There's not a blossom of beautiful May,
Silver of daisy, or daffodil gay,
Nor the rosy bloom of apple tree flowers,
Fair as the face of this baby of ours.
You could never find, on a bright June day,
A bit of fair sky so cheery and gay;
Nor the haze on the hills in noonday hours,
Blue as the eyes of this baby of ours.
There's not a murmur of wakening bird--
The clearest, sweetest, that ever was heard
In the tender hush of the dawn's still hours--
Soft as the laugh of this baby of ours.
There's no gossamer silk of tasseled corn,
Nor the flimsiest thread of the shy wood fern--
Not even the cobwebs spread over the flowers--
Fine as the hair of this baby of ours.
There's no fairy shell by the sounding sea,
No wild rose that nods on the windy lea,
No blush of the sun through April's showers,
Pink as the palm of this baby of ours.
* * * * *
Don't you get awfully tired of people who are always croaking? A frog in
a big, damp, malarial pond is expected to make all the fuss he can in
protest of his surroundings. But a man! Destined for a crown, and born
that he may be educated for the court of a king! Placed in an emerald
world with a hither side of opaline shadow, and a fine dust of diamonds
to set it sparkling when winter days are flying; with ten million
singing birds to make it musical, and twice ten million flowers to make
it sweet; with countless stars to light it up with fiery splendor, and
white, new moons to wrap it round with mystery; with other souls within
it to love and make happy, and the hand of God to uphold it on its
rushing way among the countless worlds that crowd its path: what right
has a man to find fault with such a world?
When the woodtick shall gain a hearing, as he complains that the grand
old century oak is unfit to shelter him, or the bluebird be hearkened to
when he murmurs that the horizon is off color, and does not match his
wings, then, I think, it will be time for man to find fault with the
appointments of the magnificent sphere he inhabits.
"It is a fine day!" remarks Miss Cherrylips.
"Too cold," says the croaker; "beastly wind, not fit for a dog to
breathe."
Oh, yes, my dear, I heard him say it this very morning, and while I sat
and listened to him I could but think to myself, "What would become of
the croaker without the weather topic to fall back upon?" When all else
failed him, he is sure to have something to find fault with within the
range of this universal and inexhaustible topic. It is too warm or too
cold; there is too much rain, or there is a drought; the winters are
changing and microbes are on the increase; the peach buds are blighted
by a cold snap in spring, and the potatoes have failed or are about to
fail, owing to a wet June.
That is the way the croaker holds forth whenever he can get anybody to
listen to him. I sometimes wonder what he would do if he really had
great things to fret about; if one of his beautiful children were to
die, or the faithful wife he loves so well in his heart, perhaps, but
never takes the trouble to acquaint with the fact, were to weary of his
endless faultfinding and steal away from it all into the quietude of the
grave. I wonder if he would not then look back upon these days of
"croaking" with amazement that he was ever so blind and stupid a fool.
I knew a woman once who was very, very charming. She could sing "Allan
Percy" in a way that would melt the heart within you. She could paint on
china and decorate the panels of doors, and on the whole she was
calculated to enjoy life and make it enjoyable for others. But her home,
on the contrary, was utterly devoid of peace and comfort. Her husband
took no pleasure there, although he was lavish in the expenditure of
money to render the place attractive. Her children were glad to get away
from their home and find otherwhere the freedom and gaiety denied them
there. Why was all this, when the mother was so eminently fitted by
grace and accomplishments to create a beautiful and happy home? Simply
because she was always fretting and fussing about trifles. She was a
croaker and always finding fault. She fought flies until life was a
burden to everybody who watched her. She said that they would spoil the
paint, poison the food and ruin the curtains. She was after them at
early dawn nor gave over the chase until late at night. She would leave
the dinner table to chase a fly and kill it with a folded paper. She
would stop the lullaby song she was singing to her pretty baby, to get
up and call somebody to come in and hunt a stray blue-bottle that was
bunting its stupid head against the window screen. She said that her
life wasn't worth a farthing to her if the flies got into her home, and
she would sooner jump in the river than submit to the pestilential
infliction. Then she was forever prophesying some dreadful fate for
herself by reason of the muddy footprints that occasionally found their
way onto the carpets.
"I declare," she would say, "if you boys don't stop tracking dirt into
the house I'll die before my time. If there is anything I hate it is a
careless boy!"
And the boys took her at her word and stopped tracking mud. But they
were gradually lured to stay away from home, and the soil they took into
their hearts was perhaps harder to efface than the footmarks they left
upon the floor of mother's neatly kept hallways.
She was always anticipating trouble that never came. She knew the girl
was going to leave. She was simply too great a treasure to keep. She was
absolutely certain that the milkman was watering his milk, and the baby
would get sick. She had no doubt whatever but what her husband was
going to ruin himself on 'Change, and then what would become of them
all? So she worried and fretted and fumed, until patience, like a hunted
bird, spread its wings and flew away, and what might have been a happy
home became a stranded wreck upon the rocks of contention.
Oh, I tell you right now, girls, if you can only cultivate one
accomplishment out of the many that wait to crown a perfect womanhood,
cultivate a pleasant temper and cheerful disposition. The ability to
speak many languages, to paint, to dance, to sing, or even to wield a
graceful pen is nothing compared to the ability to make a lovely home.
Nobody ever yet succeeded in that noblest endeavor without abjuring
needless faultfinding, croaking and fretting.
* * * * *
As a general thing I don't believe in sermons served as restaurants
serve beef--in slices. I believe in teaching truths, rather, as one
whips cream, dropping in the moral as an almost imperceptible flavoring.
But I tell you there are times when I feel like mounting a pulpit and
thundering with old Calvin, until the air emits sulphur. Especially when
I see the inhumanities and outrages practiced upon children by witless
parents, do I feel stirred to my soul's depths. If we treated our flower
beds as we do our children there wouldn't be a blossom left in the
world. If we served our meals as we do our children, there would be
rampant indigestion and black-browed death at the heels of every one of
us. Now and then you see a wise mother and sensible father, but the
biggest half of humanity receive their children as youngsters receive
their Christmas toys, to be played with when in a good humor, and
bundled anywhere out of sight when out of sorts or engrossed with more
important matters. We forget, half of us, that a little child's sense of
injustice and sorrow and wrong is compatible with its own growth and
experience rather than with our own. What to us is a paltry trial is the
cause of keenest, unalleviated woe to the child of five. The possession
of uncounted gold at forty will not be more precious than the possession
at three of the apple or the book we so rudely snatch from the little
hands without a word of apology. Take the time to explain to the little
fellow why you deprive him of some cherished possession and you will
save the tender bit of a heart a vast amount of unnecessary aching.
* * * * *
I have many things to be thankful for this stormy winter night. One is
that the coal bin is full and the lock on the outer door secure. Another
is that the rooftree bends above an unbroken band, and that disease with
its fell touch lingers the other side of the threshold of the little
home. Another is that, as a family, we all have straight backs and
moderately developed intellects; that we are neither dime museum freaks,
lunatics, nor half-wits. Another is that none of us chew gum, carry
around dogs, nor make expectoration the chief business of a day's
outing. Another is that I am getting so used to the alarm clock that I
sleep through its wild clamor and escape the duties that fall to the lot
of that other member of the home circle whose ear and conscience are not
so sadly seared as mine. Another is that I know enough to detect butter
from oleomargarine, and am not roped in by Blank street vendors with
their dollar and a half tubs. Another is that I am not the sort of
fellow to be always hitting another fellow when he has been down and is
trying to stand steady again. Another is that I am modest enough to
question whether I could run a grip any better than he does? Another is
that I got one answer to the "ad." wherewith I sought to capture a gold
watch. It would have been an embarrassing thing to have received not one
solitary little nibble. Another is that the elevator boy who
occasionally carries me to the top floor and intermediate stations
around at Blank's is kind and does not treat me with the haughty scorn
he bestows on others. Another is that I have the serene equipoise of
nerve which renders me calm and even cheerful under the knowledge that
there is nothing in the house to eat, and two invited guests gently
sleeping the happy hours away in the chamber above, dreaming perchance
of toothsome viands not to be. Another is that in spite of weather I
take no colds, and am as impervious to catarrhal or pneumonic affections
as an eagle is impervious to the attack of tom-tits. Another is that I
live in a town where people sell no beer; they may steal and backbite,
and raise the old lad generally, but thank goodness the baleful glitter
of a glass beer bottle has never yet eclipsed the moral splendor of the
scene. Another is that I have been enabled to preserve a few staunch and
trusty friends through the evolution of that rainy-weather costume which
a few of my sex have joined me in essaying. I cannot speak for future
tests, but so far my henchmen have stood firm. And right here let me say
that any friend, man, woman or babe, who can remain loyal to you after
you have been seen in public in a dress-reform garment is worth
cultivating, and should be made the theme of special psalms of praise.
Another is that the picture I had taken the other day looks worse than I
do, and when I send it off to unsuspecting admirers I am not torn with
the thought that when they see the original they will drop scalding hot
tears of disappointment. This idea of raising false hopes in the minds
of confiding strangers savors too much of Ananias and Sapphira. Another
is that so far in life I have preserved a stern and unshaken resolution
not to wear a false front. A woman in a store bang is next worse to a
chromo in an art gallery, or a muslin rose among American beauties
fresh from the rose gardens. Artificiality, my dear, pretense and
assumption, are harder to put up with than anything else in the world,
unless it is corns. But far ahead of all the above enumerated causes for
gratitude is one which thrills me most profoundly, and which can be
summed up in half a dozen words, the echo of which, perhaps, will find a
lodgment in some other hearts. I am thankful, very, very thankful, that
I am not the mother, nor the aunt, nor the half-sister, nor the first
cousin, nor even the next-door neighbor, of the boy who kills sparrows
for two cents bounty on the little heads. If I had such a boy within
range of my voice to-night I should say to him, "Be poor, my man; be
unsuccessful in business, and not up to bargains all your life, but
don't be shrewd and sordid and cruel in seeking your gains. Better go by
the name of 'mollycoddle' and 'baby' among the other boys than get to be
a little ruffian with your arrow and your sling-shot, and the name of a
keen-killer tacked on to yourself. Let the sparrows alone, or if you
really feel that they are the nuisance they are made out to be, kill
them if you like, but do it in a gentlemanly way (if such a paradox is
possible), and don't take money for the job." The boy or the man who
will take a life for sordid ends, or, in other words, who will seek to
enrich himself on "blood money," is pretty low down in the human scale.
* * * * *
Laughter is a positive sweetness of life, but, like good coffee, it
should be well cleared of deleterious substance before use. Ill-will and
malice and the desire to wound are worse than chicory. Between a laugh
and a giggle there is the width of the horizons. I could sit all day and
listen to the hearty and heartsome ha! ha! of a lot of bright and jolly
people, but would rather be shot by a Winchester rifle at short range
than be forced to stay within earshot of a couple of silly gossips.
Cultivate that part of your nature that is quick to see the mirthful
side of things, so shall you be enabled to shed many of life's troubles,
as the plumage of the bird sheds rain. But discourage all tendencies to
seek your amusement at the expense of another's feelings or in aught
that is impure. It was Goethe who said: "Tell me what a man laughs at
and I will read you his character."
* * * * *
I'll take my chances any day to find heaven on earth, if I can have the
run of the woods up along our northern lake shore in early springtime. I
want no companions either, unless, perhaps, it be a child or a dog, for
artificial women and dudish men, let loose in the woods, are harder to
endure than gad-flies. It was scarcely more than sunrise, the other
morning, when I left the house and took my way toward the forest shrine
undesecrated as yet by surveyors or wood-choppers, the advent of either
of whom in a country town means good-bye to heaven on that particular
spot of earth! We found the air so full of sweetness, the instant we
struck the depths of the woods, that one could almost fancy the wise men
of the East had been there before us to greet the new-born Spring with
spices as they greeted another Heaven-born child a score of centuries
ago in Bethlehem. Every shrub held a softly-tinted leafbud half
unfolded, like a listless hand. The maple leaves were pink and glossy,
like rose petals wet with rain. The hickory trees were unfolding great
creamy buds that looked like magnolias. The hawthorns were all afloat
with silver blossoms, like loosened sails. The earth seemed singing to
the heavens, "God is here!" and from the blue depths of quietude, where
a few clouds spread their soft wings like brooding birds, came back the
answer, "He is here!" The lake claimed Him, and a thousand azure waves
murmured His presence on the deep. Wherever we looked, at our feet where
the June lilies whitened the ground like perfumed snow, and the moss was
bubbling like a wayside spring with sunshine in place of water; at the
misty foliage overhead, like shadowy spirit wings; at the circle of blue
that bounded the earth, or into the very heart of heaven above us, it
seemed as though God, visible and manifest, was there to give us
greeting. Finally, we found a point of high land, touched here and there
with shadows flung down from budding birches, and starred with
dandelions in flocks, like golden butterflies. Here, leaving the
material part of me leaning up against a tree-trunk to rest, as one
thrusts a cumbersome garment on a nail, my soul went wandering off into
Paradise, and forgot awhile its environment and its earth-born
responsibilities. Next time the world has failed to use you well and you
are smarting from the sense of injury undeserved, or the frets of
domestic life have worn you down to the minimum, like a blade that is
eternally upon the grindstone, start for the woods. Take a big basket
with you and fill it full of lilies, and, ten to one, before you get
home again the lilies will have taken root in your heart and your basket
will be full of contentment.
* * * * *
Educate the children to the expectation of sorrow, not as a monster who
is to devour them, but as an angel who is to meet them on the way and
lead them gently home to heaven. Teach them to hold themselves in
readiness for whatever life has in store, as soldiers are trained for a
battle whose end is certain peace. Teach them to endure all things, only
striving to sweeten and soften rather than to harden under the
discipline of sorrow. Unselfishness is the most rare and at the same
time the most Christian virtue possible for human nature to attain to,
but did anybody ever yet grow unselfish through a life of indolent
self-indulgence and ease? Did fruit ever amount to anything that was
left unacquainted with the sharp discipline of the gardener's shears? I
tell you, all the way up from an apple to a man it takes lots of pruning
and lopping off of superfluous branches to bring out the flavors and
sweeten the fiber of the fruit.
* * * * *