The man had walked the entire distance from New York to the Self Master
Family. In truth, he had walked more than the entire distance, for
once or twice he had lost his way--as many a man has done in other
walks of Life. Painfully he had retraced his steps to the right road.
The mistakes had told heavily upon his failing strength. They had
made him just that much more weary with it all. No doubt mistakes are
wonderfully educational; they make men wiser, and therefore better, for
in the final analysis wisdom and goodness are synonymous.
He complained bitterly at the hardness of his lot and found little
comfort in the thought that he might reach the Colony too late for the
evening meal.
His friend who had met him walking aimlessly up and down Broadway
assured him that there was always a coffee pot boiling on the
old-fashioned cook stove in the boys' kitchen--that the Colony House
never locked its doors.
To a man who feels that every door in the world is locked against him
there is comfort in the thought that there is really one place where
he may find a welcome. His friend had said that there would be no
questions asked him on his arrival--no investigation.
"No investigation," he muttered aloud, "thank God! It is easier
for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a
'down-and-out' man to convince Professional Charity that he is really
hungry. I think they would have given me a 'hand-out' when they
investigated me the last time if I could have told them what town my
mother was born in."
He smiled with weak cynicism at the folly of his thoughts, and then
became suddenly serious, for on the side hill in front of a large
colonial house, worked out in white stone, were the words "The Self
Masters." He stopped and studied the quiet, home-like scene from the
road. All these weary miles he had come to ask food and shelter, and
now his courage seemed to fail him. He sat down by the road side and
leisurely took his pipe from his pocket. Then he prepared tobacco with
the utmost care, filled the pipe and lighted it.
"THE SELF MASTERS"
he spelled out the letters on the sign; "What the h--ll is that?--Self
Master--Self Mastery--Self Control. Old Man, if you had ever had any
of that Self Control in your make-up you would not be a Knight of the
Dusty Road!... You had better go back to the East Side where you know
the land; where no man cares whether you live decently or not--if you
can buy."
Then the sound of a piano and male voices came to him and awakened
him to a new train of thought. "It is a Monastery--a Monastery of
Vagabondia," he said, "and why not? why shouldn't a man, even a
homeless man, have his Monastery, if you please, where he can forget
his past and live cleanly? If he only lives cleanly for a day and
falls.... It's something to remember--a day he doesn't have to be
ashamed of. Who knows but that in the one day of unselfish living a man
is more truly his real self than he is in all the other days of his
vicious years.
"Throughout his long life Moses was the leader of his people, but
it was in that day that he talked with God--face to face--that his
countenance did shine like the sun. It was not when he slew the
Egyptian, and, frightened, buried him in the sand; it was when he stood
in the presence of Divinity--that Moses was Moses. When the drunkard is
in his sober mind, when the liar is speaking the truth, when the thief
is giving honest measure, when the murderer is kind to his fellow,
then, and only then, is the true Self finding expression."
He drew heavily at his pipe and then smilingly said, "My pipe has gone
out!" He knocked out the ashes into his hand and scattered them to the
wind, gravely, as if it were some religious ceremony. Then he dusted
his shoes and clothes, and straightening himself up to his full height,
he marched bravely up to the front door of the house....
... A black crow, belated in his home-going, left his corn-thieving,
and, rising, flew across the sky to his eyrie in the pines.
[Illustration]