Rosemary and Rue, by Amber

Rosemary and Rue

By Amber

Chicago and New York:
Rand McNally & Company,
Publishers

Copyright, 1896, by Rand, McNally & Co.

PREFACE.

"Amber" was not to be classed with any society or any creed. In all respects she was an individual. In good-humored contempt she held all form, and with deep sincerity she revered all simple things. She smiled upon error and frowned upon pretense. Her life was largely made up of impulse and sacrifice. She was the constant "victim" of her own generosity, needing the money and the time which sympathy impelled her to give away. She was so devoted a lover of the moods of nature, noting so closely the changing of the leaf or a new note sounded by the whimsical wind, that her spirit itself must once have been an October day. Year after year she toiled, and her reward was not money, but a letter from the bedside of the invalid, telling of a heart that had been lightened, of a care that had been driven from the door. None of the newspaper writers of Chicago was more popular. Another column told the news of the day; her column held the news of the heart. Her best thoughts and warmest fancies are scattered throughout her prose. Her verses are pleasant, and many of them are striking, but meter often chained her fancy. But some of her unchained fancies, poetic conceits in the guise of prose, will live long after the clasp, holding the pretentious verses of a society laureate, shall have been eaten loose by the constant nibble of time.

When a church was crowded with friends, come to bid "Amber" good-bye, a great thinker, a writer who knows the meaning of toil, said that she had succeeded by the force and the industry of her genius. And so she had. For others, influence searched out easy places, but "Amber" found her own hard place and maintained it, struggling alone. Her words were for the poor and the sorrowful, and they could but give a blessing. But in the end, a blessing from the poor may be brighter than the silver of the rich.

Opie Read.

Rosemary and Rue.

I WONDER.

When I die bury me by the sea. Let my first hundred years in the spirit be spent on a sunny sand-bank watching the sapphire tides break over a bluff of lifted rocks. What is any earthly trouble but a dissolving dream, when one may bury the face in golden moss and sniff the salt spume of the sea! Over the blue verge of the horizon lies Spain, and I build its castles hourly here in my heart. A distant echo rings in my ears of trucks driven over stony streets, of the crack of the cabman's whip and the shout of profane teamsters, but the only semblance to cruel driver and jaded beast of burden seen in the seaside paradise of which I write is a fat huckster and a still fatter donkey who draws the large man where he (the donkey) listeth. Here on this lifted moorland, if one wishes to go anywhere he rises up and goes forth on a carpet of crimson moss and yellow grass and is driven by a chariot of untired winds. Behind us are miles of purple moss swept by ragged shreds of September fog, and musical, here and there, with bells of grazing herds; while before us, behind us, and all around us stretches the boundless, unfathomable and mysterious sea.

Did you ever hear of the island of Avilion? That enchanted place where "falls not hail, or rain, nor ever wind blows loudly," whose orchard lands and bowery hollows lie lapsed in summer seas? I found it one day when I was sailing on Casco bay in a boat hardly bigger than a peanut shell. Tennyson found it long ago in a dream, and to it he sent the good King Arthur that he might "heal him of his grievous wound" within the balm of its heavenly peace. But I found it in reality, and to it I took a care-worn lady and a work-weary brain, that I might perchance renew under its sunny spell a strength that was well-nigh spent. I found my island under another name, to be sure, but I rechristened it within the first hour of my landing. It is not the place, my dear, for featherheads and butterflies, this island of Avilion. It is not the place for the descendants of Flora McFlimsy to go with their new gowns and their French heels. All such would vote my little island a bore, and run up a flag for the first inland-bound steamer to put into port and carry them away. It has no ball-room, no promenade-hall under cover, no brass band, no merry-go-round, but instead it has meadow-lands that are brimful of bird songs; it has wild strawberries that bring their ruby wine to the very lips of the laughing sea; it has such sunsets as visit the dreams of poets and the skies of Italy; it has great rocks that are woven all over with webs of wild convolvulus vine, whose airy goblets of pink and blue hold nectar for the booming bee to sip; and it has marguerite daisies by the tens of thousands, and wild roses that carry the tint of your baby's palm and the honey of sugar-sweet dew within the inclosure of their small curled cup. It is hardly bigger than a Cunarder, this little Chebeague island, whose name I changed to Avilion, and from wave-washed keel to flowery bowsprit the eye never lights upon a defilement or a stain. It is the only place in all my wanderings where I never found a peanut shell nor a tin can thrown out to defile nature's beauty.

There was not a single bad odor on my island during the whole ten days of my tarrying, and I am told by those who are old inhabitants that such a thing never was known to it. A soft wind is always blowing, but the only merchandise it carries is wild thyme perfume and the fragrant airs that waft from meadow-lands and old-fashioned gardens full of spice pinks and cinnamon roses. Now and then a hunter's fog slips the leash of its viewless hounds and with noiseless "halloo" scours the island for the prey it tracks but seems never to corral. Now and then a sudden tumult seizes the tides that climb and fall on the shiny rocks and the air is full of the throb of soft drums and the music of flutes that are beat and blown a moment, then die away as quickly as they came, like a strolling band that marches through a village street, then over the hills and far away. Now and then a troop of crows rise silently from out the shadow of the pines and go sailing between the lazy eyes that follow and the sun, until, settling down upon some meadow stacked with new-cut hay, they break into clamorous laughter that taunts you with its shrill derision. Always, from dawn to dewfall, the world about little Chebeague is full of swallows that dart and soar and flit like shadows. They seldom sing, and yet the few notes they thread upon the air sparkle like diamonds where they fall. Some strange bird, with a low, sleepy song like the crooning of a child that is half asleep, or like a shepherd boy's pipe idly blown beneath the noonday willows, is always haunting the groves of Avilion with an undiscovered presence. I have spent hours looking for him, yet never found him. Sometimes I have been led to half believe the fellow exists only in the fancy of a spellbound idler like you and me.

Just at sunset a little feathered violinist of the island whips out his fiddle and draws the bow so delicately across its vibrant strings, while the golden sun slips tranquilly beneath the tinted waters of Casco bay, that the soul of the listener is fairly attenuated like a high C diminuendo with the spell of so much beauty. I don't know the name of the bird either, but he is going to sing for us all in heaven later on. Such performers do not end all here any more than Beethoven did.

It was my custom during the time I spent at Little Chebeague to devote the entire day to strolling or lying at length upon the rocks—

Nothing but me 'twixt earth and sky;
An emerald and an amethyst stone,
Hung and hollowed for me alone.

I grew to love the solitude with all my heart, and the thought of returning to the mainland with its jargon and its bustle was like the thought of tophet to the poor little peri for whom the gate of paradise had swung. Sometimes I would board the small boat that two or three times a day threads in and out of the blue water-way and visit adjacent islands hardly less beautiful than my chosen home.

There is Long Island, far more beautiful by reason of its East End, where as yet the tide of a full-fledged summer resort has not come. There is an old-fashioned country roadhouse, such as we knew before the landscape gardener and the boulevard fiend were turned loose upon our rural towns. To follow their windings is heaven enough for me. A fringe of buttercups to fence the way, thickets of underbrush to darken the near distance, constant little ups and downs where the road slips into hollow to follow the call of a romping brook or climb a hill to watch for the sea. Wintergreen berries and russet patches everywhere, and the snow of blackberry bushes in bloom far as the eye can travel.

"There is an old-time rail fence!" cried a visitor from the booming west one day; "my God, let me get out and touch it! I haven't seen anything but barbed wire since I left New England!" And he did get out of the buckboard in which he was driving and chipped away a big brown fence sliver as a memento. These roads I am talking about lead nowhere in particular. They, as often as not, end in a fisherman's back dooryard, but they are sweet as a young girl's caprice while they last.

One day we strolled across one of the islands and found a battlement of rocks on the seaside that it would have taken a solid month to explore. Oh, there was enough on the bar at ebb tide at Avilion to while away an age of idle time.

Sometimes we took it into our heads to ride. Then the choice lay between Charlie the Christian—so named for his good behavior and gentle ways—and the one roadster the island produced, a nag in the rough, who held his head high and cavorted with the stride of a jamboreeing boy.

The choice made, the hour must be watched to catch the low tide over to Big Chebeague, for there are no wagon roads in Avilion. Six hours of safety, as to the low water mark, is the limit of one day's riding, and much can be done in the way of riding in a half-dozen hours' time. A spin across the bar, the climbing of a rocky road, a sweep of seaward-facing pike, with dips into ferny hollows and ascents to pine-crowned bluffs, make the trip worth recording, and if to the exhilaration of the ride you add a dismount now and then to gather wintergreen and pick roses, with a loiter through a church-yard where many Hamiltons, both pre-Adamite and ante-historic, are sleeping the sleep of the just, you have the whole meaning of an afternoon outing on Big Chebeague.

Every evening after supper there was a pilgrimage to the west side of the island, not to be dispensed with by descendants of those remnant tribes that once worshiped the sun. Ranging from north to south as far as the eye can sweep, from westward, fronting little Chebeague, lies Casco bay, the loveliest bit of water in all the world. I say unhesitatingly the loveliest, because I do not believe that Naples, nor Sorrento, nor any far-famed Italian watering-place can match the coast of Maine for beauty. Into this bay, like petals from a wind-shaken blossom tree, are dropped hundreds of islands. Far to the west the White mountains melt upon the horizon in airy outline of blue, and over all each day is repeated the ancient miracle of the sun's decline. Sometimes a single cloud, like a tomb, receives the bright embodiment of day and hides it from our sight behind such draperies as orient never wrought nor monarch dreamed. Sometimes this fair god lies at length upon a bier of purple porphyry, while flakes of crushed gems strew his couch with rainbow dust, and all the air is full of rose-red censers, edged with gold. Sometimes he drops below the verge, holding to the last a wine cup brimmed with sparkling vintage that spills and trickles down the hills. Sometimes he returns in an afterglow, as the dead come back to us in dreams, the tenderer and the sweeter for their second coming. However the sun may set in Avilion, each setting is the most beautiful and best to be desired.

I heard someone bewailing the death of a friend the other day. The staff on which he had leaned, the bread which had ministered to his needs, the very light that had filled his eyes seemed caught away, and he mourned as one for whom there was no comfort possible. I saw a mother leaning above an empty crib, whose dainty pillow no nestling head should ever press again. I marked the terrible yet voiceless grief that ate at a bereaved father's self-control, until no wind-blown reed was ever so shorn of self-reliant strength. I saw a wife whose love had sunk within the grave where her young husband was laid, as the sun sets within a cloud of stormy night. I saw an old man bow his snowy head because the faithful one whose hand had lain in his for more than fifty years had vanished from his sight forever. I heard a little child lamenting at bed-time the lullaby song which its dead mother's tender lips should never sing again. But sadder than all these things, more tragical than any death which merely picks the blossom of life and bears it onward to heaven, as the gardener plucks the choicest rose to grace some festival of joy, is the scene when a trusted friendship dies; when faith which has endured the test of years gives up the breath of loyal life and sinks to hopeless unawakened death. Never think that you have shed your bitterest tears until you have stood at such a death-bed. Think not the measurement of any mortal grief has been found until you have sunk the plummet-line of such a sorrow. That grave shall never burst its sheath to let the soul of friendship's betrayal free, like a lily on the Easter air. That door shall never swing like the bars of a cage to let a murdered faith flash forth like the plume of a singing bird to seek the stars. Over the grave of a dead and buried trust no resurrection-note can ever sound like a bugle-call across the dewy hills to rouse the sleeper from his couch. God pity all who linger by the heaped-up mound where love's forgotten dreams lie buried, and grant oblivion as the only surcease for their bitter sorrow.

The days and nights swing equally upon the golden balance of time. The year is whitening with its crop of frost-blossoms from which no harvest-home has ever yet been called. Like an unwritten page, the new year lies before us in untrodden fields of shining snow. God grant the footsteps of Death be not the first to track the unbroken path that lies before us. May joy and peace and love, like the roots of the violets under the snow, quicken and blossom for all of us as the year advances, and may our progress be, like January's, right steadily onward unto June!

As I write there is a sudden break in the hush of night, and faint and clear and sweet upon the listening ear falls the sound of "taps" from the camp in Fort Sheridan woods. I drop my pencil and listen to it, as I always do, with almost a spirit of reverent awe. The hard day's work is done, the time for rest has come, and over all the busy camp silence falls like the shadow of a brooding wing. The new moon, half hidden by drifting clouds sends a rippling play of silver through the woodbine leaves, and from the top of the maple tree, a thrush dreams forth a bar of liquid music in its sleep. All the world is going to sleep, and God grant, say I, that when the time for the final good-night has come for you and for me the call for "taps," blown from some celestial bugle the other side the mystic gate may fall as sweetly upon our ears and find us as ready to sink to slumber.

Did you ever hunt for eggs in a haymow? If you did you can remember just how, with bated breath, you crept through the fragrant glooms of the old barn and searched the dusty place for nests. You can recall, perhaps, the shaft of sunlight that broke through the crevice of the door and showed you old speckle-top in her corner. You can hear again her furious cackle when you dislodged her from her nest and gathered the warm eggs she had hovered under her wings. You remember the excitement of the search and the perfection of content which settled within your soul as you gathered the basketful of milk-white eggs upon your arm and picked your way down the steep ladder which led to the main floor and "all out doors." Scarcely any excitement or exhilaration of later years can compare with the joy of hen's-nest hunting when you were young.

Did you ever go berrying? With a tin pail swinging from your wrist and your oldest gown upon your back, have you climbed the hill, jumped the fences and sought the side-hill pasture where the blackberries grew purple in the shade? Can you recall much, in all the years that thread between that happy time and this, which can transcend the pleasure of those wildwood tramps? Even now I seem to fix my eyes upon a clump of bushes by the old rail fence. They are domed high with verdure and show dusky hollows underneath, where, my skilled eye tells me, lurk spoils fit for Bacchus and all his nymphs. I part the leaves, a snowy moth flutters out of the green dusk and wavers like a snowflake in the warm, sweet air. I carefully reach my hand away inside the fairy bower of crumpled leaf and twisted vine and draw it forth purple with the juice of overripe berries that dissolve at a touch. With these I fill my pail, and all too often, I blush to own it, my mouth also, until twilight sends me home saturated with sunshine, late clover blooms and berry juice.

Ah, my dear, all this was fun while it lasted, but there is a more exciting quest than hunting eggs or finding berries, in which we all of us engage as the years of our mortal pilgrimage go hurrying by. It is the search for happiness—a search we never give up nor grow too old to maintain. Forgetting the disappointments and the satieties of the dead years, we look forward to the new as the hidden nestfull of unchipped shells of fresh experience and untried delights. God bless us all, and prosper us to find the eggs and the berries before we die. Perhaps the service of love we do others shall prove the bush that bears the sweetest and the ripest clusters, and the nestfull that shall develop the whitest store of all life's opportunities.

A genuine mother could no more raise a bad boy into a bad man than a robin could raise a hawk. When I say "genuine mother" I mean something more than a mother who prays with her boy, and teaches him Bible texts, and sends him to Sunday-school. All those things are good and indispensable as far as they go, but there is a lot more to do to train a boy besides praying with him, just as there are things necessary to the cultivation of a garden besides reading a manual. To succeed with roses and corn one must prune, weed and hoe a great deal. To make a boy into a pure man, a mother must do more than pray. She must live with him in the sense of comrade and closest friend. She must stand by him in time of temptation as the pilot sticks to the wheel when rapids are ahead. She must never desert him to go off to superintend outside duties any more than the engineer deserts his post and goes into the baggage car to read up on engineering, when his train is pounding across the country at forty miles an hour.

A LITTLE GOLDENHEAD.

Where shall we go to find the fit symbol of Easter? To the encyclopedia that we may post ourselves as to word derivations and root meanings? As well send a child to a botanist to find the meaning of a rose! To fitly understand the true significance of Easter time, find some slope in early April that the sun has found a few short days before you. Lay your ear close to the ground that you may hear the fine, soft stir within the bosom of the warm earth. Note how the mold is filling with its new birth of flowers. There is not a covert in all the awakening woods that has not a little nestling head hidden behind the dead leaves. The breath of a sleeping child is not more peaceful than the sway of the wind flower upon its downy stem. The flush on a baby's cheek is not more delicate than the tint of each gossamer petal. To what shall we liken the grass blades already springing up along the loosened water ways? To fairy bowmen, led by Robin Hood's ghost through winding ways from forest on to the sparkling sea. To what shall we liken the violet buds spread thick beneath the country children's feet? To constant thoughts of God that bloom even in the grave's dark dust. To what shall we liken the twinkling leaves that shine in the dim depths of the woods? To lights at sea, that tell some fleet is sailing into port. To what shall we liken the shy unfolding of the lilac buds? To the poise of a slender maiden who leans from out her lattice to hearken to a lover's song. To what shall we liken the cowslip's valiant gold? To the shining of a contented spirit with a humble home. To what shall we liken the brooding sky and the warmth of the all-loving sun? To the potency of a gentle nature intent on doing good, and the yearning of a tender heart to bless and save. Is there a nook so dark and forbidding that the beautiful Easter sunshine cannot enter and woo forth a flower? Is there a rock so impervious that the April wind may not find lodgment for a seed in some crevice, and there uplift a bannered blossom? Is there a cold, resentful bank wherein the late snow lingers that shall not finally cast off its disdainful ice and flash into verdure in response to the patient shining of the sun? Is there a grave in all the land so new and desolate that Easter time cannot find a violet among its clods and paint a rainbow within the tears that rain above it? To nature's lovers, then, as to the truly Christian heart, the significance of Easter is found in the reviving garden and in the awakening woods. It means resurrection after death, blossom time after the bareness of woe, the cuckoo's cry after the silence of songless days, and the smile of a pitying All-Father after the orphan time of the soul's bereavement and seeming desertion.

Another blessed thought to be gained in the contemplation of nature's sure awakening from the long lethargy of her winter's sleep is that, however fearful we may be that death's reign shall be eternal, as constant as day dawn after midnight, or shining after storm, shall be the Easter of the soul. We do not need to pray for April; it comes. Nor do we need to pray for release from the first dark dominion of fear and dread when our beloved are snatched from our arms. Such experience is only the transient reign of winter in the heart, while yet the soft wing of April stirs upon the horizon's misty verge and the promise of violets is in the lingering darkness of the air. Remember this: The same power that sends us November is planning an April to follow, and out of the snowfall evolves the whiteness of the annunciation lily.

It has always seemed to me that, beautiful as Christ's birthday ought to be and full of tender significance as we may make the hallowed Christmas time, a deeper tenderness attaches to these Easter days. The Sinless One had lived out the span of his mortal years; he had suffered and been betrayed; had struggled through Gethsemane, up to the thorn-crowned heights of Calvary, and yet, through all, carried the whiteness of a saintly soul, to cast its dying petals, like a white rose, wind-shaken yet yielding perfume even in death, in the utterance of that prayer for universal forgiveness, the most wonderful that ever ascended from earth to heaven—"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" The song that ushered in the birthtime of those sanctified years was an invocation of peace and good will, beneath which the morning stars were shaken like banners before the oncoming of a glorious prince, but the prayer that ascended from Calvary was the plea of a betrayed and anguished soul for universal charity and forgiveness from God to man. Let us rejoice, then, when Christmas days bring gladness to our hearts and homes, but let us forgive and bless when Easter lays its stainless lily at our feet. There is constant need for charity and forgiveness in a world so full of self-blinded and ignorant evil-doers. They do not always know what they do, these rude and riotous betrayers of Christ; and all the more need, then, for compassion, and that divine pity that, even from the cross, could invoke heaven's pardoning love.

If you have a friend who has wronged you, forgive him to-day, for Christ's sweet sake. If you have a boy who has gone astray, reach out your arm and win him back, while yet the Easter violets glow upon the chancel rail. If you have a daughter who has been undutiful, take her in your arms and ask God to forgive you both—you for your lack of sympathy, as well as her for her waywardness. So shall you understand the meaning of Easter, the resurrection time of love, the fulfillment of its promise from out the icy negation of the grave.

A few thoughts about death before we turn to other symbolizations of the season. It is all a mistake, it seems to me, to make death a menace and a dread in the minds of the young. Does the farmer go forth with tears to plant the seed for the coming harvest? Does the scientist mourn above the chrysalis that lets a rare butterfly go free? Does the navigator rebel when a bark that has been tempest-tossed and storm-driven enters port? Teach the children that death is all that makes life endurable; that it is the sheaf of ripened wheat, or the budding flower, plucked from the earth's dark mold; that it is the flight of the bird, the home stretch of the yacht. We love each other, but what is it that makes human love any nobler than the chirruping of birds if not its duration? And it is only death that makes our loves immortal. Time enthrals them with fear and environs them with alarms; death lifts them into the region of eternal joy. Take away the reality of our faith in the life to come and Easter would mean no more to us than it means to the browsing cattle that munch the violet buds and trample the bright promises of the year under foot. The comforting view of it all is, that here we are only learning to love. We are like birds that sit upon the edge of the nest, and flutter, and chirp, and dread to fly away. What shall the bough whereon our nest was rocked with many a storm be when we have learned to spread these tiresome wings and rejoice in the blue space of the boundless air? The heroism of love, the faithfulness of love, the grandeur, patience and magnificence of love shall only be revealed when the soul has left the shadows and spread its wing in the empyrean of heaven's blue.

There is a small boy who lives at our house with whom I wage an unending warfare on the subject of clean hands. The sun never goes down nor yet arises upon a harmonious adjustment of the mooted question. There are more tears shed, more dire threats made, more promises broken, more anguish endured on that one account than upon any other under the sun.

The boy dwells under a ban as somber as the seven-fold curse of Rome. His sisters nag him, his grandmother prays for him, his mother pleads with him, his girl friends flout him, but in spite of all he continues to wear his hands in half tints. But the other evening he made an announcement that caused even the young person to remark: "Well, I'd rather see you with your soiled hands than see you such a dude as that!"

"Gee!" said the boy, "but some of the kids that go to our school are queer ducks!"

"Don't use so much slang," cried his mother; "why can't you call a boy a boy as well as a 'kid' and a 'duck'; and whatever do you mean by 'Gee'?"

"They bring little cushions to school," continued the boy with only a swift hug in answer to his mother's question, "and they put 'em under their hands when they play marbles, so's they won't get their hands dirty. Gee whiz, but I'm glad I ain't such a fool!"

And in spite of her desire to see him a bit more solicitous as to personal elegance his mother could but echo the boy's self-congratulatory remark.

What on earth is going to become of us if this awful wave of effeminacy which has struck the race does not soon subside? Earmuffs and galoshes, heated street cars in April and double windows up to rose time have done their best to make molly coddles out of men, but when we are starting a generation of boys to play marbles with cushions to rest their hands on the sex had better abolish hats and trousers and take to hoods and shoulder shawls. Give me a boy and not a pocket edition of an old woman. He need not be a tough nor a bully, nor need he be cruel nor untender because he is a boy, but I want him jolly and brave and up to every harmless prank that's going. I want him to use slang and wear muddy shoes, slam doors and make all sorts of futile feints at keeping his hands clean, provided, always, he appreciates the opportunity offered to show the gentleman that's in him by never appearing at table looking like a tramp. Even that is better, though, than being a "sissy." Give him time and the untidiest boy in the world will develop into a gentleman, but eternity itself could not evolve a man out of a boy who plays marbles with a cushion!

As I was walking down Dearborn street the other day, close upon the gloaming, I chanced to meet two pretty girls, not the only two in this big city, perhaps, but two of the fairest. One had hair like the tassel of ripe corn when the sunshine finds it; the other's head was crowned with dusky braids, and the eyes of the two were brimful of laughter as a goblet new-filled with wine. Surely such pretty girls should carry queenly hearts, thought I, and with my old trick of catching topics in the air, I loitered a little on my way to hear what such fair lips might be saying. Said one: "I really don't care to marry him; he is such a darned fool! but he will give me everything I want, and I suppose I shall." I stayed to hear no more. If I had caught a yellow-bird swearing, or seen the first robin appear in Joliet stripes, the revulsion from pleasure to disgust could not have been more sudden. Is this all the lesson the world has taught you, my pretty maiden? To soil your lips with slang and sell yourself for fine clothes and the chance of unlimited display! Forecasting the life of such a girl is like forecasting an April day that dawns in tints of purple and gold, and ends in tempest and the blackness of night. Beauty is a glorious heritage, indeed, but to see it worn by such types as you, my pretty dears, is like seeing a queen's crown on the head of a parrot, or a royal scepter in the grasp of a monkey.

Niagara Falls! What heart is so stolid, what appreciative spirit so calloused over with the hard crust of stoicism not to rise and shout before the wonder of its magnificence? When a man or woman gets so blasé as to thrill no more over Niagara Falls, let them be salted down with last year's hams and hung on a hook in the quiet seclusion of a smokehouse.

First we took our way over the bridge that leads to the beautifully kept Goat Island and, alighting from the carriage, stood for a time with the full splendor of the American fall in our faces. A fascination that could not be shaken off held the eyes upon that never-stayed torrent of sun-illumined jewels. Diamonds they were, and great uncut emeralds, with here and there a rain of fiery rubies, that tumbled from off the lifted ledge of imperishable rock. And where the volume widened, until it became an avalanche of snowy foam, shot through and through with needles of light, it seemed to us that the law of gravitation had been forever abandoned, and falling tons of water, losing kinship drop with drop, were floated skyward again to find a home in heaven. Down-shooting rockets of silver foam unfallen, yet always in the air! Canopies of cloud, dissolving into fine dust-like roadside pollen! Draperies of spray unrolled in noiseless splendor from the blue background of an endless day! Explosions in mid air of thunderous torrents that turned to carded wool on the way from heaven to earth! While I stood and watched it all somebody profaned the air with a vulgar word, and I looked for a flaming sword from the omnipotent hand to smite him where he stood. To swear, or even to think an unholy thought in such a holy of holies, deserves the penalty of death as much as did the desecration of the temple in ancient times.

Shifting our place from point to point, we found ourselves at last standing on the very verge of the Horseshoe falls, where, crowned with living green, it slips over the crumbling ledge and loses itself in a dazzling whirl of spray. Although I have stood in that same spot many times I am proud to remark that I have never stood there yet without saying my prayers. The sight is too much for the puny ego that animates this little capricious whiff of dust we call our mortal body, and now, if never before, the soul that retains one particle of the divine within it turns to God as the sunflower follows the sun. While we stood entranced by the sublime beauty of the scene a mighty wind arose suddenly and great clouds were called across the sky to the sending of a swift alarm. Before the breath of the wind the mists were tumbled far and wide like feathers, and a rainbow that arched the whole was demolished into nothingness only to be kindled again as a flame in the whimsical breath of the riotous air. One moment the atmosphere was a fairy flower garden, full of violets, roses, green feathery ferns and passion-tinted tulips brimming over with gold. The next some giant hand reached forth and plucked and bore each flower away. A suffusion of color followed every flood of sunshine, as a pomegranate runs with juice at the touch of a knife, only to be succeeded by pale wafts of colorless, interminable spray, where a cloud caught the too eager sun within its soft eclipse.

If the Lord left any snakes in Paradise after the settlement of the primal fuss they took the shape of the man who is a confirmed cynic and pessimist. The man who has no faith, no enthusiasm, no candor, no sentiment. The man who laughs at the mention of good in the world, or virtue in women, or honor among men. The man who calls his wife a fool because she teaches his little children to say their prayers, and curls his lip at any belief in the world beyond the grave. The man who never saw anything worth admiring in the sky when the dawn touches it, or the stars illumine it, or the clouds sweep it, or the rain folds it in gray mists of silence. The man who lives in this sparkling, shining world as a frog lives in a pond or a toad in a cellar, only to croak and spit venom. The man who never saw anything in a rose aglint in the sunlight or in a lily asleep in the moonlight, but a species of useless vegetable, the inferior of the cabbage and the onion. The world is overfull of such men, and if I had the right sort of broom I'd sweep them away as the new girl sweeps spiders.

Once I was sailing in a yacht close to the rock-bound coast of Maine.

It was presumably a pleasure cruise, but if ever a poor wretch in purgatory had a harder time of it I am sorry for him.

The fog was thick, the ground swell was enough to unsettle the seven hills of Rome, and something was wrong with the boat's machinery, so that for hours we lay in the trough of the sea, making no headway and fearful that each moment would be our last. Added to all this there came at short intervals a demoniac blast from a fog horn which rent the air with the clamor of a thousand tongues.

"Look out!" it seemed to shriek over and over again. "Look out, poor fragile wisps of gossamer! The hour strikes for your destruction. Another wave, a little higher than the last, shall suck you down like a shred of foam into the blackness of the sea's dark vortex. Brace up and meet your doom. Look out! Look out! Look out!"

I listened to that fog horn for hours, until the soul within me lay like a spent bird weary with futile beating of useless wings, and I came within a hair's breadth of madness. In fact, I think I had commenced to rave a bit when a brisk wind sprang up that blew the fog away, the crew succeeded in righting the craft and onward we flew out of sound of the terrible fog horn forever.

There are many things in life that remind me of fog horns; there are many occasions that beat upon the soul with just such vociferous clamor.

There are those old-fashioned Bible texts, shouting "hell fire" and "eternal damnation." What are they but fog horns warning us from off a mist-enveloped shore? We cannot shut our ears to them while we lie a furlong off the rocks and listen to their woeful reiteration. Perhaps some chance wind may blow us out to sea, there to escape for the present the unwelcome climax; but we know that underneath the shrouded stars and through the hush of midnight forever and forevermore sounds the crash of that brazen alarm. We may not heed it, but the fog horn is there, forget and disown it though we may.

Then there are our birthdays after we grow old enough to understand their significance; what are they but fog horns that sound at intervals to denote that we are drawing near to the final doom of all mankind?

"Sport on," they seem to say, "a little longer; weave your garlands and blow your pretty bubbles while you may, for to-morrow you shall surely die!"

Each year the fog horn blows a louder blast, until finally the softened haze of creeping years, like a white fog in the sea air, muffles the sound, and we sink to rest at last, some of us with the wild clamor hushed to the measure of a good-night song.

Then the holidays. Thanksgivings and Christmases with independence days, like wine-red roses dropped between, what are they but fog horns on the invisible shores of memory? How they mock us with the recollection of vanished joys, and warn us of barren years yet to be.

Gone forever are the dear ones who made gala times and festival happenings bright, and still we linger like boats in the trough of a sullen sea, our motive power wrecked, our sails rent, and listen, listen, listen to the warning that sounds from far off the hazy shore.

"Gone, forever gone," the fog horn cries; "gone down into the sea, the boats that kept you company when the bright-winged fleet put out from port! Lost forever, in storms it seems scarce worth the while to have weathered, since here you toss, alone at last, like driftwood on the chilly tide, and listen forever to the mournful warning of my voice from off the sandbars, warning you that not even love can withstand the beat of time's relentless years."

Our desks are full of miniature fog horns in the shape of unanswered letters.

Our closets hang full of fog horns of varying fabrics. They warn us of the folly of trusting to bargain sales of shoddy goods; they warn us against extravagant tastes when times are hard; they warn us against the lazy mood that neglects the stitch in time that saveth nine.

Every time we are ill the occasion is a fog horn.

Either we have disregarded some law of health and are in the trough of the sea in consequence, or we are flying on to the breakers with ears dulled to the fog horn's din.

We speak with cruel harshness to the old mother who loves us, or to the little child who trusts us. We are sorry for it afterward, and that sorrow is the fog horn that warns us to keep off the reef of temper.

"To-day may be the last day for the mother you have pained or the child you have wronged," it seems to say; "the bed they lie down upon to-night may be the bed of death. See to it, then, that you make each day of life, if possible, the last day of love's opportunity." Did you ever stop to think of what would become the instant concern of all this vast human race if a sudden edict should go forth that only twenty-four hours were left for each man to live? What if an angel should appear to-day at sunset and proclaim in a voice that should reach from world's center to world's rim, "To-morrow at set of sun this globe and all its race of sentient life shall be folded up like a scroll and effaced from heaven's chart!"

What would we all begin to do then, I wonder? I think that everything would be forgotten but love. Envy and hatred, covetousness, jealousy, ambition, selfishness and cruelty would find no place in the hearts of men. We would improve love's latest opportunity to be kind one to another, tender-hearted and merciful. The husband would not be harsh with his wife, nor the wife show waspish temper to her husband, if the last day had come for both. The father would not strike his boy in uncontrolled temper, nor the mother rebuke her careless child, if the knowledge that the end of love's opportunity lay between the uplifted hand and the culprit. We should all be loving and fond and sweet if we only knew. My dear, this very thought, carried out, is but another fog horn. Perhaps death is already near, and the brazen clamor in our hearts which takes shape of an uneasy conscience or of a nameless dread is but the warning in the fog that we are close upon the fatal reef. Ah, the air is full of them! They sound in every waking moment, they mingle with our dreams, they greet our opening eyes, they accompany us when the tired lids fall in slumber. The shore is lined with them and their warning is as ceaseless as the beat of time's receding waves.

But of what use is a fog horn to a vessel that gives no heed? Why uplift them on dangerous reefs if the ship's crew sleeps through their warning and the unconscious captain ignores their hoarse note of alarm?

An unheeded fog horn might as well be silenced, and so, I sometimes think, if we allow our hearts to grow callous to the call that conscience makes, why not be thankful when the warning ceases and silence follows the useless repetition of an unavailing appeal? If I am to be shipwrecked at last I think I would rather run upon the reefs without warning than to drift to destruction to the mocking cadence of an alarm I would not heed. To go down with the sound in my ears of an admonition that might have saved me had I but listened would be the hardest sort of dying.

HER CRADLE.

The other night, as I was listening to "taps" in a neighboring military camp, a longing came over me for a silver bugle of my own, that I might blow a message to the drowsy world. We all listen to that fellow up at Fort Sheridan, when he gives the command for "lights out!" just because he blows it through a bugle. He might come out and say what he had to say in tones anywhere between a cornet and a clap of thunder, and the effect would be nothing to what it is when the notes filter through a silver mouthpiece. And how exquisitely the last strains of that nightly call linger on the ear! They melt into the starry glooms, and throb through the dim spaces of the woods like golden bubbles or the wavering flight of butterflies. Whenever we hear them we think of Grant, asleep in his grave by the mighty river, of his work well done, and the rest that dropped upon his pain-racked life at last like a soft and rainy shadow on a thirsty land. We think of hosts of brave men who fill soldiers' graves all over this blood-bought heritage of ours. We think of hearts that once beat high, for long years silent as stones to all our cries and tears. We think of a host of things, solemn and hushed, and sacred, and drop to sleep at last with an indistinct purpose in our hearts to so conduct ourselves that when the Death Angel blows "taps" for us, we shall leave a record behind us to be read through fond, regretful tears, and enshrined in golden characters upon the tablets of memory.

Now, if I had a bugle instead of a pen, to work with, and if I could stand out under the stars on a hushed summer night and deliver my message through its silver throat, perhaps the world that reads me might be thrilled into earnest purpose more readily than it is when exhorted from a pencil point or a quill. The first message I should ring through that bugle of mine would be the command, "Don't fret!" However comfortless and forlorn you may be, don't add to your own and the world's misery by fretting. There never yet was a sorrow that could not be lived down; there never yet was one that could be cured by worry. When the cows get into the corn and the chickens into the flower-beds, the sensible man chases 'em out first, repairs the damage next, and, lastly, fastens up the break in the garden wall by which the marauders got in. What would you think of a farmer who went into his bedroom to pray before he chased out the cows, or of a woman who threw her apron over her head and wept long and loud because the hens were scratching up her pink roots, instead of "shooing" them a half-mile away with a broom? Most troubles come upon us as the cattle and the hens get into the corn and the garden patch, through a broken fence or a carelessly unguarded gate. It is our own fault half the time that we are tormented, and the sooner we repair the damage and mend the fence, the better. Time spent in useless bewailing, in worry and disquietude, is lost time, and while we wait the mischief thickens. Take life's trials one by one, as the handful of heroes met the host at Thermopylae, and you will slay them all; but allow them to marshal themselves on a broad field while you are crying over their coming or praying for deliverance, instead of arming yourselves to meet them, and they will make captives of you and keep you forever in the dungeon of tears. Is your husband too poor to buy you all the fine clothes you want, or to keep a carriage, or to surround you with pleasant society and congenial friends? Very well, that is certainly too bad, but what's the use of being forever in the dumps about it? Get up and help him keep the cows out of the corn, and perhaps you'll have a golden harvest yet. A sullen, discontented wife is a millstone around any man's neck, and he may be thankful when the good Lord delivers him from her. Whatsoever is worth having in this world's gifts is worth working for, and wedlock is like an ox-team at the plow. If the off-ox won't pull with the nigh one, it has no claim with him upon the possible future of a comfortable stall and a full bin. Out upon you, then, Madam Gruntle, if you sulk, and pout and fret your days away because your husband is a poor man and spends most of his time chasing the cattle, calamity and failure out of his wheat patch. He may possibly be one of fortune's numerous ne'er-do-wells, but in that case all the more reason you should not fail him. Bent reeds need careful handling, and smoking flax gentle tending, else they will perish on your hands and disappoint both you and heaven. All the more reason that you should be cheery and strong and ready to do your part, if the man you married, because you dearly loved him (remember!) is unable to do all that he promised. That is, always provided he is weak and unfortunate, rather than desperately wicked. A woman has no call to stand by any man if he is a wretch and shows no desire to be anything else. The Lord himself never helped a sinner until he showed some desire to be saved. Less repining, then, a little more forbearance with one another's shortcomings, and a little more loyalty to the promise "for better or for worse," will ease up much of the burden of dissatisfied and disappointed wedlock.

Another message that I should blow through that bugle, if I had it at my lips to-night, would be: "Be true!" And I should ring it out so long and loud, I think, that the moon would stop to listen, and the sleepy heads in every home in the land would rise from their pillows like night-capped crocuses out of the snow. For heaven's sake, if you have a principle or a friend, be true to them. Make up your mind, whether or no your principle is solid and has God and justice on its side, and then be true to it right down to death, or, what is harder, through misunderstanding and obloquy. And if you have a friend, such as God sometimes gives a woman or a man, faithful through all betiding, staunch in your defense and tender in your blame, stand true to that friend until the grave's green canopy is spread between you. He may be unpopular and unfortunate, and all the feather-headed crew of society may ignore him, but if you have ever tested his worth as a friend, stand up for him, and stand by him forever. The sun may go down upon his fortunes, and calumny may cloud his name, and you may know in your heart that more than half the world says about him is true, but stand by the man who has once been your true friend. Ingratitude is the blackest crime that preys upon the human soul. The forgetfulness of a favor, or the effacement of a bond sealed with an obligation, is capable only to weak and cowardly natures.

If you have a conviction, and are conscientious in the belief that you are right, be true to your professions. If you are a rebel, be a rebel out and out, and don't be a goat to leap nimbly back and forth over the fence. Never apologize for either your faith or your profession, unless you have reason to be ashamed of it; and, if you are ashamed of it, renounce it and get one that will need no apology.

There are lots of other messages I would like to stand on a hill and blow through a bugle, but the weather is too warm to admit of further effort just now; so we'll postpone the topic for another hearing.

I sat in a fashionable church the other day and listened to a sermon on "The Prodigal Son." How often I have heard the same old story told in the same old way. How familiar I have become with the kind father, the bad son, refreshingly human heir, the veal and the ring! But the last time I heard the story I felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to rise up in meeting and ask the question, "How does the treatment accorded to the prodigal son match the treatment we mete out to the prodigal daughter?"

How far out of our way do we go to accompany his sister on her homeward faring after a season spent among the swine and the husks?

Do we put an 18-karat ring on her poor little soiled finger and place her at the head of our table, even if by good chance she gains an entrance to the home? Do we not more often meet her at the back door when nobody is looking, rush her through the hallway and consign her to the little third story rear room, taking her meals to her ourselves, on the sly, that the neighbors may not find out the dreadful fact that she is at home again?

"Keep yourself very close," we say to her, "and by no manner of means be seen at any of the windows, and you may stay here. You can wear some of your virtuous sister's cast-off clothing, and sleep on the lounge in the nursery, where the servants never think of going since the little folks have grown up, but you must be very penitent, and very humble, and very thankful to God for the mercy you so little deserve."

I think somebody had better write a new parable and call it "The Prodigal Daughter." Perhaps a sermon might be preached from it to touch the unmoved heart.

After all there are two sorts of prodigals—the prodigal who comes home because the cash gives out, and the prodigal who comes because his heart turns back to the old home with such longing as the thirsty feel for water. Neither boy nor girl who comes back for the first-named reason should find a maudlin love awaiting, nor partake of any banquet that the old folks have had to pay for, but the prodigal who returns because there is something left in his or her heart like the music in a shell, which nothing can destroy or hush away to silence, be that prodigal sinful man or erring woman, should find not only the home doors swung wide in welcome, but every doorway in the land wreathed with flowers to bid him enter.

How few people know when to stop. If the preacher knew when to stop preaching, how much more satisfactory the result of his sermon might be. If the genial fellow knew just when to stop telling his good stories, how much keener their relish would be. If the moralizer knew just when to stop moralizing, how much longer the flavor of his philosophy would endure. If the friend knew when to keep still, how grateful his silence would be. If the candid creature who so glibly tells of our foibles knew when to hold his tongue, how much less strong our impulse to slap him would be. If the high-liver knew when to stop eating, how much less sure dyspepsia would be. If the popular guest knew when to withdraw, how much more regretfully we should see him go. If the politician knew when to retire into private life, how much whiter his record would be. If we all knew just when to die, and could opportunely bring the event about, how much truer our epitaphs would be. The court fool who prayed, "Oh God, be merciful to me, a fool!" prayed deeper than he knew, and the man who prays, "Oh God, teach me to know when I have said enough," prays deeper still.

You may talk about California all you will, but match, if you can, the beauty of spring as it comes to us in these northerly latitudes. There is the coy advance and retreat of a woman hard to win; there is the crescendo and diminuendo of heavenly harmonies; there is the dissolving view that glimmers and glows like an opal, or like the mirage of a misty sea. I was in California a year ago, in April time. I found the month that poets love in full splendor, like a queen who never doffs her crown. Violets, roses, lilacs and carnations came all together in a riotous rush. One did not have to woo the season; it was already won. Like a matron crowned with the mid-splendor of her years, the earth received the homage that is due achievement. Nobody caught the sound of the first robin on a rainy morning and heralded it with a shout; the first robin, like the first principle in creation, never existed, for the reason that he was always there. There were no foretellings of green along the watercourses; no prophetic thrills of violets in the air; no uplifting of the hypatica's downy head above the lattice of fuzzy leaves; everything was right where you discovered it, and had been all the year round. Without beginning and without end, spring exists forever, like a picture bound within a book, in the lovely land of the Gringos. But walk out some April morning in the suburbs that surround Chicago. Catch the tonic of the air, like wine ever so delicately chilled with ice. View the lake, like a gentian flower fringed with a horizon fine as silk. Scrape away the leaves and hail the valiant Robin Hood in his suit of green, leading his legion upward to the sun. Without the sound of a footfall or the gleam of a lance, they come to take possession of the earth. Woo the violet to turn her dewy eye upon you, and listen to the minstrel in the tower, where the winds are harping to the new buds. Mark the maple twigs, like silhouettes cut in coral, and the sheath of the wood lily, like a ribbon half unrolled. Rejoice in the flash of the blue bird's wing as it startles the still air, and then say to me, if you dare, that you prefer any other climate to this one that belts the zone of these northern lakes.

Thank the Lord, all ye who can call yourselves healthy. The day has gone by for physically delicate women. This age demands Hebes and young Venuses with ample waists and veritable muscles. Specked fruit and specked people go in the same category in the popular taste. To the question, "How are you to-day?" I for one, always feel like replying in the words of an old Irish servant we once had (God rest her faithful soul wherever it be this windy day!), "First-rate, glory be to God!" It is such a grand thing to be well and strong, to feel that your soul is riding on its way to glory in a chariot, and not in a broken-down old mud-cart. Talk about happiness! Why, a well beggar has a better time of it than a sick king, any day. If, then, like a bird, your strong wing uplifts you above the countless shafts of pain which that grim old sportsman, Death, is ever aiming at poor humanity, count yourself an ingrate if the song of thanksgiving is not always welling from your heart like the constant song of a bobolink singing for very joy above the clover.

What would be thought of a ship that was launched from its docks with flourish of music and flowing wine, built to sail the roughest and deepest sea, yet manned for an unending cruise along shore? Never leaving harbor for dread of storm. Never swinging out of the land-girt bay because over the bar, the waters were deep and rough. You would say of such a ship that its captain was a coward and the company that built it were fools.

And yet these souls of ours were fashioned for bottomless soundings. There is no created thing that draws as deep as the soul of man; our life lies straight across the ocean and not along shore, but we are afraid to venture; we hang upon the coast and explore shallow lagoons or swing at anchor in idle bays. Some of us strike the keel into riches and cruise about therein, like men-of-war in a narrow river. Some of us are contented all our days to ride at anchor in the becalmed waters of selfish ease. There are guns at every port-hole of the ship we sail, but we use them for pegs to hang clothes upon, or pigeon-holes to stack full of idle hours. We shall never smell powder, although the magazine is stocked with holy wrath wherewith to fight the devil and his deeds. When I see a man strolling along at his ease, while under his very nose some brute is maltreating a horse, or some coward venting his ignoble wrath upon a creature more helpless than he, whether it be a child or a dog, I involuntarily think of a double-decked whaler content to fish for minnows. Their uselessness in the world is more apparent than the uselessness of a Cunarder in a park pond.

What did God give you muscle and girth and brain for, if not to launch you on the high seas? Up and away with you then into the deep soundings where you belong, oh, belittled soul! Find the work to do for which you were fitted and do it, or else run yourself on the first convenient snag and founder.

Some great writer has said that we ought to begin life as at the source of a river, growing deeper every league to the sea, whereas, in fact, thousands enter the river at its mouth, and sail inland, finding less and less water every day, until in old age they lie shrunk and gasping upon dry ground.

But there are more who do not sail at all than there are of those who make the mistake of sailing up stream. There are the women who devote their lives to the petty business of pleasing worthless men. What progress do they make even inland? With sails set and brassy stanchions polished to the similitude of gold, they hover a lifetime chained to a dock and decay of their own uselessness at last, like keels that are mud-slugged. It is not the most profitable thing in the world to please. Suppose it shall please the inmates of a bedlam-house to see you set fire to your clothing and burn to death, or break your bones one by one upon a rack, or otherwise destroy your bodily parts that the poor lunatics might be entertained. Would it pay to be pleasing to such an audience at such a sacrifice? But the destruction of the loveliest body in the world is nothing compared to the demoralization of soul that takes place when women subvert everything lofty and noble within their nature to win the transient regard of a few worthless men of the world. They learn to smoke cigarettes because such men profess to like to see a pretty woman affect the toughness of a rowdy. They drink in public places and barter their honor all too often for handsome clothes in which to make a vain parade, all to please some heathen man, who in reality counts them a great way inferior to the value of a good horse. The right sort of a sweetheart, my dear, never desires to bring a woman down to his own level. He prefers to put her on a pedestal and say his prayers to her. Never think that you are winning an admiration that counts for much if you have to abate one whit of your womanhood to win it. Every time I see a woman drinking in a public resort, making herself conspicuous by loud talk and louder laughter, I think of some fair ship that should be making for the eternal city, with all its snow-white canvas set, rotting at its docks, or cruising, arm's length from a barren land. We were put into this world with a clean way bill for another port than this. Across the ocean of life our way lies, straight to the harbor of the city of gold. We are freighted with a consignment from quarter-deck to keel which is bound to be delivered sooner or later at the great master's wharf. Let us be alert, then, to recognize the seriousness of our own destinies and content ourselves no longer with shallow soundings. Spread the sails, weigh the anchor and point the prow for the country that lies the other side a deep and restless sea. Sooner or later the voyage must be made; let us make it, then, while the timber is stanch and the rudder true. With a resolute will at the wheel, and the great God himself to furnish the chart, our ship shall weather the wildest gale and find entrance at last to the harbor of peace.

When you look at a picture and find it good or bad, as the case may be, whom do you praise or blame—the owner of the picture or the artist who painted it? When you hear a strain of music and are either lifted to heaven or cast into the other place by its harmonies or its discord, whom do you thank or curse for the benefaction or the infliction, whichever it may have proved to be—the man who wrote the score or the music dealer who sold it? You go to a restaurant and order spring chicken which turns out to be the primeval fowl. Who is to blame—the waiter who serves it or the business man of the concern who does the marketing? And so when you encounter the bad boy, whom do you hold responsible for his badness—the boy himself or the mother who trained him? I declare, as I look about me from day to day and see the men and women who play so poor a part in life, it is not the poverty of their performance that astonishes me so much as the fact that it is as good as it is.

I did think I would keep out of the controversy on the low-neck dress question. But there is just one thing I want to say. Did you ever know a sweet young girl yet, one who was rightly trained and modestly brought up, who took to decollete dresses naturally? Is not the first wearing of one a trial, and a special ordeal? It is after the bloom is off the peach that a young woman is willing to show her pretty shoulders and neck to the crowd; and who cares much for a rubbed plum or a brushed peach? I cannot imagine a sweet, wholesome-hearted woman, be she young or old, divesting herself of half her clothes and thrusting herself upon the notice of ribald men. I can sooner imagine a rose tree bearing frog. The conjunction is not possible. The cheek that will blush at the story of repentant shame, that will flame with indignant protest when the skirts of a Magdalene brush too near, yet deepens not its rose at thought of uncovering neck and bust in a crowded theater or public reception is not the cheek of modest and natural womanhood. It is not necessary to be a prude or a skinny old harridan either, to inveigh against the custom. I know full well how contemptible the affectations and hypocrisies of life are. Half that is yielded to evil was meant for good. The high chancellor of Hades has put his seal on much that was originally invoiced for the Lord's own people. But there are some things so palpably shameless that to argue about them is like trying to prove by demonstration that a crow is white. It needs no argument.

THE VETERANS.

Once upon a time it came to pass that a woman, being weary with much running to and fro, fell asleep and dreamed a dream.

And in her dream she beheld a mighty host, more than man could number. And of that host, all were women, and spake with varying tongues.

And they bent the body, and sitting on hard benches wailed mightily, so that the air was full of the sound of lamentation, like a garden that wooeth many bees.

And the woman who dreamed, being tender of heart and disposed kindly toward the suffering ones, lifted up her voice saying:

"Why bendest thou the body, oh, daughters of despair, and why art thine eyelids red with tears?

"Yea, why rockest thou like boats that find no anchor, and like poplars which the north wind smiteth?"

And one from among the host greater than man could number made answer, saying:

"Wouldst know who we are, and why we spend our days like a weaver's shuttle that flitteth to and fro in a web of tears?

"Behold we are the faithless and unregenerate handmaids who have served thee, and women like unto thee, bringing desolation unto thy larders, and gray hairs among the braids with which nature hath crowned thee.

"Yea, verily, by reason of our misdemeanors lift we the voice of lamentation in a land that knoweth not comfort."

Now, the woman who dreamed, being full of amazement, replied anon, and these were the words that fell from her lips:

"Sayest thou so? And dwellest thou and thy sisters in Hades by reason of the evil thou hast wrought?"

"Nay, not forever," replied she who had spoken. "We remain but for a season, that our remorse may cleanse our record before we go hence to sit with the blessed ones in glory.

"Not from everlasting unto everlasting is the duration of the penalty we pay for what we have done unto thee, else were there no peace between the stars by reason of our torment and our tears."

And the woman who dreamed beheld many whose fame yet lingered within the shadows of her home.

There was Ann, the fumble-witted, who piled the backyard high with broken china, yet stayed not her hand when rebuked therefor.

There was Sarah, the high-headed, who refused to clean the paint because she had dwelt long in the tents of such as hired the housecleaning done by other hands, that the labors of the handmaid might be few;

Yea, verily, with such as believed that Sarah and her ilk might have time wherein to be merry rather than toil.

There was Karen, the Swede, who wrapped the bread in her petticoat and refused to be convinced of the error of her ways.

There was Jane, the Erinite, who broke the pump, and Caroline, the Teuton, who combed her locks with the comb of the woman who dreamed.

There was Adaline, the hoosier, who failed to answer the summons of the stranger who knocked at the gates unless she were in full dress and carried a perfumed handkerchief.

There was Louise, who smote the youngest born of the household because he prattled of her dealings with the frequent cousin who called often and sought to deplete the larder.

There was the girl who desired her evenings out and never came home before cock crow.

There was the girl who threw up her place in the family of the woman who dreamed because she was asked to hurry her ways.

There was the girl who wore the hose of her mistress, and took it as an affront when asked to desist.

There was the girl who swore when the chariot of the sometime guest drew nigh, and likewise the girl who refused to remain over night in a dwelling where she was summoned to serve by means of a call bell.

There was the girl who found it too lonesome in the country and left the garments in the washtub that she might hie her to the great city, the social center of which she was the joy and the pride.

There was the girl who was made mad by means of the request that she wash her hands before breakfast.

There was the girl who entertained her callers in the drawing-room while the family was afar off, sojourning in the hills or by the waves of the sea;

Yea, who thought it no evil to bring forth the flesh-pot and the brandied comfit, that the heart of the district policeman might leap thereat, as the young buck leapeth at sight of the water courses.

There was also the girl who wasted, and the girl who stole; the girl who never tried, and the girl who never cared.

And seeing the multitude the spirit of the woman who dreamed arose within her and she asked of a certain veiled one who seemed to be in charge:

"Tell me, O shrouded one, is there never to be any diminution in the throng that cometh to take their abode in these halls of penitential regret?"

And the spirit in charge made answer, saying:

"No, nor never shall be while fools live and folly thrives.

"It is by reason of the babbling of busy-bodies that havoc has overtaken the land of thy forefathers.

"There is honor in faithful service, and an uncorruptible crown awaiteth the forehead of her who serveth well.

"It is no disgrace to the comely daughters of men who toil and are put to that they bring in the wherewithal to fill the mouths of the children who call them father—

"It is no disgrace, I say unto you, if such maidens take unto themselves the position of servants in the family of him who prospereth,

"Remembering that one who lived long since and has slept these many years in the tomb of his fathers, spake truly when he uttered these words, albeit framed in rhyme:

"Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honor lies."

And it came to pass that the woman who dreamed took comfort to herself by reason of her dream.

And she arose from slumber like a strong man who desireth to run a race.

And buckling on more tightly the armor wherein she moved, yea, even with a free hand buttoning the boot and drawing the string, she cogitated unto herself, and these were the words of her cogitation:

"Behold, I will learn a new wisdom that I may be unto my handmaids a friend rather than a taskmistress, that in so doing I may win unto my household the damsel who hath intelligence. And my treatment of her shall be such that many wise ones who call that damsel friend shall decide to do even as she hath done and choose domestic service with a woman who is kind even to the showing of interest in her handmaid's affairs, rather than linger in bondage with the shop girl and her who rattles the tinkling keys of the typewriter machine.

"So doing, my days shall increase mightily in the land, as also the days of her who cometh after me."

Women are either the noblest creation of God or the meanest. A good woman is little less than an angel; a bad woman is considerably more than a devil. And by bad women I do not mean women who drink, or steal, or frequent brothels. The chief weapon of a bad woman is her tongue. With a lie she can do more deadly work than the fellow in the bible did with the jawbone of an ass. Untruth is the fundamental strata of all evil in a bad woman's nature, and with it she is more to be dreaded than many men with revolvers. There is absolutely no protection from a lie. The courts cannot protect from its venom, and to kill a defamer and a falsifier is not yet adjudged as legalized slaughter.

There is one awfully homely woman in Chicago. I met her the other day over in Blank's art gallery. Our acquaintance was brief but sensational. I looked at her, tucked her into my handbag and wept. She didn't seem to mind it, and when, a few hours later, in the seclusion of my chamber, I took her out of the bag and looked at her again, she was more hideous than before.

"You horrible creature!" said I. "If you look like me, better that the uttermost depths of the sea had me."

"But I do look like you," said she, and her voice was weak and low by reason of prolonged exposure to the sun and air, "and Mr. Blank says I will finish up very nicely."

"Do you mean to tell me," I asked, "that my nose is as big as yours?"

"Of course it is," said she; "pictures cannot lie. But comfort yourself with the assurance that a large nose is always an indication of intelligence."

"Intelligence be blessed!" said I, for I was getting excited; "intelligence without beauty is like bread without butter, or a peacock without a tail! If I possess such a nose as yours, madam, I shall take to tract-distributing, galoshes and a cotton umbrella, and forget that I was ever human."

"You talk wildly, as all the rest of them do," said my thin companion. "Listen, for my time on earth is short, I am rapidly fading away, and what I say must be said briefly. If you look about you you will see that there exists, more or less hidden in every breast, the belief of one's own beauty. The mirror, although a faithful friend, can never quite disabuse the mind of that belief, and when the honest camera holds up the actual presentation of one's self as an incontrovertible fact, the disappointment is keen and hard to bear."

"All that may be true," said I, "but not all your assertions can ever make me believe that that dusky mass of hair, brushed back so wildly from those beetling brows, is like my own. You know that mine is soft and brown, and yours looks like the bristles of an enraged stove brush."

"That's the way they all talk," responded the dissolving view, "but you do not stop to consider that under the artist's pencil the shadows will all be toned and softened. And let me say right here, that that 'beetling brow' is a sign of rare intelligence, much more to be desired than the lower and more——"

"Stop, right there!" I interrupted. "It is not necessary to have a brow like a plate-glass show-window, or like an overhanging cliff, or like a granite paving-stone, to denote intelligence! No, my friend, do not try to lift this shadow from my soul. That mouth that looks like a dark biscuit, that nose that looks like a promontory overhanging an unseen sea, that hair that looks like the ruff of an excited chicken, that brow that looks like a skating-rink, all make me sad. I shall never have my picture taken again. If I look like that it is time I died. In the round of an eventful life I may forget that I even saw you, but until I do I am a tired woman. My mirror may assuage my sorrow, for that either lies or catches me from a different point of view. Vanish then, oh, yellow shade of an unhappy reality. Back to oblivion with you, and heaven grant I never look upon your like again!" So saying, I calmly held the poor but hideous creature in the flame of a gas-jet and smilingly cremated her.

A fairer day than last Sunday was never cradled to rest behind the curtains of night. It began with a flute obligato of sunrise, orbed itself into a full orchestra wherein color took the part of first and second violins, and declined at last into the hush of sunset like the mellow notes of a cello under old Paul Schessling's master touch. Such days visit the earth rarely. They are advance sheets of a story that is going to be told in heaven; preludes to a song that we shall hear in its perfection only when we have got through with the clattering discords of time. Thank God for all such days. They do us more good than we know. The sight of the woods, adorned as only queens are adorned for the court of the king, the sound of falling leaves and lonely bird songs, of hidden lutes, of unseen brooks, tremulous and sweet and low under the russet shadows, uplift our souls and help us to forget, for the time being at least, how tired we are, how worn with the fret of sordid toil and how tormented and misjudged and calumniated we are by those who fain would do us harm. I think if I had time to do some of the things I want to do the first consummation of that happy time would be to build me a little cabin in the woods, where, in utter loneliness, I could forget how full the world is growing to be of folks and how prone they are to do each other harm and hinder rather than help each other on the stony way to heaven.

The other evening, while sitting in the gallery of the Auditorium and looking over the balcony edge at the crowd waiting for the curtain to rise, a strange thought came to my mind. How could hell be more quickly created than by the unmasking of such a crowd as this? Suddenly remove from humanity all power of self-control and conventional dissimulation; force men and women to be natural, and act out every evil impulse latent in their souls, and could Dante himself portray a blacker Inferno? The man whose heart is full of murderous hatred—tear off the mask that hides his perturbed soul, and what a demon would look forth! The woman behind whose amiable seeming lurks malicious envy and snarling temper and crafty deceit—what a pandemonium would ensue when such passion broke forth like straining dogs from the leash! The old man with the saintly face and the crown of hoary hair—could an open cage of foul birds send forth a blacker brood than should fly out from his soul when some omnipotent hand unlatched the bars of its prison and let the unclean thoughts go free? The young man with the perfumed breath and the suave and courtly manner—does any storied hell hold captive blacker demons than the cruel selfishness, the impurities and the secret vices that walk to and fro in his soul like tigers behind their bars? The young girl with face like a rose and the form of a Juno—could anything that hades holds strike greater dismay to the hearts of men than the unmasking of her hidden thoughts? Ah, when the hour strikes for unmasking time in life's parade ball, when death steps forth and with cool, relentless touch unties the knot that holds the silken thing in place that has hidden our true selves from our beautiful seeming, we shall find no more fiery hell awaiting us than that we have carried so long in our hearts.

I would not like to be regarded as a pessimist from the writing of such a paragraph as the above. Sometimes I seek to turn my thoughts upon the crowd and unmask the angel as well as the demon. But I find that the angels, as a general thing, wear no face concealers. They go disguised in poor clothes and scant bravery of attire, but the angel within them is like a singing bird rather than like a silent and chained beast. It reveals itself in songs, like a caged lark. It looks from out the window of the eyes in loving glances and tender smiles; it manifests itself in sweet and cheerful service, like the sunshine that can neither be hidden nor concealed.

Of all the pleasant things to look upon in this fair earth, I sometimes query which is the best, a little child, a fruit orchard in early June, or a young girl. I think the latter carries the day. Did you ever watch a flock of birds sitting for a moment on the mossy gable of a sloping roof? How they flutter and fuss and chirp; how they preen their delicate feathers and get all mixed up with the sunshine and the shadow, until which is bird and which is sunbeam one can scarcely tell. There is a flock of girls with whom I ride every morning, and they make me think of birds and sunbeams. They are so bewitching with their changeful moods and graces that I sit and watch them as one listens to the twitter of swallows. They sweeten up life, these girls, as sugar sweetens dough; they fill it with music as sleigh bells fill a winter night. God bless the girls, the bonnie, sweet and winsome girls, and may womanhood be for them but as the "swell of some sweet time," morning gliding into noon, May merging into June.

There are so many things in this world to be tired of! The poor little persecuted boy in pinafores, sent to school to get him out of the way, doomed to dangle his plump legs all day long from a hard bench, rubbing his grimy knuckles into his sleepy blue eyes and wondering if eternity can last any longer than a public school session, grows no more tired of watching the flies on the ceiling and the shadows on the wall than some folks get of life. Let me mention a few of the things I, for one, am horribly tired of, and see if before my bead is half strung you do not look up from the strand and cry, "Amber, I am with you!"

My dear, I am tired to-day of civilization and all modern improvements. I am tired of the speaking tube within my chamber where the new girl and myself wage daily our battle of the new Babel. She speaks Volapuk, and I do not, consequently she takes my demand for coal as an insult or an encouraging remark, just as the mood may be upon her, and pays no more attention to my request for drinking water than the unweaned child pays to the sighing wind. I am tired of sewer gas and what the scientists call "bacteria" and "germs." I am tired of going about with frescoed tonsils, the result of the three. I am tired of gargling my own throat and the throats of my helpless babes, and the throat of the casual visitor within my gates, with diluted phenic acid to ward off deadly disease. I am tired of nosing drains and buying copperas and hounding the latent plumber that he adjust the water-pipes. I am tired of boiling the cistern water and waiting for it to cool. I am tired of skipping from Dan to Beersheba daily for men to remove the tin-cans, the ashes and the unsightly rubbish that have emerged from long retirement underneath the snow. I am tired of imploring the small boy to keep his mother's chickens off my porch. I am tired of digging graves upon the common wherein to bury useless potato-parings, the unsightly cheese-rind, and the shattered egg-shell. I am tired of being told that my neighbor's calf and my neighbor's pet cat, and my neighbor's blooded stock of poultry are dying because of the copperas I scatter broadcast about the mouth of drains. I am tired of being a martyr to hygiene and a monomaniac on the subject of sanitary science. I am tired of sharpening lead pencils. I am tired of speaking pleasantly when I want to be cross. I am tired of the ceaseless grind of life, which like the upper and nether mill-stones, wears the heart to powder and the spirit to dust. I am tired of being told that the mark on my left ear is a spot of soil, and of being implored in thrilling whispers to wipe it away. I am tired of last year's seed-pods in spring gardens and of all two-legged donkeys. I am tired of awaiting a change in the methods of doing business around at the postoffice, and for the dawn of that blessed day when I shall be permitted to dance upon the grave of the aged being who peddles stamps at the retail window. I am tired of hosts of things besides, but have no time to enumerate them all to-day.

I have tested the rainy weather dress reform. It was pouring when I started from my humble home in the morning, and in spite of the prayers of the Young Person and the sobs of the "Martyr," I arrayed myself in my new, highly sensible and demoniacally ugly suit and weathered the elements. Within two hours it stopped raining; the sun came out and the streets filled with festively attired men and women, and where was I? Stranded on a clear day in garments befitting a castaway! My flannel dress, short skirts and top-boots wasted on fair weather. "In the name of heaven," exclaimed a friend, as I bore down upon him beneath a cloudless sky, "what have you got on?" "Go home! for the love of humanity, go home!" said another. And what was I to do? Await another storm like a crab in its shell, or venture forth and become the byword of an overwrought populace, the scorn of old men and matrons? Next time I start out in a reform dress I will take along the robes of civilization in a grip-sack.

There is something that is getting to be awfully scarce in this world. Shall I tell you what it is? It is girls. That is what is missing out of the sentient, breathing, living world just now. We have lots of young ladies and lots of society misses, but the sweet, old-fashioned girls of ever so long ago are vanished with the poke bonnets and the cinnamon cookies. Let me enumerate a few of the kinds of girls that are wanted. In the first place we want home girls—girls who are mothers' right hand; girls who can cuddle the little ones next best to mamma, and smooth out the tangles in the domestic skein when things get twisted; girls whom father takes comfort in for something better than beauty, and the big brothers are proud of for something that outranks the ability to dance or shine in society. Next, we want girls of sense—girls who have a standard of their own regardless of conventionalities, and are independent enough to live up to it; girls who simply won't wear a trailing dress on the street to gather up microbes and all sorts of defilement; girls who won't wear a high hat to the theater, or lacerate their feet and endanger their health with high heels and corsets; girls who will wear what is pretty and becoming and snap their fingers at the dictates of fashion when fashion is horrid and silly. And we want good girls—girls who are sweet, right straight out from the heart to the lips; innocent and pure and simple girls with less knowledge of sin and duplicity and evil-doing at twenty than the pert little school girl at ten has all too often; girls who say their prayers and read their Bibles and love God and keep his commandments. (We want these girls "awful bad!") And we want careful girls and prudent girls, who think enough of the generous father who toils to maintain them in comfort, and of the gentle mother who denies herself much that they may have so many pretty things, to count the cost and draw the line between the essentials and the non-essentials; girls who strive to save and not to spend; girls who are unselfish and eager to be a joy and a comfort in the home rather than an expensive and a useless burden. We want girls with hearts—girls who are full of tenderness and sympathy, with tears that flow for other people's ills, and smiles that light outward their own beautiful thoughts. We have lots of clever girls, and brilliant girls, and witty girls. Give us a consignment of jolly girls, warm-hearted and impulsive girls; kind and entertaining to their own folks, and with little desire to shine in the garish world. With a few such girls scattered around life would freshen up for all of us, as the weather does under the spell of summer showers. Speed the day when this sort of girls fill the world once more, overrunning the spaces where God puts them as climbing roses do when they break through the trellis to glimmer and glint above the common highway, a blessing and a boon to all who pass them by.

Is there any flower that grows that can compare with the pansy for color and richness? Others appeal more closely to the heart with fragrance that like a sweet and pure soul more than compensates for lack of exterior beauty, but in all the gorgeous category none rank this velvet flower that lies just now upon my window-sill. There is the purple of Queen Sheba mantled in its soft and shiny texture; the gold of Ophir was not more sumptuous; the light that breaks at dawn across a reef of dove-gray clouds was never more delicate than the violet heart of this lovely blossom. When I want to think of the ideal court of kings, of a royal meeting-place for blameless scions and unsullied princes of the blood, I do not think of old-world palaces and coronation halls—I think rather of a pansy bed in June in full and perfect bloom, a soft wind just bending bright heads crowned with crowns that never yet were pressed on aching brows, and fluttering mantles of more than royal splendor that never yet were wrapped above a corrupt and breaking heart.

MY ROSE AND MY CHILD.

It was not so very long ago that I chanced to overhear a lively young woman make this remark about her mother:

"Oh, mamma is nearly always taken for my sister. She never seems like anything more than one of my girl friends."

Poor child, thought I, your state is only another phase of orphanhood, for the young life that has no counsel of motherhood is bereft indeed.

No girlish comradeship, however juvenile and delightful it may be, can possibly take the place of protecting, counseling, mother-love. Not but what the sweetest relationship possible exists where the mother keeps her heart young and in sympathy with her daughter, but there is something else requisite to mother-love.

The best mothers are those who have roomy laps where the big girls love to sit while they whisper the confidences they never could reveal to sister-mothers. They have all-enfolding arms, these right kind of mothers, wherein they gather the tired girl, yes, and the tired boys, too, and rock them to rest and peace, long after their "feet touch the floor."

They used to tell me I must never sit on anybody's lap after my feet reached the carpet, but, thank God, that rule never applied to my mother.

You are never afraid of disturbing mother's "beauty sleep" when you come in late at night if she is of the good reliable sort, as far removed from frisky girl companionship as the moon is from its reflection.

No matter how tardy your home-faring may be she is always up with a lunch and a warm fire in winter or a glass of something cool and fresh in summer to soothe your overexcited nerves, a thing she cannot do if she is forever dancing about with you in your youthful larks. She has a way of calming your tempers with a joke and a caress, of which the sister-mother never dreams. She has also a way of smoothing your hair, which your girl comrade never caught the trick of, for the reason that she is kept too busy curling her own love-locks. When your head aches, the right sort of mother knows just how to pet you to sleep and leave you in a darkened room with a rose on your pillow to greet your waking eyes; if you have a bad cold she knows the cuddly way to coax you to take bitter medicine. She bathes your feet and dries them on nice warm towels. She keeps the younger children from guying you, because your nose is red; in short, she does a thousand nice things of which the sister-mother has no knack whatever.

When great trouble falls to your share, when sharp betrayal pierces your heart, and trusted affection turns to ashes in your hold of what good is the juvenile mother with her girlish tremors and tears? You want somebody next in tenderness to God, to hold you fast and tight. You want somebody who has suffered and grown strong, to soothe your breaking heart. Somebody who can be silent and brave and steady until your fever is passed. The shipwrecked sailor wants a rope rather than a feint of throwing one; the shipwrecked soul wants a heart like rock, rather than a handclasp and a promise. The sister-mother may be all right to go to parties with, but you want something stronger and more steadfast to lean upon in time of perplexity. You want a mother in all the holy significance of the name. However sweet the tie of sisterhood, it cannot be so blessed as the bond of patient, long-suffering, sanctified motherhood.

Seek to keep yourself in sympathy with your girls, then, mothers, but be content to occupy a generation removed from the path they tread. Don't make up in emulation of their beauty; don't seek to win away their beaus and outdress them. Don't go decollete to parties where your girls should be the reigning belles; don't aim to vie with them in fascination or in charm. Be guider and ready counselor, but don't try to be rival. If God has given you a girl child, and that child has grown to womanhood, accept the condition of things and give over being a society belle yourself, abdicating your place for the infinitely sweeter one of mother. You cannot be the right sort of mother and ignore your duty to your child. That duty lies in giving her her rightful place in the line of march from which you are crowded out. Let her carry the banner while you fall back a little. Watch over her, make things easy for her, smooth the little difficulties out of her way, be on hand when she comes home tired and excited to soothe her to rest and calm; counsel her how to pick her way through the snares that are laid for youth and beauty, be a refuge where she can run when the rainy weather sets in, which is sure to fall in the summer time of youth, somewhere and somehow. In short, be just as sympathetic and chummy and sociable as possible, but at the same time make your daughter feel that you are older and stronger and wiser than she, by reason of your motherhood, and that next to God you stand ready to shield her, to guide her, to receive her in time of trouble, to forgive her if she needs forgiveness, and to shrive her if she needs confessing. Teach her that your love can never fail, that your heart is a rock and a fortress and a shield for her to seek in all life's bewilderment, far surer and more steadfast than any other love beneath the stars can ever yield.

When I think of all it means to be a mother I tremble to think how far short of the standard the best of us fall. I would rather have it said of me when I die, "She was a good mother," than that men should get together and exploit my deeds as poet, reformer, artist or story-teller. I would rather feel the dewfall of a child's loving tear upon my face than wear a laureate's crown.

Don't be critical, or censorious, or reserved with your daughters; don't hold them far off and cultivate respect and fear rather than love; don't be self-assertive and cause them to feel their dependence upon you in an unpleasant way; don't be too eager to keep them in the background in little things relating to the home, such as giving them no voice in the arrangement of the room and the domestic regulations. Indeed, I have known more attrition caused in the home circle from this last mentioned point of difference between mother and daughters than almost any other. I know a family, presided over by a good, unselfish woman, who, as a mother, is the most complete failure I ever ran across. Her daughter is of mature age and pronounced opinions, but she is kept in the background and her life rendered most unhappy by the dominant will of the mother whose old-fashioned views as to running the house are directly opposed to more modern customs. The two wrangle continually over the establishment of a dinner hour, the disposal of a light, the drapery of a window, the adjustment of furniture, until there is less harmony under the roof than there is music in a hurdy-gurdy. How much better it would be if that mother would yield a little to the wishes of her daughter; give the latter a chance to display her own taste and carry out her inclination. I don't believe in the mothers and fathers of grown-up daughters always insisting upon the occupancy of the front seats and the leadership of the orchestra.

The mother who can preserve the respect of her children without chilling their love; who can be one with them, and yet apart, in the sense of guiding, aiding and consoling, who can hold their confidence while she maintains the superiority of her wisdom, is the happy and successful mother. The title is a sacred one, made by the chrism of pain and suffering, sanctified by the humanity of Christ and set apart as one of the three of earth's tenderest utterances: "Mother, home and heaven."

Now that the days draw nigh for the return of the birds to our northern woods and dales it is borne in upon me to hold a little "love feast" with the boys. You know what a love feast is, if there was ever a Methodist in your family. It is a good, cozy talk among the brethren and sisters in regard to the best way of putting down the devil, and giving the good angels a chance. And if there was ever need of downing the devil it is in the particular instance of a boy's inhumanity to birds and beasts. I have expressed myself as to horses, and to-day I shall talk about birds. On these spring mornings, when the world is enveloped in a golden halo, from out of which, like angel voices from the quiet depths of heaven, the birds are singing their impromptu of praise, imagine a lot of half-grown men and brutal boys going forth with guns and sling-shots to break up the concert and murder the choristers. I would as soon turn a lot of sharp-shooters into a cathedral at early mass to bring down the surpliced boys and the chanting novices. I tell you, O race of good-for-nothing fathers and mothers, whom God holds directly responsible for the bad boys who desecrate this beautiful world, you are no more fit for the training of immortal souls than a hawk is fitted to teach music to a thrush. You ought to have had a bear-skin and been the trainer of cubs. That your boys develop into brutes and go to state's prison, and perhaps die at the end of a rope eventually, is nobody's fault but your own. If you chance to own a horse or a dog you show some care in its training, but God gives you a boy and you let him run wild. There is no more reason why a boy should be cruel than that a properly-broken colt should kick. The tendency may have been born with him, but good training eliminates it to a great extent, if not entirely. When I was a woman and lived at home, in the happy days before I entered the arena to fight for bread and butter, to say nothing of shoe leather and fuel, I used to gather the village boys about me every spring and try to sow the good seeds of tenderness with one hand, while carefully eliminating the tares with the other. I offered prizes for the best record at the end of the summer. I formed classes, the membership of which pledged themselves, to a boy, to abstain from sling-shots, to cultivate the birds' nests and to withhold their hands from the commission of a single deed of cruelty. Many is the gallon of ice-cream I have paid for to keep those youngsters in the narrow path of rectitude, and many is the time that I have patrolled the woods with my boy comrades, keeping watch over the family of a blue-bird or a robin, when the alarm went forth that some unregenerate boy was on the rampage. All the boys whom I could get to join the club I was sure of, for I know the way to a boy's heart, if I can only get the chance at him. For what other purpose did nature turn me out a born cook? And why did she make me a master hand at doughnuts and turnover pies? I have a large and undying faith in the boys, if you will only start them right. The first thing a boy needs is a good mother. He can get along without a father—and I was going to say without a God—for the first few years of his life, but he needs a mother. Not a mere nurse maid to look after his clothes and see that he has plenty to eat at the right intervals, but a good, sweet, companionable mother, with a good, soft breast for him to cry on and two arms to hug him with. He needs a mother who can talk with him and answer his questions, who is not stern and severe, but responsive and get-at-able. With such a mother our boys will be gentle and our birds will be safe.

Try to think, boys, what a world this would be without any robins, or larks, or thrushes; without any songs in the apple trees getting all tangled up with the sunshine and the blossoms; without any canaries to sing in the window, or any meadow larks to whip out their flutes among the clover heads. If you should wake up some morning and experience the ghastly silence of a songless world you would want to hire somebody to thrash you that you ever used a sling-shot. Do you remember the minister down New York way whom they fined for shooting robins? I never wanted to get up on a mountain top so much in all my life and shout glory as I did over that verdict. I have heard of immorality among ministers, and I have heard of hypocrisy and lying and all sorts of offenses against good taste and morals, but I never heard of anything so contemptibly and causelessly mean as for one of God's especial teachers to get up in the morning, put on top boots, cross the river in the sunshine and dew of early morning, lift his gun, take deliberate aim and bring down a robin. If I was the Lord I would never forgive it. Men are not to blame sometimes when their blood gets too warm and they do impetuous things, but to deliberately descend to the ignominy of shooting a robin and calling it sport is to sink too low for justification.

Whatever else you be, boys, be brave. If you must sail in and fight, if your superfluous zeal is too much for you, go out in the field and square off at a bull. There is some glory in whipping anything bigger and stronger than yourself, but to show fight to a bird is a little too much like sneaking out and tripping up a cripple in the dark. I am going to write down a verse for you to write in your copy books this very day, and then good-night to you:

"The bravest are the tenderest;
The loving are the daring."

Isn't it heavenly to see the primrose around again? And the daffodils? And the hyacinths? Last night I went home with a rose in my button which cost me just five cents. At that rate, by careful abstaining from anything more expensive than a ten-cent lunch, one can go on wearing roses until next November. The robins have come back, too, and this morning a couple of them awoke me with their "Cheer-up" song. The indications are that they are prospecting for spring housekeeping. If the cat kills them I shall kill the cat. I shall close my eyes and do the deed in the name of mercy, for I detest cats, both two-legged and four-legged, and I love robins both feathered and human.

I wonder why it is that the average woman can walk and talk, breathe and laugh, suffer and cry, and finally die and be buried, and all the way through make such a botch of her life! Why is it that we fall in love, so many of us, just on the verge of a life that opens like a summer's day, and change that life thereby, as a June morning is changed when great clouds rush into the sky and obscure the sun? Why are girls so proud to parade an engagement ring upon their finger, when the diamond is too often the danger-light thrown out above the breakers? Now and then, about as rarely as one picks up a ruby on the highway, or finds an enchanted swan circling over the duck pond, there is a happy marriage—at least such is the popular inference—as to the absolute certainty of the statement, ask the skeleton closet. I have lived a varied sort of life. I have wandered to and fro over the earth to some extent; I have known a great many people, and have found happiness in many ways, but looking back over all the path to-night and turning my little bull's-eye lantern of experience up to the present moment, I can neither remember nor record a dozen truly happy marriages. What constitutes happiness? Peace. What brings peace? Content. Who is contented? Not you and not I. What man or woman of all whom we know can we bring out into the full light of day and say of them, "Behold the contented one! The restful one! The happy pair!" You, my dear, have attained the ambition of your youthful dreams. You have married a man who dresses you splendidly, who gives you diamonds and never murmurs when the bills come in. But are you happy? Do you never walk to and fro with the restless countess in the sad old ballad, dreaming of "Alan Percy?" Do you never, when all is still, go down into that cemetery where life's "might have beens" lie buried in graves kept green forever with your tears, and walk and dream alone? And you, my friend, have married the man of your choice. Is there nothing in the handsome exterior that palls a bit now and then when you find how sordid and meager the soul is behind the smile you used to think so charming? Do you never find scorn creeping into your heart in place of adoration when you mark the unpaid bills and the shiftless endeavor that strew his idle way? And you, sir, have a merry and a pretty wife and the world calls you a lucky fellow. How many know of the sharp tongue that underlies her laughter and the feather-filled head that never yet has donated an earnest thought to the domestic economy? And you, my good sir, have married a blue stocking in the old acceptance of the term. She can swing off a leader or make a speech on a rostrum at short notice, but how would you like to rise right up here, poor dear, and tell just what comfort lies in being mated to a superior being who busies herself with work which shall be remembered perhaps when the dust on the center table, the holes in your stockings, the discomfort of the larder, and the untidiness of the household are forgotten? And you, my good fellow, have married a woman of "good form." She never does an indiscreet thing. She is "icily faultless" and splendidly stupid. She has the neck of a swan, the arms of a goddess, the foot of a patrician, and the soul of a mouse! The scent of a wayside lilac, perhaps, is sadder than tears to you, old comrade, when you look back across the years and see again the sweet dead face of one you trifled with, or whom you deserted for this woman with heart and body of snow, a purse filled with gold and a brain filled with feathers.

There is entire hopelessness to many women in the blank monotony of life after youth is past. An emotional nature, mercurial and restless, full of aspirations and longings, as the trees this perfect month are full of blossoms, and, like the trees, bearing a thousand blooms to one fruition, finds the destiny prepared for it almost unendurable, and often longs for death that shall end all. Because poverty grinds and hosts of menial duties accumulate, because the walls of an unquiet home, made unlovely perhaps by skeletons that no skill can quite conceal, close like a dungeon upon hope and all the sweet promises of youth, bright natures grow morose and bitter, warm hearts chill into apathy and gloom, and sunny brows darken under the cloud of almost perpetual irritability and discontent. It is useless to preach sermons to such cases—as useless as to read a book of etiquette in a prison ward or comfort the victims of a railroad disaster with a treatise upon reform in the management of roads. The worn, the wasted, the erring, and the cruelly maimed lie thick about us. Our business is to encourage, to love, to bind up, and cheer. God, in His own time, shall lift the discontented head above the power of conspiring cares to vex. It is for us to lend a helping hand down here where the "slough of despond" is deepest. When tides forget to obey the moon, or leaves to answer the will of the wind, then, and not sooner, shall these restless hearts of ours learn to be still, whatsoever destinies confront, or limitations thwart. In looking upon the lives of some women, the mother of six children, for instance, who takes boarders and keeps no help; the widow supporting her little brood by endless drudgeries; the big-hearted woman in whom the frolicsomeness and wit of girlhood die hard amid the sordid miseries of a poverty-stricken life; the sensitive, poetic soul, doomed to uncongenial companionships and the criticisms and ridicule of the unfriendly—I am reminded of the score of eagles I saw lately, chained in a dusty inclosure of Central Park. With clipped wings, and grand, homesick eyes, they sat disconsolate upon their perches, and moped the hours away. Would any sane being have reviled those sorry beings for a lack of spirit? Would not the gentle-hearted spectator have proffered a handful of fresh leaves rather, and turned away in pity that sympathy could do no more?

For these unhappy sisters of mine, the discontented, yearning "Marthas," troubled with many cares, wherever my letter may find them between the great seas, I have a word of comfort in my heart to-day. In the first place, do not think, because you so often fall into irritability and impatient speech, that God despises you as a sinner. He understands, if friend, husband, or neighbor do not. Strive not to yield to fretfulness then, but, when overcome by it, remember always God understands it all. You may be able to see no light in all the shrouded way, no lifting of the shadow, no promise of the dawn; but rest assured, however long the probation, the infinite content of Heaven awaits us very soon, if we strive as much as lies within us to overcome the infirmities of our temper, and keep our faces set towards the shining of His love. I know, dear heart, indeed I do, that to-morrow and to-morrow are just alike to hopeless fancy—full of dish-washing, and drudging, and back-bending toil—that the sparkle and song of life were long ago merged in the humdrum beat of treadmill years; but through just this test is your character building—through just its hard process is shaping the conqueror's crown flashing with splendid light. As the root tarries in the dark mold to burst by-and-by into radiant bloom above it, so your poor life is hidden now to bloom to-morrow. You are not wicked because you sometimes murmur, but try and think so much of what is going to be that you shall forget what is. The Tender Heart above absolves your beaten spirit from willful sin, though you are sometimes swept away on currents of doubt and unfaith; but try and keep your eye fixed upon the headlight of His love, whatever currents drift you away. Remember how human parents deal with their children, and learn a lesson of God's dealings. If my little girl has the ear-ache, or any other tormenting ailment of childhood, do I stand over her and exact songs and smiles? And do you think that when God, for some good reason of his own, lays heavy burdens upon a life, He is going to demand unswerving sweetness of speech or ethereal mildness of temper? When I see one scrubbing who was fitted to adorn the drawing-room, washing dishes who was created an artist or a genius, darning small boys' linsey pants and homespun stockings who was intended by nature to reign the crowned priestess of some high vocation; when I mark the furrows and zigzag footprints that an army of besieging cares have left on the cheek that in girlhood outblushed the wayside rose, or note how the hands that once drew divinest music from obedient keys have twisted and warped in the performance of homely duties, I feel impelled to kiss the faded cheek with a love surpassing a lover's, to fold the poor hands in a reverent grasp, for I tell you, however often she may faint and falter by the way, however "fretty," and worn, and peevish she may become, the woman who perseveres in the performance of uncongenial duties, who struggles through the flatness of monotonous drudgeries, conquering adverse circumstances, poverty, and destiny, by patience, love, and Christian faith, is a heroine fit to rank with martyrs and saints. Remember, I am not talking to women who find the burdens hard to bear and do not bear them; to mere whimperers, who, because the road is full of stones, sit down and refuse to travel; but to the brave, true hearts who "press onward" although no rose blossoms and no bird sings, content to faithfully perform the task of life, hoping that the fullness of time shall read the riddle of incongruous destiny. I have seen the time when household work seemed newly cursed—the very dew of the primal malediction upon it; when to charge upon the dinner dishes, attack the lamps, or descend into the vortex of family patching, seemed to call for greater courage than average human nature possessed. And when I imagine that shrinking carried on through dry years of monotonous experience, the same formulas to be observed, the same distaste to be overcome throughout a lifetime of toil, yet no duty shirked, no obligation set aside, I wonder if Heaven holds a crown too bright for such faithful lives.

The time of the year for violets and also for tramps is drawing near. Did you ever stop and think just what it means to be a tramp? It means no work, no money, no home, no shelter, no friends. Nobody in all the world to care whether you live or die like a dog by the roadside. It means no heaven for such rags to crawl into, no grave to hide them out of sight and no hand stretched out in all the world to give the greeting and the good-by of love. It means nobody in all the world to feel any interest in you and no spot in all the world to call your own, not even the mud wherein your vagrant footprint falls, no prospect ahead, and no link unbroken to bind you to the past. I tell you, when we sit down and figure out just what the term means, it will not be quite so easy next time the wretched tramp calls at our door to set the dog upon him or turn him empty-handed away. Let them work, you say. Look here, my good friend, do you know how absolutely impossible a thing it is getting to be in this overcrowded country for even a willing man to find work? It used to be that "every dog had his day," but the dogs far outnumber the days in free America. I know well educated, competent men who have been out of employment for months and years. I know brave and earnest women, with little children to support, who have worn beaten paths from place to place seeking, not charity, but honest employment, and failed to find it. What chance is there for a ragged tramp when such as these fail? Remember, once in a while, if you can, that the most grizzled and wretched tramp that ever plodded his way to a pauper's grave was once a child and cradled in arms perhaps as fond as those that enfolded you and me. Remember that your mother and his were made sisters by the pangs of maternal pain, and perhaps in the heaven from which the saintly eyes of your mother are watching for you his mother is looking out for him. Perhaps—who knows?—the footfall of the ragged and despised tramp shall gain upon yours and find the gate of deliverance first, in spite of your money and your pride.

THE BROOK.

Did it ever strike you, I wonder, this marvel of our individuality? Alone we are born, alone we live, alone we die, alone we pay the penalty or reap the reward of our evil or well doing. In the troubles that assail us we stand singly, however many councillors may flock to the door of our tent. Not one in all the world, the nearest, the dearest or the best, can bear one pang of life's experience for us, love us as they may. We often hear a mother say: "My child is so headstrong; she will not take my advice; she will go her own way." Of course she will, and she will not, simply because individual tact is the law of all experience. It is not being headstrong, it is merely fulfilling destiny.

In the fight we wage we do not fight by platoons or squads, under a common leader, a thousand at a charge. We enter the lists one by one and fight single handed. We choose our own colors and there is little of pageantry or show. When we fall we fall as travelers disappear who walk across a coast that is honeycombed with quicksand. We vanish, not in crowds like men who are jostled out of life by earthquakes or flooded like rats by tidal waves, but we slowly succumb to the inevitable in solitudes where only the stars watch us and the spaces of a dim, unsounded sea catch the fret of our mortal moan.

I have always thought that I should love to have the world come to an end, with a grand final bang, while I was yet living and sentient on the surface. I would like to be flashed out of being in the conglomerate of a mighty swarm, like the covey of birds a huntsman's rifle brings down or the multitude a Pompeiian doom overtakes. Such dying would be like riding out of an electric-lighted station, by the car full, rather than sneaking a place on the back platform like a tramp. But after all, death would not lose its awful individuality even then. Marshal the whole world, and aim a single bullet at a hundred million souls, with power to still each pulse beat in the same rifle flash of time, yet each man would die alone.

There is one final lesson to be gained through the doleful contemplation of the world's flood-tide of sorrow, and that is the lesson of how to bear our troubles so as to react as little as possible upon those with whom life throws us in daily contact. Because the goblin bee has stung our own souls, shall we seek to share the pain of its stateless sting with all we meet? No more than we should endeavor to carry contagion in our garments or put poison in our neighbor's well. I knew a man once, a gallant, light-hearted soldier, who honored the blue and brass of his country's uniform by wearing it. An awful sorrow suddenly smote his life, like an Indian sortie from an ambush. Wife and children were swept from his arms by a swift disaster and he was left alone. His friends said: "He is a wrecked man! He will never lift his head again!" How did he fulfill this prophecy of woe? He entered the chamber of his darkened home and denied himself to everyone. He neither ate nor slept. He fought by himself a greater battle than call of bugle ever summoned to any field. He mastered his own soul, and emerged from that chamber after a certain number of days a conqueror over his own sorrow. His smile was as ready, his heart as tender, his genial speech as welcome at home and abroad as it had ever been, and only when the goblin bee of memory stung him in the silence of the companionless night did he live over again the experience of his sorrow. None knew when that sting came, or how it tarried; he bore it silently like a soldier and a man. The trifling world called him light of love and easily consoled, but I think he was a grand, unselfish hero, a benefactor rather than a destroyer of mankind.

When we get so that we can hide our sorrow in a smile we attain that attitude that brings us closest to the divine. The man or the woman who goes up and down the ways of the world with a groan on his lips and a weed on his arm is an infliction worse than an out of tune hand organ. If the bee stings, hold still and bear the hurt by yourself as best you may, but don't talk it over with everyone you meet, like an old woman petitioning a recipe for a bad cough and flaunting her physical ailments forever in your face. When you have bright things to talk about and comforting things to say, talk; otherwise hold your peace. The reason, I think, why animals are never wrinkled and drawn of feature and gray like mankind is because they cannot talk. If they had the power of speech they would go around as humans do and disseminate unpleasant topics, as idle winds start thistle pollen. Silence is golden when you can find nothing better to do than to clamor your own troubles; speech only is blessed when, like a bird, it evolves a song or wings a feathered hope.

It seems hardly the thing to do, perhaps, to single out the unhappy folks in a present world so full of jollity and talk with them awhile to-day. This bright autumn weather is so crowded with sights and sounds to dazzle and enchant that to obtrude the leaf of rue within the garland or breathe a minor tone into the music seems almost out of place. And yet, for some reason or other, as I sit here at my desk to-day, the thought of the hearts that are heavy in the midst of all the world's fair pageant, and the eyes that cannot see the banners by reason of their tears, come to me with a strong and resistless force.

Alas, for the goblin bee that stings, yet all too often may not "state its sting"! We walk with a crowd, and yet are conscious that our way is not theirs. It lies apart, we know not why, and evermore dips into shadow and threads the dark defiles of gloom. There are so many more reasons for being sorry than for being glad, we think. Try to count the causes for laughter, and then, over against them, set the reasons for sorrow and see which way the balance falls. I take my seat on a bench out at the big show and watch the crowd for an hour. Do I see many faces that do not bear the scar of the "goblin bee"? From the little four-year-old who is bitterly crying because somebody has jostled its toy from its hand, to the woman whose eyes are sunken with sorrow because death has jostled the one whom she loved into his grave, everybody who passes, with but few exceptions, shows the scar of that stateless sting.

Look at my window-garden, yonder! The sunshine, stealing in from the south, has wooed a dozen pansies into bloom—"Johnny-jump-ups," they used to call them when I was a girl. How bright and cheery and chatty they look. We have those sort of faces (some of us) every day about our breakfast tables. The little folks, God bless 'em! with their shining hair, their bright eyes, and the soft velvet of their cheeks, are the blessed heartsease of our home. And there is a fuchsia, turbaned like a Turk, behind the pansies. Just such sumptuous, graceful women we see every day. Like the fuchsia, they are beautiful and that is all. They yield no fragrance. They attract the eye but fail to reach the heart. Who wouldn't rather have mignonette growing in the window? There is a yellow blossom in the window that reminds one of the patient shining of certain homely souls I know, making sunshine in humble homes; cheerful old maid aunts, sweet-hearted elder sisters, yielding the honey of their hearts to others. A cluster of fading violets sets me thinking of frail invalids and the host of "shut-in" ones, whose delicate and dying beauty fills our eyes with unstayed tears and our hearts with the shadow of coming sorrow.

There are gates that swing within your life and mine from day to day, letting in rare opportunities that tarry but a moment and are gone, like travelers bound for points remote. There is the opportunity to resist the temptation to do a mean thing; improve it, for it is in a hurry, like a man whose ticket is bought and whose time is up. It won't be back this way, either, for opportunities for good are not like tourists who travel on return tickets. There is the opportunity to say a pleasant word to your wife, sir, or you, madam, to your husband, instead of venting your temper and your "nerves" upon each other. Love's opportunity travels by lightning express and has no time to dawdle around the waiting-room. If you improve it at all it must be while the gate swings to let it through.

My dear, let me implore you, whatever else you let go, hold on to your enthusiasm. Grow old if you must; grow white-headed and bent and care-furrowed, if such must needs be the process of years, but don't grow to be a stick. If you must pass on from the green time of your freshness, change into sweet hay and keep your fragrance. If the cage must grow rusty and lose its brightness, there is a bird within, that it were a pity to strangle to keep it from singing to the end. I don't care how successful, or rich, or learned a man becomes, if he maintains a grim repression of all romance and enthusiasm, and what some hard old "Gradgrinds" call the "nonsense" within him, he is nothing more than a fine cage with a dead bird in it. When I hear a person say of another, "Oh, he is a substantial fellow; no nonsense about him!" I picture a gold-fish in a glass globe. A glittering cuticle that covers anything so bloodless as the anatomy of a fish is not worth much. There are a good many types of men to be detected, but the bloodless, emotionless, heart-paralytic, is the worst. Polish up a golden ball all you like. It may ornament your mantel, or serve as a useless bit of glitter in some corner, but when you begin to feel hungry and faint, and in need of solace and cheer, you will turn from the golden ball and pick up the veriest old rusty coat apple from an orchard's windfall, that has mellowed under summer noon, and sweetened in summer rains and dews, praising God for its flavor and its juices, even if you can buy forty bushels of its counterpart, for the price of one of your polished golden balls. Cultivate the "nonsense" in you, then, if it tends to enthusiasm of the right sort. It is the sympathy we get from people, the heartsomeness and cheer that keep our souls nourished, rather than the mere dazzle of intellectual attainment, or the greatness of any worldly achievement. Heart rather than head; nature rather than art; genuineness rather than pretense; romance rather than absolute realism; enthusiasm rather than petrifaction, will make a man rather than a gold fish, a juicy apple rather than a ball of metallic and glittering nothingness.

We were gathered at the Norfolk Station awaiting the train that was to carry us over the marshes to Virginia Beach and the sea. The crowd that surrounded us was very different from a Chicago crowd. There was no pushing, no bold assertiveness, no elbows. There were lots of pretty women, and as for me everybody knows I simply adore the open sky, a tree in blossom and a pretty woman. There were young girls with velvety brown eyes within whose dusky shadows one might look fathom deep as into a well of limpid water; girls with blue eyes like fringed gentians; women with grand free curves of figure that would have made Hebe look commonplace; women with shapely shoulders and long, aristocratic hands, tinted at the finger-tips as though fresh from picking ripe strawberries; girls all in white (for the day was warm), like June lilies; women with snowy teeth and adorable smiles to disclose them; little tots of girls with braided hair and soft, questioning eyes; queenly girls, like tulips in bloom, all chatting together in subdued but merry tones and laughing as delicately and airily as thrushes sing. Oh, I lost my heart to you, my pretty southern maidens, and count the time well spent I devoted to the contemplation of your many graces away down in that little station by the torrid bay.

If I was a liar and wanted to reform I shouldn't quit lying all at once. I would start out with a covenant to occasionally tell the truth. By and by this spasmodic truth-telling, like the grain blown by the wind among stones, would, perhaps, yield sufficient harvest to send me not quite empty-handed up to St. Peter's gate. If I drank whisky I would commence to reform by swearing off on one glass out of three, and perhaps the manhood within me, having so much more chance to grow, would elbow its way into heaven. If I was a gossip I would try to hold my tongue from speaking evil half the time, and in that blissful interval perhaps my dwarfed soul would get a start skyward. It is not by sudden achievement that we consummate a long journey. It is step by step and mile by mile over a stony road that brings us to the goal, and it is not by mere resolving that we renounce the old and attain unto the new. He who travels but a few steps and keeps his face heavenward is on the way, and every small decision for the right, faithfully adhered to, is a notable step toward a consummated journey.

I am often struck with the selfishness displayed by people who are fortunate enough to be provided with umbrellas in time of sudden showers. They calmly behold hosts of unhappy beings battling their way through the storm, drenched to the bone, and with ruined garments, yet never think of saying, "Accept a share of my umbrella," or "Walk with me as far as our ways lie together." If I should hear such a speech I might drop senseless with surprise, but all the same I should hail it as the bugle note that heralded a new era of courteous kindness.

We are not put into the world to be suspicious of one another. We were put here to make the world pleasanter for our tarrying, and to cultivate a fellowship with souls. If the guests at a mountain inn, sojourning together for a stormy night, spend the time in reviling one another, or in calling attention to each other's blemishes, we write them down as snobs; but what shall we call the tenants of transitory time who spend the span of mortal life in doing all they can to make one another uncomfortable? We have only a watch in the night to tarry together; let us try to make that hour a profitable one and a pleasant memory for others when we have journeyed on.

I have often wondered how Christian people got round the gospel command, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." It doesn't say love him (or her) after a proper introduction, or if agreeable, or congenial, or of good family and established reputation—it simply gives the command on general principles. I don't pretend to be good enough to obey the mandate myself, for I honestly think it is a species of hypocrisy to say you love everybody. One might as well say one were fond of all fruit alike, whether specked, wormy or rotten. But let my good orthodox professor put this in his pipe and smoke it. Let him remember it next time he sees his neighbor plunged into an extremity, or handicapped by an annoyance of any kind. If we love our neighbor we are bound to help him, and neighbor in this sense means anyone who chances to be near us, whether black or white, raggedly disreputable or sanctimoniously frilled.

There is more selfishness perpetrated in the world under guise of family ties than in almost any other way. The man who does good and unselfish deeds only for his own children and for the immediate circle housed beneath his roof, forgetful of the claims of the great, tormented, harassed and struggling world, is a selfish man and accountable to heaven for a great deal of meanness. I don't care how much he puts on his children's backs, or how many luxuries he surrounds them with, the Lord will not hold him guiltless if he does nothing for the stranger who tugs by him in the stress of life's uncertain weather, or for the neighbor who sits disconsolate outside his gates.

I wish that vagabond and his dog who were brought before a west side justice yesterday for vagrancy would travel up my way. I like that sort of thing that leads a man to be faithful to his dog. It goes without saying that the dog is faithful to the man, but it is not often that the master shows the same spirit to the fond and steadfast brute. If the two should journey my way I think they would have one white day in the calendar. Good heavens, my dear, do you ever stop long enough in the midst of your golf-playing and your tennis tournaments, your yachtings and your outings to think what it is to be a tramp? To be unable to find a stroke of work; to be sick and starved and homeless! Like "poor Joe," to be told to "move on" every time you stop to rest; to eat the grudgingly given crust of charity, and have no friend under the sun, moon or stars but a flea-bitten dog? Did you ever stop to think, my Christian friend, that that tramp is a neighbor whom you are to love? And if you are going to love him I will love his dog! No doubt the latter is the better man of the two.

Did you ever read of a battle siege in olden times? There were the full-armored warriors, resplendent in shining metal and plumed crests; there were the mighty battering rams, and the flash of battle axes, the thunder of advancing feet and the trumpet call before the gates. But more potent than all else in the doomed city's destruction was the secret work of the sappers and miners—the patient forces which wrought their work out of sight and hearing. And I have been thinking to-night, as I sit here, where the firelight weaves its delicate tapestry within the beautiful walls of home, that it is not going to be the pompous ones who shall march triumphant at last into the "City of Gold," but they who have worked patiently and humbly out of sight and with no need of praise. The man who has held to the dictates of his own conscience, not conforming to the company he marched with; the man who has dared to be himself in a world where men are labeled in lots; the man who has held it high honor to suffer for a principle or to be loyal to an unpopular friend or cause; the man who has erected a standard made up between his own heart and heaven, and, independent of the world's verdict of praise or blame, followed it to the end, is going to wear a crown by and by, when the epauletted general and the pompous staff are forgotten. Prayer is not always a genuflexion and an address. It is oftener hard work. The farmer praying at his weeds, the pilot praying from every spoke of his wheel, the mother whose daily life of unselfish toil and far-reaching influence is a prayer, do more to stir the divine heart, to keep the world's prow headed for heaven than half the solicitations or apologetic addresses made in our churches under the name of prayer.

When you and I get rich, my dear, as some day we surely shall, what are we going to do with all our money? We will hunt up some of the improvident ones, those who could never make the two ends meet, those who through good heartedness, or lack of forethought or unselfish desire to make other folks happy, have never laid by a cent, and we will give those silly people such a good time they will carry its impress all through their after lives, as a pat of butter carries the print. We will slyly pay the bills for improvident ones who have grown gray in the effort to make a decent funeral for dead horses. They shall forget how to spell "care" and their new and happy dialect shall know no such words as "monthly payments," "righteous dues" or "can't afford it." I am convinced that as a rule it is not the sweet-hearted people who take on this world's gain. There is many a poor beggar with not a change of linen to his back who would make a more royal host, had the smiling face of fortune turned his way, than the rightful owner of the vast estates at whose gate he stands and begs. The big hearts too often go with the empty purse, and the little, wizened, skin-flint souls, that it would take a thousand of to crowd the passage through the eye of a needle, gain all the golden favors of the god of plenty.

After dinner I said to the little folks, "Behold, I will buy me a pair of stockings and hire a bathing suit, and the afternoon shall be devoted to frolic and thee." So we went to the small booth, where an exceedingly meek young man sold ginger pop and fancy shells, and paralyzed him with a demand for ladies' hose. He didn't know what we meant until I came out boldly and unblushingly and asked for women's stockings. He said he didn't keep 'em. "Have you a mother?" said I. "No." "Have you a sister? Or is there a nearer one yet and a dearer, from whom I could buy or borrow a pair of stockings that I may go in bathing?" He didn't understand that either, but finally, with the aid of lucre, I made the matter clear so that he got me a pair of canary-striped woolen hose, evidently laid by for some farmer's winter use, and I bought them for a sum that made his eyes grow dim with rapture. We went down to the beach, and after a season of prayer with the young person to induce her to put on some horrid tights, we all went in and enjoyed such a dip as only salt water yields. In the midst of it we had to go on shore several times to stand the boy on his head and pump the ocean out of him, as he was constantly getting drowned in the surf, and one of my expensive and expansive stockings was captured out at sea and brought back by a son of Belial, who seemed greatly affected by its size, but in spite of such small drawbacks we had a glorious time.

"What is the matter, my darling?" asked John, the newly married, to the wife of his bosom.

"Nothing whatever," replied Mrs. John.

"But you look like a funeral," exclaimed he.

"I am not aware that I look more than usually unamiable; I certainly never felt better," replied his wife, placidly folding down meanwhile the hem to a distracting little apron she is making. John seizes his hat, pushes it down over his eyes and rushes forth distracted with the conjecture as to what terrible thing he has been guilty of to make his wife look so like an injured martyr. For the time being love is dead, joy wiped from the face of the earth, hope crucified and peace assassinated, all because of bottled thunder. A word would have explained all, a look has ruined everything.

"Don't put on your fresh muslin this afternoon," suggests the prudent mother.

"But why not?" replied the sprightly Jane; "it is the only endurable dress this warm weather."

"Oh, very well, do as you like, of course," meekly replied the parent in a tone that suggests a serpent's fang, a hoary head and a broken heart all in one.

Now, in my opinion it is not conducive to domestic harmony to have too much of this sort of repression. It is like living in an exhaust chamber. One would be certain to choke up and burst very soon. Self-control does not consist in forever keeping one's mouth shut, alone. A look, a sneer, a drooping mouth, a tilted nose, will do as much mischief as a loosened tongue. Why I should go about like a disagreeable old martyr or like a sneering Saul of Tarsus, and call myself pleasant to live with, simply because I don't talk, is something not easily understood.

I would far rather be a target for flying saucepans every time I popped my head into the kitchen than have a cook there who never says a word, but is sullen and ugly enough to carve me up like cold meat. I would rather be a constant attendant at funerals, a nurse in a fever-ward, a girl in a circus, or a street car horse, than live with proper folks who never make blunders, or commit indiscretions either of speech or manner, but look at you every time you sneeze as though your featherheadedness was the only thing that made life unbearable. Out with it then if you have cause for offense. Don't let the clouds hang a single hour, but turn on the weather faucet and let it rain. If your neighbor has insulted you, either ask her why or ignore it. Ten to one the fancied insult is only a wind cloud, and sunshine will break it away. If you feel mad sail right in for a tempest and have done with it. Thunder and lighten, blow and hail if you want to, but don't be a non-committal dog-day. Bottled thunder is a bad thing to keep on the family shelves. It is likely to turn sour on your hands, and before you get through with it, you will wish you had died young.

Yonder goes a small and worthless yellow dog. He is young; you can tell that from the abnormal size of his paws, and a certain remnant of wistful trust in human kind, which displays itself in the furtive wag of his tail and the cock of his limp and discouraged ear. He is as absolutely friendless as anything to which God has granted life can be. Of his existence there is no thought in the mind of any man or woman beneath the stars. The boys grow mindful of him now and then, though, and their manifested interest has made of his life one terrible specter of cringing fear. He hears the hurrah of their cruel chase in every tone of sudden speech; he sees the menace of a blow in every shadow. Do you know, my dear, that I never spoke a truer word in all my life than when I say that underneath the hide of that forlorn and friendless little yellow dog there is something more valuable than beats under the broadcloth vests and silken waists of many of the men and women who pass him by! A grateful heart mindful of the smallest kindnesses, a faithful instinct which keeps dogs loyal even to cruel masters. I sometimes think I would rather take my chances with honest dogs than with half the men who own them. They may not be able to pass up the stamped ticket which transfers the human passenger from the earthly to the celestial railroad and carries him through on the passport of an immortal soul; but no ticket at all is quite as good as a forged or fraudulent one, as some of us will find out, I am thinking, when we hand up our worthless checks!

Which would you rather be in the orchestra of human life, a flute or a trombone? To be sure, the latter is heard the farthest, but the quality of the flute tone reaches deeper down into the soul and awakens there dreams without which a man's life is like bread without leaven, or a laid fire without tinder. I don't like noisy people, do you? People who talk and bluster and swagger. People who remind us of bladders filled to the point of explosion with wind. We like sensitive people, quiet-voiced, deep-hearted, earnest people, with the quality of the flute rather than that of the fog-horn in their make-up. And yet how much greater demand there is for bluster than there is for force. Sometimes I am inclined to think that life is a farce played with an earthly setting for the delectation of the angels, as we serve minstrel shows and burlesques. It isn't the shy and the timid who get the applause; the clown in tinsel and the end man in cork divide easy honors. And yet, thank God for flutes! Thank God the orchestra isn't entirely composed of trombones and bass drums.

WHAT I MISS.

The other day my strolling took me into a second-hand furniture shop. I wanted to find an ice chest. "Have you any second-hand chests?" I asked of the hoary-headed son of Erin who tended the place and raked in the shekels. He didn't answer a word, but silently arose and beckoned me to follow. Through ranks of withered tables and blighted chairs I picked my way until my guide dived down a gruesome stairway and then I stopped. Presently his head emerged like a grimy Jack-in-the-box.

"Is it an ice chist yez want?" asked he. There was mold on his faded cheeks and a cobweb on his brow as he awaited my answer.

"Must I go down there to find it?" I inquired. He replied in the affirmative.

"Old man, I will go no further," said I, "but come back here and tell me the price of this lovely desk." So saying, I designated a delightful old claw-handled, brass-mounted, spider-legged piece of furniture, which might have been used by Adam to cast up his accounts on. There was a suggestion of secret drawers about it that was quite ravishing. The doors were oddly shaped little panes of mirror glass, within which I gazed pensively at a soot blemish on my nose. "Is it the price of that yez'd be afther knowing?" said the old man, in the tone of one who dealt with a harmless lunatic. "I thought it was ice chists yez was afther." "Yes," said I, drawing out two long slabs as I spoke, such as were used to support the shelf of the desk I remembered in my grandmother's house. "That bit of furnichoor," said the old-man, gazing sadly meanwhile at the grime of ages which I could not rub from off my nose, "is more than two hundred years old." He stopped for a moment to see if I would believe him, then went on: "Yis, ma'am, that same is nearer three hundred years old, all told."

Here I gave him a look which stopped him at the threshold of the fourth century.

"Yez may have it for $25," says he.