In a city beyond far seas there dwelt a Youth who claimed
not land nor gold, yet wealthier was than sceptered
sovereign, richer far than fancy ever feigned. The great
round earth, the sun, the moon and all the stars that flame
like fireflies in the silken web of night were his, because
garnered in the salvatory of his soul. And the beaded dew
upon the morning-glories, the crimson tints of dawn, Iris'
bended bow and all the cloth-of-gold and robes of purple
that mark the royal pathway of the descending sun; the
perfume of all the flowers, the bulbul's sensuous song, and
every flowing line that marks woman's perfect form he
hoarded in his heart and gloated over as a miser does his
gain. And the Youth was in love with Life and held her to
his heart as God's most gracious gift. Ah, beautiful was
she, with her trustful eyes of blue, and hair of tangled
sunbeams blown about a brow of alabaster, arms of ivory
and bust whose rounded loveliness were a pulsing pillow
where ever dreamed Desire--beautiful beyond compare,
and sweet as odors blown across the brine from the island-
valley of Avalon, mad'ning as Lydian music, in which
swoons the soul of youth while all the passion in the blood
beats time in delirious ecstasy. And Youth and Life built
fair castles in the air, with turrets of sapphire and gates of
beaten gold, wherein they dreamed the days away on a
bed of thornless roses, drained the chalice of the
honeysuckle, ate the lotus-bud and thought of naught in all
the world but love. Of this soft dalliance was born a son,
and Life cried with falling tears, "Now I am shamed!"
"Nay," said the Youth, "for I will hide our child within my
heart and none shall know." And Life laughed and
kissed the boy, and called him Ambition, and hid him
in the secret recesses of her lover's heart, and gayly went
and came as though her fair breasts had never burgeoned
with a wealth of liquid pearl. But the child was restless
within its prison house and beat against the walls, and grew
day by day, and fought with teeth and nails, until the Youth
cried out in agony. And Life said mockingly: "Hast not
room enough within thy heart for one poor child to range--
that heart which holds the earth, the sun and stars? Cast
forth the foolish rubbish--the rainbow and the flowers, the
incense and the summer sea. Make room, make room for
thine and mine--though naught else doth remain." He cast
them forth with fond regret, and Ambition grew and filled his
heart and strove with all his strength. The Youth looked no
more upon the fair field flowers, but thought only of the
victor's wreath; he heard no melody but fame's shrill
trumpet rising ever louder on the blast, and saw no beauty
but in Minerva's laureled brow; the cool sylvan path became
a blinding mountain trail, his hours of dalliance days of toil
and nights of agony. The hidden son had become master
of the sire, and all the host of Heaven melted into a single
star which poured its baleful fire into his face the
treacherous star of Hope. And so he strove with
augmenting strength, his goal the highest, his guerdon the
immortelles. But oft he fell, and cursed his folly for having
left the flowery vale to beat against the barren mountain
rocks; but Life upbraided him, and with her soft breath
fanned the paling star to brighter flame--the star behind
which lay the throne. And Death followed them, shadowy,
indistinct, like a spirit wrapt in mist. And Life mocked at
Death, crying: "Behold the envious strumpet doth follow,
to despoil me of mine own! Faugh! How uncanny and how
cold! What lover would hang upon those ashen lips? Her
bosom is marble, and in her stony heart there flames
no fire. With her Ambition perishes and the Star of Hope
forever fades. Her house is a ghastly tomb, her bed the
granite rock, her lover childless, for her womb is barren."
And the Youth, glancing with a shudder at the figure in the
mist, drew close to Life and echoed her words with
trembling lip, "How uncanny and how cold!" Thus fared he
on through many a toilsome year, to where no shadow falls
to East or West--to manhood's glorious noon. He looked at
the towering heights before him with undaunted eye,
measuring his strength against the walls of stone. He
glanced back, and a chill swept over him, for he was
standing far up on the mountainside, he was in a barren
desert whose level waste stretched back to the pathetic
tomb where Love was left to starve and sweet Content lay
festering in her shroud. "Fool," cried Life, "why looked ye
back like wife of ancient Lot? Now are ye indeed undone!"
The voice was harsh and shrill, and starting as from an
uneasy dream, he looked on Life with wide-open eyes and
soul that understood. He found her far less fair than in the
heydey of his youth, when he reveled in her voluptuous
charms and loved her well. Her face was hard and stern
as that of some hag from Hell; the sunlight had faded from
her hair, the cestus of red roses become a poisonous
serpent, her fragrant breath a consuming flame, her robe of
glory, a sackcloth suit, begrimed with ashes, torn by thorns
and stained with blood. "Thou hast changed, O Life!" he
cried in horror. "Not so," she said; "the change is thine.
In youth you saw me not, but only dreamed you saw. She
you loved was a creature of your vain imaginings; I am Life,
mother of that scurvy brat, Ambition." She pointed upward,
saying: "Behold, thy star is gone, and the shining goal
hangs pathless in the heavens. When the sun hath
reached the zenith it must descend. Henceforth your
path leads downward, for every hour will sap your lusty
strength, and every step be weaker than the last, until you
sink into senility. Come, my love, you do not know me yet;
behold me as I am!" She cast aside her soiled and ragged
robe and stood revealed in all her hideousness--a thing of
horror. Her breasts distilled a poisonous dew, around her
gaunt limbs aspics crawled, her eyes were fierce and
hollow, and in one bony hand she held a scroll on which
was writ the record of her frauds and follies, her sin and
shame. "Come," she cried mockingly, "let us on together.
You may caress me as in the days of old, and I will answer
with a curse. Hold me to your heart and I will wither it with
my breath of flame. Praise me, and I will requite you with
dishonor and crown you with the grewsome chaplets of
grief. Fool! Thou hast striven for a prismatic bubble
bursting on the crest of a receding wave. Why scorned you
gold and lands to grasp at castles in the air? Why
dreamed of the Dimiurgus when desiring harlots beckoned
thee? Why dealt with open hand and unsuspecting heart
when thrown 'mid a world of thieves? Hadst thou been
content and not aspired to rise above the grossness, the
falsehood and the folly which is Life, I would have loved
thee well and deceived thee with a painted beauty to the
end--my foul breasts would have been to thee ever a
fragrant bed of flowers. You have invaded Life's mysteries,
the penalty whereof is pain. You have looked upon the
past; behold the future!" He looked, and saw a tortuous
path winding downward through bogs and poisonous fens
and bitter pools. In the far distance an old man, tottering
beneath his weight of years, stood leaning on a staff,
reading a riddle propounded by a sullen sphinx, and striving
with failing intellect to understand--"Cui Bono?" Near by
was an open grave, beside which an angel of mercy stood
and beckoned him. "Thou hast tarried long, my
lover," she said in a low sweet voice that was the distant
note of aeolian harp, or summer zephyr soughing
through the pines. With a cry of gladness he cast himself
into her cool arms; she touched his tired eyes with her soft
white hands, she pressed a kiss upon his lips that drained
his breath in an expiring gasp of pleasure all passionless,
and, cradled upon her bosom like a weary child, he fell
asleep. The burden and its bearer, hallowed by a pale
glory as of St. Elmo's fire sank into the open grave, yet the
sphinx sat stolidly holding the painted riddle in his stony
hand--"Cui Bono?" But there was none to answer; the
path faded like the phosphorescent track of a ship in
midnight waters, and all was dark. He turned fiercely to
Life, a question on his lip, but ere he could utter it she had
answered, with a bitter shrug: "The angel with the pitying
eyes; the beauteous one?" My rival, Death--so uncanny
and so cold! All who love me leave me for this sorceress,
and she holds them 'neath the magic of her spell
forevermore. But what care I? I do take the grain and give
to her the husk; I drink the wine and leave the lees. Mine
the bursting bud, hers the withered flower. Go to her and
thou wilt. I have slain Ambition and blotted thy foolish
ignis fatuus from the firmament. For thee the very sun
henceforth is cold, the moon a monstrous wheel of blood,
the stars but aged eyes winking back their tears as they
look upon thy broken altars and ruined fanes, the grass
grown green above the ashes of thy dead. Go; I want thee
not, for thou hast seen me as I am. I am for the red wine
and wild revel, where 'in Folly's cup still laughs the bubble
Joy'--for the idle day-dream and the sensuous dance, the
fond kiss of foolish Love and the velvet couch of Lust."
Then Death came and stood near him, beautiful with a
beauty all spirituelle, a world of pity in her eyes. But
he shrank from her with a shudder, seeing which she said:
"Am I indeed so cold--I, who warm the universe? Is the
bosom of Mercy to be feared and the breath of peace
despised? What is Life that she should mock me?--this
hideous harlot whose kisses poison and whose words
betray? Is she not the mother of all ills? Behold her
demoniac brood: Hate and Horror, Discord and Disease,
Pride and Pain! she is the creature of Time, the slave of
Space. She is the bastard spawn of Heat and Moisture--
was engendered 'mid the unclean ooze of miasmic
swamps, in the womb of noisome fens. And I? I am
empress of all that is, or was, or can ever be. Come dwell
with me, and all the earth shall be thy home, thy period
eternity. Would'st live again? Then will I make of thy
clustering locks grasses to wave in the cool meadows
green, of thine eyes fair daisies that nod in the dewy dawn,
of thy heart a great blush rose worn between the breasts of
beauty, of thy body an oak to defy the elements, of thy
blood a wave breaking in slumbrous thunder upon a beach
of gold, of thy breath the jasmine's perfume, of thy restless
spirit the levin brand that crashes in thunder peal above the
storm. Why press the cruel thorn into thy heart, the iron
into thy soul? Thus do I clasp thee to a bosom ever true,
and shield thee from the slings and arrows of the world.
Thy hot heart beats faint and ever fainter 'gainst its
pulseless pillow, until it ceases with a sigh, and thou art
mine and eternal peace is thine."
* * *
THE GARDEN OF THE GODS.
Much has been written of Texas by immigration boomers,
"able editors" and others, with an eye single to the
almighty dollar. Its healthfulness, delightful climate,
undeveloped resources, churches, schools, etc., have
been expatiated upon times without number, but little has
been said of its transcendent beauty. The average "able
editor" is not a very aesthetic animal. He has an eye for
the beautiful, 'tis true; but his tastes are of the earth earthy.
A half-page display ad. with wood-cut portrait of a chamber-
set occupying the foreground and the clare-obscure worked
up with various sizes and styles of black type, possesses
far more charm for him than does the deep blue of our
Southern sky, whose mighty concave seems to reach to
Infinity's uttermost verge; a two-story brick livery stable or
laundry is to him far more interesting than the splendors of
the Day-god rising from the ocean's blue; an eighty-cent
dollar with its lying legend more beautiful in his eyes than
even Austin's violet crown bathed in the radiance of the
morning or arched with twilight's dome of fretted gold. The
"able editor" cares naught for purple hills, unless they
contain mineral; for broad champaigns unless the soil be
good; for flashing brooks unless they can be made to turn a
millwheel or water a cow.
The "able editor" takes it for granted that everybody is as
grossly materialistic as himself,--care not whether the sky
above their heads is blue or black so long as the soil
beneath their feet is fertile; whether the landscape be
pleasant or forbidding so long as it will yield them creature
comforts. Perhaps he is very nearly right. The fact that
millions will make their homes beneath leaden skies, amid
scenes of desolation, while there is room and to spare in
our sunny Southland, is not without its significance,--
indicates plainly that man has not yet progressed far into
that spiritual kingdom where the soul must be fed as well
as the stomach; where sunlight is more necessary than
sauer-kraut, where beauty furnishes forth more delights
than beer.
Still there must be a few people in this gain-grabbing world
not altogether indifferent to the beauties of nature; to whom
the gold of the evening sky is more precious than that
wrung with infinite toil from the bowels of the earth; to
whom the purple of the hills is more pleasing than the
crustacean dyes of ancient Tyre; the flashing of clear
waters more delightful than the gleam of diamonds; the
autumn's rainbow tints more inspiring than the dull red heart
of the ruby. To have such a home in Texas were like a
sojourn in that pleasant paradise where our primal parents
first tasted terrestrial delights. No Alps or Apennines burst
from Texas' broad bosom and rear their cold, dead peaks
mile above mile into heaven's mighty vault; no Vesuvius
belches his lurid, angry flame at the stars like a colossal
cannon worked by Titans at war with the Heavenly
Hierarchy; no Niagara churns its green waters into rainbow-
tinted foam. The grandeur of Texas is not that of
destruction and desolation; its beauties are not those which
thrill the heart with awe, but fill it with adoration and sweet
content. Not dark and dreary mountains riven by the bolts
of angry Jove; not gloomy Walpurgis gorges where devils
dance and witches shriek; not the savage thunder of the
avalanche, but the sun-kissed valley of Cashmere, the
purple hills of the lotus eaters' land, the pastoral beauties of
Tempe's delightful vale. Here is repeated a thousand times
that suburban home which Horace sang; here the coast
where Odysseus, "the much-enduring man," cast anchor
and declared he would no longer roam; here the Elysian
fields "far beyond the sunset"; here the valley of Avilion lies
"Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard-lawns
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea,"
where Queens nurse the wounded hero back to life;
here the lost Atlantis, new-found; the land where it is
always summer; where airs softer than those of Araby the
Blest are ever blowing; skies bluer than ever arched famed
Tuscany bid earthworms look heavenward; sunsets whose
gleaming gold might ransom a universe!
What care I who owns this broad expanse of emerald mead
and purple hills? who pays the taxes and digs and delves
therein for gain? It is all mine, and the sky above it is mine
to the horizon's uttermost verge; the flashing waters, the
cool mists creeping down the hills, the soft breeze stealing
up from Neptune's watery world with healing on its wings,
still fragrant with spices of the Spanish main--all, all mine; a
priceless heritage which no man toiled for, which no
spendthrift can east away.
* * *
WOMAN'S WICKEDNESS.