"What will you have?" asks old St. Peter, standing idle and calm in the
perpetual sunshine that lies beyond the swinging portal.
"I will have my crown," says one. "I have earned it."
"And I will have my harp," says another; "my fingers are eager to pick
out the heavenly tunes."
"And I will hie me at once to my heavenly mansion," says a third. "Long
time I have plodded, foot-sore and weary, to gain the habitation of its
enduring rest."
But if you can imagine "Amber" piping forth her small request, I think
you might hear her say: "Conduct me, oh, aged friend, to the nearest
sand-bank, where I may lie face downward in the sunshine for fifty years
to come, and hear the surf break on 'Sconsett's reef." That is what I
have been doing for the past fortnight, and both soul and body have
waxed strong in the process.
What a tired passenger we carry around with us, sometimes, in this
marvelous Pullman coach of ours, wherein the soul takes passage for its
overland trip from the cradle to the grave. How restless it gets, and
how troublesome. How it turns from companionship, even that of books,
and finds no panacea for its torment, until some kind fate side-tracks
it and lets the noisy world rumble on with the clatter and clash of
conflicting cares beating the hours to dust beneath their flying wheels.
When I went away for my yearly outing I was so cross that there was no
living within six miles of my own shadow. I hated everything on earth,
and everything on earth hated me. But I have come back as sweetly as the
breath of a rose steals through a lattice. That is the effect of a
jaunt, my dear; and let me say right now that if you are holding on to
your money in the hope of getting rich sometime, or if you are
traveling in a rut because you think you are too poor to avoid it, or if
you are grinding your soul into fine dust in the process of laying up
against a rainy day, just stop right where you are and listen to me. Any
money that is gained at the expense of health, either physical or
mental; any duty held to in the face of nervous breakdown; any gain
secured at the expense of peace of mind and growth of soul, is not worth
the holding. You cannot be of any use in the world if you are worn out
or sick. You may persist in holding on, but your grip is weak, and your
effect on affairs and people is simply that of an irritant. You owe it
to yourself, as well as to others, to go away and get rested. If it
costs money to do so, consider money well spent that gains so fair an
equivalent as rest and change, and renewed vigor. I tell you there are
few better uses to which you may put your dollars than in a yearly
outing. Your pockets may be lighter when you get back, but so will your
heart be, and the few sacrifices necessary in the way of less expensive
clothes and cigars, or less frequent gloves and bonnets, will be well
worth the making for the result gained.
* * * * *
I wish Columbus had never discovered us. I wish that he had never
steered his old bark westward and found the "land of the free and the
home of the brave." For with discovery came civilization, and I believe
we would have been better off without it. If we only could have been
left to ourselves and gone on sitting under lotus trees unaffected by
dressmaker and tailor bills, I believe the sum total of happiness would
have been far greater in the world than it is to-day. I would love to
return to my allegiance to nature and forever desert the haunts of
civilization and the marts of trade. I want to gather together a picked
band of kindred souls and go out and pitch tent by the Gunnison River.
Ever been there? Imagine a stream of gold flowing through hills colored
like an apple orchard in May, with a sky bending down above them like
the wing of an oriole. I want to forget the insolence of a class who may
be as good as I am in the eye of the law, but whom it would take a ton
of soap and God's grace to make my equal in point of cleanliness and
decency. I want to forget forever the clang of the cable car and the
rumble of its wheels. I want to return to the heathendom that worships
gods instead of dollars and loves mankind simply because it knows
nothing of faithlessness and fraud.
* * * * *
"Plaze, sor," said a servant to the head of a certain suburban household
the other morning, "the gintleman who sthole the chickens left his hat
in the hincoop." Just so, Bridget. And the lady who attends to the
affairs of the kitchen has her foot upon the neck of the miserable woman
who is nominally at the head of the house. Oh, no! I am not going to
enter into a disquisition upon the merits of the servant question. Years
ago, when I cantered lightly in my ride against windmills, I might have
undertaken it, but the question has grown too large to be settled by
talking. The state of things in this free country is growing just a
trifle too free. There are no longer any servants in this proud land. It
is not ladylike to serve. The person who superintends the domestic
affairs of our home merely condescends for a consideration. We no
longer have any rights as employers. The wind has tacked to another
quarter. Should we wish to discharge our lady cook or dispense with the
services of a gentleman artisan it stands in place for us to approach
them in a respectful manner, put the case before them clearly and ask
them humbly, without offense to their delicate sensibilities, if they
will kindly allow us to forego their so-called services. Question
yourself seriously, my dear; are you sufficiently considerate? Think how
these defenseless ladies and thin-skinned gentlemen who fill positions
of trust in your establishment must suffer sometimes from your boorish
impetuosity. Are you always cordial in your greeting when the worn face
of the cook appears at the delayed breakfast hour and she places before
you the hurried pancake and the underdone steak? Do you stop to think
how the poor creature has danced all night at a ball and has crept home
after your stiff-necked and rebellious husband has bounded away to catch
the early train, breakfastless and profane? And when the low-voiced and
timid second girl tells you that, as a lady who knows her place, she
really cannot demean herself to wipe off the paint or sweep the front
steps, do you take her by the hand and acknowledge the indiscretion of
your coarser nature in expecting her to do such menial service? How many
of us, clods that we are, have raged when the mild-mannered laundry maid
has appropriated our underclothing, or remonstrated when the number
seven foot of the blue-blooded cook has condescended to stretch our
silken hose? It behooves us to join the ranks of the "philanthropic
fiends" and look to it that we improve our methods of treating the
delicate gentry who tarry with us so briefly.
* * * * *
By the way, I think I occasionally hear a feeble pipe from a man to the
effect that the girls are responsible for all the tomfoolery in the
world. Don't you know that you are the very ones who tend to make them
so--you men? You follow after and woo and wed just that sort of girls.
You won't look at a sensible little woman who can make "lovely" bread,
abjures bangs, can't dance and has no "style." You laugh at and make sly
jokes at the expense of our big hats and our pronounced fashions, but
when you choose your company, and often your wives, I notice you pass
right by the home-keeping birds and take the peacocks. Of course, no one
lives in this age who doubts for a moment that woman's chief aim in life
and purpose of creation, as well as her hope of a blessed hereafter, is
to please the men and get a husband. If you won't have her modest and
simply gowned she is willing to make a feather-headed doll and a
travesty of herself to get you and win heaven! You know perfectly well,
you men, that you don't care half so much for brains as you do for
general "get-up," and the woman you honor with your choice is selected
for a pretty face and form, and a becoming costume rather than for a
clever head and an honest heart. I am not talking to old fogies who
cling to old-fashioned notions, but to young men who ridicule the
customs of their grandmothers, who shake their heads at salaries of two
and three thousand a year as inadequate to support wives; who rail
against woman's extravagance, yet do their best to maintain her in it.
When you, my fine and dapper gentleman, begin to seek out the modestly
appareled and the sedate girls, then shall folly and vain show fly over
seas for want of encouragement and the grand transformation of sawdust
dolls into women and pleasure-seekers into home-keepers take place.
* * * * *