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diff --git a/42923-8.txt b/42923-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index ff719cf..0000000 --- a/42923-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7597 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's The Doctor's Christmas Eve, by James Lane Allen - -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: The Doctor's Christmas Eve - -Author: James Lane Allen - -Release Date: June 12, 2013 [EBook #42923] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOCTOR'S CHRISTMAS EVE *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Bergquist, Ernest Schaal, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) - - - - - - - - - - THE DOCTOR'S CHRISTMAS EVE - - - - - [Illustration] - - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO - ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO - - MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED - LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA - MELBOURNE - - THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. - TORONTO - - - - - THE DOCTOR'S CHRISTMAS EVE - - - _Secretum meum mihi_ - FRANCIS OF ASSISI - - - BY - JAMES LANE ALLEN - - AUTHOR OF "THE BRIDE OF THE MISTLETOE," "THE CHOIR - INVISIBLE," "A SUMMER IN ARCADY," ETC. - - - =New York= - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - 1910 - _All rights reserved_ - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1910, - BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. - * * * * * - Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1910. - - - =Norwood Press= - J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. - Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. - - - - - TO THE SOWER - - - - - PREFACE - - -THIS work now published under the title of "The Doctor's Christmas Eve" -is the one earlier announced for publication under the title of "A Brood -of the Eagle." - - - - - "The Doctor, Herbert and Elsie's father, our nearest neighbor, - your closest friend now in middle life--do you ever tire of the - Doctor and wish him away?" - - "The longer I know him, the more I like him, honor him, trust - him." - - --_The Bride of the Mistletoe._ - - - - - CONTENTS - - PART FIRST - - I - PAGE - THE CHILDREN OF DESIRE 1 - - II - WHEN A SON FINDS OUT ABOUT HIS FATHER 32 - - III - THE BOOKS OF THE YEAR 69 - - IV - THE BOOK OF THE YEARS 107 - - V - EVERGREEN AND THORN TREE 195 - - - PART SECOND - - I - TWO OTHER WINTER SNOWBIRDS AT A WINDOW 213 - - II - FOUR IN A CAGE 233 - - III - THE REALM OF MIDNIGHT 258 - - IV - TIME-SPIRIT AND ETERNAL SPIRIT 271 - - V - WHEN A FATHER FINDS OUT ABOUT A SON 285 - - VI - LIVING OUT THE YEARS 297 - - - - - PART I - - - - - THE DOCTOR'S CHRISTMAS EVE - - - I - - THE CHILDREN OF DESIRE - - -THE morning of the twenty-fourth of December a quarter of a century ago -opened upon the vast plateau of central Kentucky as a brilliant but -bitter day--with a wind like the gales of March. - -Out in a neighborhood of one of the wealthiest and most thickly settled -counties, toward the middle of the forenoon, two stumpy figures with -movements full of health and glee appeared on a hilltop of the treeless -landscape. They were the children of the neighborhood physician, a man -of the highest consequence in his part of the world; and they had come -from their home, a white and lemon-colored eighteenth-century manor -house a mile in their rear. Through the crystalline air the chimneys of -this low structure, rising out of a green girdle of cedar trees, could -be seen emptying unusual smoke which the wind in its gambolling pounced -upon and jerked away level with the chimney-tops. - -But if you had stood on the hill where the two children climbed into -view and if your eye could have swept round the horizon with adequate -radius of vision, it would everywhere have been greeted by the same -wondrous harmonious spectacle: out of the chimneys of all dwellings -scattered in comfort and permanence over that rich domestic land--a land -of Anglo-Saxon American homes--more than daily winter smoke was pouring: -one spirit of preparation, one mood of good will, warmed houses and -hearts. The whole visible heaven was receiving the incense of Kentucky -Christmas fires; the whole visible earth was a panorama of the common -peace. - -The two dauntless, frost-defying wayfarers--what Emerson, meeting them -in the depths of a New England winter, might have called two scraps of -valor--were following across fields and meadows and pastures one of the -footpaths which children who are friendly neighbors naturally make in -order to get to each other, as the young of wild creatures trace for -themselves upon the earth some new map of old hereditary traits and -cravings. For the goal of their journey they were hurrying toward a -house not yet in sight but hardly more than a mile ahead, where they -were to spend Christmas Day and share in an old people's and children's -Christmas-Tree party on Christmas Night--and where also they were to put -into execution a plot of their own: about which a good deal is to be -narrated. - -They were thus transferring the nation's yearly festival of the home -from their own roof-tree to that of another family as the place where it -could be enacted and enjoyed. The tragical meaning of this arrangement -was but too well understood by their parents. To them the abandonment of -their own fireside at the season when its bonds should have been -freshened and deepened scarcely seemed an unnatural occurrence. The -other house had always been to them as a secondary home. It was the -residence of their father's friend, a professor in the State University -situated some miles off across fine country. His two surviving children, -a boy and a girl of about their own ages, had always been their intimate -associates. And the woman of that household--the wife, the mother--all -their lives they had been mysteriously impelled toward this gentlewoman -by a power of which they were unconscious but by which they had been -swayed. - -The little girl wore a crimson hood and a brown cloak and the boy a -crimson skull cap and a brown overcoat; and both wore crimson mittens; -and both were red-legged and red-footed; for stockings had been drawn -over their boots to insure warmth and to provide safeguard against -slipping when they should cross the frozen Elkhorn or venture too -friskily on silvery pools in the valley bottoms. - -The chestnut braids of the girl falling heavily from under her hood met -in a loop in the middle of her broad fat back and were tied there with a -snip of ribbon that looked like a feather out of the wing of a bluejay. -Her bulging hips overreached the borders of the narrow path, so that the -boy was crowded out upon the rough ground as he struggled forward close -beside her. She would not allow him to walk in front of her and he -disdained to walk behind. - -"Then walk beside me or go back!" she had said to him, laughing -carelessly. - -She looked so tight inside her wrappings, so like a jolly ambulatory -small barrel well hooped and mischievously daubed here and there with -vermilion, that you might have had misgivings as to the fate of the -barrel, were it to receive a violent jolt and be rolled over. No thought -of such mishap troubled her as she trotted forward, balancing herself as -lightly on her cushioned feet as though she were wind-carried -thistledown. Nor was she disturbed by her selfishness in monopolizing -the path and forcing her brother to encounter whatsoever the winter -earth obtruded--stumps of forest trees, brambles of blackberry, sprouts -of cane, or stalks of burdock and of Spanish needle. His footing was -especially troublesome when he tried to straddle wide corn-rows with his -short legs; or when they crossed a hemp-field where the butt-ends of the -stalks serried the frost-gray soil like bayonet points. Altogether his -exertions put him out of breath somewhat, for his companion was fleet -and she made no allowance for his delays and difficulties. - -Her hands, deep in the fleece-lined mittens, were comfortably warm; but -she moreover kept them thrust into a muff of white fur, which also -looked overfed and seemed of a gay harmony with its owner. This muff she -now and then struck against her flexed knees in a vixenish playfulness -as one beats a tambourine on a bent elbow; and at a certain point of the -journey, having glanced sidewise at him and remarked his breath on the -icy air, she lifted it to her mouth and spoke guardedly from behind -it:-- - -"Remember the last thing Papa told us at the window, Herbert: we were to -keep our mouths closed and to breathe through our noses. And remember -also, my child, that we were to rely upon--_especially_ to rely -upon--the ribs and the diaphragm! I wonder why he thought it necessary -to tell us that! Did he suppose that as soon as we got by ourselves or -arrived at the Ousleys', we'd begin to rely upon something else, and -perhaps try to breathe with our spines and elbows?" - -Her eyes sparkled with mischief, and her laughter had the audacity of a -child's satire, often more terrible in its small world than a sage's in -his larger one. The instant she spoke, you recognized the pertness and -precocity of an American child--which, when seen at its best or at its -worst, is without precedent or parallel among the world's children. She -was the image of a hard bold crisp newness. Her speech was new, her -ideas were new, her impertinence was new--except in this country. She -appeared to have gathered newness during her short life, to be newer -than the day she was born. The air was full of frost spangles that -zigzagged about her as she danced along; they rather seemed like -particles of salt especially provided to escort her character. If it had -been granted Lot's wife with tears of repentance to dissolve away the -crystals of her curiosity and resume the duties of motherhood,--though -possibly permeated by a mild saline solution as a warning,--that -salt-cured matron might admirably have adapted herself to the decrees of -Providence by producing Elsie. - -The boy as she administered her caution stopped; and shutting his own -red mouth, which was like hers though more generous, he drew a long -breath through his nostrils; then, throwing back his head, he blew this -out with an open-mouthed puff, and a column of white steam shot up into -the blue ether and was whirled away by the wind. He stood studying it -awhile as it disappeared, for he was a close observer always--a -perpetual watcher of the thing that is--sometimes an observer fearful to -confront. Then he sprang forward to catch up with his sharp-tongued -monitress, who had hurried on. As he came alongside, he turned his face -toward her and made his reply, which was certainly deliberate enough in -arriving:-- - -"We have to be _taught_ the best way to breathe, Elsie; as anything -else!" - -The defence only brought on a fresh attack:-- - -"I wonder who teaches the young of other animals how to breathe! I -should like to know who teaches kittens and puppies and calves and -lambs how to breathe! How _do_ they ever manage to get along without -country doctors among them! Imagine a middle-aged sheep--old Dr. -Buck--assembling a flock of lambs and trying to show them how to -breathe!" Judging from Elsie's expression, the lambs in the case could -not have thought very highly of this queer and genial Dr. Buck. - -"But _they_ are all four-legged creatures, Elsie; and _they_ breathe -backward and forward; if you are a two-legged animal and stand up -straight, you breathe up and down: it's quite different! It's easier!" - -"Then I suppose the fewer legs a thing has, the harder it is to get its -breath. And I suppose if we ventured to stand on _one_ leg, we'd all -soon suffocate! Dear me! why _don't_ all one-legged people die at once!" - -The lad looked over the field of war on which it would seem that he was -being mowed down by small-gun fire before he could get his father's -heavy artillery into action. He decided to terminate the wordy -engagement, a prudential manoeuvre of the wiser head but slower tongue. - -"Father is right," he declared. His manner of speaking was sturdy and -decisive: it was meant to remind her first that he had enough gallantry -as a male to permit her to crowd him out of the path; but that the -moment a struggle for mental footing arose between them, he reserved the -whole road: the female could take to the weeds! He notified her also -that he stood with his father not only in this puzzling question of legs -and parlous types of respiration, but that the men in the family were -regularly combined against the women--like good organized against evil! - -But now something further had transpired. Had there been present on the -winter fields that morning an ear trained to separate our complex human -tones into simple ones--to disengage one from another the different -fibres of meaning which always make up even the slenderest tendril of -sound (as there is a cluster of grapes to a solitary stem), it might, as -it noted one thing, have discovered another. While the boy asserted his -father to be right in the matter they were debating, there escaped from -him an accent of admission that his father was wrong--wrong in some far -graver affair which was his discovery and his present trouble. - -Therefore his voice, which should have been buoyant, for the instant was -depressed; and his face, which should have been a healthy boy's happy -face, was overcast as by a foreign interference. You might have likened -it to a small luminary upon the shining disk of which a larger body, -traversing its darkened orbit, has just begun to project a wavering -shadow. And thus some patient astronomer of our inter-orbited lives, -sweeping the spiritual heavens for signs of its pendent mysteries, here -might have arrested his telescope to watch the portent of a celestial -event: was there to take place the eclipse of a son by a father? - -Certainly at least this weight of responsibility on the voice must have -caused it to strike only the more winningly upon any hearer. It was such -a devoted, loyal voice when he thus spoke of his father, with a curious -quavering huskiness of its own, as though the bass note of his distant -manhood were already beginning to clamor to be heard. - -The voice of the little girl contrariwise was a shrill treble. Had you -first become aware of it at your back, you must instantly have wheeled -to investigate the small creature it came from, as a wild animal quickly -turns to face any sound that startles its instincts. Voltaire might have -had such a voice if he had been a little girl. Yet to look at her, you -would never have imagined that anything but the honey of speech could -have dripped from so perfect a little rose. (Many surprises await -mankind behind round amiable female faces: shrews are not _all_ thin.) - -Instead of being silenced by her brother's ultimatum, she did not deign -to notice it, but continued to direct her voluble satire at her -father--quite with the air of saying that a girl who can satirize a -parent is not to be silenced by a son. - -"... forever telling us that American children must have the newest and -best way of doing everything.... My, my, my! The working of our jaws! -And the drinking and the breathing; and the stretching and the bending: -developing everything we have--and everything we haven't! I am even -trying now to find an original American way to go to sleep at night and -to wake up in the morning! Dear me, but old people can be silly without -knowing it!" She laughed with much self-approval. - -For Elsie had already entered into one of mankind's most dependable -recreations--the joy of listening to our own words: into that economic -arrangement of nature whereby whatsoever a human being might lose -through the vocal cords is returned to the owner along the auditory -nerve! So that a woman can eat her colloquial cake times over: and each -time, having devoured it, can return it to the storeroom and have it -brought out as whole and fresh as ever--sometimes actually increased in -size. And a man can send his vocal Niagara through his whirlpool rapids -and catch it again above the falls! The more gold the delver unearths, -the more he can empty back into the thinking mine. One can sit in his -own cranial theatre and produce his own play: he can be stage and -orchestra, audience and critic; and he can see that the claque does not -get drowsy and slack: it never does--in _this_ case! - -The child now threw back her round winter-rose of a face and started -along the path with a fresh outburst of speed and pride. Access of -impertinence seemed to have released in her access of vitality. Perhaps -it had. Perhaps it always does. Perhaps life itself at the full is sheer -audacity. - -The lad scrambled roughly along, and merely repeated the words that -sufficed for him:-- - -"Father knows." - -Suddenly he gave a laughing outcry, and stood still. - -"Look!" he called out, with amusement at his plight. - -He had run into some burdock, and the nettles had stuck to his yarn -stockings like stinging bees--a cluster of them about his knees and -calves. He drew off his gloves, showing the strong, overgrown hands of -boyhood: they, like his voice, seemed impatiently reaching out for -maturity. - -When he overtook his companion, who had not stopped, he had transferred -a few of the burrs to his skull cap. He had done this with crude -artistry--from some faint surviving impulse of primitive man to decorate -his body with things around him in nature: especially his head (possibly -he foresaw that his head would be most struck at). The lad was pleased -with his caper; and, smiling, thrust his head across her path, expecting -her to take sympathetic notice. He had reason to expect this, because on -dull rainy days at home he often amused her with the things he did and -the things he made: for he was a natural carpenter and toy-maker. But -now she took only the contemptuous notice of disapproval. This morning -her mind was intent on playthings of positive value: she was a little -travelling ten-toed pagoda of holiday greed. Every Christmas she -prepared for its celebration with a balancing eye to what it would cost -her and what it would bring in: she always calculated to receive more -than she gave: for Elsie, the Nativity must be made _to pay_! - -He resented her refusal to approve his playfulness by so much as a -smile, and he came back at her by doing worse:-- - -"Why didn't I think to bring all the burrs along and make a Christmas -basket for Elizabeth? Now what will I give her?" - -This drew out a caustic comment quickly enough:-- - -"Poor Elizabeth!" - -A child resents injustice with a blow or rage or tears: the old have -learned to endure without a sign--waiting for God's day of judgment (or -their first good opportunity!). - -He was furious at the way she said "Poor Elizabeth"--as though -Elizabeth's hands would be empty of gifts from him. - -"You _know_ I have _bought_ my presents for Elizabeth, Elsie!" he -exclaimed. "But Elizabeth thinks more of what I _make_ than of what I -_buy_," he continued hotly. "And the less it is worth, the more she -values it. But you can't understand _that_, Elsie! And you needn't try!" - -The little minx laughed with triumph that she had incensed him. - -"I don't expect to try!" she retorted blithely. "I don't see that I'd -gain anything, if I _did_ understand. You and Elizabeth are a great deal -too--" - -He interrupted overbearingly:-- - -"Leave Elizabeth out! Confine your remarks to me!" - -"My remarks will be wholly unconfined," said Elsie, as she trotted -forward. - -He scrambled alongside in silent rage. Perhaps he was thinking of his -inability to reach protected female license. He may obscurely have felt -that life's department of justice was being balked at the moment by its -department of natural history--a not uncommon interference in this too -crowded world. At least he put himself on record about it:-- - -"If you were a boy, Elsie, you'd get taken down a buttonhole!" - -"Don't you worry about my buttonholes!" chirped Elsie. "My buttonholes -are where they ought to be!" - -It was not the first time that he had made something of this sort for -Elizabeth. One morning of the May preceding he had pulled apart the -boughs of a blooming lilac bush in the yard, and had seen a nest with -four pale-green eggs. That autumn during a ramble in the woods and -fields he had taken burrs and made a nest and deposited in it four -pale-green half-ripe horse chestnuts. - -Elizabeth, who did not amount to much in this world but breath and a -soft cloud of hair and sentiment, had loyally carried it off to her -cabinet of nests. These were duly arranged on shelves, and labelled -according to species and life and love: "The Meadow Lark's"--"The -Blue-bird's"--"The Orchard Oriole's"--"The Brown Thrasher's"; on and on -along the shelves. At the end of a row she placed this treasured -curiosity, and inscribed it, "An Imitation by a Young Animal." - -Elizabeth's humor was a mild beam. - -Do country children in that part of the world make such playthings now? -Do they still look to wild life and not wholly to the shops of cities -for the satisfying of their instincts for toys and games and fancies? - -Do alder stalks still race down dusty country lanes as thoroughbred -colts, afterwards to be tied in their stalls in fence corners with -halters of green hemp? Does any little rustic instrument-maker now -draw melodies from a homegrown corn-stalk? Across rattling -window-panes of old farm-houses--between withered sashes--during long -winter nights does there sound the ĉolian harp made with a hair from a -horse-tail? Do boys still squeeze the red juice of poke-berries on the -plumage of white barnyard roosters, thus whenever they wish bringing -on a cock-fight between old far-squandered Cochins, who long -previously had entered into a treaty as to their spheres of influence -in a Manchuria of hens? Do the older boys some wet night lead the -youngest around the corner of the house in the darkness and show him, -there! rising out of the ground! the long expected Devil come at last -(as a pumpkin carved and candle-lighted) for his own particular urchin? -When in autumn the great annual ceremony of the slaughter of the swine -takes place on the farms at the approach of the winter solstice,--a -festival running back to aboriginal German tribes before the beginnings -of agriculture, when the stock that had been fattened on the mast and -pasturage of the mountains was driven down into the villages and -perforce killed to keep it from starving,--when this carnival of flesh -recurs on Kentucky farms, do boys with turkey-quills or goose-quills -blow the bladders up, tie the necks and hang them in smoke-houses or -garrets to dry; and then at daybreak of Christmas morning, having warmed -and expanded them before the fire, do they jump on them and explode -them--a primitive folk-rite for making a magnificent noise ages older -than the use of crackers and cannon? - -Do children contrive their picture-frames by glueing October acorns and -pine-cones to ovals of boards and giving the mass a thick coat of -varnish? On winter nights do little girls count the seeds of the apples -they are eating and pronounce over them the incantation of their -destinies--thus in another guise going through the same charm of words -that Marguerite used as she scattered earthward the petals of trust and -ruin? Do they, sitting face to face bareheaded on sun-hued meadows, -pluck the dandelion when its seed are clustered at the top like a ball -of gauze, and with one breath try to blow these off: for the number of -seed that remain will tell the too many years before they shall be asked -in marriage? Do they slit the stems and cast them into the near brook -and watch them form into ringlets and floating hair--as of a water -spirit? Do they hold buttercups under each other's chins to see who -likes butter--that is, mind you, _good_ butter! Romping little Juliets -of Nature's proud courtyards--with young Montagues watching from afar! -Sane little Ophelias of the garland at the water's brink--secure for -many years yet from all sad Hamlets! Do country children do such things -and have such notions now? - -Perhaps once in a lifetime, on some summer day when the sky was filled -with effulgence and white clouds, you may have seen a large low-flying -bird cross the landscape straight away from you, so exactly poised under -the edge of a cloud, that one of the wings beat in shadow while the -other waved in light. Thus these two children, following their path over -the fields that morning, ran along the dividing-line between the -darkness and the light of their world. - -On one side of them lay the thinning shadow of man's ancient romance -with Nature which is everywhere most rapidly dying out in this -civilization--the shadow of that romance which for ages was the earliest -ray of his religion: in later centuries became the splendor of his art; -then loomed as the historic background of his titanic myths and fables; -and now only in obscure valleys is found lingering in the play of -superstitious children at twilights before darkness engulfs them--the -latest of the infants in the dusk of the oldest gods. - -On the other side blazed the hard clear light of that realism of human -life which is the unfolding brightness of the New World; that light of -reason and of reasonableness which seems to take from man both his -mornings and his evenings, with all their half-lights and their -mysteries; and to leave him only a perpetual noonday of the actual in -which everything loses its shadow. So the two ran that morning. But so -children ever run--between the fresh light and the old darkness of -ever-advancing humanity--between the world's new birth and a forgetting. - - * * * * * - - -On the brother and sister skipped and bounded, wild with health and -Christmas joy. Their quarrel was in a moment forgotten--happy children! -The nature of the little girl was not deep enough to remember a quarrel; -the boy's nature was too deep to remember one. Crimson-tipped, madcap, -winter spirits! The blue dome vaulting infinitely above them with all -its clouds pushed aside; the wind throwing itself upon them at every -step like some huge young animal force unchained for exercise and rude -in its good-natured play. As they crossed a woodland pasture the hoary -trees rocked and roared, strewing in their path bits of bark and rotten -twigs and shattered sprigs of mistletoe. In an open meadow a -yellow-breasted lark sprang reluctantly from its cuddling-place and -drifted far behind them on the rushing air. In a corn-field out of a -dried bunch of partridge grass a rabbit started softly and went bobbing -away over the corn-rows--with its white flag run up at the rear end of -the fortifications as a notice "Please not to shoot or otherwise -trespass!" Alas, that so palpable and polite a request should be treated -as so plain a target! - -Once the little girl changed her trotting gait to a walk nearly as fast, -so that her skirts swished from side to side of her plump hips with -wren-like energy and briskness. Her mind was still harping on her -father; and having satirized him, and adoring him, she now would fain -approve him. - -"My! but it's cold, Herbert! Papa says it is not sickness that plays -havoc with you: it's not being ready for sickness; and being ready -depends upon how you have lived: it depends upon what you are; and -that's where your virtue comes in, my child, if you have any virtue. We -have been taught to stay out of doors when it is cold; and now we can -come out when it is colder. We were ready for the crisis!" and Elsie -pushed her nose into the air with smallish amusement. - -The boy gravely pondered her words about crisis, and pondered his own -before replying:-- - -"I wonder what kind of children we'd have been if we'd had some other -father. Or some other _mother_," he added with a change of tone as he -uttered that last word; and he looked askance at his sister to see -whether she would glance at him. - -She kept her face set straight forward; but she impatiently exclaimed:-- - -"Others, others, others! You are always thinking of _others_, Herbert!" - -"I am one of them myself! I am one of the others myself!" cried the boy, -relieved that his secret was his own; and bounding suddenly on the earth -also as if with a sense of his kinship to its unseen host. - -The question he had asked marked him: for he was one of the children who -from the outset begin to ask of life what it means and who are surprised -when there is no one to tell them. For him there was no rest until he -solved some mystery or had at least found out where some mystery stood -abandoned on the road--a mystery still. Her intelligence stopped short -at what she perfectly knew. She saw with amazing clearness, but she -beheld very little. Hers was that order of intelligence which is gifted -with vision of almost terrifying accuracy--at short range: life is a -thin painted curtain, and its depths are the painted curtain's depths. - -Once they came to a pair of bars which led into a meadow. The bars were -of green timber and were very heavy. As he strained and tugged at them, -she waited close behind him, dancing to the right and to the left so -that there was a sound of mud-crystals being crushed under her -tyrannical little fat feet. - -"Hurry, hurry, hurry!" she exclaimed with impatience. "We may run in the -cold, but we must not stand still in the cold;" and she kicked him on -the heels and pummelled him between the shoulders with her muff. - -"I am doing my best," he said, laughing heartily. - -"Your best is not good enough," she urged, laughing heartily likewise. - -"This bar is wedged tight. It's the sap that's frozen to the post. Look -out there behind!" - -He stepped back, and, with a short run, lifted his leg and kicked the -bar with his full strength. The recoil threw him backward to the ground, -but he was quickly on his feet again; and as the bar was now loosened, -he let it down for her. She stepped serenely through and without looking -back or waiting trotted on. He put the bars up and with a spurt soon -overtook her, for the meadow they were now crossing had been closely -grazed in the autumn and there was better walking. They went up rising -ground and reached one of those dome-like elevations which are a feature -of the blue-grass country. - -Straight ahead of them half a mile away stood the house toward which -they were hastening; a two-story brick house, lifted a little above its -surroundings of yard and gardens and shrubbery and vines: an oak-tree -over its roof, cedar-trees near its windows, ivy covering one of its -walls, a lawn sloping from it to a thicket of evergreens where its -Christmas Tree each year was cut. - -The children greeted with fresh enthusiasm the sight of this charming, -this ideal place to which they were transferring their Christmas plans -and pleasures--abandoning their own hearthstone. There lived their -father's friend; there lived Harold and Elizabeth, their friends; and -there lived the wife and mother of the household--the woman toward whom -from their infancy they had been herded as by a driving hand. - -The tell-tale Christmas smoke of the land was pouring from its chimneys, -showing that it was being warmed through and through for coming guests -and coming festivities. At one end of the building, in an ell, was the -kitchen; it sent forth a volume of smoke, the hospitable invitations of -which there was no misunderstanding. At the opposite end was the parlor: -it stood for the Spirit, as the kitchen for the honest Flesh: the wee -travellers on the distant hilltop thought of the flesh first. - -They had no idea of the origin of the American Christmas. They did not -know that this vast rolling festival has migrated to the New World, -drawing with it things gathered from many lands and centuries; that the -cooking and the feasting crossed from pagan England; that the evergreen -with its lights and gifts came from pagan Germany; that the mystical -fireside with its stockings was introduced from Holland; that the -evergreen now awaiting them in the shut and darkened parlor of this -Kentucky farm-house represented the sacred Tree which has been found in -nearly every ancient land and is older than the Tree of Life in the -literature of Eden. - -As far as they thought of the antiquity of the Christmas festival at -all, it had descended straight from the Holy Land and the Manger of -Bethlehem; this error now led to complications. - -The boy's crimson skull-cap had a peak which curled forward; and -attached to this peak by several inches of crewel hung a round crimson -ball about the size of the seed-ball of a sycamore. The shifting wind -blew it hither and thither so that it buffeted him in the face and eyes. -On this exposed height, especially, the wind raced free; and he ducked -his head and turned his face sidewise toward her--an imp of winter -joy--as he shouted across the gale:-- - -"If people are still baking such quantities of cake in memory of -Christmas after all these hundreds of years, don't you suppose, Elsie, -that the Apostles must have been fearful cake-eaters? To have left such -an impression on the world! Cake _is_ a kind of sacred thing at home -even yet, isn't it? A fine cake looks still as if it was baked for an -Apostle! Doesn't it? Now doesn't it?" - -Elsie did not reply at once. Her younger brother was growing into the -habit of saying unexpected things. Once after he had left the breakfast -table, she had heard her father say to her mother that he had genius. -Elsie was not positive as to all that genius comprised; but she at once -decided that if she did not possess genius she did not wish genius. -However she packed herself off to her room and thought further about -this unpleasant parental discrimination. - -"If he has genius," she said finally, "at least he did not get it from -_them_," and there was a triumph in her eye. "I see not the slightest -sign of genius in either of _them:_ he must have gotten it from our -grandparents--never from _them_!" - -From that moment she had begun to oppose her mind to his mind as a -superior working instrument in a practical world. Whenever he put forth -a fancy, she put forth a fact; and the fact was meant to extinguish the -fancy as a muffler puts out a candle. After a moment she now -replied--with a mind that had repudiated genius:-- - -"Nothing is said in the New Testament, my child, about cake. The only -thing mentioned is loaves and fishes. But they _do_ seem to have done an -unconscionable amount of dining on bread and fish!" and Elsie had her -own satirical laugh at the table customs of ancient Palestine as viewed -from the Kentucky standard of the nineteenth century. - -The boy before replying deliberated as always. - -"They may not have had cake, but they had meat: because they said he sat -with sinners at meat. I wonder why it was always _the sinners_ who got -_the meat_!" - -Elsie could offer no personal objection to this: Providence had ordained -her to dwell in the tents of flesh herself. - -"How could they feed five thousand people on five loaves and two fishes? -How _could_ they? At one of those fish dinners!" - -"They did it!" said Elsie flatly. She saw the whole transaction with -brilliant clearness--saw to the depths of the painted curtain. It was as -naturally fact as the family four of them at breakfast that morning, fed -on home-smoked sausages and perfectly digestible buckwheat cakes. - -"And twelve baskets of crumbs! That makes it worse! With bread for -thousands everywhere, why pick up crumbs?" - -"Nothing is said about crumbs; they were fragments." - -"But if I've got to believe it, I've got to think how they did it! I've -_got_ to! If I can't think of it as it is, I must think of it as it -isn't! But I can't do anything with the loaves; I give up the bread. -However, I think those two fish might have been leviathans. That would -be only two thousand five hundred people to each leviathan. Many of them -might not have liked leviathan. I wouldn't have wanted any! They could -have skipped me! They could have had my slice! And the babies--they -didn't want _much_! Anyhow, that's the best I can do for the fish"; and -he had his laugh also--not an incessant ripple like hers, but a music -issuing from the depths of him through joy in the things he saw. - -Elsie made the reply which of late was becoming habitual in her talks -with him. - -"Don't begin to be _peculiar_, Herbert. You are too young to be -_peculiar_. Leave that to old people!" and Elsie's mind glided off from -the loaves and the fishes of Galilee to certain old people of her -neighborhood from whose eccentricities she extracted acrid amusement. - -The boy's words were not irreverent; irreverence had never been taught -him; he did not know what irreverence was. They merely expressed the -primary action of his mind in dealing with what to him was a -wonder-story of Nature. And yet with this same mind which asked of -wonder that it be reasonable, he was on his way to the celebration of -Christmas Eve and to the story of the Nativity--the most joyous, the -most sad, the most sublime Nature-story of mankind. - -His unconscious requirement was that this also must be reasonable; if it -were not, he would accept the portions that were reasonable and reject -the others as now too childish for his fore-handed American brain. - -They were nearing the end of their bitter walk. The little girl as she -hurried forward now and then strained her eyes toward the opposite ends -of the house ahead; at the kitchen smoke which promised such gifts to -the flesh; at the window-shutters of the darkened parlor where the -Christmas Tree stood, soon to be decorated with presents: some for -her--the little fat mercenary now approaching who was positive that -during these days of preparation she had struck a shrewd bargain with -the Immortal. - -The boy, too, looked at these windows; but especially he looked at -another between them, from which perhaps Elizabeth was watching for him. - -Once he turned, and, walking backward, directed his gaze from this high -point far across the country. Somewhere back there his father might now -be stopping at a farm-house. A malignant disease was raging among the -children of the neighborhood, some of whom were his schoolmates and -friends; the holidays would bring no merry Christmas for them. - -Wherever his father might be, there an influence started and came -rushing across the landscape like the shadow of a cloud. It fell upon -him, and travelled on toward the house he was approaching; it -disappeared within the house and fell upon the woman who so wonderfully -moved about in it: a chilling mysterious shadow that bound the three of -them--his father and himself and this gentle woman--together in a band -of darkness. - -Then he faced about and ran on, longing the more ardently for Elizabeth: -the path between him and Elizabeth lay before his nimble feet like a -band of light. - - - - - II - - WHEN A BOY FINDS OUT ABOUT HIS FATHER - - -ON the day preceding that twenty-fourth of December when his two -weather-proof untrammelled children were rioting over the frozen earth, -Dr. Birney met with an event which may here be set down as casting the -first direct light upon him. Some reflected radiance may already have -gone glancing in his direction from the luminous prattle of his -offspring; some obscure glimpses must therein have bodied him forth: and -the portraits that children unconsciously paint of people--what trained -hand ever drew such living lines? - -A short stretch across the country from his comfortable manor house -there towered in stateliness one of the finest homesteads of this -region; and in the great bedroom of this house, in the mother's bed, -there had lain for days one of his patients critically ill, the only -child of an intense mother who was herself no longer young. - -Early that morning upon setting out he had driven rapidly to this house, -gotten quickly out, and been quickly received through the front door -thrown open to admit him. After examining the child, he had turned to -the mother and spoken the words that are probably the happiest ever to -fall from any tongue upon any ear:-- - -"He is out of danger. He is getting well." - -At this intelligence the mother forgot the presence of another mother -older than herself who had come to be with her during these vigils and -anxieties. As the doctor, having spoken a few words to the nurse, passed -out into the hall toward the hat-rack, she led him into the parlors; she -pulled him down into a chair beside the one she took; she caught his -hand in hers and drew it into her lap. She forgot that after all she was -a woman and he was a man; she remembered only that she was a mother and -he a physician; and unnerved by the relief from days and nights of -tension, she poured out her quivering gratitude. - -The doctor with a warm light in his eyes listened; and he was flushed -with pleasure also at his skill in bringing his case through; but she -had scarcely begun before his expression showed embarrassment. Gratitude -rendered him ill at ease: who can thank Science? Who can thank a man for -doing his duty and his best? With a smile of deprecation he -interrupted:-- - -"A great surgeon of France centuries ago was accustomed to say of a -convalescent patient: 'God cured him; I dressed him.' I do not know -whether, if I dared speak for the science of medicine near the close of -the nineteenth century, I could say that. That is not the language of -science now. If science thanks anything, it thanks other sciences and -respects itself. But I will say that I might not have been able to save -the life of your son if he had not been a healthy child--and a happy -one; for happiness in a child is of course one of its signs of health. -In his case I did not have to treat a patient with a disease; I had -merely to treat a disease in a patient: and there is a great difference. -The patient kept out of the case altogether, or in so far as he entered -it, he entered it as my assistant. But if he had not been healthy and -happy, the result might have been--well, different." - -The mother's face became more radiant. - -"If his health and happiness helped him through," she exclaimed, "then -his mother enters into the case; for his health was his birthright from -his parents; and his happiness--on account of the absence of his father -during most of his life when he has been awake--has been a gift from his -mother. He has lived with Happiness; Happiness has been before his eyes; -Happiness has filled his ears; Happiness has held him in its arms; -Happiness has danced for his feet; Happiness has rocked him to sleep; -Happiness has smiled over him when he awoke. He has not known anything -but Happiness because Happiness has been his mother. And so, if he owes -the preservation of his life to Happiness, he owes it to the instinct of -maternal imitation." - -The doctor had heard this carolling of maternity with full -approval--this heaven-rising skylark song of motherhood; but at the last -sentence he pricked up his ears with disfavor and stopped smiling: with -him these were marks that he had withdrawn his intellectual fellowship. -The trouble was that he esteemed her a charming and irreproachable woman -and wife and mother; but that he could accord her no rank as a -scientist, no standing whatsoever; and therefore he must part company -with her when she spoke for instincts. The instinct of maternal -imitation--the vanity of it! That her sex could believe a child to be -sent into this world by the great Mother of all wisdom and given so poor -a start as to be placed under the tyranny of an instinct to imitate any -other imperfect human being--man or woman. - -Perhaps it was one of his weaknesses, when he came upon a case of folly, -to wish to perform an operation in mental surgery at once--and without -anĉsthetics, in order that the wide-awake intelligence of the sufferer -might be enlisted against the recurrence of such a necessity. - -In a tone of affectionate forbearance he now said:-- - -"If only there were any such thing in Nature as the instinct of maternal -imitation! Children have enough instincts to battle with and fight their -way through, as it is. Let me beg of you not to teach your child -anything as criminally wrong as that; and don't you be so criminally -wrong as to believe it!" - -The mother's countenance fell. She released the doctor's hand and pushed -her chair back; and she brushed out her lap with both hands as though -his words might somehow have fallen into it, and she did not wish them -to remain there. She spoke caustically:-- - -"No intimate sacred bond between mother and child which guides it to -imitate her?" - -She felt as though he had attacked the very citadel of motherhood; as -though he had overthrown the tested and adopted standards of universal -thinking, the very basic idea of existence; and she recoiled from this -as a taint of eccentricity in him--that early death-knell of a -physician's usefulness. - -But the doctor swept her words away with gay warmth:-- - -"Oh, there is the intimate sacred bond, of course! No doubt the most -intimate, the most sacred in this world. Believe in that all you can: -the more the better! But we are not speaking of that: that has nothing -to do with this imagined instinct of maternal imitation. Don't you know -that a foundling in a foundling asylum as instinctively imitates its -nurse? Don't you know that a child as instinctively imitates its -stepmother--if it loves her? Don't you know that a child as -instinctively imitates its grandmother?" - -The mother lay back in her chair and looked at him without a word. But -then, Doctor Birney could be rude, curt, brutal. In proof of which he -now leaned over toward her and continued with more gentleness:-- - -"Do you not know that every child in this world begins its advance into -life by one path only--the path of least resistance? and its path of -least resistance is paved and lined with what it likes! As soon as it -can do anything for itself, it tries to do what it likes, and it never -tries to do anything else. When, later on, a time comes when it can be -persuaded to do a thing that it has already desired _not_ to do, then -its will comes into the case; it ceases to be simply a little animal and -becomes a little human animal; it begins to be moral and heroic instead -of unmoral and unheroic. But we are not talking about that. The best we -can do is to call those earliest movements of its life the reaching out -of its instincts and its taking hold of things that are like its own -leading traits. The parallel is in Nature where the tendril of a vine -takes hold of the matured branch of the same vine and pulls itself up by -this. Thus one generation knits itself to another through the binding of -like to like; and that is the whole bond between mother and child or -father and child: it is like attaching itself to like under the -influence of love. In this world every subject has two doors: you open -one, and the good things come out. You open the other, and the evil -things come out. This subject has its two doors: and I open first the -door of Mother of Pearl--for you two pearls of mothers! Out of it come -all the exquisite radiant traits that bind mothers and children. How -many great men in history have begun their growth by attaching -themselves to the great traits of their mothers? Then there is the other -door. I am sorry to open it, but whether I open it or not, opened it -will be: the Door of Ebony behind which are imprisoned all the dark -things that bind parents and children. I am afraid I shall have to -illustrate: if a child is born mendacious and its mother has mendacity -as one of her leading traits, its little mendacity will flourish on her -large mendacity. If it is born deceitful, and hypocrisy is one of her -traits, hypocrisy in it will pull itself up by taking hold of hypocrisy -in her. If it is born quick-tempered, and if ungovernable temper is one -of her failings, every exhibition of this in her will foster its -impatience and lack of self-control. These are some few of the dreadful -things that come out: and if it is dreadful even to speak of them, think -how much more dreadful to see them alive and to set them at work! Now -let's shut the dark Door! And let us hope that some day Nature herself -may not be able to open it ever again!" - -Hitherto the older of the two mothers, the mother of many children, had -remained silent with that peculiar expression of patience and sweetness -which lies like a halo on the faces of good women who have brought many -children into the world. She now spoke as if to release many thoughts -weighing heavily upon her. - -"It has always been my trouble--not that my children would not imitate -me, but that they _would_ imitate me! I have my faults, for I am human; -and I can endure them as long as they remain mine. They have ceased to -give me much concern. I suppose in a way I have grown attached to them, -just as I like people whom I do not entirely approve. But as soon as I -see the children reproducing my faults, these become responsibilities. -They keep me awake at night; sometimes they distress me almost beyond -endurance. I know I have spent many anxious years with this problem. And -I know also that the only times when their father has been overanxious -about his failings has been when the boys have imitated _him_. He is -always ready to lead a splendid attack on his faults, and they march at -him from the direction of the boys!" - -"And so," said the doctor, laughing, "this instinct of parental -imitation is an instrument safe to take by the handle, and dangerous to -grasp by the blade!" - -He knew fathers in the neighborhood who were dreading the time when -their sons might begin to imitate them--too far. And other fathers -dreading the hour when their sons might cease to imitate their sires, -and wander away preferably to imitate persons outside the family -connection,--possibly an instinct of non-parental imitation! - -He rose to go in a mood of great good nature, and looked from one to the -other of the two mothers:-- - -"Perhaps Nature protected children from the danger of imitating by not -making it their duty to imitate. And perhaps, as all parents are -imperfect human beings, she may have thought it simple justice to -children to confer upon them the right to be disobedient. At least, if -there is an instinct to obey, it is backed up with an equal instinct not -to obey; and the two seem to have been left to fight it out between -themselves; and that perhaps is the great battle-field where incessant -fighting goes on between parents and children. And at least disobedience -has been of equal value with obedience in the making of human history, -in the development of the race. For if children had simply obeyed their -parents, if the young had been born merely to ape the old, there never -would have been any human young and old. We should all still be apes, -even if we had developed as far as that. You two ladies--of course with -greatly modified features--might be throwing cocoanuts at each other on -the tops of two rival palm-trees. Or--as the dutiful daughters of -dutiful mothers--you might be taking afternoon naps in an oasis of -dates--all because of that instinct of maternal imitation!" - -He hurried out to the hat-rack, making his retreat at the top of his own -high spirits, they following; and with one glove on he held out his hand -to the mother of the sick boy:-- - -"I'll come in the morning to see how he is--and to see how his mother -is. Now shake hands and say I have been a good doctor to you both." - -The mother's reply showed that bitterness rankled in her, as she yielded -her hand coldly:-- - -"Even if you have tried to destroy for me the intimate sacred bond -between a mother and her child, I don't think you will be able to deny -that my boy is a healthy and happy child because he is a child of a -perfect marriage!" And she looked with secret and shaded import at the -other mother. - -As the doctor drove out of the yard her last words lingered--_the -healthy children of a perfect marriage_. And the look the two mothers -had exchanged! It was as though each had a sword in her eye and touched -him with the point of it--hinting that he merited being run through. How -often during these years he had encountered that same look from other -mothers of the neighborhood! - -"But if a wound like that could have been fatal," he reflected, "if a -wound like that could have finished me, I should not have been here to -save the life of her boy; he would have been dead this morning." - -Then his mind under the rigor of long training passed to happier -subjects. His success in the case of this child was one more triumph in -his long list; it renewed his grip on power within him. - - * * * * * - - -But for the necessity to provide for a people the services of general -practitioner, Dr. Birney would have made a specialty of children's -diseases. The happiest moment he experienced in his profession was a day -such as this when he could announce the triumph of his skill and the -saving of a young life. There was no sadder one than any day on which he -walked out of the sick chamber and at the threshold met the gaunt -ancient Presence, waiting to stalk in and take the final charge of the -case given up by the vanquished physician. And when a few days later he -sat in his buggy on the turnpike at the end of a procession--his healthy -little patient stretched prostrate at the other end--he driving there as -the public representative of a science that was ages old and that had -gathered from all lands the wisdom of the best minds but was still -impotent--on such a day he went down to his lowest defeat. - -He had such faith in the future of his science that he looked forward to -the time when there would be no such monstrous tragedy on this planet as -infant mortality. No healthy child would ever be allowed to die of -disease; disease would never be permitted to reach it, or reaching it, -would be arrested as it arrived. The vast multitude of physicians and -surgeons now camped around the morning of life, waiting to receive the -incoming generations on the rosy mountain-tops of its dawn--nearly all -these would be withdrawn; they would move across the landscape of the -world and pitch their tents on the plains of waning daylight; there to -receive the ragged and broken army that came staggering from the -battle-field, every soldier more or less wounded, every soldier more or -less weary; there to give them a twilight of least suffering, their -sundown of peace; and there to arrange that the great dark Gates closed -on them softly. - -The conversation that morning disclosed among other facts the secret -dread of Dr. Birney's life: that the time would come when his children, -especially his boy, might begin to imitate him more than he desired. For -a long time now he had kept under closest observation the working out in -each of them of the law of like attaching itself to like; for already -this had borne fruit for both on the vine of his own profession. - -A physician in a city may practise his profession with complete -segregation from the members of his family; his office may be miles -away; if he sees his patients in his house, his children are kept in -another part of it. But out in the country the whole house is open; the -children rove everywhere; if their father is a physician, they know when -he starts and when he returns; and there is displayed in full view the -entire drama of his life. And this life is twofold: for the physician -must demonstrate as no member of any other profession is required to -do--that whoever would best serve mankind must first best serve himself. -In this service he must reach a solution of the selfish and the -unselfish; he must reconcile the world's two warring philosophies of -egoism and altruism. The outside world has its attention fixed solely -upon the drama of the physician's public service to it; for the members -of his own family is reserved acquaintance with the drama of his -devotion to himself. Well for him and well for them if they do not -misunderstand! - -Each of Dr. Birney's children responded to the attraction of a phase of -his life--the phase that appealed to a leading trait in each. - -From the time of the little girl's beginning to observe her father she -was influenced by what looked to her like his self-love: his care about -what he ate and drank; his changing of his clothes whenever he came -home, whether they were drenched or were dry; his constant washing of -his hands; all this pageant of self-adulation mirrored itself in her -consciousness. When he was away from home, she could still follow him by -her mother's solicitude for his comfort and safety. To Elsie's mother -the ill were not so much a source of anxiety as a husband who was -perfectly well; and thus there had been built up in Elsie herself the -domineering idea that her father was the all-important personage in the -neighborhood as a consequence of thinking chiefly of himself. -Selfishness in her reached out and twined itself like a tendril about -selfishness in him; and she proceeded to lift herself up and grow by -this vital bond. - -Too young to transmit this resemblance, she did what she could to pass -it on to the next generation: she handed it down and disseminated it in -her doll-house. There was something terrifying and grim and awful in the -fatalistic accuracy with which Elsie reproduced her father's selfishness -among her dolls, because it was on a mimic scale what is going on all -over the world: the weaving by children's fingers of parental designs -long perpetuated in the tapestry of Nature; the same old looms, the same -old threads, the same old designs--but new fingers. - -One of the dolls was known as "the doctor"; the others were the members -of his family and his domestics. This puppet was a perfect child-image -of the god of self-idolatry, as set up in the person of a certain Dr. -Downs Birney, and as observed by his very loyal and most affectionate -and highly amused daughter Elsie. - -One day the doctor, quietly passing the opened door of the nursery, saw -Elsie on the floor with her back turned to him faithfully copying and -dramatizing some of the daily scenes of his professional life. His eyes -shone with humor as he looked on; but there was sadness in them as he -turned silently away. - -With the boy it was otherwise. The earliest notion of his father the boy -had grasped was that of always travelling toward the sick--to a world -that needed him. All the roads of the neighborhood--turnpikes, lanes, -carriage-tracks, wagon-tracks, foot-paths--met at his father's house; if -you followed any one of them long enough, sooner or later you would -reach some one who was sick. - -When he was quite young his father began to take him in his buggy on his -circuits; and at every house where they stopped, he witnessed this -never-ending drama of need and aid. Such countenances people had as they -followed his father out to the buggy where he was holding the reins! -Such happy faces--or so sad, so sad! Souls hanging on his father's word -as though life went on with it or went to pieces with it. Actually his -father had no business of his own: he merely drove about and enabled -other people to attend to their business! He one day asked him why he -did not _sometimes_ do something for himself and the family! - -Thus a leading trait in him gripped that branch of his father's life -where hung his service to others; and by this vital bond it lifted -itself up and began to flourish in its long travel toward maturity. He -literally took hold of his father, as a social implement, by the -well-worn handle of common use. - -His presence in the buggy with his father was not incidental; it was the -doctor's design. He wished to have the boy along during these formative -years in order that he might get the right start toward the great things -of life as these one by one begin to break in upon the attention of a -growing boy. The doctor wanted to be the first to talk with him--the -first to sow the right suggestions: it was one of his sayings that the -earliest suggestions rooted in the mind of the child will be the final -things to drop from the dying man's brain: what goes in first comes out -last. - -And so there began to be many conversations; incredible questions; -answers not always forthcoming. And a series of revelations ensued; the -boy revealing his growth to a watchful father, and a father revealing -his life to a very watchful son! These revelations began to look like -mile-stones on life's road, marked with further understandings. - -Thus, one day when the boy was a good deal younger than now, his father -had come home and had gotten ready to go away again and was sitting -before the fire, looking gravely into it and taking solitary counsel -about some desperate case, as the country doctor must often do. Being a -very little fellow then, he had straddled one of his father's mighty -legs and had balanced himself by resting his hands on his father's -mighty shoulders. - -"Is somebody very sick?" - -The head under the weather-roughened hat nodded silently. - -"I wonder how it happens that all the sick are in our neighborhood." - -A smile flitted across the doctor's mouth. - -"The sick are in all neighborhoods, little wonderer." - -He said this cheerfully. It was his idea--and he tried to enforce it at -home--that young children must never, if possible, make the acquaintance -of the words _bad_ and _sad_--nor of the realities that are masked -behind them. He especially believed that what the old are familiar with -as life's tragic laws ought never to be told to children as tragic: what -is inevitable should never be presented to them as misfortunes. - -Therefore he now declared that the sick are in all neighborhoods as he -might have stated that there are wings on all birds, or leaves on all -growing apple trees. - -"Not all over the world?" asked the boy, enlarging his vision in space. - -"All over the world," admitted the doctor with entire cheerfulness; the -fact was a matter of no consequence. - -"Not all the time?" asked the boy, enlarging his outlook in time. - -"All the time! All over the world and all the time!" conceded the -doctor, as though this made not the slightest difference to a human -being. - -"Isn't there a single minute when everybody is well everywhere?" - -"Not a single, solitary minute." - -"Then somebody must always be suffering." - -The doctor nodded again; the matter was not worth speaking of. - -"Then somebody else must always be sorry." - -The doctor bowed encouragingly. - -"_Then I am sorry, too!_" - -This time the doctor did not move his head, and he did not open his -lips. He saw that a new moment had arrived in the boy's growth--a -consciousness of the universal tragedy and personal share and sorrow in -it. He knew that many people never feel this; some feel it late; a few -feel it early; he had always said that children should never feel it. He -knew also that when once it has begun, it never ends. Nothing ever -banishes it or stills it--that perception of the human tragedy and one's -share and sorrow in it. - -He did not welcome its appearance now, in his son least of all. For an -instant he charged himself with having made a mistake in taking the -child along on his visits to the sick, thus making known too early the -dark side of happy neighborhood life. Then he went further back and -traced this premature seriousness to its home and its beginning: in -prenatal depression--in a mother's anguish and a wife's despair. It was -a bitter retrospect: it kept him brooding. - -The chatter was persistent. A hand was stretched up, and it took hold of -his chin and shook it:-- - -"There ought to be a country where nobody suffers and there ought to be -a time; a large country and a long time." - -"There is such a country and there is such a time, Herbert," said the -doctor, now with some sadness. - -"Then I'll warrant you it's part of the United States," cried the boy, -getting his idea of mortality slightly mixed with his early Americanism. -"Texas would hold them, wouldn't it? Don't you think Texas could contain -them all and contain them forever?" - -The doctor laughed and seemed to think enough had been said on the -subject of large enough graveyards for the race. - -"Why don't you doctors send your patients to that country?" - -"Perhaps we do sometimes!" The doctor laughed again. - -"Do you ever send yours?" - -"Possibly." - -"And how many do _you_ send?" - -"I don't know!" exclaimed the doctor, laughing this time without being -wholly amused. "I don't know, and I never intend to try to find out." - -"When I grow up we'll practise together and send twice as many," the boy -said, looking into his father's eyes with the flattery of professional -imitation. - -"So we will! There'll be no trouble about that! Twice as many, perhaps -three times! No trouble whatever!" - -He took the hands from his shoulders and laid them in the palm of his -and studied them--those masculine boyish hands that had never touched -any of the world's suffering. And then he looked at his own hands which -had handled so much of the world's suffering, but had never reached -happiness; happiness which for years had dwelt just at his finger-tips -but beyond arm's reach. - -Not very long afterwards another conversation lettered another -mile-stone in the progress of mutual understanding. - -It was a beautiful drowsy May morning near noon, and the two were -driving slowly homeward along the turnpike. When the lazily trotting -horse reached the front gate of a certain homestead, he stopped and -threw one ear backward as a living interrogation point. As his answer, -he got an unexpected cut in the flank with the tip of the lash that was -like the sting of a hornet: a reminder that the driver was not alone in -the buggy; that the horse should have known he was not alone; and that -what he did when alone was a matter of confidence between master and -beast. - -The boy, who had been thrown backward, heels high, laughed as he settled -himself again on his cushion:-- - -"He thought you wanted to turn in." - -"He thinks too much--sometimes." - -"Don't they ever get sick there?" - -"I suppose they do." - -"_Then_ you turn in!" - -"Then I _don't_ turn in." - -"Aren't you their doctor?" - -"I was the doctor once." - -"Where was I?" - -"I don't know where you were; you were not born." - -"So many things happened before I was born; I wish they hadn't!" - -"It is a pity; I had the same experience." - -The buggy rolled slowly along homeward. On one side of the road were -fields of young Indian corn, the swordlike blades flashing in the sun; -on the other side fields of red clover blooming; the fragrance was -wafted over the fence to the buggy. Further, in a soft grassy lawn, on a -little knoll shaded by a white ash, a group of sleek cattle stood -content in their blameless world. Over the prostrate cows one lordly -head, its incurved horns deep hidden by its curls, kept guard. The scene -was a living Kentucky replica of Paul Potter's _Bull_. - -"Drive!" murmured the doctor, handing over the reins; and he drew his -hat low over his eyes and set his shoulder against his corner of the -buggy; he often caught up with sleep while on the road. And he often -tried to catch up with thinking. - -The horse always knew when the reins changed hands. He disregarded the -proxy, kept his own gait, picked the best of the road, and turned out -for passing vehicles. The boy now grasped the lines with unexpected -positiveness; and he leaned over and looked up under the rim of his -father's hat:-- - -"I hope the doctor they employ will give them the wrong medicines," he -confided. "I hope the last one of them will have many a rattling good -bellyache for their meanness to you!" - - * * * * * - - -Then more years for father and son, each finding the other out. - -And now finally on the morning of that twenty-fourth day of December, -the father was to witness a scene in the drama of his life as amazingly -performed by his son--illustrating what a little actor can do when he -undertakes to imitate an old actor to whom he is most loyal. - -That morning after breakfast the apt pupil in Life's School had been -sent for, and when he had entered the library, his father was sitting -before the fire, idle. The buggy was not waiting outside; the hat and -overcoat and gloves were nowhere in sight; and he had not gotten ready -his satchel which took the place of the saddlebags of earlier -generations when the country doctor travelled around on horseback and -carried the honey of physic packed at his thighs--like a wingless, -befattened bumblebee. This morning it looked as though all the sick were -well at last; it was a sound if wicked world; and nothing was left for a -physician but to be happy in it--without a profession--and without -wickedness. - -He threw himself into his father's impulsively opened arms, and was -heaved high into his lap. Though he was growing rather mature for laps -now; he was beginning to speculate about having something of a lap of -his own; quite a good deal of a lap. - -"How is the children's epidemic to-day?" - -"Never you mind about the children's epidemic! I'll take care of the -children's epidemic," repeated the doctor, pulling the long-faced, -autumn-faced prodigy of all questions between his knees and looking him -over with secret solicitude. "We'll not talk about sick children, but -about two well children--thanked be the Father of all children! So you -and Elsie are going away to help celebrate a Christmas Tree." - -"Yes; but when are you going to have a Christmas Tree of our own?" - -Now, that subject had two prongs, and the doctor seized the prong that -did not pierce family affairs--did not pierce _him_. He settled down to -the subject with splendid warmth and heartiness:-- - -"Well, let me see! You may have your first Christmas Tree as soon as you -are old enough to commence to do things for other people; as soon as you -can receive into your head the smallest hard pill of an idea about your -duty to millions and millions and millions of your fellow medicine -takers. Can you understand that?" - -"Gracious! That would be a _big_ pill--larger than my head! I don't see -what it has to do with one miserable little dead pine tree!" - -The doctor roared. - -"It has this to do with one miserable dead pine tree: don't you know yet -that Christmas Trees are in memory of a boy who was once exactly your -age and height--and perhaps with your appetite--and with just as many -eyes and possibly even more questions? The boy grew up to be a man. The -man became a teacher. The teacher became a neighborhood doctor. The -neighborhood doctor became the greatest physician of the world--and he -never took a fee!" - -"Ah, yes! But he wasn't a better doctor than _you_ are, was he? If he'd -come into this neighborhood and tried to practise, you'd soon have -ousted him, wouldn't you, with your doses and soups and jellies?" - -"Humph!" grunted the doctor with a wry twist of the mouth; "I suppose I -would! Yes; undoubtedly I'd have ousted him! He could never have -competed with me in _my_ practice; never! But we won't try that hard -little pill of an idea any more. We'll drop the subject of Christmas -Trees for one more year. Perhaps by that time you can take the pill as a -powder! So! I hear you are going to attend a dancing party; we'll talk -about the party. And you are going over there to stay all night. I wish -I were going. I wish I were going over there to stay all night," -reiterated the man, with an outrush of solemn tenderness that reached -back through vain years, through so many parched, unfilled years. - -"I wish so, too," cried the boy, instantly burying his face on his -father's coat-sleeve, then lifting it again and looking at him with a -guilty flush which the doctor did not observe. - -"Oh, do you! We won't say anything more about that, though I'm glad -you'd like to have me along. Now then; go and have a good time! And take -long steps and large mouthfuls! And you might do well to remember that a -boy's stomach is not a birdnest to be lined with candy eggs." - -"I think candy eggs would make a very good lining, better than real -eggs; and about half the time you're trying to line me with them, aren't -you? With all the sulphur in them! And I do hate sulphur, and I have -always hated it since the boy at my desk in school wore a bag of it -around his neck under his shirt to keep off diseases. My! how he -smelt--worse than contagion! Candy eggs would make a very good lining; -even the regular soldiers get candy in their rations now. And they don't -have to eat new-laid eggs of mornings! Think of an army having to win a -hard-fought battle on soft-boiled eggs! They don't have to do _that_, do -they?" - -"They do not!" said the doctor. "They positively do not! But we won't -say anything more about eggs--saccharine or sulphurous. What are you -going to do at the party?" - -"I am going to dance." - -"Alone? O dear! All alone? You'd better go skate on the ice! Not all -alone?" - -"I should say not! With my girl, of course." - -"That's better, much better. And then what?" - -"I am going to promenade, with my girl on my arm." - -"On _both_ arms, did you say?" - -"No; on _one_ arm." - -"Which?" - -"Either." - -"That sounds natural! (Heart action regular; brain unclouded; -temperature normal.) And then? What next?" - -"I'm going to take the darling in to supper." - -"Hold on! Not so fast! Suppose there isn't any supper--for the darling." - -"Don't say that! It would nearly kill me! Don't you suppose there'll be -any supper?" - -"I'm afraid there will be. Well, after the darling has had her fatal -supper? (Of course you won't want any!) What then?" - -"What else is there to do?" - -"You don't look as innocent as you imagine!" - -"You don't have to confess what you'd like to do, do you? Would you have -told your father?" - -"I don't think I would." - -"Then I won't tell you." - -"Then you needn't! I don't wish to know--only it must _not_ be on the -cheek! Remember, you are no son of mine if it's on the cheek!" - -"I thought I heard you say _that_ got people into trouble." - -"Maybe I did. I ought to have said it if I didn't; and it seems to be -the kind of trouble that you are trying to get into. (Temperature rising -but still normal. Respiration deeper. All symptoms favorable. No further -bulletins deemed necessary.) Well, then? Where were we?" - -"Anyhow, I've never thought of cheeks when I've thought of _that_; I -thought cheeks were for chewing." - -"Guardian Powers of our erring reason! Where did you get that idea--if -sanity can call it an idea?" - -"Watching our cows." - -The doctor laughed till tears ran down his face. - -"You can't learn much about kissing by watching anybody's _cows_, -Governor," he said, wiping the tears away. "Not about _human_ kissing. -You must begin to direct your attention to an animal not so meek and -drivable. You must learn to consider, my son, that hornless wonder and -terror of the world who forever grazes but never ruminates!" - -For years, in talking with a mind too young wholly to understand, he had -enjoyed the play of his own mind. He knew only too well that there are -few or none with whom a physician may dare have his sportive fling at -his fellow-creatures, at life in general. From a listener who never sat -in harsh judgment and who would never miscarry his random words, he had -upon occasion derived incalculable relief. - -"Anyhow, I have learned that cows have the new American way of chewing; -so they never get indigestion, do they?" - -"If they do, they cannot voice their symptoms in my mummied ears," said -the doctor, who often seemed to himself to have been listening to hue -and cry for medicine since the days of Thotmes. "However, we won't say -anything further about _that_! What else are you going to do over there? -This can't possibly be all!" - -"To-night we children are going to sit up until midnight, to see whether -the animals bellow and roar and make all kinds of noise on Christmas -Eve. We know they don't, but we're going to _prove_ they don't!" - -"Where did you pick up that notion?" - -"Where did you pick it up when you were a boy?" - -"I fail to remember," admitted the doctor with mock dignity, damaged in -his logic but recalling the child legend that on the Night of the -Nativity universal nature was in sympathy with the miracle. All sentient -creatures were wakeful and stirring, and sent forth the chorus of their -cries in stables and barns--paying their tribute to the Divine in the -Manger and proclaiming their brotherhood with Him who was to bring into -the world a new gospel for them also. - -"I don't know where I got that," he repeated. "Well, after the animals -bellow and roar and make all kinds of noise, then what?" - -"There isn't but one thing more; but that is best of all!" - -"You don't say! Out with it!" - -"That is our secret." - -The new decision of tone demonstrated that another stage had been -reached in their intercourse. The boy had withdrawn his confidence; he -had entered the ranks of his own generation and had taken his confidence -with him. Personally, also, he had shut the gate of his mind and the -gate was guarded by a will; henceforth it was to be opened by permission -of the guard. Something in their lives was abruptly ended; the father -felt like ending the talk. - -"Very well, then; we won't say anything more about the secret. And now -you had better run along." - -"But I don't want to run along just yet. It will be a long time before I -see you again; have you thought of that?" - -He reversed his position so as to face the fire; and he crossed his feet -out beyond the promontory of the doctor's knees and folded his arms on -the rampart of those enfolding arms. - -For a few moments there was intimate silence. Then he inquired:-- - -"How old must a boy be to ask a girl?" - -A flame more tender and humorous burned in the doctor's eyes. - -"Ask her _what_?" - -"Ask her nothing! Ask _her_!" - -"You mean _tell_ her, don't you? Not ask her, my friend and relative; -_tell_ her!" - -"Well, ask her and tell her, too; they go together!" - -"Is it possible! I'm always glad to learn!" - -"Then, how old must he be?" - -"Well, if you stand in need of the opinion of an experienced physician, -as soon as he learns to speak would be about the right period! That -would be the safest age! The patient would then have leisure to consider -his case before being affected by the disease. You could have time to -get singed and step away gradually instead of being roasted alive all at -once. Does that sound hard?" - -"Not very! Do you love a girl longer if you tell her or if you don't -tell her?" - -"I'm afraid nobody has ever tried _both_ ways! Suppose you try both, and -let us have the benefit of your experience." - -"Well, then, if you love, do you love forever?" - -The doctor laughed nervously and tightened his arms around the innocent. - -"Nobody has lived forever yet--nobody knows!" - -"But forever while you live--do you love as long as that?" - -"You wouldn't know until you were dead and then it would be too late to -report. But aren't you doing a good deal of hard fighting this -morning,--on soft-boiled eggs,--though I think the victory is yours, -General, the victory is truly and honestly yours!" - -"I can't stop thinking, can I? You don't expect me to stop thinking, do -you, when I'm just beginning really to think?" - -"Very well, then, we won't say anything more about thinking." - -"Then do you or don't you?" - -"Now, what are you trying to talk about?" demanded the doctor angrily, -and as if on instant guard. A new hatred seemed coming to life in him; -there was a burning flash of it in his eyes. - -"Just between ourselves--suppose that when I am a man and after I have -been married to Elizabeth awhile, I get tired of her and want a little -change. And I fell in love with another man's wife and dared not tell -her, because if I did I might get a bullet through me; would I love the -other man's wife more because I could not tell her, or would I love her -more because I told her and risked the bullet?" - -Pall-like silence draped the room, thick, awful silence. The father -lifted his son from his lap to the floor, and turned him squarely around -and looked him in the eyes imperiously. Many a time with some such -screened but piercing power he, as a doctor, had scrutinized the faces -of children to see whether they were aware that some vast tragedy of -life was in the room with them. To keep them from knowing had often been -his main care; seeing them know had been life's last pity; young -children finding out the tragedies of their parents with one another--so -many kinds of tragedies. - -"You had better go now," he urged gently. Then an idea clamped his brain -in its vise. - -"And remember: while you are over there, you must try to behave with -your best manners because you are going to stay in the house of a great -lady. All the questions that you want to ask, ask me when you come back. -Ask _me_!" - -The boy standing before his father said with a strange quietness and -stubbornness, probing him deeply through the eyes:-- - -"You haven't answered my _last_ question yet, have you?" - -"Not yet," said the doctor, with strange quietness also. - -The boy had never before heard that tone from his father. - -"It's sad being a doctor, isn't it?" he suggested, studying his father's -expression. - -"What do _you_ know about sad? Who told _you_ anything about sad?" -muttered the doctor with new sadness now added to old sadness. - -"Nobody _had_ to tell me! I knew without being told." - -"Run along now." - -"Now I'll walk along, but I won't run along. I'll walk away from you, -but I won't run away from you." - -He wandered across the room, and stood with his hand reluctantly turning -the knob. Then with a long, silent look at his father--he closed the -door between them. - - - - - III - - THE BOOKS OF THE YEAR - - -DR. BIRNEY stood motionless in the middle of the room with his gaze -riveted on the door through which his son had lingeringly disappeared. - -Some one of the world's greatest painters, chancing to enter, might -worthily have desired to paint him--putting no questions as to who the -man was or what he was; or what darkening or brightening history -stretched behind him; or what entanglement of right and wrong lay around -and within: painting only the unmistakable human signs he witnessed, and -leaving his portrait for thousands of people to look at afterwards and -make out of it what they could--through kinship with the good and evil -in themselves: Velasquez, with his brush moving upon those areas of -lonely struggle which sometimes lie with their wrecks at the bottom of -the sea of human eyes; Franz Hals, fixing the cares which hover too long -around our mouths; Vandyck, sitting in the shadow of the mystery that -slants across all mortal shoulders; Rembrandt, drawn apart into the -dignity that invests colossal disappointment. Any merciless, masterful -limner of them all in a mood to portray those secret passions which -drive men, especially men of middle age, towards safer deeps upon the -rocks. - -He had a well-set soldierly figure and the swarthy roughened face that -results from years of exposure to weather--a face looking as if inwardly -scarred by the tempests of his character but unwrinkled by the outer -years. Both face and figure breathed the silent impassiveness of the -regular who has been through campaigns enough already but is enlisted -for life and for whatsoever duty may bring; he standing there in some -wise palpably draped in the ideals of his profession as the soldier -keeps his standard waving high somewhere near his tent, to remind him of -the greatness that he guards and of the greatness that guards him. - -Not a tall man as men grow on that Kentucky plateau; and looking less -than his stature by reason of being so strongly built, square-standing, -ponderous; his muscles here and there perceivable under his loosely -fitting sack-suit of dark-gray tweeds; so that out of respect for -strength which is both manhood and manliness, your eye travelled -approvingly over his proportions: measuring the heavy legs down to the -boots; the heavy arms out to the wrists; the heavy square thick muscular -warm hands; and the heavy torso up to the short neck rising full out of -a low turned-down collar. - -In this neck an animal wildness and virile ferocity--not subdued, not -stamped out, partly tamed by a will. Overtopping this neck a tremendous -head covered with short glossy black hair, curling blue-black hair. In -this head a powerful blunt nose, set like the muzzle of a big gun -pointed to fire a heavy projectile at a distant target--the nose of a -never-releasing tenacity. Above this nose, right and left, thick black -brows, the bars of nature's iron purpose. Under these brows wonderful -grayish eyes with glints of Scotch blue in them or of Irish blue or of -Saxon blue; for the blood of three races ran thick in his veins and -mingled in the confusions of his character: blue that was in the eyes of -earlier Scottish men, exulting in heather and highland stag; or the blue -of other eyes that had looked meltingly on golden-haired minstrel and -gold-framed harp--eyes that might have poured their love into Isolde's -or have faded out in the death of Tristan; or the blue of still other -eyes--archers who had shot their last arrows and, dying, drew themselves -to the feet of Harold, their blue-eyed king fighting for Saxon England's -right and might. - -They were eyes that could look you to the core with intelligence and -then rest upon you from the outside with sympathy for all that he had -seen to be human in you whether of strength or of weakness--but never of -meanness. Under the blunt nose a thick stubby mustache trimmed short, -leaving exposed the whole red mouth--the mouth of great passions--no -paltry passions--none despicable or contemptible. - -On the whole a man who advances upon you with all there is in him and -without waiting for you to advance upon him; no stepping aside for -people in this world by this man, nor stepping timidly over things. Even -as he stood there a motionless figure, he diffused an influence most -warm and human, gay and tragic, irresistible. A man loved secretly or -openly by many women. A man that men were glad to come to confide in, -when they crossed the frontiers of what Balzac, speaking of the soldiers -of Napoleon, called their miserable joys and joyous miseries. - -But assuredly not a man to be put together by piecemeal description such -as this: the very secret of his immense influence being some charm of -mystery, as there is mystery in all the people that win us and rule us -and hold us; as though we pressed our ear against this mystery and -caught there the sound of a meaning vaster than ourselves--not meant for -us but flowing away from us along the unbroken channels of the universe: -still to be flowing there long after we ourselves are stilled. - - * * * * * - - -Thus he stood in his library that morning when his son left him, brought -to a stop in the road of life as by a straw fallen at his feet borne on -a rising wind--another harbinger of a coming storm. - -By and by not far away a door on that side of the house was slammed. The -sound of muffled feet was heard on the porch and then the laughter of -children as they bounded across the yard. As his ear caught the noises, -he hurried to the window and looked out; and then he threw up the sash -and hailed them loudly:-- - -"Ho, there! you winter snow-birds without wings!" - -As the children wheeled and paused, he smiled and shook his -forefinger:-- - -"Remember to keep those two red mouths closed and to breathe through -those two red noses!" and then as he recalled some exercises which he -had lately been putting them through, he added with ironic emphasis, -laughing the while:-- - -"And when you breathe, remember to bring into play those two invaluable -little American diaphragms and those two priceless pairs of American -ribs!" - -The little girl nodded repeatedly to indicate that she could understand -if she would and would obey if she cared; and putting her red-mittened -finger-tips to her lips, she threw him a good-by with a wide sweeping -gesture of the arms to right and left. And the boy made a soldierly -salute, touching a hand to his skull-cap with the uncouth rigor of a -veteran in the raw: then they bounded off again. - -The doctor drew down the sash and watched them. - -A hundred yards from the house the ground sloped to a limestone spring -at the foot of the hill--a characteristic Kentucky formation. From this -spring issued a brook, on the banks of which stood a clump of forest -trees, bathing their roots in the moisture. Upon reaching the brow of -this hill, the boy lagged behind his sister as though to elude her -observation; then turning looked back at his father--looked but made no -sign: a little upright pillar of life on the brow of that declivity: -then he dropped out of sight. - -A few moments later up over the hill where he was last seen a little -cloud of autumn leaves came scurrying. As they neared the wall of the -house where the wind by pressure veered skyward to clear the roof, some -of the leaves were caught up and dashed against the windowpanes behind -which the doctor was standing. Had the sash been raised, they would have -thrown themselves into his arms and have clung to his neck and breast. - -He did not know why, but they caused him a pang: those little brown -parchments torn from the finished volume of the year: they caused him a -subtle pang. - -He turned from the window, goaded by more than resolution, and crossed -to his writing-desk on the opposite side: there lay the work mapped out -for the morning. No interruptions were to be expected from his patients, -though of course there might be new patients since accidents and -illnesses befall unheralded. There would be no visitors--not to-day. In -a country of the warmest social customs and of family ties so widely -interknit that whole communities are bound together as with vine-like -closeness, no one visits on the day before Christmas. In every little -town the world of people crowd the streets and shops or busy themselves -in preparations at home: out in the country those who have not flocked -to the towns are as joyously occupied. No visitors, then. And the -children were gone--no disturbances from their romping. The servants had -put his rooms in order, and were too discreetly trained to return upon -their paths. - -After breakfast, at the stable, he had given orders to his man for the -day while he was having a look at his horses--well-stalled, -well-groomed, docile, intelligent: at his gaited saddle-horse, at the -nag for his buggy, at the perfectly matched pair for his carriage. As he -appeared in the doorway of the stalls, each beast, turning his head, had -sent to him its affectionate greeting out of eyes that looked like wells -of soft blue smoke: each said, "Take me to-day." - -He was a little vain of being weatherwise, as is apt to be the case with -country-bred folk: and at the last stable door, having studied the wind -and the sky and the temperature, he had said to his man that the weather -was changing: it would be snowing by afternoon. Usually in that latitude -the first flurry of snow gladdens the eye near Thanksgiving, but sleighs -are not often flying until late in December. There had been no snow as -yet; it was due, and the weather showed signs of its multitudinous -onset. - -He felt so sure in his forecast that he had instructed his man to put -the sleigh in readiness. He himself went into the saddle-house and from -a peg amid the gear and harness he took down the sleighbells. As he -shook them roughly, he smiled as above that cascade of mellow winter -sounds there settled a little cloud of summer dust. He observed that the -leather needed mending--what he called "a few surgical stitches"; and he -had brought the bells with him to the house and they now lay on the -floor of his office in the adjoining room. - -He thought that if it should snow heavily enough he would use the sleigh -when he started out in the afternoon. There were several sick children -to visit on opposite horizons of his neighborhood. The sound of the -bells as he drove in at their front gates might have value: it would not -only mean the coming of his sleigh, but it would suggest to them the -approach of that mysterious Sleigh of the World which that night they -were expecting. Afterwards he was to go to a distant county seat for a -consultation. His road home was a straight turnpike: it would be late -when he returned, perhaps far in the night; and he would have the sound -of the bells to himself--the bells and his thoughts and Christmas Eve. - -This plan of Dr. Birney's regarding the children laid bare one of his -ideas as a physician. For years he had employed increasingly in his -practice the power of suggestion. For years life as he sometimes -surmised had employed the power of suggestion on him. He felt assured -that in treating the sick there are cases where every suggestion of -happiness that can reach a patient draws him back toward life: every -suggestion of unhappiness lowers his vitality and helps to roll him over -the precipice: the final push need be a very slight one. The melody of -sleighbells falling on the ears of the sick children that afternoon -might have the weight of a sunbeam on delicate scales and tip the -balances as he wished: he believed that many a time the weight of a -mental sunbeam was all that was needed to decide the issue. - -He looked at his watch. It was ten o'clock, and dinner was served at -one, and he had a tranquil outlook for three hours of work. The only -remaining source from which an interruption could have reached him was -his wife. His wife!--his wife never--intruded. - -Not three hours, but two hours and a half, to be exact; for the -dining-room adjoined his library, and every day at half past twelve -o'clock his wife entered the dining-room to superintend final -preparations for dinner: from the instant of her entrance concentration -of mind ended for him: he occupied himself with things less important -and with odds and ends for mind and body. - -She would draw the shades of the windows delicately to temper the light -according as the day was cloudy or cloudless; she would bring fresh -flowers for the table; she would inspect the clearness of the cut glass, -the brightness of the silver, the snowiness of the napkins; she would -prepare at the sideboard a salad, a sauce; she would give a final push -to the chairs--last of all a straightening push to his. All the lower -drudgery of the servants and all the higher domestic triumphs of her -skill led to his chair--as to a kind of throne where the function of -feeding reigned. With that final adjustment of the piece of furniture in -which his body was to be at ease while it gorged itself, with that act -of grade, the doors were opened; dinner was announced; he walked in, and -faced his wife, and dined--with Nemesis. - -This pride of hers in housekeeping was part of her inheritance, of the -civilization of her land and people: it was a little separate dynasty of -itself. Often as the years had gone by he had been thankful that she -could thus far find compensation for larger disappointment; it helped to -keep her a healthy woman if it could not render her a happy wife. Near -the sugar and the flour she could perhaps three times a day realize -small perfections; she could mould little ideals and turn them out on -the shelf and verify them with a silver spoon: an ideal life in the -pantry for a woman who had expected an ideal life with him in library -and parlor and bedroom and out in the world. It was all as if she sat at -the base of Love's ruined Pyramids and tried to divert her desolation by -configuring ant hills. - -And he was well aware that this pride of housekeeping was the least of -all the prides that grouped themselves around that central humiliation -of wifehood. He had sometimes thought that if, after her death, over her -were planted a weeping willow, mere nutritive pride in her dust would -force the boughs to reverse their natural direction and shoot upward as -stiff as a spruce. - -The dining-room, in the old-fashioned Kentucky way, was richly carpeted; -but the moment she set her foot within it, he could trace her steps as -unerringly as though she had been shod with explosives. Likewise she -sang to herself a good deal: (he had long ago diagnosed that symptom of -nervous self-consciousness). - -When he had married her, voice and piano had been one of the resources -he thought he would hold in reserve for the emptying years; music would -fill so much rational silence. It was one of his semi-serious -declarations that only two people more or less out of their senses could -keep on talking to each other till death forced them to hold their -tongues. But with tragic swiftness and sureness a few years after their -marriage the music stopped, the piano was shut. - -More than that terminated. After two children were born, there were no -more: that profound living music came to an end also. And perhaps one of -the deepest desires of his nature was for that kind of long union with -his wife and for many children: perhaps the only austerity in him was an -austere patriarchal authority to people the earth and to bequeath the -inheritance of it to his seed. - -When she had ceased singing to him soon after marriage, she had begun to -sing to herself--habitually during this half-hour of proximity. The -sound took up a fixed abode in his ear as there is a roaring in a -seashell. He could hear it miles across the country; it was the loudest -sound to him in this world--that barely audible self-conscious singing -of his wife. - -During this interval also she addressed her commands to the maid in -tones lowered not to disturb him. He could not hear the words, but there -was no mistaking the tones! What beautiful, eager, victorious, thrilling -tones--over a dish of steaming vegetables--over a savory toast! They -forced him to be reminded that the nature of his wife was not a brook -run dry; its leaping waters were merely turned away into another -channel. Only when she spoke with him did the cadence of her tones sag; -then all the modulations ran downhill as into some inner pit of -emptiness. - -It was impossible for him to believe that the occasional chuckle and -cackle of the maid during these whispered colloquies grew out of -aspersions winged at him--at the hungry ogre, middle-aged, almost -corpulent, on the other side of the wall; at the species of advanced -gorilla, poorly disguised in collar and necktie and midway garments; -and with wool and leather drawn over his lower pair of modernized -walking hands! Yet the truth was undeniable that when dinner was -announced and he went in, the maid, standing behind her mistress's -chair, fixed her gaze on him with fresh daily delight in understanding -or misunderstanding the wretchedness of the household. - -The first time he had ever seen this maid was one evening upon going in -to supper. They were expecting guests, and his wife wore an evening -gown. As he seated himself, he became aware almost without glancing -across the table that something novel had arrived upon the -scene--something youthful yet as immemorial as Erebus. Behind the -glistening whiteness of his wife's bust with its cold proud dignity, -there was something sable--birdlike--all beak and eyes--with a small -head on which grew a kind of ruffled indignant feathers. He tried to -take no further notice of the apparition, but could not escape the -experience that several times during the meal he rescued his biscuit as -from between the claws of a competing raven. - -In the course of time, as this combination of black and white refused to -dissolve and rather coalesced into a duality holding good for meal -hours, he felt impelled to characterize the alliance--to envisage for -his own relief the totality of its comic gloom. So he called it his -_Bust of Pallas_ and his _Nevermore_. And his _Nevermore_, perched -behind his _Bust of Pallas_ at every function, fixed her dull stupid -eyes on him in unceasing judgment. He was never quite persuaded of the -human reality of her; never fully believed that she reached to the -carpet: and he never got up from the table to see whether she cast a -shadow on the floor; but he knew that it was the fowl's intention to -cast whatsoever shadow it carried about with it _upon him_. - -She had become a critic of his domestic relations. This servant, this -mal-arrangement of beak and eyes, with bare brain enough not to let -plates fall and not to dangle her fingers in scalding water nor singe -her head-feathers in the oven--this servant of his arraigned _him_ in -his humanity! And if this servant, then all his servants. And if all his -servants, then all the servants of the neighborhood. The whole Plutonian -shore croaked its black damnation of him. Of _him_!--the leading citizen -of his community, its central vital character who held in his keeping -the destiny of a people! He had a vision of the august assemblage of -them uplifted into the heavenliness of an African Walhalla--such as is -disclosed in the last act of the _Tetralogy_--all gazing down upon him -as a profaning Alberic who had raped the virgin Gold of marital love. - -On a near peak of especial moral grandeur, his _Nevermore_ stood in her -supernal resentment of his wife's wrong. For whatever _Nevermore_ was -not, at least, she was woman. And what woman fails to espouse any wife's -dignity except the woman who supplants the wife? (Not even she; for if -ever in turn her hour comes, her first outcry is, 'I might have known.') - -Dr. Birney did not have three hours for this morning's business, then, -but two hours and a half; and forthwith beginning, he took from his -breast-pocket a small book and transferred from it to a large diary his -notes of visits to patients on the day preceding. This soon done, he was -ready for the main work. - -It was now the closing week of the year when according to custom he -posted the year's books; for he was his own secretary. By New Year's Day -his accounts were about ready and new books were opened. - -He always took up with repugnance this valuation of his services. It was -to him one of life's ironies that in order to live he must take toll of -death. He must harvest his bread from the fields of tears. He must catch -his annual treasure from those rainbows of hope that spanned weary -pillows. He must fill his wine-jar by dipping his cup into the waves of -Lethe. He must equip his very stable with the ferriage he had collected -on the banks of the Styx. - -His heart was never in his bookkeeping; this morning he could barely fix -upon it his thoughts; so that before commencing he allowed himself to -turn the leaves, getting a distasteful bird's-eye view of this panorama -of neighborhood suffering and mortality there outspread on the table. - -Two infants in January had had scarlet fever; so much for the infants -and the fever. A boy had had measles; an assessment for measles. A girl -had had mumps; the price of mumps. An old lady, going one bitter -February afternoon to her hen-house to see whether the hens had begun to -lay, had slipped on the ice-covered step and had fractured her hip-bone; -damages for the friable hip-bone of the senile. A negro man, stationed -in an ice-house to knock to pieces with an axe the blocks of ice as they -were hauled from the pond, had had his feet frost-bitten. In April a -stable-boy had been kicked in the groin and bitten in the shoulder by a -stallion. This stallion, in whom survived the fighting traits of the -wild horse and defiance of man as an enemy who had no use for him but to -enslave him and work him to death, had already killed two stablemen. Too -valuable for the stud to be himself killed, and too dangerous to be -approached or handled, it was decided to destroy his eyesight; and the -doctor had been called in to treat both stable-boy and stallion. There -was a bill for his services to the boy; none for the stallion; he was -not a veterinary. But it was his hand that had jabbed the long needle -into those virile unconquerable eyes--leaving that Samson Agonistes of -the herd whose only crime had been to reject civilization, as was his -right. There was no one to put out the doctor's eyes, who also had -rejected civilization: which was not his right. - -In June a lad, climbing a cherry tree with the ambition to capture the -earliest cherries dangling scarlet, had fallen flat upon his back when -the limb had split from the half-rotten trunk, thus jarring his spine. -It was a bad case; he must now make out a good bill for it, otherwise -the father would feel resentful. - -In harvest time one of his friends, a young farmer, overheated, went -bathing too soon in a fresh-water pond--made cooler by a recent -hail-storm; between the leaves lay a note from his widow, with its deep -black border and its mourning perfume; she had asked for the -account--had asked punctiliously to pay for a beloved young husband's -fatal chill. In autumn two barefoot half-grown brothers were cutting -ironweeds in a pasture with hemphooks; the elder by too heavy a stroke -had sent his blade clean through a clump of weeds into the ankle of the -younger, slashing it to the bone. - -Thus the record ran on as the doctor turned the pages in a preliminary -survey of his chart of suffering. And then there were the cases of those -coming into the world and the cases of those going out: birth-rates, -death-rates. He must exact of Nature his fee for continuing the -existence of the human race; and he must go about among his friends and -neighbors and wring money out of them because those they loved best had -merely paid their own decent debt to mortality. - -He dipped his pen into the ink, drew before him some blanks, and began -to make out the bills. The rooms were very quiet and comfortable; winter -sunshine entered through the windows; the Christmas wind frolicked -outside the walls. - - * * * * * - - -To be forced to sit there and say to the world: My feelings have nothing -to do with it: you must pay what you owe! Because all life is payment; -everything is a settlement. There is but one that is exempt--Nature. It -is only she who never fails to collect a debt but who never pays one. -Who that has ever lived our common human life, borne its burdens, felt -its cares, fought against its wrongs, who but knows that Nature is in -debt to him? But what son of hers has ever been able to tear his due -from her! - - * * * * * - - -More may be learned about the doctor by an inspection of his rooms. Of -these there were three, with a small fourth chamber as an ell in the -house: in this ell there was a single bed, and here he sometimes -slept--as nearly outside the house as it was possible to lie and still -to be within it. - -The room in which he now worked was his library; communicating through -an open door was his office; beyond the office through another open door -was a third room in which were stored many personal articles of indoor -and outdoor use. - -Beginning with his office, you derived the knowledge which any -physician's and surgeon's office, if modern and complete, should afford. -On one wall hung his diploma from a New York Medical College; on another -a diploma from Vienna for post-graduate study and hospital work. - -The rooms taken together bore testimony in their entire equipment to a -general outside truth: that the physician who lived in them was not a -country doctor because he had been crowded by abler members of the -profession out of the cities where there are many into the country where -there are none: and this fact in turn had its larger historic -significance. - -Almost within a generation a radical change has taken place in the -relation of town and country as regards the profession of medicine. The -old barriers which half a century ago separated the sick in the streets -from the sick in fields and forests have been swept away. The city -physician now twenty-five miles away can often arrive more quickly than -a country doctor who lives five; and a surgeon can come in an hour who -formerly needed half a day. But many now living with long memories can -well remember the time when the country doctor ruled in his neighborhood -as the priest in mediĉval Europe swayed his parish. However remote, he -was always sent for. His form was the very image of rescue, his face was -the light of healing. As a consequence, the country often developed -leaders in the profession. Instead of its being dependent upon the -cities, these looked to the rural districts for many of the most skilful -practitioners. - -This was strikingly true from the earliest settlement of the West on -that immense plateau of forest and grass land which has long since drawn -to itself the notice of the world as the loveliness of Kentucky. It was -on the southern boundary of this plateau, living in a pioneer hamlet and -practising far and wide through a wilderness, that a country doctor -became the father of ovarian surgery in the United States and won the -reverence of the world of science and the gratitude of humanity. In -another pioneer settlement one of the greatest of American lithotomists -spread the lustre of his name and the goodness of his deeds over the -whole country west of the Alleghany Mountains; and these were but two of -those many country doctors who there for well-nigh a century were the -reliance of their people: physicians, surgeons, diagnosticians, nurses, -pharmacists, friends--all in one. - -This powerful and brilliant tradition had descended to Dr. Birney, and -he had worthily upheld it. In some respects he had solidly advanced it, -notably in his treatment of children's diseases. - -A second room, in which the articles of his personal life were kept, -gave further knowledge of him as a man. Outside the windows there was a -tennis court; he played tennis with his children and with young people -of the neighborhood. You saw his racquet on the wall; and if you had -opened a closet, you would have found the flannels and the shoes. -Elsewhere on the wall you saw his reel. In season he liked to fish, when -his patients also could go fishing, or at least were well enough to feel -like going; and in the same closet you might have noted the residue of a -fisherman's outfit. He fished not only for black bass, but for that mild -pond and creek fish prized as a delicacy on Kentucky tables--a variety -of the calico bass known in the local vocabulary as "newlight." - -Still elsewhere you saw his game bag and bird gun--he liked to call it -by the older word, fowling-piece. He hunted: quail, doves, wild duck. In -another closet you would have been interested to discover his regalia as -a member of the Order of Masons; and well placed beside it his uniform -as a member of the State Guard--the two well placed there. When years -before his neighbors had enrolled him in the Guard, they had saluted him -as one more Kentucky Colonel. "I will submit to no official -degradation," he had said; "I am already the Commander of the whole army -of you on the field of your human Waterloo: salute your General!" - -His library added its testimony as to other humanities. Scattered about -on tables and mantel-piece were fine old pipes and boxes of cigars and -playing-cards. There were poker chips, showing that the doctor had poker -neighbors (where else if not there?), though whist was his game. You -realized that he was a man at home among a people who loved play--must -have play. On his sideboard were temperate decanters: he had sideboard -neighbors. Altogether a human-looking room for much that is human; easy -to enter, comfortable to stay in, hard to quit. - -But our closest friends can come so close to us and no closer; they -surround us but none of them enters us. Nature forbids that any but our -own feet should cross the bridge spanning the distance between other -people and the fortress of the individual. Across that bridge we can -take with us no companions except those that keep silent amid its -silences; that can speak to us but that cannot see us: those great -voices without eyes; those great listeners without ears; great -counsellors without criticism; great hands that guide and refuse to -smite; great judges that embody law and refuse to sit in judgment on -us--Books. - -Some of the doctor's books held for him life's indispensable laughter; -and no one of us ever tells all the things in this world that we laugh -at. Some held for him life's tears; and no one of us ever tells the -things that secretly start our own. Some held neither laughter nor tears -but what is above both--life's calm; and what one of us but at times -feels the need to ascend to some inner mountain-top of our own -spirits--far above the whole darkened or radiant cloud-rack of -emotion--and look futureward into the promised peace, the end of our -wandering. Joys--sorrows--and calm: these three for him, too. - -Such books stayed with the doctor year after year. He could wake in the -night and find them through the darkness; in the darkness they knew how -to find him. They were not part of his medical library, of course, which -was another matter. But they filled three sides of a large low revolving -bookcase in the middle of the room beside his easy chair and his lamp -and table. - -The fourth side of his bookcase held the books that came and went as a -stream, entering and passing on: he drank from them as they flowed by. -Always they were books of fiction or biography which held in solution -the truth of the human matter about some life that had fought or was -fighting its path through to victory. Always he would have books of -victory. By preference it must be a story real or imagined of some boy, -youth, young man, middle-aged man, who was in the struggle for existence -and who was on the side of survival. He kept in mind the words of a -great Frenchman that the way to make an impression upon the world is to -plough through humanity like a cannon-ball or to creep through it like a -pestilence. But he knew that in this world there are very few human -cannonballs, though of such pestilence there is always more than enough. -Rather every common man's life, and every uncommon man's life, is a -drawn sword that has to cut its way through all other drawn swords. Here -were the books which disclosed the mettle of a character: the last -magnificent refusal to be ruined by evil which is the very breath of a -man and the slow measure of the world's advance. So that, while much is -always failing in everybody, all is never failing. Out of the blackest -abyss there arises in the wounded and prostrate some white peak of -unmelting innocence--at the base of which Life's battle rages. - -Many a time long after midnight he would read to a finish some such -triumphant story; and with a murmur of "Well done!" he would close the -book, turn out his lamp, and go to sleep in his chair with his clothes -on--with that scene of victory emptying its echoes into his ear and his -dreams. - -Here, then, was some discrete knowledge of the doctor as a doctor and as -a man. But there was one thing in his library that blended these two -separate aspects, showing how the man felt as a physician and how the -physician felt as a man. This was a series of pictures running around -the walls and connecting great epochs in the progress of Medicine. - -He had a liking, as the world has, for some brief series of climaxes -that will depict a subject at a glance. Very memorable to him was -Shakespeare's Seven Ages--because they were seven and were thus easily -grasped by poetry and reason. But he knew that Shakespeare might as -truly have substituted another seven--with as good poetry and reason; or -he might have made the ages fourteen or forty-nine or forty-nine -hundred; for actually the ages of a man's life are infinite; but being -reduced to seven, we all recognize them. - -And memorable to him likewise had been Hogarth's _Progress of the Rake_ -with its few pictures; and his _Progress of the Harlot_ with its few; -and his _Progress of Marriage à la Mode_ with its few; and the _Progress -of Cruelty_ with its fewest of all--only four, but more than enough! And -yet the stages in the progress of the rake and of the harlot and of -marriage à la mode and of cruelty are infinite; and at no single stage -in the progress of any one of them could you actually find either Rake -or Harlot or Infidelity or Cruelty. Being portrayed as few, the world -understands and finds its own account in them. - -So around the walls of his library there hung a series of pictures -showing the progress of Medicine across the ages. - -The first picture represented a scene in the life of primitive man, -during the period when he had long enough been man to form into hostile -tribes, but not long enough to have advanced far from the boundaries of -the brute. It is a battle picture: the battle is over: the survivors are -gone: the dead and wounded lie about. Medicine as a human science has -not yet been born; surgery has not yet separated itself from the -movements of instinct. Yet there was activity among the wounded. In some -of the warriors you saw such attempts in the care of their wounds as one -may witness to-day in wounded birds and animals--if one is fortunate -enough to be so placed as to be able to watch: there were the -instinctive devices to cleanse, to protect, to alleviate: those low -beginnings of the great science which you may observe to-day in your dog -when he has come home after a fight with lacerated ears and slashed -thighs--when he crawls under the porch to the darkest corner to keep -away other dogs and light and flies; whose sole instrument of cleansing -is his tongue and whose only bathing fluid is saliva. On that -battle-field you saw such beginnings of surgery as to-day is practised -by a bird treating its broken wing or broken leg. Thus the wounded -warriors concerned themselves with their hurts--all mother-naked. Along -one edge of the battle-field was a stream of running water; some had -started to draw themselves toward this and had died on the way. One was -stretched full alongside--a young chief of magnificent proportions and a -face of higher intelligence. And out of that intelligence, as a -marvellous advance in the development of man, you saw one action: he was -dipping up water in the palm of his hand and pouring it upon his wound. -At some moment in the history of the race there must somewhere have been -that first movement of the developing animal to substitute water for -saliva. That great historic moment was depicted there. It was still the -Azoic Age of Medicine. - -Near by hung a second picture. Ages have passed, no one knows how many. -The brute has become Prometheus; he has learned the use of fire; and he -has learned the most heroic application of flame--to touch it to himself -where he is in greatest agony: that is, he has learned to cauterize his -wounds. More than fire can he now handle; he has learned to bring -together fat and flame; and he has discovered how from flame to produce -oil; and he has learned to pour boiling oil into the holes in his body -made by the implements of war. It is the long Ages of Medicine for the -cautery and burning oil. - -A third picture hung next. More ages have passed, no one knows how many; -and the scene is another battle-field far down toward modern times. It -is France; it is the second half of the sixteenth century; it is warfare -in Piedmont. Troops are sweeping up the hill, and in the background is a -walled city with turrets and towers; and in the foreground wounded -soldiers are arriving or are lying about on the ground. There is a rude -mass of masonry used as an operating-table; and on the operating-table -is a soldier, one of whose legs has just been amputated above the knee; -an attendant holds the saw with which the leg has just been sawed off, -and the stump of it has dropped below. Beside the wounded man stand two -figures: one the figure of the past; and the other a figure of the -future--a poor barber's apprentice, father of modern surgery, named to -be massacred on St. Bartholomew's eve, but spared because none but a -despised Huguenot could be found in all France skilful enough to -safeguard the royal orthodox blood. There beside the soldier they stand, -these two, and in them ages meet; for the figure of the past holds in -his hand one of the cauteries that are kept redhot in a brazier near his -feet; and the other holds in his a new thing in the world--a simple -ligature. A great scene, a great epoch: the beginning of new surgery -when the flowing of blood from amputations of the great arteries could -be stopped by a mere bandage: that man--Ambroise Paré! - -More centuries have passed--we know exactly how many now from year to -year. It is the nineteenth, and it is the New World; the next picture on -the library wall portrayed a scene on the Western frontier of a new -civilization. It is the backwoods of Kentucky, it is a pioneer -settlement of three or four hundred souls, nearly a thousand miles from -any hospital or dissecting-room. In the front door of his rude pioneer -house stands a Kentucky country doctor, Ephraim MacDowell. His patient -is before him, a woman on horseback in a side-saddle. She has just -arrived, having ridden some seventy miles through the wilderness. He is -assisting her to alight; and he is soon to perform, without -consultation, without precedent in the ages of surgery (but not without -a prayer for himself and her), by strength of his own will and nerve and -by the light of the solitary candle of his own genius, an operation -which made Kentucky the mother of ovarian surgery for all coming time, a -new epoch of life and mercy: he going his own way to immortality as -Shakespeare went his, as the greatest always go theirs--by a new path -untrumpeted and alone. - -Another picture represented a scene in Boston in 1846, less than half a -century later; for the lonely mountain peaks of progress stretching -across the ages are beginning to crowd each other now; they are -beginning to run together into a range of continuous discovery. That -picture also shows an operating-room; and there stood the American -Morton, making for the world the first merciful use of anĉsthetics: with -which the silence of painlessness fell upon humanity's old outcry of -torture under treatment. - -There the doctor's pictures ended. In our own time he might have added -one more for the epoch of the Roentgen Ray and another for the Finsen -Light; and another for transfusion of blood; and still others crowning -other mountain-tops in the new Surgery and new Medicine. - -Thus he had before his eyes in his library some few Ages of his -Science--as it went forward and slipped back and missed the road and -forgot the road, yet somehow steadily advanced across the centuries like -an erring unconquerable man across his years. Not progressing however as -a man grows, from infancy to decrepitude; but moving from its old age -toward its youth, always toward its youth, as Swedenborg's Angels fly -forever toward their Spring. It ran around his walls like a great -roadway, connecting the last discoveries of his Science with the surgery -of the wolf who gnaws off his imprisoned leg and with the medicine of -the sick dog that eats grass. - -He called it his World's Path of Lessening Pain. - -It was the last refuge and solace of his often tired and often wounded -mind. Even after friends were gone at night and the poker chips were -stacked or the whist counters folded; after the sideboard had been -visited and temperately forsaken; after the abiding books had done for -him what they could; in the still house far into the night, he would -sometimes lie back in his chair and survey those battle-pictures of a -science on which he was spending his loyalty and his strength. - -Once, in younger days, outside the Eternal City, he had gone to study -those fragments of the Old Roman Aqueduct that to-day are slowly -crumbling on the Campagna; and standing alone before it he had in -imagination searched for the figure of some young workman who had helped -to mould those brick or to finish those columns: the figure of some -obscure vanished peasant. So the great wall of his science, being built -onward across the centuries into the future, would be revisited by men -of the future in places where it stood in ruins. He would be as one -whose life with its mistakes was yet linked to indestructible good. He -would vanish from beside the wall himself, but his work upon it would -have helped to uphold humanity. And many a night he went asleep in his -chair, committing himself to his Science, as the forgotten Roman laborer -of old may have fallen asleep under his own arch. - -But, in that same Italy, northward are the Apennines; and sometimes in -travelling through these or through the Swiss glaciers where Nature -measures all things on the scale of the sublime--sometimes as your eye -is passing from snow peak to snow peak, suddenly away up on some -mountain-side you will see a human hut; and standing in the door of that -hut a single human being; and the thought may come to you that there, in -the heart of that pygmy, may dwell sorrow that dwarfs the Alps. - -The doctor's library had such a picture: it completed the story of the -room, and it effaced everything else in it. In a somewhat darkened -corner hung a framed photograph of his wife in her bridal dress made not -long after their wedding. Once his photograph had hung beside it. The -plaster where the nail had been driven in had either fallen out or it -had been torn out. He never knew--he knew enough not to ask. - -As for the photograph, there stood a young bride, looking into her -future and trying to conceal from herself what she saw soon awaiting -her: the life of a woman wedded but not loved. And there was -recollection in the eyes too: that the man who had married her perhaps -in the very breath of his wooing had wished she were another; that at -the altar he had perhaps wished he were putting his ring upon another's -hand; and that if there were to be children, he would always be wishing -for them another mother. - - * * * * * - - -The doctor sat there that morning trying to work at the books of the -year. The rooms were comfortable; the children were away at the fireside -of another man's wife; the servants did not dare disturb him; his horses -waited in their stalls; it was the day on which he could begin to reap -his golden harvest--a pleasant day for most men; but he could not see -the blanks before him nor remember the names he filled in nor the -figures that were for value received. - -Because there lay open before him the Book of the Years. - -And coming down toward him on the track of memory through this book was -his life from boyhood to middle age: first the playing feet of the child -that have no path as yet; then the straight path of the boy; then the -winding road of youth; then the quickly widened road, so smooth, so -easy, of a young man; and then the fixed deepening rut of middle age. - -And now the rut of middle age had come to its forks: north fork and -south fork; or east fork and west fork--he must choose. - -Whoso cares to know where and how the doctor's life-path started and -across what kind of country it had run until now, a middle-aged man, he -sat there this day at the tragedy of its forking, may if he so choose -follow the road by the chart of a narrative. - -But let him remember that this narrative goes back into a society unlike -that of to-day and into a Kentucky that has vanished. Back there are -other manners, other customs, other types of men: a different light on -the world altogether. - - - - - IV - - THE BOOK OF THE YEARS - - -MORE than half a century ago, or during the decade of 1850 and 1860, -when American life on the fertile plain of Kentucky attained its ripest -flavor, there was living with great ease to himself and others on a -large estate in one of the bluegrass counties a country gentleman and -farmer who was nothing more: nothing more because that was enough. Being -farmer took up much of his time, and being a gentleman took up the rest. - -He one day observed that his prolific heels were beginning to be trodden -upon by a group of stalwart sons nearing manhood; or, in the idiom of -that picturesque soil, all thickly bunched in their race for the grand -stand. According to the robust family life of that era and people, a -year or less was often the interval between births; and a father, -slanting his eyes upward to his oldest who had just reached twenty-one, -might catch a glimpse of a fourth son smiling loyally at him from the -top of the rank stalk of eighteen. - -This juvenescent and prodigal sire clearly foreseeing, as many of his -neighbors foresaw, the emancipation of the negroes and the downfall of -the Southern feudal system and thus the downfall of the Kentucky -gentleman of the feudal soil, could see no further. When those grapes -then ripening went into the winepress of destiny, there would be no more -like them: the stock would be cut down, a new vineyard would have to be -planted; and what might become of his sons as laborers in that vineyard -he knew not, though looking wistfully forth. Therefore he determined to -store them away for their own safeguard among those ancestral -professions alike of the Old and New World that are exempt from -political vicissitude and dynastic changes. - -Now it happened that among his friends he counted the great Dr. Benjamin -Dudley, the illustrious Kentucky lithotomist at Lexington; and taking -counsel of that learned and kindly man, he chose for his first-born -stalwart--since the stalwart when invited to do so declined to choose it -for himself--the profession of medicine; and having politely packed his -trunk, he politely packed him with a polite body servant and a polite -good-by off to a medical school, the best the Southern States then -boasted--and the Southern States knew how to boast in those days. - -But the colt that has been dragged to the water cannot be forced to -drink; and the semi-docile son could not be made to introduce into his -system his father's professional prescription. His presence at the -medical school was evidence in its way that he had swallowed the -prescription; but his conduct as a student showed that by his own will -he had inhibited its action upon his vital parts. - -In the year of finishing his course of lectures his father died; and -upon returning home certificated as a doctor, he returned also as a -young blood of independent fortune, independent future, and independent -Feelings--the last of which, the Feelings, he regarded as by far the -most important of the three. At the bottom of his trunk against the -lining was his diploma, on the principle that we pack first what we -shall need last. - -The immediate use this golden youth made of his liberty and his -Feelings was to take over into his control a share of the ancestral -estate that fell to him under our American laws of partible -inheritance; to build on it a low rambling manor house; and into this -to convey his portion of the polished family silver and the polished -family blacks. Soon afterward with no exertion on his part he married -him a wife in the neighborhood; tore up his diploma as if to -annihilate in his establishment the very recognition of disease; laid -off a training-track; and proceeded to employ his languid energies in -a fashion which his father had not favored for any of his sons--the -breeding of Kentucky thoroughbreds. - -Years passed. History came and went its thundering way, leaving the -nation like a forest blasted with lightning and drenched with rain. The -Kentucky gentleman of the feudal sort was gone, having disappeared in -the clouds of that history which had swept him from the landscape. - -The mild young Kentucky breeder mellowed to his middle years, winning -and losing on the road as we all must, but with never a word about it -one way or the other from him; early losing his wife and winning the -makeshifts of widowerhood, entering so to speak upon its restrictions; -losing his little daughter and winning a nephew whom he adopted and -idolized; letting him run wild over the house, and then about the yard, -and then about the farm, and then across boundary fences into other -farms, and then into the towns, and then out into the world. - -There were parts of his farm that looked like English downs; and on -these fed Southdown sheep; for the Kentucky country gentleman of that -period killed his own mutton. (He killed pretty much his own everything, -even his own neighbors.) No saddle of mutton out of a public market -house for him and for his groaning mahogany. And so it seemed well-nigh -a romantic coincidence that the fatherless, motherless boy who came to -play on these downs should have arrived there with the name of Downs -Birney. - -The Kentucky turfman, with his Southdown sheep and Durham cattle and -White Berkshire hogs and thoroughbred horses and Blue-dorking chickens, -was born, as may already have been observed, with that Southern -indolence which occasionally equals the Oriental's; and as more time -passed he settled into the deeper imperturbability of men who commit -their destiny to fast horses. Apparently they early become so inoculated -with hazard as to end in being immune to all excitement. As he could -stroll over his farm without having to climb a hill, he had perhaps -preferred to build him a low manor house so that he could lounge over it -without having to take the trouble to go upstairs. In the chosen -business of his life it would appear that he had wished to avail himself -of a principle of Old Roman law: that he who does a thing through -another does it himself; and thus he could sit perfectly still on his -veranda with two legs and run nearly a mile a minute on a track with -four. - -A rural Kentucky gentleman of dead-ripe local pre-bellum flavor: -exhaling a kind of Falernian bouquet as he dwelt under the serene blue -sky on a beautiful bluegrass Sabine farm: a warm-visaged, soft-handed, -bland-voiced man--so bland that when he strolled up to you and accosted -you, you were uncertain whether he was going to offer to bet with you or -to baptize you. Season after season this tranquil happy Kentuckian dwelt -there, intent upon making nothing of himself and upon making the horse -an adequate citizen of a state that likes to go its own gait--and to -make him a leading citizen of the world: measurably he succeeded in -doing both. - -As he receded from view, his horses advanced into notice. He was -probably never better satisfied with his stable lot and with his human -lot than when at one of his annual sales he could hear the -auctioneer--that high-gingered Pindar of the black walnut stump--arouse -the enthusiasm of the buyers by announcing that a certain three-year-old -had as its sire the _Immortal Cunctator_ and that its dam was the -peerless _Swift Perdition_. Year after year he dwelt there, contented in -drinking the limestone water of his hillside spring with his foals and -his fillies; drinking at his table the unskimmed milk of his Durham -dairy; and drinking indoors and outdoors the waterproof beverage of a -four-seasons philosophic decanter. The decanter resembled the limestone -spring in this at least: that it could never rise higher than being full -and could never be baled dry. - -In the vernal season, as sole proprietor of all this teeming rural -bliss, he sat on the top rail of a fence and witnessed the manufacture -of the hippic generations; in summer sat on the top rail of another -fence and saw his colts trained; in autumn in the judges' stand sat with -a finger on his watch and saw them win; in winter, passing into a state -of partial hibernation over the study of pedigrees, his fingers plunged -deep in his beard, with comfortable mumblings and fumblings that bore -their analogy to a bear's brumal licking of its paws. - -A veritable Roman poet Horace of a man, with yearlings as his odes--and -with a few mules for satires. - -Surely possessed of some excellent Epicurean philosophy of his own in -that he could live so long in a wretched world and escape all -wretchedness. If storms broke over his head, he insisted that the -weather just then was especially fine; if trouble knocked at the door, -he announced with regret from the inside that the door was locked. Is -there any wonder that, nobody though he insisted upon being, his -appearance in public always attracted a crowd? For the inhabitants of -this world are always looking for one happy inhabitant. His -acquaintances hurried to him as they would break into a playful run for -a barrel of lemonade at a woodland picnic when they needed to be cooled; -or as they waited around a kettle of burgroo at a barbecue in autumn -when they wished to be warmed. Hot or cold, they felt their need to be -sprayed as to their unquiet passions by his streaming benevolence. - -Always that benevolence. On two distinct occasions he had placidly -reduced by one the entire meritorious population of central Kentucky; -and then with a clear countenance, had presented himself at the bar of -justice to be cleared. Upon his technical acquittal, the judge had -casually said that no matter how guilty he was, it would have been a -much fouler crime to hang a citizen with so innocent an expression; that -the habitual look of innocence was of more value in a homicidal -community than a verdict of guilty for two fits of distemper! - -If the world should last until Kentucky passes out of history into the -classic and the mythological; if Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road -should become Orion and the Milky Way; if the capture of Betsy Calloway -should become the rape of Lucrece; if the two gigantic Indian fighters, -the Poe brothers, should establish their claim to the authorship of -those Poems and Tales which even in our own time are beginning to fall -away from a mythical personage,--hardly more than an emanation of -darkness, perhaps this unique Kentucky gentleman who insisted upon being -no one at all will exhibit his beaming face in the heavens of those ages -as Charioteer to the Horses of the Sun. - -The sole warrant for here disturbing his light repose under his -patchwork of turf is that he had taken to his hearthstone and heart an -orphan nephew, whose destiny it was to be profoundly influenced by the -environment of heart and hearthstone: by this breeding of horses, by the -method of training them; by that serene outlook upon the world and that -gayety of nature which attracted happiness to it as naturally as the -martin box in the yard drew the martins. Possibly even more influenced -in the earlier years around that fireside where there was no women, no -mother, no father, either; nor parent out of doors save the motherhood -of the near earth and the fatherhood of the distant sky. - -From the day when he arrived on that stock farm its influences began -their work upon him and kept it up during years when he was not aware. -But in his own memory the first event in the long series of events--the -first scene of all the scenes that made his Progress--occurred when he -was about fifteen years old. As the middle-aged man, sitting in his -library that morning with the Book of the Years before him, reviewed his -life, his memory went straight back to that event and stopped there as -though it were the beginning. Of course it was not the beginning; of -course he could not himself have known where the beginning was or what -it was; but he did what we all do as we look back toward childhood and -try to open a road as far as memory will reach,--we begin somewhere, and -the doctor began with his fifteenth year--as the first scene of his -Progress. But let that scene be painted not as the doctor saw it: more -nearly as it was: he was too young to know all that it contained. - -It was a balmy Saturday afternoon of early summer; and uncle and nephew -were out in the yard of the white and lemon-colored manor house, -enjoying the shade of some blossoming locust trees. The uncle was -sitting in a yellow cane-bottom chair; and he had on a yellow nankeen -waistcoat and trousers; so that the chair looked like an overgrown -architectural harmony attached to his dorsal raiment; and he had on a -pleated bosom shirt which had been polished by his negro laundress with -iron and paraffine until it looked like a cake of winter ice marked off -to be cut in slices. In the top button-hole was a cluster diamond pin -which represented almost a star-system; and about his throat was tied a -magenta cravat: that was the day for solferinos and magentas and Madeira -wine. But the neck of the wearer of the cravat was itself turning to a -gouty magenta; so that the ribbon, while appropriately selected, was as -a color-sign superfluous. On the grass beside him lay his black alpaca -coat and panama hat and gold-headed cane and red silk handkerchief and a -piece of dry wood admirable for whittling. - -He had been to a colt show that morning several miles across the country -in a neighborhood where there was some turbulence; not the turbulence of -the colts; and he had reached home just before dinner--glad to get there -without turbulence; and the dinner had been good, and now he was -experiencing that comfortable expansion of girth which turns even a -pessimist toward optimism; that streaming benevolence of his countenance -never streamed to better advantage. - -He was reading his Saturday weekly newspaper, an entire page of which -showed that this was a great thoroughbred breeding-region of the world. -At the distance of several yards you could have inferred as much by the -character of the advertisements, each of which was headed by the little -black wood-cut of a stallion. The page was blackened by this wood-cut as -it repeated itself up and down, column after column. Whether the -stallion were sorrel or roan or bay or chestnut or black--one wood-cut -stood for all. There was one other wood-cut for jacks--all jacks. - -In the same way one little wood-cut in an earlier generation had been -used to stand for runaway slaves: a negro with a stick swung across his -shoulder and with a bundle dangling from the stick down his fugitive -back; one wood-cut for all slaves. If you saw between the legs of the -figure, it was a man; if you did not--it was the other figure of man's -fate in slavery. - -The turfman read every item of his newspaper, having first with a due -sense of proportion cast his eye on the advertisement of his own stud. - -The nephew was lying on the grass near by, wearing a kind of -dove-colored suit; so that from a distance he might have been taken for -a huge mound of vegetable mould; he having just awakened from a nap: a -heavy, rank, insolent, human cub with his powers half pent up and half -unfolded, except a fully developed insolence toward all things and -people except his uncle, himself, and his friend, Fred Ousley. He rolled -drowsily about on the soft turf, waiting to take his turn at the -newspaper: it was the only thing he read: otherwise he was too busy -reading the things of life on the farm. Once he stretched himself on his -back, looking upward for anything and everything in sight. The light -breeze swung the boughs of the locust, now heavily draped with blossoms; -and soon his eyes began to follow what looked like a flame darting in -and out amid the snowy cascades of bloom--a flame that was vocal and -that dropped down upon his ear crimson petals of song--the Baltimore -oriole. - -He liked all birds but three; and presently one of those that he -disliked appeared in a fork of a locust and darted at the oriole, -driving it away and then returning to the fork--the blue-jay. His hatred -of this bird dated from the time when one of the negroes had told him -that no blue-jays could be seen at twelve o'clock on Friday--all having -gone to carry brimstone to the lower regions. After that he and Fred -Ousley had made a point of trying to kill jays early Friday morning: a -fatally shied stone would cut off to a dead certainty just so much of -that supply of brimstone. He hated them even more on Saturday, when he -thought of them as having returned. The one in the fork now was looking -down at him, and, with a great mockery of bowing, called out his -_Fiddle-Fiddle-Fiddle_: it was his way of saying: "You'll get there: and -there will be brimstone, sonny!" - -Of course he believed none of this legend; but suggestions live on in -the mind even though they do not root themselves in faith; and memory -also has its power to make us like and dislike. Presently, as he lay -there stretched on the grass and near the edge of the shade, another -ill-omened bird came sailing cloud-high across the blue firmament; and -having taken notice of him,--a motionless form on the earth below,--it -turned back and began to circle about him. That was another bird he -hated. When a child he asked about it, and had been told that it removed -all disagreeable things from the farms. He thought it a very kind, very -self-sacrificing and industrious bird to do so. And he conceived the -whole species of them as a procession of wheelbarrows operated across -the sky by means of wings and tails. Afterwards, when his views grew -less hazy on natural history, he lowered his opinion of the -disinterested buzzard. - -The third bird on which had fallen his resentment was the rain-crow: -earlier in his childhood it had been told him that when the clacking -wail of this songster was heard on the stillness of a summer day, a -storm was coming. And he had seen storms enough on that very -farm--tornadoes that cut a path through the woods as a reaper cuts his -way across the wheat-field. But he saw no rain-crow to-day; you look for -them in August when they haunt the cool shade-trees of lawns. - -Altogether these three birds made with one another a rather formidable -combination for a boy living on a farm: the one brought on storms that -threatened life; the second gladly presided at your obsequies, if the -opportunity were given; and the third was pleased to accompany you to -the infernal regions with the necessary fuel. The arrangement seemed -about perfect; apparently they had overlooked nothing of value. - -Thus he had not escaped that vast romance of Nature which brooded more -thickly over Kentucky country life in those days than now: a romance of -superstitions and legends about bird life and animal life and tree life, -that extended even to Nature's chemicals; for was there not brimstone -with its story? As far back as he could remember he had been made -familiar with the idea--rather terrible in its way--that there was a -variety of Biblical horse which breathed brimstone. All alone one day he -had made a somewhat cautious personal examination of the paddocks and -stalls; and was relieved to discover that his uncle's horses breathed -out only what they breathed in--Kentucky air. He felt glad that they -were not of the breed of those Biblical chargers. - -But then there was brimstone in reserve for a large portion of the human -family; and with a perverse mocking deviltry he pushed his inquiry in -this direction still farther. Without the knowledge of any one he had -wasted at a drugstore in town his brightest dime for a package of the -avenging substance; and at home the following day he had scraped chips -together at the woodpile and started a blaze and poured the brimstone -in. Actually he had a sample of hell fire in operation there behind the -woodpile! There was no question that brimstone knew how to burn: it -seemed well adapted for its purpose. He did not take Fred Ousley into -his confidence in this experiment: the possibilities were a little too -personal even for friendship! - -All this reveals a trait in him which lay deeper than child's-play--a -susceptibility to suggestion. Even while he amused himself as a child -with the shams and superstitions about nature, these lived on in his -mind as part of its furnishings. Alas, that this should be true for all -of us--that we cannot forget the things we do not believe in. To the end -of our lives our thoughts have to move amid the obstructions and rubbish -of the useless and the laughable. The salon of our inner dwelling is -largely filled with old furniture which we decline to sit in, but are -obliged to look at, and are powerless to remove; and which fills the -favorite recesses where we should like to arrange the new. - -There they were, then, that Saturday afternoon: the uncle with his -newspaper and the nephew at that moment with his group of evil birds. - -There was an interruption. Around the yard with its velvet turf and -blooming shrubs and vines and flowers, that filled the air with -fragrance, was a plank fence newly whitewashed. All the fences of the -farm had been newly whitewashed; and they ran hither and thither across -the emerald of the landscape like structures of white marble. Through -the gate of the yard fence which was heard to shut behind him there now -advanced toward uncle and nephew a neighbor of theirs, the minister of -the country church, himself a bluegrass farmer. He was one of the many -who liked to seek the company of the untroubled turfman. The two were -good neighbors and great friends. The minister came oftenest for a visit -on Saturday afternoons, as if he wished to touch at this harbor of a -quiet life while passing from the earthly fields of the week to the -Sabbath's holy land. - -At the sound of the latch the uncle lifted his eyes from his newspaper. - -"Bring a chair, Downs, will you?" he said in a cordial undertone; and -soon there was a fine group of rural humanity under the blossoming -locusts: the two men talking, and the boy, now that his turn had come at -last, lying on the grass absorbed in the newspaper. - -The men were characters of broad plain speech, much like English squires -of two centuries earlier: not ladylike men: Chaucer might have been -pleased to make one of their group and listen, and turn them afterwards -into fine old English tales; Hogarth might have craved the privilege to -sit near and observe and paint; and a certain Sir John Falstaff might -have been at home with them--in the absence of the "Merry Wives." - -There was another interruption. Around the corner of the manor house a -young servant advanced, bearing a waiter with two deep glasses well -filled: at the bottom the drink was golden; it was green and snow-white -at the top: a little view of icebergs with pine trees growing on them. - -The servant smiled and approached with embarrassment, having discovered -a guest; and in a lowered tone she offered to the master of the house -apologies for not bringing three. - -"This is yours, Aleck," said the host, holding out one glass to the -minister. "This is for you, Downs. Now, Melissa, make me one, will you?" - -"None for me," said the minister. - -"Then never mind, Melissa. But wait--lemonade?" - -"Yes; lemonade. It is the very thing." - -"As it is or as it might be?" - -"As it is." - -"Lemonade without the decanter, Melissa." - -While the servant was in the house, the uncle and the nephew waited with -their glasses untouched. - -The turfman was very happy--happy in his guest, in his nephew, in -himself, in everything: his mind overflowed with his quaint playfulness; -and when he talked, you were loath to interrupt him. - -"Aleck," he said, rattling the ice in his julep, "don't you suppose that -when we get to heaven, nothing will make us happier there than -remembering the good times we had in this world? so if you want to be -happy there, be happy here. _This_ is one of the pleasures that I expect -to carry in memory if I am ever transformed into a male seraph. But I -may not have to remember. If there is any provision made for the thirst -of the Kentucky redeemed, do you know what I think will be the reward of -all central Kentucky male angels? From under the great white throne -there will trickle an ice-cold stream of this, ready-made--and I -shouldn't wonder if there were a Kentuckian under the throne making it. -The Kentucky delegation would be camped somewhere near, though there -will be two delegations, of course, because they will divide on -politics. And don't you fear that there will not be others hastening to -the banks of that stream! It is too late to look for young Moses in the -bulrushes; but I shouldn't wonder if the whole ransomed universe -discovered old Moses in the mint." - -"_Which mint?_" said the minister, who kept his worldly wits about him. - -"Aleck," replied the turfman, "I leave it to you whether that is not too -flippant a remark with which to close a gentleman's solemn discourse." - -The lemonade was served. - -"Is yours sour enough, Aleck?" - -The visitor found it to his taste. - -"Is yours sweet enough, Downs?" - -This hurt Downs' feelings: it implied that he was not old enough to like -things sour. He replied surlily that his might have been stronger. - -The servant, watching from inside a window, judged by the angle at which -the glasses were tilted that they were empty: she returned and asked -whether she should bring 'one more all around.' - -"More lemonade, Aleck?" - -"Thank you, no more for me--but it was good, better than yours." - -"Another for you, Downs?" - -Downs thought that he would not have another just for the moment: the -servant disappeared. - -The nephew returned to his paper. The turfman took from the turf a piece -of whittling wood, split it, and handed the larger piece to the -minister. The minister produced his penknife and began to whittle. In -those days a countryman who did not carry his penknife with a big blade -well sharpened for whittling as he talked with his neighbor stood -outside the manners and customs of a simple cheerful land. And now the -two friends were ready to enjoy their afternoon--the vicar of souls and -the vicar of the stables. - -The minister began to speak of his troubles--with that strange leaning -we all have to let our confidences fall upon people who are not too -good: the vicar of the stables was not too good to be sympathetic. It -was all summed up in one sentence--discouragement about his growing -boys. From the beginnings of their lives he had tried to teach them the -things they were not to do; and all their lives they had seemed bent on -doing those things. He felt disheartened as the boys grew older and -their waywardness increased. _What not to do_--morning and night _what -not to do_. Yet they were always doing it. - -Out under the trees the peaceful happy sounds of summer life in the yard -came to the ears of the minister as nature's chorus of happiness and -indifference. The breeder of thoroughbreds, as his friend grew silent, -laughed with his peaceful nature, and remarked with respect and -gentleness:-- - -"I never train my colts in that way." - -"My sons are not colts," said the minister, laughing. "Nor young -jackasses!" - -"Yes, I know they are not colts; but I doubt whether their difference -makes any difference in the training of the two species of animal." - -After a pause which was filled with little sounds made by the -industrious penknives, the master of the stables went into the matter -for the pleasure of it:-- - -"You tell me that you have tried a method of training and that it is a -failure. I don't wonder: any training would be a failure that made it -the chief business in life of any creature--human or brute--to fix its -mind upon what it is _not_ to do. You say you are always warning your -boys; that you fill their minds with cautions; that you arouse their -imagination with pictures of forbidden things; make them look at life as -a check, a halter, a blind bridle. So far as I can discover, you have -prepared a list of the evil traits of humanity and required your boys to -memorize these: and then you tell them to beware. Is that it?" - -"That is exactly it." - -The youth lying on the grass laid aside his newspaper and began to -listen. The two men welcomed his attention. The minister always found it -difficult to speak without a congregation--part of which must be -sinners: here was an occasion for outdoor preaching. The turfman -probably welcomed this chance to get before the youth in an indirect way -certain suggestions which he relied upon for his:-- - -"Well, that is where your training and my training differ," he resumed. -"I never assemble my colts at the barn door--that is, I would not if I -could--and recite to them the vicious traits of the wild horse and -require them to memorize those traits and think about them unceasingly, -but never to imitate them. Speaking of jacks, Aleck, you know our -neighbor stands a jack. And he would not if he could compel his jack to -make a study of the peculiarities of Balaam's ass. But you compel your -boys to make a study of Balaam and his tribes. You teach them the -failings of mankind as they revealed themselves in an age of primitive -transgression. I say I never try to train a horse that way. On the -contrary I try to let all the ancestral memories slumber, and I take all -the ancestral powers and develop them for modern uses. Why, listen. We -know that a horse's teeth were once useful as a weapon to bite its -enemies. Now I try to give it the notion that its teeth are only useful -in feeding. You know that its hoofs were used to strike its enemies: it -stood on its forefeet and kicked in the rear; it stood on its hind feet -and pawed in front. You know that the horse is timid, it is born timid, -dies timid; but had it not been timid, it would have been exterminated: -its speed was one of its means of survival: if it could not conquer, it -had to flee and the sentinel of its safety was its fear; it was the most -valuable trait it had; this ancestral trait has not yet been outlived; -don't despise the horse for it. But now I try to teach a horse that feet -and legs and speed are to serve another instinct--the instinct to win in -the new maddened courage of the race-course. And I never allow the horse -to believe that it has such a thing as an enemy. He is not to fear life, -but to trust life. I teach him that man is not his old hereditary enemy, -but his friend--and his master. I would not suggest to a horse any of -its latent bad traits. I never prohibit its doing anything. I never try -to teach it what not to do, but only what to do. And so I have good -colts, and you have--but excuse me!" - -The minister stood up and brushed the shavings from his lap and legs; -then as he took his seat he covered his side of the discussion with one -breath:-- - -"I hold to the old teaching--good from the foundation of the world--that -the old must tell the young what not to do." - -"Aleck," replied the vicar of the stables with his quaint sunniness, -"don't you know that no human being can teach any living thing--man or -beast or bird or fish or flea--_not_ to do a thing? you can only teach -_to do_. If there is a God of this universe, He is a God of doing. You -can no more teach 'a not' than you can teach 'a nothing.' Now try to -teach one of your sons nothing! This world has never taught, and will -never teach, a prohibition, because a prohibition is a nothing; it has -never taught anything but the will and desire to do: that is the root of -the matter. Do you suppose I try to keep one of my cows from kicking -over the bucket of milk by tying her hind legs? I go to the other end of -the beast and do something for her brain so that when she feels the -instinct to kick which is her right, what I have taught her will compel -her to waive her right and to keep her feet on the ground. That is all -there is of it." - -They were hearty and good-humored in their talk, and the minister did -not budge: but the boy listened only to his uncle. - -"Do you remember, Aleck, when you and I were in the school over yonder -and one morning old Bowles issued a new order that none of us boys was -to ask for a drink between little recess and big recess? Now none of us -drank at that hour; but the day after the order was issued, every boy -wanted a drink, and demanded a drink, and got a drink. It was thirst for -principle. Every boy knew it was his right to drink whenever he was -thirsty--and even when he was not thirsty; and he disobeyed orders to -assert that right. And if old Bowles had not lowered his authority -before that advancing right, there would not have been any old Bowles. -There is one thing greater than any man's authority, and that is any -man's right. Isn't that the United States? Wasn't that Kentucky country -school-house the United States? And don't you know, Aleck, that as soon -as a thing is forbidden, human nature investigates the command to see -whether it puts forth an infringement of its liberties? Don't you -_know_, Aleck, that the disobedience of children may be one of their -natural rights?" - -At this point the uncle turned unexpectedly toward his nephew:-- - -"Does this bore you, Downs?" - -Downs remarked pointedly that half of it bored him: he made it perfectly -clear which was the objectionable half. - -The uncle did not notice the discourtesy to his guest, but continued his -amiable observation:-- - -"To me it all leads up to this--and now the road turns away from colts -to the road you and I walk in as men. It leads up to this: the -difference between failure and transgression. Command to do; and the -worst result can only be failure. Command not to do; and the worst -result is transgression. Now we all live on partial failure: it is the -beginning of effort and the incentive to effort. We try and fail; with -more will and strength and experience we wipe out the failure and stand -beyond it. Long afterwards men look back and laugh at their failures, -love them because they are the measure of what they were and of what -they have become. It is our life, the glory of more strength, the -triumph of will and determination. It is the crowning victory of the -world. And it is the road that leads upward. - -"But transgression! No transgression ever develops life; it is so much -death. You can't wrest victory out of transgression: it's a thing by -itself--a final defeat. And what has been defeated is your last -safeguard--your will. Every transgression helps to kill the will. It -weakens, discourages, humiliates, stings, poisons. The road of -transgression is downward." - -He stood up, and his guest with him. As he lifted his alpaca coat from -the grass and put it on, there was left lying his bowie-knife, and he -put that on. It was the bowie-knife age. - -"Will you come with us, Downs?" - -Downs thought he would now read the newspaper. - -"Where is Fred Ousley?" asked the minister of him, knowing that the two -boys were inseparable. - -"He has gone to a picnic." - -"Why didn't you go to the picnic?" - -"I wasn't invited: it's his cousins'." - -"And haven't you any cousins who give picnics?" - -"I don't like my cousins: I hate my cousins: Fred hates _his_ cousins: -it's a girl that goes _with_ his cousins." - -"And what about a girl with your cousins?" - -"Well, while you're talking, what about your sons and their cousins? -We're running this farm very well, and we're all pleased. From what I -have been hearing, it's more than can be said about yours." - -The minister laughed good-naturedly at this rudeness as the two friends -walked away; but the vicar of the stables observed mildly:-- - -"You gave him the wrong kind of suggestion, Aleck. It wasn't in your -words exactly; I don't know where it was; but I felt it and he felt it: -somehow you challenged him to employ his manly art of self-defence; and -part of that art is to attack. But never mind about Downs. Now come to -the stable: I am going to show you a young thoroughbred there that has -never had a disagreeable suggestion made to him: he thinks this farm -paradise. And the five great things I tried to teach him are: to develop -his will, to develop his speed, to develop his endurance and -perseverance, to develop his pride, and to develop his affection: he is -a masterpiece." - - * * * * * - - -In the green yard that summer afternoon, under the white locust blossoms -and with the fragrance of rose and honeysuckle and lilac all about him, -the youth lay on the grass beside the newspaper--which he forgot. A new -world of thinking had been disclosed to him. And he made one special -discovery: that as far as memory could reach his uncle had never told -him not to do anything: always it had been to do--never not to do. - -And he was a good deal impressed with the difference between failure and -transgression. He did not at all like that idea of transgression; but he -thought he should like to try failure for a while; then he could call on -more strength, tighten his will, develop more fighting power. He rather -welcomed that combat with failure which would end in success. - -He wished Fred were there. It was Saturday he came to stay all night; -and the two were getting old enough to talk about their futures and at -what ages each would marry. They described the desirable type of woman; -and sometimes exchanged descriptions. - -And then suddenly he rolled over the grass convulsed with laughter: -his uncle was raising him as a thoroughbred colt. He approved of -the training, but somehow he did not feel complimented by the -classification. Fred would have to hear that--that he was being trained -as for a race-course. - - * * * * * - - -The next morning he was sitting in church; and the minister read the -Commandments. - -Hitherto he had always listened to them as the whole congregation -apparently listened: as to a noise from the pulpit that drew near, -lasted for a while, and then rumbled on--without being meant for any -one. But this morning he scrutinized each Commandment with new -thoughtfulness--and with a new resentfulness also; and when a certain -one was reached he made a discovery that it applied to men only: "Thou -shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife." - -Why should not wives be commanded not to covet their neighbors' -husbands? he wondered. Why was the other half of the Commandment -suppressed? Moses must have been a very polite man! Perhaps there was -more involved than courtesy: otherwise he might have found life more -tolerable among the Egyptians: he might have been forced to make the -return trip across the Red Sea when the waters were inconveniently deep. -Those Jewesses of the Wandering might have seen to it that he was not to -have the pleasure of dying so mysteriously on Nebo's lonely mountain: -his sepulchre would have been marked--and well marked. - -He sat there in the corner of the church, and plied his insolent satire. -Fred Ousley must hear about the second discovery also--the Commandment -for men only. - - * * * * * - - -Then three years passed and he was eighteen; and from fifteen to -eighteen is a long time in youth's life; things are much worse or things -are much better. - -It was one rainy September night after supper, and he and his uncle were -sitting on opposite sides of the deep fireplace. - -Some logs blazed comfortably, and awoke in both man and youth the -thoughtfulness which lays such a silence upon us with the kindling of -the earliest Autumn fires. Talk between them was never forced. It came, -it went: they were at perfect ease with one another in their -comradeship. The man's long thoughts went backward; the youth's long -thoughts went forward. The man was smoking, at intervals serenely -drawing his amber-hued meerschaum from under his thick mustache. The -youth was not smoking--he was waiting to be a man. Once his uncle had -remarked: "Tobacco is for men if they wish tobacco, and for pioneer old -ladies if they must have their pipes. Begin to smoke after you are a -man, Downs. Cigars for boys are as bad as cigars would be for old -ladies." - -The way in which this had been put rather captured the youth's fancy: he -was determined to have every inward and outward sign of being a man: now -he was waiting for the cigar. - -He had been hunting with Fred Ousley that afternoon, and just before -dark had come in with a good bag of birds. A drizzle of rain had -overtaken him in the fields and dampened his clothing. The truth is that -he and Ousley had lingered over their good-by; Fred was off for college. -Supper was over when he reached the house, and he had merely washed his -hands and gone in to supper as he was, eating alone; and now as he sat -gazing into the fire, his boots and his hunting-trousers and his dark -blue flannel shirt began to steam. He was too much a youth to mind wet -garments. - -The man on the opposite side sent secret glances across at him: they -were full of pride, of a man's idolatry of a scion of his own blood. He -was thinking of the blood of that family--blood never to be forced or -hurried: death rather than being commanded: rage at being ordered: -mingled of Scotch and Irish and Anglo-Saxon--with the Kentucky wildness -and insolence added. Blood that often wallowed in the old mires of -humanity; then later in life by a process of unfolding began to set its -course toward the virtues of the world and ultimately stood where it -filled lower men with awe. - -September was the month for the opening of schools and colleges. The -boy's education had been difficult and desultory. First he had gone to -the neighborhood school, then to a boys' select school, then to a -military school, then to a college. Usually he quit and came home. Once -he had joined his uncle in another State at the Autumn meeting of a -racing association--had merely walked up to him on the grounds, eating -purple grapes out of a paper bag and with his linen trousers pockets -bulging with ripe peaches. - -"Well, Downs," his uncle observed by way of greeting him, as though he -had reappeared round a corner. - -"Who won the last race?" inquired the boy as though he had been absent -ten minutes. - -Now out of the silence of the rainy September night and out of the -thoughtfulness of the fire, the imperious splendid dark glowing young -animal steaming in his boots and flannel suddenly looked across and -spoke:-- - -"If I am ever going to do anything, it is about time I began." - -The philosopher on the other side of the fire grew wary; he had given -the blood time, and now the blood was mounting to the brain. - -"It is time, if you think it is time." - -"One thing I am not going to do," said the arbiter of his fate, as if he -were drawing a surprise from the depths of his nature and were offering -it to his uncle; if possible, without discourtesy, but certainly without -discussion--"one thing I am not going to do; I am not going to breed -horses." - -The fire crackled, and no other sound disturbed the stillness. - -"Some one else will breed them," replied the vicar of the stables, with -quietness: the sun always seemed to remain on his face after it had gone -down. "They will be bred by some one else. The breeding of horses in the -world will not be stopped because some one does not wish to breed them. -It will come to the same thing in the end. Even if it does not come to -the same thing, it will come to something different. No matter, either -way." - -The young hunter had unbuttoned one of his shirt sleeves and bared his -arm above the elbow; and he now stroked his forearm as he bent it -backward over the biceps and suddenly struck out at the air as though he -would knock the head off of an idea. - -"My notion is this: I don't want to stand still and let my horse do the -running. If I have a horse, I want it to stand still and let me do the -running. If there is any excitement for either of us, I want the -excitement. I don't care _to own_ an animal that wins a race: I want _to -be_ the animal that wins a race." - -"Then be the animal that wins the race! The horse will win his races: he -will take care of himself: win your race." - -"I intend to win my race." - -There was silence for a while. - -"As it is not to be horses, then, I have been thinking of other things I -might do." - -"Keep on thinking." - -"You might help me to think." - -"I am ready to think with you; you can only think for yourself." - -"What about going into the army?" - -"You just said you wanted excitement. There is no excitement in the army -unless there is war. We have just passed through one war, and I don't -think either of us will live to see another. Still, if you wish, I can -get you to West Point. Or, if you prefer the navy, I can get you to -Annapolis." - -"No Annapolis for me! I wouldn't live on anything that I couldn't walk -about on and sit down on and roll over on. No water for me. I'll take -land all round me in every direction. I guess I'll leave the sea to the -Apostle Peter. Life on land and death on land for me. Hard showers and -streams and ponds and springs--that will do for water. No Annapolis, -thank you!" - -"West Point, then." - -"If I went into the army, wouldn't I have to leave the farm here?" - -"You'd have to leave the farm here unless the Government would quarter -some troops here for your accommodation. In case of war, you might -arrange with the enemy to come to Kentucky and attack you where you -would be comfortable." - -The future officer of his country did not smile at this: his manner -seemed to indicate that such a concession might not be so absurd. He did -not budge from his position:-- - -"I'd rather do something that would let me live here." - -"You could live here and study law: some of the greatest members of the -Kentucky bar have been farmers. You could live here and practise law in -the country seat." - -"Suppose I studied law and then some day I were called to the Supreme -Bench: wouldn't that take me away?" - -"It might take you away unless the Supreme Court would get down from its -Bench and come and sit on your bench--always to accommodate you." - -"I don't know about law: I'll have to think: law _does_ make you think!" - -"There is the pulpit: some of the greatest Kentucky divines have been -bluegrass farmers--though I've always wished that they wouldn't call -themselves divines. It's more than Christ did!" - -"The pulpit! And then all my life I'd be thinking of other people's -faults and failings. A fine time I'd have, trying to chase my friends to -hell." - -The next suggestion followed in due order. - -"There's Oratory; some of the great Kentucky orators have been bluegrass -farmers. There is Southern Oratory." - -"Oratory--where would I get my gas?" - -"Manufacture it. It always has to be manufactured. The consumer always -manufactures." - -"If I went in for oratory, you _know_ I'd come out in Congress; you know -they always do: then no farm for me again." - -"That is, unless--you know, Congress might adjourn and hold its -sessions--that same idea--to accommodate you--!" - -"I'd like to be a soldier and I'd like to be a farmer, if I could get -the two professions together." - -"They went together regularly in pioneer Kentucky. The soldiers were -farmers and the farmers were soldiers." - -"And then if I could be a doctor. That's what I'd like best. To be a -soldier and a farmer and a doctor." - -"Men were all three in pioneer Kentucky. During the period of Indian -wars the Kentucky farmer and soldier, who was the border scout, was also -sometimes the scout of Ĉsculapius." - -"Ĉsculapius--who was he? Trotter, runner, or pacer?" - -"He set the pace: you might call him a pacer." - - * * * * * - - -What a sense of deep peace and security and privacy there was in the two -being thus free to talk together of life and the world--in that -womanless house! No woman sitting beside the fire to interject herself -and pull things her way; or to sit by without a sign--and pull things -her way afterwards--without a sign. - -The physical comfort of the night, and the rain, and the snug hearth -awoke a desire for more confidences. - -"Tell me about the medical schools when you were a student. Not about -the professors. I don't want to hear anything about the professors. You -wouldn't know anything about _them_, anyhow: no student ever does. But -what were the students up to among themselves at nights? The wild ones. -I don't want to hear anything about the goody-goody ones. Tell me about -the devils--the worst of the devils." - -The medical schools of those days, as members of the profession yet -living can testify if they would, had their stories of student life that -make good stories when recited around the fireside with September rain -on the roof. The former graduate and non-practitioner was not averse -seemingly to reminiscence. Forthwith he entered upon some chronicles and -pursued them with that soft, level voice of either betting with you or -baptizing you--the voice of gambling in this world or of gambling for -the next. - -As the recitals wound along their channels, the listener's enthusiasm -became stirred: by degrees it took on a kindling that was like a wild -leaping flame of joy. - -"But there always has to be a leader," he said, as though forecasting -for himself a place of such splendid prominence. "There has to be a -leader, a head." - -"I was the head." - -The young hunter on the opposite side of the fireplace suddenly threw up -his arms and rolled out of his chair and lay on the floor as though he -had received a charge of buckshot in one ear. At last, gathering himself -up on the floor, he gazed at the tranquil amber pipe and tranquil -piper:-- - -"_You!_" - -There was a mild wave of the hand by the historian of the night, much as -one puts aside a faded wreath, deprecating being crowned with it a -second time. - -"Another shock like that----!" and the searcher for a profession climbed -with difficulty into his chair again. For a while there was satisfied -silence, and now things took on a graver character:-- - -"Somehow I feel," said the younger of the men, "that there have been -great men all about here. I don't see any now; but I have a feeling that -they have been here--great men. I feel them behind me--all kinds of -great men. It is like the licks where we now find the footprints and the -bones of big game, larger animals that have vanished. There are the -bones of greater men in Kentucky: I feel their lives behind me." - -"They _are_ behind you: the earth is rank with them. You need not look -anywhere else for examples. I don't know how far you got in your Homer -at school before you were tired of it; but there is the _Iliad_ of -Kentucky: I am glad you have begun to read _that_!" - -The rain on the shingles and in the gutters began to sound like music. -The two men alone there in their talk about life, not a woman near, a -kind of ragged sublimity. - -"To be a soldier and to be a farmer--if I could get those two -professions together," persisted the youth. - -"In times of peace there is only one profession that furnishes the -active soldier: and that is the profession of medicine. It is the -physician and the surgeon that the military virtues rest on; and the -martial traits when there is no war. It is these men that bring those -virtues and those traits undiminished from one war to the next war. -There is no kind of manhood in the soldier, the fighting man, that is -not in the fighting physician and fighting surgeon--fighting against -disease. There is nothing that has to be changed in these two when war -breaks out or when peace comes: their constant service fits them for -either. In times of peace the only warlike type of man actively engaged -in human life is the doctor and surgeon. Did you ever think of that?" -said the older man, persuasively. - -The silence in the room grew deeper. - -"Tell me about the professions in the War: what did they do about it; -how did they act?" - -"The professions divided: some going with North, some going with South; -fighting on each side, fighting one another. The ministry dividing most -bitterly and sending up their prayers on each side for the destruction -of the other--to the same God. All except one: the profession of -medicine remained indivisible. For that is the profession which has but -a single ideal, a single duty, a single work, and but one patient--Man." - -The silence had become too deep for words. - -The young hunter quietly got up and lit his candle and squared himself -in the middle of the floor, pale with the sacred fire of a youth's -ideal. - -"I am going to be a Kentucky country doctor. Good night!" He strode -heavily out of the room, and his stride on the stairway sounded like an -upward march toward future glory. - -The man at the fire listened. Usually when the youth had reached his -room above and set his candle on his stand beside his bed, he undressed -there as with one double motion of shucking an ear of corn: half to -right and half to left; and then the ear stood forth bared in its -glistening whiteness and rounded out to perfect form with clean -vitality. But now for a long time he heard a walking back and forth, a -solemn tread: life's march had begun in earnest. - -He rose from his chair and tapped the ash out of his meerschaum. Through -force of habit and old association with the race-course he looked at his -timepiece. - -"I win that race in good time," he said. "That colt was hard to manage, -obstreperous and balky." - -It had always been his secret wish that his nephew would enter the -profession that he himself had spurned. Perhaps no man ever ceases to -have some fondness for the profession he has declined, as perhaps a -woman will to the last send some kind thoughts toward the man she has -rejected. - -After winning a race, he always poured out a libation; and he went to -his sideboard now and poured out a libation sixteen years old. - -And he did not pour it on the ground. - - * * * * * - - -And now eight years followed, during which the youth Downs Birney became -young Dr. Birney--a very great stage of actual progress. Seven away from -Kentucky, and one there since his return. Of those seven, five in New -York for a degree; and two in Europe--in Berlin, in Vienna--for more -lectures, more hospital work, another degree. At the end of the second -he returned incredibly developed to Kentucky, to the manor house and the -stock farm; and to the uncle to whom these years had furnished abundance -of means whereby to get the best of all that was wisely to be gotten: an -affectionate abundance, no overfond super-abundance, no sentimentality: -merely a quiet Kentucky sun throwing the energy of its rays along that -young life-track--hanging out a purse of gold at each quarter-stretch, -to be snatched as the thoroughbred passed. - -A return home then to a neighborhood of kinships and friendships and to -the uphill work which could so easily become downhill sliding--the -practice of medicine among a people where during these absences he had -been remembered, if remembered at all, as the wildest youth in the -country. When it had been learned what profession he had chosen, the -prediction had been made that within a year Downs would reduce the -mortality of the neighborhood to normal--one to every inhabitant! - -But at the end of this first year of undertaking to convert ridicule -into acceptance of himself as a stable health officer and confidential -health guardian, he was able to say that he had made a good start: -neighbors have long memories about a budding physician's first -cases--when he fails. Young Dr. Birney had not failed, because none of -his cases had been important: when there was danger, it was considered -safe to avoid the doctor: the only way in which he could have lost a -patient would have been to murder one! Thus he had entered auspiciously -upon the long art and science of securing patients. But he had secured -no wife! And he greatly preferred one impossible wife to all possible -patients. That problem meantime had been pressing him sorely. - -The womanless house in which he had been reared and his boyhood on a -stock farm had rendered him rather shy of girls and kept him much apart -from the society of the neighborhood. Nevertheless even in Europe before -his return--with the certainty of marriage before him--he had recalled -two or three juvenile perturbations, and he had resolved upon arrival to -follow these clues and ascertain what changes seven years had wrought in -them. There was no difficulty in following the clues a few weeks after -getting back to Kentucky: they led in each case to the door of a growing -young family: and out of these households he thereupon began to receive -calls for his services to sick children: all the perturbations had -become volcanoes, and were now on their way to become extinct craters. - -So he was clueless. He must make his own clues and then follow. Nor -could there be any dallying, since he could not hope to succeed in his -profession as a young unmarried physician: thus pressure from without -equalled pressure from within. - -Moreover, he was pleasantly conscious of a general commotion of part of -the population toward him with reference to life's romance. The girls of -that race and land were much too healthy and normally imaginative not to -feel the impact of the arrival of a young doctor--who was going to ask -one of them to marry him. As to those seven years of his in New York and -Europe, he could discover only one mind in them: they deplored his -absence not because they had missed _him_, but because he had missed -_them_: it was no gain to have been in New York and Berlin and Vienna if -you lost Kentucky! He gradually acquired the feeling that if in addition -to the misfortune of having been absent for several years, the calamity -had been his of having been born abroad, it would not have been -permitted him to plough corn. - -But while they could not abet him in the error of thinking that he had -returned a cosmopolitan, bringing high prestige, instantly they showed -general excitement that he--one of themselves--was at home again in -search of a wife. He had arrived like a starving bee released in a ripe -vineyard; and for a while he could only whirl about, distracted by -indecision as to what cluster of grapes he should settle on: not that -the grapes did not have something to say as to the privilege of -alighting. After the bee had selected the bunch, the bunch selected the -bee. A vineyard ripe to be gathered--and being gathered! Every month or -so a vine disappeared--claimed for Love's vintage--stored away in Love's -cellar. - -They were everywhere! As he drove widely about the country, the two most -abundant characteristics seemed to be unequalled grass and marriageable -girls. He met them on turnpikes and lanes--in leafy woods at picnics--at -moonlight dances--on velvet lawns--amid the roses of old gardens--and he -began humorously to count those who looked available. One passed him on -the road one day, and, lifting a corner of the buggy curtain, she peeped -back at him: "She will do!" he said. Another swept past him on horseback -and looked in the opposite direction. "She will do!" he said. He met two -on a shady street of a quiet town under their peach-blow parasols: "They -will do!" he said. He saw four on a lawn playing tennis, and watched -their vital abandon and tasted their cup: "They will do!" he said. He -swept his eyes over a ball-room one night: "They will all do!" he said, -and made an end of counting. - -Into this world of romance and bride-seeking the doctor launched himself -formally under brilliant auspices of earth and sky and people one -beautiful afternoon of early summer: it was on the grounds of one of the -finest old country places at a lawn party with tennis matches. It was -his first appearance as a candidate for life's greater game. A large -gallery of onlookers, seated along a trellis of vines and roses, -measured him critically as he stepped out on the court: he knew it and -he challenged the criticism. In his white flannels; his big bared head -covered with curling black hair; his neck half bare in its virile -strength; his big grayish blue eyes flashing with glorious health, full -of good humor and of deeper warmth; his big half-bared arms strong to -hold in love or to lift in pain; the big stub nose of tenacity; the big -red mouth that laughing revealed the big thick white teeth, good to tear -and grind their way: his twenty-six years of native Kentucky insolence -capped with a consciousness of travel and knowledge of his own authority -and power--youthful white soldier of the clean,--the neighborhood's -evangelist of life and death,--he looked like a good partner for the -afternoon or for life. One girl, seeing all this--and more--repeated to -herself, she did not know why, Blake's poem on the Tiger. - -His partner that afternoon was his hostess--a Kentucky girl just home -from her Northern college as a graduate. She too had been away for -several years; and they had this in common as the first bond--that they -had arrived as comparative strangers and saw their home surroundings -from the outside: they spoke of it: it introduced them. - -There was tension in the play for this reason; and for others: this -first public appearance with so much going on in imagination and -sympathy. Too great tension developed as the battle of the racquets went -on: so that the doctor's partner, overreaching and twisting, sprained an -ankle, and the games ended for them: she was assisted upstairs, and he -applied his skill and his treatment. - -As he drove home he thought a good deal of his partner: of her proud -reserve toward him out of the game and of her inseparable blending of -herself with him in the game; her devotion to their common cause; her -will not that she should win but that both should win; her unruffled -ignoring of a bad play of his or a bad play of her own; the freshened -energy of her attack after a reverse; her matter-of-course pleasure when -he played well or when she played well; the complete surrender of -herself to him for the game--after which instantly there was nothing -between them except the courtesy of a hostess. He thought of these -traits. And then he recalled her fortitude during the acute suffering -with that twisted ankle! How contemptuously she had borne pain! - -"That little foot," he said, moved to admiration, "that little foot -makes the true footprint of the greater vanished people! She is of the -blood of male and female heroes: she knows how to do and she knows how -to suffer! Now if I fall in love with her--!" and there surged through -him the invitation to do so. - -But at the end of his first year the doctor felt that he had made only a -general advance toward the long battle-line of Love; he had -reconnoitred, but he had not attacked; he had a vast marital receptivity -embracing many square miles. He had slid his hands along the nuptial -rope, but he could not as yet discover who was waiting beside the bridal -knot. - -On the other hand, there were two or three cases of wounded on the other -side; and if one could have been privileged to stand near, it would have -been possible to see Love's ambulances secretly and mournfully moving -here and there to the rear. If as much as this could not be said for -him, what right would he have had to be practising there--or to be alive -anywhere! - - * * * * * - - -And now the winter of that first year had come: it brought an immense -stride--in Progress. - -It was the twenty-fourth of December. Darkness was beginning to fall on -road and woods and fields; and he was driving rapidly home because he -was tired and ravenous and because he was thinking of his supper--always -that good Kentucky supper. But to-night he would have to eat solitary -because some days previous his uncle had gone to New York--gone in his -quiet way: announcing the fact one morning and stopping there--his -reasons were his own. - -About a mile from home the doctor's horse, rushing on through the -gathering Christmas twilight, began to overtake a vehicle moving at a -stately pace as though its mission involved affairs too elaborate for -haste. As he approached from the rear he recognized that it was -Frederick Ousley's carriage, returning from his afternoon wedding -several miles across the country. - -He had never met the girl that his friend was to marry: her home was in -another neighborhood, and the demands of this first year upon him had -been too many. He had not even had time to go to the wedding. Now he -checked his horse in order not to pass the carriage, and at a respectful -distance of a few yards constituted himself its happy procession. At the -front gate it turned in and rolled through the woods to the house, the -windows of which were blazing with candles--bridal lights and the lights -of Christmas Eve! He stopped at the gate and followed the progress of it -as it intercepted the lights now of one window and now of another as it -wound along the drive. Leaning forward with his forearms on his knees -and peering from the side-curtain, he saw the front doors thrown open, -or knew this by the flood of radiance that issued from the hall; saw the -young master of the house walk to the top step of his porch and there -turn and wait to receive his bride--in true poetic and royal and manly -fashion: wishing her to come to him as he faced her on his threshold; he -saw arms outstretched toward her, saw her mount falteringly and give her -hands; and saw them walk side by side into the hall: the servants closed -in upon them, the doors closed upon the servants. - -Christmas Eve--Night of Nativity--Home--Youth--Love--Firelight and -Darkness--One another! - -As the doctor watched, that vision sank into him as an arrow which had -been shot into the air years before and had now hit its mark. He -straightened himself abruptly and gave the rein to his horse with a -feeling that the shaft stuck in its wound. Then with a vigorous shake of -his head he said to himself:-- - -"Dr. Birney, there is a young man in this buggy who needs your best -attention: see that he gets it and gets it quickly." - -He found his supper awaiting him: and some intelligence which drove -appetite away and drove him away, leaving the supper uneaten: it was a -letter from his uncle--one of those tranquil letters:-- - -"They think they will have to perform an operation on me, but I want -your opinion first. I trust your judgment beyond that of any of them, -old and experienced as they are: and I should have sought your judgment -before coming away if I could have felt sure that it would be needed: -unless it were needed, I did not wish you to know. You had better start -without losing very much time. They seem to regard the case as urgent -and uncertain. - -"If anything should happen before you are able to reach me, these few -words will be my last. - -"You have long since entered, Downs, into possession of part of what you -will inherit from me: and that is your acquaintance with the -imperfections of my character and the frailties of my life. There has -been much in it that even a worse man might regret, but nothing of which -any better man could be ashamed. You have always guarded this part of -your inheritance as your sacred private personal property. My request is -that you will hereafter make as little account of it as possible; I hope -you will never be tempted to draw upon it as a valuable fund; and as -early as time permits, put the memory of it away to gather its oblivion -and its dust. - -"You will find that everything of value I possess has been left to you. -You think I have loved horses; I have loved nothing but you. I have -loved you because you were worthy of it; but I should have loved you if -you had not been worthy. The horses meant a good deal to me in life, but -they mean nothing in death. - -"I believe you will be one more great Kentucky country doctor. And -whatever race you may have to run in this world, whether you win or -whether you lose, I know it will be a hard, a gallant, struggle: that is -all the thoroughbred can ever do. Having delivered over to you -everything I own and retaining only the things I cannot will away,--my -judgment, my confidence in you, and my devotion to you,--I wager these -that you will win life's race and win it gloriously. My last bet--with -my last coin--you will win! - -"If this is good-by--good-by." - -It was several weeks before he returned, bringing with him all that was -earthly of one whose races were over and who himself had just been -entered for the unknown stake of the Great Futurity. - - * * * * * - - -Now February had reappeared, and with it came another stage of Progress. -When he entered the breakfast room one morning--always to a hearty -breakfast--he went first to the windows and looked out at the low dark -clouds shrouding the sky and the rapidly whitening earth: it was snowing -heavily. As he turned within, the bleakness out of doors brightened the -fire and added its comfort to the breakfast table. While he was pouring -out his coffee, suddenly through one window an object appeared; and -looking out, he saw Frederick Ousley on horseback at the foot of the -pavement: he was but half seen, laughing and beckoning amid the thickly -falling flakes. - -The doctor rushed out to the porch, and young Ousley spurred his horse -up to the side of it, riding over flower-beds, trampling and ruining -plants that happened not now to be in bloom. The two friends after a -long crushing grip poured out their friendship with eye and speech, -greeting and laughter. - -Two products of that land. With much in sympathy, with no outward -resemblance: one of little mingled Anglo-Saxon blood: the other of -Scotch-Irish Anglo-Saxon strains which have created so much history -wherever they have made their mortal fight. The young Kentucky -Anglo-Saxon on his horse, blond-haired, blue-eyed, with heavy body and -heavy limbs, a superb animal to begin with, wheresoever and in -whatsoever the animal might end: the snow on the edges of his yellowish -hair and close-clipped beard; around his neck, just visible inside his -upturned coat collar, a light blue scarf, a woman's scarf, tied there as -he had started by tender fingers that had perhaps craved the mere -touching of his flesh: the scarf, as it were, of Lohengrin blue; for -there was something so knightly about him, he radiated such a passion of -clean young manhood, that you all but thought of him as a Kentucky -Lohengrin--whom no Elsa had questioned too closely, and for whom there -would never be a barren return to Montserrat. - -Facing him, the young Kentucky Scotch-Irish Anglo-Saxon, physical equal, -physical opposite: dark and swarthy soldier of the South: as he stood -there giving you no notion that for him waited the crimson-dyed cup of -Life's tragic brew, topped at this moment with the white dancing foam of -youth and happiness. - -They talked rapidly of many things. Then the object of the visit was -disclosed--with an altered voice and manner:-- - -"As soon as you have had breakfast, Downs, I wish you would come over. -Mrs. Ousley is not very well. She would like to see you." - -Then he added with affectionate seriousness: "I have told her about you: -how we have known each other all our lives, have played together, hunted -together, slept together, travelled together, studied together. She -knows all about you! I have prepared the way for you to be her -physician. There was a great difficulty there--that question of her -physician: you will know _that_, when you know _her_!" - -A new look had come into his eyes: he stood as on the peak of -experience--the true mountain-top of the life of this world. - -"I will come at once." - -Young Ousley, with a sudden impulse, perhaps to conceal his own sacred -emotion, rode over to a window of the breakfast room and peered in at -the waiting table with its solitary chair at the head. He raised his -voice as though speaking to an imaginary person inside: - -"How do you do, Mrs. Birney?" he said. "Could I speak to the doctor a -moment? I should like to have his private ear professionally: could you -pass one of his ears out?" - -The doctor stooped and scraped together a snowball from the edge of the -porch, and with a soft toss hit him in the face:-- - -"Take that for speaking to Mrs. Birney through a window! And Mrs. Birney -is not my office boy. And I do the passing out of my own ears--to any -desired distance." - -The young husband rode back to the porch, wiping the snow out of his -laughing eyes: they looked blue as with the clear laughter of the sky. - -"That will never do!" he said with a backward motion of his head toward -the solitary chair at the breakfast-table. "What right have you to -defraud a girl out of all that happiness?" - -"I am not defrauding a girl out of all that happiness: I am being -defrauded. I am not the culprit: I am the victim. As a consequence of -trying to save the lives of other husbands, I have nearly come to my own -death as a bachelor: I have about succumbed to inanition: I am a mere -Hamlet of soliloquy--and abstention." - -It was the last playfulness of boyhood friendship, of a return to old -ways of jesting when jesting meant nothing. But the glance into the -breakfast room--those rallying words--the return of the snowball into -the face--were the ending of a past: each felt that this was enough of -it. - -As young Ousley rode away, he wheeled his horse at the distance of some -yards and called back formally:-- - -"Mrs. Ousley would like to see you as soon as you can come, doctor." - -It was a professional command. - -"I'll come immediately after breakfast." - -"Thank you." - -"Thank _you!_" - -They had assumed another relation in life: on one side of a chasm was a -young husband with his bride; on the other, the family physician. - -As Dr. Birney poured out his coffee and buttered his biscuit, he said to -himself that now the bread of life was being buttered. - -When he reached the Ousleys', the youthful husband met him on the -veranda and threw an arm around his shoulder affectionately and led him -in; and when some time later they reappeared, both talked gravely and -parted, bound by a new bond of dependence and helpfulness between man -and man. - -For the next few days there developed in Dr. Birney a novel -consciousness that his interest in marriage had enormously deepened, but -that interest in his own marriage had received a setback: the feeling -was genuine, and it troubled him. The tentative advances into social -life that he had been making seemed to have ended in blind paths; the -growing ties snapped like threads upon which some displaced weight has -fallen. - -What he had been looking for it seemed to him that he had found too late -in Josephine Ousley. Had he found her before her marriage, he would have -looked at no other, nor have wavered a year. The actual significance of -this was that he had encountered one of the persistent dreams of -mankind--the dream of ideal love and ideal marriage with one who is -unattainable. - -The history of the race, of its art, of its literature, has borne -through ages testimony to the vividness and to the tyranny of this -obsession, this mistake, or this truth which may be one of Nature's -deepest. For it may be error and it may be truth, or sometimes the one -and sometimes the other. It may be one of the vast forces in Nature -which we are but now beginning to observe--one of her instincts of -intuitive selection which announces itself instantly and is never to be -reversed: such an instinct as governs the mating of other lives not -human. But there it is in our own species for us to make out of it what -we can. There are men who for the rest of their lives look back upon the -mere sight of some woman, a solitary brief meeting with her, as though -that were their natural and perfect union. There are women who are -haunted by the same influence and allegiance to some man--seen -once--perhaps never seen at all except in a picture. Among the dreams of -humanity about ideal strength, ideal wisdom, ideal justice and charity -and friendship, this must be set apart as its dream of ideal love; and -as all high and beautiful dreams about human nature are welcome, -provided only we never awaken from them, let those who dream thus dream -on. But the tragedy of it falls upon those who in actual life -practically supplant the imagined. Let Petrarch dream of Laura, let -Dante dream of Beatrice, if only the perfections of Laura and Beatrice -do not come into judgment against the actual wives of Petrarchs and -Dantes. Let the ideal love of Romeo and Juliet gladden mankind only as a -dream of the unfulfilled. - -Dr. Birney had fallen under the influence of this error, or this truth: -the bride of his friend instantly filled his imagination as that vision -of perfection which dreams alone bring to visit us. He was not yet in -love with her, not a feeling of his nature had yet made its start -towards her: but she had declared herself as for him the ideal -woman--ensphered in the unattainable. As proof of this she released in -him from the hour of his meeting her finer things than he had been aware -of in his own nature: her countenance, her form, her voice, her whole -presence, her spirit, disclosed for him for the first time the whole -glory and splendor of human life and of a man's union with a woman. - -As he tried to withdraw his mind from this belief and fix it upon his -own separate future, he discovered that his outlook was no longer single -nor clear. Something stood in his path--an irremovable obstacle. -Sometimes in sleep we try to drive around an obstruction in our road, -and as often as we drive around it it reappears where it was before: -such an obstruction had obtruded itself across his progress. - -During the following weeks he was often at the Ousleys'--to supper, as a -guest in their carriage on visits and to parties: the three were almost -inseparable. One night at supper young Ousley again brought up the -subject of the doctor's marriage and twitted him for hesitancy: -unexpectedly the subject was thrust back into the speaker's teeth: there -was an awkward silence--very curious-- - - * * * * * - - -And now there befell the doctor one of those peculiar little -progressions or retrogressions which prove a man not to be utterly -forlorn. He had ceased to make social calls, and had begun to decline -invitations; and so into the air there was wafted that little myth which -went wandering over the country from house to house: the familiar little -myth that he had been rejected. This myth of the rejected!--this little -death-web wound about the unsuccessful suitor: every eligible man is as -much entitled to one as every caterpillar to his cocoon. - - * * * * * - - -He was with Mrs. Ousley when her child was born--he saved her life and -the child's life and his friend's happiness. And in response he found -that both of them were now drawing him into that closer friendship which -rests upon danger shared and passed--upon respect and power. - -The first day that Mrs. Ousley sat in her drawing-room with her infant -across her knees the doctor was there; and as he studied the perfect -group--husband and wife and child--it seemed to him that behind them -should have shone the full-orbed golden splendor of this life's ideal -happiness. - -"There is only one way out of it for me," he muttered bitterly as he -went down the steps. "I must marry and fall in love with my own wife and -with the mother of my own children." - -That afternoon he drove toward the stately homestead of the summer lawns -and tennis matches--but when he reached the front gate, he drove past. - -It was a few months after this, toward the end of a long conversation -with Mrs. Ousley, in which _she_ now broached with feminine tact and -urgency the subject of his marriage, it was as he told her good-by that -there escaped from him the first intimation of his love--unexpectedly as -an electric spark flashing across a vacuum. - -When he was miles away he said to himself: - -"This must stop--this must be stopped: if I cannot stop it, some one -else must help me to stop it." - -That afternoon he began again his visits to the stately homestead of the -lawns and the tennis courts; and a month or two later he drove by and -said to Mrs. Ousley:-- - -"I am engaged to be married." - -She gave him a quick startled look, thinking not of him, but with a -woman's intuitive forecast sending her sympathy and apprehension on into -the life of another woman. - -One beautiful summer night of the year following there were bridal -fights gleaming far and wide over the grounds of this stately country -place and from all the windows of the house. - -The doctor was married. - - * * * * * - - -About a year later there reached Dr. Birney one morning a piece of -evidence as to how his reputation was spreading: from another -neighborhood a farmer of small means rode to his door and besought him -to come and see a member of his family: this request implied that the -regular family physician had been passed over, supplanted; and when the -poor turn against their physicians and discharge them, it is a bad sign -indeed--for the physicians. - -The doctor upon setting out sent his thoughts to this professional -brother who had been discredited: he would gladly have saved him from -the wound. - -A few miles up the pike he was surprised to meet a well-known physician -from the city: they knew each other socially and checked their horses to -exchange greetings. - -Dr. Birney lost no time in saying:-- - -"If you are on the way to my house, I'll turn back." - -"I'm going to the Ousleys'. Professor Ousley asked me yesterday to come -out and see Mrs. Ousley: he said it was her wish." - -The two physicians quickly parted with embarrassment. - -As Dr. Birney drove on he had received the wound which sometimes leaves -a physician with the feeling that he has tasted the bitterness of his -own death: he himself had been pushed aside--discarded from the -household that meant most to him as physician and man. - -He pulled his horse's head into a dirt road and crossed to another -turnpike and visited his new patient and went on to another county seat -and put up his horse at a livery stable to be groomed and fed and took -his dinner at the little tavern and wandered aimlessly about the town -and started back towards sundown and reached home late in the night and -went to his rooms without awaking his wife. As he lighted his lamp in -the library under its rays he saw a note from Mrs. Ousley to them, -asking their company to supper next evening. His wife had pencilled -across the top of the page a message that she would not go. - -"It is their good-by to me," he said; "when my wife knows that they have -discharged me, as a woman understands another woman in such a matter, -she will know the reason; and she will see fully at last what she began -to see long since." - -When he went to the Ousleys', Mrs. Ousley came forward to greet him at -the side of her husband, and she gave him both hands. And she did what -she had never done before--she tried with her little hands to take his -big ones--the hands that had saved her life; and out of the intensity -and solemnity of her gratitude she looked him in the eyes until the lids -fell over hers. It was like saying:-- - -It is not your fault, it is not my fault, it is not the fault of any of -us: it is life and the fault of life. As I let you go, dear friend, I -cling to you. - -When the evening was over and the moment had come to leave, she was at -the side of her husband again; and under the chandelier in the hall she -suddenly looked up to it with a beautiful mystical rapture and -consecration--as if to the mistletoe of her bridal eve. - -And now more years--years--years! But what effect have years upon the -master passions? What are five years to a master Hatred? What are ten -years to Revenge? What are twenty to Malice? What is half a century to -Patience, or fourscore years to Loyalty, or fourscore and ten to -Friendship, or the last stretch of mortality to waiting Love? The noble -passions grow in nobility; the ignoble ones grow in ignominy. - -And thus it came about that the final stage of the doctor's Progress -attained dimensions large enough to contain Hogarth's most human four: -for it represented that _Progress of the Rake_ which sometimes in -everyday reality coincides with the _Progress of the Harlot_ and with -the _Progress of Marriage à la Mode_ and with the _Progress of Cruelty_: -so that he thus achieved as much by way of getting on as may be -reasonably demanded of any plodding man. - - * * * * * - - -It was an August day in this same year which was now closing its record -with the thoughtful days of December. It was afternoon, and it was -Saturday. - -Intervening years had developed the doctor in two phases of growth: he -looked no older, but he was heavier in trunk and limbs; and he was -weightier in repute, for he had established far and near his fame as a -physician. He had patients in remote county seats now, and on this day -he had been to one of those county seats to visit a patient, and had -found him mending. As he quitted the house with this responsibility -dropped, it further reminded him that within the range of his practice -he had not for the moment a single case of critical illness or of any -great suffering. Whereupon he experienced the relief, the elastic -rebound, known perhaps only to physicians when for a term they may take -up relations of entire health and happiness with their fellow-beings: -and when you cease to deal with pain, you begin to deal with pleasure. - -With a new buoyancy of foot and feeling he started down to Cheapside, -the gathering-place for farmers and merchants and friendly town -folk--most of all on Saturdays. As he strolled along, the recollection -wandered back to him of how in years gone by--when he was just old -enough to begin to shave--it was the excitement of the week to shave and -take his bath and don his best and come to town to enjoy Saturday -afternoon on Cheapside. The spirit of boyhood flowed back to him: he -bathed in a tide of warm mysterious waters. - -When he reached the public square, he began to shake hands and rub -shoulders; and to nod at more distant acquaintances; and once under the -awning of a store for agricultural implements he paused squarely before -a group of farmers sitting about on ploughs and harrows. They were all -friends, and at the sight of him they rose in a group, seized him and -marched him off with them to the hotel to dinner whither they were just -starting. They were hearty men; it was a hearty meal; there was hearty -talk, hearty laughter. Middle-aged, red-blooded men of overflowing -vitality, open-faced, sunbrowned; eating meat like self-unconscious -carnivora and drinking water like cattle: premium animals in prime -condition and ready for action: on each should have been tied the blue -ribbon of agricultural fairs. - -The hotel dinner was unusually rich that day because a great circus and -menagerie had pitched its tents in a vacant lot on the edge of town; and -there was to be an afternoon and an evening performance, and the town -was crowded. - -The doctor's dinner companions were to join their wives and children at -the grounds, and very reluctantly he declined their urging to go along: -as they separated, there rose in him fresh temptation about old Saturday -afternoon liberties and pleasures--and there fell upon him as a blight -the desolation of his own home life. - -He made his way through excited throngs to the livery stable, and had -soon started. On the way across town, above low roofs and fences, he -caught sight of weather-stained canvas tents, every approach toward -which now had its rolling tide of happy faces, young and aged. At a -cross street the hurrying people flowed so thoughtlessly about his -buggy wheels that he checked his horse lest some too careless child -might be trodden on; and as he sat there, smiling out at them and -waiting for them to pass, suddenly above the tumult of voices with -their brotherliness he heard a sound that made him forget his -surroundings--forget human kinship--and think only of another kinship of -his to something secret and undeclared: in one of the tents a great -lonely beast lifted its voice and roared out its deep jungle-cry. The -primitive music rang above the civilized swarm like a battle-challenge -uttered from the heart of Nature--that sad long trumpet call of -instinct--caged and defrauded; a majestic despair for things within that -could never change and for things without that were never to be enjoyed. -Shallow and pitiable by comparison sounded the human voices about the -buggy wheels. - -"_To make one outcry like that!--sincere, free! But to be heard -once--but to be understood at last!_" said the doctor. - -When he reached the outskirts of the town, he met vehicles hurrying in -from the neighborhood and from far beyond it. - -It was not long before he saw his own carriage approaching; and his -children, recognizing him, sprang to their feet and waved tumultuously. -As the vehicles drew alongside, he looked at them rather -absent-mindedly:-- - -"Where are you running off to?" he asked, pretending not to remember -that permission had been granted weeks before, as soon as the bills had -been pasted on turnpike fences. - -"We're running off to the circus!" - -"And what can you possibly be going to do at the circus? Children go to -a circus--who ever heard of such a thing! I should think you'd have -stayed at home and studied arithmetic or memorized the capitals of all -the States." - -"Well, as for me," cried Elsie, "I'm pleased to explain what I shall do: -I shall drink lemonade and sit with the fat woman if there's room for -both of us on the same plank!" - -"And what are _you_ going to do?" - -"I'm going to do _everything_, of course! That's my ticket: I don't pay -for all and see some! I'm going to do everything." - -"Everything is a good deal," commented the doctor introspectively. -"Everything is a good deal; but do what you can toward it--as you have -paid the price." - -For a while he mused how childhood wants all of whatever it craves: its -desire is as single as its eye. Only later in life we come to know--or -had better know--that we may have the whole of very little: that a small -part of anything is our wisest portion, and the instant anything becomes -entirely ours, it becomes lost to us or we become lost to it: the bright -worlds that last for ages revolve--they do not collide. - -He was still thinking of this when he met the carriage of Professor -Ousley; and the two middle-aged friends, who in their lives had never -passed each other on the road without stopping, stopped now. Professor -Ousley got out and came across to the doctor's buggy and greeted him -with fresh concerned cordiality. - -"It has come at last," he announced, as though something long talked of -between them could be thus referred to; and he drew out a letter which -he handed in to be read; it was a call to a professorship in a Northern -university. As the doctor read it and reread it (continuing to read -because he did not know what to say)--as he thus read, he began to look -like a man grown ill. - -"You have accepted, of course," he said barely. - -"I have accepted." - -The friends were silent with their faces turned in the same direction -across the country--their land, the land of generations of their people. -This breaking up would be the end for them of the near tie of soil and -tradition and boyhood friendship and the friendship of manhood. - -"Well," said the doctor unsteadily, "this is what you have been working -for." - -"This is what I have been working for," assented Professor Ousley. - -These intermediate years had wrought their changes in him also; within -and without; he was grown heavy, and as an American scholar he had -weight. The doctor clung for safety to his one theme:-- - -"You have outgrown your place here in Kentucky. A larger world has heard -of you and sends for you because it needs you. Well done! But when I -became a Kentucky country doctor, it was for life. No greater world for -me! My only future is to try to do better the same work in the same -place--always better and better if possible till it is over. You climb -your mountain range; I stay in my valley." - -Professor Ousley drew out another envelope: - -"Read that," he said a little sadly, and sadness was rare with him: it -was an advertisement for the town paper announcing for sale his house -and farm. - -"It is the beginning of the end," he said. "It is our farewell to -Kentucky, to you, to our past, but not, I hope, to our future. Herbert -and Elizabeth will have to be looked out for in the future: Elizabeth -may refuse to leave the neighborhood, who knows?" He laughed with -fatherly fondness and gentleness. - -The doctor laughed with him: that plighting of their children! - -At this moment a spring wagon came hastening on: it was the servants of -the Ousley household. - -"So you have left your mistress by herself," the master called out to -them as they passed. They replied with their bashful hilarity that she -herself had sent them away, that she was glad to be well rid of them. As -the wagon regained the middle of the road and disappeared, Professor -Ousley looked at the doctor with a meaning that may have been deeper -than his smile:-- - -"She sent us away, too--me and the children. She wanted the day to -herself. Of course this change, the going away, the wrenching loose from -memories of life in the house there since our marriage--of course, all -that no other one of us can feel as she feels it. My work marches away, -I follow my work, she follows me, the children follow her. Duty heads -the procession. It pulls us all up by the roots and drags us in the -train of service: we are all servants, work is lord. I understood her -to-day--I was glad to bring the children and to be absent from her -myself: these hours of looking backward and of looking forward are -sacred to her--it is her woman's right to be alone." He drew the doctor -into these confidences as one not outside intimate sacred things. The -doctor made no reply. - -He drove on now, not aware how he drove. A few more vehicles passed, and -then a mile or two farther out no more: they had ceased to come: he was -entering the silent open country. - -A Kentucky landscape of August afternoon--Saturday afternoon! The -stillness! The dumb pathos of garnered fields--that spectacle of the -great earth dutiful to its trust and now discharged of obligation! That -acute pang of seeing with what loyalty the vows of the year have been -kept by soil and sun, and are ended and are now no more! The first -intimations also of changes soon to come--the chill of early autumn -nights when the moon rises on the white frost of fences and stubble, and -when outside windows glowing with kindled hearths the last roses freeze. -Of all seasons, of all the days with which nature can torture us, none -so wound without striking; none awaken such pain, such longing: all -desire offers itself to be harvested. - -There was no glare of sunlight this afternoon, nor any shape of cloud, -but a haze which took away shadows from fences and bushes and wayside -trees and weeds, and left the earth and things on it in a radiance -between light and shadow--between day and darkness. It was a troubled -brooding: and when the surfaces are quiet, then begins the calling of -the deeps to the deeps. - -As the doctor advanced into this stillness of the land, there reached -his ear, as one last reverberation, that long lonely roar of the great -animal homesick and life-sick for jungle and jungle freedom; for the -right to be what nature had made it--rebellious agony! - - * * * * * - - -_A day to herself! She had sent them all away, husband, and children, -and servants! The right to be alone with memories ... under the still -surface the invitation of the deeps...._ - - * * * * * - - -Dr. Birney's buggy was nearing the front gate of Professor Ousley's -farm. When he reached it, he checked his horse and sat awhile. Then he -got out and looked up the pike and down the pike: it might have been an -instinct to hail any one passing--he looked dazed--like a man not -altogether under self-control. Not a soul was in sight. - -He drove in. - -The main driveway approached the house almost straight; but a few yards -inside the gate there branched from it another which led toward the -sequestered portions of the grounds. It was private and for pleasure: it -formed a feature of the landscape gardening of earlier times when -country places were surrounded by parklike lawns and forests and stone -fences. It skirted the grounds at a distance from the house, passed -completely round it, and returned to the main driveway at the point -where it started. Thus it lay about the house--a circle. - -Slowly the doctor's buggy began to enclose the house within this circle, -this coil, this arm creeping around and enclosing a form. - -In spots along the drive the shrubbery was dense, and forest trees -overhung. He had scarcely entered it when a bird flitted across his -path: softest of all creatures that move on wings, with its long gliding -flight, a silken voluptuous grace of movement--the rain-crow. It flew -before him a short distance and alighted on a low overhanging bough--its -breast turned, as waiting for him. Its wings during that flight -resembled the floating draperies of a woman fleeing with outstretched -arms; and as it now sat quiet and inviting, its throat looked like a -soft throat--bared. - -Once the doctor's buggy passed a flower-bed the soil of which showed -signs of having been lately upturned: a woman's trowel lay on the edge -of the sod: some one had been working there; perhaps some deep -restlessness had ended the work. Here the atmosphere was sweet with rose -geranium and heliotrope: it was the remotest part of the ground, -screened from any distant view. And once the buggy curtains struck -against the spray of a rosebush and the petals fell on the empty cushion -beside the doctor and upon his knees. The horse moved so slowly along -this forest path of beauty and privacy that no ear could have heard its -approach as it passed round the house and returned to the main drive. -Here the doctor sat awhile. - -Then he pulled the head of the horse toward the house. - -He reached the top of the drive. At the end of a short pavement stood -the house. The front doors were closed--not locked. It stood there in -the security of its land and of its history, and of traditions and -ideals. Undefended except by these: with faith that nothing else could -so well defend. - -On one side of the pavement was built an old-fashioned ornament of -Southern lawns--a vine-covered, rose-covered summer-house within which -could be seen rugs and chairs and a worktable: some one had been at -work; that same deep restlessness had perhaps terminated pastime here. -Near the other end of the house two glass doors, framed like windows, -opened upon a single stone step in the grass; and within these doors -hung a thin white drapery of summer curtains; and under the festoon of -these curtains there was visible from the doctor's buggy half the still -figure of a woman--reclining. - -She had bespoken a day for solitude. And now she sat there, deep in the -reverie of the years. - - * * * * * - - -Surely through that reverie ran the memory of a Christmas Eve when her -husband had brought her home with him, and, leading her to this same -bed-chamber, to a place under the chandelier from which mistletoe hung, -had taken her in his arms; and as his warm breath broke against her -face, his lips, hardly more than a youth's then, had uttered one -haunting phrase: _bride of the mistletoe_. - -Now had come the year for the closing scene of youth's romance in the -house--a romance that already for years had been going its quiet way to -extinction. The shorn group of them were soon to pass out of it into a -vaster world: the young lover of the hearth had become the middle-aged -lover of humanity. - -And through the reverie ran thoughts of the other man who had been near -during all this time--defrauded of her--his ideal; baffled in his -desire; a man with a love of her that had been a long prayer and a -madness: to whom she owed her life: this other man to be left behind -here amid the old familiar fields--with his love of her ruining his -home. - - * * * * * - - -The doctor got out of his buggy noiselessly. He loosened the horse's -check-rein without knowing what he did; and the surprised animal turned -its head and touched him inquiringly in his side with its nose. He -thrust his forefinger down inside his collar and pulled it with the -gesture of a man who felt himself choking. He could not--for some -reason--hear his own feet on the pavement nor on the steps as he mounted -the porch. On one side in the shadow of old vines stood a settee with -cushions; and at the head of it a little table with books opened and -unopened: that same deep restlessness had ended reading. As he grasped -the knob of the bell, it slipped from his hand and there was a loud -clangor. - -She stepped quickly out upon the stone before her door, and at -recognition of him, with a smile and gesture of welcome, she disappeared -within. The next moment the front door was opened wide; but at the sight -of his face--with an instinct perhaps the oldest that the race knows and -that needs never to be explained--she took one step backward. Then she -recovered herself, and, unsupported, she stood there on the threshold of -her home. - -"_Water!_" His death-white lips framed the word without a sound. - -He watched her pass quickly down the hall till she disappeared. Turning -away, he sat down beside the small table of books in the shadow of the -vines; and he fixed his blood-swollen eyes on the door, waiting for her -to return. She came unwaveringly, and without a word placed the glass of -water beside him, and then she passed out of sight behind him. - -A long time he remained there. Close to his ear out of the depths of the -honeysuckle came the twittering of a brood of nestlings as the mother -went to and fro--a late brood, the first having met with tragedy, or the -second love-mating of the season. - -Then upon the stillness another sound broke--a plain warning to his ear. -It was a scraping of the buggy wheel against the buggy, showing that his -horse, finding its check-rein loosened, but being too well trained to -move, had turned short to crop the grass beside the driveway. - -How the homely things, the pitiable trifles reach us amid life's -immensities! - -This overturning of a buggy! The overturning of lives! - -He started down the steps, and then midway between the house and the -buggy he saw her. - -She stood a few yards from him across the grass at one of the entrances -of the summer house where she had been working at her needlework. She -stood there, not waiting for him to come--but waiting for him to go. For -years he had followed her as along a path: this was the end of the path: -neither could go farther. - -And now, turning at the end of the path, she meant to make him -understand--understand her better and understand himself better. - -And so she stood there facing him, the whole glowing picture of her -wifehood and motherhood and womanhood: not in fear nor anger, nor with -any reproach for him nor any stain for herself: but with the deepest -understanding and sympathy in a great tragedy--and with her friendship. - -Then she turned away and with quiet steps took a slender path which led -to those sequestered portions of the grounds where she had left her -trowel and geraniums and heliotropes. Slowly along this labyrinth of -verdure, under the branches of the old forest trees, she passed. Now a -shrub partly hid her: once the long bough of a rose tree touched her -shoulder and dropped the petals of its blossoms behind her. Farther -away, farther away, then lost down the dim glade. - - * * * * * - -The buggy crept homeward along the pike. The horse hung its head low; -the reins lay on the dashboard; with its obscure sense that something -was wrong it struck the gait with which it had always yielded obedience -to the sadnesses of the land--and moved along the highway as behind a -death. - -Past farms of happy husbands and wives and children! Past fences on -which, a bareheaded boy, he had once liked to come out and sit and watch -people pass; or to meet his uncle as he returned home. Past the little -roadside church, its doors and windows so tightly shut now during the -week, where years before he had sat one morning and had shot the arrow -of a boy's satire at the Commandment for men only. - -Two voices for him that day--the same two that are in every man, the -only two in any man: the cry of the jungle--I _will_--and the voice of -the mountain-top-- - - Thou Shalt Not. - - - - - V - - EVERGREEN AND THORN TREE - - -FOUR months had elapsed since that August afternoon of summer heat and -passion--not a lengthy period as reckoned on the mere unemotional -calendar. But changes in our lives are not measurable by days: we may -spend eventless years with no inner or outer sign of growth, and then -some hour may bring a readjustment, an advancement, of our whole being. -The oriental story of Saul of Tarsus, made a changed man by a voice or a -vision of heavenly things, is human and natural, and for this reason if -for no other has been credible to thousands of men--this reversal of -direction on life's road. - -As Dr. Birney now on the morning of this twenty-fourth of December sat -in his library, trying to make out the bills of the year, and there lay -disclosed before him the book of the years--the story of his life from -boyhood up--he by and by abandoned the filling out of blanks against his -professional neighbors and began to cast up as at the end of no previous -year his own human debt to the better ideals of his fellow-beings--and -to himself. And Nature, who was grievously in his debt but had no notion -of paying, Nature stood at his shoulder and pressed him for settlement -in that old formula of hers: you need not have opened this account with -Nature, but since it has been opened, there is no closing it. It runs -until you are declared bankrupt; and you are not bankrupt until you are -dead. Then of course as a business firm I shall lose what I have not -already collected from you; but there are enough others to keep the -concern prosperous and going. Meantime--make a partial payment _now_: -payment in suffering, payment in expiation, payment in self-repudiation. -If you have any funds invested in a habit of inferiority, they are -acceptable: I levy on them. - -One particular fact this morning had riveted Dr. Birney's attention upon -the slow inexorable grinding of these mills of life. - -For years the unhappiness of his domestic affairs--the withdrawal of his -wife from him under his roof--had by insensible stages travelled as a -story to all other homesteads in that region. In his own house it had -always remained a mute tragedy: each of the two who bore the yoke of it -made no willing sign; each turned toward their world the unbetraying -countenance. And it must be remembered that half a century ago and less -you might have journeyed inquisitively through the length and breadth of -that land and have found probably not one case of divorce nor of -separation without divorce: among that people marriage was truly for -better or for worse--a great binding and unalterable sacrament of -blended lives. If after marriage love's young dream ended, then you -lived on where you were--wide awake; if all gorgeous colors left the -clouds and the clouds left the sky, you stood the blistering sun; if it -turned out to be oil and water poured together, at least it was oil and -water within the same priceless cruet: and the perpetuity of the cruet -was considered of more value to society than the preservation of a -little oil and water. - -No divorce then nor separation in his case; nor any voluntary -vulgarization of the truth, and yet a widely diffused knowledge of this -truth among neighbors, among his brother physicians, in county seats, -and away down on that lower level of the domestic servants, the proudest -experience of whose lives is perhaps the discovery of something to -criticise in those far above them: is it not a personal triumph to level -a pocket telescope on the sun? - -And all this Dr. Birney had grown used to through Nature's kind -indurations: all of us have to grow used to so much; and perhaps there -is no surer test for any of us than how much we can bear. But in one of -life's directions only--in the direction of his children--his outlook -had hitherto been as refreshing to him as sunlight on the young April -verdure of the land. In that direction had still been left him complete -peace, because there still dwelt spotlessness. - -But the father had long dreaded the arrival in his children of an age -when they must commence to see things in their home which they could not -understand or in fairness judge. He carried that old dread felt by so -many parents that by and by the children will be forced to -understand--and to misunderstand--the lack of something in the house. It -was for this very reason that permission had the more gladly been -granted them this year to celebrate their Christmas elsewhere; for this -festival brings into relief as nothing else the domestic peace of a -fireside or the discords that mar the lives of those gathered in -coldness about its warmth. - -And now the long expected had arrived. His conversation with his little -boy that morning before the two children had darted off for their -Christmas away from home had brought the announcement: the boy was at -last mature enough to begin to put his own interpretation upon the -estrangement of his parents. Moreover, the son now believed that he had -found the father out, had penetrated to his secret; and the doctor -recalled the words which had conveyed this youthful judgment to him:-- - -"_If I should get tired of Elizabeth and wanted a little change and fell -in love with another man's wife--_" - -There was the snow-white annunciation! There the doctor got insight into -the direction that a young life tended to take! There was the milestone -already reached by the traveller! That is, his son out of devotion to -him had already entered into a kind of partnership in his father's -marital unfaithfulness. The boy had laughed in his father's eyes with -elation at his own loyalty. - -These tidings of degeneracy it was that so arrested the doctor on this -day. The influence of the house had at last reached the only remaining -field thus far unreached; and now the seeds of suggestion had been -dropped from one ripened life into new soil, sowing the world's harvest -over again--that old, old harvest--of tares and tears. Hitherto his -tragedy had been communicated to his own generation; now it had dropped -into the next generation: it had been sown past his own life futureward. - -The shock of this discovery had befallen him just when Dr. Birney had -begun to extricate himself from his whole past; when he had begun to -hope that it might somehow begin to be effaced, sponged away. - -For although but four months had passed from that August afternoon to -this December morning, a great change had been wrought in him. - -When on the day following that sad August one he about the middle of the -forenoon had driven distractedly into Professor Ousley's yard, he saw -that friend of his youth, the man he loved best of men, the most nearly -perfect character he knew among men,--he saw him sitting on a rustic -bench under an old forest tree inside his front gate,--waiting for him. -Beside him on the bench lay papers over which he was working--not -because he enjoyed work at that moment probably, but because it was -impossible to sit there and wait with empty hands--with his mind -tortured by one thought, the sorrow and shame of this meeting. - -As the doctor somehow got out of his buggy and started across the grass -toward him, he did not look up because he could not look up at once; and -he did not rise and come to meet him; it was impossible--for a moment. -But then with a high bracing of himself--he came. And coming, he showed -in his face only deep emotion, anxiety, distress, such as a true man -might feel for another true man who had been caught in one of life's -disasters. As a friend might walk toward a friend who from perfect -health had by some accident of machinery tottered to him mangled; or as -to a friend of wealth who through some false investment had by a turn of -fortune's wheel been left penniless; or as to a friend of sound eyesight -who had suddenly lost the power of right vision; or as to a friend who -travelling a straight road across a perilous country had by some atrophy -or lesion of the brain lost his bearings and was found wandering over a -precipice. - -"How do you do, Downs?" he called out, using the old first name which -for years now he had dropped, the boyish name of complete boyish -friendship. "Come and sit down," he said, and he wound his arm through -the doctor's and all but supported him until they reached the seat under -the tree. - -And then, without waiting or wavering or looking at his friend's face, -most of all without allowing him to utter a word (like a man aroused to -the battle of a whole life which concentrated itself then and there), he -turned to his papers and began to speak of the future--of the -professorship with its new work, new duties, new services--to the going -away from Kentucky: not once did he turn the talk away from the new, the -future, except that when he finished he covered the whole theme by -saying that the old ties must hold fast and become the dearer for the -separation. He wanted the doctor's advice, insisted upon having it, -forced him too on into this future. Not a word, not a look of the eye, -not a note in the voice, about a thing so near, too near. - -"Now this is the end of that," he said, putting the papers away. "But it -all brings up something else: the farther we go forward, the longer we -look backward; and the future, this new future, has turned my eyes all -the more toward the past, Downs, our past--yours and mine!" - -And so he began to talk about this past. He went back to their boyhood -together. He laughed over the time when he began to go to the manor -house every Saturday to stay all night. He declared that he had expected -the first time to starve in a house where there were no women; but to -his astonishment--and relief--he had found that he had devoured things -as never before. He had not been prepared to say--speaking for the boy -he then was--that a woman at the table took away his appetite; but there -was the fact, unquestionable and satisfying, that at the table with -males only he had discovered bodily abysses within himself that had -never been called into requisition! He was as frivolous as all this, -winding quietly along through those happy years. - -He recalled another incident: that during one of their first rabbit -hunts they had fired almost simultaneously at the same rabbit. As -neither could claim the glory of killing it, they had decided that at -least they must share equally the glory of its pelt. And so, measuring -to an equal distance from the tip of its nose and the tip of its tail, -they had there inserted a penknife and severed the skin; and then, -propping their boots, soles against soles, like those resolved on a tug -of war, and each taking hold of his half of the skin, with one mighty -jerk backwards each was in possession of his trophy! He was as frivolous -as that. Nor would he ever leave this theme of their friendship, weaving -about it here and there remembered tricks and escapades as he traced it -down--this bond in their lives. (There were such friendships in those -days.) - -And so he poured out a man's tribute to a man's friendship; and then -quickly with a change of tone by which we all may intimate to a visitor -that his visit is at an end, he bade the doctor take his leave. But he -did one thing first--one little thing:-- - -"Josephine sent you these, and told me to pin them on you, with her -love," he said with a tremor of the mouth, his eyes filling; and taking -from the lapel of his coat a little freshly plucked bunch of heliotrope -and rose geranium, he leaned affectionately over against the doctor's -shoulder and pinned the flowers on his breast. - -Then he held out his hand as if to drag the doctor to his feet, walked -with him to the buggy, pushed him in, put the reins in his palm, and -gave a slap to the horse to start it. - -"Come to see us, Downs," he said; "we can't have you much longer." - - * * * * * - - -Truly if the rest of us had nobility enough to treat one another's -failings with sympathy and understanding, there would be few tragedies -for us in our human lives, except the inevitable tragedies of nature. - -The way in which these two friends instead of turning away from him -instantly turned toward him, sparing not themselves that they might -rescue him from what now might swiftly and easily be utter ruin--this -most human touch of most human nobleness wrought in him a revelation and -a revolution. - -On one day he had gone to the end of the long path of temptation: there -was relief in that even. And on the next what is finest in human nature -had come to his rescue. And both of these things changed him. Every day -since had been changing him. The unlifted shadow that had overlain the -landscape of his life had begun to break up into moving shadows -traversed by rifts of light: a ravishing greenness began to reappear in -the world. That old irremovable obstruction across his road had been -withdrawn: once again there was a clear path and single vision. - -But the sower may become a new character; the growth of what he has -sowed must go on. And the doctor with a vision clarified and corrected -now saw thriving everywhere around him young plants the germs of which -he had so long been scattering. A farmer might from a field by dint of -infinite patience and searching recover every seed that he had thrown -forth; but as well might he try to gather back a shower of raindrops -from dry clods. - -And as the doctor sat in his library that morning with this final -announcement to him of how things sown were growing in the nature of his -little boy, it seemed to him the moment to call upon Nature for a -settlement--Nature who never fails to collect a bill, but who never pays -one. And sitting there with the whole subject before him as a physician -studying his own case, he asked of Nature whether without any will of -his own she had not started him in life with too great susceptibility to -the power of suggestion. Far back when his character was being moulded, -had not Nature seen to it that wrong suggestions were sown in him? Had -not all his trouble started there? Was not _he_ harvesting what he had -not scattered? This immeasurable power of suggestion, this new mystery -which innumerable minds were now trying to fathom, to govern, to apply. -This fresh field of research for his own science of medicine--this -wounding and this healing, this waylaying and misleading, by suggestion. -This plan of Nature that no human being should escape it, that it should -be the very ether which all must breathe. - - * * * * * - - -Meantime out of doors the face of Nature had rapidly changed; his -forecast of early morning had been fulfilled: the wind had died down, -clouds had overspread the sky, and it was snowing rapidly. On turnpike -and lane and crossroads there was falling the dry snow of true winter -when there is sleighing. - -He had given up work and had long been walking restlessly to and fro -from one room to another; and now as he stood at a window and looked out -at the mantle of ermine being woven for all unsightly things, at the -hiding away of the year's blots and stains under the one new -spotlessness, his thoughts buried themselves with getting out his own -sleigh and with his trip across country in the afternoon to the homes of -the sick children. But more intimately he thought of the long drive -homeward from the distant county seat late that night--with his memories -of Christmas Eve. - -He turned from the window, and going to his office set about the work of -mending the sleigh-bells. For some reason he did this most quietly lest -they should send any sound through the stillness of the house. Once as a -bell tumbled out of its place, instinctively he put his hand over it as -though it were human and he must silence its mouth of merriment. -Sleigh-bells seemed out of place in these rooms; they threw their music -into old wounds. When he had finished, he put them just inside the door -of the small room opening toward the stable where his man could take -them away without making any noise. - -And now another sound caught the doctor's ear as he was washing his -hands. - -It was half past twelve o'clock; and his wife had entered the -dining-room to begin some early preparations for dinner, and she was -alone. She wished no maid to-day, apparently, at least not yet; and as -she moved familiarly about there reached his ear--very low, sung wholly -to herself--the melody of a ballad. - -The doctor knew it--words and music: it was the _Ballad of the Trees and -the Master_. In this the poet--a Southern poet who himself alike through -genius and suffering had entered while on earth into the divine--in this -the poet had represented the Son of Man as going into the woods when his -hour was near; into the woods for such strength as the forest only may -sometimes give us: the same forest out of which humanity itself had -emerged when it began its troubled history of search for the ideal. - -Thus her song was not of the Christmas Tree and of the Manger when -Divine love arrives; but of the tree of the Crucifixion and of love's -betrayal and sacrifice ere it goes away. It was not the carol of the -whole happy world at this hour for Bethlehem, but the hymn of -Calvary--the music of the thorn tree and of the Crown of Thorns. - -And this from his wife on Christmas Eve!--not for his ear: not for any -one's ear: but to herself alone. - -As he listened, with an overmastering impulse he walked to the corner of -the library and stood before her picture. He noticed that in the -careless haste of holiday house-cleaning to-day the servant had left on -the glass of the frame some finger-prints, some particles of dust. He -brought a little moistened antiseptic sponge and a little red-cross -gauze, and softly cleaned it as though he were touching a wound. Then he -returned to the window and watched the snow falling and heard his wife's -song through to the end. - -It was she to whom he owed everything. It was she who, a few years after -their marriage, having discovered herself to be an unloved bride, had -thrown her whole agonized nature into the one remaining chance of -winning his love as young wife and young mother. Having seen that hope -pass from her, she had withdrawn from one tragedy into a lesser one: she -had withdrawn from him. And so withdrawing, she held the whole power of -ruining him. Divorce--open separation--and his career as a physician in -that land would have been ended. - -Instead, she too had come to his rescue. Slowly out of that too swift -and pitiless a fate for her own life, she had begun to work for the -success of his: it was of too much value to many to be brought to -nothingness for the disappointment of one. - -The doctor stood there, looking out at the snowstorm and thinking how -all the people who could most have destroyed him had spared not -themselves to make him happy and successful and useful. - -The dining-room doors were thrown open--he went in to dinner. - - - - - PART II - - - - - PART II - - I - - TWO OTHER WINTER SNOWBIRDS AT A WINDOW - - -"Do you see them coming, Elizabeth?" - -"Not yet--except in my mind's eye." - -"Your mind's eye! Always that mind's eye! Till you see them with -something better than your mind's eye, don't disturb me, Elizabeth. I -have just come to the Battle of Hastings. I am going to fight as King -Harold. Old William the Conqueror has just finished saying his -hypocritical prayers. I am arming for him!" - -"Arm away!" said Elizabeth, never interested in arming. - -She stood at the sunny window of the library. With one rosy finger-nail -she had scratched some frost off a window-pane, and with her face close -to the clear spot was peeping out. Her fingers tapped a contented ditty -on the window-sill. - -A few minutes later the other voice was heard again: it came from the -direction of a sofa in the room, and seemed to rise out of -half-smothering cushions:-- - -"While the battle is going on, you might look around once more for the -key, Elizabeth. Likely enough they have it hid somewhere in here. They -got the Tree into the house last night without our catching them. And -after they think we are asleep to-night, they'll hang the presents on, -and to-morrow they'll pretend they didn't. But we can't let them go on -treating us like infants, or as if we were no better than immigrants. -That's what little immigrants believe! And that's how we got the notion -in this country. Old William was an immigrant! But I wouldn't loathe him -as I do if he hadn't been one of the hypocritical praying immigrants. He -could have prayed without being a hypocrite, Elizabeth; and he could -have been a hypocrite without praying; but he wanted to be both, the old -beast!" - -"But he stopped praying centuries ago, Harold," said Elizabeth, rubbing -her long nose against the window-pane as though she had a mind to -shorten it on a grindstone. "Can't you find enough in the world to fight -without going away back to fight William the Conqueror? What have we -Kentucky children got to do with William the Conqueror on Christmas Eve! -And suppose he was a hypocrite then; he can't be a hypocrite _now_! If -he went where it's nicest to go, it must have been taken out of him by -this time; and if he went where they say it is not so nice, O dear! of -course, I don't know what became of it _there_; it may have exploded; it -may have blown him up." Elizabeth had begun her earliest study of -chemistry; she disliked explosive gases. - -A few minutes later the deliberate voice rose out of the sofa pillows:-- - -"I wish it had been me to turn the heat on him: I'd have made him -sizzle! If you find the key, lay it aside quietly, Elizabeth. By that -time the moon may be shining down on the battle-field where I am dead -among my common soldiers, all of us covered with gore: let the king lie -there with them as one of them: doesn't that sound fine?" - -"Not to me!" said Elizabeth. "It sounds like nonsense: what's the matter -with _your_ mind's eye, I beg to inquire?" - -Elizabeth was nondescript. Her hair was golden-red and as soft as woven -wind. Her skin had the fairness of peach bloom when bees are coming and -going in the sunlit air and there is such sweetness. Under her eyes lay -a deeper flush like that sometimes seen on a child's face after a first -day's sunburn by the waterside in springtime. Her own face might have -been called the face of four crescents. Two of the crescents you always -saw--her eyebrows, twin down-curved bands of palest gold. In order to -see the other crescents, you had only to tell Elizabeth some story. As -you finished, she who had been leaning over toward you slowly closed her -eyes and drew in a breath as though to drink the last delight of it; her -thin lips parted tightly across her pointed little teeth in a smile of -thanks; and then in each cheek a curved dimple came out, shaped like -what the farmers in Elizabeth's country call "a dry moon" when it -appears thus set up on end in the evening sky--the water for the month -having all run out. - -Elizabeth's nose did not appear to have originated in the New World, but -to be one of those steep Lombard noses, which on the faces of northern -Italians seem to have started down the Alps in a landslide, to have gone -a certain distance toward the Mediterranean, and then suddenly to have -disappeared over the precipice of the chin. Across the Alpine nose was -stretched a tiny spiderweb golden bridge: Elizabeth wore spectacles. The -frames were of the palest gold--she insisted they must be the exact -color of her eyebrows. - -It was the glasses perhaps that gave to her face its look of dreaminess. -But there were times when her eyes pained. (All the doctors had never -been able to keep them from paining.) And this often compelled her to -sit with them closed and do nothing; then her face became dreamier. But -always the look bespoke an introspection of happiness. It drew your mind -back to the work of those unknown artisans of Tanagra, who centuries -before our era expressed in little terra-cotta figures the freedom and -joy of Greek children in the old Greek life. Whatever the children are -doing, they are happy about it; if they are doing nothing, they are -happy about doing nothing. - -Thus, as long as Elizabeth's eyes were open on the world, they found the -things that made her happy, neglecting the rest. No psyche winging the -wide plain ever went more surely to its needed blossom, disregarding -otherwise the crowded acres. And when her tired eyes were closed and the -golden bridge was lifted off the Lombard nose, they were opened upon an -inner world as enchanting. For with that gift which belongs to childhood -and to genius alone, as the real things of life which she had loved -disappeared, she caught them alive and transferred them to another land. -There also she kept all the other beautiful things that had never been -real on the earth but ought to have been real, as she insisted; and on -these Elysian Fields her spirit went to play. She was already old enough -to realize that she was constantly outgrowing things; but as they were -borne backward into the distance she turned and laid her fingers on her -lips in farewell to them--little Niobe of unshed tears over life's -changes. Her soul seemed to be this, that she could not turn against -anything she once had loved, nor cease to be loyal to it after it was -ruined or gone. As a swallow remembers the eaves whether the skies be -bright or dark, the nature of Elizabeth sheltered itself under the old -world's roof of love. - -It was this intense fidelity of character that now kept her in her watch -at the window, waiting for the two friends who were to make them four -children on Christmas Eve. Once, indeed, as no figures were to be seen -far or near out on the winter landscape, she turned softly into the -room, and much against her will continued her search for the key that -would unlock the doors connecting the library with the parlor--the dark -and suddenly mysterious parlor where the Christmas Tree now stood. - -There was a mingling of three odors in the library that forenoon. Into -one wall an old white marble mantel-piece was built, decorated on each -side with huge bunches of grapes--a votive offering by Bacchus, god of -the inner fire, to Pluto, god of the outer fire. This mantel now held in -its heart a crimson glow of anthracite coals; and the wintry smell of -coal gas was comfortably pervasive. Making its summer-like way through -the gas was the fragrance of rose geranium, some pots of which were -blooming on a window-sill just inside the silvery landscapes of frost. A -third and more powerful odor was that of a bruised evergreen, boughs of -which had been crushed in handling, and the sap of which, oozing from -the trunk, scattered far its wild balsam: the fragrance ever suggested -the fir in the next room. - -Elizabeth went first to the mantel, and putting one little freckled hand -on the Parian marble, and a little freckled (perhaps) foot on the brass -fender, and pressing her side against the Bacchic grapes (which might -well have become purpling at the moment), she opened the clock and -looked in. The clock key was there, and Elizabeth was used to see her -mother take it out for the winding of the hours--always the winding of -the hours, the winding of the years, the winding of life. - -Next she went to another window where the geraniums were blooming, and -looked on the sill: these geraniums were her mother's especial care, as -everything in the house was her especial care; and Elizabeth had often -watched her pouring water on the budding green of the plants as though -the drops were bright tears: once she believed the bright drops were -tears. - -Then she passed on to the locked connecting doors between the library -and the parlor, sniffing as she drew near the odor of the fir--sniffing -it with sensitive nostril as a fawn on some wild mountain-side questions -the breeze blowing from beds of inaccessible herbage. Every spring when -the parlor was locked for cleaning and when children's feet and fingers -must be kept from wet paint, she was used to see her mother lock these -doors and lay the key along the edge of the carpet. It was not there -now, however. - -Then Elizabeth looked in one more place. - -The library had shelves along one wall reaching from the floor well up -toward the ceiling in the old Southern way. Filling the shelves at one -end were the older books of the house, showing the good but narrow taste -of a Southern household in former times. Midway, the modern books were -massed, ranging through part of the world's classic literature and -through no little of the world's new science; and so marking a -transition in culture to the present master and mistress. At the other -end of the shelves there was a children's corner of the world's best -fairy tales, some English, some German, some Scandinavian--most of them -written for little people where winters are long and snows deep and pine -forests boundless. - -She went to the shelf where the day before she had observed her mother -put a book back into its place: the book was there, but no key. So she -passed along the shelves back toward the window, where she maintained -her lookout; and she trailed her finger-tips along the backs of the -books as she passed the children's corner of fairy tales: it was a habit -of hers to caress things she was fond of as long as they remained within -reach. Once her hand almost touched the key where it lay hidden--among -those old-time Christmas stories. - -Half glad that her search had been in vain, she returned to her vigil at -the window. - -"Did you find the key?" - -"No; and I'm not sorry I didn't." And then she suddenly cried: "They are -coming, Harold! I see them away off on the hilltop yonder, running and -jumping." - -The boy sat up on the edge of the sofa. He had on a suit of cassimere of -a kind of blue-limestone gray as though the rock of the land had been -used as a dye; and the brass buttons of his jacket marked him as a -member of some military institute, which had released him for the -holidays. He laid aside his Book of the World's Great Battles, and put -the hair out of his eyes. They had the bold keenness of a hawk's; and -his profile was as sharply cut as though it had been chipped along the -edge of a white flint. - -Any historian of the main stock of our early American people would have -fixed curious eyes on him. Merely to behold him was to think backward -across oceans and ages to a race emerging into notice along the coast of -the yellow-surging North Sea: known already to their historians for -straight blond hair falling over bluish gray eyes; large bodies with -shapely white limbs; braggart voices, arrogant tempers; play-loving and -fight-loving dispositions; ingrained honor and valor: their animal -natures rooted in attachment to their country; and their spiritual -natures soaring away toward an ideal of truth and strength set somewhere -in a heaven. He was an offshoot of this old race, breeding stubbornly -true on these late Kentucky fields. - -"They are coming! They are coming at last!" cried Elizabeth, beckoning -to him. - -The boy got up and strolled over to the window and stood beside his -sister, most unlike her: he springing from the land as rank as its corn; -she being without a country, a little winged soul wandering through the -universe, that merely by means of birth had alighted on Kentucky ground. -At this moment beside the grave one-toned figure of her brother the -many-colored nature of Elizabeth had its counterpart in the picture she -offered to the eye; for the sunlight out of doors falling on the -frost-jewelled window-panes spun a silvery radiance about the golden-red -of the wind-woven hair, heightened the transparency of her skin, and -stroked with softest pencil her little frock of forget-me-not blue. Had -she been lifted to the window-frame, she would have looked like some -portrait of herself done in stained glass--all atmosphered with seraphic -brilliancy. As to the forget-me-not frock, everything that Elizabeth -wore seemed to cherish her; her dresses bloomed about her thin, -unbeautiful figure like flowers bent on hiding it, trained there by a -mother's watchfulness. - -"Now I am perfectly happy," she murmured, pressing her face fondly -against his. "I was afraid it would be too cold for them to come." - -The boy pushed her away, and placed his eye at the small clear spot on -the window-pane. - -"Elizabeth," he said, squinting critically, "if this is the best -spy-glass you have, you would make very little headway with the enemy." - -"I didn't have to make headway with the enemy!" cried Elizabeth, -rejecting his hostile utterance; "I merely wished to see my friends." - -The boy kept his eye at the lookout. - -"Elsie has on a red woollen helmet; and she looks as though she were -dyed in gore. I wish it were old William's gore!" - -The sight of those far-off figures dancing toward her had awaked in -Elizabeth an ecstasy, and she began to weave light-footed measures of -her own. - -"Now I am perfectly happy," she sang, but rather to herself as she -whirled round the room. - -Her brother turned toward her and propped his back against the window -and folded his arms: he looked like a dwarf who had been a major-general -and was conscious of it. - -"I'll not be happy until that key is found. I don't propose to be -defeated." - -"Oh, Harold, why can't we leave everything as it has always been, if -_they_ want it! If papa and mamma wish to have one more old-fashioned -Christmas,--and you know it's the last,--if they wish to have one more, -so do I and so do you!" - -"I can't pretend, Elizabeth: they needn't ask me to pretend." - -Elizabeth began to dance toward him with fairy beautiful mockery:-- - -"You just pretended you were dead on the battle-field, among your -soldiers: you just pretended the moon was shining. You just pretended -Elsie had on a red woollen helmet. You just pretended you were fighting -William the Conqueror. Oh, no! It is impossible for you to pretend, you -poor deficient child!" - -"That's different, Elizabeth. That's not pretending; that's imagining. -You knew it wasn't true: there wasn't any secret about it: it didn't -fool anybody. But this pretending about Christmas and about how things -get on the Tree, and that idiotic old buffoon!--that's trying to make us -believe it is true when it is not true; and that it is real when it is -not real! That's the way fathers and mothers raise their little -immigrants!" - -Elizabeth danced before him more wildly, watching him with love and -beautiful laughter: "So when papa says he is Santa Claus, he is -pretending! And when you say you are King Harold, you're imagining! Why, -what a bright child you are! How _did_ you ever get to be a member of -_this_ dull family?" - -"I didn't expect you to understand the difference, because you girls are -used to doing both--you girls! How could you know the difference between -imagining and pretending--you girls! When you are always doing both--you -girls!" - -"Why, what superior creatures we must be, to do so much more than boys," -sang Elizabeth. Her head was filled with fragments of nursery ditties; -and the occasion seemed to warrant the production of one. With her eyes -resting on him, she made a little dance in his honor and at his expense; -and she cadenced her footfalls to the rhythm of her words:-- - - The innocent lambs!-- - They have no shams, - And they've nothing but wool to hide them. - They cannot pretend - Because at one end - They've nothing but tails to guide them. - -She suddenly glided forward step by step, airy sylph of unearthly joy, -and threw her arms around his neck and covered his face with kisses, and -then darted away from him again, dancing. With his arms folded he looked -at her as a stone mile-post might have looked at a ruby-throated -humming-bird. - -"You promised," he said--"you promised that we'd find the key, and that -all four of us would walk in on them to-night. But what do _you_ know -about keeping promises--you girls!" - -"I'll keep my promise, but I hope I won't find the key," said Elizabeth, -as her dance grew wilder with the rising whirlwind of expectation. "But -why shouldn't papa and mamma have one more Christmas as _they_ wish it! -Of course we can't care as much for old times as they do; but be -reasonable, Harold!" - -"I can't be reasonable that way. Haven't they always told us never to -pretend? Haven't they always taught us not to have secrets? Haven't they -always said that a house with a secret in it wasn't a good home for -children? Why can't Christmas be as open as all out of doors? Isn't that -what they call being American--to be as open as all out of doors? It's -the little immigrants who have secrets in them." - -At that moment there was a sound of feet, muffled with yarn stockings, -stamping triumphantly on the porch. - -"Oh, there they are!" cried Elizabeth, darting out of the room to -receive her guests. More slowly the gray-toned little figure with the -white hair falling over his hawk eyes and with the profile of white -flint followed her. - -And three great spirits there were that walked with the lad that day--as -with thousands of other lads like him: the spirit of his race, the -spirit of his land, and the spirit of his house. - -The real darkness of the Middle Ages was the spiritual night that -settled upon children as they began to play about their homes and to ask -the meanings of them--why they were built as they were--and the meaning -of other things they saw in them and around them. The architects of -those centuries designed their noblest buildings often with an eye to -many of the worst passions of human nature. Toiling masons slowly put -into mortar and stone exact arrangements for the violent and the vile: -they built not for the good in human character, but against evil--not -for a heaven on earth, but against a hell on earth. When the owners took -possession, they had placed between themselves and the surrounding world -the strongest possible proofs of a hostile and vicious attitude. Even -within their homes they had fortified one intimate part against another -intimate part until it was as though the ventricles of the human heart -had walled themselves in distrust away from the auricles. - -The mental and moral gloom of such homes hung destructively, appallingly -over children. The very architecture taught them their first bad -lessons. Lifted in their nurse's or mother's arms, they peered from -parapet down upon drawbridge and moat--at danger. At the entrances they -saw massive doors built to shut out death, perhaps battle-hacked, -blood-stained. From these they learned violence and the habit of -killing. Trap-doors taught them treachery. Sliding-panels in walls -taught them cunning, flight, and cowardice, eaves-dropping. Underground -dungeons taught them revenge, cruelty, persecution to the death: they -might look down into one and see lying there some victim of slow -starvation or slow torture. Nearly every leading vicious trait born in -them seized upon the house itself for development, and began to clamber -up its walls as naturally as castle ivy. - -Little children of the Dark Ages!--does any one now ever try to enter -into their terrors and troubles and warped souls? Can any one -conceivably nowadays look out upon human life or up to the heavens -through their vision! - -When the Anglo-Saxon, heaven's blue in his eyes, sunlight in his hair, -the conquest of the future in his brain, the peopling of the future in -his loins, breasted fresh waters and reached the distant shore, he had -come to a great land where he could build for the best that was in him. -The story of the black slave fleeing across a Western river from a slave -state into a free state, thrilling millions in this country, is as -nothing to the story of the White Slave of the Ages who escaped across -an ocean into a world where he became a free man. The cabins of this New -World became the nurseries of a new kind of childhood on the earth. -There is no possibility of measuring the effect upon a child and upon -the man he is to be even of a door that has no lock and of windows that -have no shutters. It was while sleeping behind such undefended doors and -windows that the gaunt mated lions and lionesses on the Western -frontiers of this Republic bred in chaste passion their lean cubs. Out -of such a cabin without a bolt and with its mere latchstring there -walked forth a new type of American man, the Nation's man, who as a -child had trusted the open door in his father's house, and as a man -trusted the door of humanity: nor had within himself secret nor secrecy, -nor trick nor guile, nor double-dealing nor cruelty, nor vindictiveness -nor revenge--the naked American, unpollutable iron of its strength and -honor, Child of the New Childhood, Man of the New Manhood, with the -great silence in him that is in the Great. - -The birthplace of Harold and Elizabeth was one of the thousands and -thousands of plain American homes in Kentucky and elsewhere that are the -breeding-grounds and fortresses of the Republic's impregnable virtue. -The house had never taught them a bad lesson; it had never offered them -an architectural trait to which their own coarser human traits could -attach themselves. It had never uttered a suggestion that there is -anything wrong in the human nature dwelling within it or human nature -approaching it from without. It was built against one enemy--the -climate. And whenever the climate began war on the house, the children -had a chance to see how well prepared for war it was: the climate always -retreated, whipped in the end. - -Their land was like their birthplace. The earliest generations of little -white Kentuckians had good reason to dread their country--no children -anywhere ever had more. It was their Dark Ages. Death encompassed them. -Torture snatched them from the breast. Terror cradled them. But all that -was good and great in their parents fought on their side; and through -the Dark Ages of the West shone the lustre of a new chivalry. - -But all that was changed long ago--changed except to history; and to -gratitude which is the memory of the heart. On these plains of Kentucky -no wildness any more, nothing unknown lurking anywhere: a deep strong -land completely gentled but not weakened; over it drifting the lights -and shadows of tranquil skies; and throbbing always in the heart of it a -passion of tenderness that draws its wandering children back across all -distances and through all years. - -Ay, there were three great spirits that walked with the lad that day and -with the uncounted army of his peers; the spirit of their race--the old -Anglo-Saxon race that has made its best share of the world's history by -cutting away with its sword the rotting curtains that conceal sham and -superstition; the spirit of his country which moves with resistless -strength toward the real and the strong; and the spirit of the plain -American home--that fortress where the real and the ideal meet. - - - - - II - - FOUR IN A CAGE - - -THE four children early that afternoon were shut in the library with -instructions from the mother of the household: it was too cold to go out -of doors any more--this was given as gentle counsel to the visitors; -their father--here the head was shaken warningly at the other two--their -father was finishing some very important work in his library and must -not be disturbed by noises; she herself could not be with them longer -because--her eyes spoke volumes of delightful mysteries, a volume that -suggested preparations for the coming Night. So they must entertain -themselves with whatever was within reach: there were games, there were -books; especially wonderful old Christmas tales. They must not forget to -read from these. Finally she summed up: they must remember in whatever -they did and whatever they said that they were American children playing -on Christmas Eve--the last of the Kentucky Christmas Eves in that house! - -The children thought, at least Elsie thought, that they would have a -better time if they were allowed to be simply children instead of -American children: and she said so. She was of the opinion that being -American interfered a good deal with being natural. But the rejoinder, -made with graciousness and responsive humor, was that the American back -was fitted to the burden and that no doubt the burden was fitted to the -back: at least they could try it and see--and the door was softly -closed. - -The children gathered almost immediately about a centre-table on which -were books and many magazines, very modern and very American magazines, -which were pleasantly lighted of evenings by a reading-lamp. The two -children who were at home were much used to catching echoes from those -magazines as expounded and discussed by mature heads. What attracted -them all now was neither lamp nor literature, but a silver tray bearing -plates and knives and napkins. - -"It looks as though we were going to have something delicious," said -Elizabeth daintily; and she peeped under a napkin, adding with -disappointment: "O dear! I am afraid it is going to be fruit!" - -Even as she spoke there was a knock on the door as though something had -been delayed, and the door was reopened far enough to admit the maternal -hand grasping the handle of a massive old fruit basket piled with -apples. There was a rush to the door, and another protest: "Only apples, -and there are barrels of them in the cellar: why not potatoes and be -done with it! Entertain one's company on apples!" But the door was -closed firmly, and thus the situation appeared to settle down for the -rest of the afternoon. - -It soon having become a problem of whether the apples should go to the -children or the children go to the apples, Elizabeth decided that it -should be solved in the human way; and she led the group back to the -table under guidance of Elsie's eyes, which more than once had turned in -that direction with a delicate, not to say indelicate, suggestion. - -"I suppose it is better than starving," she remarked apologetically, -adjusting her glasses in order to find the next best apple for Herbert -after Harold had given the best to Elsie, and as she peeled her apple, -she added with some instinct of regret that she was offering her guests -refreshments so meagre:-- - -"How much better turkey and plum pudding sound in the old Christmas -stories than they are when you have them!" - -Elsie did not agree with this view. "I think it is much better to _have_ -them," she said. - -"But in your mind's eye--" pleaded Elizabeth. - -"I don't know so well about that eye!" said Elsie. - -"Oh, but, Elsie," insisted Elizabeth with a rising enthusiasm, "in -Dickens' _Christmas Carol_ wouldn't you rather the big prize turkey were -whirled away in the cab to the Bob Cratchits?" - -"I must say that I should _not_," contended Elsie. - -"But the plum pudding, Elsie!" cried Elizabeth, now in the full glow of -a beautiful ardor; "when Mrs. Cratchit brings in the plum pudding -looking like a speckled cannon-ball, hard and firm and blazing with -brandy and with Christmas holly stuck in the top of it, wouldn't you -rather the little Cratchits ate _that_?" - -"Indeed I would!" said Elsie; "for I never cared for that pudding; they -were welcome to it." - -Elizabeth dropped her head and was silent; then she murmured, in wounded -loyalty to the Cratchits: "It _must_ have been good! Because Dickens -said they ate all of it and wanted more. But they tried to look as -though they'd had quite sufficient; and I think they were very nice -about it, Elsie, for children who had had so little training. They -behaved as very well bred, indeed." - -"I don't doubt it," said Elsie. "I have nothing against their manners. -And I suppose they thought it a good pudding! I merely remarked that _I_ -did _not_ think it a good pudding! They had their opinion, and I have my -opinion of that pudding." - -The subject was abandoned, but a moment later revived by Herbert, -sitting at Elizabeth's side:-- - -"Dickens had a great many more things in the _Carol_ than the turkey and -the plum pudding," he observed, with his habit of taking in everything; -and he began with a memorized list of the _Carol's_ Christmas luxuries -in one heap--passing from geese to punch. "I always like Dickens: he -gives you plenty," he concluded. - -"Oh, bother!" said Harold, the Kentucky Saxon whose forefathers had been -immigrants from Dickens' land. "We have everything in Kentucky that they -had, and more besides. They can keep their Dickens!" - -"Oh, but Harold," pleaded Elizabeth, "we haven't any American Christmas -stories! Not one old fairy tale--not one!" - -"We don't want any old English fairy tales. American children don't want -fairy tales. Couldn't we have them if we wanted them? I should say so. -Can't we make anything in our country that we want?" - -"But the little Cratchits, Harold!" insisted Elizabeth, "we do want the -little Cratchits!" - -"We have plenty of American Cratchits just as good--and much worse." - -The eating of the apples now went on silently, Elizabeth having been -worsted in her battle for the Cratchits. But soon as hostess she made -another effort to be charming. - -"Mamma tells us that whenever we have anything very very good, we must -always remember to leave a little for Lazarus. Especially at -Christmas--we must remember to share with Lazarus--to leave something on -our plates for him." - -"Well," said Elsie, "Herbert and I have always been taught to leave -something on our plates for good manners. But I never heard good manners -called Lazarus. I didn't suppose Lazarus had any manners!" - -Elizabeth's face and neck was colored with a quick flame, and she bent -her head over her plate until her hair covered her eyes. She undertook -an explanation:-- - -"I think I know what mamma meant, Elsie. Mamma always means a great -deal. It was this way: long, long ages ago all over the world people had -to divide with imaginary beings: every year they had to give so much, -part of everything they owned. Then by and by--I don't know the exact -date, Elsie, dear, and I don't think it makes much difference; but by -and by there weren't any more imaginary beings. Mamma said that they all -disappeared, going down the road of the world." - -"But who got all the things?" asked Elsie. "The imaginary beings didn't -get them." - -"I suppose that is another story," said Elizabeth, who was determined -this time not to be browbeaten. "Then just as they all disappeared down -the road, from the opposite direction there came the figure of a -man--Lazarus. Of course I can't tell it as mamma explains it to me, but -this is what it comes to: that for ages and ages people were compelled -to give up a share of what they had to imaginary beings; but now there -aren't any imaginary beings, and we must divide with people we actually -see." - -"I don't actually see Lazarus," said Elsie. - -"But with your mind's eye--!" - -"Oh, _that_ eye--!" - -"Mamma thought she would give us a good send-off for Christmas Eve," -murmured Elizabeth with another wound: she had been as unfortunate in -her crusade for Lazarus as she had been with her tirade for the -Cratchits. - -Elsie and Harold had pushed back their chairs and frolicked away to a -distant part of the room to an unfinished game of backgammon. Elizabeth -dipped her fingers into her finger-bowl, and with admiration watched -Elsie in her beauty and bouncing proportions: for she was a beautiful -child--with the beauty of round healthy vegetables displayed on market -stalls, causing you to feel comfortable and human. As for Elizabeth, her -thinness had been her pathos: from earliest childhood she had been made -to realize on school playgrounds and in all juvenile companies that very -thin children win no kind of leadership: with an instinct sure and no -doubt wise, children uniformly give their suffrages to the fat, and vote -by the pound. Now she looked longingly at the bewitching vision of her -opposite--at the heavy braids of chestnut hair hanging down the broad -back and tied with a bit of blue-checked ribbon--a back that would have -made three of her backs. One day while being dressed by her mother she -had remarked regarding herself that she was glad she was no longer: she -might be taken for the sea-serpent. - -Elsie was dressed in a shade of brown that suggested a blend of the -colors of good morning coffee with Durham cream in it and Kentucky -waffles: a kind of general breakfast brown. - -Then Elizabeth's glance came home to Herbert at her side. He was dressed -in much the same shade of brown. But something in his nature transmuted -this, and he rather seemed clad in a raiment that suggested spun oak -leaves as in autumn they lie at the bottom of still pools when the blue -of the sky falls on them and chill winds pass low. Her tenderness -suddenly enfolded him: it was the first time he had ever come to stay -all night: it gave her an intimate sense of proprietorship in him. She -settled down into her chair--the large, high-backed, parental chair--and -began rather plaintively--but also not without stratagem--having first -looked quickly to see that Elsie was at a safe distance:-- - -"Mamma says that if you have red hair and are born ugly, and grow -uglier, and are very thin, and are named Elizabeth, and no one loves -you, you may become a very dangerous person. She's positive that was the -trouble with Queen Elizabeth. Some day it may be natural for me to want -to cut off somebody's head--I don't know whose yet--but _somebody's_. -Mamma and I are alike: if we were not loved, it would be the end of us." - -(To think that even this innocent child should have had such guile!) A -head of chestnut hair was unexpectedly moved around in front of -Elizabeth's glasses and a pair of eyes peeped in through those private -windows: peeped--disappeared. From the other chair a voice sounded, -becoming confidential:-- - -"Some time before you are grown, Elizabeth, some one is going to tell -you something." - -"I wish I knew what it was _now_!" murmured Elizabeth. - -"You will know when the time comes." - -"I don't see why the time doesn't come now." - -"Before you are grown?" - -"It's the same thing--I _feel_ grown--for the moment!" - -Elizabeth looked around again to see where Elsie was. - -"I'd like to ask you a question, Elizabeth." - -"I should be pleased to answer the question." - -"But father told me not to ask any questions: I was to wait till I got -back home and ask _him_." - -"I think that is very strange! Aren't there questions a boy can't ask -his father? A father wouldn't be the right one to answer. You must ask -the one who can answer!" - -There was no reply. - -"Well," urged Elizabeth, feeling the time was short (there have been -others!), "if you can't _ask_ it, _pop_ it! If you can't ask the -question, pop the question." - -And then--clandestinely down behind the backs of the chairs! And not on -the cheek! Exact style of the respondent not accurately known--probably -early Elizabethan. - - * * * * * - - -Toward the middle of the afternoon as they played further about the room -in search of whatever entertainment it afforded, they stopped before an -old cabinet with shelves arranged behind glass doors. - -On one of the upper shelves stood some little oval frames of blue or of -rose-colored velvet; and in the frames were miniatures of women of old -Southern days with bare ivory necks and shoulders and perhaps a big -damask rose on the breast or pendent in a cataract of curls behind the -ear: women who made you think what must have been the physical and -mental calibre of the men who had captured them and held them captured: -Elizabeth's grandmothers and aunts on the mother's side. The two girls, -each with an arm around the other's waist and heads close together, -peered through the glass doors at the vital dames. - -"Don't they look as though they liked to dance and to eat and to manage -everything and everybody?" said Elsie, always practical. - -"Don't they look _proud_!" said Elizabeth proudly, "and _true_! and -don't they look _alive_!" - -But she linked her arm in Elsie's and drew her away to something else, -adding in delicate confidence: "I think I am glad, though, Elsie, that -mamma does not look like _them_. There is no one in the world like -mamma! I am a little like her, but I dwindled. Children _do_ dwindle -nowadays, don't they?" - -"Not I," said Elsie. "I didn't dwindle. Do you notice any dwindling -anywhere about me? Please say where." - -On the middle and lower shelves of the cabinet were some long-ago -specimens of mounted wild duck; and on the moss-ragged boughs of an -artificial oak some age-moulted passenger pigeons. The boys talked about -these, and told stories of their grandfathers' hunting days when pigeons -in multitudes flecked the morning sky on frosty mornings or had made -blue feathery clouds about the oak trees in the vast Kentucky pastures. - -Following this lead, the boys went to the book-shelves, and taking down -a volume of Audubon's great folio work on _American Birds_, they spread -it open on the carpet and, sprawling before it, found the picture of the -vanished wild pigeon there, and began to read about him. - -Observing this, Elizabeth and Elsie took down a volume of the same great -man's work on _American Animals_; and with it open before them on the -floor a few yards away, facing the boys, they began to turn the pages, -looking indifferently for whatever beasts might appear. - -Elizabeth's peculiar interest in animal pictures had begun during the -summer previous, when the family were having a vacation trip in Europe. -Upon her visits to galleries of paintings she had repeatedly encountered -the same picture: The Manger with the Divine Child as the centre of the -group; and about the Child, half in shadow, the donkey and others of his -lowly fellows of the stall--all turned in brute adoration. The memory of -these Christmas pictures came vividly back to her now--especially the -face of the donkey who was always made to look as though he had long -been expecting the event; and whereas reasonably gratified, could not -definitely say that he was much surprised: his entire aspect being that -of a creature too meek and lowly to think that anything foreseen by him -could possibly be much of a miracle. - -Once also she had seen another animal picture that fascinated her: it -represented a blond-haired little girl of about her own age, with bare -feet, hair hanging down, a palm branch in her hand. She was escorted by -a troop of wild animals, each vying with the other in attempt to -convince this exceptional little girl that nothing could induce them -just at present to be carnivorous. - -The most dangerous beasts walked at the head of the line; the less -powerful took their places in the rear; and the procession gradually -tapered off in the distance until only the smallest creatures were to be -seen struggling resolutely along in the parade. The meaning of the -picture seemed to be that nothing harmful could come from the animal -kingdom on this particular day, providing the animals were allowed to -arrange themselves as specified in the procession. What might have -happened on the day preceding or the day following was not guaranteed; -nor what might have befallen the little girl on this day if she had not -been a blonde; nor what might overtake little boys, dark or fair, at any -time. This picture also was in Elizabeth's memory as she turned -Audubon's mighty pages; but somehow no American animals seemed to be -represented in it: probably absenting themselves through the American -desire--ranging through the whole animal kingdom--not to appear -sentimental. All, no doubt, would have been glad to parade behind -Elizabeth; but they must have agreed that only the sheep in the United -States has the right to look sheepish. - -The boys, sitting behind the _Birds_, and the girls sitting behind the -_Quadrupeds_, turned the leaves and began to toss their comments and -their fun back and forth. - -"The wild pigeon is gone," said Harold, whose ideas on this subject and -others related to it showed that he had listened with a good purpose to -a father who was a naturalist and patriotic American. "The wild pigeon -is gone, and the buffalo is gone, and the deer is going, and all the -other big game is gone or is going, and the birds are going, and the -forests are going, and the streams are going, and the Americans are -going: everything is going but the immigrants--they are coming." - -"Oh, but, Harold, we were immigrants once," admitted Elizabeth. - -"We were Anglo-Saxon immigrants," said the son of his father; "and -they're the only kind for this country. If all the rest of the country -were like Kentucky, it wouldn't be so bad. And we American boys have got -to get busy when we are men, or there won't be any real Americans left: -I expect to stand for a big family, I do," he affirmed to Herbert as -though he somehow appropriated the privilege and the glory of it. - -"So do I intend to stand for a big family," replied Herbert quickly and -jealously, now that matters seemed to be on a satisfactory basis with -Elizabeth. - -"We boys are going to do our part," called out the Anglo-Saxon to the -girls sitting opposite. "You American girls will have to do yours!" - -"We shall be quite ready," Elizabeth sang back dreamily. - -"We shall be ready," echoed Elsie, not to be excluded from her full -share in future proceedings, "and we shall be much pleased to be ready!" - -The boys turning the pages of the _Birds_ had reached the picture of the -American robin redbreast; and the girls turning the pages of the -_Quadrupeds_ had reached the picture of the American rabbit; Elizabeth -was softly stroking its ears and coat. - -"I think," said Herbert, looking across at Elizabeth, and also of that -cordial lusty household bird whose picture was before him, "I think that -if a real American were to begin at twenty and keep on until he was, -say, ninety, he'd be able to down the immigrants with a family." - -"Why ninety?" inquired Elizabeth, looking tenderly back at him and -apparently disturbed by the fixing of an arbitrary limit. - -"That's all the Bible allows; then you take a rest." - -"Oh, then our family didn't want any rest," exclaimed Harold; "for -grandfather had a child when he was ninety-one: isn't that so, -Elizabeth?" - -"Oh, Harold! You've got that wrong. It wasn't grandmother, you dear -lamb! Wasn't it a woman in the Old Testament--Sarah--or Hagar--or maybe -Rebecca?" - -"Anyhow, I'm right about grandfather! I'm positive he had one. Hurrah -for grandfather! He was the right kind of American! When I'm a man, I'll -be the right kind: I'll have the largest family in this neighborhood." - -"Don't say that! Take that back!" - -"I _will_ say it, and I do say it!" - -"Then--take--_that_!" - -The member of the military institute received a slap in the mouth from a -masculine overgrown hand which caused him to measure the length of his -spine backward on a large damask rose in the velvet carpet. - -They fought as two young males should, one of whom had recently imagined -himself the last of the Saxon kings and the other of whom had realized -himself as an accepted lover. They fought for a moment over the -priceless folio of Audubon and ruined those open pages where the robin, -family-bird of the yards, had innocently brought on the fray. They -fought round the room, past furniture and over it: Elsie following with -delight and wishing that each would be well punished; Elizabeth -following in despair, broken-hearted lest either should be worsted. - -"The idea of two brats fighting over which is going to have the largest -family!" cried the former. - -"Oh, Harold, Harold, Harold!" implored Elizabeth. "To fight in your own -house!" - -"Where could I fight if I didn't fight in my own house?" shouted the -Saxon. "I couldn't fight in his." - -"Yes; you can fight in mine--whenever you've a mind!" shouted his -hospitable foe. - -Then something intervened--miraculously. The boys had reached the -farther end of the library and the locked doors. There they had clinched -again, and there they went down sidewise with a heavy fall against those -barriers. As they started to their feet to close in again, the miracle -took place--a real miracle, and most appropriate to Christmas Eve. In -the Middle Ages such a miracle would have given rise to a legend, a -saint, a shrine, and relics. - -Elizabeth, who had hung upon the edge of battle, was the first to see -it. As her brother rose, she threw herself upon him and whispered: - -"Oh, look, Harold! Now you'll stop!" - -Through the large empty keyhole of the locked doors an object was making -its way: first one long green finger appeared, and then a second, and -then a third--those three sacred fingers--as old as Buddha! They made -their way into the air of the library, followed by a foot or more of -timber; and the fingers and arm taken together constituted a broken-off -bough of the Christmas Tree: sign of peace and good will on earth on -that Eve: a true modern miracle! - -But the member of the military institute did not see it in that light; -what it suggested to him was the memory of certain green twigs that in -earlier years had played stingingly around a pair of bare disobedient -legs--wanton disturbers of common household peace; and as he stood there -remembering, his recollection was further assisted by certain minatory -movements of the sacred bough itself in the keyhole--a reminder that the -same hand was now at the end of the switch. It was not the miraculous -that persuaded him: it was the much too natural! But then is not the -natural in such a case miraculous enough? To take a small green cylinder -of vegetable tissue and apply it to a larger unclad cylinder of animal -tissue, with a spasmodic contraction of muscular tissue, and get a moral -result from the gray matter of the distant brain: is not that miraculous -enough? If people must hunt for miracles and must have them, can they -not find all they want in the natural? - -There was stillness in the library as that green bough slowly -disappeared. The rabbit and the robin, the latter badly torn, got put -back upon the shelves in their respective volumes. And presently there -was nothing more to be seen but four laughing children. - - * * * * * - - -And now it was getting late. Outside and all over the land snow was -falling--the longed-for snow of Christmas Eve. And the last thing to -chronicle regarding the afternoon was a reading. - -The little gray-toned lad with the mop of whitish hair and the profile -of white flint had straggled back to the story which had absorbed him -earlier that day--The Book of the World's Great Battles; and he had read -to his listeners seated around him the story of the sad battle of -Hastings when Saxon Harold fell, and green Saxon England with its mighty -throne was lost to fair-haired Saxon men and women--for a long, sad -time. - -This boy was living very close to the mind of a father who was watching -the history of his country; and his own brain was full of small echoes, -which perhaps did not echo very fully and truly. - -"That is the kind of battle we are going to fight," he said. "England -had to fight her immigrants, and we some day shall have to fight our -immigrants! Because they _will_ bring into our country old things from -their old countries, and we won't have those old things. They are the -ones that brought in this silly old Santa Claus." - -"If there is a war," said the son of the doctor, "I'll be the surgeon; -and I know of two salves already--one for wounds that are open and one -for wounds that might as well be. It's a salve that father got in -France; and they may have used it at the battle of Waterloo; that's why -there were so many soldiers limping around afterwards." - -"Well, Herbert," said Elsie, "it couldn't have been such a wonderful -salve if it set everybody to limping." - -"Well, it is either limp or be dead: so they limped." - -"What I like about the French," said Harold, remembering a summer spent -in France, "is the big red breeches on the soldiers: then you've got the -gore on you all the time, whether you're fighting or not." - -Elizabeth's mild beam of humor saw a chance to shine:-- - -"Oh, but, Harold," she exclaimed, "they _are_ so dangerous! You know the -towns were full of soldiers, and there wasn't one in the country. If a -soldier is seen in the pastures, the French bulls get after them! Blue -is better: then you aren't chased!" - -It had come Elizabeth's time to read. She made preparations for it with -the finest sense of how beautiful an occasion it was going to be: she -hunted for the best chairs; she pushed them together near one of the -windows where the last afternoon light from the snow-darkened sky began -to fall mystically; then she went to the children's corner of Fairy -Tales and softly peered along the shelf; and she drew out a -well-remembered volume. Then, seating herself before her auditors, she -began in the sweetest, most faltering of voices to read a story that in -earlier years had charmed them all. - -She had scarcely begun before she discovered that she no longer had an -audience: nobody listened. Saddest of all, Elizabeth found that she did -not herself listen: she could no longer draw close even to the -boundaries of that once magical world: it was gone from her and now she -herself loved it only as she saw it in the dim distance--on the Elysian -Fields of lost things. - -There may have been something of import to the future of this nation in -the way in which these four country children, crowded as it were on a -narrow headland looking toward the Past, there said good-by for the last -time to faith in the whole literature of Fairy Land. The splendid, the -terrible race of creatures which once had peopled the world of -imagination for races and civilizations had now crumbled to dust at the -touch of those little minds. For in the hard white light of our New -World backward, always backward toward the cradle moves the retreating -line of faith in the old superstitions: the shadows of the supernatural -retire more and more toward the very curtains that cradle infancy; and -it may be that the last miracle of fable will die where it was born--on -the lips of the child. - -Elizabeth's face flamed red as she shut the book. It was dead to her; -but her brain was musical with refrains about things that had gone to -those inner Fields of hers; and now as though she felt herself just a -little alone--even from Herbert--she walked away to the piano:-- - -"You wouldn't listen to the story, but you'll have to listen to a song! -This is _my_ song to a Fairy--my slumber song! It is away off in the -woods, and I go all by myself to where she is, and I sing this song to -her." So Elizabeth sang:-- - - "Over thee bright dews be shaken; - On thine eyelids violets blow; - At thy hand white stars awaken; - Past thee sun and darkness go! - - "In the world where thou art vanished, - All dear things are ever young. - I as thou will soon be vanished, - I like thee from nought am sprung. - - "Slumber, slumber! Why awaken? - No one now believes in thee. - I shall sleep while worlds are shaken-- - No one will believe in me." - -It was the poorest, most faltering, yet most faithful voice--the mere -note of a linnet long before the singing season has begun. As it died -out, she descended from her premature perch and went with her repudiated -book to the shelves where it must be put--not to be taken down again. In -the shadow of the library and with the uncertainty of her glasses, she -fumbled as she sought the place, and the volumes on each side collapsed -together. Whereupon a large key slid from the top and fell to the floor. -With a low cry of delight--but of regret also--she seized it and held it -up:-- - -"Oh, Harold, the key! I have found it!" - -As the others hurried to her, she said to Elsie, as though boys were not -fine enough to understand anything so fine:-- - -"It was like mamma to hide the key _there_! She gave it to the old -Christmas stories to keep and guard!" - - * * * * * - - -Soon after this the children were not seen in the room. Some one came -for them, and they were made ready for supper. After supper they were -kept well guarded in another part of the house; and at an earlier hour -than usual the little flock were herded up-stairs and at the top divided -along masculine and feminine by-paths toward drowsy folds. - -No lights were brought into the room where they had been playing. The -red embers of the anthracite sank lower under their ashes: all was -darkness and silence for the mysteries of Christmas Eve. - - - - - III - - THE REALM OF MIDNIGHT - - -A QUARTER of a century ago or more the German Christmas Tree--the -diffusion of which throughout the world was begun soon after the close -of the Napoleonic wars--had not made its way into general use throughout -the rural districts of central Kentucky. The older Dutch and English -festivals which had blent their features into the American holiday was -the current form celebrated in blue-grass homes. The German forest-idea -had been adopted in the towns for churches and other public festivities; -and in private houses also that were in the van of the world-movement. -But out in the country the evergreen had not yet enriched the great -winter drama of Nature with its fresh note of the immortal drawn from a -dead world: the evergreen was to eyes there the evergreen still, as the -primrose to other eyes had been the primrose and nothing more. - -Thus there was no Christmas Tree; and Christmas Eve brought no joy to -children except that of waiting for Christmas morning. Not until they -went to sleep or feigned slumber; not until fires died down in -chimney-corners where socks and stockings hung from a mantelpiece or -from the backs of maternal and paternal chairs--not till then did the -Sleigh of the White World draw near across the landscape of darkness. -Out of its realm of silence and snow it was suddenly there!--outside the -house, laden with gifts, drawn by tireless reindeer and driven by its -indefatigable forest-god. He was no longer young, the driver, as was -shown in his case, quite as it is shown in the case of commoner men, by -his white beard and round ruddy middle-aged face; but his twinkling eyes -and fresh good humor showed that the core of him was still boyish; and -apparently the one great lesson he had learned from half a lifetime was -that the best service he could render the whole world consisted in -giving it one night of innocent happiness and kindness. Not until well -on toward midnight was he there at the house, without sound or signal, -the Sleigh perhaps halted at the front gate or drawn up behind aged -cedar trees in the yard; or for all that any one knew to the contrary, -resting lightly on the roof of the house itself, or remaining poised up -in the air. - -At least on the roof _he_ was: he peeked down the chimney to see whether -the fire were out (and he never by any mistake went to the wrong -chimney): then he scrambled hurriedly down. If any children were in bed -in the room, he tickled the soles of their feet to prove if they were -asleep; then crammed socks and stockings; dispersed other gifts around -on the tops of furniture; left his smile on everything to last a -year--the smile of old forgiveness and of new affection--and was up the -chimney again--back in the Sleigh--gone! Gone to the next house, then to -the next, and on from house to house over the neighborhood, over the -nation, over the world: the first to operate without accidental -breakdown the heavier-than-air machine, unless it were possibly a remote -American kinswoman of his, the New England witch on her broomstick -aeroplane: which however she was never able to travel on outside New -England. In this belting of the globe with a sleigh in a single night he -must often have come to rivers and mountain ranges where passage was -impossible; and then it is certain that the Sleigh was driven up to the -roadway of the clouds and travelled across the lonely stretches of the -snow before it fell. - -Why he should come near midnight--who ever asked such a question? Has -not that hour always been the natural locality and resort for the -supernatural? What things merry or sorry could ever have come to pass -but for the stroke of midnight? How could Shakespeare have written -certain dramas without the mere aid of twelve o'clock? What considerable -part of English literature would drop out of existence but for the fact -that Big Ben struck twelve! - -The children stood at the head of the stairs; and the Great Night which -was to climb so high began for them low down--with the furniture. -Standing there, they listened for the sound of any movement in the -house: there was none, and they began to descend. Stairways in -homesteads built as solid as that did not give way with any creaking of -timbers under the pressure of feet; and they were thickly carpeted. Half -way down the children leaned over the banisters and listened again. - -Here at the turning of the stairway, directly below, there lived in his -pointed weather-house the old Time-Sentinel of the family, who with his -one remaining arm saluted evermore backward and forward in front of his -stiff form; and at every swing of this limb you could hear his muscle -crack in his ancient shoulder-joint. A metallic salute which the -children had been accustomed to all their lives was one of the only two -sounds that now reached them. - -The other sound came from near him: sitting on the hall carpet on a -square rug of tin especially provided for her was the winter companion -of the time-piece--a large round mica-plated anthracite -stove--middle-aged, designing, and corpulent. This seeming stove, whose -puffed flushed cheeks now reflected an unusual excitement, gave out -little comfortable wooing sounds, all confidential and travelling in a -soft volley toward the sentinel, backed gaunt and taciturn against the -wall. - -The children of the house had long ago named this pair the Cornered -Soldier and the Marrying Stove; and they explained the positions of the -two as indicating that the stove had backed the veteran into the corner -and had sat largely down before him with the determination to remain -there until she had warmed him up to the proper response. The veteran -however devoted his existence to moving his arm back and forth to ward -off her infatuation, and meanwhile he persisted in muttering in his -loudest possible monotone: _Go away--keep off! Go away--keep off! Go -away--keep off!_ There were seasons of course when the stove became less -ardent, for even with the fibre of iron such pursuits must relax -sometimes; but the veteran never permitted his arm to stop waving, -trusting her least when she was cold--rightly enough! - -At the foot of the stairway they encountered a pair of objects that were -genuinely alive. Two aged setters with gentle eyes and gentle ears and -gentle dispositions rose from where they lay near the stove, came -around, and, putting their feet on the lowest step, stretched themselves -backward with a low bow, and then, leaning forward with softly wagging -tails, they pushed their noses against the two children of the house, -inquiring why they were out of bed at that unheard-of hour: they offered -their services. But being shoved aside, they returned to their places -and threw themselves down again--not curled inward with chilliness, but -flat on the side with noses pointed outward: they were not wholly -reassured, and the ear of one was thrown half back, leaving the auditory -channel uncurtained: they had no fear, but they felt solicitude. - -The children made their way on tiptoe along the hall toward the door of -the library. Having paused there and listened, they entered and groped -their way to the far end where the doors connected this room with the -parlor. As they strained their ears against these barriers, low sounds -reached them from the other side: smothered laughter; the noise of -things being taken out of papers; the sound of feet moving on a -step-ladder; the sagging of a laden bough as it touched other laden -boughs. Through the keyhole there streamed into the darkness of the -library a little shaft of light. - -"They are in there! There is a light in the room! They're hanging the -presents on! We've caught them!" - -The leader of the group was about to insert the key when suddenly upon -the intense stillness there broke a sound; and following upon that sound -what a chorus of noises! - -For at that moment the old house-sentinel struck twelve--the -Christmas-Night Twelve. The children had never heard such startling -strokes--for the natural reason that never before had they been awake -and alone at that hour. As those twelve loud clear chimes rang out, the -two other guardians of the house drowsing by the clock, apprehensive -after all regarding the children straying about in the darkness--these -expressed their uneasiness by a few low gruff barks, and one followed -with a long questioning howl--a real Christmas ululation! Then out in -the henhouse a superannuated rooster drew his long-barrelled -single-shooter out of its feather and leather case, cocked it and fired -a volley point-blank at the rafters: the sound seemed made up of -drowsiness, a sore throat, general gallantry, and a notice that he kept -an eye on the sun even when he had no idea where it was--the early -Christmas clarion! Further away in the barn a motherly cow, kept awake -by the swayings and totterings of an infant calf apparently intoxicated -on new milk, stood up on her hind feet and then on her fore feet and -mooed--quite a Christmas moo! In a near-by stall an aged horse who now -seemed to recognize what was expected of him on the occasion struggled -to his fore feet and then to his hind feet, and squaring himself -nickered--his best Christmas nicker! Under some straw in a shed a litter -of pigs, disposed with heads and tails as is the packing of -sardines--except that for the sardines the oil is poured on the general -outside, but for the pigs it still remained on the individual -inside--these pigs slept on--the proper Christmas indifference! For -there had never been any holy art for them: nor miracles of their -manger: they had merely been good enough to be eaten, never good enough -to be painted! They slept on while they could!--mindful of the peril of -ancestral boar's head and of the modern peril of brains for breakfast -and sausage for supper. Then on the hearthstone of the library itself -not far from where the children were huddled the American mouse which is -always found there on Christmas Eve--this mouse, coming out and seeing -the children, shrieked and scampered--a fine Christmas shriek! Whereat -on the opposite side of the hearth a cricket stopped chirping and dodged -over the edge of the brick--a clever Christmas dodge! - -All these leaving what a stillness! - -As noiselessly as possible the key was now inserted, the lock turned, -and the door thrown quickly open; and there on the threshold of the -forbidden room, the children gasped--baffled--gazing into total -darkness! The coals of mystery forever glow even under the ashes in the -human soul; and these coals now sent up in faint wavering flashes of a -burnt-out faith: they were like the strange delicate wavering Northern -lights above a frozen horizon: after all--in the darkness--amid the hush -of the house--at the hour of midnight--with the perfume of wonderful -things wafted thickly to their sense--after all, was there not some -truth in the Legend? - -Then out of that perfumed darkness a voice sounded: "Come in if you wish -to come in!" - -And the voice was wonderful, big, deep, merry, kind--as though it had -but one meaning, the love of the earth's children; it betokened almighty -justice and impartiality to children. And it betrayed no surprise or -resentment at being intruded upon. After a while it invited more -persuasively: "Come in if you wish to come in." - -And this time it seemed not so much to proceed from near the Tree as to -emanate from the Tree itself--to be the Tree speaking! - -The children of the house at once understood that the nature of their -irruption had shifted. Their father in that disguised voice was issuing -instructions that they were not to dare question the ancient Christmas -rites of the house, nor attack his sacred office in them. For this hour -he was still to be the Santa Claus of childish faith. Since they did not -believe, they must make-believe! The scene had instantly been turned -into a house miracle-drama: and they were as in a theatre: and they were -to witness a play! And the voice did not hesitate an instant in its -exaction of obedience, but at once entered upon the rôle of a -supernatural personage:-- - -"Was I mistaken? Were not children heard whispering on the other side of -a door, and was not the door unlocked and thrown open? They must be -there! If they are gone, I am sorry. If they are still there--you -children! I'm glad to see you. Though of course I don't _see_ you!" - -"We're glad to see you--though we don't see _you_!" - -"You came just in time. I was about going. What delayed me--but strange -things have happened to-night! As I drove up to this house, suddenly the -life seemed to go out of me. It was never so before. And as I stepped -out of the Sleigh, I felt weary and old. And the moment I left the reins -on the dashboard, my reindeer, which were trembling with fright of a new -kind, fled with the Sleigh. And now I am left without knowing when and -how I shall get away. But on a night like this wonderful things happen; -and I may get some signal from them. A frightened horse will run away -from its dismounted master and then come back to him. And they may come -for me. I may get a signal. I shall wait. But as I said, I feel -strangely lifeless: and I think I shall sit down. Will you sit down, -please? Where you are, since you cannot _see_ any chairs," he said with -the sweetest gayety. - -In the darkness there were the sounds of laughing delighted -children--grouping themselves on the floor. - -"Now," said the voice, "I think I'll come around to your side of the -Tree so that there'll be nothing between us!" - -He was coming--coming as the white-haired Winter-god, Forest-spirit, of -the earth's children! They heard him advance around from behind the -Tree, moving to the right; and one of them who possessed the most -sensitive hearing felt sure that another personage advanced more softly -around from behind the Tree, on the left side. However this may be, all -heard _him_ sit down, heard the boughs rustle about him as he worked his -thick jolly figure back under them until they must have hung about his -neck and down over his eyes: then he laughed out as though he had taken -his seat on his true Forest Throne. - -"When I am at home in my own country," he said, "I am accustomed to -sleep with my back against an evergreen. I believe in your lands you -prefer pine furniture: I like the whole tree." - -A tender voice put forth an unexpected question:-- - -"Are you sure that there is not some one with you?" - -"Is not that a strange question?" - -"Ah yes, but in the old story when St. Nicholas arrived, an angel came -with him: are you right sure there's not an angel in the room with you -now?" - -"I certainly _see_ no angel, though I think I hear the voice of one! Do -you see any angel?" - -"With my mind's eye." - -"That must be the very best eye with which to see an angel!" - -"But if there were a light in the room--!" - -"Pardon me! If there were a light, I might not be here myself. If you -changed the world at all, you would change it altogether." - -A bolder voice broke in:-- - -"You're a very mysterious person, are you not?" - -"Not more mysterious than you, I should say. Is there anything more -mysterious than one of you children?" - -"Oh, but that's a different kind of mysterious: we don't pretend to be -mysterious: you do!" - -"Oh, do I! You seem to know more about me than I know about myself. When -you have lived longer, you may not feel so certain about understanding -other people. But then I'm not people," he added joyously, and they -heard him push his way further back under the boughs of the -Tree--withdrawing more deeply into its mystery. - -"Now then, while I wait, what shall we do?" - - - - - IV - - TIME-SPIRIT AND ETERNAL SPIRIT - - -A HURRIED whispering began among the children, and the result was -quickly announced:-- - -"We should like to ask you some questions." Evidently the intention was -that questions should riddle him--make reasonable daylight shine through -his mysterious pretensions: on the stage of his own theatre he was to be -stripped. - -"I treat all children alike," he replied with immediate insistence on -his divine rights. "And if any could ask, all should ask. But suppose -every living child asked me a question. That would be at least a million -to every hair on my head: don't you think that would make any head a -little heavy? Besides, I've always gotten along so well all over the -world because I have done what I had to do and have never stopped to -talk. As soon as you begin to talk, don't you get into trouble--with -somebody? Who has ever forced a word out of me!" - -How alert he was, nimble, brisk, alive! A marvellous kind of mental -arctic light from him began to spread through the pitchiness of the room -as from a sun hidden below the horizon. - -"But everything seems going to pieces tonight," he continued; "and maybe -I might let my silence go to pieces also. Your request is -granted--but--remember, one question apiece--the first each thinks -of--and not quarrelsome: this is no night for quarrelsome questions!" - -The lot of asking the first fell naturally to Elsie, and her question -had her history back of it; the question of each had life-history. - -When Elsie first came to know about the mysterious Gift-bringer from the -North, she promptly noticed in her sharp way that he was already old; -nor thereafter did he grow older. She found pictures of him taken -generations before she was born--and there he was just as old! She -judged him to be about fifty-five years or sixty as compared with -middle-aged Kentucky farmers, some of whom were heavy-set men like him -with florid complexions, and with snow on their beards and hair, and -mischievous eyes and the same high spirits. Only, there was one who had -no spirits at all except the very lowest. This was a deacon of the -country church, who instead of giving presents to the children once a -year pushed a long-handled box at them every Sunday and tried to force -them to make presents to him! One hot morning of early summer--he had so -annoyed her--when the box again paused tantalizingly in front of her, -she had shot out a plump little hand and dropped into it a frantic -indignant June bug which presently raised a hymn for the whole -congregation. She hated the deacon furthermore because he resembled -Santa Claus, and she disliked Santa Claus because he resembled the -deacon: she held them responsible for resembling each other. All this -was long ago in her short life, but the ancient grudge was still lodged -in her mind, and it now came out in her question:-- - -"Why did you wait to get old before you began to bring presents to -children; why didn't you bestir yourself earlier; and what were you -doing all the years when you were young?" - -If you could have believed that trees laughed, you would have said that -the Christmas Fir was laughing now. - -"That is a very good question, but it is not very simple, I am sorry to -say; and by my word I am bound not to answer it; you were told that the -question must be simple! However, I am willing to make you a promise: I -do not know where I may be next year, but wherever you are, you will -receive, I hope, a little book called _Santa Claus in the Days of his -Youth_. I hope you will find your question answered there to your -satisfaction. And now--for the next." - -During the years of Elizabeth's belief in the great Legend of the North, -second to her delight in the coming of the gifts was sorrow at the going -of them. Every year an avalanche of beautiful things flowed downward -over the world, across mountain ranges, across valleys and rivers; and -each house chimney received its share from the one vast avalanche. Every -year! And for all she knew these avalanches had been in motion thousands -of years. But where were the gifts? Gone, melted away; so that there -were now no more at the end of time than there had been at the -beginning. The fate of the vanished lay tenderly over the landscape of -the world for her. - -"You say that one night of every winter you drive round the earth in -your sleigh, carrying presents. Every summer don't you disguise yourself -and drive over the same track in an old cart and gather them up again? -Many a summer day I have watched you without your knowing it!" - -This time you could have believed that if evergreens are sensitive, the -fir now stood with its boughs lowered a little pensively and very still. - -"I am sorry! The question violates the same mischief-making rule, and by -my word I am bound not to answer it. But it is as easy to give a promise -to two as to one; next year I hope you will receive a little book called -_Santa Claus with the Wounded and the Lost_. And I wish you joy in that -story. Now then!" - -"Father told me not to ask any questions while I was over here: to wait -and ask _him_." - -The little theatre of make-believe almost crumbled to its foundations -beneath that one touch of reality! The great personage of the drama lost -control of his resources for a moment. Then the little miracle-play was -successfully resumed:-- - -"Well, then, I won't have to answer any questions for you!" - -"But I can tell you what I was _going_ to ask! I was going to ask you if -you are married. And if you are, why you travel always without your -wife. I was wondering whether you didn't like _your_ wife!" - -The answer came like a blinding flash--like a flash meant to extinguish -another flash:-- - -"A book, a book! Another book! There will have to be another book! Look -out for one next Christmas, dropped down the chimney especially for you: -and I hope it won't fall into the fire or into the soot--_Santa Claus -and_ his _Wife_. Now then--time flies!" - -During the infantile years when the heir of the house had been a -believer in the figure beside the Tree, there had always been one point -he jealously weighed: whether children of white complexion were not -entitled to a larger share of Christmas bounty than those of red or -yellow or brown or black faces; and in particular whether among all -white children those native to the United States ought not to receive -highest consideration. The old question now rang out: - -"What do _you_ think of the immigrants?" - -The Tree did not exactly laugh aloud, but it certainly laughed all -over--with hearty wholesome approving laughter. - -"That question is the worst offender of all; it is quarrelsome! It is -the most quarrelsome question that could be asked. What are immigrants -to me? But next year look out for a book called _Santa Claus on -Immigrants_." - -"Put plenty of gore in it!" - -"Gore! Gore on Christmas Eve! But if there was gore, since it is in a -book, it would have to be dry gore. But wouldn't salve be better--salve -for old wounds?" - -"If you're going to put salve in, you might use my Waterloo salve!" - -"Don't be peculiar, Herbert--especially away from home!" - -Certainly the Tree was shaken with laughter this time. - -"See what things grow to when once started; here were four questions, -and now they fill four books. But time flies. Now I must make haste! My -reindeer!--" - -His ingenuity was evidently at work upon this pretext as perhaps -furnishing him later on a way through which he might effect his escape: -in this little theatre of thin illusion there must be some rear exit; -and through this he hoped to retire from the stage without losing his -dignity and the illusion of his rôle. - -"My reindeer," he insisted, holding fast to that clew for whatsoever it -might lead him to, "if they should rush by for me, I must be ready. A -faint distant signal--and I'm gone! So before I go, in return for your -questions I am going to ask you one. But first there is a little -story--my last story; and I beg you to listen to it." - - * * * * * - -After a pause he began:-- - -"Listen, you children! You children of this house, you children of the -world! - -"You love the snow. You play in it, you hunt in it; it brings the melody -of sleigh-bells, it gives white wings to the trees and new robes to the -earth. Whenever it falls on the roof of this house and in the yard and -upon the farm, sooner or later it vanishes; it is forever rising and -falling, forming and melting--on and on through the ages. - -"If you should start from your home to-night and travel northward, after -a while you would find everything steadily changing: the atmosphere -growing colder, living creatures beginning to be left behind, those that -remain beginning to look white, the voices of the earth beginning to die -out: color fading, song failing. As you journeyed on always you would be -travelling toward the silent, the white, the dead. And at last you would -come to a land of no sun and of all silence except the noise of wind and -ice; you would have entered the kingdom of eternal snow. - -"If from your home you should start southward, as you crossed land after -land in the same way, you would begin to see that life was failing and -the harmonies of the planet replaced by the discord of lifeless -forces--storming, crushing, grinding. And at last you would reach the -threshold of another world that you dared not enter and that nothing -alive ever faces: the home of perpetual frost. - -"If you should rise straight into the air from your housetop as though -you were climbing the side of a mountain, you would find at last that -you had ascended to a height where the mountain would be capped forever -with snow. For all round the earth wherever its mountains are high -enough, their summits are capped with the one same snow: above us all -everywhere lies the upper land of eternal cold. - -"Sometime in the future--we do not know when--the spirit of cold at the -north will move southward; the spirit of cold at the south will move -northward; the spirit of cold in the upper air will move downward; and -the three will meet, and for the earth there will be one whiteness and -silence--rest. - -"Little children, the earth is burning out like a bedroom candle. The -great sun is but a longer candle that burns out also. All the stars are -but candles that one by one go out in the darkness of the universe. Now -tell me, you children of this house, you children of the earth, for I -make no difference among you and ask each the same question: when the -earth and the sun and the stars are burnt out like your bedroom candles, -where in that darkness will you be? Where will all the children of the -earth be then?" - -And now at last the Great Solemn Night drew apart its curtains of -mystery and revealed its spiritual summit. - -Out of these ordinary American children had all but died the last -vestiges of the superstitions of their time and of earlier ages. They -were new children of a new land in a new time; and they were the voices -of fresh millions--voices that rose and floated far and wide as a -revelation of the spirit of man stripped of worn-out rags and standing -forth in its divine nakedness--wingèd and immortal. - -"I know where I shall be," said the lad whose ideal of this life turned -toward strength that would not fail and truth that could not waver. - -"I know where I shall be," said the little soul whose earthly ideal was -selfishness: who had within herself humanity's ideal that hereafter -somewhere in the universe all desires will be gratified. - -"I know where I shall be," said the little soul whose earthly ideal was -the quieting of the world's pain: who had vague notions of a land where -none would be sick and none suffer. - -"I know where I shall be," said the little soul whose ideal of life was -the gathering and keeping of all beautiful things that none should be -lost and that none should change. - -Then in the same spirit in which the group of them had carried on their -drama of the night they now asked him:-- - -"Where will _you_ be?" - -For a while there was no answer, and when at length the answer came it -was low indeed:-- - -"Wherever the earth's children are, may I be there with them!" - -As the vast modern cathedral organ can be traced back through centuries -to the throat of a dry reed shaken with its fellows by the wind on the -banks of some ancient river, so out of the throats of these children -began once more the chant of ages-that deep majestical organ-roll of -humanity. - -The darkened parlor of the Kentucky farmhouse became the plain -where shepherds watched their flocks--it became the Mount of -Transfiguration--it became Calvary--it became the Apocalypse. It became -the chorus out of all lands, out of all ages:-- - -"_And there were shepherds--The Lord is my shepherd--Unto us a child is -born--I know that my Redeemer liveth--I know in whom I have believed--In -my Father's house are many mansions--I go to prepare a place for -you--Where I am you may be also--The earth shall pass away, but my -word will not pass away--Now is Christ risen from the dead--Trailing -clouds of glory do we come from God Who is our home--Thou wilt not leave -us in the dust--Sunset and evening star, and one clear call for me--My -Pilot face to face when I have crost the bar--_" - -In the room was the spiritual hymn of the whole earth from the beginning -until now: that somewhere in the universe there is a Father and a -Fatherland; that on a dying planet under a dying sun amid myriads of -dying stars there is something that does not die--the Youth of Man. In -that youth all that had been best in him will come to fullest life; all -that was worst will have dropped away. - -The room was very still awhile. - -Then upon its intense stillness there broke a sound--faint, far away -through the snow-thickened air--a melody of coming sleigh-bells. All -heard, all listened. - -"Hark, hark! Do you hear! Listen! They are coming for me! They're -coming!" - -The Tree shook as he who was sitting under its branches rose to his feet -with these words. - -"That is father's sleigh: I know those bells: those are our -sleigh-bells. That is father!" said a grave boy excitedly. - -"Ah! Is that what _you_ think _I_ hear! Then indeed it is time for me to -be going!" - -There was a rustling of the boughs of the Christmas Tree as though the -guest were leaving. - -Nearer, nearer, nearer, along the turnpike came the sound of the bells. -At the front gate the sound suddenly ceased. - -"They're waiting for me!" said a voice from behind the Tree as it moved -away in the direction of the chimney. - -Then all heard something more startling still. - -The sleigh was approaching the house. Out of the silence and the -darkness of Christmas Eve there was travelling toward the house another -story--the drama of a man's life. - -At the distance of a few hundred yards the sound of the sleigh-bells, -borne softly into the room and to the rapt listeners, showed that the -driver had turned out of the main drive and begun to encircle the house -by that path which enclosed it as within a ring--within the symbol of -the eternal. - -Under old trees now snow-laden, past the flower-beds of summer, past the -long branches of flowering shrubs and of roses that no longer scattered -their petals, but now dropped the flowers of the sky, past thoughts and -memories, it made its way: as for one who doubles back upon the track of -experience with a new purpose and revisits the past as he turns away -from it toward another future. Through the darkness, across the fresh -snow, on this night of the anniversary of home life, there and on this -final Christmas Eve after which all would soon vanish, he drew this -band--binding together all the lives there grouped--putting about them -the ring of oneness. - -That mournful melody of secrecy and darkness began to die out. Fainter -and fainter it pulsed through the air. At the gate it was barely heard -and then it was not heard: was it gone or was it waiting there? - -By the chimney-side there were faint noises. - -"He is gone!" whispered Elizabeth with one intense breath. - - - - - V - - WHEN A FATHER FINDS OUT ABOUT A SON - - -CHRISTMAS had passed, bringing up the train of its predecessors--the -merry and sad parade of the years. - -It departed a little changed, and it left the whole world a little -changed by the new work of new children--by that innumerable army of the -young who are ever usurping the earth from the old; who successively -refashion it in their own image, and in turn growing old themselves -leave it to the young again to refashion still further: leaving it -always to the child, the destroyer and saviour of the race. - -And yet it is the Child that amid all changes believes that it will -escape all change. - -Christmas had passed, and human nature had settled once more to routine -and commonplace, starting to travel across another restful desert of -ordinary days before it should reach another exhausting oasis of the -unusual. The young broke or threw away or forgot their toys; the old -lifted once more to their backs familiar burdens with a kind of fretful -or patient liking for them. - -The sun began to return with his fresh and ancient smiling. For a while -after Christmas snows were deeper and dryer, but then began to fall more -rarely and melt more swiftly. February turned its unfinished work over -to March, and March received it, and among other things brought to its -service winds and daffodils. The last flakes of snow as they sank -through the sod passed the snowdrop pushing upward--the passing of the -snowdrops of winter and of spring. In the woods wherever there was -mistletoe--that undying pledge of verdure into which naturalists of old -believed that the whole spirit of the tree had retreated for safety from -the storm--wherever there was mistletoe, it began to withdraw from sight -and hide itself amid young leaves bursting forth everywhere--universal -annunciation that what had seemed dead yet lived. Out of the ground -things sprouted and rose that had never lived before; but on old stocks -also, as on the tops of old trees about the doctor's house, equally -there was spring. For while there is life, there is youth; and as long -as there is youth, there is growth. Life is youth, wholly youth; and -death is not the end of age nor of old age, but only the ending of -youth: of briefer youth or extended youth, but always of youth. - -Ploughing began in the Kentucky fields, and after the plough the sower -went forth to sow. Dr. Birney as he drove along turnpikes and lanes -looked out of his buggy and saw him. Beside him was his son, and the -doctor was busy sowing also, sowing the seeds of right suggestion. -Sometimes they met child patients whom the doctor had brought through -the epidemic, they stopped and chatted triumphantly. - -Altogether it was springtime for the doctor for more reasons than one. -There was a change in him. He looked younger and he was younger. The -weight as of a glacier had melted away from him. A new verdure of joy -started forth. The beauty and happiness of the country about him found -counterpart and response in his own nature. - -One day as the two were driving across a fine growing landscape the -doctor was trying to impart a larger idea of service; and so he was -saying that there were three fathers: he was the first father--to be -looked to for counsel and guidance and protection: this father was to be -served loyally; he must be fought for if there were need, died for. But -by and by the first father would step aside and a second take his place, -much greater, more powerful--the fatherland. For this second father also -his listener must be ready to fight, to die; he must look to it for -guidance and safety. Then again in time the second father would -disappear and the third Father would take him in hand--the Father of all -things. - -"And then I'll have to fight and die for the third Father." - -"I am not so sure about the fighting and the dying," said the doctor -with a quick, happy laugh. - -"And after the third Father--who gets me next? When He is done with me, -then what?" - -"I am not so sure about that, either," admitted the doctor. "The third -Father will keep you a long time; and as all the troops are his, there -may be nobody to fight: but He'll make you a good soldier!" - - * * * * * - - -Thus during these days, each in his own way was putting forth new -growth; and now there arrived a morning when the son was to show how -well grown he was and how faithfully things sown in him were maturing. - -At breakfast for some lack of fine manners he received instructions from -his mother. By way of grateful acknowledgment, he laid down his knife -and fork and stiffened his back against his chair and looked at her -steadily:-- - -"I don't see what you have to do with my manners," he said, as though -the opportunity had come at last for him to speak his mind on the family -situation. "You've spoiled everything for us. You ought never to have -been my mother. Mrs. Ousley ought to have been my mother." And then he -looked at his father for approval that he had brought the truth out at -last. - -The doctor at the beginning of that utterance had started toward him -with the quick movement of one who tries to shut a door through which a -hurricane has begun to rush. Now without a word he rose from the table -and grasping the boy by the wrist led him from the room. - -As the door closed behind them, a loud ringing laugh was heard as though -the two were going off to enjoy something together. Then another door -was closed, and then there resounded through the silence of all the -rooms a loud startled scream; not so much of pain but of bewilderment, -of amazement, of grief of mind, of a puzzle in the brain. Then there -were other sounds, other sounds, other sounds. And then one long -continued sound--low, piteous, inconsolable. - -The spring advanced; tide of new life overflowed the land. Dr. Birney -and his boy were seen driving on all bright days: not toward the sick -necessarily; sometimes they were on their way to a creek or pond to -fish. - -There was a tragic change in the doctor, and there was a grave change in -his son. The father's face began to show the responsibility of handling -a case that was becoming more difficult; on a landscape of growing -things--growing with the irresistible force of Nature, how was he to -arrest the growth of things in the nature of a child? And the boy was -beginning in his way to consider the danger of too much devotion to a -father, too blind an imitation of him. In his way he was trying to get -clear hold of this problem of how to imitate and how not to imitate. -Something was gone between them; not affection, but peace. Each was -puzzled by the other, and each knew the other was puzzled. How -completely they jerked shining fish out of the lucent water; but as each -dropped his hook into the sea of character, neither felt assured what he -might draw up. At times in the doctor's eyes there was an expression too -sad to be seen in any father's; and in the boy's was the look of the -first deterioration in life--the defeat of being punished for what he -thought was right. - -Late one cold rainy afternoon in April there were several buggies in Dr. -Birney's yard, three of them belonging to physicians called into -consultation from adjoining county seats. One of the phenomena which -baffle the science of medicine had appeared on the doctor's -threshold--the sporadic case. Long after an epidemic is over, by an -untraceable path infection arrives. It is quite as if a bird that cannot -migrate should be found unearned on the opposite coast of a sea. - -There was little need of the consultation; the disease was well known, -the treatment was that agreed upon by the profession; Dr. Birney himself -was the most successful practitioner. A well-known disease, an -agreed-upon treatment--but a rate of mortality. - -Others came, not called: friends, neighbors, members of his Masonic -order. During all these years he had slowly won the heart of the whole -people, and now it turned to him. - - * * * * * - - -The doctor watched the progress of the case like one who must now bring -to bear the resources of a lifetime and of a life; who must cast the -total of skill and of influence on the side of the vital forces. - -As the disease ran on in its course, to him it became more and more a -question of how the issue would turn upon so-called little things, as -the recovery of a patient is probably sometimes secured by merely -turning him from side to side, from back to stomach. - -It was his problem how to drop into one scale or the other scale of the -childish balances some almost imponderable weight, as when good tidings -arriving save a life, as when bad news held back saves a life; as when -the removal of an injustice from a sensitive spirit saves a life; as -when the healing of a wound of the mind in the very extremity saves a -life. - -He felt that before him now were oscillating those delicate balances, -never quite in equilibrium: a joy dropped into one, a sorrow dropped -into the other--some pennyweight of new peace, some grain of additional -worry! The shadows collected on one side, sunbeams gathered on the -other. - -"Now then," he thought within himself, "now then is the hour when I must -be sunlight to him--not shadow!" - -He watched the look in his little boy's eyes; he noted the presence of -things weighing heavily. There was a tangle, a perplexity, a tossing of -the head from side to side on the pillow--as if to turn quickly away -from things seen. - -"Do I cast a light on him? Do I cast a shadow? Does my presence here by -him bring tranquillity, rest, sound sleep? As he sees into me, does what -he sees strengthen? Was his chastisement that morning a sunbeam? It had -not struck him like a sunbeam; it had not fallen in that way! The chill -in the house all these years--had that been vital warmth to him?" - -There now came out the meaning of all that exaggeratedly careful -training: the exercise, the outdoor life, everything: it was the attempt -to develop robust health on a foundation not robust: everything went -back to the poor start: each child had been born delicate. - -At intervals during the illness there were bits of talk. One night the -doctor rose from the bedside and brought a glass of pure fresh water and -administered a spoonful and watched the swallowing and the expression:-- - -"Does it taste bitter?" - -"Pretty bitter. You can't say that I didn't take your nasty old doses, -can you?" - -"Don't talk! You mustn't talk." - -"I'd feel better if I did talk--if I could get it out of me." - -"Then talk! What is it? Out with it!" - -But the face was jerked quickly away with that motion of wishing to look -in another direction. - -Some nights there was delirium. Through the brain rolled clouds of -fantasies:-- - -"_... If I knew how it comes out between you and Mrs. Ousley...._" - -On these dark rolling clouds the father tried to throw a beam of peace: -and it was no moment to hold back any of the truth:-- - -"_It is all over!... There is nothing of it._" - -"_I wish I had known it sooner: it bothered me...._" - -At another time more fantasies:-- - -"_... Not on the cheek! You're no father of mine if it's on the -cheek...._" - -At another time:-- - -"... _Suppose I never grow up and Elizabeth does. How is that? I -wouldn't like that. How do you straighten that out?_" - -"_I can't straighten that out._" - -"_Then I can't straighten it out, either._" - - * * * * * - - -"So young--so young!" muttered the doctor. "I was pretty old!" - -One warm night the doctor walked out of doors. The south wind blew -softly in his face, lifting his hair. - -All round the house in yard and garden and farther away in the woods and -fields everything was growing. It was a night when the earth seemed -given up to the festival of youth: it was the hour of youth: of its -triumph in Nature. - -Little aware of where his feet carried him, he was now in the garden and -now in the yard. And in the garden, low down, how sturdy little things -were growing: the little radishes, the young beets, the beans--those -children of the earth, flawless in their descent and environment--with -what unarrestable force they were growing! Afterwards in the yard he -passed some beds of lilies of the valley--most delicate breath of all -flowers: how fragile but how strong, how safe in their unsullied -parentage, in their ample wedlock! - -All about the house the steady rush of the young! And within it--as a -mausoleum--the youth of all youth for him--stopped! - - * * * * * - - -Most obedient and well-trained and irresponsible Death! Thou hast no -grudge against us nor bearest toward any of us malice nor ill-will! Thou -stayest away as long as thou canst and never comest till thou must! Thou -visitant without will of thine own! Quickening Death, that also givest -to the will of another not the shock of death, but the shock of new -life! - -There loomed in the darkness before the doctor as he wandered about a -true picture: an ancient people in an ancient land weighed upon by their -transgressions which they could neither transfer to one another nor lay -upon mother earth. So once a year one of them in behalf of himself and -the rest chose an exemplar of their faithful flocks and herds, and -folding his hands upon its head laid upon it the burden of guilt and -shame, and then had it led out of the camp--to wild waste places where -no one dwelt--"_to a land not inhabited_." - -... And now he had sent away his son into the eternal with his own life -faults and failings on him.... - -He turned back into the house--passed through the sick room--passed -through his library, passed the portrait of his wife in her bridal -veil--passed down the hall--knocked at her door and opened it wide and -stood in the opening:-- - -"... My wife, I have come to you...! Will you come to him...?" - - - - - VI - - LIVING OUT THE YEARS - - -AN afternoon of early summer, at the edge of a quiet Kentucky town, on -the slope of a grassy hillside within one of those dreamy enclosures -where our earthly dreams are ended, the sunlight began to descend -slantingly for the first time--as on white silvery wings--upon a newly -placed memorial for a child. Across the top of the memorial was carved a -single legend hoary with the guilt and shame of men and women of -centuries long since gone. Beside the memorial stood a young evergreen -as the living forest substitute of him sleeping below: it was of about -his age and height. The ancient stone with its legend of atonement and -the young tree thus brought together stood there as if the offending and -the innocent had come to one of their meeting-places--and in life they -meet so often. - -Tree and mound and marble stood within an open enclosure of turf -encircled at a score of yards by old evergreens touching one another. - -Early in the afternoon two of these evergreens had some of their lower -interlapping boughs softly pushed apart, and into the open space there -stepped excitedly a frail little figure in a frock of forget-me-not -blue. Just inside the boughs which folded behind her like living doors -so that she was screened from view, she hesitated for a moment and -looked about her for the dreaded spot which she knew she was doomed to -find. Having located it, she advanced with uncertain footsteps as though -there could be no straight path for her to the scene of such a loss. - -When she reached it, she sat hurriedly down, dropped her bouquet on the -grass beside herself, jerked off her spectacles and pressing her hands -to her eyes, burst into an agony of weeping. Long she sat there, -helpless in her anguish. Once holding her hand before her eyes, she drew -from her pocket a fresh handkerchief; she had brought two: she knew her -tears would be many. - -At last she dried her red swollen eyes and brushed back from her temples -the long sunny strands of wind-woven hair; she put on her glasses and -picked up her little round brilliant country picnic bouquet; and with -quivering lips and quivering nostrils looked where she must place it. -With tear-wet forefinger and thumb she forced the flowers apart on one -side and peeped at the card pushed deep within within--"From Elizabeth." - -She got up then and went slowly away, fading out behind the pines like a -little wandering strip of heaven's remembering blue. - - * * * * * - - -Later in the afternoon the sound of slowly approaching wheels sounded on -the gravel of the drive that wound near: then a carriage stopped. A -minute afterwards there appeared within the open enclosure a woman in -black, thickly veiled, bringing an armful of flowers. Some yards behind -her a man followed in deep mourning also, bareheaded, his hat in his -hand at his side--the soldierly figure of a man squaring himself against -adversity, but stricken and bowed at his post. They did not advance side -by side as those who walk most in unison when they are most bereaved and -draw closer together as fate draws nearer. - -When she reached the mound, she turned toward him and waited; and when -he came up, without a word she held the flowers out to him. She held -them out to him with silence and with what a face under her veil--with -what a look out of the wife's and mother's eyes--there was none to see. -He gently pushed the flowers back toward her, mutely asking of her some -charity for the sake of all; so that, consenting, she turned to arrange -them. As she did so, she became conscious at last of what hitherto she -had perceived with her eyes only: the happy little bouquet of a child -left on the sod. And suddenly there fell upon her veil and hung enmeshed -in it some heavy tears, of which, however, she took no notice. But she -disposed the flowers so that they would not interfere with--not quite -reach to--that token of a child's love which had never known and now -would never know time's disillusion or earth's disenchantment. - -When she had finished, she remained standing looking at it all. He moved -around to her side; and they both with final impulse let their eyes meet -upon the ancient line chiselled across the marble:-- - - "=Unto a Land Not Inhabited.=" - -He broke the silence:-- - -"I chose that for him: it is the truth: he has been sent away, bearing -more than was his." - -She looked at it a long time, and then bowed as if to set the seal of -her judgment upon the seal of his judgment. And, moved by some pitiless -instinct to look at things as they are,--the discipline of her -years,--with a quiet resolute hand she lifted her veil away from her -face. It was a face of that proud and self-ennobled beauty that anywhere -in the world gives to the beholder of it a lesson in the sublimer -elements of human character. There was no feature of reproach nor line -nor shadow of bitterness, but the chastened peace of a nature that has -learned to live upon itself, after having first cast itself passionately -upon others; and that indestructible strength which rests not upon what -life can give, but upon what life cannot take away: she stood revealed -there as what in truth she was--heroic daughter of the greater vanished -people. - -She dropped her veil and turned away toward the carriage. He drew to her -side and once--hesitatingly, desolately--he put his arm around her. She -did not yield, she did not decline; she walked with him as though she -walked alone. During all the barren bitter years she had not been upheld -by his arm: her staff and her support had been her ideal of herself and -of her people--after she had faced the ruined ideal of their lives -together and her lost ideal of him. It was yet too soon for his arm--or -it was too late altogether. - -He withdrew it; and he continued to walk beside her as a man who has -lost among women both her whom he had most wished to have and her whom -he might most have had. And so they passed from the scene. - - * * * * * - - -But throughout that long obscurity amid which we are appointed to pass -our allotted years, it is not the order of nature that all stars within -us should rise at once. There are some that are seen early, that move -rapidly across our sky, and are beheld no more--youth's flaming planets, -the influence of which upon us often leaves us doubting whether they -were baneful or benign. There are other lights which come out to shine -upon our paths and guide us later; and, thanks be to nature, until the -very last new stars appear. Those who early have left them they love can -never know what late radiance may illumine the end of their road. And -only those who remain together to the end can greet the last splendid -beacons that sometimes rise above the horizon before the dawn--the true -morning stars of many a dark and troubled life. - -They had half their lives before them: they were growing, unfolding -characters; perhaps they were yet to find happiness together. She had -loved him with a love too single and complete, and she loved him yet too -well, to accept anything from him a second time less than everything. -Happiness was in store for them perhaps--and more children. - -The working out of this lay with them and their remaining days. - -But for the doctor one thing had been worked out to the end: that year -by year he was to drive along turnpikes and lanes--alone. That every -spring he was to see the sower go forth in the fields; that with his -whitening hair he was to watch beside the beds of sick children; and -often at night under his lamp to fall asleep with his eyes fixed upon -The World's Path of Lessening Pain. - - * * * * * - - -When the two were gone, it was a still spot that afternoon with the -sunlight on the grass. As the sun began to descend, its rays gradually -left the earth and passed upward toward the pinnacles of the pines; and -lingering on those summits awhile, it finally took its flight back to -the infinite. Twilight fell gray; darkness began to brood; objects lost -their outlines. The trees of the enclosure became shadows; these shadows -in time became as other realities. The sturdy young evergreen planted -beside the boy as his forest counterpart, having his shape and size, now -stood there as the lad himself wrapped in his overcoat--the -crimson-tipped madcap little fellow who had gambolled across the frozen -fields that windy morning toward his Christmas Festival. - -In this valley of earth he stood there holding upright for all to see -the slab on which was to be read his brief ended tale:-- - - "=Unto a Land Not Inhabited.=" - - - THE END - - - - - The following pages - contain advertisements - of books by the same - author - - - - - MR. JAMES LANE ALLEN'S - - -The Bride of the Mistletoe - - To which _The Doctor's Christmas Eve_ is a sequel, was described - at the time of its publication as "_so exquisite that not a few - of his admirers will hold it the best work he has - accomplished_." - - "It stands out in the midst of the year's fiction, and perhaps - the fiction of many years, as a thing by itself. There is the - spirit of Maeterlinck in these pages blended with the spirit of - Hawthorne."--_Current Literature._ - - The English press was enthusiastic, the London _Academy_ - declaring it "worth very many ordinary novels"; "conceived in a - fine vision and developed with beauty"; "exercising over us a - strong and at times a weird fascination." - - The _Literary World_ sums up: "We may assure the author's - innumerable readers and friends that in his latest book he has - lost none of the charm that first won them." - - "Exquisite in form, full of color, finely - finished."--_Record-Herald_, Chicago. - - - PUBLISHED BY - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - Sixty-four and Sixty-six Fifth Avenue, New York - - - - - MR. JAMES LANE ALLEN'S Novels - - -The Choir Invisible - - _This can also be had in a special edition - illustrated by Orson Lowell_ _$2.50_ - - "One reads the story for the story's sake, and then re-reads the - book out of pure delight in its beauty. The story is American to - the very core.... Mr. Allen stands to-day in the front rank of - American novelists. _The Choir Invisible_ will solidify a - reputation already established and bring into clear light his - rare gifts as an artist. For this latest story is as genuine a - work of art as has come from an American hand."--HAMILTON W. - MABIE in _The Outlook_. - _Cloth, 12mo, $1.50_ - - -The Reign of Law A Tale of the Kentucky Hempfields - - "Mr. Allen has a style as original and almost as perfectly - finished as Hawthorne's, and he has also Hawthorne's fondness - for spiritual suggestion that makes all his stories rich - in the qualities that are lacking in so many novels of the - period.... If read in the right way, it cannot fail to add - to one's spiritual possessions."--_San Francisco Chronicle._ - _Cloth, 12mo, $1.50_ - - -The Mettle of the Pasture - - "It may be that _The Mettle of the Pasture_ will live and become - a part of our literature; it certainly will live far beyond the - allotted term of present-day fiction. Our principal concern is - that it is a notable novel, that it ranks high in the range of - American and English fiction, and that it is worth the reading, - the re-reading, and the continuous appreciation of those who - care for modern literature at its best."--E.F.E. in the _Boston - Transcript_. - _Cloth, 12mo, $1.50_ - - -Summer in Arcady A Tale of Nature - - "This story by James Lane Allen is one of the gems of the - season. It is artistic in its setting, realistic and true to - nature and life in its descriptions, dramatic, pathetic, tragic, - in its incidents; indeed, a veritable masterpiece that must - become classic. It is difficult to give an outline of the story; - it is one of the stories which do not outline; it must be - read."--_Boston Daily Advertiser._ - _Cloth, $1.25_ - - - PUBLISHED BY - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - Sixty-four and Sixty-six Fifth Avenue, New York - - - - - MR. JAMES LANE ALLEN'S - - SHORTER STORIES - - -The Blue Grass Region of Kentucky - - "'The simple, rural key-note of life is still the sweetest,' he - had written in the opening pages of _The Blue Grass Region of - Kentucky_; and it is this note which, played on the pipes of Pan - in ever-recurring and fresh variations, yields the sweetest - music, and, touched with the breath of his passion for nature, - is transmuted into those 'invisible flowers of sound' which lie - pressed between his pages."--_The Bookman._ - _Cloth, 12mo, illustrated, $1.50_ - - -Flute and Violin - and other Kentucky Tales and Romances - - "He takes us into a green and fragrant world in that Kentucky - home of his which he has shared with us so genially and - delightfully before now. No one has made more of a native region - than he--more beauty and more attractiveness. He has done for - the blue grass country what Miss Wilkins has done for New - England, what Hamlin Garland has done for some parts of the - West."--_Boston Transcript._ - _Cloth, 12mo, illustrated, $1.50_ - - -A Kentucky Cardinal - - "A narrative, told with naive simplicity in the first person, of - how a man who was devoted to his fruits and flowers and birds - came to fall in love with a fair neighbor who treated him at - first with whimsical raillery and coquetry, and who finally put - his love to the supreme test."--_New York Tribune._ - _Cloth, 12mo, illustrated, $1.00_ - - -Aftermath A Sequel to "A Kentucky Cardinal" - - "The perfect simplicity of all the episodes, the gentleness of - spirit, and the old-time courtesy, the poetry of it all, with a - gleam of humor on almost every page."--_Life._ - _Cloth, 12mo, illustrated, $1.00_ - - -A Kentucky Cardinal and Aftermath - - _In one volume. Illustrated by Hugh Thomson. $2.50_ - - -Two Gentlemen of Kentucky _Fifty cents_ - - PUBLISHED BY - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - Sixty-four and Sixty-six Fifth Avenue, New York - - - - - Transcriber Notes: - -Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_. - -Passages in bold were indicated by =equal signs=. - -Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS. - -Throughout the document, the oe ligature was replaced with "oe". - -Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of -the speakers. Those words were retained as-is. - -Errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected -unless otherwise noted. - -On page 114, "for the inhabitants" was replaced with "For the -inhabitants". - -On page 241, "who's" was replaced with "whose". - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Doctor's Christmas Eve, by James Lane Allen - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOCTOR'S CHRISTMAS EVE *** - -***** This file should be named 42923-8.txt or 42923-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/9/2/42923/ - -Produced by Greg Bergquist, Ernest Schaal, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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