I said to myself one golden day
When the world was bright and the world was gay,
"Though I live more lives than time has years
Either in this or the infinite spheres,
I will fear no blight and I'll bear no cross,
Against my gains I will write no loss,
But I and my soul, twin lilies together,
Shall whiten in endless summer weather!"
I said to myself one weary day
When the world was old and the world was gray,
"Has God forgotten His wandering earth?
Are its tears His scorning, its groans His mirth?
There's no blue above where the torn clouds fly,
There's no bloom below where the dead leaves lie;
Would I and my soul were at rest together
Wrapped from the chill of this wintry weather."
* * * * *
There are some people who live in this world as a cucumber grows in a
garden. They cling to their own vine and serve no higher end than
rotundity and relish. There are others who live in the world as a summer
breeze lives in a meadow; they find out all the hidden flowers and set
the perfumes flying. There are others who live as the sea lives in a
shell; their existence is nothing but a sigh. There are others who live
as the fire lives in a diamond; they are all sparkle. And there are
others, and they outnumber all the rest, who live as a blind mole lives
in the soil; they see nothing, feel nothing, suffer and enjoy a little
now and then, perhaps, but know nothing to all eternity. Such people
walk through life as the mole walks through the glory of a summer day,
or burrows beneath the dazzle of a winter storm. They are as
irresponsive to the voices all about them as the mole is to the singing
of April robins. They are as untouched by the myriad influences of life
as the mole is by the light of a star or the flash of a comet. Their
only interest is in the question, "Wherewith shall we be clothed, and
what shall we have to eat?" They gather the ripened hours from the tree
of life as a child gathers fruit, merely for the gratification of an
instant appetite, not as the careful housewife does, who garners in a
store for wintry weather. Life to them is merely a fattening process.
They remind one of prize beef at a county fair; to-morrow brings the
shambles and the butcher's axe, but in the serene content of a
well-filled stall and a full stomach, they take no thought of the
future. We meet such people every day and everywhere. On the streets
they may see a brute tyrannizing over a helpless beast of burden, or a
mother (?) yanking a sobbing child along by the arm, as full of ugliness
herself as a thunder-cloud is of electricity, or a man following an
innocent young girl with the devil in his heart, or a big boy
tyrannizing over a smaller one; and they pass it all by as indifferently
as the mole would sneak across a battlefield the morning after a battle.
They have too much to do themselves to waste time in remedying other
people's grievances. They think too much of personal reputation to
involve themselves in an altercation with defilers of the innocent, and
tramplers of the weak. They are too respectable to get mixed up in
brawls, even if the disturbance is brought about by the devil's own
drummers looking up recruits among the championless and defenseless
working-girls, or the parentless and homeless children of a great city.
We meet them traveling through the mountains or loitering by the sea.
Their only use for mountains is that they may carve their precious
initials on the highest peaks, pick winter-greens and blue-berries and
display their fashionable suits and striped stockings. They look upon
the sea as a big bathing-tank, and the sky, with all its splendor of
cloud and its glory of sunrise and sunset, as a barometer to forecast
the weather. We meet them in business relations, and they never believe
that courtesy and business can go together. A merchant in his office or
a lady in her parlor will bluntly refuse to buy of a worn-out,
discouraged, heart-sick book-agent, ignoring the fact that a smile
accompanying even a refusal acts like a spoonful of sugar in bitter tea,
and costs less. Even a "lady" clerk, behind a counter, will be haughty
and unaccommodating and insolent to the woman who comes to buy,
forgetful that a customer will go a long distance out of her way to deal
with a polite and well-mannered clerk, and that, like honesty,
politeness is ever the best policy. And, on the other hand, a woman
shopper will be whimsical and captious and trying, forgetting that the
girl who serves her has human blood in her veins, and often carries a
troubled heart behind her smile or her frown.
* * * * *
They have come! Without the sound of a bugle, the bright hosts have
marched down and taken possession of the land. The southern slopes are
all alive with their wind-shaken tents, and when the sun comes out warm
and glowing from the cloudy pavilions of the April sky, he finds a
million blossoms on the hills that yesterday were white with snow. Some
of them are tinted like the flush that lingers in the evening sky before
the stars find it; some of them are stainless as unfallen snow; some of
them are purple as a nautillus sail adrift upon a twilight sea; and all
of them are joyfully welcome to hearts that are weary of Winter's long
reign. And after the hypatica shall come the violet, and after the
violet the trillium, and after the trillium the wild-rose, and after
the wild-rose the cardinal-flower and the wood-lily, and after them the
gentian and the golden rod, to mark the wane of the year. Oh, who would
not live in a world whose dial-plate is made of flowers and whose
circling seasons are told over with blossoming trees and gentian-buds?
* * * * *
I saw a great many things on the way this morning as I was coming to
town. Suppose, as the weather is too warm for preaching, I enumerate
them and let you strike the balance at the close, to see which way the
world is jogging. I saw a father, drunk, beside his little blue-eyed
daughter. His head was laid in maudlin sleep upon her shoulder, and with
blushes that came and went across her face like cloud shadows on the
slope of a hill, she sat and bore the burden of her childish shame like
a little angel. I saw a hard-faced, labor-grimed man step out of his way
to pick a wild rose that grew by the side of the road. I saw a young man
lash his horse because his own bungling driving came near colliding his
vehicle with a cable car. I saw a policeman spring to the rescue of an
old beggar woman who stumbled on a street crossing, and saw him fall and
trampled upon in the discharge of duty. I saw a pretty girl reach out
her white fingers and feed a discouraged street-car horse the banana she
was eating as she passed by. I saw a beaten dog turn and fawn beneath
his master's brutal kick, and I thought to myself, where is a more
faithful friendship than that? I saw a little golden-headed boy at the
window of a house as I rode by, and when I waved my hand he kissed his
in return. I saw a tired mother stoop to hug the child who fidgeted at
her knee in the tedious depot waiting-room, and I saw another slap her
baby because its sticky fingers sought to fondle her cheek. I saw a
little girl get up, without suggestion from her mother, and yield her
seat to an older person. I saw a lamed and dying bird just brought down
by a boy's sling-shot. (I saw that same boy in Sabbath-school last
Sunday!) I saw one woman in fifty thousand wearing the dress-reform. I
saw eleven girls out of nineteen with tightly-laced waists! I saw a hurt
kitten tenderly attended to by a soldier in blue, as I passed Fort
Sheridan Camp, and involuntarily I said to myself: "The bravest are the
tenderest; the loving are the daring." I saw a small boy beating his
mother with both fists because she carried him over the crowded and
dangerous way, and so, I thought, we treat the tender God who sometimes
lifts us, against our will, from evil ways. I saw a little coffin in an
undertaker's window, and thought, what child in this busy, bustling city
is doomed to fill that casket? What love-watched home shelters the head
that shall one day sleep upon that satin pillow? I saw a teacher in one
of our public schools and overheard a gross bit of slang as she passed
by. I see myself sending a child of mine to such a teacher if I knew it!
I saw a father wheeling his baby in a perambulator, with the sun blazing
straight into its blinking eyes. I saw one man out of every ten dodge
into a liquor saloon when he thought nobody was looking. I saw a homely
girl transformed into a beauty by a service of love accorded a stranger.
I saw a woman lean out of a Marshall Field 'bus to laugh at another who
wore shabby clothes and walked with a drooping head. I saw lots of
things besides, but how does the balance strike?
* * * * *
If we have been living on bad terms with a neighbor; if we have been
maintaining a chilling silence and a forbidding reserve with anybody
thrown often in our way, let us have done with such nonsense and live in
the world as God meant we should.
* * * * *
Out of the exuberance of a merry heart the housekeeper has loosened the
tacks in the parlor carpet, and the epoch of housecleaning begins. The
head of the family, pro tem. dweller in the land of desolation and
sojourner in the valley of wrath, hies him to town and wishes vainly for
the return of the days when he had no wife save in Spain and no family
outside of Elia's land of dreams. The calciminer comes and drops leprous
splashes all over the hallways and the bannisters. One paperhanger
taketh unto himself another, and the two scatter ringlets of snipped
paper all over the bed chambers, and cumber up the floors with sticky
paste-pots and brushes. The scrub woman breathes hard and devastates
the approaches of the front steps, while the hired girl skips playfully
here and there with damp cloths and bars of silvery soap. There is no
breakfast, no lunch, no dinner. We take what provender the gods deliver
to us in out of the way places, like stalled oxen or uncomplaining army
mules! We sleep by night in beds loosely put together and smelling of
soap. We awake betimes to the rattle of the scrubbing brush and the
sharp overthrow of stovepipes. We see the young person, like McStinger,
on the rampage from morn till night. We watch her hand to hand
encounters with the pictures that have been wont to hang upon the walls.
How she swoops upon them, bears them down, buffets them with dusters and
heaps them high like stumbling blocks in the path of the righteous! How
she sneers at our feeble, yet apt, suggestion, and pharisaically "thanks
goodness that she is good for something besides standing around and
giving unsolicited advice!" How she charges upon our cherished books and
whacks them together vindictively to loosen the dust and the bindings!
How she tosses the piano like a feather in her strength and probes its
sensitive heart-strings with a knitting needle in search of dirt and
pins! How she rebukes the Captain for idling away her time at
doll-playing while there is so much work to do, and drives that gallant
young field officer forth to do battle with the unresisting tomato can
in the backyard! What a pandemonium reigns over all the domain of
yesterday's content! Carlo, the dog, whose flippant youth is getting its
first severe taste of life's discipline, retires to an adjacent covert
and howls a fitful protest. The cat blinks sleepily in the sunshine and
dreams of a future unmarred by suds and a slippery foothold. When she
has occasion to walk across the kitchen floor she shakes her hind foot
gingerly, like a pilgrim delicately removing the dust of the enemy's
land from his members. The goblin brood of chickens chuckle with
amazement while the hired man beats the rugs like a snare drum and
charges upon the carpet that hangs like a vanquished foe across the
clothesline. But, like everything else, my dear, we take the trials of
spring housecleaning as the tourist takes the storms in the Alps or the
sailor meets the tempest on the sea. It has not come to stay; the
sun-lighted peaks of deliverance lie just ahead of us, and there is
fine sailing for another year when the squall is weathered.
* * * * *
I am tired of the endless dress parade of the great alike--aren't you? I
am tired of walking in file, as convicts walk together in
stripes--aren't you? I glory in cranks who have enough individuality to
refuse to be sewed up in the universal patchwork, like the calico blocks
we used to overcast with our poor little pricked fingers ever so long
ago when we were children--don't you? The onward sweep of progress in
this age has prepared the way for non-conformists, and, glory be to God!
they are swinging into line like beacon lights up the Maine coast. I
confess I have no heart-pining for emancipation that shall place me
alongside of Dr. Mary Walker or others of her ilk. I would like to
retain my womanliness, but I would like also to make a distinct mark
upon my times, be it ever so small and insignificant, as an individual
and an intelligence quite as distinct from the conventional masses as a
blackbird is when it leaves the flock and silhouettes itself in solitary
state against the deep blue sky from the top of a windy elm
tree--wouldn't you?
* * * * *
I want one good square fling on earth before I die. I want the chance to
know what it is to have enough money to be able to buy silk elastic
occasionally instead of cotton, and to have my teeth filled with gold
instead of concrete without feeling as though I had been robbing
hen-roosts for a month after. I want to go to the theater in a swell
carriage, and sit in the best box, with a pale pink ostrich boa draped
about my shoulders and the opera-glasses of the entire house leveled at
me for a stunning beauty. I want the sensation, for once, of knowing
that I am as handsome as I am bright, and as well-dressed as I am
virtuous. I want to have ice cream seven times a week and "Pommery Sec"
by the dozen in the cellar. I want to own a silk umbrella with a golden
crook, and wear a diamond ring on every finger. I want to buy candy
whenever I feel like it without having to register it in the family
account book under the head of "sundries" and "cough drops." I want to
see the time when I can call the average shop-girl out into the alley
and have it out with her with none to interfere. I want to settle with
her for the indignities I have long suffered with the pusillanimity of a
meek nature. I want to ask her between clips why she has always sold me
just what I didn't want, and sneered at me because I didn't buy more of
it. I want also to engage in hand to hand conflict with the female
gum-chewer. I want to convince her that I have endured all I will of her
facial contortions, and that the time has come for the extinction of her
type from the face of the blooming earth. I want the power to consign
every man who even mentions "nose bag" to a horse, to the guillotine,
and to imprison for life every brute who carries a snake-whip or uses a
check-rein. I want to solder the man or woman who objects to fresh air
inside a tin can and label them "sardines." I want to shoot on sight the
first human being who mentions the word "draught" in my hearing, and set
my dog on the fiend who blots the face of nature with his ear-muffs. I
want to live for a while in a country where there are neither
thunderstorms nor cyclones, but where I can sleep nights right through,
from March until November, without getting up to look for funnels or
shooing the whole family down cellar as a hen gathers her chickens from
the swooping hawk. I want to live in a community made up of people who
mind their own business. I want to be able now and then to receive a
letter from out of town (it is generally a bill!) without having the
village postmaster regard me as a burning fagot. I want to find a recipe
for making buckwheat cakes that do not taste like sand. I want to be
able to detect a hypocrite and a traitor on sight, without waiting for a
broken heart to evidence the fact that I am sold again. I want to rise
out of the range of small annoyances, and fly above the aim of inferior
people to disturb. I want to grow to be more like an eagle that wings
its way out of the habitat of gadflies, and less like a trembling hare
pursued by hounds. I want to take the lesson to my heart that the soul
that is constant to itself and aspires towards heaven shall never be
left a prey to care and unrest. I want to strike a dress reform which
shall make women look less like guys, and to encounter a rainy day in
which I shall not bite the dust, I and my umbrella, and my
flippety-floppety skirts, and my nineteen bundles. I want to cut down
the ballot privilege and make it impossible for an immigrant to vote
before he is a twenty-one-year resident of America. I want to convince
the woman suffragist that the greatest curse she can precipitate upon
her sex is the ballot. I want to teach my sisters that if they will pay
more attention to their homes and less to outside issues American
institutions will be more of a success. If the career of a politician
will spoil a man what would it do for a woman? On the principle that a
strawberry will decay sooner than a pumpkin, or that a violet is more
fragile than a sunflower, it would take about one election day to change
a woman into a harridan. I never knew but one out and out politician who
preserved intact the amenities of a gentleman, and he died early of
heart trouble. The thing killed him physically before it destroyed him
morally. If any politician reads this and wants to challenge the point I
want to meet him and either convince him or be slain.
* * * * *
If you are not glad to be alive such weather as this it is because you
are a clod and not a sentient being. Why, I never open my door these
radiant mornings and walk out into a world that is more golden than any
topaz and more radiant than any diamond that I do not hug myself for
very joy that I am alive! The grave has not got me yet! And, though I be
poor and quite alone and go hungry for the fleshpots that make my
neighbors great about the girth, I am happy as a queen and quite content
to cast my lot with clovers and birds and wayside weeds that feel the
vigor of summer weather in every fiber of prodigal life. To-night the
sky was like the flame of King Solomon's opal--did you see it? And just
as the glory was growing and deepening into an intensity of beauty that
made you want to shut your eyes and say Oh--h--h! as the little boys do
at the circus when the elephants go round, a thrush whipped out his
mellow flute and gave us a vesper song that made one think of heaven and
bands of singing angels! And yet we are discontented and feel ourselves
misused because we happen to be a little poverty-stricken now and then,
and it is hard work to find the plums in our pudding!
* * * * *
The other morning, before the town clock struck 7, I was riding over
country in a hack, driven by a courtly mannered colored boy and drawn by
a couple of discouraged mules. I was going over to Hampton and
Chesapeake City to see the sights. A robin was quarreling with a sparrow
for possession of a nest in a treetop hung with blossoms thick as
Monday's washing, and a small pickaninny stood in a doorway and held his
breath with terror as our driver slashed the air with his long whip. The
morning was superb. The sea lay like an opal with a dark setting of
hills shadowed like oxidized silver, the birds were out like blossoms of
the upper air with song in place of perfume, and the world seemed
altogether too jolly and bright a spot to link with thoughts of sorrow
and pain and death. We drove over to the soldiers' home, where from four
to five thousand veteran warriors have found shelter from the bombarding
storm of mundane care. Under the shadow of great willows in half-leaf
and still golden with April sap, in sunny corners of broad piazzas, on
benches by the slope of sluggish streams, or walking about the well-kept
paths, these old and battle-scarred warriors pass the time away. "What
a hero I might have been," says each one to himself, "if only----!" or,
"What a narrow miss I made of glory when that premature shell took off
my legs and stranded me here!" Peacefully they behold life's sun
decline, and peacefully in turn they take possession of the narrow beds
awaiting them in the near cemetery, where so many soldiers are sleeping
the unheeded years away. Without motive or purpose their life is
scarcely more eventless than their death shall finally be. Some way the
grounds where these patient old graybeards sit day after day with
nothing to do but muse upon the past remind me of the human heart with
its pensioned hopes, its stranded intentions and its crippled endeavors!
What heroisms, what subtle intents for good, what pretentious desires
were frustrated and made worthless by the destiny which changed life's
battlefield into a "soldiers' home" and the scene of action for the
shaded seat under the willows of a long regret!
* * * * *
I wonder if Eve, looking over the battlements of heaven now and then,
and seeing how tired we get down here and how discouraged and
broken-hearted we often are, is ever sorry for the heritage she left us,
all for the sake of an apple! Does she not curse the memory of the earth
fruit whose flavor has so embittered humanity! Think of it, oh
far-removed and perverse ancestress, if it were not for you we might
have lived in a world where dinners walked into the pot and boiled
themselves over fires that called for no replenishing; where rent
stockings lifted themselves on viewless hands and were deftly darned by
sunshine needles in the air; where last year's garments glided into this
year's styles without the snip of scissors or the whirr of sewing
machine wheels; where brooms swept and dust-cloths dusted unassisted by
human hands; where windows cleaned themselves as fogs lift from the
lake, and washing and ironing were spontaneous, like the growth of
flowers. I for one am heartily tired of having to suffer for Eve's
heartless stupidity. Hard work has too much of the blight of the primal
curse about it to suit me, and no matter what philosophy we call to our
aid the fact remains that labor of a certain sort is the heritage of
sin, and sin was, is and ever shall be accursed. But there is something
a great deal worse than hard work, and that is laziness. The man who
toils until the great muscles of his arm stand out like cords and his
broad shoulders are bent like the branches of a pine under the force of
a strong wind from the north is a king among his kind compared to the
shiftless do-nothings of life, between whose feet are spun the cobwebs
of sloth and within whose lily-white fingers nothing more burdensome
than a cigar finds its way. Give me a blacksmith any day rather than a
dude. Work is hard and sometimes thankless, but, like tough venison
served with jelly sauce, it is spiced with self-respect and smacks of
honest independence.
* * * * *