AN INDEX FINGER.
AN INDEX FINGER
BY
TULIS ABROJAL
“All the Sutras are but fingers that point out the shining moon.”
“Man, thou livest forever.”
Has any one supposed it is lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him, or her, it is just as lucky to die, and I know
it.
This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look’d at the crowded
heaven.
And I said to my spirit: When we become the unfolders of those orbs,
and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them, shall we be
filled and satisfied then?
And my spirit said: No, we but level that lift to pass and continue
beyond.
--WALT WHITMAN.
[Illustration]
R. F. FENNO & COMPANY, 9 and 11 EAST
SIXTEENTH STREET: NEW YORK CITY
1898
Copyright, 1897
BY
TULIS ABROJAL.
_An Index Finger._
DEDICATION.
To those who faithfully follow their ideals, ever doing the work they
love to do, always giving to the world the best that is in them--the
truth as they see it--though in the face of difficulties, disasters
and defeat; enduring persecution, poverty and want, meeting the dread
spectre of starvation, suffering death itself if need be, yet counting
all not too great a price to pay for the freedom of their souls, this
book is sympathetically dedicated.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
PREFACE 7
I. THE CHILD AND HER OWN PEOPLE 13
II. WHERE THE ROAD DIVIDES 40
III. CONFIDENCES AND QUESTIONS 56
IV. HER STORY AND FATE 74
V. THE END OF THE DREAM 92
VI. THE BUTTERFLY 110
VII. OPPORTUNITY 131
VIII. DEATH’S NARROW SEA 148
IX. THINGS NOT DREAMED OF IN EVERYDAY PHILOSOPHY 156
X. “YE SHALL NOT UNDERSTAND” 168
XI. A LITTLE BOARD BRIDGES THE GREAT GULF 179
XII. AND THE PROPHET WAS STONED 202
XIII. THE TONGUES OF ANGELS 218
XIV. THE SIMPLE WAY 240
XV. IT IS WELL WITH THE CHILD 248
XVI. THE STORY OF ONE RETURNED FROM THE DEAD 254
XVII. UPROOTING A HUMAN TREE 277
XVIII. BOHEMIA’S HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 293
XIX. THE JOYS 310
XX. PEOPLE OF THE PAST 317
XXI. THE BUTTERFLY’S FLIGHT 331
XXII. THE PROP THAT FAILED 340
XXIII. THE BOOK AND ITS CRITICS 353
XXIV. WHO ARE THEY? 358
XXV. LAST WORDS 379
PREFACE.
The good old custom of the author telling his readers in a preface why
he wrote his book, happily has not yet gone out of date. Though no
particular friend to guide-board literature in general, I confess to a
weakness for the preface. It has its helpful uses. There the author can
talk directly to his readers, without filtering his thoughts through
the brains of his characters; and in consequence the readers come into
closer sympathy with him and understand him better. In not a few cases
I have wished books were all preface. I hope others may not wish so in
this case.
In the preface we meet the author face to face, as it were, and he
becomes ours or we become his at once. It is a little confidential
glimpse into his soul, which he kindly gives us before we enter it by
means of the book.
Yes, I am decidedly in favor of the preface, both as reader and author.
A time-honored method of prefatory writing, made the author assume a
modesty that was self-depreciatory in the extreme. More often than
not he warned readers off by throwing out hints disparaging his own
ability. To such few readers as he thought might follow him through
the book in spite of his assurance that it would be unprofitable to do
so, he apologized with the utmost humility for the waste of their time
and drain upon their patience for which he was about to be responsible.
I shall do no such thing. On the contrary, I believe that he who
reads this book will not find his time ill spent. Its theme is the
most important that can engage the human race. It is my answer to the
mightiest question ever propounded. _My_ answer. Its value extends that
far and no farther. “It is only insight into the ground of being that
secures satisfaction and thorough knowledge.” My light may be only a
rush-light; but such as it is I obey the behest to let it shine.
Says one of the greatest of modern philosophers: “If anything in the
world is worth wishing for--so well worth wishing for that even the
ignorant and dull herd in its more reflective moments would prize it
more than silver or gold--it is that a ray of light should fall on the
obscurity of our being, and that we should gain some explanation of our
mysterious existence, in which nothing is clear but its misery and its
vanity.”
To each of us things are what they appear from each particular point of
view. Our idea is our limitation.
He who writes a book presents to other minds a picture of life as it
appears to him, from whatever point of view he has chosen. His work
portrays both that which he sees outside himself and that which is
within. It is a combination of himself and the world as he sees it, for
of subject and object are all things made.
When we read a tale it is the author we learn to know, rather than
his people; but we know him through his people. They are the dwellers
within his mind, and we cannot know them without entering that realm
and knowing it, be it enchanted or disenchanting.
Sight and insight make up all literature. Every book is a combination
of the author and what he looks upon and studies objectively as well as
subjectively. It is truth as he sees it.
I have read many interesting works of fiction; but for the most part
I laid them down dissatisfied. They lacked something for which I was
always searching. They gave no answer to the questions that early began
to trouble me--questions that nobody could answer and few cared to be
bothered with. Often they were very attractive pictures of that which
the world is to so many--a fool’s paradise.
They dealt with the emotions of those whose lives they portrayed, and
they appealed to the emotions of those who read them; and all had ever
the one, one theme--the pursuit of happiness. And all pursuers saw the
alluring phantom in the same shape, and gave chase to it by the same
road. Sometimes they captured it, and then--the book ended. There was
nothing else for the author to do when he reached that point, but to
let the curtain drop and turn out the lights, lest his audience see
that the happiness so hotly pursued was not the true thing after all;
but only an appearance, an illusion, a disappointment, as veritable a
phantom as ever--which left the one in possession of it no better off
than he was before he captured it.
Now the form of this phantom, was the love of the man and the woman for
each other, and the possession of each by the other. Romances have been
mostly amplified sex chases. They wrought upon the reader’s emotions
through many harrowing chapters, the end thereof being that a certain
man married the particular woman he was pursuing.
An old man whom I knew in my youth said he only read the first and
last chapters of a novel. In the one he became acquainted with the
hero and heroine; in the other he found out “whether he got her or
not.” By so doing he escaped much emotional wear and tear to which
less discriminating readers subjected themselves. As we all know,
sometimes “he didn’t get her.” What then? Well, perhaps she died or
he died, and that ended the story. Everybody accepted that event as
final and incontestable. That was the end, and nobody ventured to ask
what lay behind it. It was the end of the successful as well as of the
disappointed--the end of everybody in the world, yet nobody sought its
meaning.
In this respect the people outside of books were precisely like the
people in books. They had the same ideal of happiness, chased it
through the same difficulties and disasters, and would not admit that
it was a phantom; would not see that Death stalked behind every joy,
sat at every feast, touched elbows right and left with the victorious
as well as with the defeated, and waited for everybody under the sun.
They knew it, of course, but they did not want to think about it or
talk about it.
And what was this spectre to which all closed their eyes because of
terror? Death was death. That was all they knew. It was the terrible
and final thing that could happen. More; it was sure to happen; but it
must be put off as long as possible and ignored in the meantime.
To me it ever was incomprehensible that so dreadful an issue was so
hopelessly accepted and so little inquired into.
I pondered much on this strange problem. The dream haunted my mind that
somewhere there was a solution.
I sought it everywhere from men and books; but long without success. At
last a ray of light fell upon my path. Faithfully following it through
years of earnest inquiry I learned that Death is not death. With that
knowledge happiness took a new form and beckoned to me over a new road.
Because of the new ideals it placed before me I wrote this book. Its
people are my people; its gospel my gospel. From the truth as I was led
to see it I found a reason for my own being as well as for that of the
book, and I have tried to give it to the reader as simply as it came to
me.
The psychical phenomena described are not exaggerated. Most of it
came within my own experience, and would be accessible to any one who
devoted to the study as much patience, time and effort as I did.
There will be those who will give to the book only the sneer of
conceited ignorance. For such I have no message. With them, the first
condition of all learning--receptively--is lacking. I make no argument.
I try to convince no one. I simply tell a story. It will bear its own
message to those ready to receive it. None else can understand. God
Himself cannot give us what we will not receive.
The book is but a finger that aims to point out to others a moon that
made glorious light for me. And if you will patiently look in the
direction it points, you, too, will see the shining moon.
THE AUTHOR.
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
THE CHILD AND HER OWN PEOPLE.
There are some of us who in after years say to Fate, “Now deal us your
hardest blow; give us what you will; but let us never again suffer as
we suffered when we were children.”
The barb in the arrow of childhood’s suffering is this; its intense
loneliness, its intense ignorance.
--_Olive Schreiner._
Under a great tree a child was singing softly to herself:
Beautiful, dear, and noble old tree
Bend your green branches caressing o’er me.
For oh! a day’s coming, and soon will be here,
When I shall be far from your presence and cheer;
And my heart will be lonely without your embrace,
And you--you will long for a sight of my face.
Your branches bend low to the ground,
Bend low and caressingly,
And they sway with a murmurous sound--
A language of nature profound--
Sway softly and caressingly,
As they bend, with a sigh, to the ground.
They chant the grand chorus of ages,
In musical monotone;
And open the past’s mystic pages--
The wonderful, solemn, sealed pages--
So vaguely and dimly known.
They sing me the song of the ages.
When I listen with spirit and soul
To each swaying, whisp’ring bough,
The silent centuries backward roll
And open before me like a scroll.
And I view the “Then as Now”--
When I listen with spirit and soul.
She was lying on the grass, with her face toward the sky, which she
could only see in spots through the tree’s thick branches, which hung
low and swayed in the slightest breeze, with a motion that was very
like a caress to one beneath them. A house stood near, but the tree
completely hid it on one side. One coming from the south saw only a
beautiful grassy hill surmounted by a great green umbrella.
Under this friendly shelter the woman-child lay, singing her own words
to her own tunes. Oblivious to outward sounds, she heard no footsteps
until the branches parted and a stranger entered her temple.
At this a dog that had been enjoying the profoundest of slumber near
her, sprang to his feet with a great show of vigilance, making up for
his tardiness by the most energetic barking.
“Be quiet, Bliss,” said the child, rising to a sitting posture and
looking steadily at the stranger, with the utmost composure. The dog
at once became silent, but he went close to her and posed as on the
defensive.
“I beg pardon,” said the intruder, politely raising his hat, “I saw no
one, and thought to rest a bit in the shade, and get a cool drink of
water, too.”
“The well is on the other side of the house,” she said, making a motion
in that direction with a thin, nervous, unchildlike hand. Her words
and manner expressed the utmost indifference--yet there was a gleam of
interest in her big, clear eyes.
The stranger moved on, murmuring thanks. She looked after him with a
sudden yearning in her heart for his return. He was not of her world,
that was sure; and yet somehow it was quite clear to her that he was
of her world--the world of her dreams, where she longed to be, fancied
she had been, and from whence she had somehow sadly strayed. Yes, in
that instant of contact she understood that in spite of all apparent
difference their worlds were the same.
In another moment he returned. Gracefully begging permission, he
seated himself on the grass and leaned against the tree. His manner
captivated her. It was respectful and deferential as to a woman grown.
It enchanted her, for she was one of those misunderstood children who
have thoughts and feelings far beyond their years and suffer great
humiliation when treated patronizingly.
“You are not at all afraid of me although I came unannounced and
unintroduced, are you?” he asked, half laughing.
“Afraid? Why should I be? I am in my own door-yard. Besides, you don’t
look like a wild beast, and if you were one, here is Bliss to take care
of me.”
“Thank you. It’s a comfort to know you have no doubt that I am human.
But what is this?” he asked, as a piece of cardboard blew toward him.
“Ah! a drawing. May I look at it?”
She nodded her consent.
It was a pencil drawing of a woman’s head, and interested him at first
glance, because, imperfect though it was, it had that which makes
art great when it is so--the human quality, the power to express its
creator, the aim and object of all art. This penciled face gave an
insight into the artist’s mind, showing that which she had tried to
express and yet had not made clear. It showed the height to which she
rose in fancy, and the long and rugged road between present performance
and the perfection of which she dreamed.
All this the stranger saw, because we see what is within ourselves. It
takes genius to recognize genius. He had traveled the road on which she
was taking her first feeble steps.
“Is it your work?” he asked.
“Yes,” she nodded, coloring faintly. It was plain that she expected no
praise, yet longed for a helping word.
“Is it a copy?” he asked, for there was about it, although but half
expressed, that which he thought must have been suggested by something
from a master hand.
“No.”
“Then who is it?” There was unaffected interest in his voice.
“One of my people,” she answered.
“Does she live here?”
“She is here sometimes, not always.”
“Well, she must be a beautiful woman--even more beautiful than you
depict her.”
“You understand,” said the child. “I cannot put her on paper as I see
her. I know but little of drawing, but I am always trying to draw
faces--the faces of my own people--and trees, for they are my own
people too; but I am never satisfied with my work. They do not get on
the paper as they are in my mind.”
“Why not have some instruction?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
The stranger understood, but in order not to seem to, he began to pick
up some scattered leaves of paper near him. Seeing that they contained
writing he was about to lay them down with an apology when the child
said:
“It is a letter I have written to Helen, the woman whose picture you
have just been looking at. You may read it, only not aloud. I couldn’t
stand that.”
“But why should I read it at all?” he said. “It would be impertinent
on my part. Besides, I am not afflicted with the despicable vice of
curiosity.”
“If you don’t mind, I wish you would read it,” she said. “It may help
me. You will understand when you have finished.” But she looked ill at
ease, nevertheless.
The stranger read:
MY DEARLY BELOVED HELEN:--Since you went away I am very lonely indeed.
None other is so near and dear to me as you. I fill the hours with
thoughts of you--thoughts so intense and absorbing that at times I
actually see you by my side. But, alas! you do not stay when you come
like that. You fade out of my sight; you go back to your world and I
cannot follow you only with my thoughts, my dreams, my love and my
letters.
But I shall go and find you some day. I shall be one of the people
of your world, and shall be busy with work which shall fill my time,
my brain and my heart. I shall meet all my people there--my very own
people, and shall love them and work with them and know loneliness no
more. I have a story to tell you, Dear Heart. It is this:
In a world nameless to all mankind, lived a woman, sweet and fair.
It was a beautiful world. There the men were all true and the women
all faithful. Misery was unknown and none sought happiness, for all
possessed it.
But this one woman dreamed dreams and saw visions. She heard voices
calling to her from another world--a world whose people sought
continually and vainly to attain a condition they knew only in name,
and which they called Happiness. All believed in the existence of
this condition and gave chase to it, each in his own way, but none
found it. Often hearing the voices of these unhappy people and
seeing them in visions, this woman longed to go and help them. The
longing disturbed the harmony of life in all her world, until it was
decreed that she must leave it and go to that other whose vibrations
of anguish had shaken the spheres. But they did not tell her of her
destiny. “She will know when she is there,” they said.
So she slept, and the sleep was long in the eyes of the children of
Time.
When she awoke, memory was gone, and everything had to be learned
over again. At first her consciousness was very dim, and her strength
feeble, and having slept so long she could scarcely keep awake at all.
But after a time a faint memory of the past came to her, and she saw
that all was different from that other time, which now seemed like a
dream. This was not the same world, nor were these the same people
she had known, for she was in the sad world she had seen in visions,
whose people so persistently and often frantically sought Happiness
and never found it--and that sad world was this in which we live.
She was changed in appearance, too, for when she looked in a mirror
she saw a face that was new to her and a tiny figure. She was like a
child, and everybody called her a child, though to herself she seemed
not to be a child, because part of her memory had come back, and it
was the memory of a woman.
It was very hard to feel like a full-grown person in mind and be
treated like a creature with almost no mind at all. One of the most
painful things she saw was that sometimes the most ignorant and
unfeeling were in positions of power over sensitive children. She
suffered much from the very beginning of consciousness.
To go back to the world she could so dimly remember was her one dream.
But when she spoke of it those about her laughed and said she had
never been in any other world, because there was no other.
Once in a dream she went back, or perhaps it was that some of her old
friends came to her. They told her to be patient; that she had been
sent to help the unhappy ones who had so often called to her; that
scattered all over the planet in which she dwelt now were others like
herself, who had come for the same purpose; that she would meet them
from time to time and that would pay her for much of her pain.
They said, too, that she had a particular work to do here and could
not leave until it was done, but she must find out what it was
herself; that the road would often seem very hard and very long, but
it had an end, and if she did her work well--
There the dream ended; but it comforted her, all unfinished as it was.
By and by her childhood was gone. She was a woman, and went forth to
find her work, earnest, enthusiastic and eager, and they said she had
precious gifts.
“I will paint pictures,” she said, “for always in my mind are noble
faces and figures, like the gods when they walked among men, and these
shall show mankind how glorious it can itself become.”
Beautiful creations, perfect shapes of beauty came forth from her
hand, but the world, for the most part, passed them by. It said, “We
see nothing in these,” and it spoke the truth, for that in them could
only be seen by those like unto them.
A few, however, stood before them filled with delight. They were
people of the planet from which the artist came, and they recognized
their kindred in the faces and forms she had depicted; but she herself
was never satisfied with what she had done. Within her mind, faces
more glorious, and forms more perfect struggled for expression.
“I have a tale to tell,” she said, “that many will be glad to hear,
for it contains help for all.” But again the world did not understand.
It said, “The people of this book are impossible people, and what
is the author trying to say? We see nothing in it.” A few only
understood; but these were of her planet.
“Now,” she said, “I will write again, and this time the world will
read and be charmed. I will give it what it wants, not what I want to
give it.”
She spoke truly. She wrote and many were pleased; but the people of
her planet closed her book with pain in their faces, and she herself
found no joy in it. To her conscience she made this excuse: “I want
bread and the easy, comfortable things of life, and the world wants
foolishness, so we exchange products. Some day I will write that which
pleases myself. Then I shall make no concessions, no bids for favor. I
shall say what I feel and think.”
Time went on, and the world became interested in new names, and
almost forgot hers. Days of discouragement and distress arrived. The
ease which she had bought by pleasing the commonplace, vanished, and
loneliness, ill-health and poverty came in its stead. Weary and
sick unto death in spirit and body, she longed to end it all, and so
longing fell asleep, and sleeping dreamed.
She saw again the faces of those from her other world who had come to
comfort her when a child. One, the most beautiful of all, and yet just
now the saddest, seemed nearer and dearer than the others. It was a
glorious face, radiant with strength and sweetness, a type of perfect
womanhood. All her life it had visited her in dreams and haunted her
imagination. Sometimes the name that belonged to it hovered on her
lips, yet was never spoken, for it always vanished before it took
shape in her mind.
“Did you find your work?” they asked.
“I tried hard, dear friends,” she said. “I have not been idle.” But
their faces showed no joy.
“Have I not done my work well?” she questioned, beginning to be afraid.
“Have you given your best?” they asked.
A flush of shame covered her face. “No; the world did not want it.”
They were silent, and there was that in their eyes which made her more
and more ashamed.
“I needed bread,” she said, anxious to make excuse.
“Is bread all that is worth striving for, that you paid for it so high
a price?” they asked.
She was silent.
“Did you come to please or help the people of this world?” they asked.
“You told me long ago that I came to help,” she answered, “but they
made it very hard. When I wrote that which burned within my soul
they cared not to hear it, but wanted something that entertained and
diverted them from what they call the cares of life; and I--well, I
was often hungry--so I gave them what they wanted.”
“And did they reward you?”
“You see I have nothing,” she answered. “For a time I had some of the
possessions all value so much; but they are gone.”
“You tried to tell these people what you thought and felt, but they
would not listen, you say; so you told them little foolish tales,
like those that please children, but instruct not, help not, and thus
you passed your life neglecting to unfold your own soul by expressing
it truly. Only the weak and feeble of will, or the indolent and
indifferent, turn back at the first obstacle. Where was your faith?”
“I sold it, as you see, for a pitiful price,” she answered, weeping.
“And were you satisfied?”
“Never. My conscience always lashed me. I have been punished already.
Give me no further penance.”
“It is not ours to punish or pardon, nor in all the universe is there
either punishment or pardon. There is only unchangeable, ever-active
law. Had you done your work well”--
“What is it to do one’s work well?” she interrupted.
And now the woman of the glorious face came near and answered: “It is
to give the highest and best that is in you, without caring whether
it will please or offend; to express truth, as you see it, though the
world be against you; to pay whatever price is asked, though it be
starvation and disgrace for the freedom of your soul, for the soul is
only free when it faithfully follows its IDEAL.”
“Then I know I have not done my work well,” said the woman, sadly. “I
seldom gave my best. I had not the courage. I was afraid the price I
would have to pay would be too high. But what is the fate of those who
do not do their work well?”
The faces of the company were full of pity, as they answered, “They
must do it over again.”
Then the woman wept aloud. “But not just yet,” they said. “You are
very tired; your strength is gone. You shall rest for a time.”
Then one touched her eyes gently, and they closed to the light of this
world!
Helen, dearest, I dreamed that story, and I was the woman who
did not do her best. It always seems to me that I lived long ago
somewhere--many lives perhaps. At times I can almost remember scenes
and people of that far-off time. It may be that it was right here in
this world, and that I have been sent back to do what I left undone.
Or it may be that here in this life I shall not do what I ought to do,
and must come again. Ever with me is the thought that there is some
particular thing for me to do and that I must make haste to find it
and do it, because the time is short.
Part of my work is to find my people--thy own people whom I knew in
that far-away life, you are one of them, and--
The stranger laid the unfinished letter down and looked curiously
at the author. He had not observed her closely until then. He saw
in her face that which is higher than beauty, but is only seen and
understood by its spiritual kindred. The mouth, that unmistakable key
to character, because it is the door through which the soul expresses
itself, was perfect in shape and exquisitely sensitive, though the
other features had a dash of boyish ruggedness in them. But the eyes,
the dark grey eyes, mottled with tawn, had in them a look, indefinable,
yearning, appealing,--a look that might have ages of suffering behind
it--and perhaps before it--that went to the stranger’s heart like a
knife, and filled his eyes with a mist. In after years more than one
strong spirit lost its strength and wept it knew not why, before that
flash-light of a soul.
In the same moment the stranger saw another thing. It was that the
child was entirely without self-consciousness and the consequent
coquetry which so often spoils the manners of even very little women.
She was not thinking how she appeared in his eyes. He could see that.
It was nothing to her that her feet were naked, her hair twisted and
her clothing crumpled. It was plain that these unconventional facts
did not even present themselves to her mind. Her shoes and stockings
and big straw hat lay near her on the grass, and she gave no sign of
embarrassment because she was not arrayed in them. She met him on the
ground of mind to mind. In her shining, yearning eyes was an eager
interest.
“A free, original, aspiring spirit,” he mused. “Life will be a rough
pilgrimage for her. She will find it hard to shape herself to iron-clad
standards. The vast army of the commonplace, unable to understand her,
will claw at her like birds of prey. It is a pity that she must be
bruised and beaten into the usual shape, as she surely will be. But the
world is a relentless potter, with inflexible ideas of how its human
jugs and vases are to be modeled; and it shapes us all, in a measure,
in spite of ourselves.”
“If the question isn’t impertinent, how old are you?” he asked, with a
cadence of melancholy in his voice.
“Eleven; but I feel _very_ old sometimes. Old, old, old!”
“Yet you are not old enough to be writing of loneliness,” he said.
“Ah; you think so? Can you imagine the loneliness of a child who is not
altogether a child and yet not a woman?”
“Where are your dolls?” he asked, hoping to divert her mind from
subjects too serious.
Her handsome mouth curved into a sneer. “Dolls?” she echoed. “Dolls?
Poor, miserable little images made by stupid people to deceive those
they believe to be stupider. Well, I have several. They were given to
me by foolish friends who meant to be kind; but they live in boxes
upstairs. I never get any good from them, wretched imitations of people
that they are, with expressionless faces and stuffed bodies. I prefer
my own people.”
“The lady of the picture and letter is one of them, you said. But of
course they are not all grown up like her.”
“Yes, they are, for I like grown-up people best. I don’t like those of
my own age. At least I have seen but few whom I liked. The reason I am
so fond of my own people, is because I make them myself, and so, of
course, I make them to suit me. They are charming, and very fond of
me. You would call them unreal; but to me they are more real than the
flesh and blood people hereabouts, and much more agreeable.”
“Ah! I understand now,” said the stranger. “They are your own people
in the sense of being congenial, companionable, of your own way of
thinking. You have gone direct to a great truth, little friend. Our own
people are those with whom we are in intellectual sympathy, no matter
where we find them.”
“But your other people,” he went on, after a short pause, motioning
with his hand toward the house, “your family,--you love them, too?”
“No; we don’t love each other,” she answered, frankly; “we seem not to
fit well together--not to be thinking the same thoughts. The most of
me is completely shut away from them. I cannot talk to them as I am
talking to you. They would laugh at me; they would ridicule me, and
that enrages as well as hurts me. And they are going away one by one,
interested in their own lives and knowing nothing of my dreams and
longings. Two of my sisters married recently and have gone far away,
and last week my oldest brother left. I watched him out of sight as he
went down the road, with my heart almost bursting. So it was when the
others went. Everything was desolate without them, and they will never
be back here again in the old way. Not that the old way was so good,
for it wasn’t, but I could not bear to see the end. I suffer if only
an animal dies or is taken away. And I always wanted to love them; but
they did not understand.”
The stranger’s eyes grew pitiful, not so much for what she had suffered
as for what she was destined to suffer. He saw her as she was, and
as no other had seen her, none having the power to understand,--a
sensitive, affectionate, aspiring soul, held for a time in a place
alien to her spirit, among people most truly not her own.
“Another,” he said, mentally, “destined to travel the rough road that
leads to the heights. Another with a dash of the weightiest gift of
the gods. I did not think to find one of the climbers of Olympus here.
Yet where none dreams to find them there they are. Poor little soul
touched with the wand of genius, already living in a world of her
own creation, because the other world is ungenial and intolerable,
and longing for sympathy, which is recognition, appreciation, and
encourages expression, which is life itself. The old, old spirit in
the new body, not comprehended, often wounded, yet striving, striving,
always striving against hard conditions to tell what it feels.
“But you have some friends of your own age among the real people--those
we call real--have you not?”
“Yes; and I play with them sometimes in their way; but in a little
while I am tired of them, and am generally glad when they are gone,
so that I can be with the friends I have been telling you about. But
I have one comrade of my own age whom I love. She talks very little;
but she understands. We often spend whole days together away from
everybody. She doesn’t fit into her family much better than I do in
mine, but she is happier, because her family are kinder than mine. They
love each other better.”
The stranger was struck with the simple and forceful analysis of the
difference between the two families.
“When people love each other they are kinder, as a matter of course,”
he said, feeling that he was guilty of the stupidest of platitudes, but
anxious to keep the young philosopher talking. “But your family love
you, surely?”
“No,” she said, decisively, the mottled eyes showing a flash of pain so
intense that he turned away.
“What makes you think so?”
“They find fault with me all the time. It is a terrible thing to be
blamed always and never praised. When I am grown, should I have power,
should I be able to get others to listen to me, I shall tell them that
if they want to make people better they must praise them. Fault-finding
helps nobody. I am sure of that. It is the worst possible thing for
me, for it fills my heart with rage and a sense of injustice, and of
course it has the same effect on everybody else. I can see plainly
enough what would make an angel of me, and angels of all others, too.
Love and praise are what is needed. What couldn’t I be and do if they
only loved me and saw good in me, and told me so. But to be nagged, and
blamed, scolded, rebuked and humiliated incessantly is making me wicked
in my mind all the time. I know how devils are made. They just take
a child, neither better nor worse than others, and put it some place
where it hears nothing but blame all the time, never a word of love or
praise, and when it is grown up it is a devil, ready to give back the
pain that had been inflicted on it. If it were not for my own people,
my thought people, I could not endure life at all.”
“A bad case,” said the stranger to himself, with a sigh, “heart and
intellect both hungry. I fear the road will be very rough.
“Why did you let your friend Helen go away? Since she is your own
creation, why not keep her here at will, when you are so fond of her?”
“She is my own creation, but I could not keep her here. She has her own
life to live, so she went back to the world from which I drew her, for
I do truly believe away down inside of me, that she is what you call
real. Just now she is in Paris, and she is a famous author, but not
too conceited to love me and find pleasure in talking and writing to
me. I was willing she should go away, as it gives me an opportunity of
writing to her. I enjoy writing even more than talking, sometimes. I
get letters from her often. I have a box full of them. Of course I have
to write them myself, but after they are written it really seems that
she, not I, is their author, and I enjoy reading them just as other
folks enjoy sure-enough letters that come from the post office.”
“How do you send letters to your people?”
The yearning eyes became grave. “Well, that is awkward. I leave them
in queer little places where big, bad, real people are not apt to find
them--at the root of a flower, in the crevice of a wall, or under a
stone--and persuade myself that somehow they reach their destination.
Sometimes I carry them clear to the woods and leave them in hollow
trees, or under great, cool rocks, where, perhaps, there are fairies or
some kind of invisible messengers who will transport them for me.
“But when it rains, now and then, they are washed out of their places,
and I find them all wet and blurred. Then a chilly feeling comes over
me, and I am half afraid that, after all, my people have not seen them.
You see it hurts me if I think _nobody_ reads them. That’s why I wanted
you to read my letter to Helen. I felt sure you would understand.”
“You have many of these unseen friends of yours?” asked the stranger.
“Yes, many; but Helen is my only confidante. Of course I am not a
little girl when I am with my people. I am grown up, and am important,
for I, too, am a famous writer, and I paint the most wonderful
pictures. Yes, I have great fame and the wisest and most distinguished
people are pleased to be received by me, and they--well,--they hang
upon my words.”
“Of course,” said the stranger.
“It is beautiful,” continued the child, “to be treated with
consideration. When will big folks learn that little ones are human
beings like themselves, with the same feelings exactly, and that they
can’t respect themselves if they are ordered about rudely, scolded,
snubbed and generally treated as inferior beings?”
She was enjoying the first appreciation the world had accorded her; was
breathing the air of her dreams, the congenial atmosphere which is only
found where there are sympathetic souls to breathe it with us.
The stranger, understanding, thought of “how widely yawns the moat that
girds a human soul,” whose “real world is always an invisible place,
removed from the rush and chatter of crowds, for the most important
portion of life is the secret and solitary portion.”
“Are your people all women, or do you permit poor, imperfect, earthly
man to enter your paradise?” he asked.
“Our world is made up of human beings, and of course that means men
and women,” she replied. “It would be a stupid place if it contained
only women or only men. But our men are men, not merely creatures who
pass as such, like so many one sees walking about here. And yet, I must
confess that the men of my thought world are not quite so real to me as
the women. I want to make them excellent, perfect; but I don’t succeed.
When I get them just so far along, I seem unable to complete them, and
so they are more or less dim and shadowy to me.”
“Ah, I see,” said her listener. “Your ideal of mankind is too high
for even your imagination to give form to. What are these men like
who still seem dim to you? Some of them are knights and lords of high
degree, or kings, perhaps?”
“No; we don’t care for that kind. They would be too conceited for our
world. We don’t like fighters, either. We have great men, of course,
but they have earned their laurels; but even then they don’t talk about
themselves, till they tire one all out like living men do. But we will
not have any who are not truthful, and then they are courageous, for
liars are always cowards, you know. And then, they are kind, very kind
to everybody, and they don’t think themselves better than women. We
couldn’t stand that, especially as our women are all so magnificent.
I’m one of them, you know.”
It was beautiful to him to see her so frankly reveal herself as she saw
herself. “Your men do something, I suppose,--something more than to be
merely agreeable?” he said.
“We all work, but we dream too, and the dreamers are prized as highly
as the workers if they dream good dreams.”
“For a dreamer lives forever,
And a toiler dies in a day,”
hummed the stranger softly.
Then in memory he turned to the past, murmuring, “Bohemia, thy grapes
are sweet.”
He saw again its hot and dusty highways, its tangled byways and the
long procession traveling thereon. One by one they passed him in
review, some with road-worn feet, faded garments and weary eyes; some
stepping lightly, with joy in their hearts and flowers in their hands.
There were the hopeful, the mirthful, the witty and the merry. There,
too, were the baffled and beaten, the hopeless and the joyless. The
successful went by with proud mien, and smiling face, and they who had
failed also bore themselves erect and smiled, that the world might
not dream of the pain at their hearts. “Their heads were bloody but
unbound.”
Grapes grew abundantly overhead, but a few, only a very few of the
many travelers gathered them. He saw it all in memory as he had seen
it all in reality. Now, as one by one the struggling, striving throng,
dowered with the fateful gift of genius, passed again before him, he saw
“Their faces all showed suffering,
Though no voice uttered plaints.”
How courageous they had been! How faithful! Not a few had met
starvation face to face, and even that dread sight had not power to
turn them from the pursuit of their ideals. Again and again he had
seen the bravest and brightest fall, their aim unattained, their hands
empty, their names unrenowned, their hearts broken. But now he saw, as
by a revelation, that the defeated were victors too.
Putting his hand over his eyes as if to shut out the sight of the
striving, suffering throng, he groaned mentally, for here in this quiet
spot, far from the great centres of life, was another getting ready for
a pilgrimage on the same hot, dusty road.
The child was the first to break the silence into which they had fallen.
“My own people are somewhere in the real world, I am sure, and I must
go and find them,” she said. “I was singing about it to this dear old
tree when you came, for when I go the tree will miss me and be lonely.
We are great friends. I tell it many things, and it answers by waving
its branches over me--see, like that, and I understand.”
“You are eleven years old,” said the stranger, “and are eager to go
and find your people. I am many, many years older and yet have found
very few of mine. The search is long and sometimes heart-breaking, but
it has to be made. But remember one thing, and forget it not, I pray
you. If you have some dream in your mind dearer than all others--some
thought that burns to spring forth into life--be faithful to it, for
it is your ideal. Follow it at any cost. Your story of the woman who
did not do her best contains a great philosophical truth. Somewhere,
sometime we are destined to reach a state where our dreams shall come
true, where we shall have the desire of our hearts, where we shall be
in accord with all beauty and all good. But we can only reach that
state by doing our best every day--in little things and great. If we do
less we shall have to do it over again.
“One is with you who always knows. It is your soul--your real self.
When you want to find your work, when you are ready to tell what you
feel, ask not the world what it wants, but say to your soul, ‘What wilt
thou have me to do?’”
She looked at him admiringly, gratefully, and said, “I thank you. I
know you are wise, for you come from the big, busy world that I long to
enter, and shall enter. There one can see and learn everything. Less
than a mile away two railroads cross each other. I hear the locomotives
whistle every day as they pass, dragging people after them. I shall go,
too, some day, and then, and then”--
“And _then_,” said the stranger, sighing; but she did not understand.
How could she?
“And then I shall be happy,” she added.
“You must find me when you come into my world,” he continued, after a
pause. “Perhaps I am one of your own people. At any rate, the great
world knows me a little. Now I must leave you and go back to where the
two railroads cross. My train was hours behind time, otherwise I should
not have had the pleasure of meeting you. I assure you I shall not
forget you, and when you come into my world I shall know you for one of
us, even as I know you now.”
They had risen as he spoke. He took her slender, sunburned hand in his,
bent down, kissed it and was gone.
“He is truly one of my very own people,” said the child to herself, as
she watched him out of sight. “Now I am sure they live somewhere, and
I shall find them and know them as soon as I see them, and shall be
happy.”