moon was at its full and all the ugliness of the city was shrouded,
like a homely woman in a bridal veil of shimmering lace. We skimmed
along on a smooth and unobstructed track, like a sloop with every sail
set, heading for the open sea. There were no idle chatterers aboard,
and from the stalwart gripman at his post of duty, to the shrinking
little girl passenger, who was half afraid and half delighted to be
abroad so late alone, everybody and everything was in harmony with the
hour and scene. Suddenly there fluttered into the car a snowy moth,
astray from some flower garden in the country and quite bewildered and
lost in the barren city. The beautiful creature fluttered into a
lady's face and she screamed and struggled as though attacked by a
rabid beast. "Oh, kill it! kill the horrid thing," she cried, while
her attendant beat the air with his cane and sought to drive the
dangerous interloper away. It rested for a moment upon the gripman's
cap, where it looked like a feather dropped from a wandering bird. At
last it settled upon the breast of a little child sleeping in its
mother's arms. The mother brushed it away with her handkerchief as
though its presence brought defilement. A gentleman who was seated
near me caught the bewildered thing and with a very tender touch held
it for a block or so until we came to one of the pretty parks that make
our city so attractive. Stepping from the car, he loosened his grasp
upon the captive moth near a big syringa bush that adorned the entrance
way. He watched the dainty white wings flutter down into the cool
seclusion of the blossom then turned and boarded the car and pursued
his homeward way conscious, let us hope, of a very pretty and graceful
deed of kindness to a most insignificant claimant for protection and
succor. Sentimental, was it? Well, God help the world when all
sentimentality of this kind is gone out of it.
LXIII.
TAKING INVENTORY.
How poor the most of us prove to be when we take inventory of the
soul's stock! We have lots of bonnets, and plenty of dresses, and no
end of lingerie, we women, but how are we off for the things that count
when the dry goods and the furbelows shall be forgotten? How about
love, of the right kind, the love that ennobles rather than degrades,
and how about loyalty, and patience, and truth? If one of Chicago's
big firms should close its doors to take inventory of stock in January
and find it had nothing but the labels on empty bales to account for,
its poverty would be as nothing to the poverty of the soul we are going
to schedule shortly behind the closed door of the grave. What slaves
we are to passion; how we hate one another for fancied or even actual
slights, when we have such a little moment of time in which to indulge
the evil tempers! How we bicker, and lie, and betray, the while the
messenger stands already at the door to bid us begone from the scene of
our petty conflicts. For my part, the interest we take in things that
pertain to this perishable life, when we are so soon going where these
are not to be; the choice we make of ranks and reputations, shams and
seemings, dinners and wines, jewels and fabrics; the importance we
attach to bubbles that break before we reach them; the allurements that
draw us far from the ideals we started out to gain; the way we content
ourselves with the environments of evil and forego forever the voice
that calls us away to partake of things which shall be as wine and
honey to the soul, frightens me; startles me as the sudden thunder of
the surf might startle one who sojourned by an unseen sea.
LXIV.
DON'T MARRY HIM TO SAVE HIM.
If any young woman who reads this is contemplating marriage with a wild
and wayward man, hoping to reform him, I want her to stop right here
and decide to give up the contract. As well might she go out and smile
down a northwest wind or expostulate with a cyclone to its own undoing.
If a man drinks to excess before he marries, there is no reason to hope
he will learn moderation afterward. If you become his wife with the
full knowledge of his habits, you will have no right to leave him or
forsake him after marriage because of his unfortunate addictions and
predilections. Once having taken the vows you have no right to refuse
to pay them to the uttermost. And the life you will lead will be
perhaps a trifle less pleasant than the life of a parlor boarder in
sheol.