccessful in business, and not up to bargains all your life, but
+don't be shrewd and sordid and cruel in seeking your gains. Better go by
+the name of 'mollycoddle' and 'baby' among the other boys than get to be
+a little ruffian with your arrow and your sling-shot, and the name of a
+keen-killer tacked on to yourself. Let the sparrows alone, or if you
+really feel that they are the nuisance they are made out to be, kill
+them if you like, but do it in a gentlemanly way (if such a paradox is
+possible), and don't take money for the job." The boy or the man who
+will take a life for sordid ends, or, in other words, who will seek to
+enrich himself on "blood money," is pretty low down in the human scale.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Laughter is a positive sweetness of life, but, like good coffee, it
+should be well cleared of deleterious substance before use. Ill-will and
+malice and the desire to wound are worse than chicory. Between a laugh
+and a giggle there is the width of the horizons. I could sit all day and
+listen to the hearty and heartsome ha! ha! of a lot of bright and jolly
+people, but would rather be shot by a Winchester rifle at short range
+than be forced to stay within earshot of a couple of silly gossips.
+Cultivate that part of your nature that is quick to see the mirthful
+side of things, so shall you be enabled to shed many of life's troubles,
+as the plumage of the bird sheds rain. But discourage all tendencies to
+seek your amusement at the expense of another's feelings or in aught
+that is impure. It was Goethe who said: "Tell me what a man laughs at
+and I will read you his character."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I'll take my chances any day to find heaven on earth, if I can have the
+run of the woods up along our northern lake shore in early springtime. I
+want no companions either, unless, perhaps, it be a child or a dog, for
+artificial women and dudish men, let loose in the woods, are harder to
+endure than gad-flies. It was scarcely more than sunrise, the other
+morning, when I left the house and took my way toward the forest shrine
+undesecrated as yet by surveyors or wood-choppers, the advent of either
+of whom in a country town means good-bye to heaven on that particular
+spot of earth! We found the air so full of sweetness, the instant we
+struck the depths of the woods, that one could almost fancy the wise men
+of the East had been there before us to greet the new-born Spring with
+spices as they greeted another Heaven-born child a score of centuries
+ago in Bethlehem. Every shrub held a softly-tinted leafbud half
+unfolded, like a listless hand. The maple leaves were pink and glossy,
+like rose petals wet with rain. The hickory trees were unfolding great
+creamy buds that looked like magnolias. The hawthorns were all afloat
+with silver blossoms, like loosened sails. The earth seemed singing to
+the heavens, "God is here!" and from the blue depths of quietude, where
+a few clouds spread their soft wings like brooding birds, came back the
+answer, "He is here!" The lake claimed Him, and a thousand azure waves
+murmured His presence on the deep. Wherever we looked, at our feet where
+the June lilies whitened the ground like perfumed snow, and the moss was
+bubbling like a wayside spring with sunshine in place of water; at the
+misty foliage overhead, like shadowy spirit wings; at the circle of blue
+that bounded the earth, or into the very heart of heaven above us, it
+seemed as though God, visible and manifest, was there to give us
+greeting. Finally, we found a point of high land, touched here and there
+with shadows flung down from budding birches, and starred with
+dandelions in flocks, like golden butterflies. Here, leaving the
+material part of me leaning up against a tree-trunk to rest, as one
+thrusts a cumbersome garment on a nail, my soul went wandering off into
+Paradise, and forgot awhile its environment and its earth-born
+responsibilities. Next time the world has failed to use you well and you
+are smarting from the sense of injury undeserved, or the frets of
+domestic life have worn you down to the minimum, like a blade that is
+eternally upon the grindstone, start for the woods. Take a big basket
+with you and fill it full of lilies, and, ten to one, before you get
+home again the lilies will have taken root in your heart and your basket
+will be full of contentment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Educate the children to the expectation of sorrow, not as a monster who
+is to devour them, but as an angel who is to meet them on the way and
+lead them gently home to heaven. Teach them to hold themselves in
+readiness for whatever life has in store, as soldiers are trained for a
+battle whose end is certain peace. Teach them to endure all things, only
+striving to sweeten and soften rather than to harden under the
+discipline of sorrow. Unselfishness is the most rare and at the same
+time the most Christian virtue possible for human nature to attain to,
+but did anybody ever yet grow unselfish through a life of indolent
+self-indulgence and ease? Did fruit ever amount to anything that was
+left unacquainted with the sharp discipline of the gardener's shears? I
+tell you, all the way up from an apple to a man it takes lots of pruning
+and lopping off of superfluous branches to bring out the flavors and
+sweeten the fiber of the fruit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I can imagine a lot of way-worn pilgrims drawing up to heaven's gate.
+
+"What will you have?" asks old St. Peter, standing idle and calm in the
+perpetual sunshine that lies beyond the swinging portal.
+
+"I will have my crown," says one. "I have earned it."
+
+"And I will have my harp," says another; "my fingers are eager to pick
+out the heavenly tunes."
+
+"And I will hie me at once to my heavenly mansion," says a third. "Long
+time I have plodded, foot-sore and weary, to gain the habitation of its
+enduring rest."
+
+But if you can imagine "Amber" piping forth her small request, I think
+you might hear her say: "Conduct me, oh, aged friend, to the nearest
+sand-bank, where I may lie face downward in the sunshine for fifty years
+to come, and hear the surf break on 'Sconsett's reef." That is what I
+have been doing for the past fortnight, and both soul and body have
+waxed strong in the process.
+
+What a tired passenger we carry around with us, sometimes, in this
+marvelous Pullman coach of ours, wherein the soul takes passage for its
+overland trip from the cradle to the grave. How restless it gets, and
+how troublesome. How it turns from companionship, even that of books,
+and finds no panacea for its torment, until some kind fate side-tracks
+it and lets the noisy world rumble on with the clatter and clash of
+conflicting cares beating the hours to dust beneath their flying wheels.
+
+When I went away for my yearly outing I was so cross that there was no
+living within six miles of my own shadow. I hated everything on earth,
+and everything on earth hated me. But I have come back as sweetly as the
+breath of a rose steals through a lattice. That is the effect of a
+jaunt, my dear; and let me say right now that if you are holding on to
+your money in the hope of getting rich sometime, or if you are
+traveling in a rut because you think you are too poor to avoid it, or if
+you are grinding your soul into fine dust in the process of laying up
+against a rainy day, just stop right where you are and listen to me. Any
+money that is gained at the expense of health, either physical or
+mental; any duty held to in the face of nervous breakdown; any gain
+secured at the expense of peace of mind and growth of soul, is not worth
+the holding. You cannot be of any use in the world if you are worn out
+or sick. You may persist in holding on, but your grip is weak, and your
+effect on affairs and people is simply that of an irritant. You owe it
+to yourself, as well as to others, to go away and get rested. If it
+costs money to do so, consider money well spent that gains so fair an
+equivalent as rest and change, and renewed vigor. I tell you there are
+few better uses to which you may put your dollars than in a yearly
+outing. Your pockets may be lighter when you get back, but so will your
+heart be, and the few sacrifices necessary in the way of less expensive
+clothes and cigars, or less frequent gloves and bonnets, will be well
+worth the making for the result gained.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I wish Columbus had never discovered us. I wish that he had never
+steered his old bark westward and found the "land of the free and the
+home of the brave." For with discovery came civilization, and I believe
+we would have been better off without it. If we only could have been
+left to ourselves and gone on sitting under lotus trees unaffected by
+dressmaker and tailor bills, I believe the sum total of happiness would
+have been far greater in the world than it is to-day. I would love to
+return to my allegiance to nature and forever desert the haunts of
+civilization and the marts of trade. I want to gather together a picked
+band of kindred souls and go out and pitch tent by the Gunnison River.
+Ever been there? Imagine a stream of gold flowing through hills colored
+like an apple orchard in May, with a sky bending down above them like
+the wing of an oriole. I want to forget the insolence of a class who may
+be as good as I am in the eye of the law, but whom it would take a ton
+of soap and God's grace to make my equal in point of cleanliness and
+decency. I want to forget forever the clang of the cable car and the
+rumble of its wheels. I want to return to the heathendom that worships
+gods instead of dollars and loves mankind simply because it knows
+nothing of faithlessness and fraud.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Plaze, sor," said a servant to the head of a certain suburban household
+the other morning, "the gintleman who sthole the chickens left his hat
+in the hincoop." Just so, Bridget. And the lady who attends to the
+affairs of the kitchen has her foot upon the neck of the miserable woman
+who is nominally at the head of the house. Oh, no! I am not going to
+enter into a disquisition upon the merits of the servant question. Years
+ago, when I cantered lightly in my ride against windmills, I might have
+undertaken it, but the question has grown too large to be settled by
+talking. The state of things in this free country is growing just a
+trifle too free. There are no longer any servants in this proud land. It
+is not ladylike to serve. The person who superintends the domestic
+affairs of our home merely condescends for a consideration. We no
+longer have any rights as employers. The wind has tacked to another
+quarter. Should we wish to discharge our lady cook or dispense with the
+services of a gentleman artisan it stands in place for us to approach
+them in a respectful manner, put the case before them clearly and ask
+them humbly, without offense to their delicate sensibilities, if they
+will kindly allow us to forego their so-called services. Question
+yourself seriously, my dear; are you sufficiently considerate? Think how
+these defenseless ladies and thin-skinned gentlemen who fill positions
+of trust in your establishment must suffer sometimes from your boorish
+impetuosity. Are you always cordial in your greeting when the worn face
+of the cook appears at the delayed breakfast hour and she places before
+you the hurried pancake and the underdone steak? Do you stop to think
+how the poor creature has danced all night at a ball and has crept home
+after your stiff-necked and rebellious husband has bounded away to catch
+the early train, breakfastless and profane? And when the low-voiced and
+timid second girl tells you that, as a lady who knows her place, she
+really cannot demean herself to wipe off the paint or sweep the front
+steps, do you take her by the hand and acknowledge the indiscretion of
+your coarser nature in expecting her to do such menial service? How many
+of us, clods that we are, have raged when the mild-mannered laundry maid
+has appropriated our underclothing, or remonstrated when the number
+seven foot of the blue-blooded cook has condescended to stretch our
+silken hose? It behooves us to join the ranks of the "philanthropic
+fiends" and look to it that we improve our methods of treating the
+delicate gentry who tarry with us so briefly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the way, I think I occasionally hear a feeble pipe from a man to the
+effect that the girls are responsible for all the tomfoolery in the
+world. Don't you know that you are the very ones who tend to make them
+so--you men? You follow after and woo and wed just that sort of girls.
+You won't look at a sensible little woman who can make "lovely" bread,
+abjures bangs, can't dance and has no "style." You laugh at and make sly
+jokes at the expense of our big hats and our pronounced fashions, but
+when you choose your company, and often your wives, I notice you pass
+right by the home-keeping birds and take the peacocks. Of course, no one
+lives in this age who doubts for a moment that woman's chief aim in life
+and purpose of creation, as well as her hope of a blessed hereafter, is
+to please the men and get a husband. If you won't have her modest and
+simply gowned she is willing to make a feather-headed doll and a
+travesty of herself to get you and win heaven! You know perfectly well,
+you men, that you don't care half so much for brains as you do for
+general "get-up," and the woman you honor with your choice is selected
+for a pretty face and form, and a becoming costume rather than for a
+clever head and an honest heart. I am not talking to old fogies who
+cling to old-fashioned notions, but to young men who ridicule the
+customs of their grandmothers, who shake their heads at salaries of two
+and three thousand a year as inadequate to support wives; who rail
+against woman's extravagance, yet do their best to maintain her in it.
+When you, my fine and dapper gentleman, begin to seek out the modestly
+appareled and the sedate girls, then shall folly and vain show fly over
+seas for want of encouragement and the grand transformation of sawdust
+dolls into women and pleasure-seekers into home-keepers take place.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TWO DAYS.
+
+  I said to myself one golden day
+  When the world was bright and the world was gay,
+    "Though I live more lives than time has years
+    Either in this or the infinite spheres,
+  I will fear no blight and I'll bear no cross,
+  Against my gains I will write no loss,
+    But I and my soul, twin lilies together,
+    Shall whiten in endless summer weather!"
+
+  I said to myself one weary day
+  When the world was old and the world was gray,
+    "Has God forgotten His wandering earth?
+    Are its tears His scorning, its groans His mirth?
+  There's no blue above where the torn clouds fly,
+  There's no bloom below where the dead leaves lie;
+    Would I and my soul were at rest together
+    Wrapped from the chill of this wintry weather."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are some people who live in this world as a cucumber grows in a
+garden. They cling to their own vine and serve no higher end than
+rotundity and relish. There are others who live in the world as a summer
+breeze lives in a meadow; they find out all the hidden flowers and set
+the perfumes flying. There are others who live as the sea lives in a
+shell; their existence is nothing but a sigh. There are others who live
+as the fire lives in a diamond; they are all sparkle. And there are
+others, and they outnumber all the rest, who live as a blind mole lives
+in the soil; they see nothing, feel nothing, suffer and enjoy a little
+now and then, perhaps, but know nothing to all eternity. Such people
+walk through life as the mole walks through the glory of a summer day,
+or burrows beneath the dazzle of a winter storm. They are as
+irresponsive to the voices all about them as the mole is to the singing
+of April robins. They are as untouched by the myriad influences of life
+as the mole is by the light of a star or the flash of a comet. Their
+only interest is in the question, "Wherewith shall we be clothed, and
+what shall we have to eat?" They gather the ripened hours from the tree
+of life as a child gathers fruit, merely for the gratification of an
+instant appetite, not as the careful housewife does, who garners in a
+store for wintry weather. Life to them is merely a fattening process.
+They remind one of prize beef at a county fair; to-morrow brings the
+shambles and the butcher's axe, but in the serene content of a
+well-filled stall and a full stomach, they take no thought of the
+future. We meet such people every day and everywhere. On the streets
+they may see a brute tyrannizing over a helpless beast of burden, or a
+mother (?) yanking a sobbing child along by the arm, as full of ugliness
+herself as a thunder-cloud is of electricity, or a man following an
+innocent young girl with the devil in his heart, or a big boy
+tyrannizing over a smaller one; and they pass it all by as indifferently
+as the mole would sneak across a battlefield the morning after a battle.
+They have too much to do themselves to waste time in remedying other
+people's grievances. They think too much of personal reputation to
+involve themselves in an altercation with defilers of the innocent, and
+tramplers of the weak. They are too respectable to get mixed up in
+brawls, even if the disturbance is brought about by the devil's own
+drummers looking up recruits among the championless and defenseless
+working-girls, or the parentless and homeless children of a great city.
+We meet them traveling through the mountains or loitering by the sea.
+Their only use for mountains is that they may carve their precious
+initials on the highest peaks, pick winter-greens and blue-berries and
+display their fashionable suits and striped stockings. They look upon
+the sea as a big bathing-tank, and the sky, with all its splendor of
+cloud and its glory of sunrise and sunset, as a barometer to forecast
+the weather. We meet them in business relations, and they never believe
+that courtesy and business can go together. A merchant in his office or
+a lady in her parlor will bluntly refuse to buy of a worn-out,
+discouraged, heart-sick book-agent, ignoring the fact that a smile
+accompanying even a refusal acts like a spoonful of sugar in bitter tea,
+and costs less. Even a "lady" clerk, behind a counter, will be haughty
+and unaccommodating and insolent to the woman who comes to buy,
+forgetful that a customer will go a long distance out of her way to deal
+with a polite and well-mannered clerk, and that, like honesty,
+politeness is ever the best policy. And, on the other hand, a woman
+shopper will be whimsical and captious and trying, forgetting that the
+girl who serves her has human blood in her veins, and often carries a
+troubled heart behind her smile or her frown.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They have come! Without the sound of a bugle, the bright hosts have
+marched down and taken possession of the land. The southern slopes are
+all alive with their wind-shaken tents, and when the sun comes out warm
+and glowing from the cloudy pavilions of the April sky, he finds a
+million blossoms on the hills that yesterday were white with snow. Some
+of them are tinted like the flush that lingers in the evening sky before
+the stars find it; some of them are stainless as unfallen snow; some of
+them are purple as a nautillus sail adrift upon a twilight sea; and all
+of them are joyfully welcome to hearts that are weary of Winter's long
+reign. And after the hypatica shall come the violet, and after the
+violet the trillium, and after the trillium the wild-rose, and after
+the wild-rose the cardinal-flower and the wood-lily, and after them the
+gentian and the golden rod, to mark the wane of the year. Oh, who would
+not live in a world whose dial-plate is made of flowers and whose
+circling seasons are told over with blossoming trees and gentian-buds?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I saw a great many things on the way this morning as I was coming to
+town. Suppose, as the weather is too warm for preaching, I enumerate
+them and let you strike the balance at the close, to see which way the
+world is jogging. I saw a father, drunk, beside his little blue-eyed
+daughter. His head was laid in maudlin sleep upon her shoulder, and with
+blushes that came and went across her face like cloud shadows on the
+slope of a hill, she sat and bore the burden of her childish shame like
+a little angel. I saw a hard-faced, labor-grimed man step out of his way
+to pick a wild rose that grew by the side of the road. I saw a young man
+lash his horse because his own bungling driving came near colliding his
+vehicle with a cable car. I saw a policeman spring to the rescue of an
+old beggar woman who stumbled on a street crossing, and saw him fall and
+trampled upon in the discharge of duty. I saw a pretty girl reach out
+her white fingers and feed a discouraged street-car horse the banana she
+was eating as she passed by. I saw a beaten dog turn and fawn beneath
+his master's brutal kick, and I thought to myself, where is a more
+faithful friendship than that? I saw a little golden-headed boy at the
+window of a house as I rode by, and when I waved my hand he kissed his
+in return. I saw a tired mother stoop to hug the child who fidgeted at
+her knee in the tedious depot waiting-room, and I saw another slap her
+baby because its sticky fingers sought to fondle her cheek. I saw a
+little girl get up, without suggestion from her mother, and yield her
+seat to an older person. I saw a lamed and dying bird just brought down
+by a boy's sling-shot. (I saw that same boy in Sabbath-school last
+Sunday!) I saw one woman in fifty thousand wearing the dress-reform. I
+saw eleven girls out of nineteen with tightly-laced waists! I saw a hurt
+kitten tenderly attended to by a soldier in blue, as I passed Fort
+Sheridan Camp, and involuntarily I said to myself: "The bravest are the
+tenderest; the loving are the daring." I saw a small boy beating his
+mother with both fists because she carried him over the crowded and
+dangerous way, and so, I thought, we treat the tender God who sometimes
+lifts us, against our will, from evil ways. I saw a little coffin in an
+undertaker's window, and thought, what child in this busy, bustling city
+is doomed to fill that casket? What love-watched home shelters the head
+that shall one day sleep upon that satin pillow? I saw a teacher in one
+of our public schools and overheard a gross bit of slang as she passed
+by. I see myself sending a child of mine to such a teacher if I knew it!
+I saw a father wheeling his baby in a perambulator, with the sun blazing
+straight into its blinking eyes. I saw one man out of every ten dodge
+into a liquor saloon when he thought nobody was looking. I saw a homely
+girl transformed into a beauty by a service of love accorded a stranger.
+I saw a woman lean out of a Marshall Field 'bus to laugh at another who
+wore shabby clothes and walked with a drooping head. I saw lots of
+things besides, but how does the balance strike?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If we have been living on bad terms with a neighbor; if we have been
+maintaining a chilling silence and a forbidding reserve with anybody
+thrown often in our way, let us have done with such nonsense and live in
+the world as God meant we should.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out of the exuberance of a merry heart the housekeeper has loosened the
+tacks in the parlor carpet, and the epoch of housecleaning begins. The
+head of the family, pro tem. dweller in the land of desolation and
+sojourner in the valley of wrath, hies him to town and wishes vainly for
+the return of the days when he had no wife save in Spain and no family
+outside of Elia's land of dreams. The calciminer comes and drops leprous
+splashes all over the hallways and the bannisters. One paperhanger
+taketh unto himself another, and the two scatter ringlets of snipped
+paper all over the bed chambers, and cumber up the floors with sticky
+paste-pots and brushes. The scrub woman breathes hard and devastates
+the approaches of the front steps, while the hired girl skips playfully
+here and there with damp cloths and bars of silvery soap. There is no
+breakfast, no lunch, no dinner. We take what provender the gods deliver
+to us in out of the way places, like stalled oxen or uncomplaining army
+mules! We sleep by night in beds loosely put together and smelling of
+soap. We awake betimes to the rattle of the scrubbing brush and the
+sharp overthrow of stovepipes. We see the young person, like McStinger,
+on the rampage from morn till night. We watch her hand to hand
+encounters with the pictures that have been wont to hang upon the walls.
+How she swoops upon them, bears them down, buffets them with dusters and
+heaps them high like stumbling blocks in the path of the righteous! How
+she sneers at our feeble, yet apt, suggestion, and pharisaically "thanks
+goodness that she is good for something besides standing around and
+giving unsolicited advice!" How she charges upon our cherished books and
+whacks them together vindictively to loosen the dust and the bindings!
+How she tosses the piano like a feather in her strength and probes its
+sensitive heart-strings with a knitting needle in search of dirt and
+pins! How she rebukes the Captain for idling away her time at
+doll-playing while there is so much work to do, and drives that gallant
+young field officer forth to do battle with the unresisting tomato can
+in the backyard! What a pandemonium reigns over all the domain of
+yesterday's content! Carlo, the dog, whose flippant youth is getting its
+first severe taste of life's discipline, retires to an adjacent covert
+and howls a fitful protest. The cat blinks sleepily in the sunshine and
+dreams of a future unmarred by suds and a slippery foothold. When she
+has occasion to walk across the kitchen floor she shakes her hind foot
+gingerly, like a pilgrim delicately removing the dust of the enemy's
+land from his members. The goblin brood of chickens chuckle with
+amazement while the hired man beats the rugs like a snare drum and
+charges upon the carpet that hangs like a vanquished foe across the
+clothesline. But, like everything else, my dear, we take the trials of
+spring housecleaning as the tourist takes the storms in the Alps or the
+sailor meets the tempest on the sea. It has not come to stay; the
+sun-lighted peaks of deliverance lie just ahead of us, and there is
+fine sailing for another year when the squall is weathered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am tired of the endless dress parade of the great alike--aren't you? I
+am tired of walking in file, as convicts walk together in
+stripes--aren't you? I glory in cranks who have enough individuality to
+refuse to be sewed up in the universal patchwork, like the calico blocks
+we used to overcast with our poor little pricked fingers ever so long
+ago when we were children--don't you? The onward sweep of progress in
+this age has prepared the way for non-conformists, and, glory be to God!
+they are swinging into line like beacon lights up the Maine coast. I
+confess I have no heart-pining for emancipation that shall place me
+alongside of Dr. Mary Walker or others of her ilk. I would like to
+retain my womanliness, but I would like also to make a distinct mark
+upon my times, be it ever so small and insignificant, as an individual
+and an intelligence quite as distinct from the conventional masses as a
+blackbird is when it leaves the flock and silhouettes itself in solitary
+state against the deep blue sky from the top of a windy elm
+tree--wouldn't you?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I want one good square fling on earth before I die. I want the chance to
+know what it is to have enough money to be able to buy silk elastic
+occasionally instead of cotton, and to have my teeth filled with gold
+instead of concrete without feeling as though I had been robbing
+hen-roosts for a month after. I want to go to the theater in a swell
+carriage, and sit in the best box, with a pale pink ostrich boa draped
+about my shoulders and the opera-glasses of the entire house leveled at
+me for a stunning beauty. I want the sensation, for once, of knowing
+that I am as handsome as I am bright, and as well-dressed as I am
+virtuous. I want to have ice cream seven times a week and "Pommery Sec"
+by the dozen in the cellar. I want to own a silk umbrella with a golden
+crook, and wear a diamond ring on every finger. I want to buy candy
+whenever I feel like it without having to register it in the family
+account book under the head of "sundries" and "cough drops." I want to
+see the time when I can call the average shop-girl out into the alley
+and have it out with her with none to interfere. I want to settle with
+her for the indignities I have long suffered with the pusillanimity of a
+meek nature. I want to ask her between clips why she has always sold me
+just what I didn't want, and sneered at me because I didn't buy more of
+it. I want also to engage in hand to hand conflict with the female
+gum-chewer. I want to convince her that I have endured all I will of her
+facial contortions, and that the time has come for the extinction of her
+type from the face of the blooming earth. I want the power to consign
+every man who even mentions "nose bag" to a horse, to the guillotine,
+and to imprison for life every brute who carries a snake-whip or uses a
+check-rein. I want to solder the man or woman who objects to fresh air
+inside a tin can and label them "sardines." I want to shoot on sight the
+first human being who mentions the word "draught" in my hearing, and set
+my dog on the fiend who blots the face of nature with his ear-muffs. I
+want to live for a while in a country where there are neither
+thunderstorms nor cyclones, but where I can sleep nights right through,
+from March until November, without getting up to look for funnels or
+shooing the whole family down cellar as a hen gathers her chickens from
+the swooping hawk. I want to live in a community made up of people who
+mind their own business. I want to be able now and then to receive a
+letter from out of town (it is generally a bill!) without having the
+village postmaster regard me as a burning fagot. I want to find a recipe
+for making buckwheat cakes that do not taste like sand. I want to be
+able to detect a hypocrite and a traitor on sight, without waiting for a
+broken heart to evidence the fact that I am sold again. I want to rise
+out of the range of small annoyances, and fly above the aim of inferior
+people to disturb. I want to grow to be more like an eagle that wings
+its way out of the habitat of gadflies, and less like a trembling hare
+pursued by hounds. I want to take the lesson to my heart that the soul
+that is constant to itself and aspires towards heaven shall never be
+left a prey to care and unrest. I want to strike a dress reform which
+shall make women look less like guys, and to encounter a rainy day in
+which I shall not bite the dust, I and my umbrella, and my
+flippety-floppety skirts, and my nineteen bundles. I want to cut down
+the ballot privilege and make it impossible for an immigrant to vote
+before he is a twenty-one-year resident of America. I want to convince
+the woman suffragist that the greatest curse she can precipitate upon
+her sex is the ballot. I want to teach my sisters that if they will pay
+more attention to their homes and less to outside issues American
+institutions will be more of a success. If the career of a politician
+will spoil a man what would it do for a woman? On the principle that a
+strawberry will decay sooner than a pumpkin, or that a violet is more
+fragile than a sunflower, it would take about one election day to change
+a woman into a harridan. I never knew but one out and out politician who
+preserved intact the amenities of a gentleman, and he died early of
+heart trouble. The thing killed him physically before it destroyed him
+morally. If any politician reads this and wants to challenge the point I
+want to meet him and either convince him or be slain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If you are not glad to be alive such weather as this it is because you
+are a clod and not a sentient being. Why, I never open my door these
+radiant mornings and walk out into a world that is more golden than any
+topaz and more radiant than any diamond that I do not hug myself for
+very joy that I am alive! The grave has not got me yet! And, though I be
+poor and quite alone and go hungry for the fleshpots that make my
+neighbors great about the girth, I am happy as a queen and quite content
+to cast my lot with clovers and birds and wayside weeds that feel the
+vigor of summer weather in every fiber of prodigal life. To-night the
+sky was like the flame of King Solomon's opal--did you see it? And just
+as the glory was growing and deepening into an intensity of beauty that
+made you want to shut your eyes and say Oh--h--h! as the little boys do
+at the circus when the elephants go round, a thrush whipped out his
+mellow flute and gave us a vesper song that made one think of heaven and
+bands of singing angels! And yet we are discontented and feel ourselves
+misused because we happen to be a little poverty-stricken now and then,
+and it is hard work to find the plums in our pudding!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other morning, before the town clock struck 7, I was riding over
+country in a hack, driven by a courtly mannered colored boy and drawn by
+a couple of discouraged mules. I was going over to Hampton and
+Chesapeake City to see the sights. A robin was quarreling with a sparrow
+for possession of a nest in a treetop hung with blossoms thick as
+Monday's washing, and a small pickaninny stood in a doorway and held his
+breath with terror as our driver slashed the air with his long whip. The
+morning was superb. The sea lay like an opal with a dark setting of
+hills shadowed like oxidized silver, the birds were out like blossoms of
+the upper air with song in place of perfume, and the world seemed
+altogether too jolly and bright a spot to link with thoughts of sorrow
+and pain and death. We drove over to the soldiers' home, where from four
+to five thousand veteran warriors have found shelter from the bombarding
+storm of mundane care. Under the shadow of great willows in half-leaf
+and still golden with April sap, in sunny corners of broad piazzas, on
+benches by the slope of sluggish streams, or walking about the well-kept
+paths, these old and battle-scarred warriors pass the time away. "What
+a hero I might have been," says each one to himself, "if only----!" or,
+"What a narrow miss I made of glory when that premature shell took off
+my legs and stranded me here!" Peacefully they behold life's sun
+decline, and peacefully in turn they take possession of the narrow beds
+awaiting them in the near cemetery, where so many soldiers are sleeping
+the unheeded years away. Without motive or purpose their life is
+scarcely more eventless than their death shall finally be. Some way the
+grounds where these patient old graybeards sit day after day with
+nothing to do but muse upon the past remind me of the human heart with
+its pensioned hopes, its stranded intentions and its crippled endeavors!
+What heroisms, what subtle intents for good, what pretentious desires
+were frustrated and made worthless by the destiny which changed life's
+battlefield into a "soldiers' home" and the scene of action for the
+shaded seat under the willows of a long regret!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I wonder if Eve, looking over the battlements of heaven now and then,
+and seeing how tired we get down here and how discouraged and
+broken-hearted we often are, is ever sorry for the heritage she left us,
+all for the sake of an apple! Does she not curse the memory of the earth
+fruit whose flavor has so embittered humanity! Think of it, oh
+far-removed and perverse ancestress, if it were not for you we might
+have lived in a world where dinners walked into the pot and boiled
+themselves over fires that called for no replenishing; where rent
+stockings lifted themselves on viewless hands and were deftly darned by
+sunshine needles in the air; where last year's garments glided into this
+year's styles without the snip of scissors or the whirr of sewing
+machine wheels; where brooms swept and dust-cloths dusted unassisted by
+human hands; where windows cleaned themselves as fogs lift from the
+lake, and washing and ironing were spontaneous, like the growth of
+flowers. I for one am heartily tired of having to suffer for Eve's
+heartless stupidity. Hard work has too much of the blight of the primal
+curse about it to suit me, and no matter what philosophy we call to our
+aid the fact remains that labor of a certain sort is the heritage of
+sin, and sin was, is and ever shall be accursed. But there is something
+a great deal worse than hard work, and that is laziness. The man who
+toils until the great muscles of his arm stand out like cords and his
+broad shoulders are bent like the branches of a pine under the force of
+a strong wind from the north is a king among his kind compared to the
+shiftless do-nothings of life, between whose feet are spun the cobwebs
+of sloth and within whose lily-white fingers nothing more burdensome
+than a cigar finds its way. Give me a blacksmith any day rather than a
+dude. Work is hard and sometimes thankless, but, like tough venison
+served with jelly sauce, it is spiced with self-respect and smacks of
+honest independence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE STORY OF A ROSE.
+
+  A white rose grew in a garden place,
+  On a slender stem, with a royal grace;
+  The nursling of June and her gentle showers,
+  Fairest and sweetest of all her flowers.
+
+  The south wind was out one day for a sail,
+  In a cloudy boat, so fleecy and frail,
+  And he chanced to spy, where musing she stood,
+  My dear little rose in her snowy hood.
+
+  Oh, softly he whispered and tenderly sighed,
+  "Starry Eyes, Starry Eyes, I wait for my bride."
+  But she laughed in his face, and told him to go;
+  She didn't see why he bothered her so.
+
+  A dewdrop fell in the starry hush,
+  Lured from heaven by her dreamy blush;
+  But the tender kiss of his balmy lip
+  She gave to a bee, next morning, to sip.
+
+  A bobolink left the bloom of a tree
+  To tell her tale of whimsical glee;
+  The moon dropped a pearl to wear in her breast;
+  Dawn wove her a cloak of silvery mist.
+
+  But her hard little heart was colder than ice,
+  She sent every suitor away in a trice;
+  Till the wind drew nigh, with a terrible roar,
+  And said: "Pretty Rose, your playtime is o'er."
+
+  He shook her with might, and he drenched her with rain,
+  Till the poor little rose swooned away with her pain;
+  And her shiny crown, with its moonbeam glow,
+  He tossed far and wide, like the feathery snow.
+
+  And all that is left of that splendid bloom,
+  The diadem gay, and the spicy perfume,
+  Is a handful of dust, that once was a rose--
+  The sport of the wind, as it fitfully blows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once upon a time there lived a woman. She was not very young, nor was
+she very old. She was neither handsome, homely, a genius, nor a fool.
+She was just a commonplace, good-intentioned, fair type of the average
+woman. This woman prided herself but little upon the various
+accomplishments that contribute to the modern woman's popularity. She
+could not dance a step, save in front of a northeast gale, or in a game
+of romps with her little folks. She could not decorate a tea cup to save
+her life, nor hand-paint a clam shell, nor embellish a canvas with
+fleshy cupids and no less corpulent rosebuds. She could sing a few
+insignificant ballads, such as "Annie Laurie," "Twilight Dews," and
+"Nearer, My God, to Thee." These with a number like them, she was always
+ready to furnish in a manner to bring down the house, but I doubt if she
+would have been a success either in a comic opera or a church choir. She
+could make bread and pieplant pie after a fashion that would make a man
+wish that he had been born earlier to enjoy more of them. She could tidy
+up a room quicker than a cat could wink its eyes, and in the matter of
+housecleaning she was a regular four-in-hand coach and a tiger. If you
+had asked her to lead a class in ethical culture or make a speech on
+suffrage or score a point for reform, this woman would have ignobly
+turned her back and run away, and yet perhaps she wielded an influence
+in the world quite as strong as many a woman whose name is recorded on
+the roll call of noisy fame. But there was one thing this woman abhorred
+with all the might and strength of her soul, and that was slang. She had
+been brought up to consider the use of anything more pronounced than the
+"yea" and "nay" of the Quaker vernacular an outrage to refinement, and
+although drifting far from her childhood's faith in many ways still
+preserved an innate shrinking from the exuberance of vain speech. She
+allowed no little boys to slide the cellar door with her own precious
+yellow-heads who could be positively convicted of using naughty
+language. Her husband left his worldly ways in town and only carried
+home to this nice little woman the aroma of propriety and coriander
+seeds. But who ever yet was assured of a firm foothold upon the pinnacle
+of self-righteousness that the old boy did not whip out an arrow and
+bring them low? It becomes my painful duty to chronicle the temptation
+and downfall of the upright woman.
+
+It was a tempestuous day of early autumn. It not only rained, it poured!
+It not only blew, but it tore, howled, twisted, cavorted! The woman had
+to go to town. At the eleventh hour the family umbrella was kidnaped by
+a demon. (When the prince of evil has nothing else to do he sends out
+his imps to hide umbrellas, handkerchiefs, thimbles, scissors, and other
+domestic essentials.) The woman had no time to track the umbrella to its
+lair, so she pinned a newspaper over her bonnet and leaped for the
+train. Arrived in town she bought a 50 cent umbrella from a man who was
+peddling them on the street corner, and from that moment we date her
+downfall. The umbrella proved to be fashioned of gum arabic and cobweb.
+It leaked, it exuded, it faded away like a frost-flake in her hands, so
+that ere half an hour had passed she gave it to a newsboy, and laughed
+to see him kick it into an alley. Then she took off her plumed hat and
+pinned it underneath her cloak, wrapped a lace scarf about her head and
+proceeded on her way. Remarking the pleased expression on the faces of
+all she met, she wondered at it, with an Indian outbreak so imminent.
+Small boys danced by her in the rain to the sound of their own bright
+laughter; strong men seemed overcome as she drew near, and even the
+stern policemen at the street crossings turned aside to hide a 9×14
+smile. The woman lunched at a popular restaurant in the midst of a
+mysterious carnival of glee, and finally took the train for home and,
+leaving the city limits, skirted the northern shores of the lake to the
+sound of muffled mirth. Reaching home and looking into the mirror she
+was confronted by a countenance that bore all the seeming "of a demon
+that is dreaming." The sea-green warp of cotton in the gum-arabic
+umbrella had melted and run in long lines over brow and nose and chin.
+For one moment the woman gazed at her frescoed charm, and as to what
+follows we will drop the curtain. Suffice it to say, she fell, and the
+shocked echoes of that little home put cotton in their ears and fainted
+into lonely space at being called upon to repeat the strong language
+that rent the air. Who shall blame the woman if she said "darn" with an
+emphasis that might have made a pirate wan with envy? Who shall cast the
+first stone at her until the day dawns that releases my sex from the
+thralldom of its bondage to those demons who walk abroad and plot her
+downfall in rainy weather?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wear this bead upon your heart, girls; have nothing whatever to do with
+so-called "fascinating" or "magnetic" men. Put no faith in mystery when
+it comes to a question of the man you think you love. Rapt glances and
+tender sighs that lead to nothing in the way of an honest declaration
+are as despoiling to your womanhood as the breath of a furnace is to a
+flower. There is no mystery in genuine love, and there is no
+counterfeiting it, either. It is open-faced, ready-tongued and
+clear-eyed. It is a virtue for heroes, not a platitude in the mouth of
+fools. It is undefiled and set apart, like the snow on high hills. Allow
+no man to make you a party to anything clandestine. A man who is afraid
+to meet you at your own home, and appoints a tryst in the park, or a
+down-town restaurant, is as much of a menace to your happiness as a
+pestilence would be to your health. Remember, in all your experience
+with so-called love, that the fewer adventures a young woman has, the
+fewer flirtations and the fewer "affairs," the more glad she will be, by
+and by, when she is a good man's wife and a brave boy's or sweet girl's
+mother. A gown oft handled, you know, is seldom white, and each romance
+you weave with idle fellows who roll their eyes and talk love, but never
+show you the respect to offer you their hand in honest marriage--these
+fascinating "Rochesters" and wicked "St. Elmos," already married, or
+steeped to the lips in evil-doing--deprive you of your whiteness and
+your bloom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Do you ever get discouraged and feel like saying: "Oh, it's no use! I
+want to amount to something! I have it in me to do great and grand
+things, but the circumstances of poverty are against me. I can be
+nothing but a drudge and the sooner I get over dreaming of anything
+higher, the better!" Of course you have just such times of thinking and
+talking, but did you ever comfort yourself with the thought that though
+all these things you can not be, you are, really, in the sight of God?
+A diamond is no less a diamond because it has been mislaid, and passed
+off through ignorance as common glass. A tulip seed is no less the
+sheath of a flower because through mistake somebody has labeled it as
+common timothy. A silk fabric is no less the product of the
+mulberry-feeding worm because somebody has wrapped it in a brown paper
+parcel and valued it as domestic jeans. What you are, you are, and there
+is no power on earth can gainsay it. Other folks may ignore it in you;
+half the world, nay all the world, may fail to see it, but if nobility,
+and strength, and sweetness are there you are worth just that much to
+God! Blessed thought, isn't it, you poor, overworked clerk, with your
+brain always in a muddle with the dry details of a business you hate!
+Blessed thought, isn't it, you dear, tired woman with more burdens to
+carry than a maple tree has leaves! No matter how impossible it may be
+for you to live out what is in you, that something true and grand and
+beautiful is deathless and shall have its chance of development by and
+by.
+
+I shall never again meet the pretty maid with the larkspur eyes and the
+corn silk hair who traveled with us a part of the way, but wherever she
+goes, joy go with her! She was so modest and unspoiled and sweet, I
+declare the sight of such a girl in this day of dancers and
+high-steppers is like the sound of "Annie Laurie" between the carousals
+of a break-down jig, or the taste of a wild strawberry after pepper tea.
+God bless the old-fashioned girl with her helpful ways, her arch face
+and her blithe and hearty laugh. May her type never vanish from the face
+of the earth, and may the mold after which her soul was fashioned never
+get mislaid and lost in the heavenly work-shop.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think I shall be a little sorry when the commanding officer sends out
+the word to break camp and leave this dear old earth forever. For I love
+this world. I never walk out in the morning when all its radiant colors
+are newly washed with dew, or at splendid noon, when, like an untired
+racer the sun has flashed around his mid-day course, or at evening, when
+a fringe of shadow, like the lash of a weary eye, droops over mountain
+and valley and sea, or in the majestic pomp of night when stars swarm
+together like bees and the moon clears its way through the golden fields
+as a sickle through the ripened wheat, that I do not hug myself for very
+joy that I am yet alive. The cruel grave has not got me! Those jaws of
+darkness have not swallowed me up from the sweet light of mortal day!
+What matter if I am poor and unsheltered and costumeless? Thank God, I
+am yet alive! People who tire of this world before they are seventy and
+pretend that they are ready to leave it are either crazy or stuck full
+of bodily ailments as a cushion is of pins. The happy, the warm-blooded,
+the sunny-natured and the loving cling to life as petals cling to the
+calyx of a budding rose. By and by when the rose is over-ripe, or when
+the frosts come and the November winds are trumpeting through all the
+leafless spaces of the woods, will be the time to die. It is no time
+now, while there is a dark space left on earth that love can brighten,
+while there is a human lot to be alleviated by a smile, or a burden to
+be lifted with a sympathizing tear. It will be time to die when you are
+too old or too sick to be a comfort in the world, but if God has given
+you a warm heart and a ready hand, look about you and be glad He lets
+you live. Yesterday I was passing through the street and I saw a woman
+stoop down and pick up a faded lilac from the middle of a crossing and
+transfer it to a corner where it would not be trampled under foot. The
+world wants such people alive in it, not buried under its green sods.
+The heart that is not unmindful of a crushed flower will be a royal hand
+in the ministrations of life. May the day tarry long on its way that
+lays in the grave such helpful, tender hands that seek to do good.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The good book says, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," but it don't say,
+Tell thy neighbor all thy secrets. We can love one another without
+establishing an unsafe intimacy. In an age when so little remains set
+apart and sacred, keep the treasury of your inmost heart intact. It is a
+hard thing to believe that in every present friend is hidden a possible
+future enemy, but it is safer to shape the conduct of our life upon that
+belief than to live to see our inmost thoughts and the sanctities of
+one's heart of hearts hawked about like green peas in a street vender's
+basket by a spiteful and treacherous enemy. The safest course to pursue
+in a world so full of unfaith and desertions is to be friendly and sweet
+and helpful to all, but communicative and confiding to none.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once when I was a child, with two long yellow braids down my back, and a
+very great capacity for happiness in my heart, I lived in a remote
+country with an aunt who didn't believe in any one having too good a
+time here on earth. She thought they would appreciate the new Jerusalem
+all the more, perhaps, for having a dismal experience here (there are
+lots like her, too, in the world to-day). Well, once afterward when I
+came home from school (and, ah! as I write how I can see the old road
+where I walked, winding its way under silver birches by the side of a
+trout-brook), somebody came out of the house and beckoned wildly, madly
+for me to hurry up. It was my little cousin, and she looked as though
+she had just skipped out of heaven! Her cheeks were all aglow and her
+eyes were shining like stars. "Oh, come! Come quick!" she shouted.
+"There's something in the parlor." I made haste to enter, and there
+before me sat a doll, the biggest and most splendid it had ever entered
+my young heart to imagine. It was dressed in pink tarletan, and had a
+pair of jeweled earrings in its exceedingly life-like ears. At once I
+became embarrassed. Self-consciousness sprang into full being. I was
+painfully aware that my own dress and general appearance suffered by
+contrast with the doll. Nor have I ever since experienced a keener
+sensation of embarrassment than overcame me as I faced that gaudy image
+in wax. My aunt's sarcastic remark, "No wonder that child's mother can't
+lay up a cent for a rainy day when she throws away her dollars on a doll
+like that!" gave me the sad impression that my darling mother was a
+spendthrift, something after the pattern of the prodigal son. From the
+first moment the doll was a source of disappointment and sorrow to me. I
+never could play with it with any comfort because I was afraid of
+soiling its splendid clothes, losing its earrings, or feeling myself and
+my calico and homespun abashed by its superior attire. That doll did me
+no good, and just what it did for me its costly and extravagantly
+dressed sisterhood is doing for hundreds of little girls to-day. Too
+fine to be played with, rigged out in all its paraphernalia of empty
+headed flesh and blood women, with powder, puff and bustles, real
+jewelry and costly lingerie, the modern doll is a demoralizer, a
+torment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Protracted broiling is, I think, on the whole, more wearing to the
+sensibilities than sudden conflagration. A lightning stroke is soon
+over, but who shall deliver us from the torments of dog-days? A bull of
+Bashan encountered in a ten-acre lot may be outrun, but who shall escape
+from a cloud of mosquitoes on a windless night? Give me any day a life
+to live with a tempestuous, gusty sort of person, and I can endure it,
+but deliver me from existence with one who bottles up his thunder and
+looks like a storm that never breaks. A hearty shower, beating down the
+flowers to call them up again in fresher beauty, brightening the hills
+and swelling the brooks, treading with musical footfall the dusty
+streets, and lashing the violet-tinted lake into a foam-flecked sea,
+veining the hot air with sudden fire, and calling out a thousand echoes
+to answer the thunder's call, is it not far better than lowering skies
+that look rain and won't yield it, dragging, sultry days of neither
+sunshine nor storm?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+LINES TO MY LOVE.
+
+  When the salt has left the ocean,
+    And the moon forgets the sea,
+  When with gay and festive motion
+    Ox shall waltz with bee,
+
+  When we wash our face in cinders,
+    And bake our meat on ice,
+  When tender mercy hinders
+    The cat from eating the mice,
+
+  When gray heads grace young shoulders
+    And icicles form in June,
+  When Quakers all turn soldiers,
+    And bull frogs sing in tune,
+
+  Then, and not till then, my treasure,
+    My darling, tender and true,
+  My heart shall claim the leisure
+    To think no more of you.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other morning, lured by the splendor of a golden day, I started to
+walk to town, a distance of twenty-four miles. But after the tenth mile
+the truth was so forcibly and increasingly borne in upon me that "all
+flesh is grass," and that the strength of a man (or woman either) "lieth
+not in his heels," that I postponed the finish until another day. But
+who shall take from me the glory of the start? Shall anybody forget that
+a sunrise was fair and full of promise because the noon was clouded and
+the evening declined into rain? Although my twenty-five-mile walk ended
+at the tenth in a rocking-chair, yet those ten miles were beautiful and
+full of glory.
+
+"It will certainly kill you!" wailed the martyr as I bade her good-bye.
+"Oh, will it kill her?" echoed the poor little Captain, and lifted up
+her voice in lamentation as I vanished from her sight and struck for the
+bluff road. The morning was so beautiful that I could imagine the world
+nothing but a big bunch of tulips standing within a crystal vase in the
+sun. The maples glistened like gold, and were flecked with ruby drops
+that burned and glowed like spilled wine. The oaks were russet brown and
+dusky purple, cleft here and there with vivid green, like glimpses of a
+windy sea through shadowed hills. The leaves that had fallen to the
+earth were musical underneath the foot, and gave forth a faint fragrance
+that made the air as sweet as any bakeshop. The odor of fallen leaves
+and wood shrubs sinking into decay is not like any other fragrance so
+much as the scent of well-baked bread, browned and finished in summer's
+ruddy heat.
+
+The lake--but what can I say to fitly describe that translucent
+sapphire, over which a mist hung like a gossamer web above a blue-bell,
+or the haze of slumber upon a drowsy eye? As I stood upon the bluff,
+before the road struck landward through the woods, I could but extend my
+arm to the glorious expanse of waters and bless the Lord with all my
+soul for so lovely a place to tarry in between times. If this world is
+only a stopping-place, a country through which we march to heaven, as
+Sherman marched overland to the sea, then thank God for so glorious a
+prelude to eternity; and what shall the after harmonies be when the
+broken sounds of idly-touched flutes and harps are so divine?
+
+After leaving Ravinia I proceeded to get lost in the woods. A very
+small boy and a very large dog were standing by a fence. "Does that dog
+bite?" I asked. "Yes'm," promptly replied the sweet and candid child. So
+I climbed a fence and struck for the timber. I soon found that all
+knowledge of the points of the compass had failed me. "If I am going
+east," I mused, "I shall soon strike the lake; if west, the track; south
+will eventually bring me to the Chicago River; but a northerly direction
+will restore me to the sleuth-hound. I will say my prayers and endeavor
+to keep to the south." The way grew denser. My hat gave me some trouble,
+as it insisted upon hanging itself to every tree in the wilderness. The
+twigs twitched the hair-pins from my hair and poked themselves into my
+eyes. A few corpulent bugs toyed with my ankles and a large caterpillar
+passed the blockade of my collar-button and basked in the warmth of my
+neck. I nearly stepped on a snake and was confronted by a toad that
+froze me with a glance of its basilisk eye. So I changed my course and
+suddenly entered a little woodland graveyard--a handful of neglected
+mounds of earth and silence. No tombstones marked the graves. A
+rudely-constructed cross of wood, gray with lichens, alone told of
+consecrated ground. There, away off from the road in the silence of the
+woods, a few tired hearts were taking their rest. Silently I stood a
+moment, then stole away and left the place to its hush of lonely peace.
+What right had I, with my frets and feathers, my twig-punctured
+eye-balls and my toad-perturbed nerves, to bring an unquiet presence
+within this abode of silence and of rest? I sat down on a fence-rail a
+moment while, like Miss Riderhood, I deftly twisted up my back hair and
+mused briefly. When the time comes, oh, intensely alive and happy Amber,
+for your feet to halt in the march, ask to be buried in the woods, where
+your grave will be forgotten and the constant years with falling leaves
+and driving snows may have a good chance to obliterate the earthly
+record of your misspent years.
+
+  "Sooner or later the shadows shall creep
+  Over my rest in the woods so deep;
+  Sooner or later--"
+
+But enough of this, my dear. I did not intend to incorporate a whole
+cemetery, an obituary discourse, and "lines to the departed" in my
+"Glints." After leaving the little graveyard I allowed my instincts to
+carry me in a new direction, and soon a rustling among the dead leaves,
+and the sound of hushed breathing, convinced me that I was approaching a
+living presence. I felt for my revolver. It was there, but unloaded. (I
+would sooner walk arm in arm with death than carry loaded firearms.) I
+advanced bravely and became speedily aware of a score or so of large and
+startled eyes, all fixed upon me. A half-score of woolly heads were
+lifted, and a flock of sheep stood ready to take instant flight if I
+showed sign of battle. "My dear young friends," said I, "it is a relief
+to meet you, and I give you good morrow. I fully expected to encounter a
+band of cutthroat tramps who should toss pennies for my heart's blood.
+The blessings of a rescued woman rest upon your crinkly coats, my
+beauties." A half-hour's walk through the woods brought me to a clearing
+where a flock of bluebirds were holding council together among the
+falling leaves. They seemed inclined to start southward, but tarried for
+one last frolic. How beautiful they were as they flitted in and out
+among the golden underbrush no eye but mine shall ever know. Bluebirds
+have always been associated with thoughts of spring and apple-blossoms
+heretofore. I could hardly believe my senses to find them here amid the
+late and falling leaves. For a while I loitered in their midst and
+wished for a fairy to change me into one of their winged company, that I
+might forget care and find no need of revolvers; but time, as sternly
+announced by my exquisite Waterbury, admitted of no delay, so I hied me
+onward. At this point in my walk I approached a broken gate and a
+stretch of shockingly muddy road. The vanity of confidence in any
+strength that emanates alone from the "heels of a man" was by this time
+beginning to make itself felt. I longed to sit down in the miry way and
+go to sleep. A child could have played with me despite my revolver, and
+a day-old lamb have gained the victory in a personal encounter. At this
+moment, while I lingered, picking my way daintily from tuft to tuft of
+the swamp, I was confronted by a tall, gaunt woman. Of course you don't
+believe this; it reads too much like a dime novel. You think I am
+painting my picture in lurid tints for public exhibition, but in spite
+of your incredulity I repeat that I was confronted by a tall, gaunt
+woman, who appeared as suddenly as though invoked by an evil spell from
+the mud. The woman was shabbily dressed and wore an old-fashioned scoop
+bonnet. She had a bundle on her arm, and was dragging by the hair of the
+head, as it were, an indescribable umbrella. My voice sank out of sight,
+like a stone in the sea, and my feet grew too heavy to lift. I stared in
+silence. "Is your name Maria Hopkins?" asked the woman.
+
+"Indeed it is," I replied, prepared to get down on my knees and swear to
+the truth of what I said, if need be. "I thought so," said my companion;
+"let us pray." But I didn't stop for prayers. Convinced that my time had
+come, and that I was in the presence of a lunatic, I fell over the fence
+and ran. When I was out of breath I looked over my shoulder, but the
+woman was nowhere in sight. To pursue my walk seemed unnecessary,
+especially as I was nearing the house of a friend, so summoning what
+strength was left me I toddled onward, completing my tenth mile in five
+hours from the starting. After my sympathizing friend had emptied her
+camphor bottle upon me I asked her if she knew a party of the name of
+Hopkins anywhere in town, and if there was any resemblance between such
+a person and myself. I saw she thought I was delirious, and no
+explanation has ever dispelled that belief. Some day I shall complete
+the walk and write up the finish.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Said some one to me the other day: "Amber, you have lots of good friends
+among the girls." "Good," said I; "then I am all right." Anybody who
+gains the friendly approval of the right sort of girls has a passport
+right through to glory! I mean it. There is nothing on earth I love
+better than a good, sweet girl. I would rather watch a crowd of them any
+day than all the pictures Fra Angelica ever painted of saints in
+paradise. But there are girls and girls. There is as much difference
+between them as there is between griddle cakes made with yeast and
+griddle cakes in which the careless cook forgot to put the leaven. Shall
+I tell you the kind of girl I especially adore? Well, first of all, let
+us take the working girl. She is not a "lady" in the acceptance of the
+term by this latter day's hybrid democracy. She is just a blithe,
+cheery, sweet-tempered young woman. She may have a father rich enough to
+support her at home, but for all that she is a working girl. She is
+never idle. She is studying or sewing or helping about the home part of
+the day. She is romping or playing or swinging out of doors the other
+part. She is never frowsy nor untidy nor lazy. She is never rude nor
+slangy nor bold. And yet she is always full of fun and ready for frolic.
+She does not depend upon a servant to do what she can do for herself.
+She is considerate to all who serve her. She is reverent to the old and
+thoughtful of the feeble. She never criticises when criticism can wound,
+and she is ready with a helpful, loving word for every one. Sometimes
+she has no father, or her parents are too poor to support her. Then she
+goes out and earns her living by whatever her hands find to do. She
+clerks in a store, or she counts out change at a cashier's desk, or she
+teaches school, or she clicks a typewriter, or rather a telegrapher's
+key, but always and everywhere she is modest and willing and sweet,
+provided she doesn't get that meddlesome little "bee" of "lady"-hood in
+her bonnet. If she tries to be a lady at the expense of all that is
+honest and frank in her nature, she is like a black baby crying for a
+black kitten in the dark--you can't tell what she is exactly, but you
+know she is mighty disagreeable. She has too much dignity to be imposed
+upon, or put to open affront, but she has humility also, and purity that
+differs from prudishness as a dove in the air differs from a stuffed
+bird in a showcase. She is quick to apologize when she knows she is in
+the wrong, yet no young queen ever carried a higher head than she can
+upon justifiable occasions. She is not always imagining herself looked
+down upon because she is poor. She knows full well that out of her own
+heart and mouth proceed the only witnesses that can absolve or condemn
+her. If she eats peanuts in public places, and talks loud, and flirts
+with strange boys, and chews gum or displays a toothpick she is common,
+even though she wore a four-foot placard emblazoned with the misnomer,
+"lady." If she is quick to be courteous, unselfish, gentle and retiring
+in speech and manner in public places, she is true gold, even though her
+dress be faded and her bonnet be old. You cannot mistake any girl any
+more than you can mistake the sunshine that follows the rain or the
+lark that springs from the hawthorn hedge. All things that are blooming
+and sweet attend her! The earth is better for her passing through it and
+heaven will be fairer for her habitation therein. God bless her!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some day I am going gunning. In a reform dress suit, with the right to
+vote in my pocket, and a shotgun delicately poised upon my enfranchised
+shoulder, I shall start forth on my "safety" and proceed to lay low for
+a few victims. The first to perforate with my murderous bullet shall be
+the fiend in human guise who toys with my "copy" from time to time and
+makes me spell whether without an "h," or so distorts the sense of what
+I write that my best friends wouldn't know me from Martin Tupper. I
+shall show no mercy to him. I shall continue to shoot until he is
+perforated like a yard of mosquito netting, and I shall leave a little
+note pinned to the lapel of his coat saying that I have more bullets
+left for his "successor in trust." If there is one thing that has
+survived the buffetings of a harsh and somewhat disconcerting bout with
+fate it is the knowledge that I know how to spell. But even of this the
+fiend in question would deprive me. He has brought his fate upon himself
+and will excuse me if I remark that I thirst for his gore.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dominated by that superfluous energy which has, so far, rendered my
+earthly career cyclonic, I called together a confiding band during the
+height of the recent snow carnival for the purpose of a sleigh ride. The
+opening up of that sleigh ride was propitious. The caravan moved due
+north, bound for a destination that shall be nameless. We tried to look
+upon the attention we attracted as a public ovation, but it was far more
+suggestive of the way they used to accompany outlaws beyond the limits
+of a mining town, or of the children of Israel chased by Pharaoh's
+mocking hosts. It was cold. Our noses, in the light of a wan old moon,
+looked like doorknobs. Our ears cracked to the lightest touch, like harp
+strings in the wind. Patient, long-suffering "doctor!" Shall I ever
+forget how, turning to him when the carnival of sport was at its height,
+I murmured: "Are you enjoying yourself, dear?" And he replied, with
+ghastly sarcasm: "Tumultuously, my love!" So might an arctic frigate,
+ice-bound, have hailed a polar bear. Suddenly, when all seemed
+progressing serenely, we came to a standstill, something like what might
+be expected from a runaway horse checked by the newly patented electric
+button. What was the matter? Bare ground. Now, under ordinary
+circumstances, the term "bare ground" is not synonymous of disaster. But
+if ever in the dispensation of providence it falls to your lot to be one
+of a band of sleigh-riding imbeciles then shall those two words be to
+you what snags in the channel are to seaward-hastening keels. The driver
+shouted and became distinctly profane. "Would you please get out and
+walk over this bad place?" said he. With such speed as our petrified
+members would allow we all got out, and the women sat on a wayside
+fence, while the men "heaved to" and dragged the chariot over about a
+mile and a quarter of bare ground.
+
+"Shall we make for the nearest line of street cars?" asked one of the
+party, whose well-known position as Sunday-school superintendent kept
+him in a state of abnormal calm. "What will become of the sleigh and the
+poor, tired horses?" asked that one of the party directly responsible
+for this mad jubilee.
+
+"Oh, you women can lead the horses while we men carry the old band wagon
+on our shoulders back to shelter." "It is no time for jokes," cried one,
+"I am going home," and we all followed suit, to vow later, in the
+shelter of our happy homes, that our future attempts at sleigh riding
+should be confined to wheels and the time of roses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think I would rather lose this serviceable old right hand of mine than
+have it write a word that could be construed into defense or
+encouragement of loud and blatant women. The over-dressed and slangy
+sisterhood who parade in public places and storm the land these latter
+days will meet with nothing from Amber and her pen but wholesale
+denunciation while the lamp of an insignificant life holds out to burn.
+I hate them as a Quaker hates gunpowder, and I am more than half
+inclined to believe that the total extermination of the stock would be
+one of the supremest blessings that could be vouchsafed to man. The
+tendencies toward boldness and effrontery which characterize the present
+day, the unabashed speech and action and the manifest lack of
+old-fashioned courtesy and the reserve that springs from gentle breeding
+are evils that grow rather than diminish. A gentlewoman, a pure, correct
+and lovely gentlewoman, occupies a loftier place than any throne, and
+wields an influence more potent than the swing of a jeweled scepter. Yet
+it is never by vulgar assumption that she enters into her kingdom. The
+parrot is not a bird we prize, although its plumage is resplendent with
+green and purple and gold. In the proud breast of the homely and
+unpretentious thrush is hidden the heavenly song. Wherever gentle
+forbearance is found, wherever patience and tenderness and love idealize
+and sweeten life, there you will find woman as heaven meant she should
+be--the crowned queen of hearth and home. And in saying all this I do
+not wish to be understood as advancing the idea that a woman has no
+wider scope than home, or that she must be all sugar, without any spice.
+Next to the loud and bold-mannered woman as a specimen to be detested I
+would put the meek Griselda, with less spirit than a boneless herring
+and less sparkle than tepid tea. There is no charm left to femininity
+when you add idiocy to a pretty woman's make-up. A fool may be very
+docile, but a fool is not good company. Of the two, perhaps, if a man
+were forced to choose a comrade to share a life that was to be cast on a
+South Sea island, he would do better to take the "loud" type. Either
+would drive him to the "cups," if such relief were to be found upon an
+island of the sea. But who would not rather go to wreck in a storm than
+founder in becalmed waters? Or, to bring it nearer home, who would not
+rather be drowned away out in the middle of Lake Michigan in a howling
+gale than in a gentle 7×9 cistern? If circumstances call a woman out
+into the thickest of the old bread-and-butter fight that has been waging
+ever since Eve ran afoul of the apple, it is to her credit if she rolls
+up her sleeves and goes into the thickest of the scrimmage and holds her
+own with the pluckiest of them all. It is no disgrace to her to be
+quick to seize an opportunity and shrewd to find a point of vantage. Let
+her rank with the men, and make ever so fine a name for herself in
+whatever business vocation she chooses to make her own, it will not
+detract one whit from her womanliness, provided she keep herself
+unsullied of soul and tender of heart. The moment she lends herself to
+practices that lead men to forget to touch their hats when she passes by
+she becomes unsexed, and a sexless woman is worse than a pestilence, a
+cyclone and a strike condensed into one vast calamity. No sensible man
+will think any less of a woman if she has spirit enough to get downright
+mad at injustice, insult or iniquity. I don't know, though, why we women
+should always get together and compare notes as to what course of
+conduct will best please the men. They don't lie awake nights to conform
+their behavior to ways and manners that shall please us; but, even
+putting our argument on the basis of what shall win approval from men, I
+repeat that I don't believe that there are many of them who would object
+to a woman knowing how to use a pistol or to her carrying one in case of
+an unprotected walk, or a night spent in an unguarded home. There would
+be fewer tales to tell of assaults and woful disappearances of young
+women if all our girls were versed in the ethics of the revolver. Ah, my
+dear, you can never get a more adorable portrait of a woman to hang upon
+the walls of glorified fancy than the pen-portrait drawn by the master
+hand of Robert Browning when he wrote of beautiful Evelyn Hope: "God
+made her of spirit, fire and dew." There is the swiftest and most
+splendid stroke of the artist's brush ever given to literature. And yet
+half the world would substitute "putty" for "spirit," "feathers" for
+"fire" and "dough" for "dew."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The only way to rid the world of bubble-marriages--marriages that turn
+out emptiness with one drop of water as the residuum, and that drop a
+tear--is to educate our girls and boys to something higher than playing
+with pipes and soapy water. Give them something more earnest to do, and
+see that they do it. Compel men and women to choose their life
+companions with at least a tithe of the solemnity they bring to the
+selection of a carriage horse or a ribbon. Legislate laws against early
+marriages. "I can't tolerate children," said a little idiot to me the
+other day, "but I adore dogs!" And yet that girl had an engagement ring
+on her finger. There should be a special seclusion for such girls until
+they develop some instinct of womanliness, and they should no more be
+allowed to marry than a Choctaw chief should be allowed to take charge
+of a kindergarten. You nor I can hope to turn a bubble into substance
+after it is once blown.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Last week I moved. At least I tried to, but I haven't fully accomplished
+the feat yet. If it costs one woman a desk and an umbrella, the pangs of
+a seven-horse torment to move one block, what must it cost a family of
+fourteen to move seven wagonloads a mile? There is a problem that will
+keep you awake nights. When they said to me: "Oh, it will be nothing for
+you to move!" When they pointed with derision at my few belongings I
+said to myself: "All right; perhaps it will be easier than my fears." So
+I packed up my penknife, my mucilage pot, my paper cutter, my eleven
+dozen pencils and my assortment of stub pens, my violet ink, my clock,
+pictures, calendars, Japanese fans, scraps of poetry, magazines, books,
+lemons, buttercups, blotting pads, and sundry trifles it were waste of
+time to enumerate, and sallied forth to find a son of wrath to transport
+them to new quarters. "How much will you charge to move two articles of
+furniture one block?" I asked a guileless Scandinavian teamster. "Three
+dollars," replied he with touching promptitude. I passed him by, and
+after two days' search found a down-trodden African who said he would
+undertake the job for $1.50. I wish you could have seen the look in the
+darky's face when he tried to lift the desk. "Gor-a-mighty, Missus,
+what's in that ar desk?" cried he. I had to unpack every blessed article
+but the penknife and a postage stamp before he would move the thing, and
+all the long day I trotted back and forth with market baskets full of
+the original contents of that desk. When at last I had them moved I
+couldn't find anything. I wanted my pencils, but haven't seen 'em yet.
+The paperweight had smashed the ink bottle, and the mucilage had formed
+a glassy pool in which my buttercups were anchored like islands. The
+frizzes and hairpins and other little what-nots that I kept in the right
+hand drawer had dabbled themselves in the ink and mucilage and fused
+themselves into one indistinguishable horror. I haven't been able to
+find one thing that I wanted since I moved but a toothpick, and that
+don't look exactly natural. The overshoes, and gossamer, and jersey
+waists, soap and chamois skins that I secreted in the left hand drawer
+haven't been seen since they left in the market basket under convoy of
+the Ethiopian. He has probably opened a costumer's shop on Halsted
+street with them. When I move again I shall carry my pencils behind my
+ear and my penknife between my teeth. I'll never be found a second time
+stringing my beads with a toothpick and relying for time upon a clock
+with the hour hand missing. When next I move may it be straight through
+to glory, where the lease is long and the landlord never sublets.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let anybody in this world really undertake to thoroughly do his duty; to
+do it in the face of opposition, prejudice and the meddling
+interference of fools, and he becomes a target set upon a hill for the
+convenient aim of popular scorn. It is harder for a man to be true to a
+principle than it is to face a gun. If an employe in the daily discharge
+of duty aims to be prompt, faithful and fearless he is boycotted by his
+associates in almost as conspicuous a way as was poor little David
+Copperfield with the pasteboard motto on his back. We all of us have
+known in early life the "pet scholar" of the school, the dear little
+virtuous prig who never did anything out of the way, who never played a
+prank or accomplished anything but a pattern pose. Small wonder that we
+hated him! Good behavior, which has for its aim merely the disconcerting
+of others and the aggrandizement of one's self, is snobbery and should
+be loathed as such. But there is a courage of over-conviction which
+leads a man to hold himself honest among thieves, pure among libertines
+and faithful among time-servers and strikers. It was such a spirit as
+this that made dear little "Tom," at "Rugby," loyal to his mother's
+teachings, and led him to kneel amid a crowd of jeering boys to say the
+prayers she taught him. It is such a spirit as this that holds a man or
+woman true to the sense of justice in an unjust world, and keeps them
+undaunted in the midst of enemies, who hate them for doing their duty
+and caring as much for the work as they do for the wages that work
+commands. The man who can hold himself beyond the reach of bribery,
+uncorrupted in corruptible times, and sure to keep his colors flying,
+with never a chance to trail them in the dust for politic purposes, is a
+greater hero than many a blue-coat who marches to battle. Give us a few
+more such heroes, oh, good and merciful dispenser of destinies, and
+sweep off the track a hundred thousand or so of the eye-servants,
+time-servers and money-graspers who keep the profitable places of the
+world's giving away from honest men and faithful women.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A BOBOLINK'S SONG.
+
+  The earth was awake, and like a gay rover,
+    His knapsack of sunshine loose strapped on his back,
+  Through mists, and through dews, and through fine purple clover
+    Was faring his way down the summer's green track.
+
+  I sat all alone 'neath the shade of a willow,
+    And saw the old earth blithely jogging along,
+  While over the fields, like the foam on a billow,
+    The morning was breaking in blossom and song.
+
+  O, list! and, O, hear! like the wing of a swallow,
+    Updarting from fields that are golden with corn;
+  With the ring and the swing of a huntsman's "view hallo,"
+    Some fairy is winding his sweet elfin horn.
+
+  Now up like a flame, and now down like a shower;
+    Now here and now there in its sparkle and gloom;
+  It rings and it swings like a bell in a tower,
+    Wide casting its notes as a wind-flower its bloom.
+
+  'Tis a bobolink singing among the sweet clover;
+    A bobolink whimsical, happy and free,
+  And its voice like new wine makes earth, the old rover,
+    Half tipsy with jollity, clean daft with his glee.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It fell to my lot the other day to witness a scene that I shall not soon
+forget. Death has myriad ways of coming to the sons and daughters of
+men, and it chanced that death had drawn near to a certain dear woman in
+a way that well might blanch the cheek of the bravest hero. As surely
+condemned to die as is the murderer when he hears the judge's sentence,
+with absolute hopelessness of any cure, and with the certainty of no
+more than a brief span of weeks wherein to live, this brave woman faced
+her doom with all the condemned man's certainty, and yet without his
+shame. Grown old in a life of peculiar usefulness, with not a single
+abated enthusiasm and with a heart as keenly attuned to nature's as is
+the flute to the master's touch, this dear old heroine calmly renounced
+the world she had so loved and turned her face direct to "headquarters,"
+with no friend to interfere between herself and God. For one bitter
+hour, perhaps, she wept and watched alone in her Gethsemane, then turned
+about to await the chariot wheels of her deliverance with a heart as
+glad and a faith as warm and bright as a little child's who waits in the
+shadow the coming of a loving father to lead her home. Taken to the
+hospital to die, knowing that those doors swung for her last entrance
+within any earthly home, fully realizing that from beneath that roof
+her soul should ascend to its home beyond the stars, bidding good-bye
+forever to the sunset skies and the rural walks that she had so loved,
+to all the bright company of wild flowers she had known by name, to the
+pomp of seasons and the communion of happy homes, she took up her abode
+in the ward of the incurables. Every day she sits in the sunshine and
+reads her books or indites letters to her friends. Every day she
+struggles with devastating pain, and every day she grows a little
+thinner and a little weaker in the body, while her soul springs
+heavenward like a white flower from the dust, which no earthly blight
+can reach. As I sat by her side the other morning and held her wasted
+hand in mine it seemed the most natural thing in the world to send a
+message by this sweet soul to the unseen land, and we almost forgot the
+pain of parting in the bright anticipation of the many who would throng
+to meet the gray-headed voyager when at last her sail should beat across
+the blue waters into the heavenly harbor. And as we talked there came a
+message that a very old friend had called to see the sufferer; one who
+had been the closest comrade of her brilliant youth and the companion
+of her maturer years. Slowly the guest entered the shrine wherein a soul
+awaited the sacrament of death, silently she stretched out her arms and
+gathered that wasted frame within their close embrace. As a mother
+comforts the baby at her breast, so they comforted one another with
+tender words. The years of their life fell away from them as petals from
+a rose which the wind lightly rocks, and they were girls again. "Oh, my
+dear child, how sweet, how brave, how grand you are!" said the guest.
+"My precious girl, my poor, dear one, how can I bear to see you here!"
+she cried again and yet again, while her tears fell like rain, and the
+turmoil of her sobs rent her very inmost heart. I shall live long before
+I see so touching a sight again. In the presence of a love so perfect
+and so true I felt to be almost an interloper and an alien, so I quietly
+stole away and left these two old women, bowed with the weight of many
+years, sustaining and sustained by the trust that the portals of the
+tomb, within whose shadows they stood, were but the gates that usher the
+soul into the full affluence of life and love.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is almost impossible to get the average young person past the
+florist's window nowadays. She has a way of clasping her hands and
+pursing her lips over the roses that would make the average young man
+shed his last dollar, as the almond tree shakes its blossoms. I am
+always sorry for a poor young man in love with a pretty girl. He longs
+to buy the world for her and she longs quite as ardently to receive it
+as a gift, and so he is hurrying along his bankrupt career until
+matrimony or estrangement checks him. Have you not a pitying remembrance
+in your own heart of a certain youth of the long ago who deluged your
+house with roses, confectionery and novels until his salary was wildly
+wasted in the unequal contests? Girls, be a little less receptive, as it
+were; be just a bit more thoughtful and delicate in your orders at the
+restaurant and your selection from the florist's window, and I think
+your matrimonial chances will be the better for it. How often have I
+seen a young woman order a costly dinner when some young man whom she
+well knew to be the recipient of a small salary was to foot the bill,
+yet when ordering for herself I am told she never goes higher than
+beans and bread and butter. Now, girls, don't think Amber is an
+everlasting old grandmother! Not a bit of it, but she has tossed about
+the world so much and heard so many "little birds" telling their secrets
+that she has taken unto herself quite a pack of knowledge of the ways
+and manners of mankind. I positively adore a young girl, and always
+have, and, what is more, expect I always shall. But admiring and loving
+them as I do, from the tip of their bangs to the click of their boot
+heels, I cannot bear to see them do unlovely things. I want to see them
+helpful, lovable, sweet. I want to see them slow to wound another's
+feelings, and quick as sunshine after rain with tender smiles and
+womanly ways. I want to see them brave, yet gentle; gay, yet kind;
+fun-loving, yet never loud and rude. I want to hear the young men in
+speaking of them speak of something besides their extravagance and their
+greed. I want the very air to be the sweeter for their passing, as when
+one carries roses through a room their fragrance lingers. And what shall
+make you sweet, dear girls? Not fashionable gowns and dainty clothing;
+not beauty nor grace nor wealth so much as womanliness and unselfish
+thought for others.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The woman who can wear an arctic overshoe over a No. 5 shoe and make no
+moan ought to have been born a Joan of Arc or a Charlotte Corday. She is
+made of the "dust" that heroines have a corner on. At one time in my
+life I owned a dog--a guileless pup--whose darling aim on earth was to
+drag my colossal arctics before admiring gentlemen callers and lay them
+by the fireside, where they overshadowed the big base-burner with their
+bulk. I was rid of the dog long before I was rid of the feeling that it
+was a disgrace for a woman to wear the feet God gave her. The most
+colossal overshoe is neither so big nor so objectionable as an early
+grave, and that is just what lies before some of you girls if you don't
+quit wearing French heels and going about in damp and chilly weather
+without protection for your feet. Burn up the high-heeled slippers,
+then, with their atrocious shape; cultivate health and common-sense
+rather than the empty flattery of a world that cares nothing for you. So
+shall you be as beautiful as houris, as healthy as Hebes, as long lived
+as Sarahs and as light-footed as the shadow that dances to a wind-blown
+Columbine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A graveyard never saddens me. It seems nothing more than one of the
+flies behind the scenes when the actors have gone on in front. What
+matters the room where we doff our toggery when we are once out of it?
+So, not long since, when in rambling about one of the Apostle Islands,
+away up in Lake Superior country, I ran across a sunshiny little
+graveyard, and I was glad to loiter about for an hour and read the
+inscriptions on the age-worn stones. It was a blue day--blue in the sky
+above and blue in the haze on the hills, blue in the sparkling waters of
+the lake and bluer yet in the far distance that marked a score of miles
+from shore. Before the gateway of the graveyard a clump of golden rod
+stood, like an angel barring the way with a sword of light. A tangle of
+luxuriant vines had curtained most of the graves from sight A few, more
+carefully tended than the rest, stood bravely out from behind fences of
+ornamental woodwork, but most of them were sheltered and peaceful
+within their neglected bowers of green. When my time comes to lie down
+in my narrow home, I pray you, kind gentlefolks, grant me the seclusion
+of an unremembered grave rather than the accentuated desolation of a
+painted fence and a padlocked gate. There is rest in neglect, and
+nature, if left alone, will never allow a grave to grow unsightly. She
+folds it away in added coverings of mossy green from year to year as a
+mother when the nights are long will tuck her sleeping children under
+soft, warm blankets. She appoints her choristers from the leafy belfry
+of the woods to keep the chimes ringing when the days are long and slow
+and sweet, and lights her tapers nightly in the wavering shimmer of the
+stars. In a secluded corner we found a handbreadth space where a baby
+was laid to rest many a year ago. No chronicle of the little life
+remains, and yet a stranger stands beside its grave and drops a tear. I
+don't know why, I'm sure, for why should we cry when a baby dies? So
+roses are picked before the frost finds them! Another stone was erected
+to a young bride who died at twenty. Looking about at the
+stoop-shouldered, care-lined and prematurely old women who toiled in
+those island homes, we could not feel very sorry for the young bride who
+died, perhaps, while life still held an illusion. With lingering step at
+last we left the graveyard, repassed the golden sentry at the gate and
+sought the little boat that awaited us on the beautiful bay. Long after
+other details of that pleasant outing are forgotten the memory of that
+blue day among the quiet graves on the island of the great lake shall
+linger like a song within our hearts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"If I had two loaves of bread," said Mahomet, "I would sell one of them
+and buy white hyacinths, for they would feed my soul." I came across
+that delightful saying the other day, and I thought to myself: There is
+another one to be hunted up when I get over yonder! I shall have to make
+the acquaintance of a man, prophet or not, who gave utterance to such a
+sentiment as that. How many of us, poor earthworms that we are, would
+rather spend our dollar for white hyacinths than for a big supper? How
+many of us ever stop to think that there is something under the sleek
+rotundity of our girth that demands food quite as eagerly as our stomach
+does, and fails and faints and dies quite as surely without it? Take
+less of the food that goes to fatten the perishable part of you, and
+give more sustenance to that inner guest who, like a captive, sits and
+starves with long and cruel neglect. Buy fewer glasses of beer and more
+"white hyacinths." Smoke less tobacco and invest in a few sunsets and
+dawns. Let cheap shows alone and go hear music of the right sort. So
+shall your soul lift up its drooping head and grow less and less to
+resemble one of Pharaoh's lean kine. I adore a man or a woman who has
+enough sentiment to appreciate what dead and gone Mahomet said, and
+hereafter will make it a point to buy less bread and more hyacinths.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I wonder if, when we get to the other world, we shall not occasionally
+stroll into some sort of a celestial museum, where the relics of our
+foregone existence, its wasted days and misspent years, may stare back
+at us from glass cases where the angels have ticketed them and put them
+all neatly on exhibition! There will be necklaces of ill-spent moments,
+like the faded brilliants exhumed from old Pompeii, with lots of broken
+hopes and thwarted destinies. There will be odd little freaks and
+unreasoning caprices, like the "What is it?" and foolish deeds of daring
+to turn our pulses faint with the old-time terror. There will be those
+tendencies which kept us heavy-footed like the fat woman, and others
+that made us blind, although the world was full of light. There will be
+the disloyal deeds that made us a constant source of care and wonderment
+to the angels who watched us, and the cowardice that kept us in leading
+strings to conformity. There will be shelves full of the little white
+lies we have told, all labeled and dated, like pebbles from the
+Mediterranean or bits of shell from the sea. There will be fragments of
+blighted lives ruined by wagging tongues and shafts of tea table gossip.
+There will be the old-time masks wherein we masqueraded, and the flimsy
+veils of deceit behind which we hid our individuality. There will be the
+memories of little children we might have kept had we been wiser, and
+snatches of lullaby songs. There will be jars full of love glances and
+pots of preserved and honeyed kisses. There will be whole bales of
+mistakes, a Gobelin tapestry to drape the world, and stacks of dead and
+withered "might-have-beens." There will be peacock feathers of pride
+tied together with faded ribbons of regret, and whole cabinets full of
+closet skeletons and family contentions. There will be pedestals whereon
+shall stand the "white days" we can never forget, and panorama chambers
+wherein shall be unrolled the pictured scroll of our journey heavenward.
+In cunningly devised music boxes we shall hear again the melody of our
+youthful laughter and the patter of life's uncounted tears. I think the
+shelves of that celestial museum would yield some odd surprises to the
+most of us, like the finding of a bauble we counted worthless and threw
+away glittering in the diadem of a crown, or the prize we bartered honor
+for turned to worthless glitter and tinsel paste!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no use sitting here by this window any longer and trying to
+believe that life is worth living. If I looked for five minutes more at
+this November landscape I should shave my head and hie me to a Carmelite
+convent. Dame Nature has forgotten her housewifely duties and gone off
+to gossip with the good ladies who have charge of the other planets.
+Where but yesterday the late asters bloomed in long rows of splendor,
+and the chrysanthemums fringed the sunny borders with feathers of white
+and gold, the unsightly stalks grovel in the clayey mold, and the
+frost-nipped vines drop their dismantled tendrils in the chilly wind.
+Fragments of old china lurk in the discovered spaces underneath the
+denuded lilac bushes, and out by the oleander tub a cruel cat is
+worrying a large and discouraged rat. That oleander tub reminds me of an
+ordeal that is ushered in with every change of season. Twice a year we
+are compelled to carry that large vegetable in and out of its winter
+lair. About the last week of September we begin to wrap it in bed-quilts
+every night, and from that time on until late autumn no delicate babe
+was ever more tenderly guarded. Then, as there is no man in the country
+who for love or lucre will condescend to the job, we begin to worry the
+Doctor. We tell him the oleander will be blighted by the frost, and he
+pays no heed. Then we ask him if he would just as lief bring in the
+oleander after supper. He sneaks off and is gone until the 11 p. m.
+train. Next we take to tears, and declare that we love that oleander as
+one of the family, and it breaks our heart to see it perish for want of
+care. We grow pale and wan and gray-headed as the days go by, and
+finally with flashing eyes and muttered oaths the Doctor yanks the tub
+and its colossal growth into the cellar, and we rest on our arms until
+the advent of another spring.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, the summer has gathered up her corn-silk draperies, put on her
+rose-trimmed hat, and tripped over the border land at last. From the
+bend in the road that shall hide her from our view forever she lingers a
+moment to throw back a sunny glance at September, as he comes whistling
+down the lane, with plume of golden-rod in his hat. A glad good-bye to
+you, long-to-be-remembered summer of 1890! We are so glad to see you go
+that we are willing to forego your blossoms and your bird songs to be
+well rid of you. For three long months we have endured heat without
+precedent, drought and discomfort, flies and mosquitos, threatened
+thunder gusts and devastating cyclones, and we are so tired that we feel
+like shaking a stick at you now, to see you lingering to coquet with
+September. Hasten on, oh bright autumn weather, with your comfortable
+nights for sleep, and your royal days of sunshine and frost. We are
+longing for the time to come when the lamps shall be lighted early in
+the parlor, and the fire-glow shall once more shed its glory upon
+grandma's lovely hair and upon the gold of the children's restless
+heads; when the cat shall have leave to lie on the best cushion, and the
+voice of the tea-kettle, droning its supper monologue, shall alternate
+with the efforts of the older sister at the piano. By the way, do you
+know there is lots of solace to be found in an old music book of twenty
+years ago? Don't tell me that the music of to-day is as sweet all
+through as the melodies of long ago. Who sings such soul-ravishing duets
+to-day as "She Bloomed with the Roses," "Twilight Dews," or "Gently
+Sighs the Breeze"? I declare to you, my dear, that although I shall be
+considerably older some day than I am now, and although I have not
+fallen so far into the "sere and yellow" as to count myself among the
+old-fashioned and the queer, yet any one of those songs just mentioned
+will start the tears from my eyes as showers start from summer clouds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two little motherless children! Do you know the thought of a baby
+without a mother to cuddle it always brings the tears to my eyes?
+Traveling to distant New England with a father who, although kind,
+seemed some way unfitted to his duties, as a straight-legged chair might
+if used for a lullaby rocker, were two bits of folks, a boy and a girl,
+one four, the other two years old. The careful father brushed their hair
+very nicely and washed their mites of faces with great regularity. When
+he told them to sit still they sat still, and nobody was annoyed by
+their antics, but, oh, how it made my heart ache to watch the motherless
+chicks! If mamma had been there they would have climbed all over her,
+and bothered her a good deal, perhaps, with their clinging arms and
+kisses (it's a way babies have with their mammas!), but in the presence
+of their dark-eyed and quiet papa they behaved like little weasels in
+the presence of a fox. "Papa says we mustn't talk about mamma any more,"
+lisped the boy. "'Cause she's gone to heaven." In the name of love,
+whose apostle I humbly claim to be, I longed to gather those little ones
+in my arms and have a dear, sweet talk about the mamma who had left them
+for a little while, and I wanted to say to the proper and punctilious
+papa: "Good sir, if you attempt to bring up these motherless mites
+without the demonstration of love you will meet with the same success
+your gardener would should he set out roses in a pine forest. Children
+need love as flowers need the southerly exposure and sunshine. When that
+boy of yours bumped his head, sir, it was your place to comfort him in
+something the way his dead mother might have done, rather than to have
+bade him 'sit up and be a man.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SLEEP'S SERENADE.
+
+      In cadence far,
+      From star to star,
+  Sleep's mellow horns are faintly calling;
+      Through dreamland halls
+      Sweet madrigals,
+  In liquid numbers drowsy falling.
+
+      Noiseless and still,
+      O'er star-watched hill,
+  Beneath the white moon's tender glances,
+      A host of dreams,
+      By wind-blown streams,
+  March on with gleam of silver lances.
+
+      A captive thou;
+      Then, yield thee, now,
+  While mellow horns are nearer calling;
+      And ringing bells,
+      And poppy spells,
+  Thy senses all in sleep enthralling.
+
+      O, hark; O, hear,
+      My lady, dear,
+  O'er woods and hills and streamlets flying,
+      The winding note
+      Of horns remote,
+  In softest echo dying--dying.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had a dream the other night which was like, and yet unlike, the vision
+of fair women of which a poet once wrote. I dreamed that I sat within a
+court-room. Before me passed the meanest men and women God ever
+permitted to live, and upon them I was to pass the verdict as to which
+should carry off the palm. The scandal-monger came first, he or she who
+sits like a fly-catcher on a tree, snapping up morsels of news. He or
+she who is swelled full of conjecture whenever anybody commits an
+innocent indiscretion, as an owl blinks and ruffles up its feathers when
+the bobolink sings. He or she who goes about the world like a lean cat
+after a mouse. He or she who is always looking for clouds in a bright
+June sky, and slugs in roses and flies in honey. He or she whose heart
+is made of brass, and whose soul is so small it will take eleven cycles
+of eternity to develop it to the dimension of a hayseed. I was about to
+hand this specimen the banner without looking further when a being
+glided by me with a noiseless tread. She wore felt shoes and a mask. She
+spoke with the voice of a canary, yet had the talons of a vulture. She
+wore a stomacher made from the fleece of a lamb, and between her bright
+red lips were the tusks of a wolf. I recognized her as the hypocrite,
+the false friend; she who hands over your living bones for your enemies
+to pick, while you believe she is your champion and your defender.
+Following her came the man who keeps his horse standing all day with its
+nose in a nosebag. There was a groan like the sighing of wind in the
+poplars as he went by. Then came the merciless man who oppresses and
+torments the helpless and grinds the faces of the poor; and following
+him I beheld yet another monster--the worst of all in male attire. He
+came sneaking around a corner, with a smile on his lips and a devil in
+his eye, seeking to entrap innocent girlhood and unsuspecting womanhood.
+Then came the woman who gives her children to the care of servants while
+she goes downtown with a dog in her arms. Then came a lean-faced,
+weasel-eyed creature with the general expression of a sneak thief. I
+discovered her to be the representative of that type of women who coaxes
+her neighbor's hired girl away with promises of better wages. Then came
+the envious person whose evil passions are kindled like the fires of
+sheol at the prosperity of others, and who, because his own cup of life
+holds vinegar, is determined no other shall contain wine. I suddenly
+awoke without having bestowed the palm on any. Perhaps some of my
+readers may find it easy to do that for themselves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Do you know which, of all the sights that confronted me yesterday in my
+rambles through the rainy weather, I pigeon-holed as the saddest? Not
+the little white casket, gleaming like the petal of a fallen flower,
+through the undertaker's rain-streaked window; not the woman with the
+lack-luster eye and the flippety-floppety petticoats who went by me in
+the rain silently cursing her bundles and the fact that she was not
+three-handed; not the poor old cab horse with his nose in a wet bag, and
+his stomach so tightly buckled in that he couldn't breathe below the
+fifth rib; not the man out of a job, with his gloveless hands in his
+pockets, trying to solve the problem of supper; not the little child
+under convoy of a stern and relentless dragon who yanked it over the
+crossings by the arm socket; not the starved and absolutely hopeless
+yellow dog, who sat in a doorway and wondered to himself if there was
+indeed a canine life that included occasional bones and no kicks; no,
+not any of these impressed me as the most gruesome of a great city's
+many sights. As I passed the corner of Washington and Dearborn streets I
+came face to face with a red-cheeked, wholesome boy of barely twenty
+years of age. He was leaning upon the arm of an elderly man, and at
+first I thought him ill, but it took but a second glance to see that he
+was drunk. Now, I consider that the very saddest sight a great city has
+to offer. When the old men are wicked there is some comfort in the
+thought that their day is nearly spent, and their worthless places may
+be soon filled with a nobler and a better stock, but a drunken and
+dissolute boy means just what it means for the fruit harvest when the
+blight gets into the blossom. The gathered apple that rots in the bin is
+bad enough, but the worm that destroys the fruit in the germ makes
+greater loss. Be thankful that the grave has taken to its protecting
+shelter the boy you loved so dearly, and of whom you were so proud,
+rather than that he should have grown to be a drunkard before his
+twentieth birthday.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We are each of us missing constant chances to bestow a kindness upon
+some needy soul for the reason that we dread being imposed upon by a
+case of causeless complaining. Is it worth while to keep our hearts
+stolid merely because we may be cheated in the bestowal of a nickel's
+worth of alms? I think not. You looked up from your work a few minutes
+ago and saw a little boy not much bigger than your thumb looking through
+the open doorway. He began at once a sing-song tale of woe about a sick
+mother and a father out of work--or in his grave, it doesn't much
+matter. At the same time he held out a paper of cheap pins to tempt a
+nickel from your store.
+
+"I have no time to bother with such as you," you said, and turned your
+eyes back to your ledger. But still the boy droned on. You looked at him
+again and noticed that the small hand that held the pins was well kept
+and very, very thin. Then your eyes followed the diminutive form down to
+the feet; they, too, showed signs of somebody's care, although the shoes
+were shabby and the stockings thin.
+
+"He is not an ordinary little beggar," you said to yourself. And then
+your gaze traveled upward again until it met his long-lashed Irish eyes,
+so full of trouble and of entreaty that they looked like twin Killarney
+lakes getting ready for rain.
+
+"Poor little chap," you said, "of course I'll buy a paper of pins," and
+in so doing you stooped over and patted his head, perhaps, or called him
+"dear," so that he went away with the twin Killarney lakes all ready for
+a sunburst to follow the rain. That was an opportunity you nearly
+missed, but it brought a blessing sweeter than a Crawford peach. You
+didn't want the pins, but the little desolate heart wanted the kind word
+bestowed along with your nickel, and perhaps its bestowal shall be an
+impulse toward the light to a soul that cross words and constant
+refusals had already given a downward trend.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There stands a very young girl at the door of a drug store. She
+hesitates a moment and enters. "May I sit here and wait for a friend?"
+she inquires of the dapper clerk. "Certainly," he answers, and places a
+chair for her near the window.
+
+That girl's father told her last night to have nothing more to do with
+young Solomon Levi. "He is a worthless fellow," said he, "and I have
+forbidden him the house." "Very well," said she, and this morning she
+has made the excuse to go to the grocery for yeast, and is waiting here
+for the graceless Solomon. By and by he will come, and she will listen
+to him and form plans for clandestine meetings. My dear, there is a
+stairway whose top lies in the sunshine, but whose lower steps lead down
+to endless shadow. Your pretty foot is poising on the upper
+stair--beware! And yet I think the father has been to blame also. These
+stern, non-explanatory parents are responsible for much of the ruin
+wrought in young people's lives. If the old rat would go with the young
+one now and then to investigate the smell of cheese, his restraining
+presence would do more good than all the warnings and threats
+beforehand. Temptations are bound to besiege the girls and bewilder the
+boys. Don't let us make a pit-fire out of moonshine and forbid every bit
+of innocent fun and frolic because there is a gayety that takes hold on
+death. Give the young folks a little more license, mingle with them in
+many amusements which you have been wont to frown upon, do not be so
+frightened if their light feet go dancing off the path now and then, and
+ten to one the end of the journey will be Beulah Land and peace. A good
+deal less faultfinding and a good deal more sympathy would be better all
+around.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no lot on earth so hard to bear as the lot of wedlock where
+love has failed. The slave's life is not comparable to it, for the
+manacles that only bind the hands may be laid aside, but those that
+fetter the heart not death itself holds the key to loosen. It fairly
+makes me tremble when I see the thoughtless rush young people make to
+enter what is by far the most solemn and responsible relation of life.
+They are like mariners who put to sea in flimsy boats, or like explorers
+who fit themselves with Prince Albert suits and buttonhole bouquets.
+Before you get through the voyage, my dears, you will encounter tempests
+as well as bonnie blue weather, and God pity you when your pleasure
+craft strikes the first billow, if it was made of caprice and put
+together with mucilage instead of rivets! As for the explorer and his
+dress suit, where will he be when the tigers begin to scent him and the
+air is full of great sorrows and little frets like flying buzzards and
+cawing crows?
+
+Be an old maid in its most despised significance then; be a grubber and
+a toiler all the days of your life rather than rush into marriage as a
+hunted fox flies into a trap. There is some chance for the fox that
+flies to the hills, and for the bird that soars above the huntsman's
+aim, but what better off is the fox in the trap or the lark in a cage?
+There is a love so pure and ennobling that eternity shall not be long
+enough to cast its blossom, nor death sharp enough to loosen the
+foundation of its hold. Such love is born in the spirit rather than
+forced in the hot-house of the senses. It is an impulse toward the
+stars, a striving toward things that are pure and perfect and true. It
+grows in the heart as a rose grows in the garden, first a slip, then a
+leaf and finally the perfect blossom. No rose ever put forth a flower
+first, and then bethought itself of rooting and budding. Pray, dear
+girls, that this love may come to you rather than its poor prototype, so
+current in a world of shams and pretenses, whose luster corrodes with
+daily usage and turns to pewter in your grasp.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once there was an old woman who died and went to glory. Now a great many
+old women have died and gone the same way, but this one was very tired
+and very glad to go. She had worked hard ever since she could handle a
+broom or flirt a duster. She had probably washed about 91,956,045 dishes
+in her life, had baked something less than a million of pies, and turned
+out anywhere between a quarter to half a million loaves of bread, to say
+nothing of biscuits. These figures are steep, but I am writing under the
+invigorating impulse of the grip! She had darned socks and hemmed towels
+and patched old pantaloon-seats between times, until her fingers were
+callous as agate. She had borne and reared lots of children and tended
+to their myriad wants. For forty-seven years she had done a big washing
+every week, and laundried more collars than a Canada thistle has
+seed-pods. At last she died. The tired old body burst its withered husk
+and let the flower free. The rusty old cage flew open and out went the
+bird. And when they buried her I suppose they were foolish enough to
+shed tears and put on mourning! As well expect all the birds to wear
+crape when dawn sets out its primrose-pot on the ledge of the eastern
+sky! But one friend of quicker perception than the rest, I am told,
+placed the following inscription on the tired old woman's gravestone:
+
+  Here lies a poor woman who always was tired,
+  For she lived in a world where much was required.
+  "Weep not for me, friends," she said, "for I'm going
+  Where there'll be neither washing, nor baking, nor sewing;
+  Then weep not for me; if death must us sever,
+  Rejoice that I'm going to do nothing forever."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is just one thing in the latter part of the nineteenth century
+that never fails to bring success, and that is assurance. If you are
+going to make yourself known it is no longer the thing to quietly pass
+out a visiting card--you must advance with a trumpet and blow a brazen
+blast to shake the stars. The time has gone by when self-advancement
+can be gained by modest and unassuming methods. To stand with a lifted
+hat and solicit a hearing savors of mendicancy and an humble spirit. The
+easily abashed and the diffident may starve in a garret, or go die on
+the highways--there is no chance for them in the jostling rush of life.
+The gilded circus chariot, with a full brass band and a plump goddess
+distributing circulars, is what takes the popular heart by storm. Your
+silent entry into town, depending upon the merits of your wares to gain
+an audience or work up a custom, is chimerical and obsolete. We no
+longer sit in the shadow and play flutes; we mount a pine platform and
+blow on a trombone, and in that way we draw a crowd, and that is what we
+live for. Who are the women who succeed in business ventures of any
+sort? Mostly the mannish, bold, aggressive amazons who are unmindful of
+rebuffs and impervious to contempt. Who are the men who wear diamonds
+and live easy lives? Largely the politicians who have made their
+reputation in bar-room rostrums and among sharpers. Oh, for a wind to
+blow us forward a hundred years out of this age of sordid self-seeking
+and impudent assertiveness into something larger and sweeter and finer.
+Give us less yeast in our bread and more substance; fill our cups with
+wine rather than froth, and for sweet pity's sake hang up the great
+American trumpet and let "silence, like a poultice, come to heal the
+blows of sound."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Every day, for months, as I have taken my morning ride to town I have
+noticed a dog who bounds forth from a dooryard that overlooks the busy
+highway of the steed of steam and barks himself weak at the rushing
+trains. He really accomplishes nothing, but do you suppose you could
+convince his canine brain that he was not at once a reproach and a
+terror to the numerous trains that disturb his rest? He reminds me of
+certain people we meet all the way through life. They bark at trains
+continually while the Lord prolongs their breath, and the faster the
+train and the more it carries the louder they bark. They fondly imagine
+that the voice of their ranting protest accomplishes a purpose in the
+world. They are always barking at capital and at rich men and at
+corporations. They bark at people of courteous manners, and all the ways
+and customs of polite and gentle society, with fierce and futile
+yelpings. They bark at the swift advancement of the world from ignorance
+to enlightenment, from superstition to liberalism. They bark at the
+churches because they are on a train that has sidetracked Calvin. They
+bark at polite young men who wear clean linen, and call them dudes; they
+bark at women who have one or two ideas outside of fashionable folly and
+inane conventionalism, and call them cranks; they bark at everything on
+wheels, where wheels typify strength and achievement. They will go on
+barking, too, while the world finds room and maintains patience for them
+and their barking.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think I have said before that I loathe meek people. But even if I have
+I am going to say it again. Your half-wits who sit and turn first one
+cheek and then the other to be slapped are not the sort for me. The man
+or woman, boy or girl, child or otherwise, that will endure direct
+insult day after day without resenting it ought to sell themselves at
+so much a pint for illuminating oil--that is all they are good for. I
+love a fighter, provided he foils gracefully and does not snatch out his
+sword in every brawling and unworthy cause. In the defense of woman, in
+the cause of honor, purity and truth; in battle against sordidness, and
+greed, and a lying tongue, let your blade flash like summer rain and
+your white plume outdistance the plume of Navarre! For God and mother,
+justice and honor, self-respect and the approval of our own conscience,
+let us go forward then with a chip, if need be, on each shoulder and a
+standard copy of the celestial army tactics in our side pocket! The Lord
+loves a good many things, cheerful givers and self-sacrificing widows
+with their mites, merciful men and sweet and noble women, but most of
+all, I think, he loves a valiant fighter in the cause of right.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now it came to pass that there dwelt in a certain city of the land of
+the great lakes a woman called Lydia, sister to Simon, the shipwright.
+And Lydia, being comely and fair to look upon, was sought in marriage
+by one John, a dealer in spices and fine teas. And the years of their
+wedlock having outnumbered the fingers upon a man's two hands, it came
+to pass that they dwelt together in exceeding prosperity in a town near
+by the blue waters of a mighty lake.
+
+And Heaven sent unto them children to the number of three, so that their
+hearts were exceeding glad, and the cords of their habitation were
+stretched from year to year. And it came to pass that the home in which
+they lived was spacious and full of salubrious air. Their beds, also,
+were of curled hair, and all their bed-springs of beaten steel. And
+bath-rooms made glad the heart of the dust-laden when summer dwelt in
+the land. Also there were cunningly devised screens of fine wire in all
+the windows, so that the marauding fly and the pestilential mosquito
+might not enter.
+
+And the flesh increased from year to year upon the bones of Lydia and
+the children that heaven sent her, while they remained in the home that
+John, the tea merchant, had given them.
+
+But it came to pass that the neighbors of the woman Lydia closed up the
+shutters of their dwellings, and one by one stole from town when the
+heat descended upon the land.
+
+Then spake Lydia unto John, the vender of spices and fine teas, saying:
+
+"Arise, let us go hence and dwell within a farm-house, where the
+children may leap together in the sweet-smelling hay, and I may comfort
+myself with flagons of cream."
+
+But John, being a man among men, and accounted somewhat wise withal,
+would have restrained Lydia, saying: "Not so; for verily I say unto you,
+comfort abideth not in the dwelling of the farmer, neither does joy
+linger in the shadow of his doorway."
+
+Now Lydia, being president of a Woman's Club and reputed of knowledge
+beyond the generality of womankind, would not listen, but beat her hands
+together, crying: "I prithee hold thy peace, for behold, I and the
+children heaven sent me will depart hence by to-morrow's chariot of
+steam, and will make our home with the gentle farmer and his
+sweet-breathed kine."
+
+So John, being loth to war with the tongue, albeit he was heavy-hearted
+and walked with a bent head, purchased tickets for Lydia and the
+children heaven had given her.
+
+And it came to pass that they left town by the train which men call "the
+limited."
+
+Now the way of that train through the land is like unto the way of a
+ship at sea, or of a strong eagle that never wearieth. And the
+sufferings of Lydia were such that she sought relief in peppermint and
+found it not.
+
+And the babes by reason of the swiftness with which they traversed a
+crooked land, were made ill and languished like sea-sick rangers of the
+deep.
+
+Yet, after many hours, their torment abated not, so that, reaching their
+destination, the bodies of Lydia and her children were removed in a hack
+and hurried to an inn that was built near by.
+
+And in the inn where they were fain to tarry until strength should be
+given them for further journeying, it chanced that a young babe lay
+sorely stricken with the whooping-cough.
+
+Now, when Lydia knew this, her heart fainted with fear, and she
+prophesied evil.
+
+For well she knew that her own babes had not had the disease, and that
+the time of their prostration was at hand.
+
+So Lydia, being president of a Woman's Club, and accounted without a
+peer in the gift of words, sent for the keeper of the inn, that she
+might rebuke him.
+
+And she opened her mouth impulsively and questioned him saying: "Why
+broughtest thou me and the children heaven gave me into thine inn
+knowing that contagious disease lurked within its gates?"
+
+And the keeper of the inn shot out the lip at her and was undismayed.
+
+And he cried, "Go to! And what wouldst thou of a public house? Thou
+talkest like one with little sense!"
+
+And it came to pass that Lydia and her children departed thence by stage
+and sought the farm-house. And, arriving there, they would have laid
+themselves down to rest, being sorely bruised by reason of protracted
+stage-riding.
+
+But the beds were made of straw and corded underneath with ropes. So
+that lying upon them caused the children to roar loudly, and they found
+rest from their lamentations, four in a bed, on the bosom of Lydia.
+
+And, supper being served, it consisted of tinted warm water and
+gooseberries sweetened with brown sugar.
+
+Now Lydia, by reason of her connection with the club, was enabled to
+speak boldly, and she called for cream.
+
+But the wife of the farmer made answer, saying, "We have none."
+
+And Lydia spoke yet again, saying, "Why, O woman of many wiles, hast
+thou no cream?"
+
+And the woman made way with an insect that swam gaily in a pitcher of
+azure milk, and said gently, "Because we sell it to a neighboring
+dairy."
+
+And Lydia said nothing, but remembering the words of John, the
+tea-merchant, wept silently.
+
+And it came to pass that next morning the children went forth to leap in
+the hay.
+
+And the farmer led them firmly away from the hay-mow by the tip of the
+ear, saying, "I allow no children to spoil my fodder."
+
+And the morning of the second day, the woman Lydia, being starved for
+nutritious food, wended her way with her babes across a stretch of
+pasture land in search of wild blackberries.
+
+And a beast, whose voice was baritone and whose approach was like the
+approach of a Kansas cyclone, bore down upon her and the children
+heaven had given her, while yet they were midway in the meadow. Now only
+by leaping could they save themselves.
+
+And it came to pass that they leaped mightily and flung themselves over
+a five-barred fence.
+
+And a snake made free with the draperies of Lydia, so that her hair
+whitened with fear, and between the beast with the baritone voice and
+the serpent she knew not which way to turn.
+
+And the morning of the third day she wrote to John, the tea-merchant,
+saying only:
+
+"My darling--Meet the first train that returns from this place to the
+dear city by the lake, for behold! I and the children heaven sent me are
+on our homeward way!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+IMPATIENCE.
+
+  A sweet little crocus came up through the mold,
+  And hugged round her shoulders her mantle of gold,
+  While tears of distress fringed her delicate eye,
+  Like rain drops that start from a showery sky.
+
+  "Where, pray, are those laggards, the violets blue?
+  The roses and lilies and daffodils too?
+  I really think it's a shame and a sin
+  This waiting so long for the spring to begin.
+
+  "The first day of April and only one bird
+  Since I lifted my head has uttered a word!
+  And search as I may all over the meadow
+  Not even a cowslip has shown its bright head, O--
+
+  "Misery me! Sure there's no use in waiting,
+  For something, no doubt, is the summer belating;
+  So I'll go back to bed, put on my lace night cap,
+  And snatch, for a fortnight, a nice little cat-nap!"
+
+  Down went little Gold-head, back to her pillow;
+  When, all in a twinkling, up over the hill, O,
+  The wind-flower host, with rose-tinted banners,
+  Marched into the world; Queen Summer's forerunners.
+
+  Her rose maids of honor, in filmiest laces,
+  Loitered and lingered in shy woodland places;
+  And white-vested lilies were ever at prayer;
+  Their vespers, the perfume that sweetened the air.
+
+  The apple trees blushed into delicate splendor;
+  The blue birds hung over in ecstasy tender,
+  While the gold powdered bee with helmet all dusty
+  Kept watch over the flowers, a sentinel trusty.
+
+  The robin sang love to his shy little sweetheart;
+  The orioles lashed their nests in the tree top;
+  The willows drooped low over swift water courses,
+  And murmuring brooks started fresh from their sources.
+
+  But down in the gloom, on her dream-haunted pillow,
+  As pale and as cold as the moon on the billow,
+  Forgot and unmissed by bird and by blossom,
+  The crocus slept sound in the earth's faithful bosom.
+
+  When at last she awoke, the spring had been banished,
+  Her forerunner flowers from the hillside had vanished.
+  And all of the bees had turned into stock brokers.
+  And even the birds had changed into croakers.
+
+  'Tis only by waiting we find our fruition;
+  To learn how to wait is a needed tuition.
+  The faint-hearted people who go to sleep fretting,
+  Will wake up at last too late for the getting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If there is anything more utterly desolate than a poorly-conducted farm,
+preserve me from it. There is an ideal farm familiar to the writers of
+pretty tales, where everything is kept in apple-pie order throughout
+the year, and where one can walk broadcast, so to speak, in a spick and
+span white gown without attracting so much as the shadow of a shade of
+minutest defilement. We have seen pictures of such farms wherein sleek
+cattle stood around knee-deep in dewy clover, or lay serenely on
+polished hillsides, or meandered dreamily by crystal streams; wherein
+pale pink farm-houses with green gables and yellow piazzas, fairly
+scintillated from behind decorous foliage, and peacocks, with tails
+nearly as long as the Mississippi River, posed on the gate-posts;
+wherein neat little boys in variegated trousers rode prancing chargers
+down blooming lanes, and correct little girls in ruffled underclothing
+fed well-mannered chickens from morning till night. But the actual farm
+of the remote rural districts is about as much like its ideal picture as
+Esau was like a modern dude. Not long ago somebody suggested that I go
+and board for a fortnight at a farm-house. "You will have perfect rest,"
+said my friend, "and that is what you need." So I went, and rather than
+again undergo the torments of the five days spent in that restful (?)
+spot I think I would cheerfully hire out with a Siberian chain-gang. In
+the first place there was no such a thing as rest possible after the
+first glimmer of each day's dawn. Every rooster on the farm, and there
+were millions of them, was up "for keeps" long before sunrise. Their
+united chorus smote the skies. One might as well have tried to sleep
+through Gettysburg's battle. A score or so of bereaved cows lamented all
+night for their murdered babies, and a couple of donkeys, kept purely
+for ornamental purposes, made sounds every half hour or so that turned
+my hair snow white with terror. After breakfast each day I used to walk
+down the hill and fish for pickerel in a river that had no current, and
+looked discouraged. "Walked," did I say? Nay, there was nothing so
+decorous as a walk possible down the slippery, stony descent which led
+to the haunts of the pickerel. When I didn't hurl myself down that hill,
+I slid down, and between the two methods I wrecked both muscle and shoe
+leather. The latter part of the way led through a pasture devoted to
+several cows and a bull. As I am more afraid of the latter than of death
+and all his cohorts, my morning walks ended in heart failures and had to
+be abandoned. Occasionally I would take a book and go out and sit in my
+hammock. Then the large roosters, each one of them at least seven feet
+tall and highly ruffled about the legs, would come around and look at
+me, so that I would have to go into the house to hide my embarrassment.
+I know of nothing harder to endure than the stare of a Brahma fowl,
+especially if one is a bit nervous and overworked. Nervous prostration
+has sprung from lighter causes.
+
+Nothing happened while I was at the farm but meal time, and the
+intervals were so long between those episodes that I used to wonder
+daily at my own mission subsequent to the farm-life as one gropes for
+prehistoric clues. There was a man about the premises who walked to and
+from the village twice a day with a large brown jug. When I asked at
+different times what he fetched in the jug, not because I wanted to
+know, but merely to find a topic of conversation, I was successively
+told that it was "kerosene," "maple molasses," "buttermilk," and
+"vinegar." I wish I knew if I was told the truth every time, or if
+somebody tried to impose upon me merely because I was town-bred.
+
+Occasionally we took rides over stony trails where boulders and ruts
+marked the way, and only the creaking of our bones broke the primeval
+silence. These rides were supposed to be part of the generous plan of
+contemplated rest, but a few more of them would have resulted in the
+rest from which there is no awaking. No, my dear, I am an ardent lover
+of the country, and I love it as the epicure loves a good dinner, or the
+musician loves music, but I will take it, please, without the
+accessories of a poorly-kept hoosier farm. I do not yearn for the
+defilements of a barn-yard that is never cleansed, nor for the
+frolicsomeness of pigs that wander at their own sweet will, nor for the
+clamor of aggressively alert poultry, nor for piscatorial delights. I
+love the country as God made it before greed and gain and all the
+abominations of man entered into and spoiled it. I love it clean and
+wholesome and sweet, as it was turned out of the workshop; its streams
+untainted, and their banks unbereft of beautiful trees; its hills still
+covered with verdure, and its winds uncontaminated with the scent of
+defiling drains and waterways.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have seen him! Actually seen him! Shall I say the coming man? No,
+rather let us call him the vanished type, the stalwart, full-blooded,
+glorious "might have been" of nature. Not an exotic, but the indigenous
+growth of a soil fed by breeze and sun. No earmuffs about him; no
+cringing withdrawal into mufflers before the advance of winter blasts.
+No cowardly retreat into furry overcoats, mittens and gum shoes.
+
+"Amber," said a fellow traveler the other day, "yonder is a man after
+your own heart. He has not worn an overcoat or heavyweight flannels for
+six years. He never buttons up his coat save when it rains. What do you
+think of him?"
+
+"Think of him!" said I; "were it not for a lingering regard for the
+conventionalities, I should walk right over to that man and say: 'Sir, I
+thank you for the sight of a man--not a human lily bud! You have struck
+the right way of living, and you will be a hale and handsome man when
+the enfeebled race that surrounds you have toddled into the
+consumptive's grave or are sneezing upon their catarrhal pilgrimage to
+the tomb.'" The man was worth looking at, hale and hearty, his chest like
+the convex curve of a barrel, his eye like a falcon's.
+
+"But," said my friend, "were I to throw aside my overcoat and go forth
+unprotected this freezing weather, the exposure would surely kill me!"
+
+"No doubt it would," was my cheerful reply. "There are always a host to
+die before any reform is achieved or victory accomplished. You have
+coddled yourself so long between blankets and absorbed red-hot furnace
+heat until you haven't the stamina of an aspen leaf. Take a hot-house
+flower out of doors and it soon wilts. But mark the beautiful Edelweiss
+of the Alps--it thrives in the pure breath of eternal snow." But what is
+the use of talking? Although my tongue became a golden bell and my pen a
+gleaming flame, I could never convince you, my dear old, shivery, shaky
+public, of the advantage of fresh air and plenty of it, and the
+advisability of a generous cultivation of nature and her free gifts. As
+well expect to be nourished by looking at your food through an opera
+glass as hope to be strong and stalwart upon a homeopathic allowance of
+pure air and sunshine, or in spite of the devices you plan to shut
+yourself away and hermetically seal your body, as it were, from the
+sweet, health-giving influence of sun and wind and frost. Just stop a
+moment before you turn away from this subject, my dear, and hear a
+little story. I know the subject is a bore and that I am a crank, but
+listen. Once there was a grand beneficent power--call it God if you
+will--who planned a spot wherein to place some atom which he had shaped
+out of dust and vivified with a spark of his own life. He looked about a
+little, we will imagine, and finally settled upon a garden wherein to
+place these precious pensioners on his care. A roofless, wall-less spot
+full of draughts and dew, breezes and blossoms. He filled it with birds
+and carpeted it with grass, set rivulets running through it for "water
+works" and sunbeams and starbeams for "electric light" plants, etc. That
+is all I have to say. Like the Mother Morey legend my story is done
+before it is scarcely begun. But ask yourself the question, Why didn't
+God put his well-beloved models of the forthcoming race into a more
+sheltered place if there was so much danger in fresh air, draughts and
+chilly weather? Why didn't he seal them up behind double windows in an
+airless, sunless, hot and unhealthful home where the dear things could
+keep warm? Because he was God and knew everything, and not man and knew
+nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, the old ship Time has put into port again to take on a new cargo
+of good resolutions, earnest resolves and patented schemes, before
+setting sail for the shores of a distant future. Ten to one she goes to
+pieces on the breakers before ever sighting land again, and a hundred to
+ninety-nine her cargo is thrown overboard before she reaches mid-sea.
+The channel is narrow and the rocks lie thick as peas in a marrowfat
+pod, and many more bales of choice merchandise find the bottom of the
+sea each year than are ever delivered to the good angel consignee. "I am
+going to be the best girl in all the world," says the poor little
+Captain on New Year's eve. Behold! the hours have not swung around the
+diurnal circle before there is a wild onslaught from shadowland, and the
+brave captain is left wounded on the field. Only a tender hand and
+tireless patience can set her on her feet again.
+
+"I will eschew debt as I would poison, and starve before I will commit
+an indiscretion," cries the Doctor as he sets sail for the untried sea.
+Within the first watch he hauls down his colors from the mast head,
+captured by a pirate extravagance.
+
+"I will be gentle of speech and courteous and sweet to all!" says the
+Young Person, and gayly steers for the open channel. Midway she
+encounters a rock of annoyance and the air is stormy with irritable
+words that fly and beat like stinging rain. Ah, well, my dear, thank the
+good Lord there are life-saving stations all along the shore, and no
+wreck was ever yet so hopeless but Infinite Love could set it afloat
+again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There is just one person born who has a right to this thoroughfare, and
+that is I!" muses the woman with the umbrella as she walks the crowded
+streets on a rainy day. "I am in possession of that part of the universe
+immediately contiguous to the spot on which I stand, and I shall make
+myself just as much of a nuisance as I choose. I shall jab out your
+eyes, and knock off your hat, and clip your ears, and stab your back
+with my umbrella tip just as often and as violently as I choose. I shall
+run into you from behind, and bump into you, and knock you down if I so
+desire, and none shall say me nay. I am not very tall, but all the
+better for my plans if I am not. If I were of the same height as you I
+should not be able to take you under the hat-brim as I do, and jab you
+in the nostril as I pass. If I choose to cut criss-cross through a
+crowd, who shall forbid me, being a woman? I can be just as rude and
+just as mean as I want to be, and who is going to hinder, so long as I
+wear a gown and call myself a lady? If I were a man and manifested the
+reckless thirst for universal carnage that I do you would call the
+patrol and bear me away to the lock-up; but being a poor little,
+innocent woman I have it all my own way."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I know a wife who is waiting, safe and sound in her father's home, for
+her young husband to earn the money single-handed to make a home worthy
+of her acceptance. She makes me think of the first mate of a ship who
+should stay on shore until the captain tested the ability of his vessel
+to weather the storm. Back to your ship, you cowardly one! If the boat
+goes down, go down with it, but do not count yourself worthy of any fair
+weather you did not help to gain! A woman who will do all she can to win
+a man's love merely for the profit his purse is going to be to her, and
+will desert him when the cash runs low, is a bad woman and carries a bad
+heart in her bosom. Why, you are never really wedded until you have had
+dark days together. What earthly purpose would a cable serve that never
+was tested by a weight? Of what use is the tie that binds wedded hearts
+together if like a filament of floss it parts when the strain is brought
+to bear upon it? It is not when you are young, my dear, when the skies
+are blue and every wayside weed flaunts a summer blossom, that the story
+of your life is recorded. It is when "Darby and Joan" are faded and
+wasted and old, when poverty has nipped the roses, when trouble and want
+and care have flown like uncanny birds over their heads (but never yet
+nested in their hearts, thank God!), that the completed chronicle of
+their lives furnishes the record over which approving heaven smiles and
+weeps.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is one thing I learn day by day in my strollings about town, and
+that is that nobody is going to give me dollar values for half-dollar
+equivalents. In these days when the best of folks go mad on bargains we
+seem to think it is an easy thing to get something for nothing, but I
+have yet to see the day when we can. There are cheap restaurants where
+they serve you roast turkey for a quarter, but don't fool yourself! It
+is not the same kind of bird they serve in a high-class place for a
+dollar. You look at your check when you come out from an economical
+kitchen with a feeling of glee that you have got so much for so little.
+But how about the flavor that lingers in your mouth? How about the
+display of pine toothpicks and spotted linen? How about the
+finger-marked drinking glasses and damp napkins? No, no; poor as I am I
+would rather pay my dollar and get a dollar's worth of cleanliness and
+daintiness and flavor than save seventy-five cents and do without them.
+Sure as you live and sure as the world is operated on a
+self-accommodative basis, you never will get a first-water diamond
+without you pay first-water diamond equivalents.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other day there was a little girl, scarce 16 years of age, who
+started away for the first time from home and mother. She was brave and
+gay in a new suit, new boots and a new hat with a feather the color of a
+linnet's wing. She carried a bunch of the loveliest sweet peas at her
+dainty waist and on her face there played a sunburst of smiles. She had
+not been five hours in the place appointed her to visit when her mother
+received the following letter:
+
+"My Precious Mamma: I am writing this in my room before I am called to
+breakfast. None but God can know what I suffer! Not until I am in your
+arms once more will you know what I am going through! If you love me let
+me come home. Don't tell anyone, but let me come if you love me! Don't
+send the shoes--I shall not need them--but let me come home! Think what
+I must suffer so far away from you. I shall sell my ring and buy a
+ticket if you do not telegraph that I may come!"
+
+And as I read the pathetic letter between my smiles and tears I thought
+to myself, is there anything on earth so hard to bear as
+homesickness--first homesickness, when the heart is new to sorrow? I
+would rather have any disease the laboratory of evil keeps in stock than
+one pang of what that little girl was suffering when she penciled that
+letter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Around in a picture store on one of the avenues I chanced upon a
+painting that attracted not only myself, but a crowd of people from the
+street. It represented a lion's cage barred with heavy barriers of iron.
+On the floor of the den is the figure of a beautiful girl stretched in a
+deathlike swoon. There are orange blossoms in her hair, and the flush on
+her cheek has had no time to fade. Crouched by her side, one great paw
+on her breast and another at her waist, is a wrathful lion whose evident
+intention is to tear his victim into bonbon fragments. I wish somebody
+would explain that picture to me. I am tired conjecturing how the bride
+strayed into the lion's quarters, and where her husband was that he
+shouldn't be taking better care of her, and why there was nobody on hand
+to help at this critical moment portrayed on the canvas. Young married
+women are not supposed to be visiting zoological gardens when they ought
+to be changing their white satin favors for their traveling gowns. The
+picture seems a puzzler to all who watch it, and as the crowd is great
+the confusion of wits is catching.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE TRYST.
+
+  Where a woodland path, like a silver line,
+    Winds by a woodland river,
+  And half in shadow, and half in shine,
+    The alders lean and shiver,
+  Where a forest bird has built him a nest
+    Low in the springing grasses,
+  And all the day long, with her wings at rest,
+    His mate the slow time passes;
+
+  Where a flood of gold through the forest dim
+    Tells when the noon is strongest,
+  And a purple fringe on the forest's rim
+    Proclaims when the shades are longest;
+  Where the dawn is only known from the night
+    By the birds that sing their sweetest,
+  And the twilight hush from the morning light
+    By the peace that is then completest;
+
+  Where only the flood of silvery haze
+    Shall tell that the moon is risen,
+  When down from the sky, like a meteor blaze,
+    Shall flutter her snow-white ribbon,--
+  I will meet you there, my lady love sweet,
+    When the weary world is sleeping,
+  And the frets of the day, that tireless beat,
+    Are hushed in the night's close keeping;
+
+  Not missing the world--by the world unmissed--
+    We two shall wander together,
+  And whether we chided, or whether we kissed,
+    There'll be none to forget or remember;
+  And when at the last asleep you shall fall,
+    By the shore of the musical river,
+  Of the crimson leaves I will weave you a pall,
+    And kiss you good-by, love, forever.
+
+  But the stars up above, and the waters below,
+    Shall sing of us, over and over;
+  Of the tryst that we kept in the years long ago,
+    In the woods by the beautiful river.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+
+  Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from
+  the original.
+
+  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected as follows:
+
+    Page  35: "blase" changed to "blasé"
+    Page  53: "neighors" changed to "neighbors"
+    Page  98: "patroled" changed to "patrolled"
+    Page 129: "meed" changed to "need"
+
+  Punctuation has been corrected without note.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Rosemary and Rue, by Amber
+
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Rosemary and Rue, by Amber.
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rosemary and Rue, by Amber
+
+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: Rosemary and Rue
+
+Author: Amber
+
+Release Date: May 19, 2011 [EBook #36168]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROSEMARY AND RUE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/icover.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="giant">Rosemary and Rue</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">By Amber</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/ititle.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="center">Chicago and New York:<br />
+<span class="big">Rand McNally &amp; Company,</span><br />
+Publishers</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">Copyright, 1896, by Rand, McNally &amp; Co.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">PREFACE.</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"Amber" was not to be classed with any society or any creed. In all
+respects she was an individual. In good-humored contempt she held all
+form, and with deep sincerity she revered all simple things. She smiled
+upon error and frowned upon pretense. Her life was largely made up of
+impulse and sacrifice. She was the constant "victim" of her own
+generosity, needing the money and the time which sympathy impelled her
+to give away. She was so devoted a lover of the moods of nature, noting
+so closely the changing of the leaf or a new note sounded by the
+whimsical wind, that her spirit itself must once have been an October
+day. Year after year she toiled, and her reward was not money, but a
+letter from the bedside of the invalid, telling of a heart that had been
+lightened, of a care that had been driven from the door. None of the
+newspaper writers of Chicago was more popular.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> Another column told the
+news of the day; her column held the news of the heart. Her best
+thoughts and warmest fancies are scattered throughout her prose. Her
+verses are pleasant, and many of them are striking, but meter often
+chained her fancy. But some of her unchained fancies, poetic conceits in
+the guise of prose, will live long after the clasp, holding the
+pretentious verses of a society laureate, shall have been eaten loose by
+the constant nibble of time.</p>
+
+<p>When a church was crowded with friends, come to bid "Amber" good-bye, a
+great thinker, a writer who knows the meaning of toil, said that she had
+succeeded by the force and the industry of her genius. And so she had.
+For others, influence searched out easy places, but "Amber" found her
+own hard place and maintained it, struggling alone. Her words were for
+the poor and the sorrowful, and they could but give a blessing. But in
+the end, a blessing from the poor may be brighter than the silver of the
+rich.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 2em;">Opie Read.</span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">Rosemary and Rue.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center"><span class="big">I WONDER.</span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+
+<tr><td>
+I wonder, if I died to-night,<br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And you should hear to-morrow,</span><br/>
+You'd mourn to think this one dear friend<br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Had bid good-bye to sorrow.</span><br/>
+<br/>
+I wonder, if you saw a bird,<br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The hunter's dart outflying,</span><br/>
+You'd lure it back with loving word<br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To danger, pain, and dying.</span><br/>
+<br/>
+I wonder, if you saw a rose,<br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Plucked quick in June's surrender,</span><br/>
+You'd wish it back upon the bough,<br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To wither in November.</span><br/>
+<br/>
+I wonder, if you watched the moon,<br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The tempest's rack outstripping,</span><br/>
+You'd grieve to see its silver prow<br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In cloudless ether dipping.</span><br/>
+<br/>
+I wonder, if you heard a thrush<br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Laugh out amid the clover,</span><br/>
+You'd weep because its cage door oped&mdash;<br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Its captive days were over.</span><br/>
+<br/>
+I wonder, if, some happy day,<br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When you have found your haven,</span><br/>
+You'll mourn to find this one dear friend<br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Had been so long in heaven.</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>When I die bury me by the sea. Let my first hundred years in the spirit
+be spent on a sunny sand-bank watching the sapphire tides break over a
+bluff of lifted rocks. What is any earthly trouble but a dissolving
+dream, when one may bury the face in golden moss and sniff the salt
+spume of the sea! Over the blue verge of the horizon lies Spain, and I
+build its castles hourly here in my heart. A distant echo rings in my
+ears of trucks driven over stony streets, of the crack of the cabman's
+whip and the shout of profane teamsters, but the only semblance to cruel
+driver and jaded beast of burden seen in the seaside paradise of which I
+write is a fat huckster and a still fatter donkey who draws the large
+man where he (the donkey) listeth. Here on this lifted moorland, if one
+wishes to go anywhere he rises up and goes forth on a carpet of crimson
+moss and yellow grass and is driven by a chariot of untired winds.
+Behind us are miles of purple moss swept by ragged shreds of September
+fog, and musical, here and there, with bells of grazing herds; while
+before us, behind us, and all around us<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> stretches the boundless,
+unfathomable and mysterious sea.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Did you ever hear of the island of Avilion? That enchanted place where
+"falls not hail, or rain, nor ever wind blows loudly," whose orchard
+lands and bowery hollows lie lapsed in summer seas? I found it one day
+when I was sailing on Casco bay in a boat hardly bigger than a peanut
+shell. Tennyson found it long ago in a dream, and to it he sent the good
+King Arthur that he might "heal him of his grievous wound" within the
+balm of its heavenly peace. But I found it in reality, and to it I took
+a care-worn lady and a work-weary brain, that I might perchance renew
+under its sunny spell a strength that was well-nigh spent. I found my
+island under another name, to be sure, but I rechristened it within the
+first hour of my landing. It is not the place, my dear, for featherheads
+and butterflies, this island of Avilion. It is not the place for the
+descendants of Flora McFlimsy to go with their new gowns and their
+French heels. All such would vote my little island<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> a bore, and run up a
+flag for the first inland-bound steamer to put into port and carry them
+away. It has no ball-room, no promenade-hall under cover, no brass band,
+no merry-go-round, but instead it has meadow-lands that are brimful of
+bird songs; it has wild strawberries that bring their ruby wine to the
+very lips of the laughing sea; it has such sunsets as visit the dreams
+of poets and the skies of Italy; it has great rocks that are woven all
+over with webs of wild convolvulus vine, whose airy goblets of pink and
+blue hold nectar for the booming bee to sip; and it has marguerite
+daisies by the tens of thousands, and wild roses that carry the tint of
+your baby's palm and the honey of sugar-sweet dew within the inclosure
+of their small curled cup. It is hardly bigger than a Cunarder, this
+little Chebeague island, whose name I changed to Avilion, and from
+wave-washed keel to flowery bowsprit the eye never lights upon a
+defilement or a stain. It is the only place in all my wanderings where I
+never found a peanut shell nor a tin can thrown out to defile nature's
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>There was not a single bad odor on my island during the whole ten days
+of my tarrying,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> and I am told by those who are old inhabitants that
+such a thing never was known to it. A soft wind is always blowing, but
+the only merchandise it carries is wild thyme perfume and the fragrant
+airs that waft from meadow-lands and old-fashioned gardens full of spice
+pinks and cinnamon roses. Now and then a hunter's fog slips the leash of
+its viewless hounds and with noiseless "halloo" scours the island for
+the prey it tracks but seems never to corral. Now and then a sudden
+tumult seizes the tides that climb and fall on the shiny rocks and the
+air is full of the throb of soft drums and the music of flutes that are
+beat and blown a moment, then die away as quickly as they came, like a
+strolling band that marches through a village street, then over the
+hills and far away. Now and then a troop of crows rise silently from out
+the shadow of the pines and go sailing between the lazy eyes that follow
+and the sun, until, settling down upon some meadow stacked with new-cut
+hay, they break into clamorous laughter that taunts you with its shrill
+derision. Always, from dawn to dewfall, the world about little Chebeague
+is full of swallows that dart and soar and flit like shadows.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> They
+seldom sing, and yet the few notes they thread upon the air sparkle like
+diamonds where they fall. Some strange bird, with a low, sleepy song
+like the crooning of a child that is half asleep, or like a shepherd
+boy's pipe idly blown beneath the noonday willows, is always haunting
+the groves of Avilion with an undiscovered presence. I have spent hours
+looking for him, yet never found him. Sometimes I have been led to half
+believe the fellow exists only in the fancy of a spellbound idler like
+you and me.</p>
+
+<p>Just at sunset a little feathered violinist of the island whips out his
+fiddle and draws the bow so delicately across its vibrant strings, while
+the golden sun slips tranquilly beneath the tinted waters of Casco bay,
+that the soul of the listener is fairly attenuated like a high C
+diminuendo with the spell of so much beauty. I don't know the name of
+the bird either, but he is going to sing for us all in heaven later on.
+Such performers do not end all here any more than Beethoven did.</p>
+
+<p>It was my custom during the time I spent at Little Chebeague to devote
+the entire day to strolling or lying at length upon the rocks&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Nothing but me 'twixt earth and sky;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">An emerald and an amethyst stone,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Hung and hollowed for me alone.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>I grew to love the solitude with all my heart, and the thought of
+returning to the mainland with its jargon and its bustle was like the
+thought of tophet to the poor little peri for whom the gate of paradise
+had swung. Sometimes I would board the small boat that two or three
+times a day threads in and out of the blue water-way and visit adjacent
+islands hardly less beautiful than my chosen home.</p>
+
+<p>There is Long Island, far more beautiful by reason of its East End,
+where as yet the tide of a full-fledged summer resort has not come.
+There is an old-fashioned country roadhouse, such as we knew before the
+landscape gardener and the boulevard fiend were turned loose upon our
+rural towns. To follow their windings is heaven enough for me. A fringe
+of buttercups to fence the way, thickets of underbrush to darken the
+near distance, constant little ups and downs where the road slips into
+hollow to follow the call of a romping brook or climb a hill to watch
+for the sea. Wintergreen berries and russet patches everywhere, and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+snow of blackberry bushes in bloom far as the eye can travel.</p>
+
+<p>"There is an old-time rail fence!" cried a visitor from the booming west
+one day; "my God, let me get out and touch it! I haven't seen anything
+but barbed wire since I left New England!" And he did get out of the
+buckboard in which he was driving and chipped away a big brown fence
+sliver as a memento. These roads I am talking about lead nowhere in
+particular. They, as often as not, end in a fisherman's back dooryard,
+but they are sweet as a young girl's caprice while they last.</p>
+
+<p>One day we strolled across one of the islands and found a battlement of
+rocks on the seaside that it would have taken a solid month to explore.
+Oh, there was enough on the bar at ebb tide at Avilion to while away an
+age of idle time.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes we took it into our heads to ride. Then the choice lay between
+Charlie the Christian&mdash;so named for his good behavior and gentle
+ways&mdash;and the one roadster the island produced, a nag in the rough, who
+held his head high and cavorted with the stride of a jamboreeing boy.</p>
+
+<p>The choice made, the hour must be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> watched to catch the low tide over to
+Big Chebeague, for there are no wagon roads in Avilion. Six hours of
+safety, as to the low water mark, is the limit of one day's riding, and
+much can be done in the way of riding in a half-dozen hours' time. A
+spin across the bar, the climbing of a rocky road, a sweep of
+seaward-facing pike, with dips into ferny hollows and ascents to
+pine-crowned bluffs, make the trip worth recording, and if to the
+exhilaration of the ride you add a dismount now and then to gather
+wintergreen and pick roses, with a loiter through a church-yard where
+many Hamiltons, both pre-Adamite and ante-historic, are sleeping the
+sleep of the just, you have the whole meaning of an afternoon outing on
+Big Chebeague.</p>
+
+<p>Every evening after supper there was a pilgrimage to the west side of
+the island, not to be dispensed with by descendants of those remnant
+tribes that once worshiped the sun. Ranging from north to south as far
+as the eye can sweep, from westward, fronting little Chebeague, lies
+Casco bay, the loveliest bit of water in all the world. I say
+unhesitatingly the loveliest, because I do not believe that Naples, nor
+Sorrento, nor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> any far-famed Italian watering-place can match the coast
+of Maine for beauty. Into this bay, like petals from a wind-shaken
+blossom tree, are dropped hundreds of islands. Far to the west the White
+mountains melt upon the horizon in airy outline of blue, and over all
+each day is repeated the ancient miracle of the sun's decline. Sometimes
+a single cloud, like a tomb, receives the bright embodiment of day and
+hides it from our sight behind such draperies as orient never wrought
+nor monarch dreamed. Sometimes this fair god lies at length upon a bier
+of purple porphyry, while flakes of crushed gems strew his couch with
+rainbow dust, and all the air is full of rose-red censers, edged with
+gold. Sometimes he drops below the verge, holding to the last a wine cup
+brimmed with sparkling vintage that spills and trickles down the hills.
+Sometimes he returns in an afterglow, as the dead come back to us in
+dreams, the tenderer and the sweeter for their second coming. However
+the sun may set in Avilion, each setting is the most beautiful and best
+to be desired.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>I heard someone bewailing the death of a friend the other day. The staff
+on which he had leaned, the bread which had ministered to his needs, the
+very light that had filled his eyes seemed caught away, and he mourned
+as one for whom there was no comfort possible. I saw a mother leaning
+above an empty crib, whose dainty pillow no nestling head should ever
+press again. I marked the terrible yet voiceless grief that ate at a
+bereaved father's self-control, until no wind-blown reed was ever so
+shorn of self-reliant strength. I saw a wife whose love had sunk within
+the grave where her young husband was laid, as the sun sets within a
+cloud of stormy night. I saw an old man bow his snowy head because the
+faithful one whose hand had lain in his for more than fifty years had
+vanished from his sight forever. I heard a little child lamenting at
+bed-time the lullaby song which its dead mother's tender lips should
+never sing again. But sadder than all these things, more tragical than
+any death which merely picks the blossom of life and bears it onward to
+heaven, as the gardener plucks the choicest rose to grace some festival
+of joy, is the scene when a trusted friendship dies; when faith which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+has endured the test of years gives up the breath of loyal life and
+sinks to hopeless unawakened death. Never think that you have shed your
+bitterest tears until you have stood at such a death-bed. Think not the
+measurement of any mortal grief has been found until you have sunk the
+plummet-line of such a sorrow. That grave shall never burst its sheath
+to let the soul of friendship's betrayal free, like a lily on the Easter
+air. That door shall never swing like the bars of a cage to let a
+murdered faith flash forth like the plume of a singing bird to seek the
+stars. Over the grave of a dead and buried trust no resurrection-note
+can ever sound like a bugle-call across the dewy hills to rouse the
+sleeper from his couch. God pity all who linger by the heaped-up mound
+where love's forgotten dreams lie buried, and grant oblivion as the only
+surcease for their bitter sorrow.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>The days and nights swing equally upon the golden balance of time. The
+year is whitening with its crop of frost-blossoms from which no
+harvest-home has ever yet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> been called. Like an unwritten page, the new
+year lies before us in untrodden fields of shining snow. God grant the
+footsteps of Death be not the first to track the unbroken path that lies
+before us. May joy and peace and love, like the roots of the violets
+under the snow, quicken and blossom for all of us as the year advances,
+and may our progress be, like January's, right steadily onward unto
+June!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>As I write there is a sudden break in the hush of night, and faint and
+clear and sweet upon the listening ear falls the sound of "taps" from
+the camp in Fort Sheridan woods. I drop my pencil and listen to it, as I
+always do, with almost a spirit of reverent awe. The hard day's work is
+done, the time for rest has come, and over all the busy camp silence
+falls like the shadow of a brooding wing. The new moon, half hidden by
+drifting clouds sends a rippling play of silver through the woodbine
+leaves, and from the top of the maple tree, a thrush dreams forth a bar
+of liquid music in its sleep. All the world is going to sleep, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> God
+grant, say I, that when the time for the final good-night has come for
+you and for me the call for "taps," blown from some celestial bugle the
+other side the mystic gate may fall as sweetly upon our ears and find us
+as ready to sink to slumber.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Did you ever hunt for eggs in a haymow? If you did you can remember just
+how, with bated breath, you crept through the fragrant glooms of the old
+barn and searched the dusty place for nests. You can recall, perhaps,
+the shaft of sunlight that broke through the crevice of the door and
+showed you old speckle-top in her corner. You can hear again her furious
+cackle when you dislodged her from her nest and gathered the warm eggs
+she had hovered under her wings. You remember the excitement of the
+search and the perfection of content which settled within your soul as
+you gathered the basketful of milk-white eggs upon your arm and picked
+your way down the steep ladder which led to the main floor and "all out
+doors." Scarcely any excitement or exhilaration of later years can
+compare<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> with the joy of hen's-nest hunting when you were young.</p>
+
+<p>Did you ever go berrying? With a tin pail swinging from your wrist and
+your oldest gown upon your back, have you climbed the hill, jumped the
+fences and sought the side-hill pasture where the blackberries grew
+purple in the shade? Can you recall much, in all the years that thread
+between that happy time and this, which can transcend the pleasure of
+those wildwood tramps? Even now I seem to fix my eyes upon a clump of
+bushes by the old rail fence. They are domed high with verdure and show
+dusky hollows underneath, where, my skilled eye tells me, lurk spoils
+fit for Bacchus and all his nymphs. I part the leaves, a snowy moth
+flutters out of the green dusk and wavers like a snowflake in the warm,
+sweet air. I carefully reach my hand away inside the fairy bower of
+crumpled leaf and twisted vine and draw it forth purple with the juice
+of overripe berries that dissolve at a touch. With these I fill my pail,
+and all too often, I blush to own it, my mouth also, until twilight
+sends me home saturated with sunshine, late clover blooms and berry
+juice.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>Ah, my dear, all this was fun while it lasted, but there is a more
+exciting quest than hunting eggs or finding berries, in which we all of
+us engage as the years of our mortal pilgrimage go hurrying by. It is
+the search for happiness&mdash;a search we never give up nor grow too old to
+maintain. Forgetting the disappointments and the satieties of the dead
+years, we look forward to the new as the hidden nestfull of unchipped
+shells of fresh experience and untried delights. God bless us all, and
+prosper us to find the eggs and the berries before we die. Perhaps the
+service of love we do others shall prove the bush that bears the
+sweetest and the ripest clusters, and the nestfull that shall develop
+the whitest store of all life's opportunities.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>A genuine mother could no more raise a bad boy into a bad man than a
+robin could raise a hawk. When I say "genuine mother" I mean something
+more than a mother who prays with her boy, and teaches him Bible texts,
+and sends him to Sunday-school. All those things are good and
+indispensable as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> far as they go, but there is a lot more to do to train
+a boy besides praying with him, just as there are things necessary to
+the cultivation of a garden besides reading a manual. To succeed with
+roses and corn one must prune, weed and hoe a great deal. To make a boy
+into a pure man, a mother must do more than pray. She must live with him
+in the sense of comrade and closest friend. She must stand by him in
+time of temptation as the pilot sticks to the wheel when rapids are
+ahead. She must never desert him to go off to superintend outside duties
+any more than the engineer deserts his post and goes into the baggage
+car to read up on engineering, when his train is pounding across the
+country at forty miles an hour.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">A LITTLE GOLDENHEAD.</span></p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+
+<tr><td>
+Gay little Goldenhead lived within a town<br />
+Full of busy bobolinks, flitting up and down,<br />
+Pretty neighbor buttercups, cosy auntie clovers,<br />
+And shy groups of daisies, all whispering like lovers.<br />
+<br />
+A town that was builded on the borders of a stream,<br />
+By the loving hands of nature when she woke from winter's dream;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span><br />
+Sunbeams for the workingmen taking turns with showers,<br />
+Rearing fairy houses of fairy grass and flowers.<br />
+<br />
+Crowds of talking bumblebees, rushing up and down,<br />
+Wily little brokers of this busy little town,<br />
+Bearing bags of gold dust, always in a hurry,<br />
+Fussy bits of gentlemen, full of fret and flurry.<br />
+<br />
+Gay little Goldenhead fair and fairer grew,<br />
+Fed on flecks of sunshine, and sips of balmy dew,<br />
+Swinging on her slender foot all the happy day,<br />
+Chattering with bobolinks, gossips of the May.<br />
+<br />
+Underneath her lattice on starry summer eves,<br />
+By and by a lover came, with his harp of leaves;<br />
+Wooed and won the maiden, tender, sweet and shy,<br />
+For a little cloud home he was building in the sky.<br />
+<br />
+And one breezy morning, on a steed of might,<br />
+He bore his little Goldenhead out of mortal sight;<br />
+But still her gentle spirit, a puff of airy down,<br />
+Wanders through the mazes of that busy little town.</td></tr></table>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Where shall we go to find the fit symbol of Easter? To the encyclopedia
+that we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> may post ourselves as to word derivations and root meanings? As
+well send a child to a botanist to find the meaning of a rose! To fitly
+understand the true significance of Easter time, find some slope in
+early April that the sun has found a few short days before you. Lay your
+ear close to the ground that you may hear the fine, soft stir within the
+bosom of the warm earth. Note how the mold is filling with its new birth
+of flowers. There is not a covert in all the awakening woods that has
+not a little nestling head hidden behind the dead leaves. The breath of
+a sleeping child is not more peaceful than the sway of the wind flower
+upon its downy stem. The flush on a baby's cheek is not more delicate
+than the tint of each gossamer petal. To what shall we liken the grass
+blades already springing up along the loosened water ways? To fairy
+bowmen, led by Robin Hood's ghost through winding ways from forest on to
+the sparkling sea. To what shall we liken the violet buds spread thick
+beneath the country children's feet? To constant thoughts of God that
+bloom even in the grave's dark dust. To what shall we liken the
+twinkling leaves that shine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> in the dim depths of the woods? To lights
+at sea, that tell some fleet is sailing into port. To what shall we
+liken the shy unfolding of the lilac buds? To the poise of a slender
+maiden who leans from out her lattice to hearken to a lover's song. To
+what shall we liken the cowslip's valiant gold? To the shining of a
+contented spirit with a humble home. To what shall we liken the brooding
+sky and the warmth of the all-loving sun? To the potency of a gentle
+nature intent on doing good, and the yearning of a tender heart to bless
+and save. Is there a nook so dark and forbidding that the beautiful
+Easter sunshine cannot enter and woo forth a flower? Is there a rock so
+impervious that the April wind may not find lodgment for a seed in some
+crevice, and there uplift a bannered blossom? Is there a cold, resentful
+bank wherein the late snow lingers that shall not finally cast off its
+disdainful ice and flash into verdure in response to the patient shining
+of the sun? Is there a grave in all the land so new and desolate that
+Easter time cannot find a violet among its clods and paint a rainbow
+within the tears that rain above it? To nature's lovers, then, as to the
+truly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> Christian heart, the significance of Easter is found in the
+reviving garden and in the awakening woods. It means resurrection after
+death, blossom time after the bareness of woe, the cuckoo's cry after
+the silence of songless days, and the smile of a pitying All-Father
+after the orphan time of the soul's bereavement and seeming desertion.</p>
+
+<p>Another blessed thought to be gained in the contemplation of nature's
+sure awakening from the long lethargy of her winter's sleep is that,
+however fearful we may be that death's reign shall be eternal, as
+constant as day dawn after midnight, or shining after storm, shall be
+the Easter of the soul. We do not need to pray for April; it comes. Nor
+do we need to pray for release from the first dark dominion of fear and
+dread when our beloved are snatched from our arms. Such experience is
+only the transient reign of winter in the heart, while yet the soft wing
+of April stirs upon the horizon's misty verge and the promise of violets
+is in the lingering darkness of the air. Remember this: The same power
+that sends us November is planning an April to follow, and out of the
+snowfall evolves the whiteness of the annunciation lily.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>It has always seemed to me that, beautiful as Christ's birthday ought to
+be and full of tender significance as we may make the hallowed Christmas
+time, a deeper tenderness attaches to these Easter days. The Sinless One
+had lived out the span of his mortal years; he had suffered and been
+betrayed; had struggled through Gethsemane, up to the thorn-crowned
+heights of Calvary, and yet, through all, carried the whiteness of a
+saintly soul, to cast its dying petals, like a white rose, wind-shaken
+yet yielding perfume even in death, in the utterance of that prayer for
+universal forgiveness, the most wonderful that ever ascended from earth
+to heaven&mdash;"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" The
+song that ushered in the birthtime of those sanctified years was an
+invocation of peace and good will, beneath which the morning stars were
+shaken like banners before the oncoming of a glorious prince, but the
+prayer that ascended from Calvary was the plea of a betrayed and
+anguished soul for universal charity and forgiveness from God to man.
+Let us rejoice, then, when Christmas days bring gladness to our hearts
+and homes, but let us forgive and bless when Easter lays<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> its stainless
+lily at our feet. There is constant need for charity and forgiveness in
+a world so full of self-blinded and ignorant evil-doers. They do not
+always know what they do, these rude and riotous betrayers of Christ;
+and all the more need, then, for compassion, and that divine pity that,
+even from the cross, could invoke heaven's pardoning love.</p>
+
+<p>If you have a friend who has wronged you, forgive him to-day, for
+Christ's sweet sake. If you have a boy who has gone astray, reach out
+your arm and win him back, while yet the Easter violets glow upon the
+chancel rail. If you have a daughter who has been undutiful, take her in
+your arms and ask God to forgive you both&mdash;you for your lack of
+sympathy, as well as her for her waywardness. So shall you understand
+the meaning of Easter, the resurrection time of love, the fulfillment of
+its promise from out the icy negation of the grave.</p>
+
+<p>A few thoughts about death before we turn to other symbolizations of the
+season. It is all a mistake, it seems to me, to make death a menace and
+a dread in the minds of the young. Does the farmer go forth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> with tears
+to plant the seed for the coming harvest? Does the scientist mourn above
+the chrysalis that lets a rare butterfly go free? Does the navigator
+rebel when a bark that has been tempest-tossed and storm-driven enters
+port? Teach the children that death is all that makes life endurable;
+that it is the sheaf of ripened wheat, or the budding flower, plucked
+from the earth's dark mold; that it is the flight of the bird, the home
+stretch of the yacht. We love each other, but what is it that makes
+human love any nobler than the chirruping of birds if not its duration?
+And it is only death that makes our loves immortal. Time enthrals them
+with fear and environs them with alarms; death lifts them into the
+region of eternal joy. Take away the reality of our faith in the life to
+come and Easter would mean no more to us than it means to the browsing
+cattle that munch the violet buds and trample the bright promises of the
+year under foot. The comforting view of it all is, that here we are only
+learning to love. We are like birds that sit upon the edge of the nest,
+and flutter, and chirp, and dread to fly away. What shall the bough
+whereon our nest was rocked with many a storm be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> when we have learned
+to spread these tiresome wings and rejoice in the blue space of the
+boundless air? The heroism of love, the faithfulness of love, the
+grandeur, patience and magnificence of love shall only be revealed when
+the soul has left the shadows and spread its wing in the empyrean of
+heaven's blue.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>There is a small boy who lives at our house with whom I wage an unending
+warfare on the subject of clean hands. The sun never goes down nor yet
+arises upon a harmonious adjustment of the mooted question. There are
+more tears shed, more dire threats made, more promises broken, more
+anguish endured on that one account than upon any other under the sun.</p>
+
+<p>The boy dwells under a ban as somber as the seven-fold curse of Rome.
+His sisters nag him, his grandmother prays for him, his mother pleads
+with him, his girl friends flout him, but in spite of all he continues
+to wear his hands in half tints. But the other evening he made an
+announcement that caused even the young person to remark:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> "Well, I'd
+rather see you with your soiled hands than see you such a dude as that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Gee!" said the boy, "but some of the kids that go to our school are
+queer ducks!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't use so much slang," cried his mother; "why can't you call a boy a
+boy as well as a 'kid' and a 'duck'; and whatever do you mean by 'Gee'?"</p>
+
+<p>"They bring little cushions to school," continued the boy with only a
+swift hug in answer to his mother's question, "and they put 'em under
+their hands when they play marbles, so's they won't get their hands
+dirty. Gee whiz, but I'm glad I ain't such a fool!"</p>
+
+<p>And in spite of her desire to see him a bit more solicitous
+as to personal elegance his mother could but echo the boy's
+self-congratulatory remark.</p>
+
+<p>What on earth is going to become of us if this awful wave of effeminacy
+which has struck the race does not soon subside? Earmuffs and galoshes,
+heated street cars in April and double windows up to rose time have done
+their best to make molly coddles out of men, but when we are starting a
+generation of boys to play marbles with cushions to rest their hands on
+the sex had better<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> abolish hats and trousers and take to hoods and
+shoulder shawls. Give me a boy and not a pocket edition of an old woman.
+He need not be a tough nor a bully, nor need he be cruel nor untender
+because he is a boy, but I want him jolly and brave and up to every
+harmless prank that's going. I want him to use slang and wear muddy
+shoes, slam doors and make all sorts of futile feints at keeping his
+hands clean, provided, always, he appreciates the opportunity offered to
+show the gentleman that's in him by never appearing at table looking
+like a tramp. Even that is better, though, than being a "sissy." Give
+him time and the untidiest boy in the world will develop into a
+gentleman, but eternity itself could not evolve a man out of a boy who
+plays marbles with a cushion!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>As I was walking down Dearborn street the other day, close upon the
+gloaming, I chanced to meet two pretty girls, not the only two in this
+big city, perhaps, but two of the fairest. One had hair like the tassel
+of ripe corn when the sunshine finds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> it; the other's head was crowned
+with dusky braids, and the eyes of the two were brimful of laughter as a
+goblet new-filled with wine. Surely such pretty girls should carry
+queenly hearts, thought I, and with my old trick of catching topics in
+the air, I loitered a little on my way to hear what such fair lips might
+be saying. Said one: "I really don't care to marry him; he is such a
+darned fool! but he will give me everything I want, and I suppose I
+shall." I stayed to hear no more. If I had caught a yellow-bird
+swearing, or seen the first robin appear in Joliet stripes, the
+revulsion from pleasure to disgust could not have been more sudden. Is
+this all the lesson the world has taught you, my pretty maiden? To soil
+your lips with slang and sell yourself for fine clothes and the chance
+of unlimited display! Forecasting the life of such a girl is like
+forecasting an April day that dawns in tints of purple and gold, and
+ends in tempest and the blackness of night. Beauty is a glorious
+heritage, indeed, but to see it worn by such types as you, my pretty
+dears, is like seeing a queen's crown on the head of a parrot, or a
+royal scepter in the grasp of a monkey.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Niagara Falls! What heart is so stolid, what appreciative spirit so
+calloused over with the hard crust of stoicism not to rise and shout
+before the wonder of its magnificence? When a man or woman gets so blasé
+as to thrill no more over Niagara Falls, let them be salted down with
+last year's hams and hung on a hook in the quiet seclusion of a
+smokehouse.</p>
+
+<p>First we took our way over the bridge that leads to the beautifully kept
+Goat Island and, alighting from the carriage, stood for a time with the
+full splendor of the American fall in our faces. A fascination that
+could not be shaken off held the eyes upon that never-stayed torrent of
+sun-illumined jewels. Diamonds they were, and great uncut emeralds, with
+here and there a rain of fiery rubies, that tumbled from off the lifted
+ledge of imperishable rock. And where the volume widened, until it
+became an avalanche of snowy foam, shot through and through with needles
+of light, it seemed to us that the law of gravitation had been forever
+abandoned, and falling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> tons of water, losing kinship drop with drop,
+were floated skyward again to find a home in heaven. Down-shooting
+rockets of silver foam unfallen, yet always in the air! Canopies of
+cloud, dissolving into fine dust-like roadside pollen! Draperies of
+spray unrolled in noiseless splendor from the blue background of an
+endless day! Explosions in mid air of thunderous torrents that turned to
+carded wool on the way from heaven to earth! While I stood and watched
+it all somebody profaned the air with a vulgar word, and I looked for a
+flaming sword from the omnipotent hand to smite him where he stood. To
+swear, or even to think an unholy thought in such a holy of holies,
+deserves the penalty of death as much as did the desecration of the
+temple in ancient times.</p>
+
+<p>Shifting our place from point to point, we found ourselves at last
+standing on the very verge of the Horseshoe falls, where, crowned with
+living green, it slips over the crumbling ledge and loses itself in a
+dazzling whirl of spray. Although I have stood in that same spot many
+times I am proud to remark that I have never stood there yet without
+saying my prayers. The sight is too much for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> puny ego that animates
+this little capricious whiff of dust we call our mortal body, and now,
+if never before, the soul that retains one particle of the divine within
+it turns to God as the sunflower follows the sun. While we stood
+entranced by the sublime beauty of the scene a mighty wind arose
+suddenly and great clouds were called across the sky to the sending of a
+swift alarm. Before the breath of the wind the mists were tumbled far
+and wide like feathers, and a rainbow that arched the whole was
+demolished into nothingness only to be kindled again as a flame in the
+whimsical breath of the riotous air. One moment the atmosphere was a
+fairy flower garden, full of violets, roses, green feathery ferns and
+passion-tinted tulips brimming over with gold. The next some giant hand
+reached forth and plucked and bore each flower away. A suffusion of
+color followed every flood of sunshine, as a pomegranate runs with juice
+at the touch of a knife, only to be succeeded by pale wafts of
+colorless, interminable spray, where a cloud caught the too eager sun
+within its soft eclipse.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p>
+<p>If the Lord left any snakes in Paradise after the settlement of the
+primal fuss they took the shape of the man who is a confirmed cynic and
+pessimist. The man who has no faith, no enthusiasm, no candor, no
+sentiment. The man who laughs at the mention of good in the world, or
+virtue in women, or honor among men. The man who calls his wife a fool
+because she teaches his little children to say their prayers, and curls
+his lip at any belief in the world beyond the grave. The man who never
+saw anything worth admiring in the sky when the dawn touches it, or the
+stars illumine it, or the clouds sweep it, or the rain folds it in gray
+mists of silence. The man who lives in this sparkling, shining world as
+a frog lives in a pond or a toad in a cellar, only to croak and spit
+venom. The man who never saw anything in a rose aglint in the sunlight
+or in a lily asleep in the moonlight, but a species of useless
+vegetable, the inferior of the cabbage and the onion. The world is
+overfull of such men, and if I had the right sort of broom I'd sweep
+them away as the new girl sweeps spiders.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>Once I was sailing in a yacht close to the rock-bound coast of Maine.</p>
+
+<p>It was presumably a pleasure cruise, but if ever a poor wretch in
+purgatory had a harder time of it I am sorry for him.</p>
+
+<p>The fog was thick, the ground swell was enough to unsettle the seven
+hills of Rome, and something was wrong with the boat's machinery, so
+that for hours we lay in the trough of the sea, making no headway and
+fearful that each moment would be our last. Added to all this there came
+at short intervals a demoniac blast from a fog horn which rent the air
+with the clamor of a thousand tongues.</p>
+
+<p>"Look out!" it seemed to shriek over and over again. "Look out, poor
+fragile wisps of gossamer! The hour strikes for your destruction.
+Another wave, a little higher than the last, shall suck you down like a
+shred of foam into the blackness of the sea's dark vortex. Brace up and
+meet your doom. Look out! Look out! Look out!"</p>
+
+<p>I listened to that fog horn for hours, until the soul within me lay like
+a spent bird weary with futile beating of useless wings, and I came
+within a hair's breadth of madness. In fact, I think I had commenced to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+rave a bit when a brisk wind sprang up that blew the fog away, the crew
+succeeded in righting the craft and onward we flew out of sound of the
+terrible fog horn forever.</p>
+
+<p>There are many things in life that remind me of fog horns; there are
+many occasions that beat upon the soul with just such vociferous clamor.</p>
+
+<p>There are those old-fashioned Bible texts, shouting "hell fire" and
+"eternal damnation." What are they but fog horns warning us from off a
+mist-enveloped shore? We cannot shut our ears to them while we lie a
+furlong off the rocks and listen to their woeful reiteration. Perhaps
+some chance wind may blow us out to sea, there to escape for the present
+the unwelcome climax; but we know that underneath the shrouded stars and
+through the hush of midnight forever and forevermore sounds the crash of
+that brazen alarm. We may not heed it, but the fog horn is there, forget
+and disown it though we may.</p>
+
+<p>Then there are our birthdays after we grow old enough to understand
+their significance; what are they but fog horns that sound at intervals
+to denote that we are drawing near to the final doom of all mankind?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>"Sport on," they seem to say, "a little longer; weave your garlands and
+blow your pretty bubbles while you may, for to-morrow you shall surely
+die!"</p>
+
+<p>Each year the fog horn blows a louder blast, until finally the softened
+haze of creeping years, like a white fog in the sea air, muffles the
+sound, and we sink to rest at last, some of us with the wild clamor
+hushed to the measure of a good-night song.</p>
+
+<p>Then the holidays. Thanksgivings and Christmases with independence days,
+like wine-red roses dropped between, what are they but fog horns on the
+invisible shores of memory? How they mock us with the recollection of
+vanished joys, and warn us of barren years yet to be.</p>
+
+<p>Gone forever are the dear ones who made gala times and festival
+happenings bright, and still we linger like boats in the trough of a
+sullen sea, our motive power wrecked, our sails rent, and listen,
+listen, listen to the warning that sounds from far off the hazy shore.</p>
+
+<p>"Gone, forever gone," the fog horn cries; "gone down into the sea, the
+boats that kept you company when the bright-winged fleet put out from
+port! Lost forever, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> storms it seems scarce worth the while to have
+weathered, since here you toss, alone at last, like driftwood on the
+chilly tide, and listen forever to the mournful warning of my voice from
+off the sandbars, warning you that not even love can withstand the beat
+of time's relentless years."</p>
+
+<p>Our desks are full of miniature fog horns in the shape of unanswered
+letters.</p>
+
+<p>Our closets hang full of fog horns of varying fabrics. They warn us of
+the folly of trusting to bargain sales of shoddy goods; they warn us
+against extravagant tastes when times are hard; they warn us against the
+lazy mood that neglects the stitch in time that saveth nine.</p>
+
+<p>Every time we are ill the occasion is a fog horn.</p>
+
+<p>Either we have disregarded some law of health and are in the trough of
+the sea in consequence, or we are flying on to the breakers with ears
+dulled to the fog horn's din.</p>
+
+<p>We speak with cruel harshness to the old mother who loves us, or to the
+little child who trusts us. We are sorry for it afterward, and that
+sorrow is the fog horn that warns us to keep off the reef of temper.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>"To-day may be the last day for the mother you have pained or the child
+you have wronged," it seems to say; "the bed they lie down upon to-night
+may be the bed of death. See to it, then, that you make each day of
+life, if possible, the last day of love's opportunity." Did you ever
+stop to think of what would become the instant concern of all this vast
+human race if a sudden edict should go forth that only twenty-four hours
+were left for each man to live? What if an angel should appear to-day at
+sunset and proclaim in a voice that should reach from world's center to
+world's rim, "To-morrow at set of sun this globe and all its race of
+sentient life shall be folded up like a scroll and effaced from heaven's
+chart!"</p>
+
+<p>What would we all begin to do then, I wonder? I think that everything
+would be forgotten but love. Envy and hatred, covetousness, jealousy,
+ambition, selfishness and cruelty would find no place in the hearts of
+men. We would improve love's latest opportunity to be kind one to
+another, tender-hearted and merciful. The husband would not be harsh
+with his wife, nor the wife show waspish temper to her husband, if the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+last day had come for both. The father would not strike his boy in
+uncontrolled temper, nor the mother rebuke her careless child, if the
+knowledge that the end of love's opportunity lay between the uplifted
+hand and the culprit. We should all be loving and fond and sweet if we
+only knew. My dear, this very thought, carried out, is but another fog
+horn. Perhaps death is already near, and the brazen clamor in our hearts
+which takes shape of an uneasy conscience or of a nameless dread is but
+the warning in the fog that we are close upon the fatal reef. Ah, the
+air is full of them! They sound in every waking moment, they mingle with
+our dreams, they greet our opening eyes, they accompany us when the
+tired lids fall in slumber. The shore is lined with them and their
+warning is as ceaseless as the beat of time's receding waves.</p>
+
+<p>But of what use is a fog horn to a vessel that gives no heed? Why uplift
+them on dangerous reefs if the ship's crew sleeps through their warning
+and the unconscious captain ignores their hoarse note of alarm?</p>
+
+<p>An unheeded fog horn might as well be silenced, and so, I sometimes
+think, if we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> allow our hearts to grow callous to the call that
+conscience makes, why not be thankful when the warning ceases and
+silence follows the useless repetition of an unavailing appeal? If I am
+to be shipwrecked at last I think I would rather run upon the reefs
+without warning than to drift to destruction to the mocking cadence of
+an alarm I would not heed. To go down with the sound in my ears of an
+admonition that might have saved me had I but listened would be the
+hardest sort of dying.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">HER CRADLE.</span></p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+There are tears on the gentian's eyelids,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As they lift them, fringed and fair.</span><br />
+Do they mourn for the vanished brightness<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of my baby's golden hair?</span><br />
+<br />
+There's a cloud a-droop in the heavens<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That shadows their sunny hue.</span><br />
+Does it dream of the lovelight tender<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In my baby's eyes so blue?</span><br />
+<br />
+The golden rod pines in the forest,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The aster pales by the brook.</span><br />
+Do they miss her fairy footfall<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In each dim and flow'ry nook?</span><br />
+<br />
+Now, all through this beautiful weather,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wherever I walk, I weep;</span><br />
+For I think of the desolate cradle<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where my baby lies asleep.</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>The other night, as I was listening to "taps" in a neighboring military
+camp, a longing came over me for a silver bugle of my own, that I might
+blow a message to the drowsy world. We all listen to that fellow up at
+Fort Sheridan, when he gives the command for "lights out!" just because
+he blows it through a bugle. He might come out and say what he had to
+say in tones anywhere between a cornet and a clap of thunder, and the
+effect would be nothing to what it is when the notes filter through a
+silver mouthpiece. And how exquisitely the last strains of that nightly
+call linger on the ear! They melt into the starry glooms, and throb
+through the dim spaces of the woods like golden bubbles or the wavering
+flight of butterflies. Whenever we hear them we think of Grant, asleep
+in his grave by the mighty river, of his work well done, and the rest
+that dropped upon his pain-racked life at last like a soft and rainy
+shadow on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> a thirsty land. We think of hosts of brave men who fill
+soldiers' graves all over this blood-bought heritage of ours. We think
+of hearts that once beat high, for long years silent as stones to all
+our cries and tears. We think of a host of things, solemn and hushed,
+and sacred, and drop to sleep at last with an indistinct purpose in our
+hearts to so conduct ourselves that when the Death Angel blows "taps"
+for us, we shall leave a record behind us to be read through fond,
+regretful tears, and enshrined in golden characters upon the tablets of
+memory.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if I had a bugle instead of a pen, to work with, and if I could
+stand out under the stars on a hushed summer night and deliver my
+message through its silver throat, perhaps the world that reads me might
+be thrilled into earnest purpose more readily than it is when exhorted
+from a pencil point or a quill. The first message I should ring through
+that bugle of mine would be the command, "Don't fret!" However
+comfortless and forlorn you may be, don't add to your own and the
+world's misery by fretting. There never yet was a sorrow that could not
+be lived down; there never yet was one that could be cured by worry.
+When<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> the cows get into the corn and the chickens into the flower-beds,
+the sensible man chases 'em out first, repairs the damage next, and,
+lastly, fastens up the break in the garden wall by which the marauders
+got in. What would you think of a farmer who went into his bedroom to
+pray before he chased out the cows, or of a woman who threw her apron
+over her head and wept long and loud because the hens were scratching up
+her pink roots, instead of "shooing" them a half-mile away with a broom?
+Most troubles come upon us as the cattle and the hens get into the corn
+and the garden patch, through a broken fence or a carelessly unguarded
+gate. It is our own fault half the time that we are tormented, and the
+sooner we repair the damage and mend the fence, the better. Time spent
+in useless bewailing, in worry and disquietude, is lost time, and while
+we wait the mischief thickens. Take life's trials one by one, as the
+handful of heroes met the host at Thermopylae, and you will slay them
+all; but allow them to marshal themselves on a broad field while you are
+crying over their coming or praying for deliverance, instead of arming
+yourselves to meet them, and they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> will make captives of you and keep
+you forever in the dungeon of tears. Is your husband too poor to buy you
+all the fine clothes you want, or to keep a carriage, or to surround you
+with pleasant society and congenial friends? Very well, that is
+certainly too bad, but what's the use of being forever in the dumps
+about it? Get up and help him keep the cows out of the corn, and perhaps
+you'll have a golden harvest yet. A sullen, discontented wife is a
+millstone around any man's neck, and he may be thankful when the good
+Lord delivers him from her. Whatsoever is worth having in this world's
+gifts is worth working for, and wedlock is like an ox-team at the plow.
+If the off-ox won't pull with the nigh one, it has no claim with him
+upon the possible future of a comfortable stall and a full bin. Out upon
+you, then, Madam Gruntle, if you sulk, and pout and fret your days away
+because your husband is a poor man and spends most of his time chasing
+the cattle, calamity and failure out of his wheat patch. He may possibly
+be one of fortune's numerous ne'er-do-wells, but in that case all the
+more reason you should not fail him. Bent reeds need careful handling,
+and smoking flax gentle tending, else they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> will perish on your hands
+and disappoint both you and heaven. All the more reason that you should
+be cheery and strong and ready to do your part, if the man you married,
+because you dearly loved him (remember!) is unable to do all that he
+promised. That is, always provided he is weak and unfortunate, rather
+than desperately wicked. A woman has no call to stand by any man if he
+is a wretch and shows no desire to be anything else. The Lord himself
+never helped a sinner until he showed some desire to be saved. Less
+repining, then, a little more forbearance with one another's
+shortcomings, and a little more loyalty to the promise "for better or
+for worse," will ease up much of the burden of dissatisfied and
+disappointed wedlock.</p>
+
+<p>Another message that I should blow through that bugle, if I had it at my
+lips to-night, would be: "Be true!" And I should ring it out so long and
+loud, I think, that the moon would stop to listen, and the sleepy heads
+in every home in the land would rise from their pillows like
+night-capped crocuses out of the snow. For heaven's sake, if you have a
+principle or a friend, be true to them. Make up your mind,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> whether or
+no your principle is solid and has God and justice on its side, and then
+be true to it right down to death, or, what is harder, through
+misunderstanding and obloquy. And if you have a friend, such as God
+sometimes gives a woman or a man, faithful through all betiding, staunch
+in your defense and tender in your blame, stand true to that friend
+until the grave's green canopy is spread between you. He may be
+unpopular and unfortunate, and all the feather-headed crew of society
+may ignore him, but if you have ever tested his worth as a friend, stand
+up for him, and stand by him forever. The sun may go down upon his
+fortunes, and calumny may cloud his name, and you may know in your heart
+that more than half the world says about him is true, but stand by the
+man who has once been your true friend. Ingratitude is the blackest
+crime that preys upon the human soul. The forgetfulness of a favor, or
+the effacement of a bond sealed with an obligation, is capable only to
+weak and cowardly natures.</p>
+
+<p>If you have a conviction, and are conscientious in the belief that you
+are right, be true to your professions. If you are a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> rebel, be a rebel
+out and out, and don't be a goat to leap nimbly back and forth over the
+fence. Never apologize for either your faith or your profession, unless
+you have reason to be ashamed of it; and, if you are ashamed of it,
+renounce it and get one that will need no apology.</p>
+
+<p>There are lots of other messages I would like to stand on a hill and
+blow through a bugle, but the weather is too warm to admit of further
+effort just now; so we'll postpone the topic for another hearing.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I sat in a fashionable church the other day and listened to a sermon on
+"The Prodigal Son." How often I have heard the same old story told in
+the same old way. How familiar I have become with the kind father, the
+bad son, refreshingly human heir, the veal and the ring! But the last
+time I heard the story I felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to rise
+up in meeting and ask the question, "How does the treatment accorded to
+the prodigal son match the treatment we mete out to the prodigal
+daughter?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>How far out of our way do we go to accompany his sister on her homeward
+faring after a season spent among the swine and the husks?</p>
+
+<p>Do we put an 18-karat ring on her poor little soiled finger and place
+her at the head of our table, even if by good chance she gains an
+entrance to the home? Do we not more often meet her at the back door
+when nobody is looking, rush her through the hallway and consign her to
+the little third story rear room, taking her meals to her ourselves, on
+the sly, that the neighbors may not find out the dreadful fact that she
+is at home again?</p>
+
+<p>"Keep yourself very close," we say to her, "and by no manner of means be
+seen at any of the windows, and you may stay here. You can wear some of
+your virtuous sister's cast-off clothing, and sleep on the lounge in the
+nursery, where the servants never think of going since the little folks
+have grown up, but you must be very penitent, and very humble, and very
+thankful to God for the mercy you so little deserve."</p>
+
+<p>I think somebody had better write a new parable and call it "The
+Prodigal Daughter." Perhaps a sermon might be preached from it to touch
+the unmoved heart.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>After all there are two sorts of prodigals&mdash;the prodigal who comes home
+because the cash gives out, and the prodigal who comes because his heart
+turns back to the old home with such longing as the thirsty feel for
+water. Neither boy nor girl who comes back for the first-named reason
+should find a maudlin love awaiting, nor partake of any banquet that the
+old folks have had to pay for, but the prodigal who returns because
+there is something left in his or her heart like the music in a shell,
+which nothing can destroy or hush away to silence, be that prodigal
+sinful man or erring woman, should find not only the home doors swung
+wide in welcome, but every doorway in the land wreathed with flowers to
+bid him enter.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>How few people know when to stop. If the preacher knew when to stop
+preaching, how much more satisfactory the result of his sermon might be.
+If the genial fellow knew just when to stop telling his good stories,
+how much keener their relish would be. If the moralizer knew just when
+to stop moralizing,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> how much longer the flavor of his philosophy would
+endure. If the friend knew when to keep still, how grateful his silence
+would be. If the candid creature who so glibly tells of our foibles knew
+when to hold his tongue, how much less strong our impulse to slap him
+would be. If the high-liver knew when to stop eating, how much less sure
+dyspepsia would be. If the popular guest knew when to withdraw, how much
+more regretfully we should see him go. If the politician knew when to
+retire into private life, how much whiter his record would be. If we all
+knew just when to die, and could opportunely bring the event about, how
+much truer our epitaphs would be. The court fool who prayed, "Oh God, be
+merciful to me, a fool!" prayed deeper than he knew, and the man who
+prays, "Oh God, teach me to know when I have said enough," prays deeper
+still.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>You may talk about California all you will, but match, if you can, the
+beauty of spring as it comes to us in these northerly latitudes. There
+is the coy advance and retreat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> of a woman hard to win; there is the
+crescendo and diminuendo of heavenly harmonies; there is the dissolving
+view that glimmers and glows like an opal, or like the mirage of a misty
+sea. I was in California a year ago, in April time. I found the month
+that poets love in full splendor, like a queen who never doffs her
+crown. Violets, roses, lilacs and carnations came all together in a
+riotous rush. One did not have to woo the season; it was already won.
+Like a matron crowned with the mid-splendor of her years, the earth
+received the homage that is due achievement. Nobody caught the sound of
+the first robin on a rainy morning and heralded it with a shout; the
+first robin, like the first principle in creation, never existed, for
+the reason that he was always there. There were no foretellings of green
+along the watercourses; no prophetic thrills of violets in the air; no
+uplifting of the hypatica's downy head above the lattice of fuzzy
+leaves; everything was right where you discovered it, and had been all
+the year round. Without beginning and without end, spring exists
+forever, like a picture bound within a book, in the lovely land of the
+Gringos. But walk out some April morning in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> suburbs that surround
+Chicago. Catch the tonic of the air, like wine ever so delicately
+chilled with ice. View the lake, like a gentian flower fringed with a
+horizon fine as silk. Scrape away the leaves and hail the valiant Robin
+Hood in his suit of green, leading his legion upward to the sun. Without
+the sound of a footfall or the gleam of a lance, they come to take
+possession of the earth. Woo the violet to turn her dewy eye upon you,
+and listen to the minstrel in the tower, where the winds are harping to
+the new buds. Mark the maple twigs, like silhouettes cut in coral, and
+the sheath of the wood lily, like a ribbon half unrolled. Rejoice in the
+flash of the blue bird's wing as it startles the still air, and then say
+to me, if you dare, that you prefer any other climate to this one that
+belts the zone of these northern lakes.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Thank the Lord, all ye who can call yourselves healthy. The day has gone
+by for physically delicate women. This age demands Hebes and young
+Venuses with ample waists and veritable muscles. Specked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> fruit and
+specked people go in the same category in the popular taste. To the
+question, "How are you to-day?" I for one, always feel like replying in
+the words of an old Irish servant we once had (God rest her faithful
+soul wherever it be this windy day!), "First-rate, glory be to God!" It
+is such a grand thing to be well and strong, to feel that your soul is
+riding on its way to glory in a chariot, and not in a broken-down old
+mud-cart. Talk about happiness! Why, a well beggar has a better time of
+it than a sick king, any day. If, then, like a bird, your strong wing
+uplifts you above the countless shafts of pain which that grim old
+sportsman, Death, is ever aiming at poor humanity, count yourself an
+ingrate if the song of thanksgiving is not always welling from your
+heart like the constant song of a bobolink singing for very joy above
+the clover.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>What would be thought of a ship that was launched from its docks with
+flourish of music and flowing wine, built to sail the roughest and
+deepest sea, yet manned for an unending cruise along shore? Never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+leaving harbor for dread of storm. Never swinging out of the land-girt
+bay because over the bar, the waters were deep and rough. You would say
+of such a ship that its captain was a coward and the company that built
+it were fools.</p>
+
+<p>And yet these souls of ours were fashioned for bottomless soundings.
+There is no created thing that draws as deep as the soul of man; our
+life lies straight across the ocean and not along shore, but we are
+afraid to venture; we hang upon the coast and explore shallow lagoons or
+swing at anchor in idle bays. Some of us strike the keel into riches and
+cruise about therein, like men-of-war in a narrow river. Some of us are
+contented all our days to ride at anchor in the becalmed waters of
+selfish ease. There are guns at every port-hole of the ship we sail, but
+we use them for pegs to hang clothes upon, or pigeon-holes to stack full
+of idle hours. We shall never smell powder, although the magazine is
+stocked with holy wrath wherewith to fight the devil and his deeds. When
+I see a man strolling along at his ease, while under his very nose some
+brute is maltreating a horse, or some coward venting his ignoble wrath<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+upon a creature more helpless than he, whether it be a child or a dog, I
+involuntarily think of a double-decked whaler content to fish for
+minnows. Their uselessness in the world is more apparent than the
+uselessness of a Cunarder in a park pond.</p>
+
+<p>What did God give you muscle and girth and brain for, if not to launch
+you on the high seas? Up and away with you then into the deep soundings
+where you belong, oh, belittled soul! Find the work to do for which you
+were fitted and do it, or else run yourself on the first convenient snag
+and founder.</p>
+
+<p>Some great writer has said that we ought to begin life as at the source
+of a river, growing deeper every league to the sea, whereas, in fact,
+thousands enter the river at its mouth, and sail inland, finding less
+and less water every day, until in old age they lie shrunk and gasping
+upon dry ground.</p>
+
+<p>But there are more who do not sail at all than there are of those who
+make the mistake of sailing up stream. There are the women who devote
+their lives to the petty business of pleasing worthless men. What
+progress do they make even inland? With sails set and brassy stanchions
+polished to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> the similitude of gold, they hover a lifetime chained to a
+dock and decay of their own uselessness at last, like keels that are
+mud-slugged. It is not the most profitable thing in the world to please.
+Suppose it shall please the inmates of a bedlam-house to see you set
+fire to your clothing and burn to death, or break your bones one by one
+upon a rack, or otherwise destroy your bodily parts that the poor
+lunatics might be entertained. Would it pay to be pleasing to such an
+audience at such a sacrifice? But the destruction of the loveliest body
+in the world is nothing compared to the demoralization of soul that
+takes place when women subvert everything lofty and noble within their
+nature to win the transient regard of a few worthless men of the world.
+They learn to smoke cigarettes because such men profess to like to see a
+pretty woman affect the toughness of a rowdy. They drink in public
+places and barter their honor all too often for handsome clothes in
+which to make a vain parade, all to please some heathen man, who in
+reality counts them a great way inferior to the value of a good horse.
+The right sort of a sweetheart, my dear, never desires to bring a woman
+down<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> to his own level. He prefers to put her on a pedestal and say his
+prayers to her. Never think that you are winning an admiration that
+counts for much if you have to abate one whit of your womanhood to win
+it. Every time I see a woman drinking in a public resort, making herself
+conspicuous by loud talk and louder laughter, I think of some fair ship
+that should be making for the eternal city, with all its snow-white
+canvas set, rotting at its docks, or cruising, arm's length from a
+barren land. We were put into this world with a clean way bill for
+another port than this. Across the ocean of life our way lies, straight
+to the harbor of the city of gold. We are freighted with a consignment
+from quarter-deck to keel which is bound to be delivered sooner or later
+at the great master's wharf. Let us be alert, then, to recognize the
+seriousness of our own destinies and content ourselves no longer with
+shallow soundings. Spread the sails, weigh the anchor and point the prow
+for the country that lies the other side a deep and restless sea. Sooner
+or later the voyage must be made; let us make it, then, while the timber
+is stanch and the rudder true. With a resolute will at the wheel, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+the great God himself to furnish the chart, our ship shall weather the
+wildest gale and find entrance at last to the harbor of peace.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>When you look at a picture and find it good or bad, as the case may be,
+whom do you praise or blame&mdash;the owner of the picture or the artist who
+painted it? When you hear a strain of music and are either lifted to
+heaven or cast into the other place by its harmonies or its discord,
+whom do you thank or curse for the benefaction or the infliction,
+whichever it may have proved to be&mdash;the man who wrote the score or the
+music dealer who sold it? You go to a restaurant and order spring
+chicken which turns out to be the primeval fowl. Who is to blame&mdash;the
+waiter who serves it or the business man of the concern who does the
+marketing? And so when you encounter the bad boy, whom do you hold
+responsible for his badness&mdash;the boy himself or the mother who trained
+him? I declare, as I look about me from day to day and see the men and
+women who play so poor a part in life, it is not the poverty of their
+performance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> that astonishes me so much as the fact that it is as good
+as it is.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I did think I would keep out of the controversy on the low-neck dress
+question. But there is just one thing I want to say. Did you ever know a
+sweet young girl yet, one who was rightly trained and modestly brought
+up, who took to decollete dresses naturally? Is not the first wearing of
+one a trial, and a special ordeal? It is after the bloom is off the
+peach that a young woman is willing to show her pretty shoulders and
+neck to the crowd; and who cares much for a rubbed plum or a brushed
+peach? I cannot imagine a sweet, wholesome-hearted woman, be she young
+or old, divesting herself of half her clothes and thrusting herself upon
+the notice of ribald men. I can sooner imagine a rose tree bearing frog.
+The conjunction is not possible. The cheek that will blush at the story
+of repentant shame, that will flame with indignant protest when the
+skirts of a Magdalene brush too near, yet deepens not its rose at
+thought of uncovering neck and bust in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> crowded theater or public
+reception is not the cheek of modest and natural womanhood. It is not
+necessary to be a prude or a skinny old harridan either, to inveigh
+against the custom. I know full well how contemptible the affectations
+and hypocrisies of life are. Half that is yielded to evil was meant for
+good. The high chancellor of Hades has put his seal on much that was
+originally invoiced for the Lord's own people. But there are some things
+so palpably shameless that to argue about them is like trying to prove
+by demonstration that a crow is white. It needs no argument.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">THE VETERANS.</span></p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+Scarce had the bugle note sounded<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For the call of their last defeat;</span><br />
+And still on the lowland meadow<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lie the prints of their quick retreat.</span><br />
+<br />
+Above us the bright skies sparkle,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And around us the same winds blow</span><br />
+That rippled their golden banners<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In that battle so long ago,</span><br />
+<br />
+When the southwind challenged winter,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the rose-ranks routed the snow,</span><br />
+And the hosts of tiny gold coats<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sprang up from their campfires below,</span><br />
+<br />
+To charge on the insolent frost king,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And shatter his lance of ice,</span><br />
+While back to the desolate northland<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They wheeled him about in a trice.</span><br />
+<br />
+The battle is hardly ended,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The victory only begun,</span><br />
+Yet I saw the gray-bearded vet'rans,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To-day, sitting out in the sun.</span><br />
+<br />
+They nod by wind-rippled rivers,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They shake in the shade of the oak,</span><br />
+And all the day long they murmur<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And whisper, and gossip, and croak.</span><br />
+<br />
+And often in wondering rapture,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They recount the charge they made,</span><br />
+When down from the windy hillsides,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And up through the dewy glade,</span><br />
+<br />
+The sheen of their golden bonnets<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shone out from the green of the leaves,</span><br />
+Like the flight of a glancing swallow,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or the flash of a wave on the seas.</span><br />
+<br />
+They muse in sleepy contentment,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or flutter in endless dispute.</span><br />
+For this was a brave cadet, sir,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And that one a crippled recruit.</span><br />
+<br />
+Fight over again your battles,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O veterans, withered and gray;</span><br />
+For a band of northwind chasseurs<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To-morrow shall blow you away.</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p>
+<p>Once upon a time it came to pass that a woman, being weary with much
+running to and fro, fell asleep and dreamed a dream.</p>
+
+<p>And in her dream she beheld a mighty host, more than man could number.
+And of that host, all were women, and spake with varying tongues.</p>
+
+<p>And they bent the body, and sitting on hard benches wailed mightily, so
+that the air was full of the sound of lamentation, like a garden that
+wooeth many bees.</p>
+
+<p>And the woman who dreamed, being tender of heart and disposed kindly
+toward the suffering ones, lifted up her voice saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Why bendest thou the body, oh, daughters of despair, and why art thine
+eyelids red with tears?</p>
+
+<p>"Yea, why rockest thou like boats that find no anchor, and like poplars
+which the north wind smiteth?"</p>
+
+<p>And one from among the host greater than man could number made answer,
+saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldst know who we are, and why we spend our days like a weaver's
+shuttle that flitteth to and fro in a web of tears?</p>
+
+<p>"Behold we are the faithless and unregenerate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> handmaids who have served
+thee, and women like unto thee, bringing desolation unto thy larders,
+and gray hairs among the braids with which nature hath crowned thee.</p>
+
+<p>"Yea, verily, by reason of our misdemeanors lift we the voice of
+lamentation in a land that knoweth not comfort."</p>
+
+<p>Now, the woman who dreamed, being full of amazement, replied anon, and
+these were the words that fell from her lips:</p>
+
+<p>"Sayest thou so? And dwellest thou and thy sisters in Hades by reason of
+the evil thou hast wrought?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, not forever," replied she who had spoken. "We remain but for a
+season, that our remorse may cleanse our record before we go hence to
+sit with the blessed ones in glory.</p>
+
+<p>"Not from everlasting unto everlasting is the duration of the penalty we
+pay for what we have done unto thee, else were there no peace between
+the stars by reason of our torment and our tears."</p>
+
+<p>And the woman who dreamed beheld many whose fame yet lingered within the
+shadows of her home.</p>
+
+<p>There was Ann, the fumble-witted, who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> piled the backyard high with
+broken china, yet stayed not her hand when rebuked therefor.</p>
+
+<p>There was Sarah, the high-headed, who refused to clean the paint because
+she had dwelt long in the tents of such as hired the housecleaning done
+by other hands, that the labors of the handmaid might be few;</p>
+
+<p>Yea, verily, with such as believed that Sarah and her ilk might have
+time wherein to be merry rather than toil.</p>
+
+<p>There was Karen, the Swede, who wrapped the bread in her petticoat and
+refused to be convinced of the error of her ways.</p>
+
+<p>There was Jane, the Erinite, who broke the pump, and Caroline, the
+Teuton, who combed her locks with the comb of the woman who dreamed.</p>
+
+<p>There was Adaline, the hoosier, who failed to answer the summons of the
+stranger who knocked at the gates unless she were in full dress and
+carried a perfumed handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>There was Louise, who smote the youngest born of the household because
+he prattled of her dealings with the frequent cousin who called often
+and sought to deplete the larder.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>There was the girl who desired her evenings out and never came home
+before cock crow.</p>
+
+<p>There was the girl who threw up her place in the family of the woman who
+dreamed because she was asked to hurry her ways.</p>
+
+<p>There was the girl who wore the hose of her mistress, and took it as an
+affront when asked to desist.</p>
+
+<p>There was the girl who swore when the chariot of the sometime guest drew
+nigh, and likewise the girl who refused to remain over night in a
+dwelling where she was summoned to serve by means of a call bell.</p>
+
+<p>There was the girl who found it too lonesome in the country and left the
+garments in the washtub that she might hie her to the great city, the
+social center of which she was the joy and the pride.</p>
+
+<p>There was the girl who was made mad by means of the request that she
+wash her hands before breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>There was the girl who entertained her callers in the drawing-room while
+the family was afar off, sojourning in the hills or by the waves of the
+sea;</p>
+
+<p>Yea, who thought it no evil to bring forth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> the flesh-pot and the
+brandied comfit, that the heart of the district policeman might leap
+thereat, as the young buck leapeth at sight of the water courses.</p>
+
+<p>There was also the girl who wasted, and the girl who stole; the girl who
+never tried, and the girl who never cared.</p>
+
+<p>And seeing the multitude the spirit of the woman who dreamed arose
+within her and she asked of a certain veiled one who seemed to be in
+charge:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, O shrouded one, is there never to be any diminution in the
+throng that cometh to take their abode in these halls of penitential
+regret?"</p>
+
+<p>And the spirit in charge made answer, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"No, nor never shall be while fools live and folly thrives.</p>
+
+<p>"It is by reason of the babbling of busy-bodies that havoc has overtaken
+the land of thy forefathers.</p>
+
+<p>"There is honor in faithful service, and an uncorruptible crown awaiteth
+the forehead of her who serveth well.</p>
+
+<p>"It is no disgrace to the comely daughters of men who toil and are put
+to that they bring in the wherewithal to fill the mouths of the children
+who call them father&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>"It is no disgrace, I say unto you, if such maidens take unto themselves
+the position of servants in the family of him who prospereth,</p>
+
+<p>"Remembering that one who lived long since and has slept these many
+years in the tomb of his fathers, spake truly when he uttered these
+words, albeit framed in rhyme:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Honor and shame from no condition rise;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Act well your part, there all the honor lies."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>And it came to pass that the woman who dreamed took comfort to herself
+by reason of her dream.</p>
+
+<p>And she arose from slumber like a strong man who desireth to run a race.</p>
+
+<p>And buckling on more tightly the armor wherein she moved, yea, even with
+a free hand buttoning the boot and drawing the string, she cogitated
+unto herself, and these were the words of her cogitation:</p>
+
+<p>"Behold, I will learn a new wisdom that I may be unto my handmaids a
+friend rather than a taskmistress, that in so doing I may win unto my
+household the damsel who hath intelligence. And my treatment of her
+shall be such that many wise ones who call that damsel friend shall
+decide to do even as she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> hath done and choose domestic service with a
+woman who is kind even to the showing of interest in her handmaid's
+affairs, rather than linger in bondage with the shop girl and her who
+rattles the tinkling keys of the typewriter machine.</p>
+
+<p>"So doing, my days shall increase mightily in the land, as also the days
+of her who cometh after me."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Women are either the noblest creation of God or the meanest. A good
+woman is little less than an angel; a bad woman is considerably more
+than a devil. And by bad women I do not mean women who drink, or steal,
+or frequent brothels. The chief weapon of a bad woman is her tongue.
+With a lie she can do more deadly work than the fellow in the bible did
+with the jawbone of an ass. Untruth is the fundamental strata of all
+evil in a bad woman's nature, and with it she is more to be dreaded than
+many men with revolvers. There is absolutely no protection from a lie.
+The courts cannot protect from its venom, and to kill a defamer and a
+falsifier is not yet adjudged as legalized slaughter.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>There is one awfully homely woman in Chicago. I met her the other day
+over in Blank's art gallery. Our acquaintance was brief but sensational.
+I looked at her, tucked her into my handbag and wept. She didn't seem to
+mind it, and when, a few hours later, in the seclusion of my chamber, I
+took her out of the bag and looked at her again, she was more hideous
+than before.</p>
+
+<p>"You horrible creature!" said I. "If you look like me, better that the
+uttermost depths of the sea had me."</p>
+
+<p>"But I do look like you," said she, and her voice was weak and low by
+reason of prolonged exposure to the sun and air, "and Mr. Blank says I
+will finish up very nicely."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to tell me," I asked, "that my nose is as big as yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it is," said she; "pictures cannot lie. But comfort yourself
+with the assurance that a large nose is always an indication of
+intelligence."</p>
+
+<p>"Intelligence be blessed!" said I, for I was getting excited;
+"intelligence without beauty is like bread without butter, or a peacock<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+without a tail! If I possess such a nose as yours, madam, I shall take
+to tract-distributing, galoshes and a cotton umbrella, and forget that I
+was ever human."</p>
+
+<p>"You talk wildly, as all the rest of them do," said my thin companion.
+"Listen, for my time on earth is short, I am rapidly fading away, and
+what I say must be said briefly. If you look about you you will see that
+there exists, more or less hidden in every breast, the belief of one's
+own beauty. The mirror, although a faithful friend, can never quite
+disabuse the mind of that belief, and when the honest camera holds up
+the actual presentation of one's self as an incontrovertible fact, the
+disappointment is keen and hard to bear."</p>
+
+<p>"All that may be true," said I, "but not all your assertions can ever
+make me believe that that dusky mass of hair, brushed back so wildly
+from those beetling brows, is like my own. You know that mine is soft
+and brown, and yours looks like the bristles of an enraged stove brush."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the way they all talk," responded the dissolving view, "but you
+do not stop to consider that under the artist's pencil the shadows will
+all be toned and softened.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> And let me say right here, that that
+'beetling brow' is a sign of rare intelligence, much more to be desired
+than the lower and more&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, right there!" I interrupted. "It is not necessary to have a brow
+like a plate-glass show-window, or like an overhanging cliff, or like a
+granite paving-stone, to denote intelligence! No, my friend, do not try
+to lift this shadow from my soul. That mouth that looks like a dark
+biscuit, that nose that looks like a promontory overhanging an unseen
+sea, that hair that looks like the ruff of an excited chicken, that brow
+that looks like a skating-rink, all make me sad. I shall never have my
+picture taken again. If I look like that it is time I died. In the round
+of an eventful life I may forget that I even saw you, but until I do I
+am a tired woman. My mirror may assuage my sorrow, for that either lies
+or catches me from a different point of view. Vanish then, oh, yellow
+shade of an unhappy reality. Back to oblivion with you, and heaven grant
+I never look upon your like again!" So saying, I calmly held the poor
+but hideous creature in the flame of a gas-jet and smilingly cremated
+her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>A fairer day than last Sunday was never cradled to rest behind the
+curtains of night. It began with a flute obligato of sunrise, orbed
+itself into a full orchestra wherein color took the part of first and
+second violins, and declined at last into the hush of sunset like the
+mellow notes of a cello under old Paul Schessling's master touch. Such
+days visit the earth rarely. They are advance sheets of a story that is
+going to be told in heaven; preludes to a song that we shall hear in its
+perfection only when we have got through with the clattering discords of
+time. Thank God for all such days. They do us more good than we know.
+The sight of the woods, adorned as only queens are adorned for the court
+of the king, the sound of falling leaves and lonely bird songs, of
+hidden lutes, of unseen brooks, tremulous and sweet and low under the
+russet shadows, uplift our souls and help us to forget, for the time
+being at least, how tired we are, how worn with the fret of sordid toil
+and how tormented and misjudged and calumniated we are by those who fain
+would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> do us harm. I think if I had time to do some of the things I want
+to do the first consummation of that happy time would be to build me a
+little cabin in the woods, where, in utter loneliness, I could forget
+how full the world is growing to be of folks and how prone they are to
+do each other harm and hinder rather than help each other on the stony
+way to heaven.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>The other evening, while sitting in the gallery of the Auditorium and
+looking over the balcony edge at the crowd waiting for the curtain to
+rise, a strange thought came to my mind. How could hell be more quickly
+created than by the unmasking of such a crowd as this? Suddenly remove
+from humanity all power of self-control and conventional dissimulation;
+force men and women to be natural, and act out every evil impulse latent
+in their souls, and could Dante himself portray a blacker Inferno? The
+man whose heart is full of murderous hatred&mdash;tear off the mask that
+hides his perturbed soul, and what a demon would look forth! The woman
+behind whose amiable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> seeming lurks malicious envy and snarling temper
+and crafty deceit&mdash;what a pandemonium would ensue when such passion
+broke forth like straining dogs from the leash! The old man with the
+saintly face and the crown of hoary hair&mdash;could an open cage of foul
+birds send forth a blacker brood than should fly out from his soul when
+some omnipotent hand unlatched the bars of its prison and let the
+unclean thoughts go free? The young man with the perfumed breath and the
+suave and courtly manner&mdash;does any storied hell hold captive blacker
+demons than the cruel selfishness, the impurities and the secret vices
+that walk to and fro in his soul like tigers behind their bars? The
+young girl with face like a rose and the form of a Juno&mdash;could anything
+that hades holds strike greater dismay to the hearts of men than the
+unmasking of her hidden thoughts? Ah, when the hour strikes for
+unmasking time in life's parade ball, when death steps forth and with
+cool, relentless touch unties the knot that holds the silken thing in
+place that has hidden our true selves from our beautiful seeming, we
+shall find no more fiery hell awaiting us than that we have carried so
+long in our hearts.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>I would not like to be regarded as a pessimist from the writing of such
+a paragraph as the above. Sometimes I seek to turn my thoughts upon the
+crowd and unmask the angel as well as the demon. But I find that the
+angels, as a general thing, wear no face concealers. They go disguised
+in poor clothes and scant bravery of attire, but the angel within them
+is like a singing bird rather than like a silent and chained beast. It
+reveals itself in songs, like a caged lark. It looks from out the window
+of the eyes in loving glances and tender smiles; it manifests itself in
+sweet and cheerful service, like the sunshine that can neither be hidden
+nor concealed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Of all the pleasant things to look upon in this fair earth, I sometimes
+query which is the best, a little child, a fruit orchard in early June,
+or a young girl. I think the latter carries the day. Did you ever watch
+a flock of birds sitting for a moment on the mossy gable of a sloping
+roof? How they flutter and fuss and chirp; how they preen their delicate
+feathers and get all mixed up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> with the sunshine and the shadow, until
+which is bird and which is sunbeam one can scarcely tell. There is a
+flock of girls with whom I ride every morning, and they make me think of
+birds and sunbeams. They are so bewitching with their changeful moods
+and graces that I sit and watch them as one listens to the twitter of
+swallows. They sweeten up life, these girls, as sugar sweetens dough;
+they fill it with music as sleigh bells fill a winter night. God bless
+the girls, the bonnie, sweet and winsome girls, and may womanhood be for
+them but as the "swell of some sweet time," morning gliding into noon,
+May merging into June.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>There are so many things in this world to be tired of! The poor little
+persecuted boy in pinafores, sent to school to get him out of the way,
+doomed to dangle his plump legs all day long from a hard bench, rubbing
+his grimy knuckles into his sleepy blue eyes and wondering if eternity
+can last any longer than a public school session, grows no more tired of
+watching the flies on the ceiling and the shadows on the wall than some
+folks get<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> of life. Let me mention a few of the things I, for one, am
+horribly tired of, and see if before my bead is half strung you do not
+look up from the strand and cry, "Amber, I am with you!"</p>
+
+<p>My dear, I am tired to-day of civilization and all modern improvements.
+I am tired of the speaking tube within my chamber where the new girl and
+myself wage daily our battle of the new Babel. She speaks Volapuk, and I
+do not, consequently she takes my demand for coal as an insult or an
+encouraging remark, just as the mood may be upon her, and pays no more
+attention to my request for drinking water than the unweaned child pays
+to the sighing wind. I am tired of sewer gas and what the scientists
+call "bacteria" and "germs." I am tired of going about with frescoed
+tonsils, the result of the three. I am tired of gargling my own throat
+and the throats of my helpless babes, and the throat of the casual
+visitor within my gates, with diluted phenic acid to ward off deadly
+disease. I am tired of nosing drains and buying copperas and hounding
+the latent plumber that he adjust the water-pipes. I am tired of boiling
+the cistern<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> water and waiting for it to cool. I am tired of skipping
+from Dan to Beersheba daily for men to remove the tin-cans, the ashes
+and the unsightly rubbish that have emerged from long retirement
+underneath the snow. I am tired of imploring the small boy to keep his
+mother's chickens off my porch. I am tired of digging graves upon the
+common wherein to bury useless potato-parings, the unsightly
+cheese-rind, and the shattered egg-shell. I am tired of being told that
+my neighbor's calf and my neighbor's pet cat, and my neighbor's blooded
+stock of poultry are dying because of the copperas I scatter broadcast
+about the mouth of drains. I am tired of being a martyr to hygiene and a
+monomaniac on the subject of sanitary science. I am tired of sharpening
+lead pencils. I am tired of speaking pleasantly when I want to be cross.
+I am tired of the ceaseless grind of life, which like the upper and
+nether mill-stones, wears the heart to powder and the spirit to dust. I
+am tired of being told that the mark on my left ear is a spot of soil,
+and of being implored in thrilling whispers to wipe it away. I am tired
+of last year's seed-pods in spring gardens and of all two-legged
+donkeys. I am tired of awaiting a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> change in the methods of doing
+business around at the postoffice, and for the dawn of that blessed day
+when I shall be permitted to dance upon the grave of the aged being who
+peddles stamps at the retail window. I am tired of hosts of things
+besides, but have no time to enumerate them all to-day.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I have tested the rainy weather dress reform. It was pouring when I
+started from my humble home in the morning, and in spite of the prayers
+of the Young Person and the sobs of the "Martyr," I arrayed myself in my
+new, highly sensible and demoniacally ugly suit and weathered the
+elements. Within two hours it stopped raining; the sun came out and the
+streets filled with festively attired men and women, and where was I?
+Stranded on a clear day in garments befitting a castaway! My flannel
+dress, short skirts and top-boots wasted on fair weather. "In the name
+of heaven," exclaimed a friend, as I bore down upon him beneath a
+cloudless sky, "what have you got on?" "Go home! for the love of
+humanity, go home!" said another. And what was I to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> do? Await another
+storm like a crab in its shell, or venture forth and become the byword
+of an overwrought populace, the scorn of old men and matrons? Next time
+I start out in a reform dress I will take along the robes of
+civilization in a grip-sack.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>There is something that is getting to be awfully scarce in this world.
+Shall I tell you what it is? It is girls. That is what is missing out of
+the sentient, breathing, living world just now. We have lots of young
+ladies and lots of society misses, but the sweet, old-fashioned girls of
+ever so long ago are vanished with the poke bonnets and the cinnamon
+cookies. Let me enumerate a few of the kinds of girls that are wanted.
+In the first place we want home girls&mdash;girls who are mothers' right
+hand; girls who can cuddle the little ones next best to mamma, and
+smooth out the tangles in the domestic skein when things get twisted;
+girls whom father takes comfort in for something better than beauty, and
+the big brothers are proud of for something that outranks the ability to
+dance or shine in society. Next, we want girls of sense&mdash;girls who have
+a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> standard of their own regardless of conventionalities, and are
+independent enough to live up to it; girls who simply won't wear a
+trailing dress on the street to gather up microbes and all sorts of
+defilement; girls who won't wear a high hat to the theater, or lacerate
+their feet and endanger their health with high heels and corsets; girls
+who will wear what is pretty and becoming and snap their fingers at the
+dictates of fashion when fashion is horrid and silly. And we want good
+girls&mdash;girls who are sweet, right straight out from the heart to the
+lips; innocent and pure and simple girls with less knowledge of sin and
+duplicity and evil-doing at twenty than the pert little school girl at
+ten has all too often; girls who say their prayers and read their Bibles
+and love God and keep his commandments. (We want these girls "awful
+bad!") And we want careful girls and prudent girls, who think enough of
+the generous father who toils to maintain them in comfort, and of the
+gentle mother who denies herself much that they may have so many pretty
+things, to count the cost and draw the line between the essentials and
+the non-essentials; girls who strive to save and not to spend; girls<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+who are unselfish and eager to be a joy and a comfort in the home rather
+than an expensive and a useless burden. We want girls with hearts&mdash;girls
+who are full of tenderness and sympathy, with tears that flow for other
+people's ills, and smiles that light outward their own beautiful
+thoughts. We have lots of clever girls, and brilliant girls, and witty
+girls. Give us a consignment of jolly girls, warm-hearted and impulsive
+girls; kind and entertaining to their own folks, and with little desire
+to shine in the garish world. With a few such girls scattered around
+life would freshen up for all of us, as the weather does under the spell
+of summer showers. Speed the day when this sort of girls fill the world
+once more, overrunning the spaces where God puts them as climbing roses
+do when they break through the trellis to glimmer and glint above the
+common highway, a blessing and a boon to all who pass them by.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Is there any flower that grows that can compare with the pansy for color
+and richness? Others appeal more closely to the heart with fragrance
+that like a sweet and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> pure soul more than compensates for lack of
+exterior beauty, but in all the gorgeous category none rank this velvet
+flower that lies just now upon my window-sill. There is the purple of
+Queen Sheba mantled in its soft and shiny texture; the gold of Ophir was
+not more sumptuous; the light that breaks at dawn across a reef of
+dove-gray clouds was never more delicate than the violet heart of this
+lovely blossom. When I want to think of the ideal court of kings, of a
+royal meeting-place for blameless scions and unsullied princes of the
+blood, I do not think of old-world palaces and coronation halls&mdash;I think
+rather of a pansy bed in June in full and perfect bloom, a soft wind
+just bending bright heads crowned with crowns that never yet were
+pressed on aching brows, and fluttering mantles of more than royal
+splendor that never yet were wrapped above a corrupt and breaking heart.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">MY ROSE AND MY CHILD.</span></p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+I held in my bosom a beautiful rose,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All gay with the splendor of June;</span><br />
+Its dew-laden petals like sheen of soft snows,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Its blush like the sunshine at noon.</span><br />
+<br />
+But e'en as I held it, I knew it must fade;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Its bloom was as brief as the hour.</span><br />
+The dews of the evening like soft tears were laid<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On the grave of my beauteous flower.</span><br />
+<br />
+I held in my bosom a beautiful child,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The splendor of love in her eyes;</span><br />
+No snow on high hills was more undefiled<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Than her soul in its innocent guise.</span><br />
+<br />
+But I knew that my angel in heaven was missed;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I knew, like my rose, she must go;</span><br />
+So with heartbreak and anguish her sweet lips I kissed&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She sleeps with my rose in the snow.</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>It was not so very long ago that I chanced to overhear a lively young
+woman make this remark about her mother:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mamma is nearly always taken for my sister. She never seems like
+anything more than one of my girl friends."</p>
+
+<p>Poor child, thought I, your state is only another phase of orphanhood,
+for the young life that has no counsel of motherhood is bereft indeed.</p>
+
+<p>No girlish comradeship, however juvenile and delightful it may be, can
+possibly take the place of protecting, counseling, mother-love.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> Not but
+what the sweetest relationship possible exists where the mother keeps
+her heart young and in sympathy with her daughter, but there is
+something else requisite to mother-love.</p>
+
+<p>The best mothers are those who have roomy laps where the big girls love
+to sit while they whisper the confidences they never could reveal to
+sister-mothers. They have all-enfolding arms, these right kind of
+mothers, wherein they gather the tired girl, yes, and the tired boys,
+too, and rock them to rest and peace, long after their "feet touch the
+floor."</p>
+
+<p>They used to tell me I must never sit on anybody's lap after my feet
+reached the carpet, but, thank God, that rule never applied to my
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>You are never afraid of disturbing mother's "beauty sleep" when you come
+in late at night if she is of the good reliable sort, as far removed
+from frisky girl companionship as the moon is from its reflection.</p>
+
+<p>No matter how tardy your home-faring may be she is always up with a
+lunch and a warm fire in winter or a glass of something cool and fresh
+in summer to soothe your overexcited nerves, a thing she cannot do if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+she is forever dancing about with you in your youthful larks. She has a
+way of calming your tempers with a joke and a caress, of which the
+sister-mother never dreams. She has also a way of smoothing your hair,
+which your girl comrade never caught the trick of, for the reason that
+she is kept too busy curling her own love-locks. When your head aches,
+the right sort of mother knows just how to pet you to sleep and leave
+you in a darkened room with a rose on your pillow to greet your waking
+eyes; if you have a bad cold she knows the cuddly way to coax you to
+take bitter medicine. She bathes your feet and dries them on nice warm
+towels. She keeps the younger children from guying you, because your
+nose is red; in short, she does a thousand nice things of which the
+sister-mother has no knack whatever.</p>
+
+<p>When great trouble falls to your share, when sharp betrayal pierces your
+heart, and trusted affection turns to ashes in your hold of what good is
+the juvenile mother with her girlish tremors and tears? You want
+somebody next in tenderness to God, to hold you fast and tight. You want
+somebody who has suffered and grown strong,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> to soothe your breaking
+heart. Somebody who can be silent and brave and steady until your fever
+is passed. The shipwrecked sailor wants a rope rather than a feint of
+throwing one; the shipwrecked soul wants a heart like rock, rather than
+a handclasp and a promise. The sister-mother may be all right to go to
+parties with, but you want something stronger and more steadfast to lean
+upon in time of perplexity. You want a mother in all the holy
+significance of the name. However sweet the tie of sisterhood, it cannot
+be so blessed as the bond of patient, long-suffering, sanctified
+motherhood.</p>
+
+<p>Seek to keep yourself in sympathy with your girls, then, mothers, but be
+content to occupy a generation removed from the path they tread. Don't
+make up in emulation of their beauty; don't seek to win away their beaus
+and outdress them. Don't go decollete to parties where your girls should
+be the reigning belles; don't aim to vie with them in fascination or in
+charm. Be guider and ready counselor, but don't try to be rival. If God
+has given you a girl child, and that child has grown to womanhood,
+accept the condition of things and give over being a society belle
+yourself, abdicating your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> place for the infinitely sweeter one of
+mother. You cannot be the right sort of mother and ignore your duty to
+your child. That duty lies in giving her her rightful place in the line
+of march from which you are crowded out. Let her carry the banner while
+you fall back a little. Watch over her, make things easy for her, smooth
+the little difficulties out of her way, be on hand when she comes home
+tired and excited to soothe her to rest and calm; counsel her how to
+pick her way through the snares that are laid for youth and beauty, be a
+refuge where she can run when the rainy weather sets in, which is sure
+to fall in the summer time of youth, somewhere and somehow. In short, be
+just as sympathetic and chummy and sociable as possible, but at the same
+time make your daughter feel that you are older and stronger and wiser
+than she, by reason of your motherhood, and that next to God you stand
+ready to shield her, to guide her, to receive her in time of trouble, to
+forgive her if she needs forgiveness, and to shrive her if she needs
+confessing. Teach her that your love can never fail, that your heart is
+a rock and a fortress and a shield for her to seek in all life's
+bewilderment, far<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> surer and more steadfast than any other love beneath
+the stars can ever yield.</p>
+
+<p>When I think of all it means to be a mother I tremble to think how far
+short of the standard the best of us fall. I would rather have it said
+of me when I die, "She was a good mother," than that men should get
+together and exploit my deeds as poet, reformer, artist or story-teller.
+I would rather feel the dewfall of a child's loving tear upon my face
+than wear a laureate's crown.</p>
+
+<p>Don't be critical, or censorious, or reserved with your daughters; don't
+hold them far off and cultivate respect and fear rather than love; don't
+be self-assertive and cause them to feel their dependence upon you in an
+unpleasant way; don't be too eager to keep them in the background in
+little things relating to the home, such as giving them no voice in the
+arrangement of the room and the domestic regulations. Indeed, I have
+known more attrition caused in the home circle from this last mentioned
+point of difference between mother and daughters than almost any other.
+I know a family, presided over by a good, unselfish woman, who, as a
+mother, is the most complete failure I ever ran across. Her daughter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> is
+of mature age and pronounced opinions, but she is kept in the background
+and her life rendered most unhappy by the dominant will of the mother
+whose old-fashioned views as to running the house are directly opposed
+to more modern customs. The two wrangle continually over the
+establishment of a dinner hour, the disposal of a light, the drapery of
+a window, the adjustment of furniture, until there is less harmony under
+the roof than there is music in a hurdy-gurdy. How much better it would
+be if that mother would yield a little to the wishes of her daughter;
+give the latter a chance to display her own taste and carry out her
+inclination. I don't believe in the mothers and fathers of grown-up
+daughters always insisting upon the occupancy of the front seats and the
+leadership of the orchestra.</p>
+
+<p>The mother who can preserve the respect of her children without chilling
+their love; who can be one with them, and yet apart, in the sense of
+guiding, aiding and consoling, who can hold their confidence while she
+maintains the superiority of her wisdom, is the happy and successful
+mother. The title is a sacred one, made by the chrism of pain and
+suffering, sanctified by the humanity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> of Christ and set apart as one of
+the three of earth's tenderest utterances: "Mother, home and heaven."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Now that the days draw nigh for the return of the birds to our northern
+woods and dales it is borne in upon me to hold a little "love feast"
+with the boys. You know what a love feast is, if there was ever a
+Methodist in your family. It is a good, cozy talk among the brethren and
+sisters in regard to the best way of putting down the devil, and giving
+the good angels a chance. And if there was ever need of downing the
+devil it is in the particular instance of a boy's inhumanity to birds
+and beasts. I have expressed myself as to horses, and to-day I shall
+talk about birds. On these spring mornings, when the world is enveloped
+in a golden halo, from out of which, like angel voices from the quiet
+depths of heaven, the birds are singing their impromptu of praise,
+imagine a lot of half-grown men and brutal boys going forth with guns
+and sling-shots to break up the concert and murder the choristers. I
+would as soon turn a lot of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> sharp-shooters into a cathedral at early
+mass to bring down the surpliced boys and the chanting novices. I tell
+you, O race of good-for-nothing fathers and mothers, whom God holds
+directly responsible for the bad boys who desecrate this beautiful
+world, you are no more fit for the training of immortal souls than a
+hawk is fitted to teach music to a thrush. You ought to have had a
+bear-skin and been the trainer of cubs. That your boys develop into
+brutes and go to state's prison, and perhaps die at the end of a rope
+eventually, is nobody's fault but your own. If you chance to own a horse
+or a dog you show some care in its training, but God gives you a boy and
+you let him run wild. There is no more reason why a boy should be cruel
+than that a properly-broken colt should kick. The tendency may have been
+born with him, but good training eliminates it to a great extent, if not
+entirely. When I was a woman and lived at home, in the happy days before
+I entered the arena to fight for bread and butter, to say nothing of
+shoe leather and fuel, I used to gather the village boys about me every
+spring and try to sow the good seeds of tenderness with one hand, while
+carefully<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> eliminating the tares with the other. I offered prizes for
+the best record at the end of the summer. I formed classes, the
+membership of which pledged themselves, to a boy, to abstain from
+sling-shots, to cultivate the birds' nests and to withhold their hands
+from the commission of a single deed of cruelty. Many is the gallon of
+ice-cream I have paid for to keep those youngsters in the narrow path of
+rectitude, and many is the time that I have patrolled the woods with my
+boy comrades, keeping watch over the family of a blue-bird or a robin,
+when the alarm went forth that some unregenerate boy was on the rampage.
+All the boys whom I could get to join the club I was sure of, for I know
+the way to a boy's heart, if I can only get the chance at him. For what
+other purpose did nature turn me out a born cook? And why did she make
+me a master hand at doughnuts and turnover pies? I have a large and
+undying faith in the boys, if you will only start them right. The first
+thing a boy needs is a good mother. He can get along without a
+father&mdash;and I was going to say without a God&mdash;for the first few years of
+his life, but he needs a mother. Not a mere nurse maid to look after
+his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> clothes and see that he has plenty to eat at the right intervals,
+but a good, sweet, companionable mother, with a good, soft breast for
+him to cry on and two arms to hug him with. He needs a mother who can
+talk with him and answer his questions, who is not stern and severe, but
+responsive and get-at-able. With such a mother our boys will be gentle
+and our birds will be safe.</p>
+
+<p>Try to think, boys, what a world this would be without any robins, or
+larks, or thrushes; without any songs in the apple trees getting all
+tangled up with the sunshine and the blossoms; without any canaries to
+sing in the window, or any meadow larks to whip out their flutes among
+the clover heads. If you should wake up some morning and experience the
+ghastly silence of a songless world you would want to hire somebody to
+thrash you that you ever used a sling-shot. Do you remember the minister
+down New York way whom they fined for shooting robins? I never wanted to
+get up on a mountain top so much in all my life and shout glory as I did
+over that verdict. I have heard of immorality among ministers, and I
+have heard of hypocrisy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> and lying and all sorts of offenses against
+good taste and morals, but I never heard of anything so contemptibly and
+causelessly mean as for one of God's especial teachers to get up in the
+morning, put on top boots, cross the river in the sunshine and dew of
+early morning, lift his gun, take deliberate aim and bring down a robin.
+If I was the Lord I would never forgive it. Men are not to blame
+sometimes when their blood gets too warm and they do impetuous things,
+but to deliberately descend to the ignominy of shooting a robin and
+calling it sport is to sink too low for justification.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever else you be, boys, be brave. If you must sail in and fight, if
+your superfluous zeal is too much for you, go out in the field and
+square off at a bull. There is some glory in whipping anything bigger
+and stronger than yourself, but to show fight to a bird is a little too
+much like sneaking out and tripping up a cripple in the dark. I am going
+to write down a verse for you to write in your copy books this very day,
+and then good-night to you:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"The bravest are the tenderest;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The loving are the daring."</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Isn't it heavenly to see the primrose around again? And the daffodils?
+And the hyacinths? Last night I went home with a rose in my button which
+cost me just five cents. At that rate, by careful abstaining from
+anything more expensive than a ten-cent lunch, one can go on wearing
+roses until next November. The robins have come back, too, and this
+morning a couple of them awoke me with their "Cheer-up" song. The
+indications are that they are prospecting for spring housekeeping. If
+the cat kills them I shall kill the cat. I shall close my eyes and do
+the deed in the name of mercy, for I detest cats, both two-legged and
+four-legged, and I love robins both feathered and human.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I wonder why it is that the average woman can walk and talk, breathe and
+laugh, suffer and cry, and finally die and be buried, and all the way
+through make such a botch of her life! Why is it that we fall in love,
+so many of us, just on the verge of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> a life that opens like a summer's
+day, and change that life thereby, as a June morning is changed when
+great clouds rush into the sky and obscure the sun? Why are girls so
+proud to parade an engagement ring upon their finger, when the diamond
+is too often the danger-light thrown out above the breakers? Now and
+then, about as rarely as one picks up a ruby on the highway, or finds an
+enchanted swan circling over the duck pond, there is a happy
+marriage&mdash;at least such is the popular inference&mdash;as to the absolute
+certainty of the statement, ask the skeleton closet. I have lived a
+varied sort of life. I have wandered to and fro over the earth to some
+extent; I have known a great many people, and have found happiness in
+many ways, but looking back over all the path to-night and turning my
+little bull's-eye lantern of experience up to the present moment, I can
+neither remember nor record a dozen truly happy marriages. What
+constitutes happiness? Peace. What brings peace? Content. Who is
+contented? Not you and not I. What man or woman of all whom we know can
+we bring out into the full light of day and say of them, "Behold the
+contented one! The restful one! The happy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> pair!" You, my dear, have
+attained the ambition of your youthful dreams. You have married a man
+who dresses you splendidly, who gives you diamonds and never murmurs
+when the bills come in. But are you happy? Do you never walk to and fro
+with the restless countess in the sad old ballad, dreaming of "Alan
+Percy?" Do you never, when all is still, go down into that cemetery
+where life's "might have beens" lie buried in graves kept green forever
+with your tears, and walk and dream alone? And you, my friend, have
+married the man of your choice. Is there nothing in the handsome
+exterior that palls a bit now and then when you find how sordid and
+meager the soul is behind the smile you used to think so charming? Do
+you never find scorn creeping into your heart in place of adoration when
+you mark the unpaid bills and the shiftless endeavor that strew his idle
+way? And you, sir, have a merry and a pretty wife and the world calls
+you a lucky fellow. How many know of the sharp tongue that underlies her
+laughter and the feather-filled head that never yet has donated an
+earnest thought to the domestic economy? And you, my good sir, have
+married a blue stocking in the old acceptance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> of the term. She can
+swing off a leader or make a speech on a rostrum at short notice, but
+how would you like to rise right up here, poor dear, and tell just what
+comfort lies in being mated to a superior being who busies herself with
+work which shall be remembered perhaps when the dust on the center
+table, the holes in your stockings, the discomfort of the larder, and
+the untidiness of the household are forgotten? And you, my good fellow,
+have married a woman of "good form." She never does an indiscreet thing.
+She is "icily faultless" and splendidly stupid. She has the neck of a
+swan, the arms of a goddess, the foot of a patrician, and the soul of a
+mouse! The scent of a wayside lilac, perhaps, is sadder than tears to
+you, old comrade, when you look back across the years and see again the
+sweet dead face of one you trifled with, or whom you deserted for this
+woman with heart and body of snow, a purse filled with gold and a brain
+filled with feathers.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>There is entire hopelessness to many women in the blank monotony of life
+after<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> youth is past. An emotional nature, mercurial and restless, full
+of aspirations and longings, as the trees this perfect month are full of
+blossoms, and, like the trees, bearing a thousand blooms to one
+fruition, finds the destiny prepared for it almost unendurable, and
+often longs for death that shall end all. Because poverty grinds and
+hosts of menial duties accumulate, because the walls of an unquiet home,
+made unlovely perhaps by skeletons that no skill can quite conceal,
+close like a dungeon upon hope and all the sweet promises of youth,
+bright natures grow morose and bitter, warm hearts chill into apathy and
+gloom, and sunny brows darken under the cloud of almost perpetual
+irritability and discontent. It is useless to preach sermons to such
+cases&mdash;as useless as to read a book of etiquette in a prison ward or
+comfort the victims of a railroad disaster with a treatise upon reform
+in the management of roads. The worn, the wasted, the erring, and the
+cruelly maimed lie thick about us. Our business is to encourage, to
+love, to bind up, and cheer. God, in His own time, shall lift the
+discontented head above the power of conspiring cares to vex. It is for
+us to lend a helping<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> hand down here where the "slough of despond" is
+deepest. When tides forget to obey the moon, or leaves to answer the
+will of the wind, then, and not sooner, shall these restless hearts of
+ours learn to be still, whatsoever destinies confront, or limitations
+thwart. In looking upon the lives of some women, the mother of six
+children, for instance, who takes boarders and keeps no help; the widow
+supporting her little brood by endless drudgeries; the big-hearted woman
+in whom the frolicsomeness and wit of girlhood die hard amid the sordid
+miseries of a poverty-stricken life; the sensitive, poetic soul, doomed
+to uncongenial companionships and the criticisms and ridicule of the
+unfriendly&mdash;I am reminded of the score of eagles I saw lately, chained
+in a dusty inclosure of Central Park. With clipped wings, and grand,
+homesick eyes, they sat disconsolate upon their perches, and moped the
+hours away. Would any sane being have reviled those sorry beings for a
+lack of spirit? Would not the gentle-hearted spectator have proffered a
+handful of fresh leaves rather, and turned away in pity that sympathy
+could do no more?</p>
+
+<p>For these unhappy sisters of mine, the discontented,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> yearning
+"Marthas," troubled with many cares, wherever my letter may find them
+between the great seas, I have a word of comfort in my heart to-day. In
+the first place, do not think, because you so often fall into
+irritability and impatient speech, that God despises you as a sinner. He
+understands, if friend, husband, or neighbor do not. Strive not to yield
+to fretfulness then, but, when overcome by it, remember always God
+understands it all. You may be able to see no light in all the shrouded
+way, no lifting of the shadow, no promise of the dawn; but rest assured,
+however long the probation, the infinite content of Heaven awaits us
+very soon, if we strive as much as lies within us to overcome the
+infirmities of our temper, and keep our faces set towards the shining of
+His love. I know, dear heart, indeed I do, that to-morrow and to-morrow
+are just alike to hopeless fancy&mdash;full of dish-washing, and drudging,
+and back-bending toil&mdash;that the sparkle and song of life were long ago
+merged in the humdrum beat of treadmill years; but through just this
+test is your character building&mdash;through just its hard process is
+shaping the conqueror's crown flashing with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> splendid light. As the root
+tarries in the dark mold to burst by-and-by into radiant bloom above it,
+so your poor life is hidden now to bloom to-morrow. You are not wicked
+because you sometimes murmur, but try and think so much of what is going
+to be that you shall forget what is. The Tender Heart above absolves
+your beaten spirit from willful sin, though you are sometimes swept away
+on currents of doubt and unfaith; but try and keep your eye fixed upon
+the headlight of His love, whatever currents drift you away. Remember
+how human parents deal with their children, and learn a lesson of God's
+dealings. If my little girl has the ear-ache, or any other tormenting
+ailment of childhood, do I stand over her and exact songs and smiles?
+And do you think that when God, for some good reason of his own, lays
+heavy burdens upon a life, He is going to demand unswerving sweetness of
+speech or ethereal mildness of temper? When I see one scrubbing who was
+fitted to adorn the drawing-room, washing dishes who was created an
+artist or a genius, darning small boys' linsey pants and homespun
+stockings who was intended by nature to reign the crowned priestess of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+some high vocation; when I mark the furrows and zigzag footprints that
+an army of besieging cares have left on the cheek that in girlhood
+outblushed the wayside rose, or note how the hands that once drew
+divinest music from obedient keys have twisted and warped in the
+performance of homely duties, I feel impelled to kiss the faded cheek
+with a love surpassing a lover's, to fold the poor hands in a reverent
+grasp, for I tell you, however often she may faint and falter by the
+way, however "fretty," and worn, and peevish she may become, the woman
+who perseveres in the performance of uncongenial duties, who struggles
+through the flatness of monotonous drudgeries, conquering adverse
+circumstances, poverty, and destiny, by patience, love, and Christian
+faith, is a heroine fit to rank with martyrs and saints. Remember, I am
+not talking to women who find the burdens hard to bear and do not bear
+them; to mere whimperers, who, because the road is full of stones, sit
+down and refuse to travel; but to the brave, true hearts who "press
+onward" although no rose blossoms and no bird sings, content to
+faithfully perform the task of life, hoping that the fullness of time
+shall read the riddle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> of incongruous destiny. I have seen the time when
+household work seemed newly cursed&mdash;the very dew of the primal
+malediction upon it; when to charge upon the dinner dishes, attack the
+lamps, or descend into the vortex of family patching, seemed to call for
+greater courage than average human nature possessed. And when I imagine
+that shrinking carried on through dry years of monotonous experience,
+the same formulas to be observed, the same distaste to be overcome
+throughout a lifetime of toil, yet no duty shirked, no obligation set
+aside, I wonder if Heaven holds a crown too bright for such faithful
+lives.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>The time of the year for violets and also for tramps is drawing near.
+Did you ever stop and think just what it means to be a tramp? It means
+no work, no money, no home, no shelter, no friends. Nobody in all the
+world to care whether you live or die like a dog by the roadside. It
+means no heaven for such rags to crawl into, no grave to hide them out
+of sight and no hand stretched out in all the world to give the greeting
+and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> good-by of love. It means nobody in all the world to feel any
+interest in you and no spot in all the world to call your own, not even
+the mud wherein your vagrant footprint falls, no prospect ahead, and no
+link unbroken to bind you to the past. I tell you, when we sit down and
+figure out just what the term means, it will not be quite so easy next
+time the wretched tramp calls at our door to set the dog upon him or
+turn him empty-handed away. Let them work, you say. Look here, my good
+friend, do you know how absolutely impossible a thing it is getting to
+be in this overcrowded country for even a willing man to find work? It
+used to be that "every dog had his day," but the dogs far outnumber the
+days in free America. I know well educated, competent men who have been
+out of employment for months and years. I know brave and earnest women,
+with little children to support, who have worn beaten paths from place
+to place seeking, not charity, but honest employment, and failed to find
+it. What chance is there for a ragged tramp when such as these fail?
+Remember, once in a while, if you can, that the most grizzled and
+wretched tramp that ever plodded his way to a pauper's grave<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> was once a
+child and cradled in arms perhaps as fond as those that enfolded you and
+me. Remember that your mother and his were made sisters by the pangs of
+maternal pain, and perhaps in the heaven from which the saintly eyes of
+your mother are watching for you his mother is looking out for him.
+Perhaps&mdash;who knows?&mdash;the footfall of the ragged and despised tramp shall
+gain upon yours and find the gate of deliverance first, in spite of your
+money and your pride.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">THE BROOK.</span></p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+
+<tr><td>
+Lifting its chalice of sun-kissed foam<br />
+Far up the heights where the wild winds roam,<br />
+Weaving a web of shadow and sheen<br />
+In lowland meadows of dewy green.<br />
+<br />
+Murmuring over the mossy stones,<br />
+In cool green dells where the gold bee drones,<br />
+Sudden and swift the showery fall,<br />
+Startling the wood bird's madrigal.<br />
+<br />
+Orbing itself in a crystal lake<br />
+Set round with thickets of tangled brake,<br />
+In waveless calm, an emerald stone,<br />
+In the lap of the dusky forest thrown.<br />
+<br />
+Silver flakes of tremulous light<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span><br />
+Showering down from the fields of night,<br />
+Where the great white stars like lilies glow&mdash;<br />
+Tossed on its tide as feathery snow.<br />
+<br />
+Hastening onward through troubled ways,<br />
+Forgotten for aye its woodland days,<br />
+Sullen and silent its banks beside<br />
+The free brook wanders, a mighty tide.<br />
+<br />
+Beyond where the forest's purple rim<br />
+Belts the horizon, hazy and dim,<br />
+Thundering down from the frowning steeps,<br />
+Into the arms of the sea it leaps.</td></tr></table>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Did it ever strike you, I wonder, this marvel of our individuality?
+Alone we are born, alone we live, alone we die, alone we pay the penalty
+or reap the reward of our evil or well doing. In the troubles that
+assail us we stand singly, however many councillors may flock to the
+door of our tent. Not one in all the world, the nearest, the dearest or
+the best, can bear one pang of life's experience for us, love us as they
+may. We often hear a mother say: "My child is so headstrong; she will
+not take my advice; she will go her own way." Of course<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> she will, and
+she will not, simply because individual tact is the law of all
+experience. It is not being headstrong, it is merely fulfilling destiny.</p>
+
+<p>In the fight we wage we do not fight by platoons or squads, under a
+common leader, a thousand at a charge. We enter the lists one by one and
+fight single handed. We choose our own colors and there is little of
+pageantry or show. When we fall we fall as travelers disappear who walk
+across a coast that is honeycombed with quicksand. We vanish, not in
+crowds like men who are jostled out of life by earthquakes or flooded
+like rats by tidal waves, but we slowly succumb to the inevitable in
+solitudes where only the stars watch us and the spaces of a dim,
+unsounded sea catch the fret of our mortal moan.</p>
+
+<p>I have always thought that I should love to have the world come to an
+end, with a grand final bang, while I was yet living and sentient on the
+surface. I would like to be flashed out of being in the conglomerate of
+a mighty swarm, like the covey of birds a huntsman's rifle brings down
+or the multitude a Pompeiian doom overtakes. Such dying would be like
+riding out of an electric-lighted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> station, by the car full, rather than
+sneaking a place on the back platform like a tramp. But after all, death
+would not lose its awful individuality even then. Marshal the whole
+world, and aim a single bullet at a hundred million souls, with power to
+still each pulse beat in the same rifle flash of time, yet each man
+would die alone.</p>
+
+<p>There is one final lesson to be gained through the doleful contemplation
+of the world's flood-tide of sorrow, and that is the lesson of how to
+bear our troubles so as to react as little as possible upon those with
+whom life throws us in daily contact. Because the goblin bee has stung
+our own souls, shall we seek to share the pain of its stateless sting
+with all we meet? No more than we should endeavor to carry contagion in
+our garments or put poison in our neighbor's well. I knew a man once, a
+gallant, light-hearted soldier, who honored the blue and brass of his
+country's uniform by wearing it. An awful sorrow suddenly smote his
+life, like an Indian sortie from an ambush. Wife and children were swept
+from his arms by a swift disaster and he was left alone. His friends
+said: "He is a wrecked man! He will never lift his head again!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> How did
+he fulfill this prophecy of woe? He entered the chamber of his darkened
+home and denied himself to everyone. He neither ate nor slept. He fought
+by himself a greater battle than call of bugle ever summoned to any
+field. He mastered his own soul, and emerged from that chamber after a
+certain number of days a conqueror over his own sorrow. His smile was as
+ready, his heart as tender, his genial speech as welcome at home and
+abroad as it had ever been, and only when the goblin bee of memory stung
+him in the silence of the companionless night did he live over again the
+experience of his sorrow. None knew when that sting came, or how it
+tarried; he bore it silently like a soldier and a man. The trifling
+world called him light of love and easily consoled, but I think he was a
+grand, unselfish hero, a benefactor rather than a destroyer of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>When we get so that we can hide our sorrow in a smile we attain that
+attitude that brings us closest to the divine. The man or the woman who
+goes up and down the ways of the world with a groan on his lips and a
+weed on his arm is an infliction worse than an out of tune hand organ.
+If the bee<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> stings, hold still and bear the hurt by yourself as best you
+may, but don't talk it over with everyone you meet, like an old woman
+petitioning a recipe for a bad cough and flaunting her physical ailments
+forever in your face. When you have bright things to talk about and
+comforting things to say, talk; otherwise hold your peace. The reason, I
+think, why animals are never wrinkled and drawn of feature and gray like
+mankind is because they cannot talk. If they had the power of speech
+they would go around as humans do and disseminate unpleasant topics, as
+idle winds start thistle pollen. Silence is golden when you can find
+nothing better to do than to clamor your own troubles; speech only is
+blessed when, like a bird, it evolves a song or wings a feathered hope.</p>
+
+<p>It seems hardly the thing to do, perhaps, to single out the unhappy
+folks in a present world so full of jollity and talk with them awhile
+to-day. This bright autumn weather is so crowded with sights and sounds
+to dazzle and enchant that to obtrude the leaf of rue within the garland
+or breathe a minor tone into the music seems almost out of place. And
+yet, for some reason or other, as I sit here at my desk to-day, the
+thought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> of the hearts that are heavy in the midst of all the world's
+fair pageant, and the eyes that cannot see the banners by reason of
+their tears, come to me with a strong and resistless force.</p>
+
+<p>Alas, for the goblin bee that stings, yet all too often may not "state
+its sting"! We walk with a crowd, and yet are conscious that our way is
+not theirs. It lies apart, we know not why, and evermore dips into
+shadow and threads the dark defiles of gloom. There are so many more
+reasons for being sorry than for being glad, we think. Try to count the
+causes for laughter, and then, over against them, set the reasons for
+sorrow and see which way the balance falls. I take my seat on a bench
+out at the big show and watch the crowd for an hour. Do I see many faces
+that do not bear the scar of the "goblin bee"? From the little
+four-year-old who is bitterly crying because somebody has jostled its
+toy from its hand, to the woman whose eyes are sunken with sorrow
+because death has jostled the one whom she loved into his grave,
+everybody who passes, with but few exceptions, shows the scar of that
+stateless sting.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Look at my window-garden, yonder! The sunshine, stealing in from the
+south, has wooed a dozen pansies into bloom&mdash;"Johnny-jump-ups," they
+used to call them when I was a girl. How bright and cheery and chatty
+they look. We have those sort of faces (some of us) every day about our
+breakfast tables. The little folks, God bless 'em! with their shining
+hair, their bright eyes, and the soft velvet of their cheeks, are the
+blessed heartsease of our home. And there is a fuchsia, turbaned like a
+Turk, behind the pansies. Just such sumptuous, graceful women we see
+every day. Like the fuchsia, they are beautiful and that is all. They
+yield no fragrance. They attract the eye but fail to reach the heart.
+Who wouldn't rather have mignonette growing in the window? There is a
+yellow blossom in the window that reminds one of the patient shining of
+certain homely souls I know, making sunshine in humble homes; cheerful
+old maid aunts, sweet-hearted elder sisters, yielding the honey of their
+hearts to others. A cluster of fading violets sets me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> thinking of frail
+invalids and the host of "shut-in" ones, whose delicate and dying beauty
+fills our eyes with unstayed tears and our hearts with the shadow of
+coming sorrow.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>There are gates that swing within your life and mine from day to day,
+letting in rare opportunities that tarry but a moment and are gone, like
+travelers bound for points remote. There is the opportunity to resist
+the temptation to do a mean thing; improve it, for it is in a hurry,
+like a man whose ticket is bought and whose time is up. It won't be back
+this way, either, for opportunities for good are not like tourists who
+travel on return tickets. There is the opportunity to say a pleasant
+word to your wife, sir, or you, madam, to your husband, instead of
+venting your temper and your "nerves" upon each other. Love's
+opportunity travels by lightning express and has no time to dawdle
+around the waiting-room. If you improve it at all it must be while the
+gate swings to let it through.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>My dear, let me implore you, whatever else you let go, hold on to your
+enthusiasm. Grow old if you must; grow white-headed and bent and
+care-furrowed, if such must needs be the process of years, but don't
+grow to be a stick. If you must pass on from the green time of your
+freshness, change into sweet hay and keep your fragrance. If the cage
+must grow rusty and lose its brightness, there is a bird within, that it
+were a pity to strangle to keep it from singing to the end. I don't care
+how successful, or rich, or learned a man becomes, if he maintains a
+grim repression of all romance and enthusiasm, and what some hard old
+"Gradgrinds" call the "nonsense" within him, he is nothing more than a
+fine cage with a dead bird in it. When I hear a person say of another,
+"Oh, he is a substantial fellow; no nonsense about him!" I picture a
+gold-fish in a glass globe. A glittering cuticle that covers anything so
+bloodless as the anatomy of a fish is not worth much. There are a good
+many types of men to be detected, but the bloodless, emotionless,
+heart-paralytic, is the worst. Polish up a golden ball all you like. It
+may ornament your mantel, or serve as a useless bit of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> glitter in some
+corner, but when you begin to feel hungry and faint, and in need of
+solace and cheer, you will turn from the golden ball and pick up the
+veriest old rusty coat apple from an orchard's windfall, that has
+mellowed under summer noon, and sweetened in summer rains and dews,
+praising God for its flavor and its juices, even if you can buy forty
+bushels of its counterpart, for the price of one of your polished golden
+balls. Cultivate the "nonsense" in you, then, if it tends to enthusiasm
+of the right sort. It is the sympathy we get from people, the
+heartsomeness and cheer that keep our souls nourished, rather than the
+mere dazzle of intellectual attainment, or the greatness of any worldly
+achievement. Heart rather than head; nature rather than art; genuineness
+rather than pretense; romance rather than absolute realism; enthusiasm
+rather than petrifaction, will make a man rather than a gold fish, a
+juicy apple rather than a ball of metallic and glittering nothingness.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>We were gathered at the Norfolk Station awaiting the train that was to
+carry us<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> over the marshes to Virginia Beach and the sea. The crowd that
+surrounded us was very different from a Chicago crowd. There was no
+pushing, no bold assertiveness, no elbows. There were lots of pretty
+women, and as for me everybody knows I simply adore the open sky, a tree
+in blossom and a pretty woman. There were young girls with velvety brown
+eyes within whose dusky shadows one might look fathom deep as into a
+well of limpid water; girls with blue eyes like fringed gentians; women
+with grand free curves of figure that would have made Hebe look
+commonplace; women with shapely shoulders and long, aristocratic hands,
+tinted at the finger-tips as though fresh from picking ripe
+strawberries; girls all in white (for the day was warm), like June
+lilies; women with snowy teeth and adorable smiles to disclose them;
+little tots of girls with braided hair and soft, questioning eyes;
+queenly girls, like tulips in bloom, all chatting together in subdued
+but merry tones and laughing as delicately and airily as thrushes sing.
+Oh, I lost my heart to you, my pretty southern maidens, and count the
+time well spent I devoted to the contemplation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> of your many graces away
+down in that little station by the torrid bay.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>If I was a liar and wanted to reform I shouldn't quit lying all at once.
+I would start out with a covenant to occasionally tell the truth. By and
+by this spasmodic truth-telling, like the grain blown by the wind among
+stones, would, perhaps, yield sufficient harvest to send me not quite
+empty-handed up to St. Peter's gate. If I drank whisky I would commence
+to reform by swearing off on one glass out of three, and perhaps the
+manhood within me, having so much more chance to grow, would elbow its
+way into heaven. If I was a gossip I would try to hold my tongue from
+speaking evil half the time, and in that blissful interval perhaps my
+dwarfed soul would get a start skyward. It is not by sudden achievement
+that we consummate a long journey. It is step by step and mile by mile
+over a stony road that brings us to the goal, and it is not by mere
+resolving that we renounce the old and attain unto the new. He who
+travels but a few steps and keeps his face heavenward<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> is on the way,
+and every small decision for the right, faithfully adhered to, is a
+notable step toward a consummated journey.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I am often struck with the selfishness displayed by people who are
+fortunate enough to be provided with umbrellas in time of sudden
+showers. They calmly behold hosts of unhappy beings battling their way
+through the storm, drenched to the bone, and with ruined garments, yet
+never think of saying, "Accept a share of my umbrella," or "Walk with me
+as far as our ways lie together." If I should hear such a speech I might
+drop senseless with surprise, but all the same I should hail it as the
+bugle note that heralded a new era of courteous kindness.</p>
+
+<p>We are not put into the world to be suspicious of one another. We were
+put here to make the world pleasanter for our tarrying, and to cultivate
+a fellowship with souls. If the guests at a mountain inn, sojourning
+together for a stormy night, spend the time in reviling one another, or
+in calling attention to each other's blemishes, we write them down as
+snobs; but what shall we call the tenants of transitory time who spend
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> span of mortal life in doing all they can to make one another
+uncomfortable? We have only a watch in the night to tarry together; let
+us try to make that hour a profitable one and a pleasant memory for
+others when we have journeyed on.</p>
+
+<p>I have often wondered how Christian people got round the gospel command,
+"Love thy neighbor as thyself." It doesn't say love him (or her) after a
+proper introduction, or if agreeable, or congenial, or of good family
+and established reputation&mdash;it simply gives the command on general
+principles. I don't pretend to be good enough to obey the mandate
+myself, for I honestly think it is a species of hypocrisy to say you
+love everybody. One might as well say one were fond of all fruit alike,
+whether specked, wormy or rotten. But let my good orthodox professor put
+this in his pipe and smoke it. Let him remember it next time he sees his
+neighbor plunged into an extremity, or handicapped by an annoyance of
+any kind. If we love our neighbor we are bound to help him, and neighbor
+in this sense means anyone who chances to be near us, whether black or
+white, raggedly disreputable or sanctimoniously frilled.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>There is more selfishness perpetrated in the world under guise of family
+ties than in almost any other way. The man who does good and unselfish
+deeds only for his own children and for the immediate circle housed
+beneath his roof, forgetful of the claims of the great, tormented,
+harassed and struggling world, is a selfish man and accountable to
+heaven for a great deal of meanness. I don't care how much he puts on
+his children's backs, or how many luxuries he surrounds them with, the
+Lord will not hold him guiltless if he does nothing for the stranger who
+tugs by him in the stress of life's uncertain weather, or for the
+neighbor who sits disconsolate outside his gates.</p>
+
+<p>I wish that vagabond and his dog who were brought before a west side
+justice yesterday for vagrancy would travel up my way. I like that sort
+of thing that leads a man to be faithful to his dog. It goes without
+saying that the dog is faithful to the man, but it is not often that the
+master shows the same spirit to the fond and steadfast brute. If the two
+should journey my way I think they would have one white day in the
+calendar. Good heavens, my dear, do you ever stop long enough in the
+midst of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> your golf-playing and your tennis tournaments, your yachtings
+and your outings to think what it is to be a tramp? To be unable to find
+a stroke of work; to be sick and starved and homeless! Like "poor Joe,"
+to be told to "move on" every time you stop to rest; to eat the
+grudgingly given crust of charity, and have no friend under the sun,
+moon or stars but a flea-bitten dog? Did you ever stop to think, my
+Christian friend, that that tramp is a neighbor whom you are to love?
+And if you are going to love him I will love his dog! No doubt the
+latter is the better man of the two.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Did you ever read of a battle siege in olden times? There were the
+full-armored warriors, resplendent in shining metal and plumed crests;
+there were the mighty battering rams, and the flash of battle axes, the
+thunder of advancing feet and the trumpet call before the gates. But
+more potent than all else in the doomed city's destruction was the
+secret work of the sappers and miners&mdash;the patient forces which wrought
+their work out of sight and hearing. And<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> I have been thinking to-night,
+as I sit here, where the firelight weaves its delicate tapestry within
+the beautiful walls of home, that it is not going to be the pompous ones
+who shall march triumphant at last into the "City of Gold," but they who
+have worked patiently and humbly out of sight and with no need of
+praise. The man who has held to the dictates of his own conscience, not
+conforming to the company he marched with; the man who has dared to be
+himself in a world where men are labeled in lots; the man who has held
+it high honor to suffer for a principle or to be loyal to an unpopular
+friend or cause; the man who has erected a standard made up between his
+own heart and heaven, and, independent of the world's verdict of praise
+or blame, followed it to the end, is going to wear a crown by and by,
+when the epauletted general and the pompous staff are forgotten. Prayer
+is not always a genuflexion and an address. It is oftener hard work. The
+farmer praying at his weeds, the pilot praying from every spoke of his
+wheel, the mother whose daily life of unselfish toil and far-reaching
+influence is a prayer, do more to stir the divine heart, to keep the
+world's prow headed for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> heaven than half the solicitations or
+apologetic addresses made in our churches under the name of prayer.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>When you and I get rich, my dear, as some day we surely shall, what are
+we going to do with all our money? We will hunt up some of the
+improvident ones, those who could never make the two ends meet, those
+who through good heartedness, or lack of forethought or unselfish desire
+to make other folks happy, have never laid by a cent, and we will give
+those silly people such a good time they will carry its impress all
+through their after lives, as a pat of butter carries the print. We will
+slyly pay the bills for improvident ones who have grown gray in the
+effort to make a decent funeral for dead horses. They shall forget how
+to spell "care" and their new and happy dialect shall know no such words
+as "monthly payments," "righteous dues" or "can't afford it." I am
+convinced that as a rule it is not the sweet-hearted people who take on
+this world's gain. There is many a poor beggar with not a change of
+linen to his back who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> would make a more royal host, had the smiling
+face of fortune turned his way, than the rightful owner of the vast
+estates at whose gate he stands and begs. The big hearts too often go
+with the empty purse, and the little, wizened, skin-flint souls, that it
+would take a thousand of to crowd the passage through the eye of a
+needle, gain all the golden favors of the god of plenty.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>After dinner I said to the little folks, "Behold, I will buy me a pair
+of stockings and hire a bathing suit, and the afternoon shall be devoted
+to frolic and thee." So we went to the small booth, where an exceedingly
+meek young man sold ginger pop and fancy shells, and paralyzed him with
+a demand for ladies' hose. He didn't know what we meant until I came out
+boldly and unblushingly and asked for women's stockings. He said he
+didn't keep 'em. "Have you a mother?" said I. "No." "Have you a sister?
+Or is there a nearer one yet and a dearer, from whom I could buy or
+borrow a pair of stockings that I may go in bathing?" He didn't
+understand that either, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> finally, with the aid of lucre, I made the
+matter clear so that he got me a pair of canary-striped woolen hose,
+evidently laid by for some farmer's winter use, and I bought them for a
+sum that made his eyes grow dim with rapture. We went down to the beach,
+and after a season of prayer with the young person to induce her to put
+on some horrid tights, we all went in and enjoyed such a dip as only
+salt water yields. In the midst of it we had to go on shore several
+times to stand the boy on his head and pump the ocean out of him, as he
+was constantly getting drowned in the surf, and one of my expensive and
+expansive stockings was captured out at sea and brought back by a son of
+Belial, who seemed greatly affected by its size, but in spite of such
+small drawbacks we had a glorious time.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>"What is the matter, my darling?" asked John, the newly married, to the
+wife of his bosom.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing whatever," replied Mrs. John.</p>
+
+<p>"But you look like a funeral," exclaimed he.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>"I am not aware that I look more than usually unamiable; I certainly
+never felt better," replied his wife, placidly folding down meanwhile
+the hem to a distracting little apron she is making. John seizes his
+hat, pushes it down over his eyes and rushes forth distracted with the
+conjecture as to what terrible thing he has been guilty of to make his
+wife look so like an injured martyr. For the time being love is dead,
+joy wiped from the face of the earth, hope crucified and peace
+assassinated, all because of bottled thunder. A word would have
+explained all, a look has ruined everything.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't put on your fresh muslin this afternoon," suggests the prudent
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>"But why not?" replied the sprightly Jane; "it is the only endurable
+dress this warm weather."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very well, do as you like, of course," meekly replied the parent in
+a tone that suggests a serpent's fang, a hoary head and a broken heart
+all in one.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in my opinion it is not conducive to domestic harmony to have too
+much of this sort of repression. It is like living in an exhaust
+chamber. One would be certain to choke up and burst very soon.
+Self-control<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> does not consist in forever keeping one's mouth shut,
+alone. A look, a sneer, a drooping mouth, a tilted nose, will do as much
+mischief as a loosened tongue. Why I should go about like a disagreeable
+old martyr or like a sneering Saul of Tarsus, and call myself pleasant
+to live with, simply because I don't talk, is something not easily
+understood.</p>
+
+<p>I would far rather be a target for flying saucepans every time I popped
+my head into the kitchen than have a cook there who never says a word,
+but is sullen and ugly enough to carve me up like cold meat. I would
+rather be a constant attendant at funerals, a nurse in a fever-ward, a
+girl in a circus, or a street car horse, than live with proper folks who
+never make blunders, or commit indiscretions either of speech or manner,
+but look at you every time you sneeze as though your featherheadedness
+was the only thing that made life unbearable. Out with it then if you
+have cause for offense. Don't let the clouds hang a single hour, but
+turn on the weather faucet and let it rain. If your neighbor has
+insulted you, either ask her why or ignore it. Ten to one the fancied
+insult is only a wind cloud, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> sunshine will break it away. If you
+feel mad sail right in for a tempest and have done with it. Thunder and
+lighten, blow and hail if you want to, but don't be a non-committal
+dog-day. Bottled thunder is a bad thing to keep on the family shelves.
+It is likely to turn sour on your hands, and before you get through with
+it, you will wish you had died young.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Yonder goes a small and worthless yellow dog. He is young; you can tell
+that from the abnormal size of his paws, and a certain remnant of
+wistful trust in human kind, which displays itself in the furtive wag of
+his tail and the cock of his limp and discouraged ear. He is as
+absolutely friendless as anything to which God has granted life can be.
+Of his existence there is no thought in the mind of any man or woman
+beneath the stars. The boys grow mindful of him now and then, though,
+and their manifested interest has made of his life one terrible specter
+of cringing fear. He hears the hurrah of their cruel chase in every tone
+of sudden speech; he sees the menace of a blow in every shadow. Do you
+know, my dear,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> that I never spoke a truer word in all my life than when
+I say that underneath the hide of that forlorn and friendless little
+yellow dog there is something more valuable than beats under the
+broadcloth vests and silken waists of many of the men and women who pass
+him by! A grateful heart mindful of the smallest kindnesses, a faithful
+instinct which keeps dogs loyal even to cruel masters. I sometimes think
+I would rather take my chances with honest dogs than with half the men
+who own them. They may not be able to pass up the stamped ticket which
+transfers the human passenger from the earthly to the celestial railroad
+and carries him through on the passport of an immortal soul; but no
+ticket at all is quite as good as a forged or fraudulent one, as some of
+us will find out, I am thinking, when we hand up our worthless checks!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Which would you rather be in the orchestra of human life, a flute or a
+trombone? To be sure, the latter is heard the farthest, but the quality
+of the flute tone reaches deeper down into the soul and awakens there
+dreams without which a man's life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> is like bread without leaven, or a
+laid fire without tinder. I don't like noisy people, do you? People who
+talk and bluster and swagger. People who remind us of bladders filled to
+the point of explosion with wind. We like sensitive people,
+quiet-voiced, deep-hearted, earnest people, with the quality of the
+flute rather than that of the fog-horn in their make-up. And yet how
+much greater demand there is for bluster than there is for force.
+Sometimes I am inclined to think that life is a farce played with an
+earthly setting for the delectation of the angels, as we serve minstrel
+shows and burlesques. It isn't the shy and the timid who get the
+applause; the clown in tinsel and the end man in cork divide easy
+honors. And yet, thank God for flutes! Thank God the orchestra isn't
+entirely composed of trombones and bass drums.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">WHAT I MISS.</span></p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+I can get used to my darling's dress<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That hangs on the closet door;</span><br />
+And the little silent half-worn shoes<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That patter no more on the floor.</span><br />
+<br />
+I can get used to the hopeless blank<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That greets my waking eyes,</span><br />
+As they meet the sight of the empty crib<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where no little nestling lies.</span><br />
+<br />
+I can get used to the dreary hush,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the home which my darling blest</span><br />
+With her prattling speech and her rippling laugh,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ere we laid her away to rest.</span><br />
+<br />
+But, ah! the touch of those little hands<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That wandered o'er my face,</span><br />
+Like the wavering fall of rose-leaves soft,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In some sunlit garden place.</span><br />
+<br />
+Those dimpled caressing baby hands!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I feel them again at night,</span><br />
+And in dreams I gather them back again<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From their harp in the City of Light.</span><br />
+<br />
+My hungry heart will claim them still;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I cannot let them depart.</span><br />
+So I gather them back again in dreams<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To my desolate, breaking heart.</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>The other day my strolling took me into a second-hand furniture shop. I
+wanted to find an ice chest. "Have you any second-hand chests?" I asked
+of the hoary-headed son of Erin who tended the place and raked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> in the
+shekels. He didn't answer a word, but silently arose and beckoned me to
+follow. Through ranks of withered tables and blighted chairs I picked my
+way until my guide dived down a gruesome stairway and then I stopped.
+Presently his head emerged like a grimy Jack-in-the-box.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it an ice chist yez want?" asked he. There was mold on his faded
+cheeks and a cobweb on his brow as he awaited my answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Must I go down there to find it?" I inquired. He replied in the
+affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>"Old man, I will go no further," said I, "but come back here and tell me
+the price of this lovely desk." So saying, I designated a delightful old
+claw-handled, brass-mounted, spider-legged piece of furniture, which
+might have been used by Adam to cast up his accounts on. There was a
+suggestion of secret drawers about it that was quite ravishing. The
+doors were oddly shaped little panes of mirror glass, within which I
+gazed pensively at a soot blemish on my nose. "Is it the price of that
+yez'd be afther knowing?" said the old man, in the tone of one who dealt
+with a harmless lunatic. "I thought it was ice chists yez<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> was afther."
+"Yes," said I, drawing out two long slabs as I spoke, such as were used
+to support the shelf of the desk I remembered in my grandmother's house.
+"That bit of furnichoor," said the old-man, gazing sadly meanwhile at
+the grime of ages which I could not rub from off my nose, "is more than
+two hundred years old." He stopped for a moment to see if I would
+believe him, then went on: "Yis, ma'am, that same is nearer three
+hundred years old, all told."</p>
+
+<p>Here I gave him a look which stopped him at the threshold of the fourth
+century.</p>
+
+<p>"Yez may have it for $25," says he.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll give you five," says I.</p>
+
+<p>He turned away as one who found his mother tongue inadequate to express
+the deep-seated scorn of his soul. I followed.</p>
+
+<p>"Did yez say twenty?" he asked stopping abruptly and facing me with the
+blurred photograph of what was once an engaging smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I said five," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, take it thin," said he, "but it would be dirt chape at fifty.
+It's not a day less than four hun&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop," said I, "if you add another century I'll only pay you two and a
+half for it."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>And so to-night it comes to pass that I am writing at my new old desk. I
+am half conscious, as my pencil glides along the paper, of a laughing
+face, half-hidden by showers of falling hair, that flickers like a
+shadow in and out of the soft gloom that enfolds me. Fingers, light as
+air, seem to follow the motion of my own, and the ghost of the mistress
+who thought and wrote at this same desk, one, two, three, four hundred
+years ago, seems whispering in my ear. I wonder what will be the effect
+if I read to that sweet, gentle woman of "ye olden time" a few bits from
+the morning paper.</p>
+
+<p>Madam, are you aware that a man kicked his wife to death yesterday
+because she failed to have his supper ready for him? Are you not to be
+congratulated that you are out of reach of this latter day development
+of the human brute? Do you know that the Blank concerts began this last
+week, and that the melodies that throng the beautiful hall yonder on the
+avenue are like bands of singing angels charming a world's sorrows to
+rest? Do not the gentle caprices of the flutes and the swing of the
+fiddles make even you, flake of airy nothingness that you are! dance
+like a thistle-down<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> in a summer breeze? Madam, do you know, and how
+does it affect you to know, that there are bargain sales in town where
+you can buy a gown for a song, and a pair of all-wool blankets for the
+worth of a dream? In your long time disembodied state have you yet
+reached a point, I wonder, when such news as this can no longer thrill a
+woman's heart? If so, madam, you are truly and undeniably dead, and your
+room is better than your company. I bid you a gentle good evening.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Among the many things I shall be glad to find out some day will be why,
+in spite of heroic effort to keep it straight, my hat always gets
+crooked and my hair becomes disordered on the march. I thoroughly detest
+the sight of a typical "blue-stocking," or a literary woman who affects
+a sublime superiority to appearances, and yet Mrs. Jellyby was nowhere
+as to general demoralization of raiment compared to my unfortunate self.
+Taking my seat in a down-town restaurant the other day, I found myself
+surrounded by half a dozen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> girls as bright and pretty and jolly as
+girls go. No sooner was I seated than the whisper went round that a
+newspaper woman had invaded the party. "Looks like one," murmured the
+plumpest one of the lot, and I could have cried. "Girls," I wanted to
+say, "judge not by appearances. The best christians sometimes have red
+noses, just as the jolliest literary folks have frowsy hair and
+abandoned hats. They can't help it, my dears, any more than a black cat
+can help being somber. It is never safe to condemn anybody, not even a
+poor, miserable scribbler for the press, on circumstantial evidence. You
+see a crooked hat, electric hair, and that is all. Put on Titbottom
+spectacles and look deeper. Perhaps you will then see an
+anguish-stricken woman rising at 5 a. m. to make herself smart for the
+day. You will note how carefully she adjusts the feeble adjuncts to her
+toilet, how she places her hat on straight and secures it with a
+cast-iron cable! How she combs out her curls and sticks a feathery
+kerchief within her belt. Two hours later the cable hat-pin has been
+struck by a tidal-wave and swept from its anchorage; the curls have
+degenerated into wisps of wind-tossed hay;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> and the kerchief? Gone as a
+feather is gone when the summer tempest gets behind it! We mean well,
+girls. We want to look trim and slick and span. All of us poor literary
+people do, but we can't bring it about. Life is so everlastingly full,
+anyway, that it seems preposterous to spend more than half one's time in
+getting fixed up. Sometimes I am foolish enough to believe that good St.
+Peter, when we come toiling up to his gate, won't look so much to the
+condition of our hats and our hair as he will to the way we wear our
+souls. If they are tip-tilted and frowsy it may go a little bit hard
+with us. Of course, it is a good thing to be able to wear a hat
+straight, and be remarked for your pretty hair and generally pleasing
+appearance, but I declare to you if it comes to a question of mental
+array and soul-correction as opposed to style and good form, I am
+willing to choose the former and be laughed at now and then by saucy
+girls."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>That's right. Stand on shore and beat him back when he attempts to make
+a landing.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> If necessary, club him under water and congratulate yourself
+that you are so self-righteous and everlastingly holy that nobody can
+get a chance to swing a club at you. What is this half-dead thing that
+is trying to force its way onto dry land from the whelming waters of
+temptation and misery? A rat? Oh, no; only a human creature like
+yourself. Sin overtaken and subdued by evil. He is young, perhaps, and
+never had a mother's care or a father's training. He has drifted with
+easy currents into dangerous waters, and the devil, who lurks beneath
+the flood, is trying to snatch him down to hell! Raise your club and
+give him a clip! The audacity of such a boy trying to be anything with
+such a record behind him! Oh, I am sick of you all, you omniverous
+feeders on reputation, you unveilers of past records of shame! I hope in
+my heart that if ever you get your own foot on the threshold of some
+haven of relief, after a tight tussle with danger and death, an angel
+will stand over against the doorway with a flaming sword and demand to
+see your credentials. No hope of that, though. Angels are not up to that
+sort of work; it is left to men, and sometimes&mdash;God pity us all!&mdash;to
+women.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>If you expect to escape criticism, girls, in this world, you will put
+yourselves very much in the plight of flower-roots that expect to grow
+without the discipline of the hoe. Before we can amount to anything
+either in blossom or as fruit, we must undergo much honest criticism,
+and of such we need never be afraid. A candid and above-board enemy is
+of far more benefit, often, than a timid friend, who, seeing our faults,
+is afraid to tell us of them. The fact that boys stone certain trees and
+pass others by, is explained when we find that the stones are always
+thrown at the fruit-bearing trees. And so with character; the fact that
+we are criticized proves that we are something better than scrub-oak
+saplings. But all criticism that does not make us grow, and put forth
+fairer and richer blossoms, is like a hoe made of wood, or a cultivator
+without power applied to cause it to destroy the weeds. If the unanimous
+verdict of the community in which we live asserts that we are proud, or
+ill-natured, or lazy, we may be pretty sure that there is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> some cause
+for the application of that particular stroke of the hoe, and the sooner
+we set about seeking to remedy the evil, the better for our next world's
+crop of blossoms. Nobody (save One) was ever yet maligned without some
+little cause. Those who come in contact with you at home may not see
+little blemishes upon your conduct or character which those who meet you
+in business may detect. For instance, to the folks at home you never put
+on that indifferent and languid air to which you treat the customer who
+drops in to buy ribbon, or the woman who asks you a question at your
+office desk. The customer and the questioner go away with an estimate of
+your behavior very unlike the one held at home, where you are frank and
+cheerful, and willing to please. And, on the other hand, the party with
+whom you associate casually in business, or with whom you ride daily to
+and from your office and your home, has no conception how snappy and
+snarly you can be when none but familiar ears are open to your surly
+complaints.</p>
+
+<p>The statement from your little brother or sister that you are a "cross
+old thing" would hardly be believed by those who meet you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> away from
+home. And yet the hoe in the little hands strikes at a weed that
+threatens to make havoc in the garden. Better look to it, dearie, before
+the ugly thing quite overtops the mignonette and the pinks! Whenever you
+hear of an adverse criticism set to find the weed somewhere in your
+character. I believe firmly that every one of us was born into the world
+with capabilities for almost every evil under the sun if environment
+favors the development. Like a garden patch, the roots of the weeds lie
+already deep, the flower seeds must be sown. And no gardener ever
+struggled with "pusley" and burdock as we must struggle with the evil
+crop, heredity-sown. Thanks be to the quick eye, then, be it of friend
+or foe, who discerns the weed before we do, and whips out the hoe to
+attack it. We are not exactly pleased when it is borne in upon us
+through the criticism of some acquaintance or neighbor, that we are
+selfish in little things. Our folks don't say so, and we try to believe
+the charge is a libel. Next time you throw your banana skin heedlessly
+on the pavement, or crowd into a seat without a "by your leave," or
+refuse to move up in a crowded car, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> open your window without asking
+if it be agreeable to the person behind you, or eat peanuts and throw
+the shucks on the floor instead of out of the window, or see a lady
+going by with a disarranged dress and don't tell her of it, or return an
+indifferent answer to a civil question, or refuse the sweet service of a
+smile and a gentle look to the humblest wayfarer that jostles you on the
+road, just remember the criticism, and see if there is not occasion for
+it. Set about correcting the little faults, and the great ones leave to
+God. He will keep you, no doubt, from theft, and murder, and perjury,
+but you don't ask or seem to stand in need of His help in getting rid of
+temptations to be mean and selfish, and discourteous and lazy.</p>
+
+<p>What would you think of a gardener who went about with a spade seeking
+to exterminate nothing but Canada thistles, and let all the rest of the
+weeds go? It is not often that so big and determinate a thing as a
+Canada thistle gets in among the roses, and when it does it is quickly
+disposed of. But oh, the wee growths! The tiny shoots that come up
+faster than flies swarm in dog-days, and need to be forever stood over
+against with a steady hand and a hoe. If my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> neighbor comes out and
+charges me with stealing a barrel of flour from her storehouse, or
+attacking her first-born with a meat-axe, I can quickly disprove that
+sort of a charge; but when she says that I am unprincipled because I
+steal in and coax her girl away from her with the offer of higher
+wages&mdash;how is that? Or that I am selfish because she sees me let my old
+mother wait on me to what I am able to get myself; or cross, because I
+am untender to the children; or untruthful, because I instruct the
+servant to say I am "not at home" when I am, how am I going to dispose
+of those charges? Sure as you live, there are weeds in front of such hoe
+strokes, and with heaven's help we'll get rid of 'em.</p>
+
+<p>Cultivate your critics, then, provided they be honest and fair-dealing.
+Avoid only such as strike in the dark. The man who goes out to hoe weeds
+in the night time is not to be trusted, and the enemy who resorts to the
+underhand methods of backbiting and scandal to do his work, is not worth
+talking about, much less heeding. Take criticism that is fair and open,
+as you occasionally take quinine, to tone up the system and dissipate
+the malaria of sloth and inertia.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> Only they shall come into the
+festival by and by, bearing garlands of roses, and wreaths of hearts'
+delight and balm, who have welcomed the strong stroke of the hoe at the
+root of every blossom to bear down the weeds and loosen the tough and
+sun-baked soil.</p>
+
+<p>As Charles Kingsley says:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"My fairest child, I have no song to give you;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">No lark could pipe 'neath skies so dull and gray;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">For every day:</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Do noble things, not dream them, all day long,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And so make life, death and that vast forever</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">One grand, sweet song."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>See that half-grown man? He never will know as much again as he does now
+at the ripe age of twenty. When he gets to be fifty, when his hair is
+grizzled and his hopes are like the dead leaves that cling to November
+trees, he will look back upon these years of rare wisdom and colossal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+effrontery and blush a little, perhaps, at the recollection. Now he has
+no reverence for a woman or for God. He sneers at good in a world whose
+threshold he has barely crossed, as a year-old child might stand in the
+doorway of his nursery and denounce what was going on in the
+drawing-room. Most of the scathing things that are said about domestic
+felicity, and the sneers that are bestowed on love, and the gibes that
+are flung at purity, and the scoffs that are launched at established
+religions; all the jokes at the expense of noble womanhood and the
+witticisms that are lavished upon the old-fashioned virtues, spring from
+the gigantic brain of the youth of the period.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Often as I pass along the streets of this town I notice certain places
+which I do not burn down, nor tear down, nor otherwise demolish, merely
+because of inherent cowardice and inadequate strength. If I had a
+wide-awake, growing boy I would no more turn him loose in your town, Mr.
+Alderman, than I would cut his throat with my own hand. Not, certainly,
+if there was a spark<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> of human nature within him, and a boy without such
+a spark is hardly worth raising. And more than that, I will say this,
+that what with your saloons and your wide-open gambling resorts, and
+your doorways of hell, wherein sit spiders luring flies, it has come to
+pass that every mother whose boy encounters harm thereby should be
+entitled to damages at least as great as juries award a careless
+pedestrian who gets his legs cut off at a railway crossing. You say that
+laws are inadequate to cope with evils of this kind; if that is so, then
+an outraged citizenhood should rise superior to law, and enter upon a
+crusade to destroy the infamous dens that decoy our boys. On a certain
+downtown street there is a newly opened resort, the windows of which are
+closely draped, and before the door of which a placard is suspended
+which invites only men to enter within. Now and then a hideously ugly
+man, with a yellow beard, comes to the ticket window and looks out like
+a tarantula from its hole, but in the main the place seems absolutely
+unfrequented.</p>
+
+<p>Take your stand and watch for awhile, though, and you will see young men
+and small boys, old men and slouching reprobates<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> of all conditions and
+colors going in and coming out by dozens. Why doesn't some good citizen
+enter a complaint of that place and break it up? We would pounce upon a
+smallpox case soon enough wherever it might lurk, but we are strangely
+indifferent where the menace is only to the soul.</p>
+
+<p>How can we expect to keep our boys pure and raise them to lives of
+usefulness when such iniquitous places are run wide open on public
+streets at noonday, granting admission to all masculinity between the
+ages of 7 and 70?</p>
+
+<p>A well-guarded youth is supposed to be at home in the night time and not
+to be frequenting shy neighborhoods at any hour. So that we might feel
+comparatively safe about the boy we send out into the world at an early
+age to begin his career as errand boy or messenger if these pernicious
+decoys were maintained only at night and in low vicinities. When the
+trap is set, however, right in the business center of the town by
+daylight, what safety have we? Whenever I look into the face of an
+eager, bright, curious, thoroughly alive boy I feel like shaking every
+other duty of life and going forth to do battle with the devil for that
+lad's soul.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>Why should evil have so much greater chance than good? For one reason I
+don't believe we make the good attractive enough. The devil has stolen
+the trademark of light for half his wares. Why not have more fun and
+frolic in the home? Why not add a gymnasium and dancing hall to the
+Sunday school and filter some of the world's innocent sunshine inside
+its gloomy walls? Why may not the eager, active heart of youth find its
+good cheer and jollity somewhere else than in forbidden places and among
+smooth and unscrupulous knaves? If we made our churches less austere and
+their gatherings more alluring to the young, these low and vicious
+resorts might close for lack of patronage.</p>
+
+<p>God bless the boys. I love them next best to girls, and sometimes even a
+little better, when they are especially frank and brave and true. I am
+not going to see them harmed without a protest, either, and I would be
+one of a crowd this very day to march upon the resorts of evil that lie
+in wait, all over town, to destroy the bonnie fellows. If I had my way,
+every man or woman who makes money by pandering to the curiosity of a
+boy's nature, inciting to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> unworthy passion by means of lewd pictures
+and the like, should be consigned to instant perdition. The earth is too
+hallowed to receive their vile dust!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Dear girls, if you would be beautiful with the beauty that strikes root
+in heaven, first of all be natural. Be true to something within you
+higher than any conventional code or worldly wise mandate. If it is your
+natural impulse to be courteous, and sympathetic, and sweet (and blessed
+be the fact, it is the natural impulse of most girls so to be!), don't
+let miserable conformity and its tricksters exchange your genuine
+blossom for a mere shred of painted muslin, fashioned though it be after
+even so perfect a similitude of a rose. The birds of the air nor the
+angels in heaven will ever be fooled by any artificial rose, let me tell
+you, however much dudes and society feather-heads may pretend to desire
+it. Grow for something better than this world; wear your sweetness in
+your heart rather than on your pocket handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>The great drawback to domestic felicity often lies in the fact that we
+get too familiar with one another. There should be a certain reserve in
+the most intimate relationships. Sisters and brothers have no right to
+burst into one another's private rooms without knocking. Wives have no
+more right to search their husband's pockets than they have to do the
+same little service for a distant acquaintance. I have no right to read
+the Young Person's letters without permission, although I have a right
+to win her confidence so that she shows them freely. The Captain has no
+more right to visit the Boy's bank for pennies because he is her
+brother, than she has to abstract money from the grocery-man's till. You
+have no more right to obtrude your conversation upon your wife, nor she
+upon her husband, when either is in the middle of a thrilling story,
+than you or she would have to interrupt the Queen of England at her
+devotions. An "excuse me," if a mother is obliged to interrupt her
+youngest child's babble, is quite as good a way to teach the baby
+manners<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> as a course of lectures later on etiquette. The man who gets up
+and slams shut the ventilator in a crowded car to suit his own
+convenience, or the woman who throws open a car-window regardless of the
+occupants of the seat behind her, is no ruder than Bess is when she
+ignores brother Tom's comfort at home, or Tom is when he pounces for the
+biggest orange on the plate when only Bess and he are at table. When
+either makes rude remarks to the other, they sin against the true code
+of etiquette more than when they are discourteous at a party or
+boisterously unkind with a comrade, just as he is more criminally
+careless who pounds a piano to pieces with a hammer than he who batters
+the pine case it was brought in. The greater the value of the article,
+the choicer we are supposed to be of it, and in the same line of
+argument, the dearer and closer the tie that binds us, the more
+considerate we should be in the handling of it. I may hurt the feelings
+of a society acquaintance, and there is restitution and forgiveness, but
+when I stab the dear old mother's heart with an unkind word, or wound my
+child's feelings with an injustice or a cruelty, or ridicule the
+sensitive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> feelings of a brother or a sister, not eternity itself shall
+be long enough to extract the sting from my memory when my dear ones are
+dead and love's opportunity is vanished forever.</p>
+
+<p>Study politeness, then, which is the bodyguard of love, and build up for
+yourself the structure of a happy home.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Has it been borne in upon you what radiant mornings and September nights
+the last two weeks have brought in? Have you stopped, Mr. Busyman, to
+note the wonder of the skies, never so glorious as of late? Did you see
+the sunset the other evening when a gigantic cloud stood almost zenith
+high against the flaming west, and took on for a time the panoply of a
+king? Did you notice the purple center and the dazzling edge, with the
+rose blush that fringed its borders? Did you see it pale to gray and
+vanish like a ghost into the starry night? Do you ever stop, Mrs.
+Featherhead, to mark the beauty of our wayside clover or the sparkle of
+a buttercup in the dew? Have you found the nooks where, like shy
+children,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> the violets cluster? Did you mark a certain day, a week or so
+ago, when the heavens were full of cloud battalions, taking new shapes
+every minute, and often dissolving in long lines of purple rain, shot
+through with stitches of golden light? Have you seen the lake lately, as
+blue as a heather bell, as wild as a wood-bird, as peaceful as a
+brooding dove? Where were you the other night when out of the sullen
+storm cloud the "light that never was on land or sea" enfolded us, and
+the world hung like an emerald in a topaz sky?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>No law of morals should be less arbitrary for men than it is for women.
+An impure heart, a riotous appetite, a profane tongue, are no more
+excusable in a man than they are in a woman. If a man is supposed to
+shrink from selecting his wife among the unclean in thought and immoral
+of practice, why should not a young girl be allowed an undefiled
+selection? When girls grow so queenly natured that they demand that
+their lover should be of the royal stock and never demean themselves<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> to
+stoop to mate with impurity and profligacy just because it carries a
+handsome face and a well-filled pocketbook, there will be some chance
+for happiness in the married estate. It is this placing white flowers in
+smutty buttonholes, or, in other words, the wedding of pure women to
+blasé and wicked men, that sows the seed of the tare in what was meant
+by the primal law to be a harvest of golden grain. Do you pick
+slug-eaten roses and wind-fall blossoms? When you go forth to buy
+material for a new gown do you choose cotton warp fabrics and colors
+that will fade in the first washing? Your answers to all these question
+are prompt enough, but when I ask you what choice you make of gentlemen
+friends, you are not quite so ready with a reply. Do you choose the
+young man who has a clean record, who neither drinks nor wastes his
+money in riotous practices? How about the tobacco chewers and the
+swearers? How about the lewd jesters and the low-minded? Provided he
+wears fine clothes, can dance well and make a good appearance in
+society, and above all can give you a handsome diamond for an engagement
+ring, are you not willing to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> accept a lover in spite of his known
+reputation as a fast young man about town? Girls, you had much better
+choose a specked peach for canning than such a man for a husband. Do you
+imagine that by and by at the upper court, whither we are all hastening
+as quickly as the old patrol wagon of time can carry us, there will be
+any distinction made between men and women? Think you a man is going to
+get off easier than a sorrowful and sinful woman merely because the
+world falsely taught him that the exigencies of his nature demanded
+greater latitude than hers?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>You may retouch a faded picture, you may patch up an old piano, you may
+mend a shattered vase, but you cannot make a plucked rose grow again; it
+will wither and die in spite of every effort to restore it to the stem
+from which it fell. And so with the heart from which a low desire in the
+guise of an alluring temptation has snatched the flower of innocence.
+That heart will fade into hopeless loss unless a greater love than yours
+or mine intervenes to save. An impure soul never started out impure from
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> first any more than a peach was decayed in the blossom. It is the
+small beginnings, dear girls, that lead up to the bitter endings. The
+impure book read on the sly, the questionable jest laughed at in secret,
+the talk indulged in with a schoolmate or a friend which you would be
+unwilling for "mother" to hear, the horrible card circulated under the
+desk or behind the teacher's back, those are the beginnings of an ending
+sadder than the blight of any desolation that storm or drought or frost
+can bring upon the blossoms. If I only could, how gladly I would dip my
+pen to-night in a light that should outshine the electric splendor of
+our streets and write a message against the dark background of the sky,
+to startle young girls into the realization of the danger that lurks in
+the first indulgence of thoughts and companionships that are not pure.
+Avoid all such as you would avoid the contagion of small-pox, and a
+thousand times more. Small-pox, at its worst, can only mar the body, but
+the friend who lends you bad books or tells you "smutty" stories
+proffers a contagion to your soul which all the fountains of all your
+tears can never cleanse away.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">THIS BABY OF OURS.</span></p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+
+<tr><td>
+There's not a blossom of beautiful May,<br />
+Silver of daisy, or daffodil gay,<br />
+Nor the rosy bloom of apple tree flowers,<br />
+Fair as the face of this baby of ours.<br />
+<br />
+You could never find, on a bright June day,<br />
+A bit of fair sky so cheery and gay;<br />
+Nor the haze on the hills in noonday hours,<br />
+Blue as the eyes of this baby of ours.<br />
+<br />
+There's not a murmur of wakening bird&mdash;<br />
+The clearest, sweetest, that ever was heard<br />
+In the tender hush of the dawn's still hours&mdash;<br />
+Soft as the laugh of this baby of ours.<br />
+<br />
+There's no gossamer silk of tasseled corn,<br />
+Nor the flimsiest thread of the shy wood fern&mdash;<br />
+Not even the cobwebs spread over the flowers&mdash;<br />
+Fine as the hair of this baby of ours.<br />
+<br />
+There's no fairy shell by the sounding sea,<br />
+No wild rose that nods on the windy lea,<br />
+No blush of the sun through April's showers,<br />
+Pink as the palm of this baby of ours.</td></tr></table>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Don't you get awfully tired of people who are always croaking? A frog in
+a big,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> damp, malarial pond is expected to make all the fuss he can in
+protest of his surroundings. But a man! Destined for a crown, and born
+that he may be educated for the court of a king! Placed in an emerald
+world with a hither side of opaline shadow, and a fine dust of diamonds
+to set it sparkling when winter days are flying; with ten million
+singing birds to make it musical, and twice ten million flowers to make
+it sweet; with countless stars to light it up with fiery splendor, and
+white, new moons to wrap it round with mystery; with other souls within
+it to love and make happy, and the hand of God to uphold it on its
+rushing way among the countless worlds that crowd its path: what right
+has a man to find fault with such a world?</p>
+
+<p>When the woodtick shall gain a hearing, as he complains that the grand
+old century oak is unfit to shelter him, or the bluebird be hearkened to
+when he murmurs that the horizon is off color, and does not match his
+wings, then, I think, it will be time for man to find fault with the
+appointments of the magnificent sphere he inhabits.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a fine day!" remarks Miss Cherrylips.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>"Too cold," says the croaker; "beastly wind, not fit for a dog to
+breathe."</p>
+
+<p>Oh, yes, my dear, I heard him say it this very morning, and while I sat
+and listened to him I could but think to myself, "What would become of
+the croaker without the weather topic to fall back upon?" When all else
+failed him, he is sure to have something to find fault with within the
+range of this universal and inexhaustible topic. It is too warm or too
+cold; there is too much rain, or there is a drought; the winters are
+changing and microbes are on the increase; the peach buds are blighted
+by a cold snap in spring, and the potatoes have failed or are about to
+fail, owing to a wet June.</p>
+
+<p>That is the way the croaker holds forth whenever he can get anybody to
+listen to him. I sometimes wonder what he would do if he really had
+great things to fret about; if one of his beautiful children were to
+die, or the faithful wife he loves so well in his heart, perhaps, but
+never takes the trouble to acquaint with the fact, were to weary of his
+endless faultfinding and steal away from it all into the quietude of the
+grave. I wonder if he would not then look back upon these days of
+"croaking" with amazement that he was ever so blind and stupid a fool.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>I knew a woman once who was very, very charming. She could sing "Allan
+Percy" in a way that would melt the heart within you. She could paint on
+china and decorate the panels of doors, and on the whole she was
+calculated to enjoy life and make it enjoyable for others. But her home,
+on the contrary, was utterly devoid of peace and comfort. Her husband
+took no pleasure there, although he was lavish in the expenditure of
+money to render the place attractive. Her children were glad to get away
+from their home and find otherwhere the freedom and gaiety denied them
+there. Why was all this, when the mother was so eminently fitted by
+grace and accomplishments to create a beautiful and happy home? Simply
+because she was always fretting and fussing about trifles. She was a
+croaker and always finding fault. She fought flies until life was a
+burden to everybody who watched her. She said that they would spoil the
+paint, poison the food and ruin the curtains. She was after them at
+early dawn nor gave over the chase until late at night. She would leave
+the dinner table to chase a fly and kill it with a folded paper. She
+would stop the lullaby song she was singing to her pretty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> baby, to get
+up and call somebody to come in and hunt a stray blue-bottle that was
+bunting its stupid head against the window screen. She said that her
+life wasn't worth a farthing to her if the flies got into her home, and
+she would sooner jump in the river than submit to the pestilential
+infliction. Then she was forever prophesying some dreadful fate for
+herself by reason of the muddy footprints that occasionally found their
+way onto the carpets.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare," she would say, "if you boys don't stop tracking dirt into
+the house I'll die before my time. If there is anything I hate it is a
+careless boy!"</p>
+
+<p>And the boys took her at her word and stopped tracking mud. But they
+were gradually lured to stay away from home, and the soil they took into
+their hearts was perhaps harder to efface than the footmarks they left
+upon the floor of mother's neatly kept hallways.</p>
+
+<p>She was always anticipating trouble that never came. She knew the girl
+was going to leave. She was simply too great a treasure to keep. She was
+absolutely certain that the milkman was watering his milk, and the baby
+would get sick. She had no doubt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> whatever but what her husband was
+going to ruin himself on 'Change, and then what would become of them
+all? So she worried and fretted and fumed, until patience, like a hunted
+bird, spread its wings and flew away, and what might have been a happy
+home became a stranded wreck upon the rocks of contention.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, I tell you right now, girls, if you can only cultivate one
+accomplishment out of the many that wait to crown a perfect womanhood,
+cultivate a pleasant temper and cheerful disposition. The ability to
+speak many languages, to paint, to dance, to sing, or even to wield a
+graceful pen is nothing compared to the ability to make a lovely home.
+Nobody ever yet succeeded in that noblest endeavor without abjuring
+needless faultfinding, croaking and fretting.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>As a general thing I don't believe in sermons served as restaurants
+serve beef&mdash;in slices. I believe in teaching truths, rather, as one
+whips cream, dropping in the moral as an almost imperceptible flavoring.
+But I tell you there are times when I feel like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> mounting a pulpit and
+thundering with old Calvin, until the air emits sulphur. Especially when
+I see the inhumanities and outrages practiced upon children by witless
+parents, do I feel stirred to my soul's depths. If we treated our flower
+beds as we do our children there wouldn't be a blossom left in the
+world. If we served our meals as we do our children, there would be
+rampant indigestion and black-browed death at the heels of every one of
+us. Now and then you see a wise mother and sensible father, but the
+biggest half of humanity receive their children as youngsters receive
+their Christmas toys, to be played with when in a good humor, and
+bundled anywhere out of sight when out of sorts or engrossed with more
+important matters. We forget, half of us, that a little child's sense of
+injustice and sorrow and wrong is compatible with its own growth and
+experience rather than with our own. What to us is a paltry trial is the
+cause of keenest, unalleviated woe to the child of five. The possession
+of uncounted gold at forty will not be more precious than the possession
+at three of the apple or the book we so rudely snatch from the little
+hands without a word of apology. Take<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> the time to explain to the little
+fellow why you deprive him of some cherished possession and you will
+save the tender bit of a heart a vast amount of unnecessary aching.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I have many things to be thankful for this stormy winter night. One is
+that the coal bin is full and the lock on the outer door secure. Another
+is that the rooftree bends above an unbroken band, and that disease with
+its fell touch lingers the other side of the threshold of the little
+home. Another is that, as a family, we all have straight backs and
+moderately developed intellects; that we are neither dime museum freaks,
+lunatics, nor half-wits. Another is that none of us chew gum, carry
+around dogs, nor make expectoration the chief business of a day's
+outing. Another is that I am getting so used to the alarm clock that I
+sleep through its wild clamor and escape the duties that fall to the lot
+of that other member of the home circle whose ear and conscience are not
+so sadly seared as mine. Another is that I know enough to detect butter
+from oleomargarine, and am not roped in by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> Blank street vendors with
+their dollar and a half tubs. Another is that I am not the sort of
+fellow to be always hitting another fellow when he has been down and is
+trying to stand steady again. Another is that I am modest enough to
+question whether I could run a grip any better than he does? Another is
+that I got one answer to the "ad." wherewith I sought to capture a gold
+watch. It would have been an embarrassing thing to have received not one
+solitary little nibble. Another is that the elevator boy who
+occasionally carries me to the top floor and intermediate stations
+around at Blank's is kind and does not treat me with the haughty scorn
+he bestows on others. Another is that I have the serene equipoise of
+nerve which renders me calm and even cheerful under the knowledge that
+there is nothing in the house to eat, and two invited guests gently
+sleeping the happy hours away in the chamber above, dreaming perchance
+of toothsome viands not to be. Another is that in spite of weather I
+take no colds, and am as impervious to catarrhal or pneumonic affections
+as an eagle is impervious to the attack of tom-tits. Another is that I
+live in a town where people sell no beer; they may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> steal and backbite,
+and raise the old lad generally, but thank goodness the baleful glitter
+of a glass beer bottle has never yet eclipsed the moral splendor of the
+scene. Another is that I have been enabled to preserve a few staunch and
+trusty friends through the evolution of that rainy-weather costume which
+a few of my sex have joined me in essaying. I cannot speak for future
+tests, but so far my henchmen have stood firm. And right here let me say
+that any friend, man, woman or babe, who can remain loyal to you after
+you have been seen in public in a dress-reform garment is worth
+cultivating, and should be made the theme of special psalms of praise.
+Another is that the picture I had taken the other day looks worse than I
+do, and when I send it off to unsuspecting admirers I am not torn with
+the thought that when they see the original they will drop scalding hot
+tears of disappointment. This idea of raising false hopes in the minds
+of confiding strangers savors too much of Ananias and Sapphira. Another
+is that so far in life I have preserved a stern and unshaken resolution
+not to wear a false front. A woman in a store bang is next worse to a
+chromo in an art gallery,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> or a muslin rose among American beauties
+fresh from the rose gardens. Artificiality, my dear, pretense and
+assumption, are harder to put up with than anything else in the world,
+unless it is corns. But far ahead of all the above enumerated causes for
+gratitude is one which thrills me most profoundly, and which can be
+summed up in half a dozen words, the echo of which, perhaps, will find a
+lodgment in some other hearts. I am thankful, very, very thankful, that
+I am not the mother, nor the aunt, nor the half-sister, nor the first
+cousin, nor even the next-door neighbor, of the boy who kills sparrows
+for two cents bounty on the little heads. If I had such a boy within
+range of my voice to-night I should say to him, "Be poor, my man; be
+unsuccessful in business, and not up to bargains all your life, but
+don't be shrewd and sordid and cruel in seeking your gains. Better go by
+the name of 'mollycoddle' and 'baby' among the other boys than get to be
+a little ruffian with your arrow and your sling-shot, and the name of a
+keen-killer tacked on to yourself. Let the sparrows alone, or if you
+really feel that they are the nuisance they are made out to be, kill
+them if you like, but do it in a gentlemanly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> way (if such a paradox is
+possible), and don't take money for the job." The boy or the man who
+will take a life for sordid ends, or, in other words, who will seek to
+enrich himself on "blood money," is pretty low down in the human scale.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Laughter is a positive sweetness of life, but, like good coffee, it
+should be well cleared of deleterious substance before use. Ill-will and
+malice and the desire to wound are worse than chicory. Between a laugh
+and a giggle there is the width of the horizons. I could sit all day and
+listen to the hearty and heartsome ha! ha! of a lot of bright and jolly
+people, but would rather be shot by a Winchester rifle at short range
+than be forced to stay within earshot of a couple of silly gossips.
+Cultivate that part of your nature that is quick to see the mirthful
+side of things, so shall you be enabled to shed many of life's troubles,
+as the plumage of the bird sheds rain. But discourage all tendencies to
+seek your amusement at the expense of another's feelings or in aught
+that is impure. It was Goethe who said:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> "Tell me what a man laughs at
+and I will read you his character."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I'll take my chances any day to find heaven on earth, if I can have the
+run of the woods up along our northern lake shore in early springtime. I
+want no companions either, unless, perhaps, it be a child or a dog, for
+artificial women and dudish men, let loose in the woods, are harder to
+endure than gad-flies. It was scarcely more than sunrise, the other
+morning, when I left the house and took my way toward the forest shrine
+undesecrated as yet by surveyors or wood-choppers, the advent of either
+of whom in a country town means good-bye to heaven on that particular
+spot of earth! We found the air so full of sweetness, the instant we
+struck the depths of the woods, that one could almost fancy the wise men
+of the East had been there before us to greet the new-born Spring with
+spices as they greeted another Heaven-born child a score of centuries
+ago in Bethlehem. Every shrub held a softly-tinted leafbud half
+unfolded, like a listless hand. The maple leaves were pink<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> and glossy,
+like rose petals wet with rain. The hickory trees were unfolding great
+creamy buds that looked like magnolias. The hawthorns were all afloat
+with silver blossoms, like loosened sails. The earth seemed singing to
+the heavens, "God is here!" and from the blue depths of quietude, where
+a few clouds spread their soft wings like brooding birds, came back the
+answer, "He is here!" The lake claimed Him, and a thousand azure waves
+murmured His presence on the deep. Wherever we looked, at our feet where
+the June lilies whitened the ground like perfumed snow, and the moss was
+bubbling like a wayside spring with sunshine in place of water; at the
+misty foliage overhead, like shadowy spirit wings; at the circle of blue
+that bounded the earth, or into the very heart of heaven above us, it
+seemed as though God, visible and manifest, was there to give us
+greeting. Finally, we found a point of high land, touched here and there
+with shadows flung down from budding birches, and starred with
+dandelions in flocks, like golden butterflies. Here, leaving the
+material part of me leaning up against a tree-trunk to rest, as one
+thrusts a cumbersome garment on a nail, my soul<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> went wandering off into
+Paradise, and forgot awhile its environment and its earth-born
+responsibilities. Next time the world has failed to use you well and you
+are smarting from the sense of injury undeserved, or the frets of
+domestic life have worn you down to the minimum, like a blade that is
+eternally upon the grindstone, start for the woods. Take a big basket
+with you and fill it full of lilies, and, ten to one, before you get
+home again the lilies will have taken root in your heart and your basket
+will be full of contentment.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Educate the children to the expectation of sorrow, not as a monster who
+is to devour them, but as an angel who is to meet them on the way and
+lead them gently home to heaven. Teach them to hold themselves in
+readiness for whatever life has in store, as soldiers are trained for a
+battle whose end is certain peace. Teach them to endure all things, only
+striving to sweeten and soften rather than to harden under the
+discipline of sorrow. Unselfishness is the most rare and at the same
+time the most Christian virtue<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> possible for human nature to attain to,
+but did anybody ever yet grow unselfish through a life of indolent
+self-indulgence and ease? Did fruit ever amount to anything that was
+left unacquainted with the sharp discipline of the gardener's shears? I
+tell you, all the way up from an apple to a man it takes lots of pruning
+and lopping off of superfluous branches to bring out the flavors and
+sweeten the fiber of the fruit.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I can imagine a lot of way-worn pilgrims drawing up to heaven's gate.</p>
+
+<p>"What will you have?" asks old St. Peter, standing idle and calm in the
+perpetual sunshine that lies beyond the swinging portal.</p>
+
+<p>"I will have my crown," says one. "I have earned it."</p>
+
+<p>"And I will have my harp," says another; "my fingers are eager to pick
+out the heavenly tunes."</p>
+
+<p>"And I will hie me at once to my heavenly mansion," says a third. "Long
+time I have plodded, foot-sore and weary, to gain the habitation of its
+enduring rest."</p>
+
+<p>But if you can imagine "Amber" piping forth her small request, I think
+you might<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> hear her say: "Conduct me, oh, aged friend, to the nearest
+sand-bank, where I may lie face downward in the sunshine for fifty years
+to come, and hear the surf break on 'Sconsett's reef." That is what I
+have been doing for the past fortnight, and both soul and body have
+waxed strong in the process.</p>
+
+<p>What a tired passenger we carry around with us, sometimes, in this
+marvelous Pullman coach of ours, wherein the soul takes passage for its
+overland trip from the cradle to the grave. How restless it gets, and
+how troublesome. How it turns from companionship, even that of books,
+and finds no panacea for its torment, until some kind fate side-tracks
+it and lets the noisy world rumble on with the clatter and clash of
+conflicting cares beating the hours to dust beneath their flying wheels.</p>
+
+<p>When I went away for my yearly outing I was so cross that there was no
+living within six miles of my own shadow. I hated everything on earth,
+and everything on earth hated me. But I have come back as sweetly as the
+breath of a rose steals through a lattice. That is the effect of a
+jaunt, my dear; and let me say right now that if you are holding on to
+your money in the hope<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> of getting rich sometime, or if you are
+traveling in a rut because you think you are too poor to avoid it, or if
+you are grinding your soul into fine dust in the process of laying up
+against a rainy day, just stop right where you are and listen to me. Any
+money that is gained at the expense of health, either physical or
+mental; any duty held to in the face of nervous breakdown; any gain
+secured at the expense of peace of mind and growth of soul, is not worth
+the holding. You cannot be of any use in the world if you are worn out
+or sick. You may persist in holding on, but your grip is weak, and your
+effect on affairs and people is simply that of an irritant. You owe it
+to yourself, as well as to others, to go away and get rested. If it
+costs money to do so, consider money well spent that gains so fair an
+equivalent as rest and change, and renewed vigor. I tell you there are
+few better uses to which you may put your dollars than in a yearly
+outing. Your pockets may be lighter when you get back, but so will your
+heart be, and the few sacrifices necessary in the way of less expensive
+clothes and cigars, or less frequent gloves and bonnets, will be well
+worth the making for the result gained.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I wish Columbus had never discovered us. I wish that he had never
+steered his old bark westward and found the "land of the free and the
+home of the brave." For with discovery came civilization, and I believe
+we would have been better off without it. If we only could have been
+left to ourselves and gone on sitting under lotus trees unaffected by
+dressmaker and tailor bills, I believe the sum total of happiness would
+have been far greater in the world than it is to-day. I would love to
+return to my allegiance to nature and forever desert the haunts of
+civilization and the marts of trade. I want to gather together a picked
+band of kindred souls and go out and pitch tent by the Gunnison River.
+Ever been there? Imagine a stream of gold flowing through hills colored
+like an apple orchard in May, with a sky bending down above them like
+the wing of an oriole. I want to forget the insolence of a class who may
+be as good as I am in the eye of the law, but whom it would take a ton
+of soap and God's grace to make my equal in point of cleanliness and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+decency. I want to forget forever the clang of the cable car and the
+rumble of its wheels. I want to return to the heathendom that worships
+gods instead of dollars and loves mankind simply because it knows
+nothing of faithlessness and fraud.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>"Plaze, sor," said a servant to the head of a certain suburban household
+the other morning, "the gintleman who sthole the chickens left his hat
+in the hincoop." Just so, Bridget. And the lady who attends to the
+affairs of the kitchen has her foot upon the neck of the miserable woman
+who is nominally at the head of the house. Oh, no! I am not going to
+enter into a disquisition upon the merits of the servant question. Years
+ago, when I cantered lightly in my ride against windmills, I might have
+undertaken it, but the question has grown too large to be settled by
+talking. The state of things in this free country is growing just a
+trifle too free. There are no longer any servants in this proud land. It
+is not ladylike to serve. The person who superintends the domestic
+affairs of our home merely condescends<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> for a consideration. We no
+longer have any rights as employers. The wind has tacked to another
+quarter. Should we wish to discharge our lady cook or dispense with the
+services of a gentleman artisan it stands in place for us to approach
+them in a respectful manner, put the case before them clearly and ask
+them humbly, without offense to their delicate sensibilities, if they
+will kindly allow us to forego their so-called services. Question
+yourself seriously, my dear; are you sufficiently considerate? Think how
+these defenseless ladies and thin-skinned gentlemen who fill positions
+of trust in your establishment must suffer sometimes from your boorish
+impetuosity. Are you always cordial in your greeting when the worn face
+of the cook appears at the delayed breakfast hour and she places before
+you the hurried pancake and the underdone steak? Do you stop to think
+how the poor creature has danced all night at a ball and has crept home
+after your stiff-necked and rebellious husband has bounded away to catch
+the early train, breakfastless and profane? And when the low-voiced and
+timid second girl tells you that, as a lady who knows her place, she
+really cannot demean<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> herself to wipe off the paint or sweep the front
+steps, do you take her by the hand and acknowledge the indiscretion of
+your coarser nature in expecting her to do such menial service? How many
+of us, clods that we are, have raged when the mild-mannered laundry maid
+has appropriated our underclothing, or remonstrated when the number
+seven foot of the blue-blooded cook has condescended to stretch our
+silken hose? It behooves us to join the ranks of the "philanthropic
+fiends" and look to it that we improve our methods of treating the
+delicate gentry who tarry with us so briefly.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>By the way, I think I occasionally hear a feeble pipe from a man to the
+effect that the girls are responsible for all the tomfoolery in the
+world. Don't you know that you are the very ones who tend to make them
+so&mdash;you men? You follow after and woo and wed just that sort of girls.
+You won't look at a sensible little woman who can make "lovely" bread,
+abjures bangs, can't dance and has no "style." You laugh at and make sly
+jokes at the expense of our big hats and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> our pronounced fashions, but
+when you choose your company, and often your wives, I notice you pass
+right by the home-keeping birds and take the peacocks. Of course, no one
+lives in this age who doubts for a moment that woman's chief aim in life
+and purpose of creation, as well as her hope of a blessed hereafter, is
+to please the men and get a husband. If you won't have her modest and
+simply gowned she is willing to make a feather-headed doll and a
+travesty of herself to get you and win heaven! You know perfectly well,
+you men, that you don't care half so much for brains as you do for
+general "get-up," and the woman you honor with your choice is selected
+for a pretty face and form, and a becoming costume rather than for a
+clever head and an honest heart. I am not talking to old fogies who
+cling to old-fashioned notions, but to young men who ridicule the
+customs of their grandmothers, who shake their heads at salaries of two
+and three thousand a year as inadequate to support wives; who rail
+against woman's extravagance, yet do their best to maintain her in it.
+When you, my fine and dapper gentleman, begin to seek out the modestly
+appareled and the sedate girls,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> then shall folly and vain show fly over
+seas for want of encouragement and the grand transformation of sawdust
+dolls into women and pleasure-seekers into home-keepers take place.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">TWO DAYS.</span></p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+
+<tr><td>
+I said to myself one golden day<br />
+When the world was bright and the world was gay,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Though I live more lives than time has years</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Either in this or the infinite spheres,</span><br />
+I will fear no blight and I'll bear no cross,<br />
+Against my gains I will write no loss,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But I and my soul, twin lilies together,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shall whiten in endless summer weather!"</span><br />
+<br />
+I said to myself one weary day<br />
+When the world was old and the world was gray,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Has God forgotten His wandering earth?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Are its tears His scorning, its groans His mirth?</span><br />
+There's no blue above where the torn clouds fly,<br />
+There's no bloom below where the dead leaves lie;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Would I and my soul were at rest together</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wrapped from the chill of this wintry weather."</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>There<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> are some people who live in this world as a cucumber grows in a
+garden. They cling to their own vine and serve no higher end than
+rotundity and relish. There are others who live in the world as a summer
+breeze lives in a meadow; they find out all the hidden flowers and set
+the perfumes flying. There are others who live as the sea lives in a
+shell; their existence is nothing but a sigh. There are others who live
+as the fire lives in a diamond; they are all sparkle. And there are
+others, and they outnumber all the rest, who live as a blind mole lives
+in the soil; they see nothing, feel nothing, suffer and enjoy a little
+now and then, perhaps, but know nothing to all eternity. Such people
+walk through life as the mole walks through the glory of a summer day,
+or burrows beneath the dazzle of a winter storm. They are as
+irresponsive to the voices all about them as the mole is to the singing
+of April robins. They are as untouched by the myriad influences of life
+as the mole is by the light of a star or the flash of a comet. Their
+only interest is in the question, "Wherewith shall we be clothed, and
+what shall we have to eat?" They gather the ripened hours from the tree<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+of life as a child gathers fruit, merely for the gratification of an
+instant appetite, not as the careful housewife does, who garners in a
+store for wintry weather. Life to them is merely a fattening process.
+They remind one of prize beef at a county fair; to-morrow brings the
+shambles and the butcher's axe, but in the serene content of a
+well-filled stall and a full stomach, they take no thought of the
+future. We meet such people every day and everywhere. On the streets
+they may see a brute tyrannizing over a helpless beast of burden, or a
+mother (?) yanking a sobbing child along by the arm, as full of ugliness
+herself as a thunder-cloud is of electricity, or a man following an
+innocent young girl with the devil in his heart, or a big boy
+tyrannizing over a smaller one; and they pass it all by as indifferently
+as the mole would sneak across a battlefield the morning after a battle.
+They have too much to do themselves to waste time in remedying other
+people's grievances. They think too much of personal reputation to
+involve themselves in an altercation with defilers of the innocent, and
+tramplers of the weak. They are too respectable to get mixed up in
+brawls, even if the disturbance is brought about by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> the devil's own
+drummers looking up recruits among the championless and defenseless
+working-girls, or the parentless and homeless children of a great city.
+We meet them traveling through the mountains or loitering by the sea.
+Their only use for mountains is that they may carve their precious
+initials on the highest peaks, pick winter-greens and blue-berries and
+display their fashionable suits and striped stockings. They look upon
+the sea as a big bathing-tank, and the sky, with all its splendor of
+cloud and its glory of sunrise and sunset, as a barometer to forecast
+the weather. We meet them in business relations, and they never believe
+that courtesy and business can go together. A merchant in his office or
+a lady in her parlor will bluntly refuse to buy of a worn-out,
+discouraged, heart-sick book-agent, ignoring the fact that a smile
+accompanying even a refusal acts like a spoonful of sugar in bitter tea,
+and costs less. Even a "lady" clerk, behind a counter, will be haughty
+and unaccommodating and insolent to the woman who comes to buy,
+forgetful that a customer will go a long distance out of her way to deal
+with a polite and well-mannered clerk, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> that, like honesty,
+politeness is ever the best policy. And, on the other hand, a woman
+shopper will be whimsical and captious and trying, forgetting that the
+girl who serves her has human blood in her veins, and often carries a
+troubled heart behind her smile or her frown.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>They have come! Without the sound of a bugle, the bright hosts have
+marched down and taken possession of the land. The southern slopes are
+all alive with their wind-shaken tents, and when the sun comes out warm
+and glowing from the cloudy pavilions of the April sky, he finds a
+million blossoms on the hills that yesterday were white with snow. Some
+of them are tinted like the flush that lingers in the evening sky before
+the stars find it; some of them are stainless as unfallen snow; some of
+them are purple as a nautillus sail adrift upon a twilight sea; and all
+of them are joyfully welcome to hearts that are weary of Winter's long
+reign. And after the hypatica shall come the violet, and after the
+violet the trillium, and after the trillium the wild-rose,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> and after
+the wild-rose the cardinal-flower and the wood-lily, and after them the
+gentian and the golden rod, to mark the wane of the year. Oh, who would
+not live in a world whose dial-plate is made of flowers and whose
+circling seasons are told over with blossoming trees and gentian-buds?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I saw a great many things on the way this morning as I was coming to
+town. Suppose, as the weather is too warm for preaching, I enumerate
+them and let you strike the balance at the close, to see which way the
+world is jogging. I saw a father, drunk, beside his little blue-eyed
+daughter. His head was laid in maudlin sleep upon her shoulder, and with
+blushes that came and went across her face like cloud shadows on the
+slope of a hill, she sat and bore the burden of her childish shame like
+a little angel. I saw a hard-faced, labor-grimed man step out of his way
+to pick a wild rose that grew by the side of the road. I saw a young man
+lash his horse because his own bungling driving came near colliding his
+vehicle with a cable car. I saw a policeman spring to the rescue<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> of an
+old beggar woman who stumbled on a street crossing, and saw him fall and
+trampled upon in the discharge of duty. I saw a pretty girl reach out
+her white fingers and feed a discouraged street-car horse the banana she
+was eating as she passed by. I saw a beaten dog turn and fawn beneath
+his master's brutal kick, and I thought to myself, where is a more
+faithful friendship than that? I saw a little golden-headed boy at the
+window of a house as I rode by, and when I waved my hand he kissed his
+in return. I saw a tired mother stoop to hug the child who fidgeted at
+her knee in the tedious depot waiting-room, and I saw another slap her
+baby because its sticky fingers sought to fondle her cheek. I saw a
+little girl get up, without suggestion from her mother, and yield her
+seat to an older person. I saw a lamed and dying bird just brought down
+by a boy's sling-shot. (I saw that same boy in Sabbath-school last
+Sunday!) I saw one woman in fifty thousand wearing the dress-reform. I
+saw eleven girls out of nineteen with tightly-laced waists! I saw a hurt
+kitten tenderly attended to by a soldier in blue, as I passed Fort
+Sheridan Camp, and involuntarily I said to myself: "The bravest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> are the
+tenderest; the loving are the daring." I saw a small boy beating his
+mother with both fists because she carried him over the crowded and
+dangerous way, and so, I thought, we treat the tender God who sometimes
+lifts us, against our will, from evil ways. I saw a little coffin in an
+undertaker's window, and thought, what child in this busy, bustling city
+is doomed to fill that casket? What love-watched home shelters the head
+that shall one day sleep upon that satin pillow? I saw a teacher in one
+of our public schools and overheard a gross bit of slang as she passed
+by. I see myself sending a child of mine to such a teacher if I knew it!
+I saw a father wheeling his baby in a perambulator, with the sun blazing
+straight into its blinking eyes. I saw one man out of every ten dodge
+into a liquor saloon when he thought nobody was looking. I saw a homely
+girl transformed into a beauty by a service of love accorded a stranger.
+I saw a woman lean out of a Marshall Field 'bus to laugh at another who
+wore shabby clothes and walked with a drooping head. I saw lots of
+things besides, but how does the balance strike?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>If we have been living on bad terms with a neighbor; if we have been
+maintaining a chilling silence and a forbidding reserve with anybody
+thrown often in our way, let us have done with such nonsense and live in
+the world as God meant we should.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Out of the exuberance of a merry heart the housekeeper has loosened the
+tacks in the parlor carpet, and the epoch of housecleaning begins. The
+head of the family, pro tem. dweller in the land of desolation and
+sojourner in the valley of wrath, hies him to town and wishes vainly for
+the return of the days when he had no wife save in Spain and no family
+outside of Elia's land of dreams. The calciminer comes and drops leprous
+splashes all over the hallways and the bannisters. One paperhanger
+taketh unto himself another, and the two scatter ringlets of snipped
+paper all over the bed chambers, and cumber up the floors with sticky
+paste-pots and brushes. The scrub<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> woman breathes hard and devastates
+the approaches of the front steps, while the hired girl skips playfully
+here and there with damp cloths and bars of silvery soap. There is no
+breakfast, no lunch, no dinner. We take what provender the gods deliver
+to us in out of the way places, like stalled oxen or uncomplaining army
+mules! We sleep by night in beds loosely put together and smelling of
+soap. We awake betimes to the rattle of the scrubbing brush and the
+sharp overthrow of stovepipes. We see the young person, like McStinger,
+on the rampage from morn till night. We watch her hand to hand
+encounters with the pictures that have been wont to hang upon the walls.
+How she swoops upon them, bears them down, buffets them with dusters and
+heaps them high like stumbling blocks in the path of the righteous! How
+she sneers at our feeble, yet apt, suggestion, and pharisaically "thanks
+goodness that she is good for something besides standing around and
+giving unsolicited advice!" How she charges upon our cherished books and
+whacks them together vindictively to loosen the dust and the bindings!
+How she tosses the piano like a feather in her strength and probes its
+sensitive heart-strings with a knitting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> needle in search of dirt and
+pins! How she rebukes the Captain for idling away her time at
+doll-playing while there is so much work to do, and drives that gallant
+young field officer forth to do battle with the unresisting tomato can
+in the backyard! What a pandemonium reigns over all the domain of
+yesterday's content! Carlo, the dog, whose flippant youth is getting its
+first severe taste of life's discipline, retires to an adjacent covert
+and howls a fitful protest. The cat blinks sleepily in the sunshine and
+dreams of a future unmarred by suds and a slippery foothold. When she
+has occasion to walk across the kitchen floor she shakes her hind foot
+gingerly, like a pilgrim delicately removing the dust of the enemy's
+land from his members. The goblin brood of chickens chuckle with
+amazement while the hired man beats the rugs like a snare drum and
+charges upon the carpet that hangs like a vanquished foe across the
+clothesline. But, like everything else, my dear, we take the trials of
+spring housecleaning as the tourist takes the storms in the Alps or the
+sailor meets the tempest on the sea. It has not come to stay; the
+sun-lighted peaks of deliverance lie just ahead of us, and there is
+fine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> sailing for another year when the squall is weathered.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I am tired of the endless dress parade of the great alike&mdash;aren't you? I
+am tired of walking in file, as convicts walk together in
+stripes&mdash;aren't you? I glory in cranks who have enough individuality to
+refuse to be sewed up in the universal patchwork, like the calico blocks
+we used to overcast with our poor little pricked fingers ever so long
+ago when we were children&mdash;don't you? The onward sweep of progress in
+this age has prepared the way for non-conformists, and, glory be to God!
+they are swinging into line like beacon lights up the Maine coast. I
+confess I have no heart-pining for emancipation that shall place me
+alongside of Dr. Mary Walker or others of her ilk. I would like to
+retain my womanliness, but I would like also to make a distinct mark
+upon my times, be it ever so small and insignificant, as an individual
+and an intelligence quite as distinct from the conventional masses as a
+blackbird is when it leaves the flock and silhouettes itself in solitary
+state<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> against the deep blue sky from the top of a windy elm
+tree&mdash;wouldn't you?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I want one good square fling on earth before I die. I want the chance to
+know what it is to have enough money to be able to buy silk elastic
+occasionally instead of cotton, and to have my teeth filled with gold
+instead of concrete without feeling as though I had been robbing
+hen-roosts for a month after. I want to go to the theater in a swell
+carriage, and sit in the best box, with a pale pink ostrich boa draped
+about my shoulders and the opera-glasses of the entire house leveled at
+me for a stunning beauty. I want the sensation, for once, of knowing
+that I am as handsome as I am bright, and as well-dressed as I am
+virtuous. I want to have ice cream seven times a week and "Pommery Sec"
+by the dozen in the cellar. I want to own a silk umbrella with a golden
+crook, and wear a diamond ring on every finger. I want to buy candy
+whenever I feel like it without having to register it in the family
+account book under the head of "sundries" and "cough drops." I want to
+see the time<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> when I can call the average shop-girl out into the alley
+and have it out with her with none to interfere. I want to settle with
+her for the indignities I have long suffered with the pusillanimity of a
+meek nature. I want to ask her between clips why she has always sold me
+just what I didn't want, and sneered at me because I didn't buy more of
+it. I want also to engage in hand to hand conflict with the female
+gum-chewer. I want to convince her that I have endured all I will of her
+facial contortions, and that the time has come for the extinction of her
+type from the face of the blooming earth. I want the power to consign
+every man who even mentions "nose bag" to a horse, to the guillotine,
+and to imprison for life every brute who carries a snake-whip or uses a
+check-rein. I want to solder the man or woman who objects to fresh air
+inside a tin can and label them "sardines." I want to shoot on sight the
+first human being who mentions the word "draught" in my hearing, and set
+my dog on the fiend who blots the face of nature with his ear-muffs. I
+want to live for a while in a country where there are neither
+thunderstorms nor cyclones, but where I can sleep nights right through,
+from March until November,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> without getting up to look for funnels or
+shooing the whole family down cellar as a hen gathers her chickens from
+the swooping hawk. I want to live in a community made up of people who
+mind their own business. I want to be able now and then to receive a
+letter from out of town (it is generally a bill!) without having the
+village postmaster regard me as a burning fagot. I want to find a recipe
+for making buckwheat cakes that do not taste like sand. I want to be
+able to detect a hypocrite and a traitor on sight, without waiting for a
+broken heart to evidence the fact that I am sold again. I want to rise
+out of the range of small annoyances, and fly above the aim of inferior
+people to disturb. I want to grow to be more like an eagle that wings
+its way out of the habitat of gadflies, and less like a trembling hare
+pursued by hounds. I want to take the lesson to my heart that the soul
+that is constant to itself and aspires towards heaven shall never be
+left a prey to care and unrest. I want to strike a dress reform which
+shall make women look less like guys, and to encounter a rainy day in
+which I shall not bite the dust, I and my umbrella, and my
+flippety-floppety skirts, and my nineteen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> bundles. I want to cut down
+the ballot privilege and make it impossible for an immigrant to vote
+before he is a twenty-one-year resident of America. I want to convince
+the woman suffragist that the greatest curse she can precipitate upon
+her sex is the ballot. I want to teach my sisters that if they will pay
+more attention to their homes and less to outside issues American
+institutions will be more of a success. If the career of a politician
+will spoil a man what would it do for a woman? On the principle that a
+strawberry will decay sooner than a pumpkin, or that a violet is more
+fragile than a sunflower, it would take about one election day to change
+a woman into a harridan. I never knew but one out and out politician who
+preserved intact the amenities of a gentleman, and he died early of
+heart trouble. The thing killed him physically before it destroyed him
+morally. If any politician reads this and wants to challenge the point I
+want to meet him and either convince him or be slain.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>If you are not glad to be alive such weather as this it is because you
+are a clod and not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> a sentient being. Why, I never open my door these
+radiant mornings and walk out into a world that is more golden than any
+topaz and more radiant than any diamond that I do not hug myself for
+very joy that I am alive! The grave has not got me yet! And, though I be
+poor and quite alone and go hungry for the fleshpots that make my
+neighbors great about the girth, I am happy as a queen and quite content
+to cast my lot with clovers and birds and wayside weeds that feel the
+vigor of summer weather in every fiber of prodigal life. To-night the
+sky was like the flame of King Solomon's opal&mdash;did you see it? And just
+as the glory was growing and deepening into an intensity of beauty that
+made you want to shut your eyes and say Oh&mdash;h&mdash;h! as the little boys do
+at the circus when the elephants go round, a thrush whipped out his
+mellow flute and gave us a vesper song that made one think of heaven and
+bands of singing angels! And yet we are discontented and feel ourselves
+misused because we happen to be a little poverty-stricken now and then,
+and it is hard work to find the plums in our pudding!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>The other morning, before the town clock struck 7, I was riding over
+country in a hack, driven by a courtly mannered colored boy and drawn by
+a couple of discouraged mules. I was going over to Hampton and
+Chesapeake City to see the sights. A robin was quarreling with a sparrow
+for possession of a nest in a treetop hung with blossoms thick as
+Monday's washing, and a small pickaninny stood in a doorway and held his
+breath with terror as our driver slashed the air with his long whip. The
+morning was superb. The sea lay like an opal with a dark setting of
+hills shadowed like oxidized silver, the birds were out like blossoms of
+the upper air with song in place of perfume, and the world seemed
+altogether too jolly and bright a spot to link with thoughts of sorrow
+and pain and death. We drove over to the soldiers' home, where from four
+to five thousand veteran warriors have found shelter from the bombarding
+storm of mundane care. Under the shadow of great willows in half-leaf
+and still golden with April sap, in sunny corners of broad piazzas, on
+benches by the slope of sluggish streams, or walking about the well-kept
+paths, these old and battle-scarred warriors pass the time away.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> "What
+a hero I might have been," says each one to himself, "if only&mdash;&mdash;!" or,
+"What a narrow miss I made of glory when that premature shell took off
+my legs and stranded me here!" Peacefully they behold life's sun
+decline, and peacefully in turn they take possession of the narrow beds
+awaiting them in the near cemetery, where so many soldiers are sleeping
+the unheeded years away. Without motive or purpose their life is
+scarcely more eventless than their death shall finally be. Some way the
+grounds where these patient old graybeards sit day after day with
+nothing to do but muse upon the past remind me of the human heart with
+its pensioned hopes, its stranded intentions and its crippled endeavors!
+What heroisms, what subtle intents for good, what pretentious desires
+were frustrated and made worthless by the destiny which changed life's
+battlefield into a "soldiers' home" and the scene of action for the
+shaded seat under the willows of a long regret!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I wonder if Eve, looking over the battlements of heaven now and then,
+and seeing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> how tired we get down here and how discouraged and
+broken-hearted we often are, is ever sorry for the heritage she left us,
+all for the sake of an apple! Does she not curse the memory of the earth
+fruit whose flavor has so embittered humanity! Think of it, oh
+far-removed and perverse ancestress, if it were not for you we might
+have lived in a world where dinners walked into the pot and boiled
+themselves over fires that called for no replenishing; where rent
+stockings lifted themselves on viewless hands and were deftly darned by
+sunshine needles in the air; where last year's garments glided into this
+year's styles without the snip of scissors or the whirr of sewing
+machine wheels; where brooms swept and dust-cloths dusted unassisted by
+human hands; where windows cleaned themselves as fogs lift from the
+lake, and washing and ironing were spontaneous, like the growth of
+flowers. I for one am heartily tired of having to suffer for Eve's
+heartless stupidity. Hard work has too much of the blight of the primal
+curse about it to suit me, and no matter what philosophy we call to our
+aid the fact remains that labor of a certain sort is the heritage of
+sin, and sin was, is and ever shall be accursed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> But there is something
+a great deal worse than hard work, and that is laziness. The man who
+toils until the great muscles of his arm stand out like cords and his
+broad shoulders are bent like the branches of a pine under the force of
+a strong wind from the north is a king among his kind compared to the
+shiftless do-nothings of life, between whose feet are spun the cobwebs
+of sloth and within whose lily-white fingers nothing more burdensome
+than a cigar finds its way. Give me a blacksmith any day rather than a
+dude. Work is hard and sometimes thankless, but, like tough venison
+served with jelly sauce, it is spiced with self-respect and smacks of
+honest independence.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">THE STORY OF A ROSE.</span></p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+
+<tr><td>
+A white rose grew in a garden place,<br />
+On a slender stem, with a royal grace;<br />
+The nursling of June and her gentle showers,<br />
+Fairest and sweetest of all her flowers.<br />
+<br />
+The south wind was out one day for a sail,<br />
+In a cloudy boat, so fleecy and frail,<br />
+And he chanced to spy, where musing she stood,<br />
+My dear little rose in her snowy hood.<br />
+<br />
+Oh, softly he whispered and tenderly sighed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span><br />
+"Starry Eyes, Starry Eyes, I wait for my bride."<br />
+But she laughed in his face, and told him to go;<br />
+She didn't see why he bothered her so.<br />
+<br />
+A dewdrop fell in the starry hush,<br />
+Lured from heaven by her dreamy blush;<br />
+But the tender kiss of his balmy lip<br />
+She gave to a bee, next morning, to sip.<br />
+<br />
+A bobolink left the bloom of a tree<br />
+To tell her tale of whimsical glee;<br />
+The moon dropped a pearl to wear in her breast;<br />
+Dawn wove her a cloak of silvery mist.<br />
+<br />
+But her hard little heart was colder than ice,<br />
+She sent every suitor away in a trice;<br />
+Till the wind drew nigh, with a terrible roar,<br />
+And said: "Pretty Rose, your playtime is o'er."<br />
+<br />
+He shook her with might, and he drenched her with rain,<br />
+Till the poor little rose swooned away with her pain;<br />
+And her shiny crown, with its moonbeam glow,<br />
+He tossed far and wide, like the feathery snow.<br />
+<br />
+And all that is left of that splendid bloom,<br />
+The diadem gay, and the spicy perfume,<br />
+Is a handful of dust, that once was a rose&mdash;<br />
+The sport of the wind, as it fitfully blows.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Once upon a time there lived a woman. She was not very young, nor was
+she very old. She was neither handsome, homely, a genius, nor a fool.
+She was just a commonplace, good-intentioned, fair type of the average
+woman. This woman prided herself but little upon the various
+accomplishments that contribute to the modern woman's popularity. She
+could not dance a step, save in front of a northeast gale, or in a game
+of romps with her little folks. She could not decorate a tea cup to save
+her life, nor hand-paint a clam shell, nor embellish a canvas with
+fleshy cupids and no less corpulent rosebuds. She could sing a few
+insignificant ballads, such as "Annie Laurie," "Twilight Dews," and
+"Nearer, My God, to Thee." These with a number like them, she was always
+ready to furnish in a manner to bring down the house, but I doubt if she
+would have been a success either in a comic opera or a church choir. She
+could make bread and pieplant pie after a fashion that would make a man
+wish that he had been born earlier to enjoy more of them. She could tidy
+up a room quicker than a cat could wink its eyes, and in the matter of
+housecleaning she was a regular four-in-hand coach and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> tiger. If you
+had asked her to lead a class in ethical culture or make a speech on
+suffrage or score a point for reform, this woman would have ignobly
+turned her back and run away, and yet perhaps she wielded an influence
+in the world quite as strong as many a woman whose name is recorded on
+the roll call of noisy fame. But there was one thing this woman abhorred
+with all the might and strength of her soul, and that was slang. She had
+been brought up to consider the use of anything more pronounced than the
+"yea" and "nay" of the Quaker vernacular an outrage to refinement, and
+although drifting far from her childhood's faith in many ways still
+preserved an innate shrinking from the exuberance of vain speech. She
+allowed no little boys to slide the cellar door with her own precious
+yellow-heads who could be positively convicted of using naughty
+language. Her husband left his worldly ways in town and only carried
+home to this nice little woman the aroma of propriety and coriander
+seeds. But who ever yet was assured of a firm foothold upon the pinnacle
+of self-righteousness that the old boy did not whip out an arrow and
+bring them low? It becomes my painful duty to chronicle the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> temptation
+and downfall of the upright woman.</p>
+
+<p>It was a tempestuous day of early autumn. It not only rained, it poured!
+It not only blew, but it tore, howled, twisted, cavorted! The woman had
+to go to town. At the eleventh hour the family umbrella was kidnaped by
+a demon. (When the prince of evil has nothing else to do he sends out
+his imps to hide umbrellas, handkerchiefs, thimbles, scissors, and other
+domestic essentials.) The woman had no time to track the umbrella to its
+lair, so she pinned a newspaper over her bonnet and leaped for the
+train. Arrived in town she bought a 50 cent umbrella from a man who was
+peddling them on the street corner, and from that moment we date her
+downfall. The umbrella proved to be fashioned of gum arabic and cobweb.
+It leaked, it exuded, it faded away like a frost-flake in her hands, so
+that ere half an hour had passed she gave it to a newsboy, and laughed
+to see him kick it into an alley. Then she took off her plumed hat and
+pinned it underneath her cloak, wrapped a lace scarf about her head and
+proceeded on her way. Remarking the pleased expression on the faces of
+all she met, she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> wondered at it, with an Indian outbreak so imminent.
+Small boys danced by her in the rain to the sound of their own bright
+laughter; strong men seemed overcome as she drew near, and even the
+stern policemen at the street crossings turned aside to hide a 9&#215;14
+smile. The woman lunched at a popular restaurant in the midst of a
+mysterious carnival of glee, and finally took the train for home and,
+leaving the city limits, skirted the northern shores of the lake to the
+sound of muffled mirth. Reaching home and looking into the mirror she
+was confronted by a countenance that bore all the seeming "of a demon
+that is dreaming." The sea-green warp of cotton in the gum-arabic
+umbrella had melted and run in long lines over brow and nose and chin.
+For one moment the woman gazed at her frescoed charm, and as to what
+follows we will drop the curtain. Suffice it to say, she fell, and the
+shocked echoes of that little home put cotton in their ears and fainted
+into lonely space at being called upon to repeat the strong language
+that rent the air. Who shall blame the woman if she said "darn" with an
+emphasis that might have made a pirate wan with envy? Who shall cast the
+first stone at her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> until the day dawns that releases my sex from the
+thralldom of its bondage to those demons who walk abroad and plot her
+downfall in rainy weather?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Wear this bead upon your heart, girls; have nothing whatever to do with
+so-called "fascinating" or "magnetic" men. Put no faith in mystery when
+it comes to a question of the man you think you love. Rapt glances and
+tender sighs that lead to nothing in the way of an honest declaration
+are as despoiling to your womanhood as the breath of a furnace is to a
+flower. There is no mystery in genuine love, and there is no
+counterfeiting it, either. It is open-faced, ready-tongued and
+clear-eyed. It is a virtue for heroes, not a platitude in the mouth of
+fools. It is undefiled and set apart, like the snow on high hills. Allow
+no man to make you a party to anything clandestine. A man who is afraid
+to meet you at your own home, and appoints a tryst in the park, or a
+down-town restaurant, is as much of a menace to your happiness as a
+pestilence would be to your health. Remember, in all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> your experience
+with so-called love, that the fewer adventures a young woman has, the
+fewer flirtations and the fewer "affairs," the more glad she will be, by
+and by, when she is a good man's wife and a brave boy's or sweet girl's
+mother. A gown oft handled, you know, is seldom white, and each romance
+you weave with idle fellows who roll their eyes and talk love, but never
+show you the respect to offer you their hand in honest marriage&mdash;these
+fascinating "Rochesters" and wicked "St. Elmos," already married, or
+steeped to the lips in evil-doing&mdash;deprive you of your whiteness and
+your bloom.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Do you ever get discouraged and feel like saying: "Oh, it's no use! I
+want to amount to something! I have it in me to do great and grand
+things, but the circumstances of poverty are against me. I can be
+nothing but a drudge and the sooner I get over dreaming of anything
+higher, the better!" Of course you have just such times of thinking and
+talking, but did you ever comfort yourself with the thought that though
+all these things you can not be, you are, really,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> in the sight of God?
+A diamond is no less a diamond because it has been mislaid, and passed
+off through ignorance as common glass. A tulip seed is no less the
+sheath of a flower because through mistake somebody has labeled it as
+common timothy. A silk fabric is no less the product of the
+mulberry-feeding worm because somebody has wrapped it in a brown paper
+parcel and valued it as domestic jeans. What you are, you are, and there
+is no power on earth can gainsay it. Other folks may ignore it in you;
+half the world, nay all the world, may fail to see it, but if nobility,
+and strength, and sweetness are there you are worth just that much to
+God! Blessed thought, isn't it, you poor, overworked clerk, with your
+brain always in a muddle with the dry details of a business you hate!
+Blessed thought, isn't it, you dear, tired woman with more burdens to
+carry than a maple tree has leaves! No matter how impossible it may be
+for you to live out what is in you, that something true and grand and
+beautiful is deathless and shall have its chance of development by and
+by.</p>
+
+<p>I shall never again meet the pretty maid with the larkspur eyes and the
+corn silk hair<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> who traveled with us a part of the way, but wherever she
+goes, joy go with her! She was so modest and unspoiled and sweet, I
+declare the sight of such a girl in this day of dancers and
+high-steppers is like the sound of "Annie Laurie" between the carousals
+of a break-down jig, or the taste of a wild strawberry after pepper tea.
+God bless the old-fashioned girl with her helpful ways, her arch face
+and her blithe and hearty laugh. May her type never vanish from the face
+of the earth, and may the mold after which her soul was fashioned never
+get mislaid and lost in the heavenly work-shop.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I think I shall be a little sorry when the commanding officer sends out
+the word to break camp and leave this dear old earth forever. For I love
+this world. I never walk out in the morning when all its radiant colors
+are newly washed with dew, or at splendid noon, when, like an untired
+racer the sun has flashed around his mid-day course, or at evening, when
+a fringe of shadow, like the lash of a weary eye, droops over mountain
+and valley and sea, or in the majestic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> pomp of night when stars swarm
+together like bees and the moon clears its way through the golden fields
+as a sickle through the ripened wheat, that I do not hug myself for very
+joy that I am yet alive. The cruel grave has not got me! Those jaws of
+darkness have not swallowed me up from the sweet light of mortal day!
+What matter if I am poor and unsheltered and costumeless? Thank God, I
+am yet alive! People who tire of this world before they are seventy and
+pretend that they are ready to leave it are either crazy or stuck full
+of bodily ailments as a cushion is of pins. The happy, the warm-blooded,
+the sunny-natured and the loving cling to life as petals cling to the
+calyx of a budding rose. By and by when the rose is over-ripe, or when
+the frosts come and the November winds are trumpeting through all the
+leafless spaces of the woods, will be the time to die. It is no time
+now, while there is a dark space left on earth that love can brighten,
+while there is a human lot to be alleviated by a smile, or a burden to
+be lifted with a sympathizing tear. It will be time to die when you are
+too old or too sick to be a comfort in the world, but if God has given
+you a warm heart and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> ready hand, look about you and be glad He lets
+you live. Yesterday I was passing through the street and I saw a woman
+stoop down and pick up a faded lilac from the middle of a crossing and
+transfer it to a corner where it would not be trampled under foot. The
+world wants such people alive in it, not buried under its green sods.
+The heart that is not unmindful of a crushed flower will be a royal hand
+in the ministrations of life. May the day tarry long on its way that
+lays in the grave such helpful, tender hands that seek to do good.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>The good book says, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," but it don't say,
+Tell thy neighbor all thy secrets. We can love one another without
+establishing an unsafe intimacy. In an age when so little remains set
+apart and sacred, keep the treasury of your inmost heart intact. It is a
+hard thing to believe that in every present friend is hidden a possible
+future enemy, but it is safer to shape the conduct of our life upon that
+belief than to live to see our inmost thoughts and the sanctities of
+one's heart of hearts hawked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> about like green peas in a street vender's
+basket by a spiteful and treacherous enemy. The safest course to pursue
+in a world so full of unfaith and desertions is to be friendly and sweet
+and helpful to all, but communicative and confiding to none.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Once when I was a child, with two long yellow braids down my back, and a
+very great capacity for happiness in my heart, I lived in a remote
+country with an aunt who didn't believe in any one having too good a
+time here on earth. She thought they would appreciate the new Jerusalem
+all the more, perhaps, for having a dismal experience here (there are
+lots like her, too, in the world to-day). Well, once afterward when I
+came home from school (and, ah! as I write how I can see the old road
+where I walked, winding its way under silver birches by the side of a
+trout-brook), somebody came out of the house and beckoned wildly, madly
+for me to hurry up. It was my little cousin, and she looked as though
+she had just skipped out of heaven! Her cheeks were all aglow and her
+eyes were shining like stars. "Oh, come!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> Come quick!" she shouted.
+"There's something in the parlor." I made haste to enter, and there
+before me sat a doll, the biggest and most splendid it had ever entered
+my young heart to imagine. It was dressed in pink tarletan, and had a
+pair of jeweled earrings in its exceedingly life-like ears. At once I
+became embarrassed. Self-consciousness sprang into full being. I was
+painfully aware that my own dress and general appearance suffered by
+contrast with the doll. Nor have I ever since experienced a keener
+sensation of embarrassment than overcame me as I faced that gaudy image
+in wax. My aunt's sarcastic remark, "No wonder that child's mother can't
+lay up a cent for a rainy day when she throws away her dollars on a doll
+like that!" gave me the sad impression that my darling mother was a
+spendthrift, something after the pattern of the prodigal son. From the
+first moment the doll was a source of disappointment and sorrow to me. I
+never could play with it with any comfort because I was afraid of
+soiling its splendid clothes, losing its earrings, or feeling myself and
+my calico and homespun abashed by its superior attire. That doll did me
+no good, and just what it did for me its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> costly and extravagantly
+dressed sisterhood is doing for hundreds of little girls to-day. Too
+fine to be played with, rigged out in all its paraphernalia of empty
+headed flesh and blood women, with powder, puff and bustles, real
+jewelry and costly lingerie, the modern doll is a demoralizer, a
+torment.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Protracted broiling is, I think, on the whole, more wearing to the
+sensibilities than sudden conflagration. A lightning stroke is soon
+over, but who shall deliver us from the torments of dog-days? A bull of
+Bashan encountered in a ten-acre lot may be outrun, but who shall escape
+from a cloud of mosquitoes on a windless night? Give me any day a life
+to live with a tempestuous, gusty sort of person, and I can endure it,
+but deliver me from existence with one who bottles up his thunder and
+looks like a storm that never breaks. A hearty shower, beating down the
+flowers to call them up again in fresher beauty, brightening the hills
+and swelling the brooks, treading with musical footfall the dusty
+streets, and lashing the violet-tinted lake into a foam-flecked sea,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+veining the hot air with sudden fire, and calling out a thousand echoes
+to answer the thunder's call, is it not far better than lowering skies
+that look rain and won't yield it, dragging, sultry days of neither
+sunshine nor storm?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">LINES TO MY LOVE.</span></p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+
+<tr><td>
+When the salt has left the ocean,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the moon forgets the sea,</span><br />
+When with gay and festive motion<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ox shall waltz with bee,</span><br />
+<br />
+When we wash our face in cinders,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And bake our meat on ice,</span><br />
+When tender mercy hinders<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The cat from eating the mice,</span><br />
+<br />
+When gray heads grace young shoulders<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And icicles form in June,</span><br />
+When Quakers all turn soldiers,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And bull frogs sing in tune,</span><br />
+<br />
+Then, and not till then, my treasure,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My darling, tender and true,</span><br />
+My heart shall claim the leisure<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To think no more of you.</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The other morning, lured by the splendor of a golden day, I started to
+walk to town, a distance of twenty-four miles. But after the tenth mile
+the truth was so forcibly and increasingly borne in upon me that "all
+flesh is grass," and that the strength of a man (or woman either) "lieth
+not in his heels," that I postponed the finish until another day. But
+who shall take from me the glory of the start? Shall anybody forget that
+a sunrise was fair and full of promise because the noon was clouded and
+the evening declined into rain? Although my twenty-five-mile walk ended
+at the tenth in a rocking-chair, yet those ten miles were beautiful and
+full of glory.</p>
+
+<p>"It will certainly kill you!" wailed the martyr as I bade her good-bye.
+"Oh, will it kill her?" echoed the poor little Captain, and lifted up
+her voice in lamentation as I vanished from her sight and struck for the
+bluff road. The morning was so beautiful that I could imagine the world
+nothing but a big bunch of tulips standing within a crystal vase in the
+sun. The maples glistened like gold, and were flecked with ruby drops
+that burned and glowed like spilled wine. The oaks were russet brown and
+dusky purple,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> cleft here and there with vivid green, like glimpses of a
+windy sea through shadowed hills. The leaves that had fallen to the
+earth were musical underneath the foot, and gave forth a faint fragrance
+that made the air as sweet as any bakeshop. The odor of fallen leaves
+and wood shrubs sinking into decay is not like any other fragrance so
+much as the scent of well-baked bread, browned and finished in summer's
+ruddy heat.</p>
+
+<p>The lake&mdash;but what can I say to fitly describe that translucent
+sapphire, over which a mist hung like a gossamer web above a blue-bell,
+or the haze of slumber upon a drowsy eye? As I stood upon the bluff,
+before the road struck landward through the woods, I could but extend my
+arm to the glorious expanse of waters and bless the Lord with all my
+soul for so lovely a place to tarry in between times. If this world is
+only a stopping-place, a country through which we march to heaven, as
+Sherman marched overland to the sea, then thank God for so glorious a
+prelude to eternity; and what shall the after harmonies be when the
+broken sounds of idly-touched flutes and harps are so divine?</p>
+
+<p>After leaving Ravinia I proceeded to get<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> lost in the woods. A very
+small boy and a very large dog were standing by a fence. "Does that dog
+bite?" I asked. "Yes'm," promptly replied the sweet and candid child. So
+I climbed a fence and struck for the timber. I soon found that all
+knowledge of the points of the compass had failed me. "If I am going
+east," I mused, "I shall soon strike the lake; if west, the track; south
+will eventually bring me to the Chicago River; but a northerly direction
+will restore me to the sleuth-hound. I will say my prayers and endeavor
+to keep to the south." The way grew denser. My hat gave me some trouble,
+as it insisted upon hanging itself to every tree in the wilderness. The
+twigs twitched the hair-pins from my hair and poked themselves into my
+eyes. A few corpulent bugs toyed with my ankles and a large caterpillar
+passed the blockade of my collar-button and basked in the warmth of my
+neck. I nearly stepped on a snake and was confronted by a toad that
+froze me with a glance of its basilisk eye. So I changed my course and
+suddenly entered a little woodland graveyard&mdash;a handful of neglected
+mounds of earth and silence. No tombstones marked the graves. A
+rudely-constructed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> cross of wood, gray with lichens, alone told of
+consecrated ground. There, away off from the road in the silence of the
+woods, a few tired hearts were taking their rest. Silently I stood a
+moment, then stole away and left the place to its hush of lonely peace.
+What right had I, with my frets and feathers, my twig-punctured
+eye-balls and my toad-perturbed nerves, to bring an unquiet presence
+within this abode of silence and of rest? I sat down on a fence-rail a
+moment while, like Miss Riderhood, I deftly twisted up my back hair and
+mused briefly. When the time comes, oh, intensely alive and happy Amber,
+for your feet to halt in the march, ask to be buried in the woods, where
+your grave will be forgotten and the constant years with falling leaves
+and driving snows may have a good chance to obliterate the earthly
+record of your misspent years.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Sooner or later the shadows shall creep</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Over my rest in the woods so deep;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Sooner or later&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>But enough of this, my dear. I did not intend to incorporate a whole
+cemetery, an obituary discourse, and "lines to the departed"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> in my
+"Glints." After leaving the little graveyard I allowed my instincts to
+carry me in a new direction, and soon a rustling among the dead leaves,
+and the sound of hushed breathing, convinced me that I was approaching a
+living presence. I felt for my revolver. It was there, but unloaded. (I
+would sooner walk arm in arm with death than carry loaded firearms.) I
+advanced bravely and became speedily aware of a score or so of large and
+startled eyes, all fixed upon me. A half-score of woolly heads were
+lifted, and a flock of sheep stood ready to take instant flight if I
+showed sign of battle. "My dear young friends," said I, "it is a relief
+to meet you, and I give you good morrow. I fully expected to encounter a
+band of cutthroat tramps who should toss pennies for my heart's blood.
+The blessings of a rescued woman rest upon your crinkly coats, my
+beauties." A half-hour's walk through the woods brought me to a clearing
+where a flock of bluebirds were holding council together among the
+falling leaves. They seemed inclined to start southward, but tarried for
+one last frolic. How beautiful they were as they flitted in and out
+among the golden underbrush no eye but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> mine shall ever know. Bluebirds
+have always been associated with thoughts of spring and apple-blossoms
+heretofore. I could hardly believe my senses to find them here amid the
+late and falling leaves. For a while I loitered in their midst and
+wished for a fairy to change me into one of their winged company, that I
+might forget care and find no need of revolvers; but time, as sternly
+announced by my exquisite Waterbury, admitted of no delay, so I hied me
+onward. At this point in my walk I approached a broken gate and a
+stretch of shockingly muddy road. The vanity of confidence in any
+strength that emanates alone from the "heels of a man" was by this time
+beginning to make itself felt. I longed to sit down in the miry way and
+go to sleep. A child could have played with me despite my revolver, and
+a day-old lamb have gained the victory in a personal encounter. At this
+moment, while I lingered, picking my way daintily from tuft to tuft of
+the swamp, I was confronted by a tall, gaunt woman. Of course you don't
+believe this; it reads too much like a dime novel. You think I am
+painting my picture in lurid tints for public exhibition,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span> but in spite
+of your incredulity I repeat that I was confronted by a tall, gaunt
+woman, who appeared as suddenly as though invoked by an evil spell from
+the mud. The woman was shabbily dressed and wore an old-fashioned scoop
+bonnet. She had a bundle on her arm, and was dragging by the hair of the
+head, as it were, an indescribable umbrella. My voice sank out of sight,
+like a stone in the sea, and my feet grew too heavy to lift. I stared in
+silence. "Is your name Maria Hopkins?" asked the woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed it is," I replied, prepared to get down on my knees and swear to
+the truth of what I said, if need be. "I thought so," said my companion;
+"let us pray." But I didn't stop for prayers. Convinced that my time had
+come, and that I was in the presence of a lunatic, I fell over the fence
+and ran. When I was out of breath I looked over my shoulder, but the
+woman was nowhere in sight. To pursue my walk seemed unnecessary,
+especially as I was nearing the house of a friend, so summoning what
+strength was left me I toddled onward, completing my tenth mile in five
+hours from the starting. After my sympathizing friend had emptied her
+camphor bottle upon me I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> asked her if she knew a party of the name of
+Hopkins anywhere in town, and if there was any resemblance between such
+a person and myself. I saw she thought I was delirious, and no
+explanation has ever dispelled that belief. Some day I shall complete
+the walk and write up the finish.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Said some one to me the other day: "Amber, you have lots of good friends
+among the girls." "Good," said I; "then I am all right." Anybody who
+gains the friendly approval of the right sort of girls has a passport
+right through to glory! I mean it. There is nothing on earth I love
+better than a good, sweet girl. I would rather watch a crowd of them any
+day than all the pictures Fra Angelica ever painted of saints in
+paradise. But there are girls and girls. There is as much difference
+between them as there is between griddle cakes made with yeast and
+griddle cakes in which the careless cook forgot to put the leaven. Shall
+I tell you the kind of girl I especially adore? Well, first of all, let
+us take the working girl. She is not a "lady" in the acceptance of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+term by this latter day's hybrid democracy. She is just a blithe,
+cheery, sweet-tempered young woman. She may have a father rich enough to
+support her at home, but for all that she is a working girl. She is
+never idle. She is studying or sewing or helping about the home part of
+the day. She is romping or playing or swinging out of doors the other
+part. She is never frowsy nor untidy nor lazy. She is never rude nor
+slangy nor bold. And yet she is always full of fun and ready for frolic.
+She does not depend upon a servant to do what she can do for herself.
+She is considerate to all who serve her. She is reverent to the old and
+thoughtful of the feeble. She never criticises when criticism can wound,
+and she is ready with a helpful, loving word for every one. Sometimes
+she has no father, or her parents are too poor to support her. Then she
+goes out and earns her living by whatever her hands find to do. She
+clerks in a store, or she counts out change at a cashier's desk, or she
+teaches school, or she clicks a typewriter, or rather a telegrapher's
+key, but always and everywhere she is modest and willing and sweet,
+provided she doesn't get that meddlesome little "bee" of "lady"-hood in
+her bonnet.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> If she tries to be a lady at the expense of all that is
+honest and frank in her nature, she is like a black baby crying for a
+black kitten in the dark&mdash;you can't tell what she is exactly, but you
+know she is mighty disagreeable. She has too much dignity to be imposed
+upon, or put to open affront, but she has humility also, and purity that
+differs from prudishness as a dove in the air differs from a stuffed
+bird in a showcase. She is quick to apologize when she knows she is in
+the wrong, yet no young queen ever carried a higher head than she can
+upon justifiable occasions. She is not always imagining herself looked
+down upon because she is poor. She knows full well that out of her own
+heart and mouth proceed the only witnesses that can absolve or condemn
+her. If she eats peanuts in public places, and talks loud, and flirts
+with strange boys, and chews gum or displays a toothpick she is common,
+even though she wore a four-foot placard emblazoned with the misnomer,
+"lady." If she is quick to be courteous, unselfish, gentle and retiring
+in speech and manner in public places, she is true gold, even though her
+dress be faded and her bonnet be old. You cannot mistake any girl any
+more than you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> can mistake the sunshine that follows the rain or the
+lark that springs from the hawthorn hedge. All things that are blooming
+and sweet attend her! The earth is better for her passing through it and
+heaven will be fairer for her habitation therein. God bless her!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Some day I am going gunning. In a reform dress suit, with the right to
+vote in my pocket, and a shotgun delicately poised upon my enfranchised
+shoulder, I shall start forth on my "safety" and proceed to lay low for
+a few victims. The first to perforate with my murderous bullet shall be
+the fiend in human guise who toys with my "copy" from time to time and
+makes me spell whether without an "h," or so distorts the sense of what
+I write that my best friends wouldn't know me from Martin Tupper. I
+shall show no mercy to him. I shall continue to shoot until he is
+perforated like a yard of mosquito netting, and I shall leave a little
+note pinned to the lapel of his coat saying that I have more bullets
+left for his "successor in trust." If there is one thing that has
+survived the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> buffetings of a harsh and somewhat disconcerting bout with
+fate it is the knowledge that I know how to spell. But even of this the
+fiend in question would deprive me. He has brought his fate upon himself
+and will excuse me if I remark that I thirst for his gore.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Dominated by that superfluous energy which has, so far, rendered my
+earthly career cyclonic, I called together a confiding band during the
+height of the recent snow carnival for the purpose of a sleigh ride. The
+opening up of that sleigh ride was propitious. The caravan moved due
+north, bound for a destination that shall be nameless. We tried to look
+upon the attention we attracted as a public ovation, but it was far more
+suggestive of the way they used to accompany outlaws beyond the limits
+of a mining town, or of the children of Israel chased by Pharaoh's
+mocking hosts. It was cold. Our noses, in the light of a wan old moon,
+looked like doorknobs. Our ears cracked to the lightest touch, like harp
+strings in the wind. Patient, long-suffering<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> "doctor!" Shall I ever
+forget how, turning to him when the carnival of sport was at its height,
+I murmured: "Are you enjoying yourself, dear?" And he replied, with
+ghastly sarcasm: "Tumultuously, my love!" So might an arctic frigate,
+ice-bound, have hailed a polar bear. Suddenly, when all seemed
+progressing serenely, we came to a standstill, something like what might
+be expected from a runaway horse checked by the newly patented electric
+button. What was the matter? Bare ground. Now, under ordinary
+circumstances, the term "bare ground" is not synonymous of disaster. But
+if ever in the dispensation of providence it falls to your lot to be one
+of a band of sleigh-riding imbeciles then shall those two words be to
+you what snags in the channel are to seaward-hastening keels. The driver
+shouted and became distinctly profane. "Would you please get out and
+walk over this bad place?" said he. With such speed as our petrified
+members would allow we all got out, and the women sat on a wayside
+fence, while the men "heaved to" and dragged the chariot over about a
+mile and a quarter of bare ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we make for the nearest line of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> street cars?" asked one of the
+party, whose well-known position as Sunday-school superintendent kept
+him in a state of abnormal calm. "What will become of the sleigh and the
+poor, tired horses?" asked that one of the party directly responsible
+for this mad jubilee.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you women can lead the horses while we men carry the old band wagon
+on our shoulders back to shelter." "It is no time for jokes," cried one,
+"I am going home," and we all followed suit, to vow later, in the
+shelter of our happy homes, that our future attempts at sleigh riding
+should be confined to wheels and the time of roses.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I think I would rather lose this serviceable old right hand of mine than
+have it write a word that could be construed into defense or
+encouragement of loud and blatant women. The over-dressed and slangy
+sisterhood who parade in public places and storm the land these latter
+days will meet with nothing from Amber and her pen but wholesale
+denunciation while the lamp of an insignificant life holds out to burn.
+I hate them as a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> Quaker hates gunpowder, and I am more than half
+inclined to believe that the total extermination of the stock would be
+one of the supremest blessings that could be vouchsafed to man. The
+tendencies toward boldness and effrontery which characterize the present
+day, the unabashed speech and action and the manifest lack of
+old-fashioned courtesy and the reserve that springs from gentle breeding
+are evils that grow rather than diminish. A gentlewoman, a pure, correct
+and lovely gentlewoman, occupies a loftier place than any throne, and
+wields an influence more potent than the swing of a jeweled scepter. Yet
+it is never by vulgar assumption that she enters into her kingdom. The
+parrot is not a bird we prize, although its plumage is resplendent with
+green and purple and gold. In the proud breast of the homely and
+unpretentious thrush is hidden the heavenly song. Wherever gentle
+forbearance is found, wherever patience and tenderness and love idealize
+and sweeten life, there you will find woman as heaven meant she should
+be&mdash;the crowned queen of hearth and home. And in saying all this I do
+not wish to be understood as advancing the idea that a woman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> has no
+wider scope than home, or that she must be all sugar, without any spice.
+Next to the loud and bold-mannered woman as a specimen to be detested I
+would put the meek Griselda, with less spirit than a boneless herring
+and less sparkle than tepid tea. There is no charm left to femininity
+when you add idiocy to a pretty woman's make-up. A fool may be very
+docile, but a fool is not good company. Of the two, perhaps, if a man
+were forced to choose a comrade to share a life that was to be cast on a
+South Sea island, he would do better to take the "loud" type. Either
+would drive him to the "cups," if such relief were to be found upon an
+island of the sea. But who would not rather go to wreck in a storm than
+founder in becalmed waters? Or, to bring it nearer home, who would not
+rather be drowned away out in the middle of Lake Michigan in a howling
+gale than in a gentle 7&#215;9 cistern? If circumstances call a woman out
+into the thickest of the old bread-and-butter fight that has been waging
+ever since Eve ran afoul of the apple, it is to her credit if she rolls
+up her sleeves and goes into the thickest of the scrimmage and holds her
+own with the pluckiest of them all. It is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span> no disgrace to her to be
+quick to seize an opportunity and shrewd to find a point of vantage. Let
+her rank with the men, and make ever so fine a name for herself in
+whatever business vocation she chooses to make her own, it will not
+detract one whit from her womanliness, provided she keep herself
+unsullied of soul and tender of heart. The moment she lends herself to
+practices that lead men to forget to touch their hats when she passes by
+she becomes unsexed, and a sexless woman is worse than a pestilence, a
+cyclone and a strike condensed into one vast calamity. No sensible man
+will think any less of a woman if she has spirit enough to get downright
+mad at injustice, insult or iniquity. I don't know, though, why we women
+should always get together and compare notes as to what course of
+conduct will best please the men. They don't lie awake nights to conform
+their behavior to ways and manners that shall please us; but, even
+putting our argument on the basis of what shall win approval from men, I
+repeat that I don't believe that there are many of them who would object
+to a woman knowing how to use a pistol or to her carrying one in case of
+an unprotected walk, or a night spent in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> an unguarded home. There would
+be fewer tales to tell of assaults and woful disappearances of young
+women if all our girls were versed in the ethics of the revolver. Ah, my
+dear, you can never get a more adorable portrait of a woman to hang upon
+the walls of glorified fancy than the pen-portrait drawn by the master
+hand of Robert Browning when he wrote of beautiful Evelyn Hope: "God
+made her of spirit, fire and dew." There is the swiftest and most
+splendid stroke of the artist's brush ever given to literature. And yet
+half the world would substitute "putty" for "spirit," "feathers" for
+"fire" and "dough" for "dew."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>The only way to rid the world of bubble-marriages&mdash;marriages that turn
+out emptiness with one drop of water as the residuum, and that drop a
+tear&mdash;is to educate our girls and boys to something higher than playing
+with pipes and soapy water. Give them something more earnest to do, and
+see that they do it. Compel men and women to choose their life
+companions with at least a tithe of the solemnity they bring to the
+selection<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> of a carriage horse or a ribbon. Legislate laws against early
+marriages. "I can't tolerate children," said a little idiot to me the
+other day, "but I adore dogs!" And yet that girl had an engagement ring
+on her finger. There should be a special seclusion for such girls until
+they develop some instinct of womanliness, and they should no more be
+allowed to marry than a Choctaw chief should be allowed to take charge
+of a kindergarten. You nor I can hope to turn a bubble into substance
+after it is once blown.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Last week I moved. At least I tried to, but I haven't fully accomplished
+the feat yet. If it costs one woman a desk and an umbrella, the pangs of
+a seven-horse torment to move one block, what must it cost a family of
+fourteen to move seven wagonloads a mile? There is a problem that will
+keep you awake nights. When they said to me: "Oh, it will be nothing for
+you to move!" When they pointed with derision at my few belongings I
+said to myself: "All right; perhaps it will be easier than my fears." So
+I packed up my penknife, my mucilage pot,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> my paper cutter, my eleven
+dozen pencils and my assortment of stub pens, my violet ink, my clock,
+pictures, calendars, Japanese fans, scraps of poetry, magazines, books,
+lemons, buttercups, blotting pads, and sundry trifles it were waste of
+time to enumerate, and sallied forth to find a son of wrath to transport
+them to new quarters. "How much will you charge to move two articles of
+furniture one block?" I asked a guileless Scandinavian teamster. "Three
+dollars," replied he with touching promptitude. I passed him by, and
+after two days' search found a down-trodden African who said he would
+undertake the job for $1.50. I wish you could have seen the look in the
+darky's face when he tried to lift the desk. "Gor-a-mighty, Missus,
+what's in that ar desk?" cried he. I had to unpack every blessed article
+but the penknife and a postage stamp before he would move the thing, and
+all the long day I trotted back and forth with market baskets full of
+the original contents of that desk. When at last I had them moved I
+couldn't find anything. I wanted my pencils, but haven't seen 'em yet.
+The paperweight had smashed the ink bottle, and the mucilage had formed
+a glassy pool in which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> my buttercups were anchored like islands. The
+frizzes and hairpins and other little what-nots that I kept in the right
+hand drawer had dabbled themselves in the ink and mucilage and fused
+themselves into one indistinguishable horror. I haven't been able to
+find one thing that I wanted since I moved but a toothpick, and that
+don't look exactly natural. The overshoes, and gossamer, and jersey
+waists, soap and chamois skins that I secreted in the left hand drawer
+haven't been seen since they left in the market basket under convoy of
+the Ethiopian. He has probably opened a costumer's shop on Halsted
+street with them. When I move again I shall carry my pencils behind my
+ear and my penknife between my teeth. I'll never be found a second time
+stringing my beads with a toothpick and relying for time upon a clock
+with the hour hand missing. When next I move may it be straight through
+to glory, where the lease is long and the landlord never sublets.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Let anybody in this world really undertake to thoroughly do his duty; to
+do it in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> the face of opposition, prejudice and the meddling
+interference of fools, and he becomes a target set upon a hill for the
+convenient aim of popular scorn. It is harder for a man to be true to a
+principle than it is to face a gun. If an employe in the daily discharge
+of duty aims to be prompt, faithful and fearless he is boycotted by his
+associates in almost as conspicuous a way as was poor little David
+Copperfield with the pasteboard motto on his back. We all of us have
+known in early life the "pet scholar" of the school, the dear little
+virtuous prig who never did anything out of the way, who never played a
+prank or accomplished anything but a pattern pose. Small wonder that we
+hated him! Good behavior, which has for its aim merely the disconcerting
+of others and the aggrandizement of one's self, is snobbery and should
+be loathed as such. But there is a courage of over-conviction which
+leads a man to hold himself honest among thieves, pure among libertines
+and faithful among time-servers and strikers. It was such a spirit as
+this that made dear little "Tom," at "Rugby," loyal to his mother's
+teachings, and led him to kneel amid a crowd of jeering boys to say the
+prayers she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span> taught him. It is such a spirit as this that holds a man or
+woman true to the sense of justice in an unjust world, and keeps them
+undaunted in the midst of enemies, who hate them for doing their duty
+and caring as much for the work as they do for the wages that work
+commands. The man who can hold himself beyond the reach of bribery,
+uncorrupted in corruptible times, and sure to keep his colors flying,
+with never a chance to trail them in the dust for politic purposes, is a
+greater hero than many a blue-coat who marches to battle. Give us a few
+more such heroes, oh, good and merciful dispenser of destinies, and
+sweep off the track a hundred thousand or so of the eye-servants,
+time-servers and money-graspers who keep the profitable places of the
+world's giving away from honest men and faithful women.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">A BOBOLINK'S SONG.</span></p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+
+<tr><td>
+The earth was awake, and like a gay rover,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His knapsack of sunshine loose strapped on his back,</span><br />
+Through mists, and through dews, and through fine purple clover<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Was faring his way down the summer's green track.</span><br />
+<br />
+I sat all alone 'neath the shade of a willow,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And saw the old earth blithely jogging along,</span><br />
+While over the fields, like the foam on a billow,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The morning was breaking in blossom and song.</span><br />
+<br />
+O, list! and, O, hear! like the wing of a swallow,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Updarting from fields that are golden with corn;</span><br />
+With the ring and the swing of a huntsman's "view hallo,"<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Some fairy is winding his sweet elfin horn.</span><br />
+<br />
+Now up like a flame, and now down like a shower;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Now here and now there in its sparkle and gloom;</span><br />
+It rings and it swings like a bell in a tower,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wide casting its notes as a wind-flower its bloom.</span><br />
+<br />
+'Tis a bobolink singing among the sweet clover;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A bobolink whimsical, happy and free,</span><br />
+And its voice like new wine makes earth, the old rover,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Half tipsy with jollity, clean daft with his glee.</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>It fell to my lot the other day to witness a scene that I shall not soon
+forget. Death has myriad ways of coming to the sons and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span> daughters of
+men, and it chanced that death had drawn near to a certain dear woman in
+a way that well might blanch the cheek of the bravest hero. As surely
+condemned to die as is the murderer when he hears the judge's sentence,
+with absolute hopelessness of any cure, and with the certainty of no
+more than a brief span of weeks wherein to live, this brave woman faced
+her doom with all the condemned man's certainty, and yet without his
+shame. Grown old in a life of peculiar usefulness, with not a single
+abated enthusiasm and with a heart as keenly attuned to nature's as is
+the flute to the master's touch, this dear old heroine calmly renounced
+the world she had so loved and turned her face direct to "headquarters,"
+with no friend to interfere between herself and God. For one bitter
+hour, perhaps, she wept and watched alone in her Gethsemane, then turned
+about to await the chariot wheels of her deliverance with a heart as
+glad and a faith as warm and bright as a little child's who waits in the
+shadow the coming of a loving father to lead her home. Taken to the
+hospital to die, knowing that those doors swung for her last entrance
+within any earthly home, fully realizing that from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> beneath that roof
+her soul should ascend to its home beyond the stars, bidding good-bye
+forever to the sunset skies and the rural walks that she had so loved,
+to all the bright company of wild flowers she had known by name, to the
+pomp of seasons and the communion of happy homes, she took up her abode
+in the ward of the incurables. Every day she sits in the sunshine and
+reads her books or indites letters to her friends. Every day she
+struggles with devastating pain, and every day she grows a little
+thinner and a little weaker in the body, while her soul springs
+heavenward like a white flower from the dust, which no earthly blight
+can reach. As I sat by her side the other morning and held her wasted
+hand in mine it seemed the most natural thing in the world to send a
+message by this sweet soul to the unseen land, and we almost forgot the
+pain of parting in the bright anticipation of the many who would throng
+to meet the gray-headed voyager when at last her sail should beat across
+the blue waters into the heavenly harbor. And as we talked there came a
+message that a very old friend had called to see the sufferer; one who
+had been the closest comrade of her brilliant youth and the companion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+of her maturer years. Slowly the guest entered the shrine wherein a soul
+awaited the sacrament of death, silently she stretched out her arms and
+gathered that wasted frame within their close embrace. As a mother
+comforts the baby at her breast, so they comforted one another with
+tender words. The years of their life fell away from them as petals from
+a rose which the wind lightly rocks, and they were girls again. "Oh, my
+dear child, how sweet, how brave, how grand you are!" said the guest.
+"My precious girl, my poor, dear one, how can I bear to see you here!"
+she cried again and yet again, while her tears fell like rain, and the
+turmoil of her sobs rent her very inmost heart. I shall live long before
+I see so touching a sight again. In the presence of a love so perfect
+and so true I felt to be almost an interloper and an alien, so I quietly
+stole away and left these two old women, bowed with the weight of many
+years, sustaining and sustained by the trust that the portals of the
+tomb, within whose shadows they stood, were but the gates that usher the
+soul into the full affluence of life and love.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is almost impossible to get the average young person past the
+florist's window nowadays. She has a way of clasping her hands and
+pursing her lips over the roses that would make the average young man
+shed his last dollar, as the almond tree shakes its blossoms. I am
+always sorry for a poor young man in love with a pretty girl. He longs
+to buy the world for her and she longs quite as ardently to receive it
+as a gift, and so he is hurrying along his bankrupt career until
+matrimony or estrangement checks him. Have you not a pitying remembrance
+in your own heart of a certain youth of the long ago who deluged your
+house with roses, confectionery and novels until his salary was wildly
+wasted in the unequal contests? Girls, be a little less receptive, as it
+were; be just a bit more thoughtful and delicate in your orders at the
+restaurant and your selection from the florist's window, and I think
+your matrimonial chances will be the better for it. How often have I
+seen a young woman order a costly dinner when some young man whom she
+well knew to be the recipient of a small salary was to foot the bill,
+yet when ordering for herself I am told she never goes higher than
+beans<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> and bread and butter. Now, girls, don't think Amber is an
+everlasting old grandmother! Not a bit of it, but she has tossed about
+the world so much and heard so many "little birds" telling their secrets
+that she has taken unto herself quite a pack of knowledge of the ways
+and manners of mankind. I positively adore a young girl, and always
+have, and, what is more, expect I always shall. But admiring and loving
+them as I do, from the tip of their bangs to the click of their boot
+heels, I cannot bear to see them do unlovely things. I want to see them
+helpful, lovable, sweet. I want to see them slow to wound another's
+feelings, and quick as sunshine after rain with tender smiles and
+womanly ways. I want to see them brave, yet gentle; gay, yet kind;
+fun-loving, yet never loud and rude. I want to hear the young men in
+speaking of them speak of something besides their extravagance and their
+greed. I want the very air to be the sweeter for their passing, as when
+one carries roses through a room their fragrance lingers. And what shall
+make you sweet, dear girls? Not fashionable gowns and dainty clothing;
+not beauty nor grace nor wealth so much as womanliness and unselfish
+thought for others.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>The woman who can wear an arctic overshoe over a No. 5 shoe and make no
+moan ought to have been born a Joan of Arc or a Charlotte Corday. She is
+made of the "dust" that heroines have a corner on. At one time in my
+life I owned a dog&mdash;a guileless pup&mdash;whose darling aim on earth was to
+drag my colossal arctics before admiring gentlemen callers and lay them
+by the fireside, where they overshadowed the big base-burner with their
+bulk. I was rid of the dog long before I was rid of the feeling that it
+was a disgrace for a woman to wear the feet God gave her. The most
+colossal overshoe is neither so big nor so objectionable as an early
+grave, and that is just what lies before some of you girls if you don't
+quit wearing French heels and going about in damp and chilly weather
+without protection for your feet. Burn up the high-heeled slippers,
+then, with their atrocious shape; cultivate health and common-sense
+rather than the empty flattery of a world that cares nothing for you. So
+shall you be as beautiful as houris, as healthy as Hebes, as long lived
+as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> Sarahs and as light-footed as the shadow that dances to a wind-blown
+Columbine.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>A graveyard never saddens me. It seems nothing more than one of the
+flies behind the scenes when the actors have gone on in front. What
+matters the room where we doff our toggery when we are once out of it?
+So, not long since, when in rambling about one of the Apostle Islands,
+away up in Lake Superior country, I ran across a sunshiny little
+graveyard, and I was glad to loiter about for an hour and read the
+inscriptions on the age-worn stones. It was a blue day&mdash;blue in the sky
+above and blue in the haze on the hills, blue in the sparkling waters of
+the lake and bluer yet in the far distance that marked a score of miles
+from shore. Before the gateway of the graveyard a clump of golden rod
+stood, like an angel barring the way with a sword of light. A tangle of
+luxuriant vines had curtained most of the graves from sight A few, more
+carefully tended than the rest, stood bravely out from behind fences of
+ornamental woodwork, but most of them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> were sheltered and peaceful
+within their neglected bowers of green. When my time comes to lie down
+in my narrow home, I pray you, kind gentlefolks, grant me the seclusion
+of an unremembered grave rather than the accentuated desolation of a
+painted fence and a padlocked gate. There is rest in neglect, and
+nature, if left alone, will never allow a grave to grow unsightly. She
+folds it away in added coverings of mossy green from year to year as a
+mother when the nights are long will tuck her sleeping children under
+soft, warm blankets. She appoints her choristers from the leafy belfry
+of the woods to keep the chimes ringing when the days are long and slow
+and sweet, and lights her tapers nightly in the wavering shimmer of the
+stars. In a secluded corner we found a handbreadth space where a baby
+was laid to rest many a year ago. No chronicle of the little life
+remains, and yet a stranger stands beside its grave and drops a tear. I
+don't know why, I'm sure, for why should we cry when a baby dies? So
+roses are picked before the frost finds them! Another stone was erected
+to a young bride who died at twenty. Looking about at the
+stoop-shouldered, care-lined and prematurely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> old women who toiled in
+those island homes, we could not feel very sorry for the young bride who
+died, perhaps, while life still held an illusion. With lingering step at
+last we left the graveyard, repassed the golden sentry at the gate and
+sought the little boat that awaited us on the beautiful bay. Long after
+other details of that pleasant outing are forgotten the memory of that
+blue day among the quiet graves on the island of the great lake shall
+linger like a song within our hearts.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>"If I had two loaves of bread," said Mahomet, "I would sell one of them
+and buy white hyacinths, for they would feed my soul." I came across
+that delightful saying the other day, and I thought to myself: There is
+another one to be hunted up when I get over yonder! I shall have to make
+the acquaintance of a man, prophet or not, who gave utterance to such a
+sentiment as that. How many of us, poor earthworms that we are, would
+rather spend our dollar for white hyacinths than for a big supper? How
+many of us ever stop to think that there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> is something under the sleek
+rotundity of our girth that demands food quite as eagerly as our stomach
+does, and fails and faints and dies quite as surely without it? Take
+less of the food that goes to fatten the perishable part of you, and
+give more sustenance to that inner guest who, like a captive, sits and
+starves with long and cruel neglect. Buy fewer glasses of beer and more
+"white hyacinths." Smoke less tobacco and invest in a few sunsets and
+dawns. Let cheap shows alone and go hear music of the right sort. So
+shall your soul lift up its drooping head and grow less and less to
+resemble one of Pharaoh's lean kine. I adore a man or a woman who has
+enough sentiment to appreciate what dead and gone Mahomet said, and
+hereafter will make it a point to buy less bread and more hyacinths.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I wonder if, when we get to the other world, we shall not occasionally
+stroll into some sort of a celestial museum, where the relics of our
+foregone existence, its wasted days and misspent years, may stare back
+at us from glass cases where the angels have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span> ticketed them and put them
+all neatly on exhibition! There will be necklaces of ill-spent moments,
+like the faded brilliants exhumed from old Pompeii, with lots of broken
+hopes and thwarted destinies. There will be odd little freaks and
+unreasoning caprices, like the "What is it?" and foolish deeds of daring
+to turn our pulses faint with the old-time terror. There will be those
+tendencies which kept us heavy-footed like the fat woman, and others
+that made us blind, although the world was full of light. There will be
+the disloyal deeds that made us a constant source of care and wonderment
+to the angels who watched us, and the cowardice that kept us in leading
+strings to conformity. There will be shelves full of the little white
+lies we have told, all labeled and dated, like pebbles from the
+Mediterranean or bits of shell from the sea. There will be fragments of
+blighted lives ruined by wagging tongues and shafts of tea table gossip.
+There will be the old-time masks wherein we masqueraded, and the flimsy
+veils of deceit behind which we hid our individuality. There will be the
+memories of little children we might have kept had we been wiser, and
+snatches of lullaby<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> songs. There will be jars full of love glances and
+pots of preserved and honeyed kisses. There will be whole bales of
+mistakes, a Gobelin tapestry to drape the world, and stacks of dead and
+withered "might-have-beens." There will be peacock feathers of pride
+tied together with faded ribbons of regret, and whole cabinets full of
+closet skeletons and family contentions. There will be pedestals whereon
+shall stand the "white days" we can never forget, and panorama chambers
+wherein shall be unrolled the pictured scroll of our journey heavenward.
+In cunningly devised music boxes we shall hear again the melody of our
+youthful laughter and the patter of life's uncounted tears. I think the
+shelves of that celestial museum would yield some odd surprises to the
+most of us, like the finding of a bauble we counted worthless and threw
+away glittering in the diadem of a crown, or the prize we bartered honor
+for turned to worthless glitter and tinsel paste!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>There is no use sitting here by this window any longer and trying to
+believe that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> life is worth living. If I looked for five minutes more at
+this November landscape I should shave my head and hie me to a Carmelite
+convent. Dame Nature has forgotten her housewifely duties and gone off
+to gossip with the good ladies who have charge of the other planets.
+Where but yesterday the late asters bloomed in long rows of splendor,
+and the chrysanthemums fringed the sunny borders with feathers of white
+and gold, the unsightly stalks grovel in the clayey mold, and the
+frost-nipped vines drop their dismantled tendrils in the chilly wind.
+Fragments of old china lurk in the discovered spaces underneath the
+denuded lilac bushes, and out by the oleander tub a cruel cat is
+worrying a large and discouraged rat. That oleander tub reminds me of an
+ordeal that is ushered in with every change of season. Twice a year we
+are compelled to carry that large vegetable in and out of its winter
+lair. About the last week of September we begin to wrap it in bed-quilts
+every night, and from that time on until late autumn no delicate babe
+was ever more tenderly guarded. Then, as there is no man in the country
+who for love or lucre will condescend to the job, we begin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span> to worry the
+Doctor. We tell him the oleander will be blighted by the frost, and he
+pays no heed. Then we ask him if he would just as lief bring in the
+oleander after supper. He sneaks off and is gone until the 11 p. m.
+train. Next we take to tears, and declare that we love that oleander as
+one of the family, and it breaks our heart to see it perish for want of
+care. We grow pale and wan and gray-headed as the days go by, and
+finally with flashing eyes and muttered oaths the Doctor yanks the tub
+and its colossal growth into the cellar, and we rest on our arms until
+the advent of another spring.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Well, the summer has gathered up her corn-silk draperies, put on her
+rose-trimmed hat, and tripped over the border land at last. From the
+bend in the road that shall hide her from our view forever she lingers a
+moment to throw back a sunny glance at September, as he comes whistling
+down the lane, with plume of golden-rod in his hat. A glad good-bye to
+you, long-to-be-remembered summer of 1890! We are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> so glad to see you go
+that we are willing to forego your blossoms and your bird songs to be
+well rid of you. For three long months we have endured heat without
+precedent, drought and discomfort, flies and mosquitos, threatened
+thunder gusts and devastating cyclones, and we are so tired that we feel
+like shaking a stick at you now, to see you lingering to coquet with
+September. Hasten on, oh bright autumn weather, with your comfortable
+nights for sleep, and your royal days of sunshine and frost. We are
+longing for the time to come when the lamps shall be lighted early in
+the parlor, and the fire-glow shall once more shed its glory upon
+grandma's lovely hair and upon the gold of the children's restless
+heads; when the cat shall have leave to lie on the best cushion, and the
+voice of the tea-kettle, droning its supper monologue, shall alternate
+with the efforts of the older sister at the piano. By the way, do you
+know there is lots of solace to be found in an old music book of twenty
+years ago? Don't tell me that the music of to-day is as sweet all
+through as the melodies of long ago. Who sings such soul-ravishing duets
+to-day as "She Bloomed with the Roses," "Twilight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> Dews," or "Gently
+Sighs the Breeze"? I declare to you, my dear, that although I shall be
+considerably older some day than I am now, and although I have not
+fallen so far into the "sere and yellow" as to count myself among the
+old-fashioned and the queer, yet any one of those songs just mentioned
+will start the tears from my eyes as showers start from summer clouds.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Two little motherless children! Do you know the thought of a baby
+without a mother to cuddle it always brings the tears to my eyes?
+Traveling to distant New England with a father who, although kind,
+seemed some way unfitted to his duties, as a straight-legged chair might
+if used for a lullaby rocker, were two bits of folks, a boy and a girl,
+one four, the other two years old. The careful father brushed their hair
+very nicely and washed their mites of faces with great regularity. When
+he told them to sit still they sat still, and nobody was annoyed by
+their antics, but, oh, how it made my heart ache to watch the motherless
+chicks! If mamma had been there they would have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span> climbed all over her,
+and bothered her a good deal, perhaps, with their clinging arms and
+kisses (it's a way babies have with their mammas!), but in the presence
+of their dark-eyed and quiet papa they behaved like little weasels in
+the presence of a fox. "Papa says we mustn't talk about mamma any more,"
+lisped the boy. "'Cause she's gone to heaven." In the name of love,
+whose apostle I humbly claim to be, I longed to gather those little ones
+in my arms and have a dear, sweet talk about the mamma who had left them
+for a little while, and I wanted to say to the proper and punctilious
+papa: "Good sir, if you attempt to bring up these motherless mites
+without the demonstration of love you will meet with the same success
+your gardener would should he set out roses in a pine forest. Children
+need love as flowers need the southerly exposure and sunshine. When that
+boy of yours bumped his head, sir, it was your place to comfort him in
+something the way his dead mother might have done, rather than to have
+bade him 'sit up and be a man.'"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">SLEEP'S SERENADE.</span></p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+
+<tr><td>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In cadence far,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">From star to star,</span><br />
+Sleep's mellow horns are faintly calling;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Through dreamland halls</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Sweet madrigals,</span><br />
+In liquid numbers drowsy falling.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Noiseless and still,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">O'er star-watched hill,</span><br />
+Beneath the white moon's tender glances,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A host of dreams,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">By wind-blown streams,</span><br />
+March on with gleam of silver lances.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A captive thou;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Then, yield thee, now,</span><br />
+While mellow horns are nearer calling;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And ringing bells,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And poppy spells,</span><br />
+Thy senses all in sleep enthralling.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">O, hark; O, hear,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">My lady, dear,</span><br />
+O'er woods and hills and streamlets flying,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The winding note</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of horns remote,</span><br />
+In softest echo dying&mdash;dying.</td></tr></table>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I had a dream the other night which was like, and yet unlike, the vision
+of fair women<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> of which a poet once wrote. I dreamed that I sat within a
+court-room. Before me passed the meanest men and women God ever
+permitted to live, and upon them I was to pass the verdict as to which
+should carry off the palm. The scandal-monger came first, he or she who
+sits like a fly-catcher on a tree, snapping up morsels of news. He or
+she who is swelled full of conjecture whenever anybody commits an
+innocent indiscretion, as an owl blinks and ruffles up its feathers when
+the bobolink sings. He or she who goes about the world like a lean cat
+after a mouse. He or she who is always looking for clouds in a bright
+June sky, and slugs in roses and flies in honey. He or she whose heart
+is made of brass, and whose soul is so small it will take eleven cycles
+of eternity to develop it to the dimension of a hayseed. I was about to
+hand this specimen the banner without looking further when a being
+glided by me with a noiseless tread. She wore felt shoes and a mask. She
+spoke with the voice of a canary, yet had the talons of a vulture. She
+wore a stomacher made from the fleece of a lamb, and between her bright
+red lips were the tusks of a wolf. I recognized her as the hypocrite,
+the false<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> friend; she who hands over your living bones for your enemies
+to pick, while you believe she is your champion and your defender.
+Following her came the man who keeps his horse standing all day with its
+nose in a nosebag. There was a groan like the sighing of wind in the
+poplars as he went by. Then came the merciless man who oppresses and
+torments the helpless and grinds the faces of the poor; and following
+him I beheld yet another monster&mdash;the worst of all in male attire. He
+came sneaking around a corner, with a smile on his lips and a devil in
+his eye, seeking to entrap innocent girlhood and unsuspecting womanhood.
+Then came the woman who gives her children to the care of servants while
+she goes downtown with a dog in her arms. Then came a lean-faced,
+weasel-eyed creature with the general expression of a sneak thief. I
+discovered her to be the representative of that type of women who coaxes
+her neighbor's hired girl away with promises of better wages. Then came
+the envious person whose evil passions are kindled like the fires of
+sheol at the prosperity of others, and who, because his own cup of life
+holds vinegar, is determined no other shall contain wine. I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> suddenly
+awoke without having bestowed the palm on any. Perhaps some of my
+readers may find it easy to do that for themselves.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Do you know which, of all the sights that confronted me yesterday in my
+rambles through the rainy weather, I pigeon-holed as the saddest? Not
+the little white casket, gleaming like the petal of a fallen flower,
+through the undertaker's rain-streaked window; not the woman with the
+lack-luster eye and the flippety-floppety petticoats who went by me in
+the rain silently cursing her bundles and the fact that she was not
+three-handed; not the poor old cab horse with his nose in a wet bag, and
+his stomach so tightly buckled in that he couldn't breathe below the
+fifth rib; not the man out of a job, with his gloveless hands in his
+pockets, trying to solve the problem of supper; not the little child
+under convoy of a stern and relentless dragon who yanked it over the
+crossings by the arm socket; not the starved and absolutely hopeless
+yellow dog, who sat in a doorway and wondered to himself if there was
+indeed a canine life that included occasional<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> bones and no kicks; no,
+not any of these impressed me as the most gruesome of a great city's
+many sights. As I passed the corner of Washington and Dearborn streets I
+came face to face with a red-cheeked, wholesome boy of barely twenty
+years of age. He was leaning upon the arm of an elderly man, and at
+first I thought him ill, but it took but a second glance to see that he
+was drunk. Now, I consider that the very saddest sight a great city has
+to offer. When the old men are wicked there is some comfort in the
+thought that their day is nearly spent, and their worthless places may
+be soon filled with a nobler and a better stock, but a drunken and
+dissolute boy means just what it means for the fruit harvest when the
+blight gets into the blossom. The gathered apple that rots in the bin is
+bad enough, but the worm that destroys the fruit in the germ makes
+greater loss. Be thankful that the grave has taken to its protecting
+shelter the boy you loved so dearly, and of whom you were so proud,
+rather than that he should have grown to be a drunkard before his
+twentieth birthday.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We are each of us missing constant chances to bestow a kindness upon
+some needy soul for the reason that we dread being imposed upon by a
+case of causeless complaining. Is it worth while to keep our hearts
+stolid merely because we may be cheated in the bestowal of a nickel's
+worth of alms? I think not. You looked up from your work a few minutes
+ago and saw a little boy not much bigger than your thumb looking through
+the open doorway. He began at once a sing-song tale of woe about a sick
+mother and a father out of work&mdash;or in his grave, it doesn't much
+matter. At the same time he held out a paper of cheap pins to tempt a
+nickel from your store.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no time to bother with such as you," you said, and turned your
+eyes back to your ledger. But still the boy droned on. You looked at him
+again and noticed that the small hand that held the pins was well kept
+and very, very thin. Then your eyes followed the diminutive form down to
+the feet; they, too, showed signs of somebody's care, although the shoes
+were shabby and the stockings thin.</p>
+
+<p>"He is not an ordinary little beggar," you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> said to yourself. And then
+your gaze traveled upward again until it met his long-lashed Irish eyes,
+so full of trouble and of entreaty that they looked like twin Killarney
+lakes getting ready for rain.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little chap," you said, "of course I'll buy a paper of pins," and
+in so doing you stooped over and patted his head, perhaps, or called him
+"dear," so that he went away with the twin Killarney lakes all ready for
+a sunburst to follow the rain. That was an opportunity you nearly
+missed, but it brought a blessing sweeter than a Crawford peach. You
+didn't want the pins, but the little desolate heart wanted the kind word
+bestowed along with your nickel, and perhaps its bestowal shall be an
+impulse toward the light to a soul that cross words and constant
+refusals had already given a downward trend.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>There stands a very young girl at the door of a drug store. She
+hesitates a moment and enters. "May I sit here and wait for a friend?"
+she inquires of the dapper clerk. "Certainly," he answers, and places a
+chair for her near the window.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>That girl's father told her last night to have nothing more to do with
+young Solomon Levi. "He is a worthless fellow," said he, "and I have
+forbidden him the house." "Very well," said she, and this morning she
+has made the excuse to go to the grocery for yeast, and is waiting here
+for the graceless Solomon. By and by he will come, and she will listen
+to him and form plans for clandestine meetings. My dear, there is a
+stairway whose top lies in the sunshine, but whose lower steps lead down
+to endless shadow. Your pretty foot is poising on the upper
+stair&mdash;beware! And yet I think the father has been to blame also. These
+stern, non-explanatory parents are responsible for much of the ruin
+wrought in young people's lives. If the old rat would go with the young
+one now and then to investigate the smell of cheese, his restraining
+presence would do more good than all the warnings and threats
+beforehand. Temptations are bound to besiege the girls and bewilder the
+boys. Don't let us make a pit-fire out of moonshine and forbid every bit
+of innocent fun and frolic because there is a gayety that takes hold on
+death. Give the young folks a little more license, mingle with them in
+many amusements<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span> which you have been wont to frown upon, do not be so
+frightened if their light feet go dancing off the path now and then, and
+ten to one the end of the journey will be Beulah Land and peace. A good
+deal less faultfinding and a good deal more sympathy would be better all
+around.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>There is no lot on earth so hard to bear as the lot of wedlock where
+love has failed. The slave's life is not comparable to it, for the
+manacles that only bind the hands may be laid aside, but those that
+fetter the heart not death itself holds the key to loosen. It fairly
+makes me tremble when I see the thoughtless rush young people make to
+enter what is by far the most solemn and responsible relation of life.
+They are like mariners who put to sea in flimsy boats, or like explorers
+who fit themselves with Prince Albert suits and buttonhole bouquets.
+Before you get through the voyage, my dears, you will encounter tempests
+as well as bonnie blue weather, and God pity you when your pleasure
+craft strikes the first billow, if it was made of caprice and put
+together<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span> with mucilage instead of rivets! As for the explorer and his
+dress suit, where will he be when the tigers begin to scent him and the
+air is full of great sorrows and little frets like flying buzzards and
+cawing crows?</p>
+
+<p>Be an old maid in its most despised significance then; be a grubber and
+a toiler all the days of your life rather than rush into marriage as a
+hunted fox flies into a trap. There is some chance for the fox that
+flies to the hills, and for the bird that soars above the huntsman's
+aim, but what better off is the fox in the trap or the lark in a cage?
+There is a love so pure and ennobling that eternity shall not be long
+enough to cast its blossom, nor death sharp enough to loosen the
+foundation of its hold. Such love is born in the spirit rather than
+forced in the hot-house of the senses. It is an impulse toward the
+stars, a striving toward things that are pure and perfect and true. It
+grows in the heart as a rose grows in the garden, first a slip, then a
+leaf and finally the perfect blossom. No rose ever put forth a flower
+first, and then bethought itself of rooting and budding. Pray, dear
+girls, that this love may come to you rather than its poor prototype, so
+current in a world of shams and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> pretenses, whose luster corrodes with
+daily usage and turns to pewter in your grasp.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Once there was an old woman who died and went to glory. Now a great many
+old women have died and gone the same way, but this one was very tired
+and very glad to go. She had worked hard ever since she could handle a
+broom or flirt a duster. She had probably washed about 91,956,045 dishes
+in her life, had baked something less than a million of pies, and turned
+out anywhere between a quarter to half a million loaves of bread, to say
+nothing of biscuits. These figures are steep, but I am writing under the
+invigorating impulse of the grip! She had darned socks and hemmed towels
+and patched old pantaloon-seats between times, until her fingers were
+callous as agate. She had borne and reared lots of children and tended
+to their myriad wants. For forty-seven years she had done a big washing
+every week, and laundried more collars than a Canada thistle has
+seed-pods. At last she died. The tired old body burst its withered husk
+and let the flower free. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> rusty old cage flew open and out went the
+bird. And when they buried her I suppose they were foolish enough to
+shed tears and put on mourning! As well expect all the birds to wear
+crape when dawn sets out its primrose-pot on the ledge of the eastern
+sky! But one friend of quicker perception than the rest, I am told,
+placed the following inscription on the tired old woman's gravestone:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Here lies a poor woman who always was tired,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For she lived in a world where much was required.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Weep not for me, friends," she said, "for I'm going</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Where there'll be neither washing, nor baking, nor sewing;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Then weep not for me; if death must us sever,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Rejoice that I'm going to do nothing forever."</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>There is just one thing in the latter part of the nineteenth century
+that never fails to bring success, and that is assurance. If you are
+going to make yourself known it is no longer the thing to quietly pass
+out a visiting card&mdash;you must advance with a trumpet and blow a brazen
+blast to shake the stars.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> The time has gone by when self-advancement
+can be gained by modest and unassuming methods. To stand with a lifted
+hat and solicit a hearing savors of mendicancy and an humble spirit. The
+easily abashed and the diffident may starve in a garret, or go die on
+the highways&mdash;there is no chance for them in the jostling rush of life.
+The gilded circus chariot, with a full brass band and a plump goddess
+distributing circulars, is what takes the popular heart by storm. Your
+silent entry into town, depending upon the merits of your wares to gain
+an audience or work up a custom, is chimerical and obsolete. We no
+longer sit in the shadow and play flutes; we mount a pine platform and
+blow on a trombone, and in that way we draw a crowd, and that is what we
+live for. Who are the women who succeed in business ventures of any
+sort? Mostly the mannish, bold, aggressive amazons who are unmindful of
+rebuffs and impervious to contempt. Who are the men who wear diamonds
+and live easy lives? Largely the politicians who have made their
+reputation in bar-room rostrums and among sharpers. Oh, for a wind to
+blow us forward a hundred years out of this age of sordid self-seeking
+and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> impudent assertiveness into something larger and sweeter and finer.
+Give us less yeast in our bread and more substance; fill our cups with
+wine rather than froth, and for sweet pity's sake hang up the great
+American trumpet and let "silence, like a poultice, come to heal the
+blows of sound."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Every day, for months, as I have taken my morning ride to town I have
+noticed a dog who bounds forth from a dooryard that overlooks the busy
+highway of the steed of steam and barks himself weak at the rushing
+trains. He really accomplishes nothing, but do you suppose you could
+convince his canine brain that he was not at once a reproach and a
+terror to the numerous trains that disturb his rest? He reminds me of
+certain people we meet all the way through life. They bark at trains
+continually while the Lord prolongs their breath, and the faster the
+train and the more it carries the louder they bark. They fondly imagine
+that the voice of their ranting protest accomplishes a purpose in the
+world. They are always barking at capital and at rich men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> and at
+corporations. They bark at people of courteous manners, and all the ways
+and customs of polite and gentle society, with fierce and futile
+yelpings. They bark at the swift advancement of the world from ignorance
+to enlightenment, from superstition to liberalism. They bark at the
+churches because they are on a train that has sidetracked Calvin. They
+bark at polite young men who wear clean linen, and call them dudes; they
+bark at women who have one or two ideas outside of fashionable folly and
+inane conventionalism, and call them cranks; they bark at everything on
+wheels, where wheels typify strength and achievement. They will go on
+barking, too, while the world finds room and maintains patience for them
+and their barking.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I think I have said before that I loathe meek people. But even if I have
+I am going to say it again. Your half-wits who sit and turn first one
+cheek and then the other to be slapped are not the sort for me. The man
+or woman, boy or girl, child or otherwise, that will endure direct
+insult day after day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span> without resenting it ought to sell themselves at
+so much a pint for illuminating oil&mdash;that is all they are good for. I
+love a fighter, provided he foils gracefully and does not snatch out his
+sword in every brawling and unworthy cause. In the defense of woman, in
+the cause of honor, purity and truth; in battle against sordidness, and
+greed, and a lying tongue, let your blade flash like summer rain and
+your white plume outdistance the plume of Navarre! For God and mother,
+justice and honor, self-respect and the approval of our own conscience,
+let us go forward then with a chip, if need be, on each shoulder and a
+standard copy of the celestial army tactics in our side pocket! The Lord
+loves a good many things, cheerful givers and self-sacrificing widows
+with their mites, merciful men and sweet and noble women, but most of
+all, I think, he loves a valiant fighter in the cause of right.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Now it came to pass that there dwelt in a certain city of the land of
+the great lakes a woman called Lydia, sister to Simon, the shipwright.
+And Lydia, being comely and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span> fair to look upon, was sought in marriage
+by one John, a dealer in spices and fine teas. And the years of their
+wedlock having outnumbered the fingers upon a man's two hands, it came
+to pass that they dwelt together in exceeding prosperity in a town near
+by the blue waters of a mighty lake.</p>
+
+<p>And Heaven sent unto them children to the number of three, so that their
+hearts were exceeding glad, and the cords of their habitation were
+stretched from year to year. And it came to pass that the home in which
+they lived was spacious and full of salubrious air. Their beds, also,
+were of curled hair, and all their bed-springs of beaten steel. And
+bath-rooms made glad the heart of the dust-laden when summer dwelt in
+the land. Also there were cunningly devised screens of fine wire in all
+the windows, so that the marauding fly and the pestilential mosquito
+might not enter.</p>
+
+<p>And the flesh increased from year to year upon the bones of Lydia and
+the children that heaven sent her, while they remained in the home that
+John, the tea merchant, had given them.</p>
+
+<p>But it came to pass that the neighbors of the woman Lydia closed up the
+shutters of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span> their dwellings, and one by one stole from town when the
+heat descended upon the land.</p>
+
+<p>Then spake Lydia unto John, the vender of spices and fine teas, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Arise, let us go hence and dwell within a farm-house, where the
+children may leap together in the sweet-smelling hay, and I may comfort
+myself with flagons of cream."</p>
+
+<p>But John, being a man among men, and accounted somewhat wise withal,
+would have restrained Lydia, saying: "Not so; for verily I say unto you,
+comfort abideth not in the dwelling of the farmer, neither does joy
+linger in the shadow of his doorway."</p>
+
+<p>Now Lydia, being president of a Woman's Club and reputed of knowledge
+beyond the generality of womankind, would not listen, but beat her hands
+together, crying: "I prithee hold thy peace, for behold, I and the
+children heaven sent me will depart hence by to-morrow's chariot of
+steam, and will make our home with the gentle farmer and his
+sweet-breathed kine."</p>
+
+<p>So John, being loth to war with the tongue, albeit he was heavy-hearted
+and walked with a bent head, purchased tickets for Lydia and the
+children heaven had given her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>And it came to pass that they left town by the train which men call "the
+limited."</p>
+
+<p>Now the way of that train through the land is like unto the way of a
+ship at sea, or of a strong eagle that never wearieth. And the
+sufferings of Lydia were such that she sought relief in peppermint and
+found it not.</p>
+
+<p>And the babes by reason of the swiftness with which they traversed a
+crooked land, were made ill and languished like sea-sick rangers of the
+deep.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, after many hours, their torment abated not, so that, reaching their
+destination, the bodies of Lydia and her children were removed in a hack
+and hurried to an inn that was built near by.</p>
+
+<p>And in the inn where they were fain to tarry until strength should be
+given them for further journeying, it chanced that a young babe lay
+sorely stricken with the whooping-cough.</p>
+
+<p>Now, when Lydia knew this, her heart fainted with fear, and she
+prophesied evil.</p>
+
+<p>For well she knew that her own babes had not had the disease, and that
+the time of their prostration was at hand.</p>
+
+<p>So Lydia, being president of a Woman's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span> Club, and accounted without a
+peer in the gift of words, sent for the keeper of the inn, that she
+might rebuke him.</p>
+
+<p>And she opened her mouth impulsively and questioned him saying: "Why
+broughtest thou me and the children heaven gave me into thine inn
+knowing that contagious disease lurked within its gates?"</p>
+
+<p>And the keeper of the inn shot out the lip at her and was undismayed.</p>
+
+<p>And he cried, "Go to! And what wouldst thou of a public house? Thou
+talkest like one with little sense!"</p>
+
+<p>And it came to pass that Lydia and her children departed thence by stage
+and sought the farm-house. And, arriving there, they would have laid
+themselves down to rest, being sorely bruised by reason of protracted
+stage-riding.</p>
+
+<p>But the beds were made of straw and corded underneath with ropes. So
+that lying upon them caused the children to roar loudly, and they found
+rest from their lamentations, four in a bed, on the bosom of Lydia.</p>
+
+<p>And, supper being served, it consisted of tinted warm water and
+gooseberries sweetened with brown sugar.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>Now Lydia, by reason of her connection with the club, was enabled to
+speak boldly, and she called for cream.</p>
+
+<p>But the wife of the farmer made answer, saying, "We have none."</p>
+
+<p>And Lydia spoke yet again, saying, "Why, O woman of many wiles, hast
+thou no cream?"</p>
+
+<p>And the woman made way with an insect that swam gaily in a pitcher of
+azure milk, and said gently, "Because we sell it to a neighboring
+dairy."</p>
+
+<p>And Lydia said nothing, but remembering the words of John, the
+tea-merchant, wept silently.</p>
+
+<p>And it came to pass that next morning the children went forth to leap in
+the hay.</p>
+
+<p>And the farmer led them firmly away from the hay-mow by the tip of the
+ear, saying, "I allow no children to spoil my fodder."</p>
+
+<p>And the morning of the second day, the woman Lydia, being starved for
+nutritious food, wended her way with her babes across a stretch of
+pasture land in search of wild blackberries.</p>
+
+<p>And a beast, whose voice was baritone and whose approach was like the
+approach<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> of a Kansas cyclone, bore down upon her and the children
+heaven had given her, while yet they were midway in the meadow. Now only
+by leaping could they save themselves.</p>
+
+<p>And it came to pass that they leaped mightily and flung themselves over
+a five-barred fence.</p>
+
+<p>And a snake made free with the draperies of Lydia, so that her hair
+whitened with fear, and between the beast with the baritone voice and
+the serpent she knew not which way to turn.</p>
+
+<p>And the morning of the third day she wrote to John, the tea-merchant,
+saying only:</p>
+
+<p>"My darling&mdash;Meet the first train that returns from this place to the
+dear city by the lake, for behold! I and the children heaven sent me are
+on our homeward way!"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">IMPATIENCE.</span></p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+
+<tr><td>
+A sweet little crocus came up through the mold,<br />
+And hugged round her shoulders her mantle of gold,<br />
+While tears of distress fringed her delicate eye,<br />
+Like rain drops that start from a showery sky.<br />
+<br />
+"Where, pray, are those laggards, the violets blue?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span><br />
+The roses and lilies and daffodils too?<br />
+I really think it's a shame and a sin<br />
+This waiting so long for the spring to begin.<br />
+<br />
+"The first day of April and only one bird<br />
+Since I lifted my head has uttered a word!<br />
+And search as I may all over the meadow<br />
+Not even a cowslip has shown its bright head, O&mdash;<br />
+<br />
+"Misery me! Sure there's no use in waiting,<br />
+For something, no doubt, is the summer belating;<br />
+So I'll go back to bed, put on my lace night cap,<br />
+And snatch, for a fortnight, a nice little cat-nap!"<br />
+<br />
+Down went little Gold-head, back to her pillow;<br />
+When, all in a twinkling, up over the hill, O,<br />
+The wind-flower host, with rose-tinted banners,<br />
+Marched into the world; Queen Summer's forerunners.<br />
+<br />
+Her rose maids of honor, in filmiest laces,<br />
+Loitered and lingered in shy woodland places;<br />
+And white-vested lilies were ever at prayer;<br />
+Their vespers, the perfume that sweetened the air.<br />
+<br />
+The apple trees blushed into delicate splendor;<br />
+The blue birds hung over in ecstasy tender,<br />
+While the gold powdered bee with helmet all dusty<br />
+Kept watch over the flowers, a sentinel trusty.<br />
+<br />
+The robin sang love to his shy little sweetheart;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span><br />
+The orioles lashed their nests in the tree top;<br />
+The willows drooped low over swift water courses,<br />
+And murmuring brooks started fresh from their sources.<br />
+<br />
+But down in the gloom, on her dream-haunted pillow,<br />
+As pale and as cold as the moon on the billow,<br />
+Forgot and unmissed by bird and by blossom,<br />
+The crocus slept sound in the earth's faithful bosom.<br />
+<br />
+When at last she awoke, the spring had been banished,<br />
+Her forerunner flowers from the hillside had vanished.<br />
+And all of the bees had turned into stock brokers.<br />
+And even the birds had changed into croakers.<br />
+<br />
+'Tis only by waiting we find our fruition;<br />
+To learn how to wait is a needed tuition.<br />
+The faint-hearted people who go to sleep fretting,<br />
+Will wake up at last too late for the getting.</td></tr></table>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>If there is anything more utterly desolate than a poorly-conducted farm,
+preserve me from it. There is an ideal farm familiar to the writers of
+pretty tales, where everything<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span> is kept in apple-pie order throughout
+the year, and where one can walk broadcast, so to speak, in a spick and
+span white gown without attracting so much as the shadow of a shade of
+minutest defilement. We have seen pictures of such farms wherein sleek
+cattle stood around knee-deep in dewy clover, or lay serenely on
+polished hillsides, or meandered dreamily by crystal streams; wherein
+pale pink farm-houses with green gables and yellow piazzas, fairly
+scintillated from behind decorous foliage, and peacocks, with tails
+nearly as long as the Mississippi River, posed on the gate-posts;
+wherein neat little boys in variegated trousers rode prancing chargers
+down blooming lanes, and correct little girls in ruffled underclothing
+fed well-mannered chickens from morning till night. But the actual farm
+of the remote rural districts is about as much like its ideal picture as
+Esau was like a modern dude. Not long ago somebody suggested that I go
+and board for a fortnight at a farm-house. "You will have perfect rest,"
+said my friend, "and that is what you need." So I went, and rather than
+again undergo the torments of the five days spent in that restful (?)
+spot I think I would cheerfully hire<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span> out with a Siberian chain-gang. In
+the first place there was no such a thing as rest possible after the
+first glimmer of each day's dawn. Every rooster on the farm, and there
+were millions of them, was up "for keeps" long before sunrise. Their
+united chorus smote the skies. One might as well have tried to sleep
+through Gettysburg's battle. A score or so of bereaved cows lamented all
+night for their murdered babies, and a couple of donkeys, kept purely
+for ornamental purposes, made sounds every half hour or so that turned
+my hair snow white with terror. After breakfast each day I used to walk
+down the hill and fish for pickerel in a river that had no current, and
+looked discouraged. "Walked," did I say? Nay, there was nothing so
+decorous as a walk possible down the slippery, stony descent which led
+to the haunts of the pickerel. When I didn't hurl myself down that hill,
+I slid down, and between the two methods I wrecked both muscle and shoe
+leather. The latter part of the way led through a pasture devoted to
+several cows and a bull. As I am more afraid of the latter than of death
+and all his cohorts, my morning walks ended in heart failures and had to
+be abandoned.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span> Occasionally I would take a book and go out and sit in my
+hammock. Then the large roosters, each one of them at least seven feet
+tall and highly ruffled about the legs, would come around and look at
+me, so that I would have to go into the house to hide my embarrassment.
+I know of nothing harder to endure than the stare of a Brahma fowl,
+especially if one is a bit nervous and overworked. Nervous prostration
+has sprung from lighter causes.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing happened while I was at the farm but meal time, and the
+intervals were so long between those episodes that I used to wonder
+daily at my own mission subsequent to the farm-life as one gropes for
+prehistoric clues. There was a man about the premises who walked to and
+from the village twice a day with a large brown jug. When I asked at
+different times what he fetched in the jug, not because I wanted to
+know, but merely to find a topic of conversation, I was successively
+told that it was "kerosene," "maple molasses," "buttermilk," and
+"vinegar." I wish I knew if I was told the truth every time, or if
+somebody tried to impose upon me merely because I was town-bred.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>Occasionally we took rides over stony trails where boulders and ruts
+marked the way, and only the creaking of our bones broke the primeval
+silence. These rides were supposed to be part of the generous plan of
+contemplated rest, but a few more of them would have resulted in the
+rest from which there is no awaking. No, my dear, I am an ardent lover
+of the country, and I love it as the epicure loves a good dinner, or the
+musician loves music, but I will take it, please, without the
+accessories of a poorly-kept hoosier farm. I do not yearn for the
+defilements of a barn-yard that is never cleansed, nor for the
+frolicsomeness of pigs that wander at their own sweet will, nor for the
+clamor of aggressively alert poultry, nor for piscatorial delights. I
+love the country as God made it before greed and gain and all the
+abominations of man entered into and spoiled it. I love it clean and
+wholesome and sweet, as it was turned out of the workshop; its streams
+untainted, and their banks unbereft of beautiful trees; its hills still
+covered with verdure, and its winds uncontaminated with the scent of
+defiling drains and waterways.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I have seen him! Actually seen him! Shall I say the coming man? No,
+rather let us call him the vanished type, the stalwart, full-blooded,
+glorious "might have been" of nature. Not an exotic, but the indigenous
+growth of a soil fed by breeze and sun. No earmuffs about him; no
+cringing withdrawal into mufflers before the advance of winter blasts.
+No cowardly retreat into furry overcoats, mittens and gum shoes.</p>
+
+<p>"Amber," said a fellow traveler the other day, "yonder is a man after
+your own heart. He has not worn an overcoat or heavyweight flannels for
+six years. He never buttons up his coat save when it rains. What do you
+think of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Think of him!" said I; "were it not for a lingering regard for the
+conventionalities, I should walk right over to that man and say: 'Sir, I
+thank you for the sight of a man&mdash;not a human lily bud! You have struck
+the right way of living, and you will be a hale and handsome man when
+the enfeebled race that surrounds you have toddled into the
+consumptive's grave or are sneezing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span> upon their catarrhal pilgrimage to
+the tomb.'" The man was worth looking at, hale and hearty, his chest like
+the convex curve of a barrel, his eye like a falcon's.</p>
+
+<p>"But," said my friend, "were I to throw aside my overcoat and go forth
+unprotected this freezing weather, the exposure would surely kill me!"</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt it would," was my cheerful reply. "There are always a host to
+die before any reform is achieved or victory accomplished. You have
+coddled yourself so long between blankets and absorbed red-hot furnace
+heat until you haven't the stamina of an aspen leaf. Take a hot-house
+flower out of doors and it soon wilts. But mark the beautiful Edelweiss
+of the Alps&mdash;it thrives in the pure breath of eternal snow." But what is
+the use of talking? Although my tongue became a golden bell and my pen a
+gleaming flame, I could never convince you, my dear old, shivery, shaky
+public, of the advantage of fresh air and plenty of it, and the
+advisability of a generous cultivation of nature and her free gifts. As
+well expect to be nourished by looking at your food through an opera
+glass as hope to be strong and stalwart upon a homeopathic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span> allowance of
+pure air and sunshine, or in spite of the devices you plan to shut
+yourself away and hermetically seal your body, as it were, from the
+sweet, health-giving influence of sun and wind and frost. Just stop a
+moment before you turn away from this subject, my dear, and hear a
+little story. I know the subject is a bore and that I am a crank, but
+listen. Once there was a grand beneficent power&mdash;call it God if you
+will&mdash;who planned a spot wherein to place some atom which he had shaped
+out of dust and vivified with a spark of his own life. He looked about a
+little, we will imagine, and finally settled upon a garden wherein to
+place these precious pensioners on his care. A roofless, wall-less spot
+full of draughts and dew, breezes and blossoms. He filled it with birds
+and carpeted it with grass, set rivulets running through it for "water
+works" and sunbeams and starbeams for "electric light" plants, etc. That
+is all I have to say. Like the Mother Morey legend my story is done
+before it is scarcely begun. But ask yourself the question, Why didn't
+God put his well-beloved models of the forthcoming race into a more
+sheltered place if there was so much danger in fresh<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span> air, draughts and
+chilly weather? Why didn't he seal them up behind double windows in an
+airless, sunless, hot and unhealthful home where the dear things could
+keep warm? Because he was God and knew everything, and not man and knew
+nothing.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Well, the old ship Time has put into port again to take on a new cargo
+of good resolutions, earnest resolves and patented schemes, before
+setting sail for the shores of a distant future. Ten to one she goes to
+pieces on the breakers before ever sighting land again, and a hundred to
+ninety-nine her cargo is thrown overboard before she reaches mid-sea.
+The channel is narrow and the rocks lie thick as peas in a marrowfat
+pod, and many more bales of choice merchandise find the bottom of the
+sea each year than are ever delivered to the good angel consignee. "I am
+going to be the best girl in all the world," says the poor little
+Captain on New Year's eve. Behold! the hours have not swung around the
+diurnal circle before there is a wild onslaught from shadowland, and the
+brave captain is left<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span> wounded on the field. Only a tender hand and
+tireless patience can set her on her feet again.</p>
+
+<p>"I will eschew debt as I would poison, and starve before I will commit
+an indiscretion," cries the Doctor as he sets sail for the untried sea.
+Within the first watch he hauls down his colors from the mast head,
+captured by a pirate extravagance.</p>
+
+<p>"I will be gentle of speech and courteous and sweet to all!" says the
+Young Person, and gayly steers for the open channel. Midway she
+encounters a rock of annoyance and the air is stormy with irritable
+words that fly and beat like stinging rain. Ah, well, my dear, thank the
+good Lord there are life-saving stations all along the shore, and no
+wreck was ever yet so hopeless but Infinite Love could set it afloat
+again.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>"There is just one person born who has a right to this thoroughfare, and
+that is I!" muses the woman with the umbrella as she walks the crowded
+streets on a rainy day. "I am in possession of that part of the universe
+immediately contiguous to the spot on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span> which I stand, and I shall make
+myself just as much of a nuisance as I choose. I shall jab out your
+eyes, and knock off your hat, and clip your ears, and stab your back
+with my umbrella tip just as often and as violently as I choose. I shall
+run into you from behind, and bump into you, and knock you down if I so
+desire, and none shall say me nay. I am not very tall, but all the
+better for my plans if I am not. If I were of the same height as you I
+should not be able to take you under the hat-brim as I do, and jab you
+in the nostril as I pass. If I choose to cut criss-cross through a
+crowd, who shall forbid me, being a woman? I can be just as rude and
+just as mean as I want to be, and who is going to hinder, so long as I
+wear a gown and call myself a lady? If I were a man and manifested the
+reckless thirst for universal carnage that I do you would call the
+patrol and bear me away to the lock-up; but being a poor little,
+innocent woman I have it all my own way."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>I know a wife who is waiting, safe and sound in her father's home, for
+her young<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span> husband to earn the money single-handed to make a home worthy
+of her acceptance. She makes me think of the first mate of a ship who
+should stay on shore until the captain tested the ability of his vessel
+to weather the storm. Back to your ship, you cowardly one! If the boat
+goes down, go down with it, but do not count yourself worthy of any fair
+weather you did not help to gain! A woman who will do all she can to win
+a man's love merely for the profit his purse is going to be to her, and
+will desert him when the cash runs low, is a bad woman and carries a bad
+heart in her bosom. Why, you are never really wedded until you have had
+dark days together. What earthly purpose would a cable serve that never
+was tested by a weight? Of what use is the tie that binds wedded hearts
+together if like a filament of floss it parts when the strain is brought
+to bear upon it? It is not when you are young, my dear, when the skies
+are blue and every wayside weed flaunts a summer blossom, that the story
+of your life is recorded. It is when "Darby and Joan" are faded and
+wasted and old, when poverty has nipped the roses, when trouble and want
+and care have flown like uncanny birds over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> their heads (but never yet
+nested in their hearts, thank God!), that the completed chronicle of
+their lives furnishes the record over which approving heaven smiles and
+weeps.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>There is one thing I learn day by day in my strollings about town, and
+that is that nobody is going to give me dollar values for half-dollar
+equivalents. In these days when the best of folks go mad on bargains we
+seem to think it is an easy thing to get something for nothing, but I
+have yet to see the day when we can. There are cheap restaurants where
+they serve you roast turkey for a quarter, but don't fool yourself! It
+is not the same kind of bird they serve in a high-class place for a
+dollar. You look at your check when you come out from an economical
+kitchen with a feeling of glee that you have got so much for so little.
+But how about the flavor that lingers in your mouth? How about the
+display of pine toothpicks and spotted linen? How about the
+finger-marked drinking glasses and damp napkins? No, no; poor as I am I
+would rather pay<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span> my dollar and get a dollar's worth of cleanliness and
+daintiness and flavor than save seventy-five cents and do without them.
+Sure as you live and sure as the world is operated on a
+self-accommodative basis, you never will get a first-water diamond
+without you pay first-water diamond equivalents.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>The other day there was a little girl, scarce 16 years of age, who
+started away for the first time from home and mother. She was brave and
+gay in a new suit, new boots and a new hat with a feather the color of a
+linnet's wing. She carried a bunch of the loveliest sweet peas at her
+dainty waist and on her face there played a sunburst of smiles. She had
+not been five hours in the place appointed her to visit when her mother
+received the following letter:</p>
+
+<p>"My Precious Mamma: I am writing this in my room before I am called to
+breakfast. None but God can know what I suffer! Not until I am in your
+arms once more will you know what I am going through! If you love me let
+me come home. Don't tell anyone, but let me come if you love me! Don't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>
+send the shoes&mdash;I shall not need them&mdash;but let me come home! Think what
+I must suffer so far away from you. I shall sell my ring and buy a
+ticket if you do not telegraph that I may come!"</p>
+
+<p>And as I read the pathetic letter between my smiles and tears I thought
+to myself, is there anything on earth so hard to bear as
+homesickness&mdash;first homesickness, when the heart is new to sorrow? I
+would rather have any disease the laboratory of evil keeps in stock than
+one pang of what that little girl was suffering when she penciled that
+letter.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Around in a picture store on one of the avenues I chanced upon a
+painting that attracted not only myself, but a crowd of people from the
+street. It represented a lion's cage barred with heavy barriers of iron.
+On the floor of the den is the figure of a beautiful girl stretched in a
+deathlike swoon. There are orange blossoms in her hair, and the flush on
+her cheek has had no time to fade. Crouched by her side, one great paw
+on her breast and another at her waist, is a wrathful lion whose evident
+intention<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span> is to tear his victim into bonbon fragments. I wish somebody
+would explain that picture to me. I am tired conjecturing how the bride
+strayed into the lion's quarters, and where her husband was that he
+shouldn't be taking better care of her, and why there was nobody on hand
+to help at this critical moment portrayed on the canvas. Young married
+women are not supposed to be visiting zoological gardens when they ought
+to be changing their white satin favors for their traveling gowns. The
+picture seems a puzzler to all who watch it, and as the crowd is great
+the confusion of wits is catching.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">THE TRYST.</span></p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+
+<tr><td>
+Where a woodland path, like a silver line,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Winds by a woodland river,</span><br />
+And half in shadow, and half in shine,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The alders lean and shiver,</span><br />
+Where a forest bird has built him a nest<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Low in the springing grasses,</span><br />
+And all the day long, with her wings at rest,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His mate the slow time passes;</span><br />
+<br />
+Where a flood of gold through the forest dim<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tells when the noon is strongest,</span><br />
+And a purple fringe on the forest's rim<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Proclaims when the shades are longest;</span><br />
+Where the dawn is only known from the night<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By the birds that sing their sweetest,</span><br />
+And the twilight hush from the morning light<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By the peace that is then completest;</span><br />
+<br />
+Where only the flood of silvery haze<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shall tell that the moon is risen,</span><br />
+When down from the sky, like a meteor blaze,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shall flutter her snow-white ribbon,&mdash;</span><br />
+I will meet you there, my lady love sweet,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When the weary world is sleeping,</span><br />
+And the frets of the day, that tireless beat,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Are hushed in the night's close keeping;</span><br />
+<br />
+Not missing the world&mdash;by the world unmissed&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We two shall wander together,</span><br />
+And whether we chided, or whether we kissed,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">There'll be none to forget or remember;</span><br />
+And when at the last asleep you shall fall,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By the shore of the musical river,</span><br />
+Of the crimson leaves I will weave you a pall,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And kiss you good-by, love, forever.</span><br />
+<br />
+But the stars up above, and the waters below,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shall sing of us, over and over;</span><br />
+Of the tryst that we kept in the years long ago,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the woods by the beautiful river.</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/iseparator.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center"><span class="big">TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original.</p>
+
+<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected as follows:</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Page&nbsp;&nbsp; 35: <i>blase</i> changed to <i>blasé</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Page&nbsp;&nbsp; 53: <i>neighors</i> changed to <i>neighbors</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Page&nbsp;&nbsp; 98: <i>patroled</i> changed to <i>patrolled</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Page 129: <i>meed</i> changed to <i>need</i></span></p>
+
+<p>Punctuation has been corrected without note.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Rosemary and Rue, by Amber
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rosemary and Rue, by Amber
+
+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: Rosemary and Rue
+
+Author: Amber
+
+Release Date: May 19, 2011 [EBook #36168]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROSEMARY AND RUE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Rosemary and Rue
+
+  By Amber
+
+
+  Chicago and New York:
+  Rand McNally & Company,
+  Publishers
+
+
+  Copyright, 1896, by Rand, McNally & Co.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+"Amber" was not to be classed with any society or any creed. In all
+respects she was an individual. In good-humored contempt she held all
+form, and with deep sincerity she revered all simple things. She smiled
+upon error and frowned upon pretense. Her life was largely made up of
+impulse and sacrifice. She was the constant "victim" of her own
+generosity, needing the money and the time which sympathy impelled her
+to give away. She was so devoted a lover of the moods of nature, noting
+so closely the changing of the leaf or a new note sounded by the
+whimsical wind, that her spirit itself must once have been an October
+day. Year after year she toiled, and her reward was not money, but a
+letter from the bedside of the invalid, telling of a heart that had been
+lightened, of a care that had been driven from the door. None of the
+newspaper writers of Chicago was more popular. Another column told the
+news of the day; her column held the news of the heart. Her best
+thoughts and warmest fancies are scattered throughout her prose. Her
+verses are pleasant, and many of them are striking, but meter often
+chained her fancy. But some of her unchained fancies, poetic conceits in
+the guise of prose, will live long after the clasp, holding the
+pretentious verses of a society laureate, shall have been eaten loose by
+the constant nibble of time.
+
+When a church was crowded with friends, come to bid "Amber" good-bye, a
+great thinker, a writer who knows the meaning of toil, said that she had
+succeeded by the force and the industry of her genius. And so she had.
+For others, influence searched out easy places, but "Amber" found her
+own hard place and maintained it, struggling alone. Her words were for
+the poor and the sorrowful, and they could but give a blessing. But in
+the end, a blessing from the poor may be brighter than the silver of the
+rich.
+
+  Opie Read.
+
+
+
+
+Rosemary and Rue.
+
+
+
+
+I WONDER.
+
+  I wonder, if I died to-night,
+    And you should hear to-morrow,
+  You'd mourn to think this one dear friend
+    Had bid good-bye to sorrow.
+
+  I wonder, if you saw a bird,
+    The hunter's dart outflying,
+  You'd lure it back with loving word
+    To danger, pain, and dying.
+
+  I wonder, if you saw a rose,
+    Plucked quick in June's surrender,
+  You'd wish it back upon the bough,
+    To wither in November.
+
+  I wonder, if you watched the moon,
+    The tempest's rack outstripping,
+  You'd grieve to see its silver prow
+    In cloudless ether dipping.
+
+  I wonder, if you heard a thrush
+    Laugh out amid the clover,
+  You'd weep because its cage door oped--
+    Its captive days were over.
+
+  I wonder, if, some happy day,
+    When you have found your haven,
+  You'll mourn to find this one dear friend
+    Had been so long in heaven.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When I die bury me by the sea. Let my first hundred years in the spirit
+be spent on a sunny sand-bank watching the sapphire tides break over a
+bluff of lifted rocks. What is any earthly trouble but a dissolving
+dream, when one may bury the face in golden moss and sniff the salt
+spume of the sea! Over the blue verge of the horizon lies Spain, and I
+build its castles hourly here in my heart. A distant echo rings in my
+ears of trucks driven over stony streets, of the crack of the cabman's
+whip and the shout of profane teamsters, but the only semblance to cruel
+driver and jaded beast of burden seen in the seaside paradise of which I
+write is a fat huckster and a still fatter donkey who draws the large
+man where he (the donkey) listeth. Here on this lifted moorland, if one
+wishes to go anywhere he rises up and goes forth on a carpet of crimson
+moss and yellow grass and is driven by a chariot of untired winds.
+Behind us are miles of purple moss swept by ragged shreds of September
+fog, and musical, here and there, with bells of grazing herds; while
+before us, behind us, and all around us stretches the boundless,
+unfathomable and mysterious sea.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Did you ever hear of the island of Avilion? That enchanted place where
+"falls not hail, or rain, nor ever wind blows loudly," whose orchard
+lands and bowery hollows lie lapsed in summer seas? I found it one day
+when I was sailing on Casco bay in a boat hardly bigger than a peanut
+shell. Tennyson found it long ago in a dream, and to it he sent the good
+King Arthur that he might "heal him of his grievous wound" within the
+balm of its heavenly peace. But I found it in reality, and to it I took
+a care-worn lady and a work-weary brain, that I might perchance renew
+under its sunny spell a strength that was well-nigh spent. I found my
+island under another name, to be sure, but I rechristened it within the
+first hour of my landing. It is not the place, my dear, for featherheads
+and butterflies, this island of Avilion. It is not the place for the
+descendants of Flora McFlimsy to go with their new gowns and their
+French heels. All such would vote my little island a bore, and run up a
+flag for the first inland-bound steamer to put into port and carry them
+away. It has no ball-room, no promenade-hall under cover, no brass band,
+no merry-go-round, but instead it has meadow-lands that are brimful of
+bird songs; it has wild strawberries that bring their ruby wine to the
+very lips of the laughing sea; it has such sunsets as visit the dreams
+of poets and the skies of Italy; it has great rocks that are woven all
+over with webs of wild convolvulus vine, whose airy goblets of pink and
+blue hold nectar for the booming bee to sip; and it has marguerite
+daisies by the tens of thousands, and wild roses that carry the tint of
+your baby's palm and the honey of sugar-sweet dew within the inclosure
+of their small curled cup. It is hardly bigger than a Cunarder, this
+little Chebeague island, whose name I changed to Avilion, and from
+wave-washed keel to flowery bowsprit the eye never lights upon a
+defilement or a stain. It is the only place in all my wanderings where I
+never found a peanut shell nor a tin can thrown out to defile nature's
+beauty.
+
+There was not a single bad odor on my island during the whole ten days
+of my tarrying, and I am told by those who are old inhabitants that
+such a thing never was known to it. A soft wind is always blowing, but
+the only merchandise it carries is wild thyme perfume and the fragrant
+airs that waft from meadow-lands and old-fashioned gardens full of spice
+pinks and cinnamon roses. Now and then a hunter's fog slips the leash of
+its viewless hounds and with noiseless "halloo" scours the island for
+the prey it tracks but seems never to corral. Now and then a sudden
+tumult seizes the tides that climb and fall on the shiny rocks and the
+air is full of the throb of soft drums and the music of flutes that are
+beat and blown a moment, then die away as quickly as they came, like a
+strolling band that marches through a village street, then over the
+hills and far away. Now and then a troop of crows rise silently from out
+the shadow of the pines and go sailing between the lazy eyes that follow
+and the sun, until, settling down upon some meadow stacked with new-cut
+hay, they break into clamorous laughter that taunts you with its shrill
+derision. Always, from dawn to dewfall, the world about little Chebeague
+is full of swallows that dart and soar and flit like shadows. They
+seldom sing, and yet the few notes they thread upon the air sparkle like
+diamonds where they fall. Some strange bird, with a low, sleepy song
+like the crooning of a child that is half asleep, or like a shepherd
+boy's pipe idly blown beneath the noonday willows, is always haunting
+the groves of Avilion with an undiscovered presence. I have spent hours
+looking for him, yet never found him. Sometimes I have been led to half
+believe the fellow exists only in the fancy of a spellbound idler like
+you and me.
+
+Just at sunset a little feathered violinist of the island whips out his
+fiddle and draws the bow so delicately across its vibrant strings, while
+the golden sun slips tranquilly beneath the tinted waters of Casco bay,
+that the soul of the listener is fairly attenuated like a high C
+diminuendo with the spell of so much beauty. I don't know the name of
+the bird either, but he is going to sing for us all in heaven later on.
+Such performers do not end all here any more than Beethoven did.
+
+It was my custom during the time I spent at Little Chebeague to devote
+the entire day to strolling or lying at length upon the rocks--
+
+  Nothing but me 'twixt earth and sky;
+  An emerald and an amethyst stone,
+  Hung and hollowed for me alone.
+
+I grew to love the solitude with all my heart, and the thought of
+returning to the mainland with its jargon and its bustle was like the
+thought of tophet to the poor little peri for whom the gate of paradise
+had swung. Sometimes I would board the small boat that two or three
+times a day threads in and out of the blue water-way and visit adjacent
+islands hardly less beautiful than my chosen home.
+
+There is Long Island, far more beautiful by reason of its East End,
+where as yet the tide of a full-fledged summer resort has not come.
+There is an old-fashioned country roadhouse, such as we knew before the
+landscape gardener and the boulevard fiend were turned loose upon our
+rural towns. To follow their windings is heaven enough for me. A fringe
+of buttercups to fence the way, thickets of underbrush to darken the
+near distance, constant little ups and downs where the road slips into
+hollow to follow the call of a romping brook or climb a hill to watch
+for the sea. Wintergreen berries and russet patches everywhere, and the
+snow of blackberry bushes in bloom far as the eye can travel.
+
+"There is an old-time rail fence!" cried a visitor from the booming west
+one day; "my God, let me get out and touch it! I haven't seen anything
+but barbed wire since I left New England!" And he did get out of the
+buckboard in which he was driving and chipped away a big brown fence
+sliver as a memento. These roads I am talking about lead nowhere in
+particular. They, as often as not, end in a fisherman's back dooryard,
+but they are sweet as a young girl's caprice while they last.
+
+One day we strolled across one of the islands and found a battlement of
+rocks on the seaside that it would have taken a solid month to explore.
+Oh, there was enough on the bar at ebb tide at Avilion to while away an
+age of idle time.
+
+Sometimes we took it into our heads to ride. Then the choice lay between
+Charlie the Christian--so named for his good behavior and gentle
+ways--and the one roadster the island produced, a nag in the rough, who
+held his head high and cavorted with the stride of a jamboreeing boy.
+
+The choice made, the hour must be watched to catch the low tide over to
+Big Chebeague, for there are no wagon roads in Avilion. Six hours of
+safety, as to the low water mark, is the limit of one day's riding, and
+much can be done in the way of riding in a half-dozen hours' time. A
+spin across the bar, the climbing of a rocky road, a sweep of
+seaward-facing pike, with dips into ferny hollows and ascents to
+pine-crowned bluffs, make the trip worth recording, and if to the
+exhilaration of the ride you add a dismount now and then to gather
+wintergreen and pick roses, with a loiter through a church-yard where
+many Hamiltons, both pre-Adamite and ante-historic, are sleeping the
+sleep of the just, you have the whole meaning of an afternoon outing on
+Big Chebeague.
+
+Every evening after supper there was a pilgrimage to the west side of
+the island, not to be dispensed with by descendants of those remnant
+tribes that once worshiped the sun. Ranging from north to south as far
+as the eye can sweep, from westward, fronting little Chebeague, lies
+Casco bay, the loveliest bit of water in all the world. I say
+unhesitatingly the loveliest, because I do not believe that Naples, nor
+Sorrento, nor any far-famed Italian watering-place can match the coast
+of Maine for beauty. Into this bay, like petals from a wind-shaken
+blossom tree, are dropped hundreds of islands. Far to the west the White
+mountains melt upon the horizon in airy outline of blue, and over all
+each day is repeated the ancient miracle of the sun's decline. Sometimes
+a single cloud, like a tomb, receives the bright embodiment of day and
+hides it from our sight behind such draperies as orient never wrought
+nor monarch dreamed. Sometimes this fair god lies at length upon a bier
+of purple porphyry, while flakes of crushed gems strew his couch with
+rainbow dust, and all the air is full of rose-red censers, edged with
+gold. Sometimes he drops below the verge, holding to the last a wine cup
+brimmed with sparkling vintage that spills and trickles down the hills.
+Sometimes he returns in an afterglow, as the dead come back to us in
+dreams, the tenderer and the sweeter for their second coming. However
+the sun may set in Avilion, each setting is the most beautiful and best
+to be desired.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I heard someone bewailing the death of a friend the other day. The staff
+on which he had leaned, the bread which had ministered to his needs, the
+very light that had filled his eyes seemed caught away, and he mourned
+as one for whom there was no comfort possible. I saw a mother leaning
+above an empty crib, whose dainty pillow no nestling head should ever
+press again. I marked the terrible yet voiceless grief that ate at a
+bereaved father's self-control, until no wind-blown reed was ever so
+shorn of self-reliant strength. I saw a wife whose love had sunk within
+the grave where her young husband was laid, as the sun sets within a
+cloud of stormy night. I saw an old man bow his snowy head because the
+faithful one whose hand had lain in his for more than fifty years had
+vanished from his sight forever. I heard a little child lamenting at
+bed-time the lullaby song which its dead mother's tender lips should
+never sing again. But sadder than all these things, more tragical than
+any death which merely picks the blossom of life and bears it onward to
+heaven, as the gardener plucks the choicest rose to grace some festival
+of joy, is the scene when a trusted friendship dies; when faith which
+has endured the test of years gives up the breath of loyal life and
+sinks to hopeless unawakened death. Never think that you have shed your
+bitterest tears until you have stood at such a death-bed. Think not the
+measurement of any mortal grief has been found until you have sunk the
+plummet-line of such a sorrow. That grave shall never burst its sheath
+to let the soul of friendship's betrayal free, like a lily on the Easter
+air. That door shall never swing like the bars of a cage to let a
+murdered faith flash forth like the plume of a singing bird to seek the
+stars. Over the grave of a dead and buried trust no resurrection-note
+can ever sound like a bugle-call across the dewy hills to rouse the
+sleeper from his couch. God pity all who linger by the heaped-up mound
+where love's forgotten dreams lie buried, and grant oblivion as the only
+surcease for their bitter sorrow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The days and nights swing equally upon the golden balance of time. The
+year is whitening with its crop of frost-blossoms from which no
+harvest-home has ever yet been called. Like an unwritten page, the new
+year lies before us in untrodden fields of shining snow. God grant the
+footsteps of Death be not the first to track the unbroken path that lies
+before us. May joy and peace and love, like the roots of the violets
+under the snow, quicken and blossom for all of us as the year advances,
+and may our progress be, like January's, right steadily onward unto
+June!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As I write there is a sudden break in the hush of night, and faint and
+clear and sweet upon the listening ear falls the sound of "taps" from
+the camp in Fort Sheridan woods. I drop my pencil and listen to it, as I
+always do, with almost a spirit of reverent awe. The hard day's work is
+done, the time for rest has come, and over all the busy camp silence
+falls like the shadow of a brooding wing. The new moon, half hidden by
+drifting clouds sends a rippling play of silver through the woodbine
+leaves, and from the top of the maple tree, a thrush dreams forth a bar
+of liquid music in its sleep. All the world is going to sleep, and God
+grant, say I, that when the time for the final good-night has come for
+you and for me the call for "taps," blown from some celestial bugle the
+other side the mystic gate may fall as sweetly upon our ears and find us
+as ready to sink to slumber.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Did you ever hunt for eggs in a haymow? If you did you can remember just
+how, with bated breath, you crept through the fragrant glooms of the old
+barn and searched the dusty place for nests. You can recall, perhaps,
+the shaft of sunlight that broke through the crevice of the door and
+showed you old speckle-top in her corner. You can hear again her furious
+cackle when you dislodged her from her nest and gathered the warm eggs
+she had hovered under her wings. You remember the excitement of the
+search and the perfection of content which settled within your soul as
+you gathered the basketful of milk-white eggs upon your arm and picked
+your way down the steep ladder which led to the main floor and "all out
+doors." Scarcely any excitement or exhilaration of later years can
+compare with the joy of hen's-nest hunting when you were young.
+
+Did you ever go berrying? With a tin pail swinging from your wrist and
+your oldest gown upon your back, have you climbed the hill, jumped the
+fences and sought the side-hill pasture where the blackberries grew
+purple in the shade? Can you recall much, in all the years that thread
+between that happy time and this, which can transcend the pleasure of
+those wildwood tramps? Even now I seem to fix my eyes upon a clump of
+bushes by the old rail fence. They are domed high with verdure and show
+dusky hollows underneath, where, my skilled eye tells me, lurk spoils
+fit for Bacchus and all his nymphs. I part the leaves, a snowy moth
+flutters out of the green dusk and wavers like a snowflake in the warm,
+sweet air. I carefully reach my hand away inside the fairy bower of
+crumpled leaf and twisted vine and draw it forth purple with the juice
+of overripe berries that dissolve at a touch. With these I fill my pail,
+and all too often, I blush to own it, my mouth also, until twilight
+sends me home saturated with sunshine, late clover blooms and berry
+juice.
+
+Ah, my dear, all this was fun while it lasted, but there is a more
+exciting quest than hunting eggs or finding berries, in which we all of
+us engage as the years of our mortal pilgrimage go hurrying by. It is
+the search for happiness--a search we never give up nor grow too old to
+maintain. Forgetting the disappointments and the satieties of the dead
+years, we look forward to the new as the hidden nestfull of unchipped
+shells of fresh experience and untried delights. God bless us all, and
+prosper us to find the eggs and the berries before we die. Perhaps the
+service of love we do others shall prove the bush that bears the
+sweetest and the ripest clusters, and the nestfull that shall develop
+the whitest store of all life's opportunities.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A genuine mother could no more raise a bad boy into a bad man than a
+robin could raise a hawk. When I say "genuine mother" I mean something
+more than a mother who prays with her boy, and teaches him Bible texts,
+and sends him to Sunday-school. All those things are good and
+indispensable as far as they go, but there is a lot more to do to train
+a boy besides praying with him, just as there are things necessary to
+the cultivation of a garden besides reading a manual. To succeed with
+roses and corn one must prune, weed and hoe a great deal. To make a boy
+into a pure man, a mother must do more than pray. She must live with him
+in the sense of comrade and closest friend. She must stand by him in
+time of temptation as the pilot sticks to the wheel when rapids are
+ahead. She must never desert him to go off to superintend outside duties
+any more than the engineer deserts his post and goes into the baggage
+car to read up on engineering, when his train is pounding across the
+country at forty miles an hour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A LITTLE GOLDENHEAD.
+
+  Gay little Goldenhead lived within a town
+  Full of busy bobolinks, flitting up and down,
+  Pretty neighbor buttercups, cosy auntie clovers,
+  And shy groups of daisies, all whispering like lovers.
+
+  A town that was builded on the borders of a stream,
+  By the loving hands of nature when she woke from winter's dream;
+  Sunbeams for the workingmen taking turns with showers,
+  Rearing fairy houses of fairy grass and flowers.
+
+  Crowds of talking bumblebees, rushing up and down,
+  Wily little brokers of this busy little town,
+  Bearing bags of gold dust, always in a hurry,
+  Fussy bits of gentlemen, full of fret and flurry.
+
+  Gay little Goldenhead fair and fairer grew,
+  Fed on flecks of sunshine, and sips of balmy dew,
+  Swinging on her slender foot all the happy day,
+  Chattering with bobolinks, gossips of the May.
+
+  Underneath her lattice on starry summer eves,
+  By and by a lover came, with his harp of leaves;
+  Wooed and won the maiden, tender, sweet and shy,
+  For a little cloud home he was building in the sky.
+
+  And one breezy morning, on a steed of might,
+  He bore his little Goldenhead out of mortal sight;
+  But still her gentle spirit, a puff of airy down,
+  Wanders through the mazes of that busy little town.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Where shall we go to find the fit symbol of Easter? To the encyclopedia
+that we may post ourselves as to word derivations and root meanings? As
+well send a child to a botanist to find the meaning of a rose! To fitly
+understand the true significance of Easter time, find some slope in
+early April that the sun has found a few short days before you. Lay your
+ear close to the ground that you may hear the fine, soft stir within the
+bosom of the warm earth. Note how the mold is filling with its new birth
+of flowers. There is not a covert in all the awakening woods that has
+not a little nestling head hidden behind the dead leaves. The breath of
+a sleeping child is not more peaceful than the sway of the wind flower
+upon its downy stem. The flush on a baby's cheek is not more delicate
+than the tint of each gossamer petal. To what shall we liken the grass
+blades already springing up along the loosened water ways? To fairy
+bowmen, led by Robin Hood's ghost through winding ways from forest on to
+the sparkling sea. To what shall we liken the violet buds spread thick
+beneath the country children's feet? To constant thoughts of God that
+bloom even in the grave's dark dust. To what shall we liken the
+twinkling leaves that shine in the dim depths of the woods? To lights
+at sea, that tell some fleet is sailing into port. To what shall we
+liken the shy unfolding of the lilac buds? To the poise of a slender
+maiden who leans from out her lattice to hearken to a lover's song. To
+what shall we liken the cowslip's valiant gold? To the shining of a
+contented spirit with a humble home. To what shall we liken the brooding
+sky and the warmth of the all-loving sun? To the potency of a gentle
+nature intent on doing good, and the yearning of a tender heart to bless
+and save. Is there a nook so dark and forbidding that the beautiful
+Easter sunshine cannot enter and woo forth a flower? Is there a rock so
+impervious that the April wind may not find lodgment for a seed in some
+crevice, and there uplift a bannered blossom? Is there a cold, resentful
+bank wherein the late snow lingers that shall not finally cast off its
+disdainful ice and flash into verdure in response to the patient shining
+of the sun? Is there a grave in all the land so new and desolate that
+Easter time cannot find a violet among its clods and paint a rainbow
+within the tears that rain above it? To nature's lovers, then, as to the
+truly Christian heart, the significance of Easter is found in the
+reviving garden and in the awakening woods. It means resurrection after
+death, blossom time after the bareness of woe, the cuckoo's cry after
+the silence of songless days, and the smile of a pitying All-Father
+after the orphan time of the soul's bereavement and seeming desertion.
+
+Another blessed thought to be gained in the contemplation of nature's
+sure awakening from the long lethargy of her winter's sleep is that,
+however fearful we may be that death's reign shall be eternal, as
+constant as day dawn after midnight, or shining after storm, shall be
+the Easter of the soul. We do not need to pray for April; it comes. Nor
+do we need to pray for release from the first dark dominion of fear and
+dread when our beloved are snatched from our arms. Such experience is
+only the transient reign of winter in the heart, while yet the soft wing
+of April stirs upon the horizon's misty verge and the promise of violets
+is in the lingering darkness of the air. Remember this: The same power
+that sends us November is planning an April to follow, and out of the
+snowfall evolves the whiteness of the annunciation lily.
+
+It has always seemed to me that, beautiful as Christ's birthday ought to
+be and full of tender significance as we may make the hallowed Christmas
+time, a deeper tenderness attaches to these Easter days. The Sinless One
+had lived out the span of his mortal years; he had suffered and been
+betrayed; had struggled through Gethsemane, up to the thorn-crowned
+heights of Calvary, and yet, through all, carried the whiteness of a
+saintly soul, to cast its dying petals, like a white rose, wind-shaken
+yet yielding perfume even in death, in the utterance of that prayer for
+universal forgiveness, the most wonderful that ever ascended from earth
+to heaven--"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" The
+song that ushered in the birthtime of those sanctified years was an
+invocation of peace and good will, beneath which the morning stars were
+shaken like banners before the oncoming of a glorious prince, but the
+prayer that ascended from Calvary was the plea of a betrayed and
+anguished soul for universal charity and forgiveness from God to man.
+Let us rejoice, then, when Christmas days bring gladness to our hearts
+and homes, but let us forgive and bless when Easter lays its stainless
+lily at our feet. There is constant need for charity and forgiveness in
+a world so full of self-blinded and ignorant evil-doers. They do not
+always know what they do, these rude and riotous betrayers of Christ;
+and all the more need, then, for compassion, and that divine pity that,
+even from the cross, could invoke heaven's pardoning love.
+
+If you have a friend who has wronged you, forgive him to-day, for
+Christ's sweet sake. If you have a boy who has gone astray, reach out
+your arm and win him back, while yet the Easter violets glow upon the
+chancel rail. If you have a daughter who has been undutiful, take her in
+your arms and ask God to forgive you both--you for your lack of
+sympathy, as well as her for her waywardness. So shall you understand
+the meaning of Easter, the resurrection time of love, the fulfillment of
+its promise from out the icy negation of the grave.
+
+A few thoughts about death before we turn to other symbolizations of the
+season. It is all a mistake, it seems to me, to make death a menace and
+a dread in the minds of the young. Does the farmer go forth with tears
+to plant the seed for the coming harvest? Does the scientist mourn above
+the chrysalis that lets a rare butterfly go free? Does the navigator
+rebel when a bark that has been tempest-tossed and storm-driven enters
+port? Teach the children that death is all that makes life endurable;
+that it is the sheaf of ripened wheat, or the budding flower, plucked
+from the earth's dark mold; that it is the flight of the bird, the home
+stretch of the yacht. We love each other, but what is it that makes
+human love any nobler than the chirruping of birds if not its duration?
+And it is only death that makes our loves immortal. Time enthrals them
+with fear and environs them with alarms; death lifts them into the
+region of eternal joy. Take away the reality of our faith in the life to
+come and Easter would mean no more to us than it means to the browsing
+cattle that munch the violet buds and trample the bright promises of the
+year under foot. The comforting view of it all is, that here we are only
+learning to love. We are like birds that sit upon the edge of the nest,
+and flutter, and chirp, and dread to fly away. What shall the bough
+whereon our nest was rocked with many a storm be when we have learned
+to spread these tiresome wings and rejoice in the blue space of the
+boundless air? The heroism of love, the faithfulness of love, the
+grandeur, patience and magnificence of love shall only be revealed when
+the soul has left the shadows and spread its wing in the empyrean of
+heaven's blue.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a small boy who lives at our house with whom I wage an unending
+warfare on the subject of clean hands. The sun never goes down nor yet
+arises upon a harmonious adjustment of the mooted question. There are
+more tears shed, more dire threats made, more promises broken, more
+anguish endured on that one account than upon any other under the sun.
+
+The boy dwells under a ban as somber as the seven-fold curse of Rome.
+His sisters nag him, his grandmother prays for him, his mother pleads
+with him, his girl friends flout him, but in spite of all he continues
+to wear his hands in half tints. But the other evening he made an
+announcement that caused even the young person to remark: "Well, I'd
+rather see you with your soiled hands than see you such a dude as that!"
+
+"Gee!" said the boy, "but some of the kids that go to our school are
+queer ducks!"
+
+"Don't use so much slang," cried his mother; "why can't you call a boy a
+boy as well as a 'kid' and a 'duck'; and whatever do you mean by 'Gee'?"
+
+"They bring little cushions to school," continued the boy with only a
+swift hug in answer to his mother's question, "and they put 'em under
+their hands when they play marbles, so's they won't get their hands
+dirty. Gee whiz, but I'm glad I ain't such a fool!"
+
+And in spite of her desire to see him a bit more solicitous
+as to personal elegance his mother could but echo the boy's
+self-congratulatory remark.
+
+What on earth is going to become of us if this awful wave of effeminacy
+which has struck the race does not soon subside? Earmuffs and galoshes,
+heated street cars in April and double windows up to rose time have done
+their best to make molly coddles out of men, but when we are starting a
+generation of boys to play marbles with cushions to rest their hands on
+the sex had better abolish hats and trousers and take to hoods and
+shoulder shawls. Give me a boy and not a pocket edition of an old woman.
+He need not be a tough nor a bully, nor need he be cruel nor untender
+because he is a boy, but I want him jolly and brave and up to every
+harmless prank that's going. I want him to use slang and wear muddy
+shoes, slam doors and make all sorts of futile feints at keeping his
+hands clean, provided, always, he appreciates the opportunity offered to
+show the gentleman that's in him by never appearing at table looking
+like a tramp. Even that is better, though, than being a "sissy." Give
+him time and the untidiest boy in the world will develop into a
+gentleman, but eternity itself could not evolve a man out of a boy who
+plays marbles with a cushion!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As I was walking down Dearborn street the other day, close upon the
+gloaming, I chanced to meet two pretty girls, not the only two in this
+big city, perhaps, but two of the fairest. One had hair like the tassel
+of ripe corn when the sunshine finds it; the other's head was crowned
+with dusky braids, and the eyes of the two were brimful of laughter as a
+goblet new-filled with wine. Surely such pretty girls should carry
+queenly hearts, thought I, and with my old trick of catching topics in
+the air, I loitered a little on my way to hear what such fair lips might
+be saying. Said one: "I really don't care to marry him; he is such a
+darned fool! but he will give me everything I want, and I suppose I
+shall." I stayed to hear no more. If I had caught a yellow-bird
+swearing, or seen the first robin appear in Joliet stripes, the
+revulsion from pleasure to disgust could not have been more sudden. Is
+this all the lesson the world has taught you, my pretty maiden? To soil
+your lips with slang and sell yourself for fine clothes and the chance
+of unlimited display! Forecasting the life of such a girl is like
+forecasting an April day that dawns in tints of purple and gold, and
+ends in tempest and the blackness of night. Beauty is a glorious
+heritage, indeed, but to see it worn by such types as you, my pretty
+dears, is like seeing a queen's crown on the head of a parrot, or a
+royal scepter in the grasp of a monkey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Niagara Falls! What heart is so stolid, what appreciative spirit so
+calloused over with the hard crust of stoicism not to rise and shout
+before the wonder of its magnificence? When a man or woman gets so blase
+as to thrill no more over Niagara Falls, let them be salted down with
+last year's hams and hung on a hook in the quiet seclusion of a
+smokehouse.
+
+First we took our way over the bridge that leads to the beautifully kept
+Goat Island and, alighting from the carriage, stood for a time with the
+full splendor of the American fall in our faces. A fascination that
+could not be shaken off held the eyes upon that never-stayed torrent of
+sun-illumined jewels. Diamonds they were, and great uncut emeralds, with
+here and there a rain of fiery rubies, that tumbled from off the lifted
+ledge of imperishable rock. And where the volume widened, until it
+became an avalanche of snowy foam, shot through and through with needles
+of light, it seemed to us that the law of gravitation had been forever
+abandoned, and falling tons of water, losing kinship drop with drop,
+were floated skyward again to find a home in heaven. Down-shooting
+rockets of silver foam unfallen, yet always in the air! Canopies of
+cloud, dissolving into fine dust-like roadside pollen! Draperies of
+spray unrolled in noiseless splendor from the blue background of an
+endless day! Explosions in mid air of thunderous torrents that turned to
+carded wool on the way from heaven to earth! While I stood and watched
+it all somebody profaned the air with a vulgar word, and I looked for a
+flaming sword from the omnipotent hand to smite him where he stood. To
+swear, or even to think an unholy thought in such a holy of holies,
+deserves the penalty of death as much as did the desecration of the
+temple in ancient times.
+
+Shifting our place from point to point, we found ourselves at last
+standing on the very verge of the Horseshoe falls, where, crowned with
+living green, it slips over the crumbling ledge and loses itself in a
+dazzling whirl of spray. Although I have stood in that same spot many
+times I am proud to remark that I have never stood there yet without
+saying my prayers. The sight is too much for the puny ego that animates
+this little capricious whiff of dust we call our mortal body, and now,
+if never before, the soul that retains one particle of the divine within
+it turns to God as the sunflower follows the sun. While we stood
+entranced by the sublime beauty of the scene a mighty wind arose
+suddenly and great clouds were called across the sky to the sending of a
+swift alarm. Before the breath of the wind the mists were tumbled far
+and wide like feathers, and a rainbow that arched the whole was
+demolished into nothingness only to be kindled again as a flame in the
+whimsical breath of the riotous air. One moment the atmosphere was a
+fairy flower garden, full of violets, roses, green feathery ferns and
+passion-tinted tulips brimming over with gold. The next some giant hand
+reached forth and plucked and bore each flower away. A suffusion of
+color followed every flood of sunshine, as a pomegranate runs with juice
+at the touch of a knife, only to be succeeded by pale wafts of
+colorless, interminable spray, where a cloud caught the too eager sun
+within its soft eclipse.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If the Lord left any snakes in Paradise after the settlement of the
+primal fuss they took the shape of the man who is a confirmed cynic and
+pessimist. The man who has no faith, no enthusiasm, no candor, no
+sentiment. The man who laughs at the mention of good in the world, or
+virtue in women, or honor among men. The man who calls his wife a fool
+because she teaches his little children to say their prayers, and curls
+his lip at any belief in the world beyond the grave. The man who never
+saw anything worth admiring in the sky when the dawn touches it, or the
+stars illumine it, or the clouds sweep it, or the rain folds it in gray
+mists of silence. The man who lives in this sparkling, shining world as
+a frog lives in a pond or a toad in a cellar, only to croak and spit
+venom. The man who never saw anything in a rose aglint in the sunlight
+or in a lily asleep in the moonlight, but a species of useless
+vegetable, the inferior of the cabbage and the onion. The world is
+overfull of such men, and if I had the right sort of broom I'd sweep
+them away as the new girl sweeps spiders.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once I was sailing in a yacht close to the rock-bound coast of Maine.
+
+It was presumably a pleasure cruise, but if ever a poor wretch in
+purgatory had a harder time of it I am sorry for him.
+
+The fog was thick, the ground swell was enough to unsettle the seven
+hills of Rome, and something was wrong with the boat's machinery, so
+that for hours we lay in the trough of the sea, making no headway and
+fearful that each moment would be our last. Added to all this there came
+at short intervals a demoniac blast from a fog horn which rent the air
+with the clamor of a thousand tongues.
+
+"Look out!" it seemed to shriek over and over again. "Look out, poor
+fragile wisps of gossamer! The hour strikes for your destruction.
+Another wave, a little higher than the last, shall suck you down like a
+shred of foam into the blackness of the sea's dark vortex. Brace up and
+meet your doom. Look out! Look out! Look out!"
+
+I listened to that fog horn for hours, until the soul within me lay like
+a spent bird weary with futile beating of useless wings, and I came
+within a hair's breadth of madness. In fact, I think I had commenced to
+rave a bit when a brisk wind sprang up that blew the fog away, the crew
+succeeded in righting the craft and onward we flew out of sound of the
+terrible fog horn forever.
+
+There are many things in life that remind me of fog horns; there are
+many occasions that beat upon the soul with just such vociferous clamor.
+
+There are those old-fashioned Bible texts, shouting "hell fire" and
+"eternal damnation." What are they but fog horns warning us from off a
+mist-enveloped shore? We cannot shut our ears to them while we lie a
+furlong off the rocks and listen to their woeful reiteration. Perhaps
+some chance wind may blow us out to sea, there to escape for the present
+the unwelcome climax; but we know that underneath the shrouded stars and
+through the hush of midnight forever and forevermore sounds the crash of
+that brazen alarm. We may not heed it, but the fog horn is there, forget
+and disown it though we may.
+
+Then there are our birthdays after we grow old enough to understand
+their significance; what are they but fog horns that sound at intervals
+to denote that we are drawing near to the final doom of all mankind?
+
+"Sport on," they seem to say, "a little longer; weave your garlands and
+blow your pretty bubbles while you may, for to-morrow you shall surely
+die!"
+
+Each year the fog horn blows a louder blast, until finally the softened
+haze of creeping years, like a white fog in the sea air, muffles the
+sound, and we sink to rest at last, some of us with the wild clamor
+hushed to the measure of a good-night song.
+
+Then the holidays. Thanksgivings and Christmases with independence days,
+like wine-red roses dropped between, what are they but fog horns on the
+invisible shores of memory? How they mock us with the recollection of
+vanished joys, and warn us of barren years yet to be.
+
+Gone forever are the dear ones who made gala times and festival
+happenings bright, and still we linger like boats in the trough of a
+sullen sea, our motive power wrecked, our sails rent, and listen,
+listen, listen to the warning that sounds from far off the hazy shore.
+
+"Gone, forever gone," the fog horn cries; "gone down into the sea, the
+boats that kept you company when the bright-winged fleet put out from
+port! Lost forever, in storms it seems scarce worth the while to have
+weathered, since here you toss, alone at last, like driftwood on the
+chilly tide, and listen forever to the mournful warning of my voice from
+off the sandbars, warning you that not even love can withstand the beat
+of time's relentless years."
+
+Our desks are full of miniature fog horns in the shape of unanswered
+letters.
+
+Our closets hang full of fog horns of varying fabrics. They warn us of
+the folly of trusting to bargain sales of shoddy goods; they warn us
+against extravagant tastes when times are hard; they warn us against the
+lazy mood that neglects the stitch in time that saveth nine.
+
+Every time we are ill the occasion is a fog horn.
+
+Either we have disregarded some law of health and are in the trough of
+the sea in consequence, or we are flying on to the breakers with ears
+dulled to the fog horn's din.
+
+We speak with cruel harshness to the old mother who loves us, or to the
+little child who trusts us. We are sorry for it afterward, and that
+sorrow is the fog horn that warns us to keep off the reef of temper.
+
+"To-day may be the last day for the mother you have pained or the child
+you have wronged," it seems to say; "the bed they lie down upon to-night
+may be the bed of death. See to it, then, that you make each day of
+life, if possible, the last day of love's opportunity." Did you ever
+stop to think of what would become the instant concern of all this vast
+human race if a sudden edict should go forth that only twenty-four hours
+were left for each man to live? What if an angel should appear to-day at
+sunset and proclaim in a voice that should reach from world's center to
+world's rim, "To-morrow at set of sun this globe and all its race of
+sentient life shall be folded up like a scroll and effaced from heaven's
+chart!"
+
+What would we all begin to do then, I wonder? I think that everything
+would be forgotten but love. Envy and hatred, covetousness, jealousy,
+ambition, selfishness and cruelty would find no place in the hearts of
+men. We would improve love's latest opportunity to be kind one to
+another, tender-hearted and merciful. The husband would not be harsh
+with his wife, nor the wife show waspish temper to her husband, if the
+last day had come for both. The father would not strike his boy in
+uncontrolled temper, nor the mother rebuke her careless child, if the
+knowledge that the end of love's opportunity lay between the uplifted
+hand and the culprit. We should all be loving and fond and sweet if we
+only knew. My dear, this very thought, carried out, is but another fog
+horn. Perhaps death is already near, and the brazen clamor in our hearts
+which takes shape of an uneasy conscience or of a nameless dread is but
+the warning in the fog that we are close upon the fatal reef. Ah, the
+air is full of them! They sound in every waking moment, they mingle with
+our dreams, they greet our opening eyes, they accompany us when the
+tired lids fall in slumber. The shore is lined with them and their
+warning is as ceaseless as the beat of time's receding waves.
+
+But of what use is a fog horn to a vessel that gives no heed? Why uplift
+them on dangerous reefs if the ship's crew sleeps through their warning
+and the unconscious captain ignores their hoarse note of alarm?
+
+An unheeded fog horn might as well be silenced, and so, I sometimes
+think, if we allow our hearts to grow callous to the call that
+conscience makes, why not be thankful when the warning ceases and
+silence follows the useless repetition of an unavailing appeal? If I am
+to be shipwrecked at last I think I would rather run upon the reefs
+without warning than to drift to destruction to the mocking cadence of
+an alarm I would not heed. To go down with the sound in my ears of an
+admonition that might have saved me had I but listened would be the
+hardest sort of dying.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+HER CRADLE.
+
+  There are tears on the gentian's eyelids,
+    As they lift them, fringed and fair.
+  Do they mourn for the vanished brightness
+    Of my baby's golden hair?
+
+  There's a cloud a-droop in the heavens
+    That shadows their sunny hue.
+  Does it dream of the lovelight tender
+    In my baby's eyes so blue?
+
+  The golden rod pines in the forest,
+    The aster pales by the brook.
+  Do they miss her fairy footfall
+    In each dim and flow'ry nook?
+
+  Now, all through this beautiful weather,
+    Wherever I walk, I weep;
+  For I think of the desolate cradle
+    Where my baby lies asleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other night, as I was listening to "taps" in a neighboring military
+camp, a longing came over me for a silver bugle of my own, that I might
+blow a message to the drowsy world. We all listen to that fellow up at
+Fort Sheridan, when he gives the command for "lights out!" just because
+he blows it through a bugle. He might come out and say what he had to
+say in tones anywhere between a cornet and a clap of thunder, and the
+effect would be nothing to what it is when the notes filter through a
+silver mouthpiece. And how exquisitely the last strains of that nightly
+call linger on the ear! They melt into the starry glooms, and throb
+through the dim spaces of the woods like golden bubbles or the wavering
+flight of butterflies. Whenever we hear them we think of Grant, asleep
+in his grave by the mighty river, of his work well done, and the rest
+that dropped upon his pain-racked life at last like a soft and rainy
+shadow on a thirsty land. We think of hosts of brave men who fill
+soldiers' graves all over this blood-bought heritage of ours. We think
+of hearts that once beat high, for long years silent as stones to all
+our cries and tears. We think of a host of things, solemn and hushed,
+and sacred, and drop to sleep at last with an indistinct purpose in our
+hearts to so conduct ourselves that when the Death Angel blows "taps"
+for us, we shall leave a record behind us to be read through fond,
+regretful tears, and enshrined in golden characters upon the tablets of
+memory.
+
+Now, if I had a bugle instead of a pen, to work with, and if I could
+stand out under the stars on a hushed summer night and deliver my
+message through its silver throat, perhaps the world that reads me might
+be thrilled into earnest purpose more readily than it is when exhorted
+from a pencil point or a quill. The first message I should ring through
+that bugle of mine would be the command, "Don't fret!" However
+comfortless and forlorn you may be, don't add to your own and the
+world's misery by fretting. There never yet was a sorrow that could not
+be lived down; there never yet was one that could be cured by worry.
+When the cows get into the corn and the chickens into the flower-beds,
+the sensible man chases 'em out first, repairs the damage next, and,
+lastly, fastens up the break in the garden wall by which the marauders
+got in. What would you think of a farmer who went into his bedroom to
+pray before he chased out the cows, or of a woman who threw her apron
+over her head and wept long and loud because the hens were scratching up
+her pink roots, instead of "shooing" them a half-mile away with a broom?
+Most troubles come upon us as the cattle and the hens get into the corn
+and the garden patch, through a broken fence or a carelessly unguarded
+gate. It is our own fault half the time that we are tormented, and the
+sooner we repair the damage and mend the fence, the better. Time spent
+in useless bewailing, in worry and disquietude, is lost time, and while
+we wait the mischief thickens. Take life's trials one by one, as the
+handful of heroes met the host at Thermopylae, and you will slay them
+all; but allow them to marshal themselves on a broad field while you are
+crying over their coming or praying for deliverance, instead of arming
+yourselves to meet them, and they will make captives of you and keep
+you forever in the dungeon of tears. Is your husband too poor to buy you
+all the fine clothes you want, or to keep a carriage, or to surround you
+with pleasant society and congenial friends? Very well, that is
+certainly too bad, but what's the use of being forever in the dumps
+about it? Get up and help him keep the cows out of the corn, and perhaps
+you'll have a golden harvest yet. A sullen, discontented wife is a
+millstone around any man's neck, and he may be thankful when the good
+Lord delivers him from her. Whatsoever is worth having in this world's
+gifts is worth working for, and wedlock is like an ox-team at the plow.
+If the off-ox won't pull with the nigh one, it has no claim with him
+upon the possible future of a comfortable stall and a full bin. Out upon
+you, then, Madam Gruntle, if you sulk, and pout and fret your days away
+because your husband is a poor man and spends most of his time chasing
+the cattle, calamity and failure out of his wheat patch. He may possibly
+be one of fortune's numerous ne'er-do-wells, but in that case all the
+more reason you should not fail him. Bent reeds need careful handling,
+and smoking flax gentle tending, else they will perish on your hands
+and disappoint both you and heaven. All the more reason that you should
+be cheery and strong and ready to do your part, if the man you married,
+because you dearly loved him (remember!) is unable to do all that he
+promised. That is, always provided he is weak and unfortunate, rather
+than desperately wicked. A woman has no call to stand by any man if he
+is a wretch and shows no desire to be anything else. The Lord himself
+never helped a sinner until he showed some desire to be saved. Less
+repining, then, a little more forbearance with one another's
+shortcomings, and a little more loyalty to the promise "for better or
+for worse," will ease up much of the burden of dissatisfied and
+disappointed wedlock.
+
+Another message that I should blow through that bugle, if I had it at my
+lips to-night, would be: "Be true!" And I should ring it out so long and
+loud, I think, that the moon would stop to listen, and the sleepy heads
+in every home in the land would rise from their pillows like
+night-capped crocuses out of the snow. For heaven's sake, if you have a
+principle or a friend, be true to them. Make up your mind, whether or
+no your principle is solid and has God and justice on its side, and then
+be true to it right down to death, or, what is harder, through
+misunderstanding and obloquy. And if you have a friend, such as God
+sometimes gives a woman or a man, faithful through all betiding, staunch
+in your defense and tender in your blame, stand true to that friend
+until the grave's green canopy is spread between you. He may be
+unpopular and unfortunate, and all the feather-headed crew of society
+may ignore him, but if you have ever tested his worth as a friend, stand
+up for him, and stand by him forever. The sun may go down upon his
+fortunes, and calumny may cloud his name, and you may know in your heart
+that more than half the world says about him is true, but stand by the
+man who has once been your true friend. Ingratitude is the blackest
+crime that preys upon the human soul. The forgetfulness of a favor, or
+the effacement of a bond sealed with an obligation, is capable only to
+weak and cowardly natures.
+
+If you have a conviction, and are conscientious in the belief that you
+are right, be true to your professions. If you are a rebel, be a rebel
+out and out, and don't be a goat to leap nimbly back and forth over the
+fence. Never apologize for either your faith or your profession, unless
+you have reason to be ashamed of it; and, if you are ashamed of it,
+renounce it and get one that will need no apology.
+
+There are lots of other messages I would like to stand on a hill and
+blow through a bugle, but the weather is too warm to admit of further
+effort just now; so we'll postpone the topic for another hearing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I sat in a fashionable church the other day and listened to a sermon on
+"The Prodigal Son." How often I have heard the same old story told in
+the same old way. How familiar I have become with the kind father, the
+bad son, refreshingly human heir, the veal and the ring! But the last
+time I heard the story I felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to rise
+up in meeting and ask the question, "How does the treatment accorded to
+the prodigal son match the treatment we mete out to the prodigal
+daughter?"
+
+How far out of our way do we go to accompany his sister on her homeward
+faring after a season spent among the swine and the husks?
+
+Do we put an 18-karat ring on her poor little soiled finger and place
+her at the head of our table, even if by good chance she gains an
+entrance to the home? Do we not more often meet her at the back door
+when nobody is looking, rush her through the hallway and consign her to
+the little third story rear room, taking her meals to her ourselves, on
+the sly, that the neighbors may not find out the dreadful fact that she
+is at home again?
+
+"Keep yourself very close," we say to her, "and by no manner of means be
+seen at any of the windows, and you may stay here. You can wear some of
+your virtuous sister's cast-off clothing, and sleep on the lounge in the
+nursery, where the servants never think of going since the little folks
+have grown up, but you must be very penitent, and very humble, and very
+thankful to God for the mercy you so little deserve."
+
+I think somebody had better write a new parable and call it "The
+Prodigal Daughter." Perhaps a sermon might be preached from it to touch
+the unmoved heart.
+
+After all there are two sorts of prodigals--the prodigal who comes home
+because the cash gives out, and the prodigal who comes because his heart
+turns back to the old home with such longing as the thirsty feel for
+water. Neither boy nor girl who comes back for the first-named reason
+should find a maudlin love awaiting, nor partake of any banquet that the
+old folks have had to pay for, but the prodigal who returns because
+there is something left in his or her heart like the music in a shell,
+which nothing can destroy or hush away to silence, be that prodigal
+sinful man or erring woman, should find not only the home doors swung
+wide in welcome, but every doorway in the land wreathed with flowers to
+bid him enter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How few people know when to stop. If the preacher knew when to stop
+preaching, how much more satisfactory the result of his sermon might be.
+If the genial fellow knew just when to stop telling his good stories,
+how much keener their relish would be. If the moralizer knew just when
+to stop moralizing, how much longer the flavor of his philosophy would
+endure. If the friend knew when to keep still, how grateful his silence
+would be. If the candid creature who so glibly tells of our foibles knew
+when to hold his tongue, how much less strong our impulse to slap him
+would be. If the high-liver knew when to stop eating, how much less sure
+dyspepsia would be. If the popular guest knew when to withdraw, how much
+more regretfully we should see him go. If the politician knew when to
+retire into private life, how much whiter his record would be. If we all
+knew just when to die, and could opportunely bring the event about, how
+much truer our epitaphs would be. The court fool who prayed, "Oh God, be
+merciful to me, a fool!" prayed deeper than he knew, and the man who
+prays, "Oh God, teach me to know when I have said enough," prays deeper
+still.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You may talk about California all you will, but match, if you can, the
+beauty of spring as it comes to us in these northerly latitudes. There
+is the coy advance and retreat of a woman hard to win; there is the
+crescendo and diminuendo of heavenly harmonies; there is the dissolving
+view that glimmers and glows like an opal, or like the mirage of a misty
+sea. I was in California a year ago, in April time. I found the month
+that poets love in full splendor, like a queen who never doffs her
+crown. Violets, roses, lilacs and carnations came all together in a
+riotous rush. One did not have to woo the season; it was already won.
+Like a matron crowned with the mid-splendor of her years, the earth
+received the homage that is due achievement. Nobody caught the sound of
+the first robin on a rainy morning and heralded it with a shout; the
+first robin, like the first principle in creation, never existed, for
+the reason that he was always there. There were no foretellings of green
+along the watercourses; no prophetic thrills of violets in the air; no
+uplifting of the hypatica's downy head above the lattice of fuzzy
+leaves; everything was right where you discovered it, and had been all
+the year round. Without beginning and without end, spring exists
+forever, like a picture bound within a book, in the lovely land of the
+Gringos. But walk out some April morning in the suburbs that surround
+Chicago. Catch the tonic of the air, like wine ever so delicately
+chilled with ice. View the lake, like a gentian flower fringed with a
+horizon fine as silk. Scrape away the leaves and hail the valiant Robin
+Hood in his suit of green, leading his legion upward to the sun. Without
+the sound of a footfall or the gleam of a lance, they come to take
+possession of the earth. Woo the violet to turn her dewy eye upon you,
+and listen to the minstrel in the tower, where the winds are harping to
+the new buds. Mark the maple twigs, like silhouettes cut in coral, and
+the sheath of the wood lily, like a ribbon half unrolled. Rejoice in the
+flash of the blue bird's wing as it startles the still air, and then say
+to me, if you dare, that you prefer any other climate to this one that
+belts the zone of these northern lakes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thank the Lord, all ye who can call yourselves healthy. The day has gone
+by for physically delicate women. This age demands Hebes and young
+Venuses with ample waists and veritable muscles. Specked fruit and
+specked people go in the same category in the popular taste. To the
+question, "How are you to-day?" I for one, always feel like replying in
+the words of an old Irish servant we once had (God rest her faithful
+soul wherever it be this windy day!), "First-rate, glory be to God!" It
+is such a grand thing to be well and strong, to feel that your soul is
+riding on its way to glory in a chariot, and not in a broken-down old
+mud-cart. Talk about happiness! Why, a well beggar has a better time of
+it than a sick king, any day. If, then, like a bird, your strong wing
+uplifts you above the countless shafts of pain which that grim old
+sportsman, Death, is ever aiming at poor humanity, count yourself an
+ingrate if the song of thanksgiving is not always welling from your
+heart like the constant song of a bobolink singing for very joy above
+the clover.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What would be thought of a ship that was launched from its docks with
+flourish of music and flowing wine, built to sail the roughest and
+deepest sea, yet manned for an unending cruise along shore? Never
+leaving harbor for dread of storm. Never swinging out of the land-girt
+bay because over the bar, the waters were deep and rough. You would say
+of such a ship that its captain was a coward and the company that built
+it were fools.
+
+And yet these souls of ours were fashioned for bottomless soundings.
+There is no created thing that draws as deep as the soul of man; our
+life lies straight across the ocean and not along shore, but we are
+afraid to venture; we hang upon the coast and explore shallow lagoons or
+swing at anchor in idle bays. Some of us strike the keel into riches and
+cruise about therein, like men-of-war in a narrow river. Some of us are
+contented all our days to ride at anchor in the becalmed waters of
+selfish ease. There are guns at every port-hole of the ship we sail, but
+we use them for pegs to hang clothes upon, or pigeon-holes to stack full
+of idle hours. We shall never smell powder, although the magazine is
+stocked with holy wrath wherewith to fight the devil and his deeds. When
+I see a man strolling along at his ease, while under his very nose some
+brute is maltreating a horse, or some coward venting his ignoble wrath
+upon a creature more helpless than he, whether it be a child or a dog, I
+involuntarily think of a double-decked whaler content to fish for
+minnows. Their uselessness in the world is more apparent than the
+uselessness of a Cunarder in a park pond.
+
+What did God give you muscle and girth and brain for, if not to launch
+you on the high seas? Up and away with you then into the deep soundings
+where you belong, oh, belittled soul! Find the work to do for which you
+were fitted and do it, or else run yourself on the first convenient snag
+and founder.
+
+Some great writer has said that we ought to begin life as at the source
+of a river, growing deeper every league to the sea, whereas, in fact,
+thousands enter the river at its mouth, and sail inland, finding less
+and less water every day, until in old age they lie shrunk and gasping
+upon dry ground.
+
+But there are more who do not sail at all than there are of those who
+make the mistake of sailing up stream. There are the women who devote
+their lives to the petty business of pleasing worthless men. What
+progress do they make even inland? With sails set and brassy stanchions
+polished to the similitude of gold, they hover a lifetime chained to a
+dock and decay of their own uselessness at last, like keels that are
+mud-slugged. It is not the most profitable thing in the world to please.
+Suppose it shall please the inmates of a bedlam-house to see you set
+fire to your clothing and burn to death, or break your bones one by one
+upon a rack, or otherwise destroy your bodily parts that the poor
+lunatics might be entertained. Would it pay to be pleasing to such an
+audience at such a sacrifice? But the destruction of the loveliest body
+in the world is nothing compared to the demoralization of soul that
+takes place when women subvert everything lofty and noble within their
+nature to win the transient regard of a few worthless men of the world.
+They learn to smoke cigarettes because such men profess to like to see a
+pretty woman affect the toughness of a rowdy. They drink in public
+places and barter their honor all too often for handsome clothes in
+which to make a vain parade, all to please some heathen man, who in
+reality counts them a great way inferior to the value of a good horse.
+The right sort of a sweetheart, my dear, never desires to bring a woman
+down to his own level. He prefers to put her on a pedestal and say his
+prayers to her. Never think that you are winning an admiration that
+counts for much if you have to abate one whit of your womanhood to win
+it. Every time I see a woman drinking in a public resort, making herself
+conspicuous by loud talk and louder laughter, I think of some fair ship
+that should be making for the eternal city, with all its snow-white
+canvas set, rotting at its docks, or cruising, arm's length from a
+barren land. We were put into this world with a clean way bill for
+another port than this. Across the ocean of life our way lies, straight
+to the harbor of the city of gold. We are freighted with a consignment
+from quarter-deck to keel which is bound to be delivered sooner or later
+at the great master's wharf. Let us be alert, then, to recognize the
+seriousness of our own destinies and content ourselves no longer with
+shallow soundings. Spread the sails, weigh the anchor and point the prow
+for the country that lies the other side a deep and restless sea. Sooner
+or later the voyage must be made; let us make it, then, while the timber
+is stanch and the rudder true. With a resolute will at the wheel, and
+the great God himself to furnish the chart, our ship shall weather the
+wildest gale and find entrance at last to the harbor of peace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When you look at a picture and find it good or bad, as the case may be,
+whom do you praise or blame--the owner of the picture or the artist who
+painted it? When you hear a strain of music and are either lifted to
+heaven or cast into the other place by its harmonies or its discord,
+whom do you thank or curse for the benefaction or the infliction,
+whichever it may have proved to be--the man who wrote the score or the
+music dealer who sold it? You go to a restaurant and order spring
+chicken which turns out to be the primeval fowl. Who is to blame--the
+waiter who serves it or the business man of the concern who does the
+marketing? And so when you encounter the bad boy, whom do you hold
+responsible for his badness--the boy himself or the mother who trained
+him? I declare, as I look about me from day to day and see the men and
+women who play so poor a part in life, it is not the poverty of their
+performance that astonishes me so much as the fact that it is as good
+as it is.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I did think I would keep out of the controversy on the low-neck dress
+question. But there is just one thing I want to say. Did you ever know a
+sweet young girl yet, one who was rightly trained and modestly brought
+up, who took to decollete dresses naturally? Is not the first wearing of
+one a trial, and a special ordeal? It is after the bloom is off the
+peach that a young woman is willing to show her pretty shoulders and
+neck to the crowd; and who cares much for a rubbed plum or a brushed
+peach? I cannot imagine a sweet, wholesome-hearted woman, be she young
+or old, divesting herself of half her clothes and thrusting herself upon
+the notice of ribald men. I can sooner imagine a rose tree bearing frog.
+The conjunction is not possible. The cheek that will blush at the story
+of repentant shame, that will flame with indignant protest when the
+skirts of a Magdalene brush too near, yet deepens not its rose at
+thought of uncovering neck and bust in a crowded theater or public
+reception is not the cheek of modest and natural womanhood. It is not
+necessary to be a prude or a skinny old harridan either, to inveigh
+against the custom. I know full well how contemptible the affectations
+and hypocrisies of life are. Half that is yielded to evil was meant for
+good. The high chancellor of Hades has put his seal on much that was
+originally invoiced for the Lord's own people. But there are some things
+so palpably shameless that to argue about them is like trying to prove
+by demonstration that a crow is white. It needs no argument.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE VETERANS.
+
+  Scarce had the bugle note sounded
+    For the call of their last defeat;
+  And still on the lowland meadow
+    Lie the prints of their quick retreat.
+
+  Above us the bright skies sparkle,
+    And around us the same winds blow
+  That rippled their golden banners
+    In that battle so long ago,
+
+  When the southwind challenged winter,
+    And the rose-ranks routed the snow,
+  And the hosts of tiny gold coats
+    Sprang up from their campfires below,
+
+  To charge on the insolent frost king,
+    And shatter his lance of ice,
+  While back to the desolate northland
+    They wheeled him about in a trice.
+
+  The battle is hardly ended,
+    The victory only begun,
+  Yet I saw the gray-bearded vet'rans,
+    To-day, sitting out in the sun.
+
+  They nod by wind-rippled rivers,
+    They shake in the shade of the oak,
+  And all the day long they murmur
+    And whisper, and gossip, and croak.
+
+  And often in wondering rapture,
+    They recount the charge they made,
+  When down from the windy hillsides,
+    And up through the dewy glade,
+
+  The sheen of their golden bonnets
+    Shone out from the green of the leaves,
+  Like the flight of a glancing swallow,
+    Or the flash of a wave on the seas.
+
+  They muse in sleepy contentment,
+    Or flutter in endless dispute.
+  For this was a brave cadet, sir,
+    And that one a crippled recruit.
+
+  Fight over again your battles,
+    O veterans, withered and gray;
+  For a band of northwind chasseurs
+    To-morrow shall blow you away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once upon a time it came to pass that a woman, being weary with much
+running to and fro, fell asleep and dreamed a dream.
+
+And in her dream she beheld a mighty host, more than man could number.
+And of that host, all were women, and spake with varying tongues.
+
+And they bent the body, and sitting on hard benches wailed mightily, so
+that the air was full of the sound of lamentation, like a garden that
+wooeth many bees.
+
+And the woman who dreamed, being tender of heart and disposed kindly
+toward the suffering ones, lifted up her voice saying:
+
+"Why bendest thou the body, oh, daughters of despair, and why art thine
+eyelids red with tears?
+
+"Yea, why rockest thou like boats that find no anchor, and like poplars
+which the north wind smiteth?"
+
+And one from among the host greater than man could number made answer,
+saying:
+
+"Wouldst know who we are, and why we spend our days like a weaver's
+shuttle that flitteth to and fro in a web of tears?
+
+"Behold we are the faithless and unregenerate handmaids who have served
+thee, and women like unto thee, bringing desolation unto thy larders,
+and gray hairs among the braids with which nature hath crowned thee.
+
+"Yea, verily, by reason of our misdemeanors lift we the voice of
+lamentation in a land that knoweth not comfort."
+
+Now, the woman who dreamed, being full of amazement, replied anon, and
+these were the words that fell from her lips:
+
+"Sayest thou so? And dwellest thou and thy sisters in Hades by reason of
+the evil thou hast wrought?"
+
+"Nay, not forever," replied she who had spoken. "We remain but for a
+season, that our remorse may cleanse our record before we go hence to
+sit with the blessed ones in glory.
+
+"Not from everlasting unto everlasting is the duration of the penalty we
+pay for what we have done unto thee, else were there no peace between
+the stars by reason of our torment and our tears."
+
+And the woman who dreamed beheld many whose fame yet lingered within the
+shadows of her home.
+
+There was Ann, the fumble-witted, who piled the backyard high with
+broken china, yet stayed not her hand when rebuked therefor.
+
+There was Sarah, the high-headed, who refused to clean the paint because
+she had dwelt long in the tents of such as hired the housecleaning done
+by other hands, that the labors of the handmaid might be few;
+
+Yea, verily, with such as believed that Sarah and her ilk might have
+time wherein to be merry rather than toil.
+
+There was Karen, the Swede, who wrapped the bread in her petticoat and
+refused to be convinced of the error of her ways.
+
+There was Jane, the Erinite, who broke the pump, and Caroline, the
+Teuton, who combed her locks with the comb of the woman who dreamed.
+
+There was Adaline, the hoosier, who failed to answer the summons of the
+stranger who knocked at the gates unless she were in full dress and
+carried a perfumed handkerchief.
+
+There was Louise, who smote the youngest born of the household because
+he prattled of her dealings with the frequent cousin who called often
+and sought to deplete the larder.
+
+There was the girl who desired her evenings out and never came home
+before cock crow.
+
+There was the girl who threw up her place in the family of the woman who
+dreamed because she was asked to hurry her ways.
+
+There was the girl who wore the hose of her mistress, and took it as an
+affront when asked to desist.
+
+There was the girl who swore when the chariot of the sometime guest drew
+nigh, and likewise the girl who refused to remain over night in a
+dwelling where she was summoned to serve by means of a call bell.
+
+There was the girl who found it too lonesome in the country and left the
+garments in the washtub that she might hie her to the great city, the
+social center of which she was the joy and the pride.
+
+There was the girl who was made mad by means of the request that she
+wash her hands before breakfast.
+
+There was the girl who entertained her callers in the drawing-room while
+the family was afar off, sojourning in the hills or by the waves of the
+sea;
+
+Yea, who thought it no evil to bring forth the flesh-pot and the
+brandied comfit, that the heart of the district policeman might leap
+thereat, as the young buck leapeth at sight of the water courses.
+
+There was also the girl who wasted, and the girl who stole; the girl who
+never tried, and the girl who never cared.
+
+And seeing the multitude the spirit of the woman who dreamed arose
+within her and she asked of a certain veiled one who seemed to be in
+charge:
+
+"Tell me, O shrouded one, is there never to be any diminution in the
+throng that cometh to take their abode in these halls of penitential
+regret?"
+
+And the spirit in charge made answer, saying:
+
+"No, nor never shall be while fools live and folly thrives.
+
+"It is by reason of the babbling of busy-bodies that havoc has overtaken
+the land of thy forefathers.
+
+"There is honor in faithful service, and an uncorruptible crown awaiteth
+the forehead of her who serveth well.
+
+"It is no disgrace to the comely daughters of men who toil and are put
+to that they bring in the wherewithal to fill the mouths of the children
+who call them father--
+
+"It is no disgrace, I say unto you, if such maidens take unto themselves
+the position of servants in the family of him who prospereth,
+
+"Remembering that one who lived long since and has slept these many
+years in the tomb of his fathers, spake truly when he uttered these
+words, albeit framed in rhyme:
+
+  "Honor and shame from no condition rise;
+  Act well your part, there all the honor lies."
+
+And it came to pass that the woman who dreamed took comfort to herself
+by reason of her dream.
+
+And she arose from slumber like a strong man who desireth to run a race.
+
+And buckling on more tightly the armor wherein she moved, yea, even with
+a free hand buttoning the boot and drawing the string, she cogitated
+unto herself, and these were the words of her cogitation:
+
+"Behold, I will learn a new wisdom that I may be unto my handmaids a
+friend rather than a taskmistress, that in so doing I may win unto my
+household the damsel who hath intelligence. And my treatment of her
+shall be such that many wise ones who call that damsel friend shall
+decide to do even as she hath done and choose domestic service with a
+woman who is kind even to the showing of interest in her handmaid's
+affairs, rather than linger in bondage with the shop girl and her who
+rattles the tinkling keys of the typewriter machine.
+
+"So doing, my days shall increase mightily in the land, as also the days
+of her who cometh after me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Women are either the noblest creation of God or the meanest. A good
+woman is little less than an angel; a bad woman is considerably more
+than a devil. And by bad women I do not mean women who drink, or steal,
+or frequent brothels. The chief weapon of a bad woman is her tongue.
+With a lie she can do more deadly work than the fellow in the bible did
+with the jawbone of an ass. Untruth is the fundamental strata of all
+evil in a bad woman's nature, and with it she is more to be dreaded than
+many men with revolvers. There is absolutely no protection from a lie.
+The courts cannot protect from its venom, and to kill a defamer and a
+falsifier is not yet adjudged as legalized slaughter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is one awfully homely woman in Chicago. I met her the other day
+over in Blank's art gallery. Our acquaintance was brief but sensational.
+I looked at her, tucked her into my handbag and wept. She didn't seem to
+mind it, and when, a few hours later, in the seclusion of my chamber, I
+took her out of the bag and looked at her again, she was more hideous
+than before.
+
+"You horrible creature!" said I. "If you look like me, better that the
+uttermost depths of the sea had me."
+
+"But I do look like you," said she, and her voice was weak and low by
+reason of prolonged exposure to the sun and air, "and Mr. Blank says I
+will finish up very nicely."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me," I asked, "that my nose is as big as yours?"
+
+"Of course it is," said she; "pictures cannot lie. But comfort yourself
+with the assurance that a large nose is always an indication of
+intelligence."
+
+"Intelligence be blessed!" said I, for I was getting excited;
+"intelligence without beauty is like bread without butter, or a peacock
+without a tail! If I possess such a nose as yours, madam, I shall take
+to tract-distributing, galoshes and a cotton umbrella, and forget that I
+was ever human."
+
+"You talk wildly, as all the rest of them do," said my thin companion.
+"Listen, for my time on earth is short, I am rapidly fading away, and
+what I say must be said briefly. If you look about you you will see that
+there exists, more or less hidden in every breast, the belief of one's
+own beauty. The mirror, although a faithful friend, can never quite
+disabuse the mind of that belief, and when the honest camera holds up
+the actual presentation of one's self as an incontrovertible fact, the
+disappointment is keen and hard to bear."
+
+"All that may be true," said I, "but not all your assertions can ever
+make me believe that that dusky mass of hair, brushed back so wildly
+from those beetling brows, is like my own. You know that mine is soft
+and brown, and yours looks like the bristles of an enraged stove brush."
+
+"That's the way they all talk," responded the dissolving view, "but you
+do not stop to consider that under the artist's pencil the shadows will
+all be toned and softened. And let me say right here, that that
+'beetling brow' is a sign of rare intelligence, much more to be desired
+than the lower and more----"
+
+"Stop, right there!" I interrupted. "It is not necessary to have a brow
+like a plate-glass show-window, or like an overhanging cliff, or like a
+granite paving-stone, to denote intelligence! No, my friend, do not try
+to lift this shadow from my soul. That mouth that looks like a dark
+biscuit, that nose that looks like a promontory overhanging an unseen
+sea, that hair that looks like the ruff of an excited chicken, that brow
+that looks like a skating-rink, all make me sad. I shall never have my
+picture taken again. If I look like that it is time I died. In the round
+of an eventful life I may forget that I even saw you, but until I do I
+am a tired woman. My mirror may assuage my sorrow, for that either lies
+or catches me from a different point of view. Vanish then, oh, yellow
+shade of an unhappy reality. Back to oblivion with you, and heaven grant
+I never look upon your like again!" So saying, I calmly held the poor
+but hideous creature in the flame of a gas-jet and smilingly cremated
+her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A fairer day than last Sunday was never cradled to rest behind the
+curtains of night. It began with a flute obligato of sunrise, orbed
+itself into a full orchestra wherein color took the part of first and
+second violins, and declined at last into the hush of sunset like the
+mellow notes of a cello under old Paul Schessling's master touch. Such
+days visit the earth rarely. They are advance sheets of a story that is
+going to be told in heaven; preludes to a song that we shall hear in its
+perfection only when we have got through with the clattering discords of
+time. Thank God for all such days. They do us more good than we know.
+The sight of the woods, adorned as only queens are adorned for the court
+of the king, the sound of falling leaves and lonely bird songs, of
+hidden lutes, of unseen brooks, tremulous and sweet and low under the
+russet shadows, uplift our souls and help us to forget, for the time
+being at least, how tired we are, how worn with the fret of sordid toil
+and how tormented and misjudged and calumniated we are by those who fain
+would do us harm. I think if I had time to do some of the things I want
+to do the first consummation of that happy time would be to build me a
+little cabin in the woods, where, in utter loneliness, I could forget
+how full the world is growing to be of folks and how prone they are to
+do each other harm and hinder rather than help each other on the stony
+way to heaven.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other evening, while sitting in the gallery of the Auditorium and
+looking over the balcony edge at the crowd waiting for the curtain to
+rise, a strange thought came to my mind. How could hell be more quickly
+created than by the unmasking of such a crowd as this? Suddenly remove
+from humanity all power of self-control and conventional dissimulation;
+force men and women to be natural, and act out every evil impulse latent
+in their souls, and could Dante himself portray a blacker Inferno? The
+man whose heart is full of murderous hatred--tear off the mask that
+hides his perturbed soul, and what a demon would look forth! The woman
+behind whose amiable seeming lurks malicious envy and snarling temper
+and crafty deceit--what a pandemonium would ensue when such passion
+broke forth like straining dogs from the leash! The old man with the
+saintly face and the crown of hoary hair--could an open cage of foul
+birds send forth a blacker brood than should fly out from his soul when
+some omnipotent hand unlatched the bars of its prison and let the
+unclean thoughts go free? The young man with the perfumed breath and the
+suave and courtly manner--does any storied hell hold captive blacker
+demons than the cruel selfishness, the impurities and the secret vices
+that walk to and fro in his soul like tigers behind their bars? The
+young girl with face like a rose and the form of a Juno--could anything
+that hades holds strike greater dismay to the hearts of men than the
+unmasking of her hidden thoughts? Ah, when the hour strikes for
+unmasking time in life's parade ball, when death steps forth and with
+cool, relentless touch unties the knot that holds the silken thing in
+place that has hidden our true selves from our beautiful seeming, we
+shall find no more fiery hell awaiting us than that we have carried so
+long in our hearts.
+
+I would not like to be regarded as a pessimist from the writing of such
+a paragraph as the above. Sometimes I seek to turn my thoughts upon the
+crowd and unmask the angel as well as the demon. But I find that the
+angels, as a general thing, wear no face concealers. They go disguised
+in poor clothes and scant bravery of attire, but the angel within them
+is like a singing bird rather than like a silent and chained beast. It
+reveals itself in songs, like a caged lark. It looks from out the window
+of the eyes in loving glances and tender smiles; it manifests itself in
+sweet and cheerful service, like the sunshine that can neither be hidden
+nor concealed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of all the pleasant things to look upon in this fair earth, I sometimes
+query which is the best, a little child, a fruit orchard in early June,
+or a young girl. I think the latter carries the day. Did you ever watch
+a flock of birds sitting for a moment on the mossy gable of a sloping
+roof? How they flutter and fuss and chirp; how they preen their delicate
+feathers and get all mixed up with the sunshine and the shadow, until
+which is bird and which is sunbeam one can scarcely tell. There is a
+flock of girls with whom I ride every morning, and they make me think of
+birds and sunbeams. They are so bewitching with their changeful moods
+and graces that I sit and watch them as one listens to the twitter of
+swallows. They sweeten up life, these girls, as sugar sweetens dough;
+they fill it with music as sleigh bells fill a winter night. God bless
+the girls, the bonnie, sweet and winsome girls, and may womanhood be for
+them but as the "swell of some sweet time," morning gliding into noon,
+May merging into June.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are so many things in this world to be tired of! The poor little
+persecuted boy in pinafores, sent to school to get him out of the way,
+doomed to dangle his plump legs all day long from a hard bench, rubbing
+his grimy knuckles into his sleepy blue eyes and wondering if eternity
+can last any longer than a public school session, grows no more tired of
+watching the flies on the ceiling and the shadows on the wall than some
+folks get of life. Let me mention a few of the things I, for one, am
+horribly tired of, and see if before my bead is half strung you do not
+look up from the strand and cry, "Amber, I am with you!"
+
+My dear, I am tired to-day of civilization and all modern improvements.
+I am tired of the speaking tube within my chamber where the new girl and
+myself wage daily our battle of the new Babel. She speaks Volapuk, and I
+do not, consequently she takes my demand for coal as an insult or an
+encouraging remark, just as the mood may be upon her, and pays no more
+attention to my request for drinking water than the unweaned child pays
+to the sighing wind. I am tired of sewer gas and what the scientists
+call "bacteria" and "germs." I am tired of going about with frescoed
+tonsils, the result of the three. I am tired of gargling my own throat
+and the throats of my helpless babes, and the throat of the casual
+visitor within my gates, with diluted phenic acid to ward off deadly
+disease. I am tired of nosing drains and buying copperas and hounding
+the latent plumber that he adjust the water-pipes. I am tired of boiling
+the cistern water and waiting for it to cool. I am tired of skipping
+from Dan to Beersheba daily for men to remove the tin-cans, the ashes
+and the unsightly rubbish that have emerged from long retirement
+underneath the snow. I am tired of imploring the small boy to keep his
+mother's chickens off my porch. I am tired of digging graves upon the
+common wherein to bury useless potato-parings, the unsightly
+cheese-rind, and the shattered egg-shell. I am tired of being told that
+my neighbor's calf and my neighbor's pet cat, and my neighbor's blooded
+stock of poultry are dying because of the copperas I scatter broadcast
+about the mouth of drains. I am tired of being a martyr to hygiene and a
+monomaniac on the subject of sanitary science. I am tired of sharpening
+lead pencils. I am tired of speaking pleasantly when I want to be cross.
+I am tired of the ceaseless grind of life, which like the upper and
+nether mill-stones, wears the heart to powder and the spirit to dust. I
+am tired of being told that the mark on my left ear is a spot of soil,
+and of being implored in thrilling whispers to wipe it away. I am tired
+of last year's seed-pods in spring gardens and of all two-legged
+donkeys. I am tired of awaiting a change in the methods of doing
+business around at the postoffice, and for the dawn of that blessed day
+when I shall be permitted to dance upon the grave of the aged being who
+peddles stamps at the retail window. I am tired of hosts of things
+besides, but have no time to enumerate them all to-day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have tested the rainy weather dress reform. It was pouring when I
+started from my humble home in the morning, and in spite of the prayers
+of the Young Person and the sobs of the "Martyr," I arrayed myself in my
+new, highly sensible and demoniacally ugly suit and weathered the
+elements. Within two hours it stopped raining; the sun came out and the
+streets filled with festively attired men and women, and where was I?
+Stranded on a clear day in garments befitting a castaway! My flannel
+dress, short skirts and top-boots wasted on fair weather. "In the name
+of heaven," exclaimed a friend, as I bore down upon him beneath a
+cloudless sky, "what have you got on?" "Go home! for the love of
+humanity, go home!" said another. And what was I to do? Await another
+storm like a crab in its shell, or venture forth and become the byword
+of an overwrought populace, the scorn of old men and matrons? Next time
+I start out in a reform dress I will take along the robes of
+civilization in a grip-sack.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is something that is getting to be awfully scarce in this world.
+Shall I tell you what it is? It is girls. That is what is missing out of
+the sentient, breathing, living world just now. We have lots of young
+ladies and lots of society misses, but the sweet, old-fashioned girls of
+ever so long ago are vanished with the poke bonnets and the cinnamon
+cookies. Let me enumerate a few of the kinds of girls that are wanted.
+In the first place we want home girls--girls who are mothers' right
+hand; girls who can cuddle the little ones next best to mamma, and
+smooth out the tangles in the domestic skein when things get twisted;
+girls whom father takes comfort in for something better than beauty, and
+the big brothers are proud of for something that outranks the ability to
+dance or shine in society. Next, we want girls of sense--girls who have
+a standard of their own regardless of conventionalities, and are
+independent enough to live up to it; girls who simply won't wear a
+trailing dress on the street to gather up microbes and all sorts of
+defilement; girls who won't wear a high hat to the theater, or lacerate
+their feet and endanger their health with high heels and corsets; girls
+who will wear what is pretty and becoming and snap their fingers at the
+dictates of fashion when fashion is horrid and silly. And we want good
+girls--girls who are sweet, right straight out from the heart to the
+lips; innocent and pure and simple girls with less knowledge of sin and
+duplicity and evil-doing at twenty than the pert little school girl at
+ten has all too often; girls who say their prayers and read their Bibles
+and love God and keep his commandments. (We want these girls "awful
+bad!") And we want careful girls and prudent girls, who think enough of
+the generous father who toils to maintain them in comfort, and of the
+gentle mother who denies herself much that they may have so many pretty
+things, to count the cost and draw the line between the essentials and
+the non-essentials; girls who strive to save and not to spend; girls
+who are unselfish and eager to be a joy and a comfort in the home rather
+than an expensive and a useless burden. We want girls with hearts--girls
+who are full of tenderness and sympathy, with tears that flow for other
+people's ills, and smiles that light outward their own beautiful
+thoughts. We have lots of clever girls, and brilliant girls, and witty
+girls. Give us a consignment of jolly girls, warm-hearted and impulsive
+girls; kind and entertaining to their own folks, and with little desire
+to shine in the garish world. With a few such girls scattered around
+life would freshen up for all of us, as the weather does under the spell
+of summer showers. Speed the day when this sort of girls fill the world
+once more, overrunning the spaces where God puts them as climbing roses
+do when they break through the trellis to glimmer and glint above the
+common highway, a blessing and a boon to all who pass them by.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Is there any flower that grows that can compare with the pansy for color
+and richness? Others appeal more closely to the heart with fragrance
+that like a sweet and pure soul more than compensates for lack of
+exterior beauty, but in all the gorgeous category none rank this velvet
+flower that lies just now upon my window-sill. There is the purple of
+Queen Sheba mantled in its soft and shiny texture; the gold of Ophir was
+not more sumptuous; the light that breaks at dawn across a reef of
+dove-gray clouds was never more delicate than the violet heart of this
+lovely blossom. When I want to think of the ideal court of kings, of a
+royal meeting-place for blameless scions and unsullied princes of the
+blood, I do not think of old-world palaces and coronation halls--I think
+rather of a pansy bed in June in full and perfect bloom, a soft wind
+just bending bright heads crowned with crowns that never yet were
+pressed on aching brows, and fluttering mantles of more than royal
+splendor that never yet were wrapped above a corrupt and breaking heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MY ROSE AND MY CHILD.
+
+  I held in my bosom a beautiful rose,
+    All gay with the splendor of June;
+  Its dew-laden petals like sheen of soft snows,
+    Its blush like the sunshine at noon.
+
+  But e'en as I held it, I knew it must fade;
+    Its bloom was as brief as the hour.
+  The dews of the evening like soft tears were laid
+    On the grave of my beauteous flower.
+
+  I held in my bosom a beautiful child,
+    The splendor of love in her eyes;
+  No snow on high hills was more undefiled
+    Than her soul in its innocent guise.
+
+  But I knew that my angel in heaven was missed;
+    I knew, like my rose, she must go;
+  So with heartbreak and anguish her sweet lips I kissed--
+    She sleeps with my rose in the snow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not so very long ago that I chanced to overhear a lively young
+woman make this remark about her mother:
+
+"Oh, mamma is nearly always taken for my sister. She never seems like
+anything more than one of my girl friends."
+
+Poor child, thought I, your state is only another phase of orphanhood,
+for the young life that has no counsel of motherhood is bereft indeed.
+
+No girlish comradeship, however juvenile and delightful it may be, can
+possibly take the place of protecting, counseling, mother-love. Not but
+what the sweetest relationship possible exists where the mother keeps
+her heart young and in sympathy with her daughter, but there is
+something else requisite to mother-love.
+
+The best mothers are those who have roomy laps where the big girls love
+to sit while they whisper the confidences they never could reveal to
+sister-mothers. They have all-enfolding arms, these right kind of
+mothers, wherein they gather the tired girl, yes, and the tired boys,
+too, and rock them to rest and peace, long after their "feet touch the
+floor."
+
+They used to tell me I must never sit on anybody's lap after my feet
+reached the carpet, but, thank God, that rule never applied to my
+mother.
+
+You are never afraid of disturbing mother's "beauty sleep" when you come
+in late at night if she is of the good reliable sort, as far removed
+from frisky girl companionship as the moon is from its reflection.
+
+No matter how tardy your home-faring may be she is always up with a
+lunch and a warm fire in winter or a glass of something cool and fresh
+in summer to soothe your overexcited nerves, a thing she cannot do if
+she is forever dancing about with you in your youthful larks. She has a
+way of calming your tempers with a joke and a caress, of which the
+sister-mother never dreams. She has also a way of smoothing your hair,
+which your girl comrade never caught the trick of, for the reason that
+she is kept too busy curling her own love-locks. When your head aches,
+the right sort of mother knows just how to pet you to sleep and leave
+you in a darkened room with a rose on your pillow to greet your waking
+eyes; if you have a bad cold she knows the cuddly way to coax you to
+take bitter medicine. She bathes your feet and dries them on nice warm
+towels. She keeps the younger children from guying you, because your
+nose is red; in short, she does a thousand nice things of which the
+sister-mother has no knack whatever.
+
+When great trouble falls to your share, when sharp betrayal pierces your
+heart, and trusted affection turns to ashes in your hold of what good is
+the juvenile mother with her girlish tremors and tears? You want
+somebody next in tenderness to God, to hold you fast and tight. You want
+somebody who has suffered and grown strong, to soothe your breaking
+heart. Somebody who can be silent and brave and steady until your fever
+is passed. The shipwrecked sailor wants a rope rather than a feint of
+throwing one; the shipwrecked soul wants a heart like rock, rather than
+a handclasp and a promise. The sister-mother may be all right to go to
+parties with, but you want something stronger and more steadfast to lean
+upon in time of perplexity. You want a mother in all the holy
+significance of the name. However sweet the tie of sisterhood, it cannot
+be so blessed as the bond of patient, long-suffering, sanctified
+motherhood.
+
+Seek to keep yourself in sympathy with your girls, then, mothers, but be
+content to occupy a generation removed from the path they tread. Don't
+make up in emulation of their beauty; don't seek to win away their beaus
+and outdress them. Don't go decollete to parties where your girls should
+be the reigning belles; don't aim to vie with them in fascination or in
+charm. Be guider and ready counselor, but don't try to be rival. If God
+has given you a girl child, and that child has grown to womanhood,
+accept the condition of things and give over being a society belle
+yourself, abdicating your place for the infinitely sweeter one of
+mother. You cannot be the right sort of mother and ignore your duty to
+your child. That duty lies in giving her her rightful place in the line
+of march from which you are crowded out. Let her carry the banner while
+you fall back a little. Watch over her, make things easy for her, smooth
+the little difficulties out of her way, be on hand when she comes home
+tired and excited to soothe her to rest and calm; counsel her how to
+pick her way through the snares that are laid for youth and beauty, be a
+refuge where she can run when the rainy weather sets in, which is sure
+to fall in the summer time of youth, somewhere and somehow. In short, be
+just as sympathetic and chummy and sociable as possible, but at the same
+time make your daughter feel that you are older and stronger and wiser
+than she, by reason of your motherhood, and that next to God you stand
+ready to shield her, to guide her, to receive her in time of trouble, to
+forgive her if she needs forgiveness, and to shrive her if she needs
+confessing. Teach her that your love can never fail, that your heart is
+a rock and a fortress and a shield for her to seek in all life's
+bewilderment, far surer and more steadfast than any other love beneath
+the stars can ever yield.
+
+When I think of all it means to be a mother I tremble to think how far
+short of the standard the best of us fall. I would rather have it said
+of me when I die, "She was a good mother," than that men should get
+together and exploit my deeds as poet, reformer, artist or story-teller.
+I would rather feel the dewfall of a child's loving tear upon my face
+than wear a laureate's crown.
+
+Don't be critical, or censorious, or reserved with your daughters; don't
+hold them far off and cultivate respect and fear rather than love; don't
+be self-assertive and cause them to feel their dependence upon you in an
+unpleasant way; don't be too eager to keep them in the background in
+little things relating to the home, such as giving them no voice in the
+arrangement of the room and the domestic regulations. Indeed, I have
+known more attrition caused in the home circle from this last mentioned
+point of difference between mother and daughters than almost any other.
+I know a family, presided over by a good, unselfish woman, who, as a
+mother, is the most complete failure I ever ran across. Her daughter is
+of mature age and pronounced opinions, but she is kept in the background
+and her life rendered most unhappy by the dominant will of the mother
+whose old-fashioned views as to running the house are directly opposed
+to more modern customs. The two wrangle continually over the
+establishment of a dinner hour, the disposal of a light, the drapery of
+a window, the adjustment of furniture, until there is less harmony under
+the roof than there is music in a hurdy-gurdy. How much better it would
+be if that mother would yield a little to the wishes of her daughter;
+give the latter a chance to display her own taste and carry out her
+inclination. I don't believe in the mothers and fathers of grown-up
+daughters always insisting upon the occupancy of the front seats and the
+leadership of the orchestra.
+
+The mother who can preserve the respect of her children without chilling
+their love; who can be one with them, and yet apart, in the sense of
+guiding, aiding and consoling, who can hold their confidence while she
+maintains the superiority of her wisdom, is the happy and successful
+mother. The title is a sacred one, made by the chrism of pain and
+suffering, sanctified by the humanity of Christ and set apart as one of
+the three of earth's tenderest utterances: "Mother, home and heaven."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now that the days draw nigh for the return of the birds to our northern
+woods and dales it is borne in upon me to hold a little "love feast"
+with the boys. You know what a love feast is, if there was ever a
+Methodist in your family. It is a good, cozy talk among the brethren and
+sisters in regard to the best way of putting down the devil, and giving
+the good angels a chance. And if there was ever need of downing the
+devil it is in the particular instance of a boy's inhumanity to birds
+and beasts. I have expressed myself as to horses, and to-day I shall
+talk about birds. On these spring mornings, when the world is enveloped
+in a golden halo, from out of which, like angel voices from the quiet
+depths of heaven, the birds are singing their impromptu of praise,
+imagine a lot of half-grown men and brutal boys going forth with guns
+and sling-shots to break up the concert and murder the choristers. I
+would as soon turn a lot of sharp-shooters into a cathedral at early
+mass to bring down the surpliced boys and the chanting novices. I tell
+you, O race of good-for-nothing fathers and mothers, whom God holds
+directly responsible for the bad boys who desecrate this beautiful
+world, you are no more fit for the training of immortal souls than a
+hawk is fitted to teach music to a thrush. You ought to have had a
+bear-skin and been the trainer of cubs. That your boys develop into
+brutes and go to state's prison, and perhaps die at the end of a rope
+eventually, is nobody's fault but your own. If you chance to own a horse
+or a dog you show some care in its training, but God gives you a boy and
+you let him run wild. There is no more reason why a boy should be cruel
+than that a properly-broken colt should kick. The tendency may have been
+born with him, but good training eliminates it to a great extent, if not
+entirely. When I was a woman and lived at home, in the happy days before
+I entered the arena to fight for bread and butter, to say nothing of
+shoe leather and fuel, I used to gather the village boys about me every
+spring and try to sow the good seeds of tenderness with one hand, while
+carefully eliminating the tares with the other. I offered prizes for
+the best record at the end of the summer. I formed classes, the
+membership of which pledged themselves, to a boy, to abstain from
+sling-shots, to cultivate the birds' nests and to withhold their hands
+from the commission of a single deed of cruelty. Many is the gallon of
+ice-cream I have paid for to keep those youngsters in the narrow path of
+rectitude, and many is the time that I have patrolled the woods with my
+boy comrades, keeping watch over the family of a blue-bird or a robin,
+when the alarm went forth that some unregenerate boy was on the rampage.
+All the boys whom I could get to join the club I was sure of, for I know
+the way to a boy's heart, if I can only get the chance at him. For what
+other purpose did nature turn me out a born cook? And why did she make
+me a master hand at doughnuts and turnover pies? I have a large and
+undying faith in the boys, if you will only start them right. The first
+thing a boy needs is a good mother. He can get along without a
+father--and I was going to say without a God--for the first few years of
+his life, but he needs a mother. Not a mere nurse maid to look after
+his clothes and see that he has plenty to eat at the right intervals,
+but a good, sweet, companionable mother, with a good, soft breast for
+him to cry on and two arms to hug him with. He needs a mother who can
+talk with him and answer his questions, who is not stern and severe, but
+responsive and get-at-able. With such a mother our boys will be gentle
+and our birds will be safe.
+
+Try to think, boys, what a world this would be without any robins, or
+larks, or thrushes; without any songs in the apple trees getting all
+tangled up with the sunshine and the blossoms; without any canaries to
+sing in the window, or any meadow larks to whip out their flutes among
+the clover heads. If you should wake up some morning and experience the
+ghastly silence of a songless world you would want to hire somebody to
+thrash you that you ever used a sling-shot. Do you remember the minister
+down New York way whom they fined for shooting robins? I never wanted to
+get up on a mountain top so much in all my life and shout glory as I did
+over that verdict. I have heard of immorality among ministers, and I
+have heard of hypocrisy and lying and all sorts of offenses against
+good taste and morals, but I never heard of anything so contemptibly and
+causelessly mean as for one of God's especial teachers to get up in the
+morning, put on top boots, cross the river in the sunshine and dew of
+early morning, lift his gun, take deliberate aim and bring down a robin.
+If I was the Lord I would never forgive it. Men are not to blame
+sometimes when their blood gets too warm and they do impetuous things,
+but to deliberately descend to the ignominy of shooting a robin and
+calling it sport is to sink too low for justification.
+
+Whatever else you be, boys, be brave. If you must sail in and fight, if
+your superfluous zeal is too much for you, go out in the field and
+square off at a bull. There is some glory in whipping anything bigger
+and stronger than yourself, but to show fight to a bird is a little too
+much like sneaking out and tripping up a cripple in the dark. I am going
+to write down a verse for you to write in your copy books this very day,
+and then good-night to you:
+
+  "The bravest are the tenderest;
+  The loving are the daring."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Isn't it heavenly to see the primrose around again? And the daffodils?
+And the hyacinths? Last night I went home with a rose in my button which
+cost me just five cents. At that rate, by careful abstaining from
+anything more expensive than a ten-cent lunch, one can go on wearing
+roses until next November. The robins have come back, too, and this
+morning a couple of them awoke me with their "Cheer-up" song. The
+indications are that they are prospecting for spring housekeeping. If
+the cat kills them I shall kill the cat. I shall close my eyes and do
+the deed in the name of mercy, for I detest cats, both two-legged and
+four-legged, and I love robins both feathered and human.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I wonder why it is that the average woman can walk and talk, breathe and
+laugh, suffer and cry, and finally die and be buried, and all the way
+through make such a botch of her life! Why is it that we fall in love,
+so many of us, just on the verge of a life that opens like a summer's
+day, and change that life thereby, as a June morning is changed when
+great clouds rush into the sky and obscure the sun? Why are girls so
+proud to parade an engagement ring upon their finger, when the diamond
+is too often the danger-light thrown out above the breakers? Now and
+then, about as rarely as one picks up a ruby on the highway, or finds an
+enchanted swan circling over the duck pond, there is a happy
+marriage--at least such is the popular inference--as to the absolute
+certainty of the statement, ask the skeleton closet. I have lived a
+varied sort of life. I have wandered to and fro over the earth to some
+extent; I have known a great many people, and have found happiness in
+many ways, but looking back over all the path to-night and turning my
+little bull's-eye lantern of experience up to the present moment, I can
+neither remember nor record a dozen truly happy marriages. What
+constitutes happiness? Peace. What brings peace? Content. Who is
+contented? Not you and not I. What man or woman of all whom we know can
+we bring out into the full light of day and say of them, "Behold the
+contented one! The restful one! The happy pair!" You, my dear, have
+attained the ambition of your youthful dreams. You have married a man
+who dresses you splendidly, who gives you diamonds and never murmurs
+when the bills come in. But are you happy? Do you never walk to and fro
+with the restless countess in the sad old ballad, dreaming of "Alan
+Percy?" Do you never, when all is still, go down into that cemetery
+where life's "might have beens" lie buried in graves kept green forever
+with your tears, and walk and dream alone? And you, my friend, have
+married the man of your choice. Is there nothing in the handsome
+exterior that palls a bit now and then when you find how sordid and
+meager the soul is behind the smile you used to think so charming? Do
+you never find scorn creeping into your heart in place of adoration when
+you mark the unpaid bills and the shiftless endeavor that strew his idle
+way? And you, sir, have a merry and a pretty wife and the world calls
+you a lucky fellow. How many know of the sharp tongue that underlies her
+laughter and the feather-filled head that never yet has donated an
+earnest thought to the domestic economy? And you, my good sir, have
+married a blue stocking in the old acceptance of the term. She can
+swing off a leader or make a speech on a rostrum at short notice, but
+how would you like to rise right up here, poor dear, and tell just what
+comfort lies in being mated to a superior being who busies herself with
+work which shall be remembered perhaps when the dust on the center
+table, the holes in your stockings, the discomfort of the larder, and
+the untidiness of the household are forgotten? And you, my good fellow,
+have married a woman of "good form." She never does an indiscreet thing.
+She is "icily faultless" and splendidly stupid. She has the neck of a
+swan, the arms of a goddess, the foot of a patrician, and the soul of a
+mouse! The scent of a wayside lilac, perhaps, is sadder than tears to
+you, old comrade, when you look back across the years and see again the
+sweet dead face of one you trifled with, or whom you deserted for this
+woman with heart and body of snow, a purse filled with gold and a brain
+filled with feathers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is entire hopelessness to many women in the blank monotony of life
+after youth is past. An emotional nature, mercurial and restless, full
+of aspirations and longings, as the trees this perfect month are full of
+blossoms, and, like the trees, bearing a thousand blooms to one
+fruition, finds the destiny prepared for it almost unendurable, and
+often longs for death that shall end all. Because poverty grinds and
+hosts of menial duties accumulate, because the walls of an unquiet home,
+made unlovely perhaps by skeletons that no skill can quite conceal,
+close like a dungeon upon hope and all the sweet promises of youth,
+bright natures grow morose and bitter, warm hearts chill into apathy and
+gloom, and sunny brows darken under the cloud of almost perpetual
+irritability and discontent. It is useless to preach sermons to such
+cases--as useless as to read a book of etiquette in a prison ward or
+comfort the victims of a railroad disaster with a treatise upon reform
+in the management of roads. The worn, the wasted, the erring, and the
+cruelly maimed lie thick about us. Our business is to encourage, to
+love, to bind up, and cheer. God, in His own time, shall lift the
+discontented head above the power of conspiring cares to vex. It is for
+us to lend a helping hand down here where the "slough of despond" is
+deepest. When tides forget to obey the moon, or leaves to answer the
+will of the wind, then, and not sooner, shall these restless hearts of
+ours learn to be still, whatsoever destinies confront, or limitations
+thwart. In looking upon the lives of some women, the mother of six
+children, for instance, who takes boarders and keeps no help; the widow
+supporting her little brood by endless drudgeries; the big-hearted woman
+in whom the frolicsomeness and wit of girlhood die hard amid the sordid
+miseries of a poverty-stricken life; the sensitive, poetic soul, doomed
+to uncongenial companionships and the criticisms and ridicule of the
+unfriendly--I am reminded of the score of eagles I saw lately, chained
+in a dusty inclosure of Central Park. With clipped wings, and grand,
+homesick eyes, they sat disconsolate upon their perches, and moped the
+hours away. Would any sane being have reviled those sorry beings for a
+lack of spirit? Would not the gentle-hearted spectator have proffered a
+handful of fresh leaves rather, and turned away in pity that sympathy
+could do no more?
+
+For these unhappy sisters of mine, the discontented, yearning
+"Marthas," troubled with many cares, wherever my letter may find them
+between the great seas, I have a word of comfort in my heart to-day. In
+the first place, do not think, because you so often fall into
+irritability and impatient speech, that God despises you as a sinner. He
+understands, if friend, husband, or neighbor do not. Strive not to yield
+to fretfulness then, but, when overcome by it, remember always God
+understands it all. You may be able to see no light in all the shrouded
+way, no lifting of the shadow, no promise of the dawn; but rest assured,
+however long the probation, the infinite content of Heaven awaits us
+very soon, if we strive as much as lies within us to overcome the
+infirmities of our temper, and keep our faces set towards the shining of
+His love. I know, dear heart, indeed I do, that to-morrow and to-morrow
+are just alike to hopeless fancy--full of dish-washing, and drudging,
+and back-bending toil--that the sparkle and song of life were long ago
+merged in the humdrum beat of treadmill years; but through just this
+test is your character building--through just its hard process is
+shaping the conqueror's crown flashing with splendid light. As the root
+tarries in the dark mold to burst by-and-by into radiant bloom above it,
+so your poor life is hidden now to bloom to-morrow. You are not wicked
+because you sometimes murmur, but try and think so much of what is going
+to be that you shall forget what is. The Tender Heart above absolves
+your beaten spirit from willful sin, though you are sometimes swept away
+on currents of doubt and unfaith; but try and keep your eye fixed upon
+the headlight of His love, whatever currents drift you away. Remember
+how human parents deal with their children, and learn a lesson of God's
+dealings. If my little girl has the ear-ache, or any other tormenting
+ailment of childhood, do I stand over her and exact songs and smiles?
+And do you think that when God, for some good reason of his own, lays
+heavy burdens upon a life, He is going to demand unswerving sweetness of
+speech or ethereal mildness of temper? When I see one scrubbing who was
+fitted to adorn the drawing-room, washing dishes who was created an
+artist or a genius, darning small boys' linsey pants and homespun
+stockings who was intended by nature to reign the crowned priestess of
+some high vocation; when I mark the furrows and zigzag footprints that
+an army of besieging cares have left on the cheek that in girlhood
+outblushed the wayside rose, or note how the hands that once drew
+divinest music from obedient keys have twisted and warped in the
+performance of homely duties, I feel impelled to kiss the faded cheek
+with a love surpassing a lover's, to fold the poor hands in a reverent
+grasp, for I tell you, however often she may faint and falter by the
+way, however "fretty," and worn, and peevish she may become, the woman
+who perseveres in the performance of uncongenial duties, who struggles
+through the flatness of monotonous drudgeries, conquering adverse
+circumstances, poverty, and destiny, by patience, love, and Christian
+faith, is a heroine fit to rank with martyrs and saints. Remember, I am
+not talking to women who find the burdens hard to bear and do not bear
+them; to mere whimperers, who, because the road is full of stones, sit
+down and refuse to travel; but to the brave, true hearts who "press
+onward" although no rose blossoms and no bird sings, content to
+faithfully perform the task of life, hoping that the fullness of time
+shall read the riddle of incongruous destiny. I have seen the time when
+household work seemed newly cursed--the very dew of the primal
+malediction upon it; when to charge upon the dinner dishes, attack the
+lamps, or descend into the vortex of family patching, seemed to call for
+greater courage than average human nature possessed. And when I imagine
+that shrinking carried on through dry years of monotonous experience,
+the same formulas to be observed, the same distaste to be overcome
+throughout a lifetime of toil, yet no duty shirked, no obligation set
+aside, I wonder if Heaven holds a crown too bright for such faithful
+lives.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The time of the year for violets and also for tramps is drawing near.
+Did you ever stop and think just what it means to be a tramp? It means
+no work, no money, no home, no shelter, no friends. Nobody in all the
+world to care whether you live or die like a dog by the roadside. It
+means no heaven for such rags to crawl into, no grave to hide them out
+of sight and no hand stretched out in all the world to give the greeting
+and the good-by of love. It means nobody in all the world to feel any
+interest in you and no spot in all the world to call your own, not even
+the mud wherein your vagrant footprint falls, no prospect ahead, and no
+link unbroken to bind you to the past. I tell you, when we sit down and
+figure out just what the term means, it will not be quite so easy next
+time the wretched tramp calls at our door to set the dog upon him or
+turn him empty-handed away. Let them work, you say. Look here, my good
+friend, do you know how absolutely impossible a thing it is getting to
+be in this overcrowded country for even a willing man to find work? It
+used to be that "every dog had his day," but the dogs far outnumber the
+days in free America. I know well educated, competent men who have been
+out of employment for months and years. I know brave and earnest women,
+with little children to support, who have worn beaten paths from place
+to place seeking, not charity, but honest employment, and failed to find
+it. What chance is there for a ragged tramp when such as these fail?
+Remember, once in a while, if you can, that the most grizzled and
+wretched tramp that ever plodded his way to a pauper's grave was once a
+child and cradled in arms perhaps as fond as those that enfolded you and
+me. Remember that your mother and his were made sisters by the pangs of
+maternal pain, and perhaps in the heaven from which the saintly eyes of
+your mother are watching for you his mother is looking out for him.
+Perhaps--who knows?--the footfall of the ragged and despised tramp shall
+gain upon yours and find the gate of deliverance first, in spite of your
+money and your pride.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE BROOK.
+
+  Lifting its chalice of sun-kissed foam
+  Far up the heights where the wild winds roam,
+  Weaving a web of shadow and sheen
+  In lowland meadows of dewy green.
+
+  Murmuring over the mossy stones,
+  In cool green dells where the gold bee drones,
+  Sudden and swift the showery fall,
+  Startling the wood bird's madrigal.
+
+  Orbing itself in a crystal lake
+  Set round with thickets of tangled brake,
+  In waveless calm, an emerald stone,
+  In the lap of the dusky forest thrown.
+
+  Silver flakes of tremulous light
+  Showering down from the fields of night,
+  Where the great white stars like lilies glow--
+  Tossed on its tide as feathery snow.
+
+  Hastening onward through troubled ways,
+  Forgotten for aye its woodland days,
+  Sullen and silent its banks beside
+  The free brook wanders, a mighty tide.
+
+  Beyond where the forest's purple rim
+  Belts the horizon, hazy and dim,
+  Thundering down from the frowning steeps,
+  Into the arms of the sea it leaps.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Did it ever strike you, I wonder, this marvel of our individuality?
+Alone we are born, alone we live, alone we die, alone we pay the penalty
+or reap the reward of our evil or well doing. In the troubles that
+assail us we stand singly, however many councillors may flock to the
+door of our tent. Not one in all the world, the nearest, the dearest or
+the best, can bear one pang of life's experience for us, love us as they
+may. We often hear a mother say: "My child is so headstrong; she will
+not take my advice; she will go her own way." Of course she will, and
+she will not, simply because individual tact is the law of all
+experience. It is not being headstrong, it is merely fulfilling destiny.
+
+In the fight we wage we do not fight by platoons or squads, under a
+common leader, a thousand at a charge. We enter the lists one by one and
+fight single handed. We choose our own colors and there is little of
+pageantry or show. When we fall we fall as travelers disappear who walk
+across a coast that is honeycombed with quicksand. We vanish, not in
+crowds like men who are jostled out of life by earthquakes or flooded
+like rats by tidal waves, but we slowly succumb to the inevitable in
+solitudes where only the stars watch us and the spaces of a dim,
+unsounded sea catch the fret of our mortal moan.
+
+I have always thought that I should love to have the world come to an
+end, with a grand final bang, while I was yet living and sentient on the
+surface. I would like to be flashed out of being in the conglomerate of
+a mighty swarm, like the covey of birds a huntsman's rifle brings down
+or the multitude a Pompeiian doom overtakes. Such dying would be like
+riding out of an electric-lighted station, by the car full, rather than
+sneaking a place on the back platform like a tramp. But after all, death
+would not lose its awful individuality even then. Marshal the whole
+world, and aim a single bullet at a hundred million souls, with power to
+still each pulse beat in the same rifle flash of time, yet each man
+would die alone.
+
+There is one final lesson to be gained through the doleful contemplation
+of the world's flood-tide of sorrow, and that is the lesson of how to
+bear our troubles so as to react as little as possible upon those with
+whom life throws us in daily contact. Because the goblin bee has stung
+our own souls, shall we seek to share the pain of its stateless sting
+with all we meet? No more than we should endeavor to carry contagion in
+our garments or put poison in our neighbor's well. I knew a man once, a
+gallant, light-hearted soldier, who honored the blue and brass of his
+country's uniform by wearing it. An awful sorrow suddenly smote his
+life, like an Indian sortie from an ambush. Wife and children were swept
+from his arms by a swift disaster and he was left alone. His friends
+said: "He is a wrecked man! He will never lift his head again!" How did
+he fulfill this prophecy of woe? He entered the chamber of his darkened
+home and denied himself to everyone. He neither ate nor slept. He fought
+by himself a greater battle than call of bugle ever summoned to any
+field. He mastered his own soul, and emerged from that chamber after a
+certain number of days a conqueror over his own sorrow. His smile was as
+ready, his heart as tender, his genial speech as welcome at home and
+abroad as it had ever been, and only when the goblin bee of memory stung
+him in the silence of the companionless night did he live over again the
+experience of his sorrow. None knew when that sting came, or how it
+tarried; he bore it silently like a soldier and a man. The trifling
+world called him light of love and easily consoled, but I think he was a
+grand, unselfish hero, a benefactor rather than a destroyer of mankind.
+
+When we get so that we can hide our sorrow in a smile we attain that
+attitude that brings us closest to the divine. The man or the woman who
+goes up and down the ways of the world with a groan on his lips and a
+weed on his arm is an infliction worse than an out of tune hand organ.
+If the bee stings, hold still and bear the hurt by yourself as best you
+may, but don't talk it over with everyone you meet, like an old woman
+petitioning a recipe for a bad cough and flaunting her physical ailments
+forever in your face. When you have bright things to talk about and
+comforting things to say, talk; otherwise hold your peace. The reason, I
+think, why animals are never wrinkled and drawn of feature and gray like
+mankind is because they cannot talk. If they had the power of speech
+they would go around as humans do and disseminate unpleasant topics, as
+idle winds start thistle pollen. Silence is golden when you can find
+nothing better to do than to clamor your own troubles; speech only is
+blessed when, like a bird, it evolves a song or wings a feathered hope.
+
+It seems hardly the thing to do, perhaps, to single out the unhappy
+folks in a present world so full of jollity and talk with them awhile
+to-day. This bright autumn weather is so crowded with sights and sounds
+to dazzle and enchant that to obtrude the leaf of rue within the garland
+or breathe a minor tone into the music seems almost out of place. And
+yet, for some reason or other, as I sit here at my desk to-day, the
+thought of the hearts that are heavy in the midst of all the world's
+fair pageant, and the eyes that cannot see the banners by reason of
+their tears, come to me with a strong and resistless force.
+
+Alas, for the goblin bee that stings, yet all too often may not "state
+its sting"! We walk with a crowd, and yet are conscious that our way is
+not theirs. It lies apart, we know not why, and evermore dips into
+shadow and threads the dark defiles of gloom. There are so many more
+reasons for being sorry than for being glad, we think. Try to count the
+causes for laughter, and then, over against them, set the reasons for
+sorrow and see which way the balance falls. I take my seat on a bench
+out at the big show and watch the crowd for an hour. Do I see many faces
+that do not bear the scar of the "goblin bee"? From the little
+four-year-old who is bitterly crying because somebody has jostled its
+toy from its hand, to the woman whose eyes are sunken with sorrow
+because death has jostled the one whom she loved into his grave,
+everybody who passes, with but few exceptions, shows the scar of that
+stateless sting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Look at my window-garden, yonder! The sunshine, stealing in from the
+south, has wooed a dozen pansies into bloom--"Johnny-jump-ups," they
+used to call them when I was a girl. How bright and cheery and chatty
+they look. We have those sort of faces (some of us) every day about our
+breakfast tables. The little folks, God bless 'em! with their shining
+hair, their bright eyes, and the soft velvet of their cheeks, are the
+blessed heartsease of our home. And there is a fuchsia, turbaned like a
+Turk, behind the pansies. Just such sumptuous, graceful women we see
+every day. Like the fuchsia, they are beautiful and that is all. They
+yield no fragrance. They attract the eye but fail to reach the heart.
+Who wouldn't rather have mignonette growing in the window? There is a
+yellow blossom in the window that reminds one of the patient shining of
+certain homely souls I know, making sunshine in humble homes; cheerful
+old maid aunts, sweet-hearted elder sisters, yielding the honey of their
+hearts to others. A cluster of fading violets sets me thinking of frail
+invalids and the host of "shut-in" ones, whose delicate and dying beauty
+fills our eyes with unstayed tears and our hearts with the shadow of
+coming sorrow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are gates that swing within your life and mine from day to day,
+letting in rare opportunities that tarry but a moment and are gone, like
+travelers bound for points remote. There is the opportunity to resist
+the temptation to do a mean thing; improve it, for it is in a hurry,
+like a man whose ticket is bought and whose time is up. It won't be back
+this way, either, for opportunities for good are not like tourists who
+travel on return tickets. There is the opportunity to say a pleasant
+word to your wife, sir, or you, madam, to your husband, instead of
+venting your temper and your "nerves" upon each other. Love's
+opportunity travels by lightning express and has no time to dawdle
+around the waiting-room. If you improve it at all it must be while the
+gate swings to let it through.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My dear, let me implore you, whatever else you let go, hold on to your
+enthusiasm. Grow old if you must; grow white-headed and bent and
+care-furrowed, if such must needs be the process of years, but don't
+grow to be a stick. If you must pass on from the green time of your
+freshness, change into sweet hay and keep your fragrance. If the cage
+must grow rusty and lose its brightness, there is a bird within, that it
+were a pity to strangle to keep it from singing to the end. I don't care
+how successful, or rich, or learned a man becomes, if he maintains a
+grim repression of all romance and enthusiasm, and what some hard old
+"Gradgrinds" call the "nonsense" within him, he is nothing more than a
+fine cage with a dead bird in it. When I hear a person say of another,
+"Oh, he is a substantial fellow; no nonsense about him!" I picture a
+gold-fish in a glass globe. A glittering cuticle that covers anything so
+bloodless as the anatomy of a fish is not worth much. There are a good
+many types of men to be detected, but the bloodless, emotionless,
+heart-paralytic, is the worst. Polish up a golden ball all you like. It
+may ornament your mantel, or serve as a useless bit of glitter in some
+corner, but when you begin to feel hungry and faint, and in need of
+solace and cheer, you will turn from the golden ball and pick up the
+veriest old rusty coat apple from an orchard's windfall, that has
+mellowed under summer noon, and sweetened in summer rains and dews,
+praising God for its flavor and its juices, even if you can buy forty
+bushels of its counterpart, for the price of one of your polished golden
+balls. Cultivate the "nonsense" in you, then, if it tends to enthusiasm
+of the right sort. It is the sympathy we get from people, the
+heartsomeness and cheer that keep our souls nourished, rather than the
+mere dazzle of intellectual attainment, or the greatness of any worldly
+achievement. Heart rather than head; nature rather than art; genuineness
+rather than pretense; romance rather than absolute realism; enthusiasm
+rather than petrifaction, will make a man rather than a gold fish, a
+juicy apple rather than a ball of metallic and glittering nothingness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We were gathered at the Norfolk Station awaiting the train that was to
+carry us over the marshes to Virginia Beach and the sea. The crowd that
+surrounded us was very different from a Chicago crowd. There was no
+pushing, no bold assertiveness, no elbows. There were lots of pretty
+women, and as for me everybody knows I simply adore the open sky, a tree
+in blossom and a pretty woman. There were young girls with velvety brown
+eyes within whose dusky shadows one might look fathom deep as into a
+well of limpid water; girls with blue eyes like fringed gentians; women
+with grand free curves of figure that would have made Hebe look
+commonplace; women with shapely shoulders and long, aristocratic hands,
+tinted at the finger-tips as though fresh from picking ripe
+strawberries; girls all in white (for the day was warm), like June
+lilies; women with snowy teeth and adorable smiles to disclose them;
+little tots of girls with braided hair and soft, questioning eyes;
+queenly girls, like tulips in bloom, all chatting together in subdued
+but merry tones and laughing as delicately and airily as thrushes sing.
+Oh, I lost my heart to you, my pretty southern maidens, and count the
+time well spent I devoted to the contemplation of your many graces away
+down in that little station by the torrid bay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If I was a liar and wanted to reform I shouldn't quit lying all at once.
+I would start out with a covenant to occasionally tell the truth. By and
+by this spasmodic truth-telling, like the grain blown by the wind among
+stones, would, perhaps, yield sufficient harvest to send me not quite
+empty-handed up to St. Peter's gate. If I drank whisky I would commence
+to reform by swearing off on one glass out of three, and perhaps the
+manhood within me, having so much more chance to grow, would elbow its
+way into heaven. If I was a gossip I would try to hold my tongue from
+speaking evil half the time, and in that blissful interval perhaps my
+dwarfed soul would get a start skyward. It is not by sudden achievement
+that we consummate a long journey. It is step by step and mile by mile
+over a stony road that brings us to the goal, and it is not by mere
+resolving that we renounce the old and attain unto the new. He who
+travels but a few steps and keeps his face heavenward is on the way,
+and every small decision for the right, faithfully adhered to, is a
+notable step toward a consummated journey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am often struck with the selfishness displayed by people who are
+fortunate enough to be provided with umbrellas in time of sudden
+showers. They calmly behold hosts of unhappy beings battling their way
+through the storm, drenched to the bone, and with ruined garments, yet
+never think of saying, "Accept a share of my umbrella," or "Walk with me
+as far as our ways lie together." If I should hear such a speech I might
+drop senseless with surprise, but all the same I should hail it as the
+bugle note that heralded a new era of courteous kindness.
+
+We are not put into the world to be suspicious of one another. We were
+put here to make the world pleasanter for our tarrying, and to cultivate
+a fellowship with souls. If the guests at a mountain inn, sojourning
+together for a stormy night, spend the time in reviling one another, or
+in calling attention to each other's blemishes, we write them down as
+snobs; but what shall we call the tenants of transitory time who spend
+the span of mortal life in doing all they can to make one another
+uncomfortable? We have only a watch in the night to tarry together; let
+us try to make that hour a profitable one and a pleasant memory for
+others when we have journeyed on.
+
+I have often wondered how Christian people got round the gospel command,
+"Love thy neighbor as thyself." It doesn't say love him (or her) after a
+proper introduction, or if agreeable, or congenial, or of good family
+and established reputation--it simply gives the command on general
+principles. I don't pretend to be good enough to obey the mandate
+myself, for I honestly think it is a species of hypocrisy to say you
+love everybody. One might as well say one were fond of all fruit alike,
+whether specked, wormy or rotten. But let my good orthodox professor put
+this in his pipe and smoke it. Let him remember it next time he sees his
+neighbor plunged into an extremity, or handicapped by an annoyance of
+any kind. If we love our neighbor we are bound to help him, and neighbor
+in this sense means anyone who chances to be near us, whether black or
+white, raggedly disreputable or sanctimoniously frilled.
+
+There is more selfishness perpetrated in the world under guise of family
+ties than in almost any other way. The man who does good and unselfish
+deeds only for his own children and for the immediate circle housed
+beneath his roof, forgetful of the claims of the great, tormented,
+harassed and struggling world, is a selfish man and accountable to
+heaven for a great deal of meanness. I don't care how much he puts on
+his children's backs, or how many luxuries he surrounds them with, the
+Lord will not hold him guiltless if he does nothing for the stranger who
+tugs by him in the stress of life's uncertain weather, or for the
+neighbor who sits disconsolate outside his gates.
+
+I wish that vagabond and his dog who were brought before a west side
+justice yesterday for vagrancy would travel up my way. I like that sort
+of thing that leads a man to be faithful to his dog. It goes without
+saying that the dog is faithful to the man, but it is not often that the
+master shows the same spirit to the fond and steadfast brute. If the two
+should journey my way I think they would have one white day in the
+calendar. Good heavens, my dear, do you ever stop long enough in the
+midst of your golf-playing and your tennis tournaments, your yachtings
+and your outings to think what it is to be a tramp? To be unable to find
+a stroke of work; to be sick and starved and homeless! Like "poor Joe,"
+to be told to "move on" every time you stop to rest; to eat the
+grudgingly given crust of charity, and have no friend under the sun,
+moon or stars but a flea-bitten dog? Did you ever stop to think, my
+Christian friend, that that tramp is a neighbor whom you are to love?
+And if you are going to love him I will love his dog! No doubt the
+latter is the better man of the two.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Did you ever read of a battle siege in olden times? There were the
+full-armored warriors, resplendent in shining metal and plumed crests;
+there were the mighty battering rams, and the flash of battle axes, the
+thunder of advancing feet and the trumpet call before the gates. But
+more potent than all else in the doomed city's destruction was the
+secret work of the sappers and miners--the patient forces which wrought
+their work out of sight and hearing. And I have been thinking to-night,
+as I sit here, where the firelight weaves its delicate tapestry within
+the beautiful walls of home, that it is not going to be the pompous ones
+who shall march triumphant at last into the "City of Gold," but they who
+have worked patiently and humbly out of sight and with no need of
+praise. The man who has held to the dictates of his own conscience, not
+conforming to the company he marched with; the man who has dared to be
+himself in a world where men are labeled in lots; the man who has held
+it high honor to suffer for a principle or to be loyal to an unpopular
+friend or cause; the man who has erected a standard made up between his
+own heart and heaven, and, independent of the world's verdict of praise
+or blame, followed it to the end, is going to wear a crown by and by,
+when the epauletted general and the pompous staff are forgotten. Prayer
+is not always a genuflexion and an address. It is oftener hard work. The
+farmer praying at his weeds, the pilot praying from every spoke of his
+wheel, the mother whose daily life of unselfish toil and far-reaching
+influence is a prayer, do more to stir the divine heart, to keep the
+world's prow headed for heaven than half the solicitations or
+apologetic addresses made in our churches under the name of prayer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When you and I get rich, my dear, as some day we surely shall, what are
+we going to do with all our money? We will hunt up some of the
+improvident ones, those who could never make the two ends meet, those
+who through good heartedness, or lack of forethought or unselfish desire
+to make other folks happy, have never laid by a cent, and we will give
+those silly people such a good time they will carry its impress all
+through their after lives, as a pat of butter carries the print. We will
+slyly pay the bills for improvident ones who have grown gray in the
+effort to make a decent funeral for dead horses. They shall forget how
+to spell "care" and their new and happy dialect shall know no such words
+as "monthly payments," "righteous dues" or "can't afford it." I am
+convinced that as a rule it is not the sweet-hearted people who take on
+this world's gain. There is many a poor beggar with not a change of
+linen to his back who would make a more royal host, had the smiling
+face of fortune turned his way, than the rightful owner of the vast
+estates at whose gate he stands and begs. The big hearts too often go
+with the empty purse, and the little, wizened, skin-flint souls, that it
+would take a thousand of to crowd the passage through the eye of a
+needle, gain all the golden favors of the god of plenty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After dinner I said to the little folks, "Behold, I will buy me a pair
+of stockings and hire a bathing suit, and the afternoon shall be devoted
+to frolic and thee." So we went to the small booth, where an exceedingly
+meek young man sold ginger pop and fancy shells, and paralyzed him with
+a demand for ladies' hose. He didn't know what we meant until I came out
+boldly and unblushingly and asked for women's stockings. He said he
+didn't keep 'em. "Have you a mother?" said I. "No." "Have you a sister?
+Or is there a nearer one yet and a dearer, from whom I could buy or
+borrow a pair of stockings that I may go in bathing?" He didn't
+understand that either, but finally, with the aid of lucre, I made the
+matter clear so that he got me a pair of canary-striped woolen hose,
+evidently laid by for some farmer's winter use, and I bought them for a
+sum that made his eyes grow dim with rapture. We went down to the beach,
+and after a season of prayer with the young person to induce her to put
+on some horrid tights, we all went in and enjoyed such a dip as only
+salt water yields. In the midst of it we had to go on shore several
+times to stand the boy on his head and pump the ocean out of him, as he
+was constantly getting drowned in the surf, and one of my expensive and
+expansive stockings was captured out at sea and brought back by a son of
+Belial, who seemed greatly affected by its size, but in spite of such
+small drawbacks we had a glorious time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What is the matter, my darling?" asked John, the newly married, to the
+wife of his bosom.
+
+"Nothing whatever," replied Mrs. John.
+
+"But you look like a funeral," exclaimed he.
+
+"I am not aware that I look more than usually unamiable; I certainly
+never felt better," replied his wife, placidly folding down meanwhile
+the hem to a distracting little apron she is making. John seizes his
+hat, pushes it down over his eyes and rushes forth distracted with the
+conjecture as to what terrible thing he has been guilty of to make his
+wife look so like an injured martyr. For the time being love is dead,
+joy wiped from the face of the earth, hope crucified and peace
+assassinated, all because of bottled thunder. A word would have
+explained all, a look has ruined everything.
+
+"Don't put on your fresh muslin this afternoon," suggests the prudent
+mother.
+
+"But why not?" replied the sprightly Jane; "it is the only endurable
+dress this warm weather."
+
+"Oh, very well, do as you like, of course," meekly replied the parent in
+a tone that suggests a serpent's fang, a hoary head and a broken heart
+all in one.
+
+Now, in my opinion it is not conducive to domestic harmony to have too
+much of this sort of repression. It is like living in an exhaust
+chamber. One would be certain to choke up and burst very soon.
+Self-control does not consist in forever keeping one's mouth shut,
+alone. A look, a sneer, a drooping mouth, a tilted nose, will do as much
+mischief as a loosened tongue. Why I should go about like a disagreeable
+old martyr or like a sneering Saul of Tarsus, and call myself pleasant
+to live with, simply because I don't talk, is something not easily
+understood.
+
+I would far rather be a target for flying saucepans every time I popped
+my head into the kitchen than have a cook there who never says a word,
+but is sullen and ugly enough to carve me up like cold meat. I would
+rather be a constant attendant at funerals, a nurse in a fever-ward, a
+girl in a circus, or a street car horse, than live with proper folks who
+never make blunders, or commit indiscretions either of speech or manner,
+but look at you every time you sneeze as though your featherheadedness
+was the only thing that made life unbearable. Out with it then if you
+have cause for offense. Don't let the clouds hang a single hour, but
+turn on the weather faucet and let it rain. If your neighbor has
+insulted you, either ask her why or ignore it. Ten to one the fancied
+insult is only a wind cloud, and sunshine will break it away. If you
+feel mad sail right in for a tempest and have done with it. Thunder and
+lighten, blow and hail if you want to, but don't be a non-committal
+dog-day. Bottled thunder is a bad thing to keep on the family shelves.
+It is likely to turn sour on your hands, and before you get through with
+it, you will wish you had died young.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yonder goes a small and worthless yellow dog. He is young; you can tell
+that from the abnormal size of his paws, and a certain remnant of
+wistful trust in human kind, which displays itself in the furtive wag of
+his tail and the cock of his limp and discouraged ear. He is as
+absolutely friendless as anything to which God has granted life can be.
+Of his existence there is no thought in the mind of any man or woman
+beneath the stars. The boys grow mindful of him now and then, though,
+and their manifested interest has made of his life one terrible specter
+of cringing fear. He hears the hurrah of their cruel chase in every tone
+of sudden speech; he sees the menace of a blow in every shadow. Do you
+know, my dear, that I never spoke a truer word in all my life than when
+I say that underneath the hide of that forlorn and friendless little
+yellow dog there is something more valuable than beats under the
+broadcloth vests and silken waists of many of the men and women who pass
+him by! A grateful heart mindful of the smallest kindnesses, a faithful
+instinct which keeps dogs loyal even to cruel masters. I sometimes think
+I would rather take my chances with honest dogs than with half the men
+who own them. They may not be able to pass up the stamped ticket which
+transfers the human passenger from the earthly to the celestial railroad
+and carries him through on the passport of an immortal soul; but no
+ticket at all is quite as good as a forged or fraudulent one, as some of
+us will find out, I am thinking, when we hand up our worthless checks!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Which would you rather be in the orchestra of human life, a flute or a
+trombone? To be sure, the latter is heard the farthest, but the quality
+of the flute tone reaches deeper down into the soul and awakens there
+dreams without which a man's life is like bread without leaven, or a
+laid fire without tinder. I don't like noisy people, do you? People who
+talk and bluster and swagger. People who remind us of bladders filled to
+the point of explosion with wind. We like sensitive people,
+quiet-voiced, deep-hearted, earnest people, with the quality of the
+flute rather than that of the fog-horn in their make-up. And yet how
+much greater demand there is for bluster than there is for force.
+Sometimes I am inclined to think that life is a farce played with an
+earthly setting for the delectation of the angels, as we serve minstrel
+shows and burlesques. It isn't the shy and the timid who get the
+applause; the clown in tinsel and the end man in cork divide easy
+honors. And yet, thank God for flutes! Thank God the orchestra isn't
+entirely composed of trombones and bass drums.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+WHAT I MISS.
+
+  I can get used to my darling's dress
+    That hangs on the closet door;
+  And the little silent half-worn shoes
+    That patter no more on the floor.
+
+  I can get used to the hopeless blank
+    That greets my waking eyes,
+  As they meet the sight of the empty crib
+    Where no little nestling lies.
+
+  I can get used to the dreary hush,
+    In the home which my darling blest
+  With her prattling speech and her rippling laugh,
+    Ere we laid her away to rest.
+
+  But, ah! the touch of those little hands
+    That wandered o'er my face,
+  Like the wavering fall of rose-leaves soft,
+    In some sunlit garden place.
+
+  Those dimpled caressing baby hands!
+    I feel them again at night,
+  And in dreams I gather them back again
+    From their harp in the City of Light.
+
+  My hungry heart will claim them still;
+    I cannot let them depart.
+  So I gather them back again in dreams
+    To my desolate, breaking heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other day my strolling took me into a second-hand furniture shop. I
+wanted to find an ice chest. "Have you any second-hand chests?" I asked
+of the hoary-headed son of Erin who tended the place and raked in the
+shekels. He didn't answer a word, but silently arose and beckoned me to
+follow. Through ranks of withered tables and blighted chairs I picked my
+way until my guide dived down a gruesome stairway and then I stopped.
+Presently his head emerged like a grimy Jack-in-the-box.
+
+"Is it an ice chist yez want?" asked he. There was mold on his faded
+cheeks and a cobweb on his brow as he awaited my answer.
+
+"Must I go down there to find it?" I inquired. He replied in the
+affirmative.
+
+"Old man, I will go no further," said I, "but come back here and tell me
+the price of this lovely desk." So saying, I designated a delightful old
+claw-handled, brass-mounted, spider-legged piece of furniture, which
+might have been used by Adam to cast up his accounts on. There was a
+suggestion of secret drawers about it that was quite ravishing. The
+doors were oddly shaped little panes of mirror glass, within which I
+gazed pensively at a soot blemish on my nose. "Is it the price of that
+yez'd be afther knowing?" said the old man, in the tone of one who dealt
+with a harmless lunatic. "I thought it was ice chists yez was afther."
+"Yes," said I, drawing out two long slabs as I spoke, such as were used
+to support the shelf of the desk I remembered in my grandmother's house.
+"That bit of furnichoor," said the old-man, gazing sadly meanwhile at
+the grime of ages which I could not rub from off my nose, "is more than
+two hundred years old." He stopped for a moment to see if I would
+believe him, then went on: "Yis, ma'am, that same is nearer three
+hundred years old, all told."
+
+Here I gave him a look which stopped him at the threshold of the fourth
+century.
+
+"Yez may have it for $25," says he.
+
+"I'll give you five," says I.
+
+He turned away as one who found his mother tongue inadequate to express
+the deep-seated scorn of his soul. I followed.
+
+"Did yez say twenty?" he asked stopping abruptly and facing me with the
+blurred photograph of what was once an engaging smile.
+
+"I said five," I answered.
+
+"Well, take it thin," said he, "but it would be dirt chape at fifty.
+It's not a day less than four hun--"
+
+"Stop," said I, "if you add another century I'll only pay you two and a
+half for it."
+
+And so to-night it comes to pass that I am writing at my new old desk. I
+am half conscious, as my pencil glides along the paper, of a laughing
+face, half-hidden by showers of falling hair, that flickers like a
+shadow in and out of the soft gloom that enfolds me. Fingers, light as
+air, seem to follow the motion of my own, and the ghost of the mistress
+who thought and wrote at this same desk, one, two, three, four hundred
+years ago, seems whispering in my ear. I wonder what will be the effect
+if I read to that sweet, gentle woman of "ye olden time" a few bits from
+the morning paper.
+
+Madam, are you aware that a man kicked his wife to death yesterday
+because she failed to have his supper ready for him? Are you not to be
+congratulated that you are out of reach of this latter day development
+of the human brute? Do you know that the Blank concerts began this last
+week, and that the melodies that throng the beautiful hall yonder on the
+avenue are like bands of singing angels charming a world's sorrows to
+rest? Do not the gentle caprices of the flutes and the swing of the
+fiddles make even you, flake of airy nothingness that you are! dance
+like a thistle-down in a summer breeze? Madam, do you know, and how
+does it affect you to know, that there are bargain sales in town where
+you can buy a gown for a song, and a pair of all-wool blankets for the
+worth of a dream? In your long time disembodied state have you yet
+reached a point, I wonder, when such news as this can no longer thrill a
+woman's heart? If so, madam, you are truly and undeniably dead, and your
+room is better than your company. I bid you a gentle good evening.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the many things I shall be glad to find out some day will be why,
+in spite of heroic effort to keep it straight, my hat always gets
+crooked and my hair becomes disordered on the march. I thoroughly detest
+the sight of a typical "blue-stocking," or a literary woman who affects
+a sublime superiority to appearances, and yet Mrs. Jellyby was nowhere
+as to general demoralization of raiment compared to my unfortunate self.
+Taking my seat in a down-town restaurant the other day, I found myself
+surrounded by half a dozen girls as bright and pretty and jolly as
+girls go. No sooner was I seated than the whisper went round that a
+newspaper woman had invaded the party. "Looks like one," murmured the
+plumpest one of the lot, and I could have cried. "Girls," I wanted to
+say, "judge not by appearances. The best christians sometimes have red
+noses, just as the jolliest literary folks have frowsy hair and
+abandoned hats. They can't help it, my dears, any more than a black cat
+can help being somber. It is never safe to condemn anybody, not even a
+poor, miserable scribbler for the press, on circumstantial evidence. You
+see a crooked hat, electric hair, and that is all. Put on Titbottom
+spectacles and look deeper. Perhaps you will then see an
+anguish-stricken woman rising at 5 a. m. to make herself smart for the
+day. You will note how carefully she adjusts the feeble adjuncts to her
+toilet, how she places her hat on straight and secures it with a
+cast-iron cable! How she combs out her curls and sticks a feathery
+kerchief within her belt. Two hours later the cable hat-pin has been
+struck by a tidal-wave and swept from its anchorage; the curls have
+degenerated into wisps of wind-tossed hay; and the kerchief? Gone as a
+feather is gone when the summer tempest gets behind it! We mean well,
+girls. We want to look trim and slick and span. All of us poor literary
+people do, but we can't bring it about. Life is so everlastingly full,
+anyway, that it seems preposterous to spend more than half one's time in
+getting fixed up. Sometimes I am foolish enough to believe that good St.
+Peter, when we come toiling up to his gate, won't look so much to the
+condition of our hats and our hair as he will to the way we wear our
+souls. If they are tip-tilted and frowsy it may go a little bit hard
+with us. Of course, it is a good thing to be able to wear a hat
+straight, and be remarked for your pretty hair and generally pleasing
+appearance, but I declare to you if it comes to a question of mental
+array and soul-correction as opposed to style and good form, I am
+willing to choose the former and be laughed at now and then by saucy
+girls."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That's right. Stand on shore and beat him back when he attempts to make
+a landing. If necessary, club him under water and congratulate yourself
+that you are so self-righteous and everlastingly holy that nobody can
+get a chance to swing a club at you. What is this half-dead thing that
+is trying to force its way onto dry land from the whelming waters of
+temptation and misery? A rat? Oh, no; only a human creature like
+yourself. Sin overtaken and subdued by evil. He is young, perhaps, and
+never had a mother's care or a father's training. He has drifted with
+easy currents into dangerous waters, and the devil, who lurks beneath
+the flood, is trying to snatch him down to hell! Raise your club and
+give him a clip! The audacity of such a boy trying to be anything with
+such a record behind him! Oh, I am sick of you all, you omniverous
+feeders on reputation, you unveilers of past records of shame! I hope in
+my heart that if ever you get your own foot on the threshold of some
+haven of relief, after a tight tussle with danger and death, an angel
+will stand over against the doorway with a flaming sword and demand to
+see your credentials. No hope of that, though. Angels are not up to that
+sort of work; it is left to men, and sometimes--God pity us all!--to
+women.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If you expect to escape criticism, girls, in this world, you will put
+yourselves very much in the plight of flower-roots that expect to grow
+without the discipline of the hoe. Before we can amount to anything
+either in blossom or as fruit, we must undergo much honest criticism,
+and of such we need never be afraid. A candid and above-board enemy is
+of far more benefit, often, than a timid friend, who, seeing our faults,
+is afraid to tell us of them. The fact that boys stone certain trees and
+pass others by, is explained when we find that the stones are always
+thrown at the fruit-bearing trees. And so with character; the fact that
+we are criticized proves that we are something better than scrub-oak
+saplings. But all criticism that does not make us grow, and put forth
+fairer and richer blossoms, is like a hoe made of wood, or a cultivator
+without power applied to cause it to destroy the weeds. If the unanimous
+verdict of the community in which we live asserts that we are proud, or
+ill-natured, or lazy, we may be pretty sure that there is some cause
+for the application of that particular stroke of the hoe, and the sooner
+we set about seeking to remedy the evil, the better for our next world's
+crop of blossoms. Nobody (save One) was ever yet maligned without some
+little cause. Those who come in contact with you at home may not see
+little blemishes upon your conduct or character which those who meet you
+in business may detect. For instance, to the folks at home you never put
+on that indifferent and languid air to which you treat the customer who
+drops in to buy ribbon, or the woman who asks you a question at your
+office desk. The customer and the questioner go away with an estimate of
+your behavior very unlike the one held at home, where you are frank and
+cheerful, and willing to please. And, on the other hand, the party with
+whom you associate casually in business, or with whom you ride daily to
+and from your office and your home, has no conception how snappy and
+snarly you can be when none but familiar ears are open to your surly
+complaints.
+
+The statement from your little brother or sister that you are a "cross
+old thing" would hardly be believed by those who meet you away from
+home. And yet the hoe in the little hands strikes at a weed that
+threatens to make havoc in the garden. Better look to it, dearie, before
+the ugly thing quite overtops the mignonette and the pinks! Whenever you
+hear of an adverse criticism set to find the weed somewhere in your
+character. I believe firmly that every one of us was born into the world
+with capabilities for almost every evil under the sun if environment
+favors the development. Like a garden patch, the roots of the weeds lie
+already deep, the flower seeds must be sown. And no gardener ever
+struggled with "pusley" and burdock as we must struggle with the evil
+crop, heredity-sown. Thanks be to the quick eye, then, be it of friend
+or foe, who discerns the weed before we do, and whips out the hoe to
+attack it. We are not exactly pleased when it is borne in upon us
+through the criticism of some acquaintance or neighbor, that we are
+selfish in little things. Our folks don't say so, and we try to believe
+the charge is a libel. Next time you throw your banana skin heedlessly
+on the pavement, or crowd into a seat without a "by your leave," or
+refuse to move up in a crowded car, or open your window without asking
+if it be agreeable to the person behind you, or eat peanuts and throw
+the shucks on the floor instead of out of the window, or see a lady
+going by with a disarranged dress and don't tell her of it, or return an
+indifferent answer to a civil question, or refuse the sweet service of a
+smile and a gentle look to the humblest wayfarer that jostles you on the
+road, just remember the criticism, and see if there is not occasion for
+it. Set about correcting the little faults, and the great ones leave to
+God. He will keep you, no doubt, from theft, and murder, and perjury,
+but you don't ask or seem to stand in need of His help in getting rid of
+temptations to be mean and selfish, and discourteous and lazy.
+
+What would you think of a gardener who went about with a spade seeking
+to exterminate nothing but Canada thistles, and let all the rest of the
+weeds go? It is not often that so big and determinate a thing as a
+Canada thistle gets in among the roses, and when it does it is quickly
+disposed of. But oh, the wee growths! The tiny shoots that come up
+faster than flies swarm in dog-days, and need to be forever stood over
+against with a steady hand and a hoe. If my neighbor comes out and
+charges me with stealing a barrel of flour from her storehouse, or
+attacking her first-born with a meat-axe, I can quickly disprove that
+sort of a charge; but when she says that I am unprincipled because I
+steal in and coax her girl away from her with the offer of higher
+wages--how is that? Or that I am selfish because she sees me let my old
+mother wait on me to what I am able to get myself; or cross, because I
+am untender to the children; or untruthful, because I instruct the
+servant to say I am "not at home" when I am, how am I going to dispose
+of those charges? Sure as you live, there are weeds in front of such hoe
+strokes, and with heaven's help we'll get rid of 'em.
+
+Cultivate your critics, then, provided they be honest and fair-dealing.
+Avoid only such as strike in the dark. The man who goes out to hoe weeds
+in the night time is not to be trusted, and the enemy who resorts to the
+underhand methods of backbiting and scandal to do his work, is not worth
+talking about, much less heeding. Take criticism that is fair and open,
+as you occasionally take quinine, to tone up the system and dissipate
+the malaria of sloth and inertia. Only they shall come into the
+festival by and by, bearing garlands of roses, and wreaths of hearts'
+delight and balm, who have welcomed the strong stroke of the hoe at the
+root of every blossom to bear down the weeds and loosen the tough and
+sun-baked soil.
+
+As Charles Kingsley says:
+
+  "My fairest child, I have no song to give you;
+    No lark could pipe 'neath skies so dull and gray;
+  Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you
+          For every day:
+
+  "Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
+    Do noble things, not dream them, all day long,
+  And so make life, death and that vast forever
+          One grand, sweet song."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+See that half-grown man? He never will know as much again as he does now
+at the ripe age of twenty. When he gets to be fifty, when his hair is
+grizzled and his hopes are like the dead leaves that cling to November
+trees, he will look back upon these years of rare wisdom and colossal
+effrontery and blush a little, perhaps, at the recollection. Now he has
+no reverence for a woman or for God. He sneers at good in a world whose
+threshold he has barely crossed, as a year-old child might stand in the
+doorway of his nursery and denounce what was going on in the
+drawing-room. Most of the scathing things that are said about domestic
+felicity, and the sneers that are bestowed on love, and the gibes that
+are flung at purity, and the scoffs that are launched at established
+religions; all the jokes at the expense of noble womanhood and the
+witticisms that are lavished upon the old-fashioned virtues, spring from
+the gigantic brain of the youth of the period.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Often as I pass along the streets of this town I notice certain places
+which I do not burn down, nor tear down, nor otherwise demolish, merely
+because of inherent cowardice and inadequate strength. If I had a
+wide-awake, growing boy I would no more turn him loose in your town, Mr.
+Alderman, than I would cut his throat with my own hand. Not, certainly,
+if there was a spark of human nature within him, and a boy without such
+a spark is hardly worth raising. And more than that, I will say this,
+that what with your saloons and your wide-open gambling resorts, and
+your doorways of hell, wherein sit spiders luring flies, it has come to
+pass that every mother whose boy encounters harm thereby should be
+entitled to damages at least as great as juries award a careless
+pedestrian who gets his legs cut off at a railway crossing. You say that
+laws are inadequate to cope with evils of this kind; if that is so, then
+an outraged citizenhood should rise superior to law, and enter upon a
+crusade to destroy the infamous dens that decoy our boys. On a certain
+downtown street there is a newly opened resort, the windows of which are
+closely draped, and before the door of which a placard is suspended
+which invites only men to enter within. Now and then a hideously ugly
+man, with a yellow beard, comes to the ticket window and looks out like
+a tarantula from its hole, but in the main the place seems absolutely
+unfrequented.
+
+Take your stand and watch for awhile, though, and you will see young men
+and small boys, old men and slouching reprobates of all conditions and
+colors going in and coming out by dozens. Why doesn't some good citizen
+enter a complaint of that place and break it up? We would pounce upon a
+smallpox case soon enough wherever it might lurk, but we are strangely
+indifferent where the menace is only to the soul.
+
+How can we expect to keep our boys pure and raise them to lives of
+usefulness when such iniquitous places are run wide open on public
+streets at noonday, granting admission to all masculinity between the
+ages of 7 and 70?
+
+A well-guarded youth is supposed to be at home in the night time and not
+to be frequenting shy neighborhoods at any hour. So that we might feel
+comparatively safe about the boy we send out into the world at an early
+age to begin his career as errand boy or messenger if these pernicious
+decoys were maintained only at night and in low vicinities. When the
+trap is set, however, right in the business center of the town by
+daylight, what safety have we? Whenever I look into the face of an
+eager, bright, curious, thoroughly alive boy I feel like shaking every
+other duty of life and going forth to do battle with the devil for that
+lad's soul.
+
+Why should evil have so much greater chance than good? For one reason I
+don't believe we make the good attractive enough. The devil has stolen
+the trademark of light for half his wares. Why not have more fun and
+frolic in the home? Why not add a gymnasium and dancing hall to the
+Sunday school and filter some of the world's innocent sunshine inside
+its gloomy walls? Why may not the eager, active heart of youth find its
+good cheer and jollity somewhere else than in forbidden places and among
+smooth and unscrupulous knaves? If we made our churches less austere and
+their gatherings more alluring to the young, these low and vicious
+resorts might close for lack of patronage.
+
+God bless the boys. I love them next best to girls, and sometimes even a
+little better, when they are especially frank and brave and true. I am
+not going to see them harmed without a protest, either, and I would be
+one of a crowd this very day to march upon the resorts of evil that lie
+in wait, all over town, to destroy the bonnie fellows. If I had my way,
+every man or woman who makes money by pandering to the curiosity of a
+boy's nature, inciting to unworthy passion by means of lewd pictures
+and the like, should be consigned to instant perdition. The earth is too
+hallowed to receive their vile dust!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dear girls, if you would be beautiful with the beauty that strikes root
+in heaven, first of all be natural. Be true to something within you
+higher than any conventional code or worldly wise mandate. If it is your
+natural impulse to be courteous, and sympathetic, and sweet (and blessed
+be the fact, it is the natural impulse of most girls so to be!), don't
+let miserable conformity and its tricksters exchange your genuine
+blossom for a mere shred of painted muslin, fashioned though it be after
+even so perfect a similitude of a rose. The birds of the air nor the
+angels in heaven will ever be fooled by any artificial rose, let me tell
+you, however much dudes and society feather-heads may pretend to desire
+it. Grow for something better than this world; wear your sweetness in
+your heart rather than on your pocket handkerchief.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great drawback to domestic felicity often lies in the fact that we
+get too familiar with one another. There should be a certain reserve in
+the most intimate relationships. Sisters and brothers have no right to
+burst into one another's private rooms without knocking. Wives have no
+more right to search their husband's pockets than they have to do the
+same little service for a distant acquaintance. I have no right to read
+the Young Person's letters without permission, although I have a right
+to win her confidence so that she shows them freely. The Captain has no
+more right to visit the Boy's bank for pennies because he is her
+brother, than she has to abstract money from the grocery-man's till. You
+have no more right to obtrude your conversation upon your wife, nor she
+upon her husband, when either is in the middle of a thrilling story,
+than you or she would have to interrupt the Queen of England at her
+devotions. An "excuse me," if a mother is obliged to interrupt her
+youngest child's babble, is quite as good a way to teach the baby
+manners as a course of lectures later on etiquette. The man who gets up
+and slams shut the ventilator in a crowded car to suit his own
+convenience, or the woman who throws open a car-window regardless of the
+occupants of the seat behind her, is no ruder than Bess is when she
+ignores brother Tom's comfort at home, or Tom is when he pounces for the
+biggest orange on the plate when only Bess and he are at table. When
+either makes rude remarks to the other, they sin against the true code
+of etiquette more than when they are discourteous at a party or
+boisterously unkind with a comrade, just as he is more criminally
+careless who pounds a piano to pieces with a hammer than he who batters
+the pine case it was brought in. The greater the value of the article,
+the choicer we are supposed to be of it, and in the same line of
+argument, the dearer and closer the tie that binds us, the more
+considerate we should be in the handling of it. I may hurt the feelings
+of a society acquaintance, and there is restitution and forgiveness, but
+when I stab the dear old mother's heart with an unkind word, or wound my
+child's feelings with an injustice or a cruelty, or ridicule the
+sensitive feelings of a brother or a sister, not eternity itself shall
+be long enough to extract the sting from my memory when my dear ones are
+dead and love's opportunity is vanished forever.
+
+Study politeness, then, which is the bodyguard of love, and build up for
+yourself the structure of a happy home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Has it been borne in upon you what radiant mornings and September nights
+the last two weeks have brought in? Have you stopped, Mr. Busyman, to
+note the wonder of the skies, never so glorious as of late? Did you see
+the sunset the other evening when a gigantic cloud stood almost zenith
+high against the flaming west, and took on for a time the panoply of a
+king? Did you notice the purple center and the dazzling edge, with the
+rose blush that fringed its borders? Did you see it pale to gray and
+vanish like a ghost into the starry night? Do you ever stop, Mrs.
+Featherhead, to mark the beauty of our wayside clover or the sparkle of
+a buttercup in the dew? Have you found the nooks where, like shy
+children, the violets cluster? Did you mark a certain day, a week or so
+ago, when the heavens were full of cloud battalions, taking new shapes
+every minute, and often dissolving in long lines of purple rain, shot
+through with stitches of golden light? Have you seen the lake lately, as
+blue as a heather bell, as wild as a wood-bird, as peaceful as a
+brooding dove? Where were you the other night when out of the sullen
+storm cloud the "light that never was on land or sea" enfolded us, and
+the world hung like an emerald in a topaz sky?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No law of morals should be less arbitrary for men than it is for women.
+An impure heart, a riotous appetite, a profane tongue, are no more
+excusable in a man than they are in a woman. If a man is supposed to
+shrink from selecting his wife among the unclean in thought and immoral
+of practice, why should not a young girl be allowed an undefiled
+selection? When girls grow so queenly natured that they demand that
+their lover should be of the royal stock and never demean themselves to
+stoop to mate with impurity and profligacy just because it carries a
+handsome face and a well-filled pocketbook, there will be some chance
+for happiness in the married estate. It is this placing white flowers in
+smutty buttonholes, or, in other words, the wedding of pure women to
+blase and wicked men, that sows the seed of the tare in what was meant
+by the primal law to be a harvest of golden grain. Do you pick
+slug-eaten roses and wind-fall blossoms? When you go forth to buy
+material for a new gown do you choose cotton warp fabrics and colors
+that will fade in the first washing? Your answers to all these question
+are prompt enough, but when I ask you what choice you make of gentlemen
+friends, you are not quite so ready with a reply. Do you choose the
+young man who has a clean record, who neither drinks nor wastes his
+money in riotous practices? How about the tobacco chewers and the
+swearers? How about the lewd jesters and the low-minded? Provided he
+wears fine clothes, can dance well and make a good appearance in
+society, and above all can give you a handsome diamond for an engagement
+ring, are you not willing to accept a lover in spite of his known
+reputation as a fast young man about town? Girls, you had much better
+choose a specked peach for canning than such a man for a husband. Do you
+imagine that by and by at the upper court, whither we are all hastening
+as quickly as the old patrol wagon of time can carry us, there will be
+any distinction made between men and women? Think you a man is going to
+get off easier than a sorrowful and sinful woman merely because the
+world falsely taught him that the exigencies of his nature demanded
+greater latitude than hers?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You may retouch a faded picture, you may patch up an old piano, you may
+mend a shattered vase, but you cannot make a plucked rose grow again; it
+will wither and die in spite of every effort to restore it to the stem
+from which it fell. And so with the heart from which a low desire in the
+guise of an alluring temptation has snatched the flower of innocence.
+That heart will fade into hopeless loss unless a greater love than yours
+or mine intervenes to save. An impure soul never started out impure from
+the first any more than a peach was decayed in the blossom. It is the
+small beginnings, dear girls, that lead up to the bitter endings. The
+impure book read on the sly, the questionable jest laughed at in secret,
+the talk indulged in with a schoolmate or a friend which you would be
+unwilling for "mother" to hear, the horrible card circulated under the
+desk or behind the teacher's back, those are the beginnings of an ending
+sadder than the blight of any desolation that storm or drought or frost
+can bring upon the blossoms. If I only could, how gladly I would dip my
+pen to-night in a light that should outshine the electric splendor of
+our streets and write a message against the dark background of the sky,
+to startle young girls into the realization of the danger that lurks in
+the first indulgence of thoughts and companionships that are not pure.
+Avoid all such as you would avoid the contagion of small-pox, and a
+thousand times more. Small-pox, at its worst, can only mar the body, but
+the friend who lends you bad books or tells you "smutty" stories
+proffers a contagion to your soul which all the fountains of all your
+tears can never cleanse away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THIS BABY OF OURS.
+
+  There's not a blossom of beautiful May,
+  Silver of daisy, or daffodil gay,
+  Nor the rosy bloom of apple tree flowers,
+  Fair as the face of this baby of ours.
+
+  You could never find, on a bright June day,
+  A bit of fair sky so cheery and gay;
+  Nor the haze on the hills in noonday hours,
+  Blue as the eyes of this baby of ours.
+
+  There's not a murmur of wakening bird--
+  The clearest, sweetest, that ever was heard
+  In the tender hush of the dawn's still hours--
+  Soft as the laugh of this baby of ours.
+
+  There's no gossamer silk of tasseled corn,
+  Nor the flimsiest thread of the shy wood fern--
+  Not even the cobwebs spread over the flowers--
+  Fine as the hair of this baby of ours.
+
+  There's no fairy shell by the sounding sea,
+  No wild rose that nods on the windy lea,
+  No blush of the sun through April's showers,
+  Pink as the palm of this baby of ours.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Don't you get awfully tired of people who are always croaking? A frog in
+a big, damp, malarial pond is expected to make all the fuss he can in
+protest of his surroundings. But a man! Destined for a crown, and born
+that he may be educated for the court of a king! Placed in an emerald
+world with a hither side of opaline shadow, and a fine dust of diamonds
+to set it sparkling when winter days are flying; with ten million
+singing birds to make it musical, and twice ten million flowers to make
+it sweet; with countless stars to light it up with fiery splendor, and
+white, new moons to wrap it round with mystery; with other souls within
+it to love and make happy, and the hand of God to uphold it on its
+rushing way among the countless worlds that crowd its path: what right
+has a man to find fault with such a world?
+
+When the woodtick shall gain a hearing, as he complains that the grand
+old century oak is unfit to shelter him, or the bluebird be hearkened to
+when he murmurs that the horizon is off color, and does not match his
+wings, then, I think, it will be time for man to find fault with the
+appointments of the magnificent sphere he inhabits.
+
+"It is a fine day!" remarks Miss Cherrylips.
+
+"Too cold," says the croaker; "beastly wind, not fit for a dog to
+breathe."
+
+Oh, yes, my dear, I heard him say it this very morning, and while I sat
+and listened to him I could but think to myself, "What would become of
+the croaker without the weather topic to fall back upon?" When all else
+failed him, he is sure to have something to find fault with within the
+range of this universal and inexhaustible topic. It is too warm or too
+cold; there is too much rain, or there is a drought; the winters are
+changing and microbes are on the increase; the peach buds are blighted
+by a cold snap in spring, and the potatoes have failed or are about to
+fail, owing to a wet June.
+
+That is the way the croaker holds forth whenever he can get anybody to
+listen to him. I sometimes wonder what he would do if he really had
+great things to fret about; if one of his beautiful children were to
+die, or the faithful wife he loves so well in his heart, perhaps, but
+never takes the trouble to acquaint with the fact, were to weary of his
+endless faultfinding and steal away from it all into the quietude of the
+grave. I wonder if he would not then look back upon these days of
+"croaking" with amazement that he was ever so blind and stupid a fool.
+
+I knew a woman once who was very, very charming. She could sing "Allan
+Percy" in a way that would melt the heart within you. She could paint on
+china and decorate the panels of doors, and on the whole she was
+calculated to enjoy life and make it enjoyable for others. But her home,
+on the contrary, was utterly devoid of peace and comfort. Her husband
+took no pleasure there, although he was lavish in the expenditure of
+money to render the place attractive. Her children were glad to get away
+from their home and find otherwhere the freedom and gaiety denied them
+there. Why was all this, when the mother was so eminently fitted by
+grace and accomplishments to create a beautiful and happy home? Simply
+because she was always fretting and fussing about trifles. She was a
+croaker and always finding fault. She fought flies until life was a
+burden to everybody who watched her. She said that they would spoil the
+paint, poison the food and ruin the curtains. She was after them at
+early dawn nor gave over the chase until late at night. She would leave
+the dinner table to chase a fly and kill it with a folded paper. She
+would stop the lullaby song she was singing to her pretty baby, to get
+up and call somebody to come in and hunt a stray blue-bottle that was
+bunting its stupid head against the window screen. She said that her
+life wasn't worth a farthing to her if the flies got into her home, and
+she would sooner jump in the river than submit to the pestilential
+infliction. Then she was forever prophesying some dreadful fate for
+herself by reason of the muddy footprints that occasionally found their
+way onto the carpets.
+
+"I declare," she would say, "if you boys don't stop tracking dirt into
+the house I'll die before my time. If there is anything I hate it is a
+careless boy!"
+
+And the boys took her at her word and stopped tracking mud. But they
+were gradually lured to stay away from home, and the soil they took into
+their hearts was perhaps harder to efface than the footmarks they left
+upon the floor of mother's neatly kept hallways.
+
+She was always anticipating trouble that never came. She knew the girl
+was going to leave. She was simply too great a treasure to keep. She was
+absolutely certain that the milkman was watering his milk, and the baby
+would get sick. She had no doubt whatever but what her husband was
+going to ruin himself on 'Change, and then what would become of them
+all? So she worried and fretted and fumed, until patience, like a hunted
+bird, spread its wings and flew away, and what might have been a happy
+home became a stranded wreck upon the rocks of contention.
+
+Oh, I tell you right now, girls, if you can only cultivate one
+accomplishment out of the many that wait to crown a perfect womanhood,
+cultivate a pleasant temper and cheerful disposition. The ability to
+speak many languages, to paint, to dance, to sing, or even to wield a
+graceful pen is nothing compared to the ability to make a lovely home.
+Nobody ever yet succeeded in that noblest endeavor without abjuring
+needless faultfinding, croaking and fretting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As a general thing I don't believe in sermons served as restaurants
+serve beef--in slices. I believe in teaching truths, rather, as one
+whips cream, dropping in the moral as an almost imperceptible flavoring.
+But I tell you there are times when I feel like mounting a pulpit and
+thundering with old Calvin, until the air emits sulphur. Especially when
+I see the inhumanities and outrages practiced upon children by witless
+parents, do I feel stirred to my soul's depths. If we treated our flower
+beds as we do our children there wouldn't be a blossom left in the
+world. If we served our meals as we do our children, there would be
+rampant indigestion and black-browed death at the heels of every one of
+us. Now and then you see a wise mother and sensible father, but the
+biggest half of humanity receive their children as youngsters receive
+their Christmas toys, to be played with when in a good humor, and
+bundled anywhere out of sight when out of sorts or engrossed with more
+important matters. We forget, half of us, that a little child's sense of
+injustice and sorrow and wrong is compatible with its own growth and
+experience rather than with our own. What to us is a paltry trial is the
+cause of keenest, unalleviated woe to the child of five. The possession
+of uncounted gold at forty will not be more precious than the possession
+at three of the apple or the book we so rudely snatch from the little
+hands without a word of apology. Take the time to explain to the little
+fellow why you deprive him of some cherished possession and you will
+save the tender bit of a heart a vast amount of unnecessary aching.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have many things to be thankful for this stormy winter night. One is
+that the coal bin is full and the lock on the outer door secure. Another
+is that the rooftree bends above an unbroken band, and that disease with
+its fell touch lingers the other side of the threshold of the little
+home. Another is that, as a family, we all have straight backs and
+moderately developed intellects; that we are neither dime museum freaks,
+lunatics, nor half-wits. Another is that none of us chew gum, carry
+around dogs, nor make expectoration the chief business of a day's
+outing. Another is that I am getting so used to the alarm clock that I
+sleep through its wild clamor and escape the duties that fall to the lot
+of that other member of the home circle whose ear and conscience are not
+so sadly seared as mine. Another is that I know enough to detect butter
+from oleomargarine, and am not roped in by Blank street vendors with
+their dollar and a half tubs. Another is that I am not the sort of
+fellow to be always hitting another fellow when he has been down and is
+trying to stand steady again. Another is that I am modest enough to
+question whether I could run a grip any better than he does? Another is
+that I got one answer to the "ad." wherewith I sought to capture a gold
+watch. It would have been an embarrassing thing to have received not one
+solitary little nibble. Another is that the elevator boy who
+occasionally carries me to the top floor and intermediate stations
+around at Blank's is kind and does not treat me with the haughty scorn
+he bestows on others. Another is that I have the serene equipoise of
+nerve which renders me calm and even cheerful under the knowledge that
+there is nothing in the house to eat, and two invited guests gently
+sleeping the happy hours away in the chamber above, dreaming perchance
+of toothsome viands not to be. Another is that in spite of weather I
+take no colds, and am as impervious to catarrhal or pneumonic affections
+as an eagle is impervious to the attack of tom-tits. Another is that I
+live in a town where people sell no beer; they may steal and backbite,
+and raise the old lad generally, but thank goodness the baleful glitter
+of a glass beer bottle has never yet eclipsed the moral splendor of the
+scene. Another is that I have been enabled to preserve a few staunch and
+trusty friends through the evolution of that rainy-weather costume which
+a few of my sex have joined me in essaying. I cannot speak for future
+tests, but so far my henchmen have stood firm. And right here let me say
+that any friend, man, woman or babe, who can remain loyal to you after
+you have been seen in public in a dress-reform garment is worth
+cultivating, and should be made the theme of special psalms of praise.
+Another is that the picture I had taken the other day looks worse than I
+do, and when I send it off to unsuspecting admirers I am not torn with
+the thought that when they see the original they will drop scalding hot
+tears of disappointment. This idea of raising false hopes in the minds
+of confiding strangers savors too much of Ananias and Sapphira. Another
+is that so far in life I have preserved a stern and unshaken resolution
+not to wear a false front. A woman in a store bang is next worse to a
+chromo in an art gallery, or a muslin rose among American beauties
+fresh from the rose gardens. Artificiality, my dear, pretense and
+assumption, are harder to put up with than anything else in the world,
+unless it is corns. But far ahead of all the above enumerated causes for
+gratitude is one which thrills me most profoundly, and which can be
+summed up in half a dozen words, the echo of which, perhaps, will find a
+lodgment in some other hearts. I am thankful, very, very thankful, that
+I am not the mother, nor the aunt, nor the half-sister, nor the first
+cousin, nor even the next-door neighbor, of the boy who kills sparrows
+for two cents bounty on the little heads. If I had such a boy within
+range of my voice to-night I should say to him, "Be poor, my man; be
+unsuccessful in business, and not up to bargains all your life, but
+don't be shrewd and sordid and cruel in seeking your gains. Better go by
+the name of 'mollycoddle' and 'baby' among the other boys than get to be
+a little ruffian with your arrow and your sling-shot, and the name of a
+keen-killer tacked on to yourself. Let the sparrows alone, or if you
+really feel that they are the nuisance they are made out to be, kill
+them if you like, but do it in a gentlemanly way (if such a paradox is
+possible), and don't take money for the job." The boy or the man who
+will take a life for sordid ends, or, in other words, who will seek to
+enrich himself on "blood money," is pretty low down in the human scale.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Laughter is a positive sweetness of life, but, like good coffee, it
+should be well cleared of deleterious substance before use. Ill-will and
+malice and the desire to wound are worse than chicory. Between a laugh
+and a giggle there is the width of the horizons. I could sit all day and
+listen to the hearty and heartsome ha! ha! of a lot of bright and jolly
+people, but would rather be shot by a Winchester rifle at short range
+than be forced to stay within earshot of a couple of silly gossips.
+Cultivate that part of your nature that is quick to see the mirthful
+side of things, so shall you be enabled to shed many of life's troubles,
+as the plumage of the bird sheds rain. But discourage all tendencies to
+seek your amusement at the expense of another's feelings or in aught
+that is impure. It was Goethe who said: "Tell me what a man laughs at
+and I will read you his character."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I'll take my chances any day to find heaven on earth, if I can have the
+run of the woods up along our northern lake shore in early springtime. I
+want no companions either, unless, perhaps, it be a child or a dog, for
+artificial women and dudish men, let loose in the woods, are harder to
+endure than gad-flies. It was scarcely more than sunrise, the other
+morning, when I left the house and took my way toward the forest shrine
+undesecrated as yet by surveyors or wood-choppers, the advent of either
+of whom in a country town means good-bye to heaven on that particular
+spot of earth! We found the air so full of sweetness, the instant we
+struck the depths of the woods, that one could almost fancy the wise men
+of the East had been there before us to greet the new-born Spring with
+spices as they greeted another Heaven-born child a score of centuries
+ago in Bethlehem. Every shrub held a softly-tinted leafbud half
+unfolded, like a listless hand. The maple leaves were pink and glossy,
+like rose petals wet with rain. The hickory trees were unfolding great
+creamy buds that looked like magnolias. The hawthorns were all afloat
+with silver blossoms, like loosened sails. The earth seemed singing to
+the heavens, "God is here!" and from the blue depths of quietude, where
+a few clouds spread their soft wings like brooding birds, came back the
+answer, "He is here!" The lake claimed Him, and a thousand azure waves
+murmured His presence on the deep. Wherever we looked, at our feet where
+the June lilies whitened the ground like perfumed snow, and the moss was
+bubbling like a wayside spring with sunshine in place of water; at the
+misty foliage overhead, like shadowy spirit wings; at the circle of blue
+that bounded the earth, or into the very heart of heaven above us, it
+seemed as though God, visible and manifest, was there to give us
+greeting. Finally, we found a point of high land, touched here and there
+with shadows flung down from budding birches, and starred with
+dandelions in flocks, like golden butterflies. Here, leaving the
+material part of me leaning up against a tree-trunk to rest, as one
+thrusts a cumbersome garment on a nail, my soul went wandering off into
+Paradise, and forgot awhile its environment and its earth-born
+responsibilities. Next time the world has failed to use you well and you
+are smarting from the sense of injury undeserved, or the frets of
+domestic life have worn you down to the minimum, like a blade that is
+eternally upon the grindstone, start for the woods. Take a big basket
+with you and fill it full of lilies, and, ten to one, before you get
+home again the lilies will have taken root in your heart and your basket
+will be full of contentment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Educate the children to the expectation of sorrow, not as a monster who
+is to devour them, but as an angel who is to meet them on the way and
+lead them gently home to heaven. Teach them to hold themselves in
+readiness for whatever life has in store, as soldiers are trained for a
+battle whose end is certain peace. Teach them to endure all things, only
+striving to sweeten and soften rather than to harden under the
+discipline of sorrow. Unselfishness is the most rare and at the same
+time the most Christian virtue possible for human nature to attain to,
+but did anybody ever yet grow unselfish through a life of indolent
+self-indulgence and ease? Did fruit ever amount to anything that was
+left unacquainted with the sharp discipline of the gardener's shears? I
+tell you, all the way up from an apple to a man it takes lots of pruning
+and lopping off of superfluous branches to bring out the flavors and
+sweeten the fiber of the fruit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I can imagine a lot of way-worn pilgrims drawing up to heaven's gate.
+
+"What will you have?" asks old St. Peter, standing idle and calm in the
+perpetual sunshine that lies beyond the swinging portal.
+
+"I will have my crown," says one. "I have earned it."
+
+"And I will have my harp," says another; "my fingers are eager to pick
+out the heavenly tunes."
+
+"And I will hie me at once to my heavenly mansion," says a third. "Long
+time I have plodded, foot-sore and weary, to gain the habitation of its
+enduring rest."
+
+But if you can imagine "Amber" piping forth her small request, I think
+you might hear her say: "Conduct me, oh, aged friend, to the nearest
+sand-bank, where I may lie face downward in the sunshine for fifty years
+to come, and hear the surf break on 'Sconsett's reef." That is what I
+have been doing for the past fortnight, and both soul and body have
+waxed strong in the process.
+
+What a tired passenger we carry around with us, sometimes, in this
+marvelous Pullman coach of ours, wherein the soul takes passage for its
+overland trip from the cradle to the grave. How restless it gets, and
+how troublesome. How it turns from companionship, even that of books,
+and finds no panacea for its torment, until some kind fate side-tracks
+it and lets the noisy world rumble on with the clatter and clash of
+conflicting cares beating the hours to dust beneath their flying wheels.
+
+When I went away for my yearly outing I was so cross that there was no
+living within six miles of my own shadow. I hated everything on earth,
+and everything on earth hated me. But I have come back as sweetly as the
+breath of a rose steals through a lattice. That is the effect of a
+jaunt, my dear; and let me say right now that if you are holding on to
+your money in the hope of getting rich sometime, or if you are
+traveling in a rut because you think you are too poor to avoid it, or if
+you are grinding your soul into fine dust in the process of laying up
+against a rainy day, just stop right where you are and listen to me. Any
+money that is gained at the expense of health, either physical or
+mental; any duty held to in the face of nervous breakdown; any gain
+secured at the expense of peace of mind and growth of soul, is not worth
+the holding. You cannot be of any use in the world if you are worn out
+or sick. You may persist in holding on, but your grip is weak, and your
+effect on affairs and people is simply that of an irritant. You owe it
+to yourself, as well as to others, to go away and get rested. If it
+costs money to do so, consider money well spent that gains so fair an
+equivalent as rest and change, and renewed vigor. I tell you there are
+few better uses to which you may put your dollars than in a yearly
+outing. Your pockets may be lighter when you get back, but so will your
+heart be, and the few sacrifices necessary in the way of less expensive
+clothes and cigars, or less frequent gloves and bonnets, will be well
+worth the making for the result gained.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I wish Columbus had never discovered us. I wish that he had never
+steered his old bark westward and found the "land of the free and the
+home of the brave." For with discovery came civilization, and I believe
+we would have been better off without it. If we only could have been
+left to ourselves and gone on sitting under lotus trees unaffected by
+dressmaker and tailor bills, I believe the sum total of happiness would
+have been far greater in the world than it is to-day. I would love to
+return to my allegiance to nature and forever desert the haunts of
+civilization and the marts of trade. I want to gather together a picked
+band of kindred souls and go out and pitch tent by the Gunnison River.
+Ever been there? Imagine a stream of gold flowing through hills colored
+like an apple orchard in May, with a sky bending down above them like
+the wing of an oriole. I want to forget the insolence of a class who may
+be as good as I am in the eye of the law, but whom it would take a ton
+of soap and God's grace to make my equal in point of cleanliness and
+decency. I want to forget forever the clang of the cable car and the
+rumble of its wheels. I want to return to the heathendom that worships
+gods instead of dollars and loves mankind simply because it knows
+nothing of faithlessness and fraud.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Plaze, sor," said a servant to the head of a certain suburban household
+the other morning, "the gintleman who sthole the chickens left his hat
+in the hincoop." Just so, Bridget. And the lady who attends to the
+affairs of the kitchen has her foot upon the neck of the miserable woman
+who is nominally at the head of the house. Oh, no! I am not going to
+enter into a disquisition upon the merits of the servant question. Years
+ago, when I cantered lightly in my ride against windmills, I might have
+undertaken it, but the question has grown too large to be settled by
+talking. The state of things in this free country is growing just a
+trifle too free. There are no longer any servants in this proud land. It
+is not ladylike to serve. The person who superintends the domestic
+affairs of our home merely condescends for a consideration. We no
+longer have any rights as employers. The wind has tacked to another
+quarter. Should we wish to discharge our lady cook or dispense with the
+services of a gentleman artisan it stands in place for us to approach
+them in a respectful manner, put the case before them clearly and ask
+them humbly, without offense to their delicate sensibilities, if they
+will kindly allow us to forego their so-called services. Question
+yourself seriously, my dear; are you sufficiently considerate? Think how
+these defenseless ladies and thin-skinned gentlemen who fill positions
+of trust in your establishment must suffer sometimes from your boorish
+impetuosity. Are you always cordial in your greeting when the worn face
+of the cook appears at the delayed breakfast hour and she places before
+you the hurried pancake and the underdone steak? Do you stop to think
+how the poor creature has danced all night at a ball and has crept home
+after your stiff-necked and rebellious husband has bounded away to catch
+the early train, breakfastless and profane? And when the low-voiced and
+timid second girl tells you that, as a lady who knows her place, she
+really cannot demean herself to wipe off the paint or sweep the front
+steps, do you take her by the hand and acknowledge the indiscretion of
+your coarser nature in expecting her to do such menial service? How many
+of us, clods that we are, have raged when the mild-mannered laundry maid
+has appropriated our underclothing, or remonstrated when the number
+seven foot of the blue-blooded cook has condescended to stretch our
+silken hose? It behooves us to join the ranks of the "philanthropic
+fiends" and look to it that we improve our methods of treating the
+delicate gentry who tarry with us so briefly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the way, I think I occasionally hear a feeble pipe from a man to the
+effect that the girls are responsible for all the tomfoolery in the
+world. Don't you know that you are the very ones who tend to make them
+so--you men? You follow after and woo and wed just that sort of girls.
+You won't look at a sensible little woman who can make "lovely" bread,
+abjures bangs, can't dance and has no "style." You laugh at and make sly
+jokes at the expense of our big hats and our pronounced fashions, but
+when you choose your company, and often your wives, I notice you pass
+right by the home-keeping birds and take the peacocks. Of course, no one
+lives in this age who doubts for a moment that woman's chief aim in life
+and purpose of creation, as well as her hope of a blessed hereafter, is
+to please the men and get a husband. If you won't have her modest and
+simply gowned she is willing to make a feather-headed doll and a
+travesty of herself to get you and win heaven! You know perfectly well,
+you men, that you don't care half so much for brains as you do for
+general "get-up," and the woman you honor with your choice is selected
+for a pretty face and form, and a becoming costume rather than for a
+clever head and an honest heart. I am not talking to old fogies who
+cling to old-fashioned notions, but to young men who ridicule the
+customs of their grandmothers, who shake their heads at salaries of two
+and three thousand a year as inadequate to support wives; who rail
+against woman's extravagance, yet do their best to maintain her in it.
+When you, my fine and dapper gentleman, begin to seek out the modestly
+appareled and the sedate girls, then shall folly and vain show fly over
+seas for want of encouragement and the grand transformation of sawdust
+dolls into women and pleasure-seekers into home-keepers take place.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TWO DAYS.
+
+  I said to myself one golden day
+  When the world was bright and the world was gay,
+    "Though I live more lives than time has years
+    Either in this or the infinite spheres,
+  I will fear no blight and I'll bear no cross,
+  Against my gains I will write no loss,
+    But I and my soul, twin lilies together,
+    Shall whiten in endless summer weather!"
+
+  I said to myself one weary day
+  When the world was old and the world was gray,
+    "Has God forgotten His wandering earth?
+    Are its tears His scorning, its groans His mirth?
+  There's no blue above where the torn clouds fly,
+  There's no bloom below where the dead leaves lie;
+    Would I and my soul were at rest together
+    Wrapped from the chill of this wintry weather."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are some people who live in this world as a cucumber grows in a
+garden. They cling to their own vine and serve no higher end than
+rotundity and relish. There are others who live in the world as a summer
+breeze lives in a meadow; they find out all the hidden flowers and set
+the perfumes flying. There are others who live as the sea lives in a
+shell; their existence is nothing but a sigh. There are others who live
+as the fire lives in a diamond; they are all sparkle. And there are
+others, and they outnumber all the rest, who live as a blind mole lives
+in the soil; they see nothing, feel nothing, suffer and enjoy a little
+now and then, perhaps, but know nothing to all eternity. Such people
+walk through life as the mole walks through the glory of a summer day,
+or burrows beneath the dazzle of a winter storm. They are as
+irresponsive to the voices all about them as the mole is to the singing
+of April robins. They are as untouched by the myriad influences of life
+as the mole is by the light of a star or the flash of a comet. Their
+only interest is in the question, "Wherewith shall we be clothed, and
+what shall we have to eat?" They gather the ripened hours from the tree
+of life as a child gathers fruit, merely for the gratification of an
+instant appetite, not as the careful housewife does, who garners in a
+store for wintry weather. Life to them is merely a fattening process.
+They remind one of prize beef at a county fair; to-morrow brings the
+shambles and the butcher's axe, but in the serene content of a
+well-filled stall and a full stomach, they take no thought of the
+future. We meet such people every day and everywhere. On the streets
+they may see a brute tyrannizing over a helpless beast of burden, or a
+mother (?) yanking a sobbing child along by the arm, as full of ugliness
+herself as a thunder-cloud is of electricity, or a man following an
+innocent young girl with the devil in his heart, or a big boy
+tyrannizing over a smaller one; and they pass it all by as indifferently
+as the mole would sneak across a battlefield the morning after a battle.
+They have too much to do themselves to waste time in remedying other
+people's grievances. They think too much of personal reputation to
+involve themselves in an altercation with defilers of the innocent, and
+tramplers of the weak. They are too respectable to get mixed up in
+brawls, even if the disturbance is brought about by the devil's own
+drummers looking up recruits among the championless and defenseless
+working-girls, or the parentless and homeless children of a great city.
+We meet them traveling through the mountains or loitering by the sea.
+Their only use for mountains is that they may carve their precious
+initials on the highest peaks, pick winter-greens and blue-berries and
+display their fashionable suits and striped stockings. They look upon
+the sea as a big bathing-tank, and the sky, with all its splendor of
+cloud and its glory of sunrise and sunset, as a barometer to forecast
+the weather. We meet them in business relations, and they never believe
+that courtesy and business can go together. A merchant in his office or
+a lady in her parlor will bluntly refuse to buy of a worn-out,
+discouraged, heart-sick book-agent, ignoring the fact that a smile
+accompanying even a refusal acts like a spoonful of sugar in bitter tea,
+and costs less. Even a "lady" clerk, behind a counter, will be haughty
+and unaccommodating and insolent to the woman who comes to buy,
+forgetful that a customer will go a long distance out of her way to deal
+with a polite and well-mannered clerk, and that, like honesty,
+politeness is ever the best policy. And, on the other hand, a woman
+shopper will be whimsical and captious and trying, forgetting that the
+girl who serves her has human blood in her veins, and often carries a
+troubled heart behind her smile or her frown.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They have come! Without the sound of a bugle, the bright hosts have
+marched down and taken possession of the land. The southern slopes are
+all alive with their wind-shaken tents, and when the sun comes out warm
+and glowing from the cloudy pavilions of the April sky, he finds a
+million blossoms on the hills that yesterday were white with snow. Some
+of them are tinted like the flush that lingers in the evening sky before
+the stars find it; some of them are stainless as unfallen snow; some of
+them are purple as a nautillus sail adrift upon a twilight sea; and all
+of them are joyfully welcome to hearts that are weary of Winter's long
+reign. And after the hypatica shall come the violet, and after the
+violet the trillium, and after the trillium the wild-rose, and after
+the wild-rose the cardinal-flower and the wood-lily, and after them the
+gentian and the golden rod, to mark the wane of the year. Oh, who would
+not live in a world whose dial-plate is made of flowers and whose
+circling seasons are told over with blossoming trees and gentian-buds?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I saw a great many things on the way this morning as I was coming to
+town. Suppose, as the weather is too warm for preaching, I enumerate
+them and let you strike the balance at the close, to see which way the
+world is jogging. I saw a father, drunk, beside his little blue-eyed
+daughter. His head was laid in maudlin sleep upon her shoulder, and with
+blushes that came and went across her face like cloud shadows on the
+slope of a hill, she sat and bore the burden of her childish shame like
+a little angel. I saw a hard-faced, labor-grimed man step out of his way
+to pick a wild rose that grew by the side of the road. I saw a young man
+lash his horse because his own bungling driving came near colliding his
+vehicle with a cable car. I saw a policeman spring to the rescue of an
+old beggar woman who stumbled on a street crossing, and saw him fall and
+trampled upon in the discharge of duty. I saw a pretty girl reach out
+her white fingers and feed a discouraged street-car horse the banana she
+was eating as she passed by. I saw a beaten dog turn and fawn beneath
+his master's brutal kick, and I thought to myself, where is a more
+faithful friendship than that? I saw a little golden-headed boy at the
+window of a house as I rode by, and when I waved my hand he kissed his
+in return. I saw a tired mother stoop to hug the child who fidgeted at
+her knee in the tedious depot waiting-room, and I saw another slap her
+baby because its sticky fingers sought to fondle her cheek. I saw a
+little girl get up, without suggestion from her mother, and yield her
+seat to an older person. I saw a lamed and dying bird just brought down
+by a boy's sling-shot. (I saw that same boy in Sabbath-school last
+Sunday!) I saw one woman in fifty thousand wearing the dress-reform. I
+saw eleven girls out of nineteen with tightly-laced waists! I saw a hurt
+kitten tenderly attended to by a soldier in blue, as I passed Fort
+Sheridan Camp, and involuntarily I said to myself: "The bravest are the
+tenderest; the loving are the daring." I saw a small boy beating his
+mother with both fists because she carried him over the crowded and
+dangerous way, and so, I thought, we treat the tender God who sometimes
+lifts us, against our will, from evil ways. I saw a little coffin in an
+undertaker's window, and thought, what child in this busy, bustling city
+is doomed to fill that casket? What love-watched home shelters the head
+that shall one day sleep upon that satin pillow? I saw a teacher in one
+of our public schools and overheard a gross bit of slang as she passed
+by. I see myself sending a child of mine to such a teacher if I knew it!
+I saw a father wheeling his baby in a perambulator, with the sun blazing
+straight into its blinking eyes. I saw one man out of every ten dodge
+into a liquor saloon when he thought nobody was looking. I saw a homely
+girl transformed into a beauty by a service of love accorded a stranger.
+I saw a woman lean out of a Marshall Field 'bus to laugh at another who
+wore shabby clothes and walked with a drooping head. I saw lots of
+things besides, but how does the balance strike?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If we have been living on bad terms with a neighbor; if we have been
+maintaining a chilling silence and a forbidding reserve with anybody
+thrown often in our way, let us have done with such nonsense and live in
+the world as God meant we should.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out of the exuberance of a merry heart the housekeeper has loosened the
+tacks in the parlor carpet, and the epoch of housecleaning begins. The
+head of the family, pro tem. dweller in the land of desolation and
+sojourner in the valley of wrath, hies him to town and wishes vainly for
+the return of the days when he had no wife save in Spain and no family
+outside of Elia's land of dreams. The calciminer comes and drops leprous
+splashes all over the hallways and the bannisters. One paperhanger
+taketh unto himself another, and the two scatter ringlets of snipped
+paper all over the bed chambers, and cumber up the floors with sticky
+paste-pots and brushes. The scrub woman breathes hard and devastates
+the approaches of the front steps, while the hired girl skips playfully
+here and there with damp cloths and bars of silvery soap. There is no
+breakfast, no lunch, no dinner. We take what provender the gods deliver
+to us in out of the way places, like stalled oxen or uncomplaining army
+mules! We sleep by night in beds loosely put together and smelling of
+soap. We awake betimes to the rattle of the scrubbing brush and the
+sharp overthrow of stovepipes. We see the young person, like McStinger,
+on the rampage from morn till night. We watch her hand to hand
+encounters with the pictures that have been wont to hang upon the walls.
+How she swoops upon them, bears them down, buffets them with dusters and
+heaps them high like stumbling blocks in the path of the righteous! How
+she sneers at our feeble, yet apt, suggestion, and pharisaically "thanks
+goodness that she is good for something besides standing around and
+giving unsolicited advice!" How she charges upon our cherished books and
+whacks them together vindictively to loosen the dust and the bindings!
+How she tosses the piano like a feather in her strength and probes its
+sensitive heart-strings with a knitting needle in search of dirt and
+pins! How she rebukes the Captain for idling away her time at
+doll-playing while there is so much work to do, and drives that gallant
+young field officer forth to do battle with the unresisting tomato can
+in the backyard! What a pandemonium reigns over all the domain of
+yesterday's content! Carlo, the dog, whose flippant youth is getting its
+first severe taste of life's discipline, retires to an adjacent covert
+and howls a fitful protest. The cat blinks sleepily in the sunshine and
+dreams of a future unmarred by suds and a slippery foothold. When she
+has occasion to walk across the kitchen floor she shakes her hind foot
+gingerly, like a pilgrim delicately removing the dust of the enemy's
+land from his members. The goblin brood of chickens chuckle with
+amazement while the hired man beats the rugs like a snare drum and
+charges upon the carpet that hangs like a vanquished foe across the
+clothesline. But, like everything else, my dear, we take the trials of
+spring housecleaning as the tourist takes the storms in the Alps or the
+sailor meets the tempest on the sea. It has not come to stay; the
+sun-lighted peaks of deliverance lie just ahead of us, and there is
+fine sailing for another year when the squall is weathered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am tired of the endless dress parade of the great alike--aren't you? I
+am tired of walking in file, as convicts walk together in
+stripes--aren't you? I glory in cranks who have enough individuality to
+refuse to be sewed up in the universal patchwork, like the calico blocks
+we used to overcast with our poor little pricked fingers ever so long
+ago when we were children--don't you? The onward sweep of progress in
+this age has prepared the way for non-conformists, and, glory be to God!
+they are swinging into line like beacon lights up the Maine coast. I
+confess I have no heart-pining for emancipation that shall place me
+alongside of Dr. Mary Walker or others of her ilk. I would like to
+retain my womanliness, but I would like also to make a distinct mark
+upon my times, be it ever so small and insignificant, as an individual
+and an intelligence quite as distinct from the conventional masses as a
+blackbird is when it leaves the flock and silhouettes itself in solitary
+state against the deep blue sky from the top of a windy elm
+tree--wouldn't you?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I want one good square fling on earth before I die. I want the chance to
+know what it is to have enough money to be able to buy silk elastic
+occasionally instead of cotton, and to have my teeth filled with gold
+instead of concrete without feeling as though I had been robbing
+hen-roosts for a month after. I want to go to the theater in a swell
+carriage, and sit in the best box, with a pale pink ostrich boa draped
+about my shoulders and the opera-glasses of the entire house leveled at
+me for a stunning beauty. I want the sensation, for once, of knowing
+that I am as handsome as I am bright, and as well-dressed as I am
+virtuous. I want to have ice cream seven times a week and "Pommery Sec"
+by the dozen in the cellar. I want to own a silk umbrella with a golden
+crook, and wear a diamond ring on every finger. I want to buy candy
+whenever I feel like it without having to register it in the family
+account book under the head of "sundries" and "cough drops." I want to
+see the time when I can call the average shop-girl out into the alley
+and have it out with her with none to interfere. I want to settle with
+her for the indignities I have long suffered with the pusillanimity of a
+meek nature. I want to ask her between clips why she has always sold me
+just what I didn't want, and sneered at me because I didn't buy more of
+it. I want also to engage in hand to hand conflict with the female
+gum-chewer. I want to convince her that I have endured all I will of her
+facial contortions, and that the time has come for the extinction of her
+type from the face of the blooming earth. I want the power to consign
+every man who even mentions "nose bag" to a horse, to the guillotine,
+and to imprison for life every brute who carries a snake-whip or uses a
+check-rein. I want to solder the man or woman who objects to fresh air
+inside a tin can and label them "sardines." I want to shoot on sight the
+first human being who mentions the word "draught" in my hearing, and set
+my dog on the fiend who blots the face of nature with his ear-muffs. I
+want to live for a while in a country where there are neither
+thunderstorms nor cyclones, but where I can sleep nights right through,
+from March until November, without getting up to look for funnels or
+shooing the whole family down cellar as a hen gathers her chickens from
+the swooping hawk. I want to live in a community made up of people who
+mind their own business. I want to be able now and then to receive a
+letter from out of town (it is generally a bill!) without having the
+village postmaster regard me as a burning fagot. I want to find a recipe
+for making buckwheat cakes that do not taste like sand. I want to be
+able to detect a hypocrite and a traitor on sight, without waiting for a
+broken heart to evidence the fact that I am sold again. I want to rise
+out of the range of small annoyances, and fly above the aim of inferior
+people to disturb. I want to grow to be more like an eagle that wings
+its way out of the habitat of gadflies, and less like a trembling hare
+pursued by hounds. I want to take the lesson to my heart that the soul
+that is constant to itself and aspires towards heaven shall never be
+left a prey to care and unrest. I want to strike a dress reform which
+shall make women look less like guys, and to encounter a rainy day in
+which I shall not bite the dust, I and my umbrella, and my
+flippety-floppety skirts, and my nineteen bundles. I want to cut down
+the ballot privilege and make it impossible for an immigrant to vote
+before he is a twenty-one-year resident of America. I want to convince
+the woman suffragist that the greatest curse she can precipitate upon
+her sex is the ballot. I want to teach my sisters that if they will pay
+more attention to their homes and less to outside issues American
+institutions will be more of a success. If the career of a politician
+will spoil a man what would it do for a woman? On the principle that a
+strawberry will decay sooner than a pumpkin, or that a violet is more
+fragile than a sunflower, it would take about one election day to change
+a woman into a harridan. I never knew but one out and out politician who
+preserved intact the amenities of a gentleman, and he died early of
+heart trouble. The thing killed him physically before it destroyed him
+morally. If any politician reads this and wants to challenge the point I
+want to meet him and either convince him or be slain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If you are not glad to be alive such weather as this it is because you
+are a clod and not a sentient being. Why, I never open my door these
+radiant mornings and walk out into a world that is more golden than any
+topaz and more radiant than any diamond that I do not hug myself for
+very joy that I am alive! The grave has not got me yet! And, though I be
+poor and quite alone and go hungry for the fleshpots that make my
+neighbors great about the girth, I am happy as a queen and quite content
+to cast my lot with clovers and birds and wayside weeds that feel the
+vigor of summer weather in every fiber of prodigal life. To-night the
+sky was like the flame of King Solomon's opal--did you see it? And just
+as the glory was growing and deepening into an intensity of beauty that
+made you want to shut your eyes and say Oh--h--h! as the little boys do
+at the circus when the elephants go round, a thrush whipped out his
+mellow flute and gave us a vesper song that made one think of heaven and
+bands of singing angels! And yet we are discontented and feel ourselves
+misused because we happen to be a little poverty-stricken now and then,
+and it is hard work to find the plums in our pudding!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other morning, before the town clock struck 7, I was riding over
+country in a hack, driven by a courtly mannered colored boy and drawn by
+a couple of discouraged mules. I was going over to Hampton and
+Chesapeake City to see the sights. A robin was quarreling with a sparrow
+for possession of a nest in a treetop hung with blossoms thick as
+Monday's washing, and a small pickaninny stood in a doorway and held his
+breath with terror as our driver slashed the air with his long whip. The
+morning was superb. The sea lay like an opal with a dark setting of
+hills shadowed like oxidized silver, the birds were out like blossoms of
+the upper air with song in place of perfume, and the world seemed
+altogether too jolly and bright a spot to link with thoughts of sorrow
+and pain and death. We drove over to the soldiers' home, where from four
+to five thousand veteran warriors have found shelter from the bombarding
+storm of mundane care. Under the shadow of great willows in half-leaf
+and still golden with April sap, in sunny corners of broad piazzas, on
+benches by the slope of sluggish streams, or walking about the well-kept
+paths, these old and battle-scarred warriors pass the time away. "What
+a hero I might have been," says each one to himself, "if only----!" or,
+"What a narrow miss I made of glory when that premature shell took off
+my legs and stranded me here!" Peacefully they behold life's sun
+decline, and peacefully in turn they take possession of the narrow beds
+awaiting them in the near cemetery, where so many soldiers are sleeping
+the unheeded years away. Without motive or purpose their life is
+scarcely more eventless than their death shall finally be. Some way the
+grounds where these patient old graybeards sit day after day with
+nothing to do but muse upon the past remind me of the human heart with
+its pensioned hopes, its stranded intentions and its crippled endeavors!
+What heroisms, what subtle intents for good, what pretentious desires
+were frustrated and made worthless by the destiny which changed life's
+battlefield into a "soldiers' home" and the scene of action for the
+shaded seat under the willows of a long regret!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I wonder if Eve, looking over the battlements of heaven now and then,
+and seeing how tired we get down here and how discouraged and
+broken-hearted we often are, is ever sorry for the heritage she left us,
+all for the sake of an apple! Does she not curse the memory of the earth
+fruit whose flavor has so embittered humanity! Think of it, oh
+far-removed and perverse ancestress, if it were not for you we might
+have lived in a world where dinners walked into the pot and boiled
+themselves over fires that called for no replenishing; where rent
+stockings lifted themselves on viewless hands and were deftly darned by
+sunshine needles in the air; where last year's garments glided into this
+year's styles without the snip of scissors or the whirr of sewing
+machine wheels; where brooms swept and dust-cloths dusted unassisted by
+human hands; where windows cleaned themselves as fogs lift from the
+lake, and washing and ironing were spontaneous, like the growth of
+flowers. I for one am heartily tired of having to suffer for Eve's
+heartless stupidity. Hard work has too much of the blight of the primal
+curse about it to suit me, and no matter what philosophy we call to our
+aid the fact remains that labor of a certain sort is the heritage of
+sin, and sin was, is and ever shall be accursed. But there is something
+a great deal worse than hard work, and that is laziness. The man who
+toils until the great muscles of his arm stand out like cords and his
+broad shoulders are bent like the branches of a pine under the force of
+a strong wind from the north is a king among his kind compared to the
+shiftless do-nothings of life, between whose feet are spun the cobwebs
+of sloth and within whose lily-white fingers nothing more burdensome
+than a cigar finds its way. Give me a blacksmith any day rather than a
+dude. Work is hard and sometimes thankless, but, like tough venison
+served with jelly sauce, it is spiced with self-respect and smacks of
+honest independence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE STORY OF A ROSE.
+
+  A white rose grew in a garden place,
+  On a slender stem, with a royal grace;
+  The nursling of June and her gentle showers,
+  Fairest and sweetest of all her flowers.
+
+  The south wind was out one day for a sail,
+  In a cloudy boat, so fleecy and frail,
+  And he chanced to spy, where musing she stood,
+  My dear little rose in her snowy hood.
+
+  Oh, softly he whispered and tenderly sighed,
+  "Starry Eyes, Starry Eyes, I wait for my bride."
+  But she laughed in his face, and told him to go;
+  She didn't see why he bothered her so.
+
+  A dewdrop fell in the starry hush,
+  Lured from heaven by her dreamy blush;
+  But the tender kiss of his balmy lip
+  She gave to a bee, next morning, to sip.
+
+  A bobolink left the bloom of a tree
+  To tell her tale of whimsical glee;
+  The moon dropped a pearl to wear in her breast;
+  Dawn wove her a cloak of silvery mist.
+
+  But her hard little heart was colder than ice,
+  She sent every suitor away in a trice;
+  Till the wind drew nigh, with a terrible roar,
+  And said: "Pretty Rose, your playtime is o'er."
+
+  He shook her with might, and he drenched her with rain,
+  Till the poor little rose swooned away with her pain;
+  And her shiny crown, with its moonbeam glow,
+  He tossed far and wide, like the feathery snow.
+
+  And all that is left of that splendid bloom,
+  The diadem gay, and the spicy perfume,
+  Is a handful of dust, that once was a rose--
+  The sport of the wind, as it fitfully blows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once upon a time there lived a woman. She was not very young, nor was
+she very old. She was neither handsome, homely, a genius, nor a fool.
+She was just a commonplace, good-intentioned, fair type of the average
+woman. This woman prided herself but little upon the various
+accomplishments that contribute to the modern woman's popularity. She
+could not dance a step, save in front of a northeast gale, or in a game
+of romps with her little folks. She could not decorate a tea cup to save
+her life, nor hand-paint a clam shell, nor embellish a canvas with
+fleshy cupids and no less corpulent rosebuds. She could sing a few
+insignificant ballads, such as "Annie Laurie," "Twilight Dews," and
+"Nearer, My God, to Thee." These with a number like them, she was always
+ready to furnish in a manner to bring down the house, but I doubt if she
+would have been a success either in a comic opera or a church choir. She
+could make bread and pieplant pie after a fashion that would make a man
+wish that he had been born earlier to enjoy more of them. She could tidy
+up a room quicker than a cat could wink its eyes, and in the matter of
+housecleaning she was a regular four-in-hand coach and a tiger. If you
+had asked her to lead a class in ethical culture or make a speech on
+suffrage or score a point for reform, this woman would have ignobly
+turned her back and run away, and yet perhaps she wielded an influence
+in the world quite as strong as many a woman whose name is recorded on
+the roll call of noisy fame. But there was one thing this woman abhorred
+with all the might and strength of her soul, and that was slang. She had
+been brought up to consider the use of anything more pronounced than the
+"yea" and "nay" of the Quaker vernacular an outrage to refinement, and
+although drifting far from her childhood's faith in many ways still
+preserved an innate shrinking from the exuberance of vain speech. She
+allowed no little boys to slide the cellar door with her own precious
+yellow-heads who could be positively convicted of using naughty
+language. Her husband left his worldly ways in town and only carried
+home to this nice little woman the aroma of propriety and coriander
+seeds. But who ever yet was assured of a firm foothold upon the pinnacle
+of self-righteousness that the old boy did not whip out an arrow and
+bring them low? It becomes my painful duty to chronicle the temptation
+and downfall of the upright woman.
+
+It was a tempestuous day of early autumn. It not only rained, it poured!
+It not only blew, but it tore, howled, twisted, cavorted! The woman had
+to go to town. At the eleventh hour the family umbrella was kidnaped by
+a demon. (When the prince of evil has nothing else to do he sends out
+his imps to hide umbrellas, handkerchiefs, thimbles, scissors, and other
+domestic essentials.) The woman had no time to track the umbrella to its
+lair, so she pinned a newspaper over her bonnet and leaped for the
+train. Arrived in town she bought a 50 cent umbrella from a man who was
+peddling them on the street corner, and from that moment we date her
+downfall. The umbrella proved to be fashioned of gum arabic and cobweb.
+It leaked, it exuded, it faded away like a frost-flake in her hands, so
+that ere half an hour had passed she gave it to a newsboy, and laughed
+to see him kick it into an alley. Then she took off her plumed hat and
+pinned it underneath her cloak, wrapped a lace scarf about her head and
+proceeded on her way. Remarking the pleased expression on the faces of
+all she met, she wondered at it, with an Indian outbreak so imminent.
+Small boys danced by her in the rain to the sound of their own bright
+laughter; strong men seemed overcome as she drew near, and even the
+stern policemen at the street crossings turned aside to hide a 9x14
+smile. The woman lunched at a popular restaurant in the midst of a
+mysterious carnival of glee, and finally took the train for home and,
+leaving the city limits, skirted the northern shores of the lake to the
+sound of muffled mirth. Reaching home and looking into the mirror she
+was confronted by a countenance that bore all the seeming "of a demon
+that is dreaming." The sea-green warp of cotton in the gum-arabic
+umbrella had melted and run in long lines over brow and nose and chin.
+For one moment the woman gazed at her frescoed charm, and as to what
+follows we will drop the curtain. Suffice it to say, she fell, and the
+shocked echoes of that little home put cotton in their ears and fainted
+into lonely space at being called upon to repeat the strong language
+that rent the air. Who shall blame the woman if she said "darn" with an
+emphasis that might have made a pirate wan with envy? Who shall cast the
+first stone at her until the day dawns that releases my sex from the
+thralldom of its bondage to those demons who walk abroad and plot her
+downfall in rainy weather?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wear this bead upon your heart, girls; have nothing whatever to do with
+so-called "fascinating" or "magnetic" men. Put no faith in mystery when
+it comes to a question of the man you think you love. Rapt glances and
+tender sighs that lead to nothing in the way of an honest declaration
+are as despoiling to your womanhood as the breath of a furnace is to a
+flower. There is no mystery in genuine love, and there is no
+counterfeiting it, either. It is open-faced, ready-tongued and
+clear-eyed. It is a virtue for heroes, not a platitude in the mouth of
+fools. It is undefiled and set apart, like the snow on high hills. Allow
+no man to make you a party to anything clandestine. A man who is afraid
+to meet you at your own home, and appoints a tryst in the park, or a
+down-town restaurant, is as much of a menace to your happiness as a
+pestilence would be to your health. Remember, in all your experience
+with so-called love, that the fewer adventures a young woman has, the
+fewer flirtations and the fewer "affairs," the more glad she will be, by
+and by, when she is a good man's wife and a brave boy's or sweet girl's
+mother. A gown oft handled, you know, is seldom white, and each romance
+you weave with idle fellows who roll their eyes and talk love, but never
+show you the respect to offer you their hand in honest marriage--these
+fascinating "Rochesters" and wicked "St. Elmos," already married, or
+steeped to the lips in evil-doing--deprive you of your whiteness and
+your bloom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Do you ever get discouraged and feel like saying: "Oh, it's no use! I
+want to amount to something! I have it in me to do great and grand
+things, but the circumstances of poverty are against me. I can be
+nothing but a drudge and the sooner I get over dreaming of anything
+higher, the better!" Of course you have just such times of thinking and
+talking, but did you ever comfort yourself with the thought that though
+all these things you can not be, you are, really, in the sight of God?
+A diamond is no less a diamond because it has been mislaid, and passed
+off through ignorance as common glass. A tulip seed is no less the
+sheath of a flower because through mistake somebody has labeled it as
+common timothy. A silk fabric is no less the product of the
+mulberry-feeding worm because somebody has wrapped it in a brown paper
+parcel and valued it as domestic jeans. What you are, you are, and there
+is no power on earth can gainsay it. Other folks may ignore it in you;
+half the world, nay all the world, may fail to see it, but if nobility,
+and strength, and sweetness are there you are worth just that much to
+God! Blessed thought, isn't it, you poor, overworked clerk, with your
+brain always in a muddle with the dry details of a business you hate!
+Blessed thought, isn't it, you dear, tired woman with more burdens to
+carry than a maple tree has leaves! No matter how impossible it may be
+for you to live out what is in you, that something true and grand and
+beautiful is deathless and shall have its chance of development by and
+by.
+
+I shall never again meet the pretty maid with the larkspur eyes and the
+corn silk hair who traveled with us a part of the way, but wherever she
+goes, joy go with her! She was so modest and unspoiled and sweet, I
+declare the sight of such a girl in this day of dancers and
+high-steppers is like the sound of "Annie Laurie" between the carousals
+of a break-down jig, or the taste of a wild strawberry after pepper tea.
+God bless the old-fashioned girl with her helpful ways, her arch face
+and her blithe and hearty laugh. May her type never vanish from the face
+of the earth, and may the mold after which her soul was fashioned never
+get mislaid and lost in the heavenly work-shop.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think I shall be a little sorry when the commanding officer sends out
+the word to break camp and leave this dear old earth forever. For I love
+this world. I never walk out in the morning when all its radiant colors
+are newly washed with dew, or at splendid noon, when, like an untired
+racer the sun has flashed around his mid-day course, or at evening, when
+a fringe of shadow, like the lash of a weary eye, droops over mountain
+and valley and sea, or in the majestic pomp of night when stars swarm
+together like bees and the moon clears its way through the golden fields
+as a sickle through the ripened wheat, that I do not hug myself for very
+joy that I am yet alive. The cruel grave has not got me! Those jaws of
+darkness have not swallowed me up from the sweet light of mortal day!
+What matter if I am poor and unsheltered and costumeless? Thank God, I
+am yet alive! People who tire of this world before they are seventy and
+pretend that they are ready to leave it are either crazy or stuck full
+of bodily ailments as a cushion is of pins. The happy, the warm-blooded,
+the sunny-natured and the loving cling to life as petals cling to the
+calyx of a budding rose. By and by when the rose is over-ripe, or when
+the frosts come and the November winds are trumpeting through all the
+leafless spaces of the woods, will be the time to die. It is no time
+now, while there is a dark space left on earth that love can brighten,
+while there is a human lot to be alleviated by a smile, or a burden to
+be lifted with a sympathizing tear. It will be time to die when you are
+too old or too sick to be a comfort in the world, but if God has given
+you a warm heart and a ready hand, look about you and be glad He lets
+you live. Yesterday I was passing through the street and I saw a woman
+stoop down and pick up a faded lilac from the middle of a crossing and
+transfer it to a corner where it would not be trampled under foot. The
+world wants such people alive in it, not buried under its green sods.
+The heart that is not unmindful of a crushed flower will be a royal hand
+in the ministrations of life. May the day tarry long on its way that
+lays in the grave such helpful, tender hands that seek to do good.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The good book says, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," but it don't say,
+Tell thy neighbor all thy secrets. We can love one another without
+establishing an unsafe intimacy. In an age when so little remains set
+apart and sacred, keep the treasury of your inmost heart intact. It is a
+hard thing to believe that in every present friend is hidden a possible
+future enemy, but it is safer to shape the conduct of our life upon that
+belief than to live to see our inmost thoughts and the sanctities of
+one's heart of hearts hawked about like green peas in a street vender's
+basket by a spiteful and treacherous enemy. The safest course to pursue
+in a world so full of unfaith and desertions is to be friendly and sweet
+and helpful to all, but communicative and confiding to none.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once when I was a child, with two long yellow braids down my back, and a
+very great capacity for happiness in my heart, I lived in a remote
+country with an aunt who didn't believe in any one having too good a
+time here on earth. She thought they would appreciate the new Jerusalem
+all the more, perhaps, for having a dismal experience here (there are
+lots like her, too, in the world to-day). Well, once afterward when I
+came home from school (and, ah! as I write how I can see the old road
+where I walked, winding its way under silver birches by the side of a
+trout-brook), somebody came out of the house and beckoned wildly, madly
+for me to hurry up. It was my little cousin, and she looked as though
+she had just skipped out of heaven! Her cheeks were all aglow and her
+eyes were shining like stars. "Oh, come! Come quick!" she shouted.
+"There's something in the parlor." I made haste to enter, and there
+before me sat a doll, the biggest and most splendid it had ever entered
+my young heart to imagine. It was dressed in pink tarletan, and had a
+pair of jeweled earrings in its exceedingly life-like ears. At once I
+became embarrassed. Self-consciousness sprang into full being. I was
+painfully aware that my own dress and general appearance suffered by
+contrast with the doll. Nor have I ever since experienced a keener
+sensation of embarrassment than overcame me as I faced that gaudy image
+in wax. My aunt's sarcastic remark, "No wonder that child's mother can't
+lay up a cent for a rainy day when she throws away her dollars on a doll
+like that!" gave me the sad impression that my darling mother was a
+spendthrift, something after the pattern of the prodigal son. From the
+first moment the doll was a source of disappointment and sorrow to me. I
+never could play with it with any comfort because I was afraid of
+soiling its splendid clothes, losing its earrings, or feeling myself and
+my calico and homespun abashed by its superior attire. That doll did me
+no good, and just what it did for me its costly and extravagantly
+dressed sisterhood is doing for hundreds of little girls to-day. Too
+fine to be played with, rigged out in all its paraphernalia of empty
+headed flesh and blood women, with powder, puff and bustles, real
+jewelry and costly lingerie, the modern doll is a demoralizer, a
+torment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Protracted broiling is, I think, on the whole, more wearing to the
+sensibilities than sudden conflagration. A lightning stroke is soon
+over, but who shall deliver us from the torments of dog-days? A bull of
+Bashan encountered in a ten-acre lot may be outrun, but who shall escape
+from a cloud of mosquitoes on a windless night? Give me any day a life
+to live with a tempestuous, gusty sort of person, and I can endure it,
+but deliver me from existence with one who bottles up his thunder and
+looks like a storm that never breaks. A hearty shower, beating down the
+flowers to call them up again in fresher beauty, brightening the hills
+and swelling the brooks, treading with musical footfall the dusty
+streets, and lashing the violet-tinted lake into a foam-flecked sea,
+veining the hot air with sudden fire, and calling out a thousand echoes
+to answer the thunder's call, is it not far better than lowering skies
+that look rain and won't yield it, dragging, sultry days of neither
+sunshine nor storm?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+LINES TO MY LOVE.
+
+  When the salt has left the ocean,
+    And the moon forgets the sea,
+  When with gay and festive motion
+    Ox shall waltz with bee,
+
+  When we wash our face in cinders,
+    And bake our meat on ice,
+  When tender mercy hinders
+    The cat from eating the mice,
+
+  When gray heads grace young shoulders
+    And icicles form in June,
+  When Quakers all turn soldiers,
+    And bull frogs sing in tune,
+
+  Then, and not till then, my treasure,
+    My darling, tender and true,
+  My heart shall claim the leisure
+    To think no more of you.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other morning, lured by the splendor of a golden day, I started to
+walk to town, a distance of twenty-four miles. But after the tenth mile
+the truth was so forcibly and increasingly borne in upon me that "all
+flesh is grass," and that the strength of a man (or woman either) "lieth
+not in his heels," that I postponed the finish until another day. But
+who shall take from me the glory of the start? Shall anybody forget that
+a sunrise was fair and full of promise because the noon was clouded and
+the evening declined into rain? Although my twenty-five-mile walk ended
+at the tenth in a rocking-chair, yet those ten miles were beautiful and
+full of glory.
+
+"It will certainly kill you!" wailed the martyr as I bade her good-bye.
+"Oh, will it kill her?" echoed the poor little Captain, and lifted up
+her voice in lamentation as I vanished from her sight and struck for the
+bluff road. The morning was so beautiful that I could imagine the world
+nothing but a big bunch of tulips standing within a crystal vase in the
+sun. The maples glistened like gold, and were flecked with ruby drops
+that burned and glowed like spilled wine. The oaks were russet brown and
+dusky purple, cleft here and there with vivid green, like glimpses of a
+windy sea through shadowed hills. The leaves that had fallen to the
+earth were musical underneath the foot, and gave forth a faint fragrance
+that made the air as sweet as any bakeshop. The odor of fallen leaves
+and wood shrubs sinking into decay is not like any other fragrance so
+much as the scent of well-baked bread, browned and finished in summer's
+ruddy heat.
+
+The lake--but what can I say to fitly describe that translucent
+sapphire, over which a mist hung like a gossamer web above a blue-bell,
+or the haze of slumber upon a drowsy eye? As I stood upon the bluff,
+before the road struck landward through the woods, I could but extend my
+arm to the glorious expanse of waters and bless the Lord with all my
+soul for so lovely a place to tarry in between times. If this world is
+only a stopping-place, a country through which we march to heaven, as
+Sherman marched overland to the sea, then thank God for so glorious a
+prelude to eternity; and what shall the after harmonies be when the
+broken sounds of idly-touched flutes and harps are so divine?
+
+After leaving Ravinia I proceeded to get lost in the woods. A very
+small boy and a very large dog were standing by a fence. "Does that dog
+bite?" I asked. "Yes'm," promptly replied the sweet and candid child. So
+I climbed a fence and struck for the timber. I soon found that all
+knowledge of the points of the compass had failed me. "If I am going
+east," I mused, "I shall soon strike the lake; if west, the track; south
+will eventually bring me to the Chicago River; but a northerly direction
+will restore me to the sleuth-hound. I will say my prayers and endeavor
+to keep to the south." The way grew denser. My hat gave me some trouble,
+as it insisted upon hanging itself to every tree in the wilderness. The
+twigs twitched the hair-pins from my hair and poked themselves into my
+eyes. A few corpulent bugs toyed with my ankles and a large caterpillar
+passed the blockade of my collar-button and basked in the warmth of my
+neck. I nearly stepped on a snake and was confronted by a toad that
+froze me with a glance of its basilisk eye. So I changed my course and
+suddenly entered a little woodland graveyard--a handful of neglected
+mounds of earth and silence. No tombstones marked the graves. A
+rudely-constructed cross of wood, gray with lichens, alone told of
+consecrated ground. There, away off from the road in the silence of the
+woods, a few tired hearts were taking their rest. Silently I stood a
+moment, then stole away and left the place to its hush of lonely peace.
+What right had I, with my frets and feathers, my twig-punctured
+eye-balls and my toad-perturbed nerves, to bring an unquiet presence
+within this abode of silence and of rest? I sat down on a fence-rail a
+moment while, like Miss Riderhood, I deftly twisted up my back hair and
+mused briefly. When the time comes, oh, intensely alive and happy Amber,
+for your feet to halt in the march, ask to be buried in the woods, where
+your grave will be forgotten and the constant years with falling leaves
+and driving snows may have a good chance to obliterate the earthly
+record of your misspent years.
+
+  "Sooner or later the shadows shall creep
+  Over my rest in the woods so deep;
+  Sooner or later--"
+
+But enough of this, my dear. I did not intend to incorporate a whole
+cemetery, an obituary discourse, and "lines to the departed" in my
+"Glints." After leaving the little graveyard I allowed my instincts to
+carry me in a new direction, and soon a rustling among the dead leaves,
+and the sound of hushed breathing, convinced me that I was approaching a
+living presence. I felt for my revolver. It was there, but unloaded. (I
+would sooner walk arm in arm with death than carry loaded firearms.) I
+advanced bravely and became speedily aware of a score or so of large and
+startled eyes, all fixed upon me. A half-score of woolly heads were
+lifted, and a flock of sheep stood ready to take instant flight if I
+showed sign of battle. "My dear young friends," said I, "it is a relief
+to meet you, and I give you good morrow. I fully expected to encounter a
+band of cutthroat tramps who should toss pennies for my heart's blood.
+The blessings of a rescued woman rest upon your crinkly coats, my
+beauties." A half-hour's walk through the woods brought me to a clearing
+where a flock of bluebirds were holding council together among the
+falling leaves. They seemed inclined to start southward, but tarried for
+one last frolic. How beautiful they were as they flitted in and out
+among the golden underbrush no eye but mine shall ever know. Bluebirds
+have always been associated with thoughts of spring and apple-blossoms
+heretofore. I could hardly believe my senses to find them here amid the
+late and falling leaves. For a while I loitered in their midst and
+wished for a fairy to change me into one of their winged company, that I
+might forget care and find no need of revolvers; but time, as sternly
+announced by my exquisite Waterbury, admitted of no delay, so I hied me
+onward. At this point in my walk I approached a broken gate and a
+stretch of shockingly muddy road. The vanity of confidence in any
+strength that emanates alone from the "heels of a man" was by this time
+beginning to make itself felt. I longed to sit down in the miry way and
+go to sleep. A child could have played with me despite my revolver, and
+a day-old lamb have gained the victory in a personal encounter. At this
+moment, while I lingered, picking my way daintily from tuft to tuft of
+the swamp, I was confronted by a tall, gaunt woman. Of course you don't
+believe this; it reads too much like a dime novel. You think I am
+painting my picture in lurid tints for public exhibition, but in spite
+of your incredulity I repeat that I was confronted by a tall, gaunt
+woman, who appeared as suddenly as though invoked by an evil spell from
+the mud. The woman was shabbily dressed and wore an old-fashioned scoop
+bonnet. She had a bundle on her arm, and was dragging by the hair of the
+head, as it were, an indescribable umbrella. My voice sank out of sight,
+like a stone in the sea, and my feet grew too heavy to lift. I stared in
+silence. "Is your name Maria Hopkins?" asked the woman.
+
+"Indeed it is," I replied, prepared to get down on my knees and swear to
+the truth of what I said, if need be. "I thought so," said my companion;
+"let us pray." But I didn't stop for prayers. Convinced that my time had
+come, and that I was in the presence of a lunatic, I fell over the fence
+and ran. When I was out of breath I looked over my shoulder, but the
+woman was nowhere in sight. To pursue my walk seemed unnecessary,
+especially as I was nearing the house of a friend, so summoning what
+strength was left me I toddled onward, completing my tenth mile in five
+hours from the starting. After my sympathizing friend had emptied her
+camphor bottle upon me I asked her if she knew a party of the name of
+Hopkins anywhere in town, and if there was any resemblance between such
+a person and myself. I saw she thought I was delirious, and no
+explanation has ever dispelled that belief. Some day I shall complete
+the walk and write up the finish.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Said some one to me the other day: "Amber, you have lots of good friends
+among the girls." "Good," said I; "then I am all right." Anybody who
+gains the friendly approval of the right sort of girls has a passport
+right through to glory! I mean it. There is nothing on earth I love
+better than a good, sweet girl. I would rather watch a crowd of them any
+day than all the pictures Fra Angelica ever painted of saints in
+paradise. But there are girls and girls. There is as much difference
+between them as there is between griddle cakes made with yeast and
+griddle cakes in which the careless cook forgot to put the leaven. Shall
+I tell you the kind of girl I especially adore? Well, first of all, let
+us take the working girl. She is not a "lady" in the acceptance of the
+term by this latter day's hybrid democracy. She is just a blithe,
+cheery, sweet-tempered young woman. She may have a father rich enough to
+support her at home, but for all that she is a working girl. She is
+never idle. She is studying or sewing or helping about the home part of
+the day. She is romping or playing or swinging out of doors the other
+part. She is never frowsy nor untidy nor lazy. She is never rude nor
+slangy nor bold. And yet she is always full of fun and ready for frolic.
+She does not depend upon a servant to do what she can do for herself.
+She is considerate to all who serve her. She is reverent to the old and
+thoughtful of the feeble. She never criticises when criticism can wound,
+and she is ready with a helpful, loving word for every one. Sometimes
+she has no father, or her parents are too poor to support her. Then she
+goes out and earns her living by whatever her hands find to do. She
+clerks in a store, or she counts out change at a cashier's desk, or she
+teaches school, or she clicks a typewriter, or rather a telegrapher's
+key, but always and everywhere she is modest and willing and sweet,
+provided she doesn't get that meddlesome little "bee" of "lady"-hood in
+her bonnet. If she tries to be a lady at the expense of all that is
+honest and frank in her nature, she is like a black baby crying for a
+black kitten in the dark--you can't tell what she is exactly, but you
+know she is mighty disagreeable. She has too much dignity to be imposed
+upon, or put to open affront, but she has humility also, and purity that
+differs from prudishness as a dove in the air differs from a stuffed
+bird in a showcase. She is quick to apologize when she knows she is in
+the wrong, yet no young queen ever carried a higher head than she can
+upon justifiable occasions. She is not always imagining herself looked
+down upon because she is poor. She knows full well that out of her own
+heart and mouth proceed the only witnesses that can absolve or condemn
+her. If she eats peanuts in public places, and talks loud, and flirts
+with strange boys, and chews gum or displays a toothpick she is common,
+even though she wore a four-foot placard emblazoned with the misnomer,
+"lady." If she is quick to be courteous, unselfish, gentle and retiring
+in speech and manner in public places, she is true gold, even though her
+dress be faded and her bonnet be old. You cannot mistake any girl any
+more than you can mistake the sunshine that follows the rain or the
+lark that springs from the hawthorn hedge. All things that are blooming
+and sweet attend her! The earth is better for her passing through it and
+heaven will be fairer for her habitation therein. God bless her!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some day I am going gunning. In a reform dress suit, with the right to
+vote in my pocket, and a shotgun delicately poised upon my enfranchised
+shoulder, I shall start forth on my "safety" and proceed to lay low for
+a few victims. The first to perforate with my murderous bullet shall be
+the fiend in human guise who toys with my "copy" from time to time and
+makes me spell whether without an "h," or so distorts the sense of what
+I write that my best friends wouldn't know me from Martin Tupper. I
+shall show no mercy to him. I shall continue to shoot until he is
+perforated like a yard of mosquito netting, and I shall leave a little
+note pinned to the lapel of his coat saying that I have more bullets
+left for his "successor in trust." If there is one thing that has
+survived the buffetings of a harsh and somewhat disconcerting bout with
+fate it is the knowledge that I know how to spell. But even of this the
+fiend in question would deprive me. He has brought his fate upon himself
+and will excuse me if I remark that I thirst for his gore.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dominated by that superfluous energy which has, so far, rendered my
+earthly career cyclonic, I called together a confiding band during the
+height of the recent snow carnival for the purpose of a sleigh ride. The
+opening up of that sleigh ride was propitious. The caravan moved due
+north, bound for a destination that shall be nameless. We tried to look
+upon the attention we attracted as a public ovation, but it was far more
+suggestive of the way they used to accompany outlaws beyond the limits
+of a mining town, or of the children of Israel chased by Pharaoh's
+mocking hosts. It was cold. Our noses, in the light of a wan old moon,
+looked like doorknobs. Our ears cracked to the lightest touch, like harp
+strings in the wind. Patient, long-suffering "doctor!" Shall I ever
+forget how, turning to him when the carnival of sport was at its height,
+I murmured: "Are you enjoying yourself, dear?" And he replied, with
+ghastly sarcasm: "Tumultuously, my love!" So might an arctic frigate,
+ice-bound, have hailed a polar bear. Suddenly, when all seemed
+progressing serenely, we came to a standstill, something like what might
+be expected from a runaway horse checked by the newly patented electric
+button. What was the matter? Bare ground. Now, under ordinary
+circumstances, the term "bare ground" is not synonymous of disaster. But
+if ever in the dispensation of providence it falls to your lot to be one
+of a band of sleigh-riding imbeciles then shall those two words be to
+you what snags in the channel are to seaward-hastening keels. The driver
+shouted and became distinctly profane. "Would you please get out and
+walk over this bad place?" said he. With such speed as our petrified
+members would allow we all got out, and the women sat on a wayside
+fence, while the men "heaved to" and dragged the chariot over about a
+mile and a quarter of bare ground.
+
+"Shall we make for the nearest line of street cars?" asked one of the
+party, whose well-known position as Sunday-school superintendent kept
+him in a state of abnormal calm. "What will become of the sleigh and the
+poor, tired horses?" asked that one of the party directly responsible
+for this mad jubilee.
+
+"Oh, you women can lead the horses while we men carry the old band wagon
+on our shoulders back to shelter." "It is no time for jokes," cried one,
+"I am going home," and we all followed suit, to vow later, in the
+shelter of our happy homes, that our future attempts at sleigh riding
+should be confined to wheels and the time of roses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think I would rather lose this serviceable old right hand of mine than
+have it write a word that could be construed into defense or
+encouragement of loud and blatant women. The over-dressed and slangy
+sisterhood who parade in public places and storm the land these latter
+days will meet with nothing from Amber and her pen but wholesale
+denunciation while the lamp of an insignificant life holds out to burn.
+I hate them as a Quaker hates gunpowder, and I am more than half
+inclined to believe that the total extermination of the stock would be
+one of the supremest blessings that could be vouchsafed to man. The
+tendencies toward boldness and effrontery which characterize the present
+day, the unabashed speech and action and the manifest lack of
+old-fashioned courtesy and the reserve that springs from gentle breeding
+are evils that grow rather than diminish. A gentlewoman, a pure, correct
+and lovely gentlewoman, occupies a loftier place than any throne, and
+wields an influence more potent than the swing of a jeweled scepter. Yet
+it is never by vulgar assumption that she enters into her kingdom. The
+parrot is not a bird we prize, although its plumage is resplendent with
+green and purple and gold. In the proud breast of the homely and
+unpretentious thrush is hidden the heavenly song. Wherever gentle
+forbearance is found, wherever patience and tenderness and love idealize
+and sweeten life, there you will find woman as heaven meant she should
+be--the crowned queen of hearth and home. And in saying all this I do
+not wish to be understood as advancing the idea that a woman has no
+wider scope than home, or that she must be all sugar, without any spice.
+Next to the loud and bold-mannered woman as a specimen to be detested I
+would put the meek Griselda, with less spirit than a boneless herring
+and less sparkle than tepid tea. There is no charm left to femininity
+when you add idiocy to a pretty woman's make-up. A fool may be very
+docile, but a fool is not good company. Of the two, perhaps, if a man
+were forced to choose a comrade to share a life that was to be cast on a
+South Sea island, he would do better to take the "loud" type. Either
+would drive him to the "cups," if such relief were to be found upon an
+island of the sea. But who would not rather go to wreck in a storm than
+founder in becalmed waters? Or, to bring it nearer home, who would not
+rather be drowned away out in the middle of Lake Michigan in a howling
+gale than in a gentle 7x9 cistern? If circumstances call a woman out
+into the thickest of the old bread-and-butter fight that has been waging
+ever since Eve ran afoul of the apple, it is to her credit if she rolls
+up her sleeves and goes into the thickest of the scrimmage and holds her
+own with the pluckiest of them all. It is no disgrace to her to be
+quick to seize an opportunity and shrewd to find a point of vantage. Let
+her rank with the men, and make ever so fine a name for herself in
+whatever business vocation she chooses to make her own, it will not
+detract one whit from her womanliness, provided she keep herself
+unsullied of soul and tender of heart. The moment she lends herself to
+practices that lead men to forget to touch their hats when she passes by
+she becomes unsexed, and a sexless woman is worse than a pestilence, a
+cyclone and a strike condensed into one vast calamity. No sensible man
+will think any less of a woman if she has spirit enough to get downright
+mad at injustice, insult or iniquity. I don't know, though, why we women
+should always get together and compare notes as to what course of
+conduct will best please the men. They don't lie awake nights to conform
+their behavior to ways and manners that shall please us; but, even
+putting our argument on the basis of what shall win approval from men, I
+repeat that I don't believe that there are many of them who would object
+to a woman knowing how to use a pistol or to her carrying one in case of
+an unprotected walk, or a night spent in an unguarded home. There would
+be fewer tales to tell of assaults and woful disappearances of young
+women if all our girls were versed in the ethics of the revolver. Ah, my
+dear, you can never get a more adorable portrait of a woman to hang upon
+the walls of glorified fancy than the pen-portrait drawn by the master
+hand of Robert Browning when he wrote of beautiful Evelyn Hope: "God
+made her of spirit, fire and dew." There is the swiftest and most
+splendid stroke of the artist's brush ever given to literature. And yet
+half the world would substitute "putty" for "spirit," "feathers" for
+"fire" and "dough" for "dew."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The only way to rid the world of bubble-marriages--marriages that turn
+out emptiness with one drop of water as the residuum, and that drop a
+tear--is to educate our girls and boys to something higher than playing
+with pipes and soapy water. Give them something more earnest to do, and
+see that they do it. Compel men and women to choose their life
+companions with at least a tithe of the solemnity they bring to the
+selection of a carriage horse or a ribbon. Legislate laws against early
+marriages. "I can't tolerate children," said a little idiot to me the
+other day, "but I adore dogs!" And yet that girl had an engagement ring
+on her finger. There should be a special seclusion for such girls until
+they develop some instinct of womanliness, and they should no more be
+allowed to marry than a Choctaw chief should be allowed to take charge
+of a kindergarten. You nor I can hope to turn a bubble into substance
+after it is once blown.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Last week I moved. At least I tried to, but I haven't fully accomplished
+the feat yet. If it costs one woman a desk and an umbrella, the pangs of
+a seven-horse torment to move one block, what must it cost a family of
+fourteen to move seven wagonloads a mile? There is a problem that will
+keep you awake nights. When they said to me: "Oh, it will be nothing for
+you to move!" When they pointed with derision at my few belongings I
+said to myself: "All right; perhaps it will be easier than my fears." So
+I packed up my penknife, my mucilage pot, my paper cutter, my eleven
+dozen pencils and my assortment of stub pens, my violet ink, my clock,
+pictures, calendars, Japanese fans, scraps of poetry, magazines, books,
+lemons, buttercups, blotting pads, and sundry trifles it were waste of
+time to enumerate, and sallied forth to find a son of wrath to transport
+them to new quarters. "How much will you charge to move two articles of
+furniture one block?" I asked a guileless Scandinavian teamster. "Three
+dollars," replied he with touching promptitude. I passed him by, and
+after two days' search found a down-trodden African who said he would
+undertake the job for $1.50. I wish you could have seen the look in the
+darky's face when he tried to lift the desk. "Gor-a-mighty, Missus,
+what's in that ar desk?" cried he. I had to unpack every blessed article
+but the penknife and a postage stamp before he would move the thing, and
+all the long day I trotted back and forth with market baskets full of
+the original contents of that desk. When at last I had them moved I
+couldn't find anything. I wanted my pencils, but haven't seen 'em yet.
+The paperweight had smashed the ink bottle, and the mucilage had formed
+a glassy pool in which my buttercups were anchored like islands. The
+frizzes and hairpins and other little what-nots that I kept in the right
+hand drawer had dabbled themselves in the ink and mucilage and fused
+themselves into one indistinguishable horror. I haven't been able to
+find one thing that I wanted since I moved but a toothpick, and that
+don't look exactly natural. The overshoes, and gossamer, and jersey
+waists, soap and chamois skins that I secreted in the left hand drawer
+haven't been seen since they left in the market basket under convoy of
+the Ethiopian. He has probably opened a costumer's shop on Halsted
+street with them. When I move again I shall carry my pencils behind my
+ear and my penknife between my teeth. I'll never be found a second time
+stringing my beads with a toothpick and relying for time upon a clock
+with the hour hand missing. When next I move may it be straight through
+to glory, where the lease is long and the landlord never sublets.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let anybody in this world really undertake to thoroughly do his duty; to
+do it in the face of opposition, prejudice and the meddling
+interference of fools, and he becomes a target set upon a hill for the
+convenient aim of popular scorn. It is harder for a man to be true to a
+principle than it is to face a gun. If an employe in the daily discharge
+of duty aims to be prompt, faithful and fearless he is boycotted by his
+associates in almost as conspicuous a way as was poor little David
+Copperfield with the pasteboard motto on his back. We all of us have
+known in early life the "pet scholar" of the school, the dear little
+virtuous prig who never did anything out of the way, who never played a
+prank or accomplished anything but a pattern pose. Small wonder that we
+hated him! Good behavior, which has for its aim merely the disconcerting
+of others and the aggrandizement of one's self, is snobbery and should
+be loathed as such. But there is a courage of over-conviction which
+leads a man to hold himself honest among thieves, pure among libertines
+and faithful among time-servers and strikers. It was such a spirit as
+this that made dear little "Tom," at "Rugby," loyal to his mother's
+teachings, and led him to kneel amid a crowd of jeering boys to say the
+prayers she taught him. It is such a spirit as this that holds a man or
+woman true to the sense of justice in an unjust world, and keeps them
+undaunted in the midst of enemies, who hate them for doing their duty
+and caring as much for the work as they do for the wages that work
+commands. The man who can hold himself beyond the reach of bribery,
+uncorrupted in corruptible times, and sure to keep his colors flying,
+with never a chance to trail them in the dust for politic purposes, is a
+greater hero than many a blue-coat who marches to battle. Give us a few
+more such heroes, oh, good and merciful dispenser of destinies, and
+sweep off the track a hundred thousand or so of the eye-servants,
+time-servers and money-graspers who keep the profitable places of the
+world's giving away from honest men and faithful women.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A BOBOLINK'S SONG.
+
+  The earth was awake, and like a gay rover,
+    His knapsack of sunshine loose strapped on his back,
+  Through mists, and through dews, and through fine purple clover
+    Was faring his way down the summer's green track.
+
+  I sat all alone 'neath the shade of a willow,
+    And saw the old earth blithely jogging along,
+  While over the fields, like the foam on a billow,
+    The morning was breaking in blossom and song.
+
+  O, list! and, O, hear! like the wing of a swallow,
+    Updarting from fields that are golden with corn;
+  With the ring and the swing of a huntsman's "view hallo,"
+    Some fairy is winding his sweet elfin horn.
+
+  Now up like a flame, and now down like a shower;
+    Now here and now there in its sparkle and gloom;
+  It rings and it swings like a bell in a tower,
+    Wide casting its notes as a wind-flower its bloom.
+
+  'Tis a bobolink singing among the sweet clover;
+    A bobolink whimsical, happy and free,
+  And its voice like new wine makes earth, the old rover,
+    Half tipsy with jollity, clean daft with his glee.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It fell to my lot the other day to witness a scene that I shall not soon
+forget. Death has myriad ways of coming to the sons and daughters of
+men, and it chanced that death had drawn near to a certain dear woman in
+a way that well might blanch the cheek of the bravest hero. As surely
+condemned to die as is the murderer when he hears the judge's sentence,
+with absolute hopelessness of any cure, and with the certainty of no
+more than a brief span of weeks wherein to live, this brave woman faced
+her doom with all the condemned man's certainty, and yet without his
+shame. Grown old in a life of peculiar usefulness, with not a single
+abated enthusiasm and with a heart as keenly attuned to nature's as is
+the flute to the master's touch, this dear old heroine calmly renounced
+the world she had so loved and turned her face direct to "headquarters,"
+with no friend to interfere between herself and God. For one bitter
+hour, perhaps, she wept and watched alone in her Gethsemane, then turned
+about to await the chariot wheels of her deliverance with a heart as
+glad and a faith as warm and bright as a little child's who waits in the
+shadow the coming of a loving father to lead her home. Taken to the
+hospital to die, knowing that those doors swung for her last entrance
+within any earthly home, fully realizing that from beneath that roof
+her soul should ascend to its home beyond the stars, bidding good-bye
+forever to the sunset skies and the rural walks that she had so loved,
+to all the bright company of wild flowers she had known by name, to the
+pomp of seasons and the communion of happy homes, she took up her abode
+in the ward of the incurables. Every day she sits in the sunshine and
+reads her books or indites letters to her friends. Every day she
+struggles with devastating pain, and every day she grows a little
+thinner and a little weaker in the body, while her soul springs
+heavenward like a white flower from the dust, which no earthly blight
+can reach. As I sat by her side the other morning and held her wasted
+hand in mine it seemed the most natural thing in the world to send a
+message by this sweet soul to the unseen land, and we almost forgot the
+pain of parting in the bright anticipation of the many who would throng
+to meet the gray-headed voyager when at last her sail should beat across
+the blue waters into the heavenly harbor. And as we talked there came a
+message that a very old friend had called to see the sufferer; one who
+had been the closest comrade of her brilliant youth and the companion
+of her maturer years. Slowly the guest entered the shrine wherein a soul
+awaited the sacrament of death, silently she stretched out her arms and
+gathered that wasted frame within their close embrace. As a mother
+comforts the baby at her breast, so they comforted one another with
+tender words. The years of their life fell away from them as petals from
+a rose which the wind lightly rocks, and they were girls again. "Oh, my
+dear child, how sweet, how brave, how grand you are!" said the guest.
+"My precious girl, my poor, dear one, how can I bear to see you here!"
+she cried again and yet again, while her tears fell like rain, and the
+turmoil of her sobs rent her very inmost heart. I shall live long before
+I see so touching a sight again. In the presence of a love so perfect
+and so true I felt to be almost an interloper and an alien, so I quietly
+stole away and left these two old women, bowed with the weight of many
+years, sustaining and sustained by the trust that the portals of the
+tomb, within whose shadows they stood, were but the gates that usher the
+soul into the full affluence of life and love.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is almost impossible to get the average young person past the
+florist's window nowadays. She has a way of clasping her hands and
+pursing her lips over the roses that would make the average young man
+shed his last dollar, as the almond tree shakes its blossoms. I am
+always sorry for a poor young man in love with a pretty girl. He longs
+to buy the world for her and she longs quite as ardently to receive it
+as a gift, and so he is hurrying along his bankrupt career until
+matrimony or estrangement checks him. Have you not a pitying remembrance
+in your own heart of a certain youth of the long ago who deluged your
+house with roses, confectionery and novels until his salary was wildly
+wasted in the unequal contests? Girls, be a little less receptive, as it
+were; be just a bit more thoughtful and delicate in your orders at the
+restaurant and your selection from the florist's window, and I think
+your matrimonial chances will be the better for it. How often have I
+seen a young woman order a costly dinner when some young man whom she
+well knew to be the recipient of a small salary was to foot the bill,
+yet when ordering for herself I am told she never goes higher than
+beans and bread and butter. Now, girls, don't think Amber is an
+everlasting old grandmother! Not a bit of it, but she has tossed about
+the world so much and heard so many "little birds" telling their secrets
+that she has taken unto herself quite a pack of knowledge of the ways
+and manners of mankind. I positively adore a young girl, and always
+have, and, what is more, expect I always shall. But admiring and loving
+them as I do, from the tip of their bangs to the click of their boot
+heels, I cannot bear to see them do unlovely things. I want to see them
+helpful, lovable, sweet. I want to see them slow to wound another's
+feelings, and quick as sunshine after rain with tender smiles and
+womanly ways. I want to see them brave, yet gentle; gay, yet kind;
+fun-loving, yet never loud and rude. I want to hear the young men in
+speaking of them speak of something besides their extravagance and their
+greed. I want the very air to be the sweeter for their passing, as when
+one carries roses through a room their fragrance lingers. And what shall
+make you sweet, dear girls? Not fashionable gowns and dainty clothing;
+not beauty nor grace nor wealth so much as womanliness and unselfish
+thought for others.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The woman who can wear an arctic overshoe over a No. 5 shoe and make no
+moan ought to have been born a Joan of Arc or a Charlotte Corday. She is
+made of the "dust" that heroines have a corner on. At one time in my
+life I owned a dog--a guileless pup--whose darling aim on earth was to
+drag my colossal arctics before admiring gentlemen callers and lay them
+by the fireside, where they overshadowed the big base-burner with their
+bulk. I was rid of the dog long before I was rid of the feeling that it
+was a disgrace for a woman to wear the feet God gave her. The most
+colossal overshoe is neither so big nor so objectionable as an early
+grave, and that is just what lies before some of you girls if you don't
+quit wearing French heels and going about in damp and chilly weather
+without protection for your feet. Burn up the high-heeled slippers,
+then, with their atrocious shape; cultivate health and common-sense
+rather than the empty flattery of a world that cares nothing for you. So
+shall you be as beautiful as houris, as healthy as Hebes, as long lived
+as Sarahs and as light-footed as the shadow that dances to a wind-blown
+Columbine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A graveyard never saddens me. It seems nothing more than one of the
+flies behind the scenes when the actors have gone on in front. What
+matters the room where we doff our toggery when we are once out of it?
+So, not long since, when in rambling about one of the Apostle Islands,
+away up in Lake Superior country, I ran across a sunshiny little
+graveyard, and I was glad to loiter about for an hour and read the
+inscriptions on the age-worn stones. It was a blue day--blue in the sky
+above and blue in the haze on the hills, blue in the sparkling waters of
+the lake and bluer yet in the far distance that marked a score of miles
+from shore. Before the gateway of the graveyard a clump of golden rod
+stood, like an angel barring the way with a sword of light. A tangle of
+luxuriant vines had curtained most of the graves from sight A few, more
+carefully tended than the rest, stood bravely out from behind fences of
+ornamental woodwork, but most of them were sheltered and peaceful
+within their neglected bowers of green. When my time comes to lie down
+in my narrow home, I pray you, kind gentlefolks, grant me the seclusion
+of an unremembered grave rather than the accentuated desolation of a
+painted fence and a padlocked gate. There is rest in neglect, and
+nature, if left alone, will never allow a grave to grow unsightly. She
+folds it away in added coverings of mossy green from year to year as a
+mother when the nights are long will tuck her sleeping children under
+soft, warm blankets. She appoints her choristers from the leafy belfry
+of the woods to keep the chimes ringing when the days are long and slow
+and sweet, and lights her tapers nightly in the wavering shimmer of the
+stars. In a secluded corner we found a handbreadth space where a baby
+was laid to rest many a year ago. No chronicle of the little life
+remains, and yet a stranger stands beside its grave and drops a tear. I
+don't know why, I'm sure, for why should we cry when a baby dies? So
+roses are picked before the frost finds them! Another stone was erected
+to a young bride who died at twenty. Looking about at the
+stoop-shouldered, care-lined and prematurely old women who toiled in
+those island homes, we could not feel very sorry for the young bride who
+died, perhaps, while life still held an illusion. With lingering step at
+last we left the graveyard, repassed the golden sentry at the gate and
+sought the little boat that awaited us on the beautiful bay. Long after
+other details of that pleasant outing are forgotten the memory of that
+blue day among the quiet graves on the island of the great lake shall
+linger like a song within our hearts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"If I had two loaves of bread," said Mahomet, "I would sell one of them
+and buy white hyacinths, for they would feed my soul." I came across
+that delightful saying the other day, and I thought to myself: There is
+another one to be hunted up when I get over yonder! I shall have to make
+the acquaintance of a man, prophet or not, who gave utterance to such a
+sentiment as that. How many of us, poor earthworms that we are, would
+rather spend our dollar for white hyacinths than for a big supper? How
+many of us ever stop to think that there is something under the sleek
+rotundity of our girth that demands food quite as eagerly as our stomach
+does, and fails and faints and dies quite as surely without it? Take
+less of the food that goes to fatten the perishable part of you, and
+give more sustenance to that inner guest who, like a captive, sits and
+starves with long and cruel neglect. Buy fewer glasses of beer and more
+"white hyacinths." Smoke less tobacco and invest in a few sunsets and
+dawns. Let cheap shows alone and go hear music of the right sort. So
+shall your soul lift up its drooping head and grow less and less to
+resemble one of Pharaoh's lean kine. I adore a man or a woman who has
+enough sentiment to appreciate what dead and gone Mahomet said, and
+hereafter will make it a point to buy less bread and more hyacinths.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I wonder if, when we get to the other world, we shall not occasionally
+stroll into some sort of a celestial museum, where the relics of our
+foregone existence, its wasted days and misspent years, may stare back
+at us from glass cases where the angels have ticketed them and put them
+all neatly on exhibition! There will be necklaces of ill-spent moments,
+like the faded brilliants exhumed from old Pompeii, with lots of broken
+hopes and thwarted destinies. There will be odd little freaks and
+unreasoning caprices, like the "What is it?" and foolish deeds of daring
+to turn our pulses faint with the old-time terror. There will be those
+tendencies which kept us heavy-footed like the fat woman, and others
+that made us blind, although the world was full of light. There will be
+the disloyal deeds that made us a constant source of care and wonderment
+to the angels who watched us, and the cowardice that kept us in leading
+strings to conformity. There will be shelves full of the little white
+lies we have told, all labeled and dated, like pebbles from the
+Mediterranean or bits of shell from the sea. There will be fragments of
+blighted lives ruined by wagging tongues and shafts of tea table gossip.
+There will be the old-time masks wherein we masqueraded, and the flimsy
+veils of deceit behind which we hid our individuality. There will be the
+memories of little children we might have kept had we been wiser, and
+snatches of lullaby songs. There will be jars full of love glances and
+pots of preserved and honeyed kisses. There will be whole bales of
+mistakes, a Gobelin tapestry to drape the world, and stacks of dead and
+withered "might-have-beens." There will be peacock feathers of pride
+tied together with faded ribbons of regret, and whole cabinets full of
+closet skeletons and family contentions. There will be pedestals whereon
+shall stand the "white days" we can never forget, and panorama chambers
+wherein shall be unrolled the pictured scroll of our journey heavenward.
+In cunningly devised music boxes we shall hear again the melody of our
+youthful laughter and the patter of life's uncounted tears. I think the
+shelves of that celestial museum would yield some odd surprises to the
+most of us, like the finding of a bauble we counted worthless and threw
+away glittering in the diadem of a crown, or the prize we bartered honor
+for turned to worthless glitter and tinsel paste!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no use sitting here by this window any longer and trying to
+believe that life is worth living. If I looked for five minutes more at
+this November landscape I should shave my head and hie me to a Carmelite
+convent. Dame Nature has forgotten her housewifely duties and gone off
+to gossip with the good ladies who have charge of the other planets.
+Where but yesterday the late asters bloomed in long rows of splendor,
+and the chrysanthemums fringed the sunny borders with feathers of white
+and gold, the unsightly stalks grovel in the clayey mold, and the
+frost-nipped vines drop their dismantled tendrils in the chilly wind.
+Fragments of old china lurk in the discovered spaces underneath the
+denuded lilac bushes, and out by the oleander tub a cruel cat is
+worrying a large and discouraged rat. That oleander tub reminds me of an
+ordeal that is ushered in with every change of season. Twice a year we
+are compelled to carry that large vegetable in and out of its winter
+lair. About the last week of September we begin to wrap it in bed-quilts
+every night, and from that time on until late autumn no delicate babe
+was ever more tenderly guarded. Then, as there is no man in the country
+who for love or lucre will condescend to the job, we begin to worry the
+Doctor. We tell him the oleander will be blighted by the frost, and he
+pays no heed. Then we ask him if he would just as lief bring in the
+oleander after supper. He sneaks off and is gone until the 11 p. m.
+train. Next we take to tears, and declare that we love that oleander as
+one of the family, and it breaks our heart to see it perish for want of
+care. We grow pale and wan and gray-headed as the days go by, and
+finally with flashing eyes and muttered oaths the Doctor yanks the tub
+and its colossal growth into the cellar, and we rest on our arms until
+the advent of another spring.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, the summer has gathered up her corn-silk draperies, put on her
+rose-trimmed hat, and tripped over the border land at last. From the
+bend in the road that shall hide her from our view forever she lingers a
+moment to throw back a sunny glance at September, as he comes whistling
+down the lane, with plume of golden-rod in his hat. A glad good-bye to
+you, long-to-be-remembered summer of 1890! We are so glad to see you go
+that we are willing to forego your blossoms and your bird songs to be
+well rid of you. For three long months we have endured heat without
+precedent, drought and discomfort, flies and mosquitos, threatened
+thunder gusts and devastating cyclones, and we are so tired that we feel
+like shaking a stick at you now, to see you lingering to coquet with
+September. Hasten on, oh bright autumn weather, with your comfortable
+nights for sleep, and your royal days of sunshine and frost. We are
+longing for the time to come when the lamps shall be lighted early in
+the parlor, and the fire-glow shall once more shed its glory upon
+grandma's lovely hair and upon the gold of the children's restless
+heads; when the cat shall have leave to lie on the best cushion, and the
+voice of the tea-kettle, droning its supper monologue, shall alternate
+with the efforts of the older sister at the piano. By the way, do you
+know there is lots of solace to be found in an old music book of twenty
+years ago? Don't tell me that the music of to-day is as sweet all
+through as the melodies of long ago. Who sings such soul-ravishing duets
+to-day as "She Bloomed with the Roses," "Twilight Dews," or "Gently
+Sighs the Breeze"? I declare to you, my dear, that although I shall be
+considerably older some day than I am now, and although I have not
+fallen so far into the "sere and yellow" as to count myself among the
+old-fashioned and the queer, yet any one of those songs just mentioned
+will start the tears from my eyes as showers start from summer clouds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two little motherless children! Do you know the thought of a baby
+without a mother to cuddle it always brings the tears to my eyes?
+Traveling to distant New England with a father who, although kind,
+seemed some way unfitted to his duties, as a straight-legged chair might
+if used for a lullaby rocker, were two bits of folks, a boy and a girl,
+one four, the other two years old. The careful father brushed their hair
+very nicely and washed their mites of faces with great regularity. When
+he told them to sit still they sat still, and nobody was annoyed by
+their antics, but, oh, how it made my heart ache to watch the motherless
+chicks! If mamma had been there they would have climbed all over her,
+and bothered her a good deal, perhaps, with their clinging arms and
+kisses (it's a way babies have with their mammas!), but in the presence
+of their dark-eyed and quiet papa they behaved like little weasels in
+the presence of a fox. "Papa says we mustn't talk about mamma any more,"
+lisped the boy. "'Cause she's gone to heaven." In the name of love,
+whose apostle I humbly claim to be, I longed to gather those little ones
+in my arms and have a dear, sweet talk about the mamma who had left them
+for a little while, and I wanted to say to the proper and punctilious
+papa: "Good sir, if you attempt to bring up these motherless mites
+without the demonstration of love you will meet with the same success
+your gardener would should he set out roses in a pine forest. Children
+need love as flowers need the southerly exposure and sunshine. When that
+boy of yours bumped his head, sir, it was your place to comfort him in
+something the way his dead mother might have done, rather than to have
+bade him 'sit up and be a man.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SLEEP'S SERENADE.
+
+      In cadence far,
+      From star to star,
+  Sleep's mellow horns are faintly calling;
+      Through dreamland halls
+      Sweet madrigals,
+  In liquid numbers drowsy falling.
+
+      Noiseless and still,
+      O'er star-watched hill,
+  Beneath the white moon's tender glances,
+      A host of dreams,
+      By wind-blown streams,
+  March on with gleam of silver lances.
+
+      A captive thou;
+      Then, yield thee, now,
+  While mellow horns are nearer calling;
+      And ringing bells,
+      And poppy spells,
+  Thy senses all in sleep enthralling.
+
+      O, hark; O, hear,
+      My lady, dear,
+  O'er woods and hills and streamlets flying,
+      The winding note
+      Of horns remote,
+  In softest echo dying--dying.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had a dream the other night which was like, and yet unlike, the vision
+of fair women of which a poet once wrote. I dreamed that I sat within a
+court-room. Before me passed the meanest men and women God ever
+permitted to live, and upon them I was to pass the verdict as to which
+should carry off the palm. The scandal-monger came first, he or she who
+sits like a fly-catcher on a tree, snapping up morsels of news. He or
+she who is swelled full of conjecture whenever anybody commits an
+innocent indiscretion, as an owl blinks and ruffles up its feathers when
+the bobolink sings. He or she who goes about the world like a lean cat
+after a mouse. He or she who is always looking for clouds in a bright
+June sky, and slugs in roses and flies in honey. He or she whose heart
+is made of brass, and whose soul is so small it will take eleven cycles
+of eternity to develop it to the dimension of a hayseed. I was about to
+hand this specimen the banner without looking further when a being
+glided by me with a noiseless tread. She wore felt shoes and a mask. She
+spoke with the voice of a canary, yet had the talons of a vulture. She
+wore a stomacher made from the fleece of a lamb, and between her bright
+red lips were the tusks of a wolf. I recognized her as the hypocrite,
+the false friend; she who hands over your living bones for your enemies
+to pick, while you believe she is your champion and your defender.
+Following her came the man who keeps his horse standing all day with its
+nose in a nosebag. There was a groan like the sighing of wind in the
+poplars as he went by. Then came the merciless man who oppresses and
+torments the helpless and grinds the faces of the poor; and following
+him I beheld yet another monster--the worst of all in male attire. He
+came sneaking around a corner, with a smile on his lips and a devil in
+his eye, seeking to entrap innocent girlhood and unsuspecting womanhood.
+Then came the woman who gives her children to the care of servants while
+she goes downtown with a dog in her arms. Then came a lean-faced,
+weasel-eyed creature with the general expression of a sneak thief. I
+discovered her to be the representative of that type of women who coaxes
+her neighbor's hired girl away with promises of better wages. Then came
+the envious person whose evil passions are kindled like the fires of
+sheol at the prosperity of others, and who, because his own cup of life
+holds vinegar, is determined no other shall contain wine. I suddenly
+awoke without having bestowed the palm on any. Perhaps some of my
+readers may find it easy to do that for themselves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Do you know which, of all the sights that confronted me yesterday in my
+rambles through the rainy weather, I pigeon-holed as the saddest? Not
+the little white casket, gleaming like the petal of a fallen flower,
+through the undertaker's rain-streaked window; not the woman with the
+lack-luster eye and the flippety-floppety petticoats who went by me in
+the rain silently cursing her bundles and the fact that she was not
+three-handed; not the poor old cab horse with his nose in a wet bag, and
+his stomach so tightly buckled in that he couldn't breathe below the
+fifth rib; not the man out of a job, with his gloveless hands in his
+pockets, trying to solve the problem of supper; not the little child
+under convoy of a stern and relentless dragon who yanked it over the
+crossings by the arm socket; not the starved and absolutely hopeless
+yellow dog, who sat in a doorway and wondered to himself if there was
+indeed a canine life that included occasional bones and no kicks; no,
+not any of these impressed me as the most gruesome of a great city's
+many sights. As I passed the corner of Washington and Dearborn streets I
+came face to face with a red-cheeked, wholesome boy of barely twenty
+years of age. He was leaning upon the arm of an elderly man, and at
+first I thought him ill, but it took but a second glance to see that he
+was drunk. Now, I consider that the very saddest sight a great city has
+to offer. When the old men are wicked there is some comfort in the
+thought that their day is nearly spent, and their worthless places may
+be soon filled with a nobler and a better stock, but a drunken and
+dissolute boy means just what it means for the fruit harvest when the
+blight gets into the blossom. The gathered apple that rots in the bin is
+bad enough, but the worm that destroys the fruit in the germ makes
+greater loss. Be thankful that the grave has taken to its protecting
+shelter the boy you loved so dearly, and of whom you were so proud,
+rather than that he should have grown to be a drunkard before his
+twentieth birthday.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We are each of us missing constant chances to bestow a kindness upon
+some needy soul for the reason that we dread being imposed upon by a
+case of causeless complaining. Is it worth while to keep our hearts
+stolid merely because we may be cheated in the bestowal of a nickel's
+worth of alms? I think not. You looked up from your work a few minutes
+ago and saw a little boy not much bigger than your thumb looking through
+the open doorway. He began at once a sing-song tale of woe about a sick
+mother and a father out of work--or in his grave, it doesn't much
+matter. At the same time he held out a paper of cheap pins to tempt a
+nickel from your store.
+
+"I have no time to bother with such as you," you said, and turned your
+eyes back to your ledger. But still the boy droned on. You looked at him
+again and noticed that the small hand that held the pins was well kept
+and very, very thin. Then your eyes followed the diminutive form down to
+the feet; they, too, showed signs of somebody's care, although the shoes
+were shabby and the stockings thin.
+
+"He is not an ordinary little beggar," you said to yourself. And then
+your gaze traveled upward again until it met his long-lashed Irish eyes,
+so full of trouble and of entreaty that they looked like twin Killarney
+lakes getting ready for rain.
+
+"Poor little chap," you said, "of course I'll buy a paper of pins," and
+in so doing you stooped over and patted his head, perhaps, or called him
+"dear," so that he went away with the twin Killarney lakes all ready for
+a sunburst to follow the rain. That was an opportunity you nearly
+missed, but it brought a blessing sweeter than a Crawford peach. You
+didn't want the pins, but the little desolate heart wanted the kind word
+bestowed along with your nickel, and perhaps its bestowal shall be an
+impulse toward the light to a soul that cross words and constant
+refusals had already given a downward trend.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There stands a very young girl at the door of a drug store. She
+hesitates a moment and enters. "May I sit here and wait for a friend?"
+she inquires of the dapper clerk. "Certainly," he answers, and places a
+chair for her near the window.
+
+That girl's father told her last night to have nothing more to do with
+young Solomon Levi. "He is a worthless fellow," said he, "and I have
+forbidden him the house." "Very well," said she, and this morning she
+has made the excuse to go to the grocery for yeast, and is waiting here
+for the graceless Solomon. By and by he will come, and she will listen
+to him and form plans for clandestine meetings. My dear, there is a
+stairway whose top lies in the sunshine, but whose lower steps lead down
+to endless shadow. Your pretty foot is poising on the upper
+stair--beware! And yet I think the father has been to blame also. These
+stern, non-explanatory parents are responsible for much of the ruin
+wrought in young people's lives. If the old rat would go with the young
+one now and then to investigate the smell of cheese, his restraining
+presence would do more good than all the warnings and threats
+beforehand. Temptations are bound to besiege the girls and bewilder the
+boys. Don't let us make a pit-fire out of moonshine and forbid every bit
+of innocent fun and frolic because there is a gayety that takes hold on
+death. Give the young folks a little more license, mingle with them in
+many amusements which you have been wont to frown upon, do not be so
+frightened if their light feet go dancing off the path now and then, and
+ten to one the end of the journey will be Beulah Land and peace. A good
+deal less faultfinding and a good deal more sympathy would be better all
+around.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no lot on earth so hard to bear as the lot of wedlock where
+love has failed. The slave's life is not comparable to it, for the
+manacles that only bind the hands may be laid aside, but those that
+fetter the heart not death itself holds the key to loosen. It fairly
+makes me tremble when I see the thoughtless rush young people make to
+enter what is by far the most solemn and responsible relation of life.
+They are like mariners who put to sea in flimsy boats, or like explorers
+who fit themselves with Prince Albert suits and buttonhole bouquets.
+Before you get through the voyage, my dears, you will encounter tempests
+as well as bonnie blue weather, and God pity you when your pleasure
+craft strikes the first billow, if it was made of caprice and put
+together with mucilage instead of rivets! As for the explorer and his
+dress suit, where will he be when the tigers begin to scent him and the
+air is full of great sorrows and little frets like flying buzzards and
+cawing crows?
+
+Be an old maid in its most despised significance then; be a grubber and
+a toiler all the days of your life rather than rush into marriage as a
+hunted fox flies into a trap. There is some chance for the fox that
+flies to the hills, and for the bird that soars above the huntsman's
+aim, but what better off is the fox in the trap or the lark in a cage?
+There is a love so pure and ennobling that eternity shall not be long
+enough to cast its blossom, nor death sharp enough to loosen the
+foundation of its hold. Such love is born in the spirit rather than
+forced in the hot-house of the senses. It is an impulse toward the
+stars, a striving toward things that are pure and perfect and true. It
+grows in the heart as a rose grows in the garden, first a slip, then a
+leaf and finally the perfect blossom. No rose ever put forth a flower
+first, and then bethought itself of rooting and budding. Pray, dear
+girls, that this love may come to you rather than its poor prototype, so
+current in a world of shams and pretenses, whose luster corrodes with
+daily usage and turns to pewter in your grasp.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once there was an old woman who died and went to glory. Now a great many
+old women have died and gone the same way, but this one was very tired
+and very glad to go. She had worked hard ever since she could handle a
+broom or flirt a duster. She had probably washed about 91,956,045 dishes
+in her life, had baked something less than a million of pies, and turned
+out anywhere between a quarter to half a million loaves of bread, to say
+nothing of biscuits. These figures are steep, but I am writing under the
+invigorating impulse of the grip! She had darned socks and hemmed towels
+and patched old pantaloon-seats between times, until her fingers were
+callous as agate. She had borne and reared lots of children and tended
+to their myriad wants. For forty-seven years she had done a big washing
+every week, and laundried more collars than a Canada thistle has
+seed-pods. At last she died. The tired old body burst its withered husk
+and let the flower free. The rusty old cage flew open and out went the
+bird. And when they buried her I suppose they were foolish enough to
+shed tears and put on mourning! As well expect all the birds to wear
+crape when dawn sets out its primrose-pot on the ledge of the eastern
+sky! But one friend of quicker perception than the rest, I am told,
+placed the following inscription on the tired old woman's gravestone:
+
+  Here lies a poor woman who always was tired,
+  For she lived in a world where much was required.
+  "Weep not for me, friends," she said, "for I'm going
+  Where there'll be neither washing, nor baking, nor sewing;
+  Then weep not for me; if death must us sever,
+  Rejoice that I'm going to do nothing forever."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is just one thing in the latter part of the nineteenth century
+that never fails to bring success, and that is assurance. If you are
+going to make yourself known it is no longer the thing to quietly pass
+out a visiting card--you must advance with a trumpet and blow a brazen
+blast to shake the stars. The time has gone by when self-advancement
+can be gained by modest and unassuming methods. To stand with a lifted
+hat and solicit a hearing savors of mendicancy and an humble spirit. The
+easily abashed and the diffident may starve in a garret, or go die on
+the highways--there is no chance for them in the jostling rush of life.
+The gilded circus chariot, with a full brass band and a plump goddess
+distributing circulars, is what takes the popular heart by storm. Your
+silent entry into town, depending upon the merits of your wares to gain
+an audience or work up a custom, is chimerical and obsolete. We no
+longer sit in the shadow and play flutes; we mount a pine platform and
+blow on a trombone, and in that way we draw a crowd, and that is what we
+live for. Who are the women who succeed in business ventures of any
+sort? Mostly the mannish, bold, aggressive amazons who are unmindful of
+rebuffs and impervious to contempt. Who are the men who wear diamonds
+and live easy lives? Largely the politicians who have made their
+reputation in bar-room rostrums and among sharpers. Oh, for a wind to
+blow us forward a hundred years out of this age of sordid self-seeking
+and impudent assertiveness into something larger and sweeter and finer.
+Give us less yeast in our bread and more substance; fill our cups with
+wine rather than froth, and for sweet pity's sake hang up the great
+American trumpet and let "silence, like a poultice, come to heal the
+blows of sound."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Every day, for months, as I have taken my morning ride to town I have
+noticed a dog who bounds forth from a dooryard that overlooks the busy
+highway of the steed of steam and barks himself weak at the rushing
+trains. He really accomplishes nothing, but do you suppose you could
+convince his canine brain that he was not at once a reproach and a
+terror to the numerous trains that disturb his rest? He reminds me of
+certain people we meet all the way through life. They bark at trains
+continually while the Lord prolongs their breath, and the faster the
+train and the more it carries the louder they bark. They fondly imagine
+that the voice of their ranting protest accomplishes a purpose in the
+world. They are always barking at capital and at rich men and at
+corporations. They bark at people of courteous manners, and all the ways
+and customs of polite and gentle society, with fierce and futile
+yelpings. They bark at the swift advancement of the world from ignorance
+to enlightenment, from superstition to liberalism. They bark at the
+churches because they are on a train that has sidetracked Calvin. They
+bark at polite young men who wear clean linen, and call them dudes; they
+bark at women who have one or two ideas outside of fashionable folly and
+inane conventionalism, and call them cranks; they bark at everything on
+wheels, where wheels typify strength and achievement. They will go on
+barking, too, while the world finds room and maintains patience for them
+and their barking.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think I have said before that I loathe meek people. But even if I have
+I am going to say it again. Your half-wits who sit and turn first one
+cheek and then the other to be slapped are not the sort for me. The man
+or woman, boy or girl, child or otherwise, that will endure direct
+insult day after day without resenting it ought to sell themselves at
+so much a pint for illuminating oil--that is all they are good for. I
+love a fighter, provided he foils gracefully and does not snatch out his
+sword in every brawling and unworthy cause. In the defense of woman, in
+the cause of honor, purity and truth; in battle against sordidness, and
+greed, and a lying tongue, let your blade flash like summer rain and
+your white plume outdistance the plume of Navarre! For God and mother,
+justice and honor, self-respect and the approval of our own conscience,
+let us go forward then with a chip, if need be, on each shoulder and a
+standard copy of the celestial army tactics in our side pocket! The Lord
+loves a good many things, cheerful givers and self-sacrificing widows
+with their mites, merciful men and sweet and noble women, but most of
+all, I think, he loves a valiant fighter in the cause of right.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now it came to pass that there dwelt in a certain city of the land of
+the great lakes a woman called Lydia, sister to Simon, the shipwright.
+And Lydia, being comely and fair to look upon, was sought in marriage
+by one John, a dealer in spices and fine teas. And the years of their
+wedlock having outnumbered the fingers upon a man's two hands, it came
+to pass that they dwelt together in exceeding prosperity in a town near
+by the blue waters of a mighty lake.
+
+And Heaven sent unto them children to the number of three, so that their
+hearts were exceeding glad, and the cords of their habitation were
+stretched from year to year. And it came to pass that the home in which
+they lived was spacious and full of salubrious air. Their beds, also,
+were of curled hair, and all their bed-springs of beaten steel. And
+bath-rooms made glad the heart of the dust-laden when summer dwelt in
+the land. Also there were cunningly devised screens of fine wire in all
+the windows, so that the marauding fly and the pestilential mosquito
+might not enter.
+
+And the flesh increased from year to year upon the bones of Lydia and
+the children that heaven sent her, while they remained in the home that
+John, the tea merchant, had given them.
+
+But it came to pass that the neighbors of the woman Lydia closed up the
+shutters of their dwellings, and one by one stole from town when the
+heat descended upon the land.
+
+Then spake Lydia unto John, the vender of spices and fine teas, saying:
+
+"Arise, let us go hence and dwell within a farm-house, where the
+children may leap together in the sweet-smelling hay, and I may comfort
+myself with flagons of cream."
+
+But John, being a man among men, and accounted somewhat wise withal,
+would have restrained Lydia, saying: "Not so; for verily I say unto you,
+comfort abideth not in the dwelling of the farmer, neither does joy
+linger in the shadow of his doorway."
+
+Now Lydia, being president of a Woman's Club and reputed of knowledge
+beyond the generality of womankind, would not listen, but beat her hands
+together, crying: "I prithee hold thy peace, for behold, I and the
+children heaven sent me will depart hence by to-morrow's chariot of
+steam, and will make our home with the gentle farmer and his
+sweet-breathed kine."
+
+So John, being loth to war with the tongue, albeit he was heavy-hearted
+and walked with a bent head, purchased tickets for Lydia and the
+children heaven had given her.
+
+And it came to pass that they left town by the train which men call "the
+limited."
+
+Now the way of that train through the land is like unto the way of a
+ship at sea, or of a strong eagle that never wearieth. And the
+sufferings of Lydia were such that she sought relief in peppermint and
+found it not.
+
+And the babes by reason of the swiftness with which they traversed a
+crooked land, were made ill and languished like sea-sick rangers of the
+deep.
+
+Yet, after many hours, their torment abated not, so that, reaching their
+destination, the bodies of Lydia and her children were removed in a hack
+and hurried to an inn that was built near by.
+
+And in the inn where they were fain to tarry until strength should be
+given them for further journeying, it chanced that a young babe lay
+sorely stricken with the whooping-cough.
+
+Now, when Lydia knew this, her heart fainted with fear, and she
+prophesied evil.
+
+For well she knew that her own babes had not had the disease, and that
+the time of their prostration was at hand.
+
+So Lydia, being president of a Woman's Club, and accounted without a
+peer in the gift of words, sent for the keeper of the inn, that she
+might rebuke him.
+
+And she opened her mouth impulsively and questioned him saying: "Why
+broughtest thou me and the children heaven gave me into thine inn
+knowing that contagious disease lurked within its gates?"
+
+And the keeper of the inn shot out the lip at her and was undismayed.
+
+And he cried, "Go to! And what wouldst thou of a public house? Thou
+talkest like one with little sense!"
+
+And it came to pass that Lydia and her children departed thence by stage
+and sought the farm-house. And, arriving there, they would have laid
+themselves down to rest, being sorely bruised by reason of protracted
+stage-riding.
+
+But the beds were made of straw and corded underneath with ropes. So
+that lying upon them caused the children to roar loudly, and they found
+rest from their lamentations, four in a bed, on the bosom of Lydia.
+
+And, supper being served, it consisted of tinted warm water and
+gooseberries sweetened with brown sugar.
+
+Now Lydia, by reason of her connection with the club, was enabled to
+speak boldly, and she called for cream.
+
+But the wife of the farmer made answer, saying, "We have none."
+
+And Lydia spoke yet again, saying, "Why, O woman of many wiles, hast
+thou no cream?"
+
+And the woman made way with an insect that swam gaily in a pitcher of
+azure milk, and said gently, "Because we sell it to a neighboring
+dairy."
+
+And Lydia said nothing, but remembering the words of John, the
+tea-merchant, wept silently.
+
+And it came to pass that next morning the children went forth to leap in
+the hay.
+
+And the farmer led them firmly away from the hay-mow by the tip of the
+ear, saying, "I allow no children to spoil my fodder."
+
+And the morning of the second day, the woman Lydia, being starved for
+nutritious food, wended her way with her babes across a stretch of
+pasture land in search of wild blackberries.
+
+And a beast, whose voice was baritone and whose approach was like the
+approach of a Kansas cyclone, bore down upon her and the children
+heaven had given her, while yet they were midway in the meadow. Now only
+by leaping could they save themselves.
+
+And it came to pass that they leaped mightily and flung themselves over
+a five-barred fence.
+
+And a snake made free with the draperies of Lydia, so that her hair
+whitened with fear, and between the beast with the baritone voice and
+the serpent she knew not which way to turn.
+
+And the morning of the third day she wrote to John, the tea-merchant,
+saying only:
+
+"My darling--Meet the first train that returns from this place to the
+dear city by the lake, for behold! I and the children heaven sent me are
+on our homeward way!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+IMPATIENCE.
+
+  A sweet little crocus came up through the mold,
+  And hugged round her shoulders her mantle of gold,
+  While tears of distress fringed her delicate eye,
+  Like rain drops that start from a showery sky.
+
+  "Where, pray, are those laggards, the violets blue?
+  The roses and lilies and daffodils too?
+  I really think it's a shame and a sin
+  This waiting so long for the spring to begin.
+
+  "The first day of April and only one bird
+  Since I lifted my head has uttered a word!
+  And search as I may all over the meadow
+  Not even a cowslip has shown its bright head, O--
+
+  "Misery me! Sure there's no use in waiting,
+  For something, no doubt, is the summer belating;
+  So I'll go back to bed, put on my lace night cap,
+  And snatch, for a fortnight, a nice little cat-nap!"
+
+  Down went little Gold-head, back to her pillow;
+  When, all in a twinkling, up over the hill, O,
+  The wind-flower host, with rose-tinted banners,
+  Marched into the world; Queen Summer's forerunners.
+
+  Her rose maids of honor, in filmiest laces,
+  Loitered and lingered in shy woodland places;
+  And white-vested lilies were ever at prayer;
+  Their vespers, the perfume that sweetened the air.
+
+  The apple trees blushed into delicate splendor;
+  The blue birds hung over in ecstasy tender,
+  While the gold powdered bee with helmet all dusty
+  Kept watch over the flowers, a sentinel trusty.
+
+  The robin sang love to his shy little sweetheart;
+  The orioles lashed their nests in the tree top;
+  The willows drooped low over swift water courses,
+  And murmuring brooks started fresh from their sources.
+
+  But down in the gloom, on her dream-haunted pillow,
+  As pale and as cold as the moon on the billow,
+  Forgot and unmissed by bird and by blossom,
+  The crocus slept sound in the earth's faithful bosom.
+
+  When at last she awoke, the spring had been banished,
+  Her forerunner flowers from the hillside had vanished.
+  And all of the bees had turned into stock brokers.
+  And even the birds had changed into croakers.
+
+  'Tis only by waiting we find our fruition;
+  To learn how to wait is a needed tuition.
+  The faint-hearted people who go to sleep fretting,
+  Will wake up at last too late for the getting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If there is anything more utterly desolate than a poorly-conducted farm,
+preserve me from it. There is an ideal farm familiar to the writers of
+pretty tales, where everything is kept in apple-pie order throughout
+the year, and where one can walk broadcast, so to speak, in a spick and
+span white gown without attracting so much as the shadow of a shade of
+minutest defilement. We have seen pictures of such farms wherein sleek
+cattle stood around knee-deep in dewy clover, or lay serenely on
+polished hillsides, or meandered dreamily by crystal streams; wherein
+pale pink farm-houses with green gables and yellow piazzas, fairly
+scintillated from behind decorous foliage, and peacocks, with tails
+nearly as long as the Mississippi River, posed on the gate-posts;
+wherein neat little boys in variegated trousers rode prancing chargers
+down blooming lanes, and correct little girls in ruffled underclothing
+fed well-mannered chickens from morning till night. But the actual farm
+of the remote rural districts is about as much like its ideal picture as
+Esau was like a modern dude. Not long ago somebody suggested that I go
+and board for a fortnight at a farm-house. "You will have perfect rest,"
+said my friend, "and that is what you need." So I went, and rather than
+again undergo the torments of the five days spent in that restful (?)
+spot I think I would cheerfully hire out with a Siberian chain-gang. In
+the first place there was no such a thing as rest possible after the
+first glimmer of each day's dawn. Every rooster on the farm, and there
+were millions of them, was up "for keeps" long before sunrise. Their
+united chorus smote the skies. One might as well have tried to sleep
+through Gettysburg's battle. A score or so of bereaved cows lamented all
+night for their murdered babies, and a couple of donkeys, kept purely
+for ornamental purposes, made sounds every half hour or so that turned
+my hair snow white with terror. After breakfast each day I used to walk
+down the hill and fish for pickerel in a river that had no current, and
+looked discouraged. "Walked," did I say? Nay, there was nothing so
+decorous as a walk possible down the slippery, stony descent which led
+to the haunts of the pickerel. When I didn't hurl myself down that hill,
+I slid down, and between the two methods I wrecked both muscle and shoe
+leather. The latter part of the way led through a pasture devoted to
+several cows and a bull. As I am more afraid of the latter than of death
+and all his cohorts, my morning walks ended in heart failures and had to
+be abandoned. Occasionally I would take a book and go out and sit in my
+hammock. Then the large roosters, each one of them at least seven feet
+tall and highly ruffled about the legs, would come around and look at
+me, so that I would have to go into the house to hide my embarrassment.
+I know of nothing harder to endure than the stare of a Brahma fowl,
+especially if one is a bit nervous and overworked. Nervous prostration
+has sprung from lighter causes.
+
+Nothing happened while I was at the farm but meal time, and the
+intervals were so long between those episodes that I used to wonder
+daily at my own mission subsequent to the farm-life as one gropes for
+prehistoric clues. There was a man about the premises who walked to and
+from the village twice a day with a large brown jug. When I asked at
+different times what he fetched in the jug, not because I wanted to
+know, but merely to find a topic of conversation, I was successively
+told that it was "kerosene," "maple molasses," "buttermilk," and
+"vinegar." I wish I knew if I was told the truth every time, or if
+somebody tried to impose upon me merely because I was town-bred.
+
+Occasionally we took rides over stony trails where boulders and ruts
+marked the way, and only the creaking of our bones broke the primeval
+silence. These rides were supposed to be part of the generous plan of
+contemplated rest, but a few more of them would have resulted in the
+rest from which there is no awaking. No, my dear, I am an ardent lover
+of the country, and I love it as the epicure loves a good dinner, or the
+musician loves music, but I will take it, please, without the
+accessories of a poorly-kept hoosier farm. I do not yearn for the
+defilements of a barn-yard that is never cleansed, nor for the
+frolicsomeness of pigs that wander at their own sweet will, nor for the
+clamor of aggressively alert poultry, nor for piscatorial delights. I
+love the country as God made it before greed and gain and all the
+abominations of man entered into and spoiled it. I love it clean and
+wholesome and sweet, as it was turned out of the workshop; its streams
+untainted, and their banks unbereft of beautiful trees; its hills still
+covered with verdure, and its winds uncontaminated with the scent of
+defiling drains and waterways.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have seen him! Actually seen him! Shall I say the coming man? No,
+rather let us call him the vanished type, the stalwart, full-blooded,
+glorious "might have been" of nature. Not an exotic, but the indigenous
+growth of a soil fed by breeze and sun. No earmuffs about him; no
+cringing withdrawal into mufflers before the advance of winter blasts.
+No cowardly retreat into furry overcoats, mittens and gum shoes.
+
+"Amber," said a fellow traveler the other day, "yonder is a man after
+your own heart. He has not worn an overcoat or heavyweight flannels for
+six years. He never buttons up his coat save when it rains. What do you
+think of him?"
+
+"Think of him!" said I; "were it not for a lingering regard for the
+conventionalities, I should walk right over to that man and say: 'Sir, I
+thank you for the sight of a man--not a human lily bud! You have struck
+the right way of living, and you will be a hale and handsome man when
+the enfeebled race that surrounds you have toddled into the
+consumptive's grave or are sneezing upon their catarrhal pilgrimage to
+the tomb.'" The man was worth looking at, hale and hearty, his chest like
+the convex curve of a barrel, his eye like a falcon's.
+
+"But," said my friend, "were I to throw aside my overcoat and go forth
+unprotected this freezing weather, the exposure would surely kill me!"
+
+"No doubt it would," was my cheerful reply. "There are always a host to
+die before any reform is achieved or victory accomplished. You have
+coddled yourself so long between blankets and absorbed red-hot furnace
+heat until you haven't the stamina of an aspen leaf. Take a hot-house
+flower out of doors and it soon wilts. But mark the beautiful Edelweiss
+of the Alps--it thrives in the pure breath of eternal snow." But what is
+the use of talking? Although my tongue became a golden bell and my pen a
+gleaming flame, I could never convince you, my dear old, shivery, shaky
+public, of the advantage of fresh air and plenty of it, and the
+advisability of a generous cultivation of nature and her free gifts. As
+well expect to be nourished by looking at your food through an opera
+glass as hope to be strong and stalwart upon a homeopathic allowance of
+pure air and sunshine, or in spite of the devices you plan to shut
+yourself away and hermetically seal your body, as it were, from the
+sweet, health-giving influence of sun and wind and frost. Just stop a
+moment before you turn away from this subject, my dear, and hear a
+little story. I know the subject is a bore and that I am a crank, but
+listen. Once there was a grand beneficent power--call it God if you
+will--who planned a spot wherein to place some atom which he had shaped
+out of dust and vivified with a spark of his own life. He looked about a
+little, we will imagine, and finally settled upon a garden wherein to
+place these precious pensioners on his care. A roofless, wall-less spot
+full of draughts and dew, breezes and blossoms. He filled it with birds
+and carpeted it with grass, set rivulets running through it for "water
+works" and sunbeams and starbeams for "electric light" plants, etc. That
+is all I have to say. Like the Mother Morey legend my story is done
+before it is scarcely begun. But ask yourself the question, Why didn't
+God put his well-beloved models of the forthcoming race into a more
+sheltered place if there was so much danger in fresh air, draughts and
+chilly weather? Why didn't he seal them up behind double windows in an
+airless, sunless, hot and unhealthful home where the dear things could
+keep warm? Because he was God and knew everything, and not man and knew
+nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, the old ship Time has put into port again to take on a new cargo
+of good resolutions, earnest resolves and patented schemes, before
+setting sail for the shores of a distant future. Ten to one she goes to
+pieces on the breakers before ever sighting land again, and a hundred to
+ninety-nine her cargo is thrown overboard before she reaches mid-sea.
+The channel is narrow and the rocks lie thick as peas in a marrowfat
+pod, and many more bales of choice merchandise find the bottom of the
+sea each year than are ever delivered to the good angel consignee. "I am
+going to be the best girl in all the world," says the poor little
+Captain on New Year's eve. Behold! the hours have not swung around the
+diurnal circle before there is a wild onslaught from shadowland, and the
+brave captain is left wounded on the field. Only a tender hand and
+tireless patience can set her on her feet again.
+
+"I will eschew debt as I would poison, and starve before I will commit
+an indiscretion," cries the Doctor as he sets sail for the untried sea.
+Within the first watch he hauls down his colors from the mast head,
+captured by a pirate extravagance.
+
+"I will be gentle of speech and courteous and sweet to all!" says the
+Young Person, and gayly steers for the open channel. Midway she
+encounters a rock of annoyance and the air is stormy with irritable
+words that fly and beat like stinging rain. Ah, well, my dear, thank the
+good Lord there are life-saving stations all along the shore, and no
+wreck was ever yet so hopeless but Infinite Love could set it afloat
+again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There is just one person born who has a right to this thoroughfare, and
+that is I!" muses the woman with the umbrella as she walks the crowded
+streets on a rainy day. "I am in possession of that part of the universe
+immediately contiguous to the spot on which I stand, and I shall make
+myself just as much of a nuisance as I choose. I shall jab out your
+eyes, and knock off your hat, and clip your ears, and stab your back
+with my umbrella tip just as often and as violently as I choose. I shall
+run into you from behind, and bump into you, and knock you down if I so
+desire, and none shall say me nay. I am not very tall, but all the
+better for my plans if I am not. If I were of the same height as you I
+should not be able to take you under the hat-brim as I do, and jab you
+in the nostril as I pass. If I choose to cut criss-cross through a
+crowd, who shall forbid me, being a woman? I can be just as rude and
+just as mean as I want to be, and who is going to hinder, so long as I
+wear a gown and call myself a lady? If I were a man and manifested the
+reckless thirst for universal carnage that I do you would call the
+patrol and bear me away to the lock-up; but being a poor little,
+innocent woman I have it all my own way."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I know a wife who is waiting, safe and sound in her father's home, for
+her young husband to earn the money single-handed to make a home worthy
+of her acceptance. She makes me think of the first mate of a ship who
+should stay on shore until the captain tested the ability of his vessel
+to weather the storm. Back to your ship, you cowardly one! If the boat
+goes down, go down with it, but do not count yourself worthy of any fair
+weather you did not help to gain! A woman who will do all she can to win
+a man's love merely for the profit his purse is going to be to her, and
+will desert him when the cash runs low, is a bad woman and carries a bad
+heart in her bosom. Why, you are never really wedded until you have had
+dark days together. What earthly purpose would a cable serve that never
+was tested by a weight? Of what use is the tie that binds wedded hearts
+together if like a filament of floss it parts when the strain is brought
+to bear upon it? It is not when you are young, my dear, when the skies
+are blue and every wayside weed flaunts a summer blossom, that the story
+of your life is recorded. It is when "Darby and Joan" are faded and
+wasted and old, when poverty has nipped the roses, when trouble and want
+and care have flown like uncanny birds over their heads (but never yet
+nested in their hearts, thank God!), that the completed chronicle of
+their lives furnishes the record over which approving heaven smiles and
+weeps.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is one thing I learn day by day in my strollings about town, and
+that is that nobody is going to give me dollar values for half-dollar
+equivalents. In these days when the best of folks go mad on bargains we
+seem to think it is an easy thing to get something for nothing, but I
+have yet to see the day when we can. There are cheap restaurants where
+they serve you roast turkey for a quarter, but don't fool yourself! It
+is not the same kind of bird they serve in a high-class place for a
+dollar. You look at your check when you come out from an economical
+kitchen with a feeling of glee that you have got so much for so little.
+But how about the flavor that lingers in your mouth? How about the
+display of pine toothpicks and spotted linen? How about the
+finger-marked drinking glasses and damp napkins? No, no; poor as I am I
+would rather pay my dollar and get a dollar's worth of cleanliness and
+daintiness and flavor than save seventy-five cents and do without them.
+Sure as you live and sure as the world is operated on a
+self-accommodative basis, you never will get a first-water diamond
+without you pay first-water diamond equivalents.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other day there was a little girl, scarce 16 years of age, who
+started away for the first time from home and mother. She was brave and
+gay in a new suit, new boots and a new hat with a feather the color of a
+linnet's wing. She carried a bunch of the loveliest sweet peas at her
+dainty waist and on her face there played a sunburst of smiles. She had
+not been five hours in the place appointed her to visit when her mother
+received the following letter:
+
+"My Precious Mamma: I am writing this in my room before I am called to
+breakfast. None but God can know what I suffer! Not until I am in your
+arms once more will you know what I am going through! If you love me let
+me come home. Don't tell anyone, but let me come if you love me! Don't
+send the shoes--I shall not need them--but let me come home! Think what
+I must suffer so far away from you. I shall sell my ring and buy a
+ticket if you do not telegraph that I may come!"
+
+And as I read the pathetic letter between my smiles and tears I thought
+to myself, is there anything on earth so hard to bear as
+homesickness--first homesickness, when the heart is new to sorrow? I
+would rather have any disease the laboratory of evil keeps in stock than
+one pang of what that little girl was suffering when she penciled that
+letter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Around in a picture store on one of the avenues I chanced upon a
+painting that attracted not only myself, but a crowd of people from the
+street. It represented a lion's cage barred with heavy barriers of iron.
+On the floor of the den is the figure of a beautiful girl stretched in a
+deathlike swoon. There are orange blossoms in her hair, and the flush on
+her cheek has had no time to fade. Crouched by her side, one great paw
+on her breast and another at her waist, is a wrathful lion whose evident
+intention is to tear his victim into bonbon fragments. I wish somebody
+would explain that picture to me. I am tired conjecturing how the bride
+strayed into the lion's quarters, and where her husband was that he
+shouldn't be taking better care of her, and why there was nobody on hand
+to help at this critical moment portrayed on the canvas. Young married
+women are not supposed to be visiting zoological gardens when they ought
+to be changing their white satin favors for their traveling gowns. The
+picture seems a puzzler to all who watch it, and as the crowd is great
+the confusion of wits is catching.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE TRYST.
+
+  Where a woodland path, like a silver line,
+    Winds by a woodland river,
+  And half in shadow, and half in shine,
+    The alders lean and shiver,
+  Where a forest bird has built him a nest
+    Low in the springing grasses,
+  And all the day long, with her wings at rest,
+    His mate the slow time passes;
+
+  Where a flood of gold through the forest dim
+    Tells when the noon is strongest,
+  And a purple fringe on the forest's rim
+    Proclaims when the shades are longest;
+  Where the dawn is only known from the night
+    By the birds that sing their sweetest,
+  And the twilight hush from the morning light
+    By the peace that is then completest;
+
+  Where only the flood of silvery haze
+    Shall tell that the moon is risen,
+  When down from the sky, like a meteor blaze,
+    Shall flutter her snow-white ribbon,--
+  I will meet you there, my lady love sweet,
+    When the weary world is sleeping,
+  And the frets of the day, that tireless beat,
+    Are hushed in the night's close keeping;
+
+  Not missing the world--by the world unmissed--
+    We two shall wander together,
+  And whether we chided, or whether we kissed,
+    There'll be none to forget or remember;
+  And when at the last asleep you shall fall,
+    By the shore of the musical river,
+  Of the crimson leaves I will weave you a pall,
+    And kiss you good-by, love, forever.
+
+  But the stars up above, and the waters below,
+    Shall sing of us, over and over;
+  Of the tryst that we kept in the years long ago,
+    In the woods by the beautiful river.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+
+  Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from
+  the original.
+
+  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected as follows:
+
+    Page  35: "blase" changed to "blase"
+    Page  53: "neighors" changed to "neighbors"
+    Page  98: "patroled" changed to "patrolled"
+    Page 129: "meed" changed to "need"
+
+  Punctuation has been corrected without note.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Rosemary and Rue, by Amber
+
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