Scarce had the bugle note sounded
For the call of their last defeat;
And still on the lowland meadow
Lie the prints of their quick retreat.
Above us the bright skies sparkle,
And around us the same winds blow
That rippled their golden banners
In that battle so long ago,
When the southwind challenged winter,
And the rose-ranks routed the snow,
And the hosts of tiny gold coats
Sprang up from their campfires below,
To charge on the insolent frost king,
And shatter his lance of ice,
While back to the desolate northland
They wheeled him about in a trice.
The battle is hardly ended,
The victory only begun,
Yet I saw the gray-bearded vet'rans,
To-day, sitting out in the sun.
They nod by wind-rippled rivers,
They shake in the shade of the oak,
And all the day long they murmur
And whisper, and gossip, and croak.
And often in wondering rapture,
They recount the charge they made,
When down from the windy hillsides,
And up through the dewy glade,
The sheen of their golden bonnets
Shone out from the green of the leaves,
Like the flight of a glancing swallow,
Or the flash of a wave on the seas.
They muse in sleepy contentment,
Or flutter in endless dispute.
For this was a brave cadet, sir,
And that one a crippled recruit.
Fight over again your battles,
O veterans, withered and gray;
For a band of northwind chasseurs
To-morrow shall blow you away.
* * * * *
Once upon a time it came to pass that a woman, being weary with much
running to and fro, fell asleep and dreamed a dream.
And in her dream she beheld a mighty host, more than man could number.
And of that host, all were women, and spake with varying tongues.
And they bent the body, and sitting on hard benches wailed mightily, so
that the air was full of the sound of lamentation, like a garden that
wooeth many bees.
And the woman who dreamed, being tender of heart and disposed kindly
toward the suffering ones, lifted up her voice saying:
"Why bendest thou the body, oh, daughters of despair, and why art thine
eyelids red with tears?
"Yea, why rockest thou like boats that find no anchor, and like poplars
which the north wind smiteth?"
And one from among the host greater than man could number made answer,
saying:
"Wouldst know who we are, and why we spend our days like a weaver's
shuttle that flitteth to and fro in a web of tears?
"Behold we are the faithless and unregenerate handmaids who have served
thee, and women like unto thee, bringing desolation unto thy larders,
and gray hairs among the braids with which nature hath crowned thee.
"Yea, verily, by reason of our misdemeanors lift we the voice of
lamentation in a land that knoweth not comfort."
Now, the woman who dreamed, being full of amazement, replied anon, and
these were the words that fell from her lips:
"Sayest thou so? And dwellest thou and thy sisters in Hades by reason of
the evil thou hast wrought?"
"Nay, not forever," replied she who had spoken. "We remain but for a
season, that our remorse may cleanse our record before we go hence to
sit with the blessed ones in glory.
"Not from everlasting unto everlasting is the duration of the penalty we
pay for what we have done unto thee, else were there no peace between
the stars by reason of our torment and our tears."
And the woman who dreamed beheld many whose fame yet lingered within the
shadows of her home.
There was Ann, the fumble-witted, who piled the backyard high with
broken china, yet stayed not her hand when rebuked therefor.
There was Sarah, the high-headed, who refused to clean the paint because
she had dwelt long in the tents of such as hired the housecleaning done
by other hands, that the labors of the handmaid might be few;
Yea, verily, with such as believed that Sarah and her ilk might have
time wherein to be merry rather than toil.
There was Karen, the Swede, who wrapped the bread in her petticoat and
refused to be convinced of the error of her ways.
There was Jane, the Erinite, who broke the pump, and Caroline, the
Teuton, who combed her locks with the comb of the woman who dreamed.
There was Adaline, the hoosier, who failed to answer the summons of the
stranger who knocked at the gates unless she were in full dress and
carried a perfumed handkerchief.
There was Louise, who smote the youngest born of the household because
he prattled of her dealings with the frequent cousin who called often
and sought to deplete the larder.
There was the girl who desired her evenings out and never came home
before cock crow.
There was the girl who threw up her place in the family of the woman who
dreamed because she was asked to hurry her ways.
There was the girl who wore the hose of her mistress, and took it as an
affront when asked to desist.
There was the girl who swore when the chariot of the sometime guest drew
nigh, and likewise the girl who refused to remain over night in a
dwelling where she was summoned to serve by means of a call bell.
There was the girl who found it too lonesome in the country and left the
garments in the washtub that she might hie her to the great city, the
social center of which she was the joy and the pride.
There was the girl who was made mad by means of the request that she
wash her hands before breakfast.
There was the girl who entertained her callers in the drawing-room while
the family was afar off, sojourning in the hills or by the waves of the
sea;
Yea, who thought it no evil to bring forth the flesh-pot and the
brandied comfit, that the heart of the district policeman might leap
thereat, as the young buck leapeth at sight of the water courses.
There was also the girl who wasted, and the girl who stole; the girl who
never tried, and the girl who never cared.
And seeing the multitude the spirit of the woman who dreamed arose
within her and she asked of a certain veiled one who seemed to be in
charge:
"Tell me, O shrouded one, is there never to be any diminution in the
throng that cometh to take their abode in these halls of penitential
regret?"
And the spirit in charge made answer, saying:
"No, nor never shall be while fools live and folly thrives.
"It is by reason of the babbling of busy-bodies that havoc has overtaken
the land of thy forefathers.
"There is honor in faithful service, and an uncorruptible crown awaiteth
the forehead of her who serveth well.
"It is no disgrace to the comely daughters of men who toil and are put
to that they bring in the wherewithal to fill the mouths of the children
who call them father--
"It is no disgrace, I say unto you, if such maidens take unto themselves
the position of servants in the family of him who prospereth,
"Remembering that one who lived long since and has slept these many
years in the tomb of his fathers, spake truly when he uttered these
words, albeit framed in rhyme:
"Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honor lies."
And it came to pass that the woman who dreamed took comfort to herself
by reason of her dream.
And she arose from slumber like a strong man who desireth to run a race.
And buckling on more tightly the armor wherein she moved, yea, even with
a free hand buttoning the boot and drawing the string, she cogitated
unto herself, and these were the words of her cogitation:
"Behold, I will learn a new wisdom that I may be unto my handmaids a
friend rather than a taskmistress, that in so doing I may win unto my
household the damsel who hath intelligence. And my treatment of her
shall be such that many wise ones who call that damsel friend shall
decide to do even as she hath done and choose domestic service with a
woman who is kind even to the showing of interest in her handmaid's
affairs, rather than linger in bondage with the shop girl and her who
rattles the tinkling keys of the typewriter machine.
"So doing, my days shall increase mightily in the land, as also the days
of her who cometh after me."
* * * * *
Women are either the noblest creation of God or the meanest. A good
woman is little less than an angel; a bad woman is considerably more
than a devil. And by bad women I do not mean women who drink, or steal,
or frequent brothels. The chief weapon of a bad woman is her tongue.
With a lie she can do more deadly work than the fellow in the bible did
with the jawbone of an ass. Untruth is the fundamental strata of all
evil in a bad woman's nature, and with it she is more to be dreaded than
many men with revolvers. There is absolutely no protection from a lie.
The courts cannot protect from its venom, and to kill a defamer and a
falsifier is not yet adjudged as legalized slaughter.
* * * * *
There is one awfully homely woman in Chicago. I met her the other day
over in Blank's art gallery. Our acquaintance was brief but sensational.
I looked at her, tucked her into my handbag and wept. She didn't seem to
mind it, and when, a few hours later, in the seclusion of my chamber, I
took her out of the bag and looked at her again, she was more hideous
than before.
"You horrible creature!" said I. "If you look like me, better that the
uttermost depths of the sea had me."
"But I do look like you," said she, and her voice was weak and low by
reason of prolonged exposure to the sun and air, "and Mr. Blank says I
will finish up very nicely."
"Do you mean to tell me," I asked, "that my nose is as big as yours?"
"Of course it is," said she; "pictures cannot lie. But comfort yourself
with the assurance that a large nose is always an indication of
intelligence."
"Intelligence be blessed!" said I, for I was getting excited;
"intelligence without beauty is like bread without butter, or a peacock
without a tail! If I possess such a nose as yours, madam, I shall take
to tract-distributing, galoshes and a cotton umbrella, and forget that I
was ever human."
"You talk wildly, as all the rest of them do," said my thin companion.
"Listen, for my time on earth is short, I am rapidly fading away, and
what I say must be said briefly. If you look about you you will see that
there exists, more or less hidden in every breast, the belief of one's
own beauty. The mirror, although a faithful friend, can never quite
disabuse the mind of that belief, and when the honest camera holds up
the actual presentation of one's self as an incontrovertible fact, the
disappointment is keen and hard to bear."
"All that may be true," said I, "but not all your assertions can ever
make me believe that that dusky mass of hair, brushed back so wildly
from those beetling brows, is like my own. You know that mine is soft
and brown, and yours looks like the bristles of an enraged stove brush."
"That's the way they all talk," responded the dissolving view, "but you
do not stop to consider that under the artist's pencil the shadows will
all be toned and softened. And let me say right here, that that
'beetling brow' is a sign of rare intelligence, much more to be desired
than the lower and more----"
"Stop, right there!" I interrupted. "It is not necessary to have a brow
like a plate-glass show-window, or like an overhanging cliff, or like a
granite paving-stone, to denote intelligence! No, my friend, do not try
to lift this shadow from my soul. That mouth that looks like a dark
biscuit, that nose that looks like a promontory overhanging an unseen
sea, that hair that looks like the ruff of an excited chicken, that brow
that looks like a skating-rink, all make me sad. I shall never have my
picture taken again. If I look like that it is time I died. In the round
of an eventful life I may forget that I even saw you, but until I do I
am a tired woman. My mirror may assuage my sorrow, for that either lies
or catches me from a different point of view. Vanish then, oh, yellow
shade of an unhappy reality. Back to oblivion with you, and heaven grant
I never look upon your like again!" So saying, I calmly held the poor
but hideous creature in the flame of a gas-jet and smilingly cremated
her.
* * * * *
A fairer day than last Sunday was never cradled to rest behind the
curtains of night. It began with a flute obligato of sunrise, orbed
itself into a full orchestra wherein color took the part of first and
second violins, and declined at last into the hush of sunset like the
mellow notes of a cello under old Paul Schessling's master touch. Such
days visit the earth rarely. They are advance sheets of a story that is
going to be told in heaven; preludes to a song that we shall hear in its
perfection only when we have got through with the clattering discords of
time. Thank God for all such days. They do us more good than we know.
The sight of the woods, adorned as only queens are adorned for the court
of the king, the sound of falling leaves and lonely bird songs, of
hidden lutes, of unseen brooks, tremulous and sweet and low under the
russet shadows, uplift our souls and help us to forget, for the time
being at least, how tired we are, how worn with the fret of sordid toil
and how tormented and misjudged and calumniated we are by those who fain
would do us harm. I think if I had time to do some of the things I want
to do the first consummation of that happy time would be to build me a
little cabin in the woods, where, in utter loneliness, I could forget
how full the world is growing to be of folks and how prone they are to
do each other harm and hinder rather than help each other on the stony
way to heaven.
* * * * *
The other evening, while sitting in the gallery of the Auditorium and
looking over the balcony edge at the crowd waiting for the curtain to
rise, a strange thought came to my mind. How could hell be more quickly
created than by the unmasking of such a crowd as this? Suddenly remove
from humanity all power of self-control and conventional dissimulation;
force men and women to be natural, and act out every evil impulse latent
in their souls, and could Dante himself portray a blacker Inferno? The
man whose heart is full of murderous hatred--tear off the mask that
hides his perturbed soul, and what a demon would look forth! The woman
behind whose amiable seeming lurks malicious envy and snarling temper
and crafty deceit--what a pandemonium would ensue when such passion
broke forth like straining dogs from the leash! The old man with the
saintly face and the crown of hoary hair--could an open cage of foul
birds send forth a blacker brood than should fly out from his soul when
some omnipotent hand unlatched the bars of its prison and let the
unclean thoughts go free? The young man with the perfumed breath and the
suave and courtly manner--does any storied hell hold captive blacker
demons than the cruel selfishness, the impurities and the secret vices
that walk to and fro in his soul like tigers behind their bars? The
young girl with face like a rose and the form of a Juno--could anything
that hades holds strike greater dismay to the hearts of men than the
unmasking of her hidden thoughts? Ah, when the hour strikes for
unmasking time in life's parade ball, when death steps forth and with
cool, relentless touch unties the knot that holds the silken thing in
place that has hidden our true selves from our beautiful seeming, we
shall find no more fiery hell awaiting us than that we have carried so
long in our hearts.
I would not like to be regarded as a pessimist from the writing of such
a paragraph as the above. Sometimes I seek to turn my thoughts upon the
crowd and unmask the angel as well as the demon. But I find that the
angels, as a general thing, wear no face concealers. They go disguised
in poor clothes and scant bravery of attire, but the angel within them
is like a singing bird rather than like a silent and chained beast. It
reveals itself in songs, like a caged lark. It looks from out the window
of the eyes in loving glances and tender smiles; it manifests itself in
sweet and cheerful service, like the sunshine that can neither be hidden
nor concealed.
* * * * *
Of all the pleasant things to look upon in this fair earth, I sometimes
query which is the best, a little child, a fruit orchard in early June,
or a young girl. I think the latter carries the day. Did you ever watch
a flock of birds sitting for a moment on the mossy gable of a sloping
roof? How they flutter and fuss and chirp; how they preen their delicate
feathers and get all mixed up with the sunshine and the shadow, until
which is bird and which is sunbeam one can scarcely tell. There is a
flock of girls with whom I ride every morning, and they make me think of
birds and sunbeams. They are so bewitching with their changeful moods
and graces that I sit and watch them as one listens to the twitter of
swallows. They sweeten up life, these girls, as sugar sweetens dough;
they fill it with music as sleigh bells fill a winter night. God bless
the girls, the bonnie, sweet and winsome girls, and may womanhood be for
them but as the "swell of some sweet time," morning gliding into noon,
May merging into June.
* * * * *
There are so many things in this world to be tired of! The poor little
persecuted boy in pinafores, sent to school to get him out of the way,
doomed to dangle his plump legs all day long from a hard bench, rubbing
his grimy knuckles into his sleepy blue eyes and wondering if eternity
can last any longer than a public school session, grows no more tired of
watching the flies on the ceiling and the shadows on the wall than some
folks get of life. Let me mention a few of the things I, for one, am
horribly tired of, and see if before my bead is half strung you do not
look up from the strand and cry, "Amber, I am with you!"
My dear, I am tired to-day of civilization and all modern improvements.
I am tired of the speaking tube within my chamber where the new girl and
myself wage daily our battle of the new Babel. She speaks Volapuk, and I
do not, consequently she takes my demand for coal as an insult or an
encouraging remark, just as the mood may be upon her, and pays no more
attention to my request for drinking water than the unweaned child pays
to the sighing wind. I am tired of sewer gas and what the scientists
call "bacteria" and "germs." I am tired of going about with frescoed
tonsils, the result of the three. I am tired of gargling my own throat
and the throats of my helpless babes, and the throat of the casual
visitor within my gates, with diluted phenic acid to ward off deadly
disease. I am tired of nosing drains and buying copperas and hounding
the latent plumber that he adjust the water-pipes. I am tired of boiling
the cistern water and waiting for it to cool. I am tired of skipping
from Dan to Beersheba daily for men to remove the tin-cans, the ashes
and the unsightly rubbish that have emerged from long retirement
underneath the snow. I am tired of imploring the small boy to keep his
mother's chickens off my porch. I am tired of digging graves upon the
common wherein to bury useless potato-parings, the unsightly
cheese-rind, and the shattered egg-shell. I am tired of being told that
my neighbor's calf and my neighbor's pet cat, and my neighbor's blooded
stock of poultry are dying because of the copperas I scatter broadcast
about the mouth of drains. I am tired of being a martyr to hygiene and a
monomaniac on the subject of sanitary science. I am tired of sharpening
lead pencils. I am tired of speaking pleasantly when I want to be cross.
I am tired of the ceaseless grind of life, which like the upper and
nether mill-stones, wears the heart to powder and the spirit to dust. I
am tired of being told that the mark on my left ear is a spot of soil,
and of being implored in thrilling whispers to wipe it away. I am tired
of last year's seed-pods in spring gardens and of all two-legged
donkeys. I am tired of awaiting a change in the methods of doing
business around at the postoffice, and for the dawn of that blessed day
when I shall be permitted to dance upon the grave of the aged being who
peddles stamps at the retail window. I am tired of hosts of things
besides, but have no time to enumerate them all to-day.
* * * * *
I have tested the rainy weather dress reform. It was pouring when I
started from my humble home in the morning, and in spite of the prayers
of the Young Person and the sobs of the "Martyr," I arrayed myself in my
new, highly sensible and demoniacally ugly suit and weathered the
elements. Within two hours it stopped raining; the sun came out and the
streets filled with festively attired men and women, and where was I?
Stranded on a clear day in garments befitting a castaway! My flannel
dress, short skirts and top-boots wasted on fair weather. "In the name
of heaven," exclaimed a friend, as I bore down upon him beneath a
cloudless sky, "what have you got on?" "Go home! for the love of
humanity, go home!" said another. And what was I to do? Await another
storm like a crab in its shell, or venture forth and become the byword
of an overwrought populace, the scorn of old men and matrons? Next time
I start out in a reform dress I will take along the robes of
civilization in a grip-sack.
* * * * *
There is something that is getting to be awfully scarce in this world.
Shall I tell you what it is? It is girls. That is what is missing out of
the sentient, breathing, living world just now. We have lots of young
ladies and lots of society misses, but the sweet, old-fashioned girls of
ever so long ago are vanished with the poke bonnets and the cinnamon
cookies. Let me enumerate a few of the kinds of girls that are wanted.
In the first place we want home girls--girls who are mothers' right
hand; girls who can cuddle the little ones next best to mamma, and
smooth out the tangles in the domestic skein when things get twisted;
girls whom father takes comfort in for something better than beauty, and
the big brothers are proud of for something that outranks the ability to
dance or shine in society. Next, we want girls of sense--girls who have
a standard of their own regardless of conventionalities, and are
independent enough to live up to it; girls who simply won't wear a
trailing dress on the street to gather up microbes and all sorts of
defilement; girls who won't wear a high hat to the theater, or lacerate
their feet and endanger their health with high heels and corsets; girls
who will wear what is pretty and becoming and snap their fingers at the
dictates of fashion when fashion is horrid and silly. And we want good
girls--girls who are sweet, right straight out from the heart to the
lips; innocent and pure and simple girls with less knowledge of sin and
duplicity and evil-doing at twenty than the pert little school girl at
ten has all too often; girls who say their prayers and read their Bibles
and love God and keep his commandments. (We want these girls "awful
bad!") And we want careful girls and prudent girls, who think enough of
the generous father who toils to maintain them in comfort, and of the
gentle mother who denies herself much that they may have so many pretty
things, to count the cost and draw the line between the essentials and
the non-essentials; girls who strive to save and not to spend; girls
who are unselfish and eager to be a joy and a comfort in the home rather
than an expensive and a useless burden. We want girls with hearts--girls
who are full of tenderness and sympathy, with tears that flow for other
people's ills, and smiles that light outward their own beautiful
thoughts. We have lots of clever girls, and brilliant girls, and witty
girls. Give us a consignment of jolly girls, warm-hearted and impulsive
girls; kind and entertaining to their own folks, and with little desire
to shine in the garish world. With a few such girls scattered around
life would freshen up for all of us, as the weather does under the spell
of summer showers. Speed the day when this sort of girls fill the world
once more, overrunning the spaces where God puts them as climbing roses
do when they break through the trellis to glimmer and glint above the
common highway, a blessing and a boon to all who pass them by.
* * * * *
Is there any flower that grows that can compare with the pansy for color
and richness? Others appeal more closely to the heart with fragrance
that like a sweet and pure soul more than compensates for lack of
exterior beauty, but in all the gorgeous category none rank this velvet
flower that lies just now upon my window-sill. There is the purple of
Queen Sheba mantled in its soft and shiny texture; the gold of Ophir was
not more sumptuous; the light that breaks at dawn across a reef of
dove-gray clouds was never more delicate than the violet heart of this
lovely blossom. When I want to think of the ideal court of kings, of a
royal meeting-place for blameless scions and unsullied princes of the
blood, I do not think of old-world palaces and coronation halls--I think
rather of a pansy bed in June in full and perfect bloom, a soft wind
just bending bright heads crowned with crowns that never yet were
pressed on aching brows, and fluttering mantles of more than royal
splendor that never yet were wrapped above a corrupt and breaking heart.
* * * * *