E-text prepared by Al Haines
A STRING OF AMBER BEADS
by
MARTHA EVERTS HOLDEN
"AMBER"
Siegel, Cooper Co.,
New York. ---------- Chicago.
Copyright 1893 by
Charles H. Kerr & Company
DEDICATED
TO THE LATE
ANDREW SHUMAN
MY LITERARY ADVISER
AND
TRUEST FRIEND
CONTENTS.
I. "I DIDN'T THINK."
II. "STAY WHERE YOU ARE."
III. A COWARDLY MATE.
IV. THEY CARRY NO BANNER.
V. SHUT IN.
VI. THE CIRCLING YEAR--A CLOCK.
VII. SOMETHING BETTER THAN SURFACE MANNERS.
VIII. MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.
IX. THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE ME MOST WEARY.
X. NOTHING SO GRAND AS FORCE.
XI. A RAINY RHAPSODY.
XII. CAUSE FOR WONDER.
XIII. THE FIRST KATYDID.
XIV. A PLEA FOR MEN.
XV. WHAT I'M TIRED OF.
XVI. NOTHING LIKE A GOOD LAUGH.
XVII. HOLD! ENOUGH!!
XVIII. RIPE OPPORTUNITIES.
XIX. A SUNSET CLOUD.
XX. ONE SECRET OF SUCCESS.
XXI. A NEW BEATITUDE.
XXII. BLESSED BE BASHFULNESS.
XXIII. A BEWITCHED VIOLIN.
XXIV. A HAT PIN PROBLEM.
XXV. POLITENESS VS. SINCERITY.
XXVI. THE MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN.
XXVII. SERMONS FROM FLIES.
XXVIII. THE MAN WHO KNOWS IT ALL.
XXIX. BALD HEADS AND UNEQUAL CHANCES.
XXX. HUMAN STRAWS.
XXXI. A SALLOW FACED GIRL FOR YOUR PITY.
XXXII. AND YET HE CLINGS TO LIFE.
XXXIII. OH! TO RID THE WORLD OF SHAMS.
XXXIV. DRESS PARADE OF THE GREAT ALIKE.
XXXV. IF GOD MADE YOU A WILLOW DON'T TRY TO BE A PINE.
XXXVI. TWO TYPES.
XXXVII. A DREAM GARDEN.
XXXVIII. ANYTHING WORSE THAN A BLUE-JAY? HARDLY!
XXXIX. GOOD HEALTH A BLESSING.
XL. WHY, BLESS MY SOUL! IT REALLY SEEMS TO THINK.
XLI. TAKE TO DRINK, OF COURSE!
XLII. A WARNING TO GIRLS.
XLIII. A FROG MAY DO WHAT A MAN MAY NOT.
XLIV. THANKING GOD FOR A GOOD HUSBAND.
XLV. JUST A LITTLE TIRED!
XLVI. PAINTING THE OLD HOMESTEAD.
XLVII. THE OLD SITTING-ROOM STOVE.
XLVIII. A TALK ABOUT DIVORCE.
XLIX. GONE BACK TO FLIPPITY-FLOPPITY SKIRTS.
L. I SHALL MEET HIM SOME DAY.
LI. A MANNISH WOMAN.
LII. THE ONLY WAY TO CONQUER A HARD DESTINY.
LIII. THE "SMART" PERSON.
LIV. A PRETTY STREET INCIDENT.
LV. POLICY A DAMASCUS BLADE, NOT A CLUB.
LVI. THE CONSTANT YEARS BRING AGE TO ALL.
LVII. DID YOU EVER READ THE "LITTLE PILGRIM."
LVIII. EATING MILK TOAST WITH A SPOON!
LIX. BOYS, YOU KNOW I LIKE YOU.
LX. WHAT TO DO WITH GROWLERS.
LXI. GOD BLESS 'EM!
LXII. "UNTO ONE OF THE LEAST OF THESE."
LXIII. TAKING INVENTORY.
LXIV. DON'T MARRY HIM TO SAVE HIM.
A STRING OF BEADS
I.
"I DIDN'T THINK."
"I didn't think!" A woman flings the whiteness of her reputation in
the dust, and, waking to the realization of her loss when the cruel
glare of the world's disapproval reveals it, she seeks to plead her
thoughtlessness as an entreaty of the world's pardon. But the
flint-hearted world is slow to grant it, if she be a woman. "You have
thrown your rose in the dust, go live there with it," the world cries,
and there is no appeal, although the dust become the grave of all that
is bright and lovely and sweet in a thoughtless woman's really innocent
life. A young girl flirts with a stranger on the street. The result
is something disagreeable, and straight-way comes the excuse: "Why, I
didn't think! I meant no harm; I just wanted to have a little fun."
Now, look me straight in the eye, young gossamer-head, while I tell you
what I _know_. The girl who will flirt with strange men in public
places, however harmless and innocent it may appear, places herself in
that man's estimation upon a level with the most abandoned of her sex
and courts the same regard. Strong language, perhaps you think, but I
tell you it is gospel truth, and I feel like going into orders and
preaching from a pulpit whenever I see a thoughtless, gay and giddy
girl tiptoeing her way upon the road that leads direct to destruction.
The boat that dances like a feather on the current a mile above
Niagara's plunge is just as much lost as when it enters the swirling,
swinging wrath of waters, unless some strong hand head it up stream and
out of danger. A flirtation to-day is a ripple merely, but to-morrow
it will be a breaker, and then a whirlpool, and after that comes
hopeless loss of character. Girls, I have seen you gather up your
roses from their vases at night and fold them away in damp paper to
protect their loveliness for another day. I have seen you pluck the
jewels like sun sparkles from your fingers and your ears, and lay them
in velvet caskets which you locked with a silver key for safe beeping.
You do all this for flowers which a thousand suns shall duplicate in
beauty, and for jewels for which a handful of dollars can reimburse
your loss; but you are infinitely careless with the delicate rose of
maidenliness, which, once faded, no summer shining can ever woo back to
freshness, and with the unsullied jewel of personal reputation which
all the wealth of kings can never buy back again, once lost. See to it
that you preserve that modesty and womanliness without which the
prettiest girl in the world is no better than a bit of scentless lawn
in a milliner's window, as compared to the white rose in the garden,
around which the honey bees gather. See to it that you lock up the
unsullied splendor of the jewel of your reputation as carefully as you
do your diamonds, and carry the key within your heart of hearts.
II.
"STAY WHERE YOU ARE."
I received a letter the other day in which the writer said: "Amber, I
want to come to the city and earn my living. What chance have I?" And
I felt like posting back an immediate answer and saying: "Stay where
you are." I didn't do it, though, for I knew it would be useless. The
child is bound to come, and come she will. And she will drift into a
third-rate Chicago boarding-house, than which if there is anything
meaner--let us pray! And if she is pretty she will have to carry
herself like snow on high hills to avoid contamination. If she is
confiding and innocent the fate of that highly persecuted heroine of
old-fashioned romance, Clarissa Harlowe, is before her. If she is
homely the doors of opportunity are firmly closed against her. If she
is smart she will perhaps succeed in earning enough money to pay her
board bill and have sufficient left over to indulge in the maddening
extravagance of an occasional paper of pins or a ball of tape! What
if, after hard labor, and repeated failure, she does secure something
like success? No sooner will she do so, than up will step some dapper
youth who will beckon her over the border into the land where troubles
just begin. She won't know how to sew, or bake, or make good coffee,
for such arts are liable to be overlooked when a girl makes a career
for herself, and so love will gallop away over the hills like a
riderless steed, and happiness will flare like a light in a windy
night. Oh, no, my little country maid, stay where you are, if you have
a home and friends. Be content with fishing for trout in the brook
rather than cruising a stormy sea for whales. A great city is a cruel
place for young lives. It takes them as the cider press takes juicy
apples, sun-kissed and flavored with the breath of the hills, and
crushes them into pulp. There is a spoonful of juice for each apple,
but cider is cheap!
III.
A COWARDLY MATE.
I know a wife who is waiting, safe and sound in her father's home, for
her young husband to earn the money single handed to make a home worthy
of her acceptance. She makes me think of the first mate of a ship who
should stay on shore until the captain tested the ability of his vessel
to weather the storm. Back to your ship, you cowardly one! If the
boat goes down, go down with it, but do not count yourself worthy of
any fair weather you did not help to gain! A woman who will do all she
can to win a man's love merely for the profit his purse is going to be
to her, and will desert him when the cash runs low, is a bad woman and
carries a bad heart in her bosom. Why, you are never really wedded
until you have had dark days together. What earthly purpose would a
cable serve that never was tested by a weight? Of what use is the tie
that binds wedded hearts together if like a filament of floss it parts
when the strain is brought to bear upon it? It is not when you are
young, my dear, when the skies are blue and every wayside weed flaunts
a summer blossom, that the story of your life is recorded. It is when
"Darby and Joan" are faded and wasted and old, when poverty has nipped
the roses, when trouble and want and care have flown like uncanny birds
over their heads (but never yet nested in their hearts, thank God),
that the completed chronicle of their lives furnishes the record over
which heaven smiles or weeps.
IV.
THEY CARRY NO BANNER.
There never yet was a grand procession that was not accompanied, or,
rather, in great measure made up of, followers and onlookers. So in
this life parade of ours, with its ever varying pageant and brilliant
display, there are comparatively few who carry banners, who disport the
epaulette, and the gold lace. And sometimes, we who help swell the
ranks of those who watch and wait, grow discouraged, almost thinking
that life is a failure because it holds no gala-day for us, nothing but
sober tints and quiet duties. What chance for any one, and a woman
especially, to make a career for herself, tied down to a lot of
precious babies, or lassooed by ten thousand galloping cares! As well
expect a rose to blossom in midwinter hedges, or a lark to sing in a
snowstorm, as to look for bloom and song in such a life! But just bend
down your ear a minute, poor, tired, overworked and troubled sister, I
have a special word for you. It is simply impossible for circumstances
of any sort to overthrow the high spirit of one who believes in
something yet to come and out of sight. What are poverty and adverse
fate and mocking hopes and disappointed ambition to the soul which is
only journeying through an unfriendly world to a heritage that cannot
fail? As well might a flower complain of the rains that called it from
the sod, of the winds that rocked it, and the cloudless noons that
flamed above it, when June at last has lightly laid the coronal of
summer's perfect bloom upon its bending bough. We shall find our June
somewhere, never fear. Be content then a little longer with
uncongenial surroundings and a life that knows no outlook of hope. Be
all the sweeter and the stronger and the braver that the way is short.
To-morrow, in the Palace of Love, the dark and unfriendly inn that
sheltered us for a night upon the way, shall be forgotten.
V.
SHUT IN.
Were you ever shut in by a fog? Lost at mid-day in a soundless,
rayless world of nebulous vapor--so seemingly alone in the universe
that your voice found no echo, and your ears caught no footfall in all
the vast domain of silence about you? The other morning, when I left
the house, I paused in wonderment at the strange world into which I was
about to plunge. All landmarks were gone, nothing but silver and gray
left of nature's brilliant tints, not even so much shadow as an artist
might use to accentuate a bird's wing in crayon--no heaven above, no
earth beneath. The interior of a raised biscuit could not have been
more densely uniform than the atmosphere. It seemed as if the world
had slipped its moorings and drifted off its course into companionless
space, leaving me behind, as an ocean steamer sometimes leaves a
straggler on an uninhabited shore. I felt like sending forth a call
that should give my bearings and bring back a boat to the rescue. I
groped my way down the steps, and, following an intuition, sought the
station. Ahead of me I heard muffled steps, yet saw no form. But
suddenly a doorway opened in the east and out strode the sun. In the
air above and about me, behold, the wonder of diamond domes and slender
minarets traced in pearl! The wayside banks were fringed with crystal
spray of downbeaten weed and bush that sparkled like the billows of a
sunlit sea. The tall elms here and there towered like the masts of
returning ships, slow sailing from a wintry voyage back to summer lands
and splendor. There was no sound in all the air, but the whole
universe seemed singing as when the morning stars chorused the glory of
God. More and more widely opened that doorway in the east; step by
step advanced the great magician, and over all the world the splendor
grew, until it seemed too much for mortal eyes to bear, when lo! a
touch dispelled it all and commonplace day stood revealed.
VI.
THE CIRCLING YEAR--A CLOCK.
The circling year is a clock whereon nature writes the hours in
blossoms. First come the wind flowers and the violets, they denote the
early morning hours and are quickly passed. The forenoon is marked by
lilacs, apple blooms and roses. The day's meridian is reached with
lilies, red carnations, and the dusky splendor of pansies and passion
flowers. Then come the languid poppy and the prim little 4 o'clock,
the marigold, the sweet pea, and later the dahlia and the many-tinted
chrysanthemum to mark the day's decline. Lastly the goldenrod, the
aster and the gentian, tell us it is evening time, and night and frost
are close at hand. The rose hour has struck already for '93. The
garden beds are full of scattered petals and the dusty roadways glimmer
with ghostly blossoms too wan to be roses, and wafted by a breath into
nothingness. With such a calendar to mark the advance of decay and
death the seasons differ from the mortal race which substitutes aches
and pains for a horologe of flowers, and grows old by processes of
physical failure and mental blight.
VII.
SOMETHING BETTER THAN SURFACE MANNERS.
There are days when my heart is so full of love for young girls that as
I pass them on the street I feel myself smiling as one does to walk by
a garden of daffodils. And when I see how careful some of them are to
be circumspect and demure, I think to myself how fine a thing it is, to
be sure, to have good manners! How happy the parent whose young
daughter knows just how to hold her hands in company, just how and when
to smile, just how to enter a room or gracefully leave it. Easy,
indeed, must lie the head of that mother who is secure in the knowledge
that her daughter will never make a false step in the stately minuet of
etiquette, or strike a discordant note in the festival of life; that
she will never laugh too loud, nor turn her head in the street, even
when the gay and glittering "king of the cannibal isles" rides by, nor
do anything odd or queer or unconventional. To the mother who believes
that good manners can be taught in books and conned in dancing schools,
there is something to satisfy the heart's finest craving in a strictly
conventional daughter, who thinks and acts and speaks by rule, and
whose life is like the life of an apricot, canned, or a music box wound
up with a key. But to my thinking, my dear, good manners are not put
on and off like varying fashions, nor done up like sweetmeats, pound
for pound, and kept in the storeroom for state occasions. They strike
root from the heart out, and the prettiest manners in the world are
only the blossoming of a good heart. Surface manners are like cut
flowers stuck in a shallow glass with just enough water to keep them
fresh an hour or so, but the courtesy that has its growth in the heart
is like the rosebush in the garden that no inclement season can kill,
and no dark day force to forego the unfolding of a bud.
VIII.
MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.
I am more and more convinced the longer I live that the very best
advice that was ever given from friend to friend is contained in those
four words: "Mind your own business." The following of it would save
many a heartache. Its observance would insure against every sort of
wrangling. When we mind our own business we are sure of success in
what we undertake, and may count upon a glorious immunity from failure.
When the husbandman harvests a crop by hanging over the fence and
watching his neighbor hoe weeds, it will be time for you and for me to
achieve renown in any undertaking in which we do not exclusively mind
our own business. If I had a family of young folks to give advice to,
my early, late and constant admonition would be always and everywhere
to "mind their own business." Thus should they woo harmony and peace,
and live to enjoy something like the completeness of life.
IX.
THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE ME MOST WEARY.
In the ups and downs and hithers and thithers of an eventful life shall
I tell you the people who have made me the most weary? It is not the
bad people, nor the foolish people; we can get along with all such
because of a streak of common humanity in us all, but I cannot survive
without extreme lassitude the decorous people; those who slip through
life without sound or sparkle, those who behave themselves upon every
occasion, and would pass through a dynamite explosion without rumpling
a hair; those who never have done anything out of the way and never
will, simply for the same reason that a fish cannot perspire--no blood
in 'em! Cut them and they would run cold sap, like a maple tree in
April. Such people are always frightened to death for fear of what the
world is going to say about them. They are under everlasting bonds to
keep the peace. I wonder that they ever un-bend to kiss their
children. If one of them lived in my house I should stick pins in him.
Morality and goodness that lie no deeper than "behavior" are like the
veneering they put on cheap tables--very tawdry and soon peeled off.
X.
NOTHING SO GRAND AS FORCE.
Reading about the superb management of the big fire the other day, a
certain girl of my acquaintance remarked: "Is there anything so grand
in a man as force? In my estimation those firemen and the chief who so
splendidly controlled them are as far superior to the dancing youth, we
meet at parties and hops, as meat is better than foam." Put that into
your pipe, you callow striplings, who aim to be lady-killers! It is
not your tennis suits, nor your small feet, nor your ability to dance
and lead the german that makes a woman's heart kindle at your approach.
It is your response to an emergency, your muscle in a tilt against
odds, your endurance and force, that will win the way to feminine
regard. As for me there is something pathetic in the sight of a big,
handsome fellow in dancing pumps and a Prince Albert coat. I would
rather see him swinging a blacksmith's hammer, or driving a plow
through stony furrows if need be. The "original man" was not created
to shine in the military schottische or win his laurels in the berlin.
XI.
A RAINY RHAPSODY.
Gently, idly, lazily, as petals from an over-blown rose, while I write,
the welcome rain is falling. The sky is neutral tinted, save in the
east, where a faint blush lingers. All along the country roadways a
thousand fainting clovers uplift their purple crests, and in the dusky
spaces of the dense June woods a host of grateful leaves wait and
beckon. A voice comes from the garden bed; it is the complaint of the
pansy. "Here I lie," it says, "with all my jewels low in the dust.
Where is the purple of my amethysts, the yellow of my topaz, the
inimitable sheen of my milk-white pearls? Alas and alack for pansies
when the rain beats them earthward!" The marigold, like a
yellow-haired boy with his straw hat well back from his flying mane,
whistles softly to himself for joy, and buries his hands in the pockets
of his green breeches. The peonies burn low their tinted globes of
light, and the sweet peas swing like idle girls upon the tendrils of
their drooping vines. The dog lifts his nose and sniffs the moist air
approvingly, while poor Old Tom, the cat, blinks benignly upon the
scene. In the poultry yard the hens pose in the same indescribable
amaze that has bewildered their species since the dawn of time. I
think the first chicken that was ever hatched in Eden must have
experienced some great nervous shock that has descended along the
infinite line of its progeny. The monotonous rooster chants ever and
anon from the top of the fence his unalterable convictions. The ducks
waddle waggishly through the rain and the pigeons coo softly the
mellowest melodies that ever sounded from a feathered throat.
XII.
CAUSE FOR WONDER.
I do not wonder so much that so few people blossom into sunny old age,
as I wonder that one-half of humanity ever shows a leaf or unfolds a
bud. Look at the idiots who have children. Look at the little ones
thrown into the street like troublesome kittens. Look at the
injudicious methods of diet and training. I declare, my dear, if I
were to go into the room where Theodore Thomas was rehearsing his
orchestra, and see the flutists using their flutes for hammers, and the
violinists using their violins for tennis rackets, and the divine old
cello in the hands of a lusty blacksmith who was utilizing it for an
anvil, the sight would be nothing to what it is to see the muddle we
make of the children's sweet lives. God meant us for musical
instruments, and gave to each soul its capacity for some original
harmony. Can a flute keep its tone for three score years it you use it
for a clothes stick on wash day, or a violin retain intact the angel
voice within it if you let rats breed and nest in it, fling it against
the side of the house and dance on it with hob-nailed boots? If an
instrument subjected to such usage pipes out a silver note once in a
dozen years, uncover your head when you hear it, for it is the original
angel within the mechanism, which nothing can kill!
XIII.
THE FIRST KATYDID.
The first katydid of the season has whipped out his bow and drawn the
preparatory note across the strings of his violin. He is alone at
present and he plays to an empty house, but it will not be long before
the orchestra fills up and the music is in full blast. The cricket is
getting ready to throw aside the green baize that has held his piccolo
so long, and before the middle of the month there will not be a tuft of
grass nor a shelter of low-lying leaves that is not alive with the
shrill, complaining sweetness of his theme. The goldenrod has lighted
the candles in the candelabra that skirt the borders of the wood, and
the aster has already hung out her purple gown and her yellow laces
upon the bushes that follow the windings of the steep ravine. Only six
weeks to frost! Only six weeks to the time for the unbottling of the
year's vintage and the exchange of tea for sparkling wine. Hasten
forward, then, oh, days of radiant life and sparkling weather! We are
tired of torrid waves and flies; of snakes, hornets and cyclones.
XIV.
A PLEA FOR MEN.
A more or less extended experience as a bread-winner has taught me a
noble charity for men. I used to think that all the head of a family
was good for was to accumulate riches and pay bills, but I am beginning
to think that there is many a martyr spirit hidden away beneath the
business man's suit of tweed. Wife and daughters stand ever before
him, like hoppers waiting for grist to grind. "Give! Give!" is their
constant cry, like the rattle of the upper and nether stones. This
panegyric does not apply to the man who frequents clubs and spends his
money on between-meal drinks and lottery tickets. It applies rather to
the unselfish, hardworking father of a family, who works early and late
to keep his daughters like lilies that have no need to toil, and to
help maintain the ostentation of vain display upon which depends the
social success of a worldly and frivolous wife. It would be far more
to those daughters' credit if they did something in the line of honest
and honorable toil to support themselves, rather than live on the
heart's blood of an unselfish and overworked father; and as for the
wife who exacts the income of a duchess to keep up the silly parade of
Vanity Fair, there may come a day for her, when, shorn of the generous
and loving support of a good husband, and forced to earn her own
livelihood, as the penniless widows of bankrupt men are sometimes
forced to do, she will appreciate, too late, the blessing that Heaven
has taken from her.
XV.
WHAT I'M TIRED OF.
I am tired of many things. I am tired of the miserable little god,
"worry," shrined in every home. I am tired of doing perpetual homage
to the same black-faced little wretch. I am tired of putting down
pride and curbing a righteous indignation. I am tired of keeping my
hands off human weeds. I am tired of crucifying my tastes, and
cultivating the nickel that springs perennial to meet my needs. I am
tired of poverty and all needful discipline. I am tired of seeing
babies born to people who don't know how to bring them up. I am tired
of folks who smile continuously. I am tired of amiable fools and the
platitudes of unintelligent saints. I am tired of mediocrity. I am
tired of cats, both human and feline. I am tired of being a soldier
and marching with the advance guard. I am tired of girls who giggle
and of boys who swear. I am tired of married women who think it
charming to be a little giddy, and of married men who ogle young girls
and other men's wives. I am tired of a world where love is like the
blossom of the century plant, unfolding only once in a hundred years.
I am tired of men who are worthless and decayed to the core, like
blighted peaches. I am tired of seeing such men in power. I am tired
of being obliged to smile where I long to smite. I am tired of
vulgarity which glides forever through the world like the snake through
Eden. I am tired of women who bear the hearts of tigers, and of men
who roar like lions, yet show the valor of mice. I am tired of living
shoulder to shoulder with my pet antipathies. I am tired of the
everlasting inveighing against capital, when any idiot knows that
capital is the king-bolt that holds the world together. I am tired of
wearing shabby clothes, and meeting folks who judge of a parcel by the
quality of wrapping paper it is incased in. I am tired of being
well-behaved and decorous when I want to fling stones and make faces.
I am tired of smelling the game dinner of my neighbor and sitting down
at home to beans and bacon. I am tired of many more things, the
enumeration of which would take from now until the day after forever.
XVI.
NOTHING LIKE A GOOD LAUGH.
Do you know, my dear, that there is absolutely nothing that will help
you to bear the ills of life so well as a good laugh. Laugh all you
can, and the small imps in blue who love to preempt their quarters in a
human heart will scatter away like owls before the music of flutes.
There are few of the minor difficulties and annoyances that will not
dissipate at the charge of the nonsense brigade. If the clothes line
breaks, if the cat tips over the milk and the dog elopes with the
roast, if the children fall into the mud simultaneously with the advent
of clean aprons, if the new girl quits in the middle of housecleaning,
and though you search the earth with candles you find none to take her
place, if the neighbor in whom you have trusted goes back on you and
decides to keep chickens, if the chariot wheels of the uninvited guest
draw near when you are out of provender, and the gaping of your empty
purse is like the unfilled mouth of a young robin take courage if you
have enough sunshine in your heart, to keep a laugh on your lips.
Before good nature, half the cares of daily living will fly away like
midges before the wind; try it.
XVII.
HOLD! ENOUGH!!
The other evening it chanced that a combination of disastrous
circumstances wrought havoc with my temper. I lost my train; my head
hummed like a bumblebee with weary pain, and the elastic that held my
hat to its moorings broke, so that that capering compromise between
inanimate matter and demoniac possession blew half a block up street on
its own account, and was brought back to me by a youthful son of
Belial, who took my very last quarter as reward for the lively chase.
"There's no use!" said I to myself as I jogged along through the
gloaming; "blessed be the woman who knows enough to cry 'hold!' against
such odds!"
And just then I spied a wizened little mite of a woman trotting by,
carrying a gripsack bigger than herself. She grasped it, and held it
against her wan little stomach, as a Roman warrior might carry his
shield into battle--plucky to the last.
"Now," said I, "look here, Amber, have you a fifty pound sachel to tug
through the darkness? No! Then you might be worse off."
And I went on a little farther and I met the brave firemen going home
drenched and worn from the big fire. "You coward!" said I to myself,
"what if you were a fireman! Something to growl about then, I guess."
And I went a bit farther and I saw a little white coffin in a window.
"How about that?" said I. "If the darlings were gone to their long
home you might talk about trouble!"
And a few moments later I ran across an old man without any legs,
peddling papers. And then I said: "Do you call your life a grind,
madam, with two legs to walk upon, and a sufficient income to admit of
an occasional fling? What if you had wooden legs, and peddled papers?"
Now, I have told you this for a purpose. However dark your lot may be
there are worse all around you. You may be inclined to think that the
bloom and the brightness have gone out of your life, leaving nothing
behind them but what remains of the carnation when the frost finds
it--a withered stalk. But if you will take the trouble to watch, you
will find that there is always something harder to bear than your own
trouble, and, put to the test, you wouldn't change crosses with your
neighbor.
XVIII.
RIPE OPPORTUNITIES.
What if a man went over the lake to St. Joe to visit the peach orchards
at the maturity of their delicious harvest! The consent of the owner
of the fairest plantation of the many has been gained, let us imagine,
for the plucking of the perfect fruit. And yet, in despite of
opportunity and privilege, what would you think of one who came home
with empty baskets and an unappeased relish for ripe peaches? Would
you not think such a one a dullard, or, at least, stupidly blind to his
opportunities? And if you chanced to hear him crying over his empty
basket later on, would you not revile him for a lazy fellow? We all of
us, from day to day, miss chances of far greater value than the ripest
peach that ever mellowed in the sun. The opportunity to say a kind and
encouraging word swings low upon the bough of to-day. Why not gather
it in? The chance to help, to succor, to protect, the chance to lend a
helping hand, to share a burden, to soothe a sorrow, to plant a loving
thought, or twine a memory that shall blossom like a rose upon the
terrace of to-morrow, all are our own as we pass through the world on
our way to heaven. We may not come this way again. See to it, then,
that we carry full baskets on the homeward faring.
XIX.
A SUNSET CLOUD.
Not long ago there slowly ascended into the evening sky a pillar of
cloud so vast that all measurements sank into insignificance beside it.
Its color was of softest gray just touched with the flush that deepens
the inmost chamber of a shell, or blushes in the unfolded petals of a
wind flower. With majestic yet almost imperceptible motion this cloud
mounted the blue background of the sky. The spectre of a faded moon
hung motionless above it an instant only, and then was swiftly drawn
within its soft eclipse. Changing from moment to moment, the great
mass took on all semblances of vivid fancy, until the evening sky
seemed the arena of dreamland's cohorts. With indescribable grace and
with the delicate lightness of a fairy footfall the mighty visitant
advanced and took possession of the heavenly field. Suddenly the full
glory of the setting sun smote it from outer rim to base. In less time
than it takes to tell the story the cloud was dissipated in a spray of
feathery light. It drifted like a wreath before the wind and lost
itself in the illimitable spaces of the air, as dust in the splendor of
a summer day. It broke upon the hills in a shower of flame and
dissolved above the still waters of the lake in tremulous flakes of
light. The sight was worth going far to see, and yet I am willing to
wager my to-morrow's dinner that not one-fiftieth of the folks for whom
I write, saw it, or would have left their supper to watch the glorious
spectacle.
XX.
ONE SECRET OF SUCCESS.
There is just one thing nowadays that never fails to bring success, and
that is assurance. If you are going to make yourself known, it is no
longer the thing to quietly hand out your card and a modest credential;
you must advance with a trumpet and blow a brazen blast to shake the
stars. The time has gone by when self-advancement can be gained by
modest and unassuming methods. To stand with lifted hat and solicit a
hearing savors of an all too humble spirit. The easily abashed may
starve in a garret, or go die on the highways. There is no chance for
them in the jostle of life. The gilded circus chariot, with a full
brass band and a plump goddess distributing posters, is what takes the
popular heart by storm. Your silent entry into town, depending upon
the merits of your wares to work up a trade, is chimerical and
obsolete. We no longer sit in the shadow and play flutes; we parade in
a sawdust ring and play on trombones, or take our place on a raised
platform and beat the bass drum, and in that way we draw a crowd and
gather in the coppers, and that is what we live for, isn't it?
XXI.
A NEW BEATITUDE.
There should be a new beatitude, and it should read, "Blessed is the
man who hath the courage of his convictions." It should apply to poor,
long-suffering women as well. We have plenty of the sort of courage
that will lead a man to step in front of a runaway horse, or dash into
a burning house, or throw himself off a dock to rescue a perishing
wretch, but there is a dearth of the kind of bravery that will enable
either man or woman to face a laugh in defense of a principle, or
succor a losing cause despite a sneer. How the best of us will retreat
trailing our banner in the dust, when the hot shot of ridicule
confronts us from the enemy's camp, or when some merry sentinel
challenges us with the opprobrious epithet, "crank." Why, I believe
there is hardly a man or woman to-day who would have the courage to
march up to a half-grown boy and knock the cigarette out of his mouth,
or tackle the omnipresent, from everlasting to everlasting expectorator
and buffet him into decency, or drive the "nose-bag" and the
"head-check" fiend at the point of an umbrella from all future
molestation of the noble horse he persecutes! We all believe in the
extermination of public nuisances, but we have not the courage of our
convictions to enable us to fight the fight of the just to overthrow
the rampancy of the evil doer.
XXII.
BLESSED BE BASHFULNESS.
Like the presence of a fresh clover in a meadow of sun-scorched
grasses, or the sound of a singing lark in a council of crows, is the
sight of a bashful child. In this age of juvenile precocity and
pinafore wisdom I would rather run across a downright timid boy or girl
than drink Arctic soda in dog days. Never be distressed, then, when
"johnnie" hangs his head and blushes like a girl, or when his little
sister stands on one foot and fairly writhes with embarrassment in the
presence of strangers. Count it rather the very crown of joy that you
are the parent of a fresh and innocent child, rather than the
superfluous attendant of a _blasé_ infant, who discounts a circus
herald in "cheek" and outdistances a drummer in politic address and
unabashed effrontery. If I had my way I would put half the little
mannikins and pattern dolls of our latter day nurseries into a big
corn-popper and see if I couldn't evolve something sweeter and more
wholesome out of the hard, round, compact little kernels of their
present individuality. I would utterly do away with children's parties
and "butterfly balls" and kirmess dissipations. There should be a new
deal of bread and milk all around. Every boy in the land should go to
bed at sundown, and every girl should wear a sunbonnet. There should
be no carrying of canes, or eating of candy, or wearing of jewelry, or
talking of beaux, and I would dig up from the grave of the long ago the
quaint old custom of courtesying to strangers, of keeping silent until
spoken to, and of universal respect for the aged. This world would
brighten up like a rose garden after a shower with the presence of so
many modest little girls and bashful boys of the good old-fashioned
sort.
XXIII.
A BEWITCHED VIOLIN.
I went to the Auditorium the other night to hear somebody play on the
violin. But that was not a violin which the slender, dark eyed
performer used, and the music that so charmed me was not drawn from
strings and flashed forth by any ordinary bow. The heavenly notes to
which I listened were like those that young leaves give forth when May
winds find them, or that ripples make, drawn softly over pebbly
beaches. And when they died away and floated like a whisper through
the hushed house, it was no longer music; it was a great
golden-jacketed bee settling sleepily into the heart of a rose; it was
the chime of a vesper-bell broken in mellow cadences between vine-clad
hills; it was a something that had no form nor shape, nor semblance to
any earthly thing, yet floated midway between the earth and sky, light
as the frailest flower of snow the north wind ever cradled,
substanceless as smoke or wind-followed mist.
XXIV.
A HAT PIN PROBLEM.
I overheard the following conversation the other day in a popular
refectory:
"Do your children mind you?"
"I guess not; they never pay any more attention to me than if I was a
dummy. It takes their father to bring them to terms every time!"
"I am so glad to hear it. I like to know that somebody else besides me
has a hard time with their children. I declare the only way I can get
baby to mind already is to jab him with a hat-pin!"
I waited to hear no more. With sad precipitation I gathered up my
check and fled. Had I waited another minute I should have said to that
mother: "Madam, I will give you a problem to solve. If, at the age of
three, a child needs the impetus of one hat-pin to make him obey, how
many meat-axes will it require to keep him in order at the age of ten?
And if you are such a poor miserable failure as a mother and a woman
now, just at the commencement of an immortal destiny, what have the
eternities in store for you?"
Why, oh, why are children sent to people who have no more idea about
bringing them up than a trout has about training hop-vines? It is a
question that has given and does give me much uneasiness.
XXV.
POLITENESS VS. SINCERITY.
You imagine it is not polite to be plain spoken! My dear, there are
times when to be merely "polite" is to be a toady! There are times
when politeness is a pillow of hen feathers, wherewith to smother honor
and strangle truth. If all you care for is to be popular, to go
through life like a molasses-drop in a child's mouth, why, then, choose
your way and live up to it, but don't expect to rank higher than
molasses, and cheap molasses at that. For my part I would rather be
outspoken in the cause of right, even if plain speech did offend, than
be a coward and a woolly mouth. Somebody once lived upon earth, the
example of whose thirty odd years of mortal environment we are taught
to pattern our own lives close upon. How about his politeness when he
talked with the hypocrites and rebuked the pharisees? How about his
policy when he drove the money-changers before a stinging whip, and
championed the cause of the sinful woman? Oh! I tell you, the soul
that is always looking out for the chance to score one for the winning
cause, and throw up its hat with the crowd that makes the most noise,
is poor stock to invest in. In the time of need such a friend would
turn out worse than a real estate investment in a Calumet swamp.
XXVI.
THE MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN.
Shall I tell you plainly, and without any mincing, what type of woman I
think the most dangerous? It is not the virago, the wounds of a sharp
tongue are hard enough to bear, but there is a balm for them. Mother
may be overworked, or sister may be fretted; something is the matter
with the digestion, often, when the one we love scolds and is
excessively disagreeable in manner and speech. The harshest word is
soon excused and overlooked by the smile and the caress that are sure
to follow. So, bad as a scolding, nagging tongue may be, it has its
alleviations, and somewhere there is an excuse made to fit it. But
what palliation is there for the offense of the woman who seeks by
blandishments and artifices of the evil one's own concoction to steal
the affection of a man away from his wife? There are more such people
in the world than you can imagine (and the evil is not confined to the
one sex either.) An intriguing woman (or man) who steals into a happy
home and seeks to undermine it, deserves to be stoned on the highway.
She may steal your purse, your diamonds, or your checkbook, and, while
love reigns on its rightful throne, the home will be happy; but let her
seek to discrown love, and entertain a clandestine passion in its
place, and the foundation of the stoutest home that was ever founded on
the rocks of time will tumble in ruin about her ears. Avoid the
intriguing, fascinating, dangerous, designing woman, then, who
recognizes no sanctity in wedded honor, and by her wiles and witcheries
lets in a thousand devils to the heart and home she curses with her
presence.
XXVII.
SERMONS FROM FLIES.
I chanced to stand the other day in a stuffy little room, the only
window of which was shaded by a ground glass light. Before the gray
void of this cheerless window a few flies darted hither and thither in
consequential flurry, while I myself, for the time being a most blue
and down-cast mortal, was battling with the thought that life, after
all, was hardly worth the living, and the outlook for anything better
in a dim and uncertain future, too dubious to be entertained. But all
at once my vision seemed to pierce the shaded pane that intervened
between me and the great, rushing, riotous world, and such a conception
of all that lay the other side the ground glass window overflowed my
soul, that I felt rebuked as by an audible voice.
XXVIII.
THE MAN WHO KNOWS IT ALL.
There is a type of humanity we all encounter from day to day, at whose
funeral I shall carry a banner and beat a tom-tom. He is the man who
knows it all. In his grave, human forethought, and general knowledge,
and mortal perfection and everything worth knowing, shall one day lie
down and die. He never makes mistakes, nor loses his temper, nor gets
the worst of an argument, nor is worsted in a bargain. He never acts
on impulse, nor jumps without looking, nor commits himself rashly, nor
loses the wind out of his sails. He is so overwhelmingly superior
(sometimes he is a woman!) that in his presence you are a child of
wrath, a hopeless imbecile, and a black sheep all in one, and yet--how
you hate him and how you long to see some brave young David come along
and hit him with a sling shot! Such a man as he, is fitted to bring
the average human to the dust as quickly and as surely as a well aimed
bullet brings down a wild duck.
XXIX.
BALD HEADS AND UNEQUAL CHANCES.
What a superior chance a man has in this world over a woman! In the
matter of physical attributes alone his innings are as far ahead of
hers as the man who carries the banner in a Fourth of July procession
is ahead of the little boy who tugs along behind with the lemonade
pail. The other evening I attended the theatre, and casting my eye
over the audience between acts, I beheld no less than a score of
bald-headed men. They were composed, and even cheerful, under an
infliction that would have ostracized a woman. Imagine a man taking a
bald-headed woman to see the "Railroad of Love!" Imagine a bald-headed
girl with a fat, red neck and white eyelashes being in eager demand for
parties, coaching jubilees or private suppers. There never was a man
so homely, so halt, so deficient in beauty or brain that he could not
get a wife when he wanted, but the candidates for the position of
mistress of any man's household must be pretty, graceful and sweet.
The chances are uneven, my dear, but what are you going to do about it?
XXX.
HUMAN STRAWS.
There is not much credit in being jolly when the joints of life are
well oiled and events move as smoothly as feathers drawn through cream.
The glory lies in maintaining your serenity under adverse
circumstances; in emulating Mark Tapley, and being jolly when there is
not a hand's breadth of blue in all the heavens. There are straws laid
upon us every day, which, if they do not break our backs, at least go
far to loosen the vertebrae of our temper. One of these straws is the
man who expectorates in public places. What shall I do with that man?
I cannot kill him, because there is a law against the violent removal
of even a human straw. To be sure, he is the most insignificant straw
that the wind of destiny blows across the waste of life. He never
will mature a head of wheat though you give him eleven eternities to do
it in. But he serves his purpose, and breaks the back of toleration.
XXXI.
A SALLOW FACED GIRL FOR YOUR PITY.
On the opposite corner sits a half-grown girl peddling apples. She
polishes the fruit occasionally with a rag that she carries about her
person (let us humbly hope it is not her handkerchief!) and now and
then breaks into a double shuffle to dissipate the chill that invades
her ill-clothed frame. What taste of joy do you suppose that child
ever got out of the pewter cup the fates pour for her? Does she ever
find time to run about with other children, playing the games which the
generations hand down from one to the other? Does she ever play "tag,"
or "gray wolf," or "I spy?" Does she ever swing in a hammock like
other girls when the days are long and blithe and sweet, as free from
care as a cloud or a butterfly? Does life hold for her one sparkle in
its poor cup of wine, one flavor that is not sordid and low and mean?
You say it is easy to sit here all day selling apples, and wonder why I
hold this sallow-faced girl up for special pity. To be sure there is
no hardship in the part of her life visible to us. But in her dull
soul lurks constantly the shadow of an ever present fear. The poor
child is accountable to a cruel master, whether father or mother it
matters little, who beats her each night that she returns to her
wretched home with a scanty showing of nickels; and the consciousness
of dull times and slow sales keeps her in a state of trepidation, which
in you or me, my dear, would soon lapse into "nervous prostration," a
big doctor's fee, and a change of air. Yet mark my words, if the
dark-browed liberator of sorrow's captives were to proffer my little
fruit peddler the exchange of death for all this wearing apprehension
and constant toil, do you think she would accept the transfer? Not
she. The "captain" out snow-balling to-day in her love-guarded home,
with never a fear to shadow her sunny eyes, nor a big sorrow to start
the showery tears, would not plead harder for the boon of longer living.
XXXII.
AND YET HE CLINGS TO LIFE.
As I sit here by my window I am reminded that this is a queer world and
queer be the mortals that pass through it. There is that wreck of a
man over yonder squeezing a bit of weird melody out of an old accordion
and expecting the tortured public to throw a penny into his hat now and
then to pay him for his trouble. Do you suppose that man knows what
happiness means, as God designed it. He was, without doubt, a sad and
grimy little baby once, brought up on gin slightly adulterated with his
mother's milk. He was pounded daily before he was two years old,
starved and cuffed and kicked all the way up to manhood, and now his
neck is so completely under the heel of hydra-headed disaster,
wickedness and want, that all he can find to do in this big and busy
world is to sit on the sidewalk and lacerate the public ear with those
dreadful discords. And yet, if death were to step up to that beggar's
side and offer him release, instant and sure, in the form of a falling
brick or a horse running amuck on the crowded sidewalk, he would cling
to the miserable shred he calls life as eagerly as though he were the
crown prince himself, with the heritage of his kingdom yet unwon.
XXXIII.
OH! TO RID THE WORLD OF SHAMS.