Evadne was swinging in the hammock one golden summer afternoon, humming
soft snatches of her old songs while she played with her aunt's pet
black and tan. The sweet freshness of her new existence was rapidly
restoring tone to her mental system, and life no longer seemed a
hopeless task. The days were full of dreamy contentment. She spent long
mornings under the murmuring pines in the deep belt of forest which
stretched for miles behind the house, or helped Mrs. Everidge keep the
rooms in dainty order; drove with her along the grass-bordered roads,
while ears and eyes feasted on the symphonies of Nature and the ever
changing beauty of the hills; or stood beside Joanna in a trance of
delight out in the fragrant dairy, whose windows opened into a wild
sweetness of fluttering leaves, and whose cool stone floor made a
channel for a purling brook, watching her as with dexterous hands she
shaped and moulded the bubbley dough or tossed up an omelet or made one
of her delicious cherry pies, conscious through it all of the sweet
influence which seemed to pervade every corner of the house and grounds.
"I wonder what it is about you, you dear Aunt Marthe?" she soliloquized,
as she pulled Noisette's silky ears. "When you are away I cannot bear to
go into the house,--everything seems so different, so cold and
dark,--but the moment you come home again it is as lovely as ever.
Concentrated light. Yes, that name would suit you, for light is sweet
and pure and stimulating and precious. If all the people in the world
were like you, _what_ a world it would be!"
She looked up as she heard footsteps approaching, and then rose to
welcome her visitor. A woman twenty years her senior, bright, capable,
energetic, with a shrewd face and kindly eyes whose keen glance was
quick to pierce the flimsy veil of humbug, and a tongue whose
good-natured sarcasm had made more than one pretender feel ashamed.
"How do?" she said briskly, as she took the chair Evadne offered. "I
hope you're feelin' better sence you've cum?"
"Much better, thank you. I am very sorry my aunt is not at home."
"I'm sorry likewise, though it don't make as much difference as it might
have done, as I'm callin' a purpose to see you."
"That is very good of you," said Evadne with a laugh. There was a spicy
flavor about this child of the mountains which she found refreshing.
"It's a bit awkward," continued her visitor with a twinkle in her eye,
"as we'll have to do our own introducin'. My name's Penelope Riggs,
Penel for brevity. What's yours?"
"Evadne Hildreth."
"Evadne. That's uncommon and pretty. I'm goin' to call you so if you're
not objectionable to it. Life's too short for handles."
Evadne laughed merrily. "I'm not in the least objectionable," she said.
"No, that's a fact," said her visitor after a moment's kindly scrutiny.
"You're true and thorough. I knew I was goin' to like you when I saw you
in meetin'."
Evadne flushed with pleasure. "Why, that is a beautiful character! I
only wish I deserved it. But I fear you are very much mistaken in me,
though it is very kind in you to think such nice things."
"Nonsense, child! I don't waste my time thinkin'. Let me have a good
look at your face for half an hour and I'll know as much about you as
you could tell me in a week. Malviny Higgins has just come back from
Bosting with her head full of sykick forces an' mental affinities an'
the dear knows what else, but I think it's just a cultivation of our
common senses--number, five. You can feel a person without touching
them; it's in the air all round you; and you don't need much
discrimination to know whether what you will say will hurt them or be a
blessin'. The main thing is to put yourself in their shoes before you
begin to talk."
"Their shoes, Miss Riggs," laughed Evadne, "why they might not fit."
"Penelope," corrected her visitor, "Penel for brevity. Yes, they will
too, that kind of shoe leather is elastic. It's the old Bible doctrine,
'never do anything to others that you wouldn't like others to do to
you.' If people got the shoes well fitted before they let their tongues
loose, there would be a deal less sorrow and heartburn in the world."
"'Love thy neighbor as thyself,'" said Evadne. "I never thought of it in
that way before."
"Well," said Miss Riggs briskly, "I'm dredful glad you've cum, Evadne.
It'll do Mis' Everidge a sight of good to have you, though Marthe
Everidge is raised above the need of humans as far as any mortal can be
on this earth. With all their inventions there ain't nobody discovered
how to make spiritual photographs yet, or I would have the picture of
_her_ character in all the windows of the land. 'Twould do more good
than miles of tracts. I agree with Paul that livin' epistles make the
best readin' an' it don't seem fittin' that she should be shut up in
this little place where only a few of us have the right kind of
spectacles to see her through. Most of the folks just allow it's Mis'
Everidge's way, and would as soon think of tryin' to imitate her as a
tadpole would a star."
"But we are to imitate Christ," said Evadne.
"'Course, child! But it's dredful comfortin' to have a human life in
front of us to show us that is possible. Lots of times when life looks
like a long seam an' the sewin' pricks my fingers, a new light falls on
this picture, and I sez to myself, 'Penel,' says I, 'look at Marthe
Everidge. The Lord has made you both out of the same material. There
ain't no reason why she should be always gettin' nearer heaven and you
goin' back to earth. She has difficulties and worriments, same as you
have, but if she can make every trial into a new rung for the ladder on
which she is mountin' up to God, there ain't no reason why you should
make a gravestone out of yours to bury yourself under; and so I start
on with a new courage, an' when we get to the end of the journey, I'll
not be the only one who'll have to thank Marthe Everidge for showin' the
way."
Evadne's eyes shone. "You make me feel," she cried, "as if I would
rather live a beautiful life than do the most magnificent thing in the
world!"
"That's a safe feelin' to tie to," said Penelope with an approving
smile; "for character is the only thing we've got to carry with us when
we go."
"Well," she continued, "I must be goin'. I did think I'd be forehanded
in callin', but mother's been dredful wakeful lately, and when daylight
comes, it don't seem as if I had the ambition of a snail. She don't like
to be left alone for a minit, mother don't, so it's a bit of a puzzle to
keep up with society."
She laughed cheerily as she held out her hand. "Well, I'm dredful
pleased to have met you. I'll be more than glad to have you come in
whenever you're down our way."
Evadne watched her as she walked briskly along the road. "She is not
Aunt Marthe," she said slowly; "I suppose Louis would call it a case of
the solanum and the potato blossom, but she is one of the Lord's plants
all the same."
"Aunt Marthe, what _is_ culture?" she asked suddenly, as later in the
afternoon Mrs. Everidge sat beside her hammock. "Is Louis right? Is it
just the veneer of education and travel and environment?"
"You can hardly call that a veneer, little one. Real education goes very
deep. Emerson says 'nothing is so indicative of deepest culture as a
tender consideration of the ignorant.' I think that culture, to be
perfect, must have its root in love. It is impossible that anyone filled
with the love of Christ should ever be discourteous or lack in
thoughtfulness for the feelings of others."
"Why that must be what Penelope Riggs meant by her 'elastic shoe
leather,'" said Evadne with a laugh, and then she repeated the
conversation.
"Oh, she has been here! I am glad. It will do you good to know her. She
is the cheeriest soul, and the busiest. She always acts upon me as a
tonic, for I know just how much she has had to give up and how hard her
life has been."
"Why, Aunt Marthe, she says when she gets to heaven she will have to
thank you for showing her the way. She thinks you are perfection."
"'Not I, but Christ,'" said Aunt Marthe with a happy smile. She went
into the house and returned with a book in her hand. "You asked what
culture really was. This writer says 'Drudgery.' Listen while I give you
a few snatches, then you shall have the book for your own.
"'Culture takes leisure, elegance, wide margins of time, a pocket-book;
drudgery means limitations, coarseness, crowded hours, chronic worry,
old clothes, black hands, headaches. Our real and our ideal are not
twins. Never were! I want the books, but the clothes basket wants me. I
love nature and figures are my fate. My taste is books and I farm it. My
taste is art and I correct exercises. My taste is science and I measure
tape. Can it be that this drudgery, not to be escaped, gives 'culture?'
Yes, culture of the prime elements of life, of the very fundamentals of
all fine manhood and fine womanhood, the fundamentals that underlie all
fulness and without which no other culture worth the winning is even
possible. Power of attention, power of industry, promptitude in
beginning work, method and accuracy and despatch in doing it,
perseverance, courage before difficulties, cheer, self-control and
self-denial, they are worth more than Latin and Greek and French and
German and music and art and painting and waxflowers and travels in
Europe added together. These last are the decorations of a man's life,
those other things are the indispensables. They make one's sit-fast
strength and one's active momentum,--they are the solid substance of
one's self.
"'How do we get them? High school and college can give much, but these
are never on their programmes. All the book processes that we go to the
schools for and commonly call our 'education' give no more than
opportunity to win the indispensables of education. We must get them
somewhat as the fields and valleys get their grace. Whence is it that
the lines of river and meadow and hill and lake and shore conspire
to-day to make the landscape beautiful? Only by long chiselings and
steady pressures. Only by ages of glacier crush and grind, by scour of
floods, by centuries of storm and sun. These rounded the hills and
scooped the valley-curves and mellowed the soil for meadow-grace. It was
'drudgery' all over the land. Mother Nature was down on her knees doing
her early scrubbing work! That was yesterday, to-day--result of
scrubbing work--we have the laughing landscape.
"'Father and mother and the ancestors before them have done much to
bequeath those mental qualities to us, but that which scrubs them into
us, the clinch which makes them actually ours and keeps them ours, and
adds to them as the years go by,--that depends on our own plod in the
rut, our drill of habit, in a word our 'drudgery.' It is because we have
to go and go morning after morning, through rain, through shine, through
toothache, headache, heartache to the appointed spot and do the
appointed work, no matter what our work may be, because of the rut,
plod, grind, humdrum in the work, that we get our foundations.
"'Drudgery is the gray angel of success, for drudgery is the doing of
one thing long after it ceases to be amusing, and it is 'this one thing
I do' that gathers me together from my chaos, that concentrates me from
possibilities to powers and turns powers into achievements. The aim in
life is what the backbone is in the body, if we have no aim we have no
meaning. Lose us and the earth has lost nothing, no niche is empty, no
force has ceased to play, for we have no aim and therefore we are
still--nobody. Our bodies are known and answer in this world to such or
such a name, but, as to our inner selves, with real and awful meaning
our walking bodies might be labelled 'An unknown man sleeps here!'
"'But we can be artists also in our daily task,--artists not artisans.
The artist is he who strives to perfect his work, the artisan strives to
get through it. If I cannot realize my ideal I can at least idealize my
real--How? By trying to be perfect in it. If I am but a raindrop in a
shower, I will be at least a perfect drop. If but a leaf in a whole
June, I will be a perfect leaf. This is the beginning of all Gospels,
that the kingdom of heaven is at hand just where we are.'"
"Oh!" cried Evadne, drawing a long breath, "that is beautiful! I feel as
if I had been lifted up until I touched the sky."
"Marthe," exclaimed Mr. Everidge reproachfully, suddenly appearing in
the doorway with a sock drawn over each arm, "it is incomprehensible to
me you do not remember that my physical organism and darns have
absolutely no affinity."
Mrs. Everidge laughed brightly. "If you will make holes, Horace, I must
make darns," she said.
"Not a natural sequence at all!" he retorted testily. "When the wear and
tear of time becomes visible in my underwear it must be relegated to
Reuben."
"But Reuben's affinity for patches may be no stronger than your own,
Uncle Horace," said Evadne mischievously.
Mr. Everidge waved his sock-capped hands with a gesture of disdain.
"The lower orders, my dear Evadne, are incapable of those delicate
perceptions which constitute the mental atmosphere of those of finer
mould. The delft does not feel the blow which would shiver the porcelain
into atoms, and Reuben's epidermis is, I imagine, of such a horny
consistency that he would walk in oblivious unconcern upon these
elevations of needlework which are as a ploughshare to my sensitive
nerves. It is the penalty one has to pay for being of finer clay than
the common herd of men."
Evadne looked at Mrs. Everidge. A deep flush of shame had dyed her
cheeks and her lips were quivering.
"Oh, Horace," she cried, "Reuben is such a faithful boy!"
"My dear," said her husband airily, "I make no aspersions against his
moral character, but he certainly cannot be classed among the
velvet-skinned aristocracy. By the way, I wish you would see in future
that my undergarments are of a silken texture. My flesh rebels at
anything approaching to harshness," and then he went complacently back
to his library to weave and fashion the graceful phrases which flowed
from his facile pen.
"Why should he go clothed in silk and you in cotton!" cried Evadne,
jealous for the rights of her friend.
Mrs. Everidge's eyes came back from one of their long journeys, "Oh, I
have learned the luxury of doing without," she said lightly.
Evadne threw her arms around her impulsively. "But why, oh, Aunt Marthe,
why should not Uncle Horace learn it too?"
"We do not see things through the same window," she answered with a
smile and a sigh.