Sorrow is not always gruesome and heart-breaking. It has a lifetime
influence, providing the fiber of the soul is strong enough to withstand
the strain. Not long ago there was a musical contest in a Pennsylvania
city, and one of the young ladies to take part in it had given up the
thought of going into the contest, because her mother lay at the point of
death the day previous to the departure of the companies who were going
to the distant city to show what their town could do in a musical way.
But during the night the mother’s condition changed for the better, and
she urged her daughter to go; for on her the town depended to bring back
some of the prizes to be given to the sweetest singers of the state.
And so she went, her heart very much lighter since the happy change in
her mother’s condition. Anyhow, going out into the world to compete for
a prize, with some hope of winning, has a buoyant effect on the heart.
Oh, if all the world could but feel a slight hope of winning a prize
when starting out in the world, how much happier the world would be!
But to most of the average people the world’s prizes are hanging up so
distressingly high that only the well prepared have any chance of winning
them.
The parents who carelessly or helplessly send their children out into the
world uneducated, to compete with college graduates, are sending them
into a hard proposition. And the state government that will sleep while
one portion of the people are being educated to take care of themselves,
and a larger number are growing up in helpless ignorance and sent out
into the world to compete with the few educated ones—the state or public
that can sleep while such an injustice is being perpetrated on the
weakest and most helpless of its subjects, needs to have its conscience
touched with the awakening finger of justice. The boasting cry that
in this country everybody’s child has an equal opportunity to gain a
livelihood, is as false as hell. There are colleges in our so-called free
land where the son of a ditch digger or a washerwoman could no more enter
than a miserly rich man can enter the kingdom of heaven.
But I have drifted. I can’t help but drift. Every time I try to paint
a picture, the injustice of the unjust crowd in and fill the distant
perspective, and get painted into the sunset and change the gold into
blackened lead.
Just one hour before the young lady was to go on the stage to sing her
solo, a dispatch brought the sad and shocking news that her mother was
dead. Nobody who knew of the sad news thought for a moment that the
bereaved and heartbroken girl would attempt to sing. They were all
disappointed, of course, but who could ask her to go on the stage with a
sorrow as deep as hers? But she did not break down. Oh, she had been so
confident of winning the prize, and her town’s people would be so greatly
disappointed if she failed!
She told the manager she would try, providing he would tell the audience
of her great sorrow. She wanted the sympathy of the people—it would give
her strength, while it would give them patience and tolerance.
After the manager had gone before the footlights and told the sad story
the people waited in silence for the young singer to appear. There was
no applause. The people felt the presence of death, or sorrow and heart
aches. The accompanist struck the first note and the brave girl commenced
to sing. The song was suitable for a sad heart to sing. She could sing
her sorrow from the depths of her soul.
The crowded house sat spellbound. That song from her soul of sorrow
thrilled every heart as it had never been thrilled before. The notes,
clear and sweet, came laden with the tears her brave soul was holding
back. The people sat in deep silence, but with beating and throbbing
hearts and active minds. They pictured the dead mother in that distant
town, sleeping silence—ah, never again, never to awaken to greet her
daughter on her return.
And the singer pictured that angeled mother listening from that far off
shore, and she sang to her while the audience listened. For as much as a
minute the people sat in silence after the singer had left the stage, and
then the cheers and tears told of the prize she had won.