even after the wonderful statues of Day and Night are lost or
destroyed. “He bore such a love to her,” said his pupil Condivi “that
I remember to have heard him say that he grieved at nothing so much as
that when he went to see her pass from this life he had not kissed her
brow or her face, as he kissed her hand. After her death he frequently
stood trembling and as if insensible.”
All lovers of art know of Saskia, whose life was to Rembrandt like the
transcendent light he threw over his pictures; whose death left him
forever in the shadow of shadows.
If men give such affection as these men gave,—and tens of thousands
do,—then the affection is worth the most careful consideration;
accepted, if possible, with gratitude that one has been thought worthy
of homage; refused, if necessary, with the utmost delicacy and kindness.
Young women sometimes, perhaps because of youth, do not realize the
far-reaching influence of what the world is pleased to jest about as
“love affairs.”
An acquaintance of mine, pretty, intelligent, and reared by a Christian
mother, became engaged to two young men at the same time. One of course
was refused, with, to him, bitter heartache. She married the other, led
a wretched life with him, and finally was divorced.
Another received for years the attention of a worthy and wealthy
young man. Another young man visited her, for whom she possibly had
a preference. Both offered themselves to her, and both were accepted,
she doubtless hoping to choose later the one who pleased her best.
Both discovered her plan, were indignant, and left her to make other
conquests.
These cases are far from isolated. I do not believe they arise from
the heartlessness of women, but from lack of thought and care. A man
can offer a woman nothing higher than a sincere love. While she need
not assume that men who offer her attention wish to marry her, it is
a mistake to keep one’s eyes shut, and open them only to find that
a heart has been hurt temporarily, and perchance permanently. Good
common-sense as well as principle are necessary in matters pertaining
to hearts.
DUTY.
“JAMES, I hear you are getting interested in Martha Wenham!” said good
old Mrs. Matthews, tremblingly, to her only son, as they sat by the
fire one evening after he had returned from a hard day’s work.
He had been her only support for four years, ever since her kind
husband died. His sister Nellie, sweet but fragile, had leaned upon his
strong arm for help, for she was unable to support herself.
Mrs. Clayton, a neighbor, had been over telling James’s mother what
she had heard about the young people: that they had been seen to walk
very leisurely home from singing-schools and prayer-meetings, and
that, at the last church picnic, he and Martha, regardless of all the
others, had sauntered off to a cool, cosey nook, and were seemingly
very happy and very much absorbed, as people are wont to be under such
circumstances. Martha was a very excellent girl, the daughter of a
well-to-do village merchant, would make one of the best of wives, and
James would be fortunate to win her; but poor Mrs. Matthews saw herself
and Nellie cast upon the world, for in case James married he could no
more than support his wife and the little ones that would probably be
born to them. He had been a faithful son, leaving school and books that
he loved, to work with his hands and earn his bread. He had been able
to pay their rent, get them a few neat clothes, and buy all necessary
food.
Sometimes he seemed rather quiet, as though he longed again for the
school days, that he might realize his ambition to be a prominent man
in the world. When either mother or daughter caught a glimpse of any
such feelings, they tried to make the home pleasanter for him. Mrs.
Matthews baked things he liked, and Nellie took a little picture from
her scantily furnished room to hang in his, or gathered a few flowers
for his table.
No wonder the dependent mother spoke anxiously about his interest in
Martha Wenham.
“Yes, I like her very much, mother. I think she is the noblest girl I
ever saw!”
Mrs. Matthews trembled more and more. She wanted to ask him if he ever
thought of marrying her, but she could not.
Finally, after long silence, James said, as though he had been weighing
the thing in his own mind, “Do you think she would make me a good wife,
mother?”
“I—I think she might, James, but what would your poor mother do?” and
the tears gathered in her eyes. “I’m afraid I’m a burden, James! Don’t
you wish there were no obstacles in the way? Oh, James, I wonder God
arranged it so!” and the fond mother could have longed to be out of the
way, that her boy’s happiness might be completed.
James Matthews’s big heart was full. He had never thought of leaving
his mother, and, though he loved Martha, duty was first with him
always; so he put his hard hands upon his mother’s gray head and kissed
her, bidding her not to fear; that he should never leave her, and that
she was better than all the Marthas in the world, and as for Nellie,
he’d work his fingers off for her before any other girl should take
her place.
That night there was a timid knock at Martha’s door, and James Matthews
was cordially welcomed. Several times before all the commonplaces were
talked of he tried to tell her his errand in coming, but his courage
as often failed. Martha broke the ice for him when she said, “I think,
James, that day spent at the picnic was the pleasantest of my life.”
What could be more delightful than to hear from her own lips the very
confession he had longed to hear—that his presence was a pleasure to
her, that she perhaps in some measure returned his affection?
“It was a very happy one to me,” responded James. “I have often
wondered if it gave you pleasure. Martha, perhaps you do not know that
I have loved you for a long time, and perhaps it is wrong for me to
tell you of it, seeing that I cannot marry anybody.”
“And why not?” said Martha, a blush spreading over her fair face and
losing itself in her golden hair.
“Because my mother and sister are dependent upon me, and as long as
they live—and I hope it may be many years—I shall take care of them.
I could love you always without marriage, but that is the only bond
that can keep you mine alone and forever. Others will be seeking one so
good as you are. I could not ask you to be engaged, for you might wait
for years before I was able to support a third in our home, and support
you as nicely as I should wish to do. You have had too many comforts to
receive poverty at my hands.”
“You know I am young, James, only seventeen, and I can wait a great
many years for you. I love you very much, and I have a good home to
wait in; so what matter, so long as we are near each other? I’ll wait
until I’m an old lady, James, if need be.”
The noble girl had answered as her pure heart had prompted.
Many a man knows how rich, and happy, and satisfied James Matthews felt
that night as he came home in the moonlight. How strong his arms felt
for work, and how strong his good principles seemed!
He could do anything now for mother and sister—make any sacrifice;
for did not one wait for him whose encouragement was more than money,
to live with whom for one year even would recompense for a score of
years of labor?
Mrs. Matthews and Nellie grew happier as they saw him so cheerful, and
as his wages increased with his larger experience, and more of the
comforts of life were obtained, Nellie, with less anxiety and more
ease, grew better.
Two years had passed, and changes had come to Martha Wenham. Her father
was dead, his property gone, and her health impaired by long and weary
care of him. What was left for her but to claim the hand of him for
whom she had waited these two years? Refusing all others, she had been
true to him. Now came the time of trial to both.
Martha was helpless, and had nowhere to look but to him. His heart
clung to her now more than ever, but who could support the two who
seemed to be left providentially on his hands? Many an evening he
passed with her, feeling every time as though the day of parting, if it
must come to that, would be unbearable; finally he resolved to marry
her, take her to his home, and do all in his power for the three.
It could be only a scanty subsistence he could earn for them, and by
taking another upon himself, would he not spoil the happiness of them
all? He might have but one meal a day for himself, and he was willing;
but what poor reward for the girl who had lost so many good places in
life to share penury with him!
“James, I have a plan to propose to you, though you may not second it,
and indeed I do not know if it be right or best,” said Martha to him
one night. “William Stillson, you know, has loved me from the time we
were children together, and has always been a warm friend to me, even
after I refused him. In these days of anxiety and prospective want, he
has offered me again himself and his lovely home. I respect him, James,
but you have my heart and he knows it. All rests with you. Shall I
marry him, and thus free you from what must necessarily be a burden?”
James could not answer, and when she put her cheek upon his and held
his hand, he said, “Oh, Martha, I cannot give you up!”
“My will is yours,” she said, and kissed him good-night.
It troubled him after he came home. She might be so comfortable with
William, so cramped with him. His duty was plain before him. He took a
pen and paper and hastily wrote:
MY MARTHA: I release you! I know what is best for you! Marry William
and be happy. There is no other course. I shall be happy because you
are. My blessing go with you.
Your
JAMES.
Four weeks after, Martha, a woman through her sufferings, and true to
her womanhood in acting honestly, gave her hand to William Stillson,
promising to be his faithful wife. James heard the words that separated
them forever, and seemed to grow stronger for his duties at home. He
never visited her, but when she bore a beautiful boy to her husband,
he felt that he might love the child, and this wee one became his
plaything for many a month, until they moved to a distant part of the
country. Then, for the first time, though he missed the boy and the
sweet face of the mother, he was no longer under restraint. He could
have her in his thoughts better than in his sight.
Many a year went by quietly, even happily, to James, for we find our
highest happiness in doing our daily duties. He had earned his mother
and sister a lovely home, which is much for any man single handed to
do; was respected in the community, well read through his industry and
perseverance, and a genial and good-principled citizen.
Nellie had married a widower with several motherless children, and she
was doing for others what had been done for her. Then the good mother,
when her time was fully come, died and was buried, and James was left
alone.
Everybody supposed he would marry now; wondered why he was a bachelor!
All the married ladies pitied him for their daughters’ sakes, and
ladies of uncertain ages looked wistfully in his direction. An old lady
kept his house neatly, while in books and memories and social converse
his days went by rapidly.
One morning the house went through an extra cleaning and arranging.
An old schoolfriend, a bachelor like himself, was coming to spend
several days with him, and the good housekeeper, a spinster herself,
but old enough to be the mother of both of them, could not help feeling
a little tremulousness with regard to the new-comer. James secretly
felt more than ordinary interest in his coming, from the fact that Mrs.
Stillson lived in the same place.
“I believe I have a friend in your vicinity,” said James to his friend
the first evening, at the supper table.
“Ah! I suppose some flame—a maiden lady about your age, probably.”
“No. A Mrs. Stillson I refer to. We were very excellent friends when we
were young.”
“Indeed! I know her very well. Have done considerable law business
for her since her husband’s death. She has four children and in quite
straitened circumstances.”
James Matthews felt a sudden increase of circulation about his heart.
She was free to wed him now, if she would, he thought to himself. Now
he could be a father to those children, and do for them all he had
longed to do for her.
When the lawyer went home, much to his surprise Mr. Matthews
accompanied him.
The knock at Mrs. Stillson’s door was answered by a bright,
noble-looking boy of eighteen. The mother, with the same sweet face as
in her girlhood, was called in.
“Oh, James!” she said, and the tears gathered in her eyes. “I am so
glad to see you once more!”
Perhaps she thought he held her hand too long and earnestly for a man
who probably had a wife and children at home.
“I have thought,” she added, “if I could only see you in our present
circumstances, you might be induced to take our youngest, a boy of six,
and adopt him as your own.”
“Martha, may I take the boy, and take his mother with him?” said James
Matthews, his heart almost too full for utterance.
The cheek was laid to his as in other days, and the old answer given,
“Your will, James, is mine!”
He was satisfied now, with a happiness interwoven with it that none
knew, except those who have waited long and been rewarded. The old
housekeeper felt a little unpleasantly when a lady and four children
were so suddenly added to their family, but soon recovered her
equilibrium, and did everything for their comfort, living with them
until she died.
There was considerable gossip for a time. Everybody knew now why he had
not married earlier. The maiden ladies were quiet, the married ladies
very polite, and James and Martha very happy in themselves and in their
children.
WAIFY.
“HEAVENS, a baby! Who brought such a speck of humanity to lay at my
cold door? There is no love in my heart. The thing will die with me.
I’ll tuck it down in the corner of the cave for to-night.”
Giles Mortimer laid the bundle on a rough pine table, put the candle
close beside it, and one by one took off the garments folded about
it—took them off with the same care and fear of touch as a naturalist
in preparing the wings or feet of a fly for microscopic examination. He
half raised it in his arms, then laid it down, walked around the cavern
with a vague knowledge of a near presence, came back, took it up slowly
and held it by the firelight.
It had a delicate girl-face, with half-quivering lips, and a little
body perfect in proportions. Who was she? Some mother must have cared
for her as long as strength or life lasted, for she was now fully ten
months old. What should he do with the little waif? This triangular
cave was his home. The green turf above it shut out scorching sun and
chilling snow; the rude door before its opening made it seem secure
from danger; the mortar he had put about the sides, the tall prairie
grass he had matted over the ground floor, the old stove he had brought
thither, the rustic chair he had made from the surrounding forests, and
the Indian blankets he had bought for his bed, all made it comfortable,
though gloomy.
Such a place might suffice for him, but how could an infant grow into
grace and beauty here, leaning ever towards the light of the outer
world, and longing for love that must be the elixir of life to woman?
The lips that before quivered with fear now opened with hunger. He laid
her down, went out to a log box adjoining the cave, coaxed his goat
to a fresh supply of milk, and the babe drank from his hand, nestled
her head against his breast, and slept. She was not tucked away in a
corner, but rested next his heart through that long night.
Giles Mortimer was written fatherless and motherless in boyhood. A
pleasant home was sold, a small sum of money laid away, and a youth
just needing a father’s care and mother’s affection was thrust upon
the charities of the world. He soon found employment in a factory, and
there, day by day, when others walked and laughed upon the highway,
he worked and looked beyond to a successful future, saved his money
carefully, dressed simply, and in a few years had nearly enough to
defray the expenses of three years’ study. College days followed. Those
four years brought head and hand work to Mortimer. By forethought and
exertion he gained the privilege of sweeping the college chapel, took
the agency of books and pictures in vacation, and in numerous other
ways partially paid for his education. His companions loved him for his
geniality, and admired him for his broad grasp of mind and manly soul.
Life looked full of promise. Towards what should it tend? The
professions were full. Among those who held out the gospel of life to
the famishing, there were too many whom Christ had never called with
His especial calling. There were lawyers at every corner quarrelling
for a petty office, or looking over dusty books while sighing for the
bright skies. There were teachers who needed to be taught. Chemistry,
geology, and philosophy had so many votaries that only one in a century
rose to eminence, and the remainder, in unsatisfying mediocrity,
plodded on with little happiness to themselves and still less to others.
He turned to business. Here was an opening to gain honorable power by
effort of will, by energy of hand, and by vigor of mind. There was
beauty to him in the smoke that curled now lazily, now swiftly, from
the chimneys of a hundred manufactories. If he could not be a merchant
prince to give with blessed munificence one hundred thousand dollars
for homes for the poor, he might have a home for some one who loved
him, and many mites to scatter in the alleys of the great cities.
With Giles Mortimer’s man-physique and mind there was a woman’s
sensitiveness, and a will that could not always bear the shock of
opposition. A mountain is not all quartz, studded with jasper and
amethyst, nor is it all trap, brown and coarse. All lives are elements
from God’s great storehouse, and earth a crucible which melts and
moulds. He needed what most men need, the stimulus of love to give
position or wealth or fame; the encouragement of a voice that has
inspiration in it; the touch of a hand that carries hope in its
pressure; the look of an eye that shines like a lone star on a dark
night. He had seen some who might have walked beside him, but for his
fear of taking them from a hall to a hovel.
He went to a strange city. Counting-rooms were filled, and clerkships
engaged for months in advance. He knew no trade, or he might have
worked and given honor to that. At last he obtained a place in a
hardware establishment, and for two years, on a small salary, the
student did uncongenial work to live; then the firm failed, and he
was again adrift. He would have loved manufacturing; he would have
been proud to have aided America with the labor of his brain and hands
combined; but the old question, the one that has settled upon and
crushed so many young men, came back—“What business can be carried on
without money?”
Many men have struggled through poverty up to affluence. Many more have
struggled in it down to a grave. There are not wanting those who tell
us that every man may succeed, if he will; and yet ninety of every
hundred who enter the whirlpool of trade are lost.
Like many others, when his heart was saddest he sang—sang like
Carligny, who was dying when he made Paris intoxicated with his wit.
No publisher was obtained for his poems; he had not found that spring
that opens all portals—a name. Every house was already filled with
manuscripts, every journal with hastily-written fragments. A living
earned by writing was one that too often gave straw for a bed, and
bread and water for food. He was growing tired of the battle. There
were no victories—all defeats. Perhaps he lacked proper training of
self; perhaps the now weakened physical had dimmed the mental; perhaps
circumstances without were as strong as the powers within. Men were
no longer brothers to him. He sighed for the freedom of solitude,
stepped one evening on a freight train going West, and, careless for
the future, went forward to an unknown fate. He crossed foaming Lake
Erie; flat, woody Michigan and its lake; passed through Milwaukee
with its forests and few inhabitants, where now rises one of the
loveliest cities of the West, out into the uncivilized country. The
land was rolling, with here and there a prairie shut in by a border
of oak or cotton-wood trees. The lakes—long Pewaukee; graceful Pine;
clear Kotchee, that makes the highway an arch and circles under it;
and Neponset, with green, scalloped bank and a tree in each scallop
reflected by the waters—all these were like oases to him.
He reached the Indian village, Oconomowoc, and stood at the foot of
the peninsula that almost touches the island. On one side was a lake
bordered with hawthorn, on whose bank a neat church now stands; on
the other, five lakes, some small, one seventeen miles in length,
surrounding islands covered with spruce and hemlock and oak. Hills,
with their outcropping quarries of limestone, stood out against the
blue sky. Back of this landscape, one of the most beautiful of the
West, he found a cave worn into the mountain—a gloomy place, but free
from dampness, and comfortable for one who had no care for humanity.
Occasionally he made friends with an Indian and asked him to his hut,
but this was rare. They looked upon him as a pale-face who, having
vexed the Great Spirit, was repenting in solitude. He spent his days
in wandering and study. He learned the geological history of the place
from the hieroglyphics God puts upon the rocks for man to read. He
pressed hundreds of flowers, and knew what Jehovah had intended for
the gardens of the growing West. He wrote some, and grew happy in his
isolated existence; yet there was no flow of animal life within him, no
leaping of the heart for joy. The past was a sealed book; the present
written with the indifference of a stoic; and the future a blank leaf
with no desire to write upon it.
Such was Giles Mortimer when a tender child was laid before him—a
magnet to draw out a heart.
He called her Waify. For days and weeks he dressed her, washed her
delicate clothes with his own hands, fed her, and made a wagon of rough
boards and drew her to the lakes, that she might dabble her hands and
feet in the clear waters. Soon the baby lips, as if taught by angels,
said “Papa!” and the man’s affections swept back upon him as a flood.
He kissed her again and again, and she, all unconscious of the reason,
put her fingers in his hair and beard, and laughed with that merry
laugh that makes most homes, even in their decay, full of the echoes
of childhood. A new look was born into his face, a look of manly
protection, as though a soul was given to his charge.
Six months came and went. Little feet strolled outside the walls. She
seemed to look vainly for something to play with, gathered blades of
grass and flowers in her creeping, and showed a longing for a fuller
life. Mortimer saw it, aroused his sleeping ambition, put out the fire
in the old cave, put Waify into the wagon, with a blanket about her
that he might keep in memory the first night she slept under it, tossed
his half dozen books and small bundle of clothes at her feet, and
started for the city. Kind people gave them a shelter at night, and
Waify made friends everywhere.
To the home of a lady he had known among the early settlers of
Milwaukee he carried his precious charge, and started this time for
business with a strength and energy that knew no failure. There were
some struggles, but at length a place was found with a land-broker. The
city was growing rapidly. Small pieces of land were purchased as by
economy some money was saved.
After many months of labor a small house was hired, a pretty play-room
arranged for the wee Waify, a good servant obtained, and Giles Mortimer
was a happy man. No longer hating the world or its people, but having
grown strong from obstacles overcome, he had sympathy for others and a
genial look and manner that gave him the fascination of a woman.
Every night Waify came a little way to meet him. Then by the firelight
he told her cheery stories, made rabbits for her on the wall, and with
her on his knees thanked God for something human to love.