There are tears on the gentian's eyelids,
As they lift them, fringed and fair.
Do they mourn for the vanished brightness
Of my baby's golden hair?
There's a cloud a-droop in the heavens
That shadows their sunny hue.
Does it dream of the lovelight tender
In my baby's eyes so blue?
The golden rod pines in the forest,
The aster pales by the brook.
Do they miss her fairy footfall
In each dim and flow'ry nook?
Now, all through this beautiful weather,
Wherever I walk, I weep;
For I think of the desolate cradle
Where my baby lies asleep.
* * * * *
The other night, as I was listening to "taps" in a neighboring military
camp, a longing came over me for a silver bugle of my own, that I might
blow a message to the drowsy world. We all listen to that fellow up at
Fort Sheridan, when he gives the command for "lights out!" just because
he blows it through a bugle. He might come out and say what he had to
say in tones anywhere between a cornet and a clap of thunder, and the
effect would be nothing to what it is when the notes filter through a
silver mouthpiece. And how exquisitely the last strains of that nightly
call linger on the ear! They melt into the starry glooms, and throb
through the dim spaces of the woods like golden bubbles or the wavering
flight of butterflies. Whenever we hear them we think of Grant, asleep
in his grave by the mighty river, of his work well done, and the rest
that dropped upon his pain-racked life at last like a soft and rainy
shadow on a thirsty land. We think of hosts of brave men who fill
soldiers' graves all over this blood-bought heritage of ours. We think
of hearts that once beat high, for long years silent as stones to all
our cries and tears. We think of a host of things, solemn and hushed,
and sacred, and drop to sleep at last with an indistinct purpose in our
hearts to so conduct ourselves that when the Death Angel blows "taps"
for us, we shall leave a record behind us to be read through fond,
regretful tears, and enshrined in golden characters upon the tablets of
memory.
Now, if I had a bugle instead of a pen, to work with, and if I could
stand out under the stars on a hushed summer night and deliver my
message through its silver throat, perhaps the world that reads me might
be thrilled into earnest purpose more readily than it is when exhorted
from a pencil point or a quill. The first message I should ring through
that bugle of mine would be the command, "Don't fret!" However
comfortless and forlorn you may be, don't add to your own and the
world's misery by fretting. There never yet was a sorrow that could not
be lived down; there never yet was one that could be cured by worry.
When the cows get into the corn and the chickens into the flower-beds,
the sensible man chases 'em out first, repairs the damage next, and,
lastly, fastens up the break in the garden wall by which the marauders
got in. What would you think of a farmer who went into his bedroom to
pray before he chased out the cows, or of a woman who threw her apron
over her head and wept long and loud because the hens were scratching up
her pink roots, instead of "shooing" them a half-mile away with a broom?
Most troubles come upon us as the cattle and the hens get into the corn
and the garden patch, through a broken fence or a carelessly unguarded
gate. It is our own fault half the time that we are tormented, and the
sooner we repair the damage and mend the fence, the better. Time spent
in useless bewailing, in worry and disquietude, is lost time, and while
we wait the mischief thickens. Take life's trials one by one, as the
handful of heroes met the host at Thermopylae, and you will slay them
all; but allow them to marshal themselves on a broad field while you are
crying over their coming or praying for deliverance, instead of arming
yourselves to meet them, and they will make captives of you and keep
you forever in the dungeon of tears. Is your husband too poor to buy you
all the fine clothes you want, or to keep a carriage, or to surround you
with pleasant society and congenial friends? Very well, that is
certainly too bad, but what's the use of being forever in the dumps
about it? Get up and help him keep the cows out of the corn, and perhaps
you'll have a golden harvest yet. A sullen, discontented wife is a
millstone around any man's neck, and he may be thankful when the good
Lord delivers him from her. Whatsoever is worth having in this world's
gifts is worth working for, and wedlock is like an ox-team at the plow.
If the off-ox won't pull with the nigh one, it has no claim with him
upon the possible future of a comfortable stall and a full bin. Out upon
you, then, Madam Gruntle, if you sulk, and pout and fret your days away
because your husband is a poor man and spends most of his time chasing
the cattle, calamity and failure out of his wheat patch. He may possibly
be one of fortune's numerous ne'er-do-wells, but in that case all the
more reason you should not fail him. Bent reeds need careful handling,
and smoking flax gentle tending, else they will perish on your hands
and disappoint both you and heaven. All the more reason that you should
be cheery and strong and ready to do your part, if the man you married,
because you dearly loved him (remember!) is unable to do all that he
promised. That is, always provided he is weak and unfortunate, rather
than desperately wicked. A woman has no call to stand by any man if he
is a wretch and shows no desire to be anything else. The Lord himself
never helped a sinner until he showed some desire to be saved. Less
repining, then, a little more forbearance with one another's
shortcomings, and a little more loyalty to the promise "for better or
for worse," will ease up much of the burden of dissatisfied and
disappointed wedlock.
Another message that I should blow through that bugle, if I had it at my
lips to-night, would be: "Be true!" And I should ring it out so long and
loud, I think, that the moon would stop to listen, and the sleepy heads
in every home in the land would rise from their pillows like
night-capped crocuses out of the snow. For heaven's sake, if you have a
principle or a friend, be true to them. Make up your mind, whether or
no your principle is solid and has God and justice on its side, and then
be true to it right down to death, or, what is harder, through
misunderstanding and obloquy. And if you have a friend, such as God
sometimes gives a woman or a man, faithful through all betiding, staunch
in your defense and tender in your blame, stand true to that friend
until the grave's green canopy is spread between you. He may be
unpopular and unfortunate, and all the feather-headed crew of society
may ignore him, but if you have ever tested his worth as a friend, stand
up for him, and stand by him forever. The sun may go down upon his
fortunes, and calumny may cloud his name, and you may know in your heart
that more than half the world says about him is true, but stand by the
man who has once been your true friend. Ingratitude is the blackest
crime that preys upon the human soul. The forgetfulness of a favor, or
the effacement of a bond sealed with an obligation, is capable only to
weak and cowardly natures.
If you have a conviction, and are conscientious in the belief that you
are right, be true to your professions. If you are a rebel, be a rebel
out and out, and don't be a goat to leap nimbly back and forth over the
fence. Never apologize for either your faith or your profession, unless
you have reason to be ashamed of it; and, if you are ashamed of it,
renounce it and get one that will need no apology.
There are lots of other messages I would like to stand on a hill and
blow through a bugle, but the weather is too warm to admit of further
effort just now; so we'll postpone the topic for another hearing.
* * * * *
I sat in a fashionable church the other day and listened to a sermon on
"The Prodigal Son." How often I have heard the same old story told in
the same old way. How familiar I have become with the kind father, the
bad son, refreshingly human heir, the veal and the ring! But the last
time I heard the story I felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to rise
up in meeting and ask the question, "How does the treatment accorded to
the prodigal son match the treatment we mete out to the prodigal
daughter?"
How far out of our way do we go to accompany his sister on her homeward
faring after a season spent among the swine and the husks?
Do we put an 18-karat ring on her poor little soiled finger and place
her at the head of our table, even if by good chance she gains an
entrance to the home? Do we not more often meet her at the back door
when nobody is looking, rush her through the hallway and consign her to
the little third story rear room, taking her meals to her ourselves, on
the sly, that the neighbors may not find out the dreadful fact that she
is at home again?
"Keep yourself very close," we say to her, "and by no manner of means be
seen at any of the windows, and you may stay here. You can wear some of
your virtuous sister's cast-off clothing, and sleep on the lounge in the
nursery, where the servants never think of going since the little folks
have grown up, but you must be very penitent, and very humble, and very
thankful to God for the mercy you so little deserve."
I think somebody had better write a new parable and call it "The
Prodigal Daughter." Perhaps a sermon might be preached from it to touch
the unmoved heart.
After all there are two sorts of prodigals--the prodigal who comes home
because the cash gives out, and the prodigal who comes because his heart
turns back to the old home with such longing as the thirsty feel for
water. Neither boy nor girl who comes back for the first-named reason
should find a maudlin love awaiting, nor partake of any banquet that the
old folks have had to pay for, but the prodigal who returns because
there is something left in his or her heart like the music in a shell,
which nothing can destroy or hush away to silence, be that prodigal
sinful man or erring woman, should find not only the home doors swung
wide in welcome, but every doorway in the land wreathed with flowers to
bid him enter.
* * * * *
How few people know when to stop. If the preacher knew when to stop
preaching, how much more satisfactory the result of his sermon might be.
If the genial fellow knew just when to stop telling his good stories,
how much keener their relish would be. If the moralizer knew just when
to stop moralizing, how much longer the flavor of his philosophy would
endure. If the friend knew when to keep still, how grateful his silence
would be. If the candid creature who so glibly tells of our foibles knew
when to hold his tongue, how much less strong our impulse to slap him
would be. If the high-liver knew when to stop eating, how much less sure
dyspepsia would be. If the popular guest knew when to withdraw, how much
more regretfully we should see him go. If the politician knew when to
retire into private life, how much whiter his record would be. If we all
knew just when to die, and could opportunely bring the event about, how
much truer our epitaphs would be. The court fool who prayed, "Oh God, be
merciful to me, a fool!" prayed deeper than he knew, and the man who
prays, "Oh God, teach me to know when I have said enough," prays deeper
still.
* * * * *
You may talk about California all you will, but match, if you can, the
beauty of spring as it comes to us in these northerly latitudes. There
is the coy advance and retreat of a woman hard to win; there is the
crescendo and diminuendo of heavenly harmonies; there is the dissolving
view that glimmers and glows like an opal, or like the mirage of a misty
sea. I was in California a year ago, in April time. I found the month
that poets love in full splendor, like a queen who never doffs her
crown. Violets, roses, lilacs and carnations came all together in a
riotous rush. One did not have to woo the season; it was already won.
Like a matron crowned with the mid-splendor of her years, the earth
received the homage that is due achievement. Nobody caught the sound of
the first robin on a rainy morning and heralded it with a shout; the
first robin, like the first principle in creation, never existed, for
the reason that he was always there. There were no foretellings of green
along the watercourses; no prophetic thrills of violets in the air; no
uplifting of the hypatica's downy head above the lattice of fuzzy
leaves; everything was right where you discovered it, and had been all
the year round. Without beginning and without end, spring exists
forever, like a picture bound within a book, in the lovely land of the
Gringos. But walk out some April morning in the suburbs that surround
Chicago. Catch the tonic of the air, like wine ever so delicately
chilled with ice. View the lake, like a gentian flower fringed with a
horizon fine as silk. Scrape away the leaves and hail the valiant Robin
Hood in his suit of green, leading his legion upward to the sun. Without
the sound of a footfall or the gleam of a lance, they come to take
possession of the earth. Woo the violet to turn her dewy eye upon you,
and listen to the minstrel in the tower, where the winds are harping to
the new buds. Mark the maple twigs, like silhouettes cut in coral, and
the sheath of the wood lily, like a ribbon half unrolled. Rejoice in the
flash of the blue bird's wing as it startles the still air, and then say
to me, if you dare, that you prefer any other climate to this one that
belts the zone of these northern lakes.
* * * * *
Thank the Lord, all ye who can call yourselves healthy. The day has gone
by for physically delicate women. This age demands Hebes and young
Venuses with ample waists and veritable muscles. Specked fruit and
specked people go in the same category in the popular taste. To the
question, "How are you to-day?" I for one, always feel like replying in
the words of an old Irish servant we once had (God rest her faithful
soul wherever it be this windy day!), "First-rate, glory be to God!" It
is such a grand thing to be well and strong, to feel that your soul is
riding on its way to glory in a chariot, and not in a broken-down old
mud-cart. Talk about happiness! Why, a well beggar has a better time of
it than a sick king, any day. If, then, like a bird, your strong wing
uplifts you above the countless shafts of pain which that grim old
sportsman, Death, is ever aiming at poor humanity, count yourself an
ingrate if the song of thanksgiving is not always welling from your
heart like the constant song of a bobolink singing for very joy above
the clover.
* * * * *
What would be thought of a ship that was launched from its docks with
flourish of music and flowing wine, built to sail the roughest and
deepest sea, yet manned for an unending cruise along shore? Never
leaving harbor for dread of storm. Never swinging out of the land-girt
bay because over the bar, the waters were deep and rough. You would say
of such a ship that its captain was a coward and the company that built
it were fools.
And yet these souls of ours were fashioned for bottomless soundings.
There is no created thing that draws as deep as the soul of man; our
life lies straight across the ocean and not along shore, but we are
afraid to venture; we hang upon the coast and explore shallow lagoons or
swing at anchor in idle bays. Some of us strike the keel into riches and
cruise about therein, like men-of-war in a narrow river. Some of us are
contented all our days to ride at anchor in the becalmed waters of
selfish ease. There are guns at every port-hole of the ship we sail, but
we use them for pegs to hang clothes upon, or pigeon-holes to stack full
of idle hours. We shall never smell powder, although the magazine is
stocked with holy wrath wherewith to fight the devil and his deeds. When
I see a man strolling along at his ease, while under his very nose some
brute is maltreating a horse, or some coward venting his ignoble wrath
upon a creature more helpless than he, whether it be a child or a dog, I
involuntarily think of a double-decked whaler content to fish for
minnows. Their uselessness in the world is more apparent than the
uselessness of a Cunarder in a park pond.
What did God give you muscle and girth and brain for, if not to launch
you on the high seas? Up and away with you then into the deep soundings
where you belong, oh, belittled soul! Find the work to do for which you
were fitted and do it, or else run yourself on the first convenient snag
and founder.
Some great writer has said that we ought to begin life as at the source
of a river, growing deeper every league to the sea, whereas, in fact,
thousands enter the river at its mouth, and sail inland, finding less
and less water every day, until in old age they lie shrunk and gasping
upon dry ground.
But there are more who do not sail at all than there are of those who
make the mistake of sailing up stream. There are the women who devote
their lives to the petty business of pleasing worthless men. What
progress do they make even inland? With sails set and brassy stanchions
polished to the similitude of gold, they hover a lifetime chained to a
dock and decay of their own uselessness at last, like keels that are
mud-slugged. It is not the most profitable thing in the world to please.
Suppose it shall please the inmates of a bedlam-house to see you set
fire to your clothing and burn to death, or break your bones one by one
upon a rack, or otherwise destroy your bodily parts that the poor
lunatics might be entertained. Would it pay to be pleasing to such an
audience at such a sacrifice? But the destruction of the loveliest body
in the world is nothing compared to the demoralization of soul that
takes place when women subvert everything lofty and noble within their
nature to win the transient regard of a few worthless men of the world.
They learn to smoke cigarettes because such men profess to like to see a
pretty woman affect the toughness of a rowdy. They drink in public
places and barter their honor all too often for handsome clothes in
which to make a vain parade, all to please some heathen man, who in
reality counts them a great way inferior to the value of a good horse.
The right sort of a sweetheart, my dear, never desires to bring a woman
down to his own level. He prefers to put her on a pedestal and say his
prayers to her. Never think that you are winning an admiration that
counts for much if you have to abate one whit of your womanhood to win
it. Every time I see a woman drinking in a public resort, making herself
conspicuous by loud talk and louder laughter, I think of some fair ship
that should be making for the eternal city, with all its snow-white
canvas set, rotting at its docks, or cruising, arm's length from a
barren land. We were put into this world with a clean way bill for
another port than this. Across the ocean of life our way lies, straight
to the harbor of the city of gold. We are freighted with a consignment
from quarter-deck to keel which is bound to be delivered sooner or later
at the great master's wharf. Let us be alert, then, to recognize the
seriousness of our own destinies and content ourselves no longer with
shallow soundings. Spread the sails, weigh the anchor and point the prow
for the country that lies the other side a deep and restless sea. Sooner
or later the voyage must be made; let us make it, then, while the timber
is stanch and the rudder true. With a resolute will at the wheel, and
the great God himself to furnish the chart, our ship shall weather the
wildest gale and find entrance at last to the harbor of peace.
* * * * *
When you look at a picture and find it good or bad, as the case may be,
whom do you praise or blame--the owner of the picture or the artist who
painted it? When you hear a strain of music and are either lifted to
heaven or cast into the other place by its harmonies or its discord,
whom do you thank or curse for the benefaction or the infliction,
whichever it may have proved to be--the man who wrote the score or the
music dealer who sold it? You go to a restaurant and order spring
chicken which turns out to be the primeval fowl. Who is to blame--the
waiter who serves it or the business man of the concern who does the
marketing? And so when you encounter the bad boy, whom do you hold
responsible for his badness--the boy himself or the mother who trained
him? I declare, as I look about me from day to day and see the men and
women who play so poor a part in life, it is not the poverty of their
performance that astonishes me so much as the fact that it is as good
as it is.
* * * * *
I did think I would keep out of the controversy on the low-neck dress
question. But there is just one thing I want to say. Did you ever know a
sweet young girl yet, one who was rightly trained and modestly brought
up, who took to decollete dresses naturally? Is not the first wearing of
one a trial, and a special ordeal? It is after the bloom is off the
peach that a young woman is willing to show her pretty shoulders and
neck to the crowd; and who cares much for a rubbed plum or a brushed
peach? I cannot imagine a sweet, wholesome-hearted woman, be she young
or old, divesting herself of half her clothes and thrusting herself upon
the notice of ribald men. I can sooner imagine a rose tree bearing frog.
The conjunction is not possible. The cheek that will blush at the story
of repentant shame, that will flame with indignant protest when the
skirts of a Magdalene brush too near, yet deepens not its rose at
thought of uncovering neck and bust in a crowded theater or public
reception is not the cheek of modest and natural womanhood. It is not
necessary to be a prude or a skinny old harridan either, to inveigh
against the custom. I know full well how contemptible the affectations
and hypocrisies of life are. Half that is yielded to evil was meant for
good. The high chancellor of Hades has put his seal on much that was
originally invoiced for the Lord's own people. But there are some things
so palpably shameless that to argue about them is like trying to prove
by demonstration that a crow is white. It needs no argument.
* * * * *