A STRING OF AMBER BEADS

by

MARTHA EVERTS HOLDEN

"AMBER"

Siegel, Cooper Co. , New York. ---------- Chicago. Copyright 1893 byCharles H. Kerr & Company

DEDICATED

TO THE LATE

ANDREW SHUMAN

MY LITERARY ADVISER

AND

TRUEST FRIEND

CONTENTS. 

 I. "I DIDN'T THINK. " II. "STAY WHERE YOU ARE. " III. A COWARDLY MATE. IV. THEY CARRY NO BANNER. V. SHUT IN. VI. THE CIRCLING YEAR--A CLOCK. VII. SOMETHING BETTER THAN SURFACE MANNERS. VIII. MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. IX. THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE ME MOST WEARY. X. NOTHING SO GRAND AS FORCE. XI. A RAINY RHAPSODY. XII. CAUSE FOR WONDER. XIII. THE FIRST KATYDID. XIV. A PLEA FOR MEN. XV. WHAT I'M TIRED OF. XVI. NOTHING LIKE A GOOD LAUGH. XVII. HOLD! ENOUGH!! XVIII. RIPE OPPORTUNITIES. XIX. A SUNSET CLOUD. XX. ONE SECRET OF SUCCESS. XXI. A NEW BEATITUDE. XXII. BLESSED BE BASHFULNESS. XXIII. A BEWITCHED VIOLIN. XXIV. A HAT PIN PROBLEM. XXV. POLITENESS VS. SINCERITY. XXVI. THE MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN. XXVII. SERMONS FROM FLIES. XXVIII. THE MAN WHO KNOWS IT ALL. XXIX. BALD HEADS AND UNEQUAL CHANCES. XXX. HUMAN STRAWS. XXXI. A SALLOW FACED GIRL FOR YOUR PITY. XXXII. AND YET HE CLINGS TO LIFE. XXXIII. OH! TO RID THE WORLD OF SHAMS. XXXIV. DRESS PARADE OF THE GREAT ALIKE. XXXV. IF GOD MADE YOU A WILLOW DON'T TRY TO BE A PINE. XXXVI. TWO TYPES. XXXVII. A DREAM GARDEN. XXXVIII. ANYTHING WORSE THAN A BLUE-JAY? HARDLY! XXXIX. GOOD HEALTH A BLESSING. XL. WHY, BLESS MY SOUL! IT REALLY SEEMS TO THINK. XLI. TAKE TO DRINK, OF COURSE! XLII. A WARNING TO GIRLS. XLIII. A FROG MAY DO WHAT A MAN MAY NOT. XLIV. THANKING GOD FOR A GOOD HUSBAND. XLV. JUST A LITTLE TIRED! XLVI. PAINTING THE OLD HOMESTEAD. XLVII. THE OLD SITTING-ROOM STOVE. XLVIII. A TALK ABOUT DIVORCE. XLIX. GONE BACK TO FLIPPITY-FLOPPITY SKIRTS. L. I SHALL MEET HIM SOME DAY. LI. A MANNISH WOMAN. LII. THE ONLY WAY TO CONQUER A HARD DESTINY. LIII. THE "SMART" PERSON. LIV. A PRETTY STREET INCIDENT. LV. POLICY A DAMASCUS BLADE, NOT A CLUB. LVI. THE CONSTANT YEARS BRING AGE TO ALL. LVII. DID YOU EVER READ THE "LITTLE PILGRIM. " LVIII. EATING MILK TOAST WITH A SPOON! LIX. BOYS, YOU KNOW I LIKE YOU. LX. WHAT TO DO WITH GROWLERS. LXI. GOD BLESS 'EM! LXII. "UNTO ONE OF THE LEAST OF THESE. " LXIII. TAKING INVENTORY. LXIV. DON'T MARRY HIM TO SAVE HIM. 

A STRING OF BEADS

I. 

"I DIDN'T THINK. "

"I didn't think!" A woman flings the whiteness of her reputation inthe dust, and, waking to the realization of her loss when the cruelglare of the world's disapproval reveals it, she seeks to plead herthoughtlessness as an entreaty of the world's pardon. But theflint-hearted world is slow to grant it, if she be a woman. "You havethrown your rose in the dust, go live there with it, " the world cries, and there is no appeal, although the dust become the grave of all thatis bright and lovely and sweet in a thoughtless woman's really innocentlife. A young girl flirts with a stranger on the street. The resultis something disagreeable, and straight-way comes the excuse: "Why, Ididn't think! I meant no harm; I just wanted to have a little fun. "Now, look me straight in the eye, young gossamer-head, while I tell youwhat I _know_. The girl who will flirt with strange men in publicplaces, however harmless and innocent it may appear, places herself inthat man's estimation upon a level with the most abandoned of her sexand courts the same regard. Strong language, perhaps you think, but Itell you it is gospel truth, and I feel like going into orders andpreaching from a pulpit whenever I see a thoughtless, gay and giddygirl tiptoeing her way upon the road that leads direct to destruction. The boat that dances like a feather on the current a mile aboveNiagara's plunge is just as much lost as when it enters the swirling, swinging wrath of waters, unless some strong hand head it up stream andout of danger. A flirtation to-day is a ripple merely, but to-morrowit will be a breaker, and then a whirlpool, and after that comeshopeless loss of character. Girls, I have seen you gather up yourroses from their vases at night and fold them away in damp paper toprotect their loveliness for another day. I have seen you pluck thejewels like sun sparkles from your fingers and your ears, and lay themin velvet caskets which you locked with a silver key for safe beeping. You do all this for flowers which a thousand suns shall duplicate inbeauty, and for jewels for which a handful of dollars can reimburseyour loss; but you are infinitely careless with the delicate rose ofmaidenliness, which, once faded, no summer shining can ever woo back tofreshness, and with the unsullied jewel of personal reputation whichall the wealth of kings can never buy back again, once lost. See to itthat you preserve that modesty and womanliness without which theprettiest girl in the world is no better than a bit of scentless lawnin a milliner's window, as compared to the white rose in the garden, around which the honey bees gather. See to it that you lock up theunsullied splendor of the jewel of your reputation as carefully as youdo your diamonds, and carry the key within your heart of hearts. 

II. 

"STAY WHERE YOU ARE. "

I received a letter the other day in which the writer said: "Amber, Iwant to come to the city and earn my living. What chance have I?" AndI felt like posting back an immediate answer and saying: "Stay whereyou are. " I didn't do it, though, for I knew it would be useless. Thechild is bound to come, and come she will. And she will drift into athird-rate Chicago boarding-house, than which if there is anythingmeaner--let us pray! And if she is pretty she will have to carryherself like snow on high hills to avoid contamination. If she isconfiding and innocent the fate of that highly persecuted heroine ofold-fashioned romance, Clarissa Harlowe, is before her. If she ishomely the doors of opportunity are firmly closed against her. If sheis smart she will perhaps succeed in earning enough money to pay herboard bill and have sufficient left over to indulge in the maddeningextravagance of an occasional paper of pins or a ball of tape! Whatif, after hard labor, and repeated failure, she does secure somethinglike success? No sooner will she do so, than up will step some dapperyouth who will beckon her over the border into the land where troublesjust begin. She won't know how to sew, or bake, or make good coffee, for such arts are liable to be overlooked when a girl makes a careerfor herself, and so love will gallop away over the hills like ariderless steed, and happiness will flare like a light in a windynight. Oh, no, my little country maid, stay where you are, if you havea home and friends. Be content with fishing for trout in the brookrather than cruising a stormy sea for whales. A great city is a cruelplace for young lives. It takes them as the cider press takes juicyapples, sun-kissed and flavored with the breath of the hills, andcrushes them into pulp. There is a spoonful of juice for each apple, but cider is cheap!

III. 

A COWARDLY MATE. 

I know a wife who is waiting, safe and sound in her father's home, forher young husband to earn the money single handed to make a home worthyof her acceptance. She makes me think of the first mate of a ship whoshould stay on shore until the captain tested the ability of his vesselto weather the storm. Back to your ship, you cowardly one! If theboat goes down, go down with it, but do not count yourself worthy ofany fair weather you did not help to gain! A woman who will do all shecan to win a man's love merely for the profit his purse is going to beto her, and will desert him when the cash runs low, is a bad woman andcarries a bad heart in her bosom. Why, you are never really weddeduntil you have had dark days together. What earthly purpose would acable serve that never was tested by a weight? Of what use is the tiethat binds wedded hearts together if like a filament of floss it partswhen the strain is brought to bear upon it? It is not when you areyoung, my dear, when the skies are blue and every wayside weed flauntsa summer blossom, that the story of your life is recorded. It is when"Darby and Joan" are faded and wasted and old, when poverty has nippedthe roses, when trouble and want and care have flown like uncanny birdsover their heads (but never yet nested in their hearts, thank God), that the completed chronicle of their lives furnishes the record overwhich heaven smiles or weeps. 

IV. 

THEY CARRY NO BANNER. 

There never yet was a grand procession that was not accompanied, or, rather, in great measure made up of, followers and onlookers. So inthis life parade of ours, with its ever varying pageant and brilliantdisplay, there are comparatively few who carry banners, who disport theepaulette, and the gold lace. And sometimes, we who help swell theranks of those who watch and wait, grow discouraged, almost thinkingthat life is a failure because it holds no gala-day for us, nothing butsober tints and quiet duties. What chance for any one, and a womanespecially, to make a career for herself, tied down to a lot ofprecious babies, or lassooed by ten thousand galloping cares! As wellexpect a rose to blossom in midwinter hedges, or a lark to sing in asnowstorm, as to look for bloom and song in such a life! But just benddown your ear a minute, poor, tired, overworked and troubled sister, Ihave a special word for you. It is simply impossible for circumstancesof any sort to overthrow the high spirit of one who believes insomething yet to come and out of sight. What are poverty and adversefate and mocking hopes and disappointed ambition to the soul which isonly journeying through an unfriendly world to a heritage that cannotfail? As well might a flower complain of the rains that called it fromthe sod, of the winds that rocked it, and the cloudless noons thatflamed above it, when June at last has lightly laid the coronal ofsummer's perfect bloom upon its bending bough. We shall find our Junesomewhere, never fear. Be content then a little longer withuncongenial surroundings and a life that knows no outlook of hope. Beall the sweeter and the stronger and the braver that the way is short. To-morrow, in the Palace of Love, the dark and unfriendly inn thatsheltered us for a night upon the way, shall be forgotten. 

V. 

SHUT IN. 

Were you ever shut in by a fog? Lost at mid-day in a soundless, rayless world of nebulous vapor--so seemingly alone in the universethat your voice found no echo, and your ears caught no footfall in allthe vast domain of silence about you? The other morning, when I leftthe house, I paused in wonderment at the strange world into which I wasabout to plunge. All landmarks were gone, nothing but silver and grayleft of nature's brilliant tints, not even so much shadow as an artistmight use to accentuate a bird's wing in crayon--no heaven above, noearth beneath. The interior of a raised biscuit could not have beenmore densely uniform than the atmosphere. It seemed as if the worldhad slipped its moorings and drifted off its course into companionlessspace, leaving me behind, as an ocean steamer sometimes leaves astraggler on an uninhabited shore. I felt like sending forth a callthat should give my bearings and bring back a boat to the rescue. Igroped my way down the steps, and, following an intuition, sought thestation. Ahead of me I heard muffled steps, yet saw no form. Butsuddenly a doorway opened in the east and out strode the sun. In theair above and about me, behold, the wonder of diamond domes and slenderminarets traced in pearl! The wayside banks were fringed with crystalspray of downbeaten weed and bush that sparkled like the billows of asunlit sea. The tall elms here and there towered like the masts ofreturning ships, slow sailing from a wintry voyage back to summer landsand splendor. There was no sound in all the air, but the wholeuniverse seemed singing as when the morning stars chorused the glory ofGod. More and more widely opened that doorway in the east; step bystep advanced the great magician, and over all the world the splendorgrew, until it seemed too much for mortal eyes to bear, when lo! atouch dispelled it all and commonplace day stood revealed. 

VI. 

THE CIRCLING YEAR--A CLOCK. 

The circling year is a clock whereon nature writes the hours inblossoms. First come the wind flowers and the violets, they denote theearly morning hours and are quickly passed. The forenoon is marked bylilacs, apple blooms and roses. The day's meridian is reached withlilies, red carnations, and the dusky splendor of pansies and passionflowers. Then come the languid poppy and the prim little 4 o'clock, the marigold, the sweet pea, and later the dahlia and the many-tintedchrysanthemum to mark the day's decline. Lastly the goldenrod, theaster and the gentian, tell us it is evening time, and night and frostare close at hand. The rose hour has struck already for '93. Thegarden beds are full of scattered petals and the dusty roadways glimmerwith ghostly blossoms too wan to be roses, and wafted by a breath intonothingness. With such a calendar to mark the advance of decay anddeath the seasons differ from the mortal race which substitutes achesand pains for a horologe of flowers, and grows old by processes ofphysical failure and mental blight. 

VII. 

SOMETHING BETTER THAN SURFACE MANNERS. 

There are days when my heart is so full of love for young girls that asI pass them on the street I feel myself smiling as one does to walk bya garden of daffodils. And when I see how careful some of them are tobe circumspect and demure, I think to myself how fine a thing it is, tobe sure, to have good manners! How happy the parent whose youngdaughter knows just how to hold her hands in company, just how and whento smile, just how to enter a room or gracefully leave it. Easy, indeed, must lie the head of that mother who is secure in the knowledgethat her daughter will never make a false step in the stately minuet ofetiquette, or strike a discordant note in the festival of life; thatshe will never laugh too loud, nor turn her head in the street, evenwhen the gay and glittering "king of the cannibal isles" rides by, nordo anything odd or queer or unconventional. To the mother who believesthat good manners can be taught in books and conned in dancing schools, there is something to satisfy the heart's finest craving in a strictlyconventional daughter, who thinks and acts and speaks by rule, andwhose life is like the life of an apricot, canned, or a music box woundup with a key. But to my thinking, my dear, good manners are not puton and off like varying fashions, nor done up like sweetmeats, poundfor pound, and kept in the storeroom for state occasions. They strikeroot from the heart out, and the prettiest manners in the world areonly the blossoming of a good heart. Surface manners are like cutflowers stuck in a shallow glass with just enough water to keep themfresh an hour or so, but the courtesy that has its growth in the heartis like the rosebush in the garden that no inclement season can kill, and no dark day force to forego the unfolding of a bud. 

VIII. 

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. 

I am more and more convinced the longer I live that the very bestadvice that was ever given from friend to friend is contained in thosefour words: "Mind your own business. " The following of it would savemany a heartache. Its observance would insure against every sort ofwrangling. When we mind our own business we are sure of success inwhat we undertake, and may count upon a glorious immunity from failure. When the husbandman harvests a crop by hanging over the fence andwatching his neighbor hoe weeds, it will be time for you and for me toachieve renown in any undertaking in which we do not exclusively mindour own business. If I had a family of young folks to give advice to, my early, late and constant admonition would be always and everywhereto "mind their own business. " Thus should they woo harmony and peace, and live to enjoy something like the completeness of life. 

IX. 

THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE ME MOST WEARY. 

In the ups and downs and hithers and thithers of an eventful life shallI tell you the people who have made me the most weary? It is not thebad people, nor the foolish people; we can get along with all suchbecause of a streak of common humanity in us all, but I cannot survivewithout extreme lassitude the decorous people; those who slip throughlife without sound or sparkle, those who behave themselves upon everyoccasion, and would pass through a dynamite explosion without rumplinga hair; those who never have done anything out of the way and neverwill, simply for the same reason that a fish cannot perspire--no bloodin 'em! Cut them and they would run cold sap, like a maple tree inApril. Such people are always frightened to death for fear of what theworld is going to say about them. They are under everlasting bonds tokeep the peace. I wonder that they ever un-bend to kiss theirchildren. If one of them lived in my house I should stick pins in him. Morality and goodness that lie no deeper than "behavior" are like theveneering they put on cheap tables--very tawdry and soon peeled off. 

X. 

NOTHING SO GRAND AS FORCE. 

Reading about the superb management of the big fire the other day, acertain girl of my acquaintance remarked: "Is there anything so grandin a man as force? In my estimation those firemen and the chief who sosplendidly controlled them are as far superior to the dancing youth, wemeet at parties and hops, as meat is better than foam. " Put that intoyour pipe, you callow striplings, who aim to be lady-killers! It isnot your tennis suits, nor your small feet, nor your ability to danceand lead the german that makes a woman's heart kindle at your approach. It is your response to an emergency, your muscle in a tilt againstodds, your endurance and force, that will win the way to feminineregard. As for me there is something pathetic in the sight of a big, handsome fellow in dancing pumps and a Prince Albert coat. I wouldrather see him swinging a blacksmith's hammer, or driving a plowthrough stony furrows if need be. The "original man" was not createdto shine in the military schottische or win his laurels in the berlin. 

XI. 

A RAINY RHAPSODY. 

Gently, idly, lazily, as petals from an over-blown rose, while I write, the welcome rain is falling. The sky is neutral tinted, save in theeast, where a faint blush lingers. All along the country roadways athousand fainting clovers uplift their purple crests, and in the duskyspaces of the dense June woods a host of grateful leaves wait andbeckon. A voice comes from the garden bed; it is the complaint of thepansy. "Here I lie, " it says, "with all my jewels low in the dust. Where is the purple of my amethysts, the yellow of my topaz, theinimitable sheen of my milk-white pearls? Alas and alack for pansieswhen the rain beats them earthward!" The marigold, like ayellow-haired boy with his straw hat well back from his flying mane, whistles softly to himself for joy, and buries his hands in the pocketsof his green breeches. The peonies burn low their tinted globes oflight, and the sweet peas swing like idle girls upon the tendrils oftheir drooping vines. The dog lifts his nose and sniffs the moist airapprovingly, while poor Old Tom, the cat, blinks benignly upon thescene. In the poultry yard the hens pose in the same indescribableamaze that has bewildered their species since the dawn of time. Ithink the first chicken that was ever hatched in Eden must haveexperienced some great nervous shock that has descended along theinfinite line of its progeny. The monotonous rooster chants ever andanon from the top of the fence his unalterable convictions. The duckswaddle waggishly through the rain and the pigeons coo softly themellowest melodies that ever sounded from a feathered throat. 

XII. 

CAUSE FOR WONDER. 

I do not wonder so much that so few people blossom into sunny old age, as I wonder that one-half of humanity ever shows a leaf or unfolds abud. Look at the idiots who have children. Look at the little onesthrown into the street like troublesome kittens. Look at theinjudicious methods of diet and training. I declare, my dear, if Iwere to go into the room where Theodore Thomas was rehearsing hisorchestra, and see the flutists using their flutes for hammers, and theviolinists using their violins for tennis rackets, and the divine oldcello in the hands of a lusty blacksmith who was utilizing it for ananvil, the sight would be nothing to what it is to see the muddle wemake of the children's sweet lives. God meant us for musicalinstruments, and gave to each soul its capacity for some originalharmony. Can a flute keep its tone for three score years it you use itfor a clothes stick on wash day, or a violin retain intact the angelvoice within it if you let rats breed and nest in it, fling it againstthe side of the house and dance on it with hob-nailed boots? If aninstrument subjected to such usage pipes out a silver note once in adozen years, uncover your head when you hear it, for it is the originalangel within the mechanism, which nothing can kill!

XIII. 

THE FIRST KATYDID. 

The first katydid of the season has whipped out his bow and drawn thepreparatory note across the strings of his violin. He is alone atpresent and he plays to an empty house, but it will not be long beforethe orchestra fills up and the music is in full blast. The cricket isgetting ready to throw aside the green baize that has held his piccoloso long, and before the middle of the month there will not be a tuft ofgrass nor a shelter of low-lying leaves that is not alive with theshrill, complaining sweetness of his theme. The goldenrod has lightedthe candles in the candelabra that skirt the borders of the wood, andthe aster has already hung out her purple gown and her yellow lacesupon the bushes that follow the windings of the steep ravine. Only sixweeks to frost! Only six weeks to the time for the unbottling of theyear's vintage and the exchange of tea for sparkling wine. Hastenforward, then, oh, days of radiant life and sparkling weather! We aretired of torrid waves and flies; of snakes, hornets and cyclones. 

XIV. 

A PLEA FOR MEN. 

A more or less extended experience as a bread-winner has taught me anoble charity for men. I used to think that all the head of a familywas good for was to accumulate riches and pay bills, but I am beginningto think that there is many a martyr spirit hidden away beneath thebusiness man's suit of tweed. Wife and daughters stand ever beforehim, like hoppers waiting for grist to grind. "Give! Give!" is theirconstant cry, like the rattle of the upper and nether stones. Thispanegyric does not apply to the man who frequents clubs and spends hismoney on between-meal drinks and lottery tickets. It applies rather tothe unselfish, hardworking father of a family, who works early and lateto keep his daughters like lilies that have no need to toil, and tohelp maintain the ostentation of vain display upon which depends thesocial success of a worldly and frivolous wife. It would be far moreto those daughters' credit if they did something in the line of honestand honorable toil to support themselves, rather than live on theheart's blood of an unselfish and overworked father; and as for thewife who exacts the income of a duchess to keep up the silly parade ofVanity Fair, there may come a day for her, when, shorn of the generousand loving support of a good husband, and forced to earn her ownlivelihood, as the penniless widows of bankrupt men are sometimesforced to do, she will appreciate, too late, the blessing that Heavenhas taken from her. 

XV. 

WHAT I'M TIRED OF. 

I am tired of many things. I am tired of the miserable little god, "worry, " shrined in every home. I am tired of doing perpetual homageto the same black-faced little wretch. I am tired of putting downpride and curbing a righteous indignation. I am tired of keeping myhands off human weeds. I am tired of crucifying my tastes, andcultivating the nickel that springs perennial to meet my needs. I amtired of poverty and all needful discipline. I am tired of seeingbabies born to people who don't know how to bring them up. I am tiredof folks who smile continuously. I am tired of amiable fools and theplatitudes of unintelligent saints. I am tired of mediocrity. I amtired of cats, both human and feline. I am tired of being a soldierand marching with the advance guard. I am tired of girls who giggleand of boys who swear. I am tired of married women who think itcharming to be a little giddy, and of married men who ogle young girlsand other men's wives. I am tired of a world where love is like theblossom of the century plant, unfolding only once in a hundred years. I am tired of men who are worthless and decayed to the core, likeblighted peaches. I am tired of seeing such men in power. I am tiredof being obliged to smile where I long to smite. I am tired ofvulgarity which glides forever through the world like the snake throughEden. I am tired of women who bear the hearts of tigers, and of menwho roar like lions, yet show the valor of mice. I am tired of livingshoulder to shoulder with my pet antipathies. I am tired of theeverlasting inveighing against capital, when any idiot knows thatcapital is the king-bolt that holds the world together. I am tired ofwearing shabby clothes, and meeting folks who judge of a parcel by thequality of wrapping paper it is incased in. I am tired of beingwell-behaved and decorous when I want to fling stones and make faces. I am tired of smelling the game dinner of my neighbor and sitting downat home to beans and bacon. I am tired of many more things, theenumeration of which would take from now until the day after forever. 

XVI. 

NOTHING LIKE A GOOD LAUGH. 

Do you know, my dear, that there is absolutely nothing that will helpyou to bear the ills of life so well as a good laugh. Laugh all youcan, and the small imps in blue who love to preempt their quarters in ahuman heart will scatter away like owls before the music of flutes. There are few of the minor difficulties and annoyances that will notdissipate at the charge of the nonsense brigade. If the clothes linebreaks, if the cat tips over the milk and the dog elopes with theroast, if the children fall into the mud simultaneously with the adventof clean aprons, if the new girl quits in the middle of housecleaning, and though you search the earth with candles you find none to take herplace, if the neighbor in whom you have trusted goes back on you anddecides to keep chickens, if the chariot wheels of the uninvited guestdraw near when you are out of provender, and the gaping of your emptypurse is like the unfilled mouth of a young robin take courage if youhave enough sunshine in your heart, to keep a laugh on your lips. Before good nature, half the cares of daily living will fly away likemidges before the wind; try it. 

XVII. 

HOLD! ENOUGH!!

The other evening it chanced that a combination of disastrouscircumstances wrought havoc with my temper. I lost my train; my headhummed like a bumblebee with weary pain, and the elastic that held myhat to its moorings broke, so that that capering compromise betweeninanimate matter and demoniac possession blew half a block up street onits own account, and was brought back to me by a youthful son ofBelial, who took my very last quarter as reward for the lively chase. 

"There's no use!" said I to myself as I jogged along through thegloaming; "blessed be the woman who knows enough to cry 'hold!' againstsuch odds!"

And just then I spied a wizened little mite of a woman trotting by, carrying a gripsack bigger than herself. She grasped it, and held itagainst her wan little stomach, as a Roman warrior might carry hisshield into battle--plucky to the last. 

"Now, " said I, "look here, Amber, have you a fifty pound sachel to tugthrough the darkness? No! Then you might be worse off. "

And I went on a little farther and I met the brave firemen going homedrenched and worn from the big fire. "You coward!" said I to myself, "what if you were a fireman! Something to growl about then, I guess. "

And I went a bit farther and I saw a little white coffin in a window. "How about that?" said I. "If the darlings were gone to their longhome you might talk about trouble!"

And a few moments later I ran across an old man without any legs, peddling papers. And then I said: "Do you call your life a grind, madam, with two legs to walk upon, and a sufficient income to admit ofan occasional fling? What if you had wooden legs, and peddled papers?"

Now, I have told you this for a purpose. However dark your lot may bethere are worse all around you. You may be inclined to think that thebloom and the brightness have gone out of your life, leaving nothingbehind them but what remains of the carnation when the frost findsit--a withered stalk. But if you will take the trouble to watch, youwill find that there is always something harder to bear than your owntrouble, and, put to the test, you wouldn't change crosses with yourneighbor. 

XVIII. 

RIPE OPPORTUNITIES. 

What if a man went over the lake to St. Joe to visit the peach orchardsat the maturity of their delicious harvest! The consent of the ownerof the fairest plantation of the many has been gained, let us imagine, for the plucking of the perfect fruit. And yet, in despite ofopportunity and privilege, what would you think of one who came homewith empty baskets and an unappeased relish for ripe peaches? Wouldyou not think such a one a dullard, or, at least, stupidly blind to hisopportunities? And if you chanced to hear him crying over his emptybasket later on, would you not revile him for a lazy fellow? We all ofus, from day to day, miss chances of far greater value than the ripestpeach that ever mellowed in the sun. The opportunity to say a kind andencouraging word swings low upon the bough of to-day. Why not gatherit in? The chance to help, to succor, to protect, the chance to lend ahelping hand, to share a burden, to soothe a sorrow, to plant a lovingthought, or twine a memory that shall blossom like a rose upon theterrace of to-morrow, all are our own as we pass through the world onour way to heaven. We may not come this way again. See to it, then, that we carry full baskets on the homeward faring. 

XIX. 

A SUNSET CLOUD. 

Not long ago there slowly ascended into the evening sky a pillar ofcloud so vast that all measurements sank into insignificance beside it. Its color was of softest gray just touched with the flush that deepensthe inmost chamber of a shell, or blushes in the unfolded petals of awind flower. With majestic yet almost imperceptible motion this cloudmounted the blue background of the sky. The spectre of a faded moonhung motionless above it an instant only, and then was swiftly drawnwithin its soft eclipse. Changing from moment to moment, the greatmass took on all semblances of vivid fancy, until the evening skyseemed the arena of dreamland's cohorts. With indescribable grace andwith the delicate lightness of a fairy footfall the mighty visitantadvanced and took possession of the heavenly field. Suddenly the fullglory of the setting sun smote it from outer rim to base. In less timethan it takes to tell the story the cloud was dissipated in a spray offeathery light. It drifted like a wreath before the wind and lostitself in the illimitable spaces of the air, as dust in the splendor ofa summer day. It broke upon the hills in a shower of flame anddissolved above the still waters of the lake in tremulous flakes oflight. The sight was worth going far to see, and yet I am willing towager my to-morrow's dinner that not one-fiftieth of the folks for whomI write, saw it, or would have left their supper to watch the gloriousspectacle. 

XX. 

ONE SECRET OF SUCCESS. 

There is just one thing nowadays that never fails to bring success, andthat is assurance. If you are going to make yourself known, it is nolonger the thing to quietly hand out your card and a modest credential;you must advance with a trumpet and blow a brazen blast to shake thestars. The time has gone by when self-advancement can be gained bymodest and unassuming methods. To stand with lifted hat and solicit ahearing savors of an all too humble spirit. The easily abashed maystarve in a garret, or go die on the highways. There is no chance forthem in the jostle of life. The gilded circus chariot, with a fullbrass band and a plump goddess distributing posters, is what takes thepopular heart by storm. Your silent entry into town, depending uponthe merits of your wares to work up a trade, is chimerical andobsolete. We no longer sit in the shadow and play flutes; we parade ina sawdust ring and play on trombones, or take our place on a raisedplatform and beat the bass drum, and in that way we draw a crowd andgather in the coppers, and that is what we live for, isn't it?

XXI. 

A NEW BEATITUDE. 

There should be a new beatitude, and it should read, "Blessed is theman who hath the courage of his convictions. " It should apply to poor, long-suffering women as well. We have plenty of the sort of couragethat will lead a man to step in front of a runaway horse, or dash intoa burning house, or throw himself off a dock to rescue a perishingwretch, but there is a dearth of the kind of bravery that will enableeither man or woman to face a laugh in defense of a principle, orsuccor a losing cause despite a sneer. How the best of us will retreattrailing our banner in the dust, when the hot shot of ridiculeconfronts us from the enemy's camp, or when some merry sentinelchallenges us with the opprobrious epithet, "crank. " Why, I believethere is hardly a man or woman to-day who would have the courage tomarch up to a half-grown boy and knock the cigarette out of his mouth, or tackle the omnipresent, from everlasting to everlasting expectoratorand buffet him into decency, or drive the "nose-bag" and the"head-check" fiend at the point of an umbrella from all futuremolestation of the noble horse he persecutes! We all believe in theextermination of public nuisances, but we have not the courage of ourconvictions to enable us to fight the fight of the just to overthrowthe rampancy of the evil doer. 

XXII. 

BLESSED BE BASHFULNESS. 

Like the presence of a fresh clover in a meadow of sun-scorchedgrasses, or the sound of a singing lark in a council of crows, is thesight of a bashful child. In this age of juvenile precocity andpinafore wisdom I would rather run across a downright timid boy or girlthan drink Arctic soda in dog days. Never be distressed, then, when"johnnie" hangs his head and blushes like a girl, or when his littlesister stands on one foot and fairly writhes with embarrassment in thepresence of strangers. Count it rather the very crown of joy that youare the parent of a fresh and innocent child, rather than thesuperfluous attendant of a _blasé_ infant, who discounts a circusherald in "cheek" and outdistances a drummer in politic address andunabashed effrontery. If I had my way I would put half the littlemannikins and pattern dolls of our latter day nurseries into a bigcorn-popper and see if I couldn't evolve something sweeter and morewholesome out of the hard, round, compact little kernels of theirpresent individuality. I would utterly do away with children's partiesand "butterfly balls" and kirmess dissipations. There should be a newdeal of bread and milk all around. Every boy in the land should go tobed at sundown, and every girl should wear a sunbonnet. There shouldbe no carrying of canes, or eating of candy, or wearing of jewelry, ortalking of beaux, and I would dig up from the grave of the long ago thequaint old custom of courtesying to strangers, of keeping silent untilspoken to, and of universal respect for the aged. This world wouldbrighten up like a rose garden after a shower with the presence of somany modest little girls and bashful boys of the good old-fashionedsort. 

XXIII. 

A BEWITCHED VIOLIN. 

I went to the Auditorium the other night to hear somebody play on theviolin. But that was not a violin which the slender, dark eyedperformer used, and the music that so charmed me was not drawn fromstrings and flashed forth by any ordinary bow. The heavenly notes towhich I listened were like those that young leaves give forth when Maywinds find them, or that ripples make, drawn softly over pebblybeaches. And when they died away and floated like a whisper throughthe hushed house, it was no longer music; it was a greatgolden-jacketed bee settling sleepily into the heart of a rose; it wasthe chime of a vesper-bell broken in mellow cadences between vine-cladhills; it was a something that had no form nor shape, nor semblance toany earthly thing, yet floated midway between the earth and sky, lightas the frailest flower of snow the north wind ever cradled, substanceless as smoke or wind-followed mist. 

XXIV. 

A HAT PIN PROBLEM. 

I overheard the following conversation the other day in a popularrefectory:

"Do your children mind you?"

"I guess not; they never pay any more attention to me than if I was adummy. It takes their father to bring them to terms every time!"

"I am so glad to hear it. I like to know that somebody else besides mehas a hard time with their children. I declare the only way I can getbaby to mind already is to jab him with a hat-pin!"

I waited to hear no more. With sad precipitation I gathered up mycheck and fled. Had I waited another minute I should have said to thatmother: "Madam, I will give you a problem to solve. If, at the age ofthree, a child needs the impetus of one hat-pin to make him obey, howmany meat-axes will it require to keep him in order at the age of ten?And if you are such a poor miserable failure as a mother and a womannow, just at the commencement of an immortal destiny, what have theeternities in store for you?"

Why, oh, why are children sent to people who have no more idea aboutbringing them up than a trout has about training hop-vines? It is aquestion that has given and does give me much uneasiness. 

XXV. 

POLITENESS VS. SINCERITY. 

You imagine it is not polite to be plain spoken! My dear, there aretimes when to be merely "polite" is to be a toady! There are timeswhen politeness is a pillow of hen feathers, wherewith to smother honorand strangle truth. If all you care for is to be popular, to gothrough life like a molasses-drop in a child's mouth, why, then, chooseyour way and live up to it, but don't expect to rank higher thanmolasses, and cheap molasses at that. For my part I would rather beoutspoken in the cause of right, even if plain speech did offend, thanbe a coward and a woolly mouth. Somebody once lived upon earth, theexample of whose thirty odd years of mortal environment we are taughtto pattern our own lives close upon. How about his politeness when hetalked with the hypocrites and rebuked the pharisees? How about hispolicy when he drove the money-changers before a stinging whip, andchampioned the cause of the sinful woman? Oh! I tell you, the soulthat is always looking out for the chance to score one for the winningcause, and throw up its hat with the crowd that makes the most noise, is poor stock to invest in. In the time of need such a friend wouldturn out worse than a real estate investment in a Calumet swamp. 

XXVI. 

THE MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN. 

Shall I tell you plainly, and without any mincing, what type of woman Ithink the most dangerous? It is not the virago, the wounds of a sharptongue are hard enough to bear, but there is a balm for them. Mothermay be overworked, or sister may be fretted; something is the matterwith the digestion, often, when the one we love scolds and isexcessively disagreeable in manner and speech. The harshest word issoon excused and overlooked by the smile and the caress that are sureto follow. So, bad as a scolding, nagging tongue may be, it has itsalleviations, and somewhere there is an excuse made to fit it. Butwhat palliation is there for the offense of the woman who seeks byblandishments and artifices of the evil one's own concoction to stealthe affection of a man away from his wife? There are more such peoplein the world than you can imagine (and the evil is not confined to theone sex either. ) An intriguing woman (or man) who steals into a happyhome and seeks to undermine it, deserves to be stoned on the highway. She may steal your purse, your diamonds, or your checkbook, and, whilelove reigns on its rightful throne, the home will be happy; but let herseek to discrown love, and entertain a clandestine passion in itsplace, and the foundation of the stoutest home that was ever founded onthe rocks of time will tumble in ruin about her ears. Avoid theintriguing, fascinating, dangerous, designing woman, then, whorecognizes no sanctity in wedded honor, and by her wiles and witcherieslets in a thousand devils to the heart and home she curses with herpresence. 

XXVII. 

SERMONS FROM FLIES. 

I chanced to stand the other day in a stuffy little room, the onlywindow of which was shaded by a ground glass light. Before the grayvoid of this cheerless window a few flies darted hither and thither inconsequential flurry, while I myself, for the time being a most blueand down-cast mortal, was battling with the thought that life, afterall, was hardly worth the living, and the outlook for anything betterin a dim and uncertain future, too dubious to be entertained. But allat once my vision seemed to pierce the shaded pane that intervenedbetween me and the great, rushing, riotous world, and such a conceptionof all that lay the other side the ground glass window overflowed mysoul, that I felt rebuked as by an audible voice. 

XXVIII. 

THE MAN WHO KNOWS IT ALL. 

There is a type of humanity we all encounter from day to day, at whosefuneral I shall carry a banner and beat a tom-tom. He is the man whoknows it all. In his grave, human forethought, and general knowledge, and mortal perfection and everything worth knowing, shall one day liedown and die. He never makes mistakes, nor loses his temper, nor getsthe worst of an argument, nor is worsted in a bargain. He never actson impulse, nor jumps without looking, nor commits himself rashly, norloses the wind out of his sails. He is so overwhelmingly superior(sometimes he is a woman!) that in his presence you are a child ofwrath, a hopeless imbecile, and a black sheep all in one, and yet--howyou hate him and how you long to see some brave young David come alongand hit him with a sling shot! Such a man as he, is fitted to bringthe average human to the dust as quickly and as surely as a well aimedbullet brings down a wild duck. 

XXIX. 

BALD HEADS AND UNEQUAL CHANCES. 

What a superior chance a man has in this world over a woman! In thematter of physical attributes alone his innings are as far ahead ofhers as the man who carries the banner in a Fourth of July processionis ahead of the little boy who tugs along behind with the lemonadepail. The other evening I attended the theatre, and casting my eyeover the audience between acts, I beheld no less than a score ofbald-headed men. They were composed, and even cheerful, under aninfliction that would have ostracized a woman. Imagine a man taking abald-headed woman to see the "Railroad of Love!" Imagine a bald-headedgirl with a fat, red neck and white eyelashes being in eager demand forparties, coaching jubilees or private suppers. There never was a manso homely, so halt, so deficient in beauty or brain that he could notget a wife when he wanted, but the candidates for the position ofmistress of any man's household must be pretty, graceful and sweet. The chances are uneven, my dear, but what are you going to do about it?

XXX. 

HUMAN STRAWS. 

There is not much credit in being jolly when the joints of life arewell oiled and events move as smoothly as feathers drawn through cream. The glory lies in maintaining your serenity under adversecircumstances; in emulating Mark Tapley, and being jolly when there isnot a hand's breadth of blue in all the heavens. There are straws laidupon us every day, which, if they do not break our backs, at least gofar to loosen the vertebrae of our temper. One of these straws is theman who expectorates in public places. What shall I do with that man?I cannot kill him, because there is a law against the violent removalof even a human straw. To be sure, he is the most insignificant strawthat the wind of destiny blows across the waste of life. He neverwill mature a head of wheat though you give him eleven eternities to doit in. But he serves his purpose, and breaks the back of toleration. 

XXXI. 

A SALLOW FACED GIRL FOR YOUR PITY. 

On the opposite corner sits a half-grown girl peddling apples. Shepolishes the fruit occasionally with a rag that she carries about herperson (let us humbly hope it is not her handkerchief!) and now andthen breaks into a double shuffle to dissipate the chill that invadesher ill-clothed frame. What taste of joy do you suppose that childever got out of the pewter cup the fates pour for her? Does she everfind time to run about with other children, playing the games which thegenerations hand down from one to the other? Does she ever play "tag, "or "gray wolf, " or "I spy?" Does she ever swing in a hammock likeother girls when the days are long and blithe and sweet, as free fromcare as a cloud or a butterfly? Does life hold for her one sparkle inits poor cup of wine, one flavor that is not sordid and low and mean?You say it is easy to sit here all day selling apples, and wonder why Ihold this sallow-faced girl up for special pity. To be sure there isno hardship in the part of her life visible to us. But in her dullsoul lurks constantly the shadow of an ever present fear. The poorchild is accountable to a cruel master, whether father or mother itmatters little, who beats her each night that she returns to herwretched home with a scanty showing of nickels; and the consciousnessof dull times and slow sales keeps her in a state of trepidation, whichin you or me, my dear, would soon lapse into "nervous prostration, " abig doctor's fee, and a change of air. Yet mark my words, if thedark-browed liberator of sorrow's captives were to proffer my littlefruit peddler the exchange of death for all this wearing apprehensionand constant toil, do you think she would accept the transfer? Notshe. The "captain" out snow-balling to-day in her love-guarded home, with never a fear to shadow her sunny eyes, nor a big sorrow to startthe showery tears, would not plead harder for the boon of longer living. 

XXXII. 

AND YET HE CLINGS TO LIFE. 

As I sit here by my window I am reminded that this is a queer world andqueer be the mortals that pass through it. There is that wreck of aman over yonder squeezing a bit of weird melody out of an old accordionand expecting the tortured public to throw a penny into his hat now andthen to pay him for his trouble. Do you suppose that man knows whathappiness means, as God designed it. He was, without doubt, a sad andgrimy little baby once, brought up on gin slightly adulterated with hismother's milk. He was pounded daily before he was two years old, starved and cuffed and kicked all the way up to manhood, and now hisneck is so completely under the heel of hydra-headed disaster, wickedness and want, that all he can find to do in this big and busyworld is to sit on the sidewalk and lacerate the public ear with thosedreadful discords. And yet, if death were to step up to that beggar'sside and offer him release, instant and sure, in the form of a fallingbrick or a horse running amuck on the crowded sidewalk, he would clingto the miserable shred he calls life as eagerly as though he were thecrown prince himself, with the heritage of his kingdom yet unwon. 

XXXIII. 

OH! TO RID THE WORLD OF SHAMS. 

If you go to a florist and ask for a sweet pink root, you may getfooled on the label, but when blooming time comes round there will beno difficulty in deciding whether the flower you took on trust was pinkor onion. Plant a seed in the horticultural kingdom by any name youplease, there will be no mistake possible when June comes. A carrot isbound to yield carrots, and a rose will repeat the bright wonder of itsbeauty throughout the dreamy summer days, in spite of any other namethe florist may have blundered upon in the labeling. Not so withhumanity. There are souls that pass through life with the label oflily, balm or heart's-ease tagged to them, when they are nothing betterthan wild onion at heart. There are lives sown in out of the wayplaces, and carelessly passed by as weeds, whose blossom angels mightstoop to wear in the whiteness of their own pure breasts. Oh, to ridthe world of its shams! To sweep away the "Chadbands" with a featherduster, as the new girl removes dust; to open the windows and shoo awaythe traitors as one drives flies, to hoe out society plats as one hoesgarden beds, and thin out the flaunting weeds so that the lilies mayfind room to grow; to turn the strong light of discerning truth uponhypocrites until, as the microscope changes a globule of dew into theabode of 10, 000 wriggling abominations, so the deceitful heart shallstand revealed for what it actually is, rather than for what it seemsto be. 

XXXIV. 

DRESS PARADE OF THE GREAT ALIKE

I am tired of the endless dress parade of the "Great Alike. " I amweary of walking in line, like convicts in stripes. I glory in crankswho serve their own individuality and are in bondage to nobody. Theonward sweep of progress in this age has opened up the way fornon-conformists. It is not a matter of heresy, nowadays, to think foryourself, dress for yourself, and be yourself. I confess that I haveno heart pinings for such nonconformists as Dr. Mary Walker or anyother individual who believes that eccentricity, serving no purpose butto make one conspicuous, is interesting. There are certain generalrules of conduct that must be observed or the world would go to wrecklike a wild freight train. It would be embarrassing to all concernedwere I to decline to conform to the conventional custom of wearingshoes and bonnets, but when fashion ordains French heels and deadbirds, if I decline to walk in file with the conformist, I am somethingof a hero, perhaps, and certainly preserve my own self-respect betterthan if I yielded to either a harmful or a cruel custom. Whenetiquette rules that I go through the world armed with a haughtyreserve, like a picket soldier with a shotgun, if I conform to thatrule, I act upon the warm impulses of natural living as therefrigerator acts upon meat; I may preserve the proprieties, but Ichill the juices. 

XXXV. 

IF GOD MADE YOU A WILLOW DON'T TRY TO BE A PINE

I wish I could spend a fortnight in a world where folks dared to betrue to themselves; where the conformist was shelved with last year'scalendars, and a man studied out his own route to heaven and had thecourage to walk in it. I would like to dwell with individuals and notwith packs of human cards shuffled together in sets. I would like tofeel my soul kindle into respect for distinct personalities, each onemaking his garment after his own measurement, and not trying to fit hiscoat after the cut of his neighbor's jacket. I would like to live fora while with men and women, rather than with human sheep blindlyfollowing a leader. Life is something better than a sheep-pathaimlessly skirting the hills. It is a growth upward through theinfinite blue into heaven. It is the spreading of many and variousbranches. If you are a willow, don't attempt to be a pine, and if theLord made you to grow like an elm don't pattern yourself after a scruboak. The rebuke "what will people say?" should never be applied to thewaywardness of a child. Teach it rather to ask: "How will my ownself-respect stand this test?" Such training will evolve somethingrarer in the way of development than a candle-mold or a yard-stick. 

XXXVI. 

TWO TYPES. 

How full the streets are, to be sure! Where do all the folks come fromand where do they stop? Surely there are not roofs enough to cover thesteady stream of humanity that courses through the thoroughfares fromdawn to night time. To one who walks much to and fro in the town therecomes a rare chance to study human types. Books hold nothing withintheir covers so grotesque and so pathetic, so inexplicable and so queeras the folks that jostle one another on the streets! There is theprecise female who nips along in a little apologetic way, as thoughthere was an impropriety in the very act of locomotion for which shewould fain atone. From the crown of her head to her boot tips she isproper, stupid and decorous, but too much of her company would prove toendurance what sultry weather proves to cream. In fact, I think if Iwere told I had to live with some of the women I meet on the streets, Iwould fall on my hat pin, as the old Romans did upon their swords, asthe pleasanter alternative. There is nothing more charming than abright woman, but she must be superior to her own environments and beable to talk and think about other things than a correct code ofetiquette, her costumes and her domestic concerns. 

There is a man I sometimes encounter on the street between whom andmyself there looms a day of bitter reckoning. He wears rubbers if theday is at all moist, and next to ear muffs, galoshes on an able bodiedman goad me to fury. If the Lord made you a man, be a man and not amolly-coddle. Soup without meat, bread without salt, pie-crust withouta filling, slack-baked dough, all these are prototypes of the manwithout endurance or sufficient stamina to stand getting his delicatefeet dashed with dew, or his shell-like ears nipped by frost. 

XXXVII. 

A DREAM GARDEN. 

Country living is delightful, but, like all other blessings, it has itsalternates of shadow. I used to sit here by my window last April andgloat over the prospects for the vegetable garden a tramp laid out andseeded for me in the early spring. What luscious peas were going toclamber over the trellis along about the middle of July! What goldensquashes were going to nestle in the little hollows! What lusty cornwas going to stride the hillocks! What colonies of beans and beds oflettuce should fill the spaces, like stars in the wake of a triumphantmoon, and how odorous the breath of the healthful onion should be uponthe midsummer air! But listen. No Assyrian ever yet came down uponthe fold as my neighbor's chickens have descended upon the fairterritory of my garden. As for shooing a chicken off, my dear, whenits gigantic intellect is set upon scratching up a seeded bed, youmight as well attempt to wave back a thunderstorm with a fan. 

I have undertaken several difficult things in my life, but never one sohopeless as convincing a calm and resolute hen that she is an intruder. I spent one glad summer trying to keep a brood out of a geranium bed, and had typhoid fever all the fall just from overwork and worry. Butsay there had been no chickens to "wear the heart and waste the body, "how about potato bugs, and caterpillars and huge and gruesome slugs? Inever go out to sprinkle the sad pea vines or pick the drooping lettucebut what I resolve myself into a magnet to lure the earlyvegetable-devouring reptile from its lair. Large 7 by 9 caterpillarsand zebra-striped ladybugs disport themselves on neck and ankle until Iflee the scene. 

XXXVIII. 

ANYTHING WORSE THAN A BLUE-JAY? HARDLY!

If there is anything worse than a blue-jay, name it. Perhaps a mannishwoman, with a shrill voice and a waspish tongue, is as bad, but shecan't be worse. There are something less than a hundred of thesefeathered hornets dwelling in the grove that surrounds my house, andthey began before sunrise to call names and fight clamorous battles. One of them starts the row by crying something in the ear of aneighbor, which sounds like a challenge blown through a fish horn. Atthis the insulted neighbor flops down off the tree where he lives, andsays naughty words very thick and very fast. Then five or six oldladies poke their heads over the sides of their nests and call"Police!" A squad of bluecoats comes tearing ever the border andattacks the original culprit. He whips out his fish horn and summons ageneral uprising. Very soon there is a battle royal, to which the oldladies add zest by squeaking out dire threats in shrill falsetto voicespitched at high "C. " This keeps up until somebody arises and declaimsfrom my open window, dancing meanwhile in helpless rage, to see howfutile is the voice of august man when blue-jays hold the floor. Talkabout the English sparrow! It is a mild-mannered little gentlemancompared to the noisy jay. Its politeness and amiability areChesterfieldan beside the behavior of its handsomely attired butboorish neighbor. And as for fighting, why, I verily believe a bluejayin good condition could "do up" John L. Sullivan so quickly the gentlepugilist would never know what struck him. 

XXXIX. 

GOOD HEALTH A BLESSING. 

What roses are with worms in the bud, such are women without health. There can be no beauty in unwholesomeness, there can be nothingattractive in a delicate pallor caused by the disregard of hygiene, orin a willowy figure, the result of lacing. If I could now and thenthread some particular bead on an electric wire that should tingle andthrill wherever it touched, or write in a streak of zig-zag lightacross the sky, I might, perhaps, compel attention to what I have tosay. There are certain laws of health which, if they only might beregarded, would make us all as beautiful in outward seeming as westrive to be, no doubt, in spirit. Ever so pure and lovely a soul inan unhealthy body is like a bird trying to thrive and sing in anill-kept cage, or a flower blooming with a blight set deep within itswithering petals. You or I can serve neither heaven nor mankindworthily if we disregard the laws of health, and bear about with us afrail and poorly nurtured body. There are "shut in" spirits, to besure, captives from birth to pain, the record of whose patientendurance of suffering sweetens the world in which they live, as a roseshut within a dull and prosy book imparts to its pages a fragrance bornof summer and heaven; but such lives are the exception. The truedestiny of the sons and daughters of earth is to grow within the gardenof life as a sapling rather than as a sickly weed, developing timberrather than pith, and yielding finally to death, the sharp-axed oldwoodman, as the tree falls, to pass onward to new opportunities ofpower and service. The tree does not decay where it stands, nor doesit often fall because its core is honeycombed by disease. It is cutdown in the meridian of its strength, because somewhere on distant seasa new ship is to be launched and needs a stalwart mainmast, or a homeis to be builded that needs the fiber of strong and steadfast timber. So, I think, with men and women, there would not be so much unsightlygrowing old, with waning power and wasted faculties, if we attendedmore strictly to the laws of health, and when death came to us at lastit should only be because there was need of good timber further on. 

XL. 

WHY, BLESS MY SOUL! IT REALLY SEEMS TO THINK. 

I was watching not long since, a man talking to a bright woman on thetrain, and his manner of comporting himself set me to thinking of thepeculiar ways men have of addressing themselves to women. Some talk toa woman very much as they might talk to the wonderful automaton aroundat the museum when it plays a game of chess. "Why, bless my soul, itreally seems to be thinking! What apparent intelligence? What evidentfaculty of mental independence! It almost appears to possess the powerof coherent thought!" Others sit in the presence of a woman as thoughshe was a dish of ice cream. "How sweet. " "How refreshing. " "Howaltogether nice!" Many behave in her company as though she was aloaded gun, and liable to do mischief, while a very few act as thoughshe was above the wiles of flattery, and not to be bought for the priceof a new bonnet. Hasten the day, good Lord, when she shall be regardedas something wiser and nobler than an automaton, less perishable than aconfection, more comforting and peace-producing than a fire-arm, averitable comrade for man at his best, not so much prized for the vainand evanescent charm of her beauty as for the steadfastness and theincorruptible purity of her soul. 

XLI. 

TAKE TO DRINK, OF COURSE!

What would a man do, I yonder, if things went so irretrievably wrongwith him as they do with some of us women? Why, take to drink, ofcourse. That is a sovereign consolation I am told for many ills. Awoman has no equivalent for whisky. She must needs clench her handsand set her teeth and bear her lot. And yet you tell us a man is thestronger. I tell you, my dear, I know a dozen women who could discountany soldier that ever fought in the Crimean wars, for downright heroismand pluck. Where do you find the man who is willing to wear shabbyclothes and old boots and a seedy hat that his boys may go fine asfiddles? Where do you find a man who will get up cold mornings andmake the fire, tramp to work through snow, pick his way throughflooding rain, weather northeast blasts and go hungry and cold that hemay keep the children together which a bad and wayward mother hasdeserted? First thing a man would do in such a case would be to boardthe children out with convenient relatives while he looked around for adivorce and another wife! How long would a man brace up under theservant question? How long would he endure the insolence and theflings of cruel and covert enemies because the children needed all hecould give them, and, only along the thorny road of continualharassment and trial might he attain the earnings needed to render themhappy and comfortable? If a man is insulted he settles the insult witha blow straight from the shoulder and that is the end of it; he wouldnever be able to endure, as some women do, a never-ending round ofpersecution that would whiten the hairs on a sealskin jacket!

XLII. 

A WARNING TO GIRLS. 

There is one thing we sometimes see in the face of the young that issadder than the ravages of any disease or the disfigurement of anydeformity. Shall I tell you what it is? It is the mark that an impurethought or an unclean jest leaves behind it. No serpent ever wentgliding through the grass and left the trail of defilement morepalpably in its wake than vulgarity marks the face. You may be ever sosecret in your enjoyment of a shady story, you may hide ever socunningly the fact that you carry something in your pocket which youpurpose to show only to a few and which will perhaps start the laughthat, like a bird of carrion, waits upon impurity and moral corruptionfor its choicest feeding, but the mark of what you tell, and what youdo, and what you laugh at, is left behind like a sketch traced inindelible fluid. There is no beauty that can stand the disfigurementof such a scar. However bright your eyes, and rosy-red your color, andsoft the contour of lip and cheek, when the relish of an impure jestcreeps in, the comeliness fades and perishes, as lilies in the languorof a poisonous breath from off the marshes. I beg of you, dear girls, shun the companion who seeks to foul your soul with an obscene story orpicture, as you would shun the contagion of smallpox. If I had adaughter who went out into the world to earn her bread, as some of youdo, and any one should seek to corrupt her purity by insidiousadvances, I would get down on my knees and pray God, to take her tohimself before her fair, sweet innocence should sully under the breathof corruption and moral death. Nobody ever went to the devil yet byone big bound, like a tiger out of a jungle or a trout to the fly; itis an imperceptible passage down an easy slope, and the first step ofall is sometimes taken when a young girl lends her ears to a smuttystory or a questionable jest. Then let me say again, and I wish Icould borrow Fort Sheridan's bugle to blow it far and wide, that everygirl might hear: Close your ears and harden your hearts against theinsidious advance of evil. Have nothing to do with a desk-mate or witha comrade who seeks to amuse or entertain you with conversation youwould not care to have "mother" hear, and which you would be sorry toremember, if this night the death angel came knocking at the door andsummoned your soul away upon its lonely journey to find its God. 

XLIII. 

A FROG MAY DO WHAT A MAN MAY NOT. 

A bull-frog in a malarial pond is expected to croak and make all theprotest he can against his surroundings. But a man! Destined for acrown and sent upon earth to be educated for the court of the King ofkings! Placed in an emerald world with a hither edge of opaline shadowand a fine spray of diamond-dust to set it sparkling; with ten millionsinging birds to form its orchestra; sunset clouds and sunrise mists todrape it, and countless flowers to make it sweet while the hand of Godhimself upholds it on its way among the clustering stars, what righthas a man to find fault with his surroundings, or lament himself thatall things do not go to suit him here below? When it shall be in orderfor the glow-worm to call the midday sun to account, or for thewood-tick to find fault with the century old oak that protects it; orfor the blue-bird to question the haze on a midsummer horizon because, forsooth! it is a little off color with his own wings, then it will betime for man to find fault with the ordering of the seasons and theallotment of the weather in the world he is allowed to inhabit. 

XLIV. 

THANKING GOD FOR A GOOD HUSBAND. 

About one hour of the twenty-four would perhaps be the proportion oftime a woman ought to spend upon her knees thanking God for a goodhusband. When I see the hosts of sorry maids, and women wearingdraggled widow's weeds who fill the ranks of the great army of theself-supporting; when I see them trooping along in the rain, slippingalong in the mud, leaping for turning bridges, and hanging on to thestraps in horse cars, I feel like sending out a circular to shelteredand happy wives bidding them be thankful for their lot. To be sure, one would rather be a scrub-woman or a circus-jumper than be the wifeof some men we wot of, but in the main, a woman well married is like ajewel well set, or like a light well sheltered from the wind. 

XLV. 

JUST A LITTLE TIRED!

What a grubby old stopping place this world is, anyway. How hard wehave to work just to keep the flesh on our bones and that fleshcovered, even with nothing better than homespun. And we are getting alittle tired of it all, aren't we, my dear? Just a little tired of thetreadmill, where, like a sheep in a dairy, we pace our limited beat tobring a handful of inadequate butter. We have trudged to and fro aboutlong enough, and have half a mind to throw up the contract with fate. But hold on a bit. There is something worse than too much work, andthat is idleness. Imagine a sudden hush in all the myriad sounds oflabor. The ceasing of the whirr of countless wheels whereat men standday after day through toilful years, fashioning everything from a pin'shead to a ship's mast; the suspended click of millions of sewingmachines, above which bend delicate women stitching their lives intoshirts and garments that find their way onto bargain tables, where richwomen crowd to seize the advantage of the discount. Let all suspendedhammers in the myriad workshops swing into silence and all footstepscease their weary plodding to and fro, I think the awful hush would fartranscend the muteness of midnight or that still hour when dawn stealsin among the pallid stars, and on the dim, uncertain shore of time thetide of man's vitality ebbs faint and low. There is no blight so fellas the blight of enforced calm. It is in the unworked garden thatweeds grow. It is in the stagnant water that disease germs waken tohorrid life. Ennui palls upon a brave heart. Ennui is like along-winded, amiable, but watery-idea'd friend who drops in to see usand dribbles platitudes until every nerve is tapped. Ennui is likebeing forced to drink tepid water or to eat soup without salt. Labor, on the contrary, is like a friend with grit and tonic in his make-up. It comes to us as a wind visits the forest, and sets our facultiesstirring as the wind rustles the leaves and sets the wood fragranceflying. It puts spice in our broth and ice in our drink. It puts aflavor in life that starts an appetite, or, in other words, awakensambition. Although the world is full of toilers it would be worse offwere it full of idlers. Good, hard workers find no time to makemischief. Your anarchists and your breeders of discord are never foundamong busy men; they breed, like mosquitoes, out of stagnant places. It is the idle man that quickens hatred and contention, as it is thesetting hen and not the scratching one that hatches out the eggs. 

XLVI. 

PAINTING THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 

It had been a battle renewed for more years than there are dandelionsjust now in the front yard. Various members of the family had declaredfrom time to time that if the old house was not painted it would fallto pieces from sheer mortification at its own disreputable appearance. 

"Why, you can put your toothpick right through the rotten shingles, "cried the doctor. "The only way to save it is to paint it. "

Now, I have always been the odd sheep of a highly decorous fold. Ihave more love for nature than hard good sense, I am told. So I loathepaint just as I hate surface manners. I want the true grain all theway through, be it in boards or people. I love the weather stain on anold house. I love the mossy touches, the lichen grays and the russetbrowns that age imparts to the shingles, and I almost feel likemurdering the paint fiend when he comes around every spring, andtransforms some dear old landmark into a gorgeous "Mrs. Skewton, " withhideous coats and splashy trimmings. But alas for sentiment when themoney bags are against it! Profit before poetry any day in thisnineteenth century, my dear, and so when an interested capitalist cameup from town and gave it as his opinion that the old house would beworth a third more if put on the market in a terra cotta coat withsage-green trimmings the day was lost for me. I had to strike mycolors like many another idealist in this practical world. In thefirst place, there has been for the last fifteen years or so, a vinegrowing all over the old home, catching its lithe tendrils into theroof and making cathedral lights in all the windows. It has been thehome of generations of robins. It has hung full of purple, bell-shapedblossoms on coral stems that have attracted a thousand humming birdsand honey bees by their fragrance. It has changed into a veritablecloth of gold in early September, and in late October has flamed intoscarlet against the gray roof, like a blaze that quivers athwart astormy sky. It has been the joy of my life and the inspiration of mydreams, but it had to come down before the paint-pot! So one nightwhen I reached home, tired to death with a hand-to-hand encounter withthe demon who gives poor mortals their bread and butter for anequivalent of flesh and blood and spirit, I noticed that the littlefolks greeted me with an air of subdued decorum as though fresh from afuneral. There were no caperings, no flauntings, no cavortings. Eachyoung minx had on her Sunday go-to-meeting air, and the boy stood withhis hat on one side of his head, as though for a sixpence he wouldfight all creation. Wondering at the change, I happened to look towardthe house, and there it stood in the light of the fading day, like apoor old woman without a veil to hide her wrinkles! Every windowlooked ashamed of itself, and on the ground lay the dear old vine, prone as a lost reputation. 

"I never see such an ill-fired crank in all the days of my life!"remarked the painter to the new girl, after I had held a brief butspirited interview with him over the garden fence; "blanked if shedidn't cry because her vine was down!"

XLVII. 

THE OLD SITTING-ROOM STOVE. 

What is there within the home, during the winter season at least, thatseems so thoroughly to constitute the soul of home as the family-roomstove? It can never be replaced by that ugly hole in the floor whichfloods our rooms with furnace heat, with no glow of cheerful firelight, no flicker of flame or changeful play of shadow out of which to weavefantastic dreams and fancies. I once watched the dying out of one ofthese fires in a great base burner, around which for years a large andloving family had gathered. The furniture of the home had all beensold, and the family was about to scatter. The trunks were packed andgone, the last article removed from the place, and the old stove wasleft to burn out its fire at the last, that it, too, might be removednext morning. And after the evening had come and was far spent, thelast evening wherein any right should remain to us to enter the oldhome as its owners and occupants, I took my pass-key and slipped overfrom the neighbor's for my final good-bye to the dear old home. Thefire-light, like the glance of a reproachful eye, shone upon me throughthe gloom of the deserted parlor. "Have I not warmed you and comfortedyou and cheered you with my genial glow?" a voice seemed to say; "andnow you have come to see me die! I am the vital spirit of your home. I am dying, and nothing can ever reanimate these deserted rooms againwith the dear, the beautiful past. "

Like the eye of one who is going down to death, the firelight faded andfinally went out in the pallor of ashes, while I, sitting alone in thedarkness, felt the whole world drearier for a little space for thefinal extinguishment of this fire, the death hour of a once happy home. 

XLVIII. 

A TALK ABOUT DIVORCE. 

Somebody asked me the other day if I favored divorce. Like everythingelse in the world the matter depends largely upon special circumstance, but in the main I do not believe in divorce. If husbands and wivescannot live together without quarreling, let them live apart, but theyhave no business to sever the bond that unites them. The promise totake each other for "better or for worse" must be regarded in bothreadings of the clause. If the "worse" comes along we have no right toignore it because the "better" has failed. If your husband is adrunkard, all the more reason for you to stand by him if you are a goodwoman. If he is cruel and abusive, you need not put your life indanger by staying under his roof, but you need not throw him over andget another husband. If he goes into the gutter, pull him out, andknow that your experience is only a big dose of the "worse" youpromised to take along with the "better. " It is the quinine with thehoney, and you have no right to reject it. There are 10, 000 thingsthat work discord in married life that a little tact and forbearancewould dissipate, as a steady wind will blow away gnats. The troublewith all of us is, we make too much of trifles. We nurse them, andfeed them, and magnify them, until from gnats they grow to be buzzardswith their beaks in our hearts. Not for one sin, nor seven sins, norseventy sins, forsake the friend you chose from all the world to makeyour own. A good woman will save anything but a liar, and God's graceis adequate, in time, for even him. I say unto wives, belarge-hearted, wide in your charity, generous, not paltry, norexacting, (exaction has murdered more loves than Herod murderedbabies!) companionable, forbearing and true, and stand by your husbandsthrough everything. And I say unto men, be _men_! Don't choose awife, in the first place, for the mere exterior of a pretty face andform. Be as alert in the choice of a wife as you are in a bargain. You don't invest in a house just because it looks well, or buy a suitof clothes at first sight, or dash on change and snatch at the firstdeal. After you are once married stand by your choice like a man. Ifyou must have your beer, don't sneak out of it on a clove and a lie;carefully weigh the cost, and if you conclude to risk everything forthe gratification of an appetite drink at home and above board, anddon't attempt to deceive your wife with subterfuges and excuses. Don'trun after other women because your wife is not so young as she oncewas, or because the bloom is faded a little from the face you oncethought so fair. It is the part of an Indian to retract a gift oncegiven, or to go back on a bargain. Don't live together if you can'trise above the level of fighting cats, but be careful how you throwaside the bonds that God has joined between you. Live the lot you havechosen as bravely as you can, remembering that the thorn that you havedeveloped will never change into a rose by mere change ofcircumstances. Divorce and the mere shifting of the stage setting willnever make your tragedy over into a vaudeville or a light opera. 

XLIX. 

GONE BACK TO FLIPPITY-FLOPPITY SKIRTS. 

The rainy season is here again, and where is dress-reform? My soulgrew sick, the other morning as, with unfurled umbrella, lunch-basket, bundle, and draperies, I beheld the working woman on her weary march. Give a man a petticoat, a bundle and an umbrella, and the streets wouldbe full of capering lunatics whenever it rained. Stay at home, did yousay? That is good advice for the woman who has nothing else to do, butin these latter days the right sort of husband don't go round. Eitherhe died in the war or the stock has run low, so that more than half thewell-meaning women have no homes to stay in. What Moses is going tolead the poor creatures to the commonsense suit that shall protect themfrom the inclement weather they are forced to meet as they go abroad toearn their bread and salt? It must be a concerted movement, for thereis none among us who dares take the war path alone. The children ofIsrael went in a crowd and so must we. For a principle there are thoseamong us who would die, perhaps, but there is no principle on the earthbelow nor in the heaven above for which we would suffer ridicule. Asfor me, I have furled my banner and laid aside my bugle. I am tired ofbeing a martyr to an unpopular cause. I am too big a coward to becaught making an everlasting object of myself. I have gone back toflippity-floppity skirts and long gowns and all the rest of the "fleshpots. " Browning says of a certain class of people: "The dread of shamehas made them tame, " and I am one of the tame ones. A domestic tabbycouldn't be tamer, nor a yellow bird fed on lump sugar. I expectnothing but that my winter's hat will be adorned with a chubby greenparrot, and that I shall walk the street leading a brimstone dog by amagenta ribbon. If one is forced to eat, drink and sleep with theRomans, perhaps it is better for one's peace of mind not to be toopronounced a Greek!

L. 

I SHALL MEET HIM SOME DAY. 

I shall meet the man who ties his horse's nose in a bag, some day, insingle combat, and there will be only one of us left to tell the taleof the encounter. Wouldn't I love to see that man forced to take hisdinner while tied up in a flour bag! I should love to deal out hiscoffee through a garden hose, and serve his vegetables through along-distance telephone. There is nothing like turn about to incitejustice in the human breast. While we are afflicted with such anepidemic of strikes, why not have one that has some sense in it. Letthe overworked horses, straining themselves blind with terrible loads, go on a strike. Let the persecuted dogs, deprived of water andscrimped for food, stoned and hounded as mad when they are only crazedby man's inhumanity, go on a strike. Let the cattle, and the countlessthousands of stock, prodded into cars and cramped in long passages oftransit, blinded with the crash of fellow-victims' horns while crowdedtogether in their inadequate quarters, trampled under riotous hoofs, and kept without food and overfilled with water to make them look fat, go on a strike. Let the chickens and geese and all the live featheredstock on South Water Street, kept in little bits of coops and flungheadlong and screaming down into dark cellars, trundled over roughroads in jolting wagons and utterly deprived for hours at a time of adrop of water to cool the fever of their terrible fear, go on a strike. Let the horses of these fat aldermen, left all day in the court housealleyway without food and checked tight with head-check lines, go on astrike. Let the patient nags that stand all day by the curbstone andare plagued and annoyed by mischievous boys, go on a strike. In such astrike as any of these the Lord himself might condescend to take sideswith the oppressed against the oppressor. 

LI. 

A MANNISH WOMAN. 

There are many disagreeable things to be met with in life, but nonethat is much harder upon the nerves than a mannish woman. With astrident voice and a swaggering walk, and a clattering tongue, shetakes her course through the world like a cat-bird through an orchard;the thrushes and the robins are driven right and left before theadvance of the noisy nuisance. A coarse-tongued man is bad enough, heaven knows, but when a woman descends to slangy speech, and vulgarjests, and harsh diatribes, there is no language strong enough withwhich to denounce her. On the principle that a strawberry is quickerto spoil than a pumpkin, it takes less to render a woman obnoxious thanto make a man unfit for decent company. I am no lover ofbutter-mouthed girls, of prudes and "prunes and prism" fine ladies; Ilove sprightliness and gay spirits and unconventionality, but themoment a woman steps over the border land that separates delicacy offeeling, womanliness and lovableness, from rudeness, loud-voiced slangand the unblushing desire for notoriety, she becomes, in the eyes ofall whose opinion is worth having, a miserable caricature upon her sex. It is not quite so bad to see a young girl making a fool of herself asto see an elderly woman comporting herself in a giddy manner in publicplaces. We look for feather-heads among juveniles, but surely thecares and troubles of fifty years should tame down the high spirits ofany woman. Chance took me into a public office the other day, largelyconducted by women. Conspicuous among the clerks was a woman whose agemust have exceeded fifty years. She was exchanging loud pleasantrieswith a couple of beardless boys upon the question of "getting tight. "Noble theme for a woman old enough to be their grandmother to choose!As I listened to the coarse jests and looked into her hard and unlovelyface, I could but wonder how nature ever made the mistake to label suchmaterial--"woman. " It would be no more of a surprise to find aconfectioner's stock made up of coarse salt, marked "sugar, " or to buyburdock of a florist, merely because the tag attached to it waslettered "moss rose. "

LII. 

THE ONLY WAY TO CONQUER A HARD DESTINY. 

The only way to conquer a cast-iron destiny is to yield to it. Youwill break to pieces if you are always casting yourself upon the rocks. Sit down on the "sorrowing stone" now and then, but don't expect tolast long if you are constantly flinging yourself head first againstit. If life holds nothing nobler and sweeter than the routine ofuncongenial work, if all the pleasant anticipations and lively hopes ofyouth remain but as cotton fabrics do when the colors have washed away, if good intention and noble purpose glimmer only a little now and thenfrom out the murky environments of your lot, as fisher lights at sea, accept the inevitable and make the best of it. Nothing can stop us ifwe are bound to grow. We are not like trees that can be hewed down byevery chance woodman's axe; death is the only woodman abroad for us, and he does not hew down, he simply transplants. God is our onlyjudge; to him alone shall we yield the record of life's troubled day, and isn't it a great comfort to think that he so fully understands whathave been our limitations, and how we have been handicapped and baffledand hindered? If jockeys were to enter their horses for the greatDerby with the understanding that the road was rough and the horsesblind, do you think much would be expected of the finish? And isheaven less discriminating than a horse jockey?

LIII. 

THE "SMART" PERSON. 

Next to a steam calliope preserve me from a "smart" person. There isas much difference between smartness and brain as there is between ajewsharp and a flute, or between mustard and wine. A "smart" personmay turn off a lot of work and make things hum, so does a buzz-saw!Who would not rather spend an afternoon with a lark than with a hornet?The lark may not be so active, but activity is not always the mostdesirable thing in the world. A smart person may accomplish more thana dreamer, but in the long run I'll take my chance with the latter. When we go up to St. Peter's gate by and by, after life's long, blundering march is over, it will not be the answer to such questionsas this: "How many socks can you darn in an afternoon, besides bakingbread, washing windows, tending babies and scrubbing floors?" that isgoing to help us; but, "How many times have you stopped your work tobind up a broken heart, or say a comforting word, or help carry aburden for somebody worse off than yourself?" I tell you, smart folksnever have the time to be sympathetic; they always have too muchthundering work on hand. 

LIV. 

A PRETTY STREET INCIDENT. 

The other day a horse was trying to get a very small quantity of oatsfrom the depths of a very small nosebag. In vain the poor fellowtossed his head and did his best to gain his dinner. At last, just ashe was settling down to dumb and despairing patience, a bright-facedboy of perhaps ten or twelve years of age happened along. Seeing thedilemma of the horse, the little fellow stopped and said: "Halloa, can't get your oats, can you? Never mind, I'll fix you!" Andstraightway he shortened up the straps that held the bag in place, and, with a kindly pat and a cheery word which the grateful horse seemed toappreciate, went his way. I would like to be the mother, or the aunt, or even the first cousin of that boy. I would rather that he shouldbelong to me than that I should own a Paganini violin, or a first-waterdiamond the size of a Concord grape. Bless his heart, wherever he is, and may he long continue to live in a world that needs him. Kindnessof heart, and tenderness; consideration for the needs of the helplessand the weak, and the courage that dares be true to a merciful impulse, are traits that go far toward the make-up of angels. We needtender-hearted boys more than we need a new tariff to bring up anddevelop the resources of the country. The boy that succeeds inbringing in the greatest number of dead sparrows may be the embryo manof the future, and you may praise his energy and his smartness, butgive me the boy who took the trouble to adjust the nose-bag every time. A little less business acumen, a good bit less greed and cruelty, willtell on future character to the comfort of all concerned. 

LV. 

POLICY A DAMASCUS BLADE, NOT A CLUB. 

Policy in the hands of a diplomat is like a sharp sword in the grasp ofan able fencer, but policy in the hands of fools, is like a good knifewielded by a half-wit. It takes brains to be truly politic, theunfortunate person who attempts to be cautious, and wise, and reticent, and to let policy thread every action as a string runs through glassbeads, only succeeds in making himself ridiculous. To be afraid tospeak what is in your mind for fear you will make yourself unpopular, to be too cautious to mention the fact that you are having a new latchput on your front gate for fear that you might be over-communicative, to be backward in taking sides for fear of committing yourself to alosing cause, may be politic to your own feeble intelligence, but inthe estimation of brainy folks it is a species of feline idiocy worsethan fits. 

LVI. 

THE CONSTANT YEARS BRING AGE TO ALL. 

All day long it has been trying to snow out here in the country. To menot even June, with its showering apple-tree flowers and itsalternations of silver rain and golden sunshine, is more beautiful thanthese soft winter days, full of snow-feathers and great shadows. Ilove to watch the young pines take on their holiday attire. How theyrobe themselves from head to foot in draperies of fleecy white, pindiamonds in their dark branches and wind about their slender girth thestrands of evanescent pearl! I love to watch the skies at dawn whenthey kindle like a flame above the bluffs and scatter sparkles of lightas a red rose scatters its petals. Where has the last year fled? Itseems but yesterday that I sat by this same window and hatched thelilac plumes unfold on that old bush that to-day is getting ready todon its ermine. Why, at this rate, my dear, it won't be longer thanday after to-morrow morning before you and I wake up and find ourselvesold folks. How odd it will seem to look in the glass and see wisps offrosted stubble in place of the wavy locks of brown, and jet, and gold!Ah, well, it is a comfort to think that some folks defy time, and areas young at seventy as at seventeen. Beauty fades, and witchery takesunto itself wings, but true hearts, like wine, mellow and enrich withyears. 

LVII. 

DID YOU EVER READ THE "LITTLE PILGRIM. "

I often sit for a half hour or more in the depot waiting-room, and forlack of anything else to do employ the time in watching the people whocrowd through the swinging doors. Did you ever read the "LittlePilgrim?" Do you recall the chapter wherein the disembodied spiritsare represented as lingering near the gates to watch the coming in ofnewly liberated souls? Sometimes while sitting in one of the bigrocking chairs I imagine to myself that the constantly opening doorsare the portals of death and I the lingering one who watches thethrongs that are constantly exchanging earth for paradise. Along comesan old man with a shabby bundle; he cautiously opens the door and slipsin like one who offers an excuse for his presence on the thither side. Presently he lays down his bundle and seats himself, a pilgrim whosewanderings and weariness are over. The brilliant lights, thecomfortable surroundings, the sound of pleasant voices all fill hisheart with joy, and he settles himself back, thoroughly glad to be atrest. Next, a beautiful woman enters, her face is lined with care andher dark, bright eyes are full of trouble. She does not tarry, buthurries on like one seeking for something yet to come. A little child, with lingering, backward glance, flits through the swinging door as ifloath to say good-bye to some one on the other side. A hard-featuredman, whose sullen glance travels quickly about the place, comes next;he seems seeking for some one to welcome him, and is abashed to findhimself alone among unheeding strangers. Next a bevy of laughing girlscome in together, and the door, swinging quickly behind them, disclosesa band of young companions who lingeringly turn away, content to knowthe sheltered ones are safely gathered out of the darkness and thestorm which they must still face. Some enter the door as thoughbewildered; some as though glad to find rest; some as though frightenedat unknown harm, and some as though suspicious of all that they beheld. Once I noticed a poor creature who came through the door cryingbitterly, but her tears were quickly dried by a waiting one who sprangforward and greeted her with a tender embrace. And at another time ababy came through in the arms of one who held it close so that it wasnot conscious of the transition. Sometimes I am glad to believe thatdeath is no more than the swinging door which divides two apartments ina mighty mansion, and that our going through is no more than theexchange of a cold and unlighted hallway for a spacious living-roomwhere all is light and warmth and blessed activity. 

LVIII. 

EATING MILK TOAST WITH A SPOON!

Eating milk toast with a spoon and stopping between each mouthful toswear! That was what I saw and heard a brawny man doing not long sincein a popular down-town restaurant. The action and the manner of speechdid not harmonize. If I felt it borne in upon me that I must be aprofane fellow to prove my manliness, I would choose another diet thanspoon victuals to nourish my formidable zest for naughtiness. Rarebeef or wild game would be less incongruous. There are times when aman may be excused for using objectionable language. Stress ofrighteous indignation, seasons of personal conflict with hansom cabmen, large-headed street car conductors, ubiquitous, never-dyingexpectorators and many other particular forms of torment may make a manswear a bit now and then, but what shall we say of a bearded creaturewith the dew of a babe's food upon his chin who rends the placid airwith unnecessary cursing? Sew up his lips with a surgeon's needle andthrow him into the fool-killer's bag!

LIX. 

BOYS, YOU KNOW I LIKE YOU. 

Boys, you know I like you and will stand a good deal of your swaggeringways. I like to see how fresh you are, and do not want to have yousalted down too early by the processes of life. But one thing let meask you. Don't wear silk hats before the down is fully apparent uponyour chin. If there is an embarrassing sight left to one grown wan andworn in watching the foolishness of folly, it is the sight of astripling in a plug hat. I would rather see a yearling colt haulinglumber, or a babe in arms scanning Homer. It is cruel; it ispremature. Be a boy until you are fit to be a man, and hold to a boy'smode of dress at least until you are old enough to command the respectof sensible girls by something more notable than cigarette smoking andathletic sports. 

LX. 

WHAT TO DO WITH GROWLERS. 

I often hear people making a big fuss about little things. My path inlife leads me among many "kickers" and many "growlers. " Do you knowwhat I would like to do with some of these malcontents and whiners? Iwould like to send them up for a week to watch life in the countyhospital. I would like to seat them by a bedside where a noble womanlies dying all alone of a terrible disease. I would like to have thembecome acquainted with her bravery and the more than queenly calm withwhich she confronts her destiny. I would like to have them linger inthe corridors and hear the moans from the wards and private rooms wherethe maimed and the crippled and the incurable are faintly struggling inthe grasp of death. I would like to lead them through the children'sward, where mites of humanity cursed with heredity's blight, removedfrom a mother's bosom, consigned to suffering throughout the span oftheir feeble days, lie faintly breathing their lives away. And thenwould like to say to them: "You contemptible cowards, you abominablefussers, you inexcusable kickers, see what the Lord might bring you toif he unloosed the leash and set real troubles in your track. Quitcomplaining and go to thanking heaven for all your unspeakable mercies!"

LXI. 

GOD BLESS 'EM!

Every morning just at 7 the entire neighborhood turns out to see thempass. She is a demure little lady with a face that makes one think ofa blush rose, a little past its prime, but mighty sweet to look upon. She wears a mite of a white sun-bonnet, clean as fresh fallen snow, andstarched and stiff as the best pearl gloss cap make it. The cape ofthis cute little bonnet shades a round white throat, and the stringsare tied beneath the chin in a ravishing bow that stands guard over adimple. She has been married quite ten years, and they say that thetwo little children who were cradled for a few happy months on her softbreast are waiting and watching for her coming the other side of theriver of death. He is a matter-of-fact looking man, with a resoluteface and a constant smile in his eyes. He always carries alunch-basket in one hand and with the other guides the steps of thefaithful little woman who accompanies him part way on the march of hisdaily grind. He works downtown in a big warehouse and he makes hardlyenough money each week to keep you in cigars, my good friend, or yourwife in novels. Though it rain, or though it shine, though the windsblow or the winds are low, whatever betide of chance, or change, orweather, there is not a morning that he goes to work that she does notwalk with him as far as the corner, and in the face of men and angels, grip car conductors and clerks, shop girls and grimacing urchins, kisshim good-bye. She stands and watches until he is well on his way, thenwaves him a final farewell, and trips back home in the serene shadow ofher little bonnet. Now you may ridicule that love and call it "spoony"and "silly, " but, I tell you, a legacy of gold or a hatful of diamondscould not begin to outvalue such love in a man's home. God bless thetwo, say I, and roll round the joyful day when love and its free andbeautiful demonstration shall shine athwart the heresies ofconventionality as April suns dispel the winter's fog with the splendorof their broadcast shining. 

LXII. 

"UNTO ONE OF THE LEAST OF THESE. "

I was riding up-town in a cable car not long ago late at night. Themoon was at its full and all the ugliness of the city was shrouded, like a homely woman in a bridal veil of shimmering lace. We skimmedalong on a smooth and unobstructed track, like a sloop with every sailset, heading for the open sea. There were no idle chatterers aboard, and from the stalwart gripman at his post of duty, to the shrinkinglittle girl passenger, who was half afraid and half delighted to beabroad so late alone, everybody and everything was in harmony with thehour and scene. Suddenly there fluttered into the car a snowy moth, astray from some flower garden in the country and quite bewildered andlost in the barren city. The beautiful creature fluttered into alady's face and she screamed and struggled as though attacked by arabid beast. "Oh, kill it! kill the horrid thing, " she cried, whileher attendant beat the air with his cane and sought to drive thedangerous interloper away. It rested for a moment upon the gripman'scap, where it looked like a feather dropped from a wandering bird. Atlast it settled upon the breast of a little child sleeping in itsmother's arms. The mother brushed it away with her handkerchief asthough its presence brought defilement. A gentleman who was seatednear me caught the bewildered thing and with a very tender touch heldit for a block or so until we came to one of the pretty parks that makeour city so attractive. Stepping from the car, he loosened his graspupon the captive moth near a big syringa bush that adorned the entranceway. He watched the dainty white wings flutter down into the coolseclusion of the blossom then turned and boarded the car and pursuedhis homeward way conscious, let us hope, of a very pretty and gracefuldeed of kindness to a most insignificant claimant for protection andsuccor. Sentimental, was it? Well, God help the world when allsentimentality of this kind is gone out of it. 

LXIII. 

TAKING INVENTORY. 

How poor the most of us prove to be when we take inventory of thesoul's stock! We have lots of bonnets, and plenty of dresses, and noend of lingerie, we women, but how are we off for the things that countwhen the dry goods and the furbelows shall be forgotten? How aboutlove, of the right kind, the love that ennobles rather than degrades, and how about loyalty, and patience, and truth? If one of Chicago'sbig firms should close its doors to take inventory of stock in Januaryand find it had nothing but the labels on empty bales to account for, its poverty would be as nothing to the poverty of the soul we are goingto schedule shortly behind the closed door of the grave. What slaveswe are to passion; how we hate one another for fancied or even actualslights, when we have such a little moment of time in which to indulgethe evil tempers! How we bicker, and lie, and betray, the while themessenger stands already at the door to bid us begone from the scene ofour petty conflicts. For my part, the interest we take in things thatpertain to this perishable life, when we are so soon going where theseare not to be; the choice we make of ranks and reputations, shams andseemings, dinners and wines, jewels and fabrics; the importance weattach to bubbles that break before we reach them; the allurements thatdraw us far from the ideals we started out to gain; the way we contentourselves with the environments of evil and forego forever the voicethat calls us away to partake of things which shall be as wine andhoney to the soul, frightens me; startles me as the sudden thunder ofthe surf might startle one who sojourned by an unseen sea. 

LXIV. 

DON'T MARRY HIM TO SAVE HIM. 

If any young woman who reads this is contemplating marriage with a wildand wayward man, hoping to reform him, I want her to stop right hereand decide to give up the contract. As well might she go out and smiledown a northwest wind or expostulate with a cyclone to its own undoing. If a man drinks to excess before he marries, there is no reason to hopehe will learn moderation afterward. If you become his wife with thefull knowledge of his habits, you will have no right to leave him orforsake him after marriage because of his unfortunate addictions andpredilections. Once having taken the vows you have no right to refuseto pay them to the uttermost. And the life you will lead will beperhaps a trifle less pleasant than the life of a parlor boarder insheol.