The earth was awake, and like a gay rover,
His knapsack of sunshine loose strapped on his back,
Through mists, and through dews, and through fine purple clover
Was faring his way down the summer's green track.
I sat all alone 'neath the shade of a willow,
And saw the old earth blithely jogging along,
While over the fields, like the foam on a billow,
The morning was breaking in blossom and song.
O, list! and, O, hear! like the wing of a swallow,
Updarting from fields that are golden with corn;
With the ring and the swing of a huntsman's "view hallo,"
Some fairy is winding his sweet elfin horn.
Now up like a flame, and now down like a shower;
Now here and now there in its sparkle and gloom;
It rings and it swings like a bell in a tower,
Wide casting its notes as a wind-flower its bloom.
'Tis a bobolink singing among the sweet clover;
A bobolink whimsical, happy and free,
And its voice like new wine makes earth, the old rover,
Half tipsy with jollity, clean daft with his glee.
* * * * *
It fell to my lot the other day to witness a scene that I shall not soon
forget. Death has myriad ways of coming to the sons and daughters of
men, and it chanced that death had drawn near to a certain dear woman in
a way that well might blanch the cheek of the bravest hero. As surely
condemned to die as is the murderer when he hears the judge's sentence,
with absolute hopelessness of any cure, and with the certainty of no
more than a brief span of weeks wherein to live, this brave woman faced
her doom with all the condemned man's certainty, and yet without his
shame. Grown old in a life of peculiar usefulness, with not a single
abated enthusiasm and with a heart as keenly attuned to nature's as is
the flute to the master's touch, this dear old heroine calmly renounced
the world she had so loved and turned her face direct to "headquarters,"
with no friend to interfere between herself and God. For one bitter
hour, perhaps, she wept and watched alone in her Gethsemane, then turned
about to await the chariot wheels of her deliverance with a heart as
glad and a faith as warm and bright as a little child's who waits in the
shadow the coming of a loving father to lead her home. Taken to the
hospital to die, knowing that those doors swung for her last entrance
within any earthly home, fully realizing that from beneath that roof
her soul should ascend to its home beyond the stars, bidding good-bye
forever to the sunset skies and the rural walks that she had so loved,
to all the bright company of wild flowers she had known by name, to the
pomp of seasons and the communion of happy homes, she took up her abode
in the ward of the incurables. Every day she sits in the sunshine and
reads her books or indites letters to her friends. Every day she
struggles with devastating pain, and every day she grows a little
thinner and a little weaker in the body, while her soul springs
heavenward like a white flower from the dust, which no earthly blight
can reach. As I sat by her side the other morning and held her wasted
hand in mine it seemed the most natural thing in the world to send a
message by this sweet soul to the unseen land, and we almost forgot the
pain of parting in the bright anticipation of the many who would throng
to meet the gray-headed voyager when at last her sail should beat across
the blue waters into the heavenly harbor. And as we talked there came a
message that a very old friend had called to see the sufferer; one who
had been the closest comrade of her brilliant youth and the companion
of her maturer years. Slowly the guest entered the shrine wherein a soul
awaited the sacrament of death, silently she stretched out her arms and
gathered that wasted frame within their close embrace. As a mother
comforts the baby at her breast, so they comforted one another with
tender words. The years of their life fell away from them as petals from
a rose which the wind lightly rocks, and they were girls again. "Oh, my
dear child, how sweet, how brave, how grand you are!" said the guest.
"My precious girl, my poor, dear one, how can I bear to see you here!"
she cried again and yet again, while her tears fell like rain, and the
turmoil of her sobs rent her very inmost heart. I shall live long before
I see so touching a sight again. In the presence of a love so perfect
and so true I felt to be almost an interloper and an alien, so I quietly
stole away and left these two old women, bowed with the weight of many
years, sustaining and sustained by the trust that the portals of the
tomb, within whose shadows they stood, were but the gates that usher the
soul into the full affluence of life and love.
* * * * *
It is almost impossible to get the average young person past the
florist's window nowadays. She has a way of clasping her hands and
pursing her lips over the roses that would make the average young man
shed his last dollar, as the almond tree shakes its blossoms. I am
always sorry for a poor young man in love with a pretty girl. He longs
to buy the world for her and she longs quite as ardently to receive it
as a gift, and so he is hurrying along his bankrupt career until
matrimony or estrangement checks him. Have you not a pitying remembrance
in your own heart of a certain youth of the long ago who deluged your
house with roses, confectionery and novels until his salary was wildly
wasted in the unequal contests? Girls, be a little less receptive, as it
were; be just a bit more thoughtful and delicate in your orders at the
restaurant and your selection from the florist's window, and I think
your matrimonial chances will be the better for it. How often have I
seen a young woman order a costly dinner when some young man whom she
well knew to be the recipient of a small salary was to foot the bill,
yet when ordering for herself I am told she never goes higher than
beans and bread and butter. Now, girls, don't think Amber is an
everlasting old grandmother! Not a bit of it, but she has tossed about
the world so much and heard so many "little birds" telling their secrets
that she has taken unto herself quite a pack of knowledge of the ways
and manners of mankind. I positively adore a young girl, and always
have, and, what is more, expect I always shall. But admiring and loving
them as I do, from the tip of their bangs to the click of their boot
heels, I cannot bear to see them do unlovely things. I want to see them
helpful, lovable, sweet. I want to see them slow to wound another's
feelings, and quick as sunshine after rain with tender smiles and
womanly ways. I want to see them brave, yet gentle; gay, yet kind;
fun-loving, yet never loud and rude. I want to hear the young men in
speaking of them speak of something besides their extravagance and their
greed. I want the very air to be the sweeter for their passing, as when
one carries roses through a room their fragrance lingers. And what shall
make you sweet, dear girls? Not fashionable gowns and dainty clothing;
not beauty nor grace nor wealth so much as womanliness and unselfish
thought for others.
* * * * *
The woman who can wear an arctic overshoe over a No. 5 shoe and make no
moan ought to have been born a Joan of Arc or a Charlotte Corday. She is
made of the "dust" that heroines have a corner on. At one time in my
life I owned a dog--a guileless pup--whose darling aim on earth was to
drag my colossal arctics before admiring gentlemen callers and lay them
by the fireside, where they overshadowed the big base-burner with their
bulk. I was rid of the dog long before I was rid of the feeling that it
was a disgrace for a woman to wear the feet God gave her. The most
colossal overshoe is neither so big nor so objectionable as an early
grave, and that is just what lies before some of you girls if you don't
quit wearing French heels and going about in damp and chilly weather
without protection for your feet. Burn up the high-heeled slippers,
then, with their atrocious shape; cultivate health and common-sense
rather than the empty flattery of a world that cares nothing for you. So
shall you be as beautiful as houris, as healthy as Hebes, as long lived
as Sarahs and as light-footed as the shadow that dances to a wind-blown
Columbine.
* * * * *
A graveyard never saddens me. It seems nothing more than one of the
flies behind the scenes when the actors have gone on in front. What
matters the room where we doff our toggery when we are once out of it?
So, not long since, when in rambling about one of the Apostle Islands,
away up in Lake Superior country, I ran across a sunshiny little
graveyard, and I was glad to loiter about for an hour and read the
inscriptions on the age-worn stones. It was a blue day--blue in the sky
above and blue in the haze on the hills, blue in the sparkling waters of
the lake and bluer yet in the far distance that marked a score of miles
from shore. Before the gateway of the graveyard a clump of golden rod
stood, like an angel barring the way with a sword of light. A tangle of
luxuriant vines had curtained most of the graves from sight A few, more
carefully tended than the rest, stood bravely out from behind fences of
ornamental woodwork, but most of them were sheltered and peaceful
within their neglected bowers of green. When my time comes to lie down
in my narrow home, I pray you, kind gentlefolks, grant me the seclusion
of an unremembered grave rather than the accentuated desolation of a
painted fence and a padlocked gate. There is rest in neglect, and
nature, if left alone, will never allow a grave to grow unsightly. She
folds it away in added coverings of mossy green from year to year as a
mother when the nights are long will tuck her sleeping children under
soft, warm blankets. She appoints her choristers from the leafy belfry
of the woods to keep the chimes ringing when the days are long and slow
and sweet, and lights her tapers nightly in the wavering shimmer of the
stars. In a secluded corner we found a handbreadth space where a baby
was laid to rest many a year ago. No chronicle of the little life
remains, and yet a stranger stands beside its grave and drops a tear. I
don't know why, I'm sure, for why should we cry when a baby dies? So
roses are picked before the frost finds them! Another stone was erected
to a young bride who died at twenty. Looking about at the
stoop-shouldered, care-lined and prematurely old women who toiled in
those island homes, we could not feel very sorry for the young bride who
died, perhaps, while life still held an illusion. With lingering step at
last we left the graveyard, repassed the golden sentry at the gate and
sought the little boat that awaited us on the beautiful bay. Long after
other details of that pleasant outing are forgotten the memory of that
blue day among the quiet graves on the island of the great lake shall
linger like a song within our hearts.
* * * * *
"If I had two loaves of bread," said Mahomet, "I would sell one of them
and buy white hyacinths, for they would feed my soul." I came across
that delightful saying the other day, and I thought to myself: There is
another one to be hunted up when I get over yonder! I shall have to make
the acquaintance of a man, prophet or not, who gave utterance to such a
sentiment as that. How many of us, poor earthworms that we are, would
rather spend our dollar for white hyacinths than for a big supper? How
many of us ever stop to think that there is something under the sleek
rotundity of our girth that demands food quite as eagerly as our stomach
does, and fails and faints and dies quite as surely without it? Take
less of the food that goes to fatten the perishable part of you, and
give more sustenance to that inner guest who, like a captive, sits and
starves with long and cruel neglect. Buy fewer glasses of beer and more
"white hyacinths." Smoke less tobacco and invest in a few sunsets and
dawns. Let cheap shows alone and go hear music of the right sort. So
shall your soul lift up its drooping head and grow less and less to
resemble one of Pharaoh's lean kine. I adore a man or a woman who has
enough sentiment to appreciate what dead and gone Mahomet said, and
hereafter will make it a point to buy less bread and more hyacinths.
* * * * *
I wonder if, when we get to the other world, we shall not occasionally
stroll into some sort of a celestial museum, where the relics of our
foregone existence, its wasted days and misspent years, may stare back
at us from glass cases where the angels have ticketed them and put them
all neatly on exhibition! There will be necklaces of ill-spent moments,
like the faded brilliants exhumed from old Pompeii, with lots of broken
hopes and thwarted destinies. There will be odd little freaks and
unreasoning caprices, like the "What is it?" and foolish deeds of daring
to turn our pulses faint with the old-time terror. There will be those
tendencies which kept us heavy-footed like the fat woman, and others
that made us blind, although the world was full of light. There will be
the disloyal deeds that made us a constant source of care and wonderment
to the angels who watched us, and the cowardice that kept us in leading
strings to conformity. There will be shelves full of the little white
lies we have told, all labeled and dated, like pebbles from the
Mediterranean or bits of shell from the sea. There will be fragments of
blighted lives ruined by wagging tongues and shafts of tea table gossip.
There will be the old-time masks wherein we masqueraded, and the flimsy
veils of deceit behind which we hid our individuality. There will be the
memories of little children we might have kept had we been wiser, and
snatches of lullaby songs. There will be jars full of love glances and
pots of preserved and honeyed kisses. There will be whole bales of
mistakes, a Gobelin tapestry to drape the world, and stacks of dead and
withered "might-have-beens." There will be peacock feathers of pride
tied together with faded ribbons of regret, and whole cabinets full of
closet skeletons and family contentions. There will be pedestals whereon
shall stand the "white days" we can never forget, and panorama chambers
wherein shall be unrolled the pictured scroll of our journey heavenward.
In cunningly devised music boxes we shall hear again the melody of our
youthful laughter and the patter of life's uncounted tears. I think the
shelves of that celestial museum would yield some odd surprises to the
most of us, like the finding of a bauble we counted worthless and threw
away glittering in the diadem of a crown, or the prize we bartered honor
for turned to worthless glitter and tinsel paste!
* * * * *
There is no use sitting here by this window any longer and trying to
believe that life is worth living. If I looked for five minutes more at
this November landscape I should shave my head and hie me to a Carmelite
convent. Dame Nature has forgotten her housewifely duties and gone off
to gossip with the good ladies who have charge of the other planets.
Where but yesterday the late asters bloomed in long rows of splendor,
and the chrysanthemums fringed the sunny borders with feathers of white
and gold, the unsightly stalks grovel in the clayey mold, and the
frost-nipped vines drop their dismantled tendrils in the chilly wind.
Fragments of old china lurk in the discovered spaces underneath the
denuded lilac bushes, and out by the oleander tub a cruel cat is
worrying a large and discouraged rat. That oleander tub reminds me of an
ordeal that is ushered in with every change of season. Twice a year we
are compelled to carry that large vegetable in and out of its winter
lair. About the last week of September we begin to wrap it in bed-quilts
every night, and from that time on until late autumn no delicate babe
was ever more tenderly guarded. Then, as there is no man in the country
who for love or lucre will condescend to the job, we begin to worry the
Doctor. We tell him the oleander will be blighted by the frost, and he
pays no heed. Then we ask him if he would just as lief bring in the
oleander after supper. He sneaks off and is gone until the 11 p. m.
train. Next we take to tears, and declare that we love that oleander as
one of the family, and it breaks our heart to see it perish for want of
care. We grow pale and wan and gray-headed as the days go by, and
finally with flashing eyes and muttered oaths the Doctor yanks the tub
and its colossal growth into the cellar, and we rest on our arms until
the advent of another spring.
* * * * *
Well, the summer has gathered up her corn-silk draperies, put on her
rose-trimmed hat, and tripped over the border land at last. From the
bend in the road that shall hide her from our view forever she lingers a
moment to throw back a sunny glance at September, as he comes whistling
down the lane, with plume of golden-rod in his hat. A glad good-bye to
you, long-to-be-remembered summer of 1890! We are so glad to see you go
that we are willing to forego your blossoms and your bird songs to be
well rid of you. For three long months we have endured heat without
precedent, drought and discomfort, flies and mosquitos, threatened
thunder gusts and devastating cyclones, and we are so tired that we feel
like shaking a stick at you now, to see you lingering to coquet with
September. Hasten on, oh bright autumn weather, with your comfortable
nights for sleep, and your royal days of sunshine and frost. We are
longing for the time to come when the lamps shall be lighted early in
the parlor, and the fire-glow shall once more shed its glory upon
grandma's lovely hair and upon the gold of the children's restless
heads; when the cat shall have leave to lie on the best cushion, and the
voice of the tea-kettle, droning its supper monologue, shall alternate
with the efforts of the older sister at the piano. By the way, do you
know there is lots of solace to be found in an old music book of twenty
years ago? Don't tell me that the music of to-day is as sweet all
through as the melodies of long ago. Who sings such soul-ravishing duets
to-day as "She Bloomed with the Roses," "Twilight Dews," or "Gently
Sighs the Breeze"? I declare to you, my dear, that although I shall be
considerably older some day than I am now, and although I have not
fallen so far into the "sere and yellow" as to count myself among the
old-fashioned and the queer, yet any one of those songs just mentioned
will start the tears from my eyes as showers start from summer clouds.
* * * * *
Two little motherless children! Do you know the thought of a baby
without a mother to cuddle it always brings the tears to my eyes?
Traveling to distant New England with a father who, although kind,
seemed some way unfitted to his duties, as a straight-legged chair might
if used for a lullaby rocker, were two bits of folks, a boy and a girl,
one four, the other two years old. The careful father brushed their hair
very nicely and washed their mites of faces with great regularity. When
he told them to sit still they sat still, and nobody was annoyed by
their antics, but, oh, how it made my heart ache to watch the motherless
chicks! If mamma had been there they would have climbed all over her,
and bothered her a good deal, perhaps, with their clinging arms and
kisses (it's a way babies have with their mammas!), but in the presence
of their dark-eyed and quiet papa they behaved like little weasels in
the presence of a fox. "Papa says we mustn't talk about mamma any more,"
lisped the boy. "'Cause she's gone to heaven." In the name of love,
whose apostle I humbly claim to be, I longed to gather those little ones
in my arms and have a dear, sweet talk about the mamma who had left them
for a little while, and I wanted to say to the proper and punctilious
papa: "Good sir, if you attempt to bring up these motherless mites
without the demonstration of love you will meet with the same success
your gardener would should he set out roses in a pine forest. Children
need love as flowers need the southerly exposure and sunshine. When that
boy of yours bumped his head, sir, it was your place to comfort him in
something the way his dead mother might have done, rather than to have
bade him 'sit up and be a man.'"
* * * * *