Initial commit of ebook 78847 filesHEAD main

author: www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org> 2026-06-11 20:10:03 -0700
committer: www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org> 2026-06-11 20:10:03 -0700
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+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
+    <title>
+      As a woman thinks | Project Gutenberg
+    </title>
+    <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+    <style>
+
+body {
+    margin-left: 10%;
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+/* Illustration classes */
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+.x-ebookmaker .illowp59 {width: 100%;}
+    </style>
+</head>
+
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78847 ***</div>
+
+
+
+<h1>
+AS A WOMAN THINKS
+</h1>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_i"></a><a id="Page_ii"></a>[Pg ii]</span></p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp60" id="frontis" style="max-width: 50.0em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/frontis.jpg" alt="Drawing of a woman leaning
+against a large tree.  She looks into the distance, with a book open
+in her lap.">
+  <figcaption>
+      <p>THERE IS A SPEECH IN THE WIND THAT WE DO NOT KNOW, A
+    HEROISM IN NATURE THAT WE DO NOT COMPREHEND</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</span></p>
+
+  <h2>AS A WOMAN THINKS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center mt3">BY<br>
+<span class="large">CORRA HARRIS</span><br>
+<i>Author of “My Book and Heart”</i></p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp59" id="titlepage" style="max-width: 8em;">
+  <img class="w100 mt3" src="images/colophon.png" alt="Colophon——Tout bien ou rien">
+</figure>
+
+<p class="center mt3"><span class="small">BOSTON AND NEW YORK</span><br>
+HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY<br>
+The Riverside Press Cambridge<br>
+1925</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p class="center mt3 small">COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY<br>
+COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY CORRA HARRIS</p>
+
+<p class="center mtextra small">ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</p>
+
+
+<p class="center mt3">The Riverside Press<br>
+<span class="small">CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS<br>
+PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">
+    CONTENTS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">I.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Introductory</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">II.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">When I Was a Child</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">III.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Children from the Cabin</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">IV.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Fearsome Thoughts</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">V.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Green-Growing Scriptures</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">VI.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Father and Mother</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">VII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">My Mother’s God</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_38">38</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">VIII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Book Learning</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_41">41</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">IX.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">School Days</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">X.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">What I Read</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XI.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">The Teacher I Had</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">The ‘Rebel’s’ Child</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XIII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">New England and the South</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XIV.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Certain Lies</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XV.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Reputation</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XVI.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">‘Beautiful and Precious’</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XVII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">The Working of Love</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XVIII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Ventures in Scriptures</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XIX.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">The Wisdom of the Word</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XX.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Confession and the Church</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXI.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Lundy and I Walk and Talk</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">We Consider Greek Culture</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXIII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">The Year in Oxford</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXIV.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Homely Pleasure</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td>
+  </tr>
+
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXV.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</span></td>
+    <td class="smcap">Love and Authorship</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_122">122</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXVI.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">The Mind of the Writer</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXVII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Do You Want to Write?</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXVIII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Expressing One’s Self</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_138">138</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXIX.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Sitting in the Public Eye</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_142">142</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXX.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">On Laying Down Your Life</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_149">149</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXXI.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">You Make Yourself</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXXII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">The Lady Politician</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_166">166</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXXIII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Living in a Book</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXXIV.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Happiness</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_178">178</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXXV.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">The Latter Days</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_186">186</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXXVI.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Why Worship Europe?</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_198">198</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXXVII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">The Country and the Town</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_202">202</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXXVIII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Garden Happiness</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XXXIX.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">War</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_220">220</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XL.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Widowhood</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_228">228</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XLI.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">All Sorts of Men</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_237">237</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XLII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Various Types of Women</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XLIII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Mere Mind</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_256">256</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XLIV.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Isn’t Life Exciting Enough?</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_263">263</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XLV.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">As We Seem to Others</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_270">270</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XLVI.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Fitting into Life</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_284">284</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XLVII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Facts and Truths</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_290">290</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XLVIII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Books: My Own and Others</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_294">294</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">XLIX.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Change and Confusion</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_304">304</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr padright">L.</td>
+    <td class="smcap">Can We be Happy?</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_309">309</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="AS_A_WOMAN_THINKS">
+    AS A WOMAN THINKS
+  </h2>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[Pg 3]</span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="I">
+    I
+    <br>
+    <span>INTRODUCTORY</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">This</span> is not a mystical tale, nor a literary interpretation
+of addled-egg metaphysics. The mind I have
+has always been laid off sensibly according to the latitudes
+and longitudes of actual experiences in this
+present world. I never had an aura, nor the least
+confidence in the existence of an oversoul. This
+phrase is the name of a subliminal hysteria, pardonable
+in poets, but not in prose people with ordinary
+midget souls. The one I have is no part of the common
+spiritual vestment. On the contrary, it is an
+astounding fact too intimately connected with my
+private consciousness to be exploited in a book, or a
+street car, or any other public conveyance. I may
+draw rings around it at a respectful distance before
+this record ends; I may speculate prudently on souls
+in general, as one does in futures sometimes; but I
+shall not risk the presumption of phonographing our
+immortal part. It is offensive.</p>
+
+<p>The mind is different. This is something no man
+will deny having, although he may deny his soul.
+Even if he is pathetically limited mentally, he is the
+enthusiastic autobiographer of what he thinks. If
+he has no character, and no energy to achieve, he is
+the more likely to be the historian, the dramatist,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span>poet and prophet of his mind. He cannot retain it.
+I have sometimes thought this explains how we came
+by that safety valve called language. If we should
+suffer a total aphasia of words, I suppose the human
+species would explode. The mind develops so much
+more power in thinking than we can possibly
+achieve in action.</p>
+
+<p>And to the last, the minds of other men, their secret
+thoughts, the motives from which their actions
+spring remain the most interesting things we can
+find out.</p>
+
+<p>What follows is such a biography; not an analysis,
+nor a confession, but the drama I have lived in thinking
+and believing; how the mind I have, determined
+my conduct, courage, cowardice, and literally created
+the life I have lived in spite of everything.</p>
+
+<p>This is no vast undertaking like following the trail
+of a great intellect. I am incapable of measuring the
+convolutions of such a brain, say, as Herbert Spencer’s.
+In any case the record would be scientific, not
+interesting. These people are born bright, but drab,
+humanly speaking. I am not opposed to them, you
+understand; they have their place somewhere over
+our heads, but not in the common life we lead. My
+justification in choosing a simpler mind to exploit is
+that most of us have this kind. We have actual experience
+in living our thoughts; and the way we do it
+tears mere philosophy to shreds, no matter how well
+and logically it has been thought out.</p>
+
+<p>If you are writing the life of a prime minister, you
+begin by laying the scenes in the times in which he
+lived. You must set down the kind of king he served,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span>discuss the people and problems that engaged his attention
+and made him a great man. I am recording
+the history of a mind as far removed as possible from
+the grandeur of kings and the policies of prime ministers.
+But like these more pretentious biographers,
+I am drawing my scenes in the right place, giving
+you a glimpse of the summer-minded, slipshod gentlemen
+who traveled this road, mismanaged their
+bankrupt fortunes with such humor and courage,
+because these are my people. There is a fine rich
+pigment in the quality of these people which imparts
+that first clear color to the mind, and may account
+for the bright loom of thought upon which
+I spun the days of my life with some wit, a certain
+dexterous sweetness and an awful strength of hope
+never justified by the facts.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know how it may be with others who have
+outgrown themselves and become merely the residents
+of culture and learning, but I experience a sensation
+of uneasiness when conversing with a man
+who evades his own personal pronoun. I always
+change my seat as soon as possible, because he is
+concealing some one who should be present and apparent
+if he is talking.</p>
+
+<p>He will never say ‘I think,’ ‘I believe,’ or ‘I know,’
+but he will begin with ‘It is said.’ This may be a
+scholarly affectation of self-effacement, for all I
+know, but it is neither natural nor sincere.</p>
+
+<p>We are every one born in the first person singular.
+We live and die feeling that way. Therefore the pronoun
+‘I’ is the most honest and revealing word in
+the English language. It is our obligatory oral signature.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span>It is not an egotistical part of speech, unless
+you are an egotist, but the born-and-bred name by
+which every man calls himself. Without this provision,
+you may say, of nature in him, we should never
+be able to identify him or know whether he is talking
+his own truth or his own lies or quoting them
+from some one else.</p>
+
+<p>This is the reason why certain of my books are
+written in the first person. They must be. It is my
+way of writing as other people feel, interpretative.
+I am being confidential, not boastful, except possibly
+where we may boast together. I am telling experience
+common to us as human beings and giving
+the reader the advantage of keeping his own silence.</p>
+
+<p>The method works. It encourages many to give
+tongue to their lives and feelings, which is a relief if
+they have held them in for a long time and never expected
+to see them said anywhere. Just write the
+truth of your own heart and you will find out how
+many men and women have lived that same truth
+more valiantly than you have without emitting it
+into copy! I have had to make that humbling revision
+of my attributes since the publication of ‘My
+Book and Heart.’ These silent ones who write letters
+not for publication have found in this volume
+the witness of their own hearts, a record more intimate
+and personal to them than if it had been written
+in the third person, or of one already dead and
+subject in the very nature of the case to biographical
+speculations.</p>
+
+<p>The record I am now writing will have no such effect,
+though it may be equally veracious, because we
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span>are further apart in our thoughts than we ever are
+in our feelings. We may talk much or little, but
+most of our thinking is done and kept in silence.
+The human mind is a queer thing. It has more
+ways of the wild creatures than we have. It never
+ceases to circle either upon the wing or to prowl in
+that secret darkness which conceals every man’s
+mind. It goes off and comes back laden with strange
+thoughts while you sit gazing with candid eyes into
+the candid eyes of your companion, whose mind has
+also been out scouting around and has returned without
+ever meeting your mind on the way.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose many a man, seated in the possessive
+case beside some woman, who has a Spencerian countenance
+and speaks to him in pale blue language of
+sweetness, would leap for his life if he could see so
+much as the flash of the thought she is whetting in
+her neat little head against his peace and happiness.
+And sometimes if a woman had a look into the mind
+of her hero she might become an idol breaker in the
+twinkling of an eye.</p>
+
+<p>But we are not to be judged by what goes on in
+our minds. One never gets cut in a word or a deed.
+If all the tools of vengeance forged there were used,
+this world would be a terrible place. If all the dark
+thoughts we have were spoken, no man or woman
+would trust us. But these are the mental vaporings
+of our lower and meaner natures, conquered in most
+of us by the moral sense we have acquired which has
+established better standards.</p>
+
+<p>A wise man can record all he knows of life in one
+book; but the scriptures of the common man require
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>two books, and maybe a few gospels, as a sort of
+quotient in the long division of living. For us there
+would be the book of the heart, where we keep memories,
+the hopes that failed, our loves and hates, and
+whatever Beatitude we needed to comfort or praise
+us, whether it is a friend, a woman, or a bit of the
+Word. Your wise man takes no account of this copy.
+In his analysis of the phenomenon of man, the heart
+is a figure of speech which refers to the reflex action
+of the emotions. Then there is for us the other record
+of the mind, quite distinct. It is the place where
+we keep the law, or break it; the motives which
+stimulate and control us, and determine our relations
+to other men—and to God, who we think
+made us.</p>
+
+<p>This last notion, in my opinion, is a gross exaggeration
+of the functions of the Almighty. He made
+what we call mind and we use it to create ourselves.
+It works one way in this generation and another way
+in the next generation. Sometimes it is war; then it
+is religion, art, one kind of science or another; or it
+may be a magnificent covetousness, practiced under
+such terms as industrialism, commercialism, or even
+the League of Nations—always filled with eleemosynary
+impulses, for conscience’ sake, according to
+that very shrewd mind he is developing. It is really
+the sand-pile where the ostrich of him hides its head.
+It is at last that thing in us which is as easily degraded
+by a false belief as by the meanest vice. It
+can exalt a heathen and trap a Christian saint. It is
+the way of life we choose, right or wrong.</p>
+
+<p>If some one laid his mind on the table, so to speak,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>not as a confession, nor even as a defense, but as a
+certified human document, it might cast a flicker of
+light upon dark corners to be turned in the lives of
+other people. So if I show what a dim thing it was in
+the beginning, how a child divines peace and happiness
+without thinking, what a terror thinking became
+afterwards, how bravely and adventurously
+my mind guided me, how cunningly it misguided me,
+what burdensome rewards it earned for me, and what
+dividends in peace I have lost by following the best
+Scriptures according to my mind—some of you who
+read this record may get a hint to watch the thing
+and control it more wisely than I have controlled
+mine.</p>
+
+<p>What I shall write will be sown with errors from
+the point of view of a psychologist, which will be
+proof to you that it is a veracious record. There may
+be laws governing mind; but if so, they are like so
+many other laws we cannot keep and survive. A
+logical sentence in thinking according to the exigencies
+of living is bound to be a very short sentence.
+The longer ones that last through the days of our
+years contradict much wisdom and a good many
+Scriptures. But we do get through, and looking back
+we do see the Word still standing, not changed.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="II">
+    II
+    <br>
+    WHEN I WAS A CHILD
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">In</span> the year 1874 there was a road which crossed the
+State of Georgia. It has disappeared long since,
+changed by the will of some memory in the hearts of
+the people. But you may trace it still when the daisies
+bloom in May. These flowers are not indigenous
+to this section. Their first seed fell here from the
+provender fed to Sherman’s cavalry. So, in May,
+that month of Decoration Days, they bloom again
+like a long, narrow memorial wreath laid upon the
+grave of a dead and glorious past. They wind and
+turn and tumble down many a steep hillside in North
+Georgia, as this road made its tortuous way among
+these hills. But when it slipped into the lower,
+smoother land, it straightened out and lay like
+a broad red-and-golden ribbon between the great
+plantations. Farther and farther it stretched until
+it slid into the city of Augusta and became Green
+Street—so named, I suppose, because the road
+that made it came down into the white old town
+through such a fair and verdant country.</p>
+
+<p>Other roads entered this highway, as smaller
+streams flow into a broader, swifter river. There
+were signposts to guide the traveler. I remember
+one in particular at the entrance of the old Petersburg
+road, because as a child it seemed to me like a
+very old man who had been pointing the way a long
+time and now leaned wearily in the direction indicated.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>Above a huge fist, rudely drawn, with the
+forefinger raised, appeared the legend:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">‘This is the way to Mill or Ferry,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Go, it, Traveler, Sad or Merry.’</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>We had sentiment in those days with a lilt to it,
+and a signpost was as good a place as any to publish
+it. We were not seeking fame. We were famous
+enough already. We were surfeited with the terrible
+distinction of having just concluded a cruel war in
+glorious defeat. We were some kind of magnificently
+irresponsible truth but lately crushed to earth, and
+we were rising again after the grandiloquent manner
+of our kind, with a beam in our eye and a song on our
+lips—but not prosperous! It requires more than a
+century for the phœnix of man to rise above the
+ashes of war in material things. We arose by a sort
+of rhythm of the spirit, unencumbered by wealth.
+The ascent is quicker and less expensive.</p>
+
+<p>Gentlemen in rags traveled this road upon their old
+raw-boned horses—Don Quixotes, every one, still
+tilting against the windmills of a graver, saner civilization
+that had been thrust upon them. They were
+rumpled, ruddy men who bore themselves with an
+air and never complained of their poverty after the
+manner of ignoble men when misfortune overtakes
+them. They held onto their leisure for a long time as
+the last asset of a lost fortune, and visited a great
+deal from one old ramshackle mansion to another.
+Their laughter was a joyous eruption. They were
+pedantic with a flourish. They could drop you a long
+quotation from Faust or Shakespeare without seeming
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>absurd or causing their victims the least embarrassment,
+such as we feel when a meaner man
+quotes a Promethean passage. They required these
+luminous vestments woven by great poets to adorn
+the qualities they had. Any one of them would have
+been admired as a character in a book or as the subject
+of a funeral oration.</p>
+
+<p>The women of this period were strangely lyrical.
+Never again shall we see so many fine ladies rise with
+such grace above the inconvenience of poverty.
+Dressed in a chignon, a curl, and a cotton frock, they
+ignored all styles and remained the last word in the
+poetry of fashion. They had swishing silken virtues
+and conducted themselves after the manner of the
+heroine in the last chapter of Proverbs.</p>
+
+<p>Eighty miles above Augusta there stood two huge
+gate-posts, topped with roughly hewed balls. Between
+them hung the old gray gate of a famous plantation.
+When the sun was low in the west it shone
+through these palings like bars of gold as if there
+might be nothing beyond but space and silence and
+brightness. Inside, there was a long avenue stretching
+away through the trees. Far down, there was a
+high green terrace; above the terrace, an ancient
+flower garden, bordered with boxwood and spired
+with the tops of juniper trees. Blossoming boughs
+waved like flags in the summer wind. All the spaces
+inside were filled with humbler flowers; phlox and
+lilies, violets and hyacinths made misty blue veils in
+the shadows. Long-soled cactus spread like green
+footprints upon the dark earth—the whole lonely
+place a wilderness of bloom left to govern itself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span></p>
+
+<p>Somewhere behind this garden in those days stood
+a little house, left over like a poor relation in adversity.</p>
+
+<p>I was born there.</p>
+
+<p>My recollection now is that it was a good little
+house, with a busy mind and a kind heart inside,
+where a female child would be taught the Lord’s
+Prayer at an early age, and how to sew and knit; but
+it was not, you would have concluded at a glance,
+the cradle of genius. Very few people make provision
+beforehand for geniuses in their families. They
+are like the seed that birds scatter—liable to spring
+up anywhere, but never to be anticipated. For my
+part, I doubt if they are born at all, but produce
+themselves by some chance of circumstances; almost
+any man or woman is remotely liable to become
+one.</p>
+
+<p>But my first memories are not of this house, nor
+even of my father and mother. I had that faint impression
+of them which grown people have of Providence,
+to be depended upon, but too far off in consciousness
+to be cultivated. My measure of relationship
+at this time was that father was very tall, and
+mother was much shorter and very slender. I was
+some kind of a little pinwheel of life revolving away
+from them.</p>
+
+<p>In these earliest years I must have belonged more
+particularly to the vegetable kingdom. My first
+vivid impressions are of being in the open, not doing
+anything, certainly not thinking. I seem to have
+grown like the grass on the rim of the green terrace
+beyond the flower garden for a long time. Father
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>and mother are very sketchy. They appear now in
+my memory of this period at rare intervals.</p>
+
+<p>I was not sufficiently acquainted with them then
+to be aware of their anxieties. They belonged to another
+world. I can barely remember father’s blue
+gaze following me about, usually with the light of
+laughter in it. Mother was always busy. She had
+large gray eyes that caught me up with a glance,
+washed me like a saucer, set me down again and
+went on to her next deed with the swiftness of one
+who wore wings on her feet. This excessive energy
+may account for the fact that I formed no apron-string
+attachment to her.</p>
+
+<p>The reputation I had, however, was that of being
+an extremely affectionate child. This only proves
+that any record written from memory must be incomplete.
+I suppose Homer omitted many important
+historical facts which did not rhyme with those
+he sang so lustily in his Iliad. Love anchored me so
+completely later in life, I am rather glad to think
+that in these first years my affections must have
+been like those of a busy man for his family, usually
+latent, but practiced with convincing charm at odd
+moments. I do not remember ever crying for my
+mother as other young children do, because I so
+completely believed in her. She could not forget me
+or forsake me. So far as I knew then, she would last
+forever. There was nothing, literally nothing, in my
+world to worry about. I was already living by faith.</p>
+
+<p>This is the earliest faculty we develop. It is an enduring
+illusion at which the world and all the vicissitudes
+of life tear in vain. We replace every hope
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>that fails with another one. We change our standards
+and our creeds, but we live and die believing in
+something. It is a medicine we use to ease the mind.
+I have had so many letters lately from men and
+women who no longer believe in God. They have
+fallen over the precipice of rationalism into an awful
+pit of darkness. But it is perfectly apparent that any
+one of them would be quick to believe in a man or
+woman. They are the same old barnacles of faith we
+all are, who have lost their hold upon the good bottom,
+raked off by the lives they have lived or the
+thinking they have practiced. They are the most
+credulous people in the world. I never knew one
+who would not trust a convincing rascal. Or he will
+take to occultism, some spiritual nostrum, as a certain
+class of people prefer patent medicine for their
+physical ailments. What I mean is that the power to
+believe is born in us, and we must exercise it one
+way or the other, as we breathe to live.</p>
+
+<p>I have a vivid recollection of the child I was then,
+as one might remember the person he used to be in
+another life, sitting on the green crown of my world,
+very pudgy, back hunched, fingers curled in the
+grass, the hair on my head sticking up like a fine
+bright fringe, eyes wide and quiet, fixed upon nothing
+in particular, the groggy little somnambulist
+of a bright dream.</p>
+
+<p>I remember one of the illusions I had. The big
+gate at the end of the avenue was the end of my
+world. I accompanied father and mother through it
+at rare intervals, but my understanding was that we
+passed immediately into another world. I shall experience
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>no more tremendous anticipations rising
+from my dust in the last day than I did then, seated
+in the bottom of the rickety old buggy, being drawn
+through the black weather-beaten portals of that
+gate.</p>
+
+<p>Once in so often I made the journey up there alone
+to peep through the palings at this neighboring
+world. My fear was that it might have fallen off or
+been blown away in a high wind. Being very young
+and unacquainted with the other stars, I dreaded
+the possibility of being stuck up against one just
+outside our big gate; or worse still, finding nothing
+at all beyond it but emptiness.</p>
+
+<p>There is a grandeur about total ignorance, winged
+with imagination. Children alone have it. They endure
+terrors and visions that would drive a sane person
+mad. They are little Saturns revolving in the incandescent
+rings of fancy, no substance to their
+thoughts, no realities in the secret world where they
+move and believe everything.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="III">
+    III
+    <br>
+    CHILDREN FROM THE CABIN
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">The</span> activities of a great plantation went on about
+me, but I recall none of the clamor of this business;
+only the ringing of the blacksmith’s hammer on the
+anvil in the shop under the mulberry trees. The
+long procession of negroes sitting sidewise on their
+mules coming up from the fields through the deepening
+dusk of the evening were a part of the day I
+lived, like the lengthening shadows of the trees on the
+grass. The thin curls of smoke that began to hurry
+out of the tops of the chimneys from the cabins below
+the avenue used to hang like long lavender
+scarfs in the air. I remember that from the top of
+the terrace I could see the negro children milling and
+playing before these cabin doors. But I never joined
+them.</p>
+
+<p>There was an invisible mark between me and
+these little black ones that must not be crossed. The
+intimate association between white children and
+negro children has been greatly exaggerated by the
+sentimental literature of the South written since the
+Civil War, to appeal, I have always thought, to the
+imagination of the North, where most of the reading
+in this country was done after that period. Southern
+white children of the stock from which I sprang
+sustained a passionately devoted relation to the old
+negroes, men and women, who remained attached to
+our families. This attachment remains unbroken
+to this day.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span></p>
+
+<p>But no such ties ever existed between us and the
+young ones. The basis of mutual affection and confidence
+had been destroyed before I was born and
+the doom of the negro sealed, not by the Civil War,
+but by propaganda that followed it for fifty years.
+Where enmity is created, justice will never be done.
+But hate and distrust beget the sense of injustice,
+which produces every abomination possible between
+a strong race and a weaker one.</p>
+
+<p>I have not one recollection of having played with
+a negro child. My only memory lasts because it was
+striped in with a switch. Susan, a little negro girl,
+came to the house one day for a pitcher of milk. I
+took her aside and examined her black kinky wool
+wrapped in white cotton thread. I did not think
+much of it and said so.</p>
+
+<p>Mother punished me severely for this. I do not
+recall the words she used. They were undoubtedly
+stern and simple, for she had that kind of a vocabulary;
+but the gist of it was that the quality of a superior
+was that he never took advantage of an inferior,
+and that it was ignoble to humiliate one by referring
+to his natural defects, whether of hair or color. This
+doctrine steadfastly kept also by my father, in the
+end cost him a two-thousand-acre cotton plantation.
+For there were a hundred negroes on the place, and
+they took every advantage that inferiors can take of
+a generous superior. The only reason why it has not
+been equally expensive to me is that I never had so
+much as a plantation to lose and have dealt with
+fewer people of this class.</p>
+
+<p>But the impression I received that day concerning
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>my obligations to those less fortunate by nature, as
+I stood tearfully diminished before mother and still
+stinging from the duty of her switch, has never left
+me. And it is now a fact, which I have proved by experience,
+that it is more enhancing to keep one’s self-respect
+than to get the advantage of an inferior person
+in any kind of transaction. After so many years
+of this kind of noble prancing morally, it produces a
+certain insolent sense of quality, not justified, of
+course, by the person you really are, all told. Still,
+it is a grand feeling and a part of the mind I have
+finally rounded up out of life.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="IV">
+    IV
+    <br>
+    FEARSOME THOUGHTS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Poetry</span> and superstition were atmospheric conditions
+of the mind. As a child, I believed in ghosts,
+spirits, and signs. Knowledge has delivered me, but
+my instincts never will. I can think of no other
+reason why I still pass the seventh day of March
+warily and more innocently than I do my other
+days. This has been regarded as an ominous day
+in my family for generations, although I do not recall
+a single disaster that overtook any of us on
+this day. I am also at some pains not to see a new
+moon for the first time through the branches of
+trees, because mammy often warned me when I was
+a child that such an indiscretion would be followed
+by bad luck.</p>
+
+<p>I received constant instructions from the negro
+servants in the primitive occult sciences, duly
+proved and illustrated.</p>
+
+<p>There was a tiny sunken grave outlined with
+white flint stones on the edge of the forest behind
+the house. Aunt Parthenia, the old black woman
+who milked the cows, told me that a child had been
+murdered and buried there. She said the face was
+very pale, the hair white like wool. It was a small
+child about my age, and wore a long white gown.
+Just at dark she said it often climbed a tree and
+wailed piteously on account of having been murdered.
+Hidden in the plum bushes near the house,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>I used to see this thing clinging and swinging in the
+top of a poplar tree that grew beside the grave. I
+cannot recall the features of any living person
+I knew then so vividly as I do the pale, pinched
+face of that forlorn little ghost. The hair on its
+head did stand out and glisten in the darkness. And
+my own hair stood up in delicious fright, listening
+to its shuddering cries. Years passed before I could
+believe this was a screech owl screaming.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere in this same period I met a ghost in
+the flower garden when I was expecting no such encounter—a
+crooked woman wrapped in a black
+shawl. I remember how stiff and ghostly white her
+hands were. She looked at me and I could not move.
+After a while mother came and led me back to the
+house. My legs were trembling with excitement,
+but I did not tell her what I had seen. I never confided
+any of my experiences with ghosts to her,
+feeling somehow that she might disapprove of them.
+She was particular about the company I kept.</p>
+
+<p>Mother belonged to the old order of saints. She
+was the kind of Christian who would have died at
+the stake for a doctrine. She believed in infant baptism
+because this was one of the doctrines of her
+church, and made haste to have me baptized before
+I could hold up my head. She not only believed you
+must be born again, spiritually speaking, but she
+had her doubts about your conversion if you did
+not suffer the birth pangs of repentance at least
+with groanings and tears. I was too young to think
+a doubt when she instructed me in the doctrine of
+damnation. Hell was a very literal pit of fire and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>brimstone, where the wicked burned forever and the
+worm never dieth. If she had not included the worm
+in this picture, I might not have received the reptilian
+idea of the place, which was particularly abhorrent.
+One day I met a turtle in the flower garden.
+The eyes were red. There were red gills under its
+neck. I fled shrieking, believing it to be some kind
+of infernal insect that had crawled out of the pit,
+still hot and malevolent.</p>
+
+<p>At this age I must have been like those birds in
+the far places that do not fear or fly at the sight of
+man. I was never afraid of the dark, nor of the considerable
+number of ghosts I collected under the
+guidance of Aunt Parthenia.</p>
+
+<p>I also believed in certain animals. The marvelous
+things I heard about the doings of rabbits, cats, and
+foxes surpass anything recorded in Æsop’s Fables.
+There was a donkey on the plantation. I was shy
+of this beast, not because I was afraid of him, but
+because he might speak to me. Some native delicacy
+I had, forbade conversation with an ass. But if our
+old dog wagged his tail, I understood him. I have
+always been able to interpret dogs. They have no
+souls, no minds of their own; but if they associate
+intimately with human beings, and not with other
+dogs, they develop a telepathic relation to us that
+amounts to divination. They understand us and act
+according to our will and mood, however secret, because
+they worship us.</p>
+
+<p>I have had fearful thoughts along this line. What
+if we sustain a similar relation to the Almighty?
+What if we are simply the tail-wagging medium of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span>infinite mind? Such speculations are no doubt of
+the devil, but if you have a mind you cannot resist
+now and then taking an intellectual whiff at your
+powers and principalities of darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Negroes do not include fairies among their superstitions;
+so I was deprived of the lighter, happier
+comradeship of these gossamer-winged beings. My
+impression is that they do not last so long, nor are
+they so sternly stimulating to the imagination as
+the illusions we have of spirits and ghosts. Even a
+child discards his fairies at an early age, but mankind
+never quite escapes the prescience of the supernatural.
+Wise men as well as fools have been haunted
+by these uneasy figments. All literature from beginning
+to end is populated with ghosts and apparitions
+of the dead. This is testimony accumulated,
+not about the supernatural, but about what we are.
+The Lord knew us. This is the reason why heavenly
+messengers were seen by the naked eye in the Scriptures.
+Something imprisoned in us responds to that
+‘cloud of witnesses,’ and to the Holy Ghost of
+Jesus Christ. We require such symbolism because
+we are forever and inalienably kin to spirits. But
+we never see them.</p>
+
+<p>During the whole of my life I have been subject to
+these visions. I have had a curious consciousness of
+not being alone when I was really alone. I have seen
+a whiteness take shape in impenetrable darkness,
+heard sounds, had a sense of wings and motion about
+me in silence and stillness. Maybe this is merely the
+blind stirring of immortal instinct; but my suspicion
+is that these ‘presences’ we feel, or think we see, are
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>freaks of memory, subconsciously aroused by the
+loves or hates we used to have, and that any one
+with a lively imagination can get himself haunted or
+blessed by these illusions. I think it is an exercise in
+supernatural lying which never fully convinces a
+rational person; therefore, a dangerous diversion to
+indulge, and bad for the soul. The practice of spiritualism
+seems to me gross and strangely repulsive,
+like some kind of abnormal vulgarity. Compare the
+noble significance of that ‘cloud of witnesses’ mentioned
+in the Scriptures with the ‘spirit’ conjured up
+at a psychic séance. The first is designed to inspire
+faith and courage; the latter merely gratifies your
+human anxiety or curiosity by informing you that
+your maiden aunt who died last spring is well and
+happy!</p>
+
+<p>We must learn; it is inevitable. The time comes
+when we can no longer avoid the facts accumulated
+by human experience. I would not go so far as to
+call this wisdom; much of it is based upon errors of
+judgment, weakness, and prejudice, but we must
+master as much of it as possible in order to live
+sensibly in an erroneous world.</p>
+
+<p>I come now to this momentous period in my own
+life when the amorphous but still entrancingly immortal
+faculties I had must be adjusted, according
+to the mortal mind, to God and man. This is a
+flighty business when you consider the strange
+contradictions involved.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="V">
+    V
+    <br>
+    GREEN-GROWING SCRIPTURES
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Father</span> was sensitive to the sublime. The calm
+mind of the heavens on a clear starlit night could
+move him to the noblest flights of imagination. He
+must stretch himself mentally and let out a spark of
+eloquence or prophecy; it made no difference so
+long as he relieved the pressure of infinities upon his
+strident soul.</p>
+
+<p>He had a habit, when I was this very small child,
+of pacing back and forth in the warm moonlit darkness
+of summer evenings. I recall myself like a caterpillar
+sticking to him there. With one bare foot
+placed upon the toe of each of his dusty boots and
+my arms clasped about his long legs, I rode backwards;
+still, the stride was exciting.</p>
+
+<p>One night when we were traveling in this fashion
+beneath a particularly clear starlit sky, he halted,
+swung a grand gesture, peered down at me as from a
+great height.</p>
+
+<p>‘You will live to see airships up there flying like a
+flock of birds!’ he said.</p>
+
+<p>‘Corra,’ mother interrupted hastily from the
+porch, ‘come in, wash your feet and go to bed!’</p>
+
+<p>I obeyed, too young to suspect that she was
+guarding me from what was supposed to be a streak
+of insanity in father’s family.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that one of his remote ancestors had conceived
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>this same idea of flying through the heavens
+on his own wing power. He was humored in this
+hobby until the day he ascended to the roof of his
+mansion geared up in two huge wings of his own devising
+and hopped off. He survived only because
+they did break the force of his fall, but he spent the
+remaining years of his life in close confinement.</p>
+
+<p>From this time forth some one in each succeeding
+generation of father’s people had been born with
+this predilection for flying. Mother was determined
+it should not be her child in this generation. She
+was a sensible woman, who had a legitimate imagination
+and conceived only of incandescent angels
+being properly endowed with wings.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, father had his anxieties.
+Mother’s Uncle John was an intensely religious man
+in an age when only preachers were distinguished
+for their piety in this section, and he was not a
+preacher. His mind was fixed on the Bible and he
+read no other book. Father believed he was quite
+mad on this subject.</p>
+
+<p>I had a rather unusual memory long before I had
+any of the other intellectual ingredients that go to
+the making of a mind. When mother began to read
+Genesis aloud to me, my ear caught the tune of that
+genealogical chapter which records the generations
+of Adam with so many repetitions of the word begat.</p>
+
+<p>One day I climbed upon father’s knee and recited
+too many verses from this chapter to him. I should
+have let him have them all but for the fact that he
+interrupted. He exchanged a look with mother.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Stop reading that book aloud to her. Remember
+your Uncle John!’ he said.</p>
+
+<p>Parents are strangely suspicious of what Nature
+may have done to their children. The first thing
+they do when one is born is to look him over to be
+sure he is made up properly, not too long or too
+short anywhere, and not one-sided. The mother’s
+travail is never over until she calls out faintly,
+‘Doctor, is my child all right?’ and receives the
+assurance that he is. Then she lets go and fades
+away into the bliss of motherhood. My parents received
+the best assurances about me then. Still, as
+I grew, strangeness of one sort and another showed
+up in me; then they would hark back, each behind
+the other, to account for it. It was not the child I
+was; it was what they knew about themselves which
+might crop out in me that disturbed them. I suppose
+all parents suffer from this same sense of ancestral
+guilt toward their offsprings.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere in another book I have set down at
+length the impression made upon me by the story of
+creation as related in Genesis. Here, following the
+trail of my mind rather than the emotional effects
+created upon the life of a child, I pass on with the
+bare statement that it fitted the mind I had then.
+And I venture to add that it still spreads amazing
+and veracious before the mind I have now. It is
+that book in the Bible most like God. In the others
+the record is diminished to His dealings with us.
+There is more room in this first one for seeing just
+God, is what I mean. The more you live in the open,
+in remote and quiet places where the evidences still
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>show like green-growing scriptures, the easier it is to
+believe. For me it will remain to the last my favorite
+gospel of the goodness and wonders of the Almighty.
+I do not know why, unless, as life, duty, and conscience
+pressed hard upon me, these first chapters
+turned out to be less obligatory than, say, the Ten
+Commandments. Many a time they have been like
+great visions in a dark place. It was like seeing
+original things take shape. I suppose other people
+have had the same experience; but in this mood the
+first herbs of the field have been almost visible, in
+their fresh greenness, through the mists of the first
+morning of time.</p>
+
+<p>Long afterwards, when I began to write a few
+scriptures of my own, and must accomplish some
+feat of imagination to reach what I know, I used to
+read the first chapter of Genesis as devout Episcopalians
+read prayers to God from a book. I never
+caught the rhythm of that great moment when the
+light was divided from the darkness and the waters
+from the lands, but hearing the roll and rumble of
+it has certainly lengthened the stride of my mind.</p>
+
+<p>I had a good deal of the Old Testament imparted
+to me before I received my other mental training.
+As far down as I can reach now into the mind I had
+then, I am a very small human, traveling by speculations
+through Deuteronomy, Judges, and believing
+that Second Samuel was Samuel’s son. I am keeping
+company with the major and minor prophets. I am
+the little girl who knew Ruth and could see her in the
+wheat fields, gathering the scattered heads that fell
+behind the reapers. I was very much attached to her
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>and to David in his youth. But never to the Song of
+Solomon. Mother always skipped it as ‘unsuitable’
+when she read from the Bible. She had a certain
+look on her face when she would be turning the
+leaves and came upon this Song, as if she had seen
+something indelicate, and invariably flirted the
+page over it hastily as you would cover such a thing.
+My impression is that she did not think very well of
+Solomon. To this day I share her prejudices. Too
+much of his wisdom is derived from the bad end of
+experience.</p>
+
+<p>But imagine a child’s mind taking shape under
+these influences. I was haunted by ghosts and fed on
+the stately Scriptures of the Old Testament. Jerusalem
+and Nineveh are the first cities I remember
+hearing about. I was particularly interested in the
+latter because of the deep-sea disaster which overtook
+Jonah on his way there. I believed everything,
+but not with the literal humble mind of the obedient
+spirit. I have always reserved the right to believe
+in the Scriptures intelligently. So far as I am able
+to judge, stupid faith is as dangerous and belittling
+to the soul as a false doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>This story of Jonah gagged me even at that early
+age. And to this day I am still wondering if any one
+saw the whale swallow him, or if it was a mere wave
+that vomited him upon the shore. Not that I doubt
+the Scriptures, you understand, but Jonah. What I
+mean is that in the horror of being cast overboard
+and drowned, he may honestly have believed he was
+being swallowed by a great fish, when he was really
+descending into the bowels of the sea.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span></p>
+
+<p>The instruction I had from the Old Testament
+marked my first definite formations mentally. They
+seemed, as I look back now, to have opened the casements
+of my mind to more gallant illusions, verified
+by the angels and prophets who appeared so constantly
+in these Scriptures. I used to strain myself
+to see Elijah rising in a chariot of fire. A red cloud
+in the sunset sky might have convinced me of the
+repetition of this miracle. I was a small human drop
+in the eternity of summer days. I had no sense of
+time. I felt very near the beginning of things. But I
+was unaffected morally. I went about my business
+as usual, without a scruple as to what was right or
+wrong.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="VI">
+    VI
+    <br>
+    FATHER AND MOTHER
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">I felt</span> a certain silent intimacy with my father. This
+was due to the fact that we were both highly sensitized
+emotionally, but not morally. I received the
+impression that there was more space in father for
+the practices of a free spirit. It seems to me that
+we both avoided the house because it was such
+a good place, ruled by order and righteousness.
+Nothing could be changed in it, least of all mother,
+who loved us with a consuming affection. I did not
+know the name of the sensation at the time, but
+I always came into it feeling like a prodigal son. I
+remember some such expression on father’s face
+shot with humor. I cannot think what we had been
+doing; probably nothing reprehensible; but I was
+full of secret stuff not to be exposed to her, because
+I never could tell what she would approve. Father
+knew and was silent for the same reason.</p>
+
+<p>She was literally a religious woman. She believed
+in the Christian religion without tears. She could
+perform her spiritual duties on a cold collar and keep
+the Commandments without praying or fasting. I
+have always thought she might have been a trifle
+short on the Beatitudes, because she practiced them
+with less emotion than any other person I have ever
+known. She had resignation and endurance to a
+remarkable degree, but she was sublimely deficient
+in humility. My memory of her, revived by the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span>wit of a mature mind, is that she was admirably
+conscious of her own worth and standing before the
+Lord, though I never heard her testify in an experience
+meeting, which was one of the pious diversions
+of saints in those days.</p>
+
+<p>Father was spiritually minded, but only intermittently
+religious, during which periods he far outstripped
+mother in the bloom and beauty of his
+virtues. But he frequently fell back into original
+sin, where he seemed to belong; but was never comfortable,
+poor soul. He would invariably rise by the
+means of the most spectacular repentance. I have
+observed that these acrobatic souls belong to men
+with more histrionic talent than ordinary saints
+have. This is the reason why they are more beloved
+even if they are less dependable. I am certain
+mother loved father more than she could have loved
+a better man. It is the quality of goodness in women,
+not a weakness.</p>
+
+<p>Mother used to pass into silence sometimes. She
+became inaccessible. No tears, going about her
+duties with a certain sweet quietness as if she was
+walking more softly before the Lord than usual and
+hoped this would do some good.</p>
+
+<p>I still think I was right in my impressions of these
+periods. My feeling was that something grand was
+going on. I distinctly felt the presence of God
+everywhere. My lid came off in this mysteriously
+electric atmosphere. I suppose it is the same sensation
+formerly enjoyed by emotional people when
+they shouted during divine services. I hoped for
+some change in the methodical routine of things, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>did not get it. When the hero of the house fell from
+grace he disappeared. He was not. But I was quarantined
+by the tightening of the ligaments of all
+mother’s virtues and obliged to practice my rectitudes
+more scrupulously than usual. No escape to
+the terrace outside. And the house felt like a church—terribly
+hallowed.</p>
+
+<p>But when father emerged from the dark pit of his
+transgression, haggard with that look of noble repentance
+remorse imparts to the male countenance,
+I beheld him with awe and speechless admiration,
+having no knowledge of the cause of this moral
+grandeur or that so much eloquence covered delinquency.</p>
+
+<p>I have a dim candle-lit memory of one of these
+scenes which took place in mother’s room when I
+was a very small child. Glowing logs upon the
+hearth that cast a red radiance over the bare white
+boards of the floor. A candle lighted upon the
+candle-stand like the faintest flickering flame in this
+darkness. Stiff blue calico curtains drawn back from
+the windows and primly tied. A clear cold night
+outside and stars shining through the symmetrical
+angle of these curtains. Mother sitting in her corner,
+pale as peace and righteousness, hair black and
+smoothly coiled, skirts arranged just so. Hands
+folded, her large gray eyes slightly raised, very
+peaceful, as if she gazed upon her cross and knew
+she could bear it. I sat in my small split-bottomed
+chair, hands clasped around the arms of this chair,
+elbows sticking out, fair hair glowing like the fringe
+of innocence in this rich darkness, copper-toed shoes
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>shining, head barely high enough above the window-sill
+to see the stars.</p>
+
+<p>But I was not looking at the stars. I was wearing
+my church manners and watching mother’s face as
+one consults the clock when it is time for services to
+begin. I had been in these family altar services before
+and knew that one was at hand now because the
+big Bible lay upon the candle-stand. This Book was
+never opened except upon great spiritual occasions
+or when the pastor called. Mother dispensed her
+daily Scriptures from a smaller, well-worn volume.</p>
+
+<p>There was a step outside, coming with a long
+crunching stride. The stars twinkled with that
+giggling sense of humor they may have acquired
+from watching the doings of men for so many ages.
+The door was thrust open. A blast of icy wind
+entered. The flame of the candle flickered, as if this
+was no place for a good little candle. I vibrated.
+My dear father, whom I had not seen for days,
+strode in, you may say, upon this blast. But I
+restrained my natural affections, as one does when
+a solemn ceremony is about to begin. Why this
+ceremony I did not know, but once in so often it had
+to be performed, because it seemed to greatly enhance
+father and to refresh and gladden mother.</p>
+
+<p>Father was a pallid and noble figure, somewhat
+disheveled, like a long-legged eagle that has recently
+weathered a high wind. He took one sweeping
+glance around, caught my adoring eyes upturned,
+and discarded them as a bagatelle in this momentous
+situation. Mother merely ceased to bat her eyes,
+gaze still fixed upon her cross. Let the mountains
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span>fall upon her, let the waters of all the seas roll over
+her, she would not be moved except by decent repentance!</p>
+
+<p>Well, he must go through with it as usual, is what
+I know now father decided after that momentary
+survey, and kept his pace to the big rickety chair
+beside the candle-stand. He let himself down into
+it like a god overtaken in a fault, glanced distastefully
+at the Bible and emitted the sigh of a bellows.
+My breast heaved in suspense. I knew that my
+father would presently become a man of the Lord
+and open the Book. These were the only occasions
+when he was associated in my mind with our God.
+I coveted the experience. What I did not know was
+that he dreaded the blasphemy demanded of him.
+He had his feelings and Adam’s modesty when his
+sin would be dying hard in him. Then some emotion
+would overcome him; maybe a man’s grateful memories
+of this invincibly good woman who could not
+be made to forsake him. What was God’s opinion of
+him compared to her dear wishes? Such a foolish
+little she demanded in exchange for all she gave.
+Something like this I know passed through his mind.
+Then he would open the Book, turn to the Psalms,
+taste a few until he struck one with the right note,
+not too revealing, something vague and nobly sung.
+That night he read this one:</p>
+
+<p>‘Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications:
+in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy
+righteousness. And enter not into judgment with
+thy servant.’</p>
+
+<p>He was ever a man quickly moved to the left or
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span>right in the moral world. Give him a full glass, a
+roistering companion, and he could race with the
+devil himself. Give him the noblest words of penitence
+and he could produce the accompanying remorseful
+emotions. He could shrive himself with
+the dignity and majesty of a saint. So now for the
+moment he was every whit David broken by his
+transgression. Grief descended upon him and shook
+him like a blessing:</p>
+
+<p>‘Hear me speedily, O Lord: my spirit faileth,’ he
+read on woefully. ‘Hide not thy face from me, lest
+I be like unto them that go down into the pit.’ And
+so on until he came to the end.</p>
+
+<p>I did not understand, but I felt the wind of sorrow
+blowing from the eloquent lips of my father. I was
+bursting with emotion, my lips primped, my eyes
+fixed upon him full of tears. The one thing that restrained
+me was mother’s inscrutable face. She not
+only understood the Psalm but the man who was
+reading it. She simply used this method to change
+the scenes of his singularly adaptable spirit.</p>
+
+<p>‘Let us pray,’ he rumbled in a choked voice.</p>
+
+<p>I have a lively recollection of this prayer. It was
+a good one. Very few people have the real gift of
+prayer, and then only under the emotional pressure
+of remorse. I have heard the ring of platform oratory
+many a time in the prayer of a saint who had
+nothing but his congregation’s sins of which to repent.
+Father, splendidly poised on one knee, recited
+a psalm of his own to the Lord, not so good as David’s
+but along the same line. He cast his iniquities from
+him in sentences that clashed like bright swords.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>Sobs shook him. I was also deeply moved, as I am
+to this day by great music of powerful prayers.
+Kneeling like a little rag doll, very low before my
+chair, I accompanied him with sounds of grief,
+meows of a kitten saint, decently repressed until,
+casting a watery glance through my fingers, I saw
+father wiping his face on the blue window curtains.
+This was too much. I keened my nose and let out a
+wail that steadied the great mourner and ended his
+petition.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="VII">
+    VII
+    <br>
+    MY MOTHER’S GOD
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">I suppose</span> there are still such husbands in the world,
+but I am wondering if there are any more women
+like mother. Maybe she would be called a pill now.
+Looking back, the methods she used to restore
+father’s soul do seem drastic. She loved him with a
+shrewd tenderness; but let him break his traveling
+gait toward Heaven and she was the most adroit
+persecutor of the damned and fallen I have ever
+known. She kept a good little house not more than
+one short prayer path from the gates of Heaven.
+Everything in it was clean, white where it should be
+white, glistening where it should shine. If by chance
+an unworthy person crossed her threshold, he
+brought his former virtues with him and practiced
+them. She demanded at least a noble deceit of goodness.</p>
+
+<p>This was the kind of father I had, and this was
+my mother. I was a sort of human hybrid composed
+of these two natures. Nothing could cure me of a
+dangerous likeness to father. I was closer kin to him
+in mind and spirit. I may have inherited some invincible
+stamina from mother, a capacity for standards
+and principles. My notion is that father
+merely begot me, and that mother continued to
+exercise the same functions to me morally that she
+did physically before I was born. She produced
+qualities of character in me which went far toward
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span>determining my woman’s life afterwards. She had
+Moses’ gift for guiding me and controlling the
+rabble in me.</p>
+
+<p>But I have never reached the promised land.
+Neither did the children of Israel under Moses. No
+one does. Your Moses is too much of a disciplinarian.
+Looking back now at my wilderness, it seems to me
+if I make the last stretch it will be upon the wings
+of a spirit inherited from father. But I shall never
+make it now. I shall pass like other people who have
+been anxious to be good all their lives—barely in
+sight of that fair and happy land. I have been encompassed
+about by too great a cloud of witnesses
+to just righteousness. The burden of being obedient
+to mother’s God, and later on to the God of a still
+more drastic saint, has wearied me. I am too tired
+now to shout and be happy. I shall probably die
+up here in a high place, barely in sight of the promised
+land as usual.</p>
+
+<p>I have often wondered how real saints feel about
+this. I know how they talk, but do they in their
+secret hearts as humans sometimes regret the hard
+and narrow way? Isn’t there something unsatisfied
+in them to the last? Have they been entirely gratified?
+Can one ever have in this world the peace
+promised? Maybe we do at the last moment. I am
+expecting it then. But one moment, with your
+breath already leaving you, is a short time to enjoy
+what you have spent a lifetime to win.</p>
+
+<p>As near as I can make out, we cannot obey the
+Scriptures and be as much like the Lord as we claim
+to be. There is too much submission, too much
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span>bondage to sacrifice. We do not seem to have arrived
+yet at that almighty mental poise where we
+can punish as He does. Vengeance is still His. Our
+minds have dropped a stitch somewhere between the
+Ten Commandments and that beatitude which
+reads: ‘Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you,
+and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil
+against you, for my sake, ... for great is your
+reward in heaven.’</p>
+
+<p>We are short on giving out these rewards. Maybe
+we are still so vicious it would not be safe to trust
+us with administering justice one to another according
+to the Lord’s way. We must go to a court and
+get balled up with an attorney to obtain our rights,
+and maybe have the decision go against us. Or we
+must go to a church conference and get balled up
+with the presiding elder and get very little satisfaction
+there for our wrongs compared to the way we
+could satisfy ourselves if it were not for sitting
+down dutifully and being persecuted for righteousness’
+sake. Maybe we should go on turning the other
+cheek a while longer; but my experience has been
+that there is very little gratification of the vanity of
+the human soul in turning the other cheek, or giving
+a man your coat also because he took your cloak. It
+leaves you naked, cold, and bruised in the face, and
+the other fellow strutting around bragging at your
+expense. Compare that with the way the Lord punishes
+evildoers and you get an inkling of what I mean—and
+the chief reason why I am writing this history.
+My mind has misled me frequently through
+the Scriptures.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII">
+    VIII
+    <br>
+    BOOK LEARNING
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Ignorance</span> is a curse, but it depends upon what
+kind of knowledge you get whether that is not even
+more of a curse. For this reason I have become a bit
+squeamish about education. Occasionally, when I
+am suffering from the effects of some regrettable
+wisdom I have acquired, the very sight or sound of
+the word gives me a sinking sensation, as one feels
+when reminded of fate. It smacks too much of
+Calvinism, a willful, worldly form of predestination
+by which the mind, morals, and future of a youth
+are determined. We can teach him a lie by concealing
+part of the truth, knob him like a hydra-horned
+monster with false ideals and he has no defense.
+We can substitute a code of ethics for religion
+without letting him know that ethics is a variable
+and frequently very free translation we make of the
+will of God in the minds of men.</p>
+
+<p>The product of such a system of education we
+have in the present generation of young people.
+They are being deprived of their legal relations to
+the Almighty. They are running true to form, predestined
+to their courses by what they have not been
+taught, obedience to that law which we older people
+call God. To be brought up illiterate in the spirit
+seems to me a frightful state of ignorance and very
+dangerous. I prefer real Calvinism, though I was
+born and bred a Methodist, because according to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span>that old doctrine some of us at least were elected to
+salvation.</p>
+
+<p>Methods of education were much more primitive
+when I was a child. You learned your Catechism
+and the Ten Commandments first; then your alphabet.
+I knew who made the heavens and the
+earth, that Adam was the first man and Eve the
+first woman, before I was five years old; but I must
+have been nearly six before I could distinguish between
+the little <i>b</i> and the little <i>d</i> of the alphabet.
+They seemed very small and negligible compared
+with the hills and skies and trees to which I had been
+accustomed. I was frightfully lonely with my a, b,
+abs. What I spelled out by the hardest was not interesting.
+I had the prescience of all things and must
+now be turned back to learn little words in a book
+that I had always used in speaking. I could not be
+impressed when w-h-a-t turned out to be ‘what.’ I
+lacked the erudite instinct which makes scholars.</p>
+
+<p>My only interest in words to-day is to find the one
+needed, preferably a small one; young, active, and
+properly colored to use for expressing that feeling
+which became a thought, if you can say it or write
+it down. I have never had the least cultural curiosity
+about the ancestry of a word, whether Greek or
+Latin or even older, though I have sometimes had
+the feeling that I might be using a smooth, wise word
+which had formerly been in the employ of Socrates.
+But never one accustomed to Marcus Aurelius’s
+way of thinking—a good man as pagans go, but reduced
+to a negative state by the quality of his spirit.</p>
+
+<p>I have often wondered if literary people as a class
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span>show any aptitude for grammar in their youth. My
+suspicion is that it is chiefly those who speak correctly—you
+may say, from a sense of duty; not
+naturally, nor with any charm—who take to the
+drudgery of studying English composition. They
+are of that class who read your book, not for the
+taste or flavor of the story you tell, but to find a misplaced
+adverb or the tail of a participle sticking out
+in the wrong place. Meanness of mind can sink no
+lower than this, because it is clothed in such outrageous
+respectability. You cannot call him a hypocrite
+for directing your attention to a grammatical
+error on the one hundred and twenty-fifth page of
+your narrative; yet he is one, plucking at the mote of
+an outlawed word with a beam in his own eye. I
+never knew one who could write an interesting sentence,
+though a child could parse it.</p>
+
+<p>The only indication I showed of literary sense
+from the beginning was a distaste for the study of
+grammar. I remember how small I was, and how
+desolate, being obliged to sit in the house and learn
+a lesson in Smith’s English Grammar. And it is still
+a queer thing from my point of view that men have
+been burned at the stake for choosing their own
+doctrines from the Scriptures; but so far as I know,
+the author of a textbook designed to cower the mind
+of a child has never suffered martyrdom. I am not
+implying a disposition to thrust a blazing fagot into
+the beard of a professional grammarian; but it does
+seem strange when you think about it that no
+man has ever been punished for devising textbook
+tortures for children.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span></p>
+
+<p>My only recollections of this book were the punishments
+I received because it remained a mystery to
+me, and the number of hard and fast rules in it that
+I learned but could not apply. When it was done
+and over with, the residuum of information left in
+my mind never to be forgotten was that ‘Active
+verbs govern the objective case.’ I have noticed
+that they do in every walk of life. In those days I
+developed a personal sympathy for the noun in the
+objective case. It was frequently knocked down and
+trampled upon by the noun in the nominative case.
+It was the victim of an active verb.</p>
+
+<p>By this time I have my own ideas about the virtue
+and value of words. Their worth depends entirely
+upon the person who uses them. They betray more
+than the mind; they betray the man. The somnambulant
+charm of De Quincey’s writings was due to
+his constant use of the passive verb. They are
+nearly all drugged and recumbent. There are peaks
+of the purest inspiration in Whitman’s poetry, rough
+tablelands that stretch away into light and darkness,
+written with a rhythm of words so harsh and strong
+that one hears the hoarse shouts of a man with a
+great and joyful heart. But the lowlands of his
+thoughts are covered with a growth of monstrous
+words. My belief is that those who revere him as a
+poet quote him less often on this account than his
+ostentatious disciples who camp most frequently
+in the lower regions of his genius.</p>
+
+<p>And there are the decadent writers who use words
+frequently that bloom like fair frail blossoms on a
+dung heap—but always a line somewhere which
+betrays the odor of the soil.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span></p>
+
+<p>The reason why the minor poets are minor is
+because the thoughts they have can only be sung in
+slender, pale, poignant words. It is not beauty they
+express so much as frailty. Poe’s tales and poetry
+always fascinated me, but they reveal the dipsomaniacal
+genius of the man.</p>
+
+<p>David was shrewder than a psalmist is supposed
+to be when he cried out, ‘Oh ... that mine enemy
+had written a book!’ I do not know how the theologians
+interpret this passage, but it is perfectly
+clear to me that David was no mean psychologist.
+No man ever wrote a book that did not betray him
+if you know how to read it. If he has an illiterate
+nature and all the words at a scholar’s command, the
+thing he writes may be useful like a record; but it
+will not have the convincing charm of life. He sustains
+the same relation to literature that a ploughman
+does to a painter, an artisan to an architect—useful,
+but not nearly so interesting to know.</p>
+
+<p>As for the mere grammar of language, it is essential
+if you have no ear for composing a sentence, as
+notes are for one who has no ear for music and must
+strum it as it is written for him. I am deficient there,
+having no skill in the harmonies of singing sounds;
+but I came out of ten generations of men who used
+words as the winds use the clouds, roughly or gently,
+according to the velocity of their moods. And I contend
+that there are some things to be said so
+quickly by way of interpreting a man or a meaning
+that if you stop long enough to reduce it to a parsing
+symmetry you have lost the breath of life in the
+truth you meant to convey.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span></p>
+
+<p>Compared with the modern child, I was stupid.
+I did not know anything. I was simply a medium
+of sensations, experiencing joy in the sun, living
+confidentially with the grass, moved to this or that
+adventure as the wind blows. I was without self-consciousness,
+that first symptom of vanity in a mind
+beginning to be, so attractive in young children,
+so offensive in men and women. I was strangely
+lacking in the monkey curiosity peculiar to the
+bright child. I came silently by my own knowledge
+without asking questions. There was no sense in
+what I learned, but much enchantment. I was
+closer kin to the earth than mere mind ever makes
+us. I knew the leaves on the trees as you hear conversation,
+and the sky was very near, like a roof
+over my head.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="IX">
+    IX
+    <br>
+    SCHOOL DAYS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">I attended</span> the old field school at broken intervals
+in these days. What I remember about that is the
+path across the hills to this school, the scent of ripe
+maypops in the long grass, the passion flowers
+blooming like lace among the corn, dew on everything;
+the way the gray gables of the schoolhouse
+showed against the sky, the little winds that accompanied
+me on summer days fragrant as the breath
+of the fields. They are like verses I learned long ago.
+If I need one in a cheerful tale now I always go back
+and copy the little a-b-c breeze that used to blow
+the grass into billows and turn the leaves on a
+certain poplar tree like a thousand tiny silver fans
+as we went by together.</p>
+
+<p>Once when I was very young I was sent to the
+village school and came for the first time in contact
+with the bold alacrity of the children of the world, a
+very small world, but strange to me. They must
+have bragged and boasted. Anyway, for the first
+time I remember being troubled about my financial
+standing. I did not know whether my parents were
+rich people or poor people, but it was apparent that
+there was great satisfaction to be had from riches.
+Still, it was a delicate matter, upon which I was
+loath to consult mother, who seemed to be above
+such trivial considerations. One day when I could
+bear my anxiety no longer I devoted myself secretly,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>like an expert accountant, to the business of estimating
+the worth of our estate and determining once
+for all the financial standing of my family. Followed
+such a feat of memory as rarely has been equaled
+since Adam named all the beasts of the field at one
+sitting. I forgot nothing, from father’s old army
+shawl to the thousands of acres of land in the plantation.
+My scale of valuation was eccentric, but exceedingly
+gratifying. We were very rich people, I
+decided, although I doubt if I had ever seen a piece
+of money at this time. We had servants and land
+and were really poverty-stricken.</p>
+
+<p>It is a good thing to be born poor with an opulent
+mind. Fluctuations in market values have less effect
+upon your strictly private fortune. Wealth is a state
+of mind which many a rich man misses. I have no
+idea how long I retained this notion of being an
+heiress, but I am moved to tears and laughter by
+the quiet assurance I had, based upon our wealth,
+to which I never referred. Children are very shrewd
+about preserving their illusions. They conceal them
+from the diminishing knowledge of others. I am
+wondering what might have happened if my young
+companions had suspected the source of my ease and
+pride. And what would have been the effect upon
+me if I had realized how anguishingly poor we were?</p>
+
+<p>After all, it was not such a bad way to grow up—next
+door to the kingdom of Heaven, believing myself
+to be the heir of a great fortune and descended
+from great people.</p>
+
+<p>I may have acquired some mettle of the spirit in
+these purely imaginary circumstances which enabled
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>me to bear with a better grace the vicissitudes of the
+direst poverty later on, for I have never felt poor.
+If I had a nickel in the machine drawer, I was doing
+very well; if my husband had a dollar in his pocket,
+want and anxiety were comfortably removed.</p>
+
+<p>What I remember about myself during this period
+is different and more engaging. It seems to me that
+from being a shy, silent child I became a genial little
+girl. I remember jumping the rope at school and
+sharing a playhouse under the trees with another
+little girl. But these were diversions natural to my
+age, as a kitten chases its tail when not otherwise
+occupied. I recall much more distinctly the satisfaction
+with which I parted from these companions
+and took the lonely path home across the fields. I
+had the happier feeling of being very much abroad
+then as a bird must have on the wing in a wide space.
+I remember the habit I had later on of walking in the
+flower garden late in the evening until mother called
+me. I am certain that this was a kind of enchantment
+I practiced, for I have no recollection of thinking
+anything right or wrong, but only of feeling like
+a part of everything; not that I could have defined
+the sensation then.</p>
+
+<p>This habit of walking alone late in the evening has
+remained with me. Sometimes for years it may be
+broken by circumstances or inevitable companionships,
+only to be resumed again with precisely the
+same somnambulant happiness I had when I was
+young. As near as I can tell now, it is like resting
+from being mortal and old and tired. It is like escaping
+from the weary consciousness of your own
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>life, narrow and familiar and full of thoughts that
+take hold of you like hands. Maybe it is a little
+Enoch period I enjoy of not being.</p>
+
+<p>My first appearance on the stage was during a
+school commencement about this time. I was in a
+dialogue composed of little girls who were supposed
+to impersonate flowers—the rose, the violet, the
+lily, for example. I was the tulip. When my turn
+came to tell how it felt and what it meant to be a
+tulip, I was so deeply moved that I had to be led
+from the stage in tears. But I had felt the glare of
+the footlights in my face and craved the opportunity
+to appear on the stage. My desire was not to show
+off, but to move the audience. I had the true artistic
+impulse.</p>
+
+<p>There was a poem written about that time purporting
+to be the Lament of the Empress Eugénie
+over the death of her son. The first line of it ran:
+‘Waileth a woman, “Oh, my God!”’ I remember
+smiting a cheerful commencement audience one
+night with this thing, delivered in a voice which
+ranged from soprano to a sobbing whisper, and with
+gestures of the wildest grief. I suppose the poor empress
+conducted herself with dignity in her sorrow,
+but whatever she said or did, she could not have
+equaled my interpretation of her woe. The performance
+was received in petrified silence, but I still
+believe the audience might have cheered if it had not
+been so startled by the activity of my emotions.</p>
+
+<p>I am probably the only person living who believes
+that I had histrionic ability of no mean order.
+But I have never regretted missing the career of a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span>great tragedienne, on account of the well-known
+perversity and stupidity of audiences. Sometimes
+they are elegant mobs who slay you by omitting the
+encore. They are the majority and hold your fate in
+their hands at every performance. But if you write
+a book, you are the silent majority. The book keeps
+going the rounds, speaking your mind, and you are
+not present when the reader or critic damns it. You
+are probably writing another book. I prefer the
+safety and remoteness of authorship, if for no other
+reason than that one may go on writing no matter
+how she looks, whether she has a distinguishable
+waistline or not, long after the tragedy queen has
+lost her beauty and has been obliged to retire, probably
+in straitened circumstances on account of the
+extravagant habits she acquired during her affluent
+period in the theatrical profession. Authors rarely
+are successful enough to develop their spendthrift
+talents.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="X">
+    X
+    <br>
+    WHAT I READ
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent">I<span class="smcap"> was</span> in and out of school until my seventeenth
+year. Toward the last I must have had queer teachers,
+or I may have been a trifle out of drawing myself,
+for I was permitted to choose the books I
+studied from father’s library. This was an old and
+honorable one, collected by two generations of
+leisure-loving men with reading minds. I recited
+lessons from Plutarch’s ‘Lives’ and Paley’s ‘Moral
+Philosophy.’ Poor old Paley! It turns out that he
+was entirely wrong about morals. I doubt now if it
+makes much difference whose philosophy you study
+on this subject. Morals change like rules for pronunciation,
+and are more confusing to learn than a
+foreign language. When you know the language you
+know how to speak it, but one never gets a working
+knowledge of morals until he learns how to compromise
+them with a good conscience and an upright
+mind. It is an obtuse subject and requires
+much experience in honorable living to master it.</p>
+
+<p>Another book I studied was Tasso’s ‘Jerusalem
+Delivered.’ Why I chose this poem I cannot imagine,
+but it has left a trail of flaming angels at war,
+memories of many flashing colors, and a sort of
+golden cadence in my mind, although I cannot recall
+a single line. What I do recall, with that mischievous
+retrospect we sometimes cast back upon our
+earliest follies, is the way the good little lady teacher
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span>used to look when I switched forward to read from
+this book. She used to turn her head sidewise with
+that weary air polite people have when they must
+listen to a bore. I always let her have as many pages
+of the stuff as she would bear.</p>
+
+<p>I have spent a good deal of my life beyond the
+bounds of the times in which we now live. Most
+people do who read and think without adding the
+experience as a fact to their consciousness. If life is
+brief, I shall never know it. I am not really old in
+years, but it seems to me that I have been living for
+ages. Much of my youth was passed a long way
+back in the centuries. I had a widely assorted companionship
+then, reaching all the way back to Genesis.
+Besides the first and closest relation I acquired
+with Nature, there were the prophets from the Old
+Testament; pagans of one sort and another from
+histories of the Greeks and Romans; heroes chosen
+from poetry and mythology; ghosts, angels of the
+covenant, Jesus Christ, with a sort of secret hankering
+for many of the Catholic saints, whose lives had
+drawn me to them.</p>
+
+<p>These people were amazingly real to me, because
+I did not know any living people so intimately. The
+topography of my mind must have been a curious
+map of ancient lands. Years later, when at last I
+saw Rome, really it was a disappointment to me; the
+shattered shell of a great civilization left half buried
+in the dust of centuries, a frailer, unsubstantial city
+built into these ruins and filled with little men. No
+gods on Mount Olympus. I am a Christian, but I
+did miss the altars and oracles of those fine old
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span>deities in Rome! The sunken place where the Forum
+had been, but no signs of Lycurgus or of Cæsar.</p>
+
+<p>We never shall know how many great men were
+created by their biographers, but we may infer how
+insignificant these same men would be twenty centuries
+later. I do not think Brutus or Mark Antony
+would cut much of a figure in the Rome I saw. Still,
+I have a sort of sympathy for Mussolini, not with
+him. A modern politician giving himself the airs of
+a Roman tribune. Who knows but he may be the
+whelp of atavism? Grant him a Plutarch for a biographer
+and he might shine for centuries to come as
+a great man. After a while, it all depends on your
+biographer whether you live in the memories of men
+or are forgotten along with the rest of us.</p>
+
+<p>The people I knew in those days stalked through
+the Scriptures, or they had been poets and gifted
+men, according to their biographers.</p>
+
+<p>I was not conscious of being different from others
+of my own age; but I must have been, now that I
+consider what substance my mind was made of,
+what scenes my imagination dwelt upon—creation,
+the slow-traveling patriarch of the Scriptures. I was
+not allowed to read fiction, but I read a translation
+of the tragedies by Sophocles. To this day I still
+have a clearer memory of one scene in the ‘Œdipus
+at Colonus’ than of anything I have ever seen acted
+upon the stage. Œdipus, eyes cut out with Jocasta’s
+golden buckle, with bloody cheeks and beard, standing
+above her dead body, and the halls of the palace
+filled with wailing women and woe-stricken men.</p>
+
+<p>This is terrible stuff to be laid away in the mind of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span>a young girl. Later I added ‘Prometheus Bound.’
+And after so long a time, out of the memory of such
+scenes, I found out what tragedy is if you write it—an
+act of fate which we perform unwillingly or without
+knowing what we do. Terribly simple, in a
+bleak place, or in a place of great splendor like a
+palace; all in the scene, not to be told in many words.</p>
+
+<p>Along with this I read Dean Swift, Sut Lovingood
+and Byron’s poetry. Mother was no great reader. I
+doubt if she knew of some of the lands through
+which Gulliver traveled, and my impression is that
+she thought all poetry was virtuous.</p>
+
+<p>I must have acquired a certain boldness of mind
+from these various sources in an age when the
+maiden mind was actually tainted with modesty.
+In reading a Latin fable I was the only girl in the
+class who would translate the word ‘<i lang="la">asinus</i>’ into the
+little English word it means. I remember this instance
+on account of the blushing embarrassment of
+my companions. I was not aware of the almost
+universal existence of the vulgar.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XI">
+    XI
+    <br>
+    THE TEACHER I HAD
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">I am</span> passing briefly through the educational period
+of my life. It was relatively unimportant. Textbooks
+may furnish a good setting-up exercise for the
+strengthening of the mind; but if one takes them seriously,
+or imagines they furnish him with the things
+he should know along the way he must go, they are
+injurious. It is a fearful thing to be stitched up and
+certified in a common-school education and later
+sold out of a university into the markets for what
+you are worth or not worth to the world. You have
+really no wisdom of your own. Your mind is a short
+or long pattern of other men’s thoughts, theories, and
+convictions. You aren’t anything but an addled egg
+of information, or a good one that must be hatched
+later into a mind of your own.</p>
+
+<p>I am not opposed to education, you understand,
+but to the way we get it. The best ones in my opinion
+are obtained as a man makes his own living, by
+work and experience. I would rather learn from a
+great man or woman traveling a wind-swept road
+than to study all the textbooks in a school taught by
+a little fellow who knows the whole course. This is
+my objection to schools, all the way from the primary
+grades through the universities. The teachers
+may be scholars, but they are rarely great men.
+They have nothing of themselves to impart that is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span>worth emulating. If so they do not impart it. Teaching
+is a business, not a process of inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>The teachers I had must have been amazingly patient
+with me, but never in the way of discipline. I
+reeked with learning in those days; I was at the
+puppy-leg stage of my intellectual development, not
+steady in my mental wobblings, but ravenous for the
+bones of other men’s thoughts and too much absorbed
+to practice the pranks of the average young
+person in school.</p>
+
+<p>I read more Latin than now is required in a college
+course, but it was only a way I had of making the ancient
+dust fly through Virgil, Horace, and the rest of
+those orators and poets who lay so safely buried centuries
+deep in their fame. I doubt if I dealt honestly
+with the moods and tenses of their verbs. There was
+some mystery about the dative case which I never
+tried to fathom. If I derived any benefit from these
+remarkably free translations, it was the practice I
+had in the valiant and unscrupulous use of words for
+translating my own thoughts later on. However it
+may be for others, this has been for me more difficult
+than translating the most obtuse Latin sentence.
+Horace was dead and could not protest; but being
+alive and exacting, I fared worse at my own hands.
+To find the right words for an idea that ought to
+have wings and tail feathers is an art I have never
+mastered. But if by chance one such thought does
+rise living and winged, I have an inkling of how the
+Lord must have felt when the first lark He made rose
+upon its wings with a song in its throat.</p>
+
+<p>No human has the right to feel so gratified with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span>his own performance, but our real feelings are rarely
+governed so strictly by modesty as we pretend they
+are when another man praises us. Modesty is often
+the hand we throw up to ward off his smashing blow
+if he should suspect how conceited we are. What I
+mean is that thoughts really are miracles, and it gives
+you a secret sensation of amazement and joy to get
+one of the things out of the far reaches of wisdom,
+disentangled from your past and your hereafter and
+set down in a few simple words which bequeath it to
+mankind.</p>
+
+<p>I have done a lot of presumptuous thinking along
+this line, sneaking around the outer edges of creation,
+trying to stretch up to sensations not really lawful to
+know. Sometimes, taking a look above and abroad in
+a star-blossoming night, I miss the prideful humility
+of David when he exclaimed, ‘When I consider thy
+heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the
+stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that
+thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that
+thou visitest him?’ What I am tempted to wonder is
+how the Almighty feels when a brand-new star slips
+out into his infinities and swings obedient forever to
+the first sun that draws it. And how does He take it
+when one of these stars He has ordained wobbles in
+its orbit and shoots off into space until it is dissolved
+like a dust ball?</p>
+
+<p>I do not suppose it makes much difference. The
+thing is not wasted, only a trifle more dust to be
+gathered in passing by the other planets. Some time
+has elapsed since we have had a certified measurement
+of the circumference of the earth. Apt as not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span>it is a much larger heavenly body than it used to be,
+or smaller, packed tighter from revolving so fast for
+so many million years. We cannot rise far enough
+above it or scratch deep enough into it to find out
+much about it, and our thoughts remain as far from
+His thoughts as the East is from the West, and God
+still is the name of what we do not know, but must
+believe to live. Still, I have this hankering after
+the streaming glories of His mind. I do not care a
+thing about being a little lower than the angels and
+crowned with glory. These are competitive values.
+What I want is the power to think myself into the
+order and majesty of His peace, so filled with energy
+and what we call love, which undoubtedly must be
+the law of the whole thing.</p>
+
+<p>Prophets always look ahead when they prophesy.
+No man can look behind him and tell what might
+have happened, because what did happen has obscured
+the view. I have no idea what kind of mind
+and life I might have had if I had enjoyed the same
+religious freedom in my youth that I had in choosing
+the texts I studied. My guess now is that I should
+have been a very different person, and not nearly
+so legible morally. Still, if I had had more religious
+liberty during these formative years, I might have
+escaped that tightening of the conscience into a
+sense of guilt from which I have suffered most of
+my life.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XII">
+    XII
+    <br>
+    THE ‘REBEL’S’ CHILD
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">My</span> memory is eclectic, so to speak, and would
+never retain what was repugnant to me, especially
+in the way of education. I have forgotten most of
+the multiplication table. The algebraic figure of
+speech, <i>×</i>, is still an unknown quantity to me, though
+I remember passing creditable examinations in this
+study. There must have been something wrong with
+the teachers I had.</p>
+
+<p>Ridpath’s ‘History of the United States’ was the
+first book I ever read. Vanity was the inspiration of
+this undertaking. I had been brought up on glorious
+family legends and I expected to find the volume
+thickly populated with my ancestors. But it was
+not. This is characteristic of historians; they omit
+many men famous in their own families. I think it
+accounts for the growth and development of the Colonial
+Dames and the various orders of Daughters.
+You may set out your family tree in any one of these
+organizations and enjoy the distinction of being
+somebody in spite of the negligence of the historians.</p>
+
+<p>After all, I was destined never to finish reading
+Ridpath’s history. I was halted at the Battle of
+Gettysburg on account of a terrible and unexpected
+censorship.</p>
+
+<p>Father had been such a good soldier that he was
+never obliged to boast of his war record until he was
+a very old man and was compelled to fan up his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span>past glories to confound the current generation of
+his posterity who fought in gas masks from dugouts
+during the World War. I was therefore a disciple
+of Ridpath without sectional animus. I was ignorant
+of the opprobrious reputation the word ‘rebel’
+had in the South. The probability is that I had
+never heard it spoken, as bad language is not used
+in the best society.</p>
+
+<p>One night we were at the supper table. I was still
+sitting on the dictionary in the bottom of my chair
+in order to be sufficiently elevated for the proper
+use of my knife and fork. But I had been reading
+Ridpath that day and suddenly showed forth with
+some childish remark about what had been done to
+the rebel army at Gettysburg.</p>
+
+<p>It was as if I had cast a bomb in the midst of this
+peaceful scene. Mother turned pale and stared at
+me as if she felt a serpent in her bosom.</p>
+
+<p>‘Rebel?’ shouted father.</p>
+
+<p>I died beneath his gaze, but kept my eyes open,
+fascinated by the noble rage that seemed to transform
+him. He stood up, cast his chair from him,
+ground his teeth, swept a gesture that made the
+candle flicker, folded his arms and strode back and
+forth, lashing the tail of his fury.</p>
+
+<p>He called upon God to witness his sorrow that a
+man should live to hear his own child call him a
+rebel!</p>
+
+<p>I keened my nose and wept, still wondering why
+rebel should be a bad name.</p>
+
+<p>Father laid his hand upon my head and forgave
+me with a sob. After all, he said, it was not my fault
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span>that an honest man who had suffered, bled and died
+twice for his country, should be set down in history
+as a rebel. His unfortunate child was the victim of
+a partisan historian. Where was that book?</p>
+
+<p>I slid hastily from my seat and ran to fetch the
+iniquitous volume. Mother had purchased it from a
+book agent without suspecting how the author
+had branded her husband and all brave men of the
+South.</p>
+
+<p>Father opened it, stared at the printed pages,
+wrinkled his nose, snarled his lip as if he literally
+smelled the meanness of ignoble truth, gripped it in
+his two hands, tore it asunder and tossed it through
+the open window behind him, the pages still tittering
+maliciously as they fluttered down.</p>
+
+<p>Followed the first and only address I ever heard
+on the Lost Cause, impassioned, and, I still believe,
+veracious. He let me have the facts—state sovereignty,
+slavery, secession—his own part in the
+struggle. He opened his wounds and bled afresh.
+Did I see his feet—halting before me and standing
+at attention upon these members. He had marched
+without shoes through the snows of Virginia and
+left his tracks there written in blood! He had slept
+in this snow without so much as a shawl to cover
+him. He had fought all day and all night when he
+was sick from hunger. And he’d never been shot in
+the back! Only to be besmirched with the title of
+‘rebel’!</p>
+
+<p>Socrates about to die had nothing on him in the
+way of eloquence, though he may have surpassed
+father in the logic of his defense. But watch the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span>world; it is ever more easily stirred and convinced
+by oratory than by logic.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting with my hands clasped in an ecstasy of all
+emotions attendant upon such a ministry, I was
+born again and confirmed in the doctrines of my own
+people. I have let it all go long since. I have praised
+Lincoln and Grant—not Sherman, of course,
+though he may deserve it from another point of
+view—but it has been, you may say, in the way of
+good sportsmanship. The fact that the South was
+wrong will never make the methods of the North
+seem right to me. I doubt now if any means used
+which result in war can be right. It comes to me
+now that the men of the North and the men of the
+South never were enemies. They fought like growing
+brothers during the Civil War, leaving no malice
+behind. It was the ethics practiced by the carpetbaggers
+that estranged the two sections.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XIII">
+    XIII
+    <br>
+    NEW ENGLAND AND THE SOUTH
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">I can</span> look back through the whole of my life at
+incidents like this hour with my father which bent
+the twig of my mind and determined the very
+nature of my thinking even after I outgrew my
+prejudices. Thus to this day it impresses me as a
+queer coincidence that altruism, of all things, flared
+up about that time in New England. Very few of
+us realize the fact, but it is a sort of instinct to cover
+the deepest transgression with a canopy of high-mindedness.
+If you are a man, it is safer and more
+veracious not to speak too nobly of your own nature,
+nor to spread the wing of your soul too far. The
+weather changes and you come down in a bad
+place. Here in the South we are not good; but that
+is the point—we do not pretend to be. Instead of
+hiding behind altruism, we have permitted the world
+to capitalize our faults. This has been good for us.
+We have fewer faults than if we had lived according
+to a self-deceiving pose.</p>
+
+<p>Time has proved us.</p>
+
+<p>Personally, I prefer to have descended from those
+Virginia colonists who came to this country of their
+own free will, like hardy swashbuckling adventurers.
+They appear to me to have had more ease of mind,
+better manners, and finer qualities than fighting over
+doctrines ever imparts. But the Pilgrims, who came
+to escape religious persecution, were very good
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span>people. They were a bit wasp-waisted in their
+pieties, but they had a sublime courage for enduring
+hardship. They were the raw-boned element of
+Protestantism, essential to the life of a new nation
+in a new hemisphere, and if it had not been for
+persecution in England they would not have come.
+This country might have been settled as it is now
+being gorged by the overflow populations of Europe.
+Such people never make a civilization. Their instinct
+is to destroy it. So we must be thankful that
+enough of the hardiest and bravest Protestants were
+driven out to start life decently here, thus giving us
+two hundred years in which to mold and harden a
+civilization needed now to withstand the disasters
+of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>But these people were encompassed about by the
+will of God. They were obliged by the everlasting
+order of things to survive their faults and to acquire
+the right virtues, as we all must do or perish. So the
+New England colonists stopped hanging witches and
+modified their blue laws. And the Virginia blades
+settled down and went to work. But they must have
+suffered cruelly for the harshness of their beliefs.
+History proves that the effects of theology differ
+dangerously from those of religion upon the characters
+of men. One reduces religion to formulas, doctrines,
+and creeds; the other lifts men by some simple
+wisdom of the heart to a sort of nobler goodness, kin
+to God.</p>
+
+<p>We may perform one of those acts of impromptu
+justice called a lynching, which is reprehensible, but
+not so bad as the torturing and slaying of forty
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span>innocent men by mob violence, crimes that are more
+and more frequently committed in other sections.
+Many a time men and women of New England have
+felt obliged to tell me that they would not dare to
+live in the lawless South, no doubt with the best
+altruistic intentions of bringing home to me the realization
+of the dangerous conditions we have produced
+down here. Now it turns out that the South
+is the safest place to live in this country. It is the
+wisest place to build factories and start industries,
+because it is easier to obtain labor and control labor
+here. We are about to be swamped and capitalized
+by money and immigrants from the North. It is a
+terrible situation, because there is no way of limiting
+the quota, say from New England, as the national
+Government limits those from desperate Europe.
+Personally, I prefer the peace and poverty we now
+enjoy to the thrift, energy, and wealth these people
+insure. Presently we shall have here the same disorders
+and problems that greed and altruism have
+bred in the North, East, and West. Time changes
+the condition of people, but not their nature or their
+disposition. The people of the North, whether they
+are Christians, capitalists, or the sons of carpetbaggers,
+have a talent for meddling with the social,
+intellectual, and commercial life of the South, and
+the nobler they are the more they meddle. It is one
+of the characteristics of greatness of soul. This provincial
+state of mind is bound to affect the quality
+of their piety.</p>
+
+<p>They have more sense than we have, but they are
+pathetically deficient in that deeper wit of understanding.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span>They understand nothing but their own
+minds and their own wills. They are artlessly
+hypocritical in their relations to us. Having failed
+to uplift their own masses spiritually or morally,
+they are on a religious trek constantly toward this
+section. Their world is not our world; their God is
+not our God. We are a warmer, kinder, more spiritually
+minded people, therefore more patient with
+their chastening efforts in our behalf than, say, the
+West would be.</p>
+
+<p>The awful thing always characteristic of them is
+their desire and determination to govern and take
+all the credit for everything accomplished. I do not
+think a union between the Northern and Southern
+Methodist Church would be any more successful, except
+in a financial way, than any other government
+set up by a foreign people who had the balance of
+power. And religion consists in no such circumstance.
+I have my very grave doubts as to whether
+the great body of Methodists in the South favor
+this contemplated corporation of the two churches.
+The thing is being engineered by the politicians and
+princes of these respective organizations.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XIV">
+    XIV
+    <br>
+    CERTAIN LIES
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">According</span> to my way of thinking, one of the most
+engaging charms I had as a child was the simplicity
+with which I lied. I was totally deficient in the arts
+of deceit, but the slightest moral pressure from
+mother sent me flying to cover behind a perfectly
+transparent falsehood. I have known many a man
+to practice prevarication in his pacifying relations
+to a woman. They choose this method of childish
+fiction in dealing with women through some simplicity
+of their own psychology. And it is the secret
+which nearly every woman keeps that her experience
+with her youngest child and her husband are very
+similar in this matter. But no such thing is characteristic
+of the pussyfooting feminine mind. We are
+much smarter in merely twisting the truth than in
+lying. Maybe I was too young then to have developed
+the gender of my faculties. My peculiarity
+was that once I had committed myself to a falsehood
+I would not confess the truth, nor any part of the
+truth. Neither prayers nor punishment could move
+me. My own notion is that this was due to some
+kind of misdirected self-respect. To this day I have
+a well-bred horror of confessing.</p>
+
+<p>But mother believed that it was innate depravity
+and took measures accordingly. One day when I
+had told a fib and stuck to it, much evidence to the
+contrary, she took the Bible and read from it that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span>passage which says, ‘All liars have their portion in
+hell.’</p>
+
+<p>I was not the same after that. I had a conscience
+which humbled me, and a very real fear of the place
+lurid with flames where the worm dieth not and
+liars inherit a certain portion. I was the wicked.
+My sins accompanied me like a still, small tune. I
+began the hectic life of indulging in sprees of goodness.
+I would be very industrious or very thoughtful
+for a day, but I never could hold any high moral
+note in living. To this day I hate objective righteousness
+as every true artist hates drudgery. I am
+not denying that faith without works is dead; but
+good deeds, even the very virtues by which you are
+recognized and praised, frequently adorn a Pharisee.</p>
+
+
+<p>I have often wondered if all children pass through
+a period of joyfully achieving innocence. They are
+not good, but what freedom there must be in not
+being able to think evil! Maybe Shakespeare was
+right: ‘’Tis thinking makes it so.’ Certainly it is
+written of children in the Scriptures, ‘Of such is the
+kingdom of heaven.’ Which suggests an idea of
+Heaven I have never seen advanced by a theologian—that
+it is a place of infinite relief where one may
+be as unscrupulously busy as a child without doing
+anything wrong. But we could not risk living in
+this present world with a generation of such Kingdom-of-Heaven
+saints. A man with that much
+innocence in him would be an outlaw. So it may
+have been all for the best, the mill and anguish I
+passed through getting my mind and virtues to fit
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>me and that sum of human heinousness so essential
+to surviving here.</p>
+
+<p>Guilt must be the parent of the moral sense. We
+are not born with it. We are born innocent and very
+dangerous. Then slowly, or quite unexpectedly, we
+receive that first spiritual perception of ourselves; a
+guilty feeling that weighs us down, never again to
+be so free, never again to be the same assured heir of
+all the stars and half brothers to the angels of God.
+We call it the voice of conscience, but I am telling
+you it is the sense of guilt, a ticker in your breast
+warning you of the change in the value of your
+virtues, recording the loss of one. It is a good thing,
+but very painful. I think most of the activities we
+engage in are due to the effort to escape it. One of
+the salvation promises is that we shall be delivered
+from it in the world to come. I do not know about
+that. I have prayed so often to be delivered from
+my sins and trespasses, it is inconceivable to me
+that I could develop very virtuously anywhere
+without them to brace me morally. I believe in
+eternal life, but I should feel queer, finished and laid
+aside, without my temptations to worry me onward
+and upward from within.</p>
+
+<p>Far be it from me to question the goodness of
+God because evil is present with us! We should
+never have the honor of choosing righteousness for
+ourselves without it. Who would be charitable if
+no one was in need of charity? Who would know
+how to practice mercy, forgiveness, and long-suffering
+if there were no faults or weakness in others to
+forgive? And how in heaven shall we be able to use
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span>all these virtues so hardly acquired here if there is
+no occasion to exercise them in heaven? How can
+we possibly enjoy ourselves where all the other saints
+are as good as we are and no distinctions made?</p>
+
+<p>We derive more satisfaction than we realize from
+successful competition with our fellow men in
+righteousness. I offer no solution; I merely ask
+these questions of those people who look forward
+with joy to eternal life without one single familiar
+thing in prospect to occupy their minds during this
+infinite stretch of time. As for me, I trust the Lord to
+make my everlasting life even more interesting than
+this short one, which has certainly been a feverishly
+exciting experience. I cannot help hoping there will
+be a few of the dearer sinners in heaven upon whom
+one may practice a little encouragement. And I
+hope there will be tremendous saints also whose attainments
+far outshine mine, so that I may have the
+honor of associating with them, as we are proud to
+be recognized here by great men who have surpassed
+us in the victories and laurels they have won.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XV">
+    XV
+    <br>
+    REPUTATION
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">We</span> make reputations long before we suspect that
+we have any such comet’s tail of public opinion
+attached to us. We leave ridiculous caricatures of
+ourselves along the way, which illustrated tragedies
+in our lives at the time. Later we come upon these
+records and pictures and are rarely ever pleased.
+But somebody has kept them for you, and somebody
+will remind you of them one day when you
+are sitting on your pinnacle.</p>
+
+<p>I have been painfully reminded of such things,
+such as the time in my early school days when I
+wore the wrong little girl’s bonnet and came home
+with boogers in my hair, the frightful ordeal my
+head passed through, and mother’s tears. She was a
+woman who made mountains of her mole-hills and
+then climbed them, dragging me, miserable, after
+her. I lived a very sensational life with her morally
+on this account. I remember the almost fainting
+state of humiliation I fell in on this occasion, because
+it seemed I was the only child in the whole history
+of her family that had ever contracted these
+disgraceful insects. I have also been obliged to recall
+how I learned to play cards under the schoolhouse,
+never having seen such things before, nor
+dreaming that they were the devil’s own deck of
+sins. This business lasted a week, and I cleaned up
+all the available property of my companions, chiefly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span>slate pencils. Then one of the heaviest losers virtuously
+betrayed me to my grandfather, a stern old
+man who knew more than I did about the iniquitous
+gift of gambling in my immediate family.</p>
+
+<p>There was a terrible scene, and I was obliged to
+stand beside the marble-top center table in the parlor,
+lay my hand on the Bible and swear solemnly
+never to play cards again. I have kept this vow.
+The little girl who betrayed me is a grandmother
+now, an exemplary woman who indulges in nothing
+worse than a social game of bridge.</p>
+
+<p>I might easily have forgotten these and many
+other diminishing incidents of my childhood but for
+the fact that they are treasured in the archives of
+the family with parsimonious care. If you wish to
+collect complimentary material for a record of yourself,
+never appeal to your relations. They may be
+proud of you as an asset to the family name, but
+they have a gift for remembering your gawky period
+privately, the follies and faults you committed and
+have forgotten. You may have come up in the
+world with a laurel on your brow, but if you go back
+home forty years later wearing two laurels on your
+brow, and a noble expression, they will miss the
+point. What you are only serves to remind them of
+the little snub-nosed girl you used to be. They are
+determined to remember that you are dust. No
+matter how well you conduct yourself, you cannot
+fix their attention on your virtues or your fame, but
+they remember how you looked in a long-tailed
+ruffled basque and full skirt when you were eight
+years old. Or how you grew up to be very sarcastic,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span>and the impudent thing you said to the Baptist
+preacher who wanted to proselyte you just after you
+were converted, meaning that the sting of my tongue
+had not been changed by conversion.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think they mean any harm. They are
+simply keeping you where you belong in the family
+no matter where you belong in literature. Still, I
+would have preferred not to have become such a
+surprise to these people who knew me in the beginning.
+It does seem queer that none of them suspected
+the kind of youngster I really was. I could
+write a very serviceable anthology on family relations;
+but it is wiser not to do so, because some of
+them are bound to survive me and have the last
+word. It would be truthful but misleading.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XVI">
+    XVI
+    <br>
+    ‘BEAUTIFUL AND PRECIOUS’
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">The</span> older I grow the more beautiful and precious
+life seems to me. The time will come, I know, when
+there will be nothing else to pray for except life and
+everlasting life. Give me that and an even break
+between joys and vicissitudes, the same right I have
+here to choose goodness, and I would cheerfully
+risk existence longer than a pious saint could stand
+with folded wings singing in heaven. But I know
+very little about this. Maybe I shall be changed
+when my corruption puts on incorruption, acclimated
+to all this music and brightness and the high
+level of perfect goodness. In the meantime, surely
+the Lord will respect my honesty in clinging to my
+human feelings, since I am subject to them according
+to His will.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know how it is, but there is a doctrine
+which teaches damnation like consequences in all
+the churches with which I am familiar, either by
+election or predestination—terms which distinctly
+imply the exclusion from salvation of those not
+elected or predestined. I can find no Scripture in
+the Bible that justifies these interpretations without
+giving the passage a theological twist. The Methodist
+church, which makes such generous provision
+for salvaging and saving those who fall from grace,
+is not without blame in this matter. It covers the
+whole ground for the doctrines of election and predestined
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>damnation, or salvation as the case may be,
+with the doctrine of apostasy. The only difference
+is that an apostate chooses his own fate and is not
+predestined to it from the foundation of the world.
+This is only apparently putting the blame where it
+belongs. The threat hidden beneath is that the Lord
+will stand just so much, then His spirit ceases to
+strive with a man. When you think about it, this
+is the worst fate of all. What is to defend a person
+highly sensitized spiritually from the perpetual
+fear of being forsaken in his sins?</p>
+
+<p>I had my first lesson in theology very early—religion
+is something else. If you have the mind to
+believe, the Scriptures are singularly clear; but only
+a student and a scholar can make heads and tails of
+theology. It is a sort of puzzle the wavering minds
+of men have made from the Word of God, to the
+end that sinners have been exalted by a creed,
+saints burned at the stake for the sake of a doctrine,
+and thousands obliged to flee from one country to
+another to save their necks and their liberty of
+conscience.</p>
+
+<p>Maybe all that was for the best. Certainly, if you
+give it time, the worst turns out for the best.</p>
+
+<p>Mother was the kind of Methodist who could
+afford to believe without much personal anxiety in
+this doctrine. She was a truly good woman, with an
+Old Testament mind. Somewhere along the way
+she warned me of the danger. She impressed me
+with the fact that if I hardened my heart the spirit
+would cease to strive with me. The time came when
+God abandoned the willful sinner and left him to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span>his fate. I went around with this red-hot coal of fire
+on my spiritual back for a long time. I acquired
+habits of thought then that worked havoc with my
+peace for half a lifetime. I have never entirely escaped
+the fear that I may turn out to be an apostate
+after all. It seizes upon me like a malady. I am
+troubled by the realization that the spirit does not
+seem to strive with me as it did when I was younger.
+This is a fearfully lonely feeling, and not rational.
+But sanity, in my opinion, is an achievement. I have
+seen very few well-balanced people in my life who
+were not dunces.</p>
+
+<p>I was finally soundly converted and joined the
+church. At the time that experience seemed more
+miraculous than it does now; I have been born again
+so many times since. First I had to adjust myself to
+the heavenly mind. Then I must adjust myself to
+the ministry of my husband. Finally, after his
+death, I had to be born again to the world, capable
+of dealing with it sensibly and honorably. My experience
+is that this last requires more divine inspiration
+than being a private Christian protected
+by all the defenses that marriage and religion raise
+about a woman’s life.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XVII">
+    XVII
+    <br>
+    THE WORKING OF LOVE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">When</span> I was nine years old I remember a certain
+thing that happened. I was sitting somewhere
+behind the old field schoolhouse with three other
+little girls. We were making wishes and telling our
+fortunes by pulling the petals from daisies. I made
+a wish and tried it out by the daisy petals. But I
+would not tell what it was.</p>
+
+<p>‘I know,’ said one little girl.</p>
+
+<p>‘You never could guess,’ I retorted.</p>
+
+<p>She bent over and whispered, ‘You wished for a
+husband!’</p>
+
+<p>It turned out that we had all wished for husbands.
+We were the simplest, most innocent of little creatures,
+at the doll-mothering, playhouse stage of
+development, totally ignorant of love and lovers.
+But we felt the need of husbands, as, I suppose, the
+Eastern Hemisphere might have longed for the
+Western Hemisphere to make the world complete.
+We felt incomplete.</p>
+
+<p>The florescence of nature came to me as it does to
+all youth, unbeknowingly. What I remember about
+that is the quantities of romantic poetry I consumed,
+practicing at the same time a very strong virginal
+antagonism toward young men.</p>
+
+<p>At last love and the lover did come to me. I have
+written all the experience out in another place, and
+of my marriage at the age of seventeen.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span></p>
+
+<p>Love does something to the mind. But it is something
+that you cannot use so long as it lasts as a
+vital part of your experience. During the first ten
+years of my married life it seemed to close the
+intellectual pores of my mind. I lived according to
+that definition of faith which says it is ‘the substance
+of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
+seen.’ I passed through many joys, poverty, fear,
+and great tribulations according to that ritual of one
+sentence. I did not think in the terms of ideas, but
+only in the terms of love. I was guided entirely by
+my husband’s mind, which was one you may say
+literally stricken by the Holy Spirit. He was a
+preacher and made only one use of his mind, that of
+finding God and teaching sinners the way of salvation.</p>
+
+<p>This was not as you may suppose a drab and monotonous
+existence, but one filled with strange and
+lofty experiences.</p>
+
+<p>I was destined to discover that mother’s ideas of
+religion were coldly platonic as compared with the
+passionate fervor of my circuit rider in his devotion
+to God. Mother believed in behaving yourself and
+keeping the Commandments and walking according
+to the ordinances of the church to which she belonged.
+He believed in literally living the life of
+Jesus Christ—and could not do it. This brought
+on the struggle that lasted for him more than
+twenty years. I tried to keep up with him. The
+first time he fasted and prayed all day after we were
+married, I fasted also, but could not pray that long.
+Protracted prayers are a mystery to me. I can
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>simply fall upon my knees and let that be a prayer
+any time. What is the good of words to God? They
+are symbols we use to one another because we
+neither know nor are known to one another as He
+knows us.</p>
+
+<p>This was the last time I ever fasted, because at
+the end of the day I was exhausted, nervous and in
+no Christian mood.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot tell in years how long it took me to do it,
+but I finally adjusted myself about my husband like
+a small protesting world and so stood the siege.
+Love held us as close together as if we had one heart
+in common. But I do not remember that we ever
+had the same mind about anything. The point at
+last with me was to get mine disentangled from the
+bondage of his brave, beautiful, but impractical
+religious beliefs. I never succeeded. All these years
+after his death I am still more conscious of the truth
+that led him than of my own right mind. I am still
+beholden to his God; I have never got round to
+serving my own God with a free mind and a comfortable,
+cheerful spirit. I must fall into a state of
+anguish once in so often, make sacrifices that do not
+ease the pain, and go about wondering where the
+witness of my spirit is. I have the feeling sometimes
+that at last I may be dragged through the gates of
+heaven, spent, woeful, and humble, by the very
+power of his spirit; that I shall not stride in with my
+hat on and my head up, bearing a good conscience
+with me in token of a well-spent life.</p>
+
+<p>If you have been born in the twentieth century
+and have a good deal of human dust sticking to your
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span>soul, if you really love the world, remembering that
+God made it and blessed it, as others think they love
+only Heaven; if you like human beings, good and
+bad, better than you do saints—it is a queer feeling
+to know that you are forever involved in a mediæval
+religion of asceticism, sacrifice, and sufferings.</p>
+
+<p>By this time it is my very nature to work up
+hardships and great spiritual struggles for myself
+which only involve me deeper and higher in the will
+of my husband’s God—all the time remembering
+the child I used to be, so sure of a kinder God, so
+peacefully at home beneath His kind heavens. It is
+a queer situation which will end very creditably, I
+suppose, with my funeral.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XVIII">
+    XVIII
+    <br>
+    VENTURES IN SCRIPTURES
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">I was</span> eleven years younger than my husband,
+being really in the plastic period of adolescence.
+He was the gentlest of men, but he had a brilliant
+and mature mind, a queer temple of intellectual
+loveliness with pure classical lines. He did his
+thinking as a master architect does his drawing,
+with delicacy and precision. He was never overbearing,
+but the elegance, sweetness, and sincerity of
+his mind confounded my younger wits. I supposed
+that a man who could think like that must be correct
+in his conclusions, and for something like ten years
+I surrendered my own mind and left him to do our
+thinking. Most of it was pious, but always informed
+with that effulgence of the spirit peculiar to the
+rarer saints. My impression now is that I became a
+very good young person, by ear, so to speak, and
+that I was strangely stupid. The mental background
+I had acquired from much ravenous reading before
+my marriage faded. I forgot Tasso’s great poetry
+and settled down on the hillside of a mountain
+circuit with Lundy and the beatitudes. Maybe this
+was good for me spiritually, but it was diminishing
+mentally, which, in my opinion, was never meant to
+be the effect of any Scriptures upon the mind.</p>
+
+<p>Lundy was not a practical man spiritually. I
+remember distinctly how determined he was to remain
+poor in spirit that he might become one of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span>those legitimate heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven.
+I imitated his poverty here with the same artless
+sincerity a child imitates an older person, though I
+could never put much feeling into the idea of being
+poor in spirit. The effect upon him was that with
+his nature elegant to the point of fastidiousness, and
+his scholarly mind, he walked humbly hand in hand
+with the meanest of his flock, making himself literally
+one of the least of them.</p>
+
+<p>It was all wrong. I call your attention to the fact
+that Jesus went up into a mountain and set Him
+above the multitude before He began that great
+Sermon on the Mount. And when He finished it and
+came down the great multitude followed Him. I do
+not suppose He was jostled by that crowd. He was
+apart and far beyond them, and so held Himself
+there and everywhere else. It will not do to be intimately
+poor in spirit with people who have no sense
+of your meaning. If you do they will keep you poorer
+than the Scriptures require both in spirit and fact.</p>
+
+<p>Lundy was the same way about that beatitude
+which recommends those that mourn for they shall
+be comforted. We were rich in love and peace and
+were being as good as it is possible for human beings
+to live, but he would mourn in spite of everything
+for his transgressions, any transgression he could
+remember. He was the most unforgiving man of
+himself I ever knew.</p>
+
+<p>In this connection I remember the first theological
+ruction we had after our marriage. He had harked
+up one of his former sins and was making himself
+miserable about it. I tried every way to smooth over
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span>his transgression—in vain. Finally I lost patience
+and called his attention to the generous forgiving
+Gospel he preached to other sinners. Did he believe
+he preached the truth? Certainly he did, was his
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well then,’ I retorted, ‘why should you malign
+the goodness of God by imagining you yourself are
+not forgiven according to the same Gospel?’</p>
+
+<p>This was one of the many clinches we had over
+these beatitudes. He said that a man’s conscience
+must be his guide in such matters. He reserved the
+right to repent of his own sins! He went on to imply
+that I might be morally obtuse. This was the straw
+that broke my camel’s back. I retorted that I was
+tired, and I supposed the Lord was tired of the vain
+repetition of his repentance over some little dead
+and forgotten transgression. I thought such conduct
+was morally debilitating. From this we had hot
+words and I flung myself upon the bed and wept
+bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>My belief is that I had some glimmerings even as
+far back as that of the true meaning of these particular
+Scriptures. I know now that they are emergency
+remedies for the soul and not designed to create
+a perpetual state of mind. The effort to practice
+them all the time will victimize any man in his relations
+to his fellow men. I feel better most of the
+time, but now and then I have known what it is to
+be poor in spirit before the Lord on the occasion of
+some defalcation in virtue or patience or courage;
+but it is not my idea to tell any one else about it. I
+do my mourning and hurry on as quickly as possible
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span>to the more cheerful part of this beatitude which
+says ‘for they shall be comforted,’ feeling that I do
+myself credit by taking the Lord at His word as soon
+as possible. I have practiced swiftness in acts of
+faith and found it profitable. If the Bible means
+anything at all, you have a right to believe it. That
+is the test of the truth of the Scriptures—believe
+them, and if they do not come true you have the
+right to deny them. I have never had the chance to
+deny a single one, though of course I have lacked the
+spiritual capacity to try out the whole thing.</p>
+
+<p>But there is that one which says, ‘Blessed are the
+meek’—meaning teachable—‘for they shall inherit
+the earth.’ It is not my nature to be teachable,
+but I have been in such tight quarters all my life
+that I have been obliged to learn a great deal with
+meekness. And it is a fact, I have inherited more of
+the earth than I deserve. To be strictly honest, I
+have never hungered and thirsted after righteousness
+to the point of egotism characteristic of some
+saints. I always had a feeling of modest limitations
+along this line; but now that I think back to those
+first years of my married life, it seems to be anguishing
+and pitiful the way I strove to be good. It
+was so terribly necessary if I was to keep up with
+Lundy.</p>
+
+<p>The motive was a trifle crooked, as you will see;
+but the Lord honored it as He did that woman’s
+faith who had the issue of blood, which was an unintelligent
+faith. For as I look back now it seems to
+me that I was pretty well filled with righteousness
+then according to the other end of that beatitude.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span>With me, being merciful is not a virtue. It comes too
+easy for me to have deserved much in return, like
+some kind of happy weakness of character. Still,
+I have finally been overwhelmed with mercies. I
+feel sometimes that I might have used them to a
+better advantage further back in the years when my
+needs were very great. But the point I make is that
+this Scripture was fulfilled. I have even been pure
+enough in heart at rare intervals to see God. But
+not often when I was up and shining. Usually it
+would be when I was passing through some valley
+of the shadow of great grief. After the pain is over
+I have always been able to look back and know that
+sorrows are much more purifying and elevating to
+the mind than joys.</p>
+
+<p>But when it comes to that verse which says
+‘Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be
+called the children of God,’ it has depended upon
+the circumstances whether I came out of the scrimmage
+like such a child. I have known myself to
+forgo the blessing and refuse to make a peace that
+left me in the lurch. In that case I hunted up some
+such Scripture as an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
+tooth, and took what satisfaction I could get from
+that. Never yet have I parted with an eye or a
+tooth, or turned the other cheek except to my Lord,
+who is the only one who has the right to smite me.</p>
+
+<p>These, of course, are my favorable experiences
+with the truth of the Bible. I have suffered a-plenty
+from the unfavorable passages, such as, ‘Judge not....
+For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be
+judged.’ I have had this experience a thousand
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span>times. Some one who knows me, or a stranger of
+whom I have never heard, rises up and passes judgment
+upon me as if it was a harsh and sacred duty
+he performed—without ever suspecting, I suppose,
+that he is measuring to me again unfair and superficial
+criticisms I have passed on other people. They
+do have somewhat the advantage in this business,
+because there are so many more of them than there
+is of me, and one person cannot spare the time to
+pass as many adverse judgments as one author endures.
+Even at that, I fare very well on account of
+getting so many more favorable judgments than I
+deserve from the same sources.</p>
+
+<p>I was so much involved in the purely spiritual
+struggle of trying to live above and without the
+world until I was thirty years old that I became a
+sort of ignoramus. I cannot now recall what were
+the social and intellectual conditions of this period.
+I remember who the great preachers were, but not
+the name of a single statesman or public servant
+except one old congressman who used to do his
+electioneering at Sunday-school picnics. Readers
+of the circuit-rider stories must have observed that
+these are records in religious living to the exclusion
+of all earthly interests.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose this is the reason why even ‘My Book
+and Heart’ produces the impression upon some readers
+of being the chronicle of a narrow and dreary
+life. I do not think it is, you understand. It seems
+to me that almost any person with a provincial
+mind might fail to appreciate the literature of a
+foreign country with which they were totally unfamiliar.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span>The spiritual world which I inhabited at
+that time is not known now by a great many people
+otherwise very well informed. They are unable therefore
+to appreciate the vividness and romance of
+such an existence. It seems drab to them because
+they live in sums and dividends and secular realities
+and the same kind of diversions, not in sublime illusions.</p>
+
+<p>But try chasing an impractical saint up one
+Jacob’s ladder after another for twelve years and
+find out for yourself what a varied and stimulating
+experience it is. Hunting big game in a jungle is
+nothing to the risks you take and the rarefied hardships
+you endure and the keen relief you feel now
+and then between adventures. I cannot claim that
+it was mentally exhilarating, but I developed considerable
+wing power of the spirit very helpful to me
+when I finally did go back, pick up my mind, shake
+some of the star dust off, and begin to use it with a
+good conscience for my own benefit in this present
+world.</p>
+
+<p>But never so long as I live can I escape the tragic
+effects upon my life of these early years. My mind
+is free now, and I can reason as clearly as the next
+one about what a dear and blessed gift from God
+the world has been to me; but in my heart I seem
+still to belong back there in the years upon the lower
+rungs of that ever-upward-stretching ladder I used
+to climb toward Lundy’s God. I cannot get over
+feeling hard pressed spiritually sometimes, as if I
+was in dangerous need of chastening—I suppose
+the steel bridge never forgets the furnace in which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span>its girders were melted and forged; I would give
+anything now and then to rest from this smelting
+sense of God and be comfortable in my carnal mind,
+but I never can be.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XIX">
+    XIX
+    <br>
+    THE WISDOM OF THE WORD
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">What</span> I have tried to prove is this: The Word of God
+is a prophecy of us in all of our manifestations and
+it records the laws of life and conduct from which no
+man can escape. Whether he is a good one or a bad
+one, he will find his portrait drawn there and a complete
+prophecy of what his fate will be. It never
+fails; it always comes true, for the atheist, agnostic,
+or spiritualistic sorcerer no less than for the saint.</p>
+
+<p>Just look yourself up in that Book, and if you
+know how, you will find yourself predicted and recorded
+in it down to the very nose of your nature.
+Set down a list of your virtues and look up the rewards
+promised in return for these virtues, and you
+will know for certain what your dividends in living
+will be if you hold onto your assets. Make a list of
+your vices and weaknesses. Then, if you have the
+courage, look up the consequences which follow
+them as recorded in this Book and you will know
+long before judgment day what will happen to you
+even in this present world. ‘He that liveth by the
+sword shall perish by the sword.’</p>
+
+<p>Even if one does not feel the keen edge of the
+blade in his breast, he is cut down one way or the
+other, and knows it whether any one else suspects
+it or not. He may be a rich man and a philanthropist,
+and he may get a great send-off, with a splendid
+funeral and a mausoleum set over his grave; but if
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>his fortune was built upon widows’ mites and the
+bread taken from the poor, if he swindled and
+cheated, if he practiced usury, he went down to his
+dust a very poor man and knows it. Because the
+Word is written in him and only copied in the Bible.</p>
+
+<p>The Baptists are not so far wrong about their
+notions of predestination and election, though far
+be it from me to travel my days encompassed about
+by their doctrines. That would be too nerve-racking
+to the mortal mind. Give me a creed with more elbow
+room in it for my transient transgressions and
+more encouragement for believing I have a chance
+to save my own soul by growing my own virtues
+according to the Word, which I could not have if I
+got the notion that I was damned or elected from
+the foundation of the world.</p>
+
+<p>The place where the makers of these sterner creeds
+miss their cue, in my opinion, is when they fail to
+realize that the Scriptures are a sort of key to which
+we may refer and find the answer to the equation
+we are. They contain the history of all dead men and
+the prophecies of all living men and men to come.
+The smallest little squinched-up fraction of a saint
+can look in that Book and find out exactly what he
+is equal to and even how to become the whole unit
+of one. But we turn the trick. We do make ourselves
+according to the mind we use in the business.
+I do not know any more terrifyingly liberal provision
+made by Providence in our behalf. I have often
+wondered why the preachers do not say more about
+it, for it is far more convincing than the damnation
+gospel with which they used to set us afire.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span></p>
+
+<p>I had no such wisdom of the Word as this, however,
+in the days of which I am now writing. I was
+a sort of Protestant Catholic, if you know what I
+mean. I accepted Lundy’s interpretations of the
+Gospels as a devout Catholic gets his from the
+priest. And I was not very much worried about not
+being able to live up to his ideals in the Christian
+life. Who has ever kept pace with the piety of a good
+priest? I did not feel obliged to do so. I existed in a
+state of mental obedience to certain religious convictions
+which were not my own. This was bad for me
+mentally and morally. I had considerable natural
+ability, but I remember distinctly being afraid to
+cut loose and think thoughts kin to my kind of
+mind lest I should sin against my husband’s faith.
+The virtues that one gets under such conditions do
+not really belong to her, but to the church or priest
+who imposes them. You are trained to them as a
+leopard is trained to jump through fiery hoops in a
+circus without singeing his tail. Without suspecting
+such a thing, I was that artificial in my Christian
+life during this period, a pathetically accomplished
+trick saint.</p>
+
+<p>I have sometimes wondered if the stampede of
+human souls from the tyranny of creeds accounts
+for the strange mental and moral disorders of our
+times, and that presently, being as we are, forever
+immortal and close kin to God, we shall discover
+righteousness for ourselves and choose goodness as
+the great vocation of man, as it surely is. One thing
+is certain—in every age when the people have not
+been permitted to study the Scriptures, but have
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>been obliged to accept a church’s interpretation of
+the Word, there followed a period of animal simplicity
+of mind in the masses, ignorance, loss of ambition,
+initiative, and all the poverty, follies, and meanness
+of mind which issue from such conditions.</p>
+
+<p>Without every kind of liberty, men must perish,
+and they do. The only knowledge that really
+counts in character is the knowledge we get for ourselves
+tested by experience. This is the reason why
+some very cultured people remain so ignorant and
+ineffective. The only law that ever will actually
+control men is the will to obey their own conscience.
+Therefore the primary object of every preacher and
+teacher should be to set up the ideal of courage and
+an honest mind. Such people are safe citizens in
+this world and the next one. But they are not safe
+under doctrines, creeds, and laws arbitrarily imposed,
+whether they get them from the Bible or the
+Bolsheviks.</p>
+
+<p>Consider the condition of our own country now.
+The democratic form of government is the best form
+for patriots. We were patriots when we signed the
+Declaration of Independence. Now we are not in
+principle or conduct. We are getting a commercialized
+conscience and covering the snare of it
+with philanthropy. So it turns out that the Constitution
+we made back there in the days when we
+were plain Christian patriots does not control the
+mind or illustrate the character of this nation now.</p>
+
+<p>A monarchal form of government would be no
+better. Mankind seems to be outgrowing kings,
+not by growing better but less good. We are turning
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span>our back upon conscience and the Ten Commandments.
+No system of laws will govern such a people.
+I do not know what the political economists think
+of this situation, but as an old woman who looks
+at it through the passages of many Scriptures, I see
+the shadows of terrible events lengthening across
+the world. It is coming, that fearful punishment
+men inflict upon men for their sins. It is coming because
+it is not in us to endure too long our own
+unrighteousness. This is the law of moral economy
+written in us which we cannot escape.</p>
+
+<p>The big knot in this whole problem is human
+nature. But once in so often we do untie it and
+straighten things out, not so much by the grace of
+God, but by the perverted righteousness of ferocity.
+Then we react and turn out once more to be the
+children of God—not lost after all, only chastened.</p>
+
+<p>The secret of all things is as far from us as the
+East is from the West and as His ways are from our
+ways. Therefore, the higher standard we reach in
+pure romance the nearer we are to truth. I prefer
+Milton’s poetry, the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah,
+my choice of the Psalms, and a few of the elder
+hymns to anything Mr. H. G. Wells can think or
+write about the beginnings of life or the history of
+Christianity. It is interesting copy and contains
+much entrancing information, but Mr. Wells has
+too much sense and too little faith in the right direction
+to be the medium of the Lord’s divine illusion,
+which clothes us like a garment and is the only protection
+we have against the destructive rationalism
+of the mortal mind.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span></p>
+
+<p>We have daily examples now of an educational
+system which encourages license in thinking along
+these lines. Two youths who graduated with distinction
+from two leading universities developed
+such unscrupulous intellects that they planned a
+monstrous crime. They had an ambition to commit
+a ‘perfect crime,’ as formerly Christian education
+inspired men to achieve honor. They executed a
+murder and proceeded with their plans for blackmail,
+ransom, and the scientific torture of their
+victims. They were not originally perverts. Now
+they must be regarded as criminally insane. They
+are the products of the rational system in education
+and of the ever-increasing intellectual slums produced
+by the license of this system.</p>
+
+<p>I think Mr. William Jennings Bryan has the
+wrong bull by the horns when he assails the theory
+of evolution. It is not a theory, but a fact distinctly
+recorded in Genesis and proved by the whole history
+of creation down to the present time. But he
+might become a benefactor of youth if he would
+exercise the same energy in getting an interstate
+alienist commission appointed to test the moral sanity
+of many learned professors in our schools and
+universities. The findings of such a commission
+would go far toward revealing the sources of the
+wave of criminal insanity that is showing its crest
+in every court in this country. Too many learned
+doctors without any faith in the law which God is,
+are teaching young people how to think. They become
+criminals mentally whether they ever commit
+a crime or not.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XX">
+    XX
+    <br>
+    CONFESSION AND THE CHURCH
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">But</span> what about the Church in all this moral confusion?
+More and more active, more and more
+prosperous, without having much effect upon the
+situation! What has become of that note of authority
+with which it formerly controlled in so great a
+measure the conduct of men? Well, it turns out to
+be a sort of spiritual bluff the Church put up, now
+no longer effective because men have learned how to
+think.</p>
+
+<p>This is a dangerous discovery in view of the fact
+that we do not know enough or fear enough to
+think righteously. But less than at any time for
+the last two thousand years are we listening to the
+voice of the preachers. It is they who have their
+ear to the ground listening to the rumbling demands
+of the world. They are cats fighting over modernism.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know what a modernist is, but my impression
+is that it is an element in the ministry of
+some churches anxious to accommodate its members
+and keep them cordial by yielding to their demands
+for less piety and more diversion. One pastor has
+introduced the ‘sacred dance’ about his church
+altar and quotes David’s example as his justification.
+David was a great singer, but not a good man.
+This preacher might take another man’s wife as
+David took Uriah’s and be quite as plausible in his
+contention.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Methodist Church has just lifted the ban on
+worldly amusements for its members. And we are
+just now getting the news of a fine old bishop about
+to be tried for heresy who strode into the court of
+bishops accompanied by his radical lawyer. He
+looks as queer and out of drawing as Socrates must
+have appeared going off with that young rascal
+Alcibiades to make a night of it!</p>
+
+<p>What I mean is that the Church is losing its
+dignity and authority as a holy institution. The
+debacle was inevitable, because its oppressive
+methods over the minds and imaginations of men
+were at variance with the wisdom of God. His
+Word was split into doctrines and creeds. No one
+denomination of us could use the whole of it. The
+plan of salvation varied according to the Church to
+which you belonged, and the doctrines by which
+we were to be damned varied even more. A good
+deal was taught concerning deliverance from sin,
+and nothing much was proved concerning freedom
+in Christ, which is the whole thing.</p>
+
+<p>Jesus was of all men the mildest and tenderest in
+his relation to men, but the prelates, dignitaries, and
+princes of all the churches with which I am familiar
+have been overbearing either in their own personal
+character or in their interpretation of the will of
+God. This was their method during the Church’s
+period of power to frighten men into the Kingdom
+of Heaven, as now during its decline we find the
+disposition to coax people into the Church by offering
+indulgences.</p>
+
+<p>There is no warrant in the Scriptures for such
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span>practices. They contain the laws of righteousness,
+the rules of living set down plain enough for a wayfaring
+man to understand. We are left free to enjoy
+the rewards of our virtues and to suffer the consequences
+of our transgression. The rest is silence.
+This is where the Church made its mistake—too
+much preaching and terrorizing, not enough teaching
+of just the Word. Now we have the reaction.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXI">
+    XXI
+    <br>
+    LUNDY AND I WALK AND TALK
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">It</span> is queer how thoughts you had long ago and the
+very scene of these thoughts come back to you after
+you have lived a dozen later lives. I recall something
+now that indicates how narrow the margin was then
+between me and one of the threadbare fallacies of
+my sex:</p>
+
+<p>Lundy and I were walking late in the afternoon
+through the college campus. I remember the deepening
+twilight beneath the trees. I wore a dark
+dress. I was young, slender, pale, homely—what I
+mean is that I remember feeling this way, sad and
+put upon. Lundy was stepping along innocently
+beside me, gracefully silent, no doubt enjoying this
+silence, for he was one who never practiced speech
+as a relief for intellectual hysteria. He could retain
+his thoughts like a gentleman. Suddenly I let out
+what I was thinking about the world’s injustice to
+women. We were the victims of the whole social
+and domestic order of mankind. We were the bond
+servants of a civilization which we had no part in
+making. We had no rights, only duties to perform,
+and so on and so forth. I cannot think now how I
+came by such thoughts. I must have read something
+along this line, and, like D—— was suffering from,
+mental regurgitation.</p>
+
+<p>What brought me to my own personal senses
+was the look Lundy gave me, not reproachful, but
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>startled, as if he had received a thrust and wondered
+if he deserved it.</p>
+
+<p>We walked on, staring straight ahead; but I
+could feel my husband searching himself, looking
+for his sins against me, and his harshness. This was
+unendurable. I sat down beside the road and made
+haste to renege. All at once it was clear how good
+this man had been to me, how hard he worked that
+I might be a little more comfortable, how patient
+he was with my ruffian mind, and how he had given
+me all the love he could spare from his jealous God.
+And now—appalling thought—what if he went
+off on one of his remorseful tangents, his ever uncertain
+peace destroyed by my complaint?</p>
+
+<p>Never did a woman praise her husband more
+fervently than I did for the next few minutes. I
+laughed and stroked his legs. He would not sit
+down! He had the rigid air of a man who preferred
+to take his punishment standing up. I vowed I was
+only teasing him. As a matter of fact, I was not
+thinking of my own husband at all when I began to
+drool about the wrongs of women. I must have been
+seeking martyrdom at large.</p>
+
+<p>This was one of those little epochs we make in
+living. I passed as quick as a flash through an enlightening
+mental process. From that moment I
+escaped the idea of grievances from which many
+women suffer too much in their imaginations. I
+have been a sluggard ever since about correcting
+the abuses from which women suffer. I have never
+been able to cast myself or my pen whole-heartedly
+into a campaign to clean up the men and bring them
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span>to repentance for their trespasses against us. Let
+somebody else do it! Because, of course, it must be
+done before we repent of the wrongs we practice
+against them, such as headaches, indifference, inefficiency,
+and extravagance. Upon those occasions
+when I have been even slightly moved to do my
+duty toward chastening them, I always think of
+Lundy, the astonished blue look he gave me that
+time on the campus in Oxford, as if this was the
+first he knew of his unkindness and injustice to the
+woman rib in his side. I remember him, the whole
+mind the man of him had at that moment, and I
+cannot believe in the light of his kind heart that
+men really mean to be unfair to women, any more
+than we mean to be as exasperating as we are to
+them sometimes.</p>
+
+<p>We are both the victims of some secret plan of
+Nature in this business. Men are overbearing on
+account of the kind of gender they are, and women
+have nervous squalls on account of the kind of gender
+they are. If they were entirely compatible, the
+one to the other, their children might be poor, spiritless
+creatures. For love certainly is a fearfully eager,
+exacting, and destructive influence upon the dead
+level of peace. Therefore incompatibility never
+seemed to me reasonable grounds for divorce. On
+the contrary, it must be in Nature the best of all
+genealogical grounds for those two afflicted people
+to continue to live together.</p>
+
+<p>The success of marriage does not depend upon
+how well it is financed with money or social position,
+but almost entirely upon how much love and wit
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span>you can put into it. Maybe there is some grave
+inequality of mind or spirit or quality between you
+in the beginning, but go on living together and
+presently there will be six of one and half a dozen of
+the other. You will develop practically the same
+horse power of perversity, even if the man becomes
+ferociously impatient and the wife sinks away into
+cowardly patience.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing known to man as exasperating
+as an infernally patient woman. She is either mean
+or lacking in wit. She never seems to realize that
+domestic temper in a man is a form of hysteria and
+should be treated accordingly with a dash of cold
+water, figuratively speaking, or some sort of shock,
+which is not meant to be a suggestion of license in
+conduct. He would ask no better excuse for a tantrum
+or a tyranny than for his wife to commit a
+fault. But there are a thousand ways of twisting
+the tail of a perverse man’s temper without ceasing
+to be an artless lady. All you have to do is to put
+your mind on it. The Lord has endowed every
+woman with special talents for this emergency.</p>
+
+<p>I know one charming little gentlewoman who
+married a very ordinary man who never had the opportunity
+to control anything or anybody until he
+achieved this lovely wife. Then he set in to exercise
+his powers along this line. If he had been the warden
+of a penitentiary he could not have been more exacting
+than he was as the master of his own house
+and the husband of this woman. The marvel was
+the sweet way she went on showing her admiration
+and affection for him. Some of us were disposed to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span>pity her as a poor creature without spirit. Then I
+caught on to her game.</p>
+
+<p>When her husband was present she never ceased
+to augment him by telling what he would permit
+her to do, or more particularly what he would not
+allow her to do, say or think. Each revelation was,
+of course, accompanied by an exchange of eye-flashing
+intelligence between those present and frequently
+by an embarrassed flush on the husband’s
+face. Nothing could stop her from making these
+revelations of his meanness and tyranny, always as
+if she approved of him to the point of boasting. We
+heard that when he reprimanded her for exposing
+his private authority she remained artless and too
+simple to be managed.</p>
+
+<p>‘But you know, dear, you did say I should not go
+to that meeting, and I wanted them to understand
+why I would not accept their invitation,’ and so on
+and so forth. In the course of two years she let in
+the light of so much public opinion on this man and
+his methods as an overbearing husband that now he
+practically runs to open the door to her every wish.
+He is tremendously concerned that his neighbors
+shall know his wife may do as she almighty pleases.
+And so she does. It was one of the most diverting
+and enlightening dramas of married life I have seen
+in years, played without a single mis-said line, and
+ended, you may say, with much secret applause.</p>
+
+<p>If it appears that I have turned my light too far
+forward through the years in the immediately preceding
+pages, I can only say that we must follow
+the beam while it shines when one is trailing the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span>mind, even if it is your own mind. This was as good
+a place as any to set down the effects of that first
+and last interview with my husband concerning the
+grievances of women. The reader will recognize it
+as the veracious record of a strictly feminine mind
+whatever else he may think.</p>
+
+<p>If I may be permitted to comment upon my own
+copy in thinking, I should say that once a woman’s
+mind is divorced from her affections it is a trifle unbalanced
+and untrustworthy no matter how brilliantly
+and broadly she uses it. It ricochets like a
+ball fired at a low angle of elevation which is apt to
+fall back upon her own destiny disastrously. A good
+many of these duds are already dropping behind
+the Nineteenth Amendment. I cannot see much
+improvement in the character of women, though
+they are more alert mentally and less satisfied.
+They have gained something they wanted and they
+have lost something they needed personally and privately.
+I have felt obliged for conscience’ sake to
+believe in equal rights for women, but the best
+success I ever had along this line has been to go out
+and win by my own works and wits the rights I preferred
+and that would be the most becoming to me
+in the end.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXII">
+    XXII
+    <br>
+    WE CONSIDER GREEK CULTURE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">My</span> husband was not only a distinguished scholar
+and a great preacher but he had a brilliant, gallant
+mind of his own. Let him have it, and God be
+thanked, was my attitude. Whenever he flared intellectually,
+I turned out my light and watched with
+admiration such an aurora borealis of fine, cold,
+clear thinking as I have never seen in any book or
+heard from another man. Some radiance of his
+mind will remain upon the horizon of mine as long as
+I live. I can never tell how much of it has brightened
+the edges of the copy I have produced since those
+days. For I have been a cheerful plagiarist of light
+whenever I found it.</p>
+
+<p>But if we came to loggerheads in an argument,
+as frequently happened, on any subject, whether it
+was religion, philosophy, poetry, or the fatalistic
+mind of the ancient Greeks, I stepped out with gaffs
+on the legs of my native wit and met him as an
+unscrupulous wrestler meets an honest big man. I
+had all the advantages, because I was never constrained
+in the exercise of my mind by much real
+knowledge of the subject or by those precedents
+which govern a scrupulously trained intellect. I
+left him to furnish the information. My business
+was to digest it quick as a flash and use it, then to
+prove my contention or to reject it for the same
+reason. I do not know what a casuist is, but he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span>frequently accused me of being one, as if this was
+a fault of which I should be ashamed. But I never
+was. This grieved him. I am sure he felt that I
+would not overcome a certain vulgar insolence of
+ignorance, because I had no native reverence for
+learning.</p>
+
+<p>Once when I was belaying the ancient Greeks
+like a ruffian he assumed the dignified manner of a
+gentleman and a scholar who must be patient with a
+Smart Aleck. As near as I can recall, this is the
+gist of that altercation:</p>
+
+<p>‘You do yourself discredit when you speak disparagingly
+of an illustrious people,’ he said.</p>
+
+<p>I knew nothing of their civilization, art, or literature.
+Then he went on to pay a tribute to the Greek
+intellect. It was symmetrical, dignified, and beautiful
+as their architecture. Had I ever studied the
+glory and simplicity of the Parthenon? I admitted
+that I had not, but I was willing to concede that
+they had highly developed artistic instincts. Which,
+I had to infer, was the wrong phrase to use.</p>
+
+<p>‘They had brains, brains!’ he retorted hotly.</p>
+
+<p>‘I would no more revere a man for his brains than
+for the hair on his head,’ I shot back; ‘the quality
+and quantity of both are determined by purely
+physical conditions, the climate, the food they eat,
+their habits as human beings. I judge the Greeks by
+what they have produced.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That is precisely what you cannot do intelligently,
+because you do not know what they produced.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, I know the effects—’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘You are profoundly ignorant of the effects of
+Greek culture upon the world,’ he interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>‘Culture’ was one of Lundy’s words, never a
+favorite with me. I am not denying there is such a
+thing, but whether it is beneficent depends in my
+opinion upon the moderation with which you absorb
+it and balance it with better, sturdier elements of
+character, like honest bigotry and hard-headed convictions.
+It is a boastful word with a bad reputation
+in advanced stages of civilization. It too frequently
+became the elegance by which the distance between
+morality and immorality is shortened.</p>
+
+<p>Lundy, however, loved it, with no such barbaric
+instincts as I had to warn him against it. And I
+suffered much from the personal uses he made of it
+during what may be called the Hellenic period of
+our married life.</p>
+
+<p>This time I made a clean sweep and cut Greek
+culture to the bone.</p>
+
+<p>‘There was something wrong with their culture,’
+I returned, ‘because they did not survive it as a
+nation. Men are destroyed by their own minds,
+their systems of thought. What the ancient Greeks
+produced with all their art and learning and culture
+are these modern Greeks. I do not think much of
+them. Neither do you. They have the same hair,
+the same brains. They are out of the same stock, but
+virtue has gone out of them. They are no longer
+sculptors and philosophers. Nobody quotes them
+or imitates them. The fatalistic mind back of all
+their culture made slaves and little men of their
+descendants.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span></p>
+
+<p>Lundy regarded me for a moment in regretful
+silence, as we sometimes measure some one who is
+dear to us who is determined not to be like us.</p>
+
+<p>‘Corra,’ he said reproachfully, ‘you have an
+underhanded mind. You deliberately missed my
+point.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I made my own point, which was better than
+being run through by yours,’ I laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Then I had to listen to his explanation of how
+there were now no Greeks of that breed. The
+Persians had destroyed that great race.</p>
+
+<p>His scholarly indignation frequently rose to the
+pitch of sarcasm. But I was never abashed. I
+could not be made to hang my head mentally or to
+feel what is now called the inferiority complex. If
+you can finance the outrageous courage of ignorance
+with a certain secret wisdom of your own, you stand
+a very good chance of disconcerting a learned man
+in an argument. I always came out of these intellectual
+scrimmages exhilarated like a ragged young
+sparrow that has enjoyed an upward flight upon an
+eagle’s wings.</p>
+
+<p>One little trait I venture to record by way of
+illustrating how shrewd a woman’s mind can be at
+ducking out of sight at the right moment. Lundy
+was resentful like most learned men—or unlearned
+for that matter—if it appeared that I was about to
+get the better of the contention. He felt the trickery
+of wit at his expense, a petticoated Puck putting
+Bottom’s head on a wise man’s shoulders. Intellectual
+rage caused him to blink. Whenever he regarded
+me with this fluttering blue gaze I cast the argument
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span>aside, rushed to him, laid my head upon his
+knees as these knees were the executioner’s block
+and invited him to strike in case he desired to make
+such a disposition of a fool. In such a manner I was
+always able to restore the equilibrium of love and
+charity between us without his ever suspecting that
+this was balm I laid upon his wounded vanity.</p>
+
+<p>I have now a certain misty tinge of time in the
+colors of my mind, elegant wisps of culture, pseudo
+evidences of learning obtained from my association
+with Lundy. I have practically no accurate information
+on any subject, which is one reason I so
+rarely burden the reader with a quotation; but I
+have the sense and feeling of all these things Lundy
+studied in his lifetime to learn. I walked for years in
+the rich pastures of his mind.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXIII">
+    XXIII
+    <br>
+    THE YEAR IN OXFORD
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">As</span> the years passed there were happier periods, all
+of which have been recorded in ‘My Book and
+Heart.’ The years in Oxford, for example.</p>
+
+<p>More than one circumstance contributed to the
+relaxation I enjoyed there. The prim academic life
+of the little college town was stimulating and refreshing
+to me after the hard and lean years in the
+itineracy. We were relieved from the burden of
+souls, and Lundy was absorbed in his work as
+teacher of Greek in the college. This is the one
+interest he had that I could not share. I had worried
+and prayed with him through all the Gospels, but
+when it came to feeling my way through the enclitics
+and iota subscripts of a dead cross-stitch
+language I had no conscience about leaving him to
+his fate.</p>
+
+<p>Now that I look back, this is a queer circumstance,
+that I never had the least ambition to keep pace
+with my husband mentally. I was not uneasy lest
+he should escape me by this route, as I always felt
+he might do in those frightfully arduous pilgrimages
+he made toward God in the spirit. Anything might
+happen to such a traveler, I feared. But I have
+always enjoyed the assurance of having a very
+dexterous mind, regardless of whether I had as
+much information or intellectual training as the
+other person had or not.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span></p>
+
+<p>This is no more a conceit than a man feels in the
+strength of his muscles. He is not disposed to skin
+the cat in order to prove his physical power. He is
+much more apt to sit down comfortably observant
+while some weaker man boasts of his biceps. I have
+done a lot of that kind of sitting down in my life.
+Nothing fans me into such a state of peaceful mental
+somnambulance as the intellectual antics of a person
+who displays his learning, not from vanity always,
+but frequently because it is all he has got; no real
+sense, no wisdom of his own, merely much good
+stuff he has learned from other sources. He spreads
+it like a garment as any other decent person would
+to hide the thinness of his shanks.</p>
+
+<p>The literary life of Oxford was the most youthful
+and strident feature of this old college town. I do
+not know how the dean of the English department
+contrived to mislead so many young men, but year
+after year a certain per cent of the senior class were
+imbued with the idea that they had some kind of
+gift for literary creation or literary criticism. The
+latter predominated. During the winter months
+they shook the very battlements of English literature.
+They spared nobody from Henry Fielding to
+Dickens. Never shall I forget the way the feathers
+of the Brontë sisters used to fly when half a dozen
+of these young whelps seized upon ‘Jane Eyre.’ I
+was in my George Eliot stage at the time and suffered
+a graver mind, but I recall with no flattery to
+myself the part I took in these discussions. There
+may be such a thing as a mature mind under the
+age of forty, but if so it is the result of premature
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span>gray matter. I was still in the adolescent period
+mentally and found great refreshment in the group
+of young-rooster intellectuals who frequently came
+to the house. We worked out our theories and opinions
+on one another as growing children wrestle.</p>
+
+<p>Oxford was a narrow-minded little community,
+but it was pigeon-breasted morally. The only disciple
+of Zola in the town was an innocent young
+man from Arkansas, who had been well grounded in
+his morals. He was by way of becoming a novelist
+at that time, but turned out to be a historian. He
+graduated in vain from the English departments of
+five universities and was finally reduced to recording
+facts and dates and rewriting information that he
+could not digest. It was a form of mental regurgitation.
+A great many people have it. The one rash
+thing he ever did was to espouse the cause of realism
+in fiction, which none of us knew or cared enough to
+attack. He came in frequently to discuss the subject
+with me, chiefly, I suppose, because no one else
+would listen to him.</p>
+
+<p>I have always been interested in bores. They are
+in my opinion the strangest of human phenomena,
+probably the one type of character impossible to
+dramatize. Has any one ever read a novel entitled
+‘The Bore’? You have not, because the creative
+mind cannot produce him. He is automatic mentally.
+He can learn, frequently more than an intelligent
+man, but he cannot think. He is without
+imagination and the personal messengers of sensibility.
+He never knows or suspects how the other
+fellow feels. Poor D—— could talk indefinitely in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span>a sensible monotone without the glint of a thought
+to brighten his durable conversation. To me it has
+ever been fascinating to watch a good brain work
+that was totally disconnected from life, charm, or
+personality.</p>
+
+<p>Everything was settled except the relative merits
+of the new school of realism in fiction as compared to
+the old school of romanticism. This was a burning
+question then. As I remember, Émile Zola was the
+father of the realists. He had written a particularly
+disgusting novel, the title of which I do not recall;
+but one scene in it I am compelled against my will
+to remember—which, I suppose, proves that Zola
+was indeed a realist, because I have forgotten ten
+thousand lines of poetry that entranced me more.</p>
+
+<p>This was a description of the decomposed body
+of a soldier plowed up on a battlefield after the
+Franco-Prussian War. Zola omitted not one worm
+from this picture. Yorick’s skull was a clean white
+bone as compared with this horrible pollution of
+what had been a man. He made realism stink for
+five pages. I shall never be willing to confound this
+monstrous insensate vitalizing of the processes of
+death with the convincing romanticism of life,
+which is what the best literature is. However, my
+opinion is prejudiced in this matter, for I am an
+incurable romanticist, from the first chapter of
+Genesis to the last breath I draw. I think the world
+of life is one bright illusion conferred upon us by a
+good God, and that if it becomes anything else, that
+also is an illusion by which we damn ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>I have a vague recollection of Cæsar or some such
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span>person having said that the Romans were made
+indolent and effeminate by the importation of
+luxuries from the provinces—a free translation,
+but the gist of what he meant. I cannot tell what
+might have happened to me if we had gone on living
+in Oxford and if Lundy had continued to hold the
+chair of Greek in Emory College. We were as poor
+as possible, but I had my little luxuries from the
+various provinces of literature. Every college community
+titters with quotations from the best writers
+and speakers. I was subject during this period
+to short-flighted aspirations, such, for example, as
+trying to understand prosody. But I could make
+nothing of this science of poetry, not even with
+Lundy’s illuminating assistance. I remember at
+another time reading Guizot’s ‘History of France.’
+This was a real experience and came near starting
+me to thinking. There is something in the quality
+of the French mind to which I have always felt a
+reluctant kinship. They are the only people I know
+who can leap into an enormous vocabulary of words
+and beat them up with the wings of their spirit into
+a fine hysterical eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot tell how I missed my cue, but my suspicion
+now is that I must have made a more or less
+deliberate effort to develop mentally. I do recall
+regretfully certain intellectual flutterings which are
+never to be confounded with the stirrings of the
+creative mind.</p>
+
+<p>When it is all over, or nearly over, and we look
+back with the wisdom of all our experiences gained,
+we know that love is the best thing in life and that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span>it leads through whatever shadows to the best
+things we are capable of. So I know now that my
+devotion to little Faith was more stimulating and
+informing than anything else.</p>
+
+<p>In contrast to this tender happiness I enjoyed as
+a mother, I was never free from a nameless fear and
+anxiety for my husband. It turned out that his
+duties as the head of the Greek department in the
+college did not divert his mind from that absorbing
+passion for peace in God. Rather the fatalism of the
+Greek mind reacted disastrously upon his own mind.
+In addition to this his vitality was depleted by overwork.
+No matter how pale saints are—and I have
+observed that as a rule they have poor complexions—I
+shall always contend that it is easier to step up
+and trust the Lord if you are in good health. Lundy’s
+strength began to fail and he passed more frequently
+into those dark periods of despair. So I labored with
+him in good faith according to his interpretation of
+the Scriptures. I remember now the premonitions
+I had of unimaginable misfortunes.</p>
+
+<p>Years passed and our fate had come upon us,
+driving us far from our little world at Oxford before
+I finally realized that this was not a spiritual condition
+from which Lundy suffered, but a very real
+and dangerous disorder of the mind; melancholia,
+which took one form after another of religious
+mania.</p>
+
+<p>I have written out in another place the life we
+lived during this period, but not the terror and
+silence that fell upon me. This cannot be set down
+in words; the frantic efforts I made to save him from
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>himself, and to protect him from that terrible world
+in the Church. I know where the spirit of all tragedies
+dwells—in the silence which you dare not
+break, with even one call for help. I contracted the
+habit of holding my breath in these years of suspense.
+Even when my body slept it seemed to me my heart
+was forever sitting up with Lundy in the dark hours
+of the night.</p>
+
+<p>This was long before the Great War, but I distinctly
+recall how I used to wish I could find relief
+in a real battle, see the dreadful face of my enemy
+and feel his wounds rather than face the powers and
+principalities of Lundy’s terrible darkness.</p>
+
+<p>I fell sick under the strain and lay at the very
+doors of death for a long time, but not wishfully.
+I survived the predictions of various physicians for
+no other reason, I believe, than that I felt obliged to
+live and stand by my husband.</p>
+
+<p>I did it. No one can say I failed him or ever drew
+back once from the shadows that finally engulfed
+him. I had written ‘A Circuit Rider’s Wife’ and
+put the crown he so richly deserved upon him before
+he passed away. I remember being in a hurry to do
+that.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing was further from my plans than to become
+a writer, but I must have already begun the
+practice of studying characters, for I remember all
+those people whom I knew then, not their faces but
+their attributes, their inside minds. Otherwise, I am
+inclined to believe now that this was not an important
+period in my own mental development. It
+seems to me that I had very little raiment on my
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span>thoughts, not much sweetness or color. That bright
+and halcyon past which came back to me later in a
+dark time was eclipsed by some sort of adolescent
+egotism of the mind. I remember being very smart,
+which is a form of stupidity. I try not to remember
+it, but it occurs to me that I may have felt intellectual.
+I entertained views too noble or too bitter to
+be true. I must have done some soul-stretching of
+my mental neck.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing that I have ever written about myself
+humbles me so much as this confession, for I have
+observed the same state of mind in others. It is
+ugly, insincere, and leads to maudlin movements,
+agitations, and other disorders of our times, especially
+among women. The wonder to me now is
+that I did not get the idea that I had a message for
+the world. God in his mercy saved me from feminine
+screech of this emotion which so many of us
+mistake for noble inspiration.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXIV">
+    XXIV
+    <br>
+    HOMELY PLEASURE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">I was</span> thirty years of age before the character of my
+mind differed consciously from that of any other
+woman’s mind who is a devoted wife and mother,
+and, by marriage, deeply and sincerely pious. I was
+backward with my needle, but necessity compelled
+me to become skillful in this art. I made my own
+clothes and they proclaimed the fact. But I was
+more successful with dear little Faith’s things. She
+came up in the drawn-line period. We could not
+afford linen, but every ruffle and hem on her white
+muslin frocks was hemstitched. The gathers were
+rolled and whipped. The yokes were elaborately
+carved with the needle into blossoms and webs
+worked into the drawn threads.</p>
+
+<p>Faith was an adorable mite of a woman from the
+very beginning of her life. She felt her feathers and
+could not resist the joy of switching when she pranced
+forth in one of these dresses. I wore the long skirts
+of that period and held them up behind after the
+manner of those former ladies. Likewise, Faith
+invariably reached back, caught a fold of her exceedingly
+abbreviated skirt between her thumb and
+forefinger, the other three fingers hoisted and
+curled as daintily as if she held an afternoon teacup.
+Then, bent slightly forward, head thrown proudly
+back, she frisked forth glorified in her own pride.
+It comforts me now to remember that I never
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span>chided her for these airs and that she had the joy of
+her things.</p>
+
+<p>They really were beautiful little garments, if I do
+say it who should not boast of my handiwork. You
+may have observed that love can impart to a woman
+who has no sense of style about her own clothes, a
+rare genius for dressing her girl child.</p>
+
+<p>I had no domestic accomplishments, but I had
+one hard-and-fast rule as a loving wife. This was to
+appeal to the eye. I have a vaguely guilty feeling
+that I was not an exquisitely neat housekeeper—which
+immediately became a belligerent feeling the
+moment some one referred to the fact—but I
+always kept one place attractive in the house that
+would strike Lundy’s eye as he entered the door.</p>
+
+<p>I remember once after we had left Oxford and
+our fortunes were at the lowest ebb we lived in two
+rooms far up in the mountains. I had saved his
+dearer books, some draperies and precious ornaments
+from the sale of our household things in
+Oxford, but not enough to furnish a whole room
+cheerfully. So I massed our wealth in one corner of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>There was an ugly little stove set far enough out
+to admit of a seat behind it on both sides of the
+corner. I had it put in, no more than a low wide
+shelf against the wall. But it was softly cushioned
+and I covered it with a dark blue chenille curtain.
+I covered some old sofa pillows with the red-and-yellow
+borders of these curtains and piled them like
+gaudy mushrooms on this seat. Some distance above
+I put in narrow shelves for the books. These were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span>arranged without regard for their titles or inside
+substance, but to bring out as much color as possible.
+A red or green backed book was precious and
+must be placed where the light would fall on it.</p>
+
+<p>There was a vase on the top shelf, two brass
+candlesticks, and wedged in the corner was a remarkable
+plaster-of-Paris little boy, quite naked,
+sitting cross-legged on a square pedestal, reading
+from a large book open upon his knees. I take it
+that he was an erudite child, because from the looks
+of his pouncy body he could not have been more
+than three years old. Lundy had given me this
+thing in an opulent moment years before. Remembering
+the classical Greek turn of his mind, I cannot
+believe it truly represented his taste, only what he
+could afford to buy. But he craved statuary of the
+graver sort to the last and treated himself now and
+then to the moulded bust of a great poet or a great
+philosopher. I keep them all, though the little boy
+has lost half his book, broken off long since in our
+travels.</p>
+
+<p>Two very wide chenille curtains remained. These
+were split and hung at the windows on either side of
+this corner. I do not suppose a professional decorator
+would have admired the general effect, but compared
+with the remaining space and furnishing of
+that wretched room, it was palatial.</p>
+
+<p>On very cold evenings when Lundy came in, the
+stove would be glowing like a grotesquely deformed
+red-hot coal. The two candles would be lighted and
+flickering bravely. The little boy high up in his
+corner between them would still be studiously reading
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span>his book. The books on the shelves below would
+be lined up brightly like old friends waiting as
+usual to spend the evening with us. And Lundy,
+merely giving me the peck of a kiss as he passed,
+would make straight for that long cushioned seat
+behind the stove. He stretched out there like a
+wealthy man and read or scribbled notes for a sermon.
+I do not think he ever really saw the other
+part of that wretched room.</p>
+
+<p>This was the life I lived then and the mind I had
+then. Good, tender and very anxious for my dear
+ones, but not by any stretch of imagination an
+intellectual existence. I doubt if we can be very
+active in such a love affair as this and be intellectual
+at the same time. Love itself is the self-expression
+of such a woman, which is something we hear
+more about these days than in those days, when it
+seems to me women loved more giftedly than they
+do now.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXV">
+    XXV
+    <br>
+    LOVE AND AUTHORSHIP
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Mothers</span> are especially methodical. Love makes
+them and tempers their minds in the beginning.
+They find out how to love each one of their little
+children differently, then they settle down in their
+maternal formulas of affection. These children
+grow up, their natures change, but this makes no
+difference. She remembers that Thomas was a
+sensitive little boy and had to be treated tenderly.
+So she goes on making allowances for his beautiful,
+sensitive nature, although he may have grown up
+into a cold-blooded wretch who has made his fortune
+on a widow’s mite.</p>
+
+<p>By the same token, she never forgets that her
+other son was a normal hard-headed youngster who
+must be disciplined and required no petting. So she
+goes on giving him the lick and the promise of a
+sterner affection, although he may now be a broken-hearted
+man who has failed on account of going into
+business with the meaner, more excitable brother,
+and is very much in need of tenderness. But she apportioned
+her affections between them like an estate
+she willed them long ago. Now she is too old and
+<i lang="la">non compos mentis</i> affectionally to change her will.</p>
+
+<p>Authors do their work the same way. They find
+out how to write. They get their own method, a
+certain set of characters, and they stick to this
+method and these characters, with a few lay figures
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>added here and there in different stories. What I
+mean is that their leading heroes and heroines show
+a marked family resemblance to one another in
+every succeeding book. And why not? They are all
+out of the same parent mind. I should recognize a
+certain author’s heroine anywhere on earth, even if
+she escapes from all the stories in which she figures.
+She is a young woman who usually works her way
+up, when the reader has every reason to believe she
+is bound to fall. I have not seen her lately, but she
+used to make me very anxious on account of her
+threadbare skirt and having to heat a can of tomato
+soup over an alcohol burner behind her washstand
+screen. I do hope she has kept her chastity and
+married well as usual these late years, since I have
+been too busy to keep up with her struggles. She
+was a model and an inspiration then to every working
+girl without a job. Which, when you think about
+it, is very high praise for her procreator.</p>
+
+<p>I had been one of the most diligent unknown
+authors in this country for ten years before circumstances
+thrust me into the written rôle of ‘A Circuit
+Rider’s Wife.’ It was then that I seemed to have
+found myself as an interpreter and at last capable
+of producing that literature of the heart which is
+peculiar to all of us. I am not wholly in my right
+mind in any other character now. She knows the
+very gist of everything I feel or know about men and
+women.</p>
+
+<p>I would not attempt to tell how earnestly and unsuccessfully
+I have tried to be a younger, lovelier,
+and more attractive woman in fiction. Being a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span>youthful, coquettish heroine is frightfully hypocritical
+and embarrassing. If I am compelled to
+play that rôle, I always put that dearer, wiser old
+woman in as a neighbor to the girl so that I may
+rest and dwell in her for a scene now and then.</p>
+
+<p>I am far removed these many years from the
+circumstances that made the ‘Circuit Rider’s Wife.’
+She was very poor and enjoyed her economies; I
+am now no longer poor, but cannot bring myself to
+commit an extravagance. She walked very softly
+before the Lord, and I walk even more softly before
+the world, on account of having attracted some
+attention from that quarter which she never had.
+She was always anxious for the peace and fate of
+her circuit rider; now I am lonely for the lack of
+these cares, and Lundy has passed away into what
+may be called the literature of my soul. She went
+to church every Sabbath day, and I do not go.
+Nevertheless she constrains me. Sometimes even
+yet the mind she had comes back to me like a song
+and I am tempted to sit down in the amen corner of
+my years, tell everything that is comforting to
+know, sing a hymn and try to lead us all in prayer!
+I seem to slip off into that same old-fashioned
+tenderness for men and women we used to feel for
+mourners kneeling about the altar during a revival.</p>
+
+<p>Then the woman I am now looks about me and
+takes a more sensible view. What the world really
+needs is to have its emotional nature disciplined and
+trained even more carefully than we take the pains
+to develop the purely mental faculties. Praying
+will not meet this emergency.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span></p>
+
+<p>My hope is to get at least ten strides ahead of
+this woman I used to be in the record I am now
+writing of my mind, which has changed considerably
+since she managed its downsittings and uprisings.</p>
+
+<p>The question is whether I can do it. As we grow
+older it seems to me we break none of the bonds
+that formerly bound us; we simply add to them. I
+doubt very seriously if there is any such experience
+as liberty. It is a notion we get from not remembering
+for a moment the habits that bind us no less
+in the spirit than in our more obvious affairs.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXVI">
+    XXVI
+    <br>
+    THE MIND OF THE WRITER
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">I had</span> been writing ten years before I discovered the
+amazing capacity even the ordinary mind has for
+creating from experience and memory, and that its
+powers of production are limited only by one’s
+courage to think, and by the amount of physical
+strength and endurance one can afford to spend on
+the performance. After the ‘Circuit Rider’s Wife’
+was written I was in the gravest state of anxiety lest
+I should never muster the material for another book.</p>
+
+<p>About this time I met an old friend who now holds
+the chair of metaphysics in one of our great universities.
+I may have given some intimation of my
+despairing state. In any case, he instructed me in
+the laws governing mind. He drew a diagram of
+my mind on a piece of paper and showed me how
+it worked. I had only one consolation as I studied
+this thing—that he did not know or suspect the
+thoughts I was thinking about him at that moment.
+They were not complimentary.</p>
+
+<p>I rejected his theory, but I could not get the picture
+of his infernal diagram out of my mind. Every
+time I sat down to work at my desk, I could see the
+lines and segments of my mind on that piece of
+paper and the dot where a thought would probably
+appear. The result was a hysteria of self-consciousness
+mentally which made thinking impossible.
+Quite by accident that great student hit upon the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span>method of obstructing thought. The mind turned
+like a worm on itself!</p>
+
+<p>In my opinion it is wiser not to fumble with this
+delicate piece of machinery, no matter how much you
+may find out by tearing it to pieces. What I know
+is that he who peeps at his mind will never have
+the use of it. It is wiser to leave not only your mind
+but your gender severely alone if you hope to do
+good spirit-level thinking. It would not surprise me
+at all if these were not the bonds which do somehow
+bind us to God, to be accepted, but not understood.</p>
+
+<p>After all is said and done and taught that we can
+possibly learn from others, every man faces his own
+problems and solves them the best way he can. The
+lawyer learns law, then he practices law according to
+the bias of his own mind and character. Maybe he
+is a shyster. Maybe he has an honest legal sense.
+It all depends on the kind of man he is. The same
+thing is true about the physician. After a while he
+gets his own mental habits of diagnosing our complaints
+and diseases. If his mind catches and holds
+some fixed idea about neurasthenic tendencies, apt
+as not he will diagnose your case accordingly, although
+you may be having fits on account of an
+ulcer in the stomach. In any case, he finally works
+out a system of favorite prescriptions. Then he fits
+us to his medicines, and his methods as he grows
+older, no matter how new our disease may be. He
+cannot help it. His mind has made him and it is too
+old, inelastic, to add another cubit to his wisdom or
+courage as a physician. If you are about to become
+a patient, the risks are six of one and half a dozen of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span>the other whether you choose a young doctor in the
+experimental stage of his practice or this old one
+who has settled down in his methods, because they
+are reasonably successful and rarely ever result in
+your death.</p>
+
+<p>Preachers are the same way. They see God according
+to their lights, make sermons until they exhaust
+their vision. Then they go on preaching this
+same body of thought as long as they live under
+various texts from the Scriptures.</p>
+
+<p>I am wondering how a literary critic would go
+about reviewing the mind of an author instead of
+his book. He would probably decline the assignment.
+He is a judge of the material, the copy a
+writer produces, but he is no mental mechanic to
+pass judgment upon the amazing motor of our
+faculties. The best he could do would be to write an
+illuminating essay upon the times in which an author
+lived; the effect, by inference, of that particular
+period of civilization upon his work; whether he was
+well and in good circumstances, or wrote under the
+pressure of ill-health and poverty.</p>
+
+<p>But none of these circumstances would account
+for the main fact that he became an author instead
+of, say, a fishmonger or a banker. The great majority
+of poor people or sick people never take it out on the
+world by writing books. Neither does their state of
+health determine their literary style or their choice
+of material to convert into copy. Robert Louis
+Stevenson was an invalid, suffering from an incurable
+malady. By all the laws governing such a
+life he was due to die early without accomplishing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span>anything. But he sat up in bed and wrote the healthiest,
+most entrancing stories of his times, and died
+later.</p>
+
+<p>The mind is something else, not us. It is an instrument
+set up in us, controlled by spiritual forces
+which reach it through the medium of our emotions.
+It can be well and powerful when we are weak and ill.
+‘By my spirit,’ thus also sayeth such a man. On the
+other hand, the mind is frequently ill to the point
+of dissolution when we are enjoying perfect health.
+Witness the sickly slime copy produced by a decadent
+writer who may be an athlete physically.
+‘By my spirit,’ also says such a man who has adopted
+his powers and principalities of darkness. My notion
+is that it is a choice between spirits which determines
+the quality of your thinking, but not the power with
+which you can do it. That, I suppose, is the personal
+equation in the whole phenomenon and would
+depend upon the strength of your emotions and the
+capacity of your mental motor.</p>
+
+<p>It is not for me to venture into the realm of metaphysics
+with my cheerful, flat-footed ignorance of
+this subject, but I am now writing the record of
+my own mind in relation to my work as an author
+merely from experience. The conclusions I have
+reached in this manner may be erroneous from the
+standpoint of the professional students. But I have
+frequently erred with the happiest practical results
+in my own living and achieving.</p>
+
+<p>I remember being very much upset upon learning
+that poetry, religion, and sex animation were all
+products of the same emotional reactions. This was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span>a serious matter. If I could not dispose of it in a
+manner satisfying to my mental and moral platform
+in living, it would take the luster off my thoughts
+and render me some sort of automaton in spiritual
+consciousness. You are not really the author of a
+thought which splashes up like spray from a wave
+of emotion which has its origin in sex. This information
+was too diminishing. Also, I prefer to believe
+in God, not because of my sex, even if I was of the
+other sex, but because I have a spiritual consciousness
+which only the idea of Providence can
+satisfy.</p>
+
+<p>Still, I had a squeamish feeling that we probably
+were made precisely by this economical pattern,
+one emotion carrying all our sensations; thrift in
+expenses being one of the axioms in creation as I
+have observed it.</p>
+
+<p>Any sensible person must have reached the same
+conclusion I reached, provided he did not consult
+too many learned authorities, but stuck like a leech
+to his Scriptures, which was something like this:
+By nature, delicacy, and decency, by all prayers,
+every hope and noble ambition, the sensations of sex
+are so mixed in us with the highest emotions of
+religion, eloquence, and every sublime imagination
+that we have been for ages the parents of spiritually
+minded beings instead of brutes.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose this was the only way to insure such a
+phenomenon in an apparently physical and carnal
+world. We are thus born convinced of immortality
+by that admirable device of the Almighty. I am
+ready to stretch a neck ahead of the current animal
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span>propaganda concerning sex and contend that it is
+probably the basic principle of the instinct we have
+of immortality. How else does the lowest type of
+savage also arrive at faith in God and keep company
+with ghosts and spirits? Superstition is the name
+we apply to that, when it may be a much sounder,
+though more elemental, faith than we have ourselves.
+In any case, how do you account for the
+character of his superstitions or for his ability to
+produce them at all? He has no Bible, no literature,
+neither theologians nor scholars to direct his mental
+processes. But he has his emotions. He is some kind
+of stick-in-the-mud poet, and he arrives at the idea
+of God because he is a man. A dog cannot do it,
+though he has the same procreating instinct, but is
+not informed with the spiritual sense.</p>
+
+<p>These conclusions have given me great satisfaction
+as a writer. I am never embarrassed if a
+particularly entrancing thought comes to me. I do
+not attribute it to the inspirations of my gender, but
+to the spiritual quality of the mind produced by
+gender in general, if you will have it so, not that I
+am personally disposed to dig down to the rudiments
+of my thoughts. Some mysteries are sacred so long
+as they are hidden, but shocking when they are
+exposed. It seems to me that the tendency of our
+times is to suspect sex of something which is really
+good, but that we are inclined to make something
+bad of what we suspect.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXVII">
+    XXVII
+    <br>
+    DO YOU WANT TO WRITE?
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">I should</span> be slow to advise the most gifted person to
+enter the literary profession. It is a life of infinite
+labor and hardship. The rewards are commensurate
+if you win them. But comparatively few who
+strive to enter in do so. Nobody lacks the sense to
+write, I believe; but most people lack the intuition,
+that hidden truth out of which romance and poetry
+and all literary illusions are made.</p>
+
+<p>Very few people who read books know or suspect
+the literary casualties in an author’s life. The most
+successful, as the least renowned of us, suffer amazing
+losses in labor and a corresponding depreciation
+in self-confidence. You may buy a seat on the stock
+exchange, get a ticker and do business there according
+to your own secret information about the market.
+But you cannot buy a seat among the editors in this
+country if you are a writer. Neither can you discover
+the ticker in their mind which determines the
+worth and unworthiness of your copy. They also
+are taking a chance with the public which reads. It
+is a fickle public, apt to change its mind any time.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is less profitable than to study a magazine
+with reference to producing copy peculiar to it.
+You are almost sure to make the mistake of writing
+something similar to the article or story you have
+studied, when your common sense should warn you
+that the editor will not want to repeat that dose.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span>You have been subtly guilty of a repetition of the
+motive back of the story you took for a pattern,
+which is reason enough to expect that the thing will
+be refused.</p>
+
+<p>An editor must have a kaleidoscopic mind. He
+cannot tell you with any degree of accuracy what
+he wants, because he does not know very far in advance
+what his readers want. But he can tell you
+as quick as a flash what he does not want, because
+he has more past experience than you can imagine
+to guide him in rejecting unavailable copy.</p>
+
+<p>The best bet, I discovered long ago, was to find
+out what was true and vital in the experience of the
+greatest number of people and to write that. As a
+rule it is so old and elemental as to have become
+identical with them, like a man’s ribs. He rarely
+ever thinks of them. There is such a body of
+thought and emotion in all of us of which we no
+longer speak. We have lost the words to do so. But
+when we see them written out it is as if we had recovered
+some dearer speech of ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>The language we use is for the obvious, the things
+we do and say, or for the impressions we wish to
+make upon others. We have ten thousand dialogues
+for lovers, a considerable vocabulary for speaking
+piety and eloquence, and we are not short on narrative
+sentences; but I challenge any man to prove
+that it is easy to tell in words what is going on in
+his mind which is peculiar to him and not to be told.
+He is thinking them in the same way he breathes to
+live—by way of being mentally conscious. He is
+registering himself in every emotion, motive, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span>desire faster than these mental sensations can be
+translated into words.</p>
+
+<p>Language is artificial. We only use it to be heard,
+or to be seen in the written word, or when we are so
+moved that we are practically talking to ourselves.
+The greater part of the thinking we do is so mixed
+with feeling that it is like a circulatory system of
+consciousness, therefore the only absolutely veracious
+mental versions of what we really are.</p>
+
+<p>To set down as much of this copy of us as possible
+has been my particular business as an author. It
+requires a sort of loving cunning in the use of words
+which has been the most fascinating feature of my
+work. Mere words will not do. They must convey
+the color, charm, and pulse of life. They must have
+a private twinkle of wit in them that makes a good-natured
+noise like laughter through the keyhole of
+the reader’s mind. If you take pains, make every
+one count like a stroke in the picture of a secret
+trait which is peculiar to all of us, the individual
+reader gets the same shock of surprise that he would
+have if his mother had been eavesdropping his mind.
+It makes him nervous, wondering how much else she
+has heard.</p>
+
+<p>As to that, it is like seeing God; you cannot do it
+without being pure in heart. So I doubt if we could
+interpret the secret hearts of men and women without
+feeling very close to them in love and sympathy.
+My observation of meaner-minded people is that
+they never really understand other people, only
+what is evil or potentially evil in them. I reckon it is
+a blessed provision of Providence that we only see
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span>through the glass darkly when our deeds are evil.
+Otherwise the wicked would have a frightful advantage
+over the innocent and good.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most profitable experiments I make
+along this line is to write out good impulses peculiar
+to people who are not good, but have a perpetual
+hankering after their might-have-been virtues.</p>
+
+<p>They invariably rise like woefully undone children
+to the bait. I get a batch of letters from sinners the
+moment such a paragraph picture of their futile
+goodness appears in print. Some of them very smart
+and bitter, but feeling that soothing plaster I have
+laid on the wounds their sins have made in them.
+Others are low in the dust. They do not expect to
+rise. Still, they want me to know they have enjoyed
+the relief of a few tears on their cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>I do think this is a dear thing about men, even
+the worst of them—how they will confess their
+tears of grief or regret to a woman in whom they
+believe or whose confidence they desire to win. If
+she is an elderly person with some wisdom of their
+sex, she knows that these are histrionic tears, shed to
+move her. Still, it is an artless sort of compliment
+they pay her good old simplicity. But if we should
+tell how many men and which men we have seen
+weep, the world would never believe us! The poor
+things are driven to it as we are driven to little
+hysterical manifestations with our dearer men which
+we should never try to put over on another woman.
+Before other men they must play the part of pride,
+strength, and courage, even if they have no such
+attributes; but once in so often the last of them will
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span>break down before one of us, quiver his chin and let
+his tears flow, because he knows that we know he is
+really a child who never grows up, begging for cake
+when he is a boy and for sympathy when he is a man.</p>
+
+<p>Very few lost and undone women ever show up,
+but now and then one comes in a letter, lays her
+head on my Circuit Rider’s Widow’s knees and
+whispers that she remembers when she felt like that,
+referring to some paragraph, say, in ‘My Book and
+Heart.’ This is as near as one of them ever comes to
+admitting that she no longer has the right to feel
+like that. And none of them ever sign their names.
+Thus they let you know they do not expect an answer.
+It is their sad way of walking like ghosts for a
+few lines close to what they believe is a kind heart.</p>
+
+<p>It must be fearful not to be good if you are a
+woman, because you never can forgive yourself,
+while a man can and will do so with the least encouragement
+from you. If the woman he loves
+shrives him, he will rise up and strut like a spiritual
+peacock without ever taking the trouble to lay his
+case before the Lord in prayer. He is the greatest
+economist in contrition the world ever saw.</p>
+
+<p>But when you think about it, this only goes to
+prove how transparent they are. I am by men as I
+am by the more occult Scriptures—they are not
+difficult to understand if you have the right mind
+toward them, not antagonistic or suspicious.</p>
+
+<p>But I am always careful never to let one know I
+am reading him. Nothing upsets a man so quickly
+as to realize that you are seeing him maneuver in and
+out of sight behind the lines of the rôle he is reciting
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span>so well to you. He is offended. He takes his leave
+of you like a puppy with its tail between its legs, or
+he goes off with a prideful stride. Presently he tells
+somebody that he does not like that woman. But
+he does. He simply dislikes the glimpse he had of
+himself mirrored in her old Sea-of-Galilee mind.</p>
+
+<p>I never answer such letters. Let them read Paul’s
+epistles! But I do feel closer kin to them than one
+ever does to the comfortable saints or to the brazenly
+virtuous.</p>
+
+<p>When you have been a mother and known such
+richness of hovering love as that, after you are childless
+the wings of your heart do feel strangely empty.
+I have sometimes considered adopting a bunch of
+bad grown-up children and starting them all over at
+their A B C’s of morals and decencies. But it would
+never do. This whole countryside would be working
+presently with runaway children. I have a vague
+suspicion that I am not an easy person to live with.
+I have a hot and heady temper, and exacting standards
+acquired in these lonely hills where there is no
+world to obstruct or soften my convictions about
+what is right or wrong, and about the exceedingly
+early hour when dutiful people should get up and
+go about their tasks. As the stepmother of sinners
+I might be rather terrible in my manifestations.
+Besides, I could not love them as a real mother
+loves. I should lack that essential wisdom in dealing
+with them. So I have abandoned the idea, except to
+think about it.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXVIII">
+    XXVIII
+    <br>
+    EXPRESSING ONE’S SELF
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Personally</span>, I do not think so much of self-expression
+as a noble yearning. I would not go so far
+as to suggest that it is a wave of feminine psychosis;
+but the suspicion grows in my mind that it may be a
+sort of hysteria peculiar to that class of people who
+have boastful souls and considerable mortal vanity,
+neither of which can be financed by the finer art of
+living privately. We notice it in women now, as we
+do other symptoms which were formerly characteristic
+only of men. Job had a notable case of it. He
+fretted his wife until at last she lost patience with his
+groaning vanity about his integrity and advised him
+to curse God and die. Carlyle made his wife miserable
+while he expressed himself like a winged leviathan
+in ‘Sartor Resartus.’ It is easier to write an
+epic than to live your own life becomingly with no
+audience to cheer the performance. Therefore we
+are a trifle long on epics and short on achieving a
+good record of ourselves in secret. Women have at
+last become infected with this disorder of the mind,
+a pathetic desire to cast themselves on the wide
+screen of the world in some rôle of self-expression.</p>
+
+<p>My mail has been laden with letters from them
+for years asking advice about how to do it. They
+are either distracted spinsters or married women
+who are childless and unhappy. Their homes and
+their husbands have got on their nerves. They are
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span>the pseudo heroines of their own sorrows, futile
+egotists in tears who wish to publish their tears in a
+book. They have only a martyr illusion of themselves
+and no sense at all of other people. They are
+totally lacking in that quality of the medium without
+which there is no such thing as a truthful interpretation
+of any life. God himself could not teach
+such a woman to write an honest sentence about
+herself, much less her husband, concerning whom
+she is determined to reveal the worst.</p>
+
+<p>Recently a mean little wife with a soul-pulling use
+of words sent in a long account of her grievances.
+She had married beneath her own position in life.
+Her husband was an honest man, but not—oh, not
+a gentleman! He did not understand or appreciate
+her. He was cruel, contemptuous, and overbearing.
+Judging by the way she praised herself, it was easy
+to infer that she was one of those women who make
+a damnable use of their virtues and would not lend
+one for any consideration to her husband. I suppose
+she wore that sad accusative look which provokes
+the worst in any man. She felt that it might relieve
+the tension if she could find some means of self-expression
+and she wanted advice about writing the
+revelations of her married life.</p>
+
+<p>On account of being partly Irish, I am not always
+able to resist the temptation to use the shillalah of
+my wit upon these little Judases.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do not write the record of your wrongs,’ I advised
+her; ‘but meet your husband with a smile the
+next time he comes in and strike him over the head
+with some blunt instrument. He will probably
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span>clean you up, which is precisely what you need.
+This will much more quickly relieve your nervous
+tension than writing a book, which is a drastic
+business and very hard on the nerves, even when
+you tell the truth.’</p>
+
+<p>The women’s organizations have a less sensational
+way of cashing in these unhappy ones. They give
+them a task to perform in connection with their vast
+activities. They are doing everything, maintaining
+schools and clinics, they are lobbying for bills. They
+are the most rapacious collectors for charity on
+earth. They have their publicity departments and
+their propaganda. They are setting up monuments
+and preserving the memory of honorable men.
+They almost invariably do what they set out to do
+and they are the only corporations in this country
+that get their labor free of charge, that even collect
+dues from their workers—which will indicate the
+fierce passion in the women of our times to achieve
+worthy ends and to express themselves in honorable
+service before the world, whatever happens to their
+homes, husbands, and children.</p>
+
+<p>No one respects them more than I do, but a
+burned child is afraid of fire. For so many years I
+did not have the use of my own life. It was controlled
+entirely by the rules of the Methodist Church
+and limited by the adversities of a circuit-rider’s life.
+Never in this world would I yield it to the executive
+committee of any kind of woman’s board. I am
+a woman myself and know very well how much
+greater our talent is for governing others than the
+most despotic form of government founded by men.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span></p>
+
+<p>My idea is that the good little life, with no publicity
+screen in the background, leads with less confusion
+and certainly less embarrassment to peace
+and happiness.</p>
+
+<p>The theory is excellent and does me credit written
+out in words. But a master mind could never put
+into words the web I have spun upon it to ensnare
+my own life, liberty, and happiness.</p>
+
+<p>For years past I have felt my immortal spirit
+zooning in it like an insect with its legs tied. No
+woman ever longed for self-expression as I long now
+to escape from my own plan of happiness.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXIX">
+    XXIX
+    <br>
+    SITTING IN THE PUBLIC EYE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">I could</span> have been contented with intimate blessings.
+I do not remember ever to have craved a
+career. I do not now understand those who strive
+so brilliantly and senselessly for recognition, fame,
+and one sort of distinction or another.</p>
+
+<p>For me the career of an author was purely accidental
+and resulted from a desperate emergency. I
+have written all this out more particularly in another
+book, but while we are on this subject of careers and
+recognition I may as well set down now what I have
+to say about that.</p>
+
+<p>Anything you do, however well, which draws the
+world’s attention is a fearful thing, not to be lightly
+sought. And I do not refer in this connection to the
+competitive jealousies engendered by success, having
+had no experiences along this line. What I am
+trying to tell you is that with the rewards one earns
+in this business some right to live privately passes
+away. Your habitation may be divided from the
+crowded world by a thousand hills, but there are
+voluntary biographers in it who create the life they
+think you live back there. I could write much more
+entrancing legends about myself.</p>
+
+<p>I have an ambition to sit gracefully in the public
+eye, one hand resting on my desk, neatly littered
+with manuscript, and the other curled like a white
+lily across my breast. When you are posing thus in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span>your own mind it is disconcerting to learn that you
+are a country policeman, conscientious in the discharge
+of your duties. I respect policemen, but I
+should shrink from crowding into that profession.</p>
+
+<p>If you have written much testifying to your
+Christian faith, even if you do admit a somewhat
+crank-sided human nature, it is depressing to learn
+that you are an atheist smoking with bad doctrines.</p>
+
+<p>After that happened, I had no sooner retired behind
+that Scripture which says, ‘Blessed are ye,
+when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and
+say all manner of evil against you, for my sake ...
+for great is your reward in heaven’—and I am taking
+particular satisfaction in the dark intimation as
+to the probable nature of this reward—than I was
+startled by the report that I had become a Catholic.
+This is a compliment which I shall never deserve,
+even though I am totally lacking in Protestant
+animus against the Catholics. If you have been one
+of those certified widows so highly recommended in
+Paul’s epistle to Timothy it feels very queer to hear
+that you have been cutting a swath in the social
+life of Havana.</p>
+
+<p>Not everything you hear about yourself can be
+considered good publicity. And if you have delicate
+sensibilities, the currycomb of public imagination
+frequently rubs your vanities the wrong way.</p>
+
+<p>You can never choose your own duties or pastimes
+again. You must work at your thoughts.
+They hold you and compel you like voices calling to
+be heard.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes now I still feel the womanly instinct
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span>stirring in me to sew a fine seam. I want to lay a
+pattern on a piece of beautiful cloth, cut out something
+sweet and make it. I long to gather a ruffle
+with my fingers, pin one end of it down and scratch
+the gathers with my needle as I used to do long ago.
+But I never can do it. No time. No such cunning
+left now in my fingers. I have become a sewless
+woman.</p>
+
+<p>When it is a fine, large, perfectly rounded day,
+with the sun shining and all the leaves talking in the
+wind and a faint perfume of woodland flowers floats
+in through the window like an invitation, I would
+give much to cast my pen far from me and follow it
+out and away to the deep green valleys where these
+blossoms bloom. But I cannot take the day off. I
+must stay here and write down the things my mind
+makes believe. No real blossoms, only the things I
+know—so little, compared with what the trees tell
+and the river sings, if you know how to listen.</p>
+
+<p>Every author knows what I mean. We become
+the slaves of our thoughts that must be written
+before they fade into forgetfulness.</p>
+
+<p>Invitations to speak upon public occasions are
+among my most grievous embarrassments. Why is
+it inferred that one is or can be a public speaker because
+she has written a book? Writing is a very
+private business. I do not know any other occupation
+which requires so much privacy unless it is a
+life of prayer or a life of crime.</p>
+
+<p>During these many years with a bee in my bonnet
+and a pen in my hand I have practically lost my
+oral faculties. I cannot scintillate on a rostrum.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span>The flare of so many faces would put out my light.
+I am accustomed to work in the presence of three
+open-eyed windows which look upon a wide green
+forest. Much motion and life out there, but complete
+and magnificent indifference to the mortal
+mind in here struggling with the adverb of an idea.</p>
+
+<p>I am not apologizing, you understand, for not
+being able to live up to this side demand of a literary
+reputation. I am simply telling what happens to
+one not anxious to dine on her own fame in a public
+place. Many people will not believe an author
+shrinks from committing this act of sublimated
+cannibalism, because so many of them do it, especially
+the English writers imported by our women’s
+clubs. But I cannot be made to believe they enjoy
+the performance. One must have spent a while
+in England, realized how repressed their enthusiasms
+are, for Americans to understand how these
+speakers must suffer from our goggle-eyed reverence
+for their voice culture, their outrageous pronunciations
+and their perfectly exquisite intellectuality.
+Nothing, I believe, but a sense of financial duty to
+themselves brings them to us.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile women are now the best public speakers
+in this country. They have something to say,
+and they are saying it with charm and courage.
+Heaven forbid that I should ever expose my old ruminating
+mind among them on the stage! What I
+mean is this: When you write you may take infinite
+time and patience to say what you want to say.
+You write in ten different ways. You reface it and
+begin again and again until the breathless, speechless
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span>idea you had lives and shines. This is how slow
+the pen-traveling mind may be; but try fumbling
+the ball of your thought like that before an audience
+and see what happens to you! The reporters
+would be justified in publishing the news that you
+had a stroke which rendered you practically inarticulate
+soon after you began your address.</p>
+
+<p>As for preparing an address and delivering it with
+your eyes and spectacles fixed upon the page instead
+of the audience, I know this is intolerable, for
+I have been in many an audience on similar occasions
+and it has frequently occurred to me that
+the offending person might have chosen something
+much better from a book to read.</p>
+
+<p>That which so many people strive to win must be
+a good thing, but I am simply telling you what
+fame costs. Once you grow accustomed to being
+famous, you do not realize it, but you are never
+quite your humble, honest self. No matter how tight
+you keep the lid on, there is some watered stock of
+vanity inside. You are always in danger of the
+thing’s coming off and of giving yourself an air or
+two. No man or woman was ever so distinguished
+that this exhibition did not make him ridiculous,
+especially to those of meaner minds.</p>
+
+<p>But the final and most depressing part comes in
+the evening of your great day when you are no longer
+great. Your career has ended. Fame fades like a
+withered rose in your hair, and you are forgotten
+even if your works are not. Other writers, whom
+you naturally feel are not doing so well, are popping
+up in the public eye.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span></p>
+
+<p>I am still sufficiently able-bodied in my mind and
+spirit not to notice the crowding forward of these
+youngsters; but I have a sort of presentiment that
+after a while, when I am no longer strong enough
+to practice nobility of mind, it is going to hurt
+some to do without the praise and admiration they
+get. I am dreading the time when I shall be so
+lonely, so much in need of a little recognition that I
+may be anxious to accept an invitation to sit on the
+stage behind the speaker of the evening.</p>
+
+<p>I can feel myself like a pain sitting up there, very
+old and gray, maybe a little soft in my head, but so
+pleased to be present and face foremost to the
+audience! I am waiting for the speaker to conclude
+his oration and for the applause meant for him to
+die down. I am hoping like a poor old hungry child
+that a few people in the audience will recognize
+me as the author of ‘A Circuit Rider’s Wife,’ or
+the woman who wrote ‘My Book and Heart’ many
+years ago. I am all in a flutter lest no one press
+forward through the crowd about the speaker and
+clasp me by my old palsied hand to say how glad
+he is to see me, and how well I am looking—not a
+day older! How do I manage to keep so young? And
+he will never forget when this or that circuit-rider
+story came out. And how he loves ‘My Book and
+Heart’! Maybe he has just read it all over again.
+I shall be hoping he will say something like that.
+Meanwhile I am glowing with childish pleasure at
+this spoofing, but trying to maintain the air of
+dignity I used to have when I really was myself.</p>
+
+<p>Heavens, how I do despise those people, now in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span>the strength of their years, who look with contempt
+or indifference upon the old children we become!</p>
+
+<p>This is the lightning of fate already flashing in my
+sky. For I have observed the weather at the end of
+more than one distinguished career. It rarely ever
+is very warm and bright. You have outgrown the
+normal mediocre sense of yourself, and you are no
+longer able to keep up the intellectual expenses of
+your reputation as a famous person.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXX">
+    XXX
+    <br>
+    ON LAYING DOWN YOUR LIFE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">I doubt</span> if the best people live their own lives. They
+make themselves the shield and buckler of another’s
+life, or they are the foundations of peace and security
+upon which many lives are built.</p>
+
+<p>What impresses me is that they seem to pass
+beyond the reach of any rewards. They lose the
+capacity to receive or to shine. If the most devoted
+mother survives the sacrifices she has made, it is
+with pathetically folded hands, as the spectator of
+the brilliant careers of her sons and daughters. I
+suppose mothers get some sort of half joy out of
+being merely present; but even that is sacrificial,
+for they are not puffed up over establishing these
+young ones; they are simply rejoicing in their
+success. Something has happened to them, they are
+tragically emptied of self and cannot share the lives
+they have made.</p>
+
+<p>It is the same way with preachers, priests, prophets,
+all that class of men who spend themselves
+for others—they lose the capacity to live. They
+are those good, quiet shadows in the background
+everywhere, strangely contented with your fame or
+your prosperity, not neglected, but used up.</p>
+
+<p>We are very good about making them the objects
+of our benefits. We get them out and show them off
+now and then for conscience’ sake, but they never
+really enjoy the parade except to be in our reflected
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span>glory. They are dead to themselves, which is being
+dead indeed.</p>
+
+<p>Just practice laying down your life for others and
+see what happens to you! These others will take it,
+strengthened by you, and go on about their affairs.
+I have never seen that Scripture fulfilled in this
+world which reads, ‘For whosoever will save his
+life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for
+my sake the same shall find it’; so it must be fulfilled
+in the world to come, which is a long way off and
+very mysterious, geographically speaking.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes when I am very low in my mind I get
+a feeling of terror about the Word. So many Scriptures
+read like laws every whit as merciless as those
+which control life in the natural world. All that
+lives has been and must be fertilized by that decay
+provided by death. Every flower fades, every leaf
+falls to enrich the soil for next year’s leaves and
+blossoms. Must we also lay down our lives forever
+and ever as living sacrifices that those who come
+after us shall be stronger and wiser to win what we
+missed of life and happiness? Is no mercy to be
+shown to the very good? Must they wait to be
+raised from the dust of all things to receive their
+rewards?</p>
+
+<p>Such thinking makes me nervous and a trifle
+indignant about the way those people who do not
+lay down their lives seem to flourish more than we
+do who have served long sentences in that wearying
+position.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know how it may be with women of other
+sections, but in this part of the country if you do
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span>your own work something goes out of you; not
+virtue—you are likely to multiply frightfully in
+virtues—but that bright, fluttering grace of the
+spirit more becoming to us than all the nobler attributes
+folds up and disappears. No matter how
+conscientious she is about setting aside a certain
+part of each day to improve herself and to keep up
+with her husband’s times—I never knew one to
+keep up her music—music is one of the things that
+go out of her—she cannot do it. She is so busy doing
+her duty she falls fatally behind his times if he is
+a man who marches with them. I do not know why
+this is so, but it is probably a feminine geographical
+phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p>This is a blessed and glorified land; there is a
+fragrant inertia in our climate suitable more particularly
+for the production of the sweetly sitting inspirational
+woman. She does not need to know so
+much in the way of mere learning in order to be
+placidly wise. The dust down here is an alluvial
+soil, humanly speaking; it has been warmed and
+brightened for so many ages by the sun, the perfume
+of so many flowers has sunk into it, the sorrows
+and misfortunes of a great people have sanctified it.
+My feeling is that it has a cultural quality which
+must be got through higher education and the most
+poignant mental exercises in the other sections where
+it has been spewed up into hoarfrost for a corresponding
+number of ages, stauncher dust, but not
+by nature so pleasant when raised, say, into an able
+citizen, a strong ballot-bearing woman. Therefore
+it is not so important for our women to exercise
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span>these rights in order to save the country as it is for
+the abler types in other sections. All they need is
+two or three of the neater virtues, a prayer capacity
+in faith, a kind and forgiving heart—and the right
+look on their faces, effulgent, without being offensively
+intelligent. I am not one of these, I weep to
+confess, but I have known such women all my life,
+as one is acquainted with certain private blessings
+not shared by the world at large. But I have never
+known one of them who did all her own work—a
+noble service diminishing to such a woman.</p>
+
+<p>No matter how correct the pattern of her frock
+is, or how good her manners are, or how sensible her
+conversation is, I have never been in the company
+of one who performed these tasks without becoming
+immediately aware of the fact, a sort of uneasiness,
+as if her shoe was pinching her foot. Her seams are
+too straight. Her draperies do not flow, however
+voluminous they are. Her eye has a measuring gaze.
+She feels like the two-edged sword of a just woman
+made perfect regarding me. Or at the very moment
+when I am about to confer the bright splash of a
+thought upon her, my light is put out by the realization
+that her mind has skipped back home to
+make sure she did not leave the top off the soda jar
+and did lock the kitchen door.</p>
+
+<p>I am not complaining of her, you understand; I
+am endeavoring to compliment her upon her merits.
+She has all the virtues and you have only your grace
+in words, a fluttering heart and a mind that climbs
+her like a clinging vine in conversation. You must
+lean to her because she will not bend to you. She
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span>has lost some graceful elasticity of the spirit. You
+cannot clasp fingers with one of her thoughts and fly
+up on an idea and share opinions with her. She is
+pickling her opinions. You can frequently smell the
+vinegar of her mind boiling. At such moments I
+have become so enfeebled spiritually as to be momentarily
+deprived of my soul. I am of the earth
+earthy, due entirely, I suppose, to the effect her
+obvious worth has upon my stricken conscience.</p>
+
+<p>But I am not alone in these sensations, only more
+vocative about them. I have observed her carefully;
+she is widely depressing.</p>
+
+<p>I have known such a woman to go abroad, spend
+a year studying art in all the galleries of Europe,
+come home, deliver a lecture on the masterpieces
+she has seen and fatigue her audience to the brink
+of tears. One must be a person in order to entertain
+other persons, and she had lost that touch of Nature
+which makes us kin whether we are kind or not.
+She is a grammarian of duties, and a recitation of
+culture if she invades that field. Nothing illuminating
+sticks to her, nothing softening can happen to
+her mentally.</p>
+
+<p>Some instinct for liberty warned me from the
+beginning to avoid the fate of these unfortunate
+best-of-all women. I have been very busy for forty
+years, but in my hardest circuit-rider days I never
+would do all of my own work; only so much of it as
+could not possibly be avoided. Even then I was
+careful not to put my whole mind on it. If I had to
+wash dishes, I always spat enough wit through the
+kitchen door at Lundy, even if he was in the uttermost
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span>parts of the parsonage, to draw his fire and
+thus divorce my attention from the clatter in the
+dish pan. Whatever else happens to me, I will
+never do my own work. If it comes to that, I will
+escape the disaster to my soul by having no works.
+Dishes and laundry are not mentioned in the Scriptures,
+therefore they are not obligatory. I will let
+my faith praise me rather than my doughnuts.</p>
+
+<p>In recording this scandalous moral limitation I
+am simply exposing to view the kind of mind I have,
+knowing well how many better women will take a
+shot at it. Let them bang away. I would rather
+have my reputation as a domestic animal riddled
+than to have my dearer faculties destroyed by a
+flatiron or dishwater. No one was ever more reduced
+in poverty than I have been, not one a more considerate
+or obedient wife. But I managed to remain
+a wife, never the mere servant of my husband. If
+you must do it, make the business brief and forgetful.
+Give him a balanced ration and leave every
+man to iron his own shirt, would be my motto, even
+if I went to the field with him afterwards and
+ploughed a furrow by way of reciprocity. The idea
+is to keep in with your husband at whatever cost.
+It works out better in the long run than making a
+pig of him at the table and a tyrant of him in the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>The disposition to do that is a senseless weakness
+in devoted women. Added to their domestic pride,
+it accounts for the enormous labor now necessary in
+the conducting of a home and the entertainment of
+guests.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span></p>
+
+<p>I am writing this record, however, to prove that
+the keeping of virtues and those attributes becoming
+to what you think is your nobler nature is an expensive
+business, and places you within grasping
+range of everybody doing business with you who has
+no such vainglorious sense of himself to serve.</p>
+
+<p>I have never found that it pays in any worldly
+sense to be outrageously and unscrupulously upright
+in my dealings. The question is whether the
+inward foundations one lays that cannot be swept
+away by earthly misfortunes make up for the losses
+one sustains. I do not know. I sometimes suffer a
+very strong temptation to take an inferior’s under-hold
+upon a person who thinks I am an easy mark
+and pull off the deal according to his standards in
+business, not mine, just to learn how it feels to win
+that way. This, however, is a puerile temptation.
+My habits are established. I have no practice in
+shrewdness; only cunning enough not to experiment
+with my too-long-buried talent.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXXI">
+    XXXI
+    <br>
+    YOU MAKE YOURSELF
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">The</span> forces that create us pass away, whether they
+are parents, teachers, or books, and we are left at
+last to re-create ourselves in the image of our own
+minds. This was what happened to me after the
+death of my husband. The woman I was and the
+mind I had then faded into a sort of peaceful silence.
+I was not for a long time. I remember feeling
+strangely like a ghost, surrounded by the same
+friends, in the midst of familiar scenes, but not of
+them, removed by death as far, maybe, as he was
+from the mind and life I had with him. He had
+been my altar and my church, I discovered.</p>
+
+<p>From that day forth I escaped from the meekness
+of being merely a Methodist. I was Hagar going off
+into the wilderness with my own Bible, leaving behind
+me forever the Abraham and Rebecca brethren
+and sisters of the established order. I was in danger
+of raising up the very Ishmael of a mind against
+them. But this passed. By nature I am short on
+vindictiveness. I am not even respectable at this
+point. I have known myself to relax and forgive
+people whom I doubt if the Lord will ever forgive.
+They seem to pass out of my thoughts like shadows
+that obscure the light.</p>
+
+<p>This happened later. Directly after Lundy’s
+death I was a very dangerous person, quite mad
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span>with the pain and horror of what had happened to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>I have a vivid picture of myself at this time one
+day in my darkened house. I am sitting outrageously
+straight, pale and wan in my black dress, but not
+bowed down or weeping as a widow should be. And
+I am being visited by a great preacher in our church
+who has come to pray with me, to the end that I
+shall find the grace to forgive certain brethren who
+used my husband despitefully in his last days. But
+I refuse to kneel or to pray or forgive these men.
+Let God do it, I told him, since the Lord only knows
+how and when to pardon us. I left them terribly in
+His hands and sat with mine neatly folded, while
+this prince of the Church parted his coat tails and
+fairly shook the shadows of that sad place with his
+petition in my behalf. Then he arose, faced about,
+and stared at me.</p>
+
+<p>‘Their sins be upon their own heads,’ I retorted,
+feeling very pale and weak, but tearless and determined.</p>
+
+<p>I may have referred to this incident in another
+place, but I am copying it here to indicate that as
+soon as that I was stripping my mind of religious
+sentimentality and assuming a sensible relation to
+the Lord, who believes profoundly in punishing
+wickedness even if a good man commits it.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after this I had an assignment from the
+editor of ‘The Saturday Evening Post’ to go abroad
+and write a series of articles about the women of the
+Old World.</p>
+
+<p>I was seriously ill at the time, depleted in mind
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span>and body; but I accepted the commission, as a
+gambler takes a bet, without giving the editor the
+least intimation about my physical condition. You
+cannot be overscrupulous in dealing with editors
+without queering your own game. Very few of them
+will arrange with a sick man to do a long piece of
+work. My idea is to keep my word with them if I
+die for it, and to leave them to take all the other
+risks. Even at that I have been obliged to deny
+myself the vanity of making many contracts with
+them on account of knowing that I can write just
+so many words a day, and that there are only three
+hundred and sixty-five days in a year. Which is as
+much as I am capable of morally in my relations
+with them.</p>
+
+<p>On my way home, after making this arrangement,
+it occurred to me that I would stop over at Dr.
+Howard Kelly’s hospital in Baltimore and find out
+exactly how ill I was; not that this would make any
+difference in my plans to go abroad, but I wanted to
+get some idea of the odds in my own body against
+this achievement.</p>
+
+<p>Doctor Kelly was positive that I was in no condition
+to go. I was a very sick person. If I persisted
+in this undertaking, he predicted that I would be
+brought home feet foremost, which in my opinion
+is a very dull way to arrive.</p>
+
+<p>I sailed two weeks later, stirred around for six
+months among the women in the various countries
+of Europe and wrote my impressions of them.
+Those articles would read now as old daguerreotypes
+look of a far former generation. Some of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span>great ones whom I met then are dead, like Frau
+Cower of Berlin. I doubt if she would be great now
+if she were living. Women have changed the definition
+of their greatness since then. She was a neat,
+dim little old woman with a piece of lace pinned like
+a rosette on top of her gray hair. She had a patient,
+enlightened, philosophical mind about the future
+of her country women. The emperor reviewed his
+troops that very day in September of 1911, but I do
+not suppose Frau Cower had the least inkling of the
+terrible future already dawning for German women.
+My idea of her is that if she had known she would
+have skipped the Great War by the length of a century
+and gone on with her calculations as if that had
+been an interruption in destiny. She had a long-distance
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>Rosa Goldberg was the most notorious woman
+in Germany then, but not the most influential. If
+there was one with actual influence there at that
+time, it was Alice Soloman. I have often wondered
+what became of her. She had power and charm, a
+certain beautiful enthusiasm that made her effective
+with men. But Rosa was murdered. This was before
+the time when it was conceivable to deal so
+with even the worst of women in public life.</p>
+
+<p>Emma Goldman, a far worse woman, was quite
+the fashion in this country then. She had her
+disciples among a certain class of our decadent
+intellectuals, to say nothing of the great following
+in her own class. I remember her well, slouchily
+dressed, with a scrubwoman’s figure, black hair,
+straight and parted in the middle, black eyes, large
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span>and strong, that missed focusing on other women’s
+faces. Olive skin, flushed, thick, red lips, the lower
+one loose. She taught dishonor and deserved death,
+but worked like an evil worm at the foundation of
+our social order for twenty years before she was even
+banished. Which always seemed to me a futile sort
+of gesture, in view of the fact that immigrants are
+examined at Ellis Island for physical disorders and
+are rejected on account of having a pimple, but are
+permitted to enter with the most frightful diseases
+of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>The point about this first adventure I made
+abroad is that I survived it and came home head
+foremost in the business of living as usual.</p>
+
+<p>I have survived a number of physicians who predicted
+my death. It is not so difficult. You simply
+make up your mind not to die of your complaint,
+however fatal it sounds in the diagnosis, but to live
+according to your spirit as much as possible. I am
+not expecting to keep up the struggle indefinitely.
+This body is not so substantial as it used to be. The
+dear thing will drop off me some day like a worn-out
+garment. But I shall have got the last shred of wear
+and tear out of it. And I shall always remember in
+paradise what a brave chance I had in it to do and
+think and go about on my two feet, which in my
+present mortal state still seems a safer way of traveling
+than by wing.</p>
+
+<p>I do not pretend to be a grasping, discriminating
+student of the Bible. I have chosen from it what I
+need, but I cannot even claim to have read it through
+consecutively. Many enlightening passages may
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span>have escaped me, but I do not recall the portrait of
+a single saint with wings in the Scriptures. Elijah
+disappeared in a chariot of fire. Moses died like a
+disappointed man. When they reappeared in that
+cloud of witnesses, it was a cloud; nothing recorded
+of their wings. After Jesus was transfigured, He
+ascended into heaven. No need of wings.</p>
+
+<p>I think it is probably the mortal imaginations of
+our preachers and artists have added this doctrine
+of wings to saints, because they felt obliged to illustrate
+by the familiar symbol of feathers the <i lang="la">modus
+vivendi</i> of immortality to mortal minds. On the
+contrary, the one authoritative description of how
+we rise from the dust discreetly records that our
+corruption puts on incorruption and this body shall
+be raised a spiritual body. Only angels, those earlier
+messengers sent to men, are recorded as having
+wings. I do not suppose these beings ever were in
+the flesh. I doubt if they are of the same stuff we
+shall be. It would not surprise me if they turned out
+to be the mere birds of heaven, and that the saints
+will be stepping around as usual, very light on their
+feet, maybe, but wingless.</p>
+
+<p>I do not recommend this idea to others, but to me
+it is comforting. I have always felt the need of having
+something firm to rest upon, even when I tuck
+the head of my spirit beneath the wings of my imagination
+and pass into a heavenly reverie. I am psychologically
+opposed to being up in the mere air,
+here or hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>The minds we have make slaves of us. We build
+a city or take one. We make laws, establish our institutions
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span>and our covetousness in commerce. We call
+this a civilization; but it is nothing, no more than
+the dream of a transient world that never stands the
+tests of the great realities which remain unshaken in
+us beyond all our knowledge and powers assumed.
+It is invariably destroyed, blown away before the
+wind of some change in our minds. And we lie at
+last buried deep in the dust of our endeavors. But
+nothing sleeps in the dust. It must rise and live
+again. So do we come up from the dark wilderness
+of these disorders and start all over again after the
+pattern of our own minds. Another dream, in which
+men walk like somnambulists for centuries to the
+same doom of death and dust regardless of God, even
+when we call it a Christian civilization, missing the
+way, the truth, and the life as we did before.</p>
+
+<p>The importance we attach to the workings of the
+merely mortal mind seems to me to approach madness.
+If for one moment we could escape from the
+illusion created by our own faculties, we should perceive
+that we make of ourselves the fools of all
+creation. The sense to live is the only wit that really
+counts, and we have less of that than any other
+creature. We have only the sense to overcome,
+achieve, and to destroy. A flea knows where to hop,
+but we do not know. A dog knows the way home,
+but the smarter a man is the more likely he is to lose
+his way home. He can only think, believe, hope;
+but he does not know the simplest things that the
+beasts of the field never have to learn. He will drink
+from a pool that a thirsty ass will pass by because
+the ass knows the water is polluted.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span></p>
+
+<p>The very earth has more sense than we ever show.
+It is not inanimate, but contains and uses all the
+elements we call brains without having them incased
+as ours are in a small bone shell. The life that
+springs green and silent from its breast is more
+obedient to law than we are, and survives us. It
+knows a joy and peace in living that we never learn.
+We are foolish to think the trees are not wise because
+they do not speak.</p>
+
+<p>I have long suspected that the power of speech is
+not a power at all, but a mere form of hysteria from
+which the living that really know the truth never suffer
+because they do not fear life or death as we do and
+can afford to be calm and silent. The frailest flower
+that blooms knows that it will rise from the dead in
+the next season’s sun, breathe, feel again the dew
+and rain. Therefore these little ones make no such
+tragedy as we do of death. Their knowledge is
+better than our faith in immortality. We make a
+religion and an anguish of doubts about an incident
+which all Nature, every Scripture, and our own instincts
+prove is a senseless anxiety. We do live again
+in the spirit if the very dust rises again in myriad
+forms of beauty and strength.</p>
+
+<p>But no scientist would offer such evidence. He
+must think it out, when this is something which
+cannot be thought, but must be accepted as we take
+our breath from the air without arguing about it.
+And the very theologians will throw up their hands
+in pious horror at such an idea, give it a bad name
+like pantheism, as if this was the name of a peculiarly
+damnable heresy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span></p>
+
+<p>My notion is that it is not our heresies but our
+sins that damn us, and no Christian name we apply to
+them will save us. I am no pantheist; I am one of
+those humbler, more transient manifestations of the
+will of God. The grass outlives me, the rose outblooms
+in blossoms that praise Him better than
+mortal deeds, and I know the stars outshine me, no
+matter how immortal I am. As a spirit clothed in
+celestial light, I doubt if I should amount to more
+than one short beam in a universe filled with the
+brilliance of His glory.</p>
+
+<p>To me, it appears sillily egotistical to give ourselves
+such airs about being immortal. Everything
+else is. The very stones are fertile and furnish
+elements indispensable to life. We, indeed, are the
+only created forms of life that entertain trembling,
+despairing doubts about that. We are even stupid
+and narrow-minded when our lid comes off and we
+go insane. We stick to the beaten tracks of the mortal
+mind, no real imagination in our delusions. The
+asylums are filled with men and women who believe
+themselves to be kings and queens or some other
+great mortals. I have never heard of one who imagined
+himself a disembodied spirit. The nearest they
+ever come to that is by claiming to be disastrous
+prophets. I have never heard of one who had the
+glory of madness to believe himself a majestic oak or
+even a blade of grass. The nearest approach I recall
+was the poor young lunatic who thought he was a
+grain of corn and invariably took to his heels at the
+sight of a chicken. We show too many evidences of
+ignominy to give ourselves airs, sane or insane.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span></p>
+
+<p>If I should take leave of my senses while I am still
+in the flesh—for I do not expect to need such senses
+when I am finally in the spirit, any more than flowers
+take thought to bloom—I hope I shall swing out
+into a more becoming conceit than the notion that
+I am an article of diet suitable for a hen, or even the
+Queen of Sheba. I have my doubts about whether
+she was all she should have been, or she could not
+have been traipsing after a man with Solomon’s
+notorious reputation. My vanity would be better
+served with the delusion of being an ever-blooming
+rose. As it is, I suffer sometimes from the vague
+regret that I missed blooming at the right time, the
+weather of my years being inclement then and unsuited
+to mere happiness.</p>
+
+<p>But this record will prove that I had my delusions
+along with the rest of my kind, and that though
+time and experience destroy the dearest illusions, we
+do cling to the last to whatever delusion we adopt.
+It is a bondage of the mind which we work up and
+strengthen year by year until nothing remains but
+a terrible obedience.</p>
+
+<p>What amazes me now is the shrewdness with
+which I avoided various forms of bondage by which
+women are so frequently defeated in their pursuit of
+happiness.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXXII">
+    XXXII
+    <br>
+    THE LADY POLITICIAN
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Without</span> taking thought I have avoided the conscience
+of the modern woman, which is a very sensitive,
+diligent, and unhappy conscience. I seem to
+have lost step with my sex. No one honors more
+than I do the sincerity of their purpose to reform,
+improve, and save the world. But I mistrust their
+judgment. I particularly mistrust their power to
+achieve their own wills. We have always been
+dominated in mind and conduct by men. We have
+never been free moral agents, nor even immoral
+ones. Cast your eye about and you will always see
+the string some man pulls to move the puppet we
+are.</p>
+
+<p>However it may appear to others I do not know,
+but to me women seem to be more completely under
+the dominion of men than ever before. The difference
+is that formerly we were managed or mismanaged
+by our husbands and fathers; now it takes a
+whole political party to turn us about and use us for
+their honor and glory; but they do it. If any one
+calls attention to the amendments and laws we have
+been instrumental in getting on the statute books,
+I call your attention to the fact that the state of the
+individual woman is not changed. The wife signs
+away her property as usual if the husband needs it.
+The mothers have less influence than ever before
+upon the character and conduct of their sons. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span>only political influence they have is by adding themselves
+obediently in subordinate positions to the
+great political parties. Never were there so many
+handmaidens to politicians in this world. It is a less
+elevating service than being a down-trodden ‘widow
+indeed’ who was required to wash the feet of saints—presumably
+male saints. They are now atoms of
+public life, but men control public opinion. So watch
+the atoms spin.</p>
+
+<p>The trouble is we can pass no amendment to the
+Constitution that will change our own nature.</p>
+
+<p>How well I understand the predicament of that
+young woman delegate to the Democratic convention
+recently held in New York!</p>
+
+<p>No one will deny the frequent assertion made
+through the press that the women delegates in this
+convention were an admirable body of women, but
+those who are most familiar with the attributes of
+what men call admirable women will have their very
+grave doubts about whether they had any more to
+do than they were told with the final choice and
+nomination of John W. Davis as our presidential
+candidate, which was the very creditable performance
+of what appeared at one time to be a convention
+decidedly discreditable to the great party
+it represented.</p>
+
+<p>If the women in it had been equal to the emergency,
+they might at least have insisted upon a
+physical examination of the contending candidates.
+This would have eliminated some of the contestants
+quietly and decently, as we bury the dead, without
+so much scandal and with less than half the expense
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span>incurred in getting rid of them. Right now we do not
+know whether the livers and kidneys of Coolidge and
+Davis are sound. But when we consider the casualties
+in the White House due to electing men depleted
+in health and vitality, this is as important an issue
+before a nominating convention as any plank in
+their respective platforms. More than half these
+give way anyhow later on under pressure. But when
+the man himself is sickly the chances are ten to one
+he will not survive the intolerable burdens he has
+assumed, and this is always a national tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>The ineffective person is always the shrewdest
+critic of those who strive, however blindly, to
+achieve. I seem to belong to that class, but I am
+so located for the sake of discretion, not for purpose
+of criticism. I do a bit of haphazard voting now and
+then for the purifying of my purely conventional
+conscience, much as one recites a prayer without
+believing the Lord hears his petition. I know the
+cards have been stacked and the successful candidate
+for that office has been predestined. So I never
+fash myself into a state of enthusiasm or animosity
+over an election.</p>
+
+<p>The most significant evidence I have of the political
+importance of women is the change in the character
+of my own mail. Formerly it consisted entirely
+of letters from admiring readers or indignant
+readers of my books, or from those kind private
+folk who are one’s dearest friends, even if one never
+beholds their faces. They write by way of clasping
+hands with you or exchanging confidences with you.
+But now if a political campaign opens, I suppose
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span>every woman receives as many letters as if she had
+written a particularly appealing book. Every candidate
+from the coroner type to the more iridescent
+eloquent type who wants to be a congressman
+or senator writes to solicit our votes.</p>
+
+<p>These are remarkably dull letters, couched in the
+embarrassed language of an awkward man writing
+to a respectable woman, whom he really does not
+like, inviting her to vote for him. To me it seems a
+frightful waste of postage, especially when the thing
+bears a picture of the aspiring author. Yesterday I
+had such a letter, ornamented with the printed
+likeness of one who is running for the office of health
+commissioner in this State, a man so grossly fat
+that he has practically no lines in his face by which
+a thought might be expressed. My idea of a health
+commissioner would be a lean man with a vital
+athletic expression.</p>
+
+<p>But my political psychology may be wrong. It is
+possible that an obese commissioner might be moved
+to preach a healthful gospel of abstinence and a balanced
+ration. My impression is that they are all
+glittering generalities so far as the health of the
+people is concerned, and that the lady demonstrators
+who travel like missionaries through all the
+counties teaching girls to can and cook hold the
+health of the next generation in their frail but diligent
+hands. Nobody elects them. They get appointed
+by hook or crook and do valiant service.</p>
+
+<p>In short, I have reached the eye-opening age when
+a personal letter from the noblest statesman of them
+could not move me to any real interest in his fate.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span></p>
+
+<p>Why should one vote? At the present moment
+the highest official in this state is candidate for
+reëlection without opposition. Personally, he bears
+a faintly pathetic resemblance to Lord Byron. And
+quite the contrary is true of him. He is not a poet.
+He is totally lacking in that quality which inspired
+Byron, banished, to lead an insurrection in a foreign
+country against despotism. And we cannot banish
+him! I have understood that he is an eminently
+respectable family man, which really contributes
+little to his eminence as a public servant. He can
+lead a prayer meeting accompanied by the amen
+chorus of the best brethren, but he cannot lead a
+people.</p>
+
+<p>The instinct for personal liberty mentioned a
+while ago has also led me to avoid participating in
+the activities so popular and so ably conducted by
+the various women’s organizations. Place yourself
+within reach of the executive committee of any up-and-doing
+group of women, and find out how much
+time or strength you have left to spend upon your
+own affairs! If you are a social climber, they will
+give you prominence in exchange for as much faithful
+service as you are capable of rendering. If you
+desire recognition, which is the complimentary name
+of publicity, you may have it as a reward for devoting
+yourself to some department of public service
+for the benefit of mankind, or for children, or for
+charity.</p>
+
+<p>If by some fluke of circumstance you have earned
+distinction, they can use you for the good of half a
+dozen causes so completely that you will never have
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span>another half hour to devote to your own cause.
+Henceforth you will be identified with their achievements.
+You will not have one laurel left on your
+brow which does not belong to womanhood at large.
+If you belong to that ever-increasing volume of
+women who crave self-expression, they can provide
+more ways for you to express yourself than if you
+were a mere Christian wife and the mother of ten
+children. They are using up more wasted feminine
+energy than any other power company known to
+civilization.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXXIII">
+    XXXIII
+    <br>
+    LIVING IN A BOOK
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">If</span> you have lived in one house all your life, it becomes
+so familiar to you that you do not think of its
+corners and angles, how the light comes and the
+shadows fall through the windows. You do not
+remember its upper chamber, because you are living
+in that chamber, nor that quiet inner room where
+you sometimes go to pray, because you are still
+going in there, closing the door and falling upon
+your knees when times are hard in your spirit, and
+asking for a little comfort. But some day when the
+door is shut and you are left outside, carried away
+by some wind of destiny, bereaved of these intimate
+associations with it, then you remember all the inside
+of that house, every board in the walls, where
+you slept and where you worked, the place you used
+to sit with folded hands when the day’s work was
+done.</p>
+
+<p>So it has been with me about the Bible. As long as
+Lundy lived we were in it. It seems to me I was
+always traveling its pages back and forth from the
+old dispensation to the new dispensation, from one
+Gospel to another Gospel, wandering around in
+Revelation as one walks upon the shores of a strange
+land, mystified.</p>
+
+<p>In those days it never occurred to me to quote the
+Scriptures. I left Lundy to do that. I was not even
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span>aware of being word-perfect in them. But after his
+death they came back to me, and I had the use of
+them as if they belonged to me at last according to
+my own mind. I recall them by my association with
+him. I use them right and left as he never would
+have dared to use them. The little kind ones are like
+bright footpaths that lead now more particularly
+to my own God, which I used to travel with him in
+the shadows. The great ones stretch away before
+and after me beyond the limits of time and sense. I
+do not try to reduce them to the dimensions of my
+own thoughts; I simply spread myself in them and
+feel immortality eased in all this space.</p>
+
+<p>When you have only one book you use it a great
+deal. I have read many books, but I never had my
+own personal rights to but one, the Bible. The
+others belong to the authors who wrote them. They
+have been created, but, broadly speaking, they are
+not creative. The Bible is. I may be pardoned then
+for referring to it frequently as the source from
+which I have received most of my inspiration in
+living and thinking.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is a mistake to fit your life to one or two
+Scriptures when there is such a wide choice of them.
+So when these moods of godly depression fall upon
+me and I am feeling like a poor old How-Firm-a-Foundation,
+or like a spiritual leaf that has been
+used a long time for the fattening or healing of the
+ungodly, I stir about in the Gospels for a better
+prophecy of myself. Something like this, for example:
+‘And he shall be like a tree planted by the
+rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span>season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever
+he doeth shall prosper.’</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is changed, you understand; the same
+law of the spiritual world is demanding the laying
+down of my life for His sake; but I get an extension
+of that law for my own mortal sake. Somewhere,
+sometime I shall be like a tree planted by the rivers
+of water, and whatsoever I do shall prosper! I am
+not above making a literal interpretation of such a
+promise in the fairing weather of my mind. I begin
+to feel greener, fresher in my boughs. Suddenly I am
+conscious of many rivers of kind water that have
+flowed close to the roots of my life. I have sinned
+quite a good deal and come short of my own glories,
+much less the Lord’s glory. Still I have not lost
+much, only a few of my dearer treasures laid up
+where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt. I am
+very well off here. After all, for a bush of my size I
+have brought forth considerable fruit. I am not old;
+I feel everlasting. Therefore let the years come;
+time cannot defeat or harm me.</p>
+
+<p>In such a mood I can swing paragraphs by the
+hour from the tip of my pen, or I can go forth and
+plant a field, strutting in the conviction that whatsoever
+I do shall prosper. It is a grand feeling, kin
+to that liberty the old-fashioned preachers used to
+claim when they made sure the Holy Ghost had
+descended upon them and they fell upon their congregations
+with power.</p>
+
+<p>It all comes to this again and again when you get
+the chance to see through your glass clearly for a
+moment: The Scriptures were made for us. They are
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span>the literature of what we are, the great reference
+book of man. We are not created like victims to
+fulfill them. By living we do fulfill them, no matter
+how we live, in the flesh or in the spirit, or, like the
+mortal hyphens we really are, halfway between. I
+use my Scriptures this way, regardless of what may
+happen to the favorite creeds and doctrines of other
+people. The idea of a church God or a national
+God is too diffused to meet my personal needs and
+peculiarities.</p>
+
+<p>I believe this is true of every man.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot tell now how I missed even the faintest
+association with the Scriptures in the minds of the
+people who knew me best. Maybe it was because
+I was never prominent in church work; maybe it
+was because after the shadows fell upon me and I
+had premonitions of Lundy’s fate I did not ask the
+prayers of all Christian people, nor take even one
+saint into my confidence lest he should suffer by this
+betrayal. In any case, after he was gone, and I
+stepped forth in my own written word caparisoned
+in so many of his favorite passages from the Bible,
+some of these people were scandalized as if a light
+and humorous person masqueraded in sacred garments.
+My own church regarded me askance for a
+long time. I was never offended. On the contrary, I
+comprehended their anxiety with a sort of sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Comparatively few people inherit the Scriptures;
+they get them as we Protestants accuse the Catholics
+of getting theirs—predigested, interpreted, laid
+down for them in creeds and doctrines. My poor
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span>brethren could not be sure that I would not presently
+rise up in the insolence of my own mortal mind and
+deny the divinity of Jesus Christ or commit some
+other damnable heresy. This is frequently the way
+with those who interpret the word for themselves.
+They want to square it with some half-developed
+science which will be changed or refuted to-morrow,
+or they go off on a purely intellectual tangent. As a
+spiritually endowed person I have always had the
+sense to look down upon our finite reasoning powers
+and to despise my intellectual tangents.</p>
+
+<p>I have discovered, however, that in dealing with
+Christians of whatever denomination it is discreet
+and valorous to use my mortal wits as shrewdly as
+if I dealt with the impious. They may not be subject
+to the same vices, but they have a record as
+long as the history of man for persecution. That is
+still an active principle of the religious conscience. I
+had my doubts about whether a mere woman would
+be considered eligible to a church trial for heresy,
+not having heard of one in my times who had suffered
+this distinction. Still, it was just as well to
+settle down somewhere beyond the reach of this
+honor. So, long since, I have allowed my membership
+to lapse. Not even a presiding elder can summon
+me before a quarterly conference to be tried
+either for my sins or my views concerning this or
+that doctrine. I am a Methodist unconfined, outside
+in the Lord’s pasture at large. If my church
+puts on a million-dollar drive for funds, I dutifully
+give my widow’s mite and spend my real Christian
+charity on a family of Hardshell Baptists who are in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span>graver need of help than a rich and prosperous
+church.</p>
+
+<p>When the Southern Methodist Church unites
+with the Northern branch of this same denomination,
+as now seems imminent, I contemplate reducing
+the widow’s mite of my contribution. As
+the devoted bystander of the Southern Methodist
+Church, I am opposed to this Union; not on account
+of prejudices connected with the reconstruction
+period, when we escaped their maudlin sentimentality
+concerning the negroes by withdrawing from
+them. I merely remember that as a warning, but
+my real objection is that we can be better brethren
+in Christ further apart.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXXIV">
+    XXXIV
+    <br>
+    HAPPINESS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">The</span> trouble is that we can use the Scriptures only as
+far as they will go, and those we have do not seem to
+be complete. I have a vague hungry feeling that we
+have not discovered all of them. There must be a
+few tablets still buried somewhere thousands of
+years deep in brighter dust which record a little
+happiness, something to ease the strain of so many
+sacrifices and holy joys. I have had such joys. It is
+like coming up through great tribulations and sitting
+for a moment beneath your halo with tears on your
+cheeks. I am not complaining, you understand; it
+is a grand feeling, but too poignant to be really restful,
+as if you had been exalted by a deed or a sacrifice
+and must choose just holiness when you are still
+in the flesh and feel the mortal need of relaxing some.</p>
+
+<p>I know by the witness of my own spirit that we
+have missed a Gospel or two which contained the
+strictly human touch in words. Paul comes somewhere
+near it in his tender letters to Timothy, but
+all these apostles were made too grave by their
+suffering to catch the light of that message we should
+have. The place where it really belongs is in those
+passages quoted from Jesus. I am certain they failed
+to record all he said, or that it has been lost, or that
+it is still hidden away in the archives of time. He
+was fearless, merciful, so good at remembering that
+we are dust, he would have made a little allowance
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span>for that kind of happiness humans need; not an indulgence
+in sin, but an indulgence in life.</p>
+
+<p>I do hope it is not blasphemous to say that I can
+almost see Jesus in such a mood; His people at ease
+about Him. It would be a quiet, bright morning
+before the multitudes began to gather. And He will
+have looked at these chosen to keep and defend the
+Word with that blessing look even we can bestow
+upon children whom we love. And He will have
+said, ‘Little children, be happy!’ Something like
+that He must have said, knowing what travails they
+were to pass through and how greatly they would
+need the respite of light-heartedness. But nothing
+of the kind is recorded anywhere in the Bible.</p>
+
+<p>The word ‘happy’ does occur at rare intervals,
+but it is too fearfully qualified. ‘Happy is the man
+that feareth alway,’ says Solomon. And Job in
+great pain catches his breath with this: ‘Happy is
+the man whom God correcteth.’ And James says,
+‘We count them happy which endure.’ All of which
+means, fortunate are they who are prepared for the
+worst, take their punishments with meekness, and
+endure with courage. These are the evidences of a
+good character and a noble mind, but not my idea of
+real happiness. One wearies of worrying all the time
+with his best attributes, especially in plain sight of
+the wicked, who do seem to flourish without any
+such attributes. I have never taken this as hard as
+Jeremiah did; still, I have had my feelings.</p>
+
+<p>One day Jeremiah’s virtues irked him. He was too
+aloof and lonesome. And he had what you may call
+an altercation with the Lord:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I plead with
+thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments:
+Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper?
+wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?
+Thou hast planted them, yea, they have
+taken root: they grow, yea, they bring forth fruit:
+thou art near in their mouth, and far from their
+reins.’</p>
+
+<p>He goes on reminding the Lord of his own obedience
+and how he has borne his trials until his sense
+of outraged justice gets the better of him, and he exclaims,
+‘Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter,
+and prepare them for the day of slaughter.’</p>
+
+<p>I do not suppose the very treacherous are happy
+and I have never wanted the wicked pulled out like
+sheep for the slaughter, but I have always wanted to
+ask a truly bad man who seemed to be having a good
+time if he really was enjoying himself.</p>
+
+<p>I have always had a hankering after some cheerful
+salvation, suitable and sanctifying to me as a human
+being in this present world, where I know what I am
+doing and what I want. I feel that I have a buried
+talent for just happiness, a sort of incandescence of
+my own nature which longs to shine. It seems to me
+that I have never made my happy sounds in living.
+I have missed that laughter which is the speech of a
+merry heart. But I have heard it many a time in a
+crowd and always flirted my head around to see who
+made it. Usually a young person whose burdens are
+still being borne by others.</p>
+
+<p>But once, I remember, it was an old woman standing
+in her own dooryard watching two children,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span>serious and absorbed in their play. Such a figure!
+Tall and gaunt, so straight and finely posed, her
+homely dress might have been a rag flung over an
+imperishable ideal. Such a face! Wrinkled, brown,
+rough, like a crude verse written by somebody like
+Ossian; the wind and the weather of life had passed
+over it, but now the sun in her eyes, the simplicity
+of the deepest wisdom made humorous upon her
+smiling lips. No comeliness anywhere, but that
+beauty of honest happiness in every line. I think of
+her as a song I saw once in the flesh set to a good
+stout tune of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>I have a distinct recollection of such people
+through the whole of my life. They do exist—women
+who have survived all their fears and learned
+their burdens by heart and stand canonized by that
+undefeated look of happiness. I have seen someone
+go by who looked like a joyful traveler on his way to
+some happiness he had earned, carrying himself, you
+may say, with the long light stride of a good conscience.
+At such times I have felt the light of my
+wings as if I had seen the witness of my own hopes
+go by.</p>
+
+<p>These are the only people I have ever envied.
+They have an expression of animation not intellectual,
+but vital, so different from that conquered look
+of peace which I am always fearing will settle upon
+my face before I know what they have learned, not
+by thinking, but by some happier use they have
+made of living.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot now recall when this idea first took
+possession of me, but it was far back in the years—that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span>the life I was living was not mine, but a sentence
+imposed upon me by fate, to be served faithfully.
+And then as a reward further on I should have
+my very own life, which would be different. I was
+not so concerned as my husband to win heaven. I
+had an impression then which has persisted with me
+to this day, that for all we know this life may be a
+rest the Lord gives us between long spells of eternity.
+I anticipated some place in my years where happiness
+would begin, as tired people look forward to a
+vacation.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after ‘A Circuit Rider’s Wife’ was published,
+it seemed to me I saw it, as you look a long
+way down the road and see a wider brighter place
+where you turn in through a gate and enter your own
+house. I remember saying something to Lundy
+about this. We would get away presently from all
+the cares we had ever had, take a little house in the
+country and begin to live happy ever after. I remember
+his silence, the look he gave me. If in the
+last day when we are called there is one who hears,
+but cannot rise from his dust, he will have just that
+look of terrible comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>It comforts me now to remember that not even
+in this dark time when the shades were deepening
+about him did I ever raise my hands to heaven and
+cry, ‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this
+death?’ I think well of myself that my one concern
+was to keep him and comfort him as long as I could
+reach him. Maybe I shall never achieve happiness,
+but one thing I have had—the terrible wisdom of
+love. I cannot doubt that I have received the best
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span>of my life and nearly every gift that prospered in
+me from my association with Lundy. What really
+troubles me sometimes is whether or not he might
+have fared better in the spirit if he had been free as a
+monk to seek his sacrifices and renunciations.</p>
+
+<p>I think now happiness is a thing you practice like
+music until you have skill in striking the right notes
+on time. We have no vocation for it. And I had no
+practice, not a day when I was free from care and
+one great anxiety—and one must be free to be
+happy. I know that much about it by having missed
+it.</p>
+
+<p>I came nearer to what happiness must be, a sort of
+deliverance from the things that are, after I began
+to do creative work. Once I had a pen in my hand
+and the use of my faculties, the casements of all my
+darkness were flung wide and I escaped into a very
+bright, quiet, good world of thoughts. Every memory
+from my earliest childhood came back to me,
+luminous substances to be worked into words. It
+was like weaving love and deeds and the beautiful
+colors of every sensation upon the loom of my mind.
+What I accomplished was as nothing to the visions
+I had. If, as Matthew Arnold claimed, genius consists
+in the power to recall, I may lay some claim to
+having genius. In one small room all my lights and
+darkness came; people that I had seen, but never
+knew, were suddenly revealed to me, so that I could
+write down the very secrets of their hearts. Men
+and women, long since dead, lived again and waited
+there close as life to be used in case I needed them for
+a paragraph or two. Things that Lundy had said,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span>poetry and philosophy that he had read to me, piled
+up like notes on my desk, changed, you understand,
+by the alchemy of my own mind, but still the parents
+of my thoughts. When I think of the vast stores of
+material I have had, the wonder and grief to me is
+that I have made such a dim and poor use of them.</p>
+
+<p>Once you get away from the Word, any discussion
+of religion is unprofitable and apt to become
+acrimonious. For this last page or two I have felt
+my own spiritual gorge rising, a mean and distasteful
+sensation which has no place in this record. It is
+better to go back to my original speculations on
+happiness.</p>
+
+<p>This is not a thing to tell, for it concerns the more
+intimate annals of my mind and is set down here
+with the same apology one should make for shouting
+in public when in an exalted spiritual mood. But
+here it is. Many a time when I have filched a grand
+thought or some finer truth out of life to write down,
+I am too moved to do it. I get up and pace the floor.
+I cast a thankful look through the ceiling at my
+heavenly Father, or I rush bareheaded out of doors
+in the bleakest weather to cool off this happiness, so
+that presently I may return and copy it into words.</p>
+
+<p>If this is happiness, I have had it; but my suspicion
+is that I may have experienced then only the pangs
+of a great joy. It is not a thing achieved by inspiration,
+even if you write an epic or paint a noble picture.
+You have produced something. My idea of
+happiness is something you get. It is intaking, not
+creative. You cannot think it. It comes to you in
+the reality of personal experience, selfish and satisfying.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span>What I want to know is how I have missed
+it. Is it by some infernally digestive attitude of my
+mind toward common human experience which consumes
+my illusions, or is it on account of circumstances
+over which I have no control, or have I just
+led myself like a wanderer walking in a blind circle
+between two worlds?</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXXV">
+    XXXV
+    <br>
+    THE LATTER DAYS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">I have</span> often wondered what becomes of us here in
+this life. For what we were in the beginning does
+pass away, and we become the millstone around
+our own neck. No matter how good we try to be or
+how bad we actually are, we barely keep up appearances.
+It is not time that changes us, but our
+own desires, ambitions and the fierce struggle we
+make to get what we want. The body breaks under
+the strain, our faculties begin to wabble like shooting
+stars, even if they leave a trail of light behind them.
+We lose our grip, let go and stand aside, but not
+satisfied. No matter how wise we have been, we
+grow simple. No matter how rich, we become mendicants
+searching the faces of youth for a little
+praise or recognition, ready to accept any flattery,
+however obvious, disposed to keep our noses and
+let out that long plaint of weariness and disillusionment
+peculiar to our condition.</p>
+
+<p>Many years ago there was a distinguished Methodist
+preacher in Tennessee. He rose so high in the
+ranks of his brethren that we called him a divine,
+and he had some kind of double-D title conferred
+upon him. He was a good man and did valiant
+service for his Lord and for the Church. At last his
+strength began to fail. Some power of the Presence
+went out of him as it always does when the magnetism
+of personality dies down in a preacher. His
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span>sermons lengthened intolerably, which is the final
+symptom a minister in our Church shows before the
+bishop and presiding elders superannuate him. No
+congregation wants the Word drooled to it even by
+a saint. So this old man was retired on his niggardly
+little pension and went to live with his married
+daughter.</p>
+
+<p>One day I met him on the street, pushing a baby
+carriage with his youngest grandchild in it. He
+wore his pastoral clothes, stiff collar, and white
+bow tie. His linen was as white as the apron of a
+neat nursemaid. But what a look in his eye, an expression
+of tears! Isaiah demoted! Nothing humanly
+unkind had happened to him. His daughter
+had probably taken this method of airing the baby
+and getting her father to take exercise at the same
+time. But when you have preached salvation with
+power from the pulpit for fifty years, it is worse than
+a fall from grace to be reduced to pushing a baby
+carriage.</p>
+
+<p>I halted to wish him good-morning and to admire
+the baby. He did not care much for this morning,
+and let the baby go for a moment; he wished
+to say something to me.</p>
+
+<p>‘If you knew what old age really is, you would
+pray for death while you are young!’ he quavered.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to comfort him, but he was too terribly
+wise to be comforted.</p>
+
+<p>‘You know,’ he went on, ‘I am not supposed to
+be of sound mind. So they give me little tasks like
+this to keep me occupied,’ regarding the infant
+ruefully.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘When you have been ordained and preached
+the gospel for many years, and moved men by the
+spirit, it’s a terrible experience to be set aside as of
+no further consequence. I may act a little queer;
+you do when misfortune and defeat overtake you in
+your old age. But if I behaved as senselessly as a
+lot of young men do, I’d be hailed before a lunacy
+commission!’</p>
+
+<p>And this was twenty years ago, when nobody
+thought of summoning an alienist to determine the
+mental responsibility of a youth who had run amuck
+and committed a crime.</p>
+
+<p>As I grow older and feel the changes that wisdom
+and experience make in me, and learn to sit down
+more to husband my failing strength and to keep
+silent longer when younger people are exploiting
+the foolishness of their wits, I often think of that
+old man toddling feebly behind the baby carriage,
+shorn of all his earthly glories save the insignia of
+his long pastoral coat tails, despised because his
+mind had passed the spring and summer seasons of
+animal wit and aggressiveness, but pathetically wise.</p>
+
+<p>I am determined to avoid his fate by taking
+thought now while my will is strong, and I have
+fairly good business sense, and still reign supreme
+in my own estimation to be spoofed or cajoled by
+the flattery of being merely humored. I am already
+old enough to fix a measuring eye upon any younger
+person who undertakes to pacify me with the mere
+assurance that such-and-such a thing is all right;
+nothing is going to break; everything is greased and
+the clutch is working properly. I have known myself
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span>to get out of the car and find something wrong
+and ready to break, and much of it not greased,
+and the clutch needing to be relined.</p>
+
+<p>This sort of enterprise does not enhance your
+reputation for sweetness and light among young
+people, but we must simply keep up our courage
+and stand the gaff. If you are a woman, and have
+passed the age of control by your merely feminine
+charms, the only thing left is to exercise sufficient
+authority to put the fear of God in these youngsters
+and sit tight. My grandfather was not so far
+wrong when he was dying and ordered us who were
+about to supersede him in living out of the room!
+That was the last act of authority performed by a
+gallant gentleman who showed a proper contempt
+for sniveling youth.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know how it happens, but as we grow
+older our friends and relatives become miraculously
+younger. We seem to survive too many of those
+companions with whom we started in life and passed
+our achieving years. As our infirmities increase, they
+wax stronger, and we become no more than a memory
+sitting in the chimney corner. However generous
+and considerate they are of your feeling and comfort,
+you have lost your standing among them. The
+consequences are inevitable. You cannot hold your
+hand with them. With the best intentions, they are
+ready to take up your burdens and manage your
+affairs, which is really a tender way of taking your
+life away from you and leaving you in your old age
+without the means of supporting your own vanities
+and self-respect.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span></p>
+
+<p>Never again can you show how much better
+judgment you have than they have in matters of
+management and economy! You may be permitted
+to hold your dear old yellow deeds, though frequently
+in a weary moment you also surrender
+them; but they have come into real possession of
+your property and they are inclined to use it recklessly,
+according to this speeding, spending new
+world they are making for themselves, while you
+become the helpless pensioner upon your own hard-earned
+bounties.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing like that shall happen to me. I have observed
+young people very carefully. They are really
+the pensioners upon our wisdom and reared upon
+our earnings. If every man and woman past sixty
+should suddenly die, there would be one grand
+wake of a funeral, then this world would rock upon
+its foundations and go to pieces. I give youth
+thirty days to destroy the whole thing. What I
+mean is that we are very important the older we
+grow, and for conscience’ sake should endeavor to
+live as long as possible in full possession of our powers
+and affairs.</p>
+
+<p>I have sometimes considered passing my last days
+writing a book of gospels for the aged, designed to
+stimulate their courage and sense of self-importance.
+I have observed that we begin to lose them when we
+lose the purely physical attributes of strength and
+animation. This is that period when the mind clears
+and can be used most effectively according wisdom
+and experience, instead of those emotions which
+inevitably affect our actions and judgments during
+our younger years.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span></p>
+
+<p>The time comes when these friends and these
+relatives who have grown up long after we grew up
+will gather around you out of respect, affection, and
+politeness; but you are a short circuit. There will be
+such a divergence in your point of view from their
+points of view that no common ground of conversation
+or comradeship remains. They will be sitting
+up with you off and on in this manner as if you were
+the dear dead body of an ancestor, although you
+may be getting your breath as usual and looking
+straight through those innocent young things, too
+polite to read aloud what you see going on inside of
+them.</p>
+
+<p>The thing to do then is not to retire to your own
+room like a sundown old cat, or like a pathetically
+forgiving old woman, but to exile them. Send them
+back to sink or swim in the world they have made
+for themselves, and keep yours. Live and die under
+your own roof, even if you do it alone. I have a suspicion
+that it is a lonely passage, even if everybody
+is present.</p>
+
+<p>I willed the world to these young powers and
+princes ten years ago when I came to this valley.
+They can have it. I am willing any time to spare
+them a few words of advice about how to conduct
+it, and I like to step around in it once in so often to
+see how things are going. But I reserve this small
+one, laid off like a garden between these hills and
+fitted to me as a fine old tune is fitted to the simple
+words of a good old hymn.</p>
+
+<p>Once you begin to fumble according to your own
+light with a denominational idea of God or to mix
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span>politics with your religion, your light goes out and
+you find yourself being tried for heresy or in some
+brotherhood which denies the divinity of Jesus,
+whereas if you had your own right mind toward the
+Lord you would know that any brotherhood which
+denies Jesus is apt to be a vindictive corporation
+organized against all men who do not belong to that
+union. We are not brothers except according to the
+way and the life of the great Galilean. I myself
+cannot pretend to be more than the disgusted stepbrother
+of all modernists in the Church and of red
+radicals in general.</p>
+
+<p>But after all we spend most of our centuries maneuvering
+in the right direction. It is only now and
+then that a demoniacal cat-fit starts somewhere, as
+in Russia at the present time. The hysteria spreads
+as demoniacal dancing did in the middle centuries,
+but it dies down. The whole thing comes from some
+monstrous mob ignorance of the spirit. The individual
+Russian still believes in his God, but the evil
+forces of stronger minds are exploiting him.</p>
+
+<p>The thing that grieves is the casualties among the
+innocent along the way.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a poor old bishop who has written a book
+in which he denies a personal deity and doubts there
+ever existed such a historical character as Jesus
+Christ. On the cover of his book is the emblem of
+Soviet Russia, the hammer and the sickle. Beneath
+that is the red star, emblem of the workers’ party in
+America, and the first sentence of the book is a quotation
+from Karl Marx, ‘Religion is the opium of
+the people.’ I am touched by that old man’s predicament
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span>as I am sometimes at the sight of an old
+Confederate soldier who had a brave record, but
+who has lost his wits and goes about decorated with
+cheap pewter and brass medals; only this poor soul
+has got them published on the cover of his book instead
+of being pinned upon his breast.</p>
+
+<p>I have noticed a certain thing especially about
+brilliant men. They retain the use of their faculties
+long after they lose their judgment. If one of them
+remains in business too long after the prime of life,
+he is apt to slip up and make an investment which
+costs him the whole of a hard-earned fortune. If he
+is a thinker and an authority upon some obtuse subject,
+he is apt to lose his grip, take a header and show
+up among the spiritists, as in the case of Sir Oliver
+Lodge, who appears to have retained his thinking
+powers long after he lost the sense to use them.</p>
+
+<p>It would not surprise me if H. G. Wells turned out
+to be a religious fanatic in his last days. These
+people suffer some kind of reverse in mind. They go
+off on tangents. So this innocent old bishop with
+the ascetic countenance and a noble Christian life
+behind him lost the rudder of his faculties, and is
+now being exploited by those arch madmen, the
+communists. He has apparently reached the mimetic
+stage of senility, got his metaphors mixed, and is
+trying to impersonate both the grand old bishop and
+the grand old communist so magnificently interpreted
+in the first chapters of ‘Les Miserables.’</p>
+
+<p>Old men are sometimes subject to great vanities
+of the soul without any wisdom. How else does one
+of them get the idea of calling himself the Episcopus
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span>Bolsheviscum et Infidelium? Instead of being tried
+for heresy, he should be rescued, put away in a
+quiet, comfortable place and allowed to fan himself
+out according to his illusions. He is obviously a
+good old man who has been tricked and flattered
+by designing men and their still more designing
+propaganda. Somebody has reversed the lever of
+his mind, else his training in spiritual consciousness
+would have insured him against being upset by
+discovering traces of our Scriptures in mythology
+and every heathen religion and philosophy. These
+pagans, the very barbarians and savages, naturally
+borrow, plagiarize and take the truth as we do, frequently
+veiled in tradition. We all have the same
+God and must feel the stirrings of His image in us.
+If this man had been in his right senses, does any
+one believe that the study of astronomy could have
+possibly upset his strictly Christian faith? Can
+what we know or suspect about a purely physical
+universe affect the everlasting fact that our spirit
+does bear witness to the truth of such Scriptures as
+the Ten Commandments, the twenty-third Psalm
+and the Sermon on the Mount?</p>
+
+<p>Words are dangerous things. They lead to heresy
+trials now, and they formerly led many martyrs to
+the stake. I suppose the good Bishop still believes
+in Providence, but here he is in his old age trying to
+liquidate his God into natural law. Somebody has
+stolen that many pages of his mind or he would
+know there never was a law without a lawmaker.</p>
+
+<p>‘Banish gods from the skies and capitalists from
+the earth!’ he cries.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span></p>
+
+<p>Well, that has been done in Russia. Religion certainly
+is the opium of the people there. Never has
+the world seen such a politically pious people. They
+sleep, indeed, but what uneasy slumber is this that
+filches all a man has and degrades him by his
+very sacrifices! Imagine living under a government
+which permits its people to prosper for a few years,
+in order that it may step in and confiscate their
+wealth and thus reduce them once more to the direst
+poverty of a national ideal where the only capitalist
+is this rogue of a government and the only god is
+the pickled body of an arch-fiend who even in death
+imposed his monstrous will upon them.</p>
+
+<p>My feeling is that every man is entitled to his
+own God, which is the same God no man can escape.
+And heaven deliver me from living in a country
+where there are no capitalists! My idea would be to
+live in one where everybody would be in neighborly
+reach of one. But at that I am this close kin to the
+bishop in the perversity of my mind; I should like to
+see all communists and radicals banished from this
+country before they pollute the minds of the ignorant,
+irresponsible, and unwary, who are the real
+poor we have always with us, even if some of them
+are learned and rich.</p>
+
+<p>My tides are falling. I have no longer the mortal
+power to believe everything and hope everything.
+I must leave hopes now for those who need them
+more than I do.</p>
+
+<p>When you are passing into the afternoon of your
+years it is wise to break the habit you used to have
+of planning for the future, because your future is behind
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span>you, as some Smart Aleck has said. It is sensible
+to economize in hopes, because they are depleting
+when you no longer have the power to achieve
+them. I have planted all my trees years ago. Presently
+I shall be obliged to sit beneath their shade
+and fold my hands. Even then I know I shall not be
+contented with just peace. I shall be looking and
+wishing for a little happiness.</p>
+
+<p>When you are about to matriculate into old age
+you speculate a good deal about how you will feel
+then. I am thinking it would be a grand thing to live
+long enough to grow simple and full of faith and the
+artless happiness I had as a child. Old people do
+sometimes; they come again into that eager, snooping
+curiosity the very young have. They go about
+wondering and getting themselves happily deceived
+as we keep terrors and anxieties from little children.
+It is a sweet and blessed state.</p>
+
+<p>Heaven preserve me from becoming a grand old
+woman and being obliged to keep my dignity and
+mind sitting up overwhelming others to the last!
+I should hate to pass out as one of my grandfathers
+did. He was very old, but he retained to the end an
+outrageously overbearing use of his faculties. All of
+us who were his meeker posterity had gathered
+respectfully about his bedside, not tearful, because
+he was intolerant of tears and we dared not weep.
+Presently he swept the whole bowed company with
+one glittering gray glance and commanded us to
+leave him alone.</p>
+
+<p>‘I will not be stared out of countenance at the
+very last!’ he gasped.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span></p>
+
+<p>So he died with all of us hidden behind the bed
+peeping at him.</p>
+
+<p>I want some one to hold my hand then, and to hear
+many kind voices soothing me and praising me as if
+I had been a dear good old child for a long time. I
+want to be reduced to that innocency of the ‘such as’
+when I go hence, and maybe trailing some fragment
+of the same cloud of glory with which I came from
+God who was my home.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXXVI">
+    XXXVI
+    <br>
+    WHY WORSHIP EUROPE?
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">We</span> never can be sure what it was that gave us a bad
+cold, and for some reason we invariably speculate
+about that as if it made a difference. So it is with
+getting to be an old person when we have always
+felt young. I suppose we do grow old, but we do not
+know it until suddenly the fact comes upon us. The
+curtain drops behind us, all those years when we
+were young pass into memory, and we see the whole
+of life from a soberer, wiser, different point of view.
+Our very self-consciousness gets a stoop in the
+shoulders, and though we may go on for a time with
+a square-shouldered air we are not the same.</p>
+
+<p>About this time that change took place in me. I
+shall never know whether it was the death of my
+husband, ill-health, or that six months spent in
+Europe, but some vivacity of the spirit was gone
+when I came home. Life had been bent somewhere
+within. I felt the weariness of wisdom, such as one
+gets from the world. And I never had it until this
+time—a curious depression about the mortal fate
+of man. I was so outrageously tamed that I lost the
+habit of making dogmatic statements, which had
+always been a refreshing insolence of the mind with
+me, as bearing arms must be with a soldier of fortune.
+It seemed to me that I had been demoted and
+suddenly civilized.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever may have been the cause I do not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span>know, but in my opinion it was Europe, that aged
+me. It is an old book of history, illustrated with
+the scenes and architecture of former, younger, more
+spirited races of men. The countries I saw could
+never have been produced by the people who are
+now living in them, with the possible exception of
+England. I do not like Britishers, but involuntary
+respect compels me to hand it to Englishmen wherever
+I see them. They have the weakest chins in
+the Old World and the strongest wills still to survive
+and achieve.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot understand Americans who worship the
+life, culture, and mental attitude of these failing
+civilizations. But they do. Nothing, not even the
+Great War and our experiences then with their
+rapacity and their resentment of our qualities can
+cure us of this obsession. If the League of Nations
+had been called the League of Arts, nothing could
+have kept us out of it. We spend more every
+year staring at their scenery, buying their pictures,
+statues, tapestries, and the very stones of their ancient
+castles than would be required to open every
+door in the world to our commerce, our inventions,
+our morals, and our institutions, all of which are
+more vigorous and vastly superior to anything along
+the same lines in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>But we seem determined to degrade our own
+powers to achieve better things by this idealism of
+old things abroad. We note disparagingly the imitative
+characteristics of the negro race in their relation
+to the white races, which has in fact delayed the development
+of their peculiar genius in many ways;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span>but we show the same tendencies toward European
+culture with less excuse. I suppose we buy their old
+things because we feel the lack of the tone of time
+in our civilization and collect this stuff to produce
+that effect.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, there is no virtue in the tone
+of time. Virtue comes alone from our own achievements.
+We cannot mellow what we are by what we
+hang on our walls. This is cheating, in my opinion,
+such as we do when we chase our ancestors back until
+we derive a coat of arms from some old swashbuckling
+knight of the fourteenth century. Very
+few of them would be acceptable now in decent
+society. It seems to me safer and more respectable
+not to admit descending from any further back than
+our original pioneer American blacksmith ancestors.
+This is good stock, cleaned and charged with the
+noblest virtues by the courage with which they
+endured hardships and built a great civilization.
+Benjamin Franklin’s sister made soap and sold it
+to her patrons in Philadelphia for a livelihood. It
+seems to me a more honorable record to hand down
+to posterity than that of a seventeenth lady whose
+only distinction was that she had a title inherited,
+not earned, and that she sat to a great artist for her
+portrait.</p>
+
+<p>Europe is childish, overbearing, grasping, like an
+old man. We ought to contribute liberally to its
+support on that account, as we do to aged parents;
+but we ought not to ape the senility of old age.
+We do now limit the quota of immigrants from these
+countries, but it seems to me even more important
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span>to limit the number of American tourists who go
+abroad to the aged and mature. The youth of this
+country should be kept at home until their characters
+and ideals have been firmly established. I was
+forty years old before I went over there, confirmed
+and certified in my convictions as an American
+citizen, but it was a long time before I recovered
+my own spirit and wiped the shadows of a weaker
+world from my mind. Even now I cannot be sure.
+It seems to me that I detect a foreign substance at
+times in my thoughts, not so firm or sound as real
+living makes thinking. And I have known a great
+many people who never do repent of Europe after
+they have indulged in it. They get an air of aloofness
+and superiority. They are sick and disgusted
+with our honest sins. They have acquired a decadent
+taste for vice as if vice were one of the arts of
+Europe, as indeed it is. Now it does seem to me that
+if we must be wicked we ought to be normally and
+healthily wicked and call our sins by their right
+names. It is a sign of degeneracy to be so virtuously
+sensitive and proud of your vices as so
+many men and women of older nations have grown
+to be.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXXVII">
+    XXXVII
+    <br>
+    THE COUNTRY AND THE TOWN
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">A young</span> man with a mind of high degree and an
+extensive literary style recently shot off this in a
+magazine article: ‘Gossips are people who have
+only one relative in common, but that relative the
+highest possible, namely, God.’ He might have
+exchanged places with his nouns, written it: ‘People
+are gossips who have only one relative in common,’
+and hit more nails on the head. But at that, he
+missed by half the number we have in common.</p>
+
+<p>The nearest relative of every mortal man that
+always survives him is the earth. He is atom and
+acid kin to it. He springs from it and returns to it,
+laid back into it, earth to earth and dust to dust,
+which is closer kin at last than he ever was to his
+up-and-speaking relatives. He bears but one relation
+to God, a spiritual resemblance, either real or fancied.
+Lacking that, he sustains literally no relation
+to God beyond that of mere material scrapped and
+to be used again for another form of perishable life,
+vegetable or flesh. The spirit of him in this case is a
+disease to be cured by some divine method with
+which no man is acquainted, whatever the theologians
+may claim to know about it.</p>
+
+<p>The wisest of us do not actually know much. We
+can only believe according to the quality of our
+minds. The favorite notion used to be that such
+spirits went through a severe smelting process,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span>similar to that of four thousand degrees centigrade
+by which pure gold is now extracted from quicksilver,
+but not, I understand, in paying quantities.
+I am merely suggesting this, not as a doctrine, much
+less a dogma, but by way of speculating upon the
+possible method of purification. Personally, I find
+it disturbing and unprofitable to dwell upon the reclaiming
+processes of damnation. I have seen too
+many damned people in this world, and been too
+frequently damned myself, not to know that we
+damn ourselves, and that by an act of will and faith
+we can always escape from this sense of guilt, which
+settles the whole doctrine of punishment so far as I
+am concerned.</p>
+
+<p>But the point I wish to make now is that we are
+all conscious of being kin to the earth, though comparatively
+few have more than a creed sense of
+being related to God. It is a thing we are taught,
+but really learn to feel. The man who begins life
+next to land never forgets. He may come up in the
+world and be carried by his illusions of success far
+from its life and loveliness, but there come wearying
+days in his countinghouse when his thoughts fly
+back like homing birds to that quiet place. His own
+people may be dead and gone, or he may have lost
+the sense of kinship to them; but he remembers still
+where the shadows fell upon the grass, as a child
+far from home remembers his mother’s face. It is
+the child in him longing for the comfort of that
+ancient mother of all men.</p>
+
+<p>If he has lost out and gone down in the world with
+a bad conscience, the same thing happens. There
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span>comes a woeful day when his tears rise like a tide
+and he knows if he could go back, fling himself beneath
+the shade of a certain tree for a long, long
+time, the silence and goodness of the earth would
+cure and restore him. It would not, but this is the
+way he feels. The sensation proves and defines the
+sanctity of our relation to the earth.</p>
+
+<p>As to those other people, born in cities as chickens
+are hatched in an incubator, they have the same
+instinct changed to silliness. They are like stepchildren
+who do not know how to love the earth;
+still, they have their transient cravings for its blessings.
+But few of them can bear to live with it, because
+its weather and its silence is terrible to them.
+They are really inebriates, living by the intoxication
+of the eye and the ear upon the vast confusion
+of cities and crowds. They may be strangers there,
+without home or friends, but they require this frightful
+motion and noise as an addict must have his
+drug. They cannot bear the solitude of silent
+places or the diminishing companionship of their
+elder brethren, the trees. They are waifs blown like
+leaves in the wind the world makes in passing. They
+never had the capacity to live, and so substitute
+motion and noise for life as a sort of artificial respiration.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know anything more tragic to contemplate
+than these lost children of the earth. They may
+be learned men or successful men; they may be
+dutiful or merely beautiful women; but if you dare
+to realize how lacking in quality and the original
+stamina of life they are, thrust them back upon
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span>the earth from which they sprung for longer than
+a vacation period, and watch them go to pieces.
+They are parasites, consumers. They have lost the
+valor to produce their own sustenance from the
+earth. They survive by trade, commerce, inherited
+wealth, some kind of artificial labor. There is not a
+drop of honest Adam sweat in them. They are the
+kind of people who carry an umbrella over their
+heads through life, whether it is the roof of an office,
+a factory or a stock exchange. They want money,
+prestige, power, more rights and privileges than any
+man can ever earn except at the expense of other
+men; but they remain unacquainted to the last
+with real life achieved in the open according to the
+law which bound the first man to the land for his
+own good, where there are no fictitious values, but
+a fair exchange of bread, poverty, and peace promised
+to those who do keep and dress the garden
+which the earth is.</p>
+
+<p>One may write very convincingly, however, upon
+this theme without making much more of a success
+than Adam did in the beginning when he was ordained
+to keep and dress that first garden. The
+Scriptures are not easy to fulfil. I have been
+tempted to doubt if the very apostles who recorded
+the Gospels actually lived up to them. I have had
+a few divine inspirations myself without feeling the
+least blasphemous; but looking back now, I can see
+no more than the faintest gleam of them in my deeds.
+What I mean is that it must be natural, after all, to
+come short of the glory of God. This world would be
+a frightfully glaring place if we did not.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span></p>
+
+<p>The queer thing is that we also miss happiness in
+the effort. The satisfaction of saints in their piety
+has always seemed to me despicable. It is a form of
+deceit never justified by the facts. And the gratified
+airs they give themselves is not to be confounded
+with simple honest human happiness. We are entitled
+to that whether we miss the glory of God or
+not. Most of the time I am certain this is the supreme
+gift of His love which still awaits us when we
+comply sensibly with the conditions; but I have my
+dark moments when I am tempted to suspect that
+this instinct for happiness may be a sort of clucking
+encouragement devised by Providence to keep us
+up and going, as romantic love is one of Nature’s
+enchantments to keep up the birth rate.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXXVIII">
+    XXXVIII
+    <br>
+    GARDEN HAPPINESS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Certainly</span> the exercise of our virtues does not insure
+happiness. My experience is according to the
+Scriptures at this point—your virtues invite hardship
+and persecution. I have observed the very good
+carefully. They are noble souls, totally defeated in
+this present world by their conscience and their
+sacrifices. It takes a spunky spirit to escape the
+Job Scriptures. This is my objection to the intimate
+companionship of saints. The last one of them has
+a martyr tune in him somewhere, and if you encourage
+him with either sympathy or admiration,
+he will let go and sing it to you in sobbing praise of
+himself. I am a trifle that way. More than once I
+have known myself to keen my spiritual nose to a
+kind friend and chant the tale of some injustice
+suffered in the exercise of my nobler qualities. It is
+puerile. No matter how virtuous you are, virtue
+goes out of you then.</p>
+
+<p>I take involuntarily a sort of ignoble consolation
+in the fact that the very bad are farther from happiness
+than the very good, because they have destroyed
+the foundation upon which happiness must rest.
+It is written that if we repent of our sins the Lord
+remembereth them no more forever, which is something
+that cannot be said of any mortal man. Even
+if he repents of his transgressions, the memory of
+them hangs like a shadow in the light of his spirit forever.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span>I have seen these swords suspended over the
+head of a saint until finally he was slain by them.</p>
+
+<p>As for me, I have never been able to keep a record
+of my virtues, though I have tried hard enough;
+but I have never been able to forget one sin. Just
+let me get in a weaving way with so much as one
+beam of holiness to light my dark places, and some
+niggardly little transgression I committed years
+ago, or yesterday, lifts its head and licks out a forked
+tongue in hissing comment. I defy anyone, however
+worthy, to risk himself in the glow of holiness without
+having a similar experience.</p>
+
+<p>This, I believe, is what is meant by the omniscience
+of the Almighty. It is in us, a fearful faculty
+for seeing ourselves which we cannot escape. And
+it reveals each man to himself as a spiritual bungler
+every time he frisks within range of his own inner
+vision. The effect is salutary, but very depressing.
+I am never peaceful, much less happy afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>It all comes to this: We get wisdom of one sort
+and another with fatal facility, because the world is
+full of it, a brilliant or dull sort of ignorance deduced
+from observation, study, experience, and the prideful
+exercise of our rational faculties; but we are
+perpetually short on understanding until after it is
+too late.</p>
+
+<p>When I came back to these hills to dress my garden
+in the year 1913, I know now that I missed
+happiness by the narrowest margin. I was on the
+right track. I was at home again upon the earth. I
+felt that peace and steadiness of mind we all feel in
+familiar surroundings among companions who never
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span>change or move away. The same grass and the same
+green boughs overhead, the same flowers I had
+known in earliest infancy blooming like tiny remembered
+faces in every meadow and on the banks
+of every stream. The same little footpaths of peace
+across every hill, winding according to the minds of
+those happy travelers who made them.</p>
+
+<p>But the most enterprising business man was never
+more quickly involved than I was in plans and preparations
+for happiness. The old cabin to be restored
+and furnished, all about to be cleared and trimmed.
+I saw the frost crystals blooming in the gray dawn
+of every morning that first winter. The longest day
+was too short to accomplish what must be done before
+the next day. I was in the woods choosing timber
+for more rooms to be added to the cabin. I was
+something of a nautilus in those days, without the
+sublime indifference of that little sailing mollusk to
+the passage of time. I was in a hurry to finish my
+house.</p>
+
+<p>But, like the nautilus, I have gone on adding to it
+year by year according to the widening chambers of
+my mind. There will be a wall, a pillar unfinished
+somewhere when my own end comes. I shall
+probably defer death by an effort of mortal will if I
+am having another window cut in order to get one
+more entrancing view of this valley at the very last.
+I do not know whether this is foolishness or not, but
+I have left much copy of my mind and spirit written
+in stones that will last longer than the monument
+Horace raised to himself, ‘more enduring than
+brass.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span></p>
+
+<p>I made a garden and planted it. I was in the
+fields from dawn until dusk that first spring, watching
+the plows sink deep in the loam of the land. To
+me, there is no fragrance comparable in sweetness
+to the scent of freshly turned earth. Later I walked
+like an impudent little god of a woman down the
+rows of young corn. I remember praying for the
+corn that year during a long drought, not that I
+needed bread so fiercely earned, but because to see
+it living and growing was like feeling the green blades
+of my own vanity spreading and rustling in the sun.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere in this house there is a snapshot made
+of me that summer standing up on a load of wheat
+sheaves. I am wearing a stiff white frock. I am bareheaded
+and the wind is blowing. I do seem to have
+a high happy look. There streams across my face
+something of the light of youth, keen and strong.
+Love alone can so transfigure us. I am in love, you
+understand. My heart is embracing this sky, this
+meadow, these overshadowing hills. I am feeling
+the wreaths of little blue flowers that bloom beside
+the streams upon my brow. I am strong and well
+again, cured of so many sorrows. My heel has
+touched the earth again. Auteas was right about
+that—if you believe in your heel and the life of
+the earth you can recover strength as he did for the
+next struggle.</p>
+
+<p>I was that child I used to be, let loose like a joyful
+energy. So this is something I have discovered
+about happiness: It is not a product of energy, but of
+chance, a free mind and deliverance from that parsimonious
+sense of time which no child ever feels.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span>This marked the difference now between the woman
+I was and the child I had been. I took every chance
+then with a free mind and no sense at all of time. I
+was too young to make plans. I met the future as a
+lark meets the sky upon the wings of a singing heart.
+I was nearer kin to God then and had a wiser sense
+of life than I shall ever know again.</p>
+
+<p>The simpler creatures manage life more gracefully
+than we do. I have often envied the birds, not
+because they can sing, but because they can fly.
+They own everything from the tallest tree top to the
+farthest meadow’s rim; but they have no sense of
+possession, no baggage to carry. They endure more
+hardships than we do and have a better time. The
+difference between them and, say, the communists,
+is that they are not acquisitive. They do not want
+to own everything in common. They are honest
+about that, and no man is. He must be either predatory
+or competitive. He has an instinct for ownership
+which he is determined to satisfy.</p>
+
+<p>This earth would be settled by squatters if a comparatively
+few people did not hold titles to most of
+it. The latter are safer neighbors than the migratory
+class to which the communists really belong.
+They are a kind of human locust swarming over the
+earth now, never to be confounded with the earlier
+pioneers. I suppose in time we shall get rid of them.
+If we do not, they will destroy us. Then they will
+turn upon themselves. They are by purpose destructive,
+according to some rascally notion of gain.
+Their piety is a sort of missionary malice couched in
+the noblest deceit of language.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span></p>
+
+<p>But with all the virtues and aspirations the best
+of us claim, it does seem strange that we make such
+an awkward art of living. We are more successful
+at increasing our capital and decorating ourselves
+with worldly distinctions than we are at increasing
+our income in happiness. This is essential. I have no
+patience with the piety of defeat which yields the
+point and declares that happiness was never meant
+for us in this present world, but reserved for us in
+paradise—a damnable doctrine which reflects upon
+the goodness of God as they do who lay their misfortunes
+to Providence when they alone are responsible
+for them.</p>
+
+<p>It is we who miss our cue. We suffer from some
+blindness of the mind which leads us to mistake the
+circumstances that produce happiness. Nothing will
+satisfy us but riches, when we know that relative poverty
+insures more peace and fewer responsibilities.
+We have built a social, industrial and commercial
+civilization, so expensive that it cannot be financed.
+And the more wealth we get the less capable we are
+of achieving our own lives.</p>
+
+<p>It is the laborers, servants, and professional people
+whom we employ that determine the conditions
+under which we exist, which is a form of frightful
+tyranny. We get the idea or the ideal, then pay
+some one else to achieve it. An architect draws the
+plans of our house. Carpenters build it. A decorator
+chooses the furnishings, and servants keep it. A
+landscape artist lays off the grounds and we employ
+someone to dress the garden, because we lack the
+will and skill to do any of these things.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span></p>
+
+<p>I do not think we should give ourselves such airs
+about art and culture as we do, seeing that we buy
+most of the mere effects of these things and that they
+are really produced by a class of people with whom
+we do not associate. No man is really learned who
+speaks his wisdom instead of practicing it. No
+woman is really cultured because she is up on art
+and music and literature, or because she wears
+beautiful clothes designed by a modiste, or because
+she lives in a splendid house, or because she is surrounded
+by people who think and speak well about
+what they know and see and exquisitely feel. She
+is merely the living portrait of many arts accomplished
+by other people. I should call her the
+decadent mollusk of refinement, never to be confounded
+with that woman depicted a while ago in
+these pages as the more endearing type of Southern
+woman. They have their occupations. They are
+amazingly executive when it comes to ordering
+others to do it. They have taste and piety and
+know how to exercise these virtues.</p>
+
+<p>The effects of the theories about the art of living
+which I have been recording in these pages are
+plainly visible in this valley. The gaping logs of
+the one-room cabin left by the Cherokee Indians
+have been restored, and so many rooms added that
+it stretches a distance of one hundred and thirty
+feet—pieced together with open entries, winged
+with a long vine-covered court on one side and a
+living porch on the other side. So you may see
+through this house to the valley below or the hills
+beyond, as one should see through a good man’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span>heart to the scenes and Scriptures which account
+for his existence. I doubt if an architect could have
+drawn plans of a house so satisfying to the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>There is no color scheme inside. To my mind, a
+house furnished in a strictly harmonious manner
+seems to be designed for publication and read by
+guests, but not to be lived in at ease in your own
+private everyday moods lest you break a note by
+moving something of a blue shade to that place
+which calls for orange-yellow, or by dropping your
+old green coat upon the divan covered with iridescent
+tapestry. Even the company bedrooms in this
+house are so plain and comfortable that a guest
+might feel at home in them, clean and fragrant, but
+faded; little messy conveniences in every one of
+them to delude the occupant into thinking he or she
+is not a transient there, but may stay a long time.
+And the living-room is such a humanly gifted place
+that I may leave my walking shoes on the hearth
+upon a winter evening and they will add a note of
+peace to the firelit scene, as if they were warming
+and drying and resting after a hard day’s walking
+out of doors in bad weather.</p>
+
+<p>Not one thing in this house is to be admired, but
+is to be appropriated and used for your ease. You
+are to shine and talk, hold a book in your hand to
+taste now and then, as in the old days a gentleman
+sipped his wine. I have seen very dull people exhilarated
+before my fire on a winter evening; I have
+also seen very bright ones let go their weary wits
+and nod. These are triumphs which color-scheming
+hostesses rarely enjoy, because you feel that you
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span>must sit up with their harmonies and take note or
+be damned.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, these women are never contented for
+long with their furniture or draperies. They must
+tear them up, send for the decorator and try some
+other effect. I do not change my furniture or move
+it about. Let the scenes of the world and all fashions
+change. I have laid my inside scenes like one of
+those prayers for peace and honor to be found in the
+Episcopal prayer book written and finished. All you
+have to do is recite it. God has been familiar with it
+for a long time, and would probably be astonished
+to hear a new word or phrase in it.</p>
+
+<p>There is an old-man chair here which, by all the
+canons of art, should never be found in a cabin;
+mahogany, with hideously carved legs, toe nails
+sticking out, the arms finished with two human
+heads, females, but not goddesses—houris, I should
+say. The springs in the seat have weakened in precisely
+the right place to make sitting in it more restful.
+About as often as an old man is barbered, this
+chair is rubbed up and the faces of the ladies polished;
+but it is never moved from the corner beside
+the fireplace. I have observed that the elderly men
+who come here invariably choose it as their resting
+place. There is a huge couch beneath a long row of
+casement windows on the living porch which has
+enticed some of the stiffest, most elegant people
+known to modern society in this section to relax
+upon it and fall asleep, when by all the rules of
+polite conversation they should have been erect and
+vocative.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span></p>
+
+<p>This is boasting—I admit it—but not of my
+possessions. I am simply showing the kind of mind
+I have toward a house, to fill it with snares of peace
+and good will whatever happens to art. It is not a
+bad idea. You excite less criticism and confer more
+happiness. It cannot be done by an interior decorator.
+He has an expensive eye and a furniture collector’s
+intellect.</p>
+
+<p>By the same token, I have declined the services
+of a landscape gardener. My idea of a landscape is a
+good deal of it, preferably green, and merely frilled
+with flowers, with the trees of an original forest
+surrounding the whole thing. I planted my flowers
+years ago, perennials, with much the same mind the
+Lord had when he said to the original creatures and
+little leaves, ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’ They do.
+Poppies, peonies, gladioli, zinnias, marigolds, phlox,
+dianthus, snapdragons, like good hardy people of
+the soil in bloom, making a thousand wreaths of
+loveliness around this green hill in their seasons. No
+wet-nursing to keep them alive during a drought,
+no coddling to preserve them through the winter.
+They die down as we do, and come again, as we shall
+do.</p>
+
+<p>During these first years here I was near the verge
+of happiness, at least by anticipation. If my mind
+could have rested I might have made it; but what
+with writing a book or two every year, conducting
+the farm and building everything from barns to
+stone walls that popped into my head, I lacked the
+leisure to be glad.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me now that I indulged in too much
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span>self-expression without looking for the reward of
+gratified vanity such persons usually crave. Comparatively
+few people have ever seen this valley or
+know what has been accomplished here. I have
+occupied it much as I shall presently occupy my
+grave, alone, but doubtless with a great deal more
+activity than the narrow confines of a grave with a
+tombstone over you can possibly afford.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot think what made me so furiously industrious
+laying scenes so rarely to be praised. As to
+that, we must always wonder why the Lord required
+such limitless spaces for His creation and made so
+many unintelligible stars. Fewer would have been
+rarer and shown to a better advantage. And what
+measly sight-seers of the heavens we make, always
+snooping and squinting at His handiwork without being
+able to find out anything about it, with no mind
+to comprehend the glory of these populous heavens.</p>
+
+<p>There must be another audience somewhere.
+Surely the Almighty has had more encouragement
+than we could give Him, more inspiration than our
+pathetically inadequate existence affords Him. I
+am so religious at times that I can conceive of a
+great council chamber of creators located upon one
+of the grander stars between burning suns. Not
+that I crave more than one Lord to serve. When we
+consider the Ten Commandments and the rules
+laid down for our obedience in the Scriptures of our
+Jehovah, it is apparent that no man could serve
+more than one God; but in certain moods one likes
+to speculate in gods by way of the most gallant and
+adventurous spiritual exercise.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span></p>
+
+<p>The thing that confounds and depresses me is,
+Why are so many of us born? Why is there so much
+of everything anyhow, when we can understand and
+use so little of anything? And what strange madness
+is this in us which perpetually compels us to
+add to the sum total of everything? I have had
+fearful thoughts along this line—the dreadful fate
+we are under to keep on thinking and doing, because
+if we stop something happens to us, a slow and monstrous
+decay. And at the end of it all, poor old
+Solomon—after he had been King of Jerusalem
+and ruled a long time, after he had built his golden
+temple and won his reputation for being the wisest
+man—sitting in his royal robes, tired of his crown,
+tired of his wisdom, calling to us down the ages,
+‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity and vexation of
+spirit.’</p>
+
+<p>He gives this conclusion a note of authority by
+signing it, ‘Thus saith the Preacher.’ But I have
+always felt that if Solomon had been a better man he
+might have been a better preacher. Like father, like
+son. David was a fine, true singer of the hearts of
+men; but I cannot think he set a good example for
+Solomon in his youth, which accounts for the depressing
+wisdom he acquired by living.</p>
+
+<p>I never take one of these headers in spiritual speculations,
+however, without falling to pieces afterwards.
+I seem to suffer from some kind of nervous
+prostration of the soul. In these ailing moods no
+wise man or great divine could comfort me. I am
+longing to hear the Word preached by a simple man
+who has lived a good little life and who can pray
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span>like a child. It is like taking the shortest, narrowest
+path back home by faith.</p>
+
+<p>I never have believed it is a far journey to the real
+kingdom of Heaven. If you start off with great
+preparations for a long pilgrimage, you may be sure
+you have missed your way. There is in the heart of
+every man a fair and lovely land, never betrayed by
+his transgressions, never sold to the world and never
+darkened by mortal wisdom. I have been there
+sometimes, an ineffable place. As a child I lived
+there.</p>
+
+<p>These little old preachers mentioned a while ago
+are the only pastors of the children we have been
+left among us. They do not know us now, they are
+not acquainted with the world in which we have
+learned so much; but they know where every man’s
+land of Canaan lies, and they have only one Rock
+of Ages tune that leads to it.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back, we can see how smart we were when
+at the time we simply followed some instinct in the
+right direction.</p>
+
+<p>For years I went on trying to create my own little
+kingdom of Heaven here behind these hills. A place
+visible to the naked eye, very deceptive in its loveliness
+and silence. I had sense enough to keep the
+world out, which was not difficult, since I have
+never been one of those popular writers whose
+doorsill the people seek. And I was rarely tempted
+out into the world.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXXIX">
+    XXXIX
+    <br>
+    WAR
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">During</span> the spring and summer of 1914 I put
+seventy acres of the valley under cultivation, added
+eight rooms to the old cabin, and wrote a serial. The
+inspiration of love or of any consuming ambition
+greatly augments the powers of even an ordinary
+person to achieve. This is the reason why men in
+love frequently accomplish so much for a time, then
+fall back into their former state of indolence. The
+illusion of love has failed. It is by nature a brief
+enchantment. This is the reason why the man fired
+by ambition frequently accomplishes prodigious
+tasks far beyond his normal capacity to achieve.</p>
+
+<p>I was inspired at this time with the hope of winning
+a happy ending to what had been a harsh sentence
+in living. I was creating a very small world to fit
+me behind the world at large; and this period, I
+should say, was about the morning and evening of
+the third day at the business. Things were beginning
+to turn green. I could see my little herbs of the
+field glistening in the early morning dew, and my
+sun was shining. I remember a certain notion I had
+then, which has remained a part of my personal
+definition of the Lord—that besides being almighty
+and obviously beneficent He must be a happy
+God every time he created another world, divided
+the light from the darkness in that place and set up
+all the miracles of life there.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span></p>
+
+<p>This notion was not so blasphemous as it sounds
+written out in words. One cannot copy His omniscience
+or His almightiness, but it does <em>not</em> seem to
+me nearly so profane to give one’s self a few airs
+about having imitated Him in a small way that
+turns out green and triumphant like a field of corn,
+as it does to dig down and snoop the heavens with
+the idea of proving there is no God at all.</p>
+
+<p>I had only to take a whiff around the farm in
+those days, have an altercation with the carpenters
+about another window needed to keep the cabin
+from looking too much like a fortress, then retire to
+my study upon the farther rim of the forest and copy
+the green leaves of my thoughts for the next chapter
+of the serial.</p>
+
+<p>On the third day of August in that year the Great
+War began in Europe. The editor of ‘The Saturday
+Evening Post’ sent his first batch of war correspondents
+across the following week. I was to have been
+one of them, but I had promised another serial for
+another magazine which was still to be written. The
+editor would neither release me from the contract
+nor risk me in the war zone until this copy was delivered.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose it would require one of those latest expositors
+of the mysteries human beings are, an
+alienist, to explain why disappointment over being
+detained brought on the first attack of hay fever I
+ever had. There is more psychology than pathology
+in our diseases.</p>
+
+<p>But I was determined to go to France in 1914. I
+had been living at such a high tension nervously for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span>some time that nothing short of a bloody war could
+have quieted me and reduced me to a normal condition.
+The motive here confessed was overlaid
+with the usual noble emotions; but this is a truthful
+record of my mind, which is sufficiently nearly related
+to human minds in general for me to risk
+the assertion that a great many other people did
+valiant service in France who were attracted there
+by a similar motive. We seek reactions from what
+we are in excitement. The use made of us under
+these circumstances proves the shrewd economies
+of Providence by employing our lower instincts to
+trap us into the performance of the greatest, most
+unselfish services, else very few men would volunteer
+for military service, and very few women would
+have volunteered for canteen service in France.</p>
+
+<p>I hurried off somewhere, wrote that serial, returned
+to New York and sailed for Liverpool all
+within thirty days.</p>
+
+<p>I have written briefly of my impressions during
+this harrowing period in ‘My Book and Heart.’
+What we know now is that the most victorious
+battles and the most disastrous defeats never settle
+the issues involved. The Great War has increased
+our debts, doubled our problems and added incredibly
+to the moral confusion of our times. Still, if
+there should be a call to arms in this country to-morrow,
+I doubt if I could bear the mortal ignominy
+of being a pacifist.</p>
+
+<p>There is no sense in war. It is the way we are
+made that brings on the red fury of arms. Neither
+the ambition of politicians nor the greed of financiers
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span>could draw a nation into war if the people were
+not so easily moved by an invitation to shed blood.
+It seems invariably to produce a state of terrific
+exaltation, similar to a religious revival. I doubt if
+this is due so much to the survival of brutal instincts
+in men as to some provision of Providence against
+the ultimate emergencies of mankind. When law,
+civilization and the artificial restraints of society
+fail him, he will still have his fists and a faculty for
+believing in God. These two capacities alone should
+reproduce men of better quality than the shrinking
+creeds of pacifism. Whatever we believe theoretically
+about peace, we should always be ready by
+nature to fight.</p>
+
+<p>But another set of youths must grow into the
+pugilistic period now before we could actually stage
+another World War. My observation has been that
+the soldiers who fought in the recent one are more or
+less shell-shocked. I have employed more soldiers
+here than any other class of men since the war, because
+they are more intelligent and better trained;
+and no matter how brave the record is they have
+left behind them in the Saint-Mihiel drive or the
+Argonne Forest, they are more concerned than other
+men to avoid personal difficulties. One must think it
+out to understand them; their reputation for courage
+has been established beyond any shadow of a doubt
+so long as history lasts. There is no reason why a
+battle-scarred man should prove his courage, which is
+probably the chief reason why men fight. They are
+the only admirable pacifists in the world; and if it
+comes to the test, they will have more to do with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span>keeping this nation out of war than a World Court
+or any other talking method we can devise, however
+wise or diplomatic.</p>
+
+<p>War, however victoriously ended, is not a profitable
+subject to discuss in the retrospect. It dies
+down in the emotions of men and passes into history.
+After that, the next generation reads history
+and discovers what burdens and strange defeats
+were entailed upon their future by these victories.
+But I am setting down one incident in connection
+with my experiences in France by way of proving
+a theory I have—that merely by living we fulfil
+more prophecies than the seers of the Old Testament
+ever dreamed of. We are becoming terrible
+predicators of the future.</p>
+
+<p>It was in October of 1914. A clear starlit night.
+A battle was on. News from the front ran through
+Paris in whispers all day. Now darkness and silence.
+No one could sleep. I came down from my room in
+the old Saint James Hotel and stood in the street,
+reaching a long look through this tomb of terrors
+that had been the gayest city in Europe three
+months ago. Not a soul in sight, not the sound of a
+voice or the rumble of a wheel, peopled now only
+with the shadows of great shapes. Yet in this fearful
+stillness these very palaces and spires seemed
+to listen, to be waiting for something about to
+happen.</p>
+
+<p>Then from the high distances came a rhythmic
+sound, thunder throttled down, stars purring, a
+pulse beating faster in the heavens. Now the ominous
+roar of motors. Swift as swallows in flight, I
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span>saw them rise above the horizon and flash by like
+great silver birds through the searchlights above
+the city—German aeroplanes coming to drop
+bombs on Paris! Red blasts, earth-rocking detonations!
+This tomb of terrors gave up its dead, a
+frightful population of men and women rushed half
+clad and disheveled from their hiding places into
+the open street. They shrieked, babbled, waved
+their arms, milled and circled, frenzied with fear
+and hate.</p>
+
+<p>I stood aside like a mere leaf of life not yet caught
+in this whirlwind of dreadful passions. The scene
+was no longer linked in my mind with war, but with
+something else far back in memory, associated with
+quietness and peace. Then it came back to me, that
+night so many years ago, the world not yet in sight,
+the quiet heavens, father thrusting his arm out in a
+gesture like a scythe aimed at all the spaces overhead;
+the child I was then, bare feet resting staunchly
+upon the toes of his boots, clinging to him, face upturned
+to him, feeling like any other young bird
+about to be borne aloft upon magnificently gesticulating
+wings.</p>
+
+<p>Through all this uproar of a panic-stricken people,
+in a strange city on the other side of the world,
+forty years later, I heard again the very tones of
+father’s voice: ‘You will live to see airships up there
+flying like a flock of birds.’ Then mother’s sharper
+tones breaking in upon this rumbling prophecy:
+‘Come in and go to bed,’ calling me away from the
+temptation of so great an imagination, anxious lest
+I should be birthmarked mentally with that mad
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span>passion to fly which had frequently cropped out in
+father’s family.</p>
+
+<p>Well, I had lived to see his prophecy fulfilled.
+But what a fulfillment! This happens frequently to
+the best efforts made by seers. The world twists
+the tail of their prophecy and makes it come true
+like a disaster.</p>
+
+<p>On the twenty-third day of December in this
+same year of 1914 I was at home again in the valley,
+sitting beside my own log fire, very quiet, but not
+serene. I was suffering from a curious pallor of the
+mind, not due entirely to the dreadful scenes I had
+passed through in the war zone. We were homeward
+bound from Liverpool when the boat struck a
+mine off the coast of Ireland. This catastrophe
+happened in the middle of the night, and I was still
+convalescing from the peculiarly sickening sensation
+of suddenly standing on my head in the berth with
+no such acrobatic intentions. I could not forget the
+tremors which passed through that ship as if it had
+been a living body pierced to the heart, the awful
+heaviness with which it settled back into the sea,
+the moments like ages of dreadful silence that
+followed, then the roar and confusion on deck, the
+sibilant sounds of many voices hushed to whispers
+by fear, the rush of bare feet along the corridors inside
+as the passengers fled for the lifeboats, which
+were not needed after all. And I shall never entirely
+recover from the recollection of that jagged hole in
+the side of the boat, so frailly mended, nor from the
+sound of the water pouring in and the rhythmic
+strokes of the pumps upon which our lives depended.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span></p>
+
+<p>I am wondering if the critics who found ‘My
+Book and Heart’ the record of a narrow and monotonous
+existence can claim one year filled with so
+many varied activities as the year 1914 was for me.
+And I am merely offering it as a sample of my years
+in general.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XL">
+    XL
+    <br>
+    WIDOWHOOD
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">The</span> older you are the greater risk to your happiness,
+and even to your peace, there is in marriage.
+I cannot conceive of a husband revolving comfortably
+in the widow’s orbit I have measured off and
+made for myself. Least of all can I conceive of his
+sitting still in it with any peace of mind. I suppose
+many other women feel the same way, else there
+would not be four times as many widows as widowers
+in this country, according to the United States census.</p>
+
+<p>A widower is probably the most transient manifestation
+of man there is among us. I have often
+wondered why this is so. I am no alienist, which is
+now that supreme authority among us for determining
+our character and conduct according to our
+glands; but my suspicion is that marriage once contracted
+becomes a habit with a man, and that he is
+the most invincible habit-forming creature on this
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>You may feed one only three articles of food for
+a year and he will stick to them as long as he lives!
+I knew one who cured himself of indigestion twenty
+years ago by taking a cup of tea and two pieces of
+dried apricot for lunch. He has never varied his
+midday meal from that day to this. If his wife died,
+I suppose he would marry again precisely as he goes
+to his club and orders that cup of tea and the preserved
+apricots for lunch.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span></p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, marriage is a state of love for
+women—barring the alimony class, of course—and
+they are so narrow and personal in their devotion
+that they do not so readily transfer their
+allegiance to another husband. Apparently they
+are not so enterprising or broad-minded in their
+romantic emotions as men are, though we seem to be
+widening out considerably in these latter years. It
+would not surprise me if the time comes when even
+widows may become obsolete, and we shall have no
+such wisdom among us as a sad, sweet-faced elderly
+woman wearing her widow’s weeds and sitting in
+the amen corner, or ambling about doing good deeds
+in the neighborhood. She may have her second or
+third husband and be engaged in a campaign for a
+better sewerage system in the city where she lives.</p>
+
+<p>What I mean is that we seem to be growing more
+like men mentally and morally every day and in
+every way. I reckon it is all for the best, but it does
+feel queer if you are a woman and a widow who
+cannot keep up with the quick step of your times
+and know yourself to be dwindling away into the
+narrow, withered-faced relict of your former husband.</p>
+
+<p>I remember one day years ago, decorating myself
+with such ladylike views as these in a conversation
+with Mark Sullivan, who had just refused a story I
+offered for Collier’s Magazine. He listened kindly
+and patiently until I had probably exhausted my
+repertoire of noble sentiments for that day. Then
+he seized his hat and made for the door, thought
+better of it, paused, looked back at me curiously and
+delivered himself of this warning:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘You may be that good, but if you are, you are
+bound to be lonesome.’</p>
+
+<p>For a moment I experienced some kind of faint
+alarm, as sinners must when the preacher gives
+them one last chance at the end of a revival to repent
+and be free men. It occurred to me that I had
+better hurry out while the spirit moved me and do
+something rash. But I could think of nothing sane,
+discreet, and becoming to do that would also be
+rash. I am not so sure it is conscience that makes
+cowards of us all. It may be the vanity of self-respect
+that holds us in check.</p>
+
+<p>After all, I have not been so very lonely, only
+slightly peeved as I grow older at the implication of
+having lived a narrow, dreary life.</p>
+
+<p>Years ago, after the death of my husband, I
+adopted one of the milder sins of our times, much as
+my mother, who was a very frugal woman, used to be
+wasteful with pins because she insisted that a little
+inexpensive extravagance was good for the soul. I
+do not know about that; but I am still so ashamed
+of my transgression I will not confess it, although
+with a discerning eye you may see it for yourself as
+one of the complimentary details in the picture on
+the frontispiece page of ‘My Book and Heart.’
+Otherwise I am far behind my times in yielding to
+temptations.</p>
+
+<p>If you had only one lover when you were a girl,
+and married him, and if you lived very quietly with
+him until death parted you, not taking in more than
+the spiritual edges of the world, you do not know
+men; you know only one man. As to the rest, you
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span>know some by their reputations—some good, some
+not good; some who will lead in prayer. The great
+majority are beyond your ken because they will not
+lead in prayer, nor contribute to foreign missions,
+nor even to the pastor’s salary. If you have been a
+preacher’s wife for nearly a quarter of a century, you
+entertain a vague suspicion of such men without
+having any information about their real characters.</p>
+
+<p>This is what happened to me as long as Lundy
+lived. A man was a sheep or a goat, and that was
+the limit of my powers of classification; a very remote
+way of thinking about them.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know how it may be with other widows.
+I suppose if they have a competency, and can afford
+to employ an agent to look after their affairs, they
+frequently retain their social and romantic ideals of
+these wonderful beings and remain peacefully ignorant
+of their sterner manifestations. But if you
+must earn your own livelihood and manage your own
+affairs, you will discover that you come face to face
+and hand to hand with men every day in every way
+upon a totally different basis. You cannot practice
+the arts and policies which made you so successful
+in managing your dear husband, not if you mean to
+be an honest, upstanding widow. Your mourning
+veil may appeal to their compassion, but it will have
+practically no effect upon loosening up their business
+sense in your favor. What is more to the point,
+it is a sly, unfair way of playing upon their sex or
+your sex to expect concessions in your favor.</p>
+
+<p>My idea of a ‘widow indeed’ is somewhat broader
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span>and more practical than Saint Paul’s. I am not objecting
+to his requirements—that she shall have
+washed the saint’s feet, if her piety takes this form,
+and if she can find the saint; but I do not see why
+she should be more diligent than any other woman
+in ‘following every good work,’ unless, as I suspect
+was the case with the widows in Timothy’s church
+at Macedonia, she was a charge upon the charity of
+that church and repaid in humble service to the
+brethren. The modern widow is not so reduced in
+circumstances, even if she is left without means.
+She can usually earn a living, though it may not be
+so good a living as her husband provided. In any
+case, a self-respecting ‘widow indeed’ now is one
+who takes a job instead of charity and performs it
+with valor instead of tears. The pith of honor in
+such a woman is not to play the feminine rôle to any
+man for largess or advantage in her affairs. Even
+on this basis she is apt to get more than is coming to
+her if she deals with the right man. The great
+majority of honest men actually shrink from the
+responsibility of handling widows’ funds lest some
+unavoidable loss occur.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, there is an average, I should
+say, of at least ten mite collectors for every widow
+in existence. They are easily recognized, however,
+by the noble and vicarious disposition they show for
+being her financial savior or her Aladdin genius in a
+get-rich-quick scheme. Not long ago I had a letter
+from such a victim. She is a stranger to me in the
+flesh, but I should recognize her in paradise—an
+elderly widow, religious, full of kindness, always
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span>protected, whose creed is faith in the goodness,
+honesty, and kindness of others.</p>
+
+<p>She wrote to tell me that she had just invested
+all she could spare in an oil well. And she asked me
+to pray that this money might bring her ten or even
+a hundred fold in return. Imagine the Lord babbling
+in wildcat oil speculations to answer even two
+widows’ prayers! Teach us some sense by not
+answering such prayers—which is a thing many people
+wiser than widows do not know about the functioning
+of the Almighty toward prayers. Maybe
+in time we shall learn that the Maker of all laws will
+not break one natural or moral law to save us from
+either death or bankruptcy. It is no use to call upon
+God like a fool to save you when He has endowed you
+with the wit to save yourself if you will only use it.</p>
+
+<p>The last I heard of this widow she was the poor
+dear shorn lamb of those oil speculators. Where one
+wins her golden fleece, a thousand are clipped clean
+of their honest wool.</p>
+
+<p>After the death of my husband I suffered for the
+first time in my life from the inferiority complex. I
+was left not merely a widow but strangely benighted,
+like a foreigner who is totally ignorant of the manners
+and customs of the people with whom he is to
+deal. I suppose many women have had this experience,
+and may think it is grief. It is terror and
+uncertainty. If she survives it honorably, with her
+head up and her banners flying, she will be obliged
+to shed her widow’s veil and be born again mentally
+no matter how soundly she may have been converted
+previously to the wisdom of spiritual things. She
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span>will be obliged to study something besides the Scriptures,
+and get stout secular doctrines for dealing
+with a vastly competitive and acquisitive world.
+Clinging to the cross is nothing to the way she must
+cling to her own good sense. The Lord encourages
+us to cling to that symbol of faith, but it is no
+use clinging to the world that way. She must step
+around in it with a firm tread and do business with
+her spectacles properly adjusted.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore I am recording it as truth here, hardly
+earned, that an up-and-doing widow’s mind is one
+of the most remarkable mental phenomena in
+existence; and I defy the ablest metaphysician to
+analyze the thing. It is made up of feminine faculties,
+stiffened, sharpened, sweetened, soured and
+tempered to any emergency, and she has ten emergencies
+where a man has one, because every one with
+whom she deals perceives that she is a woman and
+proceeds upon that basis. She is much more of one
+than the average woman ever learns to be, but,
+good heavens, what a furtive, brave, serpentine,
+dove-good use she has got of her little old knitting-needle
+faculties!</p>
+
+<p>I spent three years after the death of my husband
+walking softly beneath my widow’s veil, studying
+the situation which the world was to me. I worked
+hard, made no investments and suffered from one
+long nightmare of terror and grief. I know exactly
+how it feels to have lost my right hand for achieving
+life, to get up cured of the wound, but with only my
+left hand to support me, when I had never been
+obliged to support myself at all.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span></p>
+
+<p>Widows deal with men if they earn a living, or
+even if they do not. The thing which alarmed me
+was the discovery that I knew nothing about men,
+and that they are mysterious. Their mental processes
+are different from those of women, although
+emotionally and every other way the family resemblance
+between us is so strong as to be misleading.
+They have a different way of planning and
+accomplishing their purposes. They have a conscience,
+probably a better and more scrupulous
+conscience than we have about a few things, but
+theirs has a wide-open loose end, through which
+they can pass out to achieve without a qualm some
+great deed that we would never pay the price in
+piety to accomplish.</p>
+
+<p>I perceived with a sort of terror how able and uncanny
+they are, due chiefly to this circumstance.
+They have by nature more liberty of action than we
+can afford to exercise. This is one reason why many
+modern women look so queer and out of drawing.
+They are making the experiment. The result is a
+parody. No originality, they are aping men, as a
+feebler race imitates a stronger race. If I am any
+judge of the real moral greatness of women, they will
+suffer a revulsion of sensibility presently and take to
+their heels. It is safe and honorable to associate
+intimately with one’s husbands, sons and father,
+and discreetly with one’s Christian brethren in the
+Church, though I am wary about that; but my
+notion is that it is dangerous, indelicate, frequently
+degrading to what we are, to associate too intimately
+with men in their political, professional, and other
+manifestations.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span></p>
+
+<p>I may be wrong about this. My opinion may
+spring like hypocrisy from cowardice, because I
+have not the courage to risk the losses these women
+sustain. My only excuse is that I came up in a different
+age and had my morals and sense of womanhood
+formed under different influences. If the modern
+woman does hold fast, and win and prove herself
+an asset instead of a liability in this civilization,
+I hope to bow my old gray head to her and take off
+my shoes before her in reverent recognition of the
+fact that she will have become the greatest pioneer
+of the ages, against the greatest odds, with the
+noblest courage.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime I am wearing my shoes, holding
+my neck stiff and regarding her over the top of my
+spectacles like a harsh, narrow-minded old mother
+who would like to snatch her daughters from a
+dangerous maelstrom and set them to the tasks at
+home that would make men instead of bandits of
+their sons, and proper maidens instead of adventurous
+flappers of their daughters. The best mother
+I ever knew never cast a ballot, but she established
+her sons in the way they should go. She has been
+dead for years, but she is still voting these men in
+every election.</p>
+
+<p>Maybe I should have omitted these reflections.
+When you have survived your own world, and are
+now merely the spectator of another world in the
+making, you cannot be qualified to pass judgment
+upon it. I let that go with this polite apology and
+return to the problems which faced me so many
+years ago when I became a widow.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XLI">
+    XLI
+    <br>
+    ALL SORTS OF MEN
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">At</span> safe distance I have spent much time observing
+men and the world they are making through the
+field glasses of my mind. I still prefer it to any world
+women can make. This is not an indication of turpitude,
+but due, no doubt, to my gender and the association
+of ideas. We know that men are strong by
+the deeds they have performed, the cities they have
+built and the cities they have taken; by the courage
+they have shown in war and in the face of wildernesses
+to be conquered, and by every hardship
+which women endure but cannot overcome. So I
+instinctively look up to men.</p>
+
+<p>I am not defending myself, although women have
+made great strides recently in discovering how weak
+and unworthy men have always been of the confidence
+we reposed in them. I am not reposing much
+confidence in them, but I am simply admitting that
+the tilt of my gaze toward them is instinctive
+and prayerful, not rational, any more than personal
+faith in God would be regarded as reasonable by a
+materialist. But observe the advantage I have of
+the rationalist, who is reduced to the dirt dauber’s
+creed of worshiping his own intellect, while I enjoy
+the more becoming distinction of spreading
+wider wings upward.</p>
+
+<p>My ideas about men spring from the same shrewd
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span>source of financing my future by faith—that
+evidence of things hoped for but not seen. I am
+determined to remain the weaker vessel and to hold
+them to the higher altitude of superior beings. It
+is more profitable and the surest way of forcing them
+to make good. They are only too willing to part
+with their responsibilities to these valiant modern
+women who are so anxious to prove their own ability
+to assume these burdens and bear them.</p>
+
+<p>I have no doubt there is a smile up the sleeve of
+every man in this country as he watches the return
+of his women to servitude, not the old domestic
+bondage, but every other kind. Millions of them
+bread winners, filling positions at half the price
+these positions paid when men filled them. No
+wonder men can afford an eight-hour working day.
+Enough women are working longer hours to more
+than make up the difference in the common-to-all
+income. No wonder there are so many strikes. They
+can afford the luxury and disturbance on the sweat
+of the women.</p>
+
+<p>In the same way they are serving men in politics,
+because they can reach a class of constituents the
+male candidate cannot reach, and because they can
+practice arts he never had to get him elected. I
+am wondering what will happen when these women
+discover that they cannot make this a good little
+world to live in by amendments, and that all their
+labor and devotions have been spent for the promotion
+and gratification of men, as usual. My prediction
+is that there will be such a shrieking strike as
+the whole National Guard cannot put down, because
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span>every striker will rush home, and fling herself upon
+the bed to do her shrieking.</p>
+
+<p>I hope I shall live to see that holy day. It will
+mark the defeat of men and their return to duty in
+a strangely diminished frame of mind. But I shall
+never see it. The thing will come to pass so gradually,
+one woman at a time coming to her senses, and then
+taking refuge in nervous prostration or some other
+condition obviously and naturally beyond the power
+of men to reach or control her.</p>
+
+<p>The only man I had ever known was, as it happened,
+different from other men. He desired above
+all things to be meekly and truly blameless before
+the Lord. God was his public opinion. I was
+amazed, you may say, to the point of fainting
+spiritually to discover that men in general have no
+such instinct for piety. In his heart I do believe the
+veriest saint among them would shrink from a too
+notorious reputation for being merely good and
+entirely virtuous, although the least and meanest
+one of them wishes to appear great, if it is only to
+one woman, no matter how short he is in personal
+virtues.</p>
+
+<p>I believe they are all more spiritually inclined
+than we are; but heavens, what unscrupulous
+spirituality! It is a sort of noble side line they carry.
+They crave as we never do the sensations of power,
+exaltation. This, I believe, is the psychological explanation
+of why many men take to intoxicants
+before they feel the need of artificial stimulants
+which the hard pressure of this swiftly moving age
+now brings. They want to feel like gods, they wish
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span>to enjoy the sensations of being hard-boiled, when
+by nature they are polite, timid little fellows. They
+wish to feel for a moment the power in their heel to
+kick the world around, though as a rule they remain
+sufficiently sober not to lift a foot in the actual experiment.</p>
+
+<p>The fool wants to be witty. The Smart Aleck
+wishes to light all his candles at once and watch
+himself shine. The man with a bad conscience longs
+for the false courage to swank about like a supervillain
+and rejoice in his iniquities. And there are
+those who drink to drown their sorrows, although
+my observation is that they will do it before they
+have any griefs or legitimate depressions from weariness
+or hardship to overcome. They are really
+suffering from that masculine embarrassment in
+sobriety of knowing how limited they are in power
+and other godlikenesses which all men perpetually
+crave. If even all the women in the world would
+concede these qualities, humor them with sufficient
+admiration and reverence, we should have no need
+for the Eighteenth Amendment, seeing that these
+several classes of men would be already sublimely
+intoxicated.</p>
+
+<p>They have not made good as gods in spite of
+these divine retchings, but they have built a magnificent
+world. I will warrant there is nothing comparable
+to their achievements on any of the other
+planets of our solar system. But you will not find
+the mark of one feminine finger upon the architecture
+of this one and very few traces of the feminine
+imagination in these great accomplishments. We
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span>have our good points, but they are not architecturally
+or literally constructive. We are, I should say,
+at best the patient conservators of what men make,
+win, and produce. This is the reason why dissipation
+is far less excusable in women than men. They
+have their vanities and virtues, but no such boundless
+egotism to keep up and satisfy. When we are
+forever physically incapable of being the builders
+and achievers that men are, I do think it is regrettable
+that we should imitate that vice in them which
+is merely the mortal weakness of a sublime quality.</p>
+
+<p>We have our feminine deceits, ten thousand, but
+obvious and appealing. Men have another kind,
+which also spring from their passion for augmenting
+themselves, not endearing themselves. The vainest
+woman who ever lived does not crave the admiration
+of men as men crave that of women. They want
+it whether they want her or her love or even her
+property, whether she is young, old or blind. This
+is the reason why they cannot be truthful or quite
+honest in their relation to us. It is not the desire to
+deceive, but to shine, to rule and overcome us with
+their minds and their wills.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think any exercise of our recent rights as
+citizens will ever overcome this handicap. The fact
+is it is fatal to do so. The moment a man perceives
+himself diminished to his true proportions in a
+woman’s eyes, she becomes offensive and repugnant
+to him, and he is right about that. She was originally
+designed by her Maker to be the complimentary
+mirror in which Adam might gaze to spoof himself
+to greater endeavors.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span></p>
+
+<p>When I found out all these things about men it
+had a queer effect upon me. I distinctly recall facing
+about, thinking Lundy up out of his dust and
+reviewing him in the light of this new information.
+Had I ever really understood my husband? I never
+shall know. That perfect illusion which love is still
+clothed him, and I could make nothing of all my
+remembered evidence beyond the kindness and patience
+and prayers of our life together. I remember
+still with pleasure how grand and superior he used to
+look when he flared into flames of fine eloquence
+that put my light out. But just let any man try
+that now! I can see the difference every time between
+the mere man of him and his eloquence. I
+am not moved. I simply regard him with a listening
+eye while I divide the light of his words from his own
+darkness, whether real or potential. If I should
+be won by his eloquence or his arguments, he has
+the advantage. Presently I shall be taking his advice
+or adopting his opinions against my own
+woman’s judgment, which is bad business, if you
+know what I mean.</p>
+
+<p>As near as I can tell the truth from memory, it
+was this instinct of inferiority which led me to earn
+my life and my living in strict retirement after my
+husband’s death. I perceived that the training I
+had had with him in the scriptural simplicities of
+living was no adequate preparation for competing
+with men in any way. I might hold a candle to them,
+but I’d never hold my own with them. And trying
+to get a working knowledge of them at the age I was
+then would have been like trying to learn a foreign
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span>language after you are forty when you were born
+with a lisping, stammering tongue.</p>
+
+<p>There was another consideration that influenced
+me. As a wife I had practiced the habits of obedience.
+My husband laid the scenes of our life and
+controlled our destiny. I simply helped him do that.
+I had been confirmed in the womanly attribute of
+being guided by his stronger will. What I discovered
+at the end of these three years’ thoughtfulness is
+that every man’s will is stronger than any woman’s.
+She may outwit him, but she cannot outwill him.
+It was not my idea to dizzy around as a widow,
+being guided by this man or that one in my affairs.
+The best thing I could do was to break the entail of
+that beautiful attribute of obedience I had as a wife,
+tear it up like a scrap of paper, and retreat to a safe
+distance. I meant to lay a few scenes of my own
+devising and to become the captain of my own fate,
+let the Lord do as he saw fit about my soul.</p>
+
+<p>I was near to being tired of my soul by this time
+from worrying with it and straining spiritually for
+so many years to the exclusion of all earthly profits.
+Later, I did resume intimate relations with it, because
+once you have adopted the ideals of a spiritual
+life you are meanly impoverished without them.
+You are degraded in your own consciousness as
+bitter, worm-eaten dust without this sublime reservation
+held by faith, that there is eternal life no
+matter what griefs you have had or what happiness
+you have missed or what an ordinary person you
+have been all your life.</p>
+
+<p>I feel these limitations keenly, and have always
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span>been extremely anxious to find out for sure that I
+really am extraordinary and immortal and worthy
+of my own admiration at the very last. I wish to
+die proud.</p>
+
+<p>This is something that can only happen to us in
+the next world, where I hope to forget my mortal
+limitations and some of the ridiculous as well as
+tragic mistakes I have made here that caricature
+me now to myself. For the same reason I am not
+inclined to interpret too literally and painfully those
+Scriptures which intimate that our memories will be
+resuscitated with us. I do hope this is not obligatory.
+For I should need no memory to recognize
+Lundy or Faith. I should know them as one comes
+again in full possession of his mind and heart after
+a long sleep. My idea of a happy resurrection would
+be to rise from my dust cleansed from every embarrassing
+and diminishing recollection, because
+this is the only way to be as prideful as one expects
+to be in Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Grief, however poignant, is like a wound, if you
+are not by nature infirm, but a normal person with a
+strong mental constitution, you recover from it as
+you would from any other wound or sickness. So I
+recovered from the death of my husband. The
+health of my spirit returned, and with it the idea
+of happiness began to freshen in my mind.</p>
+
+<p>Faith was married by this time. I was alone and
+free to live that life of mine which I had wished for
+as saints long for immortality. My feeling has always
+been that happiness lies somewhere in Genesis,
+in those first scenes of man. For this reason I set
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span>out for the hills behind the world in Georgia, where
+the days come and go much as they did in the beginning,
+where human speech is such a rare sound that
+the dogs bark when they hear it in this valley, and
+where the song of birds is the real language one
+hears. It is a place where there is no wealth, no
+learning, and much natural wisdom of the woods,
+the hills and streams. There are a few people, but
+I know them only as one knows a little prose, a
+little poetry and a few Scriptures, not personally
+nor intimately.</p>
+
+<p>I have written at some length in ‘My Book and
+Heart’ of this old cabin and the surroundings, but
+I am setting down now the real reason for coming
+here. It was to escape the mind and will of the
+world, to practice my own will and mind in living
+and so find happiness—that animation of the
+mortal spirit which is far more refreshing than
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>It was my way of laying claim to my own life.
+I am now in a position to say that I very much
+doubt whether there is such a thing as a human life
+which belongs exclusively to one person. It is something
+we borrow from other men, from books, from
+a thousand sources, and something we spend or
+lend likewise; but life does not belong to us as it does
+to other living creatures, nor even to the grass. We
+are the most dependent of all God’s creatures, not
+only upon one another, but upon the beasts of the
+fields and upon everything that lives. And nothing
+we win, even if it is everything, can possibly satisfy
+us. I suppose this is one of those terrific provisions
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span>of Providence to keep us doing and moving toward
+some far-off divine event.</p>
+
+<p>What follows is the record of my adventures in
+this business. Launcelot looking for the Holy Grail
+never traveled farther or endured greater hardships
+than I have in this narrow valley looking for happiness.
+I have worn all my virtues to a frazzle and I
+am about to grow old in sorrowful defeats without
+attaining even the bright rim of the cup of happiness.
+And now, when maybe it is too late, I have discovered
+the mistake I made. This is scarcely
+reason enough to go on with these annals, because
+when at the end I prove it and set it down in plain
+words, not one who reads this tale can avoid making
+it. We are the perpetual victims of an illusion. We
+may as well take what comes, whether it is happiness
+or not, and avoid the struggle.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XLII">
+    XLII
+    <br>
+    VARIOUS TYPES OF WOMEN
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">I suppose</span> women are one of the essential provisions
+of Nature, but in our minds we have never been
+satisfied with the arrangement. We feel that there
+is some kind of imposition connected with it. We
+were simply thought of afterwards; we were not an
+inspiration of creation, but we were created to meet
+a necessity afterwards. This makes a difference.
+We are not quite normal as men are. We still have
+a futile instinct to escape from what we are. Thousands
+and thousands of years have not made us
+contented and at home in ourselves. No man ever
+wished himself a woman, but ask any one of us and
+if she is in a truthful mood she will admit that she
+wishes she were a man. I have no doubt Eve regretted
+she was not Adam.</p>
+
+<p>Circumstances have favored us. From winning
+privileges, protections and perquisites as we came up
+through the ages, we are at last getting some queer
+advantages of the situation one way or another.
+But this makes no difference. If we obtain the balance
+of power we seek, live the lives men live and
+do the things they do, we shall still be women, subject
+as usual to fits of nerves and tears on account of
+the long strain of not being quite normal and at
+home in ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>But when you have been a woman a long time,
+and have grown accustomed, you may say by defeat,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</span>to the sensations of being one, you may look
+back through your mind, which is quite different
+from looking back through your history, and pick
+up much strange information about yourself which
+you would never discover except in the retrospect.</p>
+
+<p>For example, seeing the woman I used to be more
+clearly than I could possibly have seen and measured
+her then, it occurs to me that I may have been a kind
+of idiot, femininely speaking. What I mean is that
+I seem to have been almost totally devoid of that
+engaging self-consciousness which makes women
+noticeable and attractive to men. I am embarrassed
+lest my husband may have found me delinquent in
+the mere airs of femininity. I do not recall ever
+being coquettish or feeling attractive; merely honest,
+kind, devoted, and at times freakishly witty
+or gravely intelligent.</p>
+
+<p>Maybe this was due to the fact that I was not
+pretty as men see prettiness, and knew it, although
+I always felt beautiful, and must have been absurdly
+contented with this inward conviction. Still I have
+known many a homely woman who was amazingly
+attractive, like that heroine in one of Madame de
+Staël’s novels to whose ‘bright dark homeliness’
+she refers so flatteringly. That is the point—if you
+must be homely it is better to be dark about it.
+With black hair, black eyes and even a swarthy
+skin you have only to turn on your light from within
+to glow. I am too fair, not enough contrast between
+my blondness and any brightness of expression I
+could turn on. Besides, I have what would be called
+a lofty brow in a man, which gives me a damnably
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</span>noble look so far as beauty is concerned. During
+the thin years of my earlier womanhood it was out
+of all sweetly feminine proportion to the lower part
+of my face.</p>
+
+<p>I am only suggesting a probable explanation, you
+understand; not that I believe it myself, but hope
+some one else will. The feeling I have now is that I
+missed part of my conduct as a woman at a time
+when it might have contributed some to that
+happiness which I have also missed. What I should
+like to know is whether women who have flown their
+banners in many men’s hearts during their youth
+have memories of happiness that I have not got.
+Do they recall those episodes with pleasure? Or do
+they recall them at all? I have a queer, ruthless
+feeling that I could have forgotten many men, and
+remembered forever only one. I wish I knew what
+so many other women know about this. Maybe it
+is idle curiosity, but it feels like lines I failed to recite
+in living.</p>
+
+<p>At this late day I wonder what Lundy really
+thought of me. I have observed this—that very
+few wives know what their husbands think of them.
+I even wonder sometimes with the gravest trepidations
+what he would think of me now. I have
+grown so sensible. I have almost lost the gift of
+doing anything foolish and sweetly feminine, if I
+ever had it. And yet the woman I never have been
+sits and looks through this bright veil of mysteries,
+as we sometimes gaze reverently at the masterpiece
+we never could have painted.</p>
+
+<p>The only consolation I get in such a mood is a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</span>mean one. The women I have known who enjoyed
+all these benefits do not impress me as being eased
+by their experiences. I can think of a dozen who
+were belles in their youth, who were happily married,
+who enjoyed all the distinctions society and wealth
+can confer upon charming women. And now, at my
+age, they have a curious, beautifully painted, bankrupt
+expression, as if they had lost several fortunes
+and were facing the direst poverty in their old age.
+I may be mistaken about this. They may have
+acquired that restless, frantic look characteristic
+of them from habit on account of doing things instead
+of sitting for years thinking things as I have
+done.</p>
+
+<p>Still, I feel like a stranger among them, as if they
+had practiced some kind of feminine wit and dexterity
+in living that I do not know. I believe it is
+something they learned of themselves which I cannot
+learn. They know how to make an attraction of
+their modesty.</p>
+
+<p>Now I have often wondered whether modesty is a
+cultivated virtue or a quality of femininity. If it is
+a virtue to be attained by taking thought, I have
+lacked it through the whole of my life. For I have
+never been consciously modest, nor even felt the
+need of protecting myself anywhere, nor the least
+anxiety about remaining neatly folded and decent to
+the last.</p>
+
+<p>One of the mysteries of feminine consciousness
+which I have never fathomed is why so many
+women feel in some vague danger from men. Why
+do they look under the bed to make sure no man is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</span>there? Years ago I was going to prayer meeting one
+evening in a city accompanied by a spinster. She
+was a dear good soul, but you may say almost conscientiously
+homely. This was during that period
+when we wore broad black leather belts to gear
+in our shirt waists and skirts. We were stepping
+primly around the corner to the church when my
+companion leaped into the air and screamed. Clinging
+to me in the wildest terror, she vowed that a
+man had seized her by the belt from behind. It
+was no use to ask her if she was sure it was a man:
+they always know it is a man if anything happens
+to them. He alone is the plausible explanation. It
+was a fact that she had lost her belt. The buckle
+had slipped and it lay directly behind us on the
+pavement. Now why did she do that? One might
+be tempted to suspect some indelicate lesion of the
+imagination if it were not for the fact that good
+women, pure enough in heart to see God, are subject
+to these vagaries.</p>
+
+<p>When I had lived alone in this old cabin for ten
+years, without ever suspecting it of having a man
+concealed in it, a friend came to spend a month with
+me. She was seven years my senior, and you may
+say the very pincushion of every feminine virtue,
+very modest. Nevertheless, every evening before
+she retired she would take her candle and go man-hunting
+through the house, upstairs, downstairs,
+and even into both basements—just to make sure
+no man was in it.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes in the deeper, darker hours of the
+night she would appear like a ghost in my room to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</span>whisper excitedly that she was sure she had heard a
+man in the house. Then we would start forth to
+find this wraith of her imagination, two elderly women
+buttoned to the chin in our plain middle-aged
+nighties, her gray hair and my thin hair skewed so
+tightly that it left nothing to be revealed concerning
+our faded faces—terrible looking, but harmless
+creatures, bearing our quaking candles, thrusting
+them into such corners and places as burglars only
+inhabit in the feminine imagination. If we had
+actually discovered one it would not have been we
+but the burglar who must have fainted at the sight
+of us.</p>
+
+<p>She could never realize the absurdity of these
+fruitless adventures, but I always felt embarrassed
+and apologetic to mankind in general. A woman
+must have more presumption than I have ever felt
+to imagine herself in any kind of danger from men.</p>
+
+<p>But that is my point. They are the more womanly
+women, and the dearer kind to men. The telepathy
+of terror they experience toward this imaginary man
+is none the less telepathy when they are not alarmed
+if they are in social sight and distance of men. I
+suppose in the dark or when they are alone and unprotected
+their fears are due to the survival of a
+primitive instinct, out of date now, like the appendix
+in the human body, but brought up with them from
+that far time when women were in real danger of
+being seized and borne off by some marauding
+knight on his saddlebow.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose in the daytime, in the parlor or on the
+street, when these same women are armed to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</span>teeth with every charm, it is the same instinct of
+self-consciousness in a victorious mood. They are
+on the offensive then and more or less irresistible.
+For men certainly are more easily attracted by the
+self-conscious woman, whether she is shrinkingly or
+boldly so, than they are by one who sleeps soundly
+unmindful of them and who goes about her business
+the next day with no animated sense of them.</p>
+
+<p>What I mean is that modesty of this kind is the
+fine art of self-consciousness, and to be without it is
+to be femininely stupid, no matter how much other
+sense you have. At my age, I suppose no woman
+with a proper sense of dignity would want romantic
+attention. It would come to the same thing as
+being caricatured. Even at that, I do get tired sometimes
+of seeing in every man’s eye with whom I deal
+that I have come to do business with him or that he
+has come to do business with me. I feel the need of
+a little more versatility of manners between us. I
+should like to take a pleasant feminine shot at him
+as I see other women do, but so far as I know I have
+never capered one such glancing remark at a man,
+even if I met him upon my own copygrounds, much
+less in a business way. And I have wished for compliments,
+not aimed at my brains or my diligence,
+as other women wish much more fortunately, but
+no man ever lies in that beautiful way to me.</p>
+
+<p>I am not regretting the dignity of my conduct,
+nor the awful dignity with which I am treated; but
+I am merely intimating that it is dry stuff being a
+woman when some dull wisdom in you keeps you
+from acting altogether like one. It is a tearful thing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</span>to know that you will go down to your grave loved
+and honored for the good you have done and not for
+the sweetness and loveliness of the woman you were
+or might, could or would have been if you had used
+your mind less and your talents more.</p>
+
+<p>It would be interesting to know how the modern
+woman is coming out at this point. They are bolder
+than we were. I read of one lately who left her
+husband listening on the front porch while she went
+back in the dark house and shot the burglar whom
+he was too sensible to face. And it is absolutely
+amazing to me how many of them kill their own
+husbands upon provocations that formerly drew
+only a few tears from a wife. To slay your husband,
+no matter what kind of husband he is, seems to me
+a frightful kind of suicide. Formerly only men killed
+their wives. Now they flunk and desert them. They
+have lost some power of endurance they used to
+have with all their faults in the married relation. As
+near as I can make out, two people who marry now
+are not one in the sense we used to be, because from
+the start they contemplate no such involving unity.
+We are founding a precarious domestic life upon
+the grounds of mutual intolerance.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know how they have managed it, but it
+is perfectly clear to an observing person that modern
+men are shy of modern women not as fellow sports
+but as prospective husbands. Maybe it is because so
+many women sue for alimony, when they used to
+give up and do the best they could according to their
+marriage vows. Maybe it is because so many young
+women now will bring suit for damages on account
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</span>of a breach of promise and prove the latter by the
+signature of a love letter.</p>
+
+<p>In my day, if a girl was jilted she died of a broken
+heart, or became an old maid, or married better, and
+nothing was said of that earlier affair. Getting
+damages evens matters up, but it does seem strangely
+gross and unwomanly to do such a thing, as if the
+victoress sold her self-respect in the open court for
+so many thousand dollars. Can the definition of
+self-respect change with the changing times with a
+woman? I have often wondered how they feel when
+they win such a suit.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of all this courage in women is to develop
+the bump of matrimonial caution in the best
+men to the point of absurdity. I remember very
+well the first hero we had in American fiction who
+dared not write letters like Saint Paul, with his own
+hand, to his lady love, lest these should be used as
+evidence against him. This was Annixter in Frank
+Norris’s novel, ‘The Octopus.’ We thought at the
+time that this was a false note in the story. Now the
+world is teeming with these discreet young bachelors.</p>
+
+<p>The fashion of what we are is changing. Women
+do seem to have a better working knowledge of men
+than they had even a dozen years ago. But I am
+wondering how it will turn out. If you are by nature
+the weaker vessel, it is a dangerous thing to break
+too many of the stronger vessels. We need them.
+The safest and wisest way of getting the better of a
+man if you are a woman is by sticking to him.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XLIII">
+    XLIII
+    <br>
+    MERE MIND
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">The</span> trouble is that I have been too much concerned
+in writing the scriptures of human hearts according
+to the light of my own heart. One cannot be such an
+interpreter and figure at the same time as the sophisticated
+heroine of an adventurous and highly
+colored existence. Will no one appreciate the delicacy
+and courtesy I have shown in failing to reveal his
+sins by not recording mine? Then, indeed, I should
+deserve the charge of having lived a particularly narrow
+and uninteresting life.</p>
+
+<p>No one will bury me on top of a high mountain in
+honor of my brilliant transgressions or make a pilgrimage
+to lay wreaths upon my tomb later. Any
+respectable person could commit them and get away
+with it. I have a temper which perpetually glows
+like a coal of fire on my altar. The lies I tell as a rule
+are good little lies offered to comfort somebody, or
+to shield myself from the snooping eye of the uncharitable.
+I have no more conscience about that
+than softly closing the door of my chamber when
+the devil passes by.</p>
+
+<p>I am an ungodly, intemperate and uncharitable
+woman when it comes to bearing with laziness and
+shiftlessness. I still believe an idle brain is the devil’s
+workshop. If I exposed some of the convictions I
+entertain along this line, they would forever bar me
+from polite society. I am so profoundly conscious
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</span>of my own sex that I cannot endure the license of
+modern conversation on this subject. Not only that,
+but I am so mean-minded that I cannot believe the
+people who indulge in it have decent minds, no matter
+how high and noble they look at the time or
+what excellent diction they use.</p>
+
+<p>I believe firmly in the fig leaves of language and
+that God still walks in the garden in the cool of the
+evening, looking for that damned Adam of us all. I
+believe the mere minds we have lead to mischief.
+They are roguish and unscrupulous. I believe that
+we are in touch with something else, spirit, which
+leads to righteousness, honor, and things of good
+report. I am not pretending, however, to keep up
+this connection.</p>
+
+<p>Just let me make a good resolution, especially to
+the effect that I will exercise charity toward all and
+malice toward none, and I am sure to fly off the
+handle before that day is done to administer mortal
+justice merely, you may say, as a public service
+against a neighbor who has cheated, or beaten his
+horse unmercifully, or started a scandal, or gone
+a-fishing while his wife and children remain at home
+to work in the fields—none of which is my business.
+Still, I will attend to it as if it was.</p>
+
+<p>I have long since made up my mind that there is
+more mortal relief in judging people and taking the
+consequences of having the same judgment meted
+to me again than sitting like an innocuous saint
+with my mouth shut. If that scripture should be
+literally and universally obeyed, how could we
+develop public opinion? And after all is said and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</span>done in the name of the law and religion, does not
+public opinion remain the strongest moral force we
+have for controlling the conduct of men?</p>
+
+<p>I may be a trifle short now and then in my contributions
+to charity, but no one can accuse me of not
+being liberal and constant in my contributions to
+public opinion. The result is that, so far as I know,
+I have one of the worst-weathered reputations in
+this section. I am coming to that presently. In the
+meantime, if you take my word for it, there is
+nothing novel or inflammable in the sins I have
+committed.</p>
+
+<p>I am not excusing myself for the lack of valor I
+have shown along this line, you understand; but I
+am offering an explanation, which relieves me in a
+large measure both from blame or praise in this
+matter. When you have had the Ten Commandments
+striped upon your conscience with a switch
+at a tender age, when you have spent nearly a
+quarter of a century practicing the beatitudes in
+spite of your own carnal desire to raise the dust
+occasionally with an instinct more effective in
+mortal affairs than a beatitude, and when you have
+spent the remaining years of your life serving a
+sentence to hard labor, a flirtation seems a frivolous
+waste of time, even if such an affair affords you the
+gratification of being a worldly wise and tragically
+experienced woman.</p>
+
+<p>I have contemplated this kind of diversion much
+as one considers a wild speculation; but after mature
+reflection I have always decided not to invest, because
+it seems to me the man gets the diversion and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</span>the woman gets the black eye, no matter how sweetly
+and beautifully and modestly she conducts her romance,
+especially if it ends in marriage.</p>
+
+<p>What I mean is that it is useless to pretend to be
+very good or very wise. We cannot be, and overcome
+one another as frequently as we do in the long
+competition of living. I suppose this is one reason
+why righteousness and wisdom make such slow
+progress in this world and have had so many backsets.
+The sensible thing to do is to choose a life
+within your capacity to achieve and do most of
+your thinking along the line you have chosen.</p>
+
+<p>So I have gone on, writing a few books on the side,
+but laying the scenes of my mind in the valley. I
+can go out any day and trace my real thoughts for
+the last ten years. By the looks of them it is easy to
+infer that I have no great mind and not much money
+to spend. But it is also clear that I was thinking and
+planning for happiness, not for riches. The forests
+still stand taller and greener than when I came,
+though the timber in them is worth three times as
+much as my whole estate here. The red hillsides
+have been changed into green pastures. It has been
+like taking over the care and maintenance of an old,
+sick, and impoverished relative to restore the land to
+health and vitality. But it is fertile and willing now.
+I make no apologies for what it has cost. I have been
+too wise to keep books with Nature and the weather.
+But I doubt if what I have spent in buildings, dams
+and breaks in all this time equals what the average
+woman with the same income would have spent on
+clothes, operas, motors and journeys from her
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</span>favorite summer resorts to her favorite winter resorts
+in half as many years. And I still have my investments,
+while she must repeat her expenses each
+season if she keeps up her indulgences. It all depends
+upon your taste in living and your idea of
+pleasure whether you spend lavishly for the splendors
+and gayeties of the fashionable world, or
+moderately for the long peace of a quiet place, round
+quiet days and starlit nights.</p>
+
+<p>I do not appear to have been brilliant or very
+extravagant anywhere; but the only place where I
+fail to show at a modest advantage is on the banks
+of the creek which flows through this valley, gory
+with mud in the spring and winter floods, clear and
+sparkling as a happy woman’s eye at other seasons.
+Twice every year I contend with this treacherous
+watercourse, twice every year it rises and sweeps
+over the land. Afterwards there remains not a vestige
+of my works along the banks to restrain it.</p>
+
+<p>Still, this valorous worm of a creek is near to being
+my dearest possession. The time was when my
+heart was filled with anxieties and fears for those
+whom I loved. Now there is no one to love and
+nothing to fear. The time was when I was at grips
+with poverty and every vicissitude. Now I am no
+longer very poor, and I do miss my vicissitudes as a
+demoted soldier misses his decorations for gallant
+service. And there was a time when the world inside
+the Church was fiercely critical of me and my works.
+Now the weather has changed and I miss the lash
+of the harsher saints. But I have a happy presentiment
+that when all my works are finished, and I am
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</span>a memory grown faint in the minds of men, I shall
+still be an aged willful woman in this valley, prancing
+majestically back and forth along the banks of
+this creek, ordering fortifications raised against its
+violence. The world will have passed and I shall
+have been reduced to littleness of consequences
+there; but I shall have something to do, one last
+fight to win. This is something to which to look forward
+when you have nothing else to win.</p>
+
+<p>This record, as truthful as I can make it, must read
+like a very well-constructed plan for a kind of happiness
+suitable for a person of my age and gender.
+But looking back through these years, I cannot recall
+any such experiences. It seems to me that I
+have always been in an anguish of labor or in a state
+of suspense, always looking for more burdens to
+bear, giving more bonds for title to my own life and
+liberties. It may be that happiness is a state of unconsciousness,
+and that I have been too consciously
+looking for it; but I am beginning to have a faint
+spiritual intimation that I have practiced my Scriptures
+to the wrong tune. I am not so sure now that
+the key-note of a good life should be self-sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>I am finally beginning to believe that the Scriptures
+were meant to preserve us from too many awful
+sacrifices, and that I may have used them too
+much like the shroud of my mortal mind. I am
+ready to concede that Nature is full of tricks to
+serve its own ends; but it does seem beneath the
+dignity of the good God to have persuaded the simple
+minority to sacrifice themselves for the profit and
+comfort of the indifferent and unrighteous majority,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</span>which is precisely what happens. It is really written
+that we shall present ourselves living sacrifices
+wholly acceptable to God.</p>
+
+<p>I wish I had remembered and understood the
+meaning of that passage sooner. It would have
+saved me much hardship and left more space for
+human happiness. It comes to me now that it is less
+exhausting to make one’s self wholly acceptable to
+the Lord than to those of our fellow men who can
+fish for our services with these Scriptures. For they
+want as many sacrifices as you can make, and will
+give you as many of their burdens to bear as you
+will carry; but our heavenly Father only demands a
+right spirit toward Him to make us reasonably safe
+in our relations to our fellow men—which would
+by no means cover the terrific labors and sacrifices
+some of us have made along this line.</p>
+
+<p>I am coming now to the closing scenes of my life
+as I have lived it in the past, because I mean to
+close these scenes. As a Christian, I have had the
+wrong training; as a middle-aged woman, it will be
+difficult to go against this training; but I do hope to
+have time to make the experiment.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XLIV">
+    XLIV
+    <br>
+    ISN’T LIFE EXCITING ENOUGH?
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Why</span> should one take to strong drink because this
+is now a fashionable perversity practiced against the
+prohibition amendment, as ill-bred people disregard
+other people’s respect for law and decency? We
+depend too much upon artificial stimulation. There
+used to be a home-brew known as fine conversation
+which was much more delightfully intoxicating than
+any brand of bootleg liquor now known to polite
+society. Lacking conversation here, I have frequently
+risen to a state of happy inebriation by
+following a particularly entrancing train of thought.</p>
+
+<p>This is one thing I have observed about gambling—it
+renders a man or a woman sinister and silent
+when other people present are obvious and vocative.
+They are mortgaged mentally by a fixed idea. In
+this connection I recall a visit made years ago to
+Monte Carlo. I missed the thrill. All my life I have
+been such a desperate gambler against fate, adversity,
+and the weather that the games I saw played
+there seemed childishly inadequate so far as gratifying
+an adventurous spirit is concerned. Men and
+women simply pawned themselves for a little gold,
+lost it or doubled it in a moment, and then repeated
+the experiment indefinitely. My notion about such
+people is that they lack the courage to sit in the
+long game of life and play it according to the rules.</p>
+
+<p>I am something of a piker, financially speaking;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</span>but I have always entertained the conceit that I
+might have done very well in Wall Street if I had
+not been more profitably engaged. My dealings
+have been chiefly with the earth and editors. Both
+are frightful risks. A flood or a drought may destroy
+your harvest. The forensic mind of the editor may
+have changed while you are writing the thing he
+thought he wanted, or you may have missed your
+cue and produced something he never dreamed of.
+My rule is never to kick against the pricks. What is
+the use of adding wounds to your misfortune, because
+if you push one of them he can give you
+reasons frightfully diminishing to your vanity for
+turning down your copy. They are the most convincing
+men on earth at that business.</p>
+
+<p>I recall only one triumphant exception in my
+twenty-five years’ experience with them. In 1915
+I had a contract to deliver three short stories to be
+published in a New York magazine. When they
+were delivered, the editor wired me that he would
+take them, since he was obliged to do so under the
+terms of the contract, but that he did not want them.
+The implication was not complimentary. Two days
+later I arrived in New York, called the editor of
+another magazine and offered him the same stories
+at an advance of two hundred dollars each on the
+original price. He agreed to take them sight unseen.
+I hurried off to call on the other editor who held the
+manuscripts.</p>
+
+<p>He was astonished, and obviously not glad to see
+me. But my manner was so regretful and apologetic
+that he recovered his more vehement faculties at
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</span>once. Never have I heard such a scathing criticism
+of literary composition. But I let him do his worst;
+I urged him on to speak yet more contemptuously
+of the things until words failed him.</p>
+
+<p>I do not remember ever feeling meek in the presence
+of mere man, but any woman can look meek.
+I folded my hands and regarded him like a shorn
+lamb in a cold wind.</p>
+
+<p>He accepted the compliment and relaxed. He
+said he regretted the necessity of being perfectly
+frank, but he thought under the circumstances it
+was his privilege to tell the truth about those stories.
+He was willing to keep the things, but they were not
+worth the price he had promised to pay for them,
+and so on and so forth. Oh, certainly not, I agreed;
+they were not worth anything to him, but to me,
+everything. My honor was involved; I could not
+think of allowing him to keep them, and so on and
+so forth, in a sad, low tone.</p>
+
+<p>This contest lasted an hour before I was at last
+obliged to fling off my sheep’s clothing, give him a
+glint of my real mind and demand them. He
+yielded then only on condition that I send him
+another story within the year. I agreed on condition
+that he should pay for it at once in advance, for no
+other reason that I can think of than to see how far
+I could go, seeing that I had started so glibly on this
+adventure.</p>
+
+<p>I delivered the three condemned stories to the
+other editor, having told him the scandal connected
+with them, and returned to my hotel with checks
+amounting to nearly four thousand dollars.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</span></p>
+
+<p>This indicates that I have some natural talent
+for speculating, but I am thinking my career as a
+writer has lasted longer because I have had the
+shrewdness not to develop the gift.</p>
+
+<p>There is a wideness of the mind not dependent
+upon the experience of a broad manner of living, if
+you know what I mean. But let that go; I suppose
+after all is said that can be said one way or
+the other, a man’s point of view about such matters
+depends upon his quality and his taste. Many
+people mistake jazz for joy, a loose life for a full
+life, successful selfishness for the survival of the
+fittest and the rationalism of a dirt dauber’s intellect
+for wisdom. Mine tend toward the great simplicities,
+whether they are actually to be attained or
+not. I prefer to clothe my egotism according to the
+nobler scriptures defining immortality rather than in
+the less expensive worldly vanities.</p>
+
+<p>This is a mean advantage to take of those critics
+who lack the spunk of such divine egotism without
+ever being able to prove immortality is an illusion
+of the mortal mind inspired by the fear of death. I
+have my anxieties about the traveling passports of
+saints in the next world; but if it is possible to obtain
+a furlough from paradise, I shall apply for one
+as soon as I am incorruptible and spirit-proved,
+return to this world and pinch a few friends and
+critics who now look askance upon my professions
+of faith. If I shall have developed no more than one
+wing, I mean to spread it in a smile, rustle it triumphantly
+in their ears by way of whispering, ‘Thou
+fool!’ But I do not suppose this will make any difference.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</span>It has already been written and proved
+that ‘even if one rose from the dead’ they will not
+believe.</p>
+
+<p>So my years have gone by. If you have read this
+record so far you will have perceived that these
+last ones lack the glory and loveliness of those
+earlier years. I am better known in the world and
+not so dependent in spirit as I used to be upon the
+angels in Heaven. I have not outgrown their ministrations;
+I seem to have lost them. Sometimes at
+night in this lonely house, lying awake, I remember
+the child I used to be in the little room at home, when
+I literally believed in my own guardian angels, one
+at the head and one at the foot of my bed.</p>
+
+<p>What sublime experiences children have, and how
+serenely they accept them! I used to fall asleep
+nonchalantly conscious of these angels and their
+protection. Now if for one fleeting moment I could
+be aware of such hallowed companionship, I am
+certain my corruption would put on incorruption
+and I should rise from that bed a spiritual body. I
+should be young and lovely; and the next morning,
+though I might look the same, I should be changed.
+I should have the heart of a child, know no evil,
+believe everything and draw all men to me.</p>
+
+<p>Very few people enjoy the privilege of laying the
+scenes of their own minds. They are controlled by
+circumstances, conventions, and that windy weather
+of other people’s minds known as the spirit of the
+times. If a man conceives the ambition to do such
+a thing, the easiest way is to climb into an attic,
+close the door and write out the scenes of his mind
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</span>on paper. And this is pure fiction so far as he is
+concerned, even if he produces a volume of the profoundest
+philosophy. He has not lived it; he has
+merely thought it.</p>
+
+<p>This is the reason why I have never bowed my
+dizzy old head to the greatest thinker of them all.
+I have done too much active living between the
+devil and the deep blue sea to be petrified into a
+state of admiration by a mere system of thought.
+Let him try out his theories on the land, in the street,
+in the commercial or industrial world, in society,
+even in the Church, and find out how long they will
+last.</p>
+
+<p>But watch the philosopher! He keeps out of the
+ructions of real life, which is the only personal
+evidence he shows of being one. All that stuff he has
+written is for you to practice. I never heard of an
+up-and-doing ubiquitous philosopher. He may lecture,
+but he does not live; he only exists. His books
+are popular or unpopular, but the man as a man
+would prove ineffective if he should be put to the
+tests the simplest of us must pass in order to matriculate
+as serviceable scholars in the real arts of living.
+I should be willing to match one of my narrow circuit
+rider’s days in living, or a half of one of my
+own days spent in this green attic of the hills, with
+one of Herbert Spencer’s days anytime; not that I
+know his private life, but I have my suspicions that
+there was not much of it. He was too entirely absorbed
+in recording his ideas to have had the energy
+and initiative to dramatize his thinking into deeds.</p>
+
+<p>The more one reflects upon the business rather
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</span>than the theories of living, the more do creeds and
+philosophies shrink in importance. It is like starting
+on a long and arduous journey burdened with luggage.
+You are handicapped by too many doctrines
+and complicated systems of thinking, which interferes
+with that moral elasticity so essential to courage
+and a good conscience. You may become famous for
+your piety or your wisdom, but you do not arrive.
+Respect for a doctrine or for logic trips you at the
+very moment when you might have made the grade.
+You may found a transient school of thought, obtain
+the flighty tail of a following; but there is no profit
+beyond that of gratified vanity in such an adventure.
+The world will presently swing through the lightening
+dust of your great mind and go on its way as
+if you had never happened—as this earth would
+scarcely be spattered by radiance if it passed through
+the flame tail of the brightest comet.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XLV">
+    XLV
+    <br>
+    AS WE SEEM TO OTHERS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">It</span> is a queer experience to gaze into the crystal ball
+that your mind really is and behold there the image
+of the woman you were and are and ever shall be, in
+spite of everything you have done and can do to
+glorify her.</p>
+
+<p>The life you live never reveals the person you are
+by nature; only the kind of person you have drifted
+into being or have been constrained to become. So
+your autobiography, however intimately written, is
+not the record of you, but of your feelings and performances
+under the circumstances, what happened
+to you by the day or by the year; what you lost and
+what you won. All of it is history manufactured by
+you in living, but not you. Some luminous dust of
+your trials and triumphs obscures your vision and
+makes the record shine at a time when no one who
+knew you then noticed the faintest rim of a halo
+above you.</p>
+
+<p>It is your nature to put your best foot foremost if
+you can get so much as the toe of it in print, so you
+instinctively drop the curtain on this scene or that
+one in your life because one hint of it would give the
+reader a glimpse of you, not garnished for the moment
+by your good deeds or extolled by your rhetoric
+of these performances.</p>
+
+<p>I do not suppose any one who reads ‘My Book and
+Heart’ will ever suspect what a commonplace person
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</span>the author of that record really is. I was frequently
+moved to tears and laughter while I was writing the
+thing. Sometimes for whole days I felt translated
+into the good words and the noble ones I used to set
+down merely the things I had suffered and achieved.</p>
+
+<p>But you have only to observe the impression you
+are making upon the people who see you every day
+and know your literal expression, your disposition,
+the cut of your eye, to have the soaring wings of your
+vanity as an autobiographer clipped. Very few of
+us would recognize one another by our scriptures,
+but we do it by the personal impression we make.
+For example, I have never felt that I should have
+been personally attracted to George Washington,
+although I respect and admire him as the Father
+of his Country. I do not think I would have invited
+him to a dinner party at my house even if I had been
+in a position to do so, because I have a very strong
+feeling that he would have been a short circuit
+socially. The conversation would have had to be adjusted
+to him. Our minds would have had to be
+the obsequious footmen to his outrageously noble
+soul. I do not believe tradition is responsible for this
+notion I have of him, but some intuition of the man
+which not even history can obscure.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, I have a vaguely regretful feeling
+that I might have enjoyed dining with Abraham
+Lincoln. And I am certain that I should have felt
+comfortable and blessed on merely the rim of the
+presence of Robert E. Lee. He would not have
+missed me even if I had been a very plain and undistinguished
+person in the darkest corner of the room.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</span>He would have contributed a glance of simple human
+recognition. I have the feeling that if I looked
+very insignificant he might have made the space between
+us with a fine complimentary air of having
+just seen some one with whom he particularly
+wished to pass a few pleasant words. I have had
+that happen to me more than once in the course of
+my life.</p>
+
+<p>When you have never learned to sit gracefully
+like a lady lyre in your chair with your draperies
+drawn close at exactly the right place; when you
+have a motionless countenance socially and a blunder-buss
+mind, and you are kept busy putting out
+the fuse of it lest the thing should go off with the explosion
+of an idea too loud for such an occasion—I do
+not know of any more gratifying experience than to
+be suddenly soothed by the recognition of a truly
+great man or woman who apparently does not suspect
+what an awkward person you are in that
+company. Such people are never moved by mere
+manners; they perform an act of social piety to
+you which springs from the gallantry of a kind
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>I remember once, before I ever dreamed of such
+an extravagance as an afternoon frock, I received
+an invitation to a very fashionable garden party. I
+wore a shirt waist and skirt. The latter was long
+and trailed, I hoped, elegantly behind me. But getting
+my foot caught in it as I descended caused me
+actually to tumble from the hack in which I arrived
+directly upon the fluttering edge of that garden
+party.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</span></p>
+
+<p>This was an abrupt way of entering the social life
+of a large town where I had been a stranger for
+seven years. But I made it, due entirely to one circumstance.
+A lovely woman, distinguished for her
+social graces, caught sight of me sitting upon a
+bench pathetically removed from the gayety of the
+occasion. She said she had been looking for me.
+Had I had any punch? Innocent stuff, a kind of
+sublimated lemonade. Did I know many of these
+people?</p>
+
+<p>I had had no refreshment, and I did not know any
+of these people. I might have added that my knees
+were still trembling from having fallen out of the
+hack, but I made out to accompany her. It was like
+walking in a rainbow of smiles and good will. Presently
+I came to my other self, a woman I had never
+been before, a social creature at ease. I had liberty,
+and remembered making several bright remarks,
+not droll, but neatly and prettily funny, at which
+every one laughed and looked at me as if I were a
+pleasant surprise.</p>
+
+<p>I caught the tune, even the step, of that occasion.
+I remember mincing from one group to another,
+holding up my skirt with an air, as conscious of the
+lace in the frill of my petticoat as any other woman
+present was of her rustling silk petticoats, accompanied
+through the whole afternoon by that gracious
+woman who anchored me with a look or a
+smile until my poor tight-fitting lid as a preacher’s
+wife came off and I was near to being a song which
+was not a hymn. I may have been ridiculous for all
+I know, but I felt very light in my heart. Maybe
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</span>this was happiness. If so, it was a long time ago,
+and I am by social functions now as literary critics
+are by a new novel. I am too learned in the things;
+I know too much about how they are made and what
+they cost in jealousies and competitions to enjoy
+them as I did that first garden party I attended in
+Nashville so many years ago.</p>
+
+<p>But what I started out to prove was that as one
+person to another person we are not the same character
+as we seem to be in history or even a conscientiously
+written autobiography.</p>
+
+<p>After the publication of ‘A Circuit Rider’s Wife,’
+my attributes as a good Christian woman were
+severely damaged by some of the whispering brethren.
+Quite inadvertently, the records of that book
+reflected upon a few of the inside workings of the
+Church; and Lundy being so tragically dead, these
+brethren dared not defend themselves by attacking
+his memory. The only thing left to do was to discredit
+the witness who had given damaging testimony
+concerning these matters.</p>
+
+<p>This was how I lost my reputation the first time—an
+entirely satisfactory item of expense to me so
+long as the crown I had written above Lundy’s head
+had remained untarnished.</p>
+
+<p>I kept silence, not by way of turning the other
+cheek, which is a form of piety unsuited to my disposition;
+but looking back now, I believe I was
+thinking out a few Scriptures. When you have
+nothing to lose you have everything to gain. I was
+in this grand state of destitution at that time. I
+had lost my husband; I had also lost my reputation
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</span>under the same frightful circumstances. But the
+moment I began to revolve that excellent Scripture
+in my mind which says, ‘Judge not ... for with
+what judgment ye judge ... it shall be measured
+to you again,’ I began to perk up. I had been most
+unmercifully judged, and here was the Lord’s own
+permission to return the compliment.</p>
+
+<p>I had several million readers by this time, which
+was considerable advantage to have gained in the
+scrimmage. I wrote three more circuit-rider stories.
+Besides having struck a rich vein of the finest human
+nature, I may have been inspired by some
+retributive sense of justice, according to the Scripture
+quoted above. Certainly my motive was not
+without mortal guile to guide it. But I have known
+very few effective people who stuck themselves up
+with a noble motive under fire. My idea is to whip,
+even if you perish in the fight. I am always willing
+to perish, knowing well that I shall rise again every
+time, everywhere according to the Word; but I am
+teetotally opposed to being defeated. If you do not
+take too many of the meeker Scriptures without
+balancing them with the fiercer elder Scriptures, it
+will be perfectly apparent to any sensible person
+that the Lord does not sanction submission to any
+unfriendly fate.</p>
+
+<p>I stuck to my text honorably, however, and confined
+my revealing wit to certain regrettable methods
+in the government of our church, and I may have
+touched lightly upon one or two doctrines which I
+believed to have been doubtfully derived from the
+Word. But no man’s reputation suffered in these
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</span>stories as mine had suffered at the hands of some of
+the brethren.</p>
+
+<p>Strange as it may seem, my reputation began to
+improve in the churchly silence which followed the
+publication of these later stories. I do not know
+whether I have reëstablished some kind of pop-eyed
+confidence in my own piety and character, or if I
+have been merely forgiven. I remain warily and
+politely on the outside, not knowing what service I
+yet may be inspired to render this church, which is
+infinitely dear to me. But I have been comforted
+with the hope that it has grown more tolerant of me,
+as I have become less intolerant of its shortcomings.
+I am beginning to realize how difficult it is to maintain
+any Christian organization in a world which
+specializes in worldly values without using secular
+methods. More courage and more faith are needed
+than modern Christians seem to have in order to
+comprehend that the glory of a church does not consist
+in its wealth and earthly power, but that God
+alone is the glory of the Church. I have a feeling
+that if Jesus should suddenly appear among us,
+clothed once more in our minds with divine authority,
+He would say to all these churches of whatever
+denomination, ‘Sell all thou hast and follow me.’</p>
+
+<p>It depends upon where you lay your scenes in
+living what kind of reputation you get, and how you
+lose it, in case that happens. If you lay them like a
+good little Dorcas, in the church, somebody will defeat
+you for the presidency of the missionary society
+because you are the most efficient woman for that
+place. If you stretch them like a climbing Jacobess
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</span>in women’s clubs, a certain clique in that club will
+pull the social ladder from under your aspiring feet
+and elect you to the office of kitchen manager for
+the afternoon refreshments. If you move a trifle
+briskly in smart society, you are in danger of losing
+your reputation on the front page of the daily paper
+on account of having done something newsy the
+night before the morning after. I know a splendid
+old gray-haired widow who will not dim the snap in
+her fine eyes, nor break her habit of having small
+feet beautifully shod, nor even change the contours
+of a figure outrageously youthful for her years. One
+morning this summer she appeared in the striding
+togs of a smart lady pedestrian and stepped vigorously
+past a dear friend on her way out.</p>
+
+<p>‘Where are you going?’ the dear friend called out.</p>
+
+<p>‘For my morning walk,’ she returned, swinging
+youthfully down the steps into the street.</p>
+
+<p>‘She is doing nothing of the kind. She is going to
+meet a man!’ the friend informed me.</p>
+
+<p>‘At her age?’ I protested.</p>
+
+<p>‘Age has nothing to do with her. She has resigned
+from her last ten years,’ was the indignant retort.</p>
+
+<p>‘Still, at this innocent and halcyon hour of a
+summer morning, a man cannot be such a doubtful
+person to meet,’ I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>The sense of sex has changed its location. It no
+longer exists merely as a sacred natural instinct, but
+it has become a conversational feature of the modern
+mind, leading to the wildest social and intellectual
+speculations. And there is literally no way of escaping
+its damaging enterprises.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</span></p>
+
+<p>In any case, if you retain the delicacy of your
+sensibilities, it is difficult to determine which is the
+more embarrassing—to have lost the reputation
+you were so careful to make for yourself or to endure
+the one imposed upon you by others.</p>
+
+<p>This is precisely what has happened to me. Somewhere
+along the way during these last ten years I
+have lost my reputation again. A second growth, to
+be sure, but one which I fondly believed to be normal
+and more becoming to me than the one I lost to
+the brethren. And not enough time left to build up
+another one before I pass forever out of the zone
+where all earthly reputations are made!</p>
+
+<p>Imagine the situation—an elderly woman who
+discreetly retired from the world years ago to spend
+the remainder of her days in a remote place, basking
+in the grace of God without making a fuss about it;
+showing her head once in so often above the horizon
+with a few neat laurels on her brow; doing a little
+good here and there, giving herself the airs of a beloved
+woman—only suddenly to awaken to the
+realization that she is a terrible old woman, autocratic,
+overbearing, who has set up a very small but
+clearly visible empire over which she reigns regardless
+of the manners, customs, and convictions of her
+friends and neighbors—when all this time I thought
+I was minding my own business and dressing my
+own garden to the profit and delectation of everybody
+who passed by!</p>
+
+<p>These dear good people have been speculating in
+my attributes, revising them privately according to
+their amazingly vigorous but uncouth imaginations.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</span>They have not left one pretty soft feminine sin
+sticking to me. If I had entered one of the modern
+professions of banditry or bootlegging, I should
+have needed less courage than would be required to
+play the rôle assigned to me. It calls for buckram
+breeches, two guns, a club and the vocabulary of a
+sailor on shore leave. The news of my deeds in this
+amazing disguise have percolated far and near.</p>
+
+<p>We are hard to please. I have frequently pitied
+women who were criticized for the way they dressed,
+rouged, or smiled, not knowing how vulnerable
+many people are to vivid coloring and a Mona Lisa
+sweetness of expression. Now I could find it in my
+heart to envy them. It is less embarrassing to be so
+suspected than to be shorn of one’s dearer charms
+and vanities as a woman, and to be accused instead
+of setting upon strong men with sticks. You wonder
+painfully if you actually have faded and toughened
+so much in the estimation of your neighbors that
+you have passed beyond the pink and glorified pale
+of a more delicate feminine transgression.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Virginia Woolf, novelist and critic, recently
+made this statement in an article published in the
+‘Criterion’: ‘On or about December, 1910, human
+character changed.’ One must envy her perspicuity,
+even if she does not mention the exact day of the
+month when this transformation took place; but I
+cannot imitate it about so intimate a thing as my
+own reputation. I do not know how long this primitive
+artistry in changing it has been going on; but
+my suspicion is that it began the day I set foot in
+this valley and started spinning literary rainbows
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</span>above the heads of these simple folk who share the
+attic life of these simple hills with me.</p>
+
+<p>Six busy years passed in love and charity with
+them before I had the least hint of what was going
+on. When at last I came face to face with my local
+likeness I was confounded. Long afterward the
+explanation occurred to me—in dealing with
+other people it is a mistake not to take into account
+the furtiveness of human nature and the guarded
+indirectness of the mortal mind. Wearing creeds
+and civilization like garments, we still practice
+within many of the traits of our primitive ancestors.
+A man is frequently on guard or on the offensive
+when we approach him in a friendly tail-wagging
+spirit, all unconscious of his bristling attitude, due
+to some weakness in himself of which you are not
+aware, or to a competitive animosity which you do
+not feel.</p>
+
+<p>I have learned this too late in life to practice a
+corresponding discretion in my association with
+other people. I seem to have an infernal gift for telling
+what is going on in my mind or feelings. This is
+the quickest way possible to kick the skylights out
+of your own reputation. But I do not regret it, having
+had a grander time telling on myself than most
+people ever have concealing themselves. I have
+told the truth too much. It makes you free, but you
+pay for it. I remember hoping at the time that the
+scandalous caricature of my virtues might be a compliment
+inadvertently implied. One must protect
+himself before his immediate public either with conceit
+or with resignation. I use both as the occasion
+demands.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</span></p>
+
+<p>After this experience, I resolved to have done
+with my various reputations. They are nowhere
+required of us in the Scriptures. On the contrary,
+in the second chapter of Philippians, it is recorded
+that he ‘made himself of no reputation.’ I have
+willed mine to the world, which makes them and
+takes them away. They are too ephemeral and too
+expensive to keep up. If you have caught the wind
+of the world in your sails, you have only to do your
+work to insure your fame—a drastic business, but
+not nearly so difficult as maintaining your own personal
+reputation if you have become one of the
+assets of the public mind.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, the older you grow the less comfortably
+does any reputation fit you. It is like a garment you
+used to wear, now out of style with your thoughts
+and your aspirations, which are stretching away
+like dreams beyond the mind of this world. There
+was a time, for example, when it troubled me to be
+regarded as a tightwad, because instead of contributing
+in the conventional public-spirited manner
+to movements, memorials, monuments and notorious
+charities, I have done my alms in secret. And
+though my heavenly Father who seeth in secret
+has not yet seen fit to reward me openly as they are
+praised who do good accompanied by a press agent,
+I am beginning to feel more solvent morally and independent
+spiritually by disregarding these character
+prints, good or bad, left in passing upon the
+minds of other people. The image depends too much
+upon the quality of the mind that receives it to be
+always reputable or veracious.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</span></p>
+
+<p>But whenever you become truly philosophical,
+you never are quite truthful toward your own
+humanness. I may write convincingly concerning
+this noble ideal of myself. It is held, you may say,
+on principle; I have never been able to live up to it
+except by fits and starts. The fact remains that I
+frequently suffer like a sinner under conviction over
+the impression made upon a friend, knowing how
+I have touched up the crooked lines of his character
+so that it will shine in a sentence more becoming
+to him. When he reads this sentence later in the
+book, he never seems to recognize himself. He never
+comes to clasp me by the hand and regard me with
+tear-dimmed eyes of appreciation. But just let me
+write out a fault, and forty men and women of my
+acquaintance will take offense, when my innocent
+purpose had been to dramatize one of my own secret
+shortcomings!</p>
+
+<p>The greatest inconvenience I experience comes
+from the constant effort to repress my friendly instincts.
+I have a talent for loving people and would
+like to use it, but my flare of affection is put out
+when I perceive myself mirrored in the eye of that
+man or this woman as a fearsome person, liable to
+explode an opinion which will reflect upon his dearest
+prejudice or outrage her most sacred fallacy.</p>
+
+<p>I am not complaining, you understand; I am
+simply indicating how much worm-and-dust wisdom
+of this world is required to finance a reputation even
+for sweetness and light, and that it does not pay if
+you have any safer way of employing your talents.</p>
+
+<p>We permit conscience to make cowards of us all.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</span>Then by instinct we turn upon the highest everywhere
+to reduce it to the level of our own conduct.
+We cannot even get far enough away from our own
+transgressions to believe in the Almighty. We condemn
+ourselves to dust and despair, and we cover
+the whole ignoble performance with flubdub philosophy
+and think we get away with it. But we do
+not. We live best by faith, not by what we know or
+the uttermost that we can think; and certainly not
+according to our reputations, because very few people
+know what kind of reputations they have.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XLVI">
+    XLVI
+    <br>
+    FITTING INTO LIFE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">Growing</span> up year after year in a place like this requires
+more studious application than taking a master’s
+degree in a university, where you attend lectures
+and have a course of reading to defend you
+from thinking your own thoughts on that subject.
+It is a fact which you discover for yourself under
+the circumstances that ‘knowledge comes, but
+wisdom lingers.’ We are at best no more than the
+imitators of wisdom. We borrow it, show off in it;
+but I have yet to see the faintest trace of natural
+wisdom in man, though the lower animals seem
+gifted with enough of it not to worry about their
+fate, whatever fate it is. I reckon this is the reason
+they remain lower, the damned harnessed victims
+of their content, as we are the more aspiring victims
+of our discontent, doubts and anxieties.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think, for example, that a man ever lived
+who could have conceived the idea of peace. That is
+something handed down to us by inspiration and
+tradition from the great beginning. The Lord alone
+knows what peace is, and He declared it—‘On
+earth peace, good will toward men.’ We have been
+repeating that Scripture for ages as children recite
+verses without the mind to comprehend the meaning.
+This is not hypocrisy on our part; it is our very
+nature to be incapable of peace.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</span></p>
+
+<p>After a while you get to the clear place in mind
+where you can see through so many theories and
+philosophies, even professions of faith, you know
+that they are no more than the defenses we throw
+up against our own weaknesses and fears. One of
+the touching revelations of this kind to me has been
+the shrewd way we shift for ourselves at the very
+last. We get a marvelous confidence in the goodness
+of God then. We come clean and do see Him, whether
+we were ever before pure in heart or not.</p>
+
+<p>The last deathbed I attended was that of a notoriously
+wicked man. No saint could have been
+more serenely at peace so far as his immortal future
+was concerned. He had worked hard and sinned
+fiercely. No man, it seemed, was his brother; but he
+lay there upon his dingy pillows beneath his ragged
+quilt with the innocent eyes of a child. He had done
+with guilt. He was out of pain so far as the Lord was
+concerned. Lying so wanly weak, never again to
+move hand or foot, he assured me that he was ready
+to go. The idea that he would be off presently upon
+an immeasurable journey was fixed in his mind, accompanied
+by no fears.</p>
+
+<p>They who stick to their creeds and the meaner
+mortal facts we all produce in living cannot comprehend
+the courage of a man like this. In considering
+his case they remember their favorite damnation
+doctrines, but never their own transgressions. Nothing
+will convince them that the Lord is not a theologian,
+but a Creator; and that a history of His will
+would be a history of the one fundamental law, not
+as we understand law, but what He has made it,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</span>followed whether you keep it or break it by inevitable
+consequences.</p>
+
+<p>This man had broken it in his flesh, and was dying
+for that reason as surely as if he had cut himself
+down. But now he was forced at last to keep that
+last most important part of it. With the vision of a
+child he had learned the meaning of God. He rested
+serenely upon what we preach and so rarely have the
+courage to achieve—real faith in God, and it had
+turned out precisely as the Scriptures promise—eased
+him of every fear. His sins had been removed
+as far from his consciousness as presently his body
+would be. I felt very close and soothingly kin to
+him, and reverently amazed at this perfect miracle
+of faith; also glad that he would die and escape that
+pit of himself into which he surely would have fallen
+if he had survived.</p>
+
+<p>When you get far down your slope of time, however,
+and care less than you used to care about being
+the heroine of your life dolled up in your best deeds,
+then you can take a look at yourself according to the
+mind you have now calmed and cooled by the years,
+and you may come into that last and greatest of all
+vanities—the boldness to portray the person you
+really are.</p>
+
+<p>Most people think they do that when they confess
+their sins; the worse they are the better they are for
+this purpose. My notion about that is if you must
+boast, it is more polite to proclaim your virtues. I
+have always been very courteous to others about
+that. But the queer thing is that I have never felt
+that my virtues really belong to me. Lecky’s ‘History
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</span>of European Morals’ knocked the last ray of
+conceit out of me about being even a chaste woman.
+First one virtue and then another seems to have been
+thrust upon us according to the self-protecting instinct
+of men against frauds in paternity or some
+other economy for their comfort and peace of mind.</p>
+
+<p>I am not complaining, you understand. It has all
+turned out for the best long ago; but I am just saying
+how queer I feel about having had decency and
+honor thrust upon us like foreordination by men,
+instead of choosing these distinctions for ourselves
+according to the word and will of God as we think
+we do. I have wondered if other women feel the
+same way about this. But I have never had the
+courage to ask the question point-blank. I have a
+sort of premonition that most of us are so ignorant of
+the processes by which we become virtue-bearing in
+an unvirtuous world that almost any woman might
+resent the question.</p>
+
+<p>But I suppose our sins do actually belong to us.
+However, there is practically no originality about
+them. We can only commit two or three, the others
+are mere variation of the same perversities. My
+notion is that there is not much satisfaction to be
+had from exposing them. If you make an art, a literature,
+or a science of your vices, the result is some
+kind of puerile decadence, not entertaining to normal
+people.</p>
+
+<p>In any case, I have been a very dull person along
+this line. To the best of my knowledge I have never
+committed an interesting sin, nor one that even held
+my own attention for longer than the moment it
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</span>took to get rid of it by prayer and repentance. For
+this reason I am obliged to confine myself to the
+moderate activities of that narrow and monotonous
+existence already mentioned with becoming heat in
+these pages.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back now through the mirror of my mind,
+the thing that astonishes me most is that nothing
+seems to have changed me. I made my little history
+of courage, honor and sacrifices, and from start to
+finish I can trace the silent, invincible child I was
+through all the women I have become in various
+periods of my life. I lived the whole of it with a
+curious mental reservation which was myself. I
+still love with a stronger passion the things that
+child loved—the earth, the sky, the living things
+that do not speak, but know and mean so much
+more than we can think or even tell with all our
+living or dead languages.</p>
+
+<p>There is a speech in the wind that we do not know,
+a heroism in Nature that we do not comprehend,
+some wisdom of beauty in the grass and the faintest
+flowers that bloom which we shall never achieve, a
+kind of fearless liberty to live to which we shall
+never attain with all our ideals and declarations of
+independence. We only believe that all men are
+created free and equal and entitled to the pursuit of
+happiness, but it is something we have never experienced
+because our minds constrain us. These
+verdant boughs have no mind, so they live in perfect
+liberty without our poor fears and transient
+knowledges. The seeds of the grass that is cut down
+and withers to-day will spring green above our
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</span>graves to-morrow with not one memory of pain or
+death. As a child, I could not have said what drew
+me to the earth, but it was this feeling of being closer
+there to life that neither fears nor perishes.</p>
+
+<p>I am poorer in faith than that child was, but I
+still believe wearily in the same Providence in which
+she rejoiced. As she went silently about her affairs
+regardless, so have I gone on doing the thing I
+meant to do with a determination that will not be
+defeated. I made no appearance at this business,
+and do not now attract the least attention at working
+my will; only the thing accomplished is seen and
+read, not me. What I mean is that I am literally an
+unobtrusive person by nature. No one would recognize
+me except by name. I remember the same shyness
+as a child at being noticed. I have played my
+little tunes on the heart of the world, but I never
+craved to be identified by my strut with my works.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XLVII">
+    XLVII
+    <br>
+    FACTS AND TRUTHS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">I love</span> truth, although I shall die hating mere facts,
+because they are misleading. They are the weapons
+and defense of literalists, strangely mean-minded
+people in my opinion who have caused much trouble
+and strife in the world. But I have the same happy
+talent the child I was had for prevaricating. Let
+me have some wisdom of the truth even if it is no
+larger than a mustard seed and the sensation inflates
+me. I cannot set it down in the little raw
+words of mere veracity. I must garnish it and spread
+it like a rainbow above my mind.</p>
+
+<p>Some people would call this lying. I think they
+have done it, but I am not embarrassed or convinced.
+My notion is that it is a very precious kind of inebriation
+of the spirit. I remember lying myself
+into a state of happy intoxication as a child, even if
+I had to go out behind the house to do it where no
+one could hear me. I think this is one reason I live
+concealed behind so many hills now. The occasional
+excursions I make into the world bring me face to
+face with so many confusing and depressing facts
+which I cannot endure and cannot deny. Here,
+there is nothing to deny. All is an affirmation of the
+old order of things as in the beginning. It is only
+my mind that travels. Sometimes then I see visions
+of the future like Cassandra. But I try to be sensible
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</span>about this and remember that it is the weariness of
+the years which darkens the glass.</p>
+
+<p>The world is not really whirling to destruction.
+It is we who are old and no longer able to keep pace
+with the times and who must pass away. Everything
+will go on as usual when we are out of it. And I shall
+not be scared up out of my grave, disheveled and
+demented by the din of some fearful battle going on
+above me. Such thoughts I do have for the moment,
+and am mastered by them as I used to be enchanted
+when I was young by a star-blossoming night. But
+presently I take a sort of recumbent comfort in the
+situation; nothing is really changed that should remain
+fixed by His almighty will—the same bright
+days, the same kind nights, the same seasons; only
+I have grown older.</p>
+
+<p>As to facts, I have always been a faithful interpreter
+of the truth as my mind finds it; but I never have
+been able to stick to facts. In my opinion they are
+among the most misleading things we have to contend
+with in this present world. A fact is something
+somebody finds out about you that is not true, one
+of those capital-letter deeds you performed in a high
+mood or a low mood which is not characteristic of the
+man you really are. Personally, I had much rather
+be judged by the life I have lived than by the books
+I have written. In both places I have said things or
+done things that outrage the fact-tacking genius
+of critics. But on the whole I have come out very
+well.</p>
+
+<p>My idea of Heaven is a place where there are no
+hard and fast facts of mortality sticking to us, but
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</span>we shall be what we really are, true hearts at last,
+easy to know and easier to believe, no reasons left to
+envy one another or to suspect one another. I have
+a faint impression that this may reduce mental activity
+among us beyond endurance, but I am willing
+to try it for a while.</p>
+
+<p>I am not opposed to facts, you understand; but
+my point is that we attach too much importance to
+them as evidence. Facts make war; they are used by
+ambitious men and greedy men to sway the minds
+of people. Does any one believe now that there
+would have been any Great War if the common
+people who furnished the cannon fodder for it had
+known the real truth underlying the conflict? I
+doubt it.</p>
+
+<p>I should like to get back to that honest feline
+normalcy of being just a woman with the ordinary
+exercise of my give-and-take disposition. I would
+spare more time for living instead of working. I
+wish above everything else to indulge more in inconsequential
+conversation about just pleasant things.
+What has become of all the natural, cheerful little
+topics we used to discuss? I rarely ever hear a conversation
+now that does not turn out for the worst
+instead of ending in a gale of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Am I wrong, or is there a note of sinister wisdom
+in laughter these days? Is there some dreadful quality
+in the knowledge we are getting which changes
+innocent merriment to cynical hysteria? I must be
+wrong about this; but when you live alone most of
+the time, and only go abroad occasionally in the
+world, you do notice things like that—the eyes of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</span>people not so trustful of one another as I remember
+them long ago, a fearful wit, and that queer triumphant
+note in laughter like a comment indulged at
+the world’s expense.</p>
+
+<p>I am merely setting down my thoughts about all
+this as one thrusts out his hands in the dark and
+feels his way toward the door. What actually happens
+is that I spend most of my days alone here in
+this cabin with a companionable fire upon the hearth.
+Usually I get away with it; but if I am in a particularly
+keen mood, the illusion fails. I know it is only
+a bright combustion of heat and wood in the fireplace.
+No real sense to the crackling of these blazing
+logs. I read some, walk abroad with the dogs, and I
+have my usual look at the stars, as a poor lonesome
+shepherd may watch his flock a long way off and
+beyond his reach, but his sheep still. So are these
+stars mine. The heavens above this cabin are familiar
+to me like a garment I have worn a long time
+upon my heart.</p>
+
+<p>But I have never seen an angel ascending or
+descending! That keeps one strained up too much—no
+respite from this business of believing what
+you cannot see with the naked eye. I am not denying
+that it is good for the soul, but sometimes I
+have wished for something that was just good for
+me.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XLVIII">
+    XLVIII
+    <br>
+    BOOKS: MY OWN AND OTHERS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">When</span> the harvests are in and all the summertime
+guests are gone and a crisper, cooler silence begins
+to blow through this valley, I settle down to a nine
+months’ stretch of living alone here in the best company
+to be had. What I mean is that you can lay
+the book you are reading on the shelf without being
+obliged to think about what you will serve to the
+hero and heroine for dinner that evening. But after
+dinner you can take it up again and resume your
+companionship with the author and these characters
+which are frequently more interesting than real
+people, because they are derived from human nature
+at large and are the composites of many men
+and women. Also, there is the country in which
+they live, which may be on the other side of the
+world from where you live. So, sitting in your chair
+before your own fire, you enjoy all the benefits of
+travel without the inconvenience and confusion.</p>
+
+<p>To read any one of Balzac’s stories is like spending
+an evening in France, even if you have never been
+in France and cannot pronounce one single fluted
+word of that language. And to read Victor Hugo is
+like spending one half the evening among the sobbing
+stars and the other half of it amid scenes of the
+direst poverty made by the meanest minds.</p>
+
+<p>Hugo was the dramatist of human emotions at
+their highest pitch and lowest ebb. He had the gift
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</span>of being vicariously sublime in a character like that
+of the old communist or Jean Valjean, but I doubt
+if he himself possessed the attributes of any kind of
+permanent character. I have the feeling that he was
+an irresponsible person with a histrionic conscience
+and practically no modesty of morals. Otherwise
+it is not clear to me how we can account for the
+serial romances of his own life, or his description of
+the Battle of Waterloo, or the fact that he took his
+morning ablutions in a glass bathroom on top of his
+house. The sun was, indeed, above him, but the
+populace was also in attendance in the streets
+below.</p>
+
+<p>As for Balzac, he was a literary comedian who
+handled the tragedies of the human heart with a wit
+kin to the irony of fate. He could never have interpreted
+any other people but the French. He is
+peculiar to them, a medium through which the
+France of his day still lives, loves, sins, and suffers
+with a charm and a talent for indecency which it
+probably never had in reality. The art of a master is
+required to lift the squalor of the lowest lives and
+the grandeur of the noblest lives into imperishable
+scenes on paper, because in life they do change and
+fade into forgetfulness.</p>
+
+<p>I recall one of his heroines, a stupid moron who
+could impart no animation to her immorality. He
+finds her reclining on a couch and spends ten thousand
+words describing her figure. I can spend a fascinating
+hour under that splendid spray of language,
+reading the mind and nature of the author.
+There is something idiotic in French genius of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</span>first water like the artless simplicity of a defective
+person going about with his clothing disarranged.</p>
+
+<p>Before he has done making images of this woman
+she has ceased to exist except as a feminine mollusk
+of beauty. Then I am invariably moved to mirth by
+his efforts to get her off the couch and induce her to
+say something or do something bad enough or sufficiently
+entrancing to justify his description. Only
+an author who has struggled with a stubborn or
+stupid character in a story can appreciate his dilemma,
+and the fiasco when she finally sits up and
+sobs, with no visible explanation of the sob. The
+reader is left in suspense until the next chapter
+reveals the cause of her grief, which is not grief at
+all, but the French hysteria of passion. It is clear to
+the envious like me that he cannot bear to sacrifice
+one sentence of the marvelous description he has
+written of her and that she can never measure up to
+it in actual performance.</p>
+
+<p>I remember having a similar experience years ago
+with one of my own heroines who turned out to be
+another kind of fool. Nothing was further from my
+expectations when I introduced her with a few complimentary
+sentences. I must have got the idea from
+an old valentine card. Anyway, she was standing
+beautifully gowned beside a tall fluted column on
+the veranda of a magnificent old Southern mansion.
+I managed to give the reader the impression that
+she was rich, handsome, thirty, not married and
+vaguely unhappy.</p>
+
+<p>She stood regarding the gently rolling landscape
+with this expression, which was as far as my talents
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</span>as a struggling literary genius could carry her. I
+knew what would happen to her next day, but by
+no flight of my imagination could I fathom the
+thoughts that should be passing through her sad
+spinster mind at that moment. Neither could I
+move her from her gracefully leaning pose against
+the column. She became cataleptic. I labored with
+her frantically through three blistering hot summer
+days without ever persuading her to so much as
+turn her head.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, in desperation, I sent her an anonymous
+note by a messenger couched in the language of a
+bold lover, saying that he would see her presently
+and settle a few old scores. She had run through
+with many lovers in her earlier youth, and could
+only perceive that the chirography of this note was
+vaguely familiar. It was a disgraceful thing to do,
+but the effect was electrical. From that time to the
+end of the story I have never had a more elastic
+heroine. Every author must have similar experiences,
+but very few of us would dare Balzac’s insolence
+to the reader’s intelligence and get by with
+the performance.</p>
+
+<p>Certain books are more interesting to read than
+others in a place like this. There is nothing in the
+sublime propriety of these trees, the wide skies
+above and this earth so innocently green below to
+finance the erotic in fiction. It gives the impression
+of decadence artificially conceived in circumstances
+so old and decent.</p>
+
+<p>Scott’s novels go like a singing charm. So do
+Stevenson’s stories. And it is the most pleasant
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</span>place imaginable to read Addison’s papers. But
+not Christopher North’s ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ’; too
+much scholarly wit flashing between North and his
+brilliant companions in these ambrosial nights. My
+own experience is that, living alone with the stars
+by night and with the hills by day, the mind of the
+heavens and the earth overcome you and you cannot
+think of anything very smart or funny to say to
+yourself. I have never understood that great man
+who went off one summer, settled himself like a hermit
+in the midst of an immense landscape and wrote
+an essay on the ‘Sense of Humor in Jesus.’ That
+which always impressed me more about Jesus was
+his sense of man, who is the tragic figure in all creation.</p>
+
+<p>The one book stimulating beyond all others in a
+place like this is the Bible. No matter how great a
+theologian a man may be, I doubt if he could come
+anywhere near comprehending the wisdom and the
+majesty of the thirty-eighth chapter of Job unless he
+has spent years in the wind and weather of a quiet
+place.</p>
+
+<p>‘Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind,
+and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel
+by words without knowledge?</p>
+
+<p>‘Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand
+of thee, and answer thou me.</p>
+
+<p>‘Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of
+the earth? declare, if thou have understanding.’</p>
+
+<p>Job makes no reply.</p>
+
+<p>‘Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou
+knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened?
+or who laid the cornerstone thereof;</p>
+
+<p>‘When the morning stars sang together, and all
+the sons of God shouted for joy?’</p>
+
+<p>Job remains silent.</p>
+
+<p>‘Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake
+forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?</p>
+
+<p>‘When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and
+thick darkness a swaddling-band for it,</p>
+
+<p>‘And brake up for it my decreed place, and set
+bars and doors,</p>
+
+<p>‘And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further:
+and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?’</p>
+
+<p>Job hangs his old gray head.</p>
+
+<p>‘Hast thou commanded the morning since thy
+day; and caused the dayspring to know his place;</p>
+
+<p>‘That it might take hold of the ends of the
+earth—’</p>
+
+<p>When you consider that these are the unthinkable
+thoughts of the Almighty which must be delivered
+by the tongue of a mortal man and that the trace of
+his emotion and simplicity run through them like a
+weakness, it is amazing how near he caught the
+majesty and meaning of what he had to tell. Nothing
+ever written compares with the last five chapters
+of the Book of Job and the first five chapters
+of Genesis, and the authors of these books were the
+popular writers of their day. Compare their works
+with the works of modern poets, novelists, or historians.
+Let any modern scientist answer the questions
+the Lord put to Job, and observe how reduced
+in manner and substance his answers are. He gets
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</span>the stuff out of his mind, but these Scriptures were
+blown across creation to the minds of the men who
+recorded them. They have a roll and a rumble mortal
+intelligence can never impart, and they contain
+more hints of scientific truth than the wisest among
+us have found out, though they labor in that direction.</p>
+
+<p>We are still wrinkling our noses and squinting
+through a telescope at Mars, disputing about that
+one little bright speck in the heavens. If this planet
+had been mentioned by a single prophet in the Bible,
+we should know more about it than the astronomers
+will ever find out, just as there is more information
+about creation as applied to this earth in Genesis
+than has ever been translated into the terms of
+science.</p>
+
+<p>I have long since accepted the heavens and the
+earth as a part of my future scriptures and let it all
+go at that.</p>
+
+<p>But what I am trying to do now is to indicate the
+way I have passed the time for so many years in this
+quiet place. One cannot work all the time, and I was
+never one of those worms that inhabit books written
+by others. If it is a particularly entrancing tale, I
+close the book and envy the author. I pace the floor
+and wring the neck of my spirit in grief because I
+shall never write anything as good. There are stacks
+of little ragged notebooks scattered in the dusty
+corners of this study which carry the record of these
+idle hours. Rarely ever a diary note in them of my
+own performances, but they contain studies of men
+and women.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</span></p>
+
+<p>At that hour of the evening when mother used to
+pick up her knitting and pass into a peaceful trance
+of industry, I reach for one of these headless blank
+books and write characters from memory. Maybe of
+one dead long since, but I recall her with a comprehension
+I never had when she was in the flesh. The
+copy she has left behind her is cleared of the fog
+which living casts over us. Or it is of one whom I
+never knew, but I have heard or read a news item
+concerning him which omits every personal detail.
+I piece him together as you construct a mastodon
+from the bones he left behind him. I have some
+grand portraits of the prophets made this way, intimate
+and terrible like the Scriptures they left behind
+them. Sometimes I get the whiff of a man’s reputation,
+compare it with his deeds and deduce a character
+which is finer or worse than either the one or
+the other. After this it is easy to draw the features
+of his face, the length of his legs, the cut or sag of
+his eye. Presently I have a hero or a knave put together,
+respiration as good as Adam’s, who may
+come in handy for copy.</p>
+
+<p>There is one whom I always wanted to put into a
+tale, but could never set up a situation sufficiently
+noble and stupid to contain him. He is old now and
+coming to his end; but in the days when I knew him
+he was a great man who had no manner or sensibility
+about achieving greatness—homely, with
+what you might call a country-town smile, which is
+an expression of facial simplicity. He had a splendid
+figure and wore his clothes as if he hated clothes.
+He walked as if he were stepping over dead bodies.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</span>I do not know why, because he was by nature singularly
+merciful. He worked indefatigably and rose
+to the top of his profession without distinction.</p>
+
+<p>This vicious stride he had was an offense his fellow
+men would not forgive. His unpopularity was cumulative.
+He did not need to boast to get it; he had
+only to be seen striding along the street to his office,
+down the aisle of a church, or even as a pall-bearer
+at a funeral, to add fury to these flames that never
+consumed him. He loved music and had no talent
+for it, but he always kept mute musical instruments
+in his house, as some people keep a Bible on the center
+table which they do not read. He loved learning
+and had no learning, but he had the finest private
+library in the city; not to show his friends, because
+he had no friends, but probably by way of brushing
+shoulders with poets, philosophers, and historians.</p>
+
+<p>The queer thing was that he read these books, as
+you perform a wearying task. Every evening for
+twenty years he would sit down in this library,
+cross his legs, lean back like a tired man and get
+through as many pages of a volume as he could endure
+before bedtime. He never referred to this prodigious
+labor, and no one ever heard him quote an
+opinion or passage from one of these books. He
+made his own opinions and maintained them without
+citing authorities to uphold them.</p>
+
+<p>I seem to have filled a notebook with speculations
+half touching, half humorous, on the character of
+this man; but it appears from the record that I
+could not determine whether he formed this habit of
+reading as a lonely person sometimes plays solitaire
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</span>to pass the time, or whether it was a terrific duty he
+performed toward himself. In any case, I record the
+sequel. He finally simmered down to silence and
+fishing. His conscience was clear. He had read
+every volume in that populous library and now
+reads no more.</p>
+
+<p>Follows a very good paragraph on the quality
+of valor peculiar to noble stupidity. It shows up
+cleaner than the makeshift courage of smarter people.
+But I must have been by this man as Lundy used to
+be by the great textbook he would write for teaching
+Greek. He had the idea, as entrancing as any fiction
+could be, but he did not write the book. Such a romance
+of the rudiments of a language was really
+beyond any man to achieve. Just so, you will not
+find a trace of this valorous dunce so carefully
+thought out in any story I have written. Evidently
+I could not find the deeds to dramatize him.</p>
+
+<p>Many writers probably practice their art in this
+manner, as those of us who are not writers practice
+the oral art of gossiping. I have sometimes wondered
+if an author’s sketchbook might not read better
+than an artist’s sketchbook looks. But it is unusual
+to be reduced to talking to yourself with a pen
+about people whom you have actually known or
+suspected by way of entertainment.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XLIX">
+    XLIX
+    <br>
+    CHANGE AND CONFUSION
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">I suppose</span> the shortening of human life is really a
+blessing. This may be why so many men and women
+look forward to immortal life. That would not only
+involve an incredible change of scenes but of conditions.
+We should be relieved of both our virtues and
+vices, and that wearing monitor inside, conscience;
+of appetites, indigestion and every other vicissitude
+of the mortal mind and the mortal body. Certainly
+we do tire of any existence we work out for ourselves
+if we keep an active mind, because the mind no less
+than the spirit of man is migratory. So he migrates,
+or endures all the hardships of a sabbatical year, or
+he changes his business, or he retires from business.
+The point is that we are made so that we cannot stay
+put, as the saying goes, without disintegrating.</p>
+
+<p>Lately I have contemplated the adventure of sailing
+forth into the world as one goes to meet a good
+old comrade. But the more I think about it, the more
+it seems to me that I might meet a stranger not
+suitable to my years or habits of thought. The mind
+and character of the world I knew has changed.</p>
+
+<p>When I left it in 1912 to take up my residence in
+this valley, nearly as many people in Nashville
+attended prayer meeting on Wednesday night as
+went to the theater on other evenings. Now prayer
+meetings are about to become obsolete. A popular
+preacher was a good pastor, but never the sensational
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</span>feature of the Sunday morning paper. The Methodist
+Church had not lifted the ban on worldly amusements,
+and we had only a few earthly amusements,
+like playing flinch and croquet. As a Church, it was
+lenient toward penitents on principle, but not nearly
+so lenient as it is now toward the world. Nobody
+would have dreamed of putting on a drive for seventy-five
+million dollars for Christian education.
+The price of salvation and education have advanced
+more than worldly luxuries since then.</p>
+
+<p>Women were still in hot pursuit of culture if they
+were particularly worldly minded. Otherwise they
+were the handmaidens of the Lord as usual. Polite
+social gambling was limited to a very small set, and
+was not recognized as a respectable diversion. Now
+these same women are citizens, politicians, and reformers.
+They have the same brains, the same
+natures, the same nervous systems they have always
+had, which are differently tempered from those of
+men; but they are running neck and neck now with
+men in civic virtue and public service. Even more
+of them are testing out these vices which formerly
+were supposed to be peculiar to men. They are
+much more easily deceived by their own emotions
+and by the flattery of politicians than the simplest
+maidens ever were by the eloquence of false lovers.
+I suppose when they realize that they have caught
+the bull by the horns they will retire from public
+life, go home and pay more attention to their yearling
+sons and daughters. Right now it seems to me
+that there are too many delinquent mothers broadcasting
+noble thoughts as mere citizens.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</span></p>
+
+<p>I shrink like a criminal from a nearer approach to
+these women. I have neither the rostrum mind nor
+the qualities of courage suitable for bearing banners
+in a parade. I must vote because it is my duty now
+to do so, but this is taxing to my moral nature on
+account of the character of the candidates put up.
+When it comes to choosing a politician for office I
+am a conscientious objector. I am an impractical
+Democrat who would prefer to vote for a Republican
+if he proved more nearly competent. I have barely
+sense enough not to follow my conscience in this
+matter and must always keep out of the way or
+stand among more valiant women a cubit short of
+the correct political stature. This keeps me silent
+when I should like to write a few pertinent political
+paragraphs for publication, especially before elections.</p>
+
+<p>Crime has become an intellectual pursuit and a
+profitable profession these latter years. Formerly
+only rascals and defectives became criminals; now
+learned men and youngsters choose criminal careers.
+The youths are criminally insane because they have
+not received the training and discipline necessary to
+insure moral sanity. The passing of parents is a
+tragic circumstance. Formerly they exercised control
+and commanded obedience of their children. Now
+they do not. I know many families where the elder
+sons and daughters were brought up, you may say,
+under the old dispensation of parental authority,
+while the younger ones have grown up under the new
+order since the spirit of the times has changed. They
+matriculate into the streets, then into an adventurous
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</span>school life, and finally into the universities,
+where they are provided with funds and speed facilities
+that would turn the head of a wise man, besides
+being made subjects for intellectual experiments
+by professors who have theories to prove.</p>
+
+<p>The contrast between the characters of the older
+and younger sons and daughters in these families
+is frightfully significant. The first are morally sane,
+the others are not. Even if they commit no crimes,
+they practice a license in conduct and thinking which
+leads to the disruption of society.</p>
+
+<p>This is the reason why the defense of these young
+criminals depends upon the testimony of alienists
+rather than upon the evidence of witnesses to their
+crime. They have managed in this sentimental age
+to struggle beyond the control of parents and beyond
+the reach of judges and juries. They are voluntary
+moral idiots with intellectual leanings toward every
+vice. My feeling is that we wait too long to send for
+the alienist. One should be employed to visit these
+boys and girls like any other health officer, so that
+we may be warned in time of sprouting criminals.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere in this confusion men and women are
+passing out into the light of great achievements.
+Maybe the time will come when the science of medicine
+will have advanced so far inoculation will take
+the place of morals in eradicating the physical effects
+of vice. But to what end? Nature is a better economist.
+She condemns the depraved to death. Disease
+is her quarantine method against every excess.
+Maybe in time we shall have more and more machinery
+to do the work of the world. Machines will
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</span>not strike or join a labor union, but neither will they
+work without a man’s brain and aid to guide them.
+In any case, what is to become of the surplus man
+power?</p>
+
+<p>This is not a happy moment in the world’s history.
+Never was there such a smoke screen between us and
+the future. I have a great wish to travel out there,
+at least to the edge of it, not as a tourist, but as a tired
+pilgrim who has come a long way in bad weather
+lifts his eyes and sees through the darkness a light
+shining, the open door of a house warm with peace
+and kindness. I want again at the very last the
+faith and hopes with which I started life. I remember
+that feeling, a sort of winged lightness of the
+heart. But I may never find the way. Something
+seems to be turning to ashes on my lips; not this
+valley or the scenes I have laid in it for happiness,
+but it is because I have no power of happiness now
+in me.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="L">
+    L
+    <br>
+    CAN WE BE HAPPY?
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter-text">
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">At</span> the risk of offending many people, but with the
+hope of helping a few who are making the same mistake,
+I am venturing at the very end of the record to
+set down the only explanation that occurs to me: I
+believe I have totally misunderstood the Scriptures
+by which I was guided during the formative years
+of my life. I had in the beginning a natural gift for
+the simplest, most innocent happiness. I needed
+no more than a bright day and a long path winding
+across the hills and through the fields. I had a mind
+which retained the lacy shadows leaves made upon
+the ground. Now I seem to have lost the will to
+take these little idle paths to peace and happiness.
+I could weep sometimes when at this season of the
+year the wind blows a shower of yellow elm leaves
+twinkling like gold high in the sunlight because I
+can only see them. I do not feel the loveliness of the
+sight.</p>
+
+<p>The reason is that I have spent my life and
+strength in service and sacrifice according to the
+way the Scriptures have been heaped upon me by
+preachers and my own dear saint who died a martyr’s
+death to such teachings. If I had had the
+courage to interpret them according to my own
+good senses, provided especially by the Lord for
+that purpose, I should have known the doctrines
+precisely as He promises.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</span></p>
+
+<p>How many sermons I have heard from this text,
+‘Bear ye one another’s burdens,’ but not one
+preacher ever interpreted them to mean, ‘Do not
+bear the other fellow’s burden unless he will bear one
+of yours.’ Therefore this bearing of other people’s
+burdens has contributed more to damnable selfishness
+in this world than any other Christian virtue.
+Here is another one, ‘Seek, and ye shall find; knock,
+and it shall be opened unto you.’</p>
+
+<p>I got the right cue on that one long ago. When
+Lundy was in mortal need of some earthly blessing,
+I used to go out and seek it with both hands and
+knock on every door until the right one opened to
+him. But I lacked the time and sense to practice
+the same wisdom for myself. I have earned more
+than I deserve, Heaven knows, but I have not
+sought sensibly the little things I needed for happiness.
+I have wasted too much of my time for others,
+without having the spiritual gumption to ask them
+to pay it back. There is no telling how much moral
+damage I have done in this world practicing the
+religion I have been taught, which I now know was
+a puerile and spiritually illiterate interpretation of
+the Scriptures. I have had my share of blame in
+making whimpering parasites of honest people in
+the name of the Lord. It was blasphemous, and my
+hope for forgiveness is repentance and a determination
+to reform.</p>
+
+<p>I shall never be able to face what remains of the
+future properly without weaning myself of this
+inglorious and sentimentally spiritual past. Therefore
+I must change my scenes, as a bad man sometimes
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</span>goes off to escape the temptation of evil companions.
+At the present moment I am in bondage
+to all manner of charitable habits and false obligations
+which would read like the calendar of a saint’s
+deeds if I should set them down here, but they are
+really the tax I pay upon a wrong interpretation of
+the Christian life.</p>
+
+<p>This is what I have discovered—that there is no
+way to satisfy a sentimental conscience. It is the
+thief in your breast. The more you give, the more
+will it urge you to give; the more you sacrifice, the
+greater sacrifices will it demand of you. I am determined
+to stop gratifying my conscience. I am far
+more honorable and sensible than it is. I shall be
+guided by my sense. And that points directly to
+casting off every weight that besets me and looking
+about for the fair weather of happier days.</p>
+
+<p>My idea is to prove the Scriptures by seeking and
+finding happiness. I am late starting off on this
+adventure, and I have no very definite idea about
+the direction in which happiness lies, but that very
+uncertainty has a sort of sparkle in it. My feeling
+now is that I shall need only to get away from my
+dreadful past to find it changing me to some easier
+goodness of mind, a place where I can sit down and
+not be responsible for anything or anybody, where
+I shall feel light on my feet and ready to travel
+a long way in bright silence to another country.
+Sometimes it seems to me that I may be thinking of
+the kingdom of Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>We do grow up at last somewhere, but not in this
+present world. We invariably pass out of it trying
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</span>to add another cubit to our stature, topping it off
+with a poor little deed of no importance to any one
+but ourselves. I doubt if any man or woman, however
+old, is really ready to give up his ghost. There
+is something he had not time to say or to finish before
+this chill came on and this shortening of the
+breath. Maybe it is a blessed illusion with which we
+instinctively finance our feeling of worth and importance
+when we are no longer of any worth or importance,
+but I do not think so. My idea is that it may
+be a sort of a dull intimation of immortality, a feeling
+of incompleteness, as if there must be much more
+life in which to finish up things; not the things we
+started here, but other cubits to be added later. I
+have always thought of saints as being exceedingly
+tall spirits, probably a trifle top-heavy as to their
+countenances.</p>
+
+<p>As I have grown older I am more and more convinced
+that I have not grown up, that my powers
+have not come to me, not my real wisdom to do and
+achieve the right thoughts. I lack some dear grace.
+I cannot seem to steady down and get the single eye.
+There is a curriculum in living which I have not
+studied. This may be happiness. I want to know it;
+I should feel better prepared for immortality. I do
+not wish to arrive fagged at last and a bit slipshod
+in the spirit, as if I had a hard time all my mortal
+life. It is not complimentary to God. I wish to
+come up before His face in a high mood as if I had
+tasted all His benefits. I wish to be clothed in the
+bright garments of my human happiness, more
+colorful than the glistening white robes of the merely
+redeemed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</span></p>
+
+<p>I have an intimate feeling of God that this is a
+bright idea, and that at least it is permitted one
+may seek happiness even if at last he must sink into
+the defeat of mere peace.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="mt3 center">THE END</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter-head">
+  <h2 class="nobreak">
+    Transcriber’s Notes
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="transnote">
+<p>A few inconsistencies in hyphenation have been reconciled,
+and minor printing errors in punctuation have been silently
+corrected.</p>
+</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78847 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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author	www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>	2026-06-11 20:10:03 -0700
committer	www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>	2026-06-11 20:10:03 -0700
commit	9c66de0ce6a8af18da4034ce43c86e8063ce5f2a (patch)
tree	6b929165feb21fe07fa4d2fc741b7fc0476ecd26 /78847-h