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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Threads of Grey and Gold, by Myrtle Reed
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Threads of Grey and Gold
+
+Author: Myrtle Reed
+
+Illustrator: Clara M. Burd
+
+Release Date: February 14, 2010 [EBook #31272]
+[Last updated: May 28, 2011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREADS OF GREY AND GOLD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ THREADS OF GREY
+ AND GOLD
+
+ BY
+
+ MYRTLE REED
+
+ Author of
+
+ Lavender and Old Lace
+ The Master's Violin
+ Old Rose and Silver
+ A Weaver of Dreams
+ Flower of the Dusk
+ At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern
+ The Shadow of Victory
+ Etc.
+
+ New York
+
+ GROSSET & DUNLAP
+
+ Publishers
+
+
+
+
+ COPYRIGHT, 1902
+ BY
+ MYRTLE REED
+
+
+ BY MYRTLE REED:
+
+ A Weaver of Dreams                Sonnets to a Lover
+ Old Rose and Silver               Master of the Vineyard
+ Lavender and Old Lace             Flower of the Dusk
+ The Master's Violin               At the Sign of the Jack-O'Lantern
+ Love Letters of a Musician        A Spinner in the Sun
+ The Spinster Book                 Later Love Letters of a Musician
+ The Shadow of Victory             Love Affairs of Literary Men
+                    Myrtle Reed Year Book
+
+ This edition is issued under arrangement with the publishers
+ G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: GEORGE WASHINGTON AND MARTHA CURTIS.
+  From a drawing by Clara M. Burd. (Page 34)]
+
+
+
+
+ TO THE READERS OF
+ THE ROMANCES OF MYRTLE REED.
+
+
+--A world-wide circle comprising probably not less than two million
+sympathetic admirers--
+
+This volume, which presents some of the writer's most typical
+utterances--utterances characterised by the combination of wisdom,
+humour, and sentiment that belongs to all the writings of the gifted
+author,
+
+               IS DEDICATED BY
+                    THE EDITOR.
+
+ CHICAGO,
+   _January, 1913._
+
+
+
+
+IN MEMORY OF A WEAVER OF DREAMS.
+
+
+A tribute to Myrtle Reed in recognition of her beautiful and valuable
+contributions to English literature.
+
+     As the spinner of silk weaves his sunbeams of gold,
+     Blending sunset and dawn in its silvery fold,
+     So she wove in the woof of her wonderful words
+     The soft shimmer of sunshine and music of birds.
+     With the radiance of moonlight and perfume of flowers,
+     She lent charm to the springtime and gladdened the hours.
+
+     She spoke cheer to the suffering, joy to the sad;
+     She gave rest to the weary, made the sorrowful glad.
+     The sweet touch of her sympathy soothed every pain,
+     And her words in the drouth were like showers of rain.
+     For she lovingly poured out her blessings in streams
+     As a fountain of waters--a weaver of dreams.
+
+     Her bright smiles were bejewelled, her tears were empearled,
+     And her thoughts were as stars giving light to the world;
+     Her fond dreams were the gems that were woven in gold,
+     And the fabric she wrought was of value untold.
+     Every colour of beauty was radiantly bright,
+     Blending faith, hope, and love in its opaline light.
+
+     And she wove in her woof the great wealth of her heart,
+     For the cord of her life gave the life to each part;
+     And the beauty she wrought, which gave life to the whole,
+     Was her spirit made real--she gave of her soul.
+     So the World built a temple--a glorious shrine--
+     A Taj Mahal of love to the woman divine.
+
+                    ADDISON BLAKELY.
+
+
+
+
+Editorial note
+
+
+The Editor desires to make grateful acknowledgment to the editors and
+publishers of the several periodicals in which the papers contained in
+this volume were first brought into print, for their friendly courtesy
+in permitting the collection of these papers for preservation in book
+form.
+
+ CHICAGO,
+   _January, 1913_.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+                                                  PAGE
+
+ HOW THE WORLD WATCHES THE NEW
+    YEAR COME IN                                    3
+ THE TWO YEARS. (Poem)                             23
+ THE COURTSHIP OF GEORGE
+    WASHINGTON                                     26
+ THE OLD AND THE NEW. (Poem)                       44
+ THE LOVE STORY OF "THE SAGE OF
+    MONTICELLO"                                    46
+ COLUMBIA. (Poem)                                  59
+ STORY OF A DAUGHTER'S LOVE                        60
+ THE SEA VOICE. (Poem)                             75
+ MYSTERY OF RANDOLPH'S COURTSHIP                   77
+ HOW PRESIDENT JACKSON WON HIS
+    WIFE                                           91
+ THE BACHELOR PRESIDENT'S LOYALTY
+ TO A MEMORY                                      105
+ DECORATION DAY. (Poem)                           118
+ ROMANCE OF LINCOLN'S LIFE                        119
+ SILENT THANKSGIVING. (Poem)                      135
+ IN THE FLASH OF A JEWEL                          137
+ THE COMING OF MY SHIP. (Poem)                    156
+ ROMANCE AND THE POSTMAN                          158
+ A SUMMER REVERIE. (Poem)                         171
+ A VIGNETTE                                       172
+ MEDITATION. (Poem)                               175
+ POINTERS FOR THE LORDS OF CREATION               176
+ TRANSITION. (Poem)                               187
+ THE SUPERIORITY OF MAN                           189
+ THE YEAR OF MY HEART. (Poem)                     196
+ THE AVERAGE MAN                                  197
+ THE BOOK OF LOVE. (Poem)                         202
+ THE IDEAL MAN                                    204
+ GOOD-NIGHT, SWEETHEART. (Poem)                   209
+ THE IDEAL WOMAN                                  211
+ SHE IS NOT FAIR. (Poem)                          220
+ THE FIN-DE SIÈCLE WOMAN                          222
+ THE MOON MAIDEN. (Poem)                          229
+ HER SON'S WIFE                                   230
+ A LULLABY. (Poem)                                247
+ THE DRESSING-SACK HABIT                          248
+ IN THE MEADOW. (Poem)                            259
+ ONE WOMAN'S SOLUTION OF THE
+   SERVANT PROBLEM                                260
+ TO A VIOLIN. (Poem)                              283
+ THE OLD MAID                                     284
+ THE SPINSTER'S RUBAIYAT. (Poem)                  291
+ THE RIGHTS OF DOGS                               293
+ TWILIGHT. (Poem)                                 298
+ WOMEN'S CLOTHES IN MEN'S BOOKS                   299
+ MAIDENS OF THE SEA. (Poem)                       320
+ TECHNIQUE OF THE SHORT STORY                     321
+ TO DOROTHY. (Poem)                               333
+ WRITING A BOOK                                   334
+ THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN. (Poem)                   355
+ QUAINT OLD CHRISTMAS CUSTOMS                     357
+ CONSECRATION. (Poem)                             371
+
+
+
+
+ How the World Watches the
+ New Year Come In
+
+
+The proverbial "good resolutions" of the first of January which are
+usually forgotten the next day, the watch services in the churches,
+and the tin horns in the city streets, are about the only formalities
+connected with the American New Year. The Pilgrim fathers took no note
+of the day, save in this prosaic record: "We went to work betimes";
+but one Judge Sewall writes with no small pride of the blast of
+trumpets which was sounded under his window, on the morning of January
+1st, 1697.
+
+He celebrated the opening of the eighteenth century with a very bad
+poem which he wrote himself, and he hired the bellman to recite the
+poem loudly through the streets of the town of Boston; but happily
+for a public, even now too much wearied with minor poets, the custom
+did not become general.
+
+In Scotland and the North of England the New Year festivities are of
+great importance. Weeks before hand, the village boys, with great
+secrecy, meet in out of the way places and rehearse their favourite
+songs and ballads. As the time draws near, they don improvised masks
+and go about from door to door, singing and cutting many quaint
+capers. The thirty-first of December is called "Hogmanay," and the
+children are told that if they go to the corner, they will see a man
+with as many eyes as the year has days. The children of the poorer
+classes go from house to house in the better districts, with a large
+pocket fastened to their dresses, or a large shawl with a fold in
+front.
+
+Each one receives an oaten cake, a piece of cheese, or sometimes a
+sweet cake, and goes home at night heavily laden with a good supply of
+homely New Year cheer for the rest of the family.
+
+The Scottish elders celebrate the day with a supper party, and as the
+clock strikes twelve, friend greets friend and wishes him "a gude New
+Year and mony o' them."
+
+Then with great formality the door is unbarred to let the Old Year out
+and the New Year in, while all the guests sally forth into the streets
+to "first foot" their acquaintances.
+
+The "first foot" is the first person to enter a house after midnight
+of December 31st. If he is a dark man, it is considered an omen of
+good fortune. Women generally are thought to bring ill luck, and
+in some parts of England a light-haired man, or a light-haired,
+flat-footed man is preferred. In Durham, this person must bring a
+piece of coal, a piece of iron, and a bottle of whiskey. He gives
+a glass of whiskey to each man and kisses each woman.
+
+In Edinburgh, a great crowd gathers around the church in Hunter Square
+and anxiously watches the clock. There is absolute silence from the
+first stroke of twelve until the last, then the elders go to bed, but
+the young folks have other business on hand. Each girl expects the
+"first foot" from her sweetheart and there is occasionally much
+stratagem displayed in outwitting him and arranging to have some
+grandmother or serving maid open the door for him.
+
+During the last century, all work was laid aside on the afternoon of
+the thirty-first, and the men of the hamlet went to the woods and
+brought home a lot of juniper bushes. Each household also procured a
+pitcher of water from "the dead and living ford," meaning a ford in
+the river by which passengers and funerals crossed. This was brought
+in perfect silence and was not allowed to touch the ground in its
+progress as contact with the earth would have destroyed the charm.
+
+The next morning, there were rites to protect the household against
+witchcraft, the evil eye, and other machinations of his satanic
+majesty. The father rose first, and, taking the charmed water and a
+brush, treated the whole family to a generous sprinkling, which was
+usually acknowledged with anything but gratitude.
+
+Then all the doors and windows were closed, and the juniper boughs put
+on the fire. When the smoke reached a suffocating point, the fresh air
+was admitted. The cattle were fumigated in the same way and the
+painful solemnities of the morning were over.
+
+The Scots on the first of the year consult the Bible before breakfast.
+They open it at random and lay a finger on a verse which is supposed
+to be, in some way, an augury for the coming year. If a lamp or a
+candle is taken out of the house on that day, some one will die during
+the year, and on New Year's day a Scotchman will neither lend, borrow
+nor give anything whatsoever out of his house, for fear his luck may
+go with it, and for the same reason the floor must not be swept. Even
+ashes or dirty water must not be thrown out until the next day, and if
+the fire goes out it is a sign of death.
+
+The ancient Druids distributed among the early Britons branches of the
+sacred mistletoe, which had been cut with solemn ceremony in the night
+from the oak trees in a forest that had been dedicated to the gods.
+
+Among the ancient Saxons, the New Year was ushered in with friendly
+gifts, and all fighting ceased for three days.
+
+In Banffshire the peat fires are covered with ashes and smoothed down.
+In the morning they are examined closely, and if anything resembling a
+human footprint is found in the ashes, it is taken as an omen. If the
+footprint points towards the door, one of the family will die or leave
+home during the year. If they point inward, a child will be born
+within the year.
+
+In some parts of rural England, the village maidens go from door to
+door with a bowl of wassail, made of ale, roasted apples, squares of
+toast, nutmeg, and sugar. The bowl is elaborately decorated with
+evergreen and ribbons, and as they go they sing:
+
+     "Wassail, wassail to our town,
+     The cup is white and the ale is brown,
+     The cup is made of the ashen tree,
+     And so is the ale of the good barley.
+
+     "Little maid, little maid, turn the pin,
+     Open the door and let us in;
+     God be there, God be here;
+     I wish you all a Happy New Year."
+
+In Yorkshire, the young men assemble at midnight on the thirty-first,
+blacken their faces, disguise themselves in other ways, then pass
+through the village with pieces of chalk. They write the date of the
+New Year on gates, doors, shutters, and wagons. It is considered lucky
+to have one's property so marked and the revellers are never
+disturbed.
+
+On New Year's Day, Henry VI received gifts of jewels, geese, turkeys,
+hens, and sweetmeats. "Good Queen Bess" was fairly overwhelmed with
+tokens of affection from her subjects. One New Year's morning, she was
+presented with caskets studded with gems, necklaces, bracelets, gowns,
+mantles, mirrors, fans, and a wonderful pair of black silk stockings,
+which pleased her so much that she never afterward wore any other
+kind.
+
+Among the Romans, after the reformation of the calendar, the first
+day, and even the whole month, was dedicated to the worship of the god
+Janus. He was represented as having two faces, and looking two
+ways--into the past and into the future. In January they offered
+sacrifices to Janus upon two altars, and on the first day of the month
+they were careful to regulate their speech and conduct, thinking it an
+augury for the coming year.
+
+New Year's gifts and cards originated in Rome, and there is a record
+of an amusing lawsuit which grew out of the custom. A poet was
+commissioned by a Roman pastry-cook to write the mottoes for the New
+Year day bonbons. He agreed to supply five hundred couplets for six
+sesterces, and though the poor poet toiled faithfully and the mottoes
+were used, the money was not forthcoming. He sued the pastry-cook, and
+got a verdict, but the cook regarded himself as the injured party.
+Crackers were not then invented, but we still have the mottoes--those
+queer heart-shaped things which were the delight of our school-days.
+
+The Persians remember the day with gifts of eggs--literally a "lay
+out!"
+
+In rural Russia, the day begins as a children's holiday. The village
+boys get up at sunrise and fill their pockets with peas and wheat.
+They go from house to house and as the doors are never locked,
+entrance is easy. They throw the peas upon their enemies and sprinkle
+the wheat softly upon their sleeping friends.
+
+After breakfast, the finest horse in the little town is decorated with
+evergreens and berries and led to the house of the greatest nobleman,
+followed by the pea and wheat shooters of the early morning. The lord
+admits both horse and people to his house, where the whole family is
+gathered, and the children of his household make presents of small
+pieces of silver money to those who come with the horse. This is the
+greeting of the peasants to their lord and master.
+
+Next comes a procession of domestic animals, an ox, cow, goat, and
+pig, all decorated with evergreens and berries. These do not enter the
+house but pass slowly up and down outside, that the master and his
+family may see. Then the old women of the village bring barnyard fowls
+to the master as presents, and these are left in the house which the
+horse has only recently vacated. Even the chickens are decorated with
+strings of berries around their necks and bits of evergreen fastened
+to their tails.
+
+The Russians have also a ceremony which is more agreeable. On each New
+Year's Day, a pile of sheaves is heaped up over a large pile of grain,
+and the father, after seating himself behind it, asks the children if
+they can see him. They say they cannot, and he replies that he hopes
+the crops for the coming year will be so fine that he will be hidden
+in the fields.
+
+In the cities there is a grand celebration of mass in the morning and
+the rest of the day is devoted to congratulatory visits. Good wishes
+which cannot be expressed in person are put into the newspapers in the
+form of advertisements, and in military and official circles
+ceremonial visits are paid.
+
+The Russians are very fond of fortune-telling, and on New Year's eve
+the young ladies send their servants into the street to ask the names
+of the first person they meet, and many a bashful lover has hastened
+his suit by taking good care to be the first one who is met by the
+servant of his lady love. At midnight, each member of the family
+salutes every other member with a kiss, beginning with the head of the
+house, and then they retire, after gravely wishing each other a Happy
+New Year.
+
+Except that picturesque rake, Leopold of Belgium, every monarch of
+Europe has for many years begun the New Year with a solemn appeal to
+the Almighty, for strength, guidance, and blessing.
+
+The children in Belgium spend the day in trying to secure a "sugar
+uncle" or a "sugar aunt." The day before New Year, they gather up all
+the keys of the household and divide them. The unhappy mortal who is
+caught napping finds himself in a locked room, from which he is not
+released until a ransom is offered. This is usually money for sweets
+and is divided among the captors.
+
+In France, no one pays much attention to Christmas, but New Year's day
+is a great festival and presents are freely exchanged. The President
+of France also holds a reception somewhat similar to, and possibly
+copied from, that which takes place in the White House.
+
+In Germany, complimentary visits are exchanged between the merest
+acquaintances, and New Year's gifts are made to the servants. The
+night of the thirty-first is called _Sylvester Aben_ and while many of
+the young people dance, the day in more serious households takes on a
+religious aspect. During the evening, there is prayer at the family
+altar, and at midnight the watchman on the church tower blows his
+horn to announce the birth of the New Year.
+
+At Frankfort-on-the-Main a very pretty custom is observed. On New
+Year's eve the whole city keeps a festival with songs, feasting,
+games, and family parties in every house. When the great bell in the
+cathedral tolls the first stroke of midnight, every house opens wide
+its windows. People lean from the casements, glass in hand, and from a
+hundred thousand throats comes the cry: "_Prosit Neujahr!_" At the
+last stroke, the windows are closed and a midnight hush descends upon
+the city.
+
+The hospitable Norwegians and Swedes spread their tables heavily; for
+all who may come in at Stockholm there is a grand banquet at the
+Exchange, where the king meets his people in truly democratic fashion.
+
+The Danes greet the New Year with a tremendous volley of cannon, and
+at midnight old Copenhagen is shaken to its very foundations. It is
+considered a delicate compliment to fire guns and pistols under the
+bedroom windows of one's friends at dawn of the new morning.
+
+The dwellers in Cape Town, South Africa, are an exception to the
+general custom of English colonists, and after the manner of the early
+Dutch settlers they celebrate the New Year during the entire week.
+Every house is full of visitors, every man, woman, and child is
+dressed in gay garments, and no one has any business except pleasure.
+There are picnics to Table Mountain, and pleasure excursions in boats,
+with a dance every evening. At the end of the week, everybody settles
+down and the usual routine of life is resumed.
+
+In the Indian Empire, the day which corresponds to our New Year is
+called "Hooly" and is a feast in honour of the god Krishna. Caste
+temporarily loses ground and the prevailing colour is red. Every one
+who can afford it wears red garments, red powder is thrown as if it
+were _confetti_, and streams of red water are thrown upon the
+passers-by. It is all taken in good part, however, as snowballing is
+with us.
+
+Even "farthest North," where the nights are six months long, there is
+recognition of the New Year. The Esquimaux come out of their snow huts
+and ice caves in pairs, one of each pair being dressed in women's
+clothes. They gain entrance into every _igloo_ in the village, moving
+silently and mysteriously. At last there is not a light left in the
+place, and having extinguished every fire they can find, they kindle a
+fresh one, going through in the meantime solemn ceremonies. From this
+one source, all the fires and lights in the district are kindled anew.
+
+One wonders if there may not be some fear in the breasts of these
+Children of the North, when for an instant they stand in the vastness
+of the midnight, utterly without fire or light.
+
+The most wonderful ceremonies connected with the New Year take place
+in China and Japan. In these countries and in Corea the birth of the
+year is considered the birthday of the whole community. When a child
+is born he is supposed to be a year old, and he remains thus until the
+changing seasons bring the annual birthday of the whole Mongolian
+race, when another year is credited to his account.
+
+In the Chinese quarter of the large cities, the New Year celebrations
+are dreaded by the police, since where there is so much revelry there
+is sure to be trouble. In the native country, the rejoicings absorb
+fully a month, during the first part of which no hunger is allowed to
+exist within the Empire.
+
+The refreshments are light in kind--peanuts, watermelon seeds,
+sweetmeats, oranges, tea and cakes. Presents of food are given to the
+poor, and "brilliant cakes," supposed to help the children in their
+studies, are distributed from the temples.
+
+The poor little Chinamen must sadly need some assistance, in view of
+the fact that every word in their language has a distinct root, and
+their alphabet contains over twenty thousand letters.
+
+At an early hour on New Year's morning, which according to their
+calendar comes between the twenty-first of January and the nineteenth
+of February, they propitiate heaven and earth with offerings of rice,
+vegetables, tea, wine, oranges, and imitation of paper money which
+they burn with incense, joss-sticks, and candles.
+
+Strips of scarlet paper, bearing mottoes, which look like Chinese
+laundry checks, are pasted around and over doors and windows. Blue
+strips among the red, mean that a death has occurred in the family
+since the last celebration.
+
+New Year's calls are much in vogue in China, where every denizen of
+the Empire pays a visit to each of his superiors, and receives them
+from all of his inferiors. Sometimes cards are sent, and, as with us,
+this takes the place of a call.
+
+Images of gods are carried in procession to the beating of a deafening
+gong, and mandarins go by hundreds to the Emperor and the Dowager
+Empress, with congratulatory addresses. Their robes are gorgeously
+embroidered and are sometimes heavy with gold. After this, they
+worship their household gods.
+
+Illuminations and fireworks make the streets gorgeous at night, and a
+monstrous Chinese dragon, spouting flame, is drawn through the
+streets.
+
+People salute each other with cries of "Kung-hi! Kung-hi!" meaning I
+humbly wish you joy, or "Sin-hi! Sin-hi!" May joy be yours.
+
+Many amusements in the way of theatricals and illumination are
+provided for the public.
+
+In both China and Japan, all debts must be paid and all grudges
+settled before the opening of the New Year. Every one is supposed to
+have new clothes for the occasion, and those who cannot obtain them
+remain hidden in their houses.
+
+In Japan, the conventional New Year costume is light blue cotton, and
+every one starts out to make calls. Letters on rice paper are sent to
+those in distant places, conveying appropriate greetings.
+
+The Japanese also go to their favourite tea gardens where bands play,
+and wax figures are sold. Presents of cooked rice and roasted peas,
+oranges, and figs are offered to every one. The peas are scattered
+about the houses to frighten away the evil spirits, and on the
+fourth day of the New Year, the decorations of lobster, signifying
+reproduction, cabbages indicating riches, and oranges, meaning good
+luck, are taken down and replaced with boughs of fruit trees and
+flowers.
+
+Strange indeed is the country in which the milestones of Time pass
+unheeded. In spite of all the mirth and feasting, there is an
+undercurrent of sadness which has been most fitly expressed by Charles
+Lamb:
+
+     "Of all the sounds, the most solemn and touching is the peal
+     which rings out the old year. I never hear it without
+     gathering up in my mind a concentration of all the images
+     that have been diffused over the past twelve months; all
+     that I have done or suffered, performed, or neglected, in
+     that regretted time. I begin to know its worth as when a
+     person dies. It takes a personal colour, nor was it a
+     poetical flight in a contemporary, when he exclaimed: 'I saw
+     the skirts of the departing year!'"
+
+
+
+
+The Two Years
+
+
+     Tread softly, ye throngs with hurrying feet,
+       Look down, O ye stars, in your flight,
+     And bid ye farewell to a time that was sweet,
+       For the year lies a-dying to-night.
+
+     In a shroud of pure snow lie the quickly-fled hours--
+       The children of Time and of Light;
+     Stoop down, ye fair moon, and scatter sweet flowers,
+       For the year lies a-dying to-night.
+
+     Hush, O ye rivers that sweep to the sea,
+       From hill and from blue mountain height;
+     The flood of your song should be sorrow, not glee,
+       For the year lies a-dying to-night.
+
+     Good night, and good-bye, dear, mellow, old year,
+       The new is beginning to dawn.
+     But we'll turn and drop on thy white grave a tear,
+       For the sake of the friend that is gone.
+
+     All hail to the New! He is coming with gladness,
+       From the East, where in light he reposes;
+     He is bringing a year free from pain and from sadness,
+       He is bringing a June with her roses.
+
+     A burst of sweet music, the listeners hear,
+       The stars and the angels give warning--
+     He is coming in beauty, this joyful New Year,
+       O'er the flower-strewn stairs of the morning.
+
+     He is bringing a day with glad pulses beating,
+       For the sorrow and passion are gone,
+     And Love and Life have a rapturous meeting
+       In the rush and the gladness of dawn.
+
+     The Old has gone out with a crown that is hoary,
+       The New in his brightness draws near;
+     Then let us look up in the light and the glory,
+       And welcome this royal New Year.
+
+
+
+
+ The Courtship of George
+ Washington
+
+
+The quaint old steel engraving which shows George and Martha
+Washington sitting by a table, while the Custis children stand
+dutifully by, is a familiar picture in many households, yet few of us
+remember that the first Lady of the White House was not always first
+in the heart of her husband.
+
+The years have brought us, as a people, a growing reverence for him
+who was in truth the "Father of His Country." Time has invested him
+with godlike attributes, yet, none the less, he was a man among men,
+and the hot blood of youth ran tumultuously in his veins.
+
+At the age of fifteen, like many another schoolboy, Washington
+fell in love. The man who was destined to be the Commander of the
+Revolutionary Army, wandered through the shady groves of Mount Vernon
+composing verses which, from a critical standpoint, were very bad.
+Scraps of verse were later mingled with notes of surveys, and
+interspersed with the accounts which that methodical statesman kept
+from his school-days until the year of his death.
+
+In the archives of the Capitol on a yellowed page, in Washington's own
+handwriting, these lines are still to be read:
+
+     "Oh, Ye Gods, why should my Poor Resistless Heart
+       Stand to oppose thy might and Power,
+     At last surrender to Cupid's feather'd Dart,
+       And now lays bleeding every Hour
+     For her that's Pityless of my grief and Woes,
+       And will not on me, pity take.
+     I'll sleep amongst my most inveterate Foes,
+       And with gladness never wish to wake.
+     In deluding sleepings let my Eyelids close,
+       That in an enraptured Dream I may
+     In a soft lulling sleep and gentle repose
+       Possess those joys denied by Day."
+
+Among these boyish fragments there is also an incomplete acrostic,
+evidently intended for Miss Frances Alexander, which reads as follows:
+
+     "From your bright sparkling Eyes I was undone;
+     Rays, you have, rays more transparent than the Sun
+     Amidst its glory in the rising Day;
+     None can you equal in your bright array;
+     Constant in your calm, unspotted Mind;
+     Equal to all, but will to none Prove kind,
+     So knowing, seldom one so young you'll Find.
+
+     "Ah, woe's me that I should Love and conceal--
+     Long have I wished, but never dare reveal,
+     Even though severely Love's Pains I feel;
+     Xerxes that great wast not free from Cupid's Dart,
+     And all the greatest Heroes felt the smart."
+
+He wrote at length to several of his friends concerning his youthful
+passions. In the tell-tale pages of the diary, for 1748, there is this
+draft of a letter:
+
+     "DEAR FRIEND ROBIN: My place of Residence is at present at
+     His Lordship's where I might, was my heart disengag'd, pass
+     my time very pleasantly, as there's a very agreeable Young
+     Lady Lives in the same house (Col. George Fairfax's Wife's
+     Sister); but as that's only adding fuel to fire, it makes me
+     the more uneasy, for by often and unavoidably being, in
+     Company with her revives my former Passion for your Lowland
+     Beauty; whereas was I to live more retired from young Women
+     I might in some measure aliviate my sorrows by burying that
+     chaste and troublesome Passion in the grave of oblivion or
+     eternal forgetfulness, for as I am very well assured, that's
+     the only antidote or remedy, that I shall be relieved by, as
+     I am well convinced, was I ever to ask any question, I
+     should only get a denial which would be adding grief to
+     uneasiness."
+
+The "Lowland Beauty" was Miss Mary Bland. Tradition does not say
+whether or not she ever knew of Washington's admiration, but she
+married Henry Lee.
+
+"Light Horse Harry," that daring master of cavalry of Revolutionary
+fame, was the son of the "Lowland Beauty," and some tender memories of
+the mother may have been mingled with Washington's fondness for the
+young soldier. It was "Light Horse Harry" also, who said of the
+Commander-in-Chief that he was "first in war, first in peace, and
+first in the hearts of his countrymen!"
+
+By another trick of fate the grandson of the "Lowland Beauty" was Gen.
+Robert E. Lee. Who can say what momentous changes might have been
+wrought in history had Washington married his first love?
+
+Miss Gary, the sister of Mrs. Fairfax, was the "agreeable young lady"
+of whom he speaks. After a time her charm seems to have partially
+mitigated the pain he felt over the loss of her predecessor in his
+affections. Later he writes of a Miss Betsey Fauntleroy, saying that
+he is soon to see her, and that he "hopes for a revocation of her
+former cruel sentence."
+
+When Braddock's defeat brought the soldier again to Mount Vernon, to
+rest from the fatigues of the campaign, there is abundant evidence to
+prove that he had become a personage in the eyes of women. For
+instance, Lord Fairfax writes to him, saying:
+
+     "If a Satterday Night's Rest cannot be sufficient to enable
+     your coming hither to-morrow the Lady's will try to get
+     Horses to equip our Chair or attempt their strength on Foot
+     to Salute you, so desirious are they with loving Speed
+     to have an occular Demonstration of your being the same
+     identical Gent--that lately departed to defend his Country's
+     Cause."
+
+A very feminine postscript was attached to this which read as follows:
+
+     "DEAR SIR
+
+     "After thanking Heaven for your safe return, I must accuse
+     you of great unkindness in refusing us the pleasure of
+     seeing you this night. I do assure you nothing but our being
+     satisfied that our company would be disagreeable, should
+     prevent us from trying if our Legs would not carry us to
+     Mount Vernon this night, but if you will not come to us,
+     to-morrow morning very early we shall be at Mount Vernon.
+
+                    "SALLY FAIRFAX
+                    ANN SPEARING
+                    ELIZ'TH DENT"
+
+Yet, in spite of the attractions of Virginia we find him journeying to
+Boston, on military business, by way of New York.
+
+The hero of Braddock's stricken field found every door open before
+him. He was fêted in Philadelphia, and the aristocrats of Manhattan
+gave dinners in honour of the strapping young soldier from the wilds
+of Virginia.
+
+At the house of his friend, Beverly Robinson, he met Miss Mary
+Philipse, and speedily surrendered. She was a beautiful, cultured
+woman, twenty-five years old, who had travelled widely and had seen
+much of the world. He promptly proposed to her, and was refused, but
+with exquisite grace and tact.
+
+Graver affairs however soon claimed his attention, and he did not go
+back, though a friend wrote to him that Lieutenant-Colonel Morris was
+besieging the citadel. She married Morris, and their house in
+Morristown became Washington's headquarters, in 1776--again, how
+history might have been changed had Mary Philipse married her Virginia
+lover!
+
+In the spring of 1758, Washington met his fate. He was riding on
+horseback from Mount Vernon to Williamsburg with important despatches.
+In crossing a ford of the Pamunkey he fell in with a Mr. Chamberlayne,
+who lived in the neighbourhood. With true Virginian hospitality he
+prevailed upon Washington to take dinner at his house, making the
+arrangement with much difficulty, however, since the soldier was
+impatient to get to Williamsburg.
+
+Once inside the colonial house, whose hospitable halls breathed
+welcome, his impatience, and the errand itself, were almost forgotten.
+A negro servant led his horse up and down the gravelled walk in front
+of the house; the servant grew tired, the horse pawed and sniffed with
+impatience, but Washington lingered.
+
+A petite hazel-eyed woman--she who was once Patsy Dandridge, but then
+the widow of Daniel Parke Custis--was delaying important affairs. At
+night-fall the distracted warrior remembered his mission, and made a
+hasty adieu. Mr. Chamberlayne, meeting him at the door, laid a
+restraining hand upon his arm. "No guest ever leaves my house after
+sunset," he said.
+
+The horse was put up, the servant released from duty, and Washington
+remained until the next morning, when, with new happiness in his
+heart, he dashed on to Williamsburg.
+
+We may well fancy that her image was before him all the way. She had
+worn a gown of white dimity, with a cluster of Mayblossoms at her
+belt, and a little white widow's cap half covered her soft brown hair.
+
+She was twenty-six, some three months younger than Washington; she
+had wealth, and two children. Mr. Custis had been older than his
+Patsy, for she was married when she was but seventeen. He had been a
+faithful and affectionate husband, but he had not appealed to her
+imagination, and it was doubtless through her imagination, that the
+big Virginia Colonel won her heart.
+
+She left Mr. Chamberlayne's and went to her home--the "White
+House"--near William's Ferry. The story is that when Washington came
+from Williamsburg, he was met at the ferry by one of Mrs. Custis's
+slaves. "Is your mistress at home?" he inquired of the negro who was
+rowing him across the river.
+
+"Yes, sah," replied the darkey, then added slyly, "I recon you am de
+man what am expected."
+
+It was late in the afternoon of the next day when Washington took his
+departure, but he had her promise and was happy. A ring was ordered
+from Philadelphia, and is duly set down in his accounts: "One
+engagement ring, two pounds, sixteen shillings."
+
+Then came weary months of service in the field, and they saw each
+other only four times before they were married. There were doubtless
+frequent letters, but only one of them remains. It is the letter of a
+soldier:
+
+     "We have begun our march for the Ohio, [he wrote]. A courier
+     is starting for Williamsburg, and I embrace the opportunity
+     to send a few words to one whose life is now inseparable
+     from mine.
+
+     "Since that happy hour, when we made our pledges to each
+     other, my thoughts have been continually going to you as to
+     another self. That an All-powerful Providence may keep us
+     both in safety is the prayer of your ever faithful and
+     affectionate Friend,
+
+                    "G. WASHINGTON
+
+     "20th of July
+       Mrs. Martha Custis."
+
+On the sixth of the following January they were married in the little
+church of St. Peter. Once again Dr. Mossum, in full canonicals,
+married "Patsy" Dandridge to the man of her choice. The bridegroom
+wore a blue cloth coat lined with red silk and ornamented with silver
+trimmings. His vest was embroidered white satin, his shoe- and
+knee-buckles were of solid gold, his hair was powdered, and a dress
+sword hung at his side.
+
+The bride was attired in heavy brocaded white silk inwoven with a
+silver thread. She wore a white satin quilted petticoat with heavy
+corded white silk over-skirt, and high-heeled shoes of white satin
+with buckles of brilliants. She had ruffles of rich point lace, pearl
+necklace, ear-rings, and bracelets, and was attended by three
+bridesmaids.
+
+The aristocracy of Virginia was out in full force. One of the
+most imposing figures was Bishop, the negro servant, who had led
+Washington's horse up and down the gravelled path in front of Mr.
+Chamberlayne's door while the master lingered within. He was in the
+scarlet uniform of King George's army, booted and spurred, and he held
+the bridle rein of the chestnut charger that was forced to wait while
+his rider made love.
+
+On leaving the church, the bride and her maids rode back to the "White
+House" in a coach drawn by six horses, and guided by black post-boys
+in livery, while Colonel Washington, on his magnificent horse, and
+attended by a brilliant company, rode by her side.
+
+There was no seer to predict that some time the little lady in white
+satin, brocade silk, and rich laces, would spend long hours knitting
+stockings for her husband's army, and that night after night would
+find her, in a long grey cloak, at the side of the wounded, hearing
+from stiffening lips the husky whisper, "God bless you, Lady
+Washington!"
+
+All through the troublous times that followed, Washington was the
+lover as well as the husband. He took a father's place with the little
+children, treating them with affection, but never swerving from the
+path of justice. With the fondness of a lover, he ordered fine clothes
+for his wife from London.
+
+After his death, Mrs. Washington destroyed all of his letters. There
+is only one of them to be found which was written after their
+marriage. It is in an old book, printed in New York in 1796, when the
+narrow streets around the tall spire of Trinity were the centre of
+social life, and the busy hum of Wall Street was not to be heard for
+fifty years!
+
+One may fancy a stately Knickerbocker stopping at a little bookstall
+where the dizzy heights of the Empire Building now rise, or down near
+the Battery, untroubled by the white cliff called "The Bowling Green,"
+and asking pompously enough, for the _Epistles; Domestic,
+Confidential, and Official, from General Washington_.
+
+The pages are yellowed with age, and the "f" used in the place of the
+"s", as well as the queer orthography and capitalisation, look strange
+to twentieth-century eyes, but on page 56 the lover-husband pleads
+with his lady in a way that we can well understand.
+
+The letter is dated "June 24, 1776," and in part is as follows:
+
+     "MY DEAREST LIFE AND LOVE:--
+
+     "You have hurt me, I know not how much, by the insinuation
+     in your last, that my letters to you have been less frequent
+     because I have felt less concern for you.
+
+     "The suspicion is most unjust; may I not add, is most
+     unkind. Have we lived, now almost a score of years, in the
+     closest and dearest conjugal intimacy to so little purpose,
+     that on the appearance only, of inattention to you, and
+     which you might have accounted for in a thousand ways more
+     natural and more probable, you should pitch upon that single
+     motive which is alone injurious to me?
+
+     "I have not, I own, wrote so often to you as I wished and as
+     I ought.
+
+     "But think of my situation, and then ask your heart if I be
+     _without excuse_?
+
+     "We are not, my dearest, in circumstances the most favorable
+     to our happiness; but let us not, I beseech of you, make
+     them worse by indulging suspicions and apprehensions which
+     minds in distress are apt to give way to.
+
+     "I never was, as you have often told me, even in my better
+     and more disengaged days, so attentive to the little
+     punctillios of friendship, as it may be, became me; but my
+     heart tells me, there never was a moment in my life, since I
+     first knew you, in which it did not cleave and cling to you
+     with the warmest affection; and it must cease to beat ere it
+     can cease to wish for your happiness, above anything on
+     earth.
+
+                    "Your faithful and tender husband, G. W."
+
+"'Seventy-six!" The words bring a thrill even now, yet, in the midst
+of those stirring times, not a fortnight before the Declaration was
+signed, and after twenty years of marriage, he could write her like
+this. Even his reproaches are gentle, and filled with great
+tenderness.
+
+And so it went on, through the Revolution and through the stormy days
+in which the Republic was born. There were long and inevitable
+separations, yet a part of the time she was with him, doing her duty
+as a soldier's wife, and sternly refusing to wear garments which were
+not woven in American looms.
+
+During the many years they lived at Mount Vernon, they attended divine
+service at Christ Church, Alexandria, Virginia, one of the quaint
+little landmarks of the town which is still standing. For a number of
+years he was a vestryman of the church, and the pew occupied by him is
+visited yearly by thousands of tourists while sight-seeing in the
+national Capitol. Indeed all the churches, so far as known, in which
+he once worshipped, have preserved his pew intact, while there are
+hundreds of tablets, statues, and monuments throughout the country.
+
+In the magnificent monument at Washington, rising to a height of more
+than 555 feet, the various States of the Union have placed stone
+replicas of their State seals, and these, with other symbolic devices,
+constitute the inscriptions upon one hundred and seventy-nine of these
+memorial stones. Not only this, but Europe and Asia, China and Japan
+have honoured themselves by erecting memorials to the great American.
+
+When at last his long years of service for his country were ended, he
+and his beloved wife returned again to their beautiful home at Mount
+Vernon, to wait for the night together. The whole world knows how the
+end came, with her loving ministrations to the very last of the three
+restful years which they at this time spent together at the old home,
+and how he looked Death bravely in the face, as became a soldier and a
+Christian.
+
+
+
+
+The Old and the New
+
+
+     Grandmother sat at her spinning wheel
+       In the dust of the long ago,
+     And listened, with scarlet dyeing her cheeks,
+       For the step she had learned to know.
+     A courtly lover, was he who came,
+       With frill and ruffle and curl--
+     They dressed so queerly in the days
+       When grandmother was a girl!
+
+     "Knickerbockers" they called them then,
+       When they spoke of the things at all--
+     Grandfather wore them, buckled and trim,
+       When he sallied forth to call.
+     Grandmother's eyes were youthful then--
+       His "guiding stars," he said;
+     While she demurely watched her wheel
+       And spun with a shining thread.
+
+     Frill, and ruffle, and curl are gone,
+       But the "knickers" are with us still--
+     And so is love and the spinning wheel,
+       But we ride it now--if you will!
+     In grandfather's "knickers" I sit and watch
+       For the gleam of a lamp afar;
+     And my heart still turns, as theirs, methinks,
+       To my wheel and my guiding star.
+
+
+
+
+ The Love Story of the "Sage of
+ Monticello"
+
+
+American history holds no more beautiful love-story than that of
+Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, and author of
+the Declaration of Independence. It is a tale of single-hearted,
+unswerving devotion, worthy of this illustrious statesman. His love
+for his wife was not the first outpouring of his nature, but it was
+the strongest and best--the love, not of the boy, but of the man.
+
+Jefferson was not particularly handsome as a young man, for he was
+red-haired, awkward, and knew not what to do with his hands, though he
+played the violin passably well. But his friend, Patrick Henry, suave,
+tactful and popular, exerted himself to improve Jefferson's manners
+and fit him for general society, attaining at last very pleasing
+results, although there was a certain roughness in his nature, shown
+in his correspondence, which no amount of polishing seemed able to
+overcome.
+
+John Page was Jefferson's closest friend, and to him he wrote very
+fully concerning the state of his mind and heart, and with a certain
+quaint, uncouth humour, which to this day is irresistible.
+
+For instance, at Fairfield, Christmas day, 1762, he wrote to his
+friend as follows:
+
+     "DEAR PAGE
+
+     "This very day, to others the day of greatest mirth and
+     jolity, sees me overwhelmed with more and greater
+     misfortunes than have befallen a descendant of Adam for
+     these thousand years past, I am sure; and perhaps, after
+     excepting Job, since the creation of the world.
+
+     "You must know, Dear Page, that I am now in a house
+     surrounded by enemies, who take counsel together against my
+     soul; and when I lay me down to rest, they say among
+     themselves, 'Come let us destroy him.'
+
+     "I am sure if there is such a thing as a Devil in this
+     world, he must have been here last night, and have had some
+     hand in what happened to me. Do you think the cursed rats
+     (at his instigation I suppose) did not eat up my pocket
+     book, which was in my pocket, within an inch of my head? And
+     not contented with plenty for the present, they carried away
+     my gemmy worked silk garters, and half a dozen new minuets I
+     had just got, to serve, I suppose, as provision for the
+     winter.
+
+     "You know it rained last night, or if you do not know it, I
+     am sure I do. When I went to bed I laid my watch in the
+     usual place, and going to take her up after I arose this
+     morning, I found her in the same place, it is true, but all
+     afloat in water, let in at a leak in the roof of the house,
+     and as silent, and as still as the rats that had eaten my
+     pocket book.
+
+     "Now, you know if chance had anything to do in this matter,
+     there were a thousand other spots where it might have
+     chanced to leak as well as this one which was
+     perpendicularly over my watch. But I'll tell you, it's my
+     opinion that the Devil came and bored the hole over it on
+     purpose.
+
+     "Well, as I was saying, my poor watch had lost her speech. I
+     would not have cared much for this, but something worse
+     attended it--the subtle particles of water with which the
+     case was filled had, by their penetration, so overcome the
+     cohesion of the particles of the paper, of which my dear
+     picture, and watch patch paper, were composed, that in
+     attempting to take them out to dry them, my cursed fingers
+     gave them such a rent as I fear I shall never get over.
+
+     "... And now, though her picture be defaced, there is so
+     lively an image of her imprinted in my mind, that I shall
+     think of her too often, I fear for my peace of mind; and too
+     often I am sure to get through old Coke this winter, for I
+     have not seen him since I packed him up in my trunk in
+     Williamsburg. Well, Page, I do wish the Devil had old Coke
+     for I am sure I never was so tired of the dull old scoundrel
+     in my life....
+
+     "I would fain ask the favor of Miss Bettey Burwell to give
+     me another watch paper of her own cutting, which I should
+     esteem much more though it were a plain round one, than the
+     nicest in the world cut by other hands; however I am afraid
+     she would think this presumption, after my suffering the
+     other to get spoiled. If you think you can excuse me to her
+     for this, I should be glad if you would ask her...."
+
+Page was a little older than Jefferson, and the young man thought much
+of his advice. Six months later we find Page advising him to go to
+Miss Rebecca Burwell and "lay siege in form."
+
+There were many objections to this--first, the necessity of keeping
+the matter secret, and of "treating with a ward before obtaining
+the consent of her guardian," which at that time was considered
+dishonourable, and second, Jefferson's own state of suspense and
+uneasiness, since the lady had given him no grounds for hope.
+
+     "If I am to succeed [he wrote], the sooner I know it the
+     less uneasiness I shall have to go through. If I am to meet
+     with disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life
+     I shall have to wear it off; and if I do meet with one, I
+     hope and verily believe it will be the last.
+
+     "I assure you that I almost envy you your present freedom
+     and I assure you that if Belinda will not accept of my
+     heart, it shall never be offered to another."
+
+In his letters he habitually spoke of Miss Burwell as "Belinda,"
+presumably on account of the fear which he expresses to Page, that the
+letters might possibly fall into other hands. In some of his letters
+he spells "Belinda" backward, and with exaggerated caution, in Greek
+letters.
+
+Finally, with much fear and trembling, he took his friend's advice,
+and laid siege to the fair Rebecca in due form. The day
+afterward--October 7, 1763--he confided in Page:
+
+     "In the most melancholy fit that ever a poor soul was, I sit
+     down to write you. Last night, as merry as agreeable company
+     and dancing with Belinda could make me, I never could have
+     thought that the succeeding sun would have seen me so
+     wretched as I now am!
+
+     "I was prepared to say a great deal. I had dressed up in my
+     own mind, such thoughts as occurred to me, in as moving
+     language as I knew how, and expected to have performed in a
+     tolerably creditable manner. But ... when I had an
+     opportunity of venting them, a few broken sentences, uttered
+     in great disorder, and interrupted by pauses of uncommon
+     length were the too visible marks of my strange confusion!
+
+     "The whole confab I will tell you, word for word if I can
+     when I see you which God send, may be soon."
+
+After this, he dates his letters at "Devilsburg," instead of
+Williamsburg, and says in one of them, "I believe I never told you
+that we had another occasion." This time he behaved more creditably,
+told "Belinda" that it was necessary for him to go to England,
+explained the inevitable delays and told how he should conduct himself
+until his return. He says that he asked no questions which would admit
+of a categorical answer--there was something of the lawyer in this
+wooing! He assured Miss Rebecca that such a question would one day be
+asked. In this letter she is called "Adinleb" and spoken of as "he."
+
+Miss Burwell did not wait, however, until Jefferson was in a position
+to seek her hand openly, but was suddenly married to another. The news
+was a great shock to Jefferson, who refused to believe it until Page
+confirmed it; but the love-lorn swain gradually recovered from his
+disappointment.
+
+With youthful ardour they had planned to buy adjoining estates and
+have a carriage in common, when each married the lady of his love,
+that they might attend all the dances. A little later, when Page was
+also crossed in love, both forswore marriage forever.
+
+For five or six years, Jefferson was faithful to his vow--rather an
+unusual record. He met his fate at last in the person of a charming
+widow--Martha Skelton.
+
+The death of his sister, his devotion to his books, and his
+disappointment made him a sadder and a wiser man. His home at Shadwell
+had been burned, and he removed to Monticello, a house built on the
+same estate on a spur of the Blue Ridge Mountains, five hundred feet
+above the common level.
+
+He went often to visit Mrs. Skelton who made her home with her father
+after her bereavement. Usually he took his violin under his arm, and
+out of the harmonies which came from the instrument and the lady's
+spinet came the greater one of love.
+
+They were married in January of 1772. The ceremony took place at "The
+Forest" in Charles City County. The chronicles describe the bride as a
+beautiful woman, a little above medium height, finely formed, and with
+graceful carriage. She was well educated, read a great deal, and
+played the spinet unusually well.
+
+The wedding journey was a strange one. It was a hundred miles from
+"The Forest" to Monticello, and years afterward their eldest daughter,
+Martha Jefferson Randolph, described it as follows:
+
+     "They left 'The Forest' after a fall of snow, light then,
+     but increasing in depth as they advanced up the country.
+     They were finally obliged to quit the carriage and proceed
+     on horseback. They arrived late at night, the fires were all
+     out, and the servants had retired to their own houses for
+     the night. The horrible dreariness of such a house, at the
+     end of such a journey, I have often heard both relate."
+
+Yet, the walls of Monticello, that afterwards looked down upon so much
+sorrow and so much joy, must have long remembered the home-coming of
+master and mistress, for the young husband found a bottle of old wine
+"on a shelf behind some books," built a fire in the open fireplace,
+and "they laughed and sang together like two children."
+
+And that life upon the hills proved very nearly ideal. They walked and
+planned and rode together, and kept house and garden books in the most
+minute fashion.
+
+Births and deaths followed each other at Monticello, but there was
+nothing else to mar the peace of that happy home. Between husband and
+wife there was no strife or discord, not a jar nor a rift in that
+unity of life and purpose which welds two souls into one.
+
+Childish voices came and went, but two daughters grew to womanhood,
+and in the evening, the day's duties done, violin and harpsichord
+sounded sweet strains together.
+
+They reared other children besides their own, taking the helpless
+brood of Jefferson's sister into their hearts and home when Dabney
+Carr died. Those three sons and three daughters were educated with his
+own children, and lived to bless him as a second father.
+
+One letter is extant which was written to one of the nieces whom
+Jefferson so cheerfully supported. It reads as follows:
+
+     "PARIS, June 14, 1787.
+
+     "I send you, my dear Patsey, the fifteen livres you desired.
+     You propose this to me as an anticipation of five weeks'
+     allowance, but do you not see, my dear, how imprudent it is
+     to lay out in one moment what should accommodate you for
+     five weeks? This is a departure from that rule which I wish
+     to see you governed by, thro' your whole life, of never
+     buying anything which you have not the money in your pocket
+     to pay for.
+
+     "Be sure that it gives much more pain to the mind to be in
+     debt than to do without any article whatever which we may
+     seem to want.
+
+     "The purchase you have made is one I am always ready to make
+     for you because it is my wish to see you dressed always
+     cleanly and a little more than decently; but apply to me
+     first for the money before making the purchase, if only to
+     avoid breaking through your rule.
+
+     "Learn yourself the habit of adhering vigorously to the
+     rules you lay down for yourself. I will come for you about
+     eleven o'clock on Saturday. Hurry the making of your gown,
+     and also your redingcote. You will go with me some day next
+     week to dine at the Marquis Fayette. Adieu, my dear
+     daughter,
+
+               "Yours affectionately,
+                    "TH. JEFFERSON"
+
+Mrs. Jefferson's concern for her husband, the loss of her children,
+and the weary round of domestic duties at last told upon her strong
+constitution.
+
+After the birth of her sixth child, Lucy Elizabeth, she sank rapidly,
+until at last it was plain to every one, except the distracted
+husband, that she could never recover.
+
+Finally the blow fell. His daughter Martha wrote of it as follows:
+
+     "As a nurse no female ever had more tenderness or anxiety.
+     He nursed my poor mother in turn with Aunt Carr, and her own
+     sister--sitting up with her and administering her medicines
+     and drink to the last.
+
+     "When at last he left his room, three weeks after my
+     mother's death, he rode out, and from that time, he was
+     incessantly on horseback, rambling about the mountain."
+
+Shortly afterward he received the appointment of Plenipotentiary to
+Europe, to be associated with Franklin and Adams in negotiating peace.
+He had twice refused the same appointment, as he had promised his wife
+that he would never again enter public life, as long as she lived.
+
+
+
+
+Columbia
+
+
+     She comes along old Ocean's trackless way--
+     A warrior scenting conflict from afar
+     And fearing not defeat nor battle-scar
+     Nor all the might of wind and dashing spray;
+     Her foaming path to triumph none may stay
+     For in the East, there shines her morning star;
+     She feels her strength in every shining spar
+     As one who grasps his sword and waits for day.
+
+     Columbia, Defender! dost thou hear?
+     The clarion challenge sweeps the sea
+     And straight toward the lightship doth she steer,
+     Her steadfast pulses sounding jubilee;
+     Arise, Defender! for thy way is clear
+     And all thy country's heart goes out to thee.
+
+
+
+
+The Story of a Daughter's Love
+
+
+Aaron Burr was past-master of what Whistler calls "the gentle art of
+making enemies!" Probably no man ever lived who was more bitterly
+hated or more fiercely reviled. Even at this day, when he has been
+dead more than half a century, his memory is still assailed.
+
+It is the popular impression that he was a villain. Perhaps he was,
+since "where there is smoke, there must be fire," but happily we have
+no concern with the political part of his life. Whatever he may have
+been, and whatever dark deeds he may have done, there still remains a
+redeeming feature which no one has denied him--his love for his
+daughter, Theodosia.
+
+One must remember that before Burr was two years old, his father,
+mother, and grandparents were all dead. He was reared by an uncle,
+Timothy Edwards, who doubtless did his best, but the odds were against
+the homeless child. Neither must we forget that he fought in the
+Revolution, bravely and well.
+
+From his early years he was very attractive to women. He was handsome,
+distinguished, well dressed, and gifted in many ways. He was generous,
+ready at compliments and gallantry, and possessed an all-compelling
+charm.
+
+In the autumn of 1777, his regiment was detailed for scouting duty in
+New Jersey, which was then the debatable ground between colonial and
+British armies. In January of 1779, Colonel Burr was given command of
+the "lines" in Westchester County, New York. It was at this time that
+he first met Mrs. Prevost, the widow of a British officer. She lived
+across the Hudson, some fifteen miles from shore, and the river was
+patrolled by the gunboats of the British, and the land by their
+sentries.
+
+In spite of these difficulties, however, Burr managed to make two
+calls upon the lady, although they were both necessarily informal. He
+sent six of his trusted soldiers to a place on the Hudson, where there
+was an overhanging bank under which they moored a large boat, well
+supplied with blankets and buffalo robes. At nine o'clock in the
+evening he left White Plains on the smallest and swiftest horse he
+could procure, and when he reached the rendezvous, the horse was
+quickly bound and laid in the boat. Burr and the six troopers stepped
+in, and in half an hour they were across the ferry. The horse was
+lifted out, and unbound, and with a little rubbing he was again ready
+for duty.
+
+Before midnight, Burr was at the house of his beloved, and at four in
+the morning he came back to the troopers awaiting him on the river
+bank, and the return trip was made in the same manner.
+
+For a year and a half after leaving the army, Burr was an invalid, but
+in July, 1782, he married Mrs. Prevost. She was a widow with two
+sons, and was ten years older than her husband. Her health was
+delicate and she had a scar on her forehead, but her mind was finely
+cultivated and her manners charming.
+
+Long after her death he said that if his manners were more graceful
+than those of some men, it was due to her influence, and that his wife
+was the truest woman, and most charming lady he had ever known.
+
+It has been claimed by some that Burr's married life was not a happy
+one, but there are many letters still extant which passed between them
+which seemed to prove the contrary. Before marriage he did not often
+write to her, but during his absences afterward, the fondest wife
+could have no reason to complain.
+
+For instance:
+
+     "This morning came your truly welcome letter of Monday
+     evening," he wrote her at one time. "Where did it loiter so
+     long?
+
+     "Nothing in my absence is so flattering to me as your health
+     and cheerfulness. I then contemplate nothing so eagerly as
+     my return, amuse myself with ideas of my own happiness, and
+     dwell upon the sweet domestic joys which I fancy prepared
+     for me.
+
+     "Nothing is so unfriendly to every species of enjoyment as
+     melancholy. Gloom, however dressed, however caused, is
+     incompatible with friendship. They cannot have place in the
+     mind at the same time. It is the secret, the malignant foe
+     of sentiment and love."
+
+He always wrote fondly of the children:
+
+     "My love to the smiling little girl," he said in one letter.
+     "I continually plan my return with childish impatience, and
+     fancy a thousand incidents which are most interesting."
+
+After five years of married life the wife wrote him as follows:
+
+     "Your letters always afford me a singular satisfaction, a
+     sensation entirely my own. This was peculiarly so. It
+     wrought strangely upon my mind and spirits. My Aaron, it was
+     replete with tenderness and with the most lively affection.
+     I read and re-read till afraid I should get it by rote, and
+     mingle it with common ideas."
+
+Soon after Burr entered politics, his wife developed cancer of the
+most virulent character. Everything that money or available skill
+could accomplish was done for her, but she died after a lingering and
+painful illness, in the spring of 1794.
+
+They had lived together happily for twelve years, and he grieved for
+her deeply and sincerely. Yet the greatest and most absorbing passion
+of his life was for his daughter, Theodosia, who was named for her
+mother and was born in the first year of their marriage. When little
+Theodosia was first laid in her father's arms, all that was best in
+him answered to her mute plea for his affection, and later, all that
+was best in him responded to her baby smile.
+
+Between those two, there was ever the fullest confidence, never
+tarnished by doubt or mistrust, and when all the world forsook him,
+Theodosia, grown to womanhood, stood proudly by her father's side and
+shared his blame as if it had been the highest honour.
+
+When she was a year or two old, they moved to a large house at the
+corner of Cedar and Nassau Streets, in New York City. A large garden
+surrounded it and there were grapevines in the rear. Here the child
+grew strong and healthy, and laid the foundations of her girlish
+beauty and mature charm. When she was but three years old her mother
+wrote to the father, saying:
+
+     "Your dear little Theodosia cannot hear you spoken of
+     without an apparent melancholy; insomuch, that her nurse is
+     obliged to exert her invention to divert her, and myself
+     avoid the mention of you in her presence. She was one whole
+     day indifferent to everything but your name. Her attachment
+     is not of a common nature."
+
+And again:
+
+     "Your dear little daughter seeks you twenty times a day,
+     calls you to your meals, and will not suffer your chair to
+     be filled by any of the family."
+
+The child was educated as if she had been a boy. She learned to
+read Latin and Greek fluently, and the accomplishments of her time
+were not neglected. When she was at school, the father wrote her
+regularly, and did not allow one of her letters to wait a day for
+its affectionate answer. He corrected her spelling and her grammar,
+instilled sound truths into her mind, and formed her habits. From this
+plastic clay, with inexpressible love and patient toil, he shaped his
+ideal woman.
+
+She grew into a beautiful girl. Her features were much like her
+father's. She was petite, graceful, plump, rosy, dignified, and
+gracious. In her manner, there was a calm assurance--the air of
+mastery over all situations--which she doubtless inherited from him.
+
+When she was eighteen years of age, she married Joseph Alston of
+South Carolina, and, with much pain at parting from her father, she
+went there to live, after seeing him inaugurated as Jefferson's
+Vice-President. His only consolation was her happiness, and when he
+returned to New York, he wrote her that he approached the old house
+as if it had been the sepulchre of all his friends. "Dreary, solitary,
+comfortless--it was no longer home."
+
+After her mother's death, Theodosia had been the lady of his household
+and reigned at the head of his table. When he went back there was no
+loved face opposite him, and the chill and loneliness struck him to
+the heart.
+
+For three years after her marriage, Theodosia was blissfully
+happy. A boy was born to her, and was named Aaron Burr Alston.
+The Vice-President visited them in the South and took his namesake
+unreservedly into his heart. "If I can see without prejudice," he
+said, "there never was a finer boy."
+
+His last act before fighting the duel with Hamilton, was writing to
+his daughter--a happy, gay, care-free letter, giving no hint of what
+was impending. To her husband he wrote in a different strain, begging
+him to keep the event from her as long as possible, to make her happy
+always, and to encourage her in those habits of study which he
+himself had taught her.
+
+She had parted from him with no other pain in her heart than the
+approaching separation. When they met again, he was a fugitive from
+justice, travel-stained from his long journey in an open canoe,
+indicted for murder in New York, and in New Jersey, although still
+President of the Senate, and Vice-President of the United States.
+
+The girl's heart ached bitterly, yet no word of censure escaped her
+lips, and she still held her head high. When his Mexican scheme was
+overthrown, Theodosia sat beside him at his trial, wearing her
+absolute faith, so that all the world might see.
+
+When he was preparing for his flight to Europe, Theodosia was in New
+York, and they met by night, secretly, at the house of friends. Just
+before he sailed, they spent a whole night together, making the best
+of the little time that remained to them before the inevitable
+separation. Early in June they parted, little dreaming that they
+should see each other no more.
+
+During the years of exile, Theodosia suffered no less than he. Mr.
+Alston had lost his faith in Aaron Burr, and the woman's heart
+strained beneath the burden. Her health failed, her friends shrank
+from her, yet openly and bravely she clung to her father.
+
+Public opinion showed no signs of relenting, and his evil genius
+followed him across the sea. He was expelled from England, and in
+Paris he was almost a prisoner. At one time he was obliged to live
+upon potatoes and dry bread, and his devoted daughter could not help
+him.
+
+He was despised by his countrymen, but Theodosia's adoring love never
+faltered. In one of her letters she said:
+
+     "I witness your extraordinary fortitude with new wonder at
+     every misfortune. Often, after reflecting on this subject,
+     you appear to me so superior, so elevated above other men--I
+     contemplate you with such a strange mixture of humility,
+     admiration, reverence, love, and pride, that a very little
+     superstition would be necessary to make me worship you as a
+     superior being, such enthusiasm does your character excite
+     in me.
+
+     "When I afterward revert to myself, how insignificant do my
+     best qualities appear! My own vanity would be greater if I
+     had not been placed so near you, and yet, my pride is in our
+     relationship. I had rather not live than not to be the
+     daughter of such a man."
+
+She wrote to Mrs. Madison and asked her to intercede with the
+President for her father. The answer gave the required assurance, and
+she wrote to her father, urging him to go boldly to New York and
+resume the practice of his profession. "If worse comes to worst," she
+wrote, "I will leave everything to suffer with you."
+
+He landed in Boston and went on to New York in May of 1812, where his
+reception was better than he had hoped, and where he soon had a
+lucrative practice. They planned for him to come South in the summer,
+and she was almost happy again, when her child died and her mother's
+heart was broken.
+
+She had borne much, and she never recovered from that last blow. Her
+health failed rapidly, and though she was too weak to undertake the
+trip, she insisted upon going to New York to see her father.
+
+Thinking the voyage might prove beneficial, her husband reluctantly
+consented, and passage was engaged for her on a pilot-boat that had
+been out privateering, and had stopped for supplies before going on to
+New York.
+
+The vessel sailed--and a storm swept the Atlantic coast from Maine to
+Florida. It was supposed that the ship went down off Cape Hatteras,
+but forty years afterward, a sailor, who died in Texas, confessed on
+his death-bed that he was one of a crew of mutineers who took
+possession of the _Patriot_ and forced the passengers, as well as the
+officers and men, to walk the plank. He professed to remember Mrs.
+Alston well, and said she was the last one who perished. He never
+forgot her look of despair as she stepped into the sea--with her head
+held high even in the face of death.
+
+Among Theodosia's papers was found a letter addressed to her husband,
+written at a time when she was weary of the struggle. On the envelope
+was written: "My Husband. To be delivered after my death. I wish this
+to be read immediately and before my burial."
+
+He never saw the letter, for he never had the courage to go through
+her papers, and after his death it was sent to her father. It came to
+him like a message from the grave:
+
+     "Let my father see my son, sometimes," she had written. "Do
+     not be unkind to him whom I have loved so much, I beseech of
+     you. Burn all my papers except my father's letters, which I
+     beg you to return to him."
+
+A long time afterward, her father married Madame Jumel, a rich New
+York woman who was many years his junior, but the alliance was
+unfortunate, and was soon annulled. Through all the rest of his life,
+he never wholly gave up the hope that Theodosia might return. He clung
+fondly to the belief that she had been picked up by another ship, and
+some day would be brought back to him.
+
+Day by day, he haunted the Battery, anxiously searching the faces of
+the incoming passengers, asking some of them for tidings of his
+daughter, and always believing that the next ship would bring her
+back.
+
+He became a familiar figure, for he was almost always there--a bent,
+shrunken little man, white-haired, leaning heavily upon his cane,
+asking questions in a thin piping voice, and straining his dim eyes
+forever toward the unsounded waters, from whence the idol of his heart
+never came.
+
+     For out within those waters, cruel, changeless,
+       She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea;
+     A smile upon her dear lips, dumb, but waiting,
+       And I--I hear the sea-voice calling me.
+
+
+
+
+The Sea-Voice
+
+
+     Beyond the sands I hear the sea-voice calling
+       With passion all but human in its pain,
+     While from my eyes the bitter tears are falling,
+       And all the summer land seems blind with rain;
+     For out within those waters, cruel, changeless,
+       She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea,
+     A smile upon her dear lips, dumb, but waiting,
+       And I--I hear the sea-voice calling me.
+
+     The tide comes in. The moonlight flood and glory
+       Of that unresting surge thrill earth with bliss,
+     And I can hear the passionate sweet story
+       Of waves that waited round her for her kiss.
+     Sweetheart, they love you; silent and unseeing,
+       Old Ocean holds his court around you there,
+     And while I reach out through the dark to find you
+       His fingers twine the sea-weed in your hair.
+
+     The tide goes out and in the dawn's new splendour
+       The dreams of dark first fade, then pass away,
+     And I awake from visions soft and tender
+       To face the shuddering agony of day
+     For out within those waters, cruel, changeless,
+       She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea;
+     A smile upon her dear lips, dumb, but waiting,
+       And I--I hear the sea-voice calling me.
+
+
+
+
+ The Mystery of Randolph's
+ Courtship
+
+
+It is said that in order to know a man, one must begin with his
+ancestors, and the truth of the saying is strikingly exemplified in
+the case of "John Randolph of Roanoke," as he loved to write his name.
+
+His contemporaries have told us what manner of man he was--fiery,
+excitable, of strong passions and strong will, capable of great
+bitterness, obstinate, revengeful, and extremely sensitive.
+
+"I have been all my life," he says, "the creature of impulse, the
+sport of chance, the victim of my own uncontrolled and uncontrollable
+sensations, and of a poetic temperament."
+
+He was sarcastic to a degree, proud, haughty, and subject to fits of
+Byronic despair and morbid gloom. For these traits we must look back
+to the Norman Conquest from which he traced his descent in an unbroken
+line, while, on the side of his maternal grandmother, he was the
+seventh in descent from Pocahontas, the Indian maiden who married John
+Rolfe.
+
+The Indian blood was evident, even in his personal appearance. He was
+tall, slender, and dignified in his bearing; his hands were thin, his
+fingers long and bony; his face was dark, sallow, and wrinkled, oval
+in shape and seamed with lines by the inward conflict which forever
+raged in his soul. His chin was pointed but firm, and his lips were
+set; around his mouth were marked the tiny, almost imperceptible lines
+which mean cruelty. His nose was aquiline, his ears large at the top,
+tapering almost to a point at the lobe, and his forehead unusually
+high and broad. His hair was soft, and his skin, although dark,
+suffered from extreme sensitiveness.
+
+     "There is no accounting for thinness of skins in different
+     animals, human, or brute [he once said]. Mine, I believe to
+     be more tender than many infants of a month old. Indeed I
+     have remarked in myself, from my earliest recollection, a
+     delicacy or effeminacy of complexion, which but for a spice
+     of the devil in my temper would have consigned me to the
+     distaff or the needle."
+
+"A spice of the devil" is mild indeed, considering that before he was
+four years old he frequently swooned in fits of passion, and was
+restored to consciousness with difficulty.
+
+His most striking feature was his eyes. They were deep, dark, and
+fiery, filled with passion and great sadness at the same time. "When
+he first entered an assembly of people," said one who knew him, "they
+were the eyes of the eagle in search of his prey, darting about from
+place to place to see upon whom to light. When he was assailed they
+flashed fire and proclaimed a torrent of rage within."
+
+The voice of this great statesman was a rare gift:
+
+     "One might live a hundred years [says one,] and never hear
+     another like it. The wonder was why the sweet tone of a
+     woman was so harmoniously blended with that of a man. His
+     very whisper could be distinguished above the ordinary tones
+     of other men. His voice was so singularly clear, distinct,
+     and melodious that it was a positive pleasure to hear him
+     articulate anything."
+
+Such was the man who swayed the multitude at will, punished offenders
+with sarcasm and invective, inspired fear even in his equals, and
+loved and suffered more than any other prominent man of his
+generation.
+
+He had many acquaintances, a few friends, and three loves--his mother,
+his brother, and the beautiful young woman who held his heart in the
+hollow of her hand, until the Gray Angel, taking pity, closed his eyes
+in the last sleep.
+
+His mother, who was Frances Bland, married John Randolph in 1769, and
+John Randolph, of Roanoke, was their third son.
+
+Tradition tells us of the unusual beauty of the mother--
+
+     "the high expanded forehead, the smooth arched brow; the
+     brilliant dark eyes; the well defined nose; the full round
+     laughing lips; the tall graceful figure, the beautiful dark
+     hair; an open cheerful countenance--suffused with that deep,
+     rich Oriental tint which never seems to fade, all of which
+     made her the most beautiful and attractive woman of her
+     age."
+
+She was a wife at sixteen, and at twenty-six a widow. Three years
+after the death of her husband, she married St. George Tucker, of
+Bermuda who proved to be a kind father to her children.
+
+In the winter of 1781, Benedict Arnold, the traitor who had spread
+ruin through his native state, was sent to Virginia on an expedition
+of ravage. He landed at the mouth of the James, and advanced toward
+Petersburg. Matoax, Randolph's home, was directly in the line of the
+invading army, so the family set out on a cold January morning, and at
+night entered the home of Benjamin Ward, Jr.
+
+John Randolph was seven years old, and little Maria Ward had just
+passed her fifth birthday. The two children played together happily,
+and in the boy's heart was sown the seed of that grand passion which
+dominated his life.
+
+After a few days, the family went on to Bizarre, a large estate on
+both sides of the Appomattox, and here Mrs. Tucker and her sons spent
+the remainder of the year, while her husband joined General Greene's
+army, and afterward, the force of Lafayette.
+
+In 1788, John Randolph's mother died, and his first grief swept over
+him in an overwhelming torrent. The boy of fifteen spent bitter
+nights, his face buried in the grass, sobbing over his mother's grave.
+Years afterward, he wrote to a friend, "I am a fatalist. I am all but
+friendless. Only one human being ever knew me. _She_ only knew me."
+
+He kept his mother's portrait always in his room, and enshrined her in
+loving remembrance in his heart. He had never seen his father's face
+to remember it distinctly, and for a long time he wore his miniature
+in his bosom. In 1796, his brother Richard died, and the unexpected
+blow crushed him to earth. More than thirty years afterward he wrote
+to his half-brother, Henry St. George Tucker, the following note:
+
+     "DEAR HENRY
+
+     "Our poor brother Richard was born in 1770. He would have
+     been fifty-six years old the ninth of this month. I can no
+     more.
+
+                    "J. R. OF R."
+
+At some time in his early manhood he came into close relationship with
+Maria Ward. She had been an attractive child, and had grown into a
+woman so beautiful that Lafayette said her equal could not be found in
+North America. Her hair was auburn, and hung in curls around her face;
+her skin was exquisitely fair; her eyes were dark and eloquent. Her
+mouth was well formed; she was slender, graceful, and coquettish,
+well-educated, and in every way, charming.
+
+To this woman, John Randolph's heart went out in passionate, adoring
+love. He might be bitter and sarcastic with others, but with her he
+was gentleness itself. Others might know him as a man of affairs, keen
+and logical, but to her he was only a lover.
+
+Timid and hesitating at first, afraid perhaps of his fiery wooing,
+Miss Ward kept him for some time in suspense. All the treasures of his
+mind and soul were laid before her; that deep, eloquent voice which
+moved the multitude to tears at its master's will was pleading with a
+woman for her love.
+
+What wonder that she yielded at last and promised to marry him? Then
+for a time everything else was forgotten. The world lay before him to
+be conquered when he might choose. Nothing would be too great for him
+to accomplish--nothing impossible to that eager joyous soul enthroned
+at last upon the greatest heights of human happiness. And then--there
+was a change. He rode to her home one day, tying his horse outside as
+was his wont. A little later he strode out, shaking like an aspen,
+his face white in agony. He drew his knife from his pocket, cut the
+bridle of his horse, dug his spurs into the quivering sides, and was
+off like the wind. What battle was fought out on that wild ride is
+known only to John Randolph and his God. What torture that fiery soul
+went through, no human being can ever know. When he came back at
+night, he was so changed that no one dared to speak to him.
+
+He threw himself into the political arena in order to save his reason.
+Often at midnight, he would rise from his uneasy bed, buckle on his
+pistols, and ride like mad over the country, returning only when his
+horse was spent. He never saw Miss Ward again, and she married Peyton
+Randolph, the son of Edmund Randolph, who was Secretary of State under
+Washington.
+
+The entire affair is shrouded in mystery. There is not a letter, nor a
+single scrap of paper, nor a shred of evidence upon which to base even
+a presumption. The separation was final and complete, and the
+white-hot metal of the man's nature was gradually moulded into that
+strange eccentric being whose foibles are so well known.
+
+Only once did Randolph lift even a corner of the veil. In a letter to
+his dearest friend he spoke of her as:
+
+     "One I loved better than my own soul, or Him who created it.
+     My apathy is not natural, but superinduced. There was a
+     volcano under my ice, but it burnt out, and a face of
+     desolation has come on, not to be rectified in ages, could
+     my life be prolonged to patriarchal longevity.
+
+     "The necessity of loving and being loved was never felt by
+     the imaginary beings of Rousseau and Byron's creation, more
+     imperiously than by myself. My heart was offered with a
+     devotion that knew no reserve. Long an object of
+     proscription and treachery, I have at last, more mortifying
+     to the pride of man, become an object of utter
+     indifference."
+
+The brilliant statesman would doubtless have had a large liberty of
+choice among the many beautiful women of his circle, but he never
+married, and there is no record of any entanglement. To the few women
+he deemed worthy of his respect and admiration, he was deferential and
+even gallant. In one of his letters to a young relative he said:
+
+     "Love to god-son Randolph and respectful compliments to Mrs.
+     R. She is indeed a fine woman, one for whom I have felt a
+     true regard, unmixed with the foible of another passion.
+
+     "Fortunately or unfortunately for me, when I knew her, I
+     bore a charmed heart. Nothing else could have preserved me
+     from the full force of her attractions."
+
+For much of the time after his disappointment, he lived alone with
+his servants, solaced as far as possible by those friends of all
+mankind--books. When the spirit moved him, he would make visits to the
+neighbouring plantations, sometimes dressed in white flannel trousers,
+coat, and vest, and with white paper wrapped around his beaver hat!
+When he presented himself in this manner, riding horseback, with his
+dark eyes burning, he was said to have presented "a most ghostly
+appearance!"
+
+An old lady who lived for years on the banks of the Staunton, near
+Randolph's solitary home, tells a pathetic story:
+
+She was sitting alone in her room in the dead of winter, when a
+beautiful woman, pale as a ghost, dressed entirely in white, suddenly
+appeared before her, and began to talk about Mr. Randolph, saying he
+was her lover and would marry her yet, as he had never proved false to
+his plighted faith. She talked of him incessantly, like one deranged,
+until a young gentleman came by the house, leading a horse with a
+side-saddle on. She rushed out, and asked his permission to ride a few
+miles. Greatly to his surprise, she mounted without assistance, and
+sat astride like a man. He was much embarrassed, but had no choice
+except to escort her to the end of her journey.
+
+The old lady who tells of this strange experience says that the young
+woman several times visited Mr. Randolph, always dressed in white and
+usually in the dead of winter. He always put her on a horse and sent
+her away with a servant to escort her.
+
+In his life there were but two women--his mother and Maria Ward. While
+his lips were closed on the subject of his love, he did not hesitate
+to avow his misery. "I too am wretched," he would say with infinite
+pathos; and after her death, he spoke of Maria Ward as his "angel."
+
+In a letter written sometime after she died, he said, strangely
+enough: "I loved, aye, and was loved again, not wisely, but too well."
+
+His brilliant career was closed when he was sixty years old, and in
+his last illness, during delirium, the name of Maria was frequently
+heard by those who were anxiously watching with him. But, true to
+himself and to her, even when his reason was dethroned, he said
+nothing more.
+
+He was buried on his own plantation, in the midst of "that boundless
+contiguity of shade," with his secret locked forever in his tortured
+breast. "John Randolph of Roanoke," was all the title he claimed; but
+the history of those times teaches us that he was more than that--he
+was John Randolph, of the Republic.
+
+
+
+
+ How President Jackson Won
+ His Wife
+
+
+In October of 1788, a little company of immigrants arrived in
+Tennessee. The star of empire, which is said to move westward, had not
+yet illumined Nashville, and it was one of the dangerous points "on
+the frontier."
+
+The settlement was surrounded on all sides by hostile Indians. Men
+worked in the fields, but dared not go out to their daily task without
+being heavily armed. When two men met, and stopped for a moment to
+talk, they often stood back to back, with their rifles cocked ready
+for instant use. No one stooped to drink from a spring unless another
+guarded him, and the women were always attended by an armed force.
+
+Col. John Donelson had built for himself a blockhouse of unusual size
+and strength, and furnished it comfortably; but while surveying a
+piece of land near the village, he was killed by the savages, and his
+widow left to support herself as best she could.
+
+A married daughter and her husband lived with her, but it was
+necessary for her to take other boarders. One day there was a vigorous
+rap upon the stout door of the blockhouse, and a young man whose name
+was Andrew Jackson was admitted. Shortly afterward, he took up his
+abode as a regular boarder at the Widow Donelson's.
+
+The future President was then twenty-one or twenty-two. He was tall
+and slender, with every muscle developed to its utmost strength. He
+had an attractive face, pleasing manners, and made himself agreeable
+to every one in the house.
+
+The dangers of the frontier were but minor incidents in his
+estimation, for "desperate courage makes one a majority," and he had
+courage. When he was but thirteen years of age, he had boldly defied a
+British officer who had ordered him to clean some cavalry boots.
+
+"Sir," said the boy, "I am a prisoner of war, and I claim to be
+treated as such!"
+
+With an oath the officer drew his sword, and struck at the child's
+head. He parried the blow with his left arm, but received a severe
+wound on his head and another on his arm, the scars of which he always
+carried.
+
+The protecting presence of such a man was welcome to those who dwelt
+in the blockhouse--Mrs. Donelson, Mr. and Mrs. Robards, and another
+boarder, John Overton. Mrs. Donelson was a good cook and a notable
+housekeeper, while her daughter was said to be "the best story teller,
+the best dancer, the sprightliest companion, and the most dashing
+horsewoman in the western country."
+
+Jackson, as the only licensed lawyer in that part of Tennessee, soon
+had plenty of business on his hands, and his life in the blockhouse
+was a happy one until he learned that the serpent of jealousy lurked
+by that fireside.
+
+Mrs. Robards was a comely brunette, and her dusky beauty carried with
+it an irresistible appeal. Jackson soon learned that Captain Robards
+was unreasonably and even insanely jealous of his wife, and he learned
+from John Overton that before his arrival there had been a great deal
+of unhappiness because of this.
+
+At one time Captain Robards had written to Mrs. Donelson to take her
+daughter home, as he did not wish to live with her any longer; but
+through the efforts of Mr. Overton a reconciliation had been effected
+between the pair, and they were still living together at Mrs.
+Donelson's when Jackson went there to board.
+
+In a short time, however, Robards became violently jealous of Jackson
+and talked abusively to his wife, even in the presence of her mother
+and amidst the tears of both. Once more Overton interfered, assured
+Robards that his suspicions were groundless, and reproached him for
+his unmanly conduct.
+
+It was all in vain, however, and the family was in as unhappy a state
+as before, when they were living with the Captain's mother who had
+always taken the part of her daughter-in-law.
+
+At length Overton spoke to Jackson about it, telling him it was better
+not to remain where his presence made so much trouble, and offered to
+go with him to another boarding-place. Jackson readily assented,
+though neither of them knew where to go, and said that he would talk
+to Captain Robards.
+
+The men met near the orchard fence, and Jackson remonstrated with the
+Captain who grew violently angry and threatened to strike him. Jackson
+told him that he would not advise him to try to fight, but if he
+insisted, he would try to give him satisfaction. Nothing came of the
+discussion, however, as Robards seemed willing to take Jackson's
+advice and did not dare to strike him. But the coward continued to
+abuse his wife, and insulted Jackson at every opportunity. The result
+was that the young lawyer left the house.
+
+A few months later, the still raging husband left his wife and went to
+Kentucky, which was then a part of Virginia. Soon afterward, Mrs.
+Robards went to live with her sister, Mrs. Hay, and Overton returned
+to Mrs. Donelson's.
+
+In the following autumn there was a rumour that Captain Robards
+intended to return to Tennessee and take his wife to Kentucky, at
+which Mrs. Donelson and her daughter were greatly distressed. Mrs.
+Robards wept bitterly, and said it was impossible for her to live
+peaceably with her husband as she had tried it twice and failed. She
+determined to go down the river to Natchez, to a friend, and thus
+avoid her husband, who she said had threatened to haunt her.
+
+When Jackson heard of this arrangement he was very much troubled, for
+he felt that he had been the unwilling cause of the young wife's
+unhappiness, although entirely innocent of any wrong intention. So
+when Mrs. Robards had fully determined to undertake the journey to
+Natchez, accompanied only by Colonel Stark and his family, he offered
+to go with them as an additional protection against the Indians who
+were then especially active, and his escort was very gladly accepted.
+The trip was made in safety, and after seeing the lady settled with
+her friends, he returned to Nashville and resumed his law practice.
+
+At that time there was no divorce law in Virginia, and each separate
+divorce required the passage of an act of the legislature before a
+jury could consider the case. In the winter of 1791, Captain Robards
+obtained the passage of such an act, authorising the court of Mercer
+County to act upon his divorce. Mrs. Robards, hearing of this,
+understood that the passage of the act was, in itself, divorce, and
+that she was a free woman. Jackson also took the divorce for granted.
+Every one in the country so understood the matter, and at Natchez, in
+the following summer, the two were married.
+
+They returned to Nashville, settled down, and Jackson began in earnest
+the career that was to land him in the White House, the hero of the
+nation.
+
+In December of 1793, more than two years after their marriage, their
+friend Overton learned that the legislature had not granted a divorce,
+but had left it for the court to do so. Jackson was much chagrined
+when he heard of this, and it was with great difficulty that he was
+brought to believe it. In January of 1794, when the decree was finally
+obtained, they were married again.
+
+It is difficult to excuse Jackson for marrying the woman without
+positive and absolute knowledge of her divorce. He was a lawyer, and
+could have learned the facts of the case, even though there was no
+established mail service. Each of them had been entirely innocent of
+any intentional wrong-doing, and their long life together, their
+great devotion to each other, and General Jackson's honourable career,
+forever silenced the spiteful calumny of his rivals and enemies of
+early life.
+
+In his eyes his wife was the soul of honour and purity; he loved and
+reverenced her as a man loves and reverences but one woman in his
+lifetime, and for thirty-seven years he kept a pair of pistols loaded
+for the man who should dare to breathe her name without respect.
+
+The famous pistol duel with Dickinson was the result of a quarrel
+which had its beginning in a remark reflecting upon Mrs. Jackson, and
+Dickinson, though a crack shot, paid for it with his life.
+
+Several of Dickinson's friends sent a memorial to the proprietors of
+the _Impartial Review_, asking that the next number of the paper
+appear in mourning, "out of respect for the memory, and regret for the
+untimely death, of Mr. Charles Dickinson."
+
+"Old Hickory" heard of this movement, and wrote to the proprietors,
+asking that the names of the gentlemen making the request be published
+in the memorial number of the paper. This also was agreed to, and it
+is significant that twenty-six of the seventy-three men who had signed
+the petition called and erased their names from the document.
+
+"The Hermitage" at Nashville, which is still a very attractive spot
+for visitors, was built solely to please Mrs. Jackson, and there she
+dispensed gracious hospitality. Not merely a guest or two, but whole
+families, came for weeks at a time, for the mistress of the mansion
+was fond of entertaining, and proved herself a charming hostess. She
+had a good memory, had passed through many and greatly varied
+experiences, and above all she had that rare faculty which is called
+tact.
+
+Though her husband's love for her was evident to every one, yet, in
+the presence of others, he always maintained a dignified reserve. He
+never spoke of her as "Rachel," nor addressed her as "My Dear." It
+was always "Mrs. Jackson," or "wife." She always called him "Mr.
+Jackson," never "Andrew" nor "General."
+
+Both of them greatly desired children, but this blessing was denied
+them; so they adopted a boy, the child of Mrs. Jackson's brother,
+naming him "Andrew Jackson," and bringing him up as their own child.
+
+The lady's portrait shows her to have been wonderfully attractive. It
+does not reveal the dusky Oriental tint of her skin, the ripe red of
+her lips, nor the changing lights in her face, but it shows the high
+forehead, the dark soft hair, the fine eyes, and the tempting mouth
+which was smiling, yet serene. A lace head-dress is worn over the
+waving hair, and the filmy folds fall softly over neck and bosom.
+
+When Jackson was elected to the Presidency, the ladies of Nashville
+organized themselves into sewing circles to prepare Mrs. Jackson's
+wardrobe. It was a labour of love. On December 23, 1828, there was to
+be a grand banquet in Jackson's honour, and the devoted women of their
+home city had made a beautiful gown for his wife to wear at the
+dinner. At sunrise the preparations began. The tables were set, the
+dining-room decorated, and the officers and men of the troop that was
+to escort the President-elect were preparing to go to the home and
+attend him on the long ride into the city. Their horses were saddled
+and in readiness at the place of meeting. As the bugle sounded the
+summons to mount, a breathless messenger appeared on a horse flecked
+with foam. Mrs. Jackson had died of heart disease the evening before.
+
+The festival was changed to a funeral, and the trumpets and drums that
+were to have sounded salute were muffled in black. All decorations
+were taken down, and the church bells tolled mournfully. The grief of
+the people was beyond speech. Each one felt a personal loss.
+
+At the home the blow was terrible. The lover-husband would not leave
+his wife. In those bitter hours the highest gift of his countrymen
+was an empty triumph, for his soul was wrecked with the greatness of
+his loss.
+
+When she was buried at the foot of a slope in the garden of "The
+Hermitage," his bereavement came home to him with crushing strength.
+Back of the open grave stood a great throng of people, waiting in the
+wintry wind. The sun shone brightly on the snow, but "The Hermitage"
+was desolate, for its light and laughter and love were gone. The
+casket was carried down the slope, and a long way behind it came the
+General, slowly and almost helpless, between two of his friends.
+
+The people of Nashville had made ready to greet him with the blare of
+bugles, waving flags, the clash of cymbals, and resounding cheers. It
+was for the President-elect--the hero of the war. The throng that
+stood behind the open grave greeted him with sobs and tears--not the
+President-elect, but the man bowed by his sixty years, bareheaded,
+with his gray hair rumpled in the wind, staggering toward them in the
+throes of his bitterest grief.
+
+In that one night he had grown old. He looked like a man stricken
+beyond all hope. When his old friends gathered around him with the
+tears streaming down their cheeks, wringing his hand in silent
+sympathy, he could make no response.
+
+He was never the same again, though his strength of will and his
+desperate courage fought with this infinite pain. For the rest of his
+life he lived as she would have had him live--guided his actions by
+the thought of what his wife, if living, would have had him do--loving
+her still, with the love that passeth all understanding.
+
+He declined the sarcophagus fit for an emperor, that he might be
+buried like a simple citizen, in the garden by her side.
+
+His last words were of her--his last look rested upon her portrait
+that hung opposite his bed, and if there be dreaming in the dark, the
+vision of her brought him peace at last.
+
+
+
+
+ The Bachelor President's Loyalty
+ to a Memory
+
+
+The fifteenth President was remarkable among the men of his time
+for his lifelong fidelity to one woman, for since the days of
+knight-errantry such devotion has been as rare as it is beautiful. The
+young lawyer came of Scotch-Irish parentage, and to this blending of
+blood were probably in part due his deep love and steadfastness. There
+was rather more of the Irish than of the Scotch in his face, and when
+we read that his overflowing spirits were too much for the college in
+which he had been placed, and that, for "reasons of public policy,"
+the honours which he had earned were on commencement day given to
+another, it is evident that he may sometimes have felt that he owed
+allegiance primarily to the Emerald Isle.
+
+Like others, who have been capable of deep and lasting passion, James
+Buchanan loved his mother. Among his papers there was found a fragment
+of an autobiography, which ended in 1816, when the writer was only
+twenty-five years of age. He says his father was "a kind father, a
+sincere friend, and an honest and religious man," but on the subject
+of his mother he waxes eloquent:
+
+     "Considering her limited opportunities in early life [he
+     writes], my mother was a remarkable woman. The daughter of a
+     country farmer, engaged in household employment from early
+     life until after my father's death, she yet found time to
+     read much, and to reflect deeply on what she read.
+
+     "She had a great fondness for poetry, and could repeat with
+     ease all the passages in her favorite authors which struck
+     her fancy. These were Milton, Pope, Young, Cowper, and
+     Thompson.
+
+     "I do not think, at least until a late period in life, she
+     had ever read a criticism on any one of these authors, and
+     yet such was the correctness of her natural taste, that she
+     had selected for herself, and could repeat, every passage
+     in them which has been admired....
+
+     "For her sons, as they grew up successively, she was a
+     delightful and instructive companion.... She was a woman of
+     great firmness of character, and bore the afflictions of her
+     later life with Christian philosophy.... It was chiefly to
+     her influence, that her sons were indebted for a liberal
+     education. Under Providence I attribute any little
+     distinction which I may have acquired in the world to the
+     blessing which He conferred upon me in granting me such a
+     mother."
+
+If Elizabeth Buchanan could have read these words, doubtless she would
+have felt fully repaid for her many years of toil, self-sacrifice, and
+devotion.
+
+After the young man left the legislature and took up the practice of
+law, with the intention of spending his life at the bar, he became
+engaged to Anne Coleman, the daughter of Robert Coleman, of Lancaster.
+
+She is said to have been an unusually beautiful girl, quiet, gentle,
+modest, womanly, and extremely sensitive. The fine feelings of a
+delicately organized nature may easily become either a blessing or a
+curse, and on account of her sensitiveness there was a rupture for
+which neither can be very greatly blamed.
+
+Mr. Coleman approved of the engagement, and the happy lover worked
+hard to make a home for the idol of his heart. One day, out of the
+blue sky a thunderbolt fell. He received a note from Miss Coleman
+asking him to release her from her engagement.
+
+There was no explanation forthcoming, and it was not until long
+afterward that he discovered that busy-bodies and gossips had gone to
+Miss Coleman with stories concerning him which had no foundation save
+in their mischief-making imaginations, and which she would not repeat
+to him. After all his efforts at re-establishing the old relations had
+proved useless, he wrote to her that if it were her wish to be
+released from her engagement he could but submit, as he had no desire
+to hold her against her will.
+
+The break came in the latter part of the summer of 1819, when he was
+twenty-eight years old and she was in her twenty-third year. He threw
+himself into his work with renewed energy, and later on she went to
+visit friends in Philadelphia.
+
+Though she was too proud to admit it, there was evidence that the
+beautiful and high-spirited girl was suffering from heartache. On the
+ninth of December, she died suddenly, and her body was brought home
+just a week after she left Lancaster. The funeral took place the next
+day, Sunday, and to the suffering father of the girl, the heart-broken
+lover wrote a letter which in simple pathos stands almost alone. It is
+the only document on this subject which remains, but in these few
+lines is hidden a tragedy:
+
+                    "LANCASTER, December 10, 1819.
+
+     "MY DEAR SIR:
+
+     "You have lost a child, a dear, dear child. I have lost the
+     only earthly object of my affections, without whom, life now
+     presents to me a dreary blank. My prospects are all cut off,
+     and I feel that my happiness will be buried with her in her
+     grave.
+
+     "It is now no time for explanation, but the time will come
+     when you will discover that she, as well as I, has been
+     greatly abused. God forgive the authors of it! My feelings
+     of resentment against them, whoever they may be, are buried
+     in the dust.
+
+     "I have now one request to make, and for the love of God,
+     and of your dear departed daughter, whom I loved infinitely
+     more than any human being could love, deny me not. Afford me
+     the melancholy pleasure of seeing her body before its
+     interment. I would not, for the world, be denied this
+     request.
+
+     "I might make another, but from the misrepresentations that
+     have been made to you, I am almost afraid. I would like to
+     follow her remains, to the grave as a mourner. I would like
+     to convince the world, I hope yet to convince you, that she
+     was infinitely dearer to me than life.
+
+     "I may sustain the shock of her death, but I feel that
+     happiness has fled from me forever. The prayer which I make
+     to God without ceasing is, that I yet may be able to show my
+     veneration for the memory of my dear, departed saint, by my
+     respect and attachment for her surviving friends.
+
+     "May Heaven bless you and enable you to bear the shock with
+     the fortitude of a Christian.
+
+     "I am forever, your sincere and grateful friend,
+
+                    "JAMES BUCHANAN."
+
+The father returned the letter unopened and without comment. Death had
+only widened the breach. It would have been gratifying to know that
+the two lovers were together for a moment at the end.
+
+For such a meeting as that there are no words but Edwin Arnold's:
+
+     "But he--who loved her too well to dread
+     The sweet, the stately, the beautiful dead--
+     He lit his lamp, and took the key,
+     And turn'd it!--alone again--he and she!"
+
+For him there was not even a glimpse of her as she lay in her coffin,
+nor a whisper that some day, like Evelyn Hope, she might "wake, and
+remember and understand." With that love that asks only for the right
+to serve, and feeling perhaps that no pen could do her justice, he
+obtained permission to write a paragraph for a local paper, which was
+published unsigned:
+
+     "Departed this life, on Thursday morning last, in the
+     twenty-third year of her age, while on a visit to friends in
+     the city of Philadelphia, Miss Anne C. Coleman, daughter of
+     Robert Coleman, Esquire of this city.
+
+     "It rarely falls to our lot to shed a tear over the remains
+     of one so much and so deservedly beloved as was the
+     deceased. She was everything which the fondest parent, or
+     the fondest friend could have wished her to be.
+
+     "Although she was young and beautiful and accomplished, and
+     the smiles of fortune shone upon her, yet her native modesty
+     and worth made her unconscious of her own attractions. Her
+     heart was the seat of all the softer virtues which ennoble
+     and dignify the character of woman.
+
+     "She has now gone to a world, where, in the bosom of her
+     God, she will be happy with congenial spirits. May the
+     memory of her virtues be ever green in the hearts of her
+     surviving friends. May her mild spirit, which on earth still
+     breathes peace and good will, be their guardian angel to
+     preserve them from the faults to which she was ever a
+     stranger.
+
+     "The spider's most attenuated thread
+     Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie
+     On earthly bliss--it breaks at every breeze."
+
+How deeply he felt her death is shown by extracts from a letter
+written to him by a friend in the latter part of December:
+
+     "I am writing, I know not why, and perhaps had better not. I
+     write only to speak of the awful visitation of Providence
+     that has fallen upon you, and how deeply I feel it.... I
+     trust to your philosophy and courage, and to the elasticity
+     of spirits natural to most young men....
+
+     "The sun will shine again, though a man enveloped in gloom
+     always thinks the darkness is to be eternal. Do you remember
+     the Spanish anecdote?
+
+     "A lady who had lost a favorite child remained for months
+     sunk in sullen sorrow and despair. Her confessor, one
+     morning visited her, and found her, as usual immersed in
+     gloom and grief. 'What,' said he, 'Have you not forgiven God
+     Almighty?'
+
+     "She rose, exerted herself, joined the world again, and
+     became useful to herself and her friends."
+
+Time's kindly touch heals many wounds, but the years seemed to bring
+to James Buchanan no surcease of sorrow. He was always under the
+cloud of that misunderstanding, and during his long political career,
+the incident frequently served as a butt for the calumnies of his
+enemies. It was freely used in "campaign documents," perverted,
+misrepresented, and twisted into every conceivable shape, though it is
+difficult to conceive how any form of humanity could ever be so base.
+
+Next to the loss of the girl he loved, this was the greatest grief of
+his life. To see the name of his "dear, departed saint" dragged into
+newspaper notoriety was absolute torture. Denial was useless, and
+pleading had no effect. After he had retired to his home at Wheatland,
+and when he was past seventy--when Anne Coleman's beautiful body had
+gone back to the dust, there was a long article in a newspaper about
+the affair, accompanied by the usual misrepresentations.
+
+To a friend, he said, with deep emotion: "In my safety-deposit box in
+New York there is a sealed package, containing papers and relics which
+will explain everything. Sometime, when I am dead, the world will
+know--and absolve."
+
+But after his death, when his executors found the package, there was a
+direction on the outside: "To be burned unopened at my death."
+
+He chose silence rather than vindication at the risk of having Anne
+Coleman's name again brought into publicity. In that little parcel
+there was doubtless full exoneration, but at the end, as always, he
+nobly bore the blame.
+
+It happened that the letter he had written to her father was not in
+this package, but among his papers at Wheatland--otherwise that
+pathetic request would also have been burned.
+
+Through all his life he remained true to Anne's memory. Under the
+continual public attacks his grief became one that even his friends
+forebore to speak of, and he had a chivalrous regard for all women,
+because of his love for one. His social instincts were strong,
+his nature affectionate and steadfast, yet it was owing to his
+disappointment that he became President. At one time, when he was in
+London, he said to an intimate friend: "I never intended to engage
+in politics, but meant to follow my profession strictly. But my
+prospects and plans were all changed by a most sad event, which
+happened at Lancaster when I was a young man. As a distraction from my
+grief, and because I saw that through a political following I could
+secure the friends I then needed, I accepted a nomination."
+
+A beautiful side of his character is shown in his devotion to his
+niece, Harriet Lane. He was to her always a faithful father. When she
+was away at school or otherwise separated from him, he wrote to her
+regularly, never failing to assure her of his affection, and received
+her love and confidence in return. In 1865, when she wrote to him of
+her engagement, he replied, in part, as follows:
+
+     "I believe you say truly that nothing would have induced you
+     to leave me, in good or evil fortune, if I had wished you to
+     remain with me.
+
+     "Such a wish on my part would be very selfish. You have long
+     known my desire that you should marry whenever a suitor
+     worthy of you should offer. Indeed, it has been my strong
+     desire to see you settled in the world before my death. You
+     have now made your own unbiased choice; and from the
+     character of Mr. Johnston, I anticipate for you a happy
+     marriage, because I believe from your own good sense, you
+     will conform to your conductor, and make him a good and
+     loving wife."
+
+The days passed in retirement at Wheatland were filled with quiet
+content. The end came as peacefully as the night itself. He awoke from
+a gentle sleep, murmured, "O Lord, God Almighty, as Thou wilt!" and
+passed serenely into that other sleep, which knows not dreams.
+
+The impenetrable veil between us and eternity permits no lifting of
+its folds; there is no parting of its greyness, save for a passage,
+but perhaps, in "that undiscovered country from whose bourne no
+traveller returns" Anne Coleman and her lover have met once more, and
+the long life of faithfulness at last has won her pardon.
+
+
+
+
+Decoration Day
+
+
+     The trees bow their heads in sorrow,
+       While their giant branches wave,
+     With the requiems of the forest,
+       To the dead in a soldier's grave.
+
+     The pitying rain falls softly,
+       In grief for a nation's brave,
+     Who died 'neath the scourge of treason
+       And rest in a lonely grave.
+
+     So, under the willow and cypress
+       We lay our dead away,
+     And cover their graves with blossoms,
+       But the debt we never can pay.
+
+     All nature is bathed in tears,
+       On our sad Memorial day,
+     When we crown the valour of heroes
+       With flowers from the garments of May.
+
+
+
+
+ The Romance of the Life of
+ Lincoln
+
+
+By the slow passing of years humanity attains what is called the
+"historical perspective," but it is still a mooted question as to how
+many years are necessary.
+
+We think of Lincoln as a great leader, and it is difficult to imagine
+him as a lover. He was at the helm of "the Ship of State" in the most
+fearful storm it ever passed through; he struck off the shackles of a
+fettered people, and was crowned with martyrdom; yet in spite of his
+greatness, he loved like other men.
+
+There is no record for Lincoln's earlier years of the boyish love
+which comes to many men in their school days. The great passion of his
+life came to him in manhood but with no whit of its sweetness gone.
+Sweet Anne Rutledge! There are those who remember her well, and to
+this day in speaking of her, their eyes fill with tears. A lady who
+knew her says: "Miss Rutledge had auburn hair, blue eyes, and a fair
+complexion. She was pretty, rather slender, and good-hearted, beloved
+by all who knew her."
+
+Before Lincoln loved her, she had a sad experience with another man.
+About the time that he came to New Salem, a young man named John
+McNeil drifted in from one of the Eastern States. He worked hard, was
+plucky and industrious, and soon accumulated a little property. He met
+Anne Rutledge when she was but seventeen and still in school, and he
+began to pay her especial attention which at last culminated in their
+engagement.
+
+He was about going back to New York for a visit and leaving he told
+Anne that his name was not McNeil, but McNamar--that he had changed
+his name so that his dependent family might not follow him and settle
+down upon him before he was able to support them. Now that he was in
+a position to aid his parents, brothers, and sisters, he was going
+back to do it and upon his return would make Anne his wife.
+
+For a long time she did not hear from him at all, and gossip was rife
+in New Salem. His letters became more formal and less frequent and
+finally ceased altogether. The girl's proud spirit compelled her to
+hold her head high amid the impertinent questions of the neighbors.
+
+Lincoln had heard of the strange conduct of McNeil and concluding that
+there was now no tie between Miss Rutledge and her quondam lover, he
+began his own siege in earnest. Anne consented at last to marry him
+provided he gave her time to write to McNamar and obtain a release
+from the pledge which she felt was still binding upon her.
+
+She wrote, but there was no answer and at last she definitely accepted
+Lincoln.
+
+It was necessary for him to complete his law studies, and after that,
+he said, "Nothing on God's footstool shall keep us apart."
+
+He worked happily but a sore conflict seemed to be raging in Anne's
+tender heart and conscience, and finally the strain told upon her to
+such an extent that when she was attacked by a fever, she had little
+strength to resist it.
+
+The summer waned and Anne's life ebbed with it. At the very end of her
+illness, when all visitors were forbidden, she insisted upon seeing
+Lincoln. He went to her--and closed the door between them and the
+world. It was his last hour with her. When he came out, his face was
+white with the agony of parting.
+
+A few days later, she died and Lincoln was almost insane with grief.
+He walked for hours in the woods, refused to eat, would speak to no
+one, and there settled upon him that profound melancholy which came
+back, time and again, during the after years. To one friend he said:
+"I cannot bear to think that the rain and storms will beat upon her
+grave."
+
+When the days were dark and stormy he was constantly watched, as his
+friends feared he would take his own life. Finally, he was persuaded
+to go away to the house of a friend who lived at some distance, and
+here he remained until he was ready to face the world again.
+
+A few weeks after Anne's burial, McNamar returned to New Salem. On his
+arrival he met Lincoln at the post-office and both were sorely
+distressed. He made no explanation of his absence, and shortly seemed
+to forget about Miss Rutledge, but her grave was in Lincoln's heart
+until the bullet of the assassin struck him down.
+
+In October of 1833, Lincoln met Miss Mary Owens, and admired her
+though not extravagantly. From all accounts, she was an unusual woman.
+She was tall, full in figure, with blue eyes and dark hair; she was
+well educated and quite popular in the little community. She was away
+for a time, but returned to New Salem in 1836, and Lincoln at once
+began to call upon her, enjoying her wit and beauty. At that time she
+was about twenty-eight years old.
+
+One day Miss Owens was out walking with a lady friend and when they
+came to the foot of a steep hill, Lincoln joined them. He walked
+behind with Miss Owens, and talked with her, quite oblivious to the
+fact that her friend was carrying a heavy baby. When they reached the
+summit, Miss Owens said laughingly: "You would not make a good
+husband, Abe."
+
+They sat on the fence and a wordy discussion followed. Both were angry
+when they parted, and the breach was not healed for some time. It was
+poor policy to quarrel, since some time before he had proposed to Miss
+Owens, and she had asked for time in which to consider it before
+giving a final answer. His letters to her are not what one would call
+"love-letters." One begins in this way:
+
+     "MARY:--I have been sick ever since my arrival, or I should
+     have written sooner. It is but little difference, however,
+     as I have very little even yet to write. And more, the
+     longer I can avoid the mortification of looking in the
+     post-office for your letter, and not finding it, the better.
+     You see I am mad about that old letter yet. I don't like
+     very well to risk you again. I'll try you once more,
+     anyhow."
+
+The remainder of the letter deals with political matters and is signed
+simply "Your Friend Lincoln."
+
+In another letter written the following year he says to her:
+
+     "I am often thinking about what we said of your coming to
+     live at Springfield. I am afraid you would not be satisfied.
+     There is a great deal of flourishing about in carriages
+     here, which it would be your doom to see without sharing it.
+     You would have to be poor without the means of hiding your
+     poverty. Do you believe you could bear that patiently?
+
+     "Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever
+     do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her
+     happy and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that
+     would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort.
+
+     "I know I should be much happier with you than the way I am,
+     provided I saw no signs of discontent in you. What you have
+     said to me may have been in the way of jest, or I may have
+     misunderstood it.
+
+     "If so, then let it be forgotten; if otherwise I much wish
+     you would think seriously before you decide. For my part, I
+     have already decided.
+
+     "What I have said I will most positively abide by, provided
+     you wish it. My opinion is that you would better not do it.
+     You have not been accustomed to hardship, and it may be more
+     severe than you now imagine.
+
+     "I know you are capable of thinking correctly upon any
+     subject and if you deliberate maturely upon this before you
+     decide, then I am willing to abide by your decision."
+
+Matters went on in this way for about three months; then they met
+again, seemingly without making any progress. On the day they parted,
+Lincoln wrote her another letter, evidently to make his own position
+clear and put the burden of decision upon her.
+
+     "If you feel yourself in any degree bound to me [he said], I
+     am now willing to release you, provided you wish it; while,
+     on the other hand, I am willing and even anxious, to bind
+     you faster, if I can be convinced that it will in any
+     considerable degree add to your happiness. This, indeed, is
+     the whole question with me. Nothing would make me more
+     miserable than to believe you miserable--nothing more happy
+     than to know you were so."
+
+In spite of his evident sincerity, it is not surprising to learn that
+a little later, Miss Owens definitely refused him. In April, of the
+following year, Lincoln wrote to his friend, Mrs. L. H. Browning,
+giving a full account of this grotesque courtship:
+
+     "I finally was forced to give it up [he wrote] at which I
+     very unexpectedly found myself mortified almost beyond
+     endurance.
+
+     "I was mortified it seemed to me in a hundred different
+     ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the reflection that I
+     had so long been too stupid to discover her intentions, and
+     at the same time never doubting that I understood them
+     perfectly; and also, that she, whom I had taught myself to
+     believe nobody else would have, had actually rejected me,
+     with all my fancied greatness.
+
+     "And then to cap the whole, I then, for the first time,
+     began to suspect that I was really a little in love with
+     her. But let it all go. I'll try and outlive it. Others have
+     been made fools of by the girls; but this can never with
+     truth be said of me. I most emphatically in this instance
+     made a fool of myself. I have now come to the conclusion
+     never again to think of marrying, and for this reason I can
+     never be satisfied with any one who would be blockhead
+     enough to have me!"
+
+The gist of the matter seems to be that at heart Lincoln hesitated at
+matrimony, as other men have done, both before and since his time. In
+his letter to Mrs. Browning he speaks of his efforts to "put off the
+evil day for a time, which I really dreaded as much, perhaps more,
+than an Irishman does the halter!"
+
+But in 1839 Miss Mary Todd came to live with her sister, Mrs. Ninian
+Edwards, at Springfield. She was in her twenty-first year, and is
+described as "of average height and compactly built." She had a
+well-rounded face, rich dark brown hair, and bluish grey eyes. No
+picture of her fails to show the full, well-developed chin, which,
+more than any other feature is an evidence of determination. She
+was strong, proud, passionate, gifted with a keen sense of the
+ridiculous, well educated, and swayed only by her own imperious will.
+
+Lincoln was attracted at once, and strangely enough, Stephen A.
+Douglas crossed his wooing. For a time the two men were rivals, the
+pursuit waxing more furious day by day. Some one asked Miss Todd which
+of them she intended to marry, and she answered laughingly: "The one
+who has the best chance of becoming President!"
+
+She is said, however, to have refused the "Little Giant" on account of
+his lax morality and after that the coast was clear for Lincoln. Miss
+Todd's sister tells us that "he was charmed by Mary's wit and
+fascinated by her quick sagacity, her will, her nature, and culture."
+"I have happened in the room," she says, "where they were sitting,
+often and often, and Mary led the conversation. Lincoln would listen,
+and gaze on her as if drawn by some superior power--irresistibly so;
+he listened, but scarcely ever said a word."
+
+The affair naturally culminated in an engagement, and the course of
+love was running smoothly, when a distracting element appeared in the
+shape of Miss Matilda Edwards, the sister of Mrs. Edwards's husband.
+She was young and fair, and Lincoln was pleased with her appearance.
+For a time he tried to go on as before, but his feelings were too
+strong to be concealed. Mr. Edwards endeavoured to get his sister to
+marry Lincoln's friend, Speed, but she refused both Speed and Douglas.
+
+It is said that Lincoln once went to Miss Todd's house, intending to
+break the engagement, but his real love proved too strong to allow him
+to do it.
+
+His friend, Speed, thus describes the conclusion of this episode.
+"Well, old fellow," I said, "did you do as you intended?"
+
+"Yes, I did," responded Lincoln thoughtfully, "and when I told Mary I
+did not love her, she, wringing her hands, said something about the
+deceiver being himself deceived."
+
+"What else did you say?"
+
+"To tell you the truth, Speed, it was too much for me. I found the
+tears trickling down my own cheeks. I caught her in my arms and kissed
+her."
+
+"And that's how you broke the engagement. Your conduct was tantamount
+to a renewal of it!"
+
+And indeed this was true, and the lovers again considered the time of
+marriage.
+
+There is a story by Herndon to the effect that a wedding was arranged
+for the first day of January, 1841, and then when the hour came
+Lincoln did not appear, and was found wandering alone in the woods
+plunged in the deepest melancholy--a melancholy bordering upon
+insanity.
+
+This story, however, has no foundation; in fact, most competent
+witnesses agree that no such marriage date was fixed, although some
+date may have been considered.
+
+It is certain, however, that the relations between Lincoln and Miss
+Todd were broken off for a time. He did go to Kentucky for a while,
+but this trip certainly was not due to insanity. Lincoln was never so
+mindless as some of his biographers would have us believe, and the
+breaking of the engagement was due to perfectly natural causes--the
+difference in temperament of the lovers, and Lincoln's inclination to
+procrastinate. After a time the strained relations gradually improved.
+They met occasionally in the parlor of a friend, Mrs. Francis, and it
+was through Miss Todd that the duel with Shields came about.
+
+She wielded a ready and a sarcastic pen, and safely hidden behind a
+pseudonym and the promise of the editor, she wrote a series of
+satirical articles for the local paper, entitled: "Letters from Lost
+Townships." In one of these she touched up Mr. Shields, the Auditor of
+State, to such good purpose that believing that Lincoln had written
+the article, he challenged him to a duel. Lincoln accepted the
+challenge and chose "cavalry broadswords" as the weapons, but the
+intervention of friends prevented any fighting, although he always
+spoke of the affair as his "duel."
+
+As a result of this altercation with Shields, Miss Todd and the future
+President came again into close friendship, and a marriage was decided
+upon.
+
+The license was secured, the minister sent for, and on November 4,
+1842, they became man and wife.
+
+It is not surprising that more or less unhappiness obtained in their
+married life, for Mrs. Lincoln was a woman of strong character, proud,
+fiery, and determined. Her husband was subject to strange moods and
+impulses, and the great task which God had committed to him made him
+less amenable to family cares.
+
+That married life which began at the Globe Tavern was destined to end
+at the White House, after years of vicissitude and serious national
+trouble. Children were born unto them, and all but the eldest died.
+Great responsibilities were laid upon Lincoln and even though he met
+them bravely it was inevitable that his family should also suffer.
+
+Upon the face of the Commander-in-chief rested nearly always a mighty
+sadness, except when it was occasionally illumined by his wonderful
+smile, or when the light of his sublime faith banished the clouds.
+
+Storm and stress, suffering and heartache, reverses and defeat were
+the portion of the Leader, and when Victory at last perched upon the
+National standard, her beautiful feet were all drabbled in blood, and
+the most terrible war on the world's records passed down into history.
+In the hour of triumph, with his great purpose nobly fulfilled, death
+came to the great Captain.
+
+The United Republic is his monument, and that rugged, yet gracious
+figure, hallowed by martyrdom, stands before the eyes of his
+countrymen forever serene and calm, while his memory lingers like
+a benediction in the hearts of both friend and foe.
+
+
+
+
+Silent Thanksgiving
+
+
+     She is standing alone by the window--
+       A woman, faded and old,
+     But the wrinkled face was lovely once,
+       And the silvered hair was gold.
+     As out in the darkness, the snow-flakes
+       Are falling so softly and slow,
+     Her thoughts fly back to the summer of life,
+       And the scenes of long ago.
+
+     Before the dim eyes, a picture comes,
+       She has seen it again and again;
+     The tears steal over the faded cheeks,
+       And the lips that quiver with pain,
+     For she hears once more the trumpet call
+       And sees the battle array
+     As they march to the hills with gleaming swords--
+       Can she ever forget that day?
+
+     She has given her boy to the land she loves,
+       How hard it had been to part!
+     And to-night she stands at the window alone,
+       With a new-made grave in her heart.
+     And yet, it's the day of Thanksgiving--
+       But her child, her darling was slain
+     By the shot and shell of the rebel guns--
+       Can she ever be thankful again?
+
+     She thinks once more of his fair young face,
+       And the cannon's murderous roll,
+     While hatred springs in her passionate heart,
+       And bitterness into her soul.
+     Then out of the death-like stillness
+       There comes a battle-cry--
+     The song that led those marching feet
+       To conquer, or to die.
+
+     "Yes, rally round the flag, boys!"
+       With tears she hears the song,
+     And her thoughts go back to the boys in blue,
+       That army, brave and strong--
+     Then Peace creeps in amid the pain.
+       The dead are as dear as the living,
+     And back of the song is the silence,
+       And back of the silence--Thanksgiving.
+
+
+
+
+In the Flash of a Jewel
+
+
+Certain barbaric instincts in the human race seem to be ineradicable.
+It is but a step from the painted savage, gorgeous in his beads and
+wampum, to my lady of fashion, who wears a tiara upon her stately
+head, chains and collars of precious stones at her throat, bracelets
+on her white arms, and innumerable rings upon her dainty fingers. Wise
+men may decry the baleful fascination of jewels, but, none the less,
+the jeweller's window continues to draw the crowd.
+
+Like brilliant moths that appear only at night, jewels are tabooed in
+the day hours. Dame Fashion sternly condemns gems in the day time as
+evidence of hopelessly bad taste. No jewels are permitted in any
+ostentatious way, and yet a woman may, even in good society, wear a
+few thousand dollars' worth of precious stones, without seeming to be
+overdressed, provided the occasion is appropriate, as in the case of
+functions held in darkened rooms.
+
+In the evening when shoulders are bared and light feet tread fantastic
+measures in a ball room, which is literally a bower of roses, there
+seems to be no limit as regards jewels. In such an assembly a woman
+may, without appearing overdressed, adorn herself with diamonds
+amounting to a small fortune.
+
+During a season of grand opera in Chicago, a beautiful white-haired
+woman sat in the same box night after night without attracting
+particular attention, except as a woman of acknowledged beauty. At a
+glance it might be thought that her dress, although elegant, was
+rather simple, but an enterprising reporter discovered that her gown
+of rare old lace, with the pattern picked out here and there with chip
+diamonds, had cost over fifty-five thousand dollars. The tiara,
+collar, and few rings she wore, swelled the grand total to more than
+three hundred thousand dollars.
+
+Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, pearls, and opals--these
+precious stones have played a tremendous part in the world's history.
+Empires have been bartered for jewels, and for a string of pearls many
+a woman has sold her soul. It is said that pearls mean tears, yet they
+are favourite gifts for brides, and no maiden fears to wear them on
+her way up the aisle where her bridegroom waits.
+
+A French writer claims that if it be true that the oyster can be
+forced to make as many pearls as may be required of it, the jewel will
+become so common that my lady will no longer care to decorate herself
+with its pale splendour. Whether or not this will ever be the case, it
+is certain that few gems have played a more conspicuous part in
+history than this.
+
+Not only have we Cleopatra's reckless draught, but there is also a
+story of a noble Roman who dissolved in vinegar and drank a pearl
+worth a million sesterces, which had adorned the ear of the woman he
+loved. But the cold-hearted chemist declares that an acid which could
+dissolve a pearl would also dissolve the person who swallowed it, so
+those two legends must vanish with many others that have shrivelled up
+under the searching gaze of science.
+
+There is another interesting story about the destruction of a pearl.
+During the reign of Elizabeth, a haughty Spanish ambassador was
+boasting at the Court of England of the great riches of his king. Sir
+Thomas Gresham, wishing to get even with the bragging Castilian,
+replied that some of Elizabeth's subjects would spend as much at one
+meal as Philip's whole kingdom could produce in a day! To prove this
+statement, Sir Thomas invited the Spaniard to dine with him, and
+having ground up a costly Eastern pearl the Englishman coolly
+swallowed it.
+
+Going back to the dimness of early times, we find that many of the
+ancients preferred green gems to all other stones. The emerald was
+thought to have many virtues. It kept evil spirits at a distance, it
+restored failing sight, it could unearth mysteries, and when it turned
+yellow its owner knew to a certainty that the woman he loved was false
+to him.
+
+The ruby flashes through all Oriental romances. This stone banished
+sadness and sin. A serpent with a ruby in its mouth was considered an
+appropriate betrothal ring.
+
+The most interesting ruby of history is set in the royal diadem of
+England. It is called the Black Prince's ruby. In the days when the
+Moors ruled Granada, when both the men and the women of that race
+sparkled with gems, and even the ivory covers of their books were
+sometimes set with precious stones, the Spanish king, Don Pedro the
+Cruel, obtained this stone from a Moorish prince whom he had caused to
+be murdered.
+
+It was given by Don Pedro to the Black Prince, and half a century
+later it glowed on the helmet of that most picturesque of England's
+kings, Henry V, at the battle of Agincourt.
+
+The Scotchman, Sir James Melville, saw this jewel during his famous
+visit to the Court of Elizabeth, when the Queen showed him some of the
+treasures in her cabinet, the most valued of these being the portrait
+of Leicester.
+
+"She showed me a fair ruby like a great racket ball," he says. "I
+desired she would send to my queen either this or the Earl of
+Leicester's picture." But Elizabeth cherished both the ruby and the
+portrait, so she sent Marie Stuart a diamond instead.
+
+Poets have lavished their fancies upon the origin of the opal, but no
+one seems to know why it is considered unlucky. Women who laugh at
+superstitions of all kinds are afraid to wear an opal, and a certain
+jeweller at the head of one of the largest establishments in a great
+city has carried his fear to such a length that he will not keep one
+in his establishment--not only this, but it is said that he has even
+been known to throw an opal ring out of the window. The offending
+stone had been presented to his daughter, but this fact was not
+allowed to weigh against his superstition. It is understood when he
+entertains that none of his guests will wear opals, and this wish is
+faithfully respected.
+
+The story goes that the opal was discovered at the same time that
+kissing was invented. A young shepherd on the hills of Greece found
+a pretty pebble one day, and wishing to give it to a beautiful
+shepherdess who stood near him, he let her take it from his lips
+with hers, as the hands of neither of them were clean.
+
+Many a battle royal has been waged for the possession of a diamond,
+and several famous diamonds are known by name throughout the world.
+Among these are the Orloff, the Koh-i-noor, the Regent, the Real
+Paragon, and the Sanci, besides the enormous stone which was sent to
+King Edward from South Africa. This has been cut but not yet named.
+
+The Orloff is perhaps the most brilliant of all the famous group.
+Tradition says that it was once one of the eyes of an Indian idol and
+was supposed to have been the origin of all light. A French grenadier
+of Pondicherry deserted his regiment, adopted the religion and manners
+of the Brahmans, worshipped at the shrine of the idol whose eyes were
+light itself, stole the brightest one, and escaped.
+
+A sea captain bought it from him for ten thousand dollars and sold it
+to a Jew for sixty thousand dollars. An Armenian named Shafras bought
+it from the Jew, and after a time Count Orloff paid $382,500 for this
+and a title of Russian nobility.
+
+He presented the wonderful refractor of light to the Empress Catherine
+who complimented Orloff by naming it after him. This magnificent
+stone, which weighs one hundred and ninety-five carats, now forms the
+apex of the Russian crown.
+
+The Real Paragon was in 1861 the property of the Rajah of Mattan.
+It was then uncut and weighed three hundred and seven carats. The
+Governor of Batavia was very anxious to bring it to Europe. He offered
+the Rajah one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and two warships with
+their guns and ammunition, but the offer was contemptuously refused.
+Very little is known of its history. It is now owned by the Government
+of Portugal and is pledged as security for a very large sum of money.
+
+It has been said that one could carry the Koh-i-noor in one end of a
+silk purse and balance it in the other end with a gold eagle and a
+gold dollar, and never feel the difference in weight, while the value
+of the gem in gold could not be transported in less than four dray
+loads!
+
+Tradition says that Karna, King of Anga, owned it three thousand years
+ago. The King of Lahore, one of the Indies, heard that the King of
+Cabul, one of the lesser princes, had in his possession the largest
+and purest diamond in the world. Lahore invited Cabul to visit him,
+and when he had him in his power, demanded the treasure. Cabul,
+however, had suspected treachery, and brought an imitation of the
+Koh-i-noor. He of course expostulated, but finally surrendered the
+supposed diamond.
+
+The lapidary who was employed to mount it pronounced it a piece of
+crystal, whereupon the royal old thief sent soldiers who ransacked the
+palace of the King of Cabul from top to bottom, in vain. At last,
+however, after a long search, a servant betrayed his master, and the
+gem was found in a pile of ashes.
+
+After the annexation of the Punjab in 1849, the Koh-i-noor was given
+up to the British, and at a meeting of the Punjab Board was handed to
+John (afterward Lord) Lawrence who placed it in his waistcoat pocket
+and forgot the treasure. While at a public meeting some time later, he
+suddenly remembered it, hurried home and asked his servant if he had
+seen a small box which he had left in his waistcoat pocket.
+
+"Yes, sahib," the man replied; "I found it, and put in your drawer."
+
+"Bring it here," said Lawrence, and the servant produced it.
+
+"Now," said his master, "open it and see what it contains."
+
+The old native obeyed, and after removing the folds of linen, he said:
+"There is nothing here but a piece of glass."
+
+"Good," said Lawrence, with a sigh of relief, "you can leave it with
+me."
+
+The Sanci diamond belonged to Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, who
+wore it in his hat at the battle of Nancy, where he fell. A Swiss
+soldier found it and sold it for a gulden to a clergyman of Baltimore.
+It passed into the possession of Anton, King of Portugal, who was
+obliged to sell it, the price being a million francs.
+
+It shortly afterward became the property of a Frenchman named Sanci,
+whose descendant being sent as an ambassador, was required by the King
+to give the diamond as a pledge. The servant carrying it to the King
+was attacked by robbers on the way and murdered, not, however, until
+he had swallowed the diamond. His master, feeling sure of his
+faithfulness, caused the body to be opened and found the gem in his
+stomach. This gem came into the possession of the Crown of England,
+and James II carried it with him to France in 1688.
+
+From James it passed to his friend and patron, Louis XIV, and to his
+descendants, until the Duchess of Berry at the Restoration sold it to
+the Demidoffs for six hundred and twenty-five thousand francs.
+
+It was worth a million and a half of francs when Prince Paul
+Demidoff wore it in his hat at a great fancy ball given in honour
+of Count Walewski, the Minister of Napoleon III--and lost it
+during the ball! Everybody was wild with excitement when the loss
+was announced--everybody but Prince Paul Demidoff. After an hour's
+search the Sanci was found under a chair.
+
+After more than two centuries, "the Regent is," as Saint-Simon
+described it in 1717, "a brilliant, inestimable and unique." Its
+density is rather higher than that of the usual diamond, and it
+weighs upwards of one hundred and thirty carats. This stone was found
+in India by a slave, who, to conceal it, made a wound in his leg and
+wrapped the gem in the bandages. Reaching the coast, he intrusted
+himself and his secret to an English captain, who took the gem, threw
+the slave overboard, and sold his ill-gotten gains to a native
+merchant for five thousand dollars.
+
+It afterwards passed into the hands of Pitt, Governor of St. George,
+who sold it in 1717 to the Duke of Orleans, then Regent of France, for
+$675,000. Before the end of the eighteenth century the stone had more
+than trebled in worth, and we can only wonder what it ought to bring
+now with its "perfect whiteness, its regular form, and its absolute
+freedom from stain or flaw!"
+
+The collection belonging to the Sultan of Turkey, which is probably
+the finest in the world, dates prior to the discovery of America, and
+undoubtedly came from Asia. One Turkish pasha alone left to the Empire
+at his death, seven table-cloths embroidered with diamonds, and
+bushels of fine pearls.
+
+In the war with Russia, in 1778, Turkey borrowed $30,000,000 from the
+Ottoman Bank on the security of the crown jewels. The cashier of the
+bank was admitted to the treasure-chamber and was told to help himself
+until he had enough to secure his advances.
+
+"I selected enough," he says, "to secure the bank against loss in any
+event, but the removal of the gems I took made no appreciable gap in
+the accumulation."
+
+In the imperial treasury of the Sultan, the first room is the richest
+in notable objects. The most conspicuous of these is a great throne or
+divan of beaten gold, occupying the entire centre of the room, and set
+with precious stones: pearls, rubies, and emeralds, thousands of them,
+covering the entire surface in a geometrical mosaic pattern. This
+specimen of barbaric magnificence was part of the spoils of war taken
+from one of the shahs of Persia.
+
+Much more interesting and beautiful, however, is another canopied
+throne or divan, placed in the upper story of the same building. This
+is a genuine work of old Turkish art which dates from some time during
+the second half of the sixteenth century. It is a raised square seat,
+on which the Sultan sat cross-legged. At each angle there rises a
+square vertical shaft supporting a canopy, with a minaret or pinnacle
+surmounted by a rich gold and jewelled finial. The entire height of
+the throne is nine or ten feet. The materials are precious woods,
+ebony, sandal-wood, etc., with shell, mother-of-pearl, silver, and
+gold.
+
+The entire piece is decorated inside and out with a branching
+floriated design in mother-of-pearl marquetry, in the style of the
+fine early Persian painted tiles, and the centre of each of the
+principal leaves and flowers is set with splendid _cabochon_ gems,
+fine balass rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and pearls.
+
+Pendant from the roof of the canopy, and in a position which would be
+directly over the head of the Sultan, is a golden cord, on which is
+hung a large heart-shaped ornament of gold, chased and perforated with
+floriated work, and beneath it hangs a huge uncut emerald of fine
+colour, but of triangular shape, four inches in diameter, and an inch
+and a half thick.
+
+Richly decorated arms and armour form a conspicuous feature of the
+contents of all three of these rooms. The most notable work in this
+class in the first apartment is a splendid suit of mixed chain and
+plate mail, wonderfully damascened and jewelled, worn by Sultan Murad
+IV, in 1638, at the taking of Bagdad.
+
+Near to it is a scimetar, probably a part of the panoply of the same
+monarch. Both the hilt and the greater part of the broad scabbard
+of this weapon are incrusted with large table diamonds, forming
+checkerwork, all the square stones being regularly and symmetrically
+cut, of exactly the same size--upward of half an inch across. There
+are many other sumptuous works of art which are similarly adorned.
+
+Rightfully first among the world's splendid coronets stands the State
+Crown of England. It was made in 1838 with jewels taken from old
+crowns and others furnished by command of the Queen.
+
+It consists of diamonds, pearls, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, set
+in silver and gold. It has a crimson velvet cap with ermine border;
+it is lined with white silk and weighs about forty ounces. The lower
+part of the band above the ermine border consists of a row of one
+hundred and ninety-nine pearls, and the upper part of this band has
+one hundred and twelve pearls, between which, in the front of the
+crown, is a large sapphire which was purchased for it by George IV.
+
+At the back is a sapphire of smaller size and six others, three on
+each side, between which are eight emeralds. Above and below the
+sapphires are fourteen diamonds, and around the eight emeralds are one
+hundred and twenty-eight diamonds. Between the emeralds and sapphires
+are sixteen ornaments, containing one hundred and sixty diamonds.
+Above the band are eight sapphires, surmounted by eight diamonds,
+between which are eight festoons, consisting of one hundred and
+forty-eight diamonds.
+
+In the front of the crown and in the centre of a diamond Maltese cross
+is the famous ruby of the Black Prince. Around this ruby to form the
+cross are seventy-five brilliant diamonds. Three other Maltese
+crosses, forming the two sides and back of the crown, have emerald
+centres, and each contains between one and two hundred brilliant
+diamonds. Between the four Maltese crosses are four ornaments in the
+form of the French _fleur-de-lis_, with four rubies in the centre, and
+surrounded by rose diamonds.
+
+From the Maltese crosses issue four imperial arches, composed of oak
+leaves and acorns embellished with hundreds of magnificent jewels.
+From the upper part of the arches are suspended four large pendant
+pear-shaped pearls, with rose diamond caps. Above the arch stands the
+mound, thickly set with brilliants. The cross on the summit has a
+rose cut sapphire in the centre, surrounded by diamonds.
+
+A gem is said to represent "condensed wealth," and it is also
+condensed history. The blood of a ruby, the faint moonlight lustre of
+a pearl, the green glow of an emerald, and the dazzling white light
+of a diamond--in what unfailing magic lies their charm? Tiny bits
+of crystal as they appear to be--even the Orloff diamond could be
+concealed in a child's hand--yet kings and queens have played for
+stakes like these. Battle and murder have been done for them, honour
+bartered and kingdoms lost, but the old magic beauty never fades, and
+to-day, as always, sin and beauty, side, by side, are mirrored in the
+flash of a jewel.
+
+
+
+
+The Coming of My Ship
+
+
+     Straight to the sunrise my ship's sails are leaning,
+     Brave at the masthead her new colours fly;
+     Down on the shore, her lips trembling with meaning,
+     Love waits, but unanswering, I heed not her cry.
+     The gold of the East shall be mine in full measure,
+     My ship shall come home overflowing with treasure,
+     And love is not need, but only a pleasure,
+     So I wait for my ship to come in.
+
+     Silent, half troubled, I wait in the shadow,
+     No sail do I see between me and the dawn;
+     Out in the blue and measureless meadow,
+     My ship wanders widely, but Love has not gone.
+     "My arms await thee," she cries in her pleading,
+     "Why wait for its coming, when I am thy needing?"
+     I pass by in stillness, all else unheeding,
+     And wait for my ship to come in.
+
+     See, in the East, surrounded by splendour,
+     My sail glimmers whitely in crimson and blue;
+     I turn back to Love, my heart growing tender,
+     "Now I have gold and leisure for you.
+     Jewels she brings for thy white breast's adorning,
+     Measures of gold beyond a queen's scorning"--
+     To-night I shall rest--joy comes in the morning,
+     So I wait for my ship to come in.
+
+     Remembering waters beat cold on the shore,
+     And the grey sea in sadness grows old;
+     I listen in vain for Love's pleading once more,
+     While my ship comes with spices and gold.
+     The sea birds cry hoarsely, for this is their songing,
+     On masthead and colours their white wings are thronging,
+     But my soul throbs deep with love and with longing,
+     And I wait for my ship to come in.
+
+
+
+
+Romance and the Postman
+
+
+A letter! Do the charm and uncertainty of it ever fade? Who knows what
+may be written upon the pages within!
+
+Far back, in a dim, dream-haunted childhood, the first letter came to
+me. It was "a really, truly letter," properly stamped and addressed,
+and duly delivered by the postman. With what wonder the chubby fingers
+broke the seal! It did not matter that there was an inclosure to one's
+mother, and that the thing itself was written by an adoring relative;
+it was a personal letter, of private and particular importance, and
+that day the postman assumed his rightful place in one's affairs.
+
+In the treasure box of many a grandmother is hidden a pathetic scrawl
+that the baby made for her and called "a letter." To the alien eye,
+it is a mere tangle of pencil marks, and the baby himself, grown
+to manhood, with children of his own, would laugh at the yellowed
+message, which is put away with his christening robe and his first
+shoes, but to one, at least, it speaks with a deathless voice.
+
+It is written in books and papers that some unhappy mortals are
+swamped with mail. As a lady recently wrote to the President of the
+United States: "I suppose you get so many letters that when you see
+the postman coming down the street, you don't care whether he has
+anything for you or not."
+
+Indeed, the President might well think the universe had gone suddenly
+wrong if the postman passed him by, but there are compensations in
+everything. The First Gentleman of the Republic must inevitably miss
+the pleasant emotions which letters bring to the most of us.
+
+The clerks and carriers in the business centres may be pardoned if
+they lose sight of the potentialities of the letters that pass
+through their hands. When a skyscraper is a postal district in
+itself, there is no time for the man in grey to think of the burden he
+carries, save as so many pounds of dead weight, becoming appreciably
+lighter at each stop. But outside the hum and bustle, on quiet streets
+and secluded by-ways, there are faces at the windows, watching eagerly
+for the mail.
+
+The progress of the postman is akin to a Roman triumph, for in his
+leathern pack lies Fate. Long experience has given him a sixth sense,
+as if the letters breathed a hint of their contents through their
+superscriptions.
+
+The business letter, crisp and to the point, has an atmosphere of its
+own, even where cross lines of typewriting do not show through the
+envelope.
+
+The long, rambling, friendly hand is distinctive, and if it has been
+carried in the pocket a long time before mailing, the postman knows
+that the writer is a married woman with a foolish trust in her
+husband.
+
+Circulars addressed mechanically, at so much a thousand, never
+deceive the postman, though the recipient often opens them with
+pleasurable sensations, which immediately sink to zero. And the
+love-letters! The carrier is a veritable Sherlock Holmes when it comes
+to them.
+
+Gradually he becomes acquainted with the inmost secrets of those upon
+his route. Friendship, love, and marriage, absence and return, death,
+and one's financial condition, are all as an open book to the man
+in grey. Invitations, cards, wedding announcements, forlorn little
+letters from those to whom writing is not as easy as speech, childish
+epistles with scrap pictures pasted on the outside, all give an
+inkling of their contents to the man who delivers them.
+
+When the same bill comes to the same house for a long and regular
+period, then ceases, even the carrier must feel relieved to know that
+it has been paid. When he isn't too busy, he takes a friendly look at
+the postal cards, and sometimes saves a tenant in a third flat the
+weariness of two flights of stairs by shouting the news up the tube!
+
+If the dweller in a tenement has ingratiating manners, he may learn
+how many papers, and letters are being stuffed into the letter-box, by
+a polite inquiry down the tube when the bell rings. Through the subtle
+freemasonry of the postman's voice a girl knows that her lover has not
+forgotten her--and her credit is good for the "two cents due" if the
+tender missive is overweight.
+
+"All the world loves a lover," and even the busy postman takes a
+fatherly interest in the havoc wrought by Cupid along his route. The
+little blind god knows neither times nor seasons--all alike are his
+own--but the man in grey, old and spectacled though he may be, is his
+confidential messenger.
+
+Love-letters are seemingly immortal. A clay tablet on which one of the
+Pharaohs wrote, asking for the heart and hand of a beautiful foreign
+princess, is now in the British Museum. But suppose the postman had
+not been sure-footed, and all the clay letters had been smashed into
+fragments in a single grand catastrophe! What a stir in high places,
+what havoc in Church and State, and how many fond hearts broken, if
+the postman had fallen down!
+
+"Nothing feeds the flame like a letter," said Emerson; "it has intent,
+personality, secrecy." Flimsy and frail as it is, so easily torn or
+destroyed, the love-letter many times outlasts the love. Even the
+Father of his Country, though he has been dead this hundred years or
+more, has left behind him a love-letter, ragged and faded, but still
+legible, beginning: "My Dearest Life and Love."
+
+"Matter is indestructible," so the scientists say, but what of the
+love-letter that is reduced to ashes? Does its passion live again in
+some far-off violet flame, or, rising from its dust, bloom once more
+in a fragrant rose, to touch the lips of another love?
+
+In countless secret places, the tender missives are hidden, for the
+lover must always keep his joy in tangible form, to be sure that it
+was not a dream. They fly through the world by day and night, like
+white-winged birds that can say, "I love you"--over mountain, hill,
+stream, and plain; past sea and lake and river, through the desert's
+fiery heat and amid the throbbing pulses of civilisation, with never
+a mistake, to bring exquisite rapture to another heart and wings of
+light to the loved one's soul.
+
+Under the pillow of the maiden, her lover's letter brings visions of
+happiness too great for the human heart to hold. Even in her dreams,
+her fingers tighten upon his letter--the visible assurance of his
+unchanging and unchangeable love.
+
+When the bugle sounds the charge, and dimly through the flash and
+flame the flag signals "Follow!" many a heart, leaping to answer with
+the hot blood of youth, finds a sudden tenderness in the midst of its
+high courage, from the loving letter which lies close to the soldier's
+breast.
+
+Bunker Hill and Gettysburg, Moscow and the Wilderness, Waterloo,
+Mafeking, and San Juan--the old blood-stained fields and the modern
+scenes of terror have all alike known the same message and the same
+thrill. The faith and hope of the living, the kiss and prayer of the
+dying, the cries of the wounded, and the hot tears of those who have
+parted forever, are on the blood-stained pages of the love-letters
+that have gone to war.
+
+"_Ich liebe Dich_," "_Je t'aime_," or, in our dear English speech, "I
+love you,"--it is all the same, for the heart knows the universal
+language, the words of which are gold, bedewed with tears that shine
+like precious stones.
+
+Every attic counts old love-letters among its treasures, and when the
+rain beats on the roof and grey swirls of water are blown against the
+pane, one may sit among the old trunks and boxes and bring to light
+the loves of days gone by.
+
+The little hair-cloth trunk, with its rusty lock and broken hinges,
+brings to mind a rosy-cheeked girl in a poke bonnet, who went
+a-visiting in the stage-coach. Inside is the bonnet itself--white,
+with a gorgeous trimming of pink "lute-string" ribbon, which has faded
+into ashes of roses at the touch of the kindly years.
+
+From the trunk comes a musty fragrance--lavender, sweet clover,
+rosemary, thyme, and the dried petals of roses that have long since
+crumbled to dust. Scraps of brocade and taffeta, yellowed lingerie,
+and a quaint old wedding gown, daguerreotypes in ornate cases, and
+then the letters, tied with faded ribbon, in a package by themselves.
+
+The fingers unconsciously soften to their task, for the letters are
+old and yellow, and the ink has faded to brown. Every one was cut open
+with the scissors, not hastily torn according to our modern fashion,
+but in a slow and seemly manner, as befits a solemn occasion.
+
+Perhaps the sweet face of a great-grandmother grew much perplexed at
+the sight of a letter in an unfamiliar hand, and perhaps, too, as is
+the way of womankind, she studied the outside a long time before she
+opened it. As the months passed by, the handwriting became familiar,
+but a coquettish grandmother may have flirted a bit with the letter,
+and put it aside--until she could be alone.
+
+All the important letters are in the package, from the first formal
+note asking permission to call, which a womanly instinct bade the
+maiden put aside, to the last letter, written when twilight lay upon
+the long road they had travelled together, but still beginning: "My
+Dear and Honoured Wife."
+
+Bits of rosemary and geranium, lemon verbena, tuberose, and
+heliotrope, fragile and whitened, but still sweet, fall from the
+opened letters and rustle softly as they fall.
+
+Far away in the "peace which passeth all understanding," the writer of
+the letters sleeps, but the old love keeps a fragrance that outlives
+the heart in which it bloomed.
+
+At night, when the fires below are lighted, and childish voices make
+the old house ring with laughter, Memory steals into the attic to sing
+softly of the past, as a mother croons her child to sleep.
+
+Rocking in a quaint old attic chair, with the dear familiar things of
+home gathered all about her, Memory's voice is sweet, like a harp
+tuned in the minor mode when the south wind sweeps the strings.
+
+Bunches of herbs swing from the rafters and fill the room with the
+wholesome scent of an old-fashioned garden, where rue and heartsease
+grew. With the fragrance comes the breath from that garden of
+Mnemosyne, where the simples for heartache nod beside the River of
+Forgetfulness.
+
+In a flash the world is forgotten, and into the attic come dear faces
+from that distant land of childhood, where a strange enchantment
+glorified the commonplace, and made the dreams of night seem real.
+Footsteps that have long been silent are heard upon the attic floor,
+and voices, hushed for years, whisper from the shadows from the other
+end of the room.
+
+A moonbeam creeps into the attic and transfigures the haunted chamber
+with a sheen of silver mist. From the spinning-wheel come a soft hum
+and a delicate whir; then a long-lost voice breathes the first notes
+of an old, old song. The melody changes to a minuet, and the lady in
+the portrait moves, smiling, from the tarnished gilt frame that
+surrounds her--then a childish voice says: "Mother, are you asleep?"
+
+Down the street the postman passes, bearing his burden of joy and
+pain: letters from far-off islands, where the Stars and Stripes gleam
+against a forest of palms; from the snow-bound fastnesses of the
+North, where men are searching for gold; from rose-scented valleys and
+violet fields, where the sun forever shines, and from lands across the
+sea, where men speak an alien tongue--single messages from one to
+another; letters that plead for pardon cross the paths of those that
+are meant to stab; letters written in jest too often find grim earnest
+at the end of their journey, and letters written in all tenderness
+meet misunderstandings and pain, when the postman brings them home;
+letters that deal with affairs of state and shape the destiny of a
+nation; tidings of happiness and sorrow, birth and death, love and
+trust, and the thousand pangs of trust betrayed; an hundred joys and
+as many griefs are all in the postman's hands.
+
+No wonder, then, that there is a stir in the house, that eyes
+brighten, hearts beat quickly, and eager steps hasten to the door of
+destiny, when the postman rings the bell!
+
+
+
+
+A Summer Reverie
+
+
+     I sit on the shore of the deep blue sea
+       As the tide comes rolling in,
+     And wonder, as roaming in sunlit dreams,
+       The cause of the breakers' din.
+
+     For each of the foam-crowned billows
+       Has a wonderful story to tell,
+     And the surge's mystical music
+       Seems wrought by a fairy spell.
+
+     I wander through memory's portals,
+       Through mansions dim and vast,
+     And gaze at the beautiful pictures
+       That hang in the halls of the past.
+
+     And dream-faces gather around me,
+       With voices soft and low,
+     To draw me back to the pleasures
+       Of the lands of long ago.
+
+     There are visions of beauty and splendour,
+       And a fame that I never can win--
+     Far out on the deep they are sailing--
+       My ships that will never come in.
+
+
+
+
+A Vignette
+
+
+It was a muddy down-town corner and several people stood in the cold,
+waiting for a street-car. A stand of daily papers was on the sidewalk,
+guarded by two little newsboys. One was much younger than the other,
+and he rolled two marbles back and forth in the mud by the curb.
+Suddenly his attention was attracted by something bright above him,
+and he looked up into a bunch of red carnations a young lady held in
+her hands. He watched them eagerly, seemingly unable to take his eyes
+from the feast of colour. She saw the hungry look in the little face,
+and put one into his hand. He was silent, until his brother said: "Say
+thanky to the lady." He whispered his thanks, and then she bent down
+and pinned the blossom upon his ragged jacket, while the big policeman
+on the corner smiled approvingly.
+
+"My, but you're gay now, and you can sell all your papers," the bigger
+boy said tenderly.
+
+"Yep, I can sell 'em now, sure!"
+
+Out of the crowd on the opposite corner came a tiny, dark-skinned
+Italian girl, with an accordion slung over her shoulder by a dirty
+ribbon; she made straight for the carnations and fearlessly cried,
+"Lady, please give me a flower!" She got one, and quickly vanished in
+the crowd.
+
+The young woman walked up the street to a flower-stand to replenish
+her bunch of carnations, and when she returned, another dark-skinned
+mite rushed up to her without a word, only holding up grimy hands with
+a gesture of pathetic appeal. Another brilliant blossom went to her,
+and the young woman turned to follow her; on through the crowd the
+child fled, until she reached the corner where her mother stood,
+seamed and wrinkled and old, with the dark pathetic eyes of sunny
+Italy. She held the flower out to her, and the weary mother turned and
+snatched it eagerly, then pressed it to her lips, and kissed it as
+passionately as if it had been the child who brought it to her.
+
+Just then the car came, and the big grey policeman helped the owner of
+the carnations across the street, and said as he put her on the car,
+"Lady, you've sure done them children a good turn to-day."
+
+
+
+
+Meditation
+
+
+     I sail through the realms of the long ago,
+       Wafted by fancy and visions frail,
+     On the river Time with its gentle flow,
+       In a silver boat with a golden sail.
+
+     My dreams, in the silence are hurrying by
+       On the brooklet of Thought where I let them flow,
+     And the "lilies nod to the sound of the stream"
+       As I sail through the realms of the long ago.
+
+     On the shores of life's deep-flowing stream
+       Are my countless sorrows and heartaches, too,
+     And the hills of hope are but dimly seen,
+       Far in the distance, near heaven's blue.
+
+     I find that my childish thoughts and dreams
+       Lie strewn on the sands by the cruel blast
+     That scattered my hopes on the restless streams
+       That flow through the mystic realms of the past.
+
+
+
+
+Pointers for the Lords of Creation
+
+
+Some wit has said that the worst vice in the world is advice, and it
+is also quite true that one ignorant, though well-meaning person can
+sometimes accomplish more damage in a short time, than a dozen people
+who start out for the purpose of doing mischief.
+
+The newspapers and periodicals of to-day are crowded with advice to
+women, and while much of it is found in magazines for women, written
+and edited by men, it is also true that a goodly quantity of it comes
+from feminine writers; it is all along the same lines, however, the
+burden of effort being to teach the weaker sex how to become more
+attractive and more lovable to the lords of creation. It is, of
+course, all intended for our good, for if we can only please the men,
+and obey their slightest wish even before they take the trouble to
+mention the matter, we can then be perfectly happy.
+
+A man can sit down any day and give us directions enough to keep us
+busy for a lifetime, and we seldom or never return the compliment.
+This is manifestly unfair, and so this little preachment is meant for
+the neglected and deserving men, and for them only, so that all women
+who have read thus far are invited to leave the matter right here and
+turn their attention to the column of "Advice to Women" which they can
+find in almost any periodical.
+
+In the first place, gentlemen, we must admit that you do keep us
+guessing, though we do not sit up nights nor lose much sleep over your
+queer notions.
+
+We can't ask you many questions, either, dear brethren, for, as you
+know, you rather like to fib to us, and sometimes we are able to find
+it out, and then we never believe you any more.
+
+We may venture, however, to ask small favours of you, and one of these
+is that you do not wear red ties. You look so nice in quiet colours
+that we dislike exceedingly to have you make crazy quilts of
+yourselves, and that is just what you do when you begin experimenting
+with colours which we naturally associate with the "cullud pussons."
+
+And a cane may be very ornamental, but it's of no earthly use, and we
+would rather you would not carry it when you go out with us.
+
+Never tell us you haven't had time to come and see us, or write to us,
+because we know perfectly well that if you wanted to badly enough, you
+would take the time, so the excuse makes us even madder than does the
+neglect. Still, when you don't want to come, we would not have you do
+it for anything.
+
+There is an old saying that "absence makes the heart grow fonder"--so
+it does--of the other fellow. We don't propose to shed any tears over
+you; we simply go to the theatre with the other man and have an
+extremely good time. When you are very, very bright, you can manage
+some way not to allow us to forget you for a minute, nor give us much
+time to think of anything else.
+
+When we are angry, for heaven's sake don't ask us why, because that
+shows your lack of penetration. Just simply call yourself a brute, and
+say you are utterly unworthy of even our faint regard, and you will
+soon realise that this covers a lot of ground, and everything will be
+all right in a few minutes.
+
+And whatever you do, don't show any temper yourself. A woman requires
+of a man that he shall be as immovable as the rock of Gibraltar, no
+matter what she does to him. And you play your strongest card when you
+don't mind our tantrums--even though it's a state secret we are
+telling you.
+
+Don't get huffy when you meet us with another man; in nine cases out
+of ten, that's just what we do it for. And don't make the mistake of
+retaliating by asking another girl somewhere. You'll have a perfectly
+miserable time if you do, both then and afterward.
+
+When you do come to see us, it is not at all nice to spend the entire
+evening talking about some other girl. How would you like to have the
+graces of some other man continually dinned into your ears? Sometimes
+we take that way in order to get a rest from your overweening raptures
+over the absent girl.
+
+We have a well-defined suspicion that you talk us over with your chums
+and compare notes. But, bless you, it can't possibly hold a candle to
+the thorough and impartial discussions that some of you get when girls
+are together, either in small bevies, or with only one chosen friend.
+And we don't very much care what you say about us, for a man never
+judges a woman by the opinion of any one else, but another woman's
+opinion counts for a great deal with us, so you would better be
+careful.
+
+If you are going to say things that you don't mean, try to stamp
+them with the air of sincerity--if you can once get a woman to fully
+believe in your sincerity, you have gone a long way toward her heart.
+
+Haven't you found out that women are not particularly interested in
+anecdotes? Please don't tell us more than fifteen in the same evening.
+
+And don't begin to make love to us before you have had time to make a
+favourable impression along several lines--a man, as well as a woman,
+loses ground and forfeits respect by making himself too cheap.
+
+If a girl runs and screams when she has been caught standing under the
+mistletoe, it means that she will not object; if she stiffens up and
+glares at you, it means that she does. The same idea is sometimes
+delicately conveyed by the point of a pin. But a woman will be able to
+forgive almost anything which you can make her believe was prompted by
+her own attractiveness, at least unless she knows men fairly well.
+
+You know, of course, that we will not show your letters, nor tell when
+you ask us to marry you and are refused. This much a woman owes to
+any man who has honoured her with an offer of marriage--to keep his
+perfect trust sacredly in her own heart. Even her future husband has
+no business to know of this--it is her lover's secret, and she has no
+right to betray it.
+
+Keeping the love-letters and the offers of marriage from any
+honourable man safe from a prying world are points of honour which all
+good women possess, although we may sometimes quote certain things
+from your letters, as you do from ours.
+
+There's nothing you can tell a woman which will please her quite so
+much as that knowing her has made you better, especially if you can
+prove it by showing a decided upward tendency in your morals. That's
+your good right bower, but don't play it too often--keep it for
+special occasions.
+
+There's one mistake you make, dear brethren, and that is telling a
+woman you love her as soon as you find it out yourself, and the most
+of you will do that very thing. There is one case on record where a
+man waited fifteen minutes, but he nearly died of the strain. The
+trouble is that you seldom stop to consider whether we are ready to
+hear you or not, nor whether the coast is clear, nor what the chances
+are in your favour. You simply relieve your mind, and trust in your
+own wonderful charms to accomplish the rest.
+
+And we wish that when the proper time comes for you to speak your mind
+you'd try to do it artistically. Of course you can't write it, unless
+you are far away from her, for if you can manage an opportunity to
+speak, a resort to the pen is cowardly. And don't mind our evading the
+subject--we always do that on principle, but please don't be scared,
+or at least don't show it, whatever you may feel. If there is one
+thing a woman dislikes more than another it is a man who shows
+cowardice at the crucial point in life.
+
+Every man, except yourself, dear reader, is conceited. And one
+particular sort of it makes us very, very weary. You are so blinded by
+your own perfections, so sure that we are desperately in love with
+you, that you sometimes give us little unspoken suggestions to that
+effect, and then our disgust is beyond words.
+
+Another cowardly thing you sometimes do, and that is to say that we
+have spoiled your life--that we could have made you anything we
+pleased--and that you are going straight to perdition. If one woman
+is all that keeps you from going to ruin, you have secured a through
+ticket anyway, and it's too late to save you. You don't want a woman
+who might marry you only out of pity, and you are not going to die of
+a broken heart. Men die of broken vanity, sometimes, but their hearts
+are pretty tough, being made of healthy muscle.
+
+You get married very much as you go down town in the morning. You run,
+like all possessed, until you catch your car, and then you sit down
+and read your newspaper. When you think your wife looks unusually
+well, it would not hurt you in the least to tell her so, and the way
+you leave her in the morning is going to settle her happiness for the
+day, though she may be too proud to let you know that it makes any
+difference. Women are quick to detect a sham, and they don't want you
+to say anything that you don't feel, but you are pretty sure to feel
+tenderly toward her sometimes, careless though you may be, and then is
+the time to tell her so. You don't want to wait until she is dead, and
+then buy a lily to put on her coffin. You'd better bring her the lily
+some time when you've been cross and grumpy.
+
+But don't imagine that a present of any kind ever atones for a hurt
+that has been given in words. There's nothing you can say which is
+more manly or which will do you both so much good as the simple
+"forgive me" when you have been wrong.
+
+Rest assured, gentlemen, that you who spend the most of your evenings
+in other company, and too often find fault with your meals when you
+come home, are the cause of many sorrowful talks among the women who
+are wise enough to know, even though your loyal wife may put up a
+brave front in your defense.
+
+How often do you suppose the brave woman who loves you has been
+actually driven in her agony to some married friend whom she can trust
+and upon her sympathetic bosom has cried until she could weep no more,
+simply because of your thoughtless neglect? How often do you think she
+has planned little things to make your home-coming pleasant, which you
+have never noticed? And how often do you suppose she has desperately
+fought down the heartache and tried to believe that your absorption in
+business is the reason for your forgetfulness of her?
+
+Do you ever think of these things? Do you ever think of the days
+before you were sure of her, when you treasured every line of her
+letters, and would have bartered your very hopes of heaven for the
+earthly life with her?
+
+But perhaps you can hardly be expected to remember the wild sprint
+that you made from the breakfast table to the street-car.
+
+
+
+
+Transition
+
+
+     I am thy Pleasure. See, my face is fair--
+       With silken strands of joy I twine thee round;
+     Life has enough of stress--forget with me!
+       Wilt thou not stay? Then go, thou art not bound.
+
+     I am thy Pastime. Let me be to thee
+       A daily refuge from the haunting fears
+     That bind thee, choke thee, fill thy soul with woe.
+       Seek thou my hand, let me assuage thy tears.
+
+     I am thy Habit. Nay, start not, thy will
+       Is yet supreme, for art thou not a man?
+     Then draw me close to thee, for life is brief--
+       A little space to pass as best one can.
+
+     I am thy Passion. Thou shalt cling to me
+       Through all the years to come. The silken cord
+     Of Pleasure has become a stronger bond,
+       Not to be cleft, nor loosened at a word.
+
+     I am thy Master. Thou shalt crush for me
+       The grapes of truth for wine of sacrifice;
+     My clanking chains were forged for such as thee,
+       I am thy Master--yea, I am thy vice!
+
+
+
+
+The Superiority of Man
+
+
+Without pausing to inquire why savages and barbarians are capable of
+producing college professors, who sneer at the source from which they
+sprung, we may accept for the moment the masculine hypothesis of
+intellectual superiority. Some women have been heard to say that they
+wish they had been born men, but there is no man bold enough to say
+that he would like to be a woman.
+
+If woman can produce a reasoning being, it follows that she herself
+must be capable of reasoning, since a stream can rise no higher than
+its fountain. And yet the bitter truth stares us in the face. We have
+no Shakespeare, Michelangelo, or Beethoven; our Darwins, our Schumanns
+are mute and inglorious; our Miltons, Raphaels, and Herbert Spencers
+have not arrived.
+
+Call the roll of the great and how many women's names will be found
+there? Scarcely enough to enable you to call the company mixed.
+
+No woman in her senses wishes to be merely the female of man. She
+aspires to be distinctly different--to exercise her varied powers in
+wholly different ways. Ex-President Roosevelt said: "Equality does not
+imply identity of function." We do not care to put in telephones or to
+collect fares on a street-car.
+
+Primitive man set forth from his cave to kill an animal or two, then
+repaired to a secluded nook in the jungle, with other primitive men,
+to discuss the beginnings of politics. Primitive woman in the cave
+not only dressed his game, but she cooked the animal for food,
+made clothing of its skin, necklaces and bracelets of its teeth,
+passementerie of its claws, and needles of its sharper bones. What
+wonder that she had no time for an afternoon tea?
+
+The man of the twentieth century has progressed immeasurably beyond
+this, but his wife, industrially speaking, has not gone half so far.
+Is she not still in some cases a cave-dweller, while he roams the
+highways of the world?
+
+If a woman mends men's socks, should he not darn her lisle-thread
+hosiery, and run a line of machine stitching around the middle of the
+hem to prevent a disastrous run from a broken stitch? If she presses
+his ties, why should he not learn to iron her bits of fine lace?
+
+Some one will say: "But he supports her. It is her duty."
+
+"Yes, dear friend, but similarly does he 'support' the servant who
+does the same duties. He also gives her seven dollars every Monday
+morning, or she leaves." Are we to suppose that a wife is a woman who
+does general housework for board and clothes, with a few kind words
+thrown in?
+
+A German lady, whom we well knew, worked all the morning attending to
+the comforts of her liege lord. In the dining room he was stretched
+out in an easy chair, while the queen of his heart brushed and
+repaired his clothes--yes, and blacked his boots! Doubtless for a
+single kiss, redolent of beer and sausages, she would have pressed his
+trousers. Kind words and the fragrant osculation had already saved him
+three dollars at his tailor's.
+
+By such gold-brick methods, dear friends, do men get good service
+cheap. Would that we could do the same! Here, and gladly, we admit
+masculine superiority.
+
+Our short-sightedness, our weakness for kind words, our graceful
+acceptance of the entire responsibility for the home, have chained us
+to the earth, while our lords soar. After having worked steadily for
+some six thousand years to populate the earth passably, some of us may
+now be excused from that duty.
+
+Motherhood is a career for which especial talents are required. Very
+few women know how to bring up children properly. If you don't believe
+it, look at the difference between our angelic offspring, and the
+little imps next door! It is as unreasonable to suppose that all women
+can be good mothers as it is to suppose that all women can sing in
+grand opera.
+
+And yet, let us hug to our weary hearts, in our most discouraged
+moments, the great soul-satisfying truth that men, no matter what they
+say or write, think that we are smarter than they are. Otherwise, they
+would not expect of us so much more than they can possibly do
+themselves.
+
+In every field of woman's work outside the house, the same
+illustration applies. They also think that we possess greater physical
+strength. They chivalrously shield us from the exhausting effort of
+voting, but allow us to stand in the street-cars, wash dishes, push a
+baby carriage, and scrub the kitchen floor. Should we not be proud
+because they consider us so much stronger and wiser than they?
+Interruptions are fatal to their work, as the wife of even a business
+man will testify.
+
+What would have become of Spencer's _Data of Ethics_ if, while he was
+writing it, he had two dressmakers in the house? Should we have had
+_Hamlet_, if at the completion of the first act Mr. Shakespeare had
+given birth to twins, when he had made clothes for only one?
+
+The great charm of marriage, as of life itself, is its unexpectedness.
+The only way to test a man is to marry him. If you live, it's a
+mushroom; if you die, it's a toadstool!
+
+Or, as another saying goes: "Happiness after marriage is like the soap
+in the bath-tub; you knew it was there when you got in."
+
+Man's clothes are ugly, but the styles change gradually. A judge on
+the bench may try a case lasting two weeks, and his hat will not be
+hopelessly behind the times when it is finished. A man can stoop to
+pick up a fallen magazine without pausing to remember that his front
+steels are not so flexible this year as they were last.
+
+He is not distressed by the fear that some other man may have a suit
+just like his, or that the neighbours will think it is his last year's
+suit dyed.
+
+We women fritter ourselves away upon a thousand unnecessary things.
+We waste our creative energies and our inspired moments upon pursuits
+so ephemeral that they are forgotten to-morrow. Our day's work counts
+for nothing when tested by the standards of eternity. We are unjust,
+not only to ourselves, but to the men who strive for us, for
+civilisation must progress very slowly when half of us are dragged by
+pots and pans.
+
+A house is a material fact, but a home is a fine spiritual essence
+which may pervade even the humblest abode. If love means harmony, why
+not try a little of it in the kitchen? Better a perfect salad than a
+poor poem; better a fine picture than an immaculate house.
+
+
+
+
+The Year of My Heart
+
+
+     A sigh for the spring, full flowered, promised spring,
+     Laid on the tender earth, and those dear days
+     When apple blossoms gleamed against the blue!
+     Ah, how the world of joyous robins sang:
+     "I love but you, Sweetheart, I love but you!"
+
+     A sigh for summer fled. In warm, sweet air
+     Her thousand singers sped on shining wing;
+     And all the inward life of budding grain
+     Throbbed with a thousand pulses, while I cling
+     To you, my Sweet, with passion near to pain.
+
+     A sigh for autumn past. The garnered fields
+     Lie desolate to-day. My heart is chill
+     As with a sense of dread, and on the shore
+     The waves beat grey and cold, and seem to say:
+     "No more, oh, waiting soul, oh nevermore!"
+
+     A sigh for winter come. No singing bird,
+     Nor harvest field, is near the path I tread;
+     An empty husk is all I have to keep.
+     The largess of my giving left me bare,
+     And I ask God but for His Lethe--sleep.
+
+
+
+
+The Average Man
+
+
+The real man is not at all on the outskirts of civilisation. He is
+very much in evidence and everybody knows him. He has faults and
+virtues, and sometimes they get so mixed up that "you cannot tell one
+from t'other."
+
+He is erratic and often queer. He believes, with Emerson, that "with
+consistency a great soul has nothing to do." And he is, of course, "a
+great soul." Logical, isn't it?
+
+The average man _thinks_ that he is a born genius at love-making.
+Henders, in _The Professor's Love Story_, states it thus:
+
+     "Effie, ye ken there are some men ha' a power o'er women....
+     They're what ye might call 'dead shots.' Ye canna deny,
+     Effie, that I'm one o' those men!"
+
+Even though a man may be obliged to admit, in strict confidence
+between himself and his mirror, that he is not at all handsome,
+nevertheless he is certain that he has some occult influence over that
+strange, mystifying, and altogether unreasonable organ--a woman's
+heart.
+
+The real man is conceited. Of course you are not, dear masculine
+reader, for you are one of the bright particular exceptions, but all
+of your men friends are conceited--aren't they?
+
+And then he makes fun of his women folks because they spend so much
+time in front of the mirror in arranging hats and veils. But when a
+high wind comes up and disarranges coiffures and chapeaux alike, he
+takes "my ladye fair" into some obscure corner, and saying, "Pardon
+me, but your hat isn't quite straight," he will deftly restore that
+piece of millinery to its pristine position. That's nice of him, isn't
+it? He does very nice things quite often, this real man.
+
+He says women are fickle. So they are, but men are fickle too, and
+will forget all about the absent sweetheart while contemplating the
+pretty girls in the street. For while "absence makes the heart grow
+fonder" in the case of a woman, it is presence that plays the mischief
+with a man, and Miss Beauty present has a very unfair advantage over
+Miss Sweetheart absent.
+
+The average man thinks he is a connoisseur of feminine attractiveness.
+He thinks he has tact, too, but there never was a man who was blessed
+with much of this valuable commodity. Still, as that is a favourite
+delusion with so large a majority of the human race, the conceit of
+the ordinary masculine individual ought not to be censured too
+strongly.
+
+The real man is quite an expert at flattery. Every girl he meets, if
+she is at all attractive, is considered the most charming lady that he
+ever knew. He is sure she isn't prudish enough to refuse him a kiss,
+and if she is, she wins not only his admiration, but that which is
+vastly better--his respect.
+
+If she hates to be considered a prude and gives him the kiss, he is
+very sweet and appreciative at the time, but later on he confides to
+his chum that she is a silly sort of a girl, without a great deal of
+self-respect!
+
+There are two things that the average man likes to be told. One is
+that his taste in dress is exceptional; the other that he is a deep
+student of human nature and knows the world thoroughly. This remark
+will make him your lifelong friend.
+
+Again, the real man will put on more agony when he is in love than is
+needed for a first-class tragedy. But there's no denying that most
+women like that sort of thing, you, dear dainty feminine reader, being
+almost the only exception to this rule.
+
+But, resuming the special line of thought, man firmly believes that
+woman cannot sharpen a pencil, select a necktie, throw a stone, drive
+a nail, or kill a mouse, and it is very certain that she cannot cook a
+beef-steak in the finished style of which his lordship is capable.
+
+Yes, man has his faults as well as woman. There is a vast room for
+improvement on both sides, but as long as this old earth of ours turns
+through shadow and sunlight, through sorrow and happiness, men and
+women will forgive and try to forget, and will cling to, and love each
+other.
+
+
+
+
+The Book of Love
+
+
+     I dreamt I saw an angel in the night,
+     And she held forth Love's book, limned o'er with gold,
+     That I might read of days of chivalry
+     And how men's hearts were wont to thrill of old.
+
+     Half wondering, I turned the musty leaves,
+     For Love's book counts out centuries as years,
+     And here and there a page shone out undimmed,
+     And here and there a page was blurred with tears.
+
+     I read of Grief, Doubt, Silence unexplained--
+     Of many-featured Wrong, Distrust, and Blame,
+     Renunciation--bitterest of all--
+     And yet I wandered not beyond Love's name.
+
+     At last I cried to her who held the book,
+     So fair and calm she stood, I see her yet;
+     "Why write these things within this book of Love?
+     Why may we not pass onward and forget?"
+
+     Her voice was tender when she answered me:
+     "Half child, half woman, earthy as thou art,
+     How should'st thou dream that Love is never Love
+     Unless these things beat vainly on the heart?"
+
+
+
+
+The Ideal Man
+
+
+He isn't nearly so scarce as one might think, but happy is the woman
+who finds him, for he is often a bit out of the beaten paths,
+sometimes in the very suburbs of our modern civilisation. He is,
+however, coming to the front rather slowly, to be sure, but
+nevertheless he is coming.
+
+He wouldn't do for the hero of a dime novel--he isn't melancholy in
+his mien, nor Byronic in his morals. It is a frank, honest, manly face
+that looks into the other end of our observation telescope when we
+sweep the horizon to find something higher and better than the rank
+and file of humanity.
+
+He is a gentleman, invariably courteous and refined. He is careful in
+his attire, but not foppish. He is chivalrous in his attitude toward
+woman, and as politely kind to the wrinkled old woman who scrubs his
+office floor as to the aristocratic belle who bows to him from her
+carriage.
+
+He is scrupulously honest in all his dealings with his fellow men, and
+meanness of any sort is utterly beneath him. He has a happy way of
+seeing the humorous side of life, and he is an exceedingly pleasant
+companion.
+
+When the love light shines in his eyes, kindled at the only fire where
+it may be lighted, he has nothing in his past of which he need be
+ashamed. He stands beside her and pleads earnestly and manfully for
+the treasure he seeks. Slowly he turns the pages of his life before
+her, for there is not one which can call a blush to his cheek, or to
+hers.
+
+Truth, purity, honesty, chivalry, the highest manliness--all these are
+written therein, and she gladly accepts the clean heart which is
+offered for her keeping.
+
+Her life is now another open book. To him her nature seems like a harp
+of a thousand strings, and every note, though it may not be strong
+and high, is truth itself, and most refined in tone.
+
+So they join hands, these two: the sweetheart becomes the wife; the
+lover is the husband.
+
+He is still chivalrous to every woman, but to his wife he pays the
+gentler deference which was the sweetheart's due. He loves her, and is
+not ashamed to show it. He brings her flowers and books, just as he
+used to do when he was teaching her to love him. He is broad-minded,
+and far-seeing--he believes in "a white life for two." He knows his
+wife has the same right to demand purity in thought, word, and deed
+from him, as he has to ask absolute stainlessness from her. That is
+why he has kept clean the pages of his life--why he keeps the record
+unsullied as the years go by.
+
+He is tender in his feelings; if he goes home and finds his wife in
+tears, he doesn't tell her angrily to "brace up," or say, "this is a
+pretty welcome for a man!" He doesn't slam the door and whistle as if
+nothing was the matter. But he takes her in his comforting arms and
+speaks soothing words. If his comrades speak lightly of his devotion,
+he simply thinks out other blessings for the little woman who presides
+at his fireside.
+
+His wife is inexpressibly dear to him, and every day he shows this,
+and takes pains, also, to tell her so. He admires her pretty gowns,
+and is glad to speak appreciatively of the becoming things she wears.
+He knows instinctively that it is the thoughtfulness and the little
+tenderness which make a woman's happiness, and he tries to make her
+realise that his love for her grew brighter, instead of fading, when
+the sweetheart blossomed into the wife. For every woman, old,
+wrinkled, and grey, or young and charming, likes to be loved.
+
+The ideal man will do his utmost to make his wife realise that his
+devotion intensifies as the years go by.
+
+What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they
+are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest
+upon each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain,
+to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment
+of the last parting?
+
+God bless the ideal man and hasten his coming in greater numbers.
+
+
+
+
+Good-Night, Sweetheart
+
+
+     Good-night, Sweetheart; the wingèd hours have flown;
+     I have forgotten all the world but thee.
+     Across the moon-lit deep, where stars have shone,
+     The surge sounds softly from the sleeping sea.
+
+     Thy heart at last hath opened to Love's key;
+     Remembered Aprils, glorious blooms have sown,
+     And now there comes the questing honey bee.
+     Good-night, Sweetheart; the wingèd hours have flown.
+
+     My singing soul makes music in thine own,
+     Thy hand upon my harp makes melody;
+     So close the theme and harmony have grown
+     I have forsaken all the world for thee.
+
+     Before thy whiteness do I bend the knee;
+     Thou art a queen upon a stainless throne,
+     Like Dian making royal jubilee,
+     Across the vaulted dark where stars are blown.
+
+     Within my heart thy face shines out alone,
+     Ah, dearest! Say for once thou lovest me!
+     A whisper, even, like the undertone
+     The surge sings slowly from the rhythmic sea.
+
+     Thy downcast eyes make answer to my plea;
+     A crimson mantle o'er thy cheek is thrown
+     Assurance more than this, there need not be,
+     For thus, within the silence, love is known.
+                   Good-night, Sweetheart.
+
+
+
+
+The Ideal Woman
+
+
+The trend of modern thought in art and literature is toward the real,
+but fortunately the cherishing of the ideal has not vanished.
+
+All of us, though we may profess to be realists, are at heart
+idealists, for every woman in the innermost sanctuary of her thoughts
+cherishes an ideal man. And every man, practical and commonplace
+though he be, has before him in his quiet moments a living picture of
+grace and beauty, which, consciously or not, is his ideal woman.
+
+Every man instinctively admires a beautiful woman. But when he seeks a
+wife, he demands other qualities besides that wonderful one which is,
+as the proverb tells us, "only skin deep."
+
+If men were not such strangely inconsistent beings, the world
+would lose half its charm. Each sex rails at the other for its
+inconsistency, when the real truth is that nowhere exists much of
+that beautiful quality which is aptly termed a "jewel."
+
+But humanity must learn with Emerson to seek other things than
+consistency, and to look upon the lightning play of thought and
+feeling as an index of mental and moral growth.
+
+For those who possess the happy faculty of "making the best of
+things," men are really the most amusing people in existence. To hear
+a man dilate upon the virtues and accomplishments of the ideal woman
+he would make his wife is a most interesting diversion, besides being
+a source of what may be called decorative instruction.
+
+She must, first of all, be beautiful. No man, even in his wildest
+moments, ever dreamed of marrying any but a beautiful woman, yet, in
+nine cases out of ten when he does go to the altar, he is leading
+there one who is lovely only in his own eyes.
+
+He has read Swinburne and Tennyson and is very sure he won't have
+anything but "a daughter of the gods, divinely tall, and most divinely
+fair." Then, of course, there is the "classic profile," the "deep,
+unfathomable eyes," the "lily-white skin," and "hair like the raven's
+wing," not to mention the "swan-like neck" and "tapering, shapely
+fingers."
+
+Mr. Ideal is really a man of refined taste, and the women who hear
+this impassioned outburst are supremely conscious of their own
+imperfections.
+
+But beauty is not the only demand of this fastidious gentleman; the
+fortunate woman whom he deigns to honour must be a paragon of
+sweetness and docility. No "woman's rights" or "suffrage rant" for
+him, and none of those high-stepping professional women need apply
+either--oh, no! And then all of her interests must be his, for of all
+things on earth, he "does despise a woman with a hobby!" None of these
+"broad-minded women" were ever intended for Mr. Ideal. He is very
+certain of that, because away down in his secret heart he was sure he
+had found the right woman once, but when he did, he learned also that
+she was somewhat particular about the man she wanted to marry, and the
+applicant then present did not fill the bill! He is therefore very
+sure that "a man does not want an intellectual instructor: he wants a
+wife."
+
+Just like the most of them after all, isn't he?
+
+The year goes round and Mr. Ideal goes away on a summer vacation.
+There are some pleasant people in the little town to which he goes,
+and there is a girl in the party with her mother and brother. Mr.
+Ideal looks her over disapprovingly. She isn't pretty--no, she isn't
+even good-looking. Her hair is almost red, her eyes are a pale blue,
+and she wears glasses. Her nose isn't even straight, and it turns up
+too much besides. Her skin is covered with tiny golden-brown blotches.
+"Freckles!" exclaims Mr. Ideal, _sotto voce_. Her mouth isn't bad, the
+lips are red and full and her teeth are white and even. She wears a
+blue boating suit with an Eton jacket. "So common!" and Mr. Ideal goes
+away from his secluded point of observation.
+
+A merry laugh reaches his ear, and he turns around. The tall
+brother is chasing her through the bushes, and she waves a letter
+tantalisingly at him as she goes, and finally bounds over a low fence
+and runs across the field, with her big brother in close pursuit.
+"Hoydenish!" and Mr. Ideal hums softly to himself and goes off to find
+Smith. Smith is a good fellow and asks Mr. Ideal to go fishing. They
+go, but don't have a bite, and come home rather cross. Does Smith know
+the little red-headed girl who was on the piazza this morning?
+
+Yes, he has met her. She has been here about a week. "Rather nice, but
+not especially attractive, you know." No, she isn't, but he will
+introduce Mr. Ideal.
+
+Days pass, and Mr. Ideal and Miss Practical are much together. He
+finds her the jolliest girl he ever knew. She is an enthusiastic
+advocate of "woman" in every available sphere.
+
+She herself is going to be a trained nurse after she learns to "keep
+house." "For you know that every woman should be a good housekeeper,"
+she says demurely.
+
+He doesn't exactly like "that trained nurse business," but he admits
+to himself that, if he were ill, he should like to have Miss Practical
+smooth his pillow and take care of him.
+
+And so the time goes on, and he is often the companion of the girl. At
+times, she fairly scintillates with merriment, but she is so
+dignified, and so womanly--so very careful to keep him at his proper
+distance--that, well, "she is a type!"
+
+In due course of time, he plans to return to the city, and to the
+theatres and parties he used to find so pleasant. All his friends are
+there. No, Miss Practical is not in the city; she is right here. Like
+a flash a revelation comes over him, and he paces the veranda angrily.
+Well, there's only one thing to be done--he must tell her about it.
+Perhaps--and he sees a flash of blue through the shrubbery, which he
+seeks with the air of a man who has an object in view.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His circle of friends are very much surprised when he introduces Mrs.
+Ideal, for she is surely different from the ideal woman about whom
+they have heard so much. They naturally think he is inconsistent, but
+he isn't, for some subtle alchemy has transfigured the homely little
+girl into the dearest, best, and altogether most beautiful woman Mr.
+Ideal has ever seen.
+
+She is domestic in her tastes now, and has abandoned the professional
+nurse idea. She knows a great deal about Greek and Latin, and still
+more about Shakespeare and Browning and other authors.
+
+But she neglects neither her books nor her housekeeping, and her
+husband spends his evenings at home, not because Mrs. Ideal would cry
+and make a fuss if he didn't, but because his heart is in her keeping,
+and because his own fireside, with its sweet-faced guardian angel, is
+to him the most beautiful place on earth, and he has sense enough to
+appreciate what a noble wife is to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The plain truth is, when "any whatsoever" Mr. Ideal loves a woman, he
+immediately finds her perfect, and transfers to her the attributes
+which only exist in his imagination. His heart and happiness are
+there--not with the creatures of his dreams, but the warm, living,
+loving human being beside him, and to him, henceforth, the ideal is
+the real.
+
+For "the ideal woman is as gentle as she is strong." She wins her way
+among her friends and fellow human beings, even though they may be
+strangers, by doing many a kindness which the most of us are too apt
+to overlook or ignore.
+
+No heights of thought or feeling are beyond her eager reach, and no
+human creature has sunk too low for her sympathy and her helping hand.
+Even the forlorn and friendless dog in the alley looks instinctively
+into her face for help.
+
+She is in every man's thoughts and always will be, as she always has
+been--the ideal who shall lead him step by step, and star by star, to
+the heights which he cannot reach alone.
+
+Ruskin says: "No man ever lived a right life who has not been
+chastened by a woman's love, strengthened by her courage and guided by
+her discretion."
+
+The steady flow of the twentieth-century progress has not swept away
+woman's influence, nor has it crushed out her womanliness. She lives
+in the hearts of men, a queen as royal as in the days of chivalry, and
+men shall do and dare for her dear sake as long as time shall last.
+
+The sweet, lovable, loyal woman of the past is not lost; she is only
+intensified in the brave wifehood and motherhood of our own times. The
+modern ideal, like that of olden times, is and ever will be, above all
+things--womanly.
+
+
+
+
+She Is Not Fair
+
+
+    She is not fair to other eyes--
+      No poet's dream is she,
+    Nor artist's inspiration, yet
+      I would not have her be.
+    She wanders not through princely halls,
+      A crown upon her hair;
+    Her heart awaits a single king
+      Because she is not fair.
+
+    Dear lips, your half-shy tenderness
+      Seems far too much to win!
+    Yet, has your heart a tiny door
+      Where I may peep within?
+    That voiceless chamber, dim and sweet,
+      I pray may be my own.
+    Dear little Love, may I come in
+      And make you mine alone?
+
+    She is not fair to other eyes--
+      I would not have it so;
+    She needs no further charm or grace
+      Or aught wealth may bestow;
+    For when the love light shines and makes
+      Her dear face glorified--
+    Ah Sweetheart! queens may come and go
+      And all the world beside.
+
+
+
+
+The Fin-de-Siècle Woman
+
+
+The world has fought step by step the elevation of woman from
+inferiority to equality, but at last she is being recognised as a
+potent factor in our civilisation.
+
+The most marked change which has been made in woman's position during
+the last half century or more has been effected by higher education,
+and since the universities have thrown open their doors to her, she
+has been allowed, in many cases, to take the same courses that her
+brother does.
+
+Still, the way has not been entirely smooth for educated and literary
+women, for the public press has too often frowned upon their efforts
+to obtain anything like equal recognition for equal ability. The
+literary woman has, for years, been the target of criticism, and if we
+are to believe her critics, she has been entirely shunned by the
+gentlemen of her acquaintance; but the fact that so many of them are
+wives and mothers, and, moreover, good wives and mothers, proves
+conclusively that these statements are not trustworthy.
+
+It is true that some prefer the society of women who know just
+enough to appreciate their compliments--women who deprecate their
+"strong-minded" sisters, and are ready to agree implicitly with every
+statement that the lords of creation may make; but this readiness is
+due to sheer inability to produce a thought of their own.
+
+It is true that some men are afraid of educated women, but a man who
+is afraid of a woman because she knows something is not the kind of a
+man she wants to marry. He is not the kind of a man she would choose
+for either husband or friend; she wants an intellectual companion, and
+the chances are that she will find him, or rather that he will find
+her. A woman need not be unwomanly in order to write books that will
+help the world.
+
+She may be a good housekeeper, even if she does write for the
+magazines, and the husbands of literary women are not, as some folks
+would have us believe, neglected and forlorn-looking beings. On the
+contrary, they carry brave hearts and cheerful faces with them always,
+since their strength is reinforced by the quiet happiness of their own
+firesides.
+
+The _fin-de-siècle_ woman is literary in one sense, if not in
+another, for if she may not wield her pen, she can keep in touch with
+the leading thinkers of the day, and she will prove as pleasant a
+companion during the long winter evenings as the woman whose husband
+chose her for beauty and taste in dress.
+
+The literary woman is not slipshod in her apparel, and she may, if she
+chooses, be a society and club woman as well. Surely there is nothing
+in literary culture which shall prevent neatness and propriety in
+dress as well as in conduct.
+
+The devoted admirer of Browning is not liable to quote him in
+a promiscuous company and though a lady may be familiar with
+Shakespeare, it does not follow that she will discuss _Hamlet_
+in social gatherings.
+
+If she reads Greek as readily as she does her mother tongue, you may
+rest assured she will not mention Homer in ordinary conversation, for
+a cultivated woman readily recognises the fitness of things, and
+accords a due deference to the tastes of others. She has her club and
+her friends, as do the gentlemen of her acquaintance, but her children
+are not neglected from the fact that she sometimes thinks of other
+things. She is a helpmeet to her husband, and not a plaything, or a
+slave. If duty calls her to the kitchen, she goes cheerfully, and,
+moreover, the cook will not dread to see her coming; or if that
+important person be absent, the table will be supplied with just as
+good bread, and just as delicate pastry, as if the lady of the house
+did not understand the chemicals of their composition.
+
+If trouble comes, she bears it bravely, for the cultured woman has a
+philosophy which is equal to any emergency, and she does the best she
+can on all occasions.
+
+If her husband leaves her penniless, she will, if possible, clothe her
+children with her pen, but if her literary wares are a drug on the
+market, she will turn bravely to other fields, and find her daily
+bread made sweet by thankfulness. She does not hesitate to hold out
+her hands to help a fellow-creature, either man or woman, for she is
+in all things womanly--a wife to her husband and a mother to her
+children in the truest sense of the words.
+
+Her knowledge of the classics does not interfere with the making of
+dainty draperies for her home, and though she may be appointed to read
+a paper before her club on some scholarly theme, she will listen just
+as patiently to tales of trouble from childish lips, and will tie up
+little cut fingers just as sympathetically as her neighbour who folds
+her arms and who broadly hints that "wimmen's spear is to hum!"
+
+Whether the literary woman be robed in silk and sealskin, or whether
+she rejoices in the possession of only one best gown, she may,
+nevertheless, be contented and happy.
+
+Whether she lives in a modest cottage, or in a fashionable home,
+she may be the same sweet woman, with cheerful face and pleasant
+voice--with a broad human sympathy which makes her whole life glad.
+
+Be she princess, or Cinderella, she may be still her husband's
+confidant and cherished friend, to whom he may confide his business
+troubles and perplexities, certain always of her tender consolation
+and ready sympathy. She may be quick and versatile, doing well
+whatever she does at all, for her creed declares that "whatever is
+honest is honourable."
+
+She glories in her womanhood and has no sympathy with anything which
+tends to degrade it.
+
+All hail to the woman of the twentieth century; let _fin de siècle_
+stand for all that is best and noblest in womanhood: for liberty,
+equality, and fraternity; for right, truth, and justice.
+
+All hail the widespread movement for the higher education of woman,
+for in intellectual development is the future of posterity, in study
+is happiness, through the open door of the college is the key of a
+truer womanhood, a broader humanity, and a brighter hope. In education
+along the lines of the broadest and wisest culture is to be found the
+emancipation of the race.
+
+
+
+
+The Moon Maiden
+
+
+     There's a wondrous land of misty gold
+       Beyond the sunset's bars.
+     There's a silver boat on a sea of blue,
+       And the tips of its waves are stars.
+
+     And idly rocking to and fro,
+       Her cloud robes floating by,
+     There's a maiden fair, with sunny hair,
+       The queen of the dreamy sky.
+
+
+
+
+Her Son's Wife
+
+
+The venerable mother-in-law joke appears in the comic papers with
+astonishing regularity. For a time, perhaps, it may seem to be lost in
+the mists of oblivion, but even while one is rejoicing at its absence
+it returns to claim its original position at the head of the
+procession.
+
+There are two sides to everything, even to an old joke, and the artist
+always pictures the man's dismay when his wife's mother comes for a
+visit. Nobody ever sees a drawing of a woman's mother-in-law, and yet,
+the bitterness and sadness lie mainly there--between the mother and
+the woman his son has chosen for his wife.
+
+It is a pleasure to believe that the average man is a gentleman, and
+his inborn respect for his own mother, if nothing else, will usually
+compel an outward show of politeness to every woman, even though she
+may be a constant source of irritation. Grey hair has its own claims
+upon a young man's deference, and, in the business world, he is
+obliged to learn to hold his tongue, hide his temper, and "assume a
+virtue though he has it not."
+
+The mother's welcome from her daughter's husband depends much upon
+herself. Her long years of marriage have been in vain if they have not
+taught her to watch a man's moods and tenses; when to speak and when
+to be silent, and how to avoid useless discussion of subjects on which
+there is a pronounced difference of opinion. Leaving out the personal
+equation, the older and more experienced woman is better fitted to get
+along peaceably with a man than the young girl who has her wisdom yet
+to acquire.
+
+Moreover, it is to the daughter's interest to cement a friendship
+between her mother and her husband, and so she stands as a shield
+between the two she holds dearest, to exercise whatever tact she may
+possess toward an harmonious end.
+
+     "A son's a son till he gets him a wife,
+     But a daughter's a daughter all the days of her life."
+
+Thus the old saying runs, and there is a measure of truth in it,
+more's the pity. Marriage and a home of her own interfere but little
+with a daughter's devotion to her mother, even though the daily
+companionship be materially lessened. The feeling is there and remains
+unchanged, unless it grows stronger through the new interests on both
+sides.
+
+If a man has won his wife in spite of her mother's opposition, he can
+well afford to be gracious and forget the ancient grudge. It is his
+part, too, to prove to the mother how far she was mistaken, by making
+the girl who trusted him the happiest wife in the world. The woman who
+sees her daughter happy will have little against her son-in-law,
+except that primitive, tribal instinct which survives in most of us,
+and jealously guards those of our own blood from the aggression of
+another family or individual.
+
+One may as well admit that a good husband is a very scarce article,
+and that the mother's anxiety for her daughter is well-founded. No man
+can escape the sensation of being forever on trial in the eyes of his
+wife's mother, and woe to him if he makes a mistake or falters in his
+duty! Things which a woman would gladly condone in her husband are
+unpardonable sins in the man who has married her daughter, and taken
+her from a mother's loving care.
+
+A good husband and a good man are not necessarily the same thing. Many
+a scapegrace has been dearly loved by his wife, and many a highly
+respected man has been secretly despised by his wife and children.
+When the prison doors open to discharge the sinners who have served
+long sentences, the wives of those who have been good husbands are
+waiting for them with open arms. The others have long since taken
+advantage of the divorce laws.
+
+Since women know women so well, perhaps it is only natural for a
+mother to feel that no girl who is good enough for her son ever has
+been born. All the small deceits, the little schemes and frailties,
+are as an open book in the eyes of other women.
+
+"If you were a man," said one girl to another, "and knew women as well
+as you do now, whom would you marry?"
+
+The other girl thought for a moment, and then answered unhesitatingly:
+"I'd stay single."
+
+Women are always suspicious of each other, and the one who can deceive
+another woman is entitled to her laurels for cleverness. With the keen
+insight and quick intuition of the woman on either side of him, when
+these women are violently opposed to each other, no man need look for
+peace.
+
+In spite of their discernment, women are sadly deficient in analysis
+when it comes to a question of self. Neither wife nor mother can
+clearly see her relation to the man they both love. Blinded by
+passionate devotion and eager for power, both women lose sight of the
+truth, and torment themselves and each other with unfounded jealousy
+and distrust.
+
+In no sense are wife and mother rivals, nor can they ever be so.
+Neither could take the place of the other for a single instant, and
+the wife foolishly guards the point where there is no danger, for, of
+all the women in the world, his mother and sisters are the only ones
+who could never by any possibility usurp her place.
+
+A woman need only ask herself if she would like to be the mother
+of her husband--to exchange the love which she now has for filial
+affection--for a temporary clearness of her troubled skies. The mother
+need only ask herself if she would surrender her position for the
+privilege of being her son's wife, if she seeks for light on her dark
+path.
+
+Yet, in spite of this, the two are often open and acknowledged rivals.
+A woman recently wrote to the "etiquette department" of a daily paper
+to know whether she or her son's fiancée should make the first call.
+In answering the question, the head of the department, who, by the
+way, has something of a reputation for good sense, wrote as follows:
+"It is your place to make the first call, and you have my sympathy in
+your difficult task. You must be brave, for you are going to look into
+the eyes of a woman whom your son loves better than he does you!"
+"Better than he does you!" That is where all the trouble lies, for
+each wishes to be first in a relation where no comparison is possible.
+
+When an American yacht first won the cup, Queen Victoria was watching
+the race. When she was told that the _America_ was in the lead, she
+asked what boat was second. "Your Majesty," replied the naval officer
+sadly, "there is no second!"
+
+So, between wife and mother there is no second place, and it is
+possible for each to own the whole of the loved one's heart, without
+infringing or even touching upon the rights of the other.
+
+Few of the passengers on a lake steamer, during a trip in northern
+waters a few years since, will ever forget a certain striking group.
+Mother and son, and the son's fiancée, were off for a week's vacation.
+The mother was tall and stately, with snow-white hair and a hard face
+deeply seamed with wrinkles, and with the fire of southern countries
+burning in her faded blue eyes. The son was merely a nice boy, with a
+pleasant face, and the girl, though not pretty, had a fresh look about
+her which was very attractive.
+
+She wore an engagement ring, so he must have cared for her, but
+otherwise no one would have suspected it. From beginning to end, his
+attention was centred upon his mother. He carried his mother's wraps,
+but the girl carried her own. He talked to the mother, and the girl
+could speak or not, just as she chose. Never for an instant were the
+two alone together. They sat on the deck until late at night, with the
+mother between them. When they changed, the son took his own chair
+and his mother's, while the girl dragged hers behind them. At the end
+of their table in the cabin, the mother sat between them at the head.
+Once, purely by accident, the girl slipped into the nearest chair,
+which happened to be the mother's, and the deadly silence could be
+felt even two tables away. The girl turned pale, then the son said:
+"You'll take the head of the table, won't you, mother?"
+
+The steely tone of her voice could be heard by every one as she said,
+"No!"
+
+The girl ate little, and soon excused herself to go to her stateroom,
+but the next day things were as before, and the foolish old mother had
+her place next to her son.
+
+Discussion was rife among the passengers, till an irreverent youth
+ended it by saying: "Mamma's got the rocks; that's the why of it!"
+
+Perhaps it was, but one wonders why a man should slight his promised
+wife so publicly, even to please a mother with "rocks!"
+
+To the mother who adores her son, every girl who smiles at him has
+matrimonial designs. When he falls in love, it is because he has been
+entrapped--she seldom considers him as being the aggressive one of the
+two. The mother of the girl feels the same way, and, in the lower
+circles, there is occasionally an illuminating time when the two
+mothers meet.
+
+Each is made aware how the other's offspring has given the entrapped
+one no peace, and how the affair has been the scandal of two separate
+neighbourhoods, more eligible partners having been lost by both sides.
+
+In the Declaration of Independence there is no classification of the
+rights of the married, but the clause regarding "life, liberty, and
+the pursuit of happiness" has been held pointedly to refer to the
+matrimonial state. If the mother would accord to her daughter-in-law
+the same rights she claimed at the outset of her own married life, the
+relation would be perceptibly smoother in many instances.
+
+When a woman marries, she has a right to expect the love of her
+husband, material support, a home of her own, even though it be only
+two tiny rooms, and absolute freedom from outside interference. It is
+her life, and she must live it in her own way, and a girl of spirit
+_will_ live it in her own way, without taking heed of the
+consequences, if she is pushed too far.
+
+On the other hand, the mother who bore him still has proprietary
+rights. She may reasonably claim a share of his society, a part of his
+earnings, if she needs financial assistance, and his interest in all
+that nearly concerns her. If she expects to be at the head of his
+house, with the wife as a sort of a boarder, she need not be surprised
+if there is trouble.
+
+Marriage brings to a girl certain freedom, but it gives her no
+superiority to her husband's family. A chain is as strong as its
+weakest link, and the members of a family do not rise above the
+general level. Every one of them is as good as the man she has
+married, and she is not above any of them, unless her own personality
+commands a higher position.
+
+She treasonably violates the confidence placed in her if she makes
+a discreditable use of any information coming to her through her
+association with her husband's family. There are skeletons in every
+closet, and she may not tell even her own mother of what she has seen
+in the other house. A single word breathed against her husband's
+family to an outsider stamps her as a traitor, who deserves a
+traitor's punishment.
+
+The girl who tells her most intimate friend that the mother of her
+fiancé "is an old cat," by that act has lowered herself far below the
+level of any self-respecting cat. Even if outward and visible disgrace
+comes to the family of her husband, she is unworthy if she does not
+hold her head high and let the world see her loyalty.
+
+Marriage gives her no right to criticise any member of her husband's
+family; their faults are out of her reach except by the force of
+tactful example. Her concern is with herself and him, not his family,
+and a wise girl, at the beginning of her married life, will draw a
+sharp line between her affairs and those of others, and will stay on
+her own side of the line.
+
+When a man falls in love with a thoughtless butterfly, his womenfolk
+may be pardoned if they stand aghast a moment before they regain their
+self-command. In a way it is like a guest who is given the freedom of
+the house, and who, when her visit is over, tells her friends that the
+parlour carpet was turned, and the stairs left undusted.
+
+Another household is intimately opened to the woman whom the son has
+married, and the members of it can make no defence. She can betray
+them if she chooses; there is nothing to shield them except her love
+for her husband, and too often that is insufficient.
+
+A girl seldom stops to think what she owes to her husband's mother.
+Twenty-five or thirty years ago, the man she loves was born. Since
+then there has been no time, sleeping or waking, when he has not been
+in the thoughts of the mother who has sought to do her best by him.
+She gave her life wholly to the demands of her child, without a
+moment's hesitation.
+
+She has sacrificed herself in countless ways, all through those years,
+in order that he might have his education, his pleasures, and his
+strong body. With every day he has grown nearer and dearer to her;
+every day his loss would have been that much harder to bear.
+
+In quiet talks in the twilight, she teaches him to be gentle and
+considerate, to be courteous to every woman because a woman gave him
+life; to be brave, noble, and tender; to be strong and fine; to choose
+honour with a crust, rather than shame with plenty.
+
+Then comes the pretty butterfly, with whom her son is in love. Is it
+strange that the heart of the mother tightens with sudden pain?
+
+With never a thought, the girl takes it all as her due. She would
+write a gracious note of thanks to the friend who sent her a pretty
+handkerchief, but for the woman who is the means of satisfying her
+heart's desire she has not even toleration. All the sweetness and
+beauty of his adoring love are a gift to her, unwilling too often,
+perhaps, but a gift nevertheless, from his mother.
+
+Long years of life have taught the mother what it may mean and what,
+alas, it does too often mean. Memories only are her portion; she need
+expect nothing now. He may not come to see his mother for an old
+familiar talk, because his wife either comes with him, or expects
+him to be at home. He has no time for his mother's interests or his
+mother's friends; there is scant welcome in his home for her, because
+between them has come an alien presence which never yields or softens.
+
+Strangely, and without any definite idea of the change, he comes to
+see his mother as she is. Once, she was the most beautiful woman in
+the world, and her roughened hands were lovely because they had
+toiled for him. Once, her counsel was wise, her judgment good, and the
+gift of feeling which her motherhood brought her was seen as generous
+sympathy.
+
+Now, by comparison with a bright, well-dressed wife, he sees what an
+"old frump" his mother is. She is shabby and old-fashioned, clinging
+to obsolete forms of speech, hysterical and emotional. When the mists
+of love have cleared from her boy's eyes, she may just as well give
+up, because there is no return, save in that other mist which comes
+too late, when mother is at rest.
+
+The wife who tries to keep alive her husband's love for his family,
+not only in his heart, but in outward observance as well, serves her
+own interests even better than theirs. The love of the many comes with
+the love of the one, and just as truly as he loves his sweetheart
+better because of his mother and sisters, he may love them better
+because of her.
+
+The poor heart-hungry mother, who stands by with brimming eyes,
+fearful that the joy of her life may be taken from her, will be
+content with but little if she may but keep it for her own. It is only
+a little while at the longest, for the end of the journey is soon, but
+sunset and afterglow would have some of the rapture of dawn, if her
+son's wife opened the door of her young heart and said with true
+sincerity and wells of tenderness: "Mother--Come!"
+
+
+
+
+A Lullaby
+
+
+           Sleep, baby, sleep,
+     The twilight breezes blow,
+     The flower bells are ringing,
+     The birds are twittering low,
+           Sleep, baby, sleep.
+
+           Sleep, baby, sleep,
+     The whippoorwill is calling,
+     The stars are twinkling faintly,
+     The dew is softly falling,
+           Sleep, baby, sleep.
+
+           Sleep, baby, sleep,
+     Upon your pillow lying,
+     The rushes whisper to the stream,
+     The summer day is dying,
+           Sleep, baby, sleep.
+
+
+
+
+The Dressing-Sack Habit
+
+
+Someone has said that a dressing-sack is only a Mother Hubbard with a
+college education. Accepting this statement as a great truth, one is
+inclined to wonder whether education has improved the Mother Hubbard,
+since another clever person has characterised a college as "a place
+where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed!"
+
+The bond of relationship between the two is not at first apparent, yet
+there are subtle ties of kinship between the two. If we take a Hubbard
+and cut it off at the hips, we have only a dressing-sack with a yoke.
+The dressing-sack, however, cannot be walked on, even when the wearer
+is stooping, and in this respect it has the advantage of the other; it
+is also supposed to fit in the back, but it never does.
+
+Doubtless in the wise economy of the universe, where every weed has
+its function, even this garment has its place--else it would not be.
+
+Possibly one may take a nap, or arrange one's crown of glory to better
+advantage in a "boudoir négligée," or an invalid may be thus tempted
+to think of breakfast. Indeed, the habit is apt to begin during
+illness, when a friend presents the ailing lady with a dainty affair
+of silk and lace which inclines the suffering soul to frivolities.
+Presently she sits up, takes notice, and plans more garments of the
+sort, so that after she fully recovers all the world may see these
+becoming things!
+
+The worst of the habit is that all the world does see. Fancy runs riot
+with one pattern, a sewing-machine, and all the remnants a single
+purse can compass. The lady with a kindly feeling for colour browses
+along the bargain counter and speedily acquires a rainbow for her own.
+Each morning she assumes a different phase, and, at the end of the
+week, one's recollection of her is lost in a kaleidoscopic whirl.
+
+Red, now--is anything prettier than red? And how the men admire it!
+Does not the dark lady build wisely who dons a red dressing-sack on a
+cold morning, that her husband may carry a bright bit of colour to the
+office in his fond memories of home?
+
+A book with a red cover, a red cushion, crimson draperies, and scarlet
+ribbons, are all notoriously pleasing to monsieur--why not a red
+dressing-sack?
+
+If questioned, monsieur does not know why, yet gradually his passion
+for red will wane, then fail. Later in the game, he will be affronted
+by the colour, even as the gentleman cow in the pasture. It is not the
+colour, dear madame, but the shiftless garment, which has wrought this
+change.
+
+There are few who dare to assume pink, for one must have a complexion
+of peaches and cream, delicately powdered at that, before the rosy
+hues are becoming. Yet, the sallow lady, with streaks of grey in her
+hair, crow's feet around her eyes, and little time tracks registered
+all over her face, will put on a pink dressing-sack when she gets
+ready for breakfast. She would scream with horror at the thought of a
+pink and white organdie gown, made over rosy taffeta, but the kimono
+is another story.
+
+Green dressing-sacks are not often seen, but more's the pity, for in
+the grand array of colour nothing should be lacking, and the wearers
+of these garments never seem to stop to think whether or not they are
+becoming. What could be more cheerful on a cloudy morning than a
+flannel négligée of the blessed shade of green consecrated to the
+observance of the seventeenth of March?
+
+It looks as well as many things which are commonly welded into
+dressing-sacks; then why this invidious distinction?
+
+When we approach blue in our dressing-sack rainbow, speech becomes
+pitifully weak. Ancient maidens and matrons, with olive skins,
+proudly assume a turquoise négligée. Blue flannel, with cascades of
+white lace--could anything be more attractive? It has only one
+rival--the garment of lavender eiderdown flannel, the button-holes
+stitched with black yarn, which the elderly widow too often puts on
+when the tide of her grief has turned.
+
+The combination of black with any shade of purple is well fitted to
+produce grief, even as the cutting of an onion will bring tears. Could
+the dear departed see his relict in the morning, with lavender
+eiderdown environment, he would appreciate his mercies as never
+before.
+
+The speaking shades of yellow and orange are much affected by German
+ladies for dressing-sacks, and also for the knitted tippets which our
+Teutonic friends wear, in and out of the house, from October to July.
+Canary yellow is delicate and becoming to most, but it is German taste
+to wear orange.
+
+At first, perhaps, with a sense of the fitness of things, the négligée
+is worn only in one's own room. She says: "It's so comfortable!"
+There are degrees in comfort, varying from the easy, perfect fit of
+one's own skin to a party gown which dazzles envious observers, and
+why is the adjective reserved for the educated but abbreviated Mother
+Hubbard?
+
+"The apparel oft proclaims the man," and even more is woman dependent
+upon her clothes for physical, moral, and intellectual support. An
+uncorseted body will soon make its influence felt upon the mind. The
+steel-and-whalebone spine which properly reinforces all feminine
+vertebra is literally the backbone of a woman's self-respect.
+
+Would the iceman or the janitor hesitate to "talk back" to the
+uncorseted lady in a pink dressing-sack?--Hardly!
+
+But confront the erring man with a quiet, dignified woman in a crisp
+shirt-waist and a clean collar--verily he will think twice before he
+ventures an excuse for his failings.
+
+The iceman and the grocery boy see more dressing-sacks than most
+others, for they are privileged to approach the back doors of
+residences, and to hold conversations with the lady of the house,
+after the departure of him whose duty and pleasure it is to pay for
+the remnants. And in the lower strata they are known by their clothes.
+
+"Fifty pounds for the red dressing-sack," says the iceman to his
+helper, "and a hundred for the blue. Step lively now!"
+
+And how should madame know that her order for a steak, a peck of
+potatoes, and two lemons, is registered in the grocery boy's book
+under the laconic title, "Pink"?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After breakfast, when she sits down to read the paper and make her
+plans for the day, the insidious dressing-sack gets in its deadly
+work.
+
+"I won't dress," she thinks, "until I get ready to go out." After
+luncheon, she is too tired to go out, and too nearly dead to dress.
+
+Friends come in, perhaps, and say: "Oh, how comfortable you look!
+Isn't that a dear kimono?" Madame plumes herself with conscious pride,
+for indeed it is a dear kimono, and already she sees herself with a
+reputation for "exquisite négligée."
+
+The clock strikes six, and presently the lord of the manor comes home
+to be fed. "I'm dreadfully sorry, dear, you should find me looking
+so," says the lady of his heart, "but I just haven't felt well enough
+to dress. You don't mind, do you?"
+
+The dear, good, subdued soul says he is far from minding, and dinner
+is like breakfast as far as dressing-sacks go.
+
+Perhaps, in the far depths of his nature, the man wonders why it was
+that, in the halcyon days of courtship, he never beheld his beloved in
+the midst of a gunny--no, a dressing-sack. Of course, then, she didn't
+have to keep house, and didn't have so many cares to tire her. Poor
+little thing! Perhaps she isn't well!
+
+Isn't she? Let another woman telephone that she has tickets for the
+matinée, and behold the transformation! Within certain limits and
+barring severe headaches, a woman is always well enough to do what she
+wants to do--and no more.
+
+As the habit creeps upon its victim, she loses sight of the fact
+that there are other clothes. If she has a golf cape, she may venture
+to go to the letter-box or even to market in her favourite garment.
+After a while, when the habit is firmly fixed, a woman will wear a
+dressing-sack all the time--that is, some women will, except on rare
+and festive occasions. Sometimes in self-defence, she will say that
+her husband loves soft, fluffy feminine things, and can't bear to see
+her in a tailor-made outfit. This is why she wears the "soft fluffy
+things," which, with her, always mean dressing-sacks, all the time he
+is away from home, as well as when he is there.
+
+It is a mooted question whether shiftlessness causes dressing-sacks,
+or dressing-sacks cause shiftlessness, but there is no doubt about the
+loving association of the two. The woman who has nothing to do, and
+not even a shadow of a purpose in life, will enshrine her helpless
+back in a dressing-sack. She can't wear corsets, because, forsooth,
+they "hurt" her. She can't sit at the piano, because it's hard on her
+back. She can't walk, because she "isn't strong enough." She can't
+sew, because it makes a pain between her shoulders, and indeed why
+should she sew when she has plenty of dressing-sacks?
+
+This type of woman always boards, _if she can_, or has plenty of
+servants at her command, and, in either case, her mind is free to
+dwell upon her troubles.
+
+First, there is her own weak physical condition. Just wait until she
+tells you about the last pain she had. She doesn't feel like dressing
+for dinner, but she will try to wash her face, if you will excuse her!
+When she returns, she has plucked up enough energy to change her
+dressing-sack!
+
+The only cure for the habit is a violent measure which few indeed are
+brave enough to adopt. Make a bonfire of the offensive garments, dear
+lady; then stay away from the remnant counters, and after a while you
+will become immune.
+
+Nothing is done in a négligée of this sort which cannot be done
+equally well in a shirt-waist, crisp and clean, with a collar and
+belt.
+
+There is a popular delusion to the effect that household tasks
+require slipshod garments and unkempt hair, but let the frowsy ones
+contemplate the trained nurse in her spotless uniform, with her snowy
+cap and apron and her shining hair. Let the doubtful ones go to a
+cooking school, and see a neat young woman, in a blue gingham gown and
+a white apron, prepare an eight-course dinner and emerge spotless from
+the ordeal. We get from life, in most cases, exactly what we put into
+it. The world is a mirror which gives us smiles or frowns, as we
+ourselves may choose. The woman who faces the world in a shirt-waist
+will get shirt-waist appreciation, while for the dressing-sack there
+is only a slipshod reward.
+
+
+
+
+In the Meadow
+
+
+     The flowers bow their dainty heads,
+       And see in the shining stream
+     A vision of sky and silver clouds,
+       As bright as a fairy's dream.
+
+     The great trees nod their sleepy boughs,
+       The song birds come and go,
+     And all day long, to the waving ferns
+       The south wind whispers low.
+
+     All day among the blossoms sweet,
+       The laughing sunbeams play,
+     And down the stream, in rose-leaf boats
+       The fairies sail away.
+
+
+
+
+ One Woman's Solution of the
+ Servant Problem
+
+
+Being a professional woman, my requirements in the way of a housemaid
+were rather special. While at times I can superintend my small
+household, and direct my domestic affairs, there are long periods
+during which I must have absolute quiet, untroubled by door bell,
+telephone, or the remnants of roast beef.
+
+There are two of us, in a modern six room apartment, in a city where
+the servant problem has forced a large and ever-increasing percentage
+of the population into small flats. We have late breakfasts, late
+dinners, a great deal of company, and an amount of washing, both house
+and personal, which is best described as "unholy."
+
+Five or six people often drop in informally, and unexpectedly, for
+the evening, which means, of course, a midnight "spread," and an
+enormous pile of dishes to be washed in the morning. There are,
+however, some advantages connected with the situation. We have a
+laundress besides the maid; we have a twelve-o'clock breakfast on
+Sunday instead of a dinner, getting the cold lunch ourselves in the
+evening, thus giving the girl a long afternoon and evening; and we are
+away from home a great deal, often staying weeks at a time.
+
+The eternal "good wages to right party" of the advertisements was our
+inducement also, but, apparently, there were no "right parties!"
+
+The previous incumbent, having departed in a fit of temper at half an
+hour's notice, and left me, so to speak, "in the air," with dinner
+guests on the horizon a day ahead, I betook myself to an intelligence
+office, where, strangely enough, there seems to be no intelligence,
+and grasped the first chance of relief.
+
+Nothing more unpromising could possibly be imagined. The new maid was
+sad, ugly of countenance, far from strong physically, and in every way
+hopeless and depressing. She listened, unemotionally, to my glowing
+description of the situation. Finally she said, "Ay tank Ay try it."
+
+She came, looked us over, worked a part of a week, and announced that
+she couldn't stay. "Ay can't feel like home here," she said. "Ay am
+not satisfied."
+
+She had been in her last place for three years, and left because "my's
+lady, she go to Europe." I persuaded her to try it for a while longer,
+and gave her an extra afternoon or two off, realising that she must be
+homesick.
+
+After keeping us on tenter-hooks for two weeks, she sent for her
+trunk. I discovered that she was a fine laundress, carefully washing
+and ironing the things which were too fine to go into the regular
+wash; a most excellent cook, her kitchen and pantry were at all times
+immaculate; she had no followers, and few friends; meals were ready
+on the stroke of the hour, and she had the gift of management.
+
+Offset to this was a furious temper, an atmosphere of gloom and
+depression which permeated the house and made us feel funereal,
+impertinence of a quality difficult to endure, and the callous,
+unfeeling, almost inhuman characteristics which often belong in a high
+degree to the Swedes.
+
+For weeks I debated with myself whether or not I could stand it to
+have her in the house. I have spent an hour on my own back porch, when
+I should have been at work, because I was afraid to pass through the
+room which she happened to be cleaning. Times without number, a crisp
+muffin, or a pot of perfect coffee, has made me postpone speaking the
+fateful words which would have separated us. She sighed and groaned
+and wept at her work, worried about it, and was a fiend incarnate if
+either of us was five minutes late for dinner. We often hurried
+through the evening meal so as to leave her free for her evening out,
+even though I had long since told her not to wash the dishes after
+dinner, but to pile them neatly in the sink and leave them until
+morning.
+
+Before long, however, the strictly human side of the problem began to
+interest me. I had cherished lifelong theories in regard to the
+brotherhood of man and the uplifting power of personal influence. I
+had at times been tempted to try settlement work, and here I had a
+settlement subject in my own kitchen.
+
+There was not a suggestion of fault with the girl's work. She kept her
+part of the contract, and did it well; but across the wall between us,
+she glared at--and hated--me.
+
+But, deliberately, I set to work in defence of my theory. I ignored
+the impertinence, and seemingly did not hear the crash of dishes and
+the banging of doors. When it came to an issue, I said calmly, though
+my soul quaked within me: "You are not here to tell me what you will
+do and what you won't. You are here to carry out my orders, and when
+you cannot, it is time for you to go."
+
+If she asked me a question about her work which I could not answer
+offhand, I secretly consulted a standard cook-book, and later gave her
+the desired information airily. I taught her to cook many of the
+things which I could cook well, and imbued her with a sort of sneaking
+respect for my knowledge. Throughout, I treated her with the perfect
+courtesy which one lady accords to another, ignoring the impertinence.
+I took pains to say "please" and "thank you." Many a time I bit my
+lips tightly against my own rising rage, and afterward in calmness
+recognised a superior opportunity for self-discipline.
+
+For three or four months, while the beautiful theory wavered in the
+balance, we fought--not outwardly, but beneath the surface. Daily, I
+meditated a summary discharge, dissuaded only by an immaculate house
+and perfectly cooked breakfasts and dinners. I still cherished a
+lingering belief in personal influence, in spite of the wall which
+reared itself between us.
+
+A small grey kitten, with wobbly legs and an infantile mew, made the
+first breach in the wall. She took care of it, loved it, petted it,
+and began to smile semi-occasionally. She, too, said "please" and
+"thank you." My husband suggested that we order ten kittens, but I let
+the good work go on with one, for the time being. Gradually, I learned
+that the immovable exterior was the natural protection against an
+abnormal sensitiveness both to praise and blame. Besides the cat, she
+had two other "weak spots"--an unswerving devotion to a widowed sister
+with two children, whom she partially supported, and a love for
+flowers almost pathetic.
+
+As I could, without seeming to make a point of it, I sent things to
+the sister and the children--partially worn curtains, bits of ribbons,
+little toys, and the like. I made her room as pretty and dainty as my
+own, though the furnishings were not so expensive, and gave her a
+potted plant in a brass jar. When flowers were sent to me, I gave her
+a few for the vase in her room. She began to say "we" instead of
+"you." She spoke of "our" spoons, or "our" table linen. She asked,
+what shall "we" do about this or that? what shall "we" have for
+dinner? instead of "what do _you_ want?" She began to laugh when she
+played with the kitten, and even to sing at her work.
+
+When she did well, I praised her, as I had all along, but instead of
+saying, "Iss dat so?" when I remarked that the muffins were delicious
+or the dessert a great success, her face began to light up, and a
+smile take the place of the impersonal comment. The furious temper
+began to wane, or, at least, to be under better control. Guests
+occasionally inquired, "What have you done to that maid of yours?"
+
+Five times we have left her, for one or two months at a time, on full
+salary, with unlimited credit at the grocery, and with from fifty to
+one hundred dollars in cash. During the intervals we heard nothing
+from her. We have returned each time to an immaculate house, a
+smiling maid, a perfectly cooked and nicely served meal, and an
+account correct to a penny, with vouchers to show for it, of the sum
+with which she had been intrusted.
+
+I noticed each time a vast pride in the fact that she had been so
+trusted, and from this developed a gratifying loyalty to the
+establishment. I had told her once to ask her sister and children to
+spend the day with her while we were gone. It seems that the children
+were noisy, and the lady in the apartment below us came up to object.
+
+An altercation ensued, ending with a threat from the lady downstairs
+to "tell Mrs. M. when she came home." Annie told me herself, with
+flashing eyes and shaking hands. I said, calmly: "The children must
+have been noisy, or she would not have complained. You are used to
+them, and besides it would sound worse downstairs than up here. But it
+doesn't amount to anything, for I had told you you could have the
+children here, and if I hadn't been able to trust you I wouldn't have
+left you." Thus the troubled waters were calmed.
+
+The crucial test of her qualities came when I entered upon a long
+period of exhaustive effort. The first day, we both had a hard time,
+as her highly specialised Baptist conscience would not permit her to
+say I was "not at home," when I was merely writing a book. After she
+thoroughly understood that I was not to be disturbed unless the house
+took fire, further quiet being insured by disconnecting the doorbell
+and muffling the telephone, things went swimmingly.
+
+"Annie," I said, "I want you to run this house until I get through
+with my book. Here is a hundred dollars to start with. Don't let
+anybody disturb me." She took it with a smile, and a cheerful "all
+right."
+
+From that moment to the end, I had even less care than I should have
+had in a well-equipped hotel. Not a sound penetrated my solitude. If
+I went out for a drink of water, she did not speak to me. We had
+delicious dinners and dainty breakfasts which might have waited for
+us, but we never waited a moment for them. She paid herself regularly
+every Monday morning, kept all receipts, sent out my husband's
+laundry, kept a strict list of it, mended our clothes, managed our
+household as economically as I myself could have done it, and, best of
+all, insured me from any sort of interruption with a sort of fierce
+loyalty which is beyond any money value.
+
+Once I overheard a colloquy at my front door, which was briefly and
+decisively terminated thus: "Ay already tell you dat you _not see
+her_! She says to me, 'Annie, you keep dose peoples off from me,' and
+Ay _keep dem off_!" I never have known what dear friend was thus
+turned away from my inhospitable door.
+
+Fully appreciating my blessings, the night I finished my work I went
+into the kitchen with a crisp, new, five-dollar bill. "Annie," I said,
+"here is a little extra money for you. You've been so nice about the
+house while I've been busy."
+
+She opened her eyes wide, and stared. "You don't have to do dat," she
+said.
+
+"I know I don't," I laughed, "but I like to do it."
+
+"You don't have to do dat," she repeated. "Ay like to do de
+housekeeping."
+
+"I know," I said again, "and I like to do this. You've done lots of
+things for me you didn't have to do. Why shouldn't I do something for
+you?"
+
+At that she took it, offering me a rough wet hand, which I took
+gravely. "Tank you," she said, and the tears rolled down her cheeks.
+
+"You've earned it," I assured her, "and you deserve it, and I'm very
+glad I can give it to you."
+
+From that hour she has been welded to me in a bond which I fondly hope
+is indestructible. She laughs and sings at her work, pets her beloved
+kitten, and diffuses through my six rooms the atmosphere of good
+cheer. She "looks after me," anticipates my wishes, and dedicates to
+me a continual loyal service which has no equivalent in dollars and
+cents. She asked me, hesitatingly, if she might not get some one to
+fill her place for three months while she went back to Sweden. I
+didn't like the idea, but I recognised her well-defined right.
+
+"Ay not go," she said, "if you not want me to. Ay tell my sister dat
+I want to stay wid Mrs. M. until she send me away."
+
+I knew she would have to go some time before she settled down to
+perpetual residence in an alien land, so I bade her God-speed. She
+secured the substitute and instructed her, arranged the matter of
+wages, and vouched for her honesty, but not for her work.
+
+Before she left the city, I found that the substitute was hopelessly
+incompetent and stupid. When Annie came to say "good-bye" to me, I
+told her about the new girl. She broke down and wept. "Ay sorry Ay try
+to go," she sobbed. "Ay tell my sister dere iss nobody what can take
+care of Mrs. M. lak Ay do!"
+
+I was quite willing to agree with her, but I managed to dry her tears.
+Discovering that she expected to spend two nights in a day coach, and
+remembering one dreadful night when I could get no berth, I gave her
+the money for a sleeping-car ticket both ways, as a farewell gift. The
+tears broke forth afresh. "You been so good to me and to my sister,"
+she sobbed. "Ay can't never forget dat!"
+
+"Cheer up," I answered, wiping the mist from my own eyes. "Go on, and
+have the best time you ever had in your life, and don't worry about
+me--I'll get along somehow. And if you need money while you are away,
+write to me, and I'll send you whatever you need. We'll fix it up
+afterward."
+
+Once again she looked at me, with the strangest look I have ever seen
+on the human face.
+
+"Tank you," she said slowly. "Dere iss not many ladies would say dat."
+
+"Perhaps not," I replied, "but, remember, Annie, I can trust you."
+
+"Yes," she cried, her face illumined as by some great inward light,
+"you can trust me!"
+
+I do not think she loves us yet, but I believe in time she will.
+
+The day the new girl came, I happened to overhear a much valued
+reference to myself: "Honestly," she said, "Ay been here more dan one
+year, and Ay never hear a wrong word between her and him, nor between
+her and me. It's shust wonderful. Ay isn't been see anyting like it
+since Ay been in diss country."
+
+"Is it so wonderful?" I asked myself, as I stole away, my own heart
+aglow with the consciousness of a moral victory, "and is the lack of
+self-control and human kindness at the bottom of the American servant
+problem? Are we women such children that we cannot deal wisely with
+our intellectual inferiors?" And more than all I had given her, as I
+realised then for the first time, was the power of self-discipline
+and self-control which she, all unknowingly, had developed in me.
+
+I have not ceased the "treatment," even though the patient is nearly
+well. It costs me nothing to praise her when she deserves it, to take
+an occasional friend into her immaculate kitchen, and to show the
+shining white pantry shelves (without papers), while she blushes and
+smiles with pleasure. It costs me nothing to see that she overhears
+me while I tell a friend over the telephone how capable she has been
+during the stress of my work, or how clean the house is when we come
+home after a long absence. It costs me nothing to send her out for a
+walk, or a visit to a nearby friend, on the afternoons when her work
+is finished and I am to be at home--nothing to call her attention to a
+beautiful sunset or a perfect day, or to tell her some amusing story
+that her simple mind can appreciate. It costs me nothing to tell
+her how well she looks in her cap and apron (only I call the cap a
+"hair-bow"), nor that one of the guests said she made the best cake
+she had ever eaten in her life.
+
+It costs me little to give her a pretty hatpin, or some other girlish
+trifle at Easter, to bring her some souvenir of our travels, to give
+her a fresh ribbon for her belt from my bolt, or some little toy "for
+de children."
+
+It means only a thought to say when she goes out, "Good-bye! Have a
+good time!" or to say when I go out, "Good-bye! Be good!" It means
+little to me to tell her how much my husband or our guests have
+enjoyed the dinner, or to have him go into the kitchen sometimes,
+while she is surrounded by a mountain of dishes, with a cheery word
+and a fifty-cent piece.
+
+It isn't much out of my way to do a bit of shopping for her when I am
+shopping for myself, and no trouble at all to plan for her new gowns,
+or to tell her that her new hat is very pretty and becoming.
+
+When her temper gets the better of her these days, I can laugh her
+out of it. "To think," I said once, "of a fine, capable girl like you
+flying into a rage because some one has borrowed your clothesline
+without asking for it!"
+
+The clouds vanished with a smile. "Dat iss funny of me," she said.
+
+When her work goes wrong, as of course it sometimes does, though
+rarely, and she is worrying for fear I shall be displeased, I say:
+"Never mind, Annie; things don't always go right for any of us. Don't
+worry about it, but be careful next time."
+
+It has cost me time and effort and money, and an infinite amount of
+patience and tact, not to mention steady warfare with myself, but in
+return, what have I? A housemaid, as nearly perfect, perhaps, as they
+can ever be on this faulty earth, permanently in my service, as I hope
+and believe.
+
+If any one offers her higher wages, I shall meet the "bid," for she is
+worth as much to me as she can be to any one else. Besides giving me
+superior service, she has done me a vast amount of good in furnishing
+me the needed material for the development of my character.
+
+On her own ground, she respects my superior knowledge. Once or twice
+I have heard her say of some friend, "Her's lady, she know nodding at
+all about de housekeeping--no, nodding at all!"
+
+The airy contempt of the tone is quite impossible to describe.
+
+A neighbour whom she assisted in a time of domestic stress, during my
+absence, told me amusedly of her reception in her own kitchen. "You
+don't have to come all de time to de kitchen to tell me," remarked
+Annie.
+
+"Doesn't Mrs. M. do that?" queried my neighbour, lightly.
+
+"Ay should say not," returned the capable one, indignantly. "She nefer
+come in de kitchen, and _she know, too_!"
+
+While that was not literally true, because I do go into my kitchen if
+I want to, and cook there if I like, I make a point of not intruding.
+She knows what she is to do, and I leave her to do it, in peace and
+comfort.
+
+Briefly summarised, the solution from my point of view is this. _Know
+her work yourself, down to the last detail_; pay the wages which other
+people would be glad to pay for the same service; keep your temper,
+and, in the face of everything, _be kind_! Remember that housework is
+hard work--that it never stays done--that a meal which it takes half a
+day to prepare is disposed of in half an hour. Remember, too, that it
+requires much intelligence and good judgment to be a good cook, and
+that the daily tasks lack inspiration. The hardest part of housework
+must be done at a time when many other people are free for rest and
+enjoyment, and it carries with it a social bar sinister when it is
+done for money. The woman who does it for her board and clothes, in
+her own kitchen, does not necessarily lose caste, but doing it for a
+higher wage, in another's kitchen, makes one almost an outcast.
+Strange and unreasonable, but true.
+
+It was at my own suggestion that she began to leave the dishes piled
+up in the sink until morning. When the room is otherwise immaculate,
+a tray of neatly piled plates, even if unwashed, does not disturb my
+æsthetic sense.
+
+Ordinarily, she is free for the evening at half-past seven or a
+quarter of eight--always by eight. Her evenings are hers, not
+mine,--unless I pay her extra, as I always do. A dollar or so counts
+for nothing in the expense of an entertainment, and she both earns and
+deserves the extra wage.
+
+If I am to entertain twenty or thirty people--the house will hold no
+more, and I cannot ask more than ten to dinner--I consult with her,
+decide upon the menu, tell her that she can have all the help she
+needs, and go my ways in peace. I can order the flowers, decorate the
+table, put on my best gown, and receive my guests, unwearied, with an
+easy mind.
+
+When I am not expecting guests, I can leave the house immediately
+after breakfast, without a word about dinner, and return to the right
+sort of a meal at seven o'clock, bringing a guest or two with me, if I
+telephone first.
+
+I can work for six weeks or two months in a seclusion as perfect as I
+could have in the Sahara Desert, and my household, meanwhile, will
+move as if on greased skids. I can go away for two months and hear
+nothing from her, and yet know that everything is all right at home. I
+think no more about it, so far as responsibility is concerned, when I
+am travelling, than as if I had no home at all. When we leave the
+apartment alone in the evening, we turn on the most of the lights,
+being assured by the police that burglars will never molest a
+brilliantly illuminated house.
+
+The morose countenance of my ugly maid has subtly changed. It
+radiates, in its own way, beauty and good cheer. Her harsh voice is
+gentle, her manner is kind, her tastes are becoming refined, her ways
+are those of a lady.
+
+My friends and neighbours continually allude to the transformation as
+"a miracle." The janitor remarked, in a burst of confidence, that he
+"never saw anybody change so." He "reckoned," too, that "it must be
+the folks she lives with!" Annie herself, conscious of a change,
+recently said complacently: "Ay guess Ay wass one awful crank when Ay
+first come here."
+
+And so it happens that the highest satisfaction is connected with the
+beautiful theory, triumphantly proven now, against heavy odds.
+Whatever else I may have done, I have taught one woman the workman's
+pride in her work, shown her where true happiness lies, and set her
+feet firmly on the path of right and joyous living.
+
+
+
+
+To a Violin
+
+(Antonius Stradivarius, 1685.)
+
+
+     What flights of years have gone to fashion thee,
+     My violin! What centuries have wrought
+     Thy sounding fibres! What dead fingers taught
+     Thy music to awake in ecstasy
+     Beyond our human dreams? Thy melody
+     Is resurrection. Every buried thought
+     Of singing bird, or stream, or south wind, fraught
+     With tender message, or of sobbing sea,
+     Lives once again. The tempest's solemn roll
+     Is in thy passion sleeping, till the king
+     Whose touch is mastery shall sound thy soul.
+     The organ tones of ocean shalt thou bring,
+     The crashing chords of thunder, and the whole
+     Vast harmony of God. Ah, Spirit, sing!
+
+
+
+
+The Old Maid
+
+
+One of the best things the last century has done for woman is to make
+single-blessedness appear very tolerable indeed, even if it be not
+actually desirable.
+
+The woman who didn't marry used to be looked down upon as a sort of a
+"leftover" without a thought, apparently, that she may have refused
+many a chance to change her attitude toward the world. But now, the
+"bachelor maid" is welcomed everywhere, and is not considered
+eccentric on account of her oneness.
+
+With the long records of the divorce courts before their eyes, it is
+not very unusual for the younger generation of women nowadays
+deliberately to choose spinsterhood as their independent lot in life.
+
+A girl said the other day: "It's no use to say that a woman can't
+marry if she wants to. Look around you, and see the women who _have_
+married, and then ask yourself if there is anybody who can't!"
+
+This is a great truth very concisely stated. It is safe to say that no
+woman ever reached twenty-five years of age, and very few have passed
+twenty, without having an opportunity to become somebody's mate.
+
+A very small maiden with very bright eyes once came to her mother with
+the question: "Mamma, do you think I shall ever have a chance to get
+married?"
+
+And the mother answered: "Surely you will, my child; the woods are
+full of offers of marriage--no woman can avoid them."
+
+And ere many years had passed the maiden had learned that the wisdom
+of her mother's prophecy was fully vindicated.
+
+Every one knows that a woman needs neither beauty, talent, nor money
+to win the deepest and sincerest love that man is capable of giving.
+
+Single life is, with rare exceptions, a matter of choice and not of
+necessity; and while it is true that a happy married life is the
+happiest position for either man or woman, there are many things which
+are infinitely worse than being an old maid, and chiefest among these
+is marrying the wrong man!
+
+The modern woman looks her future squarely in the face and decides
+according to her best light whether her happiness depends upon
+spinsterhood or matrimony. This decision is of course influenced very
+largely by the quality of her chances in either direction, but if the
+one whom she fully believes to be the right man comes along, he is
+likely to be able to overcome strong objections to the married state.
+If love comes to her from the right source, she takes it gladly;
+otherwise she bravely goes her way alone, often showing the world that
+some of the most mother-hearted women are not really mothers. Think of
+the magnificent solitude of such women as Florence Nightingale and our
+own splendid Frances Willard! Who shall say that these, and thousands
+of others of earth's grandest souls, were not better for their
+single-heartedness in the service of humanity?
+
+A writer in a leading journal recently said: "The fact that a woman
+remains single is a tribute to her perception. She gains an added
+dignity from being hard to suit."
+
+This, from the pen of a man, is somewhat of a revelation, in the light
+of various masculine criticisms concerning superfluous women. No woman
+is superfluous. God made her, and put her into this world to help her
+fellow-beings. There is a little niche somewhere which she, and she
+alone, can fill. She finds her own completeness in rounding out the
+lives of others.
+
+It has been said that the average man may be piloted through life by
+one woman, but it must be admitted that several of him need somewhere
+near a dozen of the fair sex to wait upon him at the same time. His
+wife and mother are kept "hustling," while his "sisters and his aunts"
+are likely to be "on the keen jump" from the time his lordship enters
+the house until he leaves it!
+
+But to return to the "superfluous woman,"--although we cannot
+literally return to her because she does not exist. Of the "old maid"
+of to-day, it is safe to say that she has her allotted plane of
+usefulness. She isn't the type our newspaper brethren delight to
+caricature. She doesn't dwell altogether upon the subject of "woman's
+sphere," which, by the way, comes very near being the plane of the
+earth's sphere, and she need not, for her position is now well
+recognised.
+
+She doesn't wear corkscrew curls and hideous reform garments. She is a
+dainty, feminine, broad-minded woman, and a charming companion. Men
+are her friends, and often her lovers, in her old age as well as in
+her youth.
+
+Every old maid has her love story, a little romance that makes her
+heart young again as she dreams it over in the firelight, and it
+calls a happy smile to the faded face.
+
+Or, perhaps, it is the old, sad story of a faithless lover, or a
+happiness spoiled by gossips--or it may be the scarcely less sad story
+of love and death.
+
+Ibsen makes two of his characters, a young man and woman who love each
+other, part voluntarily on the top of a high mountain in order that
+they may be enabled to keep their high ideals and uplifting love for
+each other.
+
+So the old maid keeps her ideals, not through fulfilment, but through
+memory, and she is far happier than many a woman who finds her ideal
+surprisingly and disagreeably real.
+
+The bachelor girl and the bachelor man are much on the increase.
+Marriage is not in itself a failure, but the people who enter unwisely
+into this solemn covenant too often are not only failures, but bitter
+disappointments to those who love them best.
+
+Life for men and women means the highest usefulness and happiness, for
+the terms are synonymous, neither being able to exist without the
+other.
+
+The model spinster of to-day is philanthropic. She is connected, not
+with innumerable charities, but with a few well-chosen ones. She gives
+freely of her time and money in many ways, where her left hand
+scarcely knoweth what her right doeth, and the record of her good
+works is not found in the chronicles of the world.
+
+She is literary, musical, or artistic. She is a devoted and loyal club
+member, and is well informed on the leading topics of the day, while
+the resources of her well-balanced mind are always at the service of
+her friends.
+
+And when all is said and done, the highest and truest life is within
+the reach of us all. Doing well whatever is given us to do will keep
+us all busy, and married or single, no woman has a right to be idle.
+The old maid may be womanly and mother-hearted as well as the wife and
+mother.
+
+
+
+
+The Spinster's Rubaiyat
+
+
+     I
+
+     Wake! For the hour of hope will soon take flight
+     And on your form and features leave a blight;
+     Since Time, who heals full many an open wound,
+     More oft than not is impolite.
+
+     II
+
+     Before my relatives began to chide,
+     Methought the voice of conscience said inside:
+     "Why should you want a husband, when you have
+     A cat who seldom will at home abide?"
+
+     III
+
+     And, when the evening breeze comes in the door,
+     The lamp smokes like a chimney, only more;
+     And yet the deacon of the church
+     Is telling every one my parrot swore.
+
+     IV
+
+     Behold, my aunt into my years inquires,
+     Then swiftly with my parents she conspires,
+     And in the family record changes dates--
+     In that same book that says all men are liars.
+
+     V
+
+     Come, fill the cup and let the kettle sing!
+     What though upon my finger gleams no ring,
+     Save that cheap turquoise that I bought myself?
+     The coming years a gladsome change may bring.
+
+     VI
+
+     Here, minion, fill the steaming cup that clears
+     The skin I will not have exposed to jeers,
+     And rub this wrinkle vigorously until
+     The maddening crow's-foot wholly disappears.
+
+     VII
+
+     And let me don some artificial bloom,
+     And turn the lamps down low, and make a gloom
+     That spreads from library to hall and stair;
+     Thus do I look my best--but ah, for whom?
+
+
+
+
+The Rights of Dogs
+
+
+We hear a great deal about the "rights of men" and still more,
+perhaps, about the "rights of women," but few stop to consider those
+which properly belong to the friend and companion of both--the dog.
+
+According to our municipal code, a dog must be muzzled from June 1st
+to September 30th. The wise men who framed this measure either did not
+know, or did not stop to consider, that a dog perspires and "cools
+off" only at his mouth.
+
+Man and the horse have tiny pores distributed all over the body, but
+in the dog they are found only in the tongue.
+
+Any one who has had a fever need not be told what happened when these
+pores ceased to act; what, then, must be the sufferings of a dog on a
+hot day, when, securely muzzled, he takes his daily exercise?
+
+Even on the coolest days, the barbarous muzzle will fret a
+thoroughbred almost to insanity, unless, indeed, he has brains to free
+himself, as did a brilliant Irish setter which we once knew. This wise
+dog would run far ahead of his human guardian, and with the help of
+his forepaws slip the strap over his slender head, then hide the
+offending muzzle in the gutter, and race onward again. When the loss
+was discovered, it was far too late to remedy it by any search that
+could be instituted.
+
+And still, without this uncomfortable encumbrance, it is unsafe for
+any valuable dog to be seen, even on his own doorsteps, for the
+"dog-catcher" is ever on the look-out for blue-blooded victims.
+
+The homeless mongrel, to whom a painless death would be a blessing, is
+left to get a precarious living as best he may from the garbage boxes,
+and spread pestilence from house to house, but the setter, the collie,
+and the St. Bernard are choked into insensibility with a wire noose,
+hurled into a stuffy cage, and with the thermometer at ninety in the
+shade, are dragged through the blistering city, as a sop to that
+Cerberus of the law which demands for its citizens safety from dogs,
+and pays no attention to the lawlessness of men.
+
+The dog tax which is paid every year is sufficient to guarantee the
+interest of the owner in his dog. Howells has pitied "the dogless
+man," and Thomas Nelson Page has said somewhere that "some of us know
+what it is to be loved by a dog."
+
+Countless writers have paid tribute to his fidelity and devotion, and
+to the constant forgiveness of blows and neglect which spring from the
+heart of the commonest cur.
+
+The trained hunter, who is as truly a sportsman as the man who brings
+down the birds he finds, can be easily fretted into madness by the
+injudicious application of the muzzle.
+
+The average dog is a gentleman and does not attack people for the
+pleasure of it, and it is lamentably true that people who live in
+cities often find it necessary to keep some sort of a dog as a
+guardian to life and property. In spite of his loyalty, which every
+one admits, the dog is an absolute slave. Men with less sense, and
+less morality, constitute a court from which he has no appeal.
+
+Four or five years of devotion to his master's interests, and four or
+five years of peaceful, friendly conduct, count for absolutely nothing
+beside the perjured statement of some man, or even woman, who, from
+spite against the owner, is willing to assert, "the dog is vicious."
+
+     "He is very imprudent, a dog is," said Jerome K. Jerome. "He
+     never makes it his business to inquire whether you are in
+     the right or wrong--never bothers as to whether you are
+     going up or down life's ladder--never asks whether you are
+     rich or poor, silly or wise, saint or sinner. You are his
+     pal. That is enough for him, and come luck or misfortune,
+     good repute or bad, honour or shame, he is going to stick to
+     you, to comfort you, guard you, and give his life for you,
+     if need be--foolish, brainless, soulless dog!
+
+     "Ah! staunch old friend, with your deep, clear eyes, and
+     bright quick glances that take in all one has to say, before
+     one has time to speak it, do you know you are only an animal
+     and have no mind?
+
+     "Do you know that dull-eyed, gin-sodden lout leaning against
+     the post out there is immeasurably your intellectual
+     superior? Do you know that every little-minded selfish
+     scoundrel, who never had a thought that was not mean and
+     base--whose every action is a fraud and whose every
+     utterance is a lie; do you know that these are as much
+     superior to you as the sun is to the rush-light, you
+     honourable, brave-hearted, unselfish brute?
+
+     "They are men, you know, and men are the greatest, noblest,
+     wisest, and best beings in the universe. Any man will tell
+     you that."
+
+Are the men whom we elect to public office our masters or our
+servants? If the former, let us change our form of government; if the
+latter, let us hope that from somewhere a little light may penetrate
+their craniums and that they may be induced to give the dog a chance.
+
+
+
+
+Twilight
+
+
+     The birds were hushed into silence,
+       The clouds had sunk from sight,
+     And the great trees bowed to the summer breeze
+       That kissed the flowers good-night.
+
+     The stars came out in the cool still air,
+       From the mansions of the blest,
+     And softly, over the dim blue hills,
+       Night came to the world with rest.
+
+
+
+
+Women's Clothes in Men's Books
+
+
+When asked why women wrote better novels than men, Mr. Richard Le
+Gallienne is said to have replied, more or less conclusively, "They
+don't"; thus recalling _Punch's_ famous advice to those about to
+marry.
+
+Happily there is no segregation in literature, and masculine and
+feminine hands alike may dabble in fiction, as long as the publishers
+are willing.
+
+If we accept Zola's dictum to the effect that art is nature seen
+through the medium of a temperament, the thing is possible to many,
+though the achievement may differ both in manner and degree. For women
+have temperament--too much of it--as the hysterical novelists daily
+testify.
+
+The gentleman novelist, however, prances in boldly, where feminine
+feet well may fear to tread, and consequently has a wider scope for
+his writing. It is not for a woman to mingle in a barroom brawl and
+write of the thing as she sees it. The prize-ring, the interior of a
+cattle-ship, Broadway at four in the morning--these and countless
+other places are forbidden by her innate refinement as well as by the
+Ladies' Own, and all the other aunties who have taken upon themselves
+the guardianship of the Home with a big H.
+
+Fancy the outpouring of scorn upon the luckless offender's head if one
+should write to the Manners and Morals Department of the Ladies' Own
+as follows: "Would it be proper for a lady novelist, in search of
+local colour and new experiences, to accept the escort of a strange
+man at midnight if he was too drunk to recognise her afterward?" Yet a
+man in the same circumstances would not hesitate to put an intoxicated
+woman into a sea-going cab, and would plume himself for a year and a
+day upon his virtuous performance.
+
+All things are considered proper for a man who is about to write a
+book. Like the disciple of Mary McLane who stole a horse in order to
+get the emotions of a police court, he may delve deeply not only into
+life, but into that under-stratum which is not spoken of, where
+respectable journals circulate.
+
+Everything is fish that comes into his net. If conscientious, he may
+even undertake marriage in order to study the feminine personal
+equations at close range. Woman's emotions, singly and collectively,
+are pilloried before his scientific gaze. He cowers before one
+problem, and one only--woman's clothes!
+
+Carlyle, after long and painful thought, arrives at the conclusion
+that "cut betokens intellect and talent; colour reveals temper and
+heart."
+
+This reminds one of the language of flowers, and the directions given
+for postage-stamp flirtation. If that massive mind had penetrated
+further into the mysteries of the subject, we might have been told
+that a turnover collar indicated that the woman was a High Church
+Episcopalian who had embroidered two altar cloths, and that suède
+gloves show a yielding but contradictory nature.
+
+Clothes are, undoubtedly, indices of character and taste, as well as a
+sop to conventionality, but this only when one has the wherewithal to
+browse at will in the department store. Many a woman with ermine
+tastes has only a rabbit-fur pocket-book, and thus her clothes wrong
+her in the sight of gods and women, though men know nothing about it.
+
+Once upon a time there was a notion to the effect that women dressed
+to please men, but that idea has long since been relegated to the
+limbo of forgotten things.
+
+Not one man in a thousand can tell the difference between Brussels
+point at thirty dollars a yard, and imitation Valenciennes at ten or
+fifteen cents a yard which was one of the "famous Friday features in
+the busy bargain basement."
+
+But across the room, yea, even from across the street, the eagle eye
+of another woman can unerringly locate the Brussels point and the
+mock Valenciennes.
+
+A man knows silk by the sound of it and diamonds by the shine. He will
+say that his heroine "was richly dressed in silk." Little does he wot
+of the difference between taffeta at eighty-five cents a yard and
+broadcloth at four dollars. Still less does he know that a white
+cotton shirt-waist represents financial ease, and a silk waist of
+festive colouring represents poverty, since it takes but two days to
+"do up" a white shirt-waist in one sense, and thirty or forty cents to
+do it up in the other!
+
+One listens with wicked delight to men's discourse upon woman's
+clothes. Now and then a man will express his preference for a tailored
+gown, as being eminently simple and satisfactory. Unless he is married
+and has seen the bills for tailored gowns, he also thinks they are
+inexpensive.
+
+It is the benedict, wise with the acquired knowledge of the serpent,
+who begs his wife to get a new party gown and let the tailor-made go
+until next season. He also knows that when the material is bought, the
+expense has scarcely begun, whereas the ignorant bachelor thinks that
+the worst is happily over.
+
+In _A Little Journey through the World_ Mr. Warner philosophised thus:
+"How a woman in a crisis hesitates before her wardrobe, and at last
+chooses just what will express her innermost feelings!"
+
+If all a woman's feelings were to be expressed by her clothes, the
+benedicts would immediately encounter financial shipwreck. On account
+of the lamentable scarcity of money and closets, one is eternally
+adjusting the emotion to the gown.
+
+Some gown, seen at the exact psychological moment, fixes forever in a
+man's mind his ideal garment. Thus we read of blue calico, of
+pink-and-white print, and more often still, of white lawn. Mad colour
+combinations run riot in the masculine fancy, as in the case of a man
+who boldly described his favourite costume as "red, with black ruffles
+down the front!"
+
+Of a hat, a man may be a surpassingly fine critic, since he recks not
+of style. Guileful is the woman who leads her liege to the millinery
+and lets him choose, taking no heed of the price and the attendant
+shock until later.
+
+A normal man is anxious that his wife shall be well dressed because it
+shows the critical observer that his business is a great success.
+After futile explorations in the labyrinth, he concerns himself simply
+with the fit, preferring always that the clothes of his heart's
+dearest shall cling to her as lovingly as a kid glove, regardless of
+the pouches and fulnesses prescribed by Dame Fashion.
+
+In the writing of books, men are at their wits' end when it comes to
+women's clothes. They are hampered by no restrictions--no thought of
+style or period enters into their calculations, and unless they have a
+wholesome fear of the unknown theme, they produce results which
+further international gaiety.
+
+Many an outrageous garment has been embalmed in a man's book, simply
+because an attractive woman once wore something like it when she fed
+the novelist. Unbalanced by the joy of the situation, he did not
+accurately observe the garb of the ministering angel, and hence we
+read of "a clinging white gown" in the days of stiff silks and rampant
+crinoline; of "the curve of the upper arm" when it took five yards for
+a pair of sleeves, and of "short walking skirts" during the reign of
+bustles and trains!
+
+In _The Blazed Trail_, Mr. White observes that his heroine was clad in
+brown which fitted her slender figure perfectly. As Hilda had yellow
+hair, "like corn silk," this was all right, and if the brown was of
+the proper golden shade, she was doubtless stunning when Thorpe first
+saw her in the forest. But the gown could not have fitted her as the
+sheath encases the dagger, for before the straight-front corsets there
+were the big sleeves, and still further back were bustles and
+_bouffant_ draperies. One does not get the impression that _The_
+_Blazed Trail_ was placed in the days of crinolines, but doubtless
+Hilda's clothes did not fit as Mr. White seems to think they did.
+
+That strenuous follower of millinery, Mr. Gibson, might give lessons
+to his friend, Mr. Davis, with advantage to the writer, if not to the
+artist. In _Captain Macklin_, the young man's cousin makes her first
+appearance in a thin gown, and a white hat trimmed with roses,
+reminding the adventurous captain of a Dresden statuette, in spite of
+the fact that she wore heavy gauntlet gloves and carried a trowel. The
+lady had been doing a hard day's work in the garden. No woman outside
+the asylum ever did gardening in such a costume, and Mr. Davis
+evidently has the hat and gown sadly mixed with some other pleasant
+impression.
+
+The feminine reader immediately hides Mr. Davis' mistake with the
+broad mantle of charity, and in her own mind clothes Beatrice properly
+in a short walking skirt, heavy shoes, shirt-waist, old hat tied down
+over the ears with a rumpled ribbon, and a pair of ancient masculine
+gloves, long since discarded by their rightful owner. Thus does lovely
+woman garden, except on the stage and in men's books.
+
+In _The Story of Eva_, Mr. Payne announces that Eva climbed out of a
+cab in "a fawn-coloured jacket," conspicuous by reason of its newness,
+and a hat "with an owl's head upon it!"
+
+The jacket was possibly a coat of tan covert cloth with strapped
+seams, but it is the startling climax which claims attention. An owl!
+Surely not, Mr. Payne! It may have been a parrot, for once upon a
+time, before the Audubon Society met with widespread recognition,
+women wore such things, and at afternoon teas where many fair
+ones were gathered together the parrot garniture was not without
+significance. But an owl's face, with its glaring glassy eyes, is
+too much like a pussy cat's to be appropriate, and one could no
+wear it at the back without conveying an unpleasant impression
+of two-facedness, if the coined word be permissible.
+
+Still the owl is no worse than the trimming suggested by a funny
+paper. The tears of mirth come yet at the picture of a hat of rough
+straw, shaped like a nest, on which sat a full-fledged Plymouth Rock
+hen, with her neck proudly, yet graciously curved. Perhaps Mr. Payne
+saw the picture and forthwith decided to do something in the same
+line, but there is a singular inappropriateness in placing the bird of
+Minerva upon the head of poor Eva, who made the old, old bargain in
+which she had everything to lose, and nothing save the bitterest
+experience to gain. A stuffed kitten, so young and innocent that its
+eyes were still blue and bleary, would have been more appropriate on
+Eva's bonnet, and just as pretty.
+
+In _The Fortunes of Oliver Horn_, Margaret Grant wears a particularly
+striking costume:
+
+     "The cloth skirt came to her ankles, which were covered with
+     yarn stockings, and her feet were encased in shoes that gave
+     him the shivers, the soles being as thick as his own and
+     the leather as tough.
+
+     "Her blouse was of grey flannel, belted to the waist by a
+     cotton saddle-girth, white and red, and as broad as her
+     hand. The tam-o-shanter was coarse and rough, evidently
+     home-made, and not at all like McFudd's, which was as soft
+     as the back of a kitten and without a seam."
+
+With all due respect to Mr. Smith, one must insist that Margaret's
+shoes were all right as regards material and build. She would have
+been more comfortable if they had been "high-necked" shoes, and, in
+that case, the yarn hosiery would not have troubled him, but that is a
+minor detail. The quibble comes at the belt, and knowing that Margaret
+was an artist, we must be sure that Mr. Smith was mistaken. It may
+have been one of the woven cotton belts, not more than two inches
+wide, which, for a dizzy moment, were at the height of fashion, and
+then tottered and fell, but a "saddle-girth"--never!
+
+In that charming morceau, _The Inn of the Silver Moon_, Mr. Viele puts
+his heroine into plaid stockings and green knickerbockers--an
+outrageous costume truly, even for wheeling.
+
+As if recognising his error, and, with veritable masculine
+stubbornness, refusing to admit it, Mr. Viele goes on to say that the
+knickerbockers were "tailor-made!" And thereby he makes a bad matter
+very much worse.
+
+In _The Wings of the Morning_, Iris, in spite of the storm through
+which the _Sirdar_ vainly attempts to make its way, appears throughout
+in a "lawn dress"--white, undoubtedly, since all sorts and conditions
+of men profess to admire white lawn!
+
+How cold the poor girl must have been! And even if she could have been
+so inappropriately gowned on shipboard, she had plenty of time to put
+on a warm and suitable tailor-made gown before she was shipwrecked.
+This is sheer fatuity, for any one with Mr. Tracy's abundant ingenuity
+could easily have contrived ruin for the tailored gown in time for
+Iris to assume masculine garb and participate bravely in that fearful
+fight on the ledge.
+
+Whence, oh whence, comes this fondness for lawn? Are not organdies,
+dimities, and embroidered muslins fully as becoming to the women who
+trip daintily through the pages of men's books? Lawn has been a back
+number for many a weary moon, and still we read of it!
+
+"When in doubt, lead trumps," might well be paraphrased thus: "When in
+doubt, put her into white lawn!" Even "J. P. M.," that gentle spirit
+to whom so many hidden things were revealed, sent his shrewish "Kate"
+off for a canter through the woods in a white gown, and, if memory
+serves, it was lawn!
+
+In _The Master_, Mr. Zangwill describes Eleanor Wyndwood as "the
+radiant apparition of a beautiful woman in a shimmering amber gown,
+from which her shoulders rose dazzling."
+
+So far so good. But a page or two farther on, that delightful minx,
+Olive Regan, wears "a dress of soft green-blue cut high, with yellow
+roses at the throat." One wonders whether Mr. Zangwill ever really saw
+a woman in any kind of a gown "with yellow roses at the throat," or
+whether it is but the slip of an overstrained fancy. The fact that he
+has married since writing this gives a goodly assurance that by this
+time he knows considerably more about gowns.
+
+Still there is always a chance that the charm may not work, for Mr.
+Arthur Stringer, who has been reported as being married to a very
+lovely woman, takes astonishing liberties in _The Silver Poppy_:
+
+     "She floated in before Reppellier, buoyant, smiling, like a
+     breath of open morning itself, a confusion of mellow
+     autumnal colours in her wine-coloured gown, and a hat of
+     roses and mottled leaves.
+
+     "Before she had as much as drawn off her gloves--and they
+     were always the most spotless of white gloves--she glanced
+     about in mock dismay, and saw that the last of the righting
+     up had already been done."
+
+Later, we read that the artist pinned an American Beauty upon her
+gown, then shook his head over the colour combination and took it
+off. If the American Beauty jarred enough for a man to notice it, the
+dress must have been the colour of claret, or Burgundy, rather than
+the clear soft gold of sauterne.
+
+This brings us up with a short turn before the hat. What colour were
+the roses? Surely they were not American Beauties, and they could not
+have been pink. Yellow roses would have been a fright, so they must
+have been white ones, and a hat covered with white roses is altogether
+too festive to wear in the morning. The white gloves also would have
+been sadly out of place.
+
+What a comfort it would be to all concerned if the feminine reader
+could take poor Cordelia one side and fix her up a bit! One could pat
+the artistic disorder out of her beautiful yellow hair, help her out
+of her hideous clothes into a grey tailor-made, with a shirt-waist of
+mercerised white cheviot, put on a stock of the same material, give
+her a "ready-to-wear" hat of the same trig-tailored quality, and, as
+she passed out, hand her a pair of grey suède gloves which exactly
+matched her gown.
+
+Though grey would be more becoming, she might wear tan as a concession
+to Mr. Stringer, who evidently likes yellow.
+
+In the same book, we find a woman who gathers up her "yellow skirts"
+and goes down a ladder. It might have been only a yellow taffeta
+drop-skirt under tan etamine, but we must take his word for it, as we
+did not see it and he did.
+
+As the Chinese keep the rat tails for the end of the feast, the worst
+clothes to be found in any book must come last by way of climax. Mr.
+Dixon, in _The Leopard's Spots_, has easily outdone every other knight
+of the pen who has entered the lists to portray women's clothes.
+Listen to the inspired description of Miss Sallie's gown!
+
+     "She was dressed in a morning gown of a soft red material,
+     trimmed with old cream lace. The material of a woman's dress
+     had never interested him before. He knew calico from silk,
+     but beyond that he never ventured an opinion. To colour
+     alone he was responsive. This combination of red and creamy
+     white, _with the bodice cut low, showing the lines of her
+     beautiful white shoulders_, and the great mass of dark hair
+     rising in graceful curves from her full round neck,
+     heightened her beauty to an extraordinary degree.
+
+     "As she walked, the clinging folds of her dress, outlining
+     her queenly figure, seemed part of her very being, and to be
+     imbued with her soul. He was dazzled with the new revelation
+     of her power over him."
+
+The fact that she goes for a ride later on, "dressed in pure white,"
+sinks into insignificance beside this new and original creation of Mr.
+Dixon's. A red morning gown, trimmed with cream lace, cut low enough
+to show the "beautiful white shoulders"--ye gods and little fishes!
+Where were the authorities, and why was not "Miss Sallie" taken to the
+detention hospital, pending an inquiry into her sanity?
+
+It would seem that any man, especially one who writes books, could be
+sure of a number of women friends. Among these there ought to be at
+least one whom he could take into his confidence. The gentleman
+novelist might go to the chosen one and say: "My heroine, in moderate
+circumstances, is going to the matinée with a girl friend. What shall
+she wear?"
+
+Instantly the discerning woman would ask the colour of her eyes and
+hair, and the name of the town she lived in, then behold!
+
+Upon the writer's page would come a radiant feminine vision, clothed
+in her right mind and in proper clothes, to the joy of every woman who
+reads the book.
+
+But men are proverbially chary of their confidence, except when they
+are in love, and being in love is supposed to put even book women out
+of a man's head. Perhaps in the new Schools of Journalism which are to
+be inaugurated, there will be supplementary courses in millinery
+elective, for those who wish to learn the trade of novel writing.
+
+If a man knows no woman to whom he can turn for counsel and advice at
+the critical point in his book, there are only two courses open to
+him, aside from the doubtful one of evasion. He may let his fancy run
+riot and put his heroine into clothes that would give even a dumb
+woman hysterics, or he may follow the example of Mr. Chatfield-Taylor,
+who says of one of his heroines that "her pliant body was enshrouded
+in white muslin with a blue ribbon at the waist."
+
+Lacking the faithful hench-woman who would gladly put them straight,
+the majority of gentlemen novelists evade the point, and, so far as
+clothes are concerned, their heroines are as badly off as the Queen of
+Spain was said to be for legs.
+
+They delve freely into emotional situations, and fearlessly attempt
+profound psychological problems, but slide off like frightened crabs
+when they strike the clothesline.
+
+After all, it may be just as well, since fashion is transient and
+colours and material do not vary much. Still, judging by the painful
+mistakes that many of them have made, the best advice that one can
+give the gallant company of literary craftsmen is this: "When you come
+to millinery, crawfish!"
+
+
+
+
+Maidens of the Sea
+
+
+     Far out in the ocean, deep and blue,
+       Where the winds dance wild and free,
+     In coral caves, dwells a beautiful band--
+       The maidens of the sea.
+
+     There are stories old, of the mystic tide,
+       And legends strange, of the deep,
+     How the witching sound of the siren's song
+       Can lull the tempest to sleep.
+
+     When moonlight falls on a crystal sea,
+       When the clouds have backward rolled,
+     The mermaids sing their low sweet songs,
+       And their harp strings are of gold.
+
+     The billows come from the vast unknown--
+       From their far-away unseen home;
+     The waves bring shells to the sandy bar,
+       And the fairies dance on the foam.
+
+
+
+
+The Technique of the Short Story
+
+
+An old rule for those who would be well-dressed says: "When you have
+finished, go to the mirror and see what you can take off." The same
+rule applies with equal force to the short story: "When you have
+written it out, go over it carefully, and see what you can take out."
+
+Besides being the best preparation for the writing of novels,
+short-story writing is undoubtedly, at the present time, the best
+paying and most satisfactory form of any ephemeral literary work. The
+qualities which make it successful are to be attained only by constant
+and patient practice. The real work of writing a story may be brief,
+but years of preparation must be worked through before a manuscript,
+which may be written in an hour or so, can present an artistic result.
+
+The first and most important thing to consider is the central idea.
+There are only a few ideas in the world, but their ramifications are
+countless, and one need never despair of a theme. Your story may be
+one of either failure or success, but it must have the true ring.
+Given the man and the circumstances, we should know his action.
+
+The plot must unfold naturally; otherwise it will be a succession of
+distinct sensations, rather than a complete and harmonious whole.
+
+There is no better way to produce this effect than to follow Edmund
+Russell's rule of colour in dress: "When a contrasting colour is
+introduced, there should be at least two subordinate repetitions of
+it."
+
+Each character should appear, or be spoken of, at least twice before
+his main action. Following this rule makes one of the differences
+between artistic and sensational literature.
+
+The heroine of a dime novel always finds a hero to rescue her in the
+nick of time, and perhaps she never sees him again. In the artistic
+novel, while the heroine may see the rescuer first at the time she
+needs him most, he never disappears altogether from the story.
+
+Description is a thing which is much abused. There is no truer
+indication of an inexperienced hand than a story beginning with a
+description of a landscape which is not necessary to the plot. If the
+peculiarities of the scenery must be understood before the idea can be
+developed, the briefest possible description is not out of place.
+Subjectively, a touch of landscape or weather is allowable, but it
+must be purely incidental. Weather is a very common thing and is apt
+to be uninteresting.
+
+It is a mistake to tell anything yourself which the people in the
+story could inform the reader without your assistance. A conversation
+between two people will bring out all the facts necessary as well as
+two pages of narration by the author.
+
+There is a way also of telling things from the point of view of the
+persons which they concern. Those who have studied Latin will find
+the "indirect discourse" of Cicero a useful model.
+
+The people in the story can tell their own peculiarities better than
+the author can do it for them. It is not necessary to say that a woman
+is a snarling, grumpy person. Bring the old lady in, and let her
+snarl, if she is in your story at all.
+
+The choice of words is not lightly to be considered. Never use two
+adjectives where one will do, or a weak word where a stronger one is
+possible. Fallows' _100,000 Synonyms and Antonyms_ and Roget's
+_Thesaurus of Words and Phrases_ will prove invaluable to those who
+wish to improve themselves in this respect.
+
+Analysis of sentences which seem to you particularly strong is a good
+way to strengthen your vocabulary. Take, for instance, the oft-quoted
+expression of George Eliot's: "Inclination snatches argument to make
+indulgence seem judicious choice." Substitute "takes" for "snatches"
+and read the sentence again. Leave out "seem" and put "appear" in its
+place. "Proper" is a synonym for "judicious"; substitute it, and put
+"selection" in the place of "choice."
+
+Reading the sentence again we have: "Inclination takes argument to
+make indulgence appear proper selection." The strength is wholly gone
+although the meaning is unchanged.
+
+Find out what you want to say, and then say it, in the most direct
+English at your command. One of the best models of concise expressions
+of thought is to be found in the essays of Emerson. He compresses a
+whole world into a single sentence, and a system of philosophy into an
+epigram.
+
+"Literary impressionism," which is largely the use of onomatopoetic
+words, is a valuable factor in the artistic short story. It is
+possible to convey the impression of a threatening sky and a stormy
+sea without doing more than alluding to the crash of the surf against
+the shore. The mind of the reader accustomed to subtle touches will at
+once picture the rest.
+
+An element of strength is added also by occasionally referring an
+impression to another sense. For instance, the newspaper poet writes:
+"The street was white with snow," and makes his line commonplace
+doggerel. Tennyson says: "The streets were _dumb_ with snow," and his
+line is poetry.
+
+"Blackening the background" is a common fault with story writers. In
+many of the Italian operas, everybody who does not appear in the final
+scene is killed off in the middle of the last act. This wholesale
+slaughter is useless as well as inartistic. The true artist does not,
+in order that his central figure may stand out prominently, make his
+background a solid wall of gloom. Yet gloom has its proper place, as
+well as joy.
+
+In the old tragedies of the Greeks, just before the final catastrophe,
+the chorus is supposed to advance to the centre of the theatre and
+sing a bacchanal of frensied exultation.
+
+In the _Antigone_ of Sophocles, just before the death of Antigone and
+her lover, the chorus sings an ode which makes one wonder at its
+extravagant expression. When the catastrophe occurs, the mystery is
+explained. Sophocles meant the sacrifice of Antigone to come home with
+its full force; and well he attained his end by use of an artistic
+method which few of our writers are subtle enough to recognise and
+claim for their own purposes.
+
+"High-sounding sentences," which an inexperienced writer is apt to put
+into the mouths of his people, only make them appear ridiculous. The
+schoolgirl in the story is too apt to say: "The day has been most
+unpleasant," whereas the real schoolgirl throws her books down with a
+bang, and declares that she has "had a perfectly horrid time!"
+
+Her grammar may be incorrect, but her method of expression is true to
+life, and there the business of the writer ends.
+
+Put yourself in your hero's place and see what you would do under
+similar circumstances. If you were in love with a young woman, you
+wouldn't get down on your knees, and swear by all that was holy that
+you would die if she didn't marry you, at the same time tearing your
+hair out by handfuls, and then endeavour to give her a concise
+biography of yourself.
+
+You would put your arm around her, the first minute you had her to
+yourself, if you felt reasonably sure that she cared for you, and tell
+her what she meant to you--perhaps so low that even the author of the
+story couldn't hear what you said, and would have to describe what
+he saw afterward in order to let his reader guess what had really
+happened.
+
+It is a lamentable fact that the description of a person's features
+gives absolutely no idea of his appearance. It is better to give a
+touch or two, and let the imagination do the rest. "Hair like raven's
+wing," and the "midnight eyes," and many similar things, may be very
+well spared. The personal charms of the lover may be brought out
+through the mediations of the lovee, much better than by pages of
+description.
+
+The law of compensation must always have its place in the artistic
+story. Those who do wrong must suffer wrong--those who work must be
+rewarded, if not in the tangible things they seek, at least in the
+conscious strength that comes from struggling. And "poetic justice,"
+which metes out to those who do the things that they have done, is
+relentless and eternal, in art, as well as in life.
+
+"Style" is purely an individual matter, and, if it is anything at all,
+it is the expression of one's self. Zola has said that, "art is nature
+seen through the medium of a temperament," and the same is true of
+literature. Bunner's stories are as thoroughly Bunner as the man who
+wrote them, and _The Badge of Courage_ is nothing unless it be the
+moody, sensitive, half-morbid Stephen Crane.
+
+Observation of things nearest at hand and the sympathetic
+understanding of people are the first requisites. Do not place the
+scene of a story in Europe if you have never been there, and do not
+assume to comprehend the inner life of a Congressman if you have never
+seen one. Do not write of mining camps if you have never seen a
+mountain, or of society if you have never worn evening dress.
+
+James Whitcomb Riley has made himself loved and honoured by writing of
+the simple things of home, and Louisa Alcott's name is a household
+word because she wrote of the little women whom she knew. Eugene Field
+has written of the children that he loved and understood, and won
+a truer fame than if he had undertaken _The Master_ of Zangwill.
+Kipling's life in India has given us _Plain Tales from the Hills_ and
+_The Jungle Book_, which Mary E. Wilkins could not have written in
+spite of the genius which made her New England stories the most
+effective of their kind. Joel Chandler Harris could not have written
+_The Prisoner of Zenda_, but those of us who have enjoyed the wiles of
+that "monstus soon beast, Brer Rabbit," would not have it otherwise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You cannot write of love unless you have loved, of suffering unless
+you have suffered, or of death unless some one who was near to you has
+learned the heavenly secret. A little touch of each must teach you the
+full meaning of the great thing you mean to write about, or your work
+will be lacking. There are few of us to whom the great experiences do
+not come sooner or later, and, in the meantime, there are the little
+everyday happenings, which are full of sweetness and help, if they are
+only seen properly, to last until the great things come to test our
+utmost strength, to crush us if we are not strong, and to make us
+broader, better men and women if we withstand the blow.
+
+And lastly, remember this, that merit is invariably recognised. If
+your stories are worth printing, they will fight their way through
+"the abundance of material on hand." The light of the public square
+is the unfailing test, and a good story is sure to be published
+sooner or later, if a fair amount of literary instinct is exercised in
+sending it out. Meteoric success is not desirable. Slow, hard,
+conscientious work will surely win its way, and those who are now near
+the bottom of the ladder are gradually ascending to make room for the
+next generation of story-writers on the rounds below.
+
+
+
+
+To Dorothy
+
+
+     There's a sleepy look in your violet eyes,
+       So the sails of our ship we'll unfurl,
+     And turn the prow to the Land of Rest,
+       My dear little Dorothy girl.
+
+     Twilight is coming soon, little one,
+       The sheep have gone to the fold;
+     See! where our white sails bend and dip
+       In the sunset glow of gold.
+
+     The roses nod to the sound of the waves,
+       And the bluebells sweet are ringing;
+     Do you hear the music, Dorothy dear?
+       The song that the angels are singing?
+
+     The fairies shall weave their drowsy spell
+       On the shadowy shore of the stream;
+     Dear little voyager say "good-night,"
+       For the birds are beginning to dream.
+
+     O white little craft, with sails full spread,
+       My heart goes out with thee;
+     God keep thee strong with thy precious freight,
+       My Dorothy--out at sea.
+
+
+
+
+Writing a Book
+
+
+Having written a few small books which have been published by a
+reputable house, and which have been pleasantly received by both the
+press and the public, and having just completed another which I
+devoutly pray may meet the same fate, I feel that I may henceforth
+deem myself an author.
+
+I have been considered such for some time among my numerous
+acquaintances ever since I made my literary bow with a short story
+in a literary magazine, years and years ago. Being of the feminine
+persuasion, I am usually presented to strangers as "an authoress." It
+is at these times that I wish I were a man.
+
+The social side of authorship is extremely interesting. At least once
+a week, I am asked how I "came to write."
+
+This is difficult, for I do not know. When I so reply, my questioner
+ascertains by further inquiries where I was educated and how I have
+been trained. Never having been through a "School of Journalism," my
+answer is not satisfactory.
+
+"You must read a great deal in order to get all those ideas," is
+frequently said to me. I reply that I do read a great deal, being
+naturally bookish, but that it is the great object of my life to avoid
+getting ideas from books. To an author, "Plagiarist" is like the old
+cry of "Wolf," and when an idea is once assimilated it is difficult
+indeed to distinguish it from one's own.
+
+I am often asked how long it takes me to write a book. I am ashamed to
+tell, but sometimes the secret escapes, since I am naturally truthful,
+and find it hard to parry a direct question. The actual time of
+composition is always greeted with astonishment, and I can read the
+questioner's inference, that if I can do so much in so short a time,
+how much could I do if I actually worked!
+
+This is always distasteful, so I hasten to add that the composition
+is really a very small part of the real writing of a book, and that
+authors' methods differ. My own practice is not to begin to write
+until my material is fully arranged in my mind, and I often use notes
+which I have been making for a period of months. Such a report is
+seldom convincing, however, to my questioners. I am gradually
+learning, when this inquiry comes, to smile inscrutably.
+
+It seems strange to many people that I do not work all the time. If I
+can write a short story in two hours and be paid thirty dollars for
+it, I am an idiot indeed if I do not write at least three in a day!
+Ninety dollars a day might easily mount up into a very comfortable
+income.
+
+Still, there are some who understand that an author cannot write
+continuously any more than a spider or a silkworm can spin all the
+time. These people ask me when, and where, and how, I get my
+material.
+
+"Getting material" is supposed to be a secret process, and I am
+thought a gay deceiver when I say I make no particular effort to get
+it--that it comes in the daily living--like the morning cream! I am
+then asked if I rely wholly upon "inspiration." I answer that
+"inspiration" doubtless has its value as well as hard work, and that
+the author who would derive all possible benefit from the rare flashes
+of it must have the same command of technique that a good workman has
+of his tools.
+
+The majority learn with surprise that there is more to a book than is
+self-evident. It was once my happy lot to put this fact into the
+understanding of a lady from the country.
+
+With infinite pains I told her of the constant study of words,
+illustrated the fine shades of distinction between synonyms, spoke of
+the different ways in which characters and events might be introduced,
+and of the subordinate repetition of contrasting themes. She listened
+in breathless wonder, and then turned to her daughter: "There, Mame,"
+she said, "I told you there was something in it!"
+
+There is nothing so pathetic as the widespread literary ambition among
+people whose future is utterly hopeless. It is sad enough for one who
+has attained a small success to see the heights which are ever beyond,
+and it makes one gentle indeed to those who come seeking aid.
+
+One ambitious soul once asked me if I would teach her to write. I
+replied that I did not know of any way in which it could be taught,
+but that I would gladly help her if I could. She said she had
+absolutely no imagination, and asked me if that would make any
+difference. I told her it was certainly an unfortunate circumstance
+and advised her to cultivate that quality before she attempted
+extensive writing. I suppose she is still doing it, for I have not
+been asked for further assistance.
+
+People often inquire what qualities I deem essential to literary
+success. Imagination is, of course, the first, observation, the
+second, and ambition, perseverance and executive ability are
+indispensable. Besides these I would place the sense of humour, of
+proportion, sympathy, insight,--indeed, there is nothing admirable in
+human nature which would come amiss in the equipment of a writer.
+
+The necessity for the humourous sense was recently brought home to me
+most forcibly. A woman brought me the manuscript of a novel which she
+asked me to read. She felt that something was wrong with it, but she
+did not know just what it was. She said it needed "a few little
+touches," she thought, such as my experience would have fitted me to
+give, and she would be grateful, indeed, if I would revise it. She
+added that, owing to the connection which I had formed with my
+publishing house, it would be an easy matter for me to get it
+published, and she generously offered to divide the royalties with me
+if I would consummate the arrangement!
+
+I began to read the manuscript, and had not gone far when I discovered
+that it was indeed rare. The entire family read it, or portions of it,
+with screams of laughter, and with tears in their eyes, although it
+was not intended to be a funny book at all. To this day, certain
+phrases from that novel will upset any one of us, even at a solemn
+time.
+
+Of course it was badly written. Characters appeared, talked for a few
+pages, and were never seen or heard from again.
+
+Long conversations were intruded which had no connection with such
+plot as there was. Commonplace descriptions of scenery, also useless,
+were frequent. Many a time the thread of the story was lost. There
+were no distinguishing traits in any one of the characters--they all
+talked very much alike. But the supreme defect was the author's lack
+of humour. With all seriousness, she made her people say and do
+things which were absolutely ridiculous and not by any means true to
+life.
+
+I think I must have an unsuspected bit of tact somewhere for I
+extricated myself from the situation, and the woman is still my
+friend. I did not hurt her feelings about her book, nor did I send it
+to my publishers with a letter of recommendation. I remarked that her
+central idea was all right, which was true, since it was a love story,
+but that it had not been properly developed and that she needed to
+study. She thanked me for my counsel and said she would rewrite it. I
+wish it might be printed just as it was, however, for it is indeed a
+sodden and mirthless world in which we live and move.
+
+As the editors say on the refusal blanks, "I am always glad to read
+manuscripts," although, as a rule, it makes an enemy for me if I try
+to help the author by criticism, when only praise was expected or
+desired.
+
+Having written some verse which has landed in respectable places, I
+am also asked about poetry. Poems written in trochaic metre with the
+good old rhymes, "trees and breeze," "light and night," soldered on at
+the end of the lines, are continually brought to me for revision and
+improvement.
+
+Once, for the benefit of the literary aspirant, I brought out my
+rhyming dictionary, but I shall never do it again. He looked it over
+carefully, while I explained the advantage for the writer in having
+before him all the available rhymes, so that the least common might
+be quickly chosen and the verse made to run smoothly.
+
+"Humph!" he said; "it's just the book. Anybody can write poetry with
+one of these books!"
+
+My invaluable thesaurus is chained to my desk in order that it may not
+escape, and I frequently have to justify its existence when aliens
+penetrate my den. "It's no wonder you can write," was said to me once.
+"Here's all the English language right on your desk, and all you've
+got to do is to put it together."
+
+"Yes," I answered wickedly, "but it's all in the dictionary too."
+
+Last week I had a rare treat. I met a woman who had "never seen a
+literary person before," and who said "it was quite a novelty!" I
+beamed upon her, for it is very nice to be a "novelty," and after a
+while we became quite confidential.
+
+"I want you to tell me just how you write," she said, "so's I can tell
+the folks at home. I'm going to buy some of your books to give away."
+
+Mindful of "royalty to author," I immediately became willing to tell
+anything I could.
+
+"Well, I want to know how you write. Do you just sit down and do it?"
+
+"Yes, I just sit down and do it."
+
+"Do you write any special time?"
+
+"No, mornings, usually; but any time will do."
+
+"What do you write with--a pen or a pencil?"
+
+"Neither, I always use a typewriter."
+
+"Why, can you write on a typewriter?"
+
+"Yes, it's much easier than a pen, and it keeps the ink off your
+hands. You can write with both hands at once, you know."
+
+"You have to write it all out with a pencil, first, don't you?"
+
+"No, I just think into the keys."
+
+"Wouldn't it be easier to write it with a pencil first and then copy
+it?"
+
+"No, or I'd do it that way."
+
+"Do you dress any special way when you write?"
+
+"No, only I must be neat and also comfortable. I usually wear a
+shirt-waist and take off my collar. Can't write with a collar on, but
+I must be well groomed otherwise."
+
+There was a long silence. The little lady was digesting the
+information which she had just received.
+
+"It seems easy enough," she said. "I should think any one could write.
+What do you do when it is done?"
+
+"Oh, I go all over it and revise very carefully."
+
+"Why, do you have to go all over it, after it is done?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Then it takes you longer than it does most people, doesn't it?"
+
+"I cannot say as to that. Everybody revises."
+
+"Why, when I write a letter, if I go over it I always scratch out so
+much that I have to do it over."
+
+"That's the idea, exactly," I replied. "I go over it until there isn't
+a thing to be scratched out, or a word to be changed."
+
+"But you've got lots left," she said, enviously. "When I go over a
+letter there's hardly anything left."
+
+Innumerable questions followed these, but at last she had her
+curiosity partially satisfied and turned away from me. I trust,
+however, that I shall some day meet her again, for she too is "a
+novelty!"
+
+The mechanical part of a book is a source of great wonder to the
+uninitiated. My galley proofs were once passed around among the guests
+at a summer hotel as if they were some new strange animal. They did
+not understand page proofs nor plates, nor how I could ever know when
+it was right.
+
+The cover is frequently commented upon as a thing of beauty (which
+with my publishers it always is), and I am asked if I did it. I am
+always sorry that I do not know enough to do covers, so I have to
+explain that an artist does that--that I often do not see it until the
+first copies come from the bindery, and that I am of such small
+importance that I am not often consulted in relation to the
+matter--being merely the poor worm who wrote the book.
+
+There are many people who seem to be afraid to talk before me lest
+their pearly utterances be transformed into copy. Time and time again
+I have heard this: "We must be very careful what we say now, or Miss
+---- will put us into a book!"
+
+People are strangely literal. An author gets no credit whatever for
+inventive faculty--his characters and stories are supposedly real
+people and real things. I am asked how I came to know so much about
+such and such a thing. I once wrote a love story with an unhappy
+ending and it was at once assumed that I had been disappointed in
+love!
+
+When my first book came from the press I was pointed out at a
+reception as the author of it. The man surveyed me long and carefully,
+then he announced: "That's a mistake. That girl never wrote that book.
+She's too frivolous and empty headed!"
+
+I have tried, until I am discouraged, to make people understand that a
+book does not have to be a verity in order to be true--that a story
+must be possible, instead of actual, and that actual circumstances may
+be too unreal for literature.
+
+There are always people who will ask that things, even books, may be
+written especially for them. People often want to tell me a story and
+let me write it up into a nice book and divide the royalties with
+them! During a summer at the coast, I had endless opportunities to
+write biographical sketches of the guests at the hotel--to write a
+story and put them all into it, or to write something about anything,
+that they might have as "a souvenir!" As a matter of fact, there were
+only two people at the hotel who could have been of any possible use
+as copy, and one of these was a woman to whom only Mr. Stockton could
+have done justice.
+
+It was hard to be always good-natured, but I lost my temper only once.
+We stayed late into the autumn and were rewarded by a magnificent
+storm. I put on my bathing suit and my mackintosh and went down to the
+beach, in the teeth of a northwest gale. Little needles of sand were
+blown in my face, and I lost my cap, but it was well worth the effort.
+For over an hour we stood on the desolate beach, sheltered from the
+sand by a bath house. I had never seen anything so grand--it was far
+beyond words. At last it grew dark and I was soaked through and stiff
+with the cold. So I went back to the hotel, my soul struck dumb by
+the might and glory of the sea. My heart was too full to speak. The
+majestic chords were still thundering in my ears; that tempest-tossed
+ocean was still before my eyes. On my way upstairs I met a woman whom
+I had formerly liked.
+
+"Oh, Miss ----, I want you to write me a description of that storm!" I
+brushed past her, rudely, I fear, and she caught hold of the cape of
+my mackintosh with elephantine playfulness. "You can't go," she said
+coquettishly, "until you promise to write me a description of that
+storm!"
+
+"I can't write it," I said coldly. "Please let me go."
+
+"You've got to write it," she returned. "I know you can, and I won't
+let you go until you promise me."
+
+I wrenched myself away from her, white with wrath, and got to my room
+before she did, though she was still pursuing me. I locked my door and
+had a hard fight for my self-control. From the beach came the distant
+boom of the surf, mingled with the liquid melody of the returning
+breakers.
+
+Later, just as I had finished dressing for dinner, there was a tap at
+my door. My friend (?) stood there beaming. "Have you got it done? You
+know you promised to write me a description of that storm!"
+
+She remained only three days longer, and I stayed away from her as
+much as possible, but occasional meetings were inevitable. When the
+gladsome time of parting came, she hung about my neck.
+
+"I want you to come and see me," she said. "You know you haven't done
+what you said you would. Don't you forget to write me a description of
+that storm!"
+
+My business arrangements with my publishers are seemingly a matter of
+public interest. I am asked how much it costs to print a book the size
+of mine. People are surprised to find that I do not pay the expenses
+and that I haven't the least idea of what it costs.
+
+Then they want to know if the publisher buys the book of me. I explain
+that this is sometimes done, but that I myself am paid upon the
+royalty basis, ---- per cent. on the list price of every copy sold.
+This seems painfully small to the dear public, but it is comparatively
+easy to demonstrate that the royalty on five or six thousand copies is
+quite worth while.
+
+They shortly come to the conclusion, however, that the publishers make
+more money than I do, and that seems to them to be very unfair. They
+suggest that if I published it myself, I should make a great deal more
+money!
+
+It is difficult for them to understand that writing books and selling
+books are two very different propositions--that I don't know enough to
+sell books, and that the imprint of a reputable house upon the
+title-page is worth a great deal to any author.
+
+"Well," a man once said to me, "how much did you make out of your book
+this year?"
+
+I explained that the percentage royalty basis was really an equal
+division of the profits, everything considered, and that all the
+financial risk was on one side. I named my few hundreds, with which I
+was very well satisfied. He absorbed himself in a calculation on the
+back of an envelope.
+
+"I figure out," said he, at length, "that they must have made at least
+a third more than you did. That isn't fair!"
+
+My ire arose. "It is perfectly fair," I replied. "Paper is cheap, I
+know, but composition isn't, and advertising isn't. They are welcome
+to every penny they can make out of my books. I'd be glad to have them
+make twice as much as they do now, even if my own income remained the
+same."
+
+At this point, I became telepathically aware that I was considered
+crazy, so I changed the subject.
+
+I am often asked how I happened to meet my publishers and "get in with
+them," and as a very great favour to me, and to them, I am offered the
+privilege of sending them some "splendid novel which was written by a
+friend" of somebody--as they know me, "they have decided to let my
+publishers have the book!"
+
+They are surprised to hear me say that I have never met any member of
+the firm, though I was in the same city with them for over a year.
+More than this, there is nothing on earth, except a green worm, which
+would scare me so much as a summons to that publishing house.
+
+I have walked by in fear and trembling. I have seen a huge pile of my
+books in the window, and on the bulletin board a poster which bore my
+name in conspicuous letters, as if I had been cured of something. But
+I should no more dare to go into that office than I should venture to
+call upon the wife of the President with a shawl over my head, and my
+fancywork tucked under my arm.
+
+This is incomprehensible to the uninitiated. The publishers have ever
+been most courteous and kind. They are people with whom it is a
+pleasure to have any sort of business dealings, but we are not bosom
+friends--and I very much fear that they do not care to become chummy
+with me.
+
+There may be some authors who have taken nerve tonics and are not
+afraid to meet an editor or publisher. I have even read of some who
+will walk cheerfully into an editorial sanctum--but I've never seen a
+sanctum, nor an editor, nor a publisher. I don't even write to an
+editor when I send him a piece--just put in a stamp. He usually knows
+what to do with it.
+
+Fame, or long experience, may enable authors to meet the arbiters of
+their destiny without becoming frightened, but I have had brief
+experience, and still less fame. The admirable qualities of the
+pachyderm may have been bestowed upon some authors--but not on this
+one.
+
+
+
+
+The Man Behind the Gun
+
+
+     Now let the eagle flap his wings
+       And let the cannon roar,
+     For while the conquering bullet sings
+       We pledge the commodore.
+     First battle of a righteous war
+       Right royally he won,
+     But here's a health to the jolly tar--
+       To the man behind the gun!
+
+     Now praise be to the flag-ship's spars--
+       To the captain in command,
+     And honour to the Stripes and Stars
+       For whose defence they stand;
+     And for the pilot at his wheel
+       Let the streams of red wine run,
+     But here's a health to the man of steel--
+       The man behind the gun!
+
+     Here's to the man who does not swerve
+       In the face of any foe;
+     Here's to the man of iron nerve,
+       On deck and down below;
+     Here's to the man whose heart is glad
+       When the battle has begun;
+     Here's to the health of that daring lad--
+       To the man behind the gun!
+
+     Now let the Stars and Stripes float high
+       And let the eagle soar;
+     Until the echoes make reply
+       We pledge the commodore.
+     Here's to the chief and here's to war,
+       And here's to the fleet that won,
+     And here's a health to the jolly tar--
+       To the man behind the gun!
+
+
+
+
+Quaint Old Christmas Customs
+
+
+Compared with the celebrations of our ancestors, the modern Christmas
+becomes a very hurried thing. The rush of the twentieth century
+forbids twelve days of celebration, or even two. Paterfamilias
+considers himself very indulgent if he gives two nights and a day to
+the annual festival, because, forsooth, "the office needs him!"
+
+One by one the quaint old customs have vanished. We still have the
+Christmas tree, evergreens in our houses and churches, and the yawning
+stocking still waits in many homes for the good St. Nicholas.
+
+But what is poor Santa Claus to do when the chimney leads to the
+furnace? And what of the city apartment, which boasts a radiator and
+gas grate, but no chimney? The myth evidently needs reconstruction to
+meet the times in which we live, and perhaps we shall soon see
+pictures of Santa Claus arriving in an automobile, and taking the
+elevator to the ninth floor, flat B, where a single childish stocking
+is hung upon the radiator.
+
+Nearly all of the Christmas observances began in ancient Rome. The
+primitive Italians were wont to celebrate the winter solstice and
+call it the feast of Saturn. Thus Saturnalia came to mean almost
+any kind of celebration which came in the wake of conquest, and
+these ceremonies being engrafted upon Anglo-Saxon customs assumed
+a religious significance.
+
+The pretty maid who hesitates and blushes beneath the overhanging
+branch of mistletoe, never stops to think of the grim festival with
+which the Druids celebrated its gathering.
+
+In their mythology the plant was regarded with the utmost reverence,
+especially when found growing upon an oak.
+
+At the time of the winter solstice, the ancient Britons, accompanied
+by their priests, the Druids, went out with great pomp and rejoicing
+to gather the mistletoe, which was believed to possess great curative
+powers. These processions were usually by night, to the accompaniment
+of flaring torches and the solemn chanting of the people. When an oak
+was reached on which the parasite grew, the company paused.
+
+Two white bulls were bound to the tree and the chief Druid, clothed
+in white to signify purity, climbed, more or less gracefully, to the
+plant. It was severed from the oak, and another priest, standing
+below, caught it in the folds of his robe. The bulls were then
+sacrificed, and often, alas, human victims also. The mistletoe thus
+gathered was divided into small portions and distributed among the
+people. The tiny sprays were fastened above the doors of the houses,
+as propitiation to the sylvan deities during the cold season.
+
+These rites were retained throughout the Roman occupation of Great
+Britain, and for some time afterward, under the sovereignty of the
+Jutes, the Saxons, and the Angles.
+
+In Scandinavian mythology there is a beautiful legend of the
+mistletoe. Balder, the god of poetry, the son of Odin and Friga, one
+day told his mother that he had dreamed his death was near at hand.
+Much alarmed, the mother invoked all the powers of nature--earth, air,
+water, fire, animals and plants, and obtained from them a solemn oath
+that they would do her son no harm.
+
+Then Balder fearlessly took his place in the combats of the gods and
+fought unharmed while showers of arrows were falling all about him.
+
+His enemy, Loake, determined to discover the secret of his
+invulnerability, and, disguising himself as an old woman, went to the
+mother with a question of the reason of his immunity. Friga answered
+that she had made a charm and invoked all nature to keep from injuring
+her son.
+
+"Indeed," said the old woman, "and did you ask all the animals and
+plants? There are so many, it seems impossible."
+
+"All but one," answered Friga proudly; "all but a little insignificant
+plant which grows upon the bark of the oak. This I did not think of
+invoking, since so small a thing could do no harm."
+
+Much delighted, Loake went away and gathered mistletoe. Then he
+entered the assembly of the gods and made his way to the blind Heda.
+
+"Why do you not shoot with the arrows at Balder?" asked Loake.
+
+"Alas," replied Heda, "I am blind and have no arms."
+
+Loake then gave him an arrow tipped with mistletoe and said: "Balder
+is before thee." Heda shot and Balder fell, pierced through the heart.
+
+In its natural state, the plant is believed to be propagated by the
+missel-thrush, which feeds upon its berries, but under favourable
+climatic conditions one may raise one's own mistletoe by bruising the
+berries on the bark of fruit trees, where they take root readily. It
+must be remembered, however, that the plant is a true parasite and
+will eventually kill whatever tree gives it nourishment.
+
+Kissing under the mistletoe was also a custom of the Druids, and in
+those uncivilised days men kissed each other. For each kiss, a single
+white berry was plucked from the spray, and kept as a souvenir by the
+one who was kissed.
+
+The burning of the Yule log was an ancient Christmas ceremony borrowed
+from the early Scandinavians. At their feast of Juul (pronounced
+_Yuul_), at the time of the winter solstice, they were wont to kindle
+huge bonfires in honour of their god Thor. The custom soon made its
+way to England where it is still in vogue in many parts of the
+country.
+
+One may imagine an ancient feudal castle, heavily fortified, standing
+in splendid isolation upon a snowy hill, on that night of all others
+when war was forgotten and peace proclaimed. Drawn by six horses, the
+great Yule log was brought into the hall and rolled into the vast
+fireplace, where it was lighted with the charred remnants of last
+year's Yule log, religiously kept in some secure place as a charm
+against fire.
+
+As the flames seize upon the oak and the light gleams from the castle
+windows, a lusty procession of wayfarers passes through, each one
+raising his hat as he passes the fire which burns all the evil out of
+the hearts of men, and up to the rafters there rings a stern old Saxon
+chant.
+
+When the song was finished, the steaming wassail bowl was brought out,
+and all the company drank to a better understanding.
+
+Up to the time of Henry VI, and even afterward, the Yule log was
+greeted with bards and minstrelsy. If a squinting person came into the
+hall while the log was burning, it was sure to bring bad luck. The
+appearance of a barefooted man was worse, and a flat-footed woman was
+the worst of all.
+
+As an accompaniment to the Yule log, a monstrous Christmas candle was
+burned on the table at supper; even now in St. John's College at
+Oxford, there is an old candle socket of stone, ornamented with the
+figure of a lamb. What generations of gay students must have sat
+around that kindly light when Christmas came to Oxford!
+
+Snap-dragon was a favourite Christmas sport at this time. Several
+raisins were put into a large shallow bowl and thoroughly saturated
+with brandy. All other lights were extinguished and the brandy
+ignited. By turns each one of the company tried to snatch a raisin
+out of the flames, singing meanwhile.
+
+In Devonshire, they burn great bundles of ash sticks, while master and
+servants sit together, for once on terms of perfect equality, and
+drink spiced ale, and the season is one of great rejoicing.
+
+Another custom in Devonshire is for the farmer, his family, and
+friends, to partake of hot cake and cider, and afterward go to the
+orchard and place a cake ceremoniously in the fork of a big tree, when
+cider is poured over it while the men fire off pistols and the women
+sing.
+
+A similar libation, but of spiced ale, used to be sprinkled through
+the orchards and meadows of Norfolk. Midnight of Christmas was the
+time usually chosen for the ceremony.
+
+In Devon and Cornwall, a belief is current that, at midnight on
+Christmas Eve, the cattle kneel in their stalls in honour of the
+Saviour, as legend claims they did in Bethlehem.
+
+In Wales, they carry about at Christmas time a horse's skull gaily
+adorned with ribbons, and supported on a pole by a man who is wholly
+concealed by a white cloth. There is a clever contrivance for opening
+and shutting the jaws, and this strange creature pursues and bites all
+who come near it.
+
+The figure is usually accompanied by a party of men and boys
+grotesquely dressed, who, on reaching a house, sing some verses, often
+extemporaneous, demanding admittance, and are answered in the same
+fashion by those within until rhymes have given out on one side or
+the other.
+
+In Scotland, he who first opens the door on Christmas Day expects more
+good luck than will fall to the lot of other members of the family
+during the year, because, as the saying goes, he lets in Yule.
+
+In Germany, Christmas Eve is the children's night, and there is a tree
+and presents. England and America appear to have borrowed the
+Christmas tree from Germany, where the custom is ancient and very
+generally followed.
+
+In the smaller towns and villages in northern Germany, the presents
+are sent by all the parents to some one fellow who, in high buskins,
+white robe, mask, and flaxen wig, personates the servant, Rupert. On
+Christmas night he goes around to every house, and says that his
+master sent him. The parents and older children receive him with pomp
+and reverence, while the younger ones are often badly frightened.
+
+He asks for the children, and then demands of their parents a report
+of their conduct during the past year. The good children are rewarded
+with sugar-plums and other things, while for the bad ones a rod is
+given to the parents with instructions to use it freely during the
+coming year.
+
+In those parts of Pennsylvania where there are many German settlers,
+the little sinners often find birchen rods suggestively placed in
+their stockings on Christmas morning.
+
+In Poland, the Christmas gifts are hidden, and the members of the
+family search for them.
+
+In Sweden and Norway, the house is thoroughly cleaned, and juniper or
+fir branches are spread over the floor. Then each member of the family
+goes in turn to the bake house, or outer shed, where he takes his
+annual bath.
+
+But it is back to Old England, after all, that we look for the
+merriest Christmas. For two or three weeks beforehand, men and boys
+of the poorer class, who were called "waits," sang Christmas carols
+under every window. Until quite recently these carols were sung all
+through England, and others of similar import were heard in France and
+Italy.
+
+The English are said to "take their pleasures sadly," but in the
+matter of Christmas they can "give us cards and spades and still win."
+Parties of Christmas drummers used to go around to the different
+houses, grotesquely attired, and play all sorts of tricks. The actors
+were chiefly boys, and the parish beadle always went along to insure
+order.
+
+The Christmas dinner of Old England was a thing capable of giving the
+whole nation dyspepsia if they indulged freely.
+
+The main dish was a boar's head, roasted to a turn, and preceded by
+trumpets and minstrelsy. Mustard was indispensable to this dish.
+
+Next came a peacock, skinned and roasted. The beak was gilded, and
+sometimes a bit of cotton, well soaked in spirits, was put into his
+mouth, and when he was brought to the table this was ignited, so that
+the bird was literally spouting fire. He was stuffed with spices,
+basted with yolks of eggs, and served with plenty of gravy.
+
+Geese, capons, pheasants, carps' tongues, frumenty, and mince, or
+"shred" pies, made up the balance of the feast.
+
+The chief functionary of Christmas was called "The Lord of Misrule."
+
+In the house of king and nobleman he held full sway for twelve days.
+His badge was a fool's bauble and he was always attended by a page,
+both of them being masked. So many pranks were played, and so much
+mischief perpetrated which was far from being amusing, that an edict
+was eventually issued against this form of liberty, not to say
+license.
+
+The Lord of Misrule was especially reviled by the Puritans, one of
+whom set him down as "a grande captain of mischiefe." One may easily
+imagine that this stern old gentleman had been ducked by a party of
+revellers following in the wake of the lawless "Captaine" because he
+had refused to contribute to their entertainment.
+
+We need not lament the passing of Christmas pageantry, if the spirit
+of the festival remains. Through the centuries that have passed since
+the first Christmas, the spirit of it has wandered in and out like a
+golden thread in a dull tapestry, sometimes hidden, but never wholly
+lost. It behooves us to keep well and reverently such Christmas as we
+have, else we shall share old Ben Jonson's lament in _The Mask of
+Father Christmas_, which was presented before the English Court nearly
+two hundred years ago:
+
+     "Any man or woman ... that can give any knowledge, or tell
+     any tidings of an old, very old, grey haired gentleman
+     called Christmas, who was wont to be a very familiar ghest,
+     and visit all sorts of people both pore and rich, and used
+     to appear in glittering gold, silk and silver in the court,
+     and in all shapes in the theatre in Whitehall, and had
+     singing, feasts and jolitie in all places, both citie and
+     countrie for his coming--whosoever can tel what is become of
+     him, or where he may be found, let them bring him back again
+     into England."
+
+
+
+
+Consecration
+
+
+     Cathedral spire and lofty architrave,
+     Nor priestly rite and humble reverence,
+     Nor costly fires of myrrh and frankincense
+     May give the consecration that we crave;
+     Upon the shore where tides forever lave
+     With grateful coolness on the fevered sense;
+     Where passion grows to silence, rapt, intense,
+     There waits the chrismal fountain of the wave.
+
+     By rock-hewn altars where is said no word,
+     Save by the deep that calleth unto deep,
+     While organ tones of sea resound above;
+     The truth of truths our inmost souls have heard,
+     And in our hearts communion wine we keep,
+     For He Himself hath said it--"God is Love!"
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+
+Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors;
+otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's
+words and intent.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Threads of Grey and Gold, by Myrtle Reed
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+                margin: 0 auto;
+                text-align: center;}
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+                margin: 0 auto;
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+                margin: 0 auto;
+                text-align: center;}
+    .centerbox12 {width: 440px;         /* heading box */
+                margin: 0 auto;
+                text-align: center;}
+
+    .n        {text-indent:0%;}
+
+    .center   {text-align: center;}
+    .smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+    .gap      {margin-top: 2em;}
+    .caption  {font-weight: bold; font-size:90%; }
+
+    .figcenter   {margin: auto; text-align: center;}
+
+    .right       {text-align: right;}
+    .poem             {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;}
+
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Threads of Grey and Gold, by Myrtle Reed
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Threads of Grey and Gold
+
+Author: Myrtle Reed
+
+Illustrator: Clara M. Burd
+
+Release Date: February 14, 2010 [EBook #31272]
+[Last updated: May 28, 2011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREADS OF GREY AND GOLD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 312px;">
+<img src="images/icover.jpg" width="312" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<div class="bbox2 centerbox11">
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/i001top.jpg" width="500" height="29" alt="" title="top border" /></div>
+<div class="titlepage">
+
+<div class="centerbox12 bbox2">
+<h1>THREADS OF GREY<br />
+AND GOLD</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>MYRTLE REED</h2>
+
+<p class="center">Author of</p>
+
+<p class="center">Lavender and Old Lace<br />
+The Master&#8217;s Violin<br />
+Old Rose and Silver<br />
+A Weaver of Dreams<br />
+Flower of the Dusk<br />
+At the Sign of the Jack O&#8217;Lantern<br />
+The Shadow of Victory,<br />
+Etc.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 175px;">
+<img src="images/i001.jpg" width="175" height="50" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h4>New York</h4>
+
+<h4>GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP</h4>
+
+<h4>Publishers</h4></div></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px"><img src="images/i001bottom.jpg" alt="" title="bottom border"
+width="500" height="29" /></div></div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1902<br />
+<small>BY</small><br />
+MYRTLE REED</p>
+
+<p class="gap">&#160;</p>
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" summary="Books by Myrtle Reed">
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><span class="smcap">By Myrtle Reed</span>:</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><ul class="none"><li>A Weaver of Dreams</li>
+<li>Old Rose and Silver</li>
+<li>Lavender and Old Lace</li>
+<li>The Master&#8217;s Violin</li>
+<li>Love Letters of a Musician</li>
+<li>The Spinster Book</li>
+<li>The Shadow of Victory</li></ul></td>
+
+<td><ul class="none"><li>Sonnets to a Lover</li>
+<li>Master of the Vineyard</li>
+<li>Flower of the Dusk</li>
+<li>At the Sign of the Jack-O&#8217;Lantern</li>
+<li>A Spinner in the Sun</li>
+<li>Later Love Letters of a Musician</li>
+<li>Love Affairs of Literary Men</li></ul></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center">Myrtle Reed Year Book</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p class="center">This edition is issued under arrangement with the publishers<br />
+<span class="smcap">G. P. Putnam&#8217;s Sons, New York and London</span></p>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 351px;">
+<img src="images/i003.jpg" width="351" height="500" alt="GEORGE WASHINGTON AND MARTHA CURTIS.
+
+From a drawing by Clara M. Burd. (Page 34)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">GEORGE WASHINGTON AND MARTHA CURTIS.<br />
+
+From a drawing by Clara M. Burd. (Page <a href="#Page_34">34</a>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+<h3><span class="smcap">To the Readers of</span></h3>
+
+<h2>THE ROMANCES OF MYRTLE REED.</h2>
+
+<p>&mdash;A world-wide circle comprising probably not less than two million
+sympathetic admirers&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>This volume, which presents some of the writer&#8217;s most typical
+utterances&mdash;utterances characterised by the combination of wisdom,
+humour, and sentiment that belongs to all the writings of the gifted
+author,</p>
+
+<p class="center">IS DEDICATED BY</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 6em;">THE EDITOR.</span></p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Chicago</span>,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.75em;"><i>January, 1913</i>.</span></p>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+<h3><span class="smcap">In Memory of</span></h3>
+<h2>A WEAVER OF DREAMS.</h2>
+
+<p>A tribute to Myrtle Reed in recognition of her beautiful and valuable
+contributions to English literature.</p>
+
+<div class="centerbox bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">A</span>s the spinner of silk weaves his sunbeams of gold,<br />
+Blending sunset and dawn in its silvery fold,<br />
+So she wove in the woof of her wonderful words<br />
+The soft shimmer of sunshine and music of birds.<br />
+With the radiance of moonlight and perfume of flowers,<br />
+She lent charm to the springtime and gladdened the hours.<br />
+<br />
+She spoke cheer to the suffering, joy to the sad;<br />
+She gave rest to the weary, made the sorrowful glad.<br />
+The sweet touch of her sympathy soothed every pain,<br />
+And her words in the drouth were like showers of rain.<br />
+For she lovingly poured out her blessings in streams<br />
+As a fountain of waters&mdash;a weaver of dreams.<br />
+<br />
+Her bright smiles were bejewelled, her tears were empearled,<br />
+And her thoughts were as stars giving light to the world;<br />
+Her fond dreams were the gems that were woven in gold,<br />
+And the fabric she wrought was of value untold.<br />
+Every colour of beauty was radiantly bright,<br />
+Blending faith, hope, and love in its opaline light.<br />
+<br />
+And she wove in her woof the great wealth of her heart,<br />
+For the cord of her life gave the life to each part;<br />
+And the beauty she wrought, which gave life to the whole,<br />
+Was her spirit made real&mdash;she gave of her soul.<br />
+So the World built a temple&mdash;a glorious shrine&mdash;<br />
+A Taj Mahal of love to the woman divine.</p></div>
+
+<p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 6em;">ADDISON BLAKELY.</span></p>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+<h2>Editorial note</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>he Editor desires to make grateful acknowledgment to the editors and
+publishers of the several periodicals in which the papers contained in
+this volume were first brought into print, for their friendly courtesy
+in permitting the collection of these papers for preservation in book
+form.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Chicago</span>,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.75em;"><i>January, 1913</i>.</span></p>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" width="70%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="1" summary="Contents">
+
+<tr><td>&#160;</td>
+<td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">How the World Watches the New<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Year Come In</span></span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Two Years.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Courtship of George<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Washington</span></span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Old and the New.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Love Story of &#8220;The Sage of<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Monticello&#8221;</span></span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Columbia.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Story of a Daughter&#8217;s Love</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Sea-Voice.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Mystery of Randolph&#8217;s Courtship</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">How President Jackson Won His<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wife</span></span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Bachelor President&#8217;s Loyalty<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">to a Memory</span></span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Decoration Day.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Romance of Lincoln&#8217;s Life</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_119">119</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Silent Thanksgiving.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">In the Flash of a Jewel</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Coming of My Ship.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Romance and the Postman</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Summer Reverie.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Vignette</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Meditation.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Pointers for the Lords of Creation</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Transition.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Superiority of Man</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_189">189</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Year of My Heart.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_196">196</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Average Man</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_197">197</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Book of Love.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_202">202</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Ideal Man</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_204">204</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Good-Night, Sweetheart.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_209">209</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Ideal Woman</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">She Is Not Fair.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_220">220</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Fin-de Si&egrave;cle Woman</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_222">222</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Moon Maiden.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Her Son&#8217;s Wife</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_230">230</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Lullaby.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Dressing-Sack Habit</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_248">248</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">In the Meadow.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_259">259</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">One Woman&#8217;s Solution of the<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Servant Problem</span></span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_260">260</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">To a Violin.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_283">283</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Old Maid</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_284">284</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Spinster&#8217;s Rubaiyat.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_291">291</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Rights of Dogs</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_293">293</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Twilight.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_298">298</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Women&#8217;s Clothes in Men&#8217;s Books</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_299">299</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Maidens of the Sea.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_320">320</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Technique of the Short Story</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_321">321</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">To Dorothy.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_333">333</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Writing a Book</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_334">334</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Man Behind the Gun.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_355">355</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Quaint Old Christmas Customs</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_357">357</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Consecration.</span> (Poem)</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Page_371">371</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+<h2>How the World Watches the<br />
+New Year Come In</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>he proverbial &#8220;good resolutions&#8221; of the first of January which are
+usually forgotten the next day, the watch services in the churches,
+and the tin horns in the city streets, are about the only formalities
+connected with the American New Year. The Pilgrim fathers took no note
+of the day, save in this prosaic record: &#8220;We went to work betimes&#8221;;
+but one Judge Sewall writes with no small pride of the blast of
+trumpets which was sounded under his window, on the morning of January
+1st, 1697.</p>
+
+<p>He celebrated the opening of the eighteenth century with a very bad
+poem which he wrote himself, and he hired the bellman to recite the
+poem loudly through the streets of the town of Boston; but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>happily
+for a public, even now too much wearied with minor poets, the custom
+did not become general.</p>
+
+<p>In Scotland and the North of England the New Year festivities are of
+great importance. Weeks before hand, the village boys, with great
+secrecy, meet in out of the way places and rehearse their favourite
+songs and ballads. As the time draws near, they don improvised masks
+and go about from door to door, singing and cutting many quaint
+capers. The thirty-first of December is called &#8220;Hogmanay,&#8221; and the
+children are told that if they go to the corner, they will see a man
+with as many eyes as the year has days. The children of the poorer
+classes go from house to house in the better districts, with a large
+pocket fastened to their dresses, or a large shawl with a fold in
+front.</p>
+
+<p>Each one receives an oaten cake, a piece of cheese, or sometimes a
+sweet cake, and goes home at night heavily laden with a good supply of
+homely New Year cheer for the rest of the family.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p><p>The Scottish elders celebrate the day with a supper party, and as the
+clock strikes twelve, friend greets friend and wishes him &#8220;a gude New
+Year and mony o&#8217; them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then with great formality the door is unbarred to let the Old Year out
+and the New Year in, while all the guests sally forth into the streets
+to &#8220;first foot&#8221; their acquaintances.</p>
+
+<p>The &#8220;first foot&#8221; is the first person to enter a house after midnight
+of December 31st. If he is a dark man, it is considered an omen of
+good fortune. Women generally are thought to bring ill luck, and in
+some parts of England a light-haired man, or a light-haired,
+flat-footed man is preferred. In Durham, this person must bring a
+piece of coal, a piece of iron, and a bottle of whiskey. He gives a
+glass of whiskey to each man and kisses each woman.</p>
+
+<p>In Edinburgh, a great crowd gathers around the church in Hunter Square
+and anxiously watches the clock. There is absolute silence from the
+first stroke of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>twelve until the last, then the elders go to bed, but
+the young folks have other business on hand. Each girl expects the
+&#8220;first foot&#8221; from her sweetheart and there is occasionally much
+stratagem displayed in outwitting him and arranging to have some
+grandmother or serving maid open the door for him.</p>
+
+<p>During the last century, all work was laid aside on the afternoon of
+the thirty-first, and the men of the hamlet went to the woods and
+brought home a lot of juniper bushes. Each household also procured a
+pitcher of water from &#8220;the dead and living ford,&#8221; meaning a ford in
+the river by which passengers and funerals crossed. This was brought
+in perfect silence and was not allowed to touch the ground in its
+progress as contact with the earth would have destroyed the charm.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, there were rites to protect the household against
+witchcraft, the evil eye, and other machinations of his satanic
+majesty. The father rose first, and, taking the charmed water and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>a
+brush, treated the whole family to a generous sprinkling, which was
+usually acknowledged with anything but gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>Then all the doors and windows were closed, and the juniper boughs put
+on the fire. When the smoke reached a suffocating point, the fresh air
+was admitted. The cattle were fumigated in the same way and the
+painful solemnities of the morning were over.</p>
+
+<p>The Scots on the first of the year consult the Bible before breakfast.
+They open it at random and lay a finger on a verse which is supposed
+to be, in some way, an augury for the coming year. If a lamp or a
+candle is taken out of the house on that day, some one will die during
+the year, and on New Year&#8217;s day a Scotchman will neither lend, borrow
+nor give anything whatsoever out of his house, for fear his luck may
+go with it, and for the same reason the floor must not be swept. Even
+ashes or dirty water must not be thrown out until the next day, and if
+the fire goes out it is a sign of death.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p><p>The ancient Druids distributed among the early Britons branches of the
+sacred mistletoe, which had been cut with solemn ceremony in the night
+from the oak trees in a forest that had been dedicated to the gods.</p>
+
+<p>Among the ancient Saxons, the New Year was ushered in with friendly
+gifts, and all fighting ceased for three days.</p>
+
+<p>In Banffshire the peat fires are covered with ashes and smoothed down.
+In the morning they are examined closely, and if anything resembling a
+human footprint is found in the ashes, it is taken as an omen. If the
+footprint points towards the door, one of the family will die or leave
+home during the year. If they point inward, a child will be born
+within the year.</p>
+
+<p>In some parts of rural England, the village maidens go from door to
+door with a bowl of wassail, made of ale, roasted apples, squares of
+toast, nutmeg, and sugar. The bowl is elaborately decorated with
+evergreen and ribbons, and as they go they sing:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+<div class="centerbox2 bbox"><p>&#8220;Wassail, wassail to our town,<br />
+The cup is white and the ale is brown,<br />
+The cup is made of the ashen tree,<br />
+And so is the ale of the good barley.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Little maid, little maid, turn the pin,<br />
+Open the door and let us in;<br />
+God be there, God be here;<br />
+I wish you all a Happy New Year.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>In Yorkshire, the young men assemble at midnight on the thirty-first,
+blacken their faces, disguise themselves in other ways, then pass
+through the village with pieces of chalk. They write the date of the
+New Year on gates, doors, shutters, and wagons. It is considered lucky
+to have one&#8217;s property so marked and the revellers are never
+disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>On New Year&#8217;s Day, Henry VI received gifts of jewels, geese, turkeys,
+hens, and sweetmeats. &#8220;Good Queen Bess&#8221; was fairly overwhelmed with
+tokens of affection from her subjects. One New Year&#8217;s morning, she was
+presented with caskets studded with gems, necklaces, bracelets, gowns,
+mantles, mirrors, fans, and a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>wonderful pair of black silk stockings,
+which pleased her so much that she never afterward wore any other
+kind.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Romans, after the reformation of the calendar, the first
+day, and even the whole month, was dedicated to the worship of the god
+Janus. He was represented as having two faces, and looking two
+ways&mdash;into the past and into the future. In January they offered
+sacrifices to Janus upon two altars, and on the first day of the month
+they were careful to regulate their speech and conduct, thinking it an
+augury for the coming year.</p>
+
+<p>New Year&#8217;s gifts and cards originated in Rome, and there is a record
+of an amusing lawsuit which grew out of the custom. A poet was
+commissioned by a Roman pastry-cook to write the mottoes for the New
+Year day bonbons. He agreed to supply five hundred couplets for six
+sesterces, and though the poor poet toiled faithfully and the mottoes
+were used, the money was not forthcoming. He sued the pastry-cook, and
+got a verdict, but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>the cook regarded himself as the injured party.
+Crackers were not then invented, but we still have the mottoes&mdash;those
+queer heart-shaped things which were the delight of our school-days.</p>
+
+<p>The Persians remember the day with gifts of eggs&mdash;literally a &#8220;lay
+out!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In rural Russia, the day begins as a children&#8217;s holiday. The village
+boys get up at sunrise and fill their pockets with peas and wheat.
+They go from house to house and as the doors are never locked,
+entrance is easy. They throw the peas upon their enemies and sprinkle
+the wheat softly upon their sleeping friends.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast, the finest horse in the little town is decorated with
+evergreens and berries and led to the house of the greatest nobleman,
+followed by the pea and wheat shooters of the early morning. The lord
+admits both horse and people to his house, where the whole family is
+gathered, and the children of his household make presents of small
+pieces of silver money to those who come with the horse. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>This is the
+greeting of the peasants to their lord and master.</p>
+
+<p>Next comes a procession of domestic animals, an ox, cow, goat, and
+pig, all decorated with evergreens and berries. These do not enter the
+house but pass slowly up and down outside, that the master and his
+family may see. Then the old women of the village bring barnyard fowls
+to the master as presents, and these are left in the house which the
+horse has only recently vacated. Even the chickens are decorated with
+strings of berries around their necks and bits of evergreen fastened
+to their tails.</p>
+
+<p>The Russians have also a ceremony which is more agreeable. On each New
+Year&#8217;s Day, a pile of sheaves is heaped up over a large pile of grain,
+and the father, after seating himself behind it, asks the children if
+they can see him. They say they cannot, and he replies that he hopes
+the crops for the coming year will be so fine that he will be hidden
+in the fields.</p>
+
+<p>In the cities there is a grand celebration <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>of mass in the morning and
+the rest of the day is devoted to congratulatory visits. Good wishes
+which cannot be expressed in person are put into the newspapers in the
+form of advertisements, and in military and official circles
+ceremonial visits are paid.</p>
+
+<p>The Russians are very fond of fortune-telling, and on New Year&#8217;s eve
+the young ladies send their servants into the street to ask the names
+of the first person they meet, and many a bashful lover has hastened
+his suit by taking good care to be the first one who is met by the
+servant of his lady love. At midnight, each member of the family
+salutes every other member with a kiss, beginning with the head of the
+house, and then they retire, after gravely wishing each other a Happy
+New Year.</p>
+
+<p>Except that picturesque rake, Leopold of Belgium, every monarch of
+Europe has for many years begun the New Year with a solemn appeal to
+the Almighty, for strength, guidance, and blessing.</p>
+
+<p>The children in Belgium spend the day in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>trying to secure a &#8220;sugar
+uncle&#8221; or a &#8220;sugar aunt.&#8221; The day before New Year, they gather up all
+the keys of the household and divide them. The unhappy mortal who is
+caught napping finds himself in a locked room, from which he is not
+released until a ransom is offered. This is usually money for sweets
+and is divided among the captors.</p>
+
+<p>In France, no one pays much attention to Christmas, but New Year&#8217;s day
+is a great festival and presents are freely exchanged. The President
+of France also holds a reception somewhat similar to, and possibly
+copied from, that which takes place in the White House.</p>
+
+<p>In Germany, complimentary visits are exchanged between the merest
+acquaintances, and New Year&#8217;s gifts are made to the servants. The
+night of the thirty-first is called <i>Sylvester Aben</i> and while many of
+the young people dance, the day in more serious households takes on a
+religious aspect. During the evening, there is prayer at the family
+altar, and at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>midnight the watchman on the church tower blows his
+horn to announce the birth of the New Year.</p>
+
+<p>At Frankfort-on-the-Main a very pretty custom is observed. On New
+Year&#8217;s eve the whole city keeps a festival with songs, feasting,
+games, and family parties in every house. When the great bell in the
+cathedral tolls the first stroke of midnight, every house opens wide
+its windows. People lean from the casements, glass in hand, and from a
+hundred thousand throats comes the cry: &#8220;<i>Prosit Neujahr!</i>&#8221; At the
+last stroke, the windows are closed and a midnight hush descends upon
+the city.</p>
+
+<p>The hospitable Norwegians and Swedes spread their tables heavily; for
+all who may come in at Stockholm there is a grand banquet at the
+Exchange, where the king meets his people in truly democratic fashion.</p>
+
+<p>The Danes greet the New Year with a tremendous volley of cannon, and
+at midnight old Copenhagen is shaken to its very foundations. It is
+considered a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>delicate compliment to fire guns and pistols under the
+bedroom windows of one&#8217;s friends at dawn of the new morning.</p>
+
+<p>The dwellers in Cape Town, South Africa, are an exception to the
+general custom of English colonists, and after the manner of the early
+Dutch settlers they celebrate the New Year during the entire week.
+Every house is full of visitors, every man, woman, and child is
+dressed in gay garments, and no one has any business except pleasure.
+There are picnics to Table Mountain, and pleasure excursions in boats,
+with a dance every evening. At the end of the week, everybody settles
+down and the usual routine of life is resumed.</p>
+
+<p>In the Indian Empire, the day which corresponds to our New Year is
+called &#8220;Hooly&#8221; and is a feast in honour of the god Krishna. Caste
+temporarily loses ground and the prevailing colour is red. Every one
+who can afford it wears red garments, red powder is thrown as if it
+were <i>confetti</i>, and streams of red water <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>are thrown upon the
+passers-by. It is all taken in good part, however, as snowballing is
+with us.</p>
+
+<p>Even &#8220;farthest North,&#8221; where the nights are six months long, there is
+recognition of the New Year. The Esquimaux come out of their snow huts
+and ice caves in pairs, one of each pair being dressed in women&#8217;s
+clothes. They gain entrance into every <i>igloo</i> in the village, moving
+silently and mysteriously. At last there is not a light left in the
+place, and having extinguished every fire they can find, they kindle a
+fresh one, going through in the meantime solemn ceremonies. From this
+one source, all the fires and lights in the district are kindled anew.</p>
+
+<p>One wonders if there may not be some fear in the breasts of these
+Children of the North, when for an instant they stand in the vastness
+of the midnight, utterly without fire or light.</p>
+
+<p>The most wonderful ceremonies connected with the New Year take place
+in China and Japan. In these countries and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>in Corea the birth of the
+year is considered the birthday of the whole community. When a child
+is born he is supposed to be a year old, and he remains thus until the
+changing seasons bring the annual birthday of the whole Mongolian
+race, when another year is credited to his account.</p>
+
+<p>In the Chinese quarter of the large cities, the New Year celebrations
+are dreaded by the police, since where there is so much revelry there
+is sure to be trouble. In the native country, the rejoicings absorb
+fully a month, during the first part of which no hunger is allowed to
+exist within the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>The refreshments are light in kind&mdash;peanuts, watermelon seeds,
+sweetmeats, oranges, tea and cakes. Presents of food are given to the
+poor, and &#8220;brilliant cakes,&#8221; supposed to help the children in their
+studies, are distributed from the temples.</p>
+
+<p>The poor little Chinamen must sadly need some assistance, in view of
+the fact that every word in their language has a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>distinct root, and
+their alphabet contains over twenty thousand letters.</p>
+
+<p>At an early hour on New Year&#8217;s morning, which according to their
+calendar comes between the twenty-first of January and the nineteenth
+of February, they propitiate heaven and earth with offerings of rice,
+vegetables, tea, wine, oranges, and imitation of paper money which
+they burn with incense, joss-sticks, and candles.</p>
+
+<p>Strips of scarlet paper, bearing mottoes, which look like Chinese
+laundry checks, are pasted around and over doors and windows. Blue
+strips among the red, mean that a death has occurred in the family
+since the last celebration.</p>
+
+<p>New Year&#8217;s calls are much in vogue in China, where every denizen of
+the Empire pays a visit to each of his superiors, and receives them
+from all of his inferiors. Sometimes cards are sent, and, as with us,
+this takes the place of a call.</p>
+
+<p>Images of gods are carried in procession to the beating of a deafening
+gong, and mandarins go by hundreds to the Emperor <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>and the Dowager
+Empress, with congratulatory addresses. Their robes are gorgeously
+embroidered and are sometimes heavy with gold. After this, they
+worship their household gods.</p>
+
+<p>Illuminations and fireworks make the streets gorgeous at night, and a
+monstrous Chinese dragon, spouting flame, is drawn through the
+streets.</p>
+
+<p>People salute each other with cries of &#8220;Kung-hi! Kung-hi!&#8221; meaning I
+humbly wish you joy, or &#8220;Sin-hi! Sin-hi!&#8221; May joy be yours.</p>
+
+<p>Many amusements in the way of theatricals and illumination are
+provided for the public.</p>
+
+<p>In both China and Japan, all debts must be paid and all grudges
+settled before the opening of the New Year. Every one is supposed to
+have new clothes for the occasion, and those who cannot obtain them
+remain hidden in their houses.</p>
+
+<p>In Japan, the conventional New Year costume is light blue cotton, and
+every one starts out to make calls. Letters <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>on rice paper are sent to
+those in distant places, conveying appropriate greetings.</p>
+
+<p>The Japanese also go to their favourite tea gardens where bands play,
+and wax figures are sold. Presents of cooked rice and roasted peas,
+oranges, and figs are offered to every one. The peas are scattered
+about the houses to frighten away the evil spirits, and on the fourth
+day of the New Year, the decorations of lobster, signifying
+reproduction, cabbages indicating riches, and oranges, meaning good
+luck, are taken down and replaced with boughs of fruit trees and
+flowers.</p>
+
+<p>Strange indeed is the country in which the milestones of Time pass
+unheeded. In spite of all the mirth and feasting, there is an
+undercurrent of sadness which has been most fitly expressed by Charles
+Lamb:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Of all the sounds, the most solemn and touching is the peal
+which rings out the old year. I never hear it without
+gathering up in my mind a concentration of all the images
+that have been diffused over the past twelve <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>months; all
+that I have done or suffered, performed, or neglected, in
+that regretted time. I begin to know its worth as when a
+person dies. It takes a personal colour, nor was it a
+poetical flight in a contemporary, when he exclaimed: &#8216;I saw
+the skirts of the departing year!&#8217;&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Two Years</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>read softly, ye throngs with hurrying feet,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.1em;">Look down, O ye stars, in your flight,</span><br />
+And bid ye farewell to a time that was sweet,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">For the year lies a-dying to-night.</span><br />
+<br />
+In a shroud of pure snow lie the quickly-fled hours&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">The children of Time and of Light;</span><br />
+Stoop down, ye fair moon, and scatter sweet flowers,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">For the year lies a-dying to-night.</span><br />
+<br />
+Hush, O ye rivers that sweep to the sea,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">From hill and from blue mountain height;</span><br />
+The flood of your song should be sorrow, not glee,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">For the year lies a-dying to-night.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>Good night, and good-bye, dear, mellow, old year,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">The new is beginning to dawn.</span><br />
+But we&#8217;ll turn and drop on thy white grave a tear,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">For the sake of the friend that is gone.</span><br />
+<br />
+All hail to the New! He is coming with gladness,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">From the East, where in light he reposes;</span><br />
+He is bringing a year free from pain and from sadness,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">He is bringing a June with her roses.</span><br />
+<br />
+A burst of sweet music, the listeners hear,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">The stars and the angels give warning&mdash;</span><br />
+He is coming in beauty, this joyful New Year,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">O&#8217;er the flower-strewn stairs of the morning.</span><br />
+<br />
+He is bringing a day with glad pulses beating,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">For the sorrow and passion are gone,</span><br />
+And Love and Life have a rapturous meeting<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">In the rush and the gladness of dawn.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>The Old has gone out with a crown that is hoary,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The New in his brightness draws near;</span><br />
+Then let us look up in the light and the glory,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And welcome this royal New Year.</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Courtship of George<br />
+Washington</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>he quaint old steel engraving which shows George and Martha
+Washington sitting by a table, while the Custis children stand
+dutifully by, is a familiar picture in many households, yet few of us
+remember that the first Lady of the White House was not always first
+in the heart of her husband.</p>
+
+<p>The years have brought us, as a people, a growing reverence for him
+who was in truth the &#8220;Father of His Country.&#8221; Time has invested him
+with godlike attributes, yet, none the less, he was a man among men,
+and the hot blood of youth ran tumultuously in his veins.</p>
+
+<p>At the age of fifteen, like many another schoolboy, Washington fell in
+love. The man who was destined to be the Commander <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>of the
+Revolutionary Army, wandered through the shady groves of Mount Vernon
+composing verses which, from a critical standpoint, were very bad.
+Scraps of verse were later mingled with notes of surveys, and
+interspersed with the accounts which that methodical statesman kept
+from his school-days until the year of his death.</p>
+
+<p>In the archives of the Capitol on a yellowed page, in Washington&#8217;s own
+handwriting, these lines are still to be read:</p>
+
+<div class="centerbox4 bbox"><p>&#8220;Oh, Ye Gods, why should my Poor Resistless Heart<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Stand to oppose thy might and Power,</span><br />
+At last surrender to Cupid&#8217;s feather&#8217;d Dart,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And now lays bleeding every Hour</span><br />
+For her that&#8217;s Pityless of my grief and Woes,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And will not on me, pity take.</span><br />
+I&#8217;ll sleep amongst my most inveterate Foes,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And with gladness never wish to wake.</span><br />
+In deluding sleepings let my Eyelids close,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">That in an enraptured Dream I may</span><br />
+In a soft lulling sleep and gentle repose<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Possess those joys denied by Day.&#8221;</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Among these boyish fragments there is also an incomplete acrostic,
+evidently intended for Miss Frances Alexander, which reads as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="centerbox4 bbox"><p>&#8220;From your bright sparkling Eyes I was undone;<br />
+Rays, you have, rays more transparent than the Sun<br />
+Amidst its glory in the rising Day;<br />
+None can you equal in your bright array;<br />
+Constant in your calm, unspotted Mind;<br />
+Equal to all, but will to none Prove kind,<br />
+So knowing, seldom one so young you&#8217;ll Find.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Ah, woe&#8217;s me that I should Love and conceal&mdash;<br />
+Long have I wished, but never dare reveal,<br />
+Even though severely Love&#8217;s Pains I feel;<br />
+Xerxes that great wast not free from Cupid&#8217;s Dart,<br />
+And all the greatest Heroes felt the smart.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p><p>He wrote at length to several of his friends concerning his youthful
+passions. In the tell-tale pages of the diary, for 1748, there is this
+draft of a letter:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;<span class="smcap">Dear Friend Robin</span>: My place of Residence is at present at
+His Lordship&#8217;s where I might, was my heart disengag&#8217;d, pass
+my time very pleasantly, as there&#8217;s a very agreeable Young
+Lady Lives in the same house (Col. George Fairfax&#8217;s Wife&#8217;s
+Sister); but as that&#8217;s only adding fuel to fire, it makes me
+the more uneasy, for by often and unavoidably being, in
+Company with her revives my former Passion for your Lowland
+Beauty; whereas was I to live more retired from young Women
+I might in some measure aliviate my sorrows by burying that
+chaste and troublesome Passion in the grave of oblivion or
+eternal forgetfulness, for as I am very well assured, that&#8217;s
+the only antidote or remedy, that I shall be relieved by, as
+I am well convinced, was I ever to ask any question, I
+should only get a denial which would be adding grief to
+uneasiness.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>The &#8220;Lowland Beauty&#8221; was Miss Mary Bland. Tradition does not say
+whether or not she ever knew of Washington&#8217;s admiration, but she
+married Henry Lee.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Light Horse Harry,&#8221; that daring master of cavalry of Revolutionary
+fame, was the son of the &#8220;Lowland Beauty,&#8221; and some tender memories of
+the mother may have been mingled with Washington&#8217;s fondness for the
+young soldier. It was &#8220;Light Horse Harry&#8221; also, who said of the
+Commander-in-Chief that he was &#8220;first in war, first in peace, and
+first in the hearts of his countrymen!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>By another trick of fate the grandson of the &#8220;Lowland Beauty&#8221; was Gen.
+Robert E. Lee. Who can say what momentous changes might have been
+wrought in history had Washington married his first love?</p>
+
+<p>Miss Gary, the sister of Mrs. Fairfax, was the &#8220;agreeable young lady&#8221;
+of whom he speaks. After a time her charm seems to have partially
+mitigated the pain he felt over the loss of her predecessor in his
+affections. Later he writes of a Miss Betsey Fauntleroy, saying that
+he is soon to see her, and that he &#8220;hopes for a revocation of her
+former cruel sentence.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p><p>When Braddock&#8217;s defeat brought the soldier again to Mount Vernon, to
+rest from the fatigues of the campaign, there is abundant evidence to
+prove that he had become a personage in the eyes of women. For
+instance, Lord Fairfax writes to him, saying:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;If a Satterday Night&#8217;s Rest cannot be sufficient to enable
+your coming hither to-morrow the Lady&#8217;s will try to get
+Horses to equip our Chair or attempt their strength on Foot
+to Salute you, so desirious are they with loving Speed to
+have an occular Demonstration of your being the same
+identical Gent&mdash;that lately departed to defend his Country&#8217;s
+Cause.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>A very feminine postscript was attached to this which read as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;<span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;After thanking Heaven for your safe return, I must accuse
+you of great unkindness in refusing us the pleasure of
+seeing you this night. I do assure you nothing but our being
+satisfied that our company would be disagreeable, should
+prevent us from trying if our Legs would not carry us to
+Mount <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>Vernon this night, but if you will not come to us,
+to-morrow morning very early we shall be at Mount Vernon.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 1.5em;">&#8220;<span class="smcap">Sally Fairfax</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-right: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Ann Spearing</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-right: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Eliz&#8217;th Dent</span>&#8221;</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Yet, in spite of the attractions of Virginia we find him journeying to
+Boston, on military business, by way of New York.</p>
+
+<p>The hero of Braddock&#8217;s stricken field found every door open before
+him. He was f&ecirc;ted in Philadelphia, and the aristocrats of Manhattan
+gave dinners in honour of the strapping young soldier from the wilds
+of Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>At the house of his friend, Beverly Robinson, he met Miss Mary
+Philipse, and speedily surrendered. She was a beautiful, cultured
+woman, twenty-five years old, who had travelled widely and had seen
+much of the world. He promptly proposed to her, and was refused, but
+with exquisite grace and tact.</p>
+
+<p>Graver affairs however soon claimed his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>attention, and he did not go
+back, though a friend wrote to him that Lieutenant-Colonel Morris was
+besieging the citadel. She married Morris, and their house in
+Morristown became Washington&#8217;s headquarters, in 1776&mdash;again, how
+history might have been changed had Mary Philipse married her Virginia
+lover!</p>
+
+<p>In the spring of 1758, Washington met his fate. He was riding on
+horseback from Mount Vernon to Williamsburg with important despatches.
+In crossing a ford of the Pamunkey he fell in with a Mr. Chamberlayne,
+who lived in the neighbourhood. With true Virginian hospitality he
+prevailed upon Washington to take dinner at his house, making the
+arrangement with much difficulty, however, since the soldier was
+impatient to get to Williamsburg.</p>
+
+<p>Once inside the colonial house, whose hospitable halls breathed
+welcome, his impatience, and the errand itself, were almost forgotten.
+A negro servant led his horse up and down the gravelled walk in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>front
+of the house; the servant grew tired, the horse pawed and sniffed with
+impatience, but Washington lingered.</p>
+
+<p>A petite hazel-eyed woman&mdash;she who was once Patsy Dandridge, but then
+the widow of Daniel Parke Custis&mdash;was delaying important affairs. At
+night-fall the distracted warrior remembered his mission, and made a
+hasty adieu. Mr. Chamberlayne, meeting him at the door, laid a
+restraining hand upon his arm. &#8220;No guest ever leaves my house after
+sunset,&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>The horse was put up, the servant released from duty, and Washington
+remained until the next morning, when, with new happiness in his
+heart, he dashed on to Williamsburg.</p>
+
+<p>We may well fancy that her image was before him all the way. She had
+worn a gown of white dimity, with a cluster of Mayblossoms at her
+belt, and a little white widow&#8217;s cap half covered her soft brown hair.</p>
+
+<p>She was twenty-six, some three months <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>younger than Washington; she
+had wealth, and two children. Mr. Custis had been older than his
+Patsy, for she was married when she was but seventeen. He had been a
+faithful and affectionate husband, but he had not appealed to her
+imagination, and it was doubtless through her imagination, that the
+big Virginia Colonel won her heart.</p>
+
+<p>She left Mr. Chamberlayne&#8217;s and went to her home&mdash;the &#8220;White
+House&#8221;&mdash;near William&#8217;s Ferry. The story is that when Washington came
+from Williamsburg, he was met at the ferry by one of Mrs. Custis&#8217;s
+slaves. &#8220;Is your mistress at home?&#8221; he inquired of the negro who was
+rowing him across the river.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, sah,&#8221; replied the darkey, then added slyly, &#8220;I recon you am de
+man what am expected.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was late in the afternoon of the next day when Washington took his
+departure, but he had her promise and was happy. A ring was ordered
+from Philadelphia, and is duly set down in his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>accounts: &#8220;One
+engagement ring, two pounds, sixteen shillings.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then came weary months of service in the field, and they saw each
+other only four times before they were married. There were doubtless
+frequent letters, but only one of them remains. It is the letter of a
+soldier:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;We have begun our march for the Ohio, [he wrote]. A courier
+is starting for Williamsburg, and I embrace the opportunity
+to send a few words to one whose life is now inseparable
+from mine.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Since that happy hour, when we made our pledges to each
+other, my thoughts have been continually going to you as to
+another self. That an All-powerful Providence may keep us
+both in safety is the prayer of your ever faithful and
+affectionate Friend,</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 2em;">&#8221;<span class="smcap">G. Washington</span></span></p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;20th of July</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.75em;">Mrs. Martha Custis.&#8221;</span></p></div>
+
+<p>On the sixth of the following January they were married in the little
+church of St. Peter. Once again Dr. Mossum, in full canonicals,
+married &#8220;Patsy&#8221; Dandridge <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>to the man of her choice. The bridegroom
+wore a blue cloth coat lined with red silk and ornamented with silver
+trimmings. His vest was embroidered white satin, his shoe- and
+knee-buckles were of solid gold, his hair was powdered, and a dress
+sword hung at his side.</p>
+
+<p>The bride was attired in heavy brocaded white silk inwoven with a
+silver thread. She wore a white satin quilted petticoat with heavy
+corded white silk over-skirt, and high-heeled shoes of white satin
+with buckles of brilliants. She had ruffles of rich point lace, pearl
+necklace, ear-rings, and bracelets, and was attended by three
+bridesmaids.</p>
+
+<p>The aristocracy of Virginia was out in full force. One of the most
+imposing figures was Bishop, the negro servant, who had led
+Washington&#8217;s horse up and down the gravelled path in front of Mr.
+Chamberlayne&#8217;s door while the master lingered within. He was in the
+scarlet uniform of King George&#8217;s army, booted and spurred, and he held
+the bridle rein <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>of the chestnut charger that was forced to wait while
+his rider made love.</p>
+
+<p>On leaving the church, the bride and her maids rode back to the &#8220;White
+House&#8221; in a coach drawn by six horses, and guided by black post-boys
+in livery, while Colonel Washington, on his magnificent horse, and
+attended by a brilliant company, rode by her side.</p>
+
+<p>There was no seer to predict that some time the little lady in white
+satin, brocade silk, and rich laces, would spend long hours knitting
+stockings for her husband&#8217;s army, and that night after night would
+find her, in a long grey cloak, at the side of the wounded, hearing
+from stiffening lips the husky whisper, &#8220;God bless you, Lady
+Washington!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>All through the troublous times that followed, Washington was the
+lover as well as the husband. He took a father&#8217;s place with the little
+children, treating them with affection, but never swerving from the
+path of justice. With the fondness of a lover, he ordered fine clothes
+for his wife from London.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p><p>After his death, Mrs. Washington destroyed all of his letters. There
+is only one of them to be found which was written after their
+marriage. It is in an old book, printed in New York in 1796, when the
+narrow streets around the tall spire of Trinity were the centre of
+social life, and the busy hum of Wall Street was not to be heard for
+fifty years!</p>
+
+<p>One may fancy a stately Knickerbocker stopping at a little bookstall
+where the dizzy heights of the Empire Building now rise, or down near
+the Battery, untroubled by the white cliff called &#8220;The Bowling Green,&#8221;
+and asking pompously enough, for the <i>Epistles; Domestic,
+Confidential, and Official, from General Washington</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The pages are yellowed with age, and the &#8220;f&#8221; used in the place of the
+&#8220;s&#8221;, as well as the queer orthography and capitalisation, look strange
+to twentieth-century eyes, but on page 56 the lover-husband pleads
+with his lady in a way that we can well understand.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p><p>The letter is dated &#8220;June 24, 1776,&#8221; and in part is as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;<span class="smcap">My Dearest Life and Love</span>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have hurt me, I know not how much, by the insinuation
+in your last, that my letters to you have been less frequent
+because I have felt less concern for you.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The suspicion is most unjust; may I not add, is most
+unkind. Have we lived, now almost a score of years, in the
+closest and dearest conjugal intimacy to so little purpose,
+that on the appearance only, of inattention to you, and
+which you might have accounted for in a thousand ways more
+natural and more probable, you should pitch upon that single
+motive which is alone injurious to me?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have not, I own, wrote so often to you as I wished and as
+I ought.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But think of my situation, and then ask your heart if I be
+<i>without excuse</i>?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We are not, my dearest, in circumstances the most favorable
+to our happiness; but let us not, I beseech of you, make
+them worse by indulging suspicions and apprehensions which
+minds in distress are apt to give way to.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never was, as you have often told me, even in my better
+and more disengaged days, so attentive to the little
+punctillios of friendship, as it may be, became me; but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>my
+heart tells me, there never was a moment in my life, since I
+first knew you, in which it did not cleave and cling to you
+with the warmest affection; and it must cease to beat ere it
+can cease to wish for your happiness, above anything on
+earth.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 2em;">&#8220;Your faithful and tender husband, G. W.&#8221;</span></p></div>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Seventy-six!&#8221; The words bring a thrill even now, yet, in the midst
+of those stirring times, not a fortnight before the Declaration was
+signed, and after twenty years of marriage, he could write her like
+this. Even his reproaches are gentle, and filled with great
+tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>And so it went on, through the Revolution and through the stormy days
+in which the Republic was born. There were long and inevitable
+separations, yet a part of the time she was with him, doing her duty
+as a soldier&#8217;s wife, and sternly refusing to wear garments which were
+not woven in American looms.</p>
+
+<p>During the many years they lived at Mount Vernon, they attended divine
+service at Christ Church, Alexandria, Virginia, one of the quaint
+little landmarks <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>of the town which is still standing. For a number of
+years he was a vestryman of the church, and the pew occupied by him is
+visited yearly by thousands of tourists while sight-seeing in the
+national Capitol. Indeed all the churches, so far as known, in which
+he once worshipped, have preserved his pew intact, while there are
+hundreds of tablets, statues, and monuments throughout the country.</p>
+
+<p>In the magnificent monument at Washington, rising to a height of more
+than 555 feet, the various States of the Union have placed stone
+replicas of their State seals, and these, with other symbolic devices,
+constitute the inscriptions upon one hundred and seventy-nine of these
+memorial stones. Not only this, but Europe and Asia, China and Japan
+have honoured themselves by erecting memorials to the great American.</p>
+
+<p>When at last his long years of service for his country were ended, he
+and his beloved wife returned again to their beautiful home at Mount
+Vernon, to wait <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>for the night together. The whole world knows how the
+end came, with her loving ministrations to the very last of the three
+restful years which they at this time spent together at the old home,
+and how he looked Death bravely in the face, as became a soldier and a
+Christian.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Old and the New</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox6 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">G</span>randmother sat at her spinning wheel<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.1em;">In the dust of the long ago,</span><br />
+And listened, with scarlet dyeing her cheeks,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">For the step she had learned to know.</span><br />
+A courtly lover, was he who came,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">With frill and ruffle and curl&mdash;</span><br />
+They dressed so queerly in the days<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">When grandmother was a girl!</span><br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Knickerbockers&#8221; they called them then,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">When they spoke of the things at all&mdash;</span><br />
+Grandfather wore them, buckled and trim,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">When he sallied forth to call.</span><br />
+Grandmother&#8217;s eyes were youthful then&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">His &#8220;guiding stars,&#8221; he said;</span><br />
+While she demurely watched her wheel<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And spun with a shining thread.</span><br />
+<br />
+Frill, and ruffle, and curl are gone,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">But the &#8220;knickers&#8221; are with us still&mdash;</span><br />
+And so is love and the spinning wheel,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">But we ride it now&mdash;if you will!</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>In grandfather&#8217;s &#8220;knickers&#8221; I sit and watch<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">For the gleam of a lamp afar;</span><br />
+And my heart still turns, as theirs, methinks,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">To my wheel and my guiding star.</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Love Story of the &#8220;Sage of<br />
+Monticello&#8221;</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">A</span>merican history holds no more beautiful love-story than that of
+Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, and author of
+the Declaration of Independence. It is a tale of single-hearted,
+unswerving devotion, worthy of this illustrious statesman. His love
+for his wife was not the first outpouring of his nature, but it was
+the strongest and best&mdash;the love, not of the boy, but of the man.</p>
+
+<p>Jefferson was not particularly handsome as a young man, for he was
+red-haired, awkward, and knew not what to do with his hands, though he
+played the violin passably well. But his friend, Patrick Henry, suave,
+tactful and popular, exerted himself to improve Jefferson&#8217;s manners
+and fit <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>him for general society, attaining at last very pleasing
+results, although there was a certain roughness in his nature, shown
+in his correspondence, which no amount of polishing seemed able to
+overcome.</p>
+
+<p>John Page was Jefferson&#8217;s closest friend, and to him he wrote very
+fully concerning the state of his mind and heart, and with a certain
+quaint, uncouth humour, which to this day is irresistible.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, at Fairfield, Christmas day, 1762, he wrote to his
+friend as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Dear Page</span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This very day, to others the day of greatest mirth and
+jolity, sees me overwhelmed with more and greater
+misfortunes than have befallen a descendant of Adam for
+these thousand years past, I am sure; and perhaps, after
+excepting Job, since the creation of the world.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must know, Dear Page, that I am now in a house
+surrounded by enemies, who take counsel together against my
+soul; and when I lay me down to rest, they say among
+themselves, &#8216;Come let us destroy him.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am sure if there is such a thing as a Devil in this
+world, he must have been here <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>last night, and have had some
+hand in what happened to me. Do you think the cursed rats
+(at his instigation I suppose) did not eat up my pocket
+book, which was in my pocket, within an inch of my head? And
+not contented with plenty for the present, they carried away
+my gemmy worked silk garters, and half a dozen new minuets I
+had just got, to serve, I suppose, as provision for the
+winter.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know it rained last night, or if you do not know it, I
+am sure I do. When I went to bed I laid my watch in the
+usual place, and going to take her up after I arose this
+morning, I found her in the same place, it is true, but all
+afloat in water, let in at a leak in the roof of the house,
+and as silent, and as still as the rats that had eaten my
+pocket book.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now, you know if chance had anything to do in this matter,
+there were a thousand other spots where it might have
+chanced to leak as well as this one which was
+perpendicularly over my watch. But I&#8217;ll tell you, it&#8217;s my
+opinion that the Devil came and bored the hole over it on
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, as I was saying, my poor watch had lost her speech. I
+would not have cared much for this, but something worse
+attended it&mdash;the subtle particles of water with which the
+case was filled had, by their penetration, so overcome the
+cohesion of the particles <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>of the paper, of which my dear
+picture, and watch patch paper, were composed, that in
+attempting to take them out to dry them, my cursed fingers
+gave them such a rent as I fear I shall never get over.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;... And now, though her picture be defaced, there is so
+lively an image of her imprinted in my mind, that I shall
+think of her too often, I fear for my peace of mind; and too
+often I am sure to get through old Coke this winter, for I
+have not seen him since I packed him up in my trunk in
+Williamsburg. Well, Page, I do wish the Devil had old Coke
+for I am sure I never was so tired of the dull old scoundrel
+in my life....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I would fain ask the favor of Miss Bettey Burwell to give
+me another watch paper of her own cutting, which I should
+esteem much more though it were a plain round one, than the
+nicest in the world cut by other hands; however I am afraid
+she would think this presumption, after my suffering the
+other to get spoiled. If you think you can excuse me to her
+for this, I should be glad if you would ask her....&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Page was a little older than Jefferson, and the young man thought much
+of his advice. Six months later we find Page <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>advising him to go to
+Miss Rebecca Burwell and &#8220;lay siege in form.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There were many objections to this&mdash;first, the necessity of keeping
+the matter secret, and of &#8220;treating with a ward before obtaining the
+consent of her guardian,&#8221; which at that time was considered
+dishonourable, and second, Jefferson&#8217;s own state of suspense and
+uneasiness, since the lady had given him no grounds for hope.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;If I am to succeed [he wrote], the sooner I know it the
+less uneasiness I shall have to go through. If I am to meet
+with disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life
+I shall have to wear it off; and if I do meet with one, I
+hope and verily believe it will be the last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I assure you that I almost envy you your present freedom
+and I assure you that if Belinda will not accept of my
+heart, it shall never be offered to another.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>In his letters he habitually spoke of Miss Burwell as &#8220;Belinda,&#8221;
+presumably on account of the fear which he expresses to Page, that the
+letters might possibly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>fall into other hands. In some of his letters
+he spells &#8220;Belinda&#8221; backward, and with exaggerated caution, in Greek
+letters.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, with much fear and trembling, he took his friend&#8217;s advice,
+and laid siege to the fair Rebecca in due form. The day
+afterward&mdash;October 7, 1763&mdash;he confided in Page:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;In the most melancholy fit that ever a poor soul was, I sit
+down to write you. Last night, as merry as agreeable company
+and dancing with Belinda could make me, I never could have
+thought that the succeeding sun would have seen me so
+wretched as I now am!</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was prepared to say a great deal. I had dressed up in my
+own mind, such thoughts as occurred to me, in as moving
+language as I knew how, and expected to have performed in a
+tolerably creditable manner. But ... when I had an
+opportunity of venting them, a few broken sentences, uttered
+in great disorder, and interrupted by pauses of uncommon
+length were the too visible marks of my strange confusion!</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The whole confab I will tell you, word for word if I can
+when I see you which God send, may be soon.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p><p>After this, he dates his letters at &#8220;Devilsburg,&#8221; instead of
+Williamsburg, and says in one of them, &#8220;I believe I never told you
+that we had another occasion.&#8221; This time he behaved more creditably,
+told &#8220;Belinda&#8221; that it was necessary for him to go to England,
+explained the inevitable delays and told how he should conduct himself
+until his return. He says that he asked no questions which would admit
+of a categorical answer&mdash;there was something of the lawyer in this
+wooing! He assured Miss Rebecca that such a question would one day be
+asked. In this letter she is called &#8220;Adinleb&#8221; and spoken of as &#8220;he.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Miss Burwell did not wait, however, until Jefferson was in a position
+to seek her hand openly, but was suddenly married to another. The news
+was a great shock to Jefferson, who refused to believe it until Page
+confirmed it; but the love-lorn swain gradually recovered from his
+disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>With youthful ardour they had planned <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>to buy adjoining estates and
+have a carriage in common, when each married the lady of his love,
+that they might attend all the dances. A little later, when Page was
+also crossed in love, both forswore marriage forever.</p>
+
+<p>For five or six years, Jefferson was faithful to his vow&mdash;rather an
+unusual record. He met his fate at last in the person of a charming
+widow&mdash;Martha Skelton.</p>
+
+<p>The death of his sister, his devotion to his books, and his
+disappointment made him a sadder and a wiser man. His home at Shadwell
+had been burned, and he removed to Monticello, a house built on the
+same estate on a spur of the Blue Ridge Mountains, five hundred feet
+above the common level.</p>
+
+<p>He went often to visit Mrs. Skelton who made her home with her father
+after her bereavement. Usually he took his violin under his arm, and
+out of the harmonies which came from the instrument and the lady&#8217;s
+spinet came the greater one of love.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p><p>They were married in January of 1772. The ceremony took place at &#8220;The
+Forest&#8221; in Charles City County. The chronicles describe the bride as a
+beautiful woman, a little above medium height, finely formed, and with
+graceful carriage. She was well educated, read a great deal, and
+played the spinet unusually well.</p>
+
+<p>The wedding journey was a strange one. It was a hundred miles from
+&#8220;The Forest&#8221; to Monticello, and years afterward their eldest daughter,
+Martha Jefferson Randolph, described it as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;They left &#8216;The Forest&#8217; after a fall of snow, light then,
+but increasing in depth as they advanced up the country.
+They were finally obliged to quit the carriage and proceed
+on horseback. They arrived late at night, the fires were all
+out, and the servants had retired to their own houses for
+the night. The horrible dreariness of such a house, at the
+end of such a journey, I have often heard both relate.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Yet, the walls of Monticello, that afterwards looked down upon so much
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>sorrow and so much joy, must have long remembered the home-coming of
+master and mistress, for the young husband found a bottle of old wine
+&#8220;on a shelf behind some books,&#8221; built a fire in the open fireplace,
+and &#8220;they laughed and sang together like two children.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And that life upon the hills proved very nearly ideal. They walked and
+planned and rode together, and kept house and garden books in the most
+minute fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Births and deaths followed each other at Monticello, but there was
+nothing else to mar the peace of that happy home. Between husband and
+wife there was no strife or discord, not a jar nor a rift in that
+unity of life and purpose which welds two souls into one.</p>
+
+<p>Childish voices came and went, but two daughters grew to womanhood,
+and in the evening, the day&#8217;s duties done, violin and harpsichord
+sounded sweet strains together.</p>
+
+<p>They reared other children besides their own, taking the helpless
+brood of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>Jefferson&#8217;s sister into their hearts and home when Dabney
+Carr died. Those three sons and three daughters were educated with his
+own children, and lived to bless him as a second father.</p>
+
+<p>One letter is extant which was written to one of the nieces whom
+Jefferson so cheerfully supported. It reads as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;<span class="smcap">Paris</span>, June 14, 1787.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I send you, my dear Patsey, the fifteen livres you desired.
+You propose this to me as an anticipation of five weeks&#8217;
+allowance, but do you not see, my dear, how imprudent it is
+to lay out in one moment what should accommodate you for
+five weeks? This is a departure from that rule which I wish
+to see you governed by, thro&#8217; your whole life, of never
+buying anything which you have not the money in your pocket
+to pay for.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Be sure that it gives much more pain to the mind to be in
+debt than to do without any article whatever which we may
+seem to want.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The purchase you have made is one I am always ready to make
+for you because it is my wish to see you dressed always
+cleanly and a little more than decently; but apply to me
+first for the money before making the purchase, if only to
+avoid breaking through your rule.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Learn yourself the habit of adhering vigorously to the
+rules you lay down for yourself. I will come for you about
+eleven o&#8217;clock on Saturday. Hurry the making of your gown,
+and also your redingcote. You will go with me some day next
+week to dine at the Marquis Fayette. Adieu, my dear
+daughter,</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 3.5em;">&#8220;Yours affectionately,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-right: 2em;">&#8220;<span class="smcap">Th. Jefferson</span>&#8221;</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jefferson&#8217;s concern for her husband, the loss of her children,
+and the weary round of domestic duties at last told upon her strong
+constitution.</p>
+
+<p>After the birth of her sixth child, Lucy Elizabeth, she sank rapidly,
+until at last it was plain to every one, except the distracted
+husband, that she could never recover.</p>
+
+<p>Finally the blow fell. His daughter Martha wrote of it as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;As a nurse no female ever had more tenderness or anxiety.
+He nursed my poor mother in turn with Aunt Carr, and her own
+sister&mdash;sitting up with her and administering her medicines
+and drink to the last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When at last he left his room, three weeks after my
+mother&#8217;s death, he rode out, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>from that time, he was
+incessantly on horseback, rambling about the mountain.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Shortly afterward he received the appointment of Plenipotentiary to
+Europe, to be associated with Franklin and Adams in negotiating peace.
+He had twice refused the same appointment, as he had promised his wife
+that he would never again enter public life, as long as she lived.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Columbia</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox5 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">S</span>he comes along old Ocean&#8217;s trackless way&mdash;<br />
+A warrior scenting conflict from afar<br />
+And fearing not defeat nor battle-scar<br />
+Nor all the might of wind and dashing spray;<br />
+Her foaming path to triumph none may stay<br />
+For in the East, there shines her morning star;<br />
+She feels her strength in every shining spar<br />
+As one who grasps his sword and waits for day.<br />
+<br />
+Columbia, Defender! dost thou hear?<br />
+The clarion challenge sweeps the sea<br />
+And straight toward the lightship doth she steer,<br />
+Her steadfast pulses sounding jubilee;<br />
+Arise, Defender! for thy way is clear<br />
+And all thy country&#8217;s heart goes out to thee.</p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Story of a Daughter&#8217;s Love</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">A</span>aron Burr was past-master of what Whistler calls &#8220;the gentle art of
+making enemies!&#8221; Probably no man ever lived who was more bitterly
+hated or more fiercely reviled. Even at this day, when he has been
+dead more than half a century, his memory is still assailed.</p>
+
+<p>It is the popular impression that he was a villain. Perhaps he was,
+since &#8220;where there is smoke, there must be fire,&#8221; but happily we have
+no concern with the political part of his life. Whatever he may have
+been, and whatever dark deeds he may have done, there still remains a
+redeeming feature which no one has denied him&mdash;his love for his
+daughter, Theodosia.</p>
+
+<p>One must remember that before Burr was two years old, his father,
+mother, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>and grandparents were all dead. He was reared by an uncle,
+Timothy Edwards, who doubtless did his best, but the odds were against
+the homeless child. Neither must we forget that he fought in the
+Revolution, bravely and well.</p>
+
+<p>From his early years he was very attractive to women. He was handsome,
+distinguished, well dressed, and gifted in many ways. He was generous,
+ready at compliments and gallantry, and possessed an all-compelling
+charm.</p>
+
+<p>In the autumn of 1777, his regiment was detailed for scouting duty in
+New Jersey, which was then the debatable ground between colonial and
+British armies. In January of 1779, Colonel Burr was given command of
+the &#8220;lines&#8221; in Westchester County, New York. It was at this time that
+he first met Mrs. Prevost, the widow of a British officer. She lived
+across the Hudson, some fifteen miles from shore, and the river was
+patrolled by the gunboats of the British, and the land by their
+sentries.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p><p>In spite of these difficulties, however, Burr managed to make two
+calls upon the lady, although they were both necessarily informal. He
+sent six of his trusted soldiers to a place on the Hudson, where there
+was an overhanging bank under which they moored a large boat, well
+supplied with blankets and buffalo robes. At nine o&#8217;clock in the
+evening he left White Plains on the smallest and swiftest horse he
+could procure, and when he reached the rendezvous, the horse was
+quickly bound and laid in the boat. Burr and the six troopers stepped
+in, and in half an hour they were across the ferry. The horse was
+lifted out, and unbound, and with a little rubbing he was again ready
+for duty.</p>
+
+<p>Before midnight, Burr was at the house of his beloved, and at four in
+the morning he came back to the troopers awaiting him on the river
+bank, and the return trip was made in the same manner.</p>
+
+<p>For a year and a half after leaving the army, Burr was an invalid, but
+in July, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>1782, he married Mrs. Prevost. She was a widow with two
+sons, and was ten years older than her husband. Her health was
+delicate and she had a scar on her forehead, but her mind was finely
+cultivated and her manners charming.</p>
+
+<p>Long after her death he said that if his manners were more graceful
+than those of some men, it was due to her influence, and that his wife
+was the truest woman, and most charming lady he had ever known.</p>
+
+<p>It has been claimed by some that Burr&#8217;s married life was not a happy
+one, but there are many letters still extant which passed between them
+which seemed to prove the contrary. Before marriage he did not often
+write to her, but during his absences afterward, the fondest wife
+could have no reason to complain.</p>
+
+<p>For instance:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;This morning came your truly welcome letter of Monday
+evening,&#8221; he wrote her at one time. &#8220;Where did it loiter so
+long?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nothing in my absence is so flattering to me as your health
+and cheerfulness. I then <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>contemplate nothing so eagerly as
+my return, amuse myself with ideas of my own happiness, and
+dwell upon the sweet domestic joys which I fancy prepared
+for me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nothing is so unfriendly to every species of enjoyment as
+melancholy. Gloom, however dressed, however caused, is
+incompatible with friendship. They cannot have place in the
+mind at the same time. It is the secret, the malignant foe
+of sentiment and love.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>He always wrote fondly of the children:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;My love to the smiling little girl,&#8221; he said in one letter.
+&#8220;I continually plan my return with childish impatience, and
+fancy a thousand incidents which are most interesting.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>After five years of married life the wife wrote him as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Your letters always afford me a singular satisfaction, a
+sensation entirely my own. This was peculiarly so. It
+wrought strangely upon my mind and spirits. My Aaron, it was
+replete with tenderness and with the most lively affection.
+I read and re-read till afraid I should get it by rote, and
+mingle it with common ideas.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Soon after Burr entered politics, his wife developed cancer of the
+most virulent <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>character. Everything that money or available skill
+could accomplish was done for her, but she died after a lingering and
+painful illness, in the spring of 1794.</p>
+
+<p>They had lived together happily for twelve years, and he grieved for
+her deeply and sincerely. Yet the greatest and most absorbing passion
+of his life was for his daughter, Theodosia, who was named for her
+mother and was born in the first year of their marriage. When little
+Theodosia was first laid in her father&#8217;s arms, all that was best in
+him answered to her mute plea for his affection, and later, all that
+was best in him responded to her baby smile.</p>
+
+<p>Between those two, there was ever the fullest confidence, never
+tarnished by doubt or mistrust, and when all the world forsook him,
+Theodosia, grown to womanhood, stood proudly by her father&#8217;s side and
+shared his blame as if it had been the highest honour.</p>
+
+<p>When she was a year or two old, they moved to a large house at the
+corner of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>Cedar and Nassau Streets, in New York City. A large garden
+surrounded it and there were grapevines in the rear. Here the child
+grew strong and healthy, and laid the foundations of her girlish
+beauty and mature charm. When she was but three years old her mother
+wrote to the father, saying:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Your dear little Theodosia cannot hear you spoken of
+without an apparent melancholy; insomuch, that her nurse is
+obliged to exert her invention to divert her, and myself
+avoid the mention of you in her presence. She was one whole
+day indifferent to everything but your name. Her attachment
+is not of a common nature.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>And again:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Your dear little daughter seeks you twenty times a day,
+calls you to your meals, and will not suffer your chair to
+be filled by any of the family.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>The child was educated as if she had been a boy. She learned to read
+Latin and Greek fluently, and the accomplishments of her time were not
+neglected. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>When she was at school, the father wrote her regularly,
+and did not allow one of her letters to wait a day for its
+affectionate answer. He corrected her spelling and her grammar,
+instilled sound truths into her mind, and formed her habits. From this
+plastic clay, with inexpressible love and patient toil, he shaped his
+ideal woman.</p>
+
+<p>She grew into a beautiful girl. Her features were much like her
+father&#8217;s. She was petite, graceful, plump, rosy, dignified, and
+gracious. In her manner, there was a calm assurance&mdash;the air of
+mastery over all situations&mdash;which she doubtless inherited from him.</p>
+
+<p>When she was eighteen years of age, she married Joseph Alston of South
+Carolina, and, with much pain at parting from her father, she went
+there to live, after seeing him inaugurated as Jefferson&#8217;s
+Vice-President. His only consolation was her happiness, and when he
+returned to New York, he wrote her that he approached the old house as
+if it had been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>the sepulchre of all his friends. &#8220;Dreary, solitary,
+comfortless&mdash;it was no longer home.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>After her mother&#8217;s death, Theodosia had been the lady of his household
+and reigned at the head of his table. When he went back there was no
+loved face opposite him, and the chill and loneliness struck him to
+the heart.</p>
+
+<p>For three years after her marriage, Theodosia was blissfully happy. A
+boy was born to her, and was named Aaron Burr Alston. The
+Vice-President visited them in the South and took his namesake
+unreservedly into his heart. &#8220;If I can see without prejudice,&#8221; he
+said, &#8220;there never was a finer boy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His last act before fighting the duel with Hamilton, was writing to
+his daughter&mdash;a happy, gay, care-free letter, giving no hint of what
+was impending. To her husband he wrote in a different strain, begging
+him to keep the event from her as long as possible, to make her happy
+always, and to encourage her in those <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>habits of study which he
+himself had taught her.</p>
+
+<p>She had parted from him with no other pain in her heart than the
+approaching separation. When they met again, he was a fugitive from
+justice, travel-stained from his long journey in an open canoe,
+indicted for murder in New York, and in New Jersey, although still
+President of the Senate, and Vice-President of the United States.</p>
+
+<p>The girl&#8217;s heart ached bitterly, yet no word of censure escaped her
+lips, and she still held her head high. When his Mexican scheme was
+overthrown, Theodosia sat beside him at his trial, wearing her
+absolute faith, so that all the world might see.</p>
+
+<p>When he was preparing for his flight to Europe, Theodosia was in New
+York, and they met by night, secretly, at the house of friends. Just
+before he sailed, they spent a whole night together, making the best
+of the little time that remained to them before the inevitable
+separation. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>Early in June they parted, little dreaming that they
+should see each other no more.</p>
+
+<p>During the years of exile, Theodosia suffered no less than he. Mr.
+Alston had lost his faith in Aaron Burr, and the woman&#8217;s heart
+strained beneath the burden. Her health failed, her friends shrank
+from her, yet openly and bravely she clung to her father.</p>
+
+<p>Public opinion showed no signs of relenting, and his evil genius
+followed him across the sea. He was expelled from England, and in
+Paris he was almost a prisoner. At one time he was obliged to live
+upon potatoes and dry bread, and his devoted daughter could not help
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He was despised by his countrymen, but Theodosia&#8217;s adoring love never
+faltered. In one of her letters she said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;I witness your extraordinary fortitude with new wonder at
+every misfortune. Often, after reflecting on this subject,
+you appear to me so superior, so elevated above other men&mdash;I
+contemplate you with such a strange mixture of humility,
+admiration, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>reverence, love, and pride, that a very little
+superstition would be necessary to make me worship you as a
+superior being, such enthusiasm does your character excite
+in me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When I afterward revert to myself, how insignificant do my
+best qualities appear! My own vanity would be greater if I
+had not been placed so near you, and yet, my pride is in our
+relationship. I had rather not live than not to be the
+daughter of such a man.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>She wrote to Mrs. Madison and asked her to intercede with the
+President for her father. The answer gave the required assurance, and
+she wrote to her father, urging him to go boldly to New York and
+resume the practice of his profession. &#8220;If worse comes to worst,&#8221; she
+wrote, &#8220;I will leave everything to suffer with you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He landed in Boston and went on to New York in May of 1812, where his
+reception was better than he had hoped, and where he soon had a
+lucrative practice. They planned for him to come South in the summer,
+and she was almost happy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>again, when her child died and her mother&#8217;s
+heart was broken.</p>
+
+<p>She had borne much, and she never recovered from that last blow. Her
+health failed rapidly, and though she was too weak to undertake the
+trip, she insisted upon going to New York to see her father.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking the voyage might prove beneficial, her husband reluctantly
+consented, and passage was engaged for her on a pilot-boat that had
+been out privateering, and had stopped for supplies before going on to
+New York.</p>
+
+<p>The vessel sailed&mdash;and a storm swept the Atlantic coast from Maine to
+Florida. It was supposed that the ship went down off Cape Hatteras,
+but forty years afterward, a sailor, who died in Texas, confessed on
+his death-bed that he was one of a crew of mutineers who took
+possession of the <i>Patriot</i> and forced the passengers, as well as the
+officers and men, to walk the plank. He professed to remember Mrs.
+Alston well, and said she was the last one who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>perished. He never
+forgot her look of despair as she stepped into the sea&mdash;with her head
+held high even in the face of death.</p>
+
+<p>Among Theodosia&#8217;s papers was found a letter addressed to her husband,
+written at a time when she was weary of the struggle. On the envelope
+was written: &#8220;My Husband. To be delivered after my death. I wish this
+to be read immediately and before my burial.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He never saw the letter, for he never had the courage to go through
+her papers, and after his death it was sent to her father. It came to
+him like a message from the grave:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Let my father see my son, sometimes,&#8221; she had written. &#8220;Do
+not be unkind to him whom I have loved so much, I beseech of
+you. Burn all my papers except my father&#8217;s letters, which I
+beg you to return to him.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>A long time afterward, her father married Madame Jumel, a rich New
+York woman who was many years his junior, but the alliance was
+unfortunate, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>was soon annulled. Through all the rest of his life,
+he never wholly gave up the hope that Theodosia might return. He clung
+fondly to the belief that she had been picked up by another ship, and
+some day would be brought back to him.</p>
+
+<p>Day by day, he haunted the Battery, anxiously searching the faces of
+the incoming passengers, asking some of them for tidings of his
+daughter, and always believing that the next ship would bring her
+back.</p>
+
+<p>He became a familiar figure, for he was almost always there&mdash;a bent,
+shrunken little man, white-haired, leaning heavily upon his cane,
+asking questions in a thin piping voice, and straining his dim eyes
+forever toward the unsounded waters, from whence the idol of his heart
+never came.</p>
+
+<div class="centerbox7 bbox"><p>For out within those waters, cruel, changeless,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea;</span><br />
+A smile upon her dear lips, dumb, but waiting,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And I&mdash;I hear the sea-voice calling me.</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Sea-Voice</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox4 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">B</span>eyond the sands I hear the sea-voice calling<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.1em;">With passion all but human in its pain,</span><br />
+While from my eyes the bitter tears are falling,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And all the summer land seems blind with rain;</span><br />
+For out within those waters, cruel, changeless,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea,</span><br />
+A smile upon her dear lips, dumb, but waiting,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And I&mdash;I hear the sea-voice calling me.</span><br />
+<br />
+The tide comes in. The moonlight flood and glory<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Of that unresting surge thrill earth with bliss,</span><br />
+And I can hear the passionate sweet story<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Of waves that waited round her for her kiss.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>Sweetheart, they love you; silent and unseeing,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Old Ocean holds his court around you there,</span><br />
+And while I reach out through the dark to find you<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">His fingers twine the sea-weed in your hair.</span><br />
+<br />
+The tide goes out and in the dawn&#8217;s new splendour<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">The dreams of dark first fade, then pass away,</span><br />
+And I awake from visions soft and tender<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">To face the shuddering agony of day</span><br />
+For out within those waters, cruel, changeless,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea;</span><br />
+A smile upon her dear lips, dumb, but waiting,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And I&mdash;I hear the sea-voice calling me.</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Mystery of Randolph&#8217;s<br />
+Courtship</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">I</span>t is said that in order to know a man, one must begin with his
+ancestors, and the truth of the saying is strikingly exemplified in
+the case of &#8220;John Randolph of Roanoke,&#8221; as he loved to write his name.</p>
+
+<p>His contemporaries have told us what manner of man he was&mdash;fiery,
+excitable, of strong passions and strong will, capable of great
+bitterness, obstinate, revengeful, and extremely sensitive.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have been all my life,&#8221; he says, &#8220;the creature of impulse, the
+sport of chance, the victim of my own uncontrolled and uncontrollable
+sensations, and of a poetic temperament.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He was sarcastic to a degree, proud, haughty, and subject to fits of
+Byronic <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>despair and morbid gloom. For these traits we must look back
+to the Norman Conquest from which he traced his descent in an unbroken
+line, while, on the side of his maternal grandmother, he was the
+seventh in descent from Pocahontas, the Indian maiden who married John
+Rolfe.</p>
+
+<p>The Indian blood was evident, even in his personal appearance. He was
+tall, slender, and dignified in his bearing; his hands were thin, his
+fingers long and bony; his face was dark, sallow, and wrinkled, oval
+in shape and seamed with lines by the inward conflict which forever
+raged in his soul. His chin was pointed but firm, and his lips were
+set; around his mouth were marked the tiny, almost imperceptible lines
+which mean cruelty. His nose was aquiline, his ears large at the top,
+tapering almost to a point at the lobe, and his forehead unusually
+high and broad. His hair was soft, and his skin, although dark,
+suffered from extreme sensitiveness.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;There is no accounting for thinness of skins in different
+animals, human, or brute [he once said]. Mine, I believe to
+be more tender than many infants of a month old. Indeed I
+have remarked in myself, from my earliest recollection, a
+delicacy or effeminacy of complexion, which but for a spice
+of the devil in my temper would have consigned me to the
+distaff or the needle.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>&#8220;A spice of the devil&#8221; is mild indeed, considering that before he was
+four years old he frequently swooned in fits of passion, and was
+restored to consciousness with difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>His most striking feature was his eyes. They were deep, dark, and
+fiery, filled with passion and great sadness at the same time. &#8220;When
+he first entered an assembly of people,&#8221; said one who knew him, &#8220;they
+were the eyes of the eagle in search of his prey, darting about from
+place to place to see upon whom to light. When he was assailed they
+flashed fire and proclaimed a torrent of rage within.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The voice of this great statesman was a rare gift:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;One might live a hundred years [says one,] and never hear
+another like it. The wonder was why the sweet tone of a
+woman was so harmoniously blended with that of a man. His
+very whisper could be distinguished above the ordinary tones
+of other men. His voice was so singularly clear, distinct,
+and melodious that it was a positive pleasure to hear him
+articulate anything.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the man who swayed the multitude at will, punished offenders
+with sarcasm and invective, inspired fear even in his equals, and
+loved and suffered more than any other prominent man of his
+generation.</p>
+
+<p>He had many acquaintances, a few friends, and three loves&mdash;his mother,
+his brother, and the beautiful young woman who held his heart in the
+hollow of her hand, until the Gray Angel, taking pity, closed his eyes
+in the last sleep.</p>
+
+<p>His mother, who was Frances Bland, married John Randolph in 1769, and
+John Randolph, of Roanoke, was their third son.</p>
+
+<p>Tradition tells us of the unusual beauty of the mother&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;the high expanded forehead, the smooth arched brow; the
+brilliant dark eyes; the well defined nose; the full round
+laughing lips; the tall graceful figure, the beautiful dark
+hair; an open cheerful countenance&mdash;suffused with that deep,
+rich Oriental tint which never seems to fade, all of which
+made her the most beautiful and attractive woman of her
+age.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>She was a wife at sixteen, and at twenty-six a widow. Three years
+after the death of her husband, she married St. George Tucker, of
+Bermuda who proved to be a kind father to her children.</p>
+
+<p>In the winter of 1781, Benedict Arnold, the traitor who had spread
+ruin through his native state, was sent to Virginia on an expedition
+of ravage. He landed at the mouth of the James, and advanced toward
+Petersburg. Matoax, Randolph&#8217;s home, was directly in the line of the
+invading army, so the family set out on a cold January morning, and at
+night entered the home of Benjamin Ward, Jr.</p>
+
+<p>John Randolph was seven years old, and little Maria Ward had just
+passed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>her fifth birthday. The two children played together happily,
+and in the boy&#8217;s heart was sown the seed of that grand passion which
+dominated his life.</p>
+
+<p>After a few days, the family went on to Bizarre, a large estate on
+both sides of the Appomattox, and here Mrs. Tucker and her sons spent
+the remainder of the year, while her husband joined General Greene&#8217;s
+army, and afterward, the force of Lafayette.</p>
+
+<p>In 1788, John Randolph&#8217;s mother died, and his first grief swept over
+him in an overwhelming torrent. The boy of fifteen spent bitter
+nights, his face buried in the grass, sobbing over his mother&#8217;s grave.
+Years afterward, he wrote to a friend, &#8220;I am a fatalist. I am all but
+friendless. Only one human being ever knew me. <i>She</i> only knew me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He kept his mother&#8217;s portrait always in his room, and enshrined her in
+loving remembrance in his heart. He had never seen his father&#8217;s face
+to remember it distinctly, and for a long time he wore his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>miniature
+in his bosom. In 1796, his brother Richard died, and the unexpected
+blow crushed him to earth. More than thirty years afterward he wrote
+to his half-brother, Henry St. George Tucker, the following note:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;<span class="smcap">Dear Henry</span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Our poor brother Richard was born in 1770. He would have
+been fifty-six years old the ninth of this month. I can no
+more.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 2em;">&#8221;<span class="smcap">J. R. of R.</span>&#8221;</span></p></div>
+
+<p>At some time in his early manhood he came into close relationship with
+Maria Ward. She had been an attractive child, and had grown into a
+woman so beautiful that Lafayette said her equal could not be found in
+North America. Her hair was auburn, and hung in curls around her face;
+her skin was exquisitely fair; her eyes were dark and eloquent. Her
+mouth was well formed; she was slender, graceful, and coquettish,
+well-educated, and in every way, charming.</p>
+
+<p>To this woman, John Randolph&#8217;s heart went out in passionate, adoring
+love. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>He might be bitter and sarcastic with others, but with her he
+was gentleness itself. Others might know him as a man of affairs, keen
+and logical, but to her he was only a lover.</p>
+
+<p>Timid and hesitating at first, afraid perhaps of his fiery wooing,
+Miss Ward kept him for some time in suspense. All the treasures of his
+mind and soul were laid before her; that deep, eloquent voice which
+moved the multitude to tears at its master&#8217;s will was pleading with a
+woman for her love.</p>
+
+<p>What wonder that she yielded at last and promised to marry him? Then
+for a time everything else was forgotten. The world lay before him to
+be conquered when he might choose. Nothing would be too great for him
+to accomplish&mdash;nothing impossible to that eager joyous soul enthroned
+at last upon the greatest heights of human happiness. And then&mdash;there
+was a change. He rode to her home one day, tying his horse outside as
+was his wont. A little later he strode out, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>shaking like an aspen,
+his face white in agony. He drew his knife from his pocket, cut the
+bridle of his horse, dug his spurs into the quivering sides, and was
+off like the wind. What battle was fought out on that wild ride is
+known only to John Randolph and his God. What torture that fiery soul
+went through, no human being can ever know. When he came back at
+night, he was so changed that no one dared to speak to him.</p>
+
+<p>He threw himself into the political arena in order to save his reason.
+Often at midnight, he would rise from his uneasy bed, buckle on his
+pistols, and ride like mad over the country, returning only when his
+horse was spent. He never saw Miss Ward again, and she married Peyton
+Randolph, the son of Edmund Randolph, who was Secretary of State under
+Washington.</p>
+
+<p>The entire affair is shrouded in mystery. There is not a letter, nor a
+single scrap of paper, nor a shred of evidence upon which to base even
+a presumption. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>separation was final and complete, and the
+white-hot metal of the man&#8217;s nature was gradually moulded into that
+strange eccentric being whose foibles are so well known.</p>
+
+<p>Only once did Randolph lift even a corner of the veil. In a letter to
+his dearest friend he spoke of her as:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;One I loved better than my own soul, or Him who created it.
+My apathy is not natural, but superinduced. There was a
+volcano under my ice, but it burnt out, and a face of
+desolation has come on, not to be rectified in ages, could
+my life be prolonged to patriarchal longevity.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The necessity of loving and being loved was never felt by
+the imaginary beings of Rousseau and Byron&#8217;s creation, more
+imperiously than by myself. My heart was offered with a
+devotion that knew no reserve. Long an object of
+proscription and treachery, I have at last, more mortifying
+to the pride of man, become an object of utter
+indifference.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>The brilliant statesman would doubtless have had a large liberty of
+choice among the many beautiful women of his circle, but he never
+married, and there is no <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>record of any entanglement. To the few women
+he deemed worthy of his respect and admiration, he was deferential and
+even gallant. In one of his letters to a young relative he said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Love to god-son Randolph and respectful compliments to Mrs.
+R. She is indeed a fine woman, one for whom I have felt a
+true regard, unmixed with the foible of another passion.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fortunately or unfortunately for me, when I knew her, I
+bore a charmed heart. Nothing else could have preserved me
+from the full force of her attractions.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>For much of the time after his disappointment, he lived alone with his
+servants, solaced as far as possible by those friends of all
+mankind&mdash;books. When the spirit moved him, he would make visits to the
+neighbouring plantations, sometimes dressed in white flannel trousers,
+coat, and vest, and with white paper wrapped around his beaver hat!
+When he presented himself in this manner, riding horseback, with his
+dark eyes burning, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>he was said to have presented &#8220;a most ghostly
+appearance!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>An old lady who lived for years on the banks of the Staunton, near
+Randolph&#8217;s solitary home, tells a pathetic story:</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting alone in her room in the dead of winter, when a
+beautiful woman, pale as a ghost, dressed entirely in white, suddenly
+appeared before her, and began to talk about Mr. Randolph, saying he
+was her lover and would marry her yet, as he had never proved false to
+his plighted faith. She talked of him incessantly, like one deranged,
+until a young gentleman came by the house, leading a horse with a
+side-saddle on. She rushed out, and asked his permission to ride a few
+miles. Greatly to his surprise, she mounted without assistance, and
+sat astride like a man. He was much embarrassed, but had no choice
+except to escort her to the end of her journey.</p>
+
+<p>The old lady who tells of this strange experience says that the young
+woman several times visited Mr. Randolph, always <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>dressed in white and
+usually in the dead of winter. He always put her on a horse and sent
+her away with a servant to escort her.</p>
+
+<p>In his life there were but two women&mdash;his mother and Maria Ward. While
+his lips were closed on the subject of his love, he did not hesitate
+to avow his misery. &#8220;I too am wretched,&#8221; he would say with infinite
+pathos; and after her death, he spoke of Maria Ward as his &#8220;angel.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In a letter written sometime after she died, he said, strangely
+enough: &#8220;I loved, aye, and was loved again, not wisely, but too well.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His brilliant career was closed when he was sixty years old, and in
+his last illness, during delirium, the name of Maria was frequently
+heard by those who were anxiously watching with him. But, true to
+himself and to her, even when his reason was dethroned, he said
+nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>He was buried on his own plantation, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>in the midst of &#8220;that boundless
+contiguity of shade,&#8221; with his secret locked forever in his tortured
+breast. &#8220;John Randolph of Roanoke,&#8221; was all the title he claimed; but
+the history of those times teaches us that he was more than that&mdash;he
+was John Randolph, of the Republic.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+<h2>How President Jackson Won<br />
+His Wife</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">I</span>n October of 1788, a little company of immigrants arrived in
+Tennessee. The star of empire, which is said to move westward, had not
+yet illumined Nashville, and it was one of the dangerous points &#8220;on
+the frontier.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The settlement was surrounded on all sides by hostile Indians. Men
+worked in the fields, but dared not go out to their daily task without
+being heavily armed. When two men met, and stopped for a moment to
+talk, they often stood back to back, with their rifles cocked ready
+for instant use. No one stooped to drink from a spring unless another
+guarded him, and the women were always attended by an armed force.</p>
+
+<p>Col. John Donelson had built for himself <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>a blockhouse of unusual size
+and strength, and furnished it comfortably; but while surveying a
+piece of land near the village, he was killed by the savages, and his
+widow left to support herself as best she could.</p>
+
+<p>A married daughter and her husband lived with her, but it was
+necessary for her to take other boarders. One day there was a vigorous
+rap upon the stout door of the blockhouse, and a young man whose name
+was Andrew Jackson was admitted. Shortly afterward, he took up his
+abode as a regular boarder at the Widow Donelson&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>The future President was then twenty-one or twenty-two. He was tall
+and slender, with every muscle developed to its utmost strength. He
+had an attractive face, pleasing manners, and made himself agreeable
+to every one in the house.</p>
+
+<p>The dangers of the frontier were but minor incidents in his
+estimation, for &#8220;desperate courage makes one a majority,&#8221; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>and he had
+courage. When he was but thirteen years of age, he had boldly defied a
+British officer who had ordered him to clean some cavalry boots.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sir,&#8221; said the boy, &#8220;I am a prisoner of war, and I claim to be
+treated as such!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>With an oath the officer drew his sword, and struck at the child&#8217;s
+head. He parried the blow with his left arm, but received a severe
+wound on his head and another on his arm, the scars of which he always
+carried.</p>
+
+<p>The protecting presence of such a man was welcome to those who dwelt
+in the blockhouse&mdash;Mrs. Donelson, Mr. and Mrs. Robards, and another
+boarder, John Overton. Mrs. Donelson was a good cook and a notable
+housekeeper, while her daughter was said to be &#8220;the best story teller,
+the best dancer, the sprightliest companion, and the most dashing
+horsewoman in the western country.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jackson, as the only licensed lawyer in that part of Tennessee, soon
+had plenty of business on his hands, and his life in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>the blockhouse
+was a happy one until he learned that the serpent of jealousy lurked
+by that fireside.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Robards was a comely brunette, and her dusky beauty carried with
+it an irresistible appeal. Jackson soon learned that Captain Robards
+was unreasonably and even insanely jealous of his wife, and he learned
+from John Overton that before his arrival there had been a great deal
+of unhappiness because of this.</p>
+
+<p>At one time Captain Robards had written to Mrs. Donelson to take her
+daughter home, as he did not wish to live with her any longer; but
+through the efforts of Mr. Overton a reconciliation had been effected
+between the pair, and they were still living together at Mrs.
+Donelson&#8217;s when Jackson went there to board.</p>
+
+<p>In a short time, however, Robards became violently jealous of Jackson
+and talked abusively to his wife, even in the presence of her mother
+and amidst the tears of both. Once more Overton interfered, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>assured
+Robards that his suspicions were groundless, and reproached him for
+his unmanly conduct.</p>
+
+<p>It was all in vain, however, and the family was in as unhappy a state
+as before, when they were living with the Captain&#8217;s mother who had
+always taken the part of her daughter-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>At length Overton spoke to Jackson about it, telling him it was better
+not to remain where his presence made so much trouble, and offered to
+go with him to another boarding-place. Jackson readily assented,
+though neither of them knew where to go, and said that he would talk
+to Captain Robards.</p>
+
+<p>The men met near the orchard fence, and Jackson remonstrated with the
+Captain who grew violently angry and threatened to strike him. Jackson
+told him that he would not advise him to try to fight, but if he
+insisted, he would try to give him satisfaction. Nothing came of the
+discussion, however, as Robards seemed willing to take Jackson&#8217;s
+advice <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>and did not dare to strike him. But the coward continued to
+abuse his wife, and insulted Jackson at every opportunity. The result
+was that the young lawyer left the house.</p>
+
+<p>A few months later, the still raging husband left his wife and went to
+Kentucky, which was then a part of Virginia. Soon afterward, Mrs.
+Robards went to live with her sister, Mrs. Hay, and Overton returned
+to Mrs. Donelson&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>In the following autumn there was a rumour that Captain Robards
+intended to return to Tennessee and take his wife to Kentucky, at
+which Mrs. Donelson and her daughter were greatly distressed. Mrs.
+Robards wept bitterly, and said it was impossible for her to live
+peaceably with her husband as she had tried it twice and failed. She
+determined to go down the river to Natchez, to a friend, and thus
+avoid her husband, who she said had threatened to haunt her.</p>
+
+<p>When Jackson heard of this arrangement he was very much troubled, for
+he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>felt that he had been the unwilling cause of the young wife&#8217;s
+unhappiness, although entirely innocent of any wrong intention. So
+when Mrs. Robards had fully determined to undertake the journey to
+Natchez, accompanied only by Colonel Stark and his family, he offered
+to go with them as an additional protection against the Indians who
+were then especially active, and his escort was very gladly accepted.
+The trip was made in safety, and after seeing the lady settled with
+her friends, he returned to Nashville and resumed his law practice.</p>
+
+<p>At that time there was no divorce law in Virginia, and each separate
+divorce required the passage of an act of the legislature before a
+jury could consider the case. In the winter of 1791, Captain Robards
+obtained the passage of such an act, authorising the court of Mercer
+County to act upon his divorce. Mrs. Robards, hearing of this,
+understood that the passage of the act was, in itself, divorce, and
+that she was a free woman. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>Jackson also took the divorce for granted.
+Every one in the country so understood the matter, and at Natchez, in
+the following summer, the two were married.</p>
+
+<p>They returned to Nashville, settled down, and Jackson began in earnest
+the career that was to land him in the White House, the hero of the
+nation.</p>
+
+<p>In December of 1793, more than two years after their marriage, their
+friend Overton learned that the legislature had not granted a divorce,
+but had left it for the court to do so. Jackson was much chagrined
+when he heard of this, and it was with great difficulty that he was
+brought to believe it. In January of 1794, when the decree was finally
+obtained, they were married again.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to excuse Jackson for marrying the woman without
+positive and absolute knowledge of her divorce. He was a lawyer, and
+could have learned the facts of the case, even though there was no
+established mail service. Each of them had been entirely innocent of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>any intentional wrong-doing, and their long life together, their
+great devotion to each other, and General Jackson&#8217;s honourable career,
+forever silenced the spiteful calumny of his rivals and enemies of
+early life.</p>
+
+<p>In his eyes his wife was the soul of honour and purity; he loved and
+reverenced her as a man loves and reverences but one woman in his
+lifetime, and for thirty-seven years he kept a pair of pistols loaded
+for the man who should dare to breathe her name without respect.</p>
+
+<p>The famous pistol duel with Dickinson was the result of a quarrel
+which had its beginning in a remark reflecting upon Mrs. Jackson, and
+Dickinson, though a crack shot, paid for it with his life.</p>
+
+<p>Several of Dickinson&#8217;s friends sent a memorial to the proprietors of
+the <i>Impartial Review</i>, asking that the next number of the paper
+appear in mourning, &#8220;out of respect for the memory, and regret for the
+untimely death, of Mr. Charles Dickinson.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Old Hickory&#8221; heard of this movement, and wrote to the proprietors,
+asking that the names of the gentlemen making the request be published
+in the memorial number of the paper. This also was agreed to, and it
+is significant that twenty-six of the seventy-three men who had signed
+the petition called and erased their names from the document.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The Hermitage&#8221; at Nashville, which is still a very attractive spot
+for visitors, was built solely to please Mrs. Jackson, and there she
+dispensed gracious hospitality. Not merely a guest or two, but whole
+families, came for weeks at a time, for the mistress of the mansion
+was fond of entertaining, and proved herself a charming hostess. She
+had a good memory, had passed through many and greatly varied
+experiences, and above all she had that rare faculty which is called
+tact.</p>
+
+<p>Though her husband&#8217;s love for her was evident to every one, yet, in
+the presence of others, he always maintained a dignified reserve. He
+never spoke of her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>as &#8220;Rachel,&#8221; nor addressed her as &#8220;My Dear.&#8221; It
+was always &#8220;Mrs. Jackson,&#8221; or &#8220;wife.&#8221; She always called him &#8220;Mr.
+Jackson,&#8221; never &#8220;Andrew&#8221; nor &#8220;General.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Both of them greatly desired children, but this blessing was denied
+them; so they adopted a boy, the child of Mrs. Jackson&#8217;s brother,
+naming him &#8220;Andrew Jackson,&#8221; and bringing him up as their own child.</p>
+
+<p>The lady&#8217;s portrait shows her to have been wonderfully attractive. It
+does not reveal the dusky Oriental tint of her skin, the ripe red of
+her lips, nor the changing lights in her face, but it shows the high
+forehead, the dark soft hair, the fine eyes, and the tempting mouth
+which was smiling, yet serene. A lace head-dress is worn over the
+waving hair, and the filmy folds fall softly over neck and bosom.</p>
+
+<p>When Jackson was elected to the Presidency, the ladies of Nashville
+organized themselves into sewing circles to prepare Mrs. Jackson&#8217;s
+wardrobe. It was a labour of love. On December 23, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>1828, there was to
+be a grand banquet in Jackson&#8217;s honour, and the devoted women of their
+home city had made a beautiful gown for his wife to wear at the
+dinner. At sunrise the preparations began. The tables were set, the
+dining-room decorated, and the officers and men of the troop that was
+to escort the President-elect were preparing to go to the home and
+attend him on the long ride into the city. Their horses were saddled
+and in readiness at the place of meeting. As the bugle sounded the
+summons to mount, a breathless messenger appeared on a horse flecked
+with foam. Mrs. Jackson had died of heart disease the evening before.</p>
+
+<p>The festival was changed to a funeral, and the trumpets and drums that
+were to have sounded salute were muffled in black. All decorations
+were taken down, and the church bells tolled mournfully. The grief of
+the people was beyond speech. Each one felt a personal loss.</p>
+
+<p>At the home the blow was terrible. The lover-husband would not leave
+his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>wife. In those bitter hours the highest gift of his countrymen
+was an empty triumph, for his soul was wrecked with the greatness of
+his loss.</p>
+
+<p>When she was buried at the foot of a slope in the garden of &#8220;The
+Hermitage,&#8221; his bereavement came home to him with crushing strength.
+Back of the open grave stood a great throng of people, waiting in the
+wintry wind. The sun shone brightly on the snow, but &#8220;The Hermitage&#8221;
+was desolate, for its light and laughter and love were gone. The
+casket was carried down the slope, and a long way behind it came the
+General, slowly and almost helpless, between two of his friends.</p>
+
+<p>The people of Nashville had made ready to greet him with the blare of
+bugles, waving flags, the clash of cymbals, and resounding cheers. It
+was for the President-elect&mdash;the hero of the war. The throng that
+stood behind the open grave greeted him with sobs and tears&mdash;not the
+President-elect, but the man bowed by his sixty years, bareheaded,
+with his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>gray hair rumpled in the wind, staggering toward them in the
+throes of his bitterest grief.</p>
+
+<p>In that one night he had grown old. He looked like a man stricken
+beyond all hope. When his old friends gathered around him with the
+tears streaming down their cheeks, wringing his hand in silent
+sympathy, he could make no response.</p>
+
+<p>He was never the same again, though his strength of will and his
+desperate courage fought with this infinite pain. For the rest of his
+life he lived as she would have had him live&mdash;guided his actions by
+the thought of what his wife, if living, would have had him do&mdash;loving
+her still, with the love that passeth all understanding.</p>
+
+<p>He declined the sarcophagus fit for an emperor, that he might be
+buried like a simple citizen, in the garden by her side.</p>
+
+<p>His last words were of her&mdash;his last look rested upon her portrait
+that hung opposite his bed, and if there be dreaming in the dark, the
+vision of her brought him peace at last.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Bachelor President&#8217;s Loyalty<br />
+to a Memory</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>he fifteenth President was remarkable among the men of his time for
+his lifelong fidelity to one woman, for since the days of
+knight-errantry such devotion has been as rare as it is beautiful. The
+young lawyer came of Scotch-Irish parentage, and to this blending of
+blood were probably in part due his deep love and steadfastness. There
+was rather more of the Irish than of the Scotch in his face, and when
+we read that his overflowing spirits were too much for the college in
+which he had been placed, and that, for &#8220;reasons of public policy,&#8221;
+the honours which he had earned were on commencement day given to
+another, it is evident that he may sometimes have felt that he owed
+allegiance primarily to the Emerald Isle.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p><p>Like others, who have been capable of deep and lasting passion, James
+Buchanan loved his mother. Among his papers there was found a fragment
+of an autobiography, which ended in 1816, when the writer was only
+twenty-five years of age. He says his father was &#8220;a kind father, a
+sincere friend, and an honest and religious man,&#8221; but on the subject
+of his mother he waxes eloquent:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Considering her limited opportunities in early life [he
+writes], my mother was a remarkable woman. The daughter of a
+country farmer, engaged in household employment from early
+life until after my father&#8217;s death, she yet found time to
+read much, and to reflect deeply on what she read.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She had a great fondness for poetry, and could repeat with
+ease all the passages in her favorite authors which struck
+her fancy. These were Milton, Pope, Young, Cowper, and
+Thompson.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not think, at least until a late period in life, she
+had ever read a criticism on any one of these authors, and
+yet such was the correctness of her natural taste, that she
+had selected for herself, and could repeat, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>every passage
+in them which has been admired....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;For her sons, as they grew up successively, she was a
+delightful and instructive companion.... She was a woman of
+great firmness of character, and bore the afflictions of her
+later life with Christian philosophy.... It was chiefly to
+her influence, that her sons were indebted for a liberal
+education. Under Providence I attribute any little
+distinction which I may have acquired in the world to the
+blessing which He conferred upon me in granting me such a
+mother.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>If Elizabeth Buchanan could have read these words, doubtless she would
+have felt fully repaid for her many years of toil, self-sacrifice, and
+devotion.</p>
+
+<p>After the young man left the legislature and took up the practice of
+law, with the intention of spending his life at the bar, he became
+engaged to Anne Coleman, the daughter of Robert Coleman, of Lancaster.</p>
+
+<p>She is said to have been an unusually beautiful girl, quiet, gentle,
+modest, womanly, and extremely sensitive. The fine feelings of a
+delicately organized nature may easily become either a blessing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>or a
+curse, and on account of her sensitiveness there was a rupture for
+which neither can be very greatly blamed.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Coleman approved of the engagement, and the happy lover worked
+hard to make a home for the idol of his heart. One day, out of the
+blue sky a thunderbolt fell. He received a note from Miss Coleman
+asking him to release her from her engagement.</p>
+
+<p>There was no explanation forthcoming, and it was not until long
+afterward that he discovered that busy-bodies and gossips had gone to
+Miss Coleman with stories concerning him which had no foundation save
+in their mischief-making imaginations, and which she would not repeat
+to him. After all his efforts at re-establishing the old relations had
+proved useless, he wrote to her that if it were her wish to be
+released from her engagement he could but submit, as he had no desire
+to hold her against her will.</p>
+
+<p>The break came in the latter part of the summer of 1819, when he was
+twenty-eight <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>years old and she was in her twenty-third year. He threw
+himself into his work with renewed energy, and later on she went to
+visit friends in Philadelphia.</p>
+
+<p>Though she was too proud to admit it, there was evidence that the
+beautiful and high-spirited girl was suffering from heartache. On the
+ninth of December, she died suddenly, and her body was brought home
+just a week after she left Lancaster. The funeral took place the next
+day, Sunday, and to the suffering father of the girl, the heart-broken
+lover wrote a letter which in simple pathos stands almost alone. It is
+the only document on this subject which remains, but in these few
+lines is hidden a tragedy:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 2em;">&#8220;<span class="smcap">Lancaster</span>, December 10, 1819.</span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<span class="smcap">My Dear Sir</span>:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have lost a child, a dear, dear child. I have lost the
+only earthly object of my affections, without whom, life now
+presents to me a dreary blank. My prospects are all cut off,
+and I feel that my happiness will be buried with her in her
+grave.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is now no time for explanation, but the time will come
+when you will discover that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>she, as well as I, has been
+greatly abused. God forgive the authors of it! My feelings
+of resentment against them, whoever they may be, are buried
+in the dust.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have now one request to make, and for the love of God,
+and of your dear departed daughter, whom I loved infinitely
+more than any human being could love, deny me not. Afford me
+the melancholy pleasure of seeing her body before its
+interment. I would not, for the world, be denied this
+request.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I might make another, but from the misrepresentations that
+have been made to you, I am almost afraid. I would like to
+follow her remains, to the grave as a mourner. I would like
+to convince the world, I hope yet to convince you, that she
+was infinitely dearer to me than life.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I may sustain the shock of her death, but I feel that
+happiness has fled from me forever. The prayer which I make
+to God without ceasing is, that I yet may be able to show my
+veneration for the memory of my dear, departed saint, by my
+respect and attachment for her surviving friends.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;May Heaven bless you and enable you to bear the shock with
+the fortitude of a Christian.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am forever, your sincere and grateful friend,</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 2em;">&#8221;<span class="smcap">James Buchanan</span>.&#8221;</span></p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p><p>The father returned the letter unopened and without comment. Death had
+only widened the breach. It would have been gratifying to know that
+the two lovers were together for a moment at the end.</p>
+
+<p>For such a meeting as that there are no words but Edwin Arnold&#8217;s:</p>
+
+<div class="centerbox6 bbox"><p>&#8220;But he&mdash;who loved her too well to dread<br />
+The sweet, the stately, the beautiful dead&mdash;<br />
+He lit his lamp, and took the key,<br />
+And turn&#8217;d it!&mdash;alone again&mdash;he and she!&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>For him there was not even a glimpse of her as she lay in her coffin,
+nor a whisper that some day, like Evelyn Hope, she might &#8220;wake, and
+remember and understand.&#8221; With that love that asks only for the right
+to serve, and feeling perhaps that no pen could do her justice, he
+obtained permission to write a paragraph for a local paper, which was
+published unsigned:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Departed this life, on Thursday morning last, in the
+twenty-third year of her age, while on a visit to friends in
+the city of Philadelphia, Miss Anne C. Coleman, daughter <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>of
+Robert Coleman, Esquire of this city.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It rarely falls to our lot to shed a tear over the remains
+of one so much and so deservedly beloved as was the
+deceased. She was everything which the fondest parent, or
+the fondest friend could have wished her to be.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Although she was young and beautiful and accomplished, and
+the smiles of fortune shone upon her, yet her native modesty
+and worth made her unconscious of her own attractions. Her
+heart was the seat of all the softer virtues which ennoble
+and dignify the character of woman.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She has now gone to a world, where, in the bosom of her
+God, she will be happy with congenial spirits. May the
+memory of her virtues be ever green in the hearts of her
+surviving friends. May her mild spirit, which on earth still
+breathes peace and good will, be their guardian angel to
+preserve them from the faults to which she was ever a
+stranger.</p></div>
+
+<div class="centerbox6 bbox"><p>&#8220;The spider&#8217;s most attenuated thread<br />
+Is cord, is cable, to man&#8217;s tender tie<br />
+On earthly bliss&mdash;it breaks at every breeze.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>How deeply he felt her death is shown by extracts from a letter
+written to him by a friend in the latter part of December:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;I am writing, I know not why, and perhaps had better not. I
+write only to speak of the awful visitation of Providence
+that has fallen upon you, and how deeply I feel it.... I
+trust to your philosophy and courage, and to the elasticity
+of spirits natural to most young men....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The sun will shine again, though a man enveloped in gloom
+always thinks the darkness is to be eternal. Do you remember
+the Spanish anecdote?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A lady who had lost a favorite child remained for months
+sunk in sullen sorrow and despair. Her confessor, one
+morning visited her, and found her, as usual immersed in
+gloom and grief. &#8216;What,&#8217; said he, &#8216;Have you not forgiven God
+Almighty?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She rose, exerted herself, joined the world again, and
+became useful to herself and her friends.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Time&#8217;s kindly touch heals many wounds, but the years seemed to bring
+to James Buchanan no surcease of sorrow. He was always under the
+cloud of that misunderstanding, and during his long political career,
+the incident frequently served as a butt for the calumnies of his
+enemies. It was freely used in &#8220;campaign documents,&#8221; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>perverted,
+misrepresented, and twisted into every conceivable shape, though it is
+difficult to conceive how any form of humanity could ever be so base.</p>
+
+<p>Next to the loss of the girl he loved, this was the greatest grief of
+his life. To see the name of his &#8220;dear, departed saint&#8221; dragged into
+newspaper notoriety was absolute torture. Denial was useless, and
+pleading had no effect. After he had retired to his home at Wheatland,
+and when he was past seventy&mdash;when Anne Coleman&#8217;s beautiful body had
+gone back to the dust, there was a long article in a newspaper about
+the affair, accompanied by the usual misrepresentations.</p>
+
+<p>To a friend, he said, with deep emotion: &#8220;In my safety-deposit box in
+New York there is a sealed package, containing papers and relics which
+will explain everything. Sometime, when I am dead, the world will
+know&mdash;and absolve.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But after his death, when his executors found the package, there was a
+direction <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>on the outside: &#8220;To be burned unopened at my death.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He chose silence rather than vindication at the risk of having Anne
+Coleman&#8217;s name again brought into publicity. In that little parcel
+there was doubtless full exoneration, but at the end, as always, he
+nobly bore the blame.</p>
+
+<p>It happened that the letter he had written to her father was not in
+this package, but among his papers at Wheatland&mdash;otherwise that
+pathetic request would also have been burned.</p>
+
+<p>Through all his life he remained true to Anne&#8217;s memory. Under the
+continual public attacks his grief became one that even his friends
+forebore to speak of, and he had a chivalrous regard for all women,
+because of his love for one. His social instincts were strong, his
+nature affectionate and steadfast, yet it was owing to his
+disappointment that he became President. At one time, when he was in
+London, he said to an intimate friend: &#8220;I never intended to engage in
+politics, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>but meant to follow my profession strictly. But my
+prospects and plans were all changed by a most sad event, which
+happened at Lancaster when I was a young man. As a distraction from my
+grief, and because I saw that through a political following I could
+secure the friends I then needed, I accepted a nomination.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A beautiful side of his character is shown in his devotion to his
+niece, Harriet Lane. He was to her always a faithful father. When she
+was away at school or otherwise separated from him, he wrote to her
+regularly, never failing to assure her of his affection, and received
+her love and confidence in return. In 1865, when she wrote to him of
+her engagement, he replied, in part, as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;I believe you say truly that nothing would have induced you
+to leave me, in good or evil fortune, if I had wished you to
+remain with me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Such a wish on my part would be very selfish. You have long
+known my desire that you should marry whenever a suitor
+worthy of you should offer. Indeed, it has <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>been my strong
+desire to see you settled in the world before my death. You
+have now made your own unbiased choice; and from the
+character of Mr. Johnston, I anticipate for you a happy
+marriage, because I believe from your own good sense, you
+will conform to your conductor, and make him a good and
+loving wife.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>The days passed in retirement at Wheatland were filled with quiet
+content. The end came as peacefully as the night itself. He awoke from
+a gentle sleep, murmured, &#8220;O Lord, God Almighty, as Thou wilt!&#8221; and
+passed serenely into that other sleep, which knows not dreams.</p>
+
+<p>The impenetrable veil between us and eternity permits no lifting of
+its folds; there is no parting of its greyness, save for a passage,
+but perhaps, in &#8220;that undiscovered country from whose bourne no
+traveller returns&#8221; Anne Coleman and her lover have met once more, and
+the long life of faithfulness at last has won her pardon.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Decoration Day</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox6 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>he trees bow their heads in sorrow,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.1em;">While their giant branches wave,</span><br />
+With the requiems of the forest,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">To the dead in a soldier&#8217;s grave.</span><br />
+<br />
+The pitying rain falls softly,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">In grief for a nation&#8217;s brave,</span><br />
+Who died &#8217;neath the scourge of treason<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And rest in a lonely grave.</span><br />
+<br />
+So, under the willow and cypress<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">We lay our dead away,</span><br />
+And cover their graves with blossoms,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">But the debt we never can pay.</span><br />
+<br />
+All nature is bathed in tears,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">On our sad Memorial day,</span><br />
+When we crown the valour of heroes<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">With flowers from the garments of May.</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Romance of the Life of<br />
+Lincoln</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">B</span>y the slow passing of years humanity attains what is called the
+&#8220;historical perspective,&#8221; but it is still a mooted question as to how
+many years are necessary.</p>
+
+<p>We think of Lincoln as a great leader, and it is difficult to imagine
+him as a lover. He was at the helm of &#8220;the Ship of State&#8221; in the most
+fearful storm it ever passed through; he struck off the shackles of a
+fettered people, and was crowned with martyrdom; yet in spite of his
+greatness, he loved like other men.</p>
+
+<p>There is no record for Lincoln&#8217;s earlier years of the boyish love
+which comes to many men in their school days. The great passion of his
+life came to him in manhood but with no whit of its sweetness gone.
+Sweet Anne Rutledge! There are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>those who remember her well, and to
+this day in speaking of her, their eyes fill with tears. A lady who
+knew her says: &#8220;Miss Rutledge had auburn hair, blue eyes, and a fair
+complexion. She was pretty, rather slender, and good-hearted, beloved
+by all who knew her.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Before Lincoln loved her, she had a sad experience with another man.
+About the time that he came to New Salem, a young man named John
+McNeil drifted in from one of the Eastern States. He worked hard, was
+plucky and industrious, and soon accumulated a little property. He met
+Anne Rutledge when she was but seventeen and still in school, and he
+began to pay her especial attention which at last culminated in their
+engagement.</p>
+
+<p>He was about going back to New York for a visit and leaving he told
+Anne that his name was not McNeil, but McNamar&mdash;that he had changed
+his name so that his dependent family might not follow him and settle
+down upon him before he was able to support them. Now that he was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>in
+a position to aid his parents, brothers, and sisters, he was going
+back to do it and upon his return would make Anne his wife.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time she did not hear from him at all, and gossip was rife
+in New Salem. His letters became more formal and less frequent and
+finally ceased altogether. The girl&#8217;s proud spirit compelled her to
+hold her head high amid the impertinent questions of the neighbors.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln had heard of the strange conduct of McNeil and concluding that
+there was now no tie between Miss Rutledge and her quondam lover, he
+began his own siege in earnest. Anne consented at last to marry him
+provided he gave her time to write to McNamar and obtain a release
+from the pledge which she felt was still binding upon her.</p>
+
+<p>She wrote, but there was no answer and at last she definitely accepted
+Lincoln.</p>
+
+<p>It was necessary for him to complete his law studies, and after that,
+he said, &#8220;Nothing on God&#8217;s footstool shall keep us apart.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p><p>He worked happily but a sore conflict seemed to be raging in Anne&#8217;s
+tender heart and conscience, and finally the strain told upon her to
+such an extent that when she was attacked by a fever, she had little
+strength to resist it.</p>
+
+<p>The summer waned and Anne&#8217;s life ebbed with it. At the very end of her
+illness, when all visitors were forbidden, she insisted upon seeing
+Lincoln. He went to her&mdash;and closed the door between them and the
+world. It was his last hour with her. When he came out, his face was
+white with the agony of parting.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later, she died and Lincoln was almost insane with grief.
+He walked for hours in the woods, refused to eat, would speak to no
+one, and there settled upon him that profound melancholy which came
+back, time and again, during the after years. To one friend he said:
+&#8220;I cannot bear to think that the rain and storms will beat upon her
+grave.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>When the days were dark and stormy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>he was constantly watched, as his
+friends feared he would take his own life. Finally, he was persuaded
+to go away to the house of a friend who lived at some distance, and
+here he remained until he was ready to face the world again.</p>
+
+<p>A few weeks after Anne&#8217;s burial, McNamar returned to New Salem. On his
+arrival he met Lincoln at the post-office and both were sorely
+distressed. He made no explanation of his absence, and shortly seemed
+to forget about Miss Rutledge, but her grave was in Lincoln&#8217;s heart
+until the bullet of the assassin struck him down.</p>
+
+<p>In October of 1833, Lincoln met Miss Mary Owens, and admired her
+though not extravagantly. From all accounts, she was an unusual woman.
+She was tall, full in figure, with blue eyes and dark hair; she was
+well educated and quite popular in the little community. She was away
+for a time, but returned to New Salem in 1836, and Lincoln at once
+began to call upon her, enjoying her wit and beauty. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>At that time she
+was about twenty-eight years old.</p>
+
+<p>One day Miss Owens was out walking with a lady friend and when they
+came to the foot of a steep hill, Lincoln joined them. He walked
+behind with Miss Owens, and talked with her, quite oblivious to the
+fact that her friend was carrying a heavy baby. When they reached the
+summit, Miss Owens said laughingly: &#8220;You would not make a good
+husband, Abe.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They sat on the fence and a wordy discussion followed. Both were angry
+when they parted, and the breach was not healed for some time. It was
+poor policy to quarrel, since some time before he had proposed to Miss
+Owens, and she had asked for time in which to consider it before
+giving a final answer. His letters to her are not what one would call
+&#8220;love-letters.&#8221; One begins in this way:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;<span class="smcap">Mary</span>:&mdash;I have been sick ever since my arrival, or I should
+have written sooner. It is but little difference, however,
+as I have very little even yet to write. And more, the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>longer I can avoid the mortification of looking in the
+post-office for your letter, and not finding it, the better.
+You see I am mad about that old letter yet. I don&#8217;t like
+very well to risk you again. I&#8217;ll try you once more,
+anyhow.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>The remainder of the letter deals with political matters and is signed
+simply &#8220;Your Friend Lincoln.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In another letter written the following year he says to her:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;I am often thinking about what we said of your coming to
+live at Springfield. I am afraid you would not be satisfied.
+There is a great deal of flourishing about in carriages
+here, which it would be your doom to see without sharing it.
+You would have to be poor without the means of hiding your
+poverty. Do you believe you could bear that patiently?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever
+do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her
+happy and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that
+would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know I should be much happier with you than the way I am,
+provided I saw no signs <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>of discontent in you. What you have
+said to me may have been in the way of jest, or I may have
+misunderstood it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If so, then let it be forgotten; if otherwise I much wish
+you would think seriously before you decide. For my part, I
+have already decided.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What I have said I will most positively abide by, provided
+you wish it. My opinion is that you would better not do it.
+You have not been accustomed to hardship, and it may be more
+severe than you now imagine.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know you are capable of thinking correctly upon any
+subject and if you deliberate maturely upon this before you
+decide, then I am willing to abide by your decision.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Matters went on in this way for about three months; then they met
+again, seemingly without making any progress. On the day they parted,
+Lincoln wrote her another letter, evidently to make his own position
+clear and put the burden of decision upon her.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;If you feel yourself in any degree bound to me [he said], I
+am now willing to release you, provided you wish it; while,
+on the other hand, I am willing and even anxious, to bind
+you faster, if I can be convinced that it will <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>in any
+considerable degree add to your happiness. This, indeed, is
+the whole question with me. Nothing would make me more
+miserable than to believe you miserable&mdash;nothing more happy
+than to know you were so.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>In spite of his evident sincerity, it is not surprising to learn that
+a little later, Miss Owens definitely refused him. In April, of the
+following year, Lincoln wrote to his friend, Mrs. L. H. Browning,
+giving a full account of this grotesque courtship:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;I finally was forced to give it up [he wrote] at which I
+very unexpectedly found myself mortified almost beyond
+endurance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was mortified it seemed to me in a hundred different
+ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the reflection that I
+had so long been too stupid to discover her intentions, and
+at the same time never doubting that I understood them
+perfectly; and also, that she, whom I had taught myself to
+believe nobody else would have, had actually rejected me,
+with all my fancied greatness.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And then to cap the whole, I then, for the first time,
+began to suspect that I was really a little in love with
+her. But let it all go. I&#8217;ll try and outlive it. Others have
+been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>made fools of by the girls; but this can never with
+truth be said of me. I most emphatically in this instance
+made a fool of myself. I have now come to the conclusion
+never again to think of marrying, and for this reason I can
+never be satisfied with any one who would be blockhead
+enough to have me!&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>The gist of the matter seems to be that at heart Lincoln hesitated at
+matrimony, as other men have done, both before and since his time. In
+his letter to Mrs. Browning he speaks of his efforts to &#8220;put off the
+evil day for a time, which I really dreaded as much, perhaps more,
+than an Irishman does the halter!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But in 1839 Miss Mary Todd came to live with her sister, Mrs. Ninian
+Edwards, at Springfield. She was in her twenty-first year, and is
+described as &#8220;of average height and compactly built.&#8221; She had a
+well-rounded face, rich dark brown hair, and bluish grey eyes. No
+picture of her fails to show the full, well-developed chin, which,
+more than any other feature is an evidence of determination. She was
+strong, proud, passionate, gifted with a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>keen sense of the
+ridiculous, well educated, and swayed only by her own imperious will.</p>
+
+<p>Lincoln was attracted at once, and strangely enough, Stephen A.
+Douglas crossed his wooing. For a time the two men were rivals, the
+pursuit waxing more furious day by day. Some one asked Miss Todd which
+of them she intended to marry, and she answered laughingly: &#8220;The one
+who has the best chance of becoming President!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She is said, however, to have refused the &#8220;Little Giant&#8221; on account of
+his lax morality and after that the coast was clear for Lincoln. Miss
+Todd&#8217;s sister tells us that &#8220;he was charmed by Mary&#8217;s wit and
+fascinated by her quick sagacity, her will, her nature, and culture.&#8221;
+&#8220;I have happened in the room,&#8221; she says, &#8220;where they were sitting,
+often and often, and Mary led the conversation. Lincoln would listen,
+and gaze on her as if drawn by some superior power&mdash;irresistibly so;
+he listened, but scarcely ever said a word.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p><p>The affair naturally culminated in an engagement, and the course of
+love was running smoothly, when a distracting element appeared in the
+shape of Miss Matilda Edwards, the sister of Mrs. Edwards&#8217;s husband.
+She was young and fair, and Lincoln was pleased with her appearance.
+For a time he tried to go on as before, but his feelings were too
+strong to be concealed. Mr. Edwards endeavoured to get his sister to
+marry Lincoln&#8217;s friend, Speed, but she refused both Speed and Douglas.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that Lincoln once went to Miss Todd&#8217;s house, intending to
+break the engagement, but his real love proved too strong to allow him
+to do it.</p>
+
+<p>His friend, Speed, thus describes the conclusion of this episode.
+&#8220;Well, old fellow,&#8221; I said, &#8220;did you do as you intended?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I did,&#8221; responded Lincoln thoughtfully, &#8220;and when I told Mary I
+did not love her, she, wringing her hands, said something about the
+deceiver being himself deceived.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;What else did you say?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To tell you the truth, Speed, it was too much for me. I found the
+tears trickling down my own cheeks. I caught her in my arms and kissed
+her.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And that&#8217;s how you broke the engagement. Your conduct was tantamount
+to a renewal of it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And indeed this was true, and the lovers again considered the time of
+marriage.</p>
+
+<p>There is a story by Herndon to the effect that a wedding was arranged
+for the first day of January, 1841, and then when the hour came
+Lincoln did not appear, and was found wandering alone in the woods
+plunged in the deepest melancholy&mdash;a melancholy bordering upon
+insanity.</p>
+
+<p>This story, however, has no foundation; in fact, most competent
+witnesses agree that no such marriage date was fixed, although some
+date may have been considered.</p>
+
+<p>It is certain, however, that the relations between Lincoln and Miss
+Todd were broken off for a time. He did go to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>Kentucky for a while,
+but this trip certainly was not due to insanity. Lincoln was never so
+mindless as some of his biographers would have us believe, and the
+breaking of the engagement was due to perfectly natural causes&mdash;the
+difference in temperament of the lovers, and Lincoln&#8217;s inclination to
+procrastinate. After a time the strained relations gradually improved.
+They met occasionally in the parlor of a friend, Mrs. Francis, and it
+was through Miss Todd that the duel with Shields came about.</p>
+
+<p>She wielded a ready and a sarcastic pen, and safely hidden behind a
+pseudonym and the promise of the editor, she wrote a series of
+satirical articles for the local paper, entitled: &#8220;Letters from Lost
+Townships.&#8221; In one of these she touched up Mr. Shields, the Auditor of
+State, to such good purpose that believing that Lincoln had written
+the article, he challenged him to a duel. Lincoln accepted the
+challenge and chose &#8220;cavalry broadswords&#8221; as the weapons, but the
+intervention of friends <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>prevented any fighting, although he always
+spoke of the affair as his &#8220;duel.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As a result of this altercation with Shields, Miss Todd and the future
+President came again into close friendship, and a marriage was decided
+upon.</p>
+
+<p>The license was secured, the minister sent for, and on November 4,
+1842, they became man and wife.</p>
+
+<p>It is not surprising that more or less unhappiness obtained in their
+married life, for Mrs. Lincoln was a woman of strong character, proud,
+fiery, and determined. Her husband was subject to strange moods and
+impulses, and the great task which God had committed to him made him
+less amenable to family cares.</p>
+
+<p>That married life which began at the Globe Tavern was destined to end
+at the White House, after years of vicissitude and serious national
+trouble. Children were born unto them, and all but the eldest died.
+Great responsibilities were laid upon Lincoln and even though he met
+them <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>bravely it was inevitable that his family should also suffer.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the face of the Commander-in-chief rested nearly always a mighty
+sadness, except when it was occasionally illumined by his wonderful
+smile, or when the light of his sublime faith banished the clouds.</p>
+
+<p>Storm and stress, suffering and heartache, reverses and defeat were
+the portion of the Leader, and when Victory at last perched upon the
+National standard, her beautiful feet were all drabbled in blood, and
+the most terrible war on the world&#8217;s records passed down into history.
+In the hour of triumph, with his great purpose nobly fulfilled, death
+came to the great Captain.</p>
+
+<p>The United Republic is his monument, and that rugged, yet gracious
+figure, hallowed by martyrdom, stands before the eyes of his
+countrymen forever serene and calm, while his memory lingers like a
+benediction in the hearts of both friend and foe.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Silent Thanksgiving</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox5 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">S</span>he is standing alone by the window&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.1em;">A woman, faded and old,</span><br />
+But the wrinkled face was lovely once,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And the silvered hair was gold.</span><br />
+As out in the darkness, the snow-flakes<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Are falling so softly and slow,</span><br />
+Her thoughts fly back to the summer of life,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And the scenes of long ago.</span><br />
+<br />
+Before the dim eyes, a picture comes,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">She has seen it again and again;</span><br />
+The tears steal over the faded cheeks,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And the lips that quiver with pain,</span><br />
+For she hears once more the trumpet call<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And sees the battle array</span><br />
+As they march to the hills with gleaming swords&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Can she ever forget that day?</span><br />
+<br />
+She has given her boy to the land she loves,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">How hard it had been to part!</span><br />
+And to-night she stands at the window alone,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">With a new-made grave in her heart.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>And yet, it&#8217;s the day of Thanksgiving&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">But her child, her darling was slain</span><br />
+By the shot and shell of the rebel guns&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Can she ever be thankful again?</span><br />
+<br />
+She thinks once more of his fair young face,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And the cannon&#8217;s murderous roll,</span><br />
+While hatred springs in her passionate heart,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And bitterness into her soul.</span><br />
+Then out of the death-like stillness<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">There comes a battle-cry&mdash;</span><br />
+The song that led those marching feet<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">To conquer, or to die.</span><br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Yes, rally round the flag, boys!&#8221;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">With tears she hears the song,</span><br />
+And her thoughts go back to the boys in blue,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">That army, brave and strong&mdash;</span><br />
+Then Peace creeps in amid the pain.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">The dead are as dear as the living,</span><br />
+And back of the song is the silence,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And back of the silence&mdash;Thanksgiving.</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+<h2>In the Flash of a Jewel</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">C</span>ertain barbaric instincts in the human race seem to be ineradicable.
+It is but a step from the painted savage, gorgeous in his beads and
+wampum, to my lady of fashion, who wears a tiara upon her stately
+head, chains and collars of precious stones at her throat, bracelets
+on her white arms, and innumerable rings upon her dainty fingers. Wise
+men may decry the baleful fascination of jewels, but, none the less,
+the jeweller&#8217;s window continues to draw the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>Like brilliant moths that appear only at night, jewels are tabooed in
+the day hours. Dame Fashion sternly condemns gems in the day time as
+evidence of hopelessly bad taste. No jewels are permitted in any
+ostentatious way, and yet a woman may, even in good society, wear a
+few <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>thousand dollars&#8217; worth of precious stones, without seeming to be
+overdressed, provided the occasion is appropriate, as in the case of
+functions held in darkened rooms.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening when shoulders are bared and light feet tread fantastic
+measures in a ball room, which is literally a bower of roses, there
+seems to be no limit as regards jewels. In such an assembly a woman
+may, without appearing overdressed, adorn herself with diamonds
+amounting to a small fortune.</p>
+
+<p>During a season of grand opera in Chicago, a beautiful white-haired
+woman sat in the same box night after night without attracting
+particular attention, except as a woman of acknowledged beauty. At a
+glance it might be thought that her dress, although elegant, was
+rather simple, but an enterprising reporter discovered that her gown
+of rare old lace, with the pattern picked out here and there with chip
+diamonds, had cost over fifty-five thousand dollars. The tiara,
+collar, and few rings she wore, swelled the grand <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>total to more than
+three hundred thousand dollars.</p>
+
+<p>Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, pearls, and opals&mdash;these
+precious stones have played a tremendous part in the world&#8217;s history.
+Empires have been bartered for jewels, and for a string of pearls many
+a woman has sold her soul. It is said that pearls mean tears, yet they
+are favourite gifts for brides, and no maiden fears to wear them on
+her way up the aisle where her bridegroom waits.</p>
+
+<p>A French writer claims that if it be true that the oyster can be
+forced to make as many pearls as may be required of it, the jewel will
+become so common that my lady will no longer care to decorate herself
+with its pale splendour. Whether or not this will ever be the case, it
+is certain that few gems have played a more conspicuous part in
+history than this.</p>
+
+<p>Not only have we Cleopatra&#8217;s reckless draught, but there is also a
+story of a noble Roman who dissolved in vinegar and drank a pearl
+worth a million sesterces, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>which had adorned the ear of the woman he
+loved. But the cold-hearted chemist declares that an acid which could
+dissolve a pearl would also dissolve the person who swallowed it, so
+those two legends must vanish with many others that have shrivelled up
+under the searching gaze of science.</p>
+
+<p>There is another interesting story about the destruction of a pearl.
+During the reign of Elizabeth, a haughty Spanish ambassador was
+boasting at the Court of England of the great riches of his king. Sir
+Thomas Gresham, wishing to get even with the bragging Castilian,
+replied that some of Elizabeth&#8217;s subjects would spend as much at one
+meal as Philip&#8217;s whole kingdom could produce in a day! To prove this
+statement, Sir Thomas invited the Spaniard to dine with him, and
+having ground up a costly Eastern pearl the Englishman coolly
+swallowed it.</p>
+
+<p>Going back to the dimness of early times, we find that many of the
+ancients preferred green gems to all other stones. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>The emerald was
+thought to have many virtues. It kept evil spirits at a distance, it
+restored failing sight, it could unearth mysteries, and when it turned
+yellow its owner knew to a certainty that the woman he loved was false
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>The ruby flashes through all Oriental romances. This stone banished
+sadness and sin. A serpent with a ruby in its mouth was considered an
+appropriate betrothal ring.</p>
+
+<p>The most interesting ruby of history is set in the royal diadem of
+England. It is called the Black Prince&#8217;s ruby. In the days when the
+Moors ruled Granada, when both the men and the women of that race
+sparkled with gems, and even the ivory covers of their books were
+sometimes set with precious stones, the Spanish king, Don Pedro the
+Cruel, obtained this stone from a Moorish prince whom he had caused to
+be murdered.</p>
+
+<p>It was given by Don Pedro to the Black Prince, and half a century
+later it glowed on the helmet of that most picturesque <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>of England&#8217;s
+kings, Henry V, at the battle of Agincourt.</p>
+
+<p>The Scotchman, Sir James Melville, saw this jewel during his famous
+visit to the Court of Elizabeth, when the Queen showed him some of the
+treasures in her cabinet, the most valued of these being the portrait
+of Leicester.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She showed me a fair ruby like a great racket ball,&#8221; he says. &#8220;I
+desired she would send to my queen either this or the Earl of
+Leicester&#8217;s picture.&#8221; But Elizabeth cherished both the ruby and the
+portrait, so she sent Marie Stuart a diamond instead.</p>
+
+<p>Poets have lavished their fancies upon the origin of the opal, but no
+one seems to know why it is considered unlucky. Women who laugh at
+superstitions of all kinds are afraid to wear an opal, and a certain
+jeweller at the head of one of the largest establishments in a great
+city has carried his fear to such a length that he will not keep one
+in his establishment&mdash;not only this, but it is said that he has even
+been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>known to throw an opal ring out of the window. The offending
+stone had been presented to his daughter, but this fact was not
+allowed to weigh against his superstition. It is understood when he
+entertains that none of his guests will wear opals, and this wish is
+faithfully respected.</p>
+
+<p>The story goes that the opal was discovered at the same time that
+kissing was invented. A young shepherd on the hills of Greece found a
+pretty pebble one day, and wishing to give it to a beautiful
+shepherdess who stood near him, he let her take it from his lips with
+hers, as the hands of neither of them were clean.</p>
+
+<p>Many a battle royal has been waged for the possession of a diamond,
+and several famous diamonds are known by name throughout the world.
+Among these are the Orloff, the Koh-i-noor, the Regent, the Real
+Paragon, and the Sanci, besides the enormous stone which was sent to
+King Edward from South Africa. This has been cut but not yet named.</p>
+
+<p>The Orloff is perhaps the most brilliant <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>of all the famous group.
+Tradition says that it was once one of the eyes of an Indian idol and
+was supposed to have been the origin of all light. A French grenadier
+of Pondicherry deserted his regiment, adopted the religion and manners
+of the Brahmans, worshipped at the shrine of the idol whose eyes were
+light itself, stole the brightest one, and escaped.</p>
+
+<p>A sea captain bought it from him for ten thousand dollars and sold it
+to a Jew for sixty thousand dollars. An Armenian named Shafras bought
+it from the Jew, and after a time Count Orloff paid $382,500 for this
+and a title of Russian nobility.</p>
+
+<p>He presented the wonderful refractor of light to the Empress Catherine
+who complimented Orloff by naming it after him. This magnificent
+stone, which weighs one hundred and ninety-five carats, now forms the
+apex of the Russian crown.</p>
+
+<p>The Real Paragon was in 1861 the property of the Rajah of Mattan. It
+was then uncut and weighed three hundred <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>and seven carats. The
+Governor of Batavia was very anxious to bring it to Europe. He offered
+the Rajah one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and two warships with
+their guns and ammunition, but the offer was contemptuously refused.
+Very little is known of its history. It is now owned by the Government
+of Portugal and is pledged as security for a very large sum of money.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that one could carry the Koh-i-noor in one end of a
+silk purse and balance it in the other end with a gold eagle and a
+gold dollar, and never feel the difference in weight, while the value
+of the gem in gold could not be transported in less than four dray
+loads!</p>
+
+<p>Tradition says that Karna, King of Anga, owned it three thousand years
+ago. The King of Lahore, one of the Indies, heard that the King of
+Cabul, one of the lesser princes, had in his possession the largest
+and purest diamond in the world. Lahore invited Cabul to visit him,
+and when he had him in his power, demanded <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>the treasure. Cabul,
+however, had suspected treachery, and brought an imitation of the
+Koh-i-noor. He of course expostulated, but finally surrendered the
+supposed diamond.</p>
+
+<p>The lapidary who was employed to mount it pronounced it a piece of
+crystal, whereupon the royal old thief sent soldiers who ransacked the
+palace of the King of Cabul from top to bottom, in vain. At last,
+however, after a long search, a servant betrayed his master, and the
+gem was found in a pile of ashes.</p>
+
+<p>After the annexation of the Punjab in 1849, the Koh-i-noor was given
+up to the British, and at a meeting of the Punjab Board was handed to
+John (afterward Lord) Lawrence who placed it in his waistcoat pocket
+and forgot the treasure. While at a public meeting some time later, he
+suddenly remembered it, hurried home and asked his servant if he had
+seen a small box which he had left in his waistcoat pocket.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, sahib,&#8221; the man replied; &#8220;I found it, and put in your drawer.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Bring it here,&#8221; said Lawrence, and the servant produced it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now,&#8221; said his master, &#8220;open it and see what it contains.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The old native obeyed, and after removing the folds of linen, he said:
+&#8220;There is nothing here but a piece of glass.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good,&#8221; said Lawrence, with a sigh of relief, &#8220;you can leave it with
+me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Sanci diamond belonged to Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, who
+wore it in his hat at the battle of Nancy, where he fell. A Swiss
+soldier found it and sold it for a gulden to a clergyman of Baltimore.
+It passed into the possession of Anton, King of Portugal, who was
+obliged to sell it, the price being a million francs.</p>
+
+<p>It shortly afterward became the property of a Frenchman named Sanci,
+whose descendant being sent as an ambassador, was required by the King
+to give the diamond as a pledge. The servant carrying it to the King
+was attacked by robbers on the way and murdered, not, however, until
+he had swallowed the diamond. His <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>master, feeling sure of his
+faithfulness, caused the body to be opened and found the gem in his
+stomach. This gem came into the possession of the Crown of England,
+and James II carried it with him to France in 1688.</p>
+
+<p>From James it passed to his friend and patron, Louis XIV, and to his
+descendants, until the Duchess of Berry at the Restoration sold it to
+the Demidoffs for six hundred and twenty-five thousand francs.</p>
+
+<p>It was worth a million and a half of francs when Prince Paul
+Demidoff wore it in his hat at a great fancy ball given in honour
+of Count Walewski, the Minister of Napoleon III&mdash;and lost it
+during the ball! Everybody was wild with excitement when the loss
+was announced&mdash;everybody but Prince Paul Demidoff. After an hour&#8217;s
+search the Sanci was found under a chair.</p>
+
+<p>After more than two centuries, &#8220;the Regent is,&#8221; as Saint-Simon
+described it in 1717, &#8220;a brilliant, inestimable and unique.&#8221; Its
+density is rather higher than that of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>usual diamond, and it
+weighs upwards of one hundred and thirty carats. This stone was found
+in India by a slave, who, to conceal it, made a wound in his leg and
+wrapped the gem in the bandages. Reaching the coast, he intrusted
+himself and his secret to an English captain, who took the gem, threw
+the slave overboard, and sold his ill-gotten gains to a native
+merchant for five thousand dollars.</p>
+
+<p>It afterwards passed into the hands of Pitt, Governor of St. George,
+who sold it in 1717 to the Duke of Orleans, then Regent of France, for
+$675,000. Before the end of the eighteenth century the stone had more
+than trebled in worth, and we can only wonder what it ought to bring
+now with its &#8220;perfect whiteness, its regular form, and its absolute
+freedom from stain or flaw!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The collection belonging to the Sultan of Turkey, which is probably
+the finest in the world, dates prior to the discovery of America, and
+undoubtedly came from Asia. One Turkish pasha alone left to the Empire
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>at his death, seven table-cloths embroidered with diamonds, and
+bushels of fine pearls.</p>
+
+<p>In the war with Russia, in 1778, Turkey borrowed $30,000,000 from the
+Ottoman Bank on the security of the crown jewels. The cashier of the
+bank was admitted to the treasure-chamber and was told to help himself
+until he had enough to secure his advances.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I selected enough,&#8221; he says, &#8220;to secure the bank against loss in any
+event, but the removal of the gems I took made no appreciable gap in
+the accumulation.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In the imperial treasury of the Sultan, the first room is the richest
+in notable objects. The most conspicuous of these is a great throne or
+divan of beaten gold, occupying the entire centre of the room, and set
+with precious stones: pearls, rubies, and emeralds, thousands of them,
+covering the entire surface in a geometrical mosaic pattern. This
+specimen of barbaric magnificence was part of the spoils of war taken
+from one of the shahs of Persia.</p>
+
+<p>Much more interesting and beautiful, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>however, is another canopied
+throne or divan, placed in the upper story of the same building. This
+is a genuine work of old Turkish art which dates from some time during
+the second half of the sixteenth century. It is a raised square seat,
+on which the Sultan sat cross-legged. At each angle there rises a
+square vertical shaft supporting a canopy, with a minaret or pinnacle
+surmounted by a rich gold and jewelled finial. The entire height of
+the throne is nine or ten feet. The materials are precious woods,
+ebony, sandal-wood, etc., with shell, mother-of-pearl, silver, and
+gold.</p>
+
+<p>The entire piece is decorated inside and out with a branching
+floriated design in mother-of-pearl marquetry, in the style of the
+fine early Persian painted tiles, and the centre of each of the
+principal leaves and flowers is set with splendid <i>cabochon</i> gems,
+fine balass rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and pearls.</p>
+
+<p>Pendant from the roof of the canopy, and in a position which would be
+directly over <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>the head of the Sultan, is a golden cord, on which is
+hung a large heart-shaped ornament of gold, chased and perforated with
+floriated work, and beneath it hangs a huge uncut emerald of fine
+colour, but of triangular shape, four inches in diameter, and an inch
+and a half thick.</p>
+
+<p>Richly decorated arms and armour form a conspicuous feature of the
+contents of all three of these rooms. The most notable work in this
+class in the first apartment is a splendid suit of mixed chain and
+plate mail, wonderfully damascened and jewelled, worn by Sultan Murad
+IV, in 1638, at the taking of Bagdad.</p>
+
+<p>Near to it is a scimetar, probably a part of the panoply of the same
+monarch. Both the hilt and the greater part of the broad scabbard of
+this weapon are incrusted with large table diamonds, forming
+checkerwork, all the square stones being regularly and symmetrically
+cut, of exactly the same size&mdash;upward of half an inch across. There
+are many other sumptuous works of art which are similarly adorned.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p><p>Rightfully first among the world&#8217;s splendid coronets stands the State
+Crown of England. It was made in 1838 with jewels taken from old
+crowns and others furnished by command of the Queen.</p>
+
+<p>It consists of diamonds, pearls, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, set
+in silver and gold. It has a crimson velvet cap with ermine border; it
+is lined with white silk and weighs about forty ounces. The lower part
+of the band above the ermine border consists of a row of one hundred
+and ninety-nine pearls, and the upper part of this band has one
+hundred and twelve pearls, between which, in the front of the crown,
+is a large sapphire which was purchased for it by George IV.</p>
+
+<p>At the back is a sapphire of smaller size and six others, three on
+each side, between which are eight emeralds. Above and below the
+sapphires are fourteen diamonds, and around the eight emeralds are one
+hundred and twenty-eight diamonds. Between the emeralds and sapphires
+are sixteen ornaments, containing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>one hundred and sixty diamonds.
+Above the band are eight sapphires, surmounted by eight diamonds,
+between which are eight festoons, consisting of one hundred and
+forty-eight diamonds.</p>
+
+<p>In the front of the crown and in the centre of a diamond Maltese cross
+is the famous ruby of the Black Prince. Around this ruby to form the
+cross are seventy-five brilliant diamonds. Three other Maltese
+crosses, forming the two sides and back of the crown, have emerald
+centres, and each contains between one and two hundred brilliant
+diamonds. Between the four Maltese crosses are four ornaments in the
+form of the French <i>fleur-de-lis</i>, with four rubies in the centre, and
+surrounded by rose diamonds.</p>
+
+<p>From the Maltese crosses issue four imperial arches, composed of oak
+leaves and acorns embellished with hundreds of magnificent jewels.
+From the upper part of the arches are suspended four large pendant
+pear-shaped pearls, with rose diamond caps. Above the arch stands the
+mound, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>thickly set with brilliants. The cross on the summit has a
+rose cut sapphire in the centre, surrounded by diamonds.</p>
+
+<p>A gem is said to represent &#8220;condensed wealth,&#8221; and it is also
+condensed history. The blood of a ruby, the faint moonlight lustre of
+a pearl, the green glow of an emerald, and the dazzling white light of
+a diamond&mdash;in what unfailing magic lies their charm? Tiny bits of
+crystal as they appear to be&mdash;even the Orloff diamond could be
+concealed in a child&#8217;s hand&mdash;yet kings and queens have played for
+stakes like these. Battle and murder have been done for them, honour
+bartered and kingdoms lost, but the old magic beauty never fades, and
+to-day, as always, sin and beauty, side, by side, are mirrored in the
+flash of a jewel.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Coming of My Ship</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox9 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">S</span>traight to the sunrise my ship&#8217;s sails are leaning,<br />
+Brave at the masthead her new colours fly;<br />
+Down on the shore, her lips trembling with meaning,<br />
+Love waits, but unanswering, I heed not her cry.<br />
+The gold of the East shall be mine in full measure,<br />
+My ship shall come home overflowing with treasure,<br />
+And love is not need, but only a pleasure,<br />
+So I wait for my ship to come in.<br />
+<br />
+Silent, half troubled, I wait in the shadow,<br />
+No sail do I see between me and the dawn;<br />
+Out in the blue and measureless meadow,<br />
+My ship wanders widely, but Love has not gone.<br />
+&#8220;My arms await thee,&#8221; she cries in her pleading,<br />
+&#8220;Why wait for its coming, when I am thy needing?&#8221;<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>I pass by in stillness, all else unheeding,<br />
+And wait for my ship to come in.<br />
+<br />
+See, in the East, surrounded by splendour,<br />
+My sail glimmers whitely in crimson and blue;<br />
+I turn back to Love, my heart growing tender,<br />
+&#8220;Now I have gold and leisure for you.<br />
+Jewels she brings for thy white breast&#8217;s adorning,<br />
+Measures of gold beyond a queen&#8217;s scorning&#8221;&mdash;<br />
+To-night I shall rest&mdash;joy comes in the morning,<br />
+So I wait for my ship to come in.<br />
+<br />
+Remembering waters beat cold on the shore,<br />
+And the grey sea in sadness grows old;<br />
+I listen in vain for Love&#8217;s pleading once more,<br />
+While my ship comes with spices and gold.<br />
+The sea birds cry hoarsely, for this is their songing,<br />
+On masthead and colours their white wings are thronging,<br />
+But my soul throbs deep with love and with longing,<br />
+And I wait for my ship to come in.</p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Romance and the Postman</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">A</span> letter! Do the charm and uncertainty of it ever fade? Who knows what
+may be written upon the pages within!</p>
+
+<p>Far back, in a dim, dream-haunted childhood, the first letter came to
+me. It was &#8220;a really, truly letter,&#8221; properly stamped and addressed,
+and duly delivered by the postman. With what wonder the chubby fingers
+broke the seal! It did not matter that there was an inclosure to one&#8217;s
+mother, and that the thing itself was written by an adoring relative;
+it was a personal letter, of private and particular importance, and
+that day the postman assumed his rightful place in one&#8217;s affairs.</p>
+
+<p>In the treasure box of many a grandmother is hidden a pathetic scrawl
+that the baby made for her and called &#8220;a letter.&#8221; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>To the alien eye,
+it is a mere tangle of pencil marks, and the baby himself, grown to
+manhood, with children of his own, would laugh at the yellowed
+message, which is put away with his christening robe and his first
+shoes, but to one, at least, it speaks with a deathless voice.</p>
+
+<p>It is written in books and papers that some unhappy mortals are
+swamped with mail. As a lady recently wrote to the President of the
+United States: &#8220;I suppose you get so many letters that when you see
+the postman coming down the street, you don&#8217;t care whether he has
+anything for you or not.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, the President might well think the universe had gone suddenly
+wrong if the postman passed him by, but there are compensations in
+everything. The First Gentleman of the Republic must inevitably miss
+the pleasant emotions which letters bring to the most of us.</p>
+
+<p>The clerks and carriers in the business centres may be pardoned if
+they lose sight of the potentialities of the letters that pass
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>through their hands. When a skyscraper is a postal district in
+itself, there is no time for the man in grey to think of the burden he
+carries, save as so many pounds of dead weight, becoming appreciably
+lighter at each stop. But outside the hum and bustle, on quiet streets
+and secluded by-ways, there are faces at the windows, watching eagerly
+for the mail.</p>
+
+<p>The progress of the postman is akin to a Roman triumph, for in his
+leathern pack lies Fate. Long experience has given him a sixth sense,
+as if the letters breathed a hint of their contents through their
+superscriptions.</p>
+
+<p>The business letter, crisp and to the point, has an atmosphere of its
+own, even where cross lines of typewriting do not show through the
+envelope.</p>
+
+<p>The long, rambling, friendly hand is distinctive, and if it has been
+carried in the pocket a long time before mailing, the postman knows
+that the writer is a married woman with a foolish trust in her
+husband.</p>
+
+<p>Circulars addressed mechanically, at so <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>much a thousand, never
+deceive the postman, though the recipient often opens them with
+pleasurable sensations, which immediately sink to zero. And the
+love-letters! The carrier is a veritable Sherlock Holmes when it comes
+to them.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually he becomes acquainted with the inmost secrets of those upon
+his route. Friendship, love, and marriage, absence and return, death,
+and one&#8217;s financial condition, are all as an open book to the man in
+grey. Invitations, cards, wedding announcements, forlorn little
+letters from those to whom writing is not as easy as speech, childish
+epistles with scrap pictures pasted on the outside, all give an
+inkling of their contents to the man who delivers them.</p>
+
+<p>When the same bill comes to the same house for a long and regular
+period, then ceases, even the carrier must feel relieved to know that
+it has been paid. When he isn&#8217;t too busy, he takes a friendly look at
+the postal cards, and sometimes saves a tenant in a third flat the
+weariness of two <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>flights of stairs by shouting the news up the tube!</p>
+
+<p>If the dweller in a tenement has ingratiating manners, he may learn
+how many papers, and letters are being stuffed into the letter-box, by
+a polite inquiry down the tube when the bell rings. Through the subtle
+freemasonry of the postman&#8217;s voice a girl knows that her lover has not
+forgotten her&mdash;and her credit is good for the &#8220;two cents due&#8221; if the
+tender missive is overweight.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All the world loves a lover,&#8221; and even the busy postman takes a
+fatherly interest in the havoc wrought by Cupid along his route. The
+little blind god knows neither times nor seasons&mdash;all alike are his
+own&mdash;but the man in grey, old and spectacled though he may be, is his
+confidential messenger.</p>
+
+<p>Love-letters are seemingly immortal. A clay tablet on which one of the
+Pharaohs wrote, asking for the heart and hand of a beautiful foreign
+princess, is now in the British Museum. But suppose the postman <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>had
+not been sure-footed, and all the clay letters had been smashed into
+fragments in a single grand catastrophe! What a stir in high places,
+what havoc in Church and State, and how many fond hearts broken, if
+the postman had fallen down!</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nothing feeds the flame like a letter,&#8221; said Emerson; &#8220;it has intent,
+personality, secrecy.&#8221; Flimsy and frail as it is, so easily torn or
+destroyed, the love-letter many times outlasts the love. Even the
+Father of his Country, though he has been dead this hundred years or
+more, has left behind him a love-letter, ragged and faded, but still
+legible, beginning: &#8220;My Dearest Life and Love.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Matter is indestructible,&#8221; so the scientists say, but what of the
+love-letter that is reduced to ashes? Does its passion live again in
+some far-off violet flame, or, rising from its dust, bloom once more
+in a fragrant rose, to touch the lips of another love?</p>
+
+<p>In countless secret places, the tender missives are hidden, for the
+lover must <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>always keep his joy in tangible form, to be sure that it
+was not a dream. They fly through the world by day and night, like
+white-winged birds that can say, &#8220;I love you&#8221;&mdash;over mountain, hill,
+stream, and plain; past sea and lake and river, through the desert&#8217;s
+fiery heat and amid the throbbing pulses of civilisation, with never a
+mistake, to bring exquisite rapture to another heart and wings of
+light to the loved one&#8217;s soul.</p>
+
+<p>Under the pillow of the maiden, her lover&#8217;s letter brings visions of
+happiness too great for the human heart to hold. Even in her dreams,
+her fingers tighten upon his letter&mdash;the visible assurance of his
+unchanging and unchangeable love.</p>
+
+<p>When the bugle sounds the charge, and dimly through the flash and
+flame the flag signals &#8220;Follow!&#8221; many a heart, leaping to answer with
+the hot blood of youth, finds a sudden tenderness in the midst of its
+high courage, from the loving letter which lies close to the soldier&#8217;s
+breast.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p><p>Bunker Hill and Gettysburg, Moscow and the Wilderness, Waterloo,
+Mafeking, and San Juan&mdash;the old blood-stained fields and the modern
+scenes of terror have all alike known the same message and the same
+thrill. The faith and hope of the living, the kiss and prayer of the
+dying, the cries of the wounded, and the hot tears of those who have
+parted forever, are on the blood-stained pages of the love-letters
+that have gone to war.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<i>Ich liebe Dich</i>,&#8221; &#8220;<i>Je t&#8217;aime</i>,&#8221; or, in our dear English speech, &#8220;I
+love you,&#8221;&mdash;it is all the same, for the heart knows the universal
+language, the words of which are gold, bedewed with tears that shine
+like precious stones.</p>
+
+<p>Every attic counts old love-letters among its treasures, and when the
+rain beats on the roof and grey swirls of water are blown against the
+pane, one may sit among the old trunks and boxes and bring to light
+the loves of days gone by.</p>
+
+<p>The little hair-cloth trunk, with its rusty lock and broken hinges,
+brings to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>mind a rosy-cheeked girl in a poke bonnet, who went
+a-visiting in the stage-coach. Inside is the bonnet itself&mdash;white,
+with a gorgeous trimming of pink &#8220;lute-string&#8221; ribbon, which has faded
+into ashes of roses at the touch of the kindly years.</p>
+
+<p>From the trunk comes a musty fragrance&mdash;lavender, sweet clover,
+rosemary, thyme, and the dried petals of roses that have long since
+crumbled to dust. Scraps of brocade and taffeta, yellowed lingerie,
+and a quaint old wedding gown, daguerreotypes in ornate cases, and
+then the letters, tied with faded ribbon, in a package by themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The fingers unconsciously soften to their task, for the letters are
+old and yellow, and the ink has faded to brown. Every one was cut open
+with the scissors, not hastily torn according to our modern fashion,
+but in a slow and seemly manner, as befits a solemn occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the sweet face of a great-grandmother grew much perplexed at
+the sight of a letter in an unfamiliar hand, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>perhaps, too, as is
+the way of womankind, she studied the outside a long time before she
+opened it. As the months passed by, the handwriting became familiar,
+but a coquettish grandmother may have flirted a bit with the letter,
+and put it aside&mdash;until she could be alone.</p>
+
+<p>All the important letters are in the package, from the first formal
+note asking permission to call, which a womanly instinct bade the
+maiden put aside, to the last letter, written when twilight lay upon
+the long road they had travelled together, but still beginning: &#8220;My
+Dear and Honoured Wife.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Bits of rosemary and geranium, lemon verbena, tuberose, and
+heliotrope, fragile and whitened, but still sweet, fall from the
+opened letters and rustle softly as they fall.</p>
+
+<p>Far away in the &#8220;peace which passeth all understanding,&#8221; the writer of
+the letters sleeps, but the old love keeps a fragrance that outlives
+the heart in which it bloomed.</p>
+
+<p>At night, when the fires below are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>lighted, and childish voices make
+the old house ring with laughter, Memory steals into the attic to sing
+softly of the past, as a mother croons her child to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Rocking in a quaint old attic chair, with the dear familiar things of
+home gathered all about her, Memory&#8217;s voice is sweet, like a harp
+tuned in the minor mode when the south wind sweeps the strings.</p>
+
+<p>Bunches of herbs swing from the rafters and fill the room with the
+wholesome scent of an old-fashioned garden, where rue and heartsease
+grew. With the fragrance comes the breath from that garden of
+Mnemosyne, where the simples for heartache nod beside the River of
+Forgetfulness.</p>
+
+<p>In a flash the world is forgotten, and into the attic come dear faces
+from that distant land of childhood, where a strange enchantment
+glorified the commonplace, and made the dreams of night seem real.
+Footsteps that have long been silent are heard upon the attic floor,
+and voices, hushed for years, whisper from the shadows from the other
+end of the room.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p><p>A moonbeam creeps into the attic and transfigures the haunted chamber
+with a sheen of silver mist. From the spinning-wheel come a soft hum
+and a delicate whir; then a long-lost voice breathes the first notes
+of an old, old song. The melody changes to a minuet, and the lady in
+the portrait moves, smiling, from the tarnished gilt frame that
+surrounds her&mdash;then a childish voice says: &#8220;Mother, are you asleep?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Down the street the postman passes, bearing his burden of joy and
+pain: letters from far-off islands, where the Stars and Stripes gleam
+against a forest of palms; from the snow-bound fastnesses of the
+North, where men are searching for gold; from rose-scented valleys and
+violet fields, where the sun forever shines, and from lands across the
+sea, where men speak an alien tongue&mdash;single messages from one to
+another; letters that plead for pardon cross the paths of those that
+are meant to stab; letters written in jest too often find grim earnest
+at the end of their journey, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>and letters written in all tenderness
+meet misunderstandings and pain, when the postman brings them home;
+letters that deal with affairs of state and shape the destiny of a
+nation; tidings of happiness and sorrow, birth and death, love and
+trust, and the thousand pangs of trust betrayed; an hundred joys and
+as many griefs are all in the postman&#8217;s hands.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder, then, that there is a stir in the house, that eyes
+brighten, hearts beat quickly, and eager steps hasten to the door of
+destiny, when the postman rings the bell!</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+<h2>A Summer Reverie</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox8 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">I</span> sit on the shore of the deep blue sea<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.1em;">As the tide comes rolling in,</span><br />
+And wonder, as roaming in sunlit dreams,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">The cause of the breakers&#8217; din.</span><br />
+<br />
+For each of the foam-crowned billows<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Has a wonderful story to tell,</span><br />
+And the surge&#8217;s mystical music<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Seems wrought by a fairy spell.</span><br />
+<br />
+I wander through memory&#8217;s portals,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Through mansions dim and vast,</span><br />
+And gaze at the beautiful pictures<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">That hang in the halls of the past.</span><br />
+<br />
+And dream-faces gather around me,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">With voices soft and low,</span><br />
+To draw me back to the pleasures<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Of the lands of long ago.</span><br />
+<br />
+There are visions of beauty and splendour,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And a fame that I never can win&mdash;</span><br />
+Far out on the deep they are sailing&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">My ships that will never come in.</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+<h2>A Vignette</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">I</span>t was a muddy down-town corner and several people stood in the cold,
+waiting for a street-car. A stand of daily papers was on the sidewalk,
+guarded by two little newsboys. One was much younger than the other,
+and he rolled two marbles back and forth in the mud by the curb.
+Suddenly his attention was attracted by something bright above him,
+and he looked up into a bunch of red carnations a young lady held in
+her hands. He watched them eagerly, seemingly unable to take his eyes
+from the feast of colour. She saw the hungry look in the little face,
+and put one into his hand. He was silent, until his brother said: &#8220;Say
+thanky to the lady.&#8221; He whispered his thanks, and then she bent down
+and pinned the blossom upon his ragged jacket, while the big policeman
+on the corner smiled approvingly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;My, but you&#8217;re gay now, and you can sell all your papers,&#8221; the bigger
+boy said tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yep, I can sell &#8217;em now, sure!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Out of the crowd on the opposite corner came a tiny, dark-skinned
+Italian girl, with an accordion slung over her shoulder by a dirty
+ribbon; she made straight for the carnations and fearlessly cried,
+&#8220;Lady, please give me a flower!&#8221; She got one, and quickly vanished in
+the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>The young woman walked up the street to a flower-stand to replenish
+her bunch of carnations, and when she returned, another dark-skinned
+mite rushed up to her without a word, only holding up grimy hands with
+a gesture of pathetic appeal. Another brilliant blossom went to her,
+and the young woman turned to follow her; on through the crowd the
+child fled, until she reached the corner where her mother stood,
+seamed and wrinkled and old, with the dark pathetic eyes of sunny
+Italy. She held the flower out to her, and the weary mother turned and
+snatched it eagerly, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>then pressed it to her lips, and kissed it as
+passionately as if it had been the child who brought it to her.</p>
+
+<p>Just then the car came, and the big grey policeman helped the owner of
+the carnations across the street, and said as he put her on the car,
+&#8220;Lady, you&#8217;ve sure done them children a good turn to-day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Meditation</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox3 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">I</span> sail through the realms of the long ago,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.3em;">Wafted by fancy and visions frail,</span><br />
+On the river Time with its gentle flow,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">In a silver boat with a golden sail.</span><br />
+<br />
+My dreams, in the silence are hurrying by<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">On the brooklet of Thought where I let them flow,</span><br />
+And the &#8220;lilies nod to the sound of the stream&#8221;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">As I sail through the realms of the long ago.</span><br />
+<br />
+On the shores of life&#8217;s deep-flowing stream<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Are my countless sorrows and heartaches, too,</span><br />
+And the hills of hope are but dimly seen,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Far in the distance, near heaven&#8217;s blue.</span><br />
+<br />
+I find that my childish thoughts and dreams<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Lie strewn on the sands by the cruel blast</span><br />
+That scattered my hopes on the restless streams<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">That flow through the mystic realms of the past.</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Pointers for the Lords of Creation</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">S</span>ome wit has said that the worst vice in the world is advice, and it
+is also quite true that one ignorant, though well-meaning person can
+sometimes accomplish more damage in a short time, than a dozen people
+who start out for the purpose of doing mischief.</p>
+
+<p>The newspapers and periodicals of to-day are crowded with advice to
+women, and while much of it is found in magazines for women, written
+and edited by men, it is also true that a goodly quantity of it comes
+from feminine writers; it is all along the same lines, however, the
+burden of effort being to teach the weaker sex how to become more
+attractive and more lovable to the lords of creation. It is, of
+course, all intended for our good, for if we can only please the men,
+and obey their slightest <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>wish even before they take the trouble to
+mention the matter, we can then be perfectly happy.</p>
+
+<p>A man can sit down any day and give us directions enough to keep us
+busy for a lifetime, and we seldom or never return the compliment.
+This is manifestly unfair, and so this little preachment is meant for
+the neglected and deserving men, and for them only, so that all women
+who have read thus far are invited to leave the matter right here and
+turn their attention to the column of &#8220;Advice to Women&#8221; which they can
+find in almost any periodical.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, gentlemen, we must admit that you do keep us
+guessing, though we do not sit up nights nor lose much sleep over your
+queer notions.</p>
+
+<p>We can&#8217;t ask you many questions, either, dear brethren, for, as you
+know, you rather like to fib to us, and sometimes we are able to find
+it out, and then we never believe you any more.</p>
+
+<p>We may venture, however, to ask small favours of you, and one of these
+is that you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>do not wear red ties. You look so nice in quiet colours
+that we dislike exceedingly to have you make crazy quilts of
+yourselves, and that is just what you do when you begin experimenting
+with colours which we naturally associate with the &#8220;cullud pussons.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And a cane may be very ornamental, but it&#8217;s of no earthly use, and we
+would rather you would not carry it when you go out with us.</p>
+
+<p>Never tell us you haven&#8217;t had time to come and see us, or write to us,
+because we know perfectly well that if you wanted to badly enough, you
+would take the time, so the excuse makes us even madder than does the
+neglect. Still, when you don&#8217;t want to come, we would not have you do
+it for anything.</p>
+
+<p>There is an old saying that &#8220;absence makes the heart grow fonder&#8221;&mdash;so
+it does&mdash;of the other fellow. We don&#8217;t propose to shed any tears over
+you; we simply go to the theatre with the other man and have an
+extremely good time. When you are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>very, very bright, you can manage
+some way not to allow us to forget you for a minute, nor give us much
+time to think of anything else.</p>
+
+<p>When we are angry, for heaven&#8217;s sake don&#8217;t ask us why, because that
+shows your lack of penetration. Just simply call yourself a brute, and
+say you are utterly unworthy of even our faint regard, and you will
+soon realise that this covers a lot of ground, and everything will be
+all right in a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>And whatever you do, don&#8217;t show any temper yourself. A woman requires
+of a man that he shall be as immovable as the rock of Gibraltar, no
+matter what she does to him. And you play your strongest card when you
+don&#8217;t mind our tantrums&mdash;even though it&#8217;s a state secret we are
+telling you.</p>
+
+<p>Don&#8217;t get huffy when you meet us with another man; in nine cases out
+of ten, that&#8217;s just what we do it for. And don&#8217;t make the mistake of
+retaliating by asking another girl somewhere. You&#8217;ll have a perfectly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>miserable time if you do, both then and afterward.</p>
+
+<p>When you do come to see us, it is not at all nice to spend the entire
+evening talking about some other girl. How would you like to have the
+graces of some other man continually dinned into your ears? Sometimes
+we take that way in order to get a rest from your overweening raptures
+over the absent girl.</p>
+
+<p>We have a well-defined suspicion that you talk us over with your chums
+and compare notes. But, bless you, it can&#8217;t possibly hold a candle to
+the thorough and impartial discussions that some of you get when girls
+are together, either in small bevies, or with only one chosen friend.
+And we don&#8217;t very much care what you say about us, for a man never
+judges a woman by the opinion of any one else, but another woman&#8217;s
+opinion counts for a great deal with us, so you would better be
+careful.</p>
+
+<p>If you are going to say things that you don&#8217;t mean, try to stamp them
+with the air of sincerity&mdash;if you can once get a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>woman to fully
+believe in your sincerity, you have gone a long way toward her heart.</p>
+
+<p>Haven&#8217;t you found out that women are not particularly interested in
+anecdotes? Please don&#8217;t tell us more than fifteen in the same evening.</p>
+
+<p>And don&#8217;t begin to make love to us before you have had time to make a
+favourable impression along several lines&mdash;a man, as well as a woman,
+loses ground and forfeits respect by making himself too cheap.</p>
+
+<p>If a girl runs and screams when she has been caught standing under the
+mistletoe, it means that she will not object; if she stiffens up and
+glares at you, it means that she does. The same idea is sometimes
+delicately conveyed by the point of a pin. But a woman will be able to
+forgive almost anything which you can make her believe was prompted by
+her own attractiveness, at least unless she knows men fairly well.</p>
+
+<p>You know, of course, that we will not show your letters, nor tell when
+you ask us to marry you and are refused. This much a woman owes to any
+man who has <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>honoured her with an offer of marriage&mdash;to keep his
+perfect trust sacredly in her own heart. Even her future husband has
+no business to know of this&mdash;it is her lover&#8217;s secret, and she has no
+right to betray it.</p>
+
+<p>Keeping the love-letters and the offers of marriage from any
+honourable man safe from a prying world are points of honour which all
+good women possess, although we may sometimes quote certain things
+from your letters, as you do from ours.</p>
+
+<p>There&#8217;s nothing you can tell a woman which will please her quite so
+much as that knowing her has made you better, especially if you can
+prove it by showing a decided upward tendency in your morals. That&#8217;s
+your good right bower, but don&#8217;t play it too often&mdash;keep it for
+special occasions.</p>
+
+<p>There&#8217;s one mistake you make, dear brethren, and that is telling a
+woman you love her as soon as you find it out yourself, and the most
+of you will do that very thing. There is one case on record where a
+man waited fifteen minutes, but he nearly died <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>of the strain. The
+trouble is that you seldom stop to consider whether we are ready to
+hear you or not, nor whether the coast is clear, nor what the chances
+are in your favour. You simply relieve your mind, and trust in your
+own wonderful charms to accomplish the rest.</p>
+
+<p>And we wish that when the proper time comes for you to speak your mind
+you&#8217;d try to do it artistically. Of course you can&#8217;t write it, unless
+you are far away from her, for if you can manage an opportunity to
+speak, a resort to the pen is cowardly. And don&#8217;t mind our evading the
+subject&mdash;we always do that on principle, but please don&#8217;t be scared,
+or at least don&#8217;t show it, whatever you may feel. If there is one
+thing a woman dislikes more than another it is a man who shows
+cowardice at the crucial point in life.</p>
+
+<p>Every man, except yourself, dear reader, is conceited. And one
+particular sort of it makes us very, very weary. You are so blinded by
+your own perfections, so sure that we are desperately in love with
+you, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>that you sometimes give us little unspoken suggestions to that
+effect, and then our disgust is beyond words.</p>
+
+<p>Another cowardly thing you sometimes do, and that is to say that we
+have spoiled your life&mdash;that we could have made you anything we
+pleased&mdash;and that you are going straight to perdition. If one woman is
+all that keeps you from going to ruin, you have secured a through
+ticket anyway, and it&#8217;s too late to save you. You don&#8217;t want a woman
+who might marry you only out of pity, and you are not going to die of
+a broken heart. Men die of broken vanity, sometimes, but their hearts
+are pretty tough, being made of healthy muscle.</p>
+
+<p>You get married very much as you go down town in the morning. You run,
+like all possessed, until you catch your car, and then you sit down
+and read your newspaper. When you think your wife looks unusually
+well, it would not hurt you in the least to tell her so, and the way
+you leave her in the morning is going to settle her happiness for the
+day, though she may be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>too proud to let you know that it makes any
+difference. Women are quick to detect a sham, and they don&#8217;t want you
+to say anything that you don&#8217;t feel, but you are pretty sure to feel
+tenderly toward her sometimes, careless though you may be, and then is
+the time to tell her so. You don&#8217;t want to wait until she is dead, and
+then buy a lily to put on her coffin. You&#8217;d better bring her the lily
+some time when you&#8217;ve been cross and grumpy.</p>
+
+<p>But don&#8217;t imagine that a present of any kind ever atones for a hurt
+that has been given in words. There&#8217;s nothing you can say which is
+more manly or which will do you both so much good as the simple
+&#8220;forgive me&#8221; when you have been wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Rest assured, gentlemen, that you who spend the most of your evenings
+in other company, and too often find fault with your meals when you
+come home, are the cause of many sorrowful talks among the women who
+are wise enough to know, even though your loyal wife may put up a
+brave front in your defense.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p><p>How often do you suppose the brave woman who loves you has been
+actually driven in her agony to some married friend whom she can trust
+and upon her sympathetic bosom has cried until she could weep no more,
+simply because of your thoughtless neglect? How often do you think she
+has planned little things to make your home-coming pleasant, which you
+have never noticed? And how often do you suppose she has desperately
+fought down the heartache and tried to believe that your absorption in
+business is the reason for your forgetfulness of her?</p>
+
+<p>Do you ever think of these things? Do you ever think of the days
+before you were sure of her, when you treasured every line of her
+letters, and would have bartered your very hopes of heaven for the
+earthly life with her?</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps you can hardly be expected to remember the wild sprint
+that you made from the breakfast table to the street-car.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Transition</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox4 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">I</span> am thy Pleasure. See, my face is fair&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.35em;">With silken strands of joy I twine thee round;</span><br />
+Life has enough of stress&mdash;forget with me!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Wilt thou not stay? Then go, thou art not bound.</span><br />
+<br />
+I am thy Pastime. Let me be to thee<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">A daily refuge from the haunting fears</span><br />
+That bind thee, choke thee, fill thy soul with woe.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Seek thou my hand, let me assuage thy tears.</span><br />
+<br />
+I am thy Habit. Nay, start not, thy will<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Is yet supreme, for art thou not a man?</span><br />
+Then draw me close to thee, for life is brief&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">A little space to pass as best one can.</span><br />
+<br />
+I am thy Passion. Thou shalt cling to me<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Through all the years to come. The silken cord</span><br />
+Of Pleasure has become a stronger bond,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Not to be cleft, nor loosened at a word.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>I am thy Master. Thou shalt crush for me<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">The grapes of truth for wine of sacrifice;</span><br />
+My clanking chains were forged for such as thee,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">I am thy Master&mdash;yea, I am thy vice!</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Superiority of Man</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">W</span>ithout pausing to inquire why savages and barbarians are capable of
+producing college professors, who sneer at the source from which they
+sprung, we may accept for the moment the masculine hypothesis of
+intellectual superiority. Some women have been heard to say that they
+wish they had been born men, but there is no man bold enough to say
+that he would like to be a woman.</p>
+
+<p>If woman can produce a reasoning being, it follows that she herself
+must be capable of reasoning, since a stream can rise no higher than
+its fountain. And yet the bitter truth stares us in the face. We have
+no Shakespeare, Michelangelo, or Beethoven; our Darwins, our Schumanns
+are mute and inglorious; our Miltons, Raphaels, and Herbert Spencers
+have not arrived.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p><p>Call the roll of the great and how many women&#8217;s names will be found
+there? Scarcely enough to enable you to call the company mixed.</p>
+
+<p>No woman in her senses wishes to be merely the female of man. She
+aspires to be distinctly different&mdash;to exercise her varied powers in
+wholly different ways. Ex-President Roosevelt said: &#8220;Equality does not
+imply identity of function.&#8221; We do not care to put in telephones or to
+collect fares on a street-car.</p>
+
+<p>Primitive man set forth from his cave to kill an animal or two, then
+repaired to a secluded nook in the jungle, with other primitive men,
+to discuss the beginnings of politics. Primitive woman in the cave not
+only dressed his game, but she cooked the animal for food, made
+clothing of its skin, necklaces and bracelets of its teeth,
+passementerie of its claws, and needles of its sharper bones. What
+wonder that she had no time for an afternoon tea?</p>
+
+<p>The man of the twentieth century has progressed immeasurably beyond
+this, but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>his wife, industrially speaking, has not gone half so far.
+Is she not still in some cases a cave-dweller, while he roams the
+highways of the world?</p>
+
+<p>If a woman mends men&#8217;s socks, should he not darn her lisle-thread
+hosiery, and run a line of machine stitching around the middle of the
+hem to prevent a disastrous run from a broken stitch? If she presses
+his ties, why should he not learn to iron her bits of fine lace?</p>
+
+<p>Some one will say: &#8220;But he supports her. It is her duty.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, dear friend, but similarly does he &#8216;support&#8217; the servant who
+does the same duties. He also gives her seven dollars every Monday
+morning, or she leaves.&#8221; Are we to suppose that a wife is a woman who
+does general housework for board and clothes, with a few kind words
+thrown in?</p>
+
+<p>A German lady, whom we well knew, worked all the morning attending to
+the comforts of her liege lord. In the dining room he was stretched
+out in an easy chair, while the queen of his heart brushed and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>repaired his clothes&mdash;yes, and blacked his boots! Doubtless for a
+single kiss, redolent of beer and sausages, she would have pressed his
+trousers. Kind words and the fragrant osculation had already saved him
+three dollars at his tailor&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>By such gold-brick methods, dear friends, do men get good service
+cheap. Would that we could do the same! Here, and gladly, we admit
+masculine superiority.</p>
+
+<p>Our short-sightedness, our weakness for kind words, our graceful
+acceptance of the entire responsibility for the home, have chained us
+to the earth, while our lords soar. After having worked steadily for
+some six thousand years to populate the earth passably, some of us may
+now be excused from that duty.</p>
+
+<p>Motherhood is a career for which especial talents are required. Very
+few women know how to bring up children properly. If you don&#8217;t believe
+it, look at the difference between our angelic offspring, and the
+little imps next door! It is as unreasonable to suppose that all women
+can be good <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>mothers as it is to suppose that all women can sing in
+grand opera.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, let us hug to our weary hearts, in our most discouraged
+moments, the great soul-satisfying truth that men, no matter what they
+say or write, think that we are smarter than they are. Otherwise, they
+would not expect of us so much more than they can possibly do
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>In every field of woman&#8217;s work outside the house, the same
+illustration applies. They also think that we possess greater physical
+strength. They chivalrously shield us from the exhausting effort of
+voting, but allow us to stand in the street-cars, wash dishes, push a
+baby carriage, and scrub the kitchen floor. Should we not be proud
+because they consider us so much stronger and wiser than they?
+Interruptions are fatal to their work, as the wife of even a business
+man will testify.</p>
+
+<p>What would have become of Spencer&#8217;s <i>Data of Ethics</i> if, while he was
+writing it, he had two dressmakers in the house? Should we have had
+<i>Hamlet</i>, if at the completion <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>of the first act Mr. Shakespeare had
+given birth to twins, when he had made clothes for only one?</p>
+
+<p>The great charm of marriage, as of life itself, is its unexpectedness.
+The only way to test a man is to marry him. If you live, it&#8217;s a
+mushroom; if you die, it&#8217;s a toadstool!</p>
+
+<p>Or, as another saying goes: &#8220;Happiness after marriage is like the soap
+in the bath-tub; you knew it was there when you got in.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Man&#8217;s clothes are ugly, but the styles change gradually. A judge on
+the bench may try a case lasting two weeks, and his hat will not be
+hopelessly behind the times when it is finished. A man can stoop to
+pick up a fallen magazine without pausing to remember that his front
+steels are not so flexible this year as they were last.</p>
+
+<p>He is not distressed by the fear that some other man may have a suit
+just like his, or that the neighbours will think it is his last year&#8217;s
+suit dyed.</p>
+
+<p>We women fritter ourselves away upon a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>thousand unnecessary things.
+We waste our creative energies and our inspired moments upon pursuits
+so ephemeral that they are forgotten to-morrow. Our day&#8217;s work counts
+for nothing when tested by the standards of eternity. We are unjust,
+not only to ourselves, but to the men who strive for us, for
+civilisation must progress very slowly when half of us are dragged by
+pots and pans.</p>
+
+<p>A house is a material fact, but a home is a fine spiritual essence
+which may pervade even the humblest abode. If love means harmony, why
+not try a little of it in the kitchen? Better a perfect salad than a
+poor poem; better a fine picture than an immaculate house.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Year of My Heart</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox3 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">A</span> sigh for the spring, full flowered, promised spring,<br />
+Laid on the tender earth, and those dear days<br />
+When apple blossoms gleamed against the blue!<br />
+Ah, how the world of joyous robins sang:<br />
+&#8220;I love but you, Sweetheart, I love but you!&#8221;<br />
+<br />
+A sigh for summer fled. In warm, sweet air<br />
+Her thousand singers sped on shining wing;<br />
+And all the inward life of budding grain<br />
+Throbbed with a thousand pulses, while I cling<br />
+To you, my Sweet, with passion near to pain.<br />
+<br />
+A sigh for autumn past. The garnered fields<br />
+Lie desolate to-day. My heart is chill<br />
+As with a sense of dread, and on the shore<br />
+The waves beat grey and cold, and seem to say:<br />
+&#8220;No more, oh, waiting soul, oh nevermore!&#8221;<br />
+<br />
+A sigh for winter come. No singing bird,<br />
+Nor harvest field, is near the path I tread;<br />
+An empty husk is all I have to keep.<br />
+The largess of my giving left me bare,<br />
+And I ask God but for His Lethe&mdash;sleep.</p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Average Man</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>he real man is not at all on the outskirts of civilisation. He is
+very much in evidence and everybody knows him. He has faults and
+virtues, and sometimes they get so mixed up that &#8220;you cannot tell one
+from t&#8217;other.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He is erratic and often queer. He believes, with Emerson, that &#8220;with
+consistency a great soul has nothing to do.&#8221; And he is, of course, &#8220;a
+great soul.&#8221; Logical, isn&#8217;t it?</p>
+
+<p>The average man <i>thinks</i> that he is a born genius at love-making.
+Henders, in <i>The Professor&#8217;s Love Story</i>, states it thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Effie, ye ken there are some men ha&#8217; a power o&#8217;er women....
+They&#8217;re what ye might call &#8216;dead shots.&#8217; Ye canna deny,
+Effie, that I&#8217;m one o&#8217; those men!&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Even though a man may be obliged to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>admit, in strict confidence
+between himself and his mirror, that he is not at all handsome,
+nevertheless he is certain that he has some occult influence over that
+strange, mystifying, and altogether unreasonable organ&mdash;a woman&#8217;s
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>The real man is conceited. Of course you are not, dear masculine
+reader, for you are one of the bright particular exceptions, but all
+of your men friends are conceited&mdash;aren&#8217;t they?</p>
+
+<p>And then he makes fun of his women folks because they spend so much
+time in front of the mirror in arranging hats and veils. But when a
+high wind comes up and disarranges coiffures and chapeaux alike, he
+takes &#8220;my ladye fair&#8221; into some obscure corner, and saying, &#8220;Pardon
+me, but your hat isn&#8217;t quite straight,&#8221; he will deftly restore that
+piece of millinery to its pristine position. That&#8217;s nice of him, isn&#8217;t
+it? He does very nice things quite often, this real man.</p>
+
+<p>He says women are fickle. So they are, but men are fickle too, and
+will forget all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>about the absent sweetheart while contemplating the
+pretty girls in the street. For while &#8220;absence makes the heart grow
+fonder&#8221; in the case of a woman, it is presence that plays the mischief
+with a man, and Miss Beauty present has a very unfair advantage over
+Miss Sweetheart absent.</p>
+
+<p>The average man thinks he is a connoisseur of feminine attractiveness.
+He thinks he has tact, too, but there never was a man who was blessed
+with much of this valuable commodity. Still, as that is a favourite
+delusion with so large a majority of the human race, the conceit of
+the ordinary masculine individual ought not to be censured too
+strongly.</p>
+
+<p>The real man is quite an expert at flattery. Every girl he meets, if
+she is at all attractive, is considered the most charming lady that he
+ever knew. He is sure she isn&#8217;t prudish enough to refuse him a kiss,
+and if she is, she wins not only his admiration, but that which is
+vastly better&mdash;his respect.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p><p>If she hates to be considered a prude and gives him the kiss, he is
+very sweet and appreciative at the time, but later on he confides to
+his chum that she is a silly sort of a girl, without a great deal of
+self-respect!</p>
+
+<p>There are two things that the average man likes to be told. One is
+that his taste in dress is exceptional; the other that he is a deep
+student of human nature and knows the world thoroughly. This remark
+will make him your lifelong friend.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the real man will put on more agony when he is in love than is
+needed for a first-class tragedy. But there&#8217;s no denying that most
+women like that sort of thing, you, dear dainty feminine reader, being
+almost the only exception to this rule.</p>
+
+<p>But, resuming the special line of thought, man firmly believes that
+woman cannot sharpen a pencil, select a necktie, throw a stone, drive
+a nail, or kill a mouse, and it is very certain that she cannot cook a
+beef-steak in the finished style of which his lordship is capable.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p><p>Yes, man has his faults as well as woman. There is a vast room for
+improvement on both sides, but as long as this old earth of ours turns
+through shadow and sunlight, through sorrow and happiness, men and
+women will forgive and try to forget, and will cling to, and love each
+other.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Book of Love</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox9 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">I</span> dreamt I saw an angel in the night,<br />
+And she held forth Love&#8217;s book, limned o&#8217;er with gold,<br />
+That I might read of days of chivalry<br />
+And how men&#8217;s hearts were wont to thrill of old.<br />
+<br />
+Half wondering, I turned the musty leaves,<br />
+For Love&#8217;s book counts out centuries as years,<br />
+And here and there a page shone out undimmed,<br />
+And here and there a page was blurred with tears.<br />
+<br />
+I read of Grief, Doubt, Silence unexplained&mdash;<br />
+Of many-featured Wrong, Distrust, and Blame,<br />
+Renunciation&mdash;bitterest of all&mdash;<br />
+And yet I wandered not beyond Love&#8217;s name.<br />
+<br />
+At last I cried to her who held the book,<br />
+So fair and calm she stood, I see her yet;<br />
+&#8220;Why write these things within this book of Love?<br />
+Why may we not pass onward and forget?&#8221;<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>Her voice was tender when she answered me:<br />
+&#8220;Half child, half woman, earthy as thou art,<br />
+How should&#8217;st thou dream that Love is never Love<br />
+Unless these things beat vainly on the heart?&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Ideal Man</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">H</span>e isn&#8217;t nearly so scarce as one might think, but happy is the woman
+who finds him, for he is often a bit out of the beaten paths,
+sometimes in the very suburbs of our modern civilisation. He is,
+however, coming to the front rather slowly, to be sure, but
+nevertheless he is coming.</p>
+
+<p>He wouldn&#8217;t do for the hero of a dime novel&mdash;he isn&#8217;t melancholy in
+his mien, nor Byronic in his morals. It is a frank, honest, manly face
+that looks into the other end of our observation telescope when we
+sweep the horizon to find something higher and better than the rank
+and file of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>He is a gentleman, invariably courteous and refined. He is careful in
+his attire, but not foppish. He is chivalrous in his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>attitude toward
+woman, and as politely kind to the wrinkled old woman who scrubs his
+office floor as to the aristocratic belle who bows to him from her
+carriage.</p>
+
+<p>He is scrupulously honest in all his dealings with his fellow men, and
+meanness of any sort is utterly beneath him. He has a happy way of
+seeing the humorous side of life, and he is an exceedingly pleasant
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>When the love light shines in his eyes, kindled at the only fire where
+it may be lighted, he has nothing in his past of which he need be
+ashamed. He stands beside her and pleads earnestly and manfully for
+the treasure he seeks. Slowly he turns the pages of his life before
+her, for there is not one which can call a blush to his cheek, or to
+hers.</p>
+
+<p>Truth, purity, honesty, chivalry, the highest manliness&mdash;all these are
+written therein, and she gladly accepts the clean heart which is
+offered for her keeping.</p>
+
+<p>Her life is now another open book. To him her nature seems like a harp
+of a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>thousand strings, and every note, though it may not be strong
+and high, is truth itself, and most refined in tone.</p>
+
+<p>So they join hands, these two: the sweetheart becomes the wife; the
+lover is the husband.</p>
+
+<p>He is still chivalrous to every woman, but to his wife he pays the
+gentler deference which was the sweetheart&#8217;s due. He loves her, and is
+not ashamed to show it. He brings her flowers and books, just as he
+used to do when he was teaching her to love him. He is broad-minded,
+and far-seeing&mdash;he believes in &#8220;a white life for two.&#8221; He knows his
+wife has the same right to demand purity in thought, word, and deed
+from him, as he has to ask absolute stainlessness from her. That is
+why he has kept clean the pages of his life&mdash;why he keeps the record
+unsullied as the years go by.</p>
+
+<p>He is tender in his feelings; if he goes home and finds his wife in
+tears, he doesn&#8217;t tell her angrily to &#8220;brace up,&#8221; or say, &#8220;this is a
+pretty welcome for a man!&#8221; He <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>doesn&#8217;t slam the door and whistle as if
+nothing was the matter. But he takes her in his comforting arms and
+speaks soothing words. If his comrades speak lightly of his devotion,
+he simply thinks out other blessings for the little woman who presides
+at his fireside.</p>
+
+<p>His wife is inexpressibly dear to him, and every day he shows this,
+and takes pains, also, to tell her so. He admires her pretty gowns,
+and is glad to speak appreciatively of the becoming things she wears.
+He knows instinctively that it is the thoughtfulness and the little
+tenderness which make a woman&#8217;s happiness, and he tries to make her
+realise that his love for her grew brighter, instead of fading, when
+the sweetheart blossomed into the wife. For every woman, old,
+wrinkled, and grey, or young and charming, likes to be loved.</p>
+
+<p>The ideal man will do his utmost to make his wife realise that his
+devotion intensifies as the years go by.</p>
+
+<p>What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they
+are joined <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>for life&mdash;to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest
+upon each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain,
+to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment
+of the last parting?</p>
+
+<p>God bless the ideal man and hasten his coming in greater numbers.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Good-Night, Sweetheart</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox9 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">G</span>ood-night, Sweetheart; the wing&egrave;d hours have flown;<br />
+I have forgotten all the world but thee.<br />
+Across the moon-lit deep, where stars have shone,<br />
+The surge sounds softly from the sleeping sea.<br />
+<br />
+Thy heart at last hath opened to Love&#8217;s key;<br />
+Remembered Aprils, glorious blooms have sown,<br />
+And now there comes the questing honey bee.<br />
+Good-night, Sweetheart; the wing&egrave;d hours have flown.<br />
+<br />
+My singing soul makes music in thine own,<br />
+Thy hand upon my harp makes melody;<br />
+So close the theme and harmony have grown<br />
+I have forsaken all the world for thee.<br />
+<br />
+Before thy whiteness do I bend the knee;<br />
+Thou art a queen upon a stainless throne,<br />
+Like Dian making royal jubilee,<br />
+Across the vaulted dark where stars are blown.<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>Within my heart thy face shines out alone,<br />
+Ah, dearest! Say for once thou lovest me!<br />
+A whisper, even, like the undertone<br />
+The surge sings slowly from the rhythmic sea.<br />
+<br />
+Thy downcast eyes make answer to my plea;<br />
+A crimson mantle o&#8217;er thy cheek is thrown<br />
+Assurance more than this, there need not be,<br />
+For thus, within the silence, love is known.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Good-night, Sweetheart.</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Ideal Woman</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>he trend of modern thought in art and literature is toward the real,
+but fortunately the cherishing of the ideal has not vanished.</p>
+
+<p>All of us, though we may profess to be realists, are at heart
+idealists, for every woman in the innermost sanctuary of her thoughts
+cherishes an ideal man. And every man, practical and commonplace
+though he be, has before him in his quiet moments a living picture of
+grace and beauty, which, consciously or not, is his ideal woman.</p>
+
+<p>Every man instinctively admires a beautiful woman. But when he seeks a
+wife, he demands other qualities besides that wonderful one which is,
+as the proverb tells us, &#8220;only skin deep.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>If men were not such strangely inconsistent <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>beings, the world would
+lose half its charm. Each sex rails at the other for its
+inconsistency, when the real truth is that nowhere exists much of that
+beautiful quality which is aptly termed a &#8220;jewel.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But humanity must learn with Emerson to seek other things than
+consistency, and to look upon the lightning play of thought and
+feeling as an index of mental and moral growth.</p>
+
+<p>For those who possess the happy faculty of &#8220;making the best of
+things,&#8221; men are really the most amusing people in existence. To hear
+a man dilate upon the virtues and accomplishments of the ideal woman
+he would make his wife is a most interesting diversion, besides being
+a source of what may be called decorative instruction.</p>
+
+<p>She must, first of all, be beautiful. No man, even in his wildest
+moments, ever dreamed of marrying any but a beautiful woman, yet, in
+nine cases out of ten when he does go to the altar, he is leading
+there one who is lovely only in his own eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He has read Swinburne and Tennyson <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>and is very sure he won&#8217;t have
+anything but &#8220;a daughter of the gods, divinely tall, and most divinely
+fair.&#8221; Then, of course, there is the &#8220;classic profile,&#8221; the &#8220;deep,
+unfathomable eyes,&#8221; the &#8220;lily-white skin,&#8221; and &#8220;hair like the raven&#8217;s
+wing,&#8221; not to mention the &#8220;swan-like neck&#8221; and &#8220;tapering, shapely
+fingers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ideal is really a man of refined taste, and the women who hear
+this impassioned outburst are supremely conscious of their own
+imperfections.</p>
+
+<p>But beauty is not the only demand of this fastidious gentleman; the
+fortunate woman whom he deigns to honour must be a paragon of
+sweetness and docility. No &#8220;woman&#8217;s rights&#8221; or &#8220;suffrage rant&#8221; for
+him, and none of those high-stepping professional women need apply
+either&mdash;oh, no! And then all of her interests must be his, for of all
+things on earth, he &#8220;does despise a woman with a hobby!&#8221; None of these
+&#8220;broad-minded women&#8221; were ever intended for Mr. Ideal. He is very
+certain of that, because away down in his secret <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>heart he was sure he
+had found the right woman once, but when he did, he learned also that
+she was somewhat particular about the man she wanted to marry, and the
+applicant then present did not fill the bill! He is therefore very
+sure that &#8220;a man does not want an intellectual instructor: he wants a
+wife.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Just like the most of them after all, isn&#8217;t he?</p>
+
+<p>The year goes round and Mr. Ideal goes away on a summer vacation.
+There are some pleasant people in the little town to which he goes,
+and there is a girl in the party with her mother and brother. Mr.
+Ideal looks her over disapprovingly. She isn&#8217;t pretty&mdash;no, she isn&#8217;t
+even good-looking. Her hair is almost red, her eyes are a pale blue,
+and she wears glasses. Her nose isn&#8217;t even straight, and it turns up
+too much besides. Her skin is covered with tiny golden-brown blotches.
+&#8220;Freckles!&#8221; exclaims Mr. Ideal, <i>sotto voce</i>. Her mouth isn&#8217;t bad, the
+lips are red and full and her teeth are white and even. She <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>wears a
+blue boating suit with an Eton jacket. &#8220;So common!&#8221; and Mr. Ideal goes
+away from his secluded point of observation.</p>
+
+<p>A merry laugh reaches his ear, and he turns around. The tall brother
+is chasing her through the bushes, and she waves a letter
+tantalisingly at him as she goes, and finally bounds over a low fence
+and runs across the field, with her big brother in close pursuit.
+&#8220;Hoydenish!&#8221; and Mr. Ideal hums softly to himself and goes off to find
+Smith. Smith is a good fellow and asks Mr. Ideal to go fishing. They
+go, but don&#8217;t have a bite, and come home rather cross. Does Smith know
+the little red-headed girl who was on the piazza this morning?</p>
+
+<p>Yes, he has met her. She has been here about a week. &#8220;Rather nice, but
+not especially attractive, you know.&#8221; No, she isn&#8217;t, but he will
+introduce Mr. Ideal.</p>
+
+<p>Days pass, and Mr. Ideal and Miss Practical are much together. He
+finds her the jolliest girl he ever knew. She is an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>enthusiastic
+advocate of &#8220;woman&#8221; in every available sphere.</p>
+
+<p>She herself is going to be a trained nurse after she learns to &#8220;keep
+house.&#8221; &#8220;For you know that every woman should be a good housekeeper,&#8221;
+she says demurely.</p>
+
+<p>He doesn&#8217;t exactly like &#8220;that trained nurse business,&#8221; but he admits
+to himself that, if he were ill, he should like to have Miss Practical
+smooth his pillow and take care of him.</p>
+
+<p>And so the time goes on, and he is often the companion of the girl. At
+times, she fairly scintillates with merriment, but she is so
+dignified, and so womanly&mdash;so very careful to keep him at his proper
+distance&mdash;that, well, &#8220;she is a type!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In due course of time, he plans to return to the city, and to the
+theatres and parties he used to find so pleasant. All his friends are
+there. No, Miss Practical is not in the city; she is right here. Like
+a flash a revelation comes over him, and he paces the veranda angrily.
+Well, there&#8217;s only one thing to be done&mdash;he must tell her about it.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>Perhaps&mdash;and he sees a flash of blue through the shrubbery, which he
+seeks with the air of a man who has an object in view.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>His circle of friends are very much surprised when he introduces Mrs.
+Ideal, for she is surely different from the ideal woman about whom
+they have heard so much. They naturally think he is inconsistent, but
+he isn&#8217;t, for some subtle alchemy has transfigured the homely little
+girl into the dearest, best, and altogether most beautiful woman Mr.
+Ideal has ever seen.</p>
+
+<p>She is domestic in her tastes now, and has abandoned the professional
+nurse idea. She knows a great deal about Greek and Latin, and still
+more about Shakespeare and Browning and other authors.</p>
+
+<p>But she neglects neither her books nor her housekeeping, and her
+husband spends his evenings at home, not because Mrs. Ideal would cry
+and make a fuss if he didn&#8217;t, but because his heart is in her keeping,
+and because his own fireside, with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>its sweet-faced guardian angel, is
+to him the most beautiful place on earth, and he has sense enough to
+appreciate what a noble wife is to him.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>The plain truth is, when &#8220;any whatsoever&#8221; Mr. Ideal loves a woman, he
+immediately finds her perfect, and transfers to her the attributes
+which only exist in his imagination. His heart and happiness are
+there&mdash;not with the creatures of his dreams, but the warm, living,
+loving human being beside him, and to him, henceforth, the ideal is
+the real.</p>
+
+<p>For &#8220;the ideal woman is as gentle as she is strong.&#8221; She wins her way
+among her friends and fellow human beings, even though they may be
+strangers, by doing many a kindness which the most of us are too apt
+to overlook or ignore.</p>
+
+<p>No heights of thought or feeling are beyond her eager reach, and no
+human creature has sunk too low for her sympathy and her helping hand.
+Even the forlorn and friendless dog in the alley <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>looks instinctively
+into her face for help.</p>
+
+<p>She is in every man&#8217;s thoughts and always will be, as she always has
+been&mdash;the ideal who shall lead him step by step, and star by star, to
+the heights which he cannot reach alone.</p>
+
+<p>Ruskin says: &#8220;No man ever lived a right life who has not been
+chastened by a woman&#8217;s love, strengthened by her courage and guided by
+her discretion.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The steady flow of the twentieth-century progress has not swept away
+woman&#8217;s influence, nor has it crushed out her womanliness. She lives
+in the hearts of men, a queen as royal as in the days of chivalry, and
+men shall do and dare for her dear sake as long as time shall last.</p>
+
+<p>The sweet, lovable, loyal woman of the past is not lost; she is only
+intensified in the brave wifehood and motherhood of our own times. The
+modern ideal, like that of olden times, is and ever will be, above all
+things&mdash;womanly.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p>
+<h2>She Is Not Fair</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox8 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">S</span>he is not fair to other eyes&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.1em;">No poet&#8217;s dream is she,</span><br />
+Nor artist&#8217;s inspiration, yet<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">I would not have her be.</span><br />
+She wanders not through princely halls,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">A crown upon her hair;</span><br />
+Her heart awaits a single king<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Because she is not fair.</span><br />
+<br />
+Dear lips, your half-shy tenderness<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Seems far too much to win!</span><br />
+Yet, has your heart a tiny door<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Where I may peep within?</span><br />
+That voiceless chamber, dim and sweet,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">I pray may be my own.</span><br />
+Dear little Love, may I come in<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And make you mine alone?</span><br />
+<br />
+She is not fair to other eyes&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">I would not have it so;</span><br />
+She needs no further charm or grace<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Or aught wealth may bestow;</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>For when the love light shines and makes<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Her dear face glorified&mdash;</span><br />
+Ah Sweetheart! queens may come and go<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And all the world beside.</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Fin-de-Si&egrave;cle Woman</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>he world has fought step by step the elevation of woman from
+inferiority to equality, but at last she is being recognised as a
+potent factor in our civilisation.</p>
+
+<p>The most marked change which has been made in woman&#8217;s position during
+the last half century or more has been effected by higher education,
+and since the universities have thrown open their doors to her, she
+has been allowed, in many cases, to take the same courses that her
+brother does.</p>
+
+<p>Still, the way has not been entirely smooth for educated and literary
+women, for the public press has too often frowned upon their efforts
+to obtain anything like equal recognition for equal ability. The
+literary woman has, for years, been the target of criticism, and if we
+are to believe <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>her critics, she has been entirely shunned by the
+gentlemen of her acquaintance; but the fact that so many of them are
+wives and mothers, and, moreover, good wives and mothers, proves
+conclusively that these statements are not trustworthy.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that some prefer the society of women who know just enough
+to appreciate their compliments&mdash;women who deprecate their
+&#8220;strong-minded&#8221; sisters, and are ready to agree implicitly with every
+statement that the lords of creation may make; but this readiness is
+due to sheer inability to produce a thought of their own.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that some men are afraid of educated women, but a man who
+is afraid of a woman because she knows something is not the kind of a
+man she wants to marry. He is not the kind of a man she would choose
+for either husband or friend; she wants an intellectual companion, and
+the chances are that she will find him, or rather that he will find
+her. A woman need not be unwomanly in order to write books that will
+help the world.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p><p>She may be a good housekeeper, even if she does write for the
+magazines, and the husbands of literary women are not, as some folks
+would have us believe, neglected and forlorn-looking beings. On the
+contrary, they carry brave hearts and cheerful faces with them always,
+since their strength is reinforced by the quiet happiness of their own
+firesides.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>fin-de-si&egrave;cle</i> woman is literary in one sense, if not in another,
+for if she may not wield her pen, she can keep in touch with the
+leading thinkers of the day, and she will prove as pleasant a
+companion during the long winter evenings as the woman whose husband
+chose her for beauty and taste in dress.</p>
+
+<p>The literary woman is not slipshod in her apparel, and she may, if she
+chooses, be a society and club woman as well. Surely there is nothing
+in literary culture which shall prevent neatness and propriety in
+dress as well as in conduct.</p>
+
+<p>The devoted admirer of Browning is not liable to quote him in a
+promiscuous company <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>and though a lady may be familiar with
+Shakespeare, it does not follow that she will discuss <i>Hamlet</i> in
+social gatherings.</p>
+
+<p>If she reads Greek as readily as she does her mother tongue, you may
+rest assured she will not mention Homer in ordinary conversation, for
+a cultivated woman readily recognises the fitness of things, and
+accords a due deference to the tastes of others. She has her club and
+her friends, as do the gentlemen of her acquaintance, but her children
+are not neglected from the fact that she sometimes thinks of other
+things. She is a helpmeet to her husband, and not a plaything, or a
+slave. If duty calls her to the kitchen, she goes cheerfully, and,
+moreover, the cook will not dread to see her coming; or if that
+important person be absent, the table will be supplied with just as
+good bread, and just as delicate pastry, as if the lady of the house
+did not understand the chemicals of their composition.</p>
+
+<p>If trouble comes, she bears it bravely, for the cultured woman has a
+philosophy which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>is equal to any emergency, and she does the best she
+can on all occasions.</p>
+
+<p>If her husband leaves her penniless, she will, if possible, clothe her
+children with her pen, but if her literary wares are a drug on the
+market, she will turn bravely to other fields, and find her daily
+bread made sweet by thankfulness. She does not hesitate to hold out
+her hands to help a fellow-creature, either man or woman, for she is
+in all things womanly&mdash;a wife to her husband and a mother to her
+children in the truest sense of the words.</p>
+
+<p>Her knowledge of the classics does not interfere with the making of
+dainty draperies for her home, and though she may be appointed to read
+a paper before her club on some scholarly theme, she will listen just
+as patiently to tales of trouble from childish lips, and will tie up
+little cut fingers just as sympathetically as her neighbour who folds
+her arms and who broadly hints that &#8220;wimmen&#8217;s spear is to hum!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Whether the literary woman be robed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>in silk and sealskin, or whether
+she rejoices in the possession of only one best gown, she may,
+nevertheless, be contented and happy.</p>
+
+<p>Whether she lives in a modest cottage, or in a fashionable home, she
+may be the same sweet woman, with cheerful face and pleasant
+voice&mdash;with a broad human sympathy which makes her whole life glad.</p>
+
+<p>Be she princess, or Cinderella, she may be still her husband&#8217;s
+confidant and cherished friend, to whom he may confide his business
+troubles and perplexities, certain always of her tender consolation
+and ready sympathy. She may be quick and versatile, doing well
+whatever she does at all, for her creed declares that &#8220;whatever is
+honest is honourable.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She glories in her womanhood and has no sympathy with anything which
+tends to degrade it.</p>
+
+<p>All hail to the woman of the twentieth century; let <i>fin de si&egrave;cle</i>
+stand for all that is best and noblest in womanhood: for liberty,
+equality, and fraternity; for right, truth, and justice.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p><p>All hail the widespread movement for the higher education of woman,
+for in intellectual development is the future of posterity, in study
+is happiness, through the open door of the college is the key of a
+truer womanhood, a broader humanity, and a brighter hope. In education
+along the lines of the broadest and wisest culture is to be found the
+emancipation of the race.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Moon Maiden</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox8 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>here&#8217;s a wondrous land of misty gold<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.1em;">Beyond the sunset&#8217;s bars.</span><br />
+There&#8217;s a silver boat on a sea of blue,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And the tips of its waves are stars.</span><br />
+<br />
+And idly rocking to and fro,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Her cloud robes floating by,</span><br />
+There&#8217;s a maiden fair, with sunny hair,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">The queen of the dreamy sky.</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Her Son&#8217;s Wife</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>he venerable mother-in-law joke appears in the comic papers with
+astonishing regularity. For a time, perhaps, it may seem to be lost in
+the mists of oblivion, but even while one is rejoicing at its absence
+it returns to claim its original position at the head of the
+procession.</p>
+
+<p>There are two sides to everything, even to an old joke, and the artist
+always pictures the man&#8217;s dismay when his wife&#8217;s mother comes for a
+visit. Nobody ever sees a drawing of a woman&#8217;s mother-in-law, and yet,
+the bitterness and sadness lie mainly there&mdash;between the mother and
+the woman his son has chosen for his wife.</p>
+
+<p>It is a pleasure to believe that the average man is a gentleman, and
+his inborn respect for his own mother, if nothing else, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>will usually
+compel an outward show of politeness to every woman, even though she
+may be a constant source of irritation. Grey hair has its own claims
+upon a young man&#8217;s deference, and, in the business world, he is
+obliged to learn to hold his tongue, hide his temper, and &#8220;assume a
+virtue though he has it not.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The mother&#8217;s welcome from her daughter&#8217;s husband depends much upon
+herself. Her long years of marriage have been in vain if they have not
+taught her to watch a man&#8217;s moods and tenses; when to speak and when
+to be silent, and how to avoid useless discussion of subjects on which
+there is a pronounced difference of opinion. Leaving out the personal
+equation, the older and more experienced woman is better fitted to get
+along peaceably with a man than the young girl who has her wisdom yet
+to acquire.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, it is to the daughter&#8217;s interest to cement a friendship
+between her mother and her husband, and so she stands as a shield
+between the two she holds dearest, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>to exercise whatever tact she may
+possess toward an harmonious end.</p>
+
+<div class="centerbox4 bbox"><p>&#8220;A son&#8217;s a son till he gets him a wife,<br />
+But a daughter&#8217;s a daughter all the days of her life.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Thus the old saying runs, and there is a measure of truth in it,
+more&#8217;s the pity. Marriage and a home of her own interfere but little
+with a daughter&#8217;s devotion to her mother, even though the daily
+companionship be materially lessened. The feeling is there and remains
+unchanged, unless it grows stronger through the new interests on both
+sides.</p>
+
+<p>If a man has won his wife in spite of her mother&#8217;s opposition, he can
+well afford to be gracious and forget the ancient grudge. It is his
+part, too, to prove to the mother how far she was mistaken, by making
+the girl who trusted him the happiest wife in the world. The woman who
+sees her daughter happy will have little against her son-in-law,
+except that primitive, tribal instinct which survives in most of us,
+and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>jealously guards those of our own blood from the aggression of
+another family or individual.</p>
+
+<p>One may as well admit that a good husband is a very scarce article,
+and that the mother&#8217;s anxiety for her daughter is well-founded. No man
+can escape the sensation of being forever on trial in the eyes of his
+wife&#8217;s mother, and woe to him if he makes a mistake or falters in his
+duty! Things which a woman would gladly condone in her husband are
+unpardonable sins in the man who has married her daughter, and taken
+her from a mother&#8217;s loving care.</p>
+
+<p>A good husband and a good man are not necessarily the same thing. Many
+a scapegrace has been dearly loved by his wife, and many a highly
+respected man has been secretly despised by his wife and children.
+When the prison doors open to discharge the sinners who have served
+long sentences, the wives of those who have been good husbands are
+waiting for them with open arms. The others have long since taken
+advantage of the divorce laws.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p><p>Since women know women so well, perhaps it is only natural for a
+mother to feel that no girl who is good enough for her son ever has
+been born. All the small deceits, the little schemes and frailties,
+are as an open book in the eyes of other women.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you were a man,&#8221; said one girl to another, &#8220;and knew women as well
+as you do now, whom would you marry?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The other girl thought for a moment, and then answered unhesitatingly:
+&#8220;I&#8217;d stay single.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Women are always suspicious of each other, and the one who can deceive
+another woman is entitled to her laurels for cleverness. With the keen
+insight and quick intuition of the woman on either side of him, when
+these women are violently opposed to each other, no man need look for
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of their discernment, women are sadly deficient in analysis
+when it comes to a question of self. Neither wife nor mother can
+clearly see her relation to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>man they both love. Blinded by
+passionate devotion and eager for power, both women lose sight of the
+truth, and torment themselves and each other with unfounded jealousy
+and distrust.</p>
+
+<p>In no sense are wife and mother rivals, nor can they ever be so.
+Neither could take the place of the other for a single instant, and
+the wife foolishly guards the point where there is no danger, for, of
+all the women in the world, his mother and sisters are the only ones
+who could never by any possibility usurp her place.</p>
+
+<p>A woman need only ask herself if she would like to be the mother of
+her husband&mdash;to exchange the love which she now has for filial
+affection&mdash;for a temporary clearness of her troubled skies. The mother
+need only ask herself if she would surrender her position for the
+privilege of being her son&#8217;s wife, if she seeks for light on her dark
+path.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, in spite of this, the two are often open and acknowledged rivals.
+A woman recently wrote to the &#8220;etiquette department&#8221; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>of a daily paper
+to know whether she or her son&#8217;s fianc&eacute;e should make the first call.
+In answering the question, the head of the department, who, by the
+way, has something of a reputation for good sense, wrote as follows:
+&#8220;It is your place to make the first call, and you have my sympathy in
+your difficult task. You must be brave, for you are going to look into
+the eyes of a woman whom your son loves better than he does you!&#8221;
+&#8220;Better than he does you!&#8221; That is where all the trouble lies, for
+each wishes to be first in a relation where no comparison is possible.</p>
+
+<p>When an American yacht first won the cup, Queen Victoria was watching
+the race. When she was told that the <i>America</i> was in the lead, she
+asked what boat was second. &#8220;Your Majesty,&#8221; replied the naval officer
+sadly, &#8220;there is no second!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So, between wife and mother there is no second place, and it is
+possible for each to own the whole of the loved one&#8217;s heart, without
+infringing or even touching upon the rights of the other.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p><p>Few of the passengers on a lake steamer, during a trip in northern
+waters a few years since, will ever forget a certain striking group.
+Mother and son, and the son&#8217;s fianc&eacute;e, were off for a week&#8217;s vacation.
+The mother was tall and stately, with snow-white hair and a hard face
+deeply seamed with wrinkles, and with the fire of southern countries
+burning in her faded blue eyes. The son was merely a nice boy, with a
+pleasant face, and the girl, though not pretty, had a fresh look about
+her which was very attractive.</p>
+
+<p>She wore an engagement ring, so he must have cared for her, but
+otherwise no one would have suspected it. From beginning to end, his
+attention was centred upon his mother. He carried his mother&#8217;s wraps,
+but the girl carried her own. He talked to the mother, and the girl
+could speak or not, just as she chose. Never for an instant were the
+two alone together. They sat on the deck until late at night, with the
+mother between them. When they changed, the son took his own chair
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>and his mother&#8217;s, while the girl dragged hers behind them. At the end
+of their table in the cabin, the mother sat between them at the head.
+Once, purely by accident, the girl slipped into the nearest chair,
+which happened to be the mother&#8217;s, and the deadly silence could be
+felt even two tables away. The girl turned pale, then the son said:
+&#8220;You&#8217;ll take the head of the table, won&#8217;t you, mother?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The steely tone of her voice could be heard by every one as she said,
+&#8220;No!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The girl ate little, and soon excused herself to go to her stateroom,
+but the next day things were as before, and the foolish old mother had
+her place next to her son.</p>
+
+<p>Discussion was rife among the passengers, till an irreverent youth
+ended it by saying: &#8220;Mamma&#8217;s got the rocks; that&#8217;s the why of it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was, but one wonders why a man should slight his promised
+wife so publicly, even to please a mother with &#8220;rocks!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p><p>To the mother who adores her son, every girl who smiles at him has
+matrimonial designs. When he falls in love, it is because he has been
+entrapped&mdash;she seldom considers him as being the aggressive one of the
+two. The mother of the girl feels the same way, and, in the lower
+circles, there is occasionally an illuminating time when the two
+mothers meet.</p>
+
+<p>Each is made aware how the other&#8217;s offspring has given the entrapped
+one no peace, and how the affair has been the scandal of two separate
+neighbourhoods, more eligible partners having been lost by both sides.</p>
+
+<p>In the Declaration of Independence there is no classification of the
+rights of the married, but the clause regarding &#8220;life, liberty, and
+the pursuit of happiness&#8221; has been held pointedly to refer to the
+matrimonial state. If the mother would accord to her daughter-in-law
+the same rights she claimed at the outset of her own married life, the
+relation would be perceptibly smoother in many instances.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p><p>When a woman marries, she has a right to expect the love of her
+husband, material support, a home of her own, even though it be only
+two tiny rooms, and absolute freedom from outside interference. It is
+her life, and she must live it in her own way, and a girl of spirit
+<i>will</i> live it in her own way, without taking heed of the
+consequences, if she is pushed too far.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the mother who bore him still has proprietary
+rights. She may reasonably claim a share of his society, a part of his
+earnings, if she needs financial assistance, and his interest in all
+that nearly concerns her. If she expects to be at the head of his
+house, with the wife as a sort of a boarder, she need not be surprised
+if there is trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Marriage brings to a girl certain freedom, but it gives her no
+superiority to her husband&#8217;s family. A chain is as strong as its
+weakest link, and the members of a family do not rise above the
+general level. Every one of them is as good as the man she has
+married, and she is not above any <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>of them, unless her own personality
+commands a higher position.</p>
+
+<p>She treasonably violates the confidence placed in her if she makes a
+discreditable use of any information coming to her through her
+association with her husband&#8217;s family. There are skeletons in every
+closet, and she may not tell even her own mother of what she has seen
+in the other house. A single word breathed against her husband&#8217;s
+family to an outsider stamps her as a traitor, who deserves a
+traitor&#8217;s punishment.</p>
+
+<p>The girl who tells her most intimate friend that the mother of her
+fianc&eacute; &#8220;is an old cat,&#8221; by that act has lowered herself far below the
+level of any self-respecting cat. Even if outward and visible disgrace
+comes to the family of her husband, she is unworthy if she does not
+hold her head high and let the world see her loyalty.</p>
+
+<p>Marriage gives her no right to criticise any member of her husband&#8217;s
+family; their faults are out of her reach except by the force of
+tactful example. Her concern <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>is with herself and him, not his family,
+and a wise girl, at the beginning of her married life, will draw a
+sharp line between her affairs and those of others, and will stay on
+her own side of the line.</p>
+
+<p>When a man falls in love with a thoughtless butterfly, his womenfolk
+may be pardoned if they stand aghast a moment before they regain their
+self-command. In a way it is like a guest who is given the freedom of
+the house, and who, when her visit is over, tells her friends that the
+parlour carpet was turned, and the stairs left undusted.</p>
+
+<p>Another household is intimately opened to the woman whom the son has
+married, and the members of it can make no defence. She can betray
+them if she chooses; there is nothing to shield them except her love
+for her husband, and too often that is insufficient.</p>
+
+<p>A girl seldom stops to think what she owes to her husband&#8217;s mother.
+Twenty-five or thirty years ago, the man she loves was born. Since
+then there has been no <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>time, sleeping or waking, when he has not been
+in the thoughts of the mother who has sought to do her best by him.
+She gave her life wholly to the demands of her child, without a
+moment&#8217;s hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>She has sacrificed herself in countless ways, all through those years,
+in order that he might have his education, his pleasures, and his
+strong body. With every day he has grown nearer and dearer to her;
+every day his loss would have been that much harder to bear.</p>
+
+<p>In quiet talks in the twilight, she teaches him to be gentle and
+considerate, to be courteous to every woman because a woman gave him
+life; to be brave, noble, and tender; to be strong and fine; to choose
+honour with a crust, rather than shame with plenty.</p>
+
+<p>Then comes the pretty butterfly, with whom her son is in love. Is it
+strange that the heart of the mother tightens with sudden pain?</p>
+
+<p>With never a thought, the girl takes it all as her due. She would
+write a gracious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>note of thanks to the friend who sent her a pretty
+handkerchief, but for the woman who is the means of satisfying her
+heart&#8217;s desire she has not even toleration. All the sweetness and
+beauty of his adoring love are a gift to her, unwilling too often,
+perhaps, but a gift nevertheless, from his mother.</p>
+
+<p>Long years of life have taught the mother what it may mean and what,
+alas, it does too often mean. Memories only are her portion; she need
+expect nothing now. He may not come to see his mother for an old
+familiar talk, because his wife either comes with him, or expects him
+to be at home. He has no time for his mother&#8217;s interests or his
+mother&#8217;s friends; there is scant welcome in his home for her, because
+between them has come an alien presence which never yields or softens.</p>
+
+<p>Strangely, and without any definite idea of the change, he comes to
+see his mother as she is. Once, she was the most beautiful woman in
+the world, and her roughened hands were lovely because they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>had
+toiled for him. Once, her counsel was wise, her judgment good, and the
+gift of feeling which her motherhood brought her was seen as generous
+sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Now, by comparison with a bright, well-dressed wife, he sees what an
+&#8220;old frump&#8221; his mother is. She is shabby and old-fashioned, clinging
+to obsolete forms of speech, hysterical and emotional. When the mists
+of love have cleared from her boy&#8217;s eyes, she may just as well give
+up, because there is no return, save in that other mist which comes
+too late, when mother is at rest.</p>
+
+<p>The wife who tries to keep alive her husband&#8217;s love for his family,
+not only in his heart, but in outward observance as well, serves her
+own interests even better than theirs. The love of the many comes with
+the love of the one, and just as truly as he loves his sweetheart
+better because of his mother and sisters, he may love them better
+because of her.</p>
+
+<p>The poor heart-hungry mother, who stands by with brimming eyes,
+fearful <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>that the joy of her life may be taken from her, will be
+content with but little if she may but keep it for her own. It is only
+a little while at the longest, for the end of the journey is soon, but
+sunset and afterglow would have some of the rapture of dawn, if her
+son&#8217;s wife opened the door of her young heart and said with true
+sincerity and wells of tenderness: &#8220;Mother&mdash;Come!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+<h2>A Lullaby</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox10 bbox"><p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sleep, baby, sleep,</span><br />
+The twilight breezes blow,<br />
+The flower bells are ringing,<br />
+The birds are twittering low,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sleep, baby, sleep.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sleep, baby, sleep,</span><br />
+The whippoorwill is calling,<br />
+The stars are twinkling faintly,<br />
+The dew is softly falling,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sleep, baby, sleep.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sleep, baby, sleep,</span><br />
+Upon your pillow lying,<br />
+The rushes whisper to the stream,<br />
+The summer day is dying,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sleep, baby, sleep.</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Dressing-Sack Habit</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">S</span>omeone has said that a dressing-sack is only a Mother Hubbard with a
+college education. Accepting this statement as a great truth, one is
+inclined to wonder whether education has improved the Mother Hubbard,
+since another clever person has characterised a college as &#8220;a place
+where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The bond of relationship between the two is not at first apparent, yet
+there are subtle ties of kinship between the two. If we take a Hubbard
+and cut it off at the hips, we have only a dressing-sack with a yoke.
+The dressing-sack, however, cannot be walked on, even when the wearer
+is stooping, and in this respect it has the advantage of the other; it
+is also supposed to fit in the back, but it never does.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p><p>Doubtless in the wise economy of the universe, where every weed has
+its function, even this garment has its place&mdash;else it would not be.</p>
+
+<p>Possibly one may take a nap, or arrange one&#8217;s crown of glory to better
+advantage in a &#8220;boudoir n&eacute;glig&eacute;e,&#8221; or an invalid may be thus tempted
+to think of breakfast. Indeed, the habit is apt to begin during
+illness, when a friend presents the ailing lady with a dainty affair
+of silk and lace which inclines the suffering soul to frivolities.
+Presently she sits up, takes notice, and plans more garments of the
+sort, so that after she fully recovers all the world may see these
+becoming things!</p>
+
+<p>The worst of the habit is that all the world does see. Fancy runs riot
+with one pattern, a sewing-machine, and all the remnants a single
+purse can compass. The lady with a kindly feeling for colour browses
+along the bargain counter and speedily acquires a rainbow for her own.
+Each morning she assumes a different phase, and, at the end of the
+week, one&#8217;s <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>recollection of her is lost in a kaleidoscopic whirl.</p>
+
+<p>Red, now&mdash;is anything prettier than red? And how the men admire it!
+Does not the dark lady build wisely who dons a red dressing-sack on a
+cold morning, that her husband may carry a bright bit of colour to the
+office in his fond memories of home?</p>
+
+<p>A book with a red cover, a red cushion, crimson draperies, and scarlet
+ribbons, are all notoriously pleasing to monsieur&mdash;why not a red
+dressing-sack?</p>
+
+<p>If questioned, monsieur does not know why, yet gradually his passion
+for red will wane, then fail. Later in the game, he will be affronted
+by the colour, even as the gentleman cow in the pasture. It is not the
+colour, dear madame, but the shiftless garment, which has wrought this
+change.</p>
+
+<p>There are few who dare to assume pink, for one must have a complexion
+of peaches and cream, delicately powdered at that, before the rosy
+hues are becoming. Yet, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>the sallow lady, with streaks of grey in her
+hair, crow&#8217;s feet around her eyes, and little time tracks registered
+all over her face, will put on a pink dressing-sack when she gets
+ready for breakfast. She would scream with horror at the thought of a
+pink and white organdie gown, made over rosy taffeta, but the kimono
+is another story.</p>
+
+<p>Green dressing-sacks are not often seen, but more&#8217;s the pity, for in
+the grand array of colour nothing should be lacking, and the wearers
+of these garments never seem to stop to think whether or not they are
+becoming. What could be more cheerful on a cloudy morning than a
+flannel n&eacute;glig&eacute;e of the blessed shade of green consecrated to the
+observance of the seventeenth of March?</p>
+
+<p>It looks as well as many things which are commonly welded into
+dressing-sacks; then why this invidious distinction?</p>
+
+<p>When we approach blue in our dressing-sack rainbow, speech becomes
+pitifully weak. Ancient maidens and matrons, with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>olive skins,
+proudly assume a turquoise n&eacute;glig&eacute;e. Blue flannel, with cascades of
+white lace&mdash;could anything be more attractive? It has only one
+rival&mdash;the garment of lavender eiderdown flannel, the button-holes
+stitched with black yarn, which the elderly widow too often puts on
+when the tide of her grief has turned.</p>
+
+<p>The combination of black with any shade of purple is well fitted to
+produce grief, even as the cutting of an onion will bring tears. Could
+the dear departed see his relict in the morning, with lavender
+eiderdown environment, he would appreciate his mercies as never
+before.</p>
+
+<p>The speaking shades of yellow and orange are much affected by German
+ladies for dressing-sacks, and also for the knitted tippets which our
+Teutonic friends wear, in and out of the house, from October to July.
+Canary yellow is delicate and becoming to most, but it is German taste
+to wear orange.</p>
+
+<p>At first, perhaps, with a sense of the fitness of things, the n&eacute;glig&eacute;e
+is worn only <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>in one&#8217;s own room. She says: &#8220;It&#8217;s so comfortable!&#8221;
+There are degrees in comfort, varying from the easy, perfect fit of
+one&#8217;s own skin to a party gown which dazzles envious observers, and
+why is the adjective reserved for the educated but abbreviated Mother
+Hubbard?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The apparel oft proclaims the man,&#8221; and even more is woman dependent
+upon her clothes for physical, moral, and intellectual support. An
+uncorseted body will soon make its influence felt upon the mind. The
+steel-and-whalebone spine which properly reinforces all feminine
+vertebra is literally the backbone of a woman&#8217;s self-respect.</p>
+
+<p>Would the iceman or the janitor hesitate to &#8220;talk back&#8221; to the
+uncorseted lady in a pink dressing-sack?&mdash;Hardly!</p>
+
+<p>But confront the erring man with a quiet, dignified woman in a crisp
+shirt-waist and a clean collar&mdash;verily he will think twice before he
+ventures an excuse for his failings.</p>
+
+<p>The iceman and the grocery boy see <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>more dressing-sacks than most
+others, for they are privileged to approach the back doors of
+residences, and to hold conversations with the lady of the house,
+after the departure of him whose duty and pleasure it is to pay for
+the remnants. And in the lower strata they are known by their clothes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fifty pounds for the red dressing-sack,&#8221; says the iceman to his
+helper, &#8220;and a hundred for the blue. Step lively now!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And how should madame know that her order for a steak, a peck of
+potatoes, and two lemons, is registered in the grocery boy&#8217;s book
+under the laconic title, &#8220;Pink&#8221;?</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>After breakfast, when she sits down to read the paper and make her
+plans for the day, the insidious dressing-sack gets in its deadly
+work.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I won&#8217;t dress,&#8221; she thinks, &#8220;until I get ready to go out.&#8221; After
+luncheon, she is too tired to go out, and too nearly dead to dress.</p>
+
+<p>Friends come in, perhaps, and say: &#8220;Oh, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>how comfortable you look!
+Isn&#8217;t that a dear kimono?&#8221; Madame plumes herself with conscious pride,
+for indeed it is a dear kimono, and already she sees herself with a
+reputation for &#8220;exquisite n&eacute;glig&eacute;e.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The clock strikes six, and presently the lord of the manor comes home
+to be fed. &#8220;I&#8217;m dreadfully sorry, dear, you should find me looking
+so,&#8221; says the lady of his heart, &#8220;but I just haven&#8217;t felt well enough
+to dress. You don&#8217;t mind, do you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The dear, good, subdued soul says he is far from minding, and dinner
+is like breakfast as far as dressing-sacks go.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, in the far depths of his nature, the man wonders why it was
+that, in the halcyon days of courtship, he never beheld his beloved in
+the midst of a gunny&mdash;no, a dressing-sack. Of course, then, she didn&#8217;t
+have to keep house, and didn&#8217;t have so many cares to tire her. Poor
+little thing! Perhaps she isn&#8217;t well!</p>
+
+<p>Isn&#8217;t she? Let another woman telephone that she has tickets for the
+matin&eacute;e, and behold the transformation! Within <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>certain limits and
+barring severe headaches, a woman is always well enough to do what she
+wants to do&mdash;and no more.</p>
+
+<p>As the habit creeps upon its victim, she loses sight of the fact that
+there are other clothes. If she has a golf cape, she may venture to go
+to the letter-box or even to market in her favourite garment. After a
+while, when the habit is firmly fixed, a woman will wear a
+dressing-sack all the time&mdash;that is, some women will, except on rare
+and festive occasions. Sometimes in self-defence, she will say that
+her husband loves soft, fluffy feminine things, and can&#8217;t bear to see
+her in a tailor-made outfit. This is why she wears the &#8220;soft fluffy
+things,&#8221; which, with her, always mean dressing-sacks, all the time he
+is away from home, as well as when he is there.</p>
+
+<p>It is a mooted question whether shiftlessness causes dressing-sacks,
+or dressing-sacks cause shiftlessness, but there is no doubt about the
+loving association of the two. The woman who has nothing to do, and
+not even a shadow of a purpose in life, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>will enshrine her helpless
+back in a dressing-sack. She can&#8217;t wear corsets, because, forsooth,
+they &#8220;hurt&#8221; her. She can&#8217;t sit at the piano, because it&#8217;s hard on her
+back. She can&#8217;t walk, because she &#8220;isn&#8217;t strong enough.&#8221; She can&#8217;t
+sew, because it makes a pain between her shoulders, and indeed why
+should she sew when she has plenty of dressing-sacks?</p>
+
+<p>This type of woman always boards, <i>if she can</i>, or has plenty of
+servants at her command, and, in either case, her mind is free to
+dwell upon her troubles.</p>
+
+<p>First, there is her own weak physical condition. Just wait until she
+tells you about the last pain she had. She doesn&#8217;t feel like dressing
+for dinner, but she will try to wash her face, if you will excuse her!
+When she returns, she has plucked up enough energy to change her
+dressing-sack!</p>
+
+<p>The only cure for the habit is a violent measure which few indeed are
+brave enough to adopt. Make a bonfire of the offensive garments, dear
+lady; then stay away from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>the remnant counters, and after a while you
+will become immune.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is done in a n&eacute;glig&eacute;e of this sort which cannot be done
+equally well in a shirt-waist, crisp and clean, with a collar and
+belt.</p>
+
+<p>There is a popular delusion to the effect that household tasks require
+slipshod garments and unkempt hair, but let the frowsy ones
+contemplate the trained nurse in her spotless uniform, with her snowy
+cap and apron and her shining hair. Let the doubtful ones go to a
+cooking school, and see a neat young woman, in a blue gingham gown and
+a white apron, prepare an eight-course dinner and emerge spotless from
+the ordeal. We get from life, in most cases, exactly what we put into
+it. The world is a mirror which gives us smiles or frowns, as we
+ourselves may choose. The woman who faces the world in a shirt-waist
+will get shirt-waist appreciation, while for the dressing-sack there
+is only a slipshod reward.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p>
+<h2>In the Meadow</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox8 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>he flowers bow their dainty heads,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.1em;">And see in the shining stream</span><br />
+A vision of sky and silver clouds,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">As bright as a fairy&#8217;s dream.</span><br />
+<br />
+The great trees nod their sleepy boughs,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">The song birds come and go,</span><br />
+And all day long, to the waving ferns<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">The south wind whispers low.</span><br />
+<br />
+All day among the blossoms sweet,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">The laughing sunbeams play,</span><br />
+And down the stream, in rose-leaf boats<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">The fairies sail away.</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p>
+<h2>One Woman&#8217;s Solution of the<br />
+Servant Problem</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">B</span>eing a professional woman, my requirements in the way of a housemaid
+were rather special. While at times I can superintend my small
+household, and direct my domestic affairs, there are long periods
+during which I must have absolute quiet, untroubled by door bell,
+telephone, or the remnants of roast beef.</p>
+
+<p>There are two of us, in a modern six room apartment, in a city where
+the servant problem has forced a large and ever-increasing percentage
+of the population into small flats. We have late breakfasts, late
+dinners, a great deal of company, and an amount of washing, both house
+and personal, which is best described as &#8220;unholy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Five or six people often drop in informally, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>and unexpectedly, for
+the evening, which means, of course, a midnight &#8220;spread,&#8221; and an
+enormous pile of dishes to be washed in the morning. There are,
+however, some advantages connected with the situation. We have a
+laundress besides the maid; we have a twelve-o&#8217;clock breakfast on
+Sunday instead of a dinner, getting the cold lunch ourselves in the
+evening, thus giving the girl a long afternoon and evening; and we are
+away from home a great deal, often staying weeks at a time.</p>
+
+<p>The eternal &#8220;good wages to right party&#8221; of the advertisements was our
+inducement also, but, apparently, there were no &#8220;right parties!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The previous incumbent, having departed in a fit of temper at half an
+hour&#8217;s notice, and left me, so to speak, &#8220;in the air,&#8221; with dinner
+guests on the horizon a day ahead, I betook myself to an intelligence
+office, where, strangely enough, there seems to be no intelligence,
+and grasped the first chance of relief.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p><p>Nothing more unpromising could possibly be imagined. The new maid was
+sad, ugly of countenance, far from strong physically, and in every way
+hopeless and depressing. She listened, unemotionally, to my glowing
+description of the situation. Finally she said, &#8220;Ay tank Ay try it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She came, looked us over, worked a part of a week, and announced that
+she couldn&#8217;t stay. &#8220;Ay can&#8217;t feel like home here,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Ay am
+not satisfied.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She had been in her last place for three years, and left because &#8220;my&#8217;s
+lady, she go to Europe.&#8221; I persuaded her to try it for a while longer,
+and gave her an extra afternoon or two off, realising that she must be
+homesick.</p>
+
+<p>After keeping us on tenter-hooks for two weeks, she sent for her
+trunk. I discovered that she was a fine laundress, carefully washing
+and ironing the things which were too fine to go into the regular
+wash; a most excellent cook, her kitchen and pantry were at all times
+immaculate; she had no followers, and few friends; meals were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>ready
+on the stroke of the hour, and she had the gift of management.</p>
+
+<p>Offset to this was a furious temper, an atmosphere of gloom and
+depression which permeated the house and made us feel funereal,
+impertinence of a quality difficult to endure, and the callous,
+unfeeling, almost inhuman characteristics which often belong in a high
+degree to the Swedes.</p>
+
+<p>For weeks I debated with myself whether or not I could stand it to
+have her in the house. I have spent an hour on my own back porch, when
+I should have been at work, because I was afraid to pass through the
+room which she happened to be cleaning. Times without number, a crisp
+muffin, or a pot of perfect coffee, has made me postpone speaking the
+fateful words which would have separated us. She sighed and groaned
+and wept at her work, worried about it, and was a fiend incarnate if
+either of us was five minutes late for dinner. We often hurried
+through the evening meal so as to leave her free for her evening out,
+even though I had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>long since told her not to wash the dishes after
+dinner, but to pile them neatly in the sink and leave them until
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>Before long, however, the strictly human side of the problem began to
+interest me. I had cherished lifelong theories in regard to the
+brotherhood of man and the uplifting power of personal influence. I
+had at times been tempted to try settlement work, and here I had a
+settlement subject in my own kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>There was not a suggestion of fault with the girl&#8217;s work. She kept her
+part of the contract, and did it well; but across the wall between us,
+she glared at&mdash;and hated&mdash;me.</p>
+
+<p>But, deliberately, I set to work in defence of my theory. I ignored
+the impertinence, and seemingly did not hear the crash of dishes and
+the banging of doors. When it came to an issue, I said calmly, though
+my soul quaked within me: &#8220;You are not here to tell me what you will
+do and what you won&#8217;t. You are here to carry out my orders, and when
+you cannot, it is time for you to go.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p><p>If she asked me a question about her work which I could not answer
+offhand, I secretly consulted a standard cook-book, and later gave her
+the desired information airily. I taught her to cook many of the
+things which I could cook well, and imbued her with a sort of sneaking
+respect for my knowledge. Throughout, I treated her with the perfect
+courtesy which one lady accords to another, ignoring the impertinence.
+I took pains to say &#8220;please&#8221; and &#8220;thank you.&#8221; Many a time I bit my
+lips tightly against my own rising rage, and afterward in calmness
+recognised a superior opportunity for self-discipline.</p>
+
+<p>For three or four months, while the beautiful theory wavered in the
+balance, we fought&mdash;not outwardly, but beneath the surface. Daily, I
+meditated a summary discharge, dissuaded only by an immaculate house
+and perfectly cooked breakfasts and dinners. I still cherished a
+lingering belief in personal influence, in spite of the wall which
+reared itself between us.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p><p>A small grey kitten, with wobbly legs and an infantile mew, made the
+first breach in the wall. She took care of it, loved it, petted it,
+and began to smile semi-occasionally. She, too, said &#8220;please&#8221; and
+&#8220;thank you.&#8221; My husband suggested that we order ten kittens, but I let
+the good work go on with one, for the time being. Gradually, I learned
+that the immovable exterior was the natural protection against an
+abnormal sensitiveness both to praise and blame. Besides the cat, she
+had two other &#8220;weak spots&#8221;&mdash;an unswerving devotion to a widowed sister
+with two children, whom she partially supported, and a love for
+flowers almost pathetic.</p>
+
+<p>As I could, without seeming to make a point of it, I sent things to
+the sister and the children&mdash;partially worn curtains, bits of ribbons,
+little toys, and the like. I made her room as pretty and dainty as my
+own, though the furnishings were not so expensive, and gave her a
+potted plant in a brass jar. When flowers were sent to me, I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>gave her
+a few for the vase in her room. She began to say &#8220;we&#8221; instead of
+&#8220;you.&#8221; She spoke of &#8220;our&#8221; spoons, or &#8220;our&#8221; table linen. She asked,
+what shall &#8220;we&#8221; do about this or that? what shall &#8220;we&#8221; have for
+dinner? instead of &#8220;what do <i>you</i> want?&#8221; She began to laugh when she
+played with the kitten, and even to sing at her work.</p>
+
+<p>When she did well, I praised her, as I had all along, but instead of
+saying, &#8220;Iss dat so?&#8221; when I remarked that the muffins were delicious
+or the dessert a great success, her face began to light up, and a
+smile take the place of the impersonal comment. The furious temper
+began to wane, or, at least, to be under better control. Guests
+occasionally inquired, &#8220;What have you done to that maid of yours?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Five times we have left her, for one or two months at a time, on full
+salary, with unlimited credit at the grocery, and with from fifty to
+one hundred dollars in cash. During the intervals we heard nothing
+from her. We have returned each time to an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>immaculate house, a
+smiling maid, a perfectly cooked and nicely served meal, and an
+account correct to a penny, with vouchers to show for it, of the sum
+with which she had been intrusted.</p>
+
+<p>I noticed each time a vast pride in the fact that she had been so
+trusted, and from this developed a gratifying loyalty to the
+establishment. I had told her once to ask her sister and children to
+spend the day with her while we were gone. It seems that the children
+were noisy, and the lady in the apartment below us came up to object.</p>
+
+<p>An altercation ensued, ending with a threat from the lady downstairs
+to &#8220;tell Mrs. M. when she came home.&#8221; Annie told me herself, with
+flashing eyes and shaking hands. I said, calmly: &#8220;The children must
+have been noisy, or she would not have complained. You are used to
+them, and besides it would sound worse downstairs than up here. But it
+doesn&#8217;t amount to anything, for I had told you you could have the
+children here, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>and if I hadn&#8217;t been able to trust you I wouldn&#8217;t have
+left you.&#8221; Thus the troubled waters were calmed.</p>
+
+<p>The crucial test of her qualities came when I entered upon a long
+period of exhaustive effort. The first day, we both had a hard time,
+as her highly specialised Baptist conscience would not permit her to
+say I was &#8220;not at home,&#8221; when I was merely writing a book. After she
+thoroughly understood that I was not to be disturbed unless the house
+took fire, further quiet being insured by disconnecting the doorbell
+and muffling the telephone, things went swimmingly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Annie,&#8221; I said, &#8220;I want you to run this house until I get through
+with my book. Here is a hundred dollars to start with. Don&#8217;t let
+anybody disturb me.&#8221; She took it with a smile, and a cheerful &#8220;all
+right.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>From that moment to the end, I had even less care than I should have
+had in a well-equipped hotel. Not a sound penetrated my solitude. If I
+went out for a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>drink of water, she did not speak to me. We had
+delicious dinners and dainty breakfasts which might have waited for
+us, but we never waited a moment for them. She paid herself regularly
+every Monday morning, kept all receipts, sent out my husband&#8217;s
+laundry, kept a strict list of it, mended our clothes, managed our
+household as economically as I myself could have done it, and, best of
+all, insured me from any sort of interruption with a sort of fierce
+loyalty which is beyond any money value.</p>
+
+<p>Once I overheard a colloquy at my front door, which was briefly and
+decisively terminated thus: &#8220;Ay already tell you dat you <i>not see
+her</i>! She says to me, &#8216;Annie, you keep dose peoples off from me,&#8217; and
+Ay <i>keep dem off</i>!&#8221; I never have known what dear friend was thus
+turned away from my inhospitable door.</p>
+
+<p>Fully appreciating my blessings, the night I finished my work I went
+into the kitchen with a crisp, new, five-dollar bill. &#8220;Annie,&#8221; I said,
+&#8220;here is a little extra <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>money for you. You&#8217;ve been so nice about the
+house while I&#8217;ve been busy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She opened her eyes wide, and stared. &#8220;You don&#8217;t have to do dat,&#8221; she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know I don&#8217;t,&#8221; I laughed, &#8220;but I like to do it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t have to do dat,&#8221; she repeated. &#8220;Ay like to do de
+housekeeping.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know,&#8221; I said again, &#8220;and I like to do this. You&#8217;ve done lots of
+things for me you didn&#8217;t have to do. Why shouldn&#8217;t I do something for
+you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At that she took it, offering me a rough wet hand, which I took
+gravely. &#8220;Tank you,&#8221; she said, and the tears rolled down her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve earned it,&#8221; I assured her, &#8220;and you deserve it, and I&#8217;m very
+glad I can give it to you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>From that hour she has been welded to me in a bond which I fondly hope
+is indestructible. She laughs and sings at her work, pets her beloved
+kitten, and diffuses through my six rooms the atmosphere of good
+cheer. She &#8220;looks after me,&#8221; anticipates <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>my wishes, and dedicates to
+me a continual loyal service which has no equivalent in dollars and
+cents. She asked me, hesitatingly, if she might not get some one to
+fill her place for three months while she went back to Sweden. I
+didn&#8217;t like the idea, but I recognised her well-defined right.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ay not go,&#8221; she said, &#8220;if you not want me to. Ay tell my sister dat I
+want to stay wid Mrs. M. until she send me away.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I knew she would have to go some time before she settled down to
+perpetual residence in an alien land, so I bade her God-speed. She
+secured the substitute and instructed her, arranged the matter of
+wages, and vouched for her honesty, but not for her work.</p>
+
+<p>Before she left the city, I found that the substitute was hopelessly
+incompetent and stupid. When Annie came to say &#8220;good-bye&#8221; to me, I
+told her about the new girl. She broke down and wept. &#8220;Ay sorry Ay try
+to go,&#8221; she sobbed. &#8220;Ay tell my sister <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>dere iss nobody what can take
+care of Mrs. M. lak Ay do!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I was quite willing to agree with her, but I managed to dry her tears.
+Discovering that she expected to spend two nights in a day coach, and
+remembering one dreadful night when I could get no berth, I gave her
+the money for a sleeping-car ticket both ways, as a farewell gift. The
+tears broke forth afresh. &#8220;You been so good to me and to my sister,&#8221;
+she sobbed. &#8220;Ay can&#8217;t never forget dat!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Cheer up,&#8221; I answered, wiping the mist from my own eyes. &#8220;Go on, and
+have the best time you ever had in your life, and don&#8217;t worry about
+me&mdash;I&#8217;ll get along somehow. And if you need money while you are away,
+write to me, and I&#8217;ll send you whatever you need. We&#8217;ll fix it up
+afterward.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Once again she looked at me, with the strangest look I have ever seen
+on the human face.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tank you,&#8221; she said slowly. &#8220;Dere iss not many ladies would say dat.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Perhaps not,&#8221; I replied, &#8220;but, remember, Annie, I can trust you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she cried, her face illumined as by some great inward light,
+&#8220;you can trust me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I do not think she loves us yet, but I believe in time she will.</p>
+
+<p>The day the new girl came, I happened to overhear a much valued
+reference to myself: &#8220;Honestly,&#8221; she said, &#8220;Ay been here more dan one
+year, and Ay never hear a wrong word between her and him, nor between
+her and me. It&#8217;s shust wonderful. Ay isn&#8217;t been see anyting like it
+since Ay been in diss country.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is it so wonderful?&#8221; I asked myself, as I stole away, my own heart
+aglow with the consciousness of a moral victory, &#8220;and is the lack of
+self-control and human kindness at the bottom of the American servant
+problem? Are we women such children that we cannot deal wisely with
+our intellectual inferiors?&#8221; And more than all I had given her, as I
+realised then for the first time, was the power of self-discipline
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>and self-control which she, all unknowingly, had developed in me.</p>
+
+<p>I have not ceased the &#8220;treatment,&#8221; even though the patient is nearly
+well. It costs me nothing to praise her when she deserves it, to take
+an occasional friend into her immaculate kitchen, and to show the
+shining white pantry shelves (without papers), while she blushes and
+smiles with pleasure. It costs me nothing to see that she overhears me
+while I tell a friend over the telephone how capable she has been
+during the stress of my work, or how clean the house is when we come
+home after a long absence. It costs me nothing to send her out for a
+walk, or a visit to a nearby friend, on the afternoons when her work
+is finished and I am to be at home&mdash;nothing to call her attention to a
+beautiful sunset or a perfect day, or to tell her some amusing story
+that her simple mind can appreciate. It costs me nothing to tell her
+how well she looks in her cap and apron (only I call the cap a
+&#8220;hair-bow&#8221;), nor that one of the guests said she made <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>the best cake
+she had ever eaten in her life.</p>
+
+<p>It costs me little to give her a pretty hatpin, or some other girlish
+trifle at Easter, to bring her some souvenir of our travels, to give
+her a fresh ribbon for her belt from my bolt, or some little toy &#8220;for
+de children.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It means only a thought to say when she goes out, &#8220;Good-bye! Have a
+good time!&#8221; or to say when I go out, &#8220;Good-bye! Be good!&#8221; It means
+little to me to tell her how much my husband or our guests have
+enjoyed the dinner, or to have him go into the kitchen sometimes,
+while she is surrounded by a mountain of dishes, with a cheery word
+and a fifty-cent piece.</p>
+
+<p>It isn&#8217;t much out of my way to do a bit of shopping for her when I am
+shopping for myself, and no trouble at all to plan for her new gowns,
+or to tell her that her new hat is very pretty and becoming.</p>
+
+<p>When her temper gets the better of her these days, I can laugh her out
+of it. &#8220;To think,&#8221; I said once, &#8220;of a fine, capable <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>girl like you
+flying into a rage because some one has borrowed your clothesline
+without asking for it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The clouds vanished with a smile. &#8220;Dat iss funny of me,&#8221; she said.</p>
+
+<p>When her work goes wrong, as of course it sometimes does, though
+rarely, and she is worrying for fear I shall be displeased, I say:
+&#8220;Never mind, Annie; things don&#8217;t always go right for any of us. Don&#8217;t
+worry about it, but be careful next time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It has cost me time and effort and money, and an infinite amount of
+patience and tact, not to mention steady warfare with myself, but in
+return, what have I? A housemaid, as nearly perfect, perhaps, as they
+can ever be on this faulty earth, permanently in my service, as I hope
+and believe.</p>
+
+<p>If any one offers her higher wages, I shall meet the &#8220;bid,&#8221; for she is
+worth as much to me as she can be to any one else. Besides giving me
+superior service, she has done me a vast amount of good in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>furnishing
+me the needed material for the development of my character.</p>
+
+<p>On her own ground, she respects my superior knowledge. Once or twice I
+have heard her say of some friend, &#8220;Her&#8217;s lady, she know nodding at
+all about de housekeeping&mdash;no, nodding at all!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The airy contempt of the tone is quite impossible to describe.</p>
+
+<p>A neighbour whom she assisted in a time of domestic stress, during my
+absence, told me amusedly of her reception in her own kitchen. &#8220;You
+don&#8217;t have to come all de time to de kitchen to tell me,&#8221; remarked
+Annie.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Doesn&#8217;t Mrs. M. do that?&#8221; queried my neighbour, lightly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ay should say not,&#8221; returned the capable one, indignantly. &#8220;She nefer
+come in de kitchen, and <i>she know, too</i>!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>While that was not literally true, because I do go into my kitchen if
+I want to, and cook there if I like, I make a point of not intruding.
+She knows what she is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>to do, and I leave her to do it, in peace and
+comfort.</p>
+
+<p>Briefly summarised, the solution from my point of view is this. <i>Know
+her work yourself, down to the last detail</i>; pay the wages which other
+people would be glad to pay for the same service; keep your temper,
+and, in the face of everything, <i>be kind</i>! Remember that housework is
+hard work&mdash;that it never stays done&mdash;that a meal which it takes half a
+day to prepare is disposed of in half an hour. Remember, too, that it
+requires much intelligence and good judgment to be a good cook, and
+that the daily tasks lack inspiration. The hardest part of housework
+must be done at a time when many other people are free for rest and
+enjoyment, and it carries with it a social bar sinister when it is
+done for money. The woman who does it for her board and clothes, in
+her own kitchen, does not necessarily lose caste, but doing it for a
+higher wage, in another&#8217;s kitchen, makes one almost an outcast.
+Strange and unreasonable, but true.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p><p>It was at my own suggestion that she began to leave the dishes piled
+up in the sink until morning. When the room is otherwise immaculate, a
+tray of neatly piled plates, even if unwashed, does not disturb my
+&aelig;sthetic sense.</p>
+
+<p>Ordinarily, she is free for the evening at half-past seven or a
+quarter of eight&mdash;always by eight. Her evenings are hers, not
+mine,&mdash;unless I pay her extra, as I always do. A dollar or so counts
+for nothing in the expense of an entertainment, and she both earns and
+deserves the extra wage.</p>
+
+<p>If I am to entertain twenty or thirty people&mdash;the house will hold no
+more, and I cannot ask more than ten to dinner&mdash;I consult with her,
+decide upon the menu, tell her that she can have all the help she
+needs, and go my ways in peace. I can order the flowers, decorate the
+table, put on my best gown, and receive my guests, unwearied, with an
+easy mind.</p>
+
+<p>When I am not expecting guests, I can leave the house immediately
+after breakfast, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>without a word about dinner, and return to the right
+sort of a meal at seven o&#8217;clock, bringing a guest or two with me, if I
+telephone first.</p>
+
+<p>I can work for six weeks or two months in a seclusion as perfect as I
+could have in the Sahara Desert, and my household, meanwhile, will
+move as if on greased skids. I can go away for two months and hear
+nothing from her, and yet know that everything is all right at home. I
+think no more about it, so far as responsibility is concerned, when I
+am travelling, than as if I had no home at all. When we leave the
+apartment alone in the evening, we turn on the most of the lights,
+being assured by the police that burglars will never molest a
+brilliantly illuminated house.</p>
+
+<p>The morose countenance of my ugly maid has subtly changed. It
+radiates, in its own way, beauty and good cheer. Her harsh voice is
+gentle, her manner is kind, her tastes are becoming refined, her ways
+are those of a lady.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p><p>My friends and neighbours continually allude to the transformation as
+&#8220;a miracle.&#8221; The janitor remarked, in a burst of confidence, that he
+&#8220;never saw anybody change so.&#8221; He &#8220;reckoned,&#8221; too, that &#8220;it must be
+the folks she lives with!&#8221; Annie herself, conscious of a change,
+recently said complacently: &#8220;Ay guess Ay wass one awful crank when Ay
+first come here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And so it happens that the highest satisfaction is connected with the
+beautiful theory, triumphantly proven now, against heavy odds.
+Whatever else I may have done, I have taught one woman the workman&#8217;s
+pride in her work, shown her where true happiness lies, and set her
+feet firmly on the path of right and joyous living.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p>
+<h2>To a Violin</h2>
+
+<p class="center">(Antonius Stradivarius, 1685.)</p>
+
+<div class="centerbox4 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">W</span>hat flights of years have gone to fashion thee,<br />
+My violin! What centuries have wrought<br />
+Thy sounding fibres! What dead fingers taught<br />
+Thy music to awake in ecstasy<br />
+Beyond our human dreams? Thy melody<br />
+Is resurrection. Every buried thought<br />
+Of singing bird, or stream, or south wind, fraught<br />
+With tender message, or of sobbing sea,<br />
+Lives once again. The tempest&#8217;s solemn roll<br />
+Is in thy passion sleeping, till the king<br />
+Whose touch is mastery shall sound thy soul.<br />
+The organ tones of ocean shalt thou bring,<br />
+The crashing chords of thunder, and the whole<br />
+Vast harmony of God. Ah, Spirit, sing!</p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Old Maid</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">O</span>ne of the best things the last century has done for woman is to make
+single-blessedness appear very tolerable indeed, even if it be not
+actually desirable.</p>
+
+<p>The woman who didn&#8217;t marry used to be looked down upon as a sort of a
+&#8220;leftover&#8221; without a thought, apparently, that she may have refused
+many a chance to change her attitude toward the world. But now, the
+&#8220;bachelor maid&#8221; is welcomed everywhere, and is not considered
+eccentric on account of her oneness.</p>
+
+<p>With the long records of the divorce courts before their eyes, it is
+not very unusual for the younger generation of women nowadays
+deliberately to choose spinsterhood as their independent lot in life.</p>
+
+<p>A girl said the other day: &#8220;It&#8217;s no use <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>to say that a woman can&#8217;t
+marry if she wants to. Look around you, and see the women who <i>have</i>
+married, and then ask yourself if there is anybody who can&#8217;t!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This is a great truth very concisely stated. It is safe to say that no
+woman ever reached twenty-five years of age, and very few have passed
+twenty, without having an opportunity to become somebody&#8217;s mate.</p>
+
+<p>A very small maiden with very bright eyes once came to her mother with
+the question: &#8220;Mamma, do you think I shall ever have a chance to get
+married?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And the mother answered: &#8220;Surely you will, my child; the woods are
+full of offers of marriage&mdash;no woman can avoid them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And ere many years had passed the maiden had learned that the wisdom
+of her mother&#8217;s prophecy was fully vindicated.</p>
+
+<p>Every one knows that a woman needs neither beauty, talent, nor money
+to win the deepest and sincerest love that man is capable of giving.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p><p>Single life is, with rare exceptions, a matter of choice and not of
+necessity; and while it is true that a happy married life is the
+happiest position for either man or woman, there are many things which
+are infinitely worse than being an old maid, and chiefest among these
+is marrying the wrong man!</p>
+
+<p>The modern woman looks her future squarely in the face and decides
+according to her best light whether her happiness depends upon
+spinsterhood or matrimony. This decision is of course influenced very
+largely by the quality of her chances in either direction, but if the
+one whom she fully believes to be the right man comes along, he is
+likely to be able to overcome strong objections to the married state.
+If love comes to her from the right source, she takes it gladly;
+otherwise she bravely goes her way alone, often showing the world that
+some of the most mother-hearted women are not really mothers. Think of
+the magnificent solitude of such women as Florence Nightingale and our
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>own splendid Frances Willard! Who shall say that these, and thousands
+of others of earth&#8217;s grandest souls, were not better for their
+single-heartedness in the service of humanity?</p>
+
+<p>A writer in a leading journal recently said: &#8220;The fact that a woman
+remains single is a tribute to her perception. She gains an added
+dignity from being hard to suit.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This, from the pen of a man, is somewhat of a revelation, in the light
+of various masculine criticisms concerning superfluous women. No woman
+is superfluous. God made her, and put her into this world to help her
+fellow-beings. There is a little niche somewhere which she, and she
+alone, can fill. She finds her own completeness in rounding out the
+lives of others.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that the average man may be piloted through life by
+one woman, but it must be admitted that several of him need somewhere
+near a dozen of the fair sex to wait upon him at the same time. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>His
+wife and mother are kept &#8220;hustling,&#8221; while his &#8220;sisters and his aunts&#8221;
+are likely to be &#8220;on the keen jump&#8221; from the time his lordship enters
+the house until he leaves it!</p>
+
+<p>But to return to the &#8220;superfluous woman,&#8221;&mdash;although we cannot
+literally return to her because she does not exist. Of the &#8220;old maid&#8221;
+of to-day, it is safe to say that she has her allotted plane of
+usefulness. She isn&#8217;t the type our newspaper brethren delight to
+caricature. She doesn&#8217;t dwell altogether upon the subject of &#8220;woman&#8217;s
+sphere,&#8221; which, by the way, comes very near being the plane of the
+earth&#8217;s sphere, and she need not, for her position is now well
+recognised.</p>
+
+<p>She doesn&#8217;t wear corkscrew curls and hideous reform garments. She is a
+dainty, feminine, broad-minded woman, and a charming companion. Men
+are her friends, and often her lovers, in her old age as well as in
+her youth.</p>
+
+<p>Every old maid has her love story, a little romance that makes her
+heart young <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>again as she dreams it over in the firelight, and it
+calls a happy smile to the faded face.</p>
+
+<p>Or, perhaps, it is the old, sad story of a faithless lover, or a
+happiness spoiled by gossips&mdash;or it may be the scarcely less sad story
+of love and death.</p>
+
+<p>Ibsen makes two of his characters, a young man and woman who love each
+other, part voluntarily on the top of a high mountain in order that
+they may be enabled to keep their high ideals and uplifting love for
+each other.</p>
+
+<p>So the old maid keeps her ideals, not through fulfilment, but through
+memory, and she is far happier than many a woman who finds her ideal
+surprisingly and disagreeably real.</p>
+
+<p>The bachelor girl and the bachelor man are much on the increase.
+Marriage is not in itself a failure, but the people who enter unwisely
+into this solemn covenant too often are not only failures, but bitter
+disappointments to those who love them best.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p><p>Life for men and women means the highest usefulness and happiness, for
+the terms are synonymous, neither being able to exist without the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>The model spinster of to-day is philanthropic. She is connected, not
+with innumerable charities, but with a few well-chosen ones. She gives
+freely of her time and money in many ways, where her left hand
+scarcely knoweth what her right doeth, and the record of her good
+works is not found in the chronicles of the world.</p>
+
+<p>She is literary, musical, or artistic. She is a devoted and loyal club
+member, and is well informed on the leading topics of the day, while
+the resources of her well-balanced mind are always at the service of
+her friends.</p>
+
+<p>And when all is said and done, the highest and truest life is within
+the reach of us all. Doing well whatever is given us to do will keep
+us all busy, and married or single, no woman has a right to be idle.
+The old maid may be womanly and mother-hearted as well as the wife and
+mother.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Spinster&#8217;s Rubaiyat</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox4 bbox"><p class="center">I</p>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">W</span>ake! For the hour of hope will soon take flight<br />
+And on your form and features leave a blight;<br />
+Since Time, who heals full many an open wound,<br />
+More oft than not is impolite.</p>
+
+<p class="center">II</p>
+
+<p>Before my relatives began to chide,<br />
+Methought the voice of conscience said inside:<br />
+&#8220;Why should you want a husband, when you have<br />
+A cat who seldom will at home abide?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="center">III</p>
+
+<p>And, when the evening breeze comes in the door,<br />
+The lamp smokes like a chimney, only more;<br />
+And yet the deacon of the church<br />
+Is telling every one my parrot swore.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p><p class="center">IV</p>
+
+<p>Behold, my aunt into my years inquires,<br />
+Then swiftly with my parents she conspires,<br />
+And in the family record changes dates&mdash;<br />
+In that same book that says all men are liars.</p>
+
+<p class="center">V</p>
+
+<p>Come, fill the cup and let the kettle sing!<br />
+What though upon my finger gleams no ring,<br />
+Save that cheap turquoise that I bought myself?<br />
+The coming years a gladsome change may bring.</p>
+
+<p class="center">VI</p>
+
+<p>Here, minion, fill the steaming cup that clears<br />
+The skin I will not have exposed to jeers,<br />
+And rub this wrinkle vigorously until<br />
+The maddening crow&#8217;s-foot wholly disappears.</p>
+
+<p class="center">VII</p>
+
+<p>And let me don some artificial bloom,<br />
+And turn the lamps down low, and make a gloom<br />
+That spreads from library to hall and stair;<br />
+Thus do I look my best&mdash;but ah, for whom?</p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Rights of Dogs</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">W</span>e hear a great deal about the &#8220;rights of men&#8221; and still more,
+perhaps, about the &#8220;rights of women,&#8221; but few stop to consider those
+which properly belong to the friend and companion of both&mdash;the dog.</p>
+
+<p>According to our municipal code, a dog must be muzzled from June 1st
+to September 30th. The wise men who framed this measure either did not
+know, or did not stop to consider, that a dog perspires and &#8220;cools
+off&#8221; only at his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Man and the horse have tiny pores distributed all over the body, but
+in the dog they are found only in the tongue.</p>
+
+<p>Any one who has had a fever need not be told what happened when these
+pores ceased to act; what, then, must be the sufferings of a dog on a
+hot day, when, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>securely muzzled, he takes his daily exercise?</p>
+
+<p>Even on the coolest days, the barbarous muzzle will fret a
+thoroughbred almost to insanity, unless, indeed, he has brains to free
+himself, as did a brilliant Irish setter which we once knew. This wise
+dog would run far ahead of his human guardian, and with the help of
+his forepaws slip the strap over his slender head, then hide the
+offending muzzle in the gutter, and race onward again. When the loss
+was discovered, it was far too late to remedy it by any search that
+could be instituted.</p>
+
+<p>And still, without this uncomfortable encumbrance, it is unsafe for
+any valuable dog to be seen, even on his own doorsteps, for the
+&#8220;dog-catcher&#8221; is ever on the look-out for blue-blooded victims.</p>
+
+<p>The homeless mongrel, to whom a painless death would be a blessing, is
+left to get a precarious living as best he may from the garbage boxes,
+and spread pestilence from house to house, but the setter, the collie,
+and the St. Bernard are choked <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>into insensibility with a wire noose,
+hurled into a stuffy cage, and with the thermometer at ninety in the
+shade, are dragged through the blistering city, as a sop to that
+Cerberus of the law which demands for its citizens safety from dogs,
+and pays no attention to the lawlessness of men.</p>
+
+<p>The dog tax which is paid every year is sufficient to guarantee the
+interest of the owner in his dog. Howells has pitied &#8220;the dogless
+man,&#8221; and Thomas Nelson Page has said somewhere that &#8220;some of us know
+what it is to be loved by a dog.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Countless writers have paid tribute to his fidelity and devotion, and
+to the constant forgiveness of blows and neglect which spring from the
+heart of the commonest cur.</p>
+
+<p>The trained hunter, who is as truly a sportsman as the man who brings
+down the birds he finds, can be easily fretted into madness by the
+injudicious application of the muzzle.</p>
+
+<p>The average dog is a gentleman and does not attack people for the
+pleasure of it, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>and it is lamentably true that people who live in
+cities often find it necessary to keep some sort of a dog as a
+guardian to life and property. In spite of his loyalty, which every
+one admits, the dog is an absolute slave. Men with less sense, and
+less morality, constitute a court from which he has no appeal.</p>
+
+<p>Four or five years of devotion to his master&#8217;s interests, and four or
+five years of peaceful, friendly conduct, count for absolutely nothing
+beside the perjured statement of some man, or even woman, who, from
+spite against the owner, is willing to assert, &#8220;the dog is vicious.&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;He is very imprudent, a dog is,&#8221; said Jerome K. Jerome. &#8220;He
+never makes it his business to inquire whether you are in
+the right or wrong&mdash;never bothers as to whether you are
+going up or down life&#8217;s ladder&mdash;never asks whether you are
+rich or poor, silly or wise, saint or sinner. You are his
+pal. That is enough for him, and come luck or misfortune,
+good repute or bad, honour or shame, he is going to stick to
+you, to comfort you, guard you, and give his life for you,
+if need be&mdash;foolish, brainless, soulless dog!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Ah! staunch old friend, with your deep, clear eyes, and
+bright quick glances that take in all one has to say, before
+one has time to speak it, do you know you are only an animal
+and have no mind?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you know that dull-eyed, gin-sodden lout leaning against
+the post out there is immeasurably your intellectual
+superior? Do you know that every little-minded selfish
+scoundrel, who never had a thought that was not mean and
+base&mdash;whose every action is a fraud and whose every
+utterance is a lie; do you know that these are as much
+superior to you as the sun is to the rush-light, you
+honourable, brave-hearted, unselfish brute?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They are men, you know, and men are the greatest, noblest,
+wisest, and best beings in the universe. Any man will tell
+you that.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Are the men whom we elect to public office our masters or our
+servants? If the former, let us change our form of government; if the
+latter, let us hope that from somewhere a little light may penetrate
+their craniums and that they may be induced to give the dog a chance.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Twilight</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox5 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>he birds were hushed into silence,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.1em;">The clouds had sunk from sight,</span><br />
+And the great trees bowed to the summer breeze<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">That kissed the flowers good-night.</span><br />
+<br />
+The stars came out in the cool still air,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">From the mansions of the blest,</span><br />
+And softly, over the dim blue hills,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Night came to the world with rest.</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Women&#8217;s Clothes in Men&#8217;s Books</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">W</span>hen asked why women wrote better novels than men, Mr. Richard Le
+Gallienne is said to have replied, more or less conclusively, &#8220;They
+don&#8217;t&#8221;; thus recalling <i>Punch&#8217;s</i> famous advice to those about to
+marry.</p>
+
+<p>Happily there is no segregation in literature, and masculine and
+feminine hands alike may dabble in fiction, as long as the publishers
+are willing.</p>
+
+<p>If we accept Zola&#8217;s dictum to the effect that art is nature seen
+through the medium of a temperament, the thing is possible to many,
+though the achievement may differ both in manner and degree. For women
+have temperament&mdash;too much of it&mdash;as the hysterical novelists daily
+testify.</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman novelist, however, prances in boldly, where feminine
+feet <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>well may fear to tread, and consequently has a wider scope for
+his writing. It is not for a woman to mingle in a barroom brawl and
+write of the thing as she sees it. The prize-ring, the interior of a
+cattle-ship, Broadway at four in the morning&mdash;these and countless
+other places are forbidden by her innate refinement as well as by the
+Ladies&#8217; Own, and all the other aunties who have taken upon themselves
+the guardianship of the Home with a big H.</p>
+
+<p>Fancy the outpouring of scorn upon the luckless offender&#8217;s head if one
+should write to the Manners and Morals Department of the Ladies&#8217; Own
+as follows: &#8220;Would it be proper for a lady novelist, in search of
+local colour and new experiences, to accept the escort of a strange
+man at midnight if he was too drunk to recognise her afterward?&#8221; Yet a
+man in the same circumstances would not hesitate to put an intoxicated
+woman into a sea-going cab, and would plume himself for a year and a
+day upon his virtuous performance.</p>
+
+<p>All things are considered proper for a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>man who is about to write a
+book. Like the disciple of Mary McLane who stole a horse in order to
+get the emotions of a police court, he may delve deeply not only into
+life, but into that under-stratum which is not spoken of, where
+respectable journals circulate.</p>
+
+<p>Everything is fish that comes into his net. If conscientious, he may
+even undertake marriage in order to study the feminine personal
+equations at close range. Woman&#8217;s emotions, singly and collectively,
+are pilloried before his scientific gaze. He cowers before one
+problem, and one only&mdash;woman&#8217;s clothes!</p>
+
+<p>Carlyle, after long and painful thought, arrives at the conclusion
+that &#8220;cut betokens intellect and talent; colour reveals temper and
+heart.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This reminds one of the language of flowers, and the directions given
+for postage-stamp flirtation. If that massive mind had penetrated
+further into the mysteries of the subject, we might have been told
+that a turnover collar indicated <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>that the woman was a High Church
+Episcopalian who had embroidered two altar cloths, and that su&egrave;de
+gloves show a yielding but contradictory nature.</p>
+
+<p>Clothes are, undoubtedly, indices of character and taste, as well as a
+sop to conventionality, but this only when one has the wherewithal to
+browse at will in the department store. Many a woman with ermine
+tastes has only a rabbit-fur pocket-book, and thus her clothes wrong
+her in the sight of gods and women, though men know nothing about it.</p>
+
+<p>Once upon a time there was a notion to the effect that women dressed
+to please men, but that idea has long since been relegated to the
+limbo of forgotten things.</p>
+
+<p>Not one man in a thousand can tell the difference between Brussels
+point at thirty dollars a yard, and imitation Valenciennes at ten or
+fifteen cents a yard which was one of the &#8220;famous Friday features in
+the busy bargain basement.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But across the room, yea, even from across the street, the eagle eye
+of another <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>woman can unerringly locate the Brussels point and the
+mock Valenciennes.</p>
+
+<p>A man knows silk by the sound of it and diamonds by the shine. He will
+say that his heroine &#8220;was richly dressed in silk.&#8221; Little does he wot
+of the difference between taffeta at eighty-five cents a yard and
+broadcloth at four dollars. Still less does he know that a white
+cotton shirt-waist represents financial ease, and a silk waist of
+festive colouring represents poverty, since it takes but two days to
+&#8220;do up&#8221; a white shirt-waist in one sense, and thirty or forty cents to
+do it up in the other!</p>
+
+<p>One listens with wicked delight to men&#8217;s discourse upon woman&#8217;s
+clothes. Now and then a man will express his preference for a tailored
+gown, as being eminently simple and satisfactory. Unless he is married
+and has seen the bills for tailored gowns, he also thinks they are
+inexpensive.</p>
+
+<p>It is the benedict, wise with the acquired knowledge of the serpent,
+who begs his wife to get a new party gown and let the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>tailor-made go
+until next season. He also knows that when the material is bought, the
+expense has scarcely begun, whereas the ignorant bachelor thinks that
+the worst is happily over.</p>
+
+<p>In <i>A Little Journey through the World</i> Mr. Warner philosophised thus:
+&#8220;How a woman in a crisis hesitates before her wardrobe, and at last
+chooses just what will express her innermost feelings!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>If all a woman&#8217;s feelings were to be expressed by her clothes, the
+benedicts would immediately encounter financial shipwreck. On account
+of the lamentable scarcity of money and closets, one is eternally
+adjusting the emotion to the gown.</p>
+
+<p>Some gown, seen at the exact psychological moment, fixes forever in a
+man&#8217;s mind his ideal garment. Thus we read of blue calico, of
+pink-and-white print, and more often still, of white lawn. Mad colour
+combinations run riot in the masculine fancy, as in the case of a man
+who boldly described his favourite costume as &#8220;red, with black ruffles
+down the front!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p><p>Of a hat, a man may be a surpassingly fine critic, since he recks not
+of style. Guileful is the woman who leads her liege to the millinery
+and lets him choose, taking no heed of the price and the attendant
+shock until later.</p>
+
+<p>A normal man is anxious that his wife shall be well dressed because it
+shows the critical observer that his business is a great success.
+After futile explorations in the labyrinth, he concerns himself simply
+with the fit, preferring always that the clothes of his heart&#8217;s
+dearest shall cling to her as lovingly as a kid glove, regardless of
+the pouches and fulnesses prescribed by Dame Fashion.</p>
+
+<p>In the writing of books, men are at their wits&#8217; end when it comes to
+women&#8217;s clothes. They are hampered by no restrictions&mdash;no thought of
+style or period enters into their calculations, and unless they have a
+wholesome fear of the unknown theme, they produce results which
+further international gaiety.</p>
+
+<p>Many an outrageous garment has been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>embalmed in a man&#8217;s book, simply
+because an attractive woman once wore something like it when she fed
+the novelist. Unbalanced by the joy of the situation, he did not
+accurately observe the garb of the ministering angel, and hence we
+read of &#8220;a clinging white gown&#8221; in the days of stiff silks and rampant
+crinoline; of &#8220;the curve of the upper arm&#8221; when it took five yards for
+a pair of sleeves, and of &#8220;short walking skirts&#8221; during the reign of
+bustles and trains!</p>
+
+<p>In <i>The Blazed Trail</i>, Mr. White observes that his heroine was clad in
+brown which fitted her slender figure perfectly. As Hilda had yellow
+hair, &#8220;like corn silk,&#8221; this was all right, and if the brown was of
+the proper golden shade, she was doubtless stunning when Thorpe first
+saw her in the forest. But the gown could not have fitted her as the
+sheath encases the dagger, for before the straight-front corsets there
+were the big sleeves, and still further back were bustles and
+<i>bouffant</i> draperies. One does not get the impression that <i>The</i>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span><i>Blazed Trail</i> was placed in the days of crinolines, but doubtless
+Hilda&#8217;s clothes did not fit as Mr. White seems to think they did.</p>
+
+<p>That strenuous follower of millinery, Mr. Gibson, might give lessons
+to his friend, Mr. Davis, with advantage to the writer, if not to the
+artist. In <i>Captain Macklin</i>, the young man&#8217;s cousin makes her first
+appearance in a thin gown, and a white hat trimmed with roses,
+reminding the adventurous captain of a Dresden statuette, in spite of
+the fact that she wore heavy gauntlet gloves and carried a trowel. The
+lady had been doing a hard day&#8217;s work in the garden. No woman outside
+the asylum ever did gardening in such a costume, and Mr. Davis
+evidently has the hat and gown sadly mixed with some other pleasant
+impression.</p>
+
+<p>The feminine reader immediately hides Mr. Davis&#8217; mistake with the
+broad mantle of charity, and in her own mind clothes Beatrice properly
+in a short walking skirt, heavy shoes, shirt-waist, old hat tied down
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>over the ears with a rumpled ribbon, and a pair of ancient masculine
+gloves, long since discarded by their rightful owner. Thus does lovely
+woman garden, except on the stage and in men&#8217;s books.</p>
+
+<p>In <i>The Story of Eva</i>, Mr. Payne announces that Eva climbed out of a
+cab in &#8220;a fawn-coloured jacket,&#8221; conspicuous by reason of its newness,
+and a hat &#8220;with an owl&#8217;s head upon it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The jacket was possibly a coat of tan covert cloth with strapped
+seams, but it is the startling climax which claims attention. An owl!
+Surely not, Mr. Payne! It may have been a parrot, for once upon a
+time, before the Audubon Society met with widespread recognition,
+women wore such things, and at afternoon teas where many fair ones
+were gathered together the parrot garniture was not without
+significance. But an owl&#8217;s face, with its glaring glassy eyes, is too
+much like a pussy cat&#8217;s to be appropriate, and one could not wear it
+at the back without conveying an unpleasant impression of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>two-facedness, if the coined word be permissible.</p>
+
+<p>Still the owl is no worse than the trimming suggested by a funny
+paper. The tears of mirth come yet at the picture of a hat of rough
+straw, shaped like a nest, on which sat a full-fledged Plymouth Rock
+hen, with her neck proudly, yet graciously curved. Perhaps Mr. Payne
+saw the picture and forthwith decided to do something in the same
+line, but there is a singular inappropriateness in placing the bird of
+Minerva upon the head of poor Eva, who made the old, old bargain in
+which she had everything to lose, and nothing save the bitterest
+experience to gain. A stuffed kitten, so young and innocent that its
+eyes were still blue and bleary, would have been more appropriate on
+Eva&#8217;s bonnet, and just as pretty.</p>
+
+<p>In <i>The Fortunes of Oliver Horn</i>, Margaret Grant wears a particularly
+striking costume:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;The cloth skirt came to her ankles, which were covered with
+yarn stockings, and her feet were encased in shoes that gave
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>him the shivers, the soles being as thick as his own and
+the leather as tough.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Her blouse was of grey flannel, belted to the waist by a
+cotton saddle-girth, white and red, and as broad as her
+hand. The tam-o-shanter was coarse and rough, evidently
+home-made, and not at all like McFudd&#8217;s, which was as soft
+as the back of a kitten and without a seam.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>With all due respect to Mr. Smith, one must insist that Margaret&#8217;s
+shoes were all right as regards material and build. She would have
+been more comfortable if they had been &#8220;high-necked&#8221; shoes, and, in
+that case, the yarn hosiery would not have troubled him, but that is a
+minor detail. The quibble comes at the belt, and knowing that Margaret
+was an artist, we must be sure that Mr. Smith was mistaken. It may
+have been one of the woven cotton belts, not more than two inches
+wide, which, for a dizzy moment, were at the height of fashion, and
+then tottered and fell, but a &#8220;saddle-girth&#8221;&mdash;never!</p>
+
+<p>In that charming morceau, <i>The Inn of the Silver Moon</i>, Mr. Viele puts
+his heroine <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>into plaid stockings and green knickerbockers&mdash;an
+outrageous costume truly, even for wheeling.</p>
+
+<p>As if recognising his error, and, with veritable masculine
+stubbornness, refusing to admit it, Mr. Viele goes on to say that the
+knickerbockers were &#8220;tailor-made!&#8221; And thereby he makes a bad matter
+very much worse.</p>
+
+<p>In <i>The Wings of the Morning</i>, Iris, in spite of the storm through
+which the <i>Sirdar</i> vainly attempts to make its way, appears throughout
+in a &#8220;lawn dress&#8221;&mdash;white, undoubtedly, since all sorts and conditions
+of men profess to admire white lawn!</p>
+
+<p>How cold the poor girl must have been! And even if she could have been
+so inappropriately gowned on shipboard, she had plenty of time to put
+on a warm and suitable tailor-made gown before she was shipwrecked.
+This is sheer fatuity, for any one with Mr. Tracy&#8217;s abundant ingenuity
+could easily have contrived ruin for the tailored gown in time for
+Iris to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>assume masculine garb and participate bravely in that fearful
+fight on the ledge.</p>
+
+<p>Whence, oh whence, comes this fondness for lawn? Are not organdies,
+dimities, and embroidered muslins fully as becoming to the women who
+trip daintily through the pages of men&#8217;s books? Lawn has been a back
+number for many a weary moon, and still we read of it!</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When in doubt, lead trumps,&#8221; might well be paraphrased thus: &#8220;When in
+doubt, put her into white lawn!&#8221; Even &#8220;J. P. M.,&#8221; that gentle spirit
+to whom so many hidden things were revealed, sent his shrewish &#8220;Kate&#8221;
+off for a canter through the woods in a white gown, and, if memory
+serves, it was lawn!</p>
+
+<p>In <i>The Master</i>, Mr. Zangwill describes Eleanor Wyndwood as &#8220;the
+radiant apparition of a beautiful woman in a shimmering amber gown,
+from which her shoulders rose dazzling.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So far so good. But a page or two farther on, that delightful minx,
+Olive Regan, wears &#8220;a dress of soft green-blue <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>cut high, with yellow
+roses at the throat.&#8221; One wonders whether Mr. Zangwill ever really saw
+a woman in any kind of a gown &#8220;with yellow roses at the throat,&#8221; or
+whether it is but the slip of an overstrained fancy. The fact that he
+has married since writing this gives a goodly assurance that by this
+time he knows considerably more about gowns.</p>
+
+<p>Still there is always a chance that the charm may not work, for Mr.
+Arthur Stringer, who has been reported as being married to a very
+lovely woman, takes astonishing liberties in <i>The Silver Poppy</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;She floated in before Reppellier, buoyant, smiling, like a
+breath of open morning itself, a confusion of mellow
+autumnal colours in her wine-coloured gown, and a hat of
+roses and mottled leaves.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Before she had as much as drawn off her gloves&mdash;and they
+were always the most spotless of white gloves&mdash;she glanced
+about in mock dismay, and saw that the last of the righting
+up had already been done.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Later, we read that the artist pinned an American Beauty upon her
+gown, then <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>shook his head over the colour combination and took it
+off. If the American Beauty jarred enough for a man to notice it, the
+dress must have been the colour of claret, or Burgundy, rather than
+the clear soft gold of sauterne.</p>
+
+<p>This brings us up with a short turn before the hat. What colour were
+the roses? Surely they were not American Beauties, and they could not
+have been pink. Yellow roses would have been a fright, so they must
+have been white ones, and a hat covered with white roses is altogether
+too festive to wear in the morning. The white gloves also would have
+been sadly out of place.</p>
+
+<p>What a comfort it would be to all concerned if the feminine reader
+could take poor Cordelia one side and fix her up a bit! One could pat
+the artistic disorder out of her beautiful yellow hair, help her out
+of her hideous clothes into a grey tailor-made, with a shirt-waist of
+mercerised white cheviot, put on a stock of the same material, give
+her a &#8220;ready-to-wear&#8221; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>hat of the same trig-tailored quality, and, as
+she passed out, hand her a pair of grey su&egrave;de gloves which exactly
+matched her gown.</p>
+
+<p>Though grey would be more becoming, she might wear tan as a concession
+to Mr. Stringer, who evidently likes yellow.</p>
+
+<p>In the same book, we find a woman who gathers up her &#8220;yellow skirts&#8221;
+and goes down a ladder. It might have been only a yellow taffeta
+drop-skirt under tan etamine, but we must take his word for it, as we
+did not see it and he did.</p>
+
+<p>As the Chinese keep the rat tails for the end of the feast, the worst
+clothes to be found in any book must come last by way of climax. Mr.
+Dixon, in <i>The Leopard&#8217;s Spots</i>, has easily outdone every other knight
+of the pen who has entered the lists to portray women&#8217;s clothes.
+Listen to the inspired description of Miss Sallie&#8217;s gown!</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;She was dressed in a morning gown of a soft red material,
+trimmed with old cream lace. The material of a woman&#8217;s dress
+had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>never interested him before. He knew calico from silk,
+but beyond that he never ventured an opinion. To colour
+alone he was responsive. This combination of red and creamy
+white, <i>with the bodice cut low, showing the lines of her
+beautiful white shoulders</i>, and the great mass of dark hair
+rising in graceful curves from her full round neck,
+heightened her beauty to an extraordinary degree.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As she walked, the clinging folds of her dress, outlining
+her queenly figure, seemed part of her very being, and to be
+imbued with her soul. He was dazzled with the new revelation
+of her power over him.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>The fact that she goes for a ride later on, &#8220;dressed in pure white,&#8221;
+sinks into insignificance beside this new and original creation of Mr.
+Dixon&#8217;s. A red morning gown, trimmed with cream lace, cut low enough
+to show the &#8220;beautiful white shoulders&#8221;&mdash;ye gods and little fishes!
+Where were the authorities, and why was not &#8220;Miss Sallie&#8221; taken to the
+detention hospital, pending an inquiry into her sanity?</p>
+
+<p>It would seem that any man, especially one who writes books, could be
+sure of a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>number of women friends. Among these there ought to be at
+least one whom he could take into his confidence. The gentleman
+novelist might go to the chosen one and say: &#8220;My heroine, in moderate
+circumstances, is going to the matin&eacute;e with a girl friend. What shall
+she wear?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Instantly the discerning woman would ask the colour of her eyes and
+hair, and the name of the town she lived in, then behold!</p>
+
+<p>Upon the writer&#8217;s page would come a radiant feminine vision, clothed
+in her right mind and in proper clothes, to the joy of every woman who
+reads the book.</p>
+
+<p>But men are proverbially chary of their confidence, except when they
+are in love, and being in love is supposed to put even book women out
+of a man&#8217;s head. Perhaps in the new Schools of Journalism which are to
+be inaugurated, there will be supplementary courses in millinery
+elective, for those who wish to learn the trade of novel writing.</p>
+
+<p>If a man knows no woman to whom he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>can turn for counsel and advice at
+the critical point in his book, there are only two courses open to
+him, aside from the doubtful one of evasion. He may let his fancy run
+riot and put his heroine into clothes that would give even a dumb
+woman hysterics, or he may follow the example of Mr. Chatfield-Taylor,
+who says of one of his heroines that &#8220;her pliant body was enshrouded
+in white muslin with a blue ribbon at the waist.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Lacking the faithful hench-woman who would gladly put them straight,
+the majority of gentlemen novelists evade the point, and, so far as
+clothes are concerned, their heroines are as badly off as the Queen of
+Spain was said to be for legs.</p>
+
+<p>They delve freely into emotional situations, and fearlessly attempt
+profound psychological problems, but slide off like frightened crabs
+when they strike the clothesline.</p>
+
+<p>After all, it may be just as well, since fashion is transient and
+colours and material do not vary much. Still, judging by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>the painful
+mistakes that many of them have made, the best advice that one can
+give the gallant company of literary craftsmen is this: &#8220;When you come
+to millinery, crawfish!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Maidens of the Sea</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox6 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">F</span>ar out in the ocean, deep and blue,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.1em;">Where the winds dance wild and free,</span><br />
+In coral caves, dwells a beautiful band&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">The maidens of the sea.</span><br />
+<br />
+There are stories old, of the mystic tide,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And legends strange, of the deep,</span><br />
+How the witching sound of the siren&#8217;s song<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Can lull the tempest to sleep.</span><br />
+<br />
+When moonlight falls on a crystal sea,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">When the clouds have backward rolled,</span><br />
+The mermaids sing their low sweet songs,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And their harp strings are of gold.</span><br />
+<br />
+The billows come from the vast unknown&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">From their far-away unseen home;</span><br />
+The waves bring shells to the sandy bar,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And the fairies dance on the foam.</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Technique of the Short Story</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">A</span>n old rule for those who would be well-dressed says: &#8220;When you have
+finished, go to the mirror and see what you can take off.&#8221; The same
+rule applies with equal force to the short story: &#8220;When you have
+written it out, go over it carefully, and see what you can take out.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Besides being the best preparation for the writing of novels,
+short-story writing is undoubtedly, at the present time, the best
+paying and most satisfactory form of any ephemeral literary work. The
+qualities which make it successful are to be attained only by constant
+and patient practice. The real work of writing a story may be brief,
+but years of preparation must be worked through before a manuscript,
+which may be written in an hour or so, can present an artistic result.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p><p>The first and most important thing to consider is the central idea.
+There are only a few ideas in the world, but their ramifications are
+countless, and one need never despair of a theme. Your story may be
+one of either failure or success, but it must have the true ring.
+Given the man and the circumstances, we should know his action.</p>
+
+<p>The plot must unfold naturally; otherwise it will be a succession of
+distinct sensations, rather than a complete and harmonious whole.</p>
+
+<p>There is no better way to produce this effect than to follow Edmund
+Russell&#8217;s rule of colour in dress: &#8220;When a contrasting colour is
+introduced, there should be at least two subordinate repetitions of
+it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Each character should appear, or be spoken of, at least twice before
+his main action. Following this rule makes one of the differences
+between artistic and sensational literature.</p>
+
+<p>The heroine of a dime novel always finds a hero to rescue her in the
+nick of time, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>and perhaps she never sees him again. In the artistic
+novel, while the heroine may see the rescuer first at the time she
+needs him most, he never disappears altogether from the story.</p>
+
+<p>Description is a thing which is much abused. There is no truer
+indication of an inexperienced hand than a story beginning with a
+description of a landscape which is not necessary to the plot. If the
+peculiarities of the scenery must be understood before the idea can be
+developed, the briefest possible description is not out of place.
+Subjectively, a touch of landscape or weather is allowable, but it
+must be purely incidental. Weather is a very common thing and is apt
+to be uninteresting.</p>
+
+<p>It is a mistake to tell anything yourself which the people in the
+story could inform the reader without your assistance. A conversation
+between two people will bring out all the facts necessary as well as
+two pages of narration by the author.</p>
+
+<p>There is a way also of telling things from the point of view of the
+persons <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>which they concern. Those who have studied Latin will find
+the &#8220;indirect discourse&#8221; of Cicero a useful model.</p>
+
+<p>The people in the story can tell their own peculiarities better than
+the author can do it for them. It is not necessary to say that a woman
+is a snarling, grumpy person. Bring the old lady in, and let her
+snarl, if she is in your story at all.</p>
+
+<p>The choice of words is not lightly to be considered. Never use two
+adjectives where one will do, or a weak word where a stronger one is
+possible. Fallows&#8217; <i>100,000 Synonyms and Antonyms</i> and Roget&#8217;s
+<i>Thesaurus of Words and Phrases</i> will prove invaluable to those who
+wish to improve themselves in this respect.</p>
+
+<p>Analysis of sentences which seem to you particularly strong is a good
+way to strengthen your vocabulary. Take, for instance, the oft-quoted
+expression of George Eliot&#8217;s: &#8220;Inclination snatches argument to make
+indulgence seem judicious choice.&#8221; Substitute &#8220;takes&#8221; for &#8220;snatches&#8221;
+and read the sentence again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> Leave out &#8220;seem&#8221; and put &#8220;appear&#8221; in its
+place. &#8220;Proper&#8221; is a synonym for &#8220;judicious&#8221;; substitute it, and put
+&#8220;selection&#8221; in the place of &#8220;choice.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Reading the sentence again we have: &#8220;Inclination takes argument to
+make indulgence appear proper selection.&#8221; The strength is wholly gone
+although the meaning is unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>Find out what you want to say, and then say it, in the most direct
+English at your command. One of the best models of concise expressions
+of thought is to be found in the essays of Emerson. He compresses a
+whole world into a single sentence, and a system of philosophy into an
+epigram.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Literary impressionism,&#8221; which is largely the use of onomatopoetic
+words, is a valuable factor in the artistic short story. It is
+possible to convey the impression of a threatening sky and a stormy
+sea without doing more than alluding to the crash of the surf against
+the shore. The mind of the reader accustomed to subtle touches will at
+once picture the rest.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span></p><p>An element of strength is added also by occasionally referring an
+impression to another sense. For instance, the newspaper poet writes:
+&#8220;The street was white with snow,&#8221; and makes his line commonplace
+doggerel. Tennyson says: &#8220;The streets were <i>dumb</i> with snow,&#8221; and his
+line is poetry.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Blackening the background&#8221; is a common fault with story writers. In
+many of the Italian operas, everybody who does not appear in the final
+scene is killed off in the middle of the last act. This wholesale
+slaughter is useless as well as inartistic. The true artist does not,
+in order that his central figure may stand out prominently, make his
+background a solid wall of gloom. Yet gloom has its proper place, as
+well as joy.</p>
+
+<p>In the old tragedies of the Greeks, just before the final catastrophe,
+the chorus is supposed to advance to the centre of the theatre and
+sing a bacchanal of frensied exultation.</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>Antigone</i> of Sophocles, just before <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>the death of Antigone and
+her lover, the chorus sings an ode which makes one wonder at its
+extravagant expression. When the catastrophe occurs, the mystery is
+explained. Sophocles meant the sacrifice of Antigone to come home with
+its full force; and well he attained his end by use of an artistic
+method which few of our writers are subtle enough to recognise and
+claim for their own purposes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;High-sounding sentences,&#8221; which an inexperienced writer is apt to put
+into the mouths of his people, only make them appear ridiculous. The
+schoolgirl in the story is too apt to say: &#8220;The day has been most
+unpleasant,&#8221; whereas the real schoolgirl throws her books down with a
+bang, and declares that she has &#8220;had a perfectly horrid time!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her grammar may be incorrect, but her method of expression is true to
+life, and there the business of the writer ends.</p>
+
+<p>Put yourself in your hero&#8217;s place and see what you would do under
+similar circumstances. If you were in love with a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>young woman, you
+wouldn&#8217;t get down on your knees, and swear by all that was holy that
+you would die if she didn&#8217;t marry you, at the same time tearing your
+hair out by handfuls, and then endeavour to give her a concise
+biography of yourself.</p>
+
+<p>You would put your arm around her, the first minute you had her to
+yourself, if you felt reasonably sure that she cared for you, and tell
+her what she meant to you&mdash;perhaps so low that even the author of the
+story couldn&#8217;t hear what you said, and would have to describe what he
+saw afterward in order to let his reader guess what had really
+happened.</p>
+
+<p>It is a lamentable fact that the description of a person&#8217;s features
+gives absolutely no idea of his appearance. It is better to give a
+touch or two, and let the imagination do the rest. &#8220;Hair like raven&#8217;s
+wing,&#8221; and the &#8220;midnight eyes,&#8221; and many similar things, may be very
+well spared. The personal charms of the lover may be brought out
+through the mediations of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>the lovee, much better than by pages of
+description.</p>
+
+<p>The law of compensation must always have its place in the artistic
+story. Those who do wrong must suffer wrong&mdash;those who work must be
+rewarded, if not in the tangible things they seek, at least in the
+conscious strength that comes from struggling. And &#8220;poetic justice,&#8221;
+which metes out to those who do the things that they have done, is
+relentless and eternal, in art, as well as in life.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Style&#8221; is purely an individual matter, and, if it is anything at all,
+it is the expression of one&#8217;s self. Zola has said that, &#8220;art is nature
+seen through the medium of a temperament,&#8221; and the same is true of
+literature. Bunner&#8217;s stories are as thoroughly Bunner as the man who
+wrote them, and <i>The Badge of Courage</i> is nothing unless it be the
+moody, sensitive, half-morbid Stephen Crane.</p>
+
+<p>Observation of things nearest at hand and the sympathetic
+understanding of people are the first requisites. Do not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>place the
+scene of a story in Europe if you have never been there, and do not
+assume to comprehend the inner life of a Congressman if you have never
+seen one. Do not write of mining camps if you have never seen a
+mountain, or of society if you have never worn evening dress.</p>
+
+<p>James Whitcomb Riley has made himself loved and honoured by writing of
+the simple things of home, and Louisa Alcott&#8217;s name is a household
+word because she wrote of the little women whom she knew. Eugene Field
+has written of the children that he loved and understood, and won a
+truer fame than if he had undertaken <i>The Master</i> of Zangwill.
+Kipling&#8217;s life in India has given us <i>Plain Tales from the Hills</i> and
+<i>The Jungle Book</i>, which Mary E. Wilkins could not have written in
+spite of the genius which made her New England stories the most
+effective of their kind. Joel Chandler Harris could not have written
+<i>The Prisoner of Zenda</i>, but those of us who have enjoyed the wiles of
+that &#8220;monstus <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>soon beast, Brer Rabbit,&#8221; would not have it otherwise.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>You cannot write of love unless you have loved, of suffering unless
+you have suffered, or of death unless some one who was near to you has
+learned the heavenly secret. A little touch of each must teach you the
+full meaning of the great thing you mean to write about, or your work
+will be lacking. There are few of us to whom the great experiences do
+not come sooner or later, and, in the meantime, there are the little
+everyday happenings, which are full of sweetness and help, if they are
+only seen properly, to last until the great things come to test our
+utmost strength, to crush us if we are not strong, and to make us
+broader, better men and women if we withstand the blow.</p>
+
+<p>And lastly, remember this, that merit is invariably recognised. If
+your stories are worth printing, they will fight their way through
+&#8220;the abundance of material on hand.&#8221; The light of the public square
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>is the unfailing test, and a good story is sure to be published
+sooner or later, if a fair amount of literary instinct is exercised in
+sending it out. Meteoric success is not desirable. Slow, hard,
+conscientious work will surely win its way, and those who are now near
+the bottom of the ladder are gradually ascending to make room for the
+next generation of story-writers on the rounds below.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span></p>
+<h2>To Dorothy</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox7 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>here&#8217;s a sleepy look in your violet eyes,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.1em;">So the sails of our ship we&#8217;ll unfurl,</span><br />
+And turn the prow to the Land of Rest,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">My dear little Dorothy girl.</span><br />
+<br />
+Twilight is coming soon, little one,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">The sheep have gone to the fold;</span><br />
+See! where our white sails bend and dip<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">In the sunset glow of gold.</span><br />
+<br />
+The roses nod to the sound of the waves,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And the bluebells sweet are ringing;</span><br />
+Do you hear the music, Dorothy dear?<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">The song that the angels are singing?</span><br />
+<br />
+The fairies shall weave their drowsy spell<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">On the shadowy shore of the stream;</span><br />
+Dear little voyager say &#8220;good-night,&#8221;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">For the birds are beginning to dream.</span><br />
+<br />
+O white little craft, with sails full spread,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">My heart goes out with thee;</span><br />
+God keep thee strong with thy precious freight,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">My Dorothy&mdash;out at sea.</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Writing a Book</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">H</span>aving written a few small books which have been published by a
+reputable house, and which have been pleasantly received by both the
+press and the public, and having just completed another which I
+devoutly pray may meet the same fate, I feel that I may henceforth
+deem myself an author.</p>
+
+<p>I have been considered such for some time among my numerous
+acquaintances ever since I made my literary bow with a short story in
+a literary magazine, years and years ago. Being of the feminine
+persuasion, I am usually presented to strangers as &#8220;an authoress.&#8221; It
+is at these times that I wish I were a man.</p>
+
+<p>The social side of authorship is extremely interesting. At least once
+a week, I am asked how I &#8220;came to write.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span></p><p>This is difficult, for I do not know. When I so reply, my questioner
+ascertains by further inquiries where I was educated and how I have
+been trained. Never having been through a &#8220;School of Journalism,&#8221; my
+answer is not satisfactory.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must read a great deal in order to get all those ideas,&#8221; is
+frequently said to me. I reply that I do read a great deal, being
+naturally bookish, but that it is the great object of my life to avoid
+getting ideas from books. To an author, &#8220;Plagiarist&#8221; is like the old
+cry of &#8220;Wolf,&#8221; and when an idea is once assimilated it is difficult
+indeed to distinguish it from one&#8217;s own.</p>
+
+<p>I am often asked how long it takes me to write a book. I am ashamed to
+tell, but sometimes the secret escapes, since I am naturally truthful,
+and find it hard to parry a direct question. The actual time of
+composition is always greeted with astonishment, and I can read the
+questioner&#8217;s inference, that if I can do so much <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span>in so short a time,
+how much could I do if I actually worked!</p>
+
+<p>This is always distasteful, so I hasten to add that the composition is
+really a very small part of the real writing of a book, and that
+authors&#8217; methods differ. My own practice is not to begin to write
+until my material is fully arranged in my mind, and I often use notes
+which I have been making for a period of months. Such a report is
+seldom convincing, however, to my questioners. I am gradually
+learning, when this inquiry comes, to smile inscrutably.</p>
+
+<p>It seems strange to many people that I do not work all the time. If I
+can write a short story in two hours and be paid thirty dollars for
+it, I am an idiot indeed if I do not write at least three in a day!
+Ninety dollars a day might easily mount up into a very comfortable
+income.</p>
+
+<p>Still, there are some who understand that an author cannot write
+continuously any more than a spider or a silkworm can spin all the
+time. These people ask me <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span>when, and where, and how, I get my
+material.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Getting material&#8221; is supposed to be a secret process, and I am
+thought a gay deceiver when I say I make no particular effort to get
+it&mdash;that it comes in the daily living&mdash;like the morning cream! I am
+then asked if I rely wholly upon &#8220;inspiration.&#8221; I answer that
+&#8220;inspiration&#8221; doubtless has its value as well as hard work, and that
+the author who would derive all possible benefit from the rare flashes
+of it must have the same command of technique that a good workman has
+of his tools.</p>
+
+<p>The majority learn with surprise that there is more to a book than is
+self-evident. It was once my happy lot to put this fact into the
+understanding of a lady from the country.</p>
+
+<p>With infinite pains I told her of the constant study of words,
+illustrated the fine shades of distinction between synonyms, spoke of
+the different ways in which characters and events might be introduced,
+and of the subordinate repetition <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>of contrasting themes. She listened
+in breathless wonder, and then turned to her daughter: &#8220;There, Mame,&#8221;
+she said, &#8220;I told you there was something in it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing so pathetic as the widespread literary ambition among
+people whose future is utterly hopeless. It is sad enough for one who
+has attained a small success to see the heights which are ever beyond,
+and it makes one gentle indeed to those who come seeking aid.</p>
+
+<p>One ambitious soul once asked me if I would teach her to write. I
+replied that I did not know of any way in which it could be taught,
+but that I would gladly help her if I could. She said she had
+absolutely no imagination, and asked me if that would make any
+difference. I told her it was certainly an unfortunate circumstance
+and advised her to cultivate that quality before she attempted
+extensive writing. I suppose she is still doing it, for I have not
+been asked for further assistance.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span></p><p>People often inquire what qualities I deem essential to literary
+success. Imagination is, of course, the first, observation, the
+second, and ambition, perseverance and executive ability are
+indispensable. Besides these I would place the sense of humour, of
+proportion, sympathy, insight,&mdash;indeed, there is nothing admirable in
+human nature which would come amiss in the equipment of a writer.</p>
+
+<p>The necessity for the humourous sense was recently brought home to me
+most forcibly. A woman brought me the manuscript of a novel which she
+asked me to read. She felt that something was wrong with it, but she
+did not know just what it was. She said it needed &#8220;a few little
+touches,&#8221; she thought, such as my experience would have fitted me to
+give, and she would be grateful, indeed, if I would revise it. She
+added that, owing to the connection which I had formed with my
+publishing house, it would be an easy matter for me to get it
+published, and she generously offered to divide the royalties <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span>with me
+if I would consummate the arrangement!</p>
+
+<p>I began to read the manuscript, and had not gone far when I discovered
+that it was indeed rare. The entire family read it, or portions of it,
+with screams of laughter, and with tears in their eyes, although it
+was not intended to be a funny book at all. To this day, certain
+phrases from that novel will upset any one of us, even at a solemn
+time.</p>
+
+<p>Of course it was badly written. Characters appeared, talked for a few
+pages, and were never seen or heard from again.</p>
+
+<p>Long conversations were intruded which had no connection with such
+plot as there was. Commonplace descriptions of scenery, also useless,
+were frequent. Many a time the thread of the story was lost. There
+were no distinguishing traits in any one of the characters&mdash;they all
+talked very much alike. But the supreme defect was the author&#8217;s lack
+of humour. With all seriousness, she made her people say and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>do
+things which were absolutely ridiculous and not by any means true to
+life.</p>
+
+<p>I think I must have an unsuspected bit of tact somewhere for I
+extricated myself from the situation, and the woman is still my
+friend. I did not hurt her feelings about her book, nor did I send it
+to my publishers with a letter of recommendation. I remarked that her
+central idea was all right, which was true, since it was a love story,
+but that it had not been properly developed and that she needed to
+study. She thanked me for my counsel and said she would rewrite it. I
+wish it might be printed just as it was, however, for it is indeed a
+sodden and mirthless world in which we live and move.</p>
+
+<p>As the editors say on the refusal blanks, &#8220;I am always glad to read
+manuscripts,&#8221; although, as a rule, it makes an enemy for me if I try
+to help the author by criticism, when only praise was expected or
+desired.</p>
+
+<p>Having written some verse which has landed in respectable places, I am
+also asked about poetry. Poems written in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>trochaic metre with the
+good old rhymes, &#8220;trees and breeze,&#8221; &#8220;light and night,&#8221; soldered on at
+the end of the lines, are continually brought to me for revision and
+improvement.</p>
+
+<p>Once, for the benefit of the literary aspirant, I brought out my
+rhyming dictionary, but I shall never do it again. He looked it over
+carefully, while I explained the advantage for the writer in having
+before him all the available rhymes, so that the least common might be
+quickly chosen and the verse made to run smoothly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Humph!&#8221; he said; &#8220;it&#8217;s just the book. Anybody can write poetry with
+one of these books!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>My invaluable thesaurus is chained to my desk in order that it may not
+escape, and I frequently have to justify its existence when aliens
+penetrate my den. &#8220;It&#8217;s no wonder you can write,&#8221; was said to me once.
+&#8220;Here&#8217;s all the English language right on your desk, and all you&#8217;ve
+got to do is to put it together.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; I answered wickedly, &#8220;but it&#8217;s all in the dictionary too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Last week I had a rare treat. I met a woman who had &#8220;never seen a
+literary person before,&#8221; and who said &#8220;it was quite a novelty!&#8221; I
+beamed upon her, for it is very nice to be a &#8220;novelty,&#8221; and after a
+while we became quite confidential.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want you to tell me just how you write,&#8221; she said, &#8220;so&#8217;s I can tell
+the folks at home. I&#8217;m going to buy some of your books to give away.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mindful of &#8220;royalty to author,&#8221; I immediately became willing to tell
+anything I could.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I want to know how you write. Do you just sit down and do it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I just sit down and do it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you write any special time?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, mornings, usually; but any time will do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you write with&mdash;a pen or a pencil?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Neither, I always use a typewriter.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, can you write on a typewriter?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Yes, it&#8217;s much easier than a pen, and it keeps the ink off your
+hands. You can write with both hands at once, you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have to write it all out with a pencil, first, don&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I just think into the keys.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wouldn&#8217;t it be easier to write it with a pencil first and then copy
+it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, or I&#8217;d do it that way.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you dress any special way when you write?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, only I must be neat and also comfortable. I usually wear a
+shirt-waist and take off my collar. Can&#8217;t write with a collar on, but
+I must be well groomed otherwise.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence. The little lady was digesting the
+information which she had just received.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It seems easy enough,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I should think any one could write.
+What do you do when it is done?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I go all over it and revise very carefully.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Why, do you have to go all over it, after it is done?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Certainly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then it takes you longer than it does most people, doesn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I cannot say as to that. Everybody revises.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, when I write a letter, if I go over it I always scratch out so
+much that I have to do it over.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the idea, exactly,&#8221; I replied. &#8220;I go over it until there isn&#8217;t
+a thing to be scratched out, or a word to be changed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you&#8217;ve got lots left,&#8221; she said, enviously. &#8220;When I go over a
+letter there&#8217;s hardly anything left.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Innumerable questions followed these, but at last she had her
+curiosity partially satisfied and turned away from me. I trust,
+however, that I shall some day meet her again, for she too is &#8220;a
+novelty!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The mechanical part of a book is a source of great wonder to the
+uninitiated. My galley proofs were once passed around among the guests
+at a summer hotel as if <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span>they were some new strange animal. They did
+not understand page proofs nor plates, nor how I could ever know when
+it was right.</p>
+
+<p>The cover is frequently commented upon as a thing of beauty (which
+with my publishers it always is), and I am asked if I did it. I am
+always sorry that I do not know enough to do covers, so I have to
+explain that an artist does that&mdash;that I often do not see it until the
+first copies come from the bindery, and that I am of such small
+importance that I am not often consulted in relation to the
+matter&mdash;being merely the poor worm who wrote the book.</p>
+
+<p>There are many people who seem to be afraid to talk before me lest
+their pearly utterances be transformed into copy. Time and time again
+I have heard this: &#8220;We must be very careful what we say now, or Miss
+<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&mdash;</span> will put us into a book!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>People are strangely literal. An author gets no credit whatever for
+inventive faculty&mdash;his characters and stories are supposedly real
+people and real things. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>I am asked how I came to know so much about
+such and such a thing. I once wrote a love story with an unhappy
+ending and it was at once assumed that I had been disappointed in
+love!</p>
+
+<p>When my first book came from the press I was pointed out at a
+reception as the author of it. The man surveyed me long and carefully,
+then he announced: &#8220;That&#8217;s a mistake. That girl never wrote that book.
+She&#8217;s too frivolous and empty headed!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I have tried, until I am discouraged, to make people understand that a
+book does not have to be a verity in order to be true&mdash;that a story
+must be possible, instead of actual, and that actual circumstances may
+be too unreal for literature.</p>
+
+<p>There are always people who will ask that things, even books, may be
+written especially for them. People often want to tell me a story and
+let me write it up into a nice book and divide the royalties with
+them! During a summer at the coast, I had endless opportunities to
+write biographical <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>sketches of the guests at the hotel&mdash;to write a
+story and put them all into it, or to write something about anything,
+that they might have as &#8220;a souvenir!&#8221; As a matter of fact, there were
+only two people at the hotel who could have been of any possible use
+as copy, and one of these was a woman to whom only Mr. Stockton could
+have done justice.</p>
+
+<p>It was hard to be always good-natured, but I lost my temper only once.
+We stayed late into the autumn and were rewarded by a magnificent
+storm. I put on my bathing suit and my mackintosh and went down to the
+beach, in the teeth of a northwest gale. Little needles of sand were
+blown in my face, and I lost my cap, but it was well worth the effort.
+For over an hour we stood on the desolate beach, sheltered from the
+sand by a bath house. I had never seen anything so grand&mdash;it was far
+beyond words. At last it grew dark and I was soaked through and stiff
+with the cold. So I went back to the hotel, my soul struck dumb by the
+might <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span>and glory of the sea. My heart was too full to speak. The
+majestic chords were still thundering in my ears; that tempest-tossed
+ocean was still before my eyes. On my way upstairs I met a woman whom
+I had formerly liked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Miss <span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&mdash;,</span> I want you to write me a description of that storm!&#8221; I
+brushed past her, rudely, I fear, and she caught hold of the cape of
+my mackintosh with elephantine playfulness. &#8220;You can&#8217;t go,&#8221; she said
+coquettishly, &#8220;until you promise to write me a description of that
+storm!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t write it,&#8221; I said coldly. &#8220;Please let me go.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve got to write it,&#8221; she returned. &#8220;I know you can, and I won&#8217;t
+let you go until you promise me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I wrenched myself away from her, white with wrath, and got to my room
+before she did, though she was still pursuing me. I locked my door and
+had a hard fight for my self-control. From the beach came the distant
+boom of the surf, mingled with the liquid melody of the returning
+breakers.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span></p><p>Later, just as I had finished dressing for dinner, there was a tap at
+my door. My friend (?) stood there beaming. &#8220;Have you got it done? You
+know you promised to write me a description of that storm!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She remained only three days longer, and I stayed away from her as
+much as possible, but occasional meetings were inevitable. When the
+gladsome time of parting came, she hung about my neck.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want you to come and see me,&#8221; she said. &#8220;You know you haven&#8217;t done
+what you said you would. Don&#8217;t you forget to write me a description of
+that storm!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>My business arrangements with my publishers are seemingly a matter of
+public interest. I am asked how much it costs to print a book the size
+of mine. People are surprised to find that I do not pay the expenses
+and that I haven&#8217;t the least idea of what it costs.</p>
+
+<p>Then they want to know if the publisher buys the book of me. I explain
+that this is sometimes done, but that I myself am <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span>paid upon the
+royalty basis, <span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&mdash;</span> per cent. on the list price of every copy sold.
+This seems painfully small to the dear public, but it is comparatively
+easy to demonstrate that the royalty on five or six thousand copies is
+quite worth while.</p>
+
+<p>They shortly come to the conclusion, however, that the publishers make
+more money than I do, and that seems to them to be very unfair. They
+suggest that if I published it myself, I should make a great deal more
+money!</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult for them to understand that writing books and selling
+books are two very different propositions&mdash;that I don&#8217;t know enough to
+sell books, and that the imprint of a reputable house upon the
+title-page is worth a great deal to any author.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; a man once said to me, &#8220;how much did you make out of your book
+this year?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I explained that the percentage royalty basis was really an equal
+division of the profits, everything considered, and that all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>the
+financial risk was on one side. I named my few hundreds, with which I
+was very well satisfied. He absorbed himself in a calculation on the
+back of an envelope.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I figure out,&#8221; said he, at length, &#8220;that they must have made at least
+a third more than you did. That isn&#8217;t fair!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>My ire arose. &#8220;It is perfectly fair,&#8221; I replied. &#8220;Paper is cheap, I
+know, but composition isn&#8217;t, and advertising isn&#8217;t. They are welcome
+to every penny they can make out of my books. I&#8217;d be glad to have them
+make twice as much as they do now, even if my own income remained the
+same.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At this point, I became telepathically aware that I was considered
+crazy, so I changed the subject.</p>
+
+<p>I am often asked how I happened to meet my publishers and &#8220;get in with
+them,&#8221; and as a very great favour to me, and to them, I am offered the
+privilege of sending them some &#8220;splendid novel which was written by a
+friend&#8221; of somebody&mdash;as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span>they know me, &#8220;they have decided to let my
+publishers have the book!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They are surprised to hear me say that I have never met any member of
+the firm, though I was in the same city with them for over a year.
+More than this, there is nothing on earth, except a green worm, which
+would scare me so much as a summons to that publishing house.</p>
+
+<p>I have walked by in fear and trembling. I have seen a huge pile of my
+books in the window, and on the bulletin board a poster which bore my
+name in conspicuous letters, as if I had been cured of something. But
+I should no more dare to go into that office than I should venture to
+call upon the wife of the President with a shawl over my head, and my
+fancywork tucked under my arm.</p>
+
+<p>This is incomprehensible to the uninitiated. The publishers have ever
+been most courteous and kind. They are people with whom it is a
+pleasure to have any sort of business dealings, but we are not bosom
+friends&mdash;and I very much fear <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span>that they do not care to become chummy
+with me.</p>
+
+<p>There may be some authors who have taken nerve tonics and are not
+afraid to meet an editor or publisher. I have even read of some who
+will walk cheerfully into an editorial sanctum&mdash;but I&#8217;ve never seen a
+sanctum, nor an editor, nor a publisher. I don&#8217;t even write to an
+editor when I send him a piece&mdash;just put in a stamp. He usually knows
+what to do with it.</p>
+
+<p>Fame, or long experience, may enable authors to meet the arbiters of
+their destiny without becoming frightened, but I have had brief
+experience, and still less fame. The admirable qualities of the
+pachyderm may have been bestowed upon some authors&mdash;but not on this
+one.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Man Behind the Gun</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox8 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">N</span>ow let the eagle flap his wings<br />
+<span style="margin-left: .10em;">And let the cannon roar,</span><br />
+For while the conquering bullet sings<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">We pledge the commodore.</span><br />
+First battle of a righteous war<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Right royally he won,</span><br />
+But here&#8217;s a health to the jolly tar&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">To the man behind the gun!</span><br />
+<br />
+Now praise be to the flag-ship&#8217;s spars&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">To the captain in command,</span><br />
+And honour to the Stripes and Stars<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">For whose defence they stand;</span><br />
+And for the pilot at his wheel<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">Let the streams of red wine run,</span><br />
+But here&#8217;s a health to the man of steel&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">The man behind the gun!</span><br />
+<br />
+Here&#8217;s to the man who does not swerve<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">In the face of any foe;</span><br />
+Here&#8217;s to the man of iron nerve,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">On deck and down below;</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span>Here&#8217;s to the man whose heart is glad<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">When the battle has begun;</span><br />
+Here&#8217;s to the health of that daring lad&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">To the man behind the gun!</span><br />
+<br />
+Now let the Stars and Stripes float high<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And let the eagle soar;</span><br />
+Until the echoes make reply<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">We pledge the commodore.</span><br />
+Here&#8217;s to the chief and here&#8217;s to war,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">And here&#8217;s to the fleet that won,</span><br />
+And here&#8217;s a health to the jolly tar&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.4em;">To the man behind the gun!</span></p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Quaint Old Christmas Customs</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">C</span>ompared with the celebrations of our ancestors, the modern Christmas
+becomes a very hurried thing. The rush of the twentieth century
+forbids twelve days of celebration, or even two. Paterfamilias
+considers himself very indulgent if he gives two nights and a day to
+the annual festival, because, forsooth, &#8220;the office needs him!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>One by one the quaint old customs have vanished. We still have the
+Christmas tree, evergreens in our houses and churches, and the yawning
+stocking still waits in many homes for the good St. Nicholas.</p>
+
+<p>But what is poor Santa Claus to do when the chimney leads to the
+furnace? And what of the city apartment, which boasts a radiator and
+gas grate, but no chimney? The myth evidently needs reconstruction <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span>to
+meet the times in which we live, and perhaps we shall soon see
+pictures of Santa Claus arriving in an automobile, and taking the
+elevator to the ninth floor, flat B, where a single childish stocking
+is hung upon the radiator.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly all of the Christmas observances began in ancient Rome. The
+primitive Italians were wont to celebrate the winter solstice and call
+it the feast of Saturn. Thus Saturnalia came to mean almost any kind
+of celebration which came in the wake of conquest, and these
+ceremonies being engrafted upon Anglo-Saxon customs assumed a
+religious significance.</p>
+
+<p>The pretty maid who hesitates and blushes beneath the overhanging
+branch of mistletoe, never stops to think of the grim festival with
+which the Druids celebrated its gathering.</p>
+
+<p>In their mythology the plant was regarded with the utmost reverence,
+especially when found growing upon an oak.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of the winter solstice, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>ancient Britons, accompanied
+by their priests, the Druids, went out with great pomp and rejoicing
+to gather the mistletoe, which was believed to possess great curative
+powers. These processions were usually by night, to the accompaniment
+of flaring torches and the solemn chanting of the people. When an oak
+was reached on which the parasite grew, the company paused.</p>
+
+<p>Two white bulls were bound to the tree and the chief Druid, clothed in
+white to signify purity, climbed, more or less gracefully, to the
+plant. It was severed from the oak, and another priest, standing
+below, caught it in the folds of his robe. The bulls were then
+sacrificed, and often, alas, human victims also. The mistletoe thus
+gathered was divided into small portions and distributed among the
+people. The tiny sprays were fastened above the doors of the houses,
+as propitiation to the sylvan deities during the cold season.</p>
+
+<p>These rites were retained throughout the Roman occupation of Great
+Britain, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span>and for some time afterward, under the sovereignty of the
+Jutes, the Saxons, and the Angles.</p>
+
+<p>In Scandinavian mythology there is a beautiful legend of the
+mistletoe. Balder, the god of poetry, the son of Odin and Friga, one
+day told his mother that he had dreamed his death was near at hand.
+Much alarmed, the mother invoked all the powers of nature&mdash;earth, air,
+water, fire, animals and plants, and obtained from them a solemn oath
+that they would do her son no harm.</p>
+
+<p>Then Balder fearlessly took his place in the combats of the gods and
+fought unharmed while showers of arrows were falling all about him.</p>
+
+<p>His enemy, Loake, determined to discover the secret of his
+invulnerability, and, disguising himself as an old woman, went to the
+mother with a question of the reason of his immunity. Friga answered
+that she had made a charm and invoked all nature to keep from injuring
+her son.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Indeed,&#8221; said the old woman, &#8220;and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>did you ask all the animals and
+plants? There are so many, it seems impossible.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All but one,&#8221; answered Friga proudly; &#8220;all but a little insignificant
+plant which grows upon the bark of the oak. This I did not think of
+invoking, since so small a thing could do no harm.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Much delighted, Loake went away and gathered mistletoe. Then he
+entered the assembly of the gods and made his way to the blind Heda.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why do you not shoot with the arrows at Balder?&#8221; asked Loake.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Alas,&#8221; replied Heda, &#8220;I am blind and have no arms.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Loake then gave him an arrow tipped with mistletoe and said: &#8220;Balder
+is before thee.&#8221; Heda shot and Balder fell, pierced through the heart.</p>
+
+<p>In its natural state, the plant is believed to be propagated by the
+missel-thrush, which feeds upon its berries, but under favourable
+climatic conditions one may raise one&#8217;s own mistletoe by bruising the
+berries on the bark of fruit trees, where <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>they take root readily. It
+must be remembered, however, that the plant is a true parasite and
+will eventually kill whatever tree gives it nourishment.</p>
+
+<p>Kissing under the mistletoe was also a custom of the Druids, and in
+those uncivilised days men kissed each other. For each kiss, a single
+white berry was plucked from the spray, and kept as a souvenir by the
+one who was kissed.</p>
+
+<p>The burning of the Yule log was an ancient Christmas ceremony borrowed
+from the early Scandinavians. At their feast of Juul (pronounced
+<i>Yuul</i>), at the time of the winter solstice, they were wont to kindle
+huge bonfires in honour of their god Thor. The custom soon made its
+way to England where it is still in vogue in many parts of the
+country.</p>
+
+<p>One may imagine an ancient feudal castle, heavily fortified, standing
+in splendid isolation upon a snowy hill, on that night of all others
+when war was forgotten and peace proclaimed. Drawn by six horses, the
+great Yule log was brought into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span>the hall and rolled into the vast
+fireplace, where it was lighted with the charred remnants of last
+year&#8217;s Yule log, religiously kept in some secure place as a charm
+against fire.</p>
+
+<p>As the flames seize upon the oak and the light gleams from the castle
+windows, a lusty procession of wayfarers passes through, each one
+raising his hat as he passes the fire which burns all the evil out of
+the hearts of men, and up to the rafters there rings a stern old Saxon
+chant.</p>
+
+<p>When the song was finished, the steaming wassail bowl was brought out,
+and all the company drank to a better understanding.</p>
+
+<p>Up to the time of Henry VI, and even afterward, the Yule log was
+greeted with bards and minstrelsy. If a squinting person came into the
+hall while the log was burning, it was sure to bring bad luck. The
+appearance of a barefooted man was worse, and a flat-footed woman was
+the worst of all.</p>
+
+<p>As an accompaniment to the Yule log, a monstrous Christmas candle was
+burned <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>on the table at supper; even now in St. John&#8217;s College at
+Oxford, there is an old candle socket of stone, ornamented with the
+figure of a lamb. What generations of gay students must have sat
+around that kindly light when Christmas came to Oxford!</p>
+
+<p>Snap-dragon was a favourite Christmas sport at this time. Several
+raisins were put into a large shallow bowl and thoroughly saturated
+with brandy. All other lights were extinguished and the brandy
+ignited. By turns each one of the company tried to snatch a raisin out
+of the flames, singing meanwhile.</p>
+
+<p>In Devonshire, they burn great bundles of ash sticks, while master and
+servants sit together, for once on terms of perfect equality, and
+drink spiced ale, and the season is one of great rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p>Another custom in Devonshire is for the farmer, his family, and
+friends, to partake of hot cake and cider, and afterward go to the
+orchard and place a cake ceremoniously in the fork of a big tree, when
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span>cider is poured over it while the men fire off pistols and the women
+sing.</p>
+
+<p>A similar libation, but of spiced ale, used to be sprinkled through
+the orchards and meadows of Norfolk. Midnight of Christmas was the
+time usually chosen for the ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>In Devon and Cornwall, a belief is current that, at midnight on
+Christmas Eve, the cattle kneel in their stalls in honour of the
+Saviour, as legend claims they did in Bethlehem.</p>
+
+<p>In Wales, they carry about at Christmas time a horse&#8217;s skull gaily
+adorned with ribbons, and supported on a pole by a man who is wholly
+concealed by a white cloth. There is a clever contrivance for opening
+and shutting the jaws, and this strange creature pursues and bites all
+who come near it.</p>
+
+<p>The figure is usually accompanied by a party of men and boys
+grotesquely dressed, who, on reaching a house, sing some verses, often
+extemporaneous, demanding admittance, and are answered in the same
+fashion <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span>by those within until rhymes have given out on one side or
+the other.</p>
+
+<p>In Scotland, he who first opens the door on Christmas Day expects more
+good luck than will fall to the lot of other members of the family
+during the year, because, as the saying goes, he lets in Yule.</p>
+
+<p>In Germany, Christmas Eve is the children&#8217;s night, and there is a tree
+and presents. England and America appear to have borrowed the
+Christmas tree from Germany, where the custom is ancient and very
+generally followed.</p>
+
+<p>In the smaller towns and villages in northern Germany, the presents
+are sent by all the parents to some one fellow who, in high buskins,
+white robe, mask, and flaxen wig, personates the servant, Rupert. On
+Christmas night he goes around to every house, and says that his
+master sent him. The parents and older children receive him with pomp
+and reverence, while the younger ones are often badly frightened.</p>
+
+<p>He asks for the children, and then demands of their parents a report
+of their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>conduct during the past year. The good children are rewarded
+with sugar-plums and other things, while for the bad ones a rod is
+given to the parents with instructions to use it freely during the
+coming year.</p>
+
+<p>In those parts of Pennsylvania where there are many German settlers,
+the little sinners often find birchen rods suggestively placed in
+their stockings on Christmas morning.</p>
+
+<p>In Poland, the Christmas gifts are hidden, and the members of the
+family search for them.</p>
+
+<p>In Sweden and Norway, the house is thoroughly cleaned, and juniper or
+fir branches are spread over the floor. Then each member of the family
+goes in turn to the bake house, or outer shed, where he takes his
+annual bath.</p>
+
+<p>But it is back to Old England, after all, that we look for the
+merriest Christmas. For two or three weeks beforehand, men and boys of
+the poorer class, who were called &#8220;waits,&#8221; sang Christmas carols
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span>under every window. Until quite recently these carols were sung all
+through England, and others of similar import were heard in France and
+Italy.</p>
+
+<p>The English are said to &#8220;take their pleasures sadly,&#8221; but in the
+matter of Christmas they can &#8220;give us cards and spades and still win.&#8221;
+Parties of Christmas drummers used to go around to the different
+houses, grotesquely attired, and play all sorts of tricks. The actors
+were chiefly boys, and the parish beadle always went along to insure
+order.</p>
+
+<p>The Christmas dinner of Old England was a thing capable of giving the
+whole nation dyspepsia if they indulged freely.</p>
+
+<p>The main dish was a boar&#8217;s head, roasted to a turn, and preceded by
+trumpets and minstrelsy. Mustard was indispensable to this dish.</p>
+
+<p>Next came a peacock, skinned and roasted. The beak was gilded, and
+sometimes a bit of cotton, well soaked in spirits, was put into his
+mouth, and when he was brought to the table this was ignited, so <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span>that
+the bird was literally spouting fire. He was stuffed with spices,
+basted with yolks of eggs, and served with plenty of gravy.</p>
+
+<p>Geese, capons, pheasants, carps&#8217; tongues, frumenty, and mince, or
+&#8220;shred&#8221; pies, made up the balance of the feast.</p>
+
+<p>The chief functionary of Christmas was called &#8220;The Lord of Misrule.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In the house of king and nobleman he held full sway for twelve days.
+His badge was a fool&#8217;s bauble and he was always attended by a page,
+both of them being masked. So many pranks were played, and so much
+mischief perpetrated which was far from being amusing, that an edict
+was eventually issued against this form of liberty, not to say
+license.</p>
+
+<p>The Lord of Misrule was especially reviled by the Puritans, one of
+whom set him down as &#8220;a grande captain of mischiefe.&#8221; One may easily
+imagine that this stern old gentleman had been ducked by a party of
+revellers following in the wake of the lawless &#8220;Captaine&#8221; because <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>he
+had refused to contribute to their entertainment.</p>
+
+<p>We need not lament the passing of Christmas pageantry, if the spirit
+of the festival remains. Through the centuries that have passed since
+the first Christmas, the spirit of it has wandered in and out like a
+golden thread in a dull tapestry, sometimes hidden, but never wholly
+lost. It behooves us to keep well and reverently such Christmas as we
+have, else we shall share old Ben Jonson&#8217;s lament in <i>The Mask of
+Father Christmas</i>, which was presented before the English Court nearly
+two hundred years ago:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Any man or woman ... that can give any knowledge, or tell
+any tidings of an old, very old, grey haired gentleman
+called Christmas, who was wont to be a very familiar ghest,
+and visit all sorts of people both pore and rich, and used
+to appear in glittering gold, silk and silver in the court,
+and in all shapes in the theatre in Whitehall, and had
+singing, feasts and jolitie in all places, both citie and
+countrie for his coming&mdash;whosoever can tel what is become of
+him, or where he may be found, let them bring him back again
+into England.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Consecration</h2>
+
+<div class="centerbox7 bbox"><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">C</span>athedral spire and lofty architrave,<br />
+Nor priestly rite and humble reverence,<br />
+Nor costly fires of myrrh and frankincense<br />
+May give the consecration that we crave;<br />
+Upon the shore where tides forever lave<br />
+With grateful coolness on the fevered sense;<br />
+Where passion grows to silence, rapt, intense,<br />
+There waits the chrismal fountain of the wave.<br />
+<br />
+By rock-hewn altars where is said no word,<br />
+Save by the deep that calleth unto deep,<br />
+While organ tones of sea resound above;<br />
+The truth of truths our inmost souls have heard,<br />
+And in our hearts communion wine we keep,<br />
+For He Himself hath said it&mdash;&#8220;God is Love!&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><h3><span class="smcap">Transcriber&#8217;s Note:</span></h3>
+
+<p>Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters&#8217; errors;
+otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author&#8217;s
+words and intent.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Threads of Grey and Gold, by Myrtle Reed
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+</pre>
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Threads of Grey and Gold, by Myrtle Reed
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Threads of Grey and Gold
+
+Author: Myrtle Reed
+
+Illustrator: Clara M. Burd
+
+Release Date: February 14, 2010 [EBook #31272]
+[Last updated: May 28, 2011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREADS OF GREY AND GOLD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ THREADS OF GREY
+ AND GOLD
+
+ BY
+
+ MYRTLE REED
+
+ Author of
+
+ Lavender and Old Lace
+ The Master's Violin
+ Old Rose and Silver
+ A Weaver of Dreams
+ Flower of the Dusk
+ At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern
+ The Shadow of Victory
+ Etc.
+
+ New York
+
+ GROSSET & DUNLAP
+
+ Publishers
+
+
+
+
+ COPYRIGHT, 1902
+ BY
+ MYRTLE REED
+
+
+ BY MYRTLE REED:
+
+ A Weaver of Dreams                Sonnets to a Lover
+ Old Rose and Silver               Master of the Vineyard
+ Lavender and Old Lace             Flower of the Dusk
+ The Master's Violin               At the Sign of the Jack-O'Lantern
+ Love Letters of a Musician        A Spinner in the Sun
+ The Spinster Book                 Later Love Letters of a Musician
+ The Shadow of Victory             Love Affairs of Literary Men
+                    Myrtle Reed Year Book
+
+ This edition is issued under arrangement with the publishers
+ G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: GEORGE WASHINGTON AND MARTHA CURTIS.
+  From a drawing by Clara M. Burd. (Page 34)]
+
+
+
+
+ TO THE READERS OF
+ THE ROMANCES OF MYRTLE REED.
+
+
+--A world-wide circle comprising probably not less than two million
+sympathetic admirers--
+
+This volume, which presents some of the writer's most typical
+utterances--utterances characterised by the combination of wisdom,
+humour, and sentiment that belongs to all the writings of the gifted
+author,
+
+               IS DEDICATED BY
+                    THE EDITOR.
+
+ CHICAGO,
+   _January, 1913._
+
+
+
+
+IN MEMORY OF A WEAVER OF DREAMS.
+
+
+A tribute to Myrtle Reed in recognition of her beautiful and valuable
+contributions to English literature.
+
+     As the spinner of silk weaves his sunbeams of gold,
+     Blending sunset and dawn in its silvery fold,
+     So she wove in the woof of her wonderful words
+     The soft shimmer of sunshine and music of birds.
+     With the radiance of moonlight and perfume of flowers,
+     She lent charm to the springtime and gladdened the hours.
+
+     She spoke cheer to the suffering, joy to the sad;
+     She gave rest to the weary, made the sorrowful glad.
+     The sweet touch of her sympathy soothed every pain,
+     And her words in the drouth were like showers of rain.
+     For she lovingly poured out her blessings in streams
+     As a fountain of waters--a weaver of dreams.
+
+     Her bright smiles were bejewelled, her tears were empearled,
+     And her thoughts were as stars giving light to the world;
+     Her fond dreams were the gems that were woven in gold,
+     And the fabric she wrought was of value untold.
+     Every colour of beauty was radiantly bright,
+     Blending faith, hope, and love in its opaline light.
+
+     And she wove in her woof the great wealth of her heart,
+     For the cord of her life gave the life to each part;
+     And the beauty she wrought, which gave life to the whole,
+     Was her spirit made real--she gave of her soul.
+     So the World built a temple--a glorious shrine--
+     A Taj Mahal of love to the woman divine.
+
+                    ADDISON BLAKELY.
+
+
+
+
+Editorial note
+
+
+The Editor desires to make grateful acknowledgment to the editors and
+publishers of the several periodicals in which the papers contained in
+this volume were first brought into print, for their friendly courtesy
+in permitting the collection of these papers for preservation in book
+form.
+
+ CHICAGO,
+   _January, 1913_.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+                                                  PAGE
+
+ HOW THE WORLD WATCHES THE NEW
+    YEAR COME IN                                    3
+ THE TWO YEARS. (Poem)                             23
+ THE COURTSHIP OF GEORGE
+    WASHINGTON                                     26
+ THE OLD AND THE NEW. (Poem)                       44
+ THE LOVE STORY OF "THE SAGE OF
+    MONTICELLO"                                    46
+ COLUMBIA. (Poem)                                  59
+ STORY OF A DAUGHTER'S LOVE                        60
+ THE SEA VOICE. (Poem)                             75
+ MYSTERY OF RANDOLPH'S COURTSHIP                   77
+ HOW PRESIDENT JACKSON WON HIS
+    WIFE                                           91
+ THE BACHELOR PRESIDENT'S LOYALTY
+ TO A MEMORY                                      105
+ DECORATION DAY. (Poem)                           118
+ ROMANCE OF LINCOLN'S LIFE                        119
+ SILENT THANKSGIVING. (Poem)                      135
+ IN THE FLASH OF A JEWEL                          137
+ THE COMING OF MY SHIP. (Poem)                    156
+ ROMANCE AND THE POSTMAN                          158
+ A SUMMER REVERIE. (Poem)                         171
+ A VIGNETTE                                       172
+ MEDITATION. (Poem)                               175
+ POINTERS FOR THE LORDS OF CREATION               176
+ TRANSITION. (Poem)                               187
+ THE SUPERIORITY OF MAN                           189
+ THE YEAR OF MY HEART. (Poem)                     196
+ THE AVERAGE MAN                                  197
+ THE BOOK OF LOVE. (Poem)                         202
+ THE IDEAL MAN                                    204
+ GOOD-NIGHT, SWEETHEART. (Poem)                   209
+ THE IDEAL WOMAN                                  211
+ SHE IS NOT FAIR. (Poem)                          220
+ THE FIN-DE SIECLE WOMAN                          222
+ THE MOON MAIDEN. (Poem)                          229
+ HER SON'S WIFE                                   230
+ A LULLABY. (Poem)                                247
+ THE DRESSING-SACK HABIT                          248
+ IN THE MEADOW. (Poem)                            259
+ ONE WOMAN'S SOLUTION OF THE
+   SERVANT PROBLEM                                260
+ TO A VIOLIN. (Poem)                              283
+ THE OLD MAID                                     284
+ THE SPINSTER'S RUBAIYAT. (Poem)                  291
+ THE RIGHTS OF DOGS                               293
+ TWILIGHT. (Poem)                                 298
+ WOMEN'S CLOTHES IN MEN'S BOOKS                   299
+ MAIDENS OF THE SEA. (Poem)                       320
+ TECHNIQUE OF THE SHORT STORY                     321
+ TO DOROTHY. (Poem)                               333
+ WRITING A BOOK                                   334
+ THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN. (Poem)                   355
+ QUAINT OLD CHRISTMAS CUSTOMS                     357
+ CONSECRATION. (Poem)                             371
+
+
+
+
+ How the World Watches the
+ New Year Come In
+
+
+The proverbial "good resolutions" of the first of January which are
+usually forgotten the next day, the watch services in the churches,
+and the tin horns in the city streets, are about the only formalities
+connected with the American New Year. The Pilgrim fathers took no note
+of the day, save in this prosaic record: "We went to work betimes";
+but one Judge Sewall writes with no small pride of the blast of
+trumpets which was sounded under his window, on the morning of January
+1st, 1697.
+
+He celebrated the opening of the eighteenth century with a very bad
+poem which he wrote himself, and he hired the bellman to recite the
+poem loudly through the streets of the town of Boston; but happily
+for a public, even now too much wearied with minor poets, the custom
+did not become general.
+
+In Scotland and the North of England the New Year festivities are of
+great importance. Weeks before hand, the village boys, with great
+secrecy, meet in out of the way places and rehearse their favourite
+songs and ballads. As the time draws near, they don improvised masks
+and go about from door to door, singing and cutting many quaint
+capers. The thirty-first of December is called "Hogmanay," and the
+children are told that if they go to the corner, they will see a man
+with as many eyes as the year has days. The children of the poorer
+classes go from house to house in the better districts, with a large
+pocket fastened to their dresses, or a large shawl with a fold in
+front.
+
+Each one receives an oaten cake, a piece of cheese, or sometimes a
+sweet cake, and goes home at night heavily laden with a good supply of
+homely New Year cheer for the rest of the family.
+
+The Scottish elders celebrate the day with a supper party, and as the
+clock strikes twelve, friend greets friend and wishes him "a gude New
+Year and mony o' them."
+
+Then with great formality the door is unbarred to let the Old Year out
+and the New Year in, while all the guests sally forth into the streets
+to "first foot" their acquaintances.
+
+The "first foot" is the first person to enter a house after midnight
+of December 31st. If he is a dark man, it is considered an omen of
+good fortune. Women generally are thought to bring ill luck, and
+in some parts of England a light-haired man, or a light-haired,
+flat-footed man is preferred. In Durham, this person must bring a
+piece of coal, a piece of iron, and a bottle of whiskey. He gives
+a glass of whiskey to each man and kisses each woman.
+
+In Edinburgh, a great crowd gathers around the church in Hunter Square
+and anxiously watches the clock. There is absolute silence from the
+first stroke of twelve until the last, then the elders go to bed, but
+the young folks have other business on hand. Each girl expects the
+"first foot" from her sweetheart and there is occasionally much
+stratagem displayed in outwitting him and arranging to have some
+grandmother or serving maid open the door for him.
+
+During the last century, all work was laid aside on the afternoon of
+the thirty-first, and the men of the hamlet went to the woods and
+brought home a lot of juniper bushes. Each household also procured a
+pitcher of water from "the dead and living ford," meaning a ford in
+the river by which passengers and funerals crossed. This was brought
+in perfect silence and was not allowed to touch the ground in its
+progress as contact with the earth would have destroyed the charm.
+
+The next morning, there were rites to protect the household against
+witchcraft, the evil eye, and other machinations of his satanic
+majesty. The father rose first, and, taking the charmed water and a
+brush, treated the whole family to a generous sprinkling, which was
+usually acknowledged with anything but gratitude.
+
+Then all the doors and windows were closed, and the juniper boughs put
+on the fire. When the smoke reached a suffocating point, the fresh air
+was admitted. The cattle were fumigated in the same way and the
+painful solemnities of the morning were over.
+
+The Scots on the first of the year consult the Bible before breakfast.
+They open it at random and lay a finger on a verse which is supposed
+to be, in some way, an augury for the coming year. If a lamp or a
+candle is taken out of the house on that day, some one will die during
+the year, and on New Year's day a Scotchman will neither lend, borrow
+nor give anything whatsoever out of his house, for fear his luck may
+go with it, and for the same reason the floor must not be swept. Even
+ashes or dirty water must not be thrown out until the next day, and if
+the fire goes out it is a sign of death.
+
+The ancient Druids distributed among the early Britons branches of the
+sacred mistletoe, which had been cut with solemn ceremony in the night
+from the oak trees in a forest that had been dedicated to the gods.
+
+Among the ancient Saxons, the New Year was ushered in with friendly
+gifts, and all fighting ceased for three days.
+
+In Banffshire the peat fires are covered with ashes and smoothed down.
+In the morning they are examined closely, and if anything resembling a
+human footprint is found in the ashes, it is taken as an omen. If the
+footprint points towards the door, one of the family will die or leave
+home during the year. If they point inward, a child will be born
+within the year.
+
+In some parts of rural England, the village maidens go from door to
+door with a bowl of wassail, made of ale, roasted apples, squares of
+toast, nutmeg, and sugar. The bowl is elaborately decorated with
+evergreen and ribbons, and as they go they sing:
+
+     "Wassail, wassail to our town,
+     The cup is white and the ale is brown,
+     The cup is made of the ashen tree,
+     And so is the ale of the good barley.
+
+     "Little maid, little maid, turn the pin,
+     Open the door and let us in;
+     God be there, God be here;
+     I wish you all a Happy New Year."
+
+In Yorkshire, the young men assemble at midnight on the thirty-first,
+blacken their faces, disguise themselves in other ways, then pass
+through the village with pieces of chalk. They write the date of the
+New Year on gates, doors, shutters, and wagons. It is considered lucky
+to have one's property so marked and the revellers are never
+disturbed.
+
+On New Year's Day, Henry VI received gifts of jewels, geese, turkeys,
+hens, and sweetmeats. "Good Queen Bess" was fairly overwhelmed with
+tokens of affection from her subjects. One New Year's morning, she was
+presented with caskets studded with gems, necklaces, bracelets, gowns,
+mantles, mirrors, fans, and a wonderful pair of black silk stockings,
+which pleased her so much that she never afterward wore any other
+kind.
+
+Among the Romans, after the reformation of the calendar, the first
+day, and even the whole month, was dedicated to the worship of the god
+Janus. He was represented as having two faces, and looking two
+ways--into the past and into the future. In January they offered
+sacrifices to Janus upon two altars, and on the first day of the month
+they were careful to regulate their speech and conduct, thinking it an
+augury for the coming year.
+
+New Year's gifts and cards originated in Rome, and there is a record
+of an amusing lawsuit which grew out of the custom. A poet was
+commissioned by a Roman pastry-cook to write the mottoes for the New
+Year day bonbons. He agreed to supply five hundred couplets for six
+sesterces, and though the poor poet toiled faithfully and the mottoes
+were used, the money was not forthcoming. He sued the pastry-cook, and
+got a verdict, but the cook regarded himself as the injured party.
+Crackers were not then invented, but we still have the mottoes--those
+queer heart-shaped things which were the delight of our school-days.
+
+The Persians remember the day with gifts of eggs--literally a "lay
+out!"
+
+In rural Russia, the day begins as a children's holiday. The village
+boys get up at sunrise and fill their pockets with peas and wheat.
+They go from house to house and as the doors are never locked,
+entrance is easy. They throw the peas upon their enemies and sprinkle
+the wheat softly upon their sleeping friends.
+
+After breakfast, the finest horse in the little town is decorated with
+evergreens and berries and led to the house of the greatest nobleman,
+followed by the pea and wheat shooters of the early morning. The lord
+admits both horse and people to his house, where the whole family is
+gathered, and the children of his household make presents of small
+pieces of silver money to those who come with the horse. This is the
+greeting of the peasants to their lord and master.
+
+Next comes a procession of domestic animals, an ox, cow, goat, and
+pig, all decorated with evergreens and berries. These do not enter the
+house but pass slowly up and down outside, that the master and his
+family may see. Then the old women of the village bring barnyard fowls
+to the master as presents, and these are left in the house which the
+horse has only recently vacated. Even the chickens are decorated with
+strings of berries around their necks and bits of evergreen fastened
+to their tails.
+
+The Russians have also a ceremony which is more agreeable. On each New
+Year's Day, a pile of sheaves is heaped up over a large pile of grain,
+and the father, after seating himself behind it, asks the children if
+they can see him. They say they cannot, and he replies that he hopes
+the crops for the coming year will be so fine that he will be hidden
+in the fields.
+
+In the cities there is a grand celebration of mass in the morning and
+the rest of the day is devoted to congratulatory visits. Good wishes
+which cannot be expressed in person are put into the newspapers in the
+form of advertisements, and in military and official circles
+ceremonial visits are paid.
+
+The Russians are very fond of fortune-telling, and on New Year's eve
+the young ladies send their servants into the street to ask the names
+of the first person they meet, and many a bashful lover has hastened
+his suit by taking good care to be the first one who is met by the
+servant of his lady love. At midnight, each member of the family
+salutes every other member with a kiss, beginning with the head of the
+house, and then they retire, after gravely wishing each other a Happy
+New Year.
+
+Except that picturesque rake, Leopold of Belgium, every monarch of
+Europe has for many years begun the New Year with a solemn appeal to
+the Almighty, for strength, guidance, and blessing.
+
+The children in Belgium spend the day in trying to secure a "sugar
+uncle" or a "sugar aunt." The day before New Year, they gather up all
+the keys of the household and divide them. The unhappy mortal who is
+caught napping finds himself in a locked room, from which he is not
+released until a ransom is offered. This is usually money for sweets
+and is divided among the captors.
+
+In France, no one pays much attention to Christmas, but New Year's day
+is a great festival and presents are freely exchanged. The President
+of France also holds a reception somewhat similar to, and possibly
+copied from, that which takes place in the White House.
+
+In Germany, complimentary visits are exchanged between the merest
+acquaintances, and New Year's gifts are made to the servants. The
+night of the thirty-first is called _Sylvester Aben_ and while many of
+the young people dance, the day in more serious households takes on a
+religious aspect. During the evening, there is prayer at the family
+altar, and at midnight the watchman on the church tower blows his
+horn to announce the birth of the New Year.
+
+At Frankfort-on-the-Main a very pretty custom is observed. On New
+Year's eve the whole city keeps a festival with songs, feasting,
+games, and family parties in every house. When the great bell in the
+cathedral tolls the first stroke of midnight, every house opens wide
+its windows. People lean from the casements, glass in hand, and from a
+hundred thousand throats comes the cry: "_Prosit Neujahr!_" At the
+last stroke, the windows are closed and a midnight hush descends upon
+the city.
+
+The hospitable Norwegians and Swedes spread their tables heavily; for
+all who may come in at Stockholm there is a grand banquet at the
+Exchange, where the king meets his people in truly democratic fashion.
+
+The Danes greet the New Year with a tremendous volley of cannon, and
+at midnight old Copenhagen is shaken to its very foundations. It is
+considered a delicate compliment to fire guns and pistols under the
+bedroom windows of one's friends at dawn of the new morning.
+
+The dwellers in Cape Town, South Africa, are an exception to the
+general custom of English colonists, and after the manner of the early
+Dutch settlers they celebrate the New Year during the entire week.
+Every house is full of visitors, every man, woman, and child is
+dressed in gay garments, and no one has any business except pleasure.
+There are picnics to Table Mountain, and pleasure excursions in boats,
+with a dance every evening. At the end of the week, everybody settles
+down and the usual routine of life is resumed.
+
+In the Indian Empire, the day which corresponds to our New Year is
+called "Hooly" and is a feast in honour of the god Krishna. Caste
+temporarily loses ground and the prevailing colour is red. Every one
+who can afford it wears red garments, red powder is thrown as if it
+were _confetti_, and streams of red water are thrown upon the
+passers-by. It is all taken in good part, however, as snowballing is
+with us.
+
+Even "farthest North," where the nights are six months long, there is
+recognition of the New Year. The Esquimaux come out of their snow huts
+and ice caves in pairs, one of each pair being dressed in women's
+clothes. They gain entrance into every _igloo_ in the village, moving
+silently and mysteriously. At last there is not a light left in the
+place, and having extinguished every fire they can find, they kindle a
+fresh one, going through in the meantime solemn ceremonies. From this
+one source, all the fires and lights in the district are kindled anew.
+
+One wonders if there may not be some fear in the breasts of these
+Children of the North, when for an instant they stand in the vastness
+of the midnight, utterly without fire or light.
+
+The most wonderful ceremonies connected with the New Year take place
+in China and Japan. In these countries and in Corea the birth of the
+year is considered the birthday of the whole community. When a child
+is born he is supposed to be a year old, and he remains thus until the
+changing seasons bring the annual birthday of the whole Mongolian
+race, when another year is credited to his account.
+
+In the Chinese quarter of the large cities, the New Year celebrations
+are dreaded by the police, since where there is so much revelry there
+is sure to be trouble. In the native country, the rejoicings absorb
+fully a month, during the first part of which no hunger is allowed to
+exist within the Empire.
+
+The refreshments are light in kind--peanuts, watermelon seeds,
+sweetmeats, oranges, tea and cakes. Presents of food are given to the
+poor, and "brilliant cakes," supposed to help the children in their
+studies, are distributed from the temples.
+
+The poor little Chinamen must sadly need some assistance, in view of
+the fact that every word in their language has a distinct root, and
+their alphabet contains over twenty thousand letters.
+
+At an early hour on New Year's morning, which according to their
+calendar comes between the twenty-first of January and the nineteenth
+of February, they propitiate heaven and earth with offerings of rice,
+vegetables, tea, wine, oranges, and imitation of paper money which
+they burn with incense, joss-sticks, and candles.
+
+Strips of scarlet paper, bearing mottoes, which look like Chinese
+laundry checks, are pasted around and over doors and windows. Blue
+strips among the red, mean that a death has occurred in the family
+since the last celebration.
+
+New Year's calls are much in vogue in China, where every denizen of
+the Empire pays a visit to each of his superiors, and receives them
+from all of his inferiors. Sometimes cards are sent, and, as with us,
+this takes the place of a call.
+
+Images of gods are carried in procession to the beating of a deafening
+gong, and mandarins go by hundreds to the Emperor and the Dowager
+Empress, with congratulatory addresses. Their robes are gorgeously
+embroidered and are sometimes heavy with gold. After this, they
+worship their household gods.
+
+Illuminations and fireworks make the streets gorgeous at night, and a
+monstrous Chinese dragon, spouting flame, is drawn through the
+streets.
+
+People salute each other with cries of "Kung-hi! Kung-hi!" meaning I
+humbly wish you joy, or "Sin-hi! Sin-hi!" May joy be yours.
+
+Many amusements in the way of theatricals and illumination are
+provided for the public.
+
+In both China and Japan, all debts must be paid and all grudges
+settled before the opening of the New Year. Every one is supposed to
+have new clothes for the occasion, and those who cannot obtain them
+remain hidden in their houses.
+
+In Japan, the conventional New Year costume is light blue cotton, and
+every one starts out to make calls. Letters on rice paper are sent to
+those in distant places, conveying appropriate greetings.
+
+The Japanese also go to their favourite tea gardens where bands play,
+and wax figures are sold. Presents of cooked rice and roasted peas,
+oranges, and figs are offered to every one. The peas are scattered
+about the houses to frighten away the evil spirits, and on the
+fourth day of the New Year, the decorations of lobster, signifying
+reproduction, cabbages indicating riches, and oranges, meaning good
+luck, are taken down and replaced with boughs of fruit trees and
+flowers.
+
+Strange indeed is the country in which the milestones of Time pass
+unheeded. In spite of all the mirth and feasting, there is an
+undercurrent of sadness which has been most fitly expressed by Charles
+Lamb:
+
+     "Of all the sounds, the most solemn and touching is the peal
+     which rings out the old year. I never hear it without
+     gathering up in my mind a concentration of all the images
+     that have been diffused over the past twelve months; all
+     that I have done or suffered, performed, or neglected, in
+     that regretted time. I begin to know its worth as when a
+     person dies. It takes a personal colour, nor was it a
+     poetical flight in a contemporary, when he exclaimed: 'I saw
+     the skirts of the departing year!'"
+
+
+
+
+The Two Years
+
+
+     Tread softly, ye throngs with hurrying feet,
+       Look down, O ye stars, in your flight,
+     And bid ye farewell to a time that was sweet,
+       For the year lies a-dying to-night.
+
+     In a shroud of pure snow lie the quickly-fled hours--
+       The children of Time and of Light;
+     Stoop down, ye fair moon, and scatter sweet flowers,
+       For the year lies a-dying to-night.
+
+     Hush, O ye rivers that sweep to the sea,
+       From hill and from blue mountain height;
+     The flood of your song should be sorrow, not glee,
+       For the year lies a-dying to-night.
+
+     Good night, and good-bye, dear, mellow, old year,
+       The new is beginning to dawn.
+     But we'll turn and drop on thy white grave a tear,
+       For the sake of the friend that is gone.
+
+     All hail to the New! He is coming with gladness,
+       From the East, where in light he reposes;
+     He is bringing a year free from pain and from sadness,
+       He is bringing a June with her roses.
+
+     A burst of sweet music, the listeners hear,
+       The stars and the angels give warning--
+     He is coming in beauty, this joyful New Year,
+       O'er the flower-strewn stairs of the morning.
+
+     He is bringing a day with glad pulses beating,
+       For the sorrow and passion are gone,
+     And Love and Life have a rapturous meeting
+       In the rush and the gladness of dawn.
+
+     The Old has gone out with a crown that is hoary,
+       The New in his brightness draws near;
+     Then let us look up in the light and the glory,
+       And welcome this royal New Year.
+
+
+
+
+ The Courtship of George
+ Washington
+
+
+The quaint old steel engraving which shows George and Martha
+Washington sitting by a table, while the Custis children stand
+dutifully by, is a familiar picture in many households, yet few of us
+remember that the first Lady of the White House was not always first
+in the heart of her husband.
+
+The years have brought us, as a people, a growing reverence for him
+who was in truth the "Father of His Country." Time has invested him
+with godlike attributes, yet, none the less, he was a man among men,
+and the hot blood of youth ran tumultuously in his veins.
+
+At the age of fifteen, like many another schoolboy, Washington
+fell in love. The man who was destined to be the Commander of the
+Revolutionary Army, wandered through the shady groves of Mount Vernon
+composing verses which, from a critical standpoint, were very bad.
+Scraps of verse were later mingled with notes of surveys, and
+interspersed with the accounts which that methodical statesman kept
+from his school-days until the year of his death.
+
+In the archives of the Capitol on a yellowed page, in Washington's own
+handwriting, these lines are still to be read:
+
+     "Oh, Ye Gods, why should my Poor Resistless Heart
+       Stand to oppose thy might and Power,
+     At last surrender to Cupid's feather'd Dart,
+       And now lays bleeding every Hour
+     For her that's Pityless of my grief and Woes,
+       And will not on me, pity take.
+     I'll sleep amongst my most inveterate Foes,
+       And with gladness never wish to wake.
+     In deluding sleepings let my Eyelids close,
+       That in an enraptured Dream I may
+     In a soft lulling sleep and gentle repose
+       Possess those joys denied by Day."
+
+Among these boyish fragments there is also an incomplete acrostic,
+evidently intended for Miss Frances Alexander, which reads as follows:
+
+     "From your bright sparkling Eyes I was undone;
+     Rays, you have, rays more transparent than the Sun
+     Amidst its glory in the rising Day;
+     None can you equal in your bright array;
+     Constant in your calm, unspotted Mind;
+     Equal to all, but will to none Prove kind,
+     So knowing, seldom one so young you'll Find.
+
+     "Ah, woe's me that I should Love and conceal--
+     Long have I wished, but never dare reveal,
+     Even though severely Love's Pains I feel;
+     Xerxes that great wast not free from Cupid's Dart,
+     And all the greatest Heroes felt the smart."
+
+He wrote at length to several of his friends concerning his youthful
+passions. In the tell-tale pages of the diary, for 1748, there is this
+draft of a letter:
+
+     "DEAR FRIEND ROBIN: My place of Residence is at present at
+     His Lordship's where I might, was my heart disengag'd, pass
+     my time very pleasantly, as there's a very agreeable Young
+     Lady Lives in the same house (Col. George Fairfax's Wife's
+     Sister); but as that's only adding fuel to fire, it makes me
+     the more uneasy, for by often and unavoidably being, in
+     Company with her revives my former Passion for your Lowland
+     Beauty; whereas was I to live more retired from young Women
+     I might in some measure aliviate my sorrows by burying that
+     chaste and troublesome Passion in the grave of oblivion or
+     eternal forgetfulness, for as I am very well assured, that's
+     the only antidote or remedy, that I shall be relieved by, as
+     I am well convinced, was I ever to ask any question, I
+     should only get a denial which would be adding grief to
+     uneasiness."
+
+The "Lowland Beauty" was Miss Mary Bland. Tradition does not say
+whether or not she ever knew of Washington's admiration, but she
+married Henry Lee.
+
+"Light Horse Harry," that daring master of cavalry of Revolutionary
+fame, was the son of the "Lowland Beauty," and some tender memories of
+the mother may have been mingled with Washington's fondness for the
+young soldier. It was "Light Horse Harry" also, who said of the
+Commander-in-Chief that he was "first in war, first in peace, and
+first in the hearts of his countrymen!"
+
+By another trick of fate the grandson of the "Lowland Beauty" was Gen.
+Robert E. Lee. Who can say what momentous changes might have been
+wrought in history had Washington married his first love?
+
+Miss Gary, the sister of Mrs. Fairfax, was the "agreeable young lady"
+of whom he speaks. After a time her charm seems to have partially
+mitigated the pain he felt over the loss of her predecessor in his
+affections. Later he writes of a Miss Betsey Fauntleroy, saying that
+he is soon to see her, and that he "hopes for a revocation of her
+former cruel sentence."
+
+When Braddock's defeat brought the soldier again to Mount Vernon, to
+rest from the fatigues of the campaign, there is abundant evidence to
+prove that he had become a personage in the eyes of women. For
+instance, Lord Fairfax writes to him, saying:
+
+     "If a Satterday Night's Rest cannot be sufficient to enable
+     your coming hither to-morrow the Lady's will try to get
+     Horses to equip our Chair or attempt their strength on Foot
+     to Salute you, so desirious are they with loving Speed
+     to have an occular Demonstration of your being the same
+     identical Gent--that lately departed to defend his Country's
+     Cause."
+
+A very feminine postscript was attached to this which read as follows:
+
+     "DEAR SIR
+
+     "After thanking Heaven for your safe return, I must accuse
+     you of great unkindness in refusing us the pleasure of
+     seeing you this night. I do assure you nothing but our being
+     satisfied that our company would be disagreeable, should
+     prevent us from trying if our Legs would not carry us to
+     Mount Vernon this night, but if you will not come to us,
+     to-morrow morning very early we shall be at Mount Vernon.
+
+                    "SALLY FAIRFAX
+                    ANN SPEARING
+                    ELIZ'TH DENT"
+
+Yet, in spite of the attractions of Virginia we find him journeying to
+Boston, on military business, by way of New York.
+
+The hero of Braddock's stricken field found every door open before
+him. He was feted in Philadelphia, and the aristocrats of Manhattan
+gave dinners in honour of the strapping young soldier from the wilds
+of Virginia.
+
+At the house of his friend, Beverly Robinson, he met Miss Mary
+Philipse, and speedily surrendered. She was a beautiful, cultured
+woman, twenty-five years old, who had travelled widely and had seen
+much of the world. He promptly proposed to her, and was refused, but
+with exquisite grace and tact.
+
+Graver affairs however soon claimed his attention, and he did not go
+back, though a friend wrote to him that Lieutenant-Colonel Morris was
+besieging the citadel. She married Morris, and their house in
+Morristown became Washington's headquarters, in 1776--again, how
+history might have been changed had Mary Philipse married her Virginia
+lover!
+
+In the spring of 1758, Washington met his fate. He was riding on
+horseback from Mount Vernon to Williamsburg with important despatches.
+In crossing a ford of the Pamunkey he fell in with a Mr. Chamberlayne,
+who lived in the neighbourhood. With true Virginian hospitality he
+prevailed upon Washington to take dinner at his house, making the
+arrangement with much difficulty, however, since the soldier was
+impatient to get to Williamsburg.
+
+Once inside the colonial house, whose hospitable halls breathed
+welcome, his impatience, and the errand itself, were almost forgotten.
+A negro servant led his horse up and down the gravelled walk in front
+of the house; the servant grew tired, the horse pawed and sniffed with
+impatience, but Washington lingered.
+
+A petite hazel-eyed woman--she who was once Patsy Dandridge, but then
+the widow of Daniel Parke Custis--was delaying important affairs. At
+night-fall the distracted warrior remembered his mission, and made a
+hasty adieu. Mr. Chamberlayne, meeting him at the door, laid a
+restraining hand upon his arm. "No guest ever leaves my house after
+sunset," he said.
+
+The horse was put up, the servant released from duty, and Washington
+remained until the next morning, when, with new happiness in his
+heart, he dashed on to Williamsburg.
+
+We may well fancy that her image was before him all the way. She had
+worn a gown of white dimity, with a cluster of Mayblossoms at her
+belt, and a little white widow's cap half covered her soft brown hair.
+
+She was twenty-six, some three months younger than Washington; she
+had wealth, and two children. Mr. Custis had been older than his
+Patsy, for she was married when she was but seventeen. He had been a
+faithful and affectionate husband, but he had not appealed to her
+imagination, and it was doubtless through her imagination, that the
+big Virginia Colonel won her heart.
+
+She left Mr. Chamberlayne's and went to her home--the "White
+House"--near William's Ferry. The story is that when Washington came
+from Williamsburg, he was met at the ferry by one of Mrs. Custis's
+slaves. "Is your mistress at home?" he inquired of the negro who was
+rowing him across the river.
+
+"Yes, sah," replied the darkey, then added slyly, "I recon you am de
+man what am expected."
+
+It was late in the afternoon of the next day when Washington took his
+departure, but he had her promise and was happy. A ring was ordered
+from Philadelphia, and is duly set down in his accounts: "One
+engagement ring, two pounds, sixteen shillings."
+
+Then came weary months of service in the field, and they saw each
+other only four times before they were married. There were doubtless
+frequent letters, but only one of them remains. It is the letter of a
+soldier:
+
+     "We have begun our march for the Ohio, [he wrote]. A courier
+     is starting for Williamsburg, and I embrace the opportunity
+     to send a few words to one whose life is now inseparable
+     from mine.
+
+     "Since that happy hour, when we made our pledges to each
+     other, my thoughts have been continually going to you as to
+     another self. That an All-powerful Providence may keep us
+     both in safety is the prayer of your ever faithful and
+     affectionate Friend,
+
+                    "G. WASHINGTON
+
+     "20th of July
+       Mrs. Martha Custis."
+
+On the sixth of the following January they were married in the little
+church of St. Peter. Once again Dr. Mossum, in full canonicals,
+married "Patsy" Dandridge to the man of her choice. The bridegroom
+wore a blue cloth coat lined with red silk and ornamented with silver
+trimmings. His vest was embroidered white satin, his shoe- and
+knee-buckles were of solid gold, his hair was powdered, and a dress
+sword hung at his side.
+
+The bride was attired in heavy brocaded white silk inwoven with a
+silver thread. She wore a white satin quilted petticoat with heavy
+corded white silk over-skirt, and high-heeled shoes of white satin
+with buckles of brilliants. She had ruffles of rich point lace, pearl
+necklace, ear-rings, and bracelets, and was attended by three
+bridesmaids.
+
+The aristocracy of Virginia was out in full force. One of the
+most imposing figures was Bishop, the negro servant, who had led
+Washington's horse up and down the gravelled path in front of Mr.
+Chamberlayne's door while the master lingered within. He was in the
+scarlet uniform of King George's army, booted and spurred, and he held
+the bridle rein of the chestnut charger that was forced to wait while
+his rider made love.
+
+On leaving the church, the bride and her maids rode back to the "White
+House" in a coach drawn by six horses, and guided by black post-boys
+in livery, while Colonel Washington, on his magnificent horse, and
+attended by a brilliant company, rode by her side.
+
+There was no seer to predict that some time the little lady in white
+satin, brocade silk, and rich laces, would spend long hours knitting
+stockings for her husband's army, and that night after night would
+find her, in a long grey cloak, at the side of the wounded, hearing
+from stiffening lips the husky whisper, "God bless you, Lady
+Washington!"
+
+All through the troublous times that followed, Washington was the
+lover as well as the husband. He took a father's place with the little
+children, treating them with affection, but never swerving from the
+path of justice. With the fondness of a lover, he ordered fine clothes
+for his wife from London.
+
+After his death, Mrs. Washington destroyed all of his letters. There
+is only one of them to be found which was written after their
+marriage. It is in an old book, printed in New York in 1796, when the
+narrow streets around the tall spire of Trinity were the centre of
+social life, and the busy hum of Wall Street was not to be heard for
+fifty years!
+
+One may fancy a stately Knickerbocker stopping at a little bookstall
+where the dizzy heights of the Empire Building now rise, or down near
+the Battery, untroubled by the white cliff called "The Bowling Green,"
+and asking pompously enough, for the _Epistles; Domestic,
+Confidential, and Official, from General Washington_.
+
+The pages are yellowed with age, and the "f" used in the place of the
+"s", as well as the queer orthography and capitalisation, look strange
+to twentieth-century eyes, but on page 56 the lover-husband pleads
+with his lady in a way that we can well understand.
+
+The letter is dated "June 24, 1776," and in part is as follows:
+
+     "MY DEAREST LIFE AND LOVE:--
+
+     "You have hurt me, I know not how much, by the insinuation
+     in your last, that my letters to you have been less frequent
+     because I have felt less concern for you.
+
+     "The suspicion is most unjust; may I not add, is most
+     unkind. Have we lived, now almost a score of years, in the
+     closest and dearest conjugal intimacy to so little purpose,
+     that on the appearance only, of inattention to you, and
+     which you might have accounted for in a thousand ways more
+     natural and more probable, you should pitch upon that single
+     motive which is alone injurious to me?
+
+     "I have not, I own, wrote so often to you as I wished and as
+     I ought.
+
+     "But think of my situation, and then ask your heart if I be
+     _without excuse_?
+
+     "We are not, my dearest, in circumstances the most favorable
+     to our happiness; but let us not, I beseech of you, make
+     them worse by indulging suspicions and apprehensions which
+     minds in distress are apt to give way to.
+
+     "I never was, as you have often told me, even in my better
+     and more disengaged days, so attentive to the little
+     punctillios of friendship, as it may be, became me; but my
+     heart tells me, there never was a moment in my life, since I
+     first knew you, in which it did not cleave and cling to you
+     with the warmest affection; and it must cease to beat ere it
+     can cease to wish for your happiness, above anything on
+     earth.
+
+                    "Your faithful and tender husband, G. W."
+
+"'Seventy-six!" The words bring a thrill even now, yet, in the midst
+of those stirring times, not a fortnight before the Declaration was
+signed, and after twenty years of marriage, he could write her like
+this. Even his reproaches are gentle, and filled with great
+tenderness.
+
+And so it went on, through the Revolution and through the stormy days
+in which the Republic was born. There were long and inevitable
+separations, yet a part of the time she was with him, doing her duty
+as a soldier's wife, and sternly refusing to wear garments which were
+not woven in American looms.
+
+During the many years they lived at Mount Vernon, they attended divine
+service at Christ Church, Alexandria, Virginia, one of the quaint
+little landmarks of the town which is still standing. For a number of
+years he was a vestryman of the church, and the pew occupied by him is
+visited yearly by thousands of tourists while sight-seeing in the
+national Capitol. Indeed all the churches, so far as known, in which
+he once worshipped, have preserved his pew intact, while there are
+hundreds of tablets, statues, and monuments throughout the country.
+
+In the magnificent monument at Washington, rising to a height of more
+than 555 feet, the various States of the Union have placed stone
+replicas of their State seals, and these, with other symbolic devices,
+constitute the inscriptions upon one hundred and seventy-nine of these
+memorial stones. Not only this, but Europe and Asia, China and Japan
+have honoured themselves by erecting memorials to the great American.
+
+When at last his long years of service for his country were ended, he
+and his beloved wife returned again to their beautiful home at Mount
+Vernon, to wait for the night together. The whole world knows how the
+end came, with her loving ministrations to the very last of the three
+restful years which they at this time spent together at the old home,
+and how he looked Death bravely in the face, as became a soldier and a
+Christian.
+
+
+
+
+The Old and the New
+
+
+     Grandmother sat at her spinning wheel
+       In the dust of the long ago,
+     And listened, with scarlet dyeing her cheeks,
+       For the step she had learned to know.
+     A courtly lover, was he who came,
+       With frill and ruffle and curl--
+     They dressed so queerly in the days
+       When grandmother was a girl!
+
+     "Knickerbockers" they called them then,
+       When they spoke of the things at all--
+     Grandfather wore them, buckled and trim,
+       When he sallied forth to call.
+     Grandmother's eyes were youthful then--
+       His "guiding stars," he said;
+     While she demurely watched her wheel
+       And spun with a shining thread.
+
+     Frill, and ruffle, and curl are gone,
+       But the "knickers" are with us still--
+     And so is love and the spinning wheel,
+       But we ride it now--if you will!
+     In grandfather's "knickers" I sit and watch
+       For the gleam of a lamp afar;
+     And my heart still turns, as theirs, methinks,
+       To my wheel and my guiding star.
+
+
+
+
+ The Love Story of the "Sage of
+ Monticello"
+
+
+American history holds no more beautiful love-story than that of
+Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, and author of
+the Declaration of Independence. It is a tale of single-hearted,
+unswerving devotion, worthy of this illustrious statesman. His love
+for his wife was not the first outpouring of his nature, but it was
+the strongest and best--the love, not of the boy, but of the man.
+
+Jefferson was not particularly handsome as a young man, for he was
+red-haired, awkward, and knew not what to do with his hands, though he
+played the violin passably well. But his friend, Patrick Henry, suave,
+tactful and popular, exerted himself to improve Jefferson's manners
+and fit him for general society, attaining at last very pleasing
+results, although there was a certain roughness in his nature, shown
+in his correspondence, which no amount of polishing seemed able to
+overcome.
+
+John Page was Jefferson's closest friend, and to him he wrote very
+fully concerning the state of his mind and heart, and with a certain
+quaint, uncouth humour, which to this day is irresistible.
+
+For instance, at Fairfield, Christmas day, 1762, he wrote to his
+friend as follows:
+
+     "DEAR PAGE
+
+     "This very day, to others the day of greatest mirth and
+     jolity, sees me overwhelmed with more and greater
+     misfortunes than have befallen a descendant of Adam for
+     these thousand years past, I am sure; and perhaps, after
+     excepting Job, since the creation of the world.
+
+     "You must know, Dear Page, that I am now in a house
+     surrounded by enemies, who take counsel together against my
+     soul; and when I lay me down to rest, they say among
+     themselves, 'Come let us destroy him.'
+
+     "I am sure if there is such a thing as a Devil in this
+     world, he must have been here last night, and have had some
+     hand in what happened to me. Do you think the cursed rats
+     (at his instigation I suppose) did not eat up my pocket
+     book, which was in my pocket, within an inch of my head? And
+     not contented with plenty for the present, they carried away
+     my gemmy worked silk garters, and half a dozen new minuets I
+     had just got, to serve, I suppose, as provision for the
+     winter.
+
+     "You know it rained last night, or if you do not know it, I
+     am sure I do. When I went to bed I laid my watch in the
+     usual place, and going to take her up after I arose this
+     morning, I found her in the same place, it is true, but all
+     afloat in water, let in at a leak in the roof of the house,
+     and as silent, and as still as the rats that had eaten my
+     pocket book.
+
+     "Now, you know if chance had anything to do in this matter,
+     there were a thousand other spots where it might have
+     chanced to leak as well as this one which was
+     perpendicularly over my watch. But I'll tell you, it's my
+     opinion that the Devil came and bored the hole over it on
+     purpose.
+
+     "Well, as I was saying, my poor watch had lost her speech. I
+     would not have cared much for this, but something worse
+     attended it--the subtle particles of water with which the
+     case was filled had, by their penetration, so overcome the
+     cohesion of the particles of the paper, of which my dear
+     picture, and watch patch paper, were composed, that in
+     attempting to take them out to dry them, my cursed fingers
+     gave them such a rent as I fear I shall never get over.
+
+     "... And now, though her picture be defaced, there is so
+     lively an image of her imprinted in my mind, that I shall
+     think of her too often, I fear for my peace of mind; and too
+     often I am sure to get through old Coke this winter, for I
+     have not seen him since I packed him up in my trunk in
+     Williamsburg. Well, Page, I do wish the Devil had old Coke
+     for I am sure I never was so tired of the dull old scoundrel
+     in my life....
+
+     "I would fain ask the favor of Miss Bettey Burwell to give
+     me another watch paper of her own cutting, which I should
+     esteem much more though it were a plain round one, than the
+     nicest in the world cut by other hands; however I am afraid
+     she would think this presumption, after my suffering the
+     other to get spoiled. If you think you can excuse me to her
+     for this, I should be glad if you would ask her...."
+
+Page was a little older than Jefferson, and the young man thought much
+of his advice. Six months later we find Page advising him to go to
+Miss Rebecca Burwell and "lay siege in form."
+
+There were many objections to this--first, the necessity of keeping
+the matter secret, and of "treating with a ward before obtaining
+the consent of her guardian," which at that time was considered
+dishonourable, and second, Jefferson's own state of suspense and
+uneasiness, since the lady had given him no grounds for hope.
+
+     "If I am to succeed [he wrote], the sooner I know it the
+     less uneasiness I shall have to go through. If I am to meet
+     with disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life
+     I shall have to wear it off; and if I do meet with one, I
+     hope and verily believe it will be the last.
+
+     "I assure you that I almost envy you your present freedom
+     and I assure you that if Belinda will not accept of my
+     heart, it shall never be offered to another."
+
+In his letters he habitually spoke of Miss Burwell as "Belinda,"
+presumably on account of the fear which he expresses to Page, that the
+letters might possibly fall into other hands. In some of his letters
+he spells "Belinda" backward, and with exaggerated caution, in Greek
+letters.
+
+Finally, with much fear and trembling, he took his friend's advice,
+and laid siege to the fair Rebecca in due form. The day
+afterward--October 7, 1763--he confided in Page:
+
+     "In the most melancholy fit that ever a poor soul was, I sit
+     down to write you. Last night, as merry as agreeable company
+     and dancing with Belinda could make me, I never could have
+     thought that the succeeding sun would have seen me so
+     wretched as I now am!
+
+     "I was prepared to say a great deal. I had dressed up in my
+     own mind, such thoughts as occurred to me, in as moving
+     language as I knew how, and expected to have performed in a
+     tolerably creditable manner. But ... when I had an
+     opportunity of venting them, a few broken sentences, uttered
+     in great disorder, and interrupted by pauses of uncommon
+     length were the too visible marks of my strange confusion!
+
+     "The whole confab I will tell you, word for word if I can
+     when I see you which God send, may be soon."
+
+After this, he dates his letters at "Devilsburg," instead of
+Williamsburg, and says in one of them, "I believe I never told you
+that we had another occasion." This time he behaved more creditably,
+told "Belinda" that it was necessary for him to go to England,
+explained the inevitable delays and told how he should conduct himself
+until his return. He says that he asked no questions which would admit
+of a categorical answer--there was something of the lawyer in this
+wooing! He assured Miss Rebecca that such a question would one day be
+asked. In this letter she is called "Adinleb" and spoken of as "he."
+
+Miss Burwell did not wait, however, until Jefferson was in a position
+to seek her hand openly, but was suddenly married to another. The news
+was a great shock to Jefferson, who refused to believe it until Page
+confirmed it; but the love-lorn swain gradually recovered from his
+disappointment.
+
+With youthful ardour they had planned to buy adjoining estates and
+have a carriage in common, when each married the lady of his love,
+that they might attend all the dances. A little later, when Page was
+also crossed in love, both forswore marriage forever.
+
+For five or six years, Jefferson was faithful to his vow--rather an
+unusual record. He met his fate at last in the person of a charming
+widow--Martha Skelton.
+
+The death of his sister, his devotion to his books, and his
+disappointment made him a sadder and a wiser man. His home at Shadwell
+had been burned, and he removed to Monticello, a house built on the
+same estate on a spur of the Blue Ridge Mountains, five hundred feet
+above the common level.
+
+He went often to visit Mrs. Skelton who made her home with her father
+after her bereavement. Usually he took his violin under his arm, and
+out of the harmonies which came from the instrument and the lady's
+spinet came the greater one of love.
+
+They were married in January of 1772. The ceremony took place at "The
+Forest" in Charles City County. The chronicles describe the bride as a
+beautiful woman, a little above medium height, finely formed, and with
+graceful carriage. She was well educated, read a great deal, and
+played the spinet unusually well.
+
+The wedding journey was a strange one. It was a hundred miles from
+"The Forest" to Monticello, and years afterward their eldest daughter,
+Martha Jefferson Randolph, described it as follows:
+
+     "They left 'The Forest' after a fall of snow, light then,
+     but increasing in depth as they advanced up the country.
+     They were finally obliged to quit the carriage and proceed
+     on horseback. They arrived late at night, the fires were all
+     out, and the servants had retired to their own houses for
+     the night. The horrible dreariness of such a house, at the
+     end of such a journey, I have often heard both relate."
+
+Yet, the walls of Monticello, that afterwards looked down upon so much
+sorrow and so much joy, must have long remembered the home-coming of
+master and mistress, for the young husband found a bottle of old wine
+"on a shelf behind some books," built a fire in the open fireplace,
+and "they laughed and sang together like two children."
+
+And that life upon the hills proved very nearly ideal. They walked and
+planned and rode together, and kept house and garden books in the most
+minute fashion.
+
+Births and deaths followed each other at Monticello, but there was
+nothing else to mar the peace of that happy home. Between husband and
+wife there was no strife or discord, not a jar nor a rift in that
+unity of life and purpose which welds two souls into one.
+
+Childish voices came and went, but two daughters grew to womanhood,
+and in the evening, the day's duties done, violin and harpsichord
+sounded sweet strains together.
+
+They reared other children besides their own, taking the helpless
+brood of Jefferson's sister into their hearts and home when Dabney
+Carr died. Those three sons and three daughters were educated with his
+own children, and lived to bless him as a second father.
+
+One letter is extant which was written to one of the nieces whom
+Jefferson so cheerfully supported. It reads as follows:
+
+     "PARIS, June 14, 1787.
+
+     "I send you, my dear Patsey, the fifteen livres you desired.
+     You propose this to me as an anticipation of five weeks'
+     allowance, but do you not see, my dear, how imprudent it is
+     to lay out in one moment what should accommodate you for
+     five weeks? This is a departure from that rule which I wish
+     to see you governed by, thro' your whole life, of never
+     buying anything which you have not the money in your pocket
+     to pay for.
+
+     "Be sure that it gives much more pain to the mind to be in
+     debt than to do without any article whatever which we may
+     seem to want.
+
+     "The purchase you have made is one I am always ready to make
+     for you because it is my wish to see you dressed always
+     cleanly and a little more than decently; but apply to me
+     first for the money before making the purchase, if only to
+     avoid breaking through your rule.
+
+     "Learn yourself the habit of adhering vigorously to the
+     rules you lay down for yourself. I will come for you about
+     eleven o'clock on Saturday. Hurry the making of your gown,
+     and also your redingcote. You will go with me some day next
+     week to dine at the Marquis Fayette. Adieu, my dear
+     daughter,
+
+               "Yours affectionately,
+                    "TH. JEFFERSON"
+
+Mrs. Jefferson's concern for her husband, the loss of her children,
+and the weary round of domestic duties at last told upon her strong
+constitution.
+
+After the birth of her sixth child, Lucy Elizabeth, she sank rapidly,
+until at last it was plain to every one, except the distracted
+husband, that she could never recover.
+
+Finally the blow fell. His daughter Martha wrote of it as follows:
+
+     "As a nurse no female ever had more tenderness or anxiety.
+     He nursed my poor mother in turn with Aunt Carr, and her own
+     sister--sitting up with her and administering her medicines
+     and drink to the last.
+
+     "When at last he left his room, three weeks after my
+     mother's death, he rode out, and from that time, he was
+     incessantly on horseback, rambling about the mountain."
+
+Shortly afterward he received the appointment of Plenipotentiary to
+Europe, to be associated with Franklin and Adams in negotiating peace.
+He had twice refused the same appointment, as he had promised his wife
+that he would never again enter public life, as long as she lived.
+
+
+
+
+Columbia
+
+
+     She comes along old Ocean's trackless way--
+     A warrior scenting conflict from afar
+     And fearing not defeat nor battle-scar
+     Nor all the might of wind and dashing spray;
+     Her foaming path to triumph none may stay
+     For in the East, there shines her morning star;
+     She feels her strength in every shining spar
+     As one who grasps his sword and waits for day.
+
+     Columbia, Defender! dost thou hear?
+     The clarion challenge sweeps the sea
+     And straight toward the lightship doth she steer,
+     Her steadfast pulses sounding jubilee;
+     Arise, Defender! for thy way is clear
+     And all thy country's heart goes out to thee.
+
+
+
+
+The Story of a Daughter's Love
+
+
+Aaron Burr was past-master of what Whistler calls "the gentle art of
+making enemies!" Probably no man ever lived who was more bitterly
+hated or more fiercely reviled. Even at this day, when he has been
+dead more than half a century, his memory is still assailed.
+
+It is the popular impression that he was a villain. Perhaps he was,
+since "where there is smoke, there must be fire," but happily we have
+no concern with the political part of his life. Whatever he may have
+been, and whatever dark deeds he may have done, there still remains a
+redeeming feature which no one has denied him--his love for his
+daughter, Theodosia.
+
+One must remember that before Burr was two years old, his father,
+mother, and grandparents were all dead. He was reared by an uncle,
+Timothy Edwards, who doubtless did his best, but the odds were against
+the homeless child. Neither must we forget that he fought in the
+Revolution, bravely and well.
+
+From his early years he was very attractive to women. He was handsome,
+distinguished, well dressed, and gifted in many ways. He was generous,
+ready at compliments and gallantry, and possessed an all-compelling
+charm.
+
+In the autumn of 1777, his regiment was detailed for scouting duty in
+New Jersey, which was then the debatable ground between colonial and
+British armies. In January of 1779, Colonel Burr was given command of
+the "lines" in Westchester County, New York. It was at this time that
+he first met Mrs. Prevost, the widow of a British officer. She lived
+across the Hudson, some fifteen miles from shore, and the river was
+patrolled by the gunboats of the British, and the land by their
+sentries.
+
+In spite of these difficulties, however, Burr managed to make two
+calls upon the lady, although they were both necessarily informal. He
+sent six of his trusted soldiers to a place on the Hudson, where there
+was an overhanging bank under which they moored a large boat, well
+supplied with blankets and buffalo robes. At nine o'clock in the
+evening he left White Plains on the smallest and swiftest horse he
+could procure, and when he reached the rendezvous, the horse was
+quickly bound and laid in the boat. Burr and the six troopers stepped
+in, and in half an hour they were across the ferry. The horse was
+lifted out, and unbound, and with a little rubbing he was again ready
+for duty.
+
+Before midnight, Burr was at the house of his beloved, and at four in
+the morning he came back to the troopers awaiting him on the river
+bank, and the return trip was made in the same manner.
+
+For a year and a half after leaving the army, Burr was an invalid, but
+in July, 1782, he married Mrs. Prevost. She was a widow with two
+sons, and was ten years older than her husband. Her health was
+delicate and she had a scar on her forehead, but her mind was finely
+cultivated and her manners charming.
+
+Long after her death he said that if his manners were more graceful
+than those of some men, it was due to her influence, and that his wife
+was the truest woman, and most charming lady he had ever known.
+
+It has been claimed by some that Burr's married life was not a happy
+one, but there are many letters still extant which passed between them
+which seemed to prove the contrary. Before marriage he did not often
+write to her, but during his absences afterward, the fondest wife
+could have no reason to complain.
+
+For instance:
+
+     "This morning came your truly welcome letter of Monday
+     evening," he wrote her at one time. "Where did it loiter so
+     long?
+
+     "Nothing in my absence is so flattering to me as your health
+     and cheerfulness. I then contemplate nothing so eagerly as
+     my return, amuse myself with ideas of my own happiness, and
+     dwell upon the sweet domestic joys which I fancy prepared
+     for me.
+
+     "Nothing is so unfriendly to every species of enjoyment as
+     melancholy. Gloom, however dressed, however caused, is
+     incompatible with friendship. They cannot have place in the
+     mind at the same time. It is the secret, the malignant foe
+     of sentiment and love."
+
+He always wrote fondly of the children:
+
+     "My love to the smiling little girl," he said in one letter.
+     "I continually plan my return with childish impatience, and
+     fancy a thousand incidents which are most interesting."
+
+After five years of married life the wife wrote him as follows:
+
+     "Your letters always afford me a singular satisfaction, a
+     sensation entirely my own. This was peculiarly so. It
+     wrought strangely upon my mind and spirits. My Aaron, it was
+     replete with tenderness and with the most lively affection.
+     I read and re-read till afraid I should get it by rote, and
+     mingle it with common ideas."
+
+Soon after Burr entered politics, his wife developed cancer of the
+most virulent character. Everything that money or available skill
+could accomplish was done for her, but she died after a lingering and
+painful illness, in the spring of 1794.
+
+They had lived together happily for twelve years, and he grieved for
+her deeply and sincerely. Yet the greatest and most absorbing passion
+of his life was for his daughter, Theodosia, who was named for her
+mother and was born in the first year of their marriage. When little
+Theodosia was first laid in her father's arms, all that was best in
+him answered to her mute plea for his affection, and later, all that
+was best in him responded to her baby smile.
+
+Between those two, there was ever the fullest confidence, never
+tarnished by doubt or mistrust, and when all the world forsook him,
+Theodosia, grown to womanhood, stood proudly by her father's side and
+shared his blame as if it had been the highest honour.
+
+When she was a year or two old, they moved to a large house at the
+corner of Cedar and Nassau Streets, in New York City. A large garden
+surrounded it and there were grapevines in the rear. Here the child
+grew strong and healthy, and laid the foundations of her girlish
+beauty and mature charm. When she was but three years old her mother
+wrote to the father, saying:
+
+     "Your dear little Theodosia cannot hear you spoken of
+     without an apparent melancholy; insomuch, that her nurse is
+     obliged to exert her invention to divert her, and myself
+     avoid the mention of you in her presence. She was one whole
+     day indifferent to everything but your name. Her attachment
+     is not of a common nature."
+
+And again:
+
+     "Your dear little daughter seeks you twenty times a day,
+     calls you to your meals, and will not suffer your chair to
+     be filled by any of the family."
+
+The child was educated as if she had been a boy. She learned to
+read Latin and Greek fluently, and the accomplishments of her time
+were not neglected. When she was at school, the father wrote her
+regularly, and did not allow one of her letters to wait a day for
+its affectionate answer. He corrected her spelling and her grammar,
+instilled sound truths into her mind, and formed her habits. From this
+plastic clay, with inexpressible love and patient toil, he shaped his
+ideal woman.
+
+She grew into a beautiful girl. Her features were much like her
+father's. She was petite, graceful, plump, rosy, dignified, and
+gracious. In her manner, there was a calm assurance--the air of
+mastery over all situations--which she doubtless inherited from him.
+
+When she was eighteen years of age, she married Joseph Alston of
+South Carolina, and, with much pain at parting from her father, she
+went there to live, after seeing him inaugurated as Jefferson's
+Vice-President. His only consolation was her happiness, and when he
+returned to New York, he wrote her that he approached the old house
+as if it had been the sepulchre of all his friends. "Dreary, solitary,
+comfortless--it was no longer home."
+
+After her mother's death, Theodosia had been the lady of his household
+and reigned at the head of his table. When he went back there was no
+loved face opposite him, and the chill and loneliness struck him to
+the heart.
+
+For three years after her marriage, Theodosia was blissfully
+happy. A boy was born to her, and was named Aaron Burr Alston.
+The Vice-President visited them in the South and took his namesake
+unreservedly into his heart. "If I can see without prejudice," he
+said, "there never was a finer boy."
+
+His last act before fighting the duel with Hamilton, was writing to
+his daughter--a happy, gay, care-free letter, giving no hint of what
+was impending. To her husband he wrote in a different strain, begging
+him to keep the event from her as long as possible, to make her happy
+always, and to encourage her in those habits of study which he
+himself had taught her.
+
+She had parted from him with no other pain in her heart than the
+approaching separation. When they met again, he was a fugitive from
+justice, travel-stained from his long journey in an open canoe,
+indicted for murder in New York, and in New Jersey, although still
+President of the Senate, and Vice-President of the United States.
+
+The girl's heart ached bitterly, yet no word of censure escaped her
+lips, and she still held her head high. When his Mexican scheme was
+overthrown, Theodosia sat beside him at his trial, wearing her
+absolute faith, so that all the world might see.
+
+When he was preparing for his flight to Europe, Theodosia was in New
+York, and they met by night, secretly, at the house of friends. Just
+before he sailed, they spent a whole night together, making the best
+of the little time that remained to them before the inevitable
+separation. Early in June they parted, little dreaming that they
+should see each other no more.
+
+During the years of exile, Theodosia suffered no less than he. Mr.
+Alston had lost his faith in Aaron Burr, and the woman's heart
+strained beneath the burden. Her health failed, her friends shrank
+from her, yet openly and bravely she clung to her father.
+
+Public opinion showed no signs of relenting, and his evil genius
+followed him across the sea. He was expelled from England, and in
+Paris he was almost a prisoner. At one time he was obliged to live
+upon potatoes and dry bread, and his devoted daughter could not help
+him.
+
+He was despised by his countrymen, but Theodosia's adoring love never
+faltered. In one of her letters she said:
+
+     "I witness your extraordinary fortitude with new wonder at
+     every misfortune. Often, after reflecting on this subject,
+     you appear to me so superior, so elevated above other men--I
+     contemplate you with such a strange mixture of humility,
+     admiration, reverence, love, and pride, that a very little
+     superstition would be necessary to make me worship you as a
+     superior being, such enthusiasm does your character excite
+     in me.
+
+     "When I afterward revert to myself, how insignificant do my
+     best qualities appear! My own vanity would be greater if I
+     had not been placed so near you, and yet, my pride is in our
+     relationship. I had rather not live than not to be the
+     daughter of such a man."
+
+She wrote to Mrs. Madison and asked her to intercede with the
+President for her father. The answer gave the required assurance, and
+she wrote to her father, urging him to go boldly to New York and
+resume the practice of his profession. "If worse comes to worst," she
+wrote, "I will leave everything to suffer with you."
+
+He landed in Boston and went on to New York in May of 1812, where his
+reception was better than he had hoped, and where he soon had a
+lucrative practice. They planned for him to come South in the summer,
+and she was almost happy again, when her child died and her mother's
+heart was broken.
+
+She had borne much, and she never recovered from that last blow. Her
+health failed rapidly, and though she was too weak to undertake the
+trip, she insisted upon going to New York to see her father.
+
+Thinking the voyage might prove beneficial, her husband reluctantly
+consented, and passage was engaged for her on a pilot-boat that had
+been out privateering, and had stopped for supplies before going on to
+New York.
+
+The vessel sailed--and a storm swept the Atlantic coast from Maine to
+Florida. It was supposed that the ship went down off Cape Hatteras,
+but forty years afterward, a sailor, who died in Texas, confessed on
+his death-bed that he was one of a crew of mutineers who took
+possession of the _Patriot_ and forced the passengers, as well as the
+officers and men, to walk the plank. He professed to remember Mrs.
+Alston well, and said she was the last one who perished. He never
+forgot her look of despair as she stepped into the sea--with her head
+held high even in the face of death.
+
+Among Theodosia's papers was found a letter addressed to her husband,
+written at a time when she was weary of the struggle. On the envelope
+was written: "My Husband. To be delivered after my death. I wish this
+to be read immediately and before my burial."
+
+He never saw the letter, for he never had the courage to go through
+her papers, and after his death it was sent to her father. It came to
+him like a message from the grave:
+
+     "Let my father see my son, sometimes," she had written. "Do
+     not be unkind to him whom I have loved so much, I beseech of
+     you. Burn all my papers except my father's letters, which I
+     beg you to return to him."
+
+A long time afterward, her father married Madame Jumel, a rich New
+York woman who was many years his junior, but the alliance was
+unfortunate, and was soon annulled. Through all the rest of his life,
+he never wholly gave up the hope that Theodosia might return. He clung
+fondly to the belief that she had been picked up by another ship, and
+some day would be brought back to him.
+
+Day by day, he haunted the Battery, anxiously searching the faces of
+the incoming passengers, asking some of them for tidings of his
+daughter, and always believing that the next ship would bring her
+back.
+
+He became a familiar figure, for he was almost always there--a bent,
+shrunken little man, white-haired, leaning heavily upon his cane,
+asking questions in a thin piping voice, and straining his dim eyes
+forever toward the unsounded waters, from whence the idol of his heart
+never came.
+
+     For out within those waters, cruel, changeless,
+       She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea;
+     A smile upon her dear lips, dumb, but waiting,
+       And I--I hear the sea-voice calling me.
+
+
+
+
+The Sea-Voice
+
+
+     Beyond the sands I hear the sea-voice calling
+       With passion all but human in its pain,
+     While from my eyes the bitter tears are falling,
+       And all the summer land seems blind with rain;
+     For out within those waters, cruel, changeless,
+       She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea,
+     A smile upon her dear lips, dumb, but waiting,
+       And I--I hear the sea-voice calling me.
+
+     The tide comes in. The moonlight flood and glory
+       Of that unresting surge thrill earth with bliss,
+     And I can hear the passionate sweet story
+       Of waves that waited round her for her kiss.
+     Sweetheart, they love you; silent and unseeing,
+       Old Ocean holds his court around you there,
+     And while I reach out through the dark to find you
+       His fingers twine the sea-weed in your hair.
+
+     The tide goes out and in the dawn's new splendour
+       The dreams of dark first fade, then pass away,
+     And I awake from visions soft and tender
+       To face the shuddering agony of day
+     For out within those waters, cruel, changeless,
+       She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea;
+     A smile upon her dear lips, dumb, but waiting,
+       And I--I hear the sea-voice calling me.
+
+
+
+
+ The Mystery of Randolph's
+ Courtship
+
+
+It is said that in order to know a man, one must begin with his
+ancestors, and the truth of the saying is strikingly exemplified in
+the case of "John Randolph of Roanoke," as he loved to write his name.
+
+His contemporaries have told us what manner of man he was--fiery,
+excitable, of strong passions and strong will, capable of great
+bitterness, obstinate, revengeful, and extremely sensitive.
+
+"I have been all my life," he says, "the creature of impulse, the
+sport of chance, the victim of my own uncontrolled and uncontrollable
+sensations, and of a poetic temperament."
+
+He was sarcastic to a degree, proud, haughty, and subject to fits of
+Byronic despair and morbid gloom. For these traits we must look back
+to the Norman Conquest from which he traced his descent in an unbroken
+line, while, on the side of his maternal grandmother, he was the
+seventh in descent from Pocahontas, the Indian maiden who married John
+Rolfe.
+
+The Indian blood was evident, even in his personal appearance. He was
+tall, slender, and dignified in his bearing; his hands were thin, his
+fingers long and bony; his face was dark, sallow, and wrinkled, oval
+in shape and seamed with lines by the inward conflict which forever
+raged in his soul. His chin was pointed but firm, and his lips were
+set; around his mouth were marked the tiny, almost imperceptible lines
+which mean cruelty. His nose was aquiline, his ears large at the top,
+tapering almost to a point at the lobe, and his forehead unusually
+high and broad. His hair was soft, and his skin, although dark,
+suffered from extreme sensitiveness.
+
+     "There is no accounting for thinness of skins in different
+     animals, human, or brute [he once said]. Mine, I believe to
+     be more tender than many infants of a month old. Indeed I
+     have remarked in myself, from my earliest recollection, a
+     delicacy or effeminacy of complexion, which but for a spice
+     of the devil in my temper would have consigned me to the
+     distaff or the needle."
+
+"A spice of the devil" is mild indeed, considering that before he was
+four years old he frequently swooned in fits of passion, and was
+restored to consciousness with difficulty.
+
+His most striking feature was his eyes. They were deep, dark, and
+fiery, filled with passion and great sadness at the same time. "When
+he first entered an assembly of people," said one who knew him, "they
+were the eyes of the eagle in search of his prey, darting about from
+place to place to see upon whom to light. When he was assailed they
+flashed fire and proclaimed a torrent of rage within."
+
+The voice of this great statesman was a rare gift:
+
+     "One might live a hundred years [says one,] and never hear
+     another like it. The wonder was why the sweet tone of a
+     woman was so harmoniously blended with that of a man. His
+     very whisper could be distinguished above the ordinary tones
+     of other men. His voice was so singularly clear, distinct,
+     and melodious that it was a positive pleasure to hear him
+     articulate anything."
+
+Such was the man who swayed the multitude at will, punished offenders
+with sarcasm and invective, inspired fear even in his equals, and
+loved and suffered more than any other prominent man of his
+generation.
+
+He had many acquaintances, a few friends, and three loves--his mother,
+his brother, and the beautiful young woman who held his heart in the
+hollow of her hand, until the Gray Angel, taking pity, closed his eyes
+in the last sleep.
+
+His mother, who was Frances Bland, married John Randolph in 1769, and
+John Randolph, of Roanoke, was their third son.
+
+Tradition tells us of the unusual beauty of the mother--
+
+     "the high expanded forehead, the smooth arched brow; the
+     brilliant dark eyes; the well defined nose; the full round
+     laughing lips; the tall graceful figure, the beautiful dark
+     hair; an open cheerful countenance--suffused with that deep,
+     rich Oriental tint which never seems to fade, all of which
+     made her the most beautiful and attractive woman of her
+     age."
+
+She was a wife at sixteen, and at twenty-six a widow. Three years
+after the death of her husband, she married St. George Tucker, of
+Bermuda who proved to be a kind father to her children.
+
+In the winter of 1781, Benedict Arnold, the traitor who had spread
+ruin through his native state, was sent to Virginia on an expedition
+of ravage. He landed at the mouth of the James, and advanced toward
+Petersburg. Matoax, Randolph's home, was directly in the line of the
+invading army, so the family set out on a cold January morning, and at
+night entered the home of Benjamin Ward, Jr.
+
+John Randolph was seven years old, and little Maria Ward had just
+passed her fifth birthday. The two children played together happily,
+and in the boy's heart was sown the seed of that grand passion which
+dominated his life.
+
+After a few days, the family went on to Bizarre, a large estate on
+both sides of the Appomattox, and here Mrs. Tucker and her sons spent
+the remainder of the year, while her husband joined General Greene's
+army, and afterward, the force of Lafayette.
+
+In 1788, John Randolph's mother died, and his first grief swept over
+him in an overwhelming torrent. The boy of fifteen spent bitter
+nights, his face buried in the grass, sobbing over his mother's grave.
+Years afterward, he wrote to a friend, "I am a fatalist. I am all but
+friendless. Only one human being ever knew me. _She_ only knew me."
+
+He kept his mother's portrait always in his room, and enshrined her in
+loving remembrance in his heart. He had never seen his father's face
+to remember it distinctly, and for a long time he wore his miniature
+in his bosom. In 1796, his brother Richard died, and the unexpected
+blow crushed him to earth. More than thirty years afterward he wrote
+to his half-brother, Henry St. George Tucker, the following note:
+
+     "DEAR HENRY
+
+     "Our poor brother Richard was born in 1770. He would have
+     been fifty-six years old the ninth of this month. I can no
+     more.
+
+                    "J. R. OF R."
+
+At some time in his early manhood he came into close relationship with
+Maria Ward. She had been an attractive child, and had grown into a
+woman so beautiful that Lafayette said her equal could not be found in
+North America. Her hair was auburn, and hung in curls around her face;
+her skin was exquisitely fair; her eyes were dark and eloquent. Her
+mouth was well formed; she was slender, graceful, and coquettish,
+well-educated, and in every way, charming.
+
+To this woman, John Randolph's heart went out in passionate, adoring
+love. He might be bitter and sarcastic with others, but with her he
+was gentleness itself. Others might know him as a man of affairs, keen
+and logical, but to her he was only a lover.
+
+Timid and hesitating at first, afraid perhaps of his fiery wooing,
+Miss Ward kept him for some time in suspense. All the treasures of his
+mind and soul were laid before her; that deep, eloquent voice which
+moved the multitude to tears at its master's will was pleading with a
+woman for her love.
+
+What wonder that she yielded at last and promised to marry him? Then
+for a time everything else was forgotten. The world lay before him to
+be conquered when he might choose. Nothing would be too great for him
+to accomplish--nothing impossible to that eager joyous soul enthroned
+at last upon the greatest heights of human happiness. And then--there
+was a change. He rode to her home one day, tying his horse outside as
+was his wont. A little later he strode out, shaking like an aspen,
+his face white in agony. He drew his knife from his pocket, cut the
+bridle of his horse, dug his spurs into the quivering sides, and was
+off like the wind. What battle was fought out on that wild ride is
+known only to John Randolph and his God. What torture that fiery soul
+went through, no human being can ever know. When he came back at
+night, he was so changed that no one dared to speak to him.
+
+He threw himself into the political arena in order to save his reason.
+Often at midnight, he would rise from his uneasy bed, buckle on his
+pistols, and ride like mad over the country, returning only when his
+horse was spent. He never saw Miss Ward again, and she married Peyton
+Randolph, the son of Edmund Randolph, who was Secretary of State under
+Washington.
+
+The entire affair is shrouded in mystery. There is not a letter, nor a
+single scrap of paper, nor a shred of evidence upon which to base even
+a presumption. The separation was final and complete, and the
+white-hot metal of the man's nature was gradually moulded into that
+strange eccentric being whose foibles are so well known.
+
+Only once did Randolph lift even a corner of the veil. In a letter to
+his dearest friend he spoke of her as:
+
+     "One I loved better than my own soul, or Him who created it.
+     My apathy is not natural, but superinduced. There was a
+     volcano under my ice, but it burnt out, and a face of
+     desolation has come on, not to be rectified in ages, could
+     my life be prolonged to patriarchal longevity.
+
+     "The necessity of loving and being loved was never felt by
+     the imaginary beings of Rousseau and Byron's creation, more
+     imperiously than by myself. My heart was offered with a
+     devotion that knew no reserve. Long an object of
+     proscription and treachery, I have at last, more mortifying
+     to the pride of man, become an object of utter
+     indifference."
+
+The brilliant statesman would doubtless have had a large liberty of
+choice among the many beautiful women of his circle, but he never
+married, and there is no record of any entanglement. To the few women
+he deemed worthy of his respect and admiration, he was deferential and
+even gallant. In one of his letters to a young relative he said:
+
+     "Love to god-son Randolph and respectful compliments to Mrs.
+     R. She is indeed a fine woman, one for whom I have felt a
+     true regard, unmixed with the foible of another passion.
+
+     "Fortunately or unfortunately for me, when I knew her, I
+     bore a charmed heart. Nothing else could have preserved me
+     from the full force of her attractions."
+
+For much of the time after his disappointment, he lived alone with
+his servants, solaced as far as possible by those friends of all
+mankind--books. When the spirit moved him, he would make visits to the
+neighbouring plantations, sometimes dressed in white flannel trousers,
+coat, and vest, and with white paper wrapped around his beaver hat!
+When he presented himself in this manner, riding horseback, with his
+dark eyes burning, he was said to have presented "a most ghostly
+appearance!"
+
+An old lady who lived for years on the banks of the Staunton, near
+Randolph's solitary home, tells a pathetic story:
+
+She was sitting alone in her room in the dead of winter, when a
+beautiful woman, pale as a ghost, dressed entirely in white, suddenly
+appeared before her, and began to talk about Mr. Randolph, saying he
+was her lover and would marry her yet, as he had never proved false to
+his plighted faith. She talked of him incessantly, like one deranged,
+until a young gentleman came by the house, leading a horse with a
+side-saddle on. She rushed out, and asked his permission to ride a few
+miles. Greatly to his surprise, she mounted without assistance, and
+sat astride like a man. He was much embarrassed, but had no choice
+except to escort her to the end of her journey.
+
+The old lady who tells of this strange experience says that the young
+woman several times visited Mr. Randolph, always dressed in white and
+usually in the dead of winter. He always put her on a horse and sent
+her away with a servant to escort her.
+
+In his life there were but two women--his mother and Maria Ward. While
+his lips were closed on the subject of his love, he did not hesitate
+to avow his misery. "I too am wretched," he would say with infinite
+pathos; and after her death, he spoke of Maria Ward as his "angel."
+
+In a letter written sometime after she died, he said, strangely
+enough: "I loved, aye, and was loved again, not wisely, but too well."
+
+His brilliant career was closed when he was sixty years old, and in
+his last illness, during delirium, the name of Maria was frequently
+heard by those who were anxiously watching with him. But, true to
+himself and to her, even when his reason was dethroned, he said
+nothing more.
+
+He was buried on his own plantation, in the midst of "that boundless
+contiguity of shade," with his secret locked forever in his tortured
+breast. "John Randolph of Roanoke," was all the title he claimed; but
+the history of those times teaches us that he was more than that--he
+was John Randolph, of the Republic.
+
+
+
+
+ How President Jackson Won
+ His Wife
+
+
+In October of 1788, a little company of immigrants arrived in
+Tennessee. The star of empire, which is said to move westward, had not
+yet illumined Nashville, and it was one of the dangerous points "on
+the frontier."
+
+The settlement was surrounded on all sides by hostile Indians. Men
+worked in the fields, but dared not go out to their daily task without
+being heavily armed. When two men met, and stopped for a moment to
+talk, they often stood back to back, with their rifles cocked ready
+for instant use. No one stooped to drink from a spring unless another
+guarded him, and the women were always attended by an armed force.
+
+Col. John Donelson had built for himself a blockhouse of unusual size
+and strength, and furnished it comfortably; but while surveying a
+piece of land near the village, he was killed by the savages, and his
+widow left to support herself as best she could.
+
+A married daughter and her husband lived with her, but it was
+necessary for her to take other boarders. One day there was a vigorous
+rap upon the stout door of the blockhouse, and a young man whose name
+was Andrew Jackson was admitted. Shortly afterward, he took up his
+abode as a regular boarder at the Widow Donelson's.
+
+The future President was then twenty-one or twenty-two. He was tall
+and slender, with every muscle developed to its utmost strength. He
+had an attractive face, pleasing manners, and made himself agreeable
+to every one in the house.
+
+The dangers of the frontier were but minor incidents in his
+estimation, for "desperate courage makes one a majority," and he had
+courage. When he was but thirteen years of age, he had boldly defied a
+British officer who had ordered him to clean some cavalry boots.
+
+"Sir," said the boy, "I am a prisoner of war, and I claim to be
+treated as such!"
+
+With an oath the officer drew his sword, and struck at the child's
+head. He parried the blow with his left arm, but received a severe
+wound on his head and another on his arm, the scars of which he always
+carried.
+
+The protecting presence of such a man was welcome to those who dwelt
+in the blockhouse--Mrs. Donelson, Mr. and Mrs. Robards, and another
+boarder, John Overton. Mrs. Donelson was a good cook and a notable
+housekeeper, while her daughter was said to be "the best story teller,
+the best dancer, the sprightliest companion, and the most dashing
+horsewoman in the western country."
+
+Jackson, as the only licensed lawyer in that part of Tennessee, soon
+had plenty of business on his hands, and his life in the blockhouse
+was a happy one until he learned that the serpent of jealousy lurked
+by that fireside.
+
+Mrs. Robards was a comely brunette, and her dusky beauty carried with
+it an irresistible appeal. Jackson soon learned that Captain Robards
+was unreasonably and even insanely jealous of his wife, and he learned
+from John Overton that before his arrival there had been a great deal
+of unhappiness because of this.
+
+At one time Captain Robards had written to Mrs. Donelson to take her
+daughter home, as he did not wish to live with her any longer; but
+through the efforts of Mr. Overton a reconciliation had been effected
+between the pair, and they were still living together at Mrs.
+Donelson's when Jackson went there to board.
+
+In a short time, however, Robards became violently jealous of Jackson
+and talked abusively to his wife, even in the presence of her mother
+and amidst the tears of both. Once more Overton interfered, assured
+Robards that his suspicions were groundless, and reproached him for
+his unmanly conduct.
+
+It was all in vain, however, and the family was in as unhappy a state
+as before, when they were living with the Captain's mother who had
+always taken the part of her daughter-in-law.
+
+At length Overton spoke to Jackson about it, telling him it was better
+not to remain where his presence made so much trouble, and offered to
+go with him to another boarding-place. Jackson readily assented,
+though neither of them knew where to go, and said that he would talk
+to Captain Robards.
+
+The men met near the orchard fence, and Jackson remonstrated with the
+Captain who grew violently angry and threatened to strike him. Jackson
+told him that he would not advise him to try to fight, but if he
+insisted, he would try to give him satisfaction. Nothing came of the
+discussion, however, as Robards seemed willing to take Jackson's
+advice and did not dare to strike him. But the coward continued to
+abuse his wife, and insulted Jackson at every opportunity. The result
+was that the young lawyer left the house.
+
+A few months later, the still raging husband left his wife and went to
+Kentucky, which was then a part of Virginia. Soon afterward, Mrs.
+Robards went to live with her sister, Mrs. Hay, and Overton returned
+to Mrs. Donelson's.
+
+In the following autumn there was a rumour that Captain Robards
+intended to return to Tennessee and take his wife to Kentucky, at
+which Mrs. Donelson and her daughter were greatly distressed. Mrs.
+Robards wept bitterly, and said it was impossible for her to live
+peaceably with her husband as she had tried it twice and failed. She
+determined to go down the river to Natchez, to a friend, and thus
+avoid her husband, who she said had threatened to haunt her.
+
+When Jackson heard of this arrangement he was very much troubled, for
+he felt that he had been the unwilling cause of the young wife's
+unhappiness, although entirely innocent of any wrong intention. So
+when Mrs. Robards had fully determined to undertake the journey to
+Natchez, accompanied only by Colonel Stark and his family, he offered
+to go with them as an additional protection against the Indians who
+were then especially active, and his escort was very gladly accepted.
+The trip was made in safety, and after seeing the lady settled with
+her friends, he returned to Nashville and resumed his law practice.
+
+At that time there was no divorce law in Virginia, and each separate
+divorce required the passage of an act of the legislature before a
+jury could consider the case. In the winter of 1791, Captain Robards
+obtained the passage of such an act, authorising the court of Mercer
+County to act upon his divorce. Mrs. Robards, hearing of this,
+understood that the passage of the act was, in itself, divorce, and
+that she was a free woman. Jackson also took the divorce for granted.
+Every one in the country so understood the matter, and at Natchez, in
+the following summer, the two were married.
+
+They returned to Nashville, settled down, and Jackson began in earnest
+the career that was to land him in the White House, the hero of the
+nation.
+
+In December of 1793, more than two years after their marriage, their
+friend Overton learned that the legislature had not granted a divorce,
+but had left it for the court to do so. Jackson was much chagrined
+when he heard of this, and it was with great difficulty that he was
+brought to believe it. In January of 1794, when the decree was finally
+obtained, they were married again.
+
+It is difficult to excuse Jackson for marrying the woman without
+positive and absolute knowledge of her divorce. He was a lawyer, and
+could have learned the facts of the case, even though there was no
+established mail service. Each of them had been entirely innocent of
+any intentional wrong-doing, and their long life together, their
+great devotion to each other, and General Jackson's honourable career,
+forever silenced the spiteful calumny of his rivals and enemies of
+early life.
+
+In his eyes his wife was the soul of honour and purity; he loved and
+reverenced her as a man loves and reverences but one woman in his
+lifetime, and for thirty-seven years he kept a pair of pistols loaded
+for the man who should dare to breathe her name without respect.
+
+The famous pistol duel with Dickinson was the result of a quarrel
+which had its beginning in a remark reflecting upon Mrs. Jackson, and
+Dickinson, though a crack shot, paid for it with his life.
+
+Several of Dickinson's friends sent a memorial to the proprietors of
+the _Impartial Review_, asking that the next number of the paper
+appear in mourning, "out of respect for the memory, and regret for the
+untimely death, of Mr. Charles Dickinson."
+
+"Old Hickory" heard of this movement, and wrote to the proprietors,
+asking that the names of the gentlemen making the request be published
+in the memorial number of the paper. This also was agreed to, and it
+is significant that twenty-six of the seventy-three men who had signed
+the petition called and erased their names from the document.
+
+"The Hermitage" at Nashville, which is still a very attractive spot
+for visitors, was built solely to please Mrs. Jackson, and there she
+dispensed gracious hospitality. Not merely a guest or two, but whole
+families, came for weeks at a time, for the mistress of the mansion
+was fond of entertaining, and proved herself a charming hostess. She
+had a good memory, had passed through many and greatly varied
+experiences, and above all she had that rare faculty which is called
+tact.
+
+Though her husband's love for her was evident to every one, yet, in
+the presence of others, he always maintained a dignified reserve. He
+never spoke of her as "Rachel," nor addressed her as "My Dear." It
+was always "Mrs. Jackson," or "wife." She always called him "Mr.
+Jackson," never "Andrew" nor "General."
+
+Both of them greatly desired children, but this blessing was denied
+them; so they adopted a boy, the child of Mrs. Jackson's brother,
+naming him "Andrew Jackson," and bringing him up as their own child.
+
+The lady's portrait shows her to have been wonderfully attractive. It
+does not reveal the dusky Oriental tint of her skin, the ripe red of
+her lips, nor the changing lights in her face, but it shows the high
+forehead, the dark soft hair, the fine eyes, and the tempting mouth
+which was smiling, yet serene. A lace head-dress is worn over the
+waving hair, and the filmy folds fall softly over neck and bosom.
+
+When Jackson was elected to the Presidency, the ladies of Nashville
+organized themselves into sewing circles to prepare Mrs. Jackson's
+wardrobe. It was a labour of love. On December 23, 1828, there was to
+be a grand banquet in Jackson's honour, and the devoted women of their
+home city had made a beautiful gown for his wife to wear at the
+dinner. At sunrise the preparations began. The tables were set, the
+dining-room decorated, and the officers and men of the troop that was
+to escort the President-elect were preparing to go to the home and
+attend him on the long ride into the city. Their horses were saddled
+and in readiness at the place of meeting. As the bugle sounded the
+summons to mount, a breathless messenger appeared on a horse flecked
+with foam. Mrs. Jackson had died of heart disease the evening before.
+
+The festival was changed to a funeral, and the trumpets and drums that
+were to have sounded salute were muffled in black. All decorations
+were taken down, and the church bells tolled mournfully. The grief of
+the people was beyond speech. Each one felt a personal loss.
+
+At the home the blow was terrible. The lover-husband would not leave
+his wife. In those bitter hours the highest gift of his countrymen
+was an empty triumph, for his soul was wrecked with the greatness of
+his loss.
+
+When she was buried at the foot of a slope in the garden of "The
+Hermitage," his bereavement came home to him with crushing strength.
+Back of the open grave stood a great throng of people, waiting in the
+wintry wind. The sun shone brightly on the snow, but "The Hermitage"
+was desolate, for its light and laughter and love were gone. The
+casket was carried down the slope, and a long way behind it came the
+General, slowly and almost helpless, between two of his friends.
+
+The people of Nashville had made ready to greet him with the blare of
+bugles, waving flags, the clash of cymbals, and resounding cheers. It
+was for the President-elect--the hero of the war. The throng that
+stood behind the open grave greeted him with sobs and tears--not the
+President-elect, but the man bowed by his sixty years, bareheaded,
+with his gray hair rumpled in the wind, staggering toward them in the
+throes of his bitterest grief.
+
+In that one night he had grown old. He looked like a man stricken
+beyond all hope. When his old friends gathered around him with the
+tears streaming down their cheeks, wringing his hand in silent
+sympathy, he could make no response.
+
+He was never the same again, though his strength of will and his
+desperate courage fought with this infinite pain. For the rest of his
+life he lived as she would have had him live--guided his actions by
+the thought of what his wife, if living, would have had him do--loving
+her still, with the love that passeth all understanding.
+
+He declined the sarcophagus fit for an emperor, that he might be
+buried like a simple citizen, in the garden by her side.
+
+His last words were of her--his last look rested upon her portrait
+that hung opposite his bed, and if there be dreaming in the dark, the
+vision of her brought him peace at last.
+
+
+
+
+ The Bachelor President's Loyalty
+ to a Memory
+
+
+The fifteenth President was remarkable among the men of his time
+for his lifelong fidelity to one woman, for since the days of
+knight-errantry such devotion has been as rare as it is beautiful. The
+young lawyer came of Scotch-Irish parentage, and to this blending of
+blood were probably in part due his deep love and steadfastness. There
+was rather more of the Irish than of the Scotch in his face, and when
+we read that his overflowing spirits were too much for the college in
+which he had been placed, and that, for "reasons of public policy,"
+the honours which he had earned were on commencement day given to
+another, it is evident that he may sometimes have felt that he owed
+allegiance primarily to the Emerald Isle.
+
+Like others, who have been capable of deep and lasting passion, James
+Buchanan loved his mother. Among his papers there was found a fragment
+of an autobiography, which ended in 1816, when the writer was only
+twenty-five years of age. He says his father was "a kind father, a
+sincere friend, and an honest and religious man," but on the subject
+of his mother he waxes eloquent:
+
+     "Considering her limited opportunities in early life [he
+     writes], my mother was a remarkable woman. The daughter of a
+     country farmer, engaged in household employment from early
+     life until after my father's death, she yet found time to
+     read much, and to reflect deeply on what she read.
+
+     "She had a great fondness for poetry, and could repeat with
+     ease all the passages in her favorite authors which struck
+     her fancy. These were Milton, Pope, Young, Cowper, and
+     Thompson.
+
+     "I do not think, at least until a late period in life, she
+     had ever read a criticism on any one of these authors, and
+     yet such was the correctness of her natural taste, that she
+     had selected for herself, and could repeat, every passage
+     in them which has been admired....
+
+     "For her sons, as they grew up successively, she was a
+     delightful and instructive companion.... She was a woman of
+     great firmness of character, and bore the afflictions of her
+     later life with Christian philosophy.... It was chiefly to
+     her influence, that her sons were indebted for a liberal
+     education. Under Providence I attribute any little
+     distinction which I may have acquired in the world to the
+     blessing which He conferred upon me in granting me such a
+     mother."
+
+If Elizabeth Buchanan could have read these words, doubtless she would
+have felt fully repaid for her many years of toil, self-sacrifice, and
+devotion.
+
+After the young man left the legislature and took up the practice of
+law, with the intention of spending his life at the bar, he became
+engaged to Anne Coleman, the daughter of Robert Coleman, of Lancaster.
+
+She is said to have been an unusually beautiful girl, quiet, gentle,
+modest, womanly, and extremely sensitive. The fine feelings of a
+delicately organized nature may easily become either a blessing or a
+curse, and on account of her sensitiveness there was a rupture for
+which neither can be very greatly blamed.
+
+Mr. Coleman approved of the engagement, and the happy lover worked
+hard to make a home for the idol of his heart. One day, out of the
+blue sky a thunderbolt fell. He received a note from Miss Coleman
+asking him to release her from her engagement.
+
+There was no explanation forthcoming, and it was not until long
+afterward that he discovered that busy-bodies and gossips had gone to
+Miss Coleman with stories concerning him which had no foundation save
+in their mischief-making imaginations, and which she would not repeat
+to him. After all his efforts at re-establishing the old relations had
+proved useless, he wrote to her that if it were her wish to be
+released from her engagement he could but submit, as he had no desire
+to hold her against her will.
+
+The break came in the latter part of the summer of 1819, when he was
+twenty-eight years old and she was in her twenty-third year. He threw
+himself into his work with renewed energy, and later on she went to
+visit friends in Philadelphia.
+
+Though she was too proud to admit it, there was evidence that the
+beautiful and high-spirited girl was suffering from heartache. On the
+ninth of December, she died suddenly, and her body was brought home
+just a week after she left Lancaster. The funeral took place the next
+day, Sunday, and to the suffering father of the girl, the heart-broken
+lover wrote a letter which in simple pathos stands almost alone. It is
+the only document on this subject which remains, but in these few
+lines is hidden a tragedy:
+
+                    "LANCASTER, December 10, 1819.
+
+     "MY DEAR SIR:
+
+     "You have lost a child, a dear, dear child. I have lost the
+     only earthly object of my affections, without whom, life now
+     presents to me a dreary blank. My prospects are all cut off,
+     and I feel that my happiness will be buried with her in her
+     grave.
+
+     "It is now no time for explanation, but the time will come
+     when you will discover that she, as well as I, has been
+     greatly abused. God forgive the authors of it! My feelings
+     of resentment against them, whoever they may be, are buried
+     in the dust.
+
+     "I have now one request to make, and for the love of God,
+     and of your dear departed daughter, whom I loved infinitely
+     more than any human being could love, deny me not. Afford me
+     the melancholy pleasure of seeing her body before its
+     interment. I would not, for the world, be denied this
+     request.
+
+     "I might make another, but from the misrepresentations that
+     have been made to you, I am almost afraid. I would like to
+     follow her remains, to the grave as a mourner. I would like
+     to convince the world, I hope yet to convince you, that she
+     was infinitely dearer to me than life.
+
+     "I may sustain the shock of her death, but I feel that
+     happiness has fled from me forever. The prayer which I make
+     to God without ceasing is, that I yet may be able to show my
+     veneration for the memory of my dear, departed saint, by my
+     respect and attachment for her surviving friends.
+
+     "May Heaven bless you and enable you to bear the shock with
+     the fortitude of a Christian.
+
+     "I am forever, your sincere and grateful friend,
+
+                    "JAMES BUCHANAN."
+
+The father returned the letter unopened and without comment. Death had
+only widened the breach. It would have been gratifying to know that
+the two lovers were together for a moment at the end.
+
+For such a meeting as that there are no words but Edwin Arnold's:
+
+     "But he--who loved her too well to dread
+     The sweet, the stately, the beautiful dead--
+     He lit his lamp, and took the key,
+     And turn'd it!--alone again--he and she!"
+
+For him there was not even a glimpse of her as she lay in her coffin,
+nor a whisper that some day, like Evelyn Hope, she might "wake, and
+remember and understand." With that love that asks only for the right
+to serve, and feeling perhaps that no pen could do her justice, he
+obtained permission to write a paragraph for a local paper, which was
+published unsigned:
+
+     "Departed this life, on Thursday morning last, in the
+     twenty-third year of her age, while on a visit to friends in
+     the city of Philadelphia, Miss Anne C. Coleman, daughter of
+     Robert Coleman, Esquire of this city.
+
+     "It rarely falls to our lot to shed a tear over the remains
+     of one so much and so deservedly beloved as was the
+     deceased. She was everything which the fondest parent, or
+     the fondest friend could have wished her to be.
+
+     "Although she was young and beautiful and accomplished, and
+     the smiles of fortune shone upon her, yet her native modesty
+     and worth made her unconscious of her own attractions. Her
+     heart was the seat of all the softer virtues which ennoble
+     and dignify the character of woman.
+
+     "She has now gone to a world, where, in the bosom of her
+     God, she will be happy with congenial spirits. May the
+     memory of her virtues be ever green in the hearts of her
+     surviving friends. May her mild spirit, which on earth still
+     breathes peace and good will, be their guardian angel to
+     preserve them from the faults to which she was ever a
+     stranger.
+
+     "The spider's most attenuated thread
+     Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie
+     On earthly bliss--it breaks at every breeze."
+
+How deeply he felt her death is shown by extracts from a letter
+written to him by a friend in the latter part of December:
+
+     "I am writing, I know not why, and perhaps had better not. I
+     write only to speak of the awful visitation of Providence
+     that has fallen upon you, and how deeply I feel it.... I
+     trust to your philosophy and courage, and to the elasticity
+     of spirits natural to most young men....
+
+     "The sun will shine again, though a man enveloped in gloom
+     always thinks the darkness is to be eternal. Do you remember
+     the Spanish anecdote?
+
+     "A lady who had lost a favorite child remained for months
+     sunk in sullen sorrow and despair. Her confessor, one
+     morning visited her, and found her, as usual immersed in
+     gloom and grief. 'What,' said he, 'Have you not forgiven God
+     Almighty?'
+
+     "She rose, exerted herself, joined the world again, and
+     became useful to herself and her friends."
+
+Time's kindly touch heals many wounds, but the years seemed to bring
+to James Buchanan no surcease of sorrow. He was always under the
+cloud of that misunderstanding, and during his long political career,
+the incident frequently served as a butt for the calumnies of his
+enemies. It was freely used in "campaign documents," perverted,
+misrepresented, and twisted into every conceivable shape, though it is
+difficult to conceive how any form of humanity could ever be so base.
+
+Next to the loss of the girl he loved, this was the greatest grief of
+his life. To see the name of his "dear, departed saint" dragged into
+newspaper notoriety was absolute torture. Denial was useless, and
+pleading had no effect. After he had retired to his home at Wheatland,
+and when he was past seventy--when Anne Coleman's beautiful body had
+gone back to the dust, there was a long article in a newspaper about
+the affair, accompanied by the usual misrepresentations.
+
+To a friend, he said, with deep emotion: "In my safety-deposit box in
+New York there is a sealed package, containing papers and relics which
+will explain everything. Sometime, when I am dead, the world will
+know--and absolve."
+
+But after his death, when his executors found the package, there was a
+direction on the outside: "To be burned unopened at my death."
+
+He chose silence rather than vindication at the risk of having Anne
+Coleman's name again brought into publicity. In that little parcel
+there was doubtless full exoneration, but at the end, as always, he
+nobly bore the blame.
+
+It happened that the letter he had written to her father was not in
+this package, but among his papers at Wheatland--otherwise that
+pathetic request would also have been burned.
+
+Through all his life he remained true to Anne's memory. Under the
+continual public attacks his grief became one that even his friends
+forebore to speak of, and he had a chivalrous regard for all women,
+because of his love for one. His social instincts were strong,
+his nature affectionate and steadfast, yet it was owing to his
+disappointment that he became President. At one time, when he was in
+London, he said to an intimate friend: "I never intended to engage
+in politics, but meant to follow my profession strictly. But my
+prospects and plans were all changed by a most sad event, which
+happened at Lancaster when I was a young man. As a distraction from my
+grief, and because I saw that through a political following I could
+secure the friends I then needed, I accepted a nomination."
+
+A beautiful side of his character is shown in his devotion to his
+niece, Harriet Lane. He was to her always a faithful father. When she
+was away at school or otherwise separated from him, he wrote to her
+regularly, never failing to assure her of his affection, and received
+her love and confidence in return. In 1865, when she wrote to him of
+her engagement, he replied, in part, as follows:
+
+     "I believe you say truly that nothing would have induced you
+     to leave me, in good or evil fortune, if I had wished you to
+     remain with me.
+
+     "Such a wish on my part would be very selfish. You have long
+     known my desire that you should marry whenever a suitor
+     worthy of you should offer. Indeed, it has been my strong
+     desire to see you settled in the world before my death. You
+     have now made your own unbiased choice; and from the
+     character of Mr. Johnston, I anticipate for you a happy
+     marriage, because I believe from your own good sense, you
+     will conform to your conductor, and make him a good and
+     loving wife."
+
+The days passed in retirement at Wheatland were filled with quiet
+content. The end came as peacefully as the night itself. He awoke from
+a gentle sleep, murmured, "O Lord, God Almighty, as Thou wilt!" and
+passed serenely into that other sleep, which knows not dreams.
+
+The impenetrable veil between us and eternity permits no lifting of
+its folds; there is no parting of its greyness, save for a passage,
+but perhaps, in "that undiscovered country from whose bourne no
+traveller returns" Anne Coleman and her lover have met once more, and
+the long life of faithfulness at last has won her pardon.
+
+
+
+
+Decoration Day
+
+
+     The trees bow their heads in sorrow,
+       While their giant branches wave,
+     With the requiems of the forest,
+       To the dead in a soldier's grave.
+
+     The pitying rain falls softly,
+       In grief for a nation's brave,
+     Who died 'neath the scourge of treason
+       And rest in a lonely grave.
+
+     So, under the willow and cypress
+       We lay our dead away,
+     And cover their graves with blossoms,
+       But the debt we never can pay.
+
+     All nature is bathed in tears,
+       On our sad Memorial day,
+     When we crown the valour of heroes
+       With flowers from the garments of May.
+
+
+
+
+ The Romance of the Life of
+ Lincoln
+
+
+By the slow passing of years humanity attains what is called the
+"historical perspective," but it is still a mooted question as to how
+many years are necessary.
+
+We think of Lincoln as a great leader, and it is difficult to imagine
+him as a lover. He was at the helm of "the Ship of State" in the most
+fearful storm it ever passed through; he struck off the shackles of a
+fettered people, and was crowned with martyrdom; yet in spite of his
+greatness, he loved like other men.
+
+There is no record for Lincoln's earlier years of the boyish love
+which comes to many men in their school days. The great passion of his
+life came to him in manhood but with no whit of its sweetness gone.
+Sweet Anne Rutledge! There are those who remember her well, and to
+this day in speaking of her, their eyes fill with tears. A lady who
+knew her says: "Miss Rutledge had auburn hair, blue eyes, and a fair
+complexion. She was pretty, rather slender, and good-hearted, beloved
+by all who knew her."
+
+Before Lincoln loved her, she had a sad experience with another man.
+About the time that he came to New Salem, a young man named John
+McNeil drifted in from one of the Eastern States. He worked hard, was
+plucky and industrious, and soon accumulated a little property. He met
+Anne Rutledge when she was but seventeen and still in school, and he
+began to pay her especial attention which at last culminated in their
+engagement.
+
+He was about going back to New York for a visit and leaving he told
+Anne that his name was not McNeil, but McNamar--that he had changed
+his name so that his dependent family might not follow him and settle
+down upon him before he was able to support them. Now that he was in
+a position to aid his parents, brothers, and sisters, he was going
+back to do it and upon his return would make Anne his wife.
+
+For a long time she did not hear from him at all, and gossip was rife
+in New Salem. His letters became more formal and less frequent and
+finally ceased altogether. The girl's proud spirit compelled her to
+hold her head high amid the impertinent questions of the neighbors.
+
+Lincoln had heard of the strange conduct of McNeil and concluding that
+there was now no tie between Miss Rutledge and her quondam lover, he
+began his own siege in earnest. Anne consented at last to marry him
+provided he gave her time to write to McNamar and obtain a release
+from the pledge which she felt was still binding upon her.
+
+She wrote, but there was no answer and at last she definitely accepted
+Lincoln.
+
+It was necessary for him to complete his law studies, and after that,
+he said, "Nothing on God's footstool shall keep us apart."
+
+He worked happily but a sore conflict seemed to be raging in Anne's
+tender heart and conscience, and finally the strain told upon her to
+such an extent that when she was attacked by a fever, she had little
+strength to resist it.
+
+The summer waned and Anne's life ebbed with it. At the very end of her
+illness, when all visitors were forbidden, she insisted upon seeing
+Lincoln. He went to her--and closed the door between them and the
+world. It was his last hour with her. When he came out, his face was
+white with the agony of parting.
+
+A few days later, she died and Lincoln was almost insane with grief.
+He walked for hours in the woods, refused to eat, would speak to no
+one, and there settled upon him that profound melancholy which came
+back, time and again, during the after years. To one friend he said:
+"I cannot bear to think that the rain and storms will beat upon her
+grave."
+
+When the days were dark and stormy he was constantly watched, as his
+friends feared he would take his own life. Finally, he was persuaded
+to go away to the house of a friend who lived at some distance, and
+here he remained until he was ready to face the world again.
+
+A few weeks after Anne's burial, McNamar returned to New Salem. On his
+arrival he met Lincoln at the post-office and both were sorely
+distressed. He made no explanation of his absence, and shortly seemed
+to forget about Miss Rutledge, but her grave was in Lincoln's heart
+until the bullet of the assassin struck him down.
+
+In October of 1833, Lincoln met Miss Mary Owens, and admired her
+though not extravagantly. From all accounts, she was an unusual woman.
+She was tall, full in figure, with blue eyes and dark hair; she was
+well educated and quite popular in the little community. She was away
+for a time, but returned to New Salem in 1836, and Lincoln at once
+began to call upon her, enjoying her wit and beauty. At that time she
+was about twenty-eight years old.
+
+One day Miss Owens was out walking with a lady friend and when they
+came to the foot of a steep hill, Lincoln joined them. He walked
+behind with Miss Owens, and talked with her, quite oblivious to the
+fact that her friend was carrying a heavy baby. When they reached the
+summit, Miss Owens said laughingly: "You would not make a good
+husband, Abe."
+
+They sat on the fence and a wordy discussion followed. Both were angry
+when they parted, and the breach was not healed for some time. It was
+poor policy to quarrel, since some time before he had proposed to Miss
+Owens, and she had asked for time in which to consider it before
+giving a final answer. His letters to her are not what one would call
+"love-letters." One begins in this way:
+
+     "MARY:--I have been sick ever since my arrival, or I should
+     have written sooner. It is but little difference, however,
+     as I have very little even yet to write. And more, the
+     longer I can avoid the mortification of looking in the
+     post-office for your letter, and not finding it, the better.
+     You see I am mad about that old letter yet. I don't like
+     very well to risk you again. I'll try you once more,
+     anyhow."
+
+The remainder of the letter deals with political matters and is signed
+simply "Your Friend Lincoln."
+
+In another letter written the following year he says to her:
+
+     "I am often thinking about what we said of your coming to
+     live at Springfield. I am afraid you would not be satisfied.
+     There is a great deal of flourishing about in carriages
+     here, which it would be your doom to see without sharing it.
+     You would have to be poor without the means of hiding your
+     poverty. Do you believe you could bear that patiently?
+
+     "Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever
+     do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her
+     happy and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that
+     would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort.
+
+     "I know I should be much happier with you than the way I am,
+     provided I saw no signs of discontent in you. What you have
+     said to me may have been in the way of jest, or I may have
+     misunderstood it.
+
+     "If so, then let it be forgotten; if otherwise I much wish
+     you would think seriously before you decide. For my part, I
+     have already decided.
+
+     "What I have said I will most positively abide by, provided
+     you wish it. My opinion is that you would better not do it.
+     You have not been accustomed to hardship, and it may be more
+     severe than you now imagine.
+
+     "I know you are capable of thinking correctly upon any
+     subject and if you deliberate maturely upon this before you
+     decide, then I am willing to abide by your decision."
+
+Matters went on in this way for about three months; then they met
+again, seemingly without making any progress. On the day they parted,
+Lincoln wrote her another letter, evidently to make his own position
+clear and put the burden of decision upon her.
+
+     "If you feel yourself in any degree bound to me [he said], I
+     am now willing to release you, provided you wish it; while,
+     on the other hand, I am willing and even anxious, to bind
+     you faster, if I can be convinced that it will in any
+     considerable degree add to your happiness. This, indeed, is
+     the whole question with me. Nothing would make me more
+     miserable than to believe you miserable--nothing more happy
+     than to know you were so."
+
+In spite of his evident sincerity, it is not surprising to learn that
+a little later, Miss Owens definitely refused him. In April, of the
+following year, Lincoln wrote to his friend, Mrs. L. H. Browning,
+giving a full account of this grotesque courtship:
+
+     "I finally was forced to give it up [he wrote] at which I
+     very unexpectedly found myself mortified almost beyond
+     endurance.
+
+     "I was mortified it seemed to me in a hundred different
+     ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the reflection that I
+     had so long been too stupid to discover her intentions, and
+     at the same time never doubting that I understood them
+     perfectly; and also, that she, whom I had taught myself to
+     believe nobody else would have, had actually rejected me,
+     with all my fancied greatness.
+
+     "And then to cap the whole, I then, for the first time,
+     began to suspect that I was really a little in love with
+     her. But let it all go. I'll try and outlive it. Others have
+     been made fools of by the girls; but this can never with
+     truth be said of me. I most emphatically in this instance
+     made a fool of myself. I have now come to the conclusion
+     never again to think of marrying, and for this reason I can
+     never be satisfied with any one who would be blockhead
+     enough to have me!"
+
+The gist of the matter seems to be that at heart Lincoln hesitated at
+matrimony, as other men have done, both before and since his time. In
+his letter to Mrs. Browning he speaks of his efforts to "put off the
+evil day for a time, which I really dreaded as much, perhaps more,
+than an Irishman does the halter!"
+
+But in 1839 Miss Mary Todd came to live with her sister, Mrs. Ninian
+Edwards, at Springfield. She was in her twenty-first year, and is
+described as "of average height and compactly built." She had a
+well-rounded face, rich dark brown hair, and bluish grey eyes. No
+picture of her fails to show the full, well-developed chin, which,
+more than any other feature is an evidence of determination. She
+was strong, proud, passionate, gifted with a keen sense of the
+ridiculous, well educated, and swayed only by her own imperious will.
+
+Lincoln was attracted at once, and strangely enough, Stephen A.
+Douglas crossed his wooing. For a time the two men were rivals, the
+pursuit waxing more furious day by day. Some one asked Miss Todd which
+of them she intended to marry, and she answered laughingly: "The one
+who has the best chance of becoming President!"
+
+She is said, however, to have refused the "Little Giant" on account of
+his lax morality and after that the coast was clear for Lincoln. Miss
+Todd's sister tells us that "he was charmed by Mary's wit and
+fascinated by her quick sagacity, her will, her nature, and culture."
+"I have happened in the room," she says, "where they were sitting,
+often and often, and Mary led the conversation. Lincoln would listen,
+and gaze on her as if drawn by some superior power--irresistibly so;
+he listened, but scarcely ever said a word."
+
+The affair naturally culminated in an engagement, and the course of
+love was running smoothly, when a distracting element appeared in the
+shape of Miss Matilda Edwards, the sister of Mrs. Edwards's husband.
+She was young and fair, and Lincoln was pleased with her appearance.
+For a time he tried to go on as before, but his feelings were too
+strong to be concealed. Mr. Edwards endeavoured to get his sister to
+marry Lincoln's friend, Speed, but she refused both Speed and Douglas.
+
+It is said that Lincoln once went to Miss Todd's house, intending to
+break the engagement, but his real love proved too strong to allow him
+to do it.
+
+His friend, Speed, thus describes the conclusion of this episode.
+"Well, old fellow," I said, "did you do as you intended?"
+
+"Yes, I did," responded Lincoln thoughtfully, "and when I told Mary I
+did not love her, she, wringing her hands, said something about the
+deceiver being himself deceived."
+
+"What else did you say?"
+
+"To tell you the truth, Speed, it was too much for me. I found the
+tears trickling down my own cheeks. I caught her in my arms and kissed
+her."
+
+"And that's how you broke the engagement. Your conduct was tantamount
+to a renewal of it!"
+
+And indeed this was true, and the lovers again considered the time of
+marriage.
+
+There is a story by Herndon to the effect that a wedding was arranged
+for the first day of January, 1841, and then when the hour came
+Lincoln did not appear, and was found wandering alone in the woods
+plunged in the deepest melancholy--a melancholy bordering upon
+insanity.
+
+This story, however, has no foundation; in fact, most competent
+witnesses agree that no such marriage date was fixed, although some
+date may have been considered.
+
+It is certain, however, that the relations between Lincoln and Miss
+Todd were broken off for a time. He did go to Kentucky for a while,
+but this trip certainly was not due to insanity. Lincoln was never so
+mindless as some of his biographers would have us believe, and the
+breaking of the engagement was due to perfectly natural causes--the
+difference in temperament of the lovers, and Lincoln's inclination to
+procrastinate. After a time the strained relations gradually improved.
+They met occasionally in the parlor of a friend, Mrs. Francis, and it
+was through Miss Todd that the duel with Shields came about.
+
+She wielded a ready and a sarcastic pen, and safely hidden behind a
+pseudonym and the promise of the editor, she wrote a series of
+satirical articles for the local paper, entitled: "Letters from Lost
+Townships." In one of these she touched up Mr. Shields, the Auditor of
+State, to such good purpose that believing that Lincoln had written
+the article, he challenged him to a duel. Lincoln accepted the
+challenge and chose "cavalry broadswords" as the weapons, but the
+intervention of friends prevented any fighting, although he always
+spoke of the affair as his "duel."
+
+As a result of this altercation with Shields, Miss Todd and the future
+President came again into close friendship, and a marriage was decided
+upon.
+
+The license was secured, the minister sent for, and on November 4,
+1842, they became man and wife.
+
+It is not surprising that more or less unhappiness obtained in their
+married life, for Mrs. Lincoln was a woman of strong character, proud,
+fiery, and determined. Her husband was subject to strange moods and
+impulses, and the great task which God had committed to him made him
+less amenable to family cares.
+
+That married life which began at the Globe Tavern was destined to end
+at the White House, after years of vicissitude and serious national
+trouble. Children were born unto them, and all but the eldest died.
+Great responsibilities were laid upon Lincoln and even though he met
+them bravely it was inevitable that his family should also suffer.
+
+Upon the face of the Commander-in-chief rested nearly always a mighty
+sadness, except when it was occasionally illumined by his wonderful
+smile, or when the light of his sublime faith banished the clouds.
+
+Storm and stress, suffering and heartache, reverses and defeat were
+the portion of the Leader, and when Victory at last perched upon the
+National standard, her beautiful feet were all drabbled in blood, and
+the most terrible war on the world's records passed down into history.
+In the hour of triumph, with his great purpose nobly fulfilled, death
+came to the great Captain.
+
+The United Republic is his monument, and that rugged, yet gracious
+figure, hallowed by martyrdom, stands before the eyes of his
+countrymen forever serene and calm, while his memory lingers like
+a benediction in the hearts of both friend and foe.
+
+
+
+
+Silent Thanksgiving
+
+
+     She is standing alone by the window--
+       A woman, faded and old,
+     But the wrinkled face was lovely once,
+       And the silvered hair was gold.
+     As out in the darkness, the snow-flakes
+       Are falling so softly and slow,
+     Her thoughts fly back to the summer of life,
+       And the scenes of long ago.
+
+     Before the dim eyes, a picture comes,
+       She has seen it again and again;
+     The tears steal over the faded cheeks,
+       And the lips that quiver with pain,
+     For she hears once more the trumpet call
+       And sees the battle array
+     As they march to the hills with gleaming swords--
+       Can she ever forget that day?
+
+     She has given her boy to the land she loves,
+       How hard it had been to part!
+     And to-night she stands at the window alone,
+       With a new-made grave in her heart.
+     And yet, it's the day of Thanksgiving--
+       But her child, her darling was slain
+     By the shot and shell of the rebel guns--
+       Can she ever be thankful again?
+
+     She thinks once more of his fair young face,
+       And the cannon's murderous roll,
+     While hatred springs in her passionate heart,
+       And bitterness into her soul.
+     Then out of the death-like stillness
+       There comes a battle-cry--
+     The song that led those marching feet
+       To conquer, or to die.
+
+     "Yes, rally round the flag, boys!"
+       With tears she hears the song,
+     And her thoughts go back to the boys in blue,
+       That army, brave and strong--
+     Then Peace creeps in amid the pain.
+       The dead are as dear as the living,
+     And back of the song is the silence,
+       And back of the silence--Thanksgiving.
+
+
+
+
+In the Flash of a Jewel
+
+
+Certain barbaric instincts in the human race seem to be ineradicable.
+It is but a step from the painted savage, gorgeous in his beads and
+wampum, to my lady of fashion, who wears a tiara upon her stately
+head, chains and collars of precious stones at her throat, bracelets
+on her white arms, and innumerable rings upon her dainty fingers. Wise
+men may decry the baleful fascination of jewels, but, none the less,
+the jeweller's window continues to draw the crowd.
+
+Like brilliant moths that appear only at night, jewels are tabooed in
+the day hours. Dame Fashion sternly condemns gems in the day time as
+evidence of hopelessly bad taste. No jewels are permitted in any
+ostentatious way, and yet a woman may, even in good society, wear a
+few thousand dollars' worth of precious stones, without seeming to be
+overdressed, provided the occasion is appropriate, as in the case of
+functions held in darkened rooms.
+
+In the evening when shoulders are bared and light feet tread fantastic
+measures in a ball room, which is literally a bower of roses, there
+seems to be no limit as regards jewels. In such an assembly a woman
+may, without appearing overdressed, adorn herself with diamonds
+amounting to a small fortune.
+
+During a season of grand opera in Chicago, a beautiful white-haired
+woman sat in the same box night after night without attracting
+particular attention, except as a woman of acknowledged beauty. At a
+glance it might be thought that her dress, although elegant, was
+rather simple, but an enterprising reporter discovered that her gown
+of rare old lace, with the pattern picked out here and there with chip
+diamonds, had cost over fifty-five thousand dollars. The tiara,
+collar, and few rings she wore, swelled the grand total to more than
+three hundred thousand dollars.
+
+Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, pearls, and opals--these
+precious stones have played a tremendous part in the world's history.
+Empires have been bartered for jewels, and for a string of pearls many
+a woman has sold her soul. It is said that pearls mean tears, yet they
+are favourite gifts for brides, and no maiden fears to wear them on
+her way up the aisle where her bridegroom waits.
+
+A French writer claims that if it be true that the oyster can be
+forced to make as many pearls as may be required of it, the jewel will
+become so common that my lady will no longer care to decorate herself
+with its pale splendour. Whether or not this will ever be the case, it
+is certain that few gems have played a more conspicuous part in
+history than this.
+
+Not only have we Cleopatra's reckless draught, but there is also a
+story of a noble Roman who dissolved in vinegar and drank a pearl
+worth a million sesterces, which had adorned the ear of the woman he
+loved. But the cold-hearted chemist declares that an acid which could
+dissolve a pearl would also dissolve the person who swallowed it, so
+those two legends must vanish with many others that have shrivelled up
+under the searching gaze of science.
+
+There is another interesting story about the destruction of a pearl.
+During the reign of Elizabeth, a haughty Spanish ambassador was
+boasting at the Court of England of the great riches of his king. Sir
+Thomas Gresham, wishing to get even with the bragging Castilian,
+replied that some of Elizabeth's subjects would spend as much at one
+meal as Philip's whole kingdom could produce in a day! To prove this
+statement, Sir Thomas invited the Spaniard to dine with him, and
+having ground up a costly Eastern pearl the Englishman coolly
+swallowed it.
+
+Going back to the dimness of early times, we find that many of the
+ancients preferred green gems to all other stones. The emerald was
+thought to have many virtues. It kept evil spirits at a distance, it
+restored failing sight, it could unearth mysteries, and when it turned
+yellow its owner knew to a certainty that the woman he loved was false
+to him.
+
+The ruby flashes through all Oriental romances. This stone banished
+sadness and sin. A serpent with a ruby in its mouth was considered an
+appropriate betrothal ring.
+
+The most interesting ruby of history is set in the royal diadem of
+England. It is called the Black Prince's ruby. In the days when the
+Moors ruled Granada, when both the men and the women of that race
+sparkled with gems, and even the ivory covers of their books were
+sometimes set with precious stones, the Spanish king, Don Pedro the
+Cruel, obtained this stone from a Moorish prince whom he had caused to
+be murdered.
+
+It was given by Don Pedro to the Black Prince, and half a century
+later it glowed on the helmet of that most picturesque of England's
+kings, Henry V, at the battle of Agincourt.
+
+The Scotchman, Sir James Melville, saw this jewel during his famous
+visit to the Court of Elizabeth, when the Queen showed him some of the
+treasures in her cabinet, the most valued of these being the portrait
+of Leicester.
+
+"She showed me a fair ruby like a great racket ball," he says. "I
+desired she would send to my queen either this or the Earl of
+Leicester's picture." But Elizabeth cherished both the ruby and the
+portrait, so she sent Marie Stuart a diamond instead.
+
+Poets have lavished their fancies upon the origin of the opal, but no
+one seems to know why it is considered unlucky. Women who laugh at
+superstitions of all kinds are afraid to wear an opal, and a certain
+jeweller at the head of one of the largest establishments in a great
+city has carried his fear to such a length that he will not keep one
+in his establishment--not only this, but it is said that he has even
+been known to throw an opal ring out of the window. The offending
+stone had been presented to his daughter, but this fact was not
+allowed to weigh against his superstition. It is understood when he
+entertains that none of his guests will wear opals, and this wish is
+faithfully respected.
+
+The story goes that the opal was discovered at the same time that
+kissing was invented. A young shepherd on the hills of Greece found
+a pretty pebble one day, and wishing to give it to a beautiful
+shepherdess who stood near him, he let her take it from his lips
+with hers, as the hands of neither of them were clean.
+
+Many a battle royal has been waged for the possession of a diamond,
+and several famous diamonds are known by name throughout the world.
+Among these are the Orloff, the Koh-i-noor, the Regent, the Real
+Paragon, and the Sanci, besides the enormous stone which was sent to
+King Edward from South Africa. This has been cut but not yet named.
+
+The Orloff is perhaps the most brilliant of all the famous group.
+Tradition says that it was once one of the eyes of an Indian idol and
+was supposed to have been the origin of all light. A French grenadier
+of Pondicherry deserted his regiment, adopted the religion and manners
+of the Brahmans, worshipped at the shrine of the idol whose eyes were
+light itself, stole the brightest one, and escaped.
+
+A sea captain bought it from him for ten thousand dollars and sold it
+to a Jew for sixty thousand dollars. An Armenian named Shafras bought
+it from the Jew, and after a time Count Orloff paid $382,500 for this
+and a title of Russian nobility.
+
+He presented the wonderful refractor of light to the Empress Catherine
+who complimented Orloff by naming it after him. This magnificent
+stone, which weighs one hundred and ninety-five carats, now forms the
+apex of the Russian crown.
+
+The Real Paragon was in 1861 the property of the Rajah of Mattan.
+It was then uncut and weighed three hundred and seven carats. The
+Governor of Batavia was very anxious to bring it to Europe. He offered
+the Rajah one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and two warships with
+their guns and ammunition, but the offer was contemptuously refused.
+Very little is known of its history. It is now owned by the Government
+of Portugal and is pledged as security for a very large sum of money.
+
+It has been said that one could carry the Koh-i-noor in one end of a
+silk purse and balance it in the other end with a gold eagle and a
+gold dollar, and never feel the difference in weight, while the value
+of the gem in gold could not be transported in less than four dray
+loads!
+
+Tradition says that Karna, King of Anga, owned it three thousand years
+ago. The King of Lahore, one of the Indies, heard that the King of
+Cabul, one of the lesser princes, had in his possession the largest
+and purest diamond in the world. Lahore invited Cabul to visit him,
+and when he had him in his power, demanded the treasure. Cabul,
+however, had suspected treachery, and brought an imitation of the
+Koh-i-noor. He of course expostulated, but finally surrendered the
+supposed diamond.
+
+The lapidary who was employed to mount it pronounced it a piece of
+crystal, whereupon the royal old thief sent soldiers who ransacked the
+palace of the King of Cabul from top to bottom, in vain. At last,
+however, after a long search, a servant betrayed his master, and the
+gem was found in a pile of ashes.
+
+After the annexation of the Punjab in 1849, the Koh-i-noor was given
+up to the British, and at a meeting of the Punjab Board was handed to
+John (afterward Lord) Lawrence who placed it in his waistcoat pocket
+and forgot the treasure. While at a public meeting some time later, he
+suddenly remembered it, hurried home and asked his servant if he had
+seen a small box which he had left in his waistcoat pocket.
+
+"Yes, sahib," the man replied; "I found it, and put in your drawer."
+
+"Bring it here," said Lawrence, and the servant produced it.
+
+"Now," said his master, "open it and see what it contains."
+
+The old native obeyed, and after removing the folds of linen, he said:
+"There is nothing here but a piece of glass."
+
+"Good," said Lawrence, with a sigh of relief, "you can leave it with
+me."
+
+The Sanci diamond belonged to Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, who
+wore it in his hat at the battle of Nancy, where he fell. A Swiss
+soldier found it and sold it for a gulden to a clergyman of Baltimore.
+It passed into the possession of Anton, King of Portugal, who was
+obliged to sell it, the price being a million francs.
+
+It shortly afterward became the property of a Frenchman named Sanci,
+whose descendant being sent as an ambassador, was required by the King
+to give the diamond as a pledge. The servant carrying it to the King
+was attacked by robbers on the way and murdered, not, however, until
+he had swallowed the diamond. His master, feeling sure of his
+faithfulness, caused the body to be opened and found the gem in his
+stomach. This gem came into the possession of the Crown of England,
+and James II carried it with him to France in 1688.
+
+From James it passed to his friend and patron, Louis XIV, and to his
+descendants, until the Duchess of Berry at the Restoration sold it to
+the Demidoffs for six hundred and twenty-five thousand francs.
+
+It was worth a million and a half of francs when Prince Paul
+Demidoff wore it in his hat at a great fancy ball given in honour
+of Count Walewski, the Minister of Napoleon III--and lost it
+during the ball! Everybody was wild with excitement when the loss
+was announced--everybody but Prince Paul Demidoff. After an hour's
+search the Sanci was found under a chair.
+
+After more than two centuries, "the Regent is," as Saint-Simon
+described it in 1717, "a brilliant, inestimable and unique." Its
+density is rather higher than that of the usual diamond, and it
+weighs upwards of one hundred and thirty carats. This stone was found
+in India by a slave, who, to conceal it, made a wound in his leg and
+wrapped the gem in the bandages. Reaching the coast, he intrusted
+himself and his secret to an English captain, who took the gem, threw
+the slave overboard, and sold his ill-gotten gains to a native
+merchant for five thousand dollars.
+
+It afterwards passed into the hands of Pitt, Governor of St. George,
+who sold it in 1717 to the Duke of Orleans, then Regent of France, for
+$675,000. Before the end of the eighteenth century the stone had more
+than trebled in worth, and we can only wonder what it ought to bring
+now with its "perfect whiteness, its regular form, and its absolute
+freedom from stain or flaw!"
+
+The collection belonging to the Sultan of Turkey, which is probably
+the finest in the world, dates prior to the discovery of America, and
+undoubtedly came from Asia. One Turkish pasha alone left to the Empire
+at his death, seven table-cloths embroidered with diamonds, and
+bushels of fine pearls.
+
+In the war with Russia, in 1778, Turkey borrowed $30,000,000 from the
+Ottoman Bank on the security of the crown jewels. The cashier of the
+bank was admitted to the treasure-chamber and was told to help himself
+until he had enough to secure his advances.
+
+"I selected enough," he says, "to secure the bank against loss in any
+event, but the removal of the gems I took made no appreciable gap in
+the accumulation."
+
+In the imperial treasury of the Sultan, the first room is the richest
+in notable objects. The most conspicuous of these is a great throne or
+divan of beaten gold, occupying the entire centre of the room, and set
+with precious stones: pearls, rubies, and emeralds, thousands of them,
+covering the entire surface in a geometrical mosaic pattern. This
+specimen of barbaric magnificence was part of the spoils of war taken
+from one of the shahs of Persia.
+
+Much more interesting and beautiful, however, is another canopied
+throne or divan, placed in the upper story of the same building. This
+is a genuine work of old Turkish art which dates from some time during
+the second half of the sixteenth century. It is a raised square seat,
+on which the Sultan sat cross-legged. At each angle there rises a
+square vertical shaft supporting a canopy, with a minaret or pinnacle
+surmounted by a rich gold and jewelled finial. The entire height of
+the throne is nine or ten feet. The materials are precious woods,
+ebony, sandal-wood, etc., with shell, mother-of-pearl, silver, and
+gold.
+
+The entire piece is decorated inside and out with a branching
+floriated design in mother-of-pearl marquetry, in the style of the
+fine early Persian painted tiles, and the centre of each of the
+principal leaves and flowers is set with splendid _cabochon_ gems,
+fine balass rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and pearls.
+
+Pendant from the roof of the canopy, and in a position which would be
+directly over the head of the Sultan, is a golden cord, on which is
+hung a large heart-shaped ornament of gold, chased and perforated with
+floriated work, and beneath it hangs a huge uncut emerald of fine
+colour, but of triangular shape, four inches in diameter, and an inch
+and a half thick.
+
+Richly decorated arms and armour form a conspicuous feature of the
+contents of all three of these rooms. The most notable work in this
+class in the first apartment is a splendid suit of mixed chain and
+plate mail, wonderfully damascened and jewelled, worn by Sultan Murad
+IV, in 1638, at the taking of Bagdad.
+
+Near to it is a scimetar, probably a part of the panoply of the same
+monarch. Both the hilt and the greater part of the broad scabbard
+of this weapon are incrusted with large table diamonds, forming
+checkerwork, all the square stones being regularly and symmetrically
+cut, of exactly the same size--upward of half an inch across. There
+are many other sumptuous works of art which are similarly adorned.
+
+Rightfully first among the world's splendid coronets stands the State
+Crown of England. It was made in 1838 with jewels taken from old
+crowns and others furnished by command of the Queen.
+
+It consists of diamonds, pearls, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, set
+in silver and gold. It has a crimson velvet cap with ermine border;
+it is lined with white silk and weighs about forty ounces. The lower
+part of the band above the ermine border consists of a row of one
+hundred and ninety-nine pearls, and the upper part of this band has
+one hundred and twelve pearls, between which, in the front of the
+crown, is a large sapphire which was purchased for it by George IV.
+
+At the back is a sapphire of smaller size and six others, three on
+each side, between which are eight emeralds. Above and below the
+sapphires are fourteen diamonds, and around the eight emeralds are one
+hundred and twenty-eight diamonds. Between the emeralds and sapphires
+are sixteen ornaments, containing one hundred and sixty diamonds.
+Above the band are eight sapphires, surmounted by eight diamonds,
+between which are eight festoons, consisting of one hundred and
+forty-eight diamonds.
+
+In the front of the crown and in the centre of a diamond Maltese cross
+is the famous ruby of the Black Prince. Around this ruby to form the
+cross are seventy-five brilliant diamonds. Three other Maltese
+crosses, forming the two sides and back of the crown, have emerald
+centres, and each contains between one and two hundred brilliant
+diamonds. Between the four Maltese crosses are four ornaments in the
+form of the French _fleur-de-lis_, with four rubies in the centre, and
+surrounded by rose diamonds.
+
+From the Maltese crosses issue four imperial arches, composed of oak
+leaves and acorns embellished with hundreds of magnificent jewels.
+From the upper part of the arches are suspended four large pendant
+pear-shaped pearls, with rose diamond caps. Above the arch stands the
+mound, thickly set with brilliants. The cross on the summit has a
+rose cut sapphire in the centre, surrounded by diamonds.
+
+A gem is said to represent "condensed wealth," and it is also
+condensed history. The blood of a ruby, the faint moonlight lustre of
+a pearl, the green glow of an emerald, and the dazzling white light
+of a diamond--in what unfailing magic lies their charm? Tiny bits
+of crystal as they appear to be--even the Orloff diamond could be
+concealed in a child's hand--yet kings and queens have played for
+stakes like these. Battle and murder have been done for them, honour
+bartered and kingdoms lost, but the old magic beauty never fades, and
+to-day, as always, sin and beauty, side, by side, are mirrored in the
+flash of a jewel.
+
+
+
+
+The Coming of My Ship
+
+
+     Straight to the sunrise my ship's sails are leaning,
+     Brave at the masthead her new colours fly;
+     Down on the shore, her lips trembling with meaning,
+     Love waits, but unanswering, I heed not her cry.
+     The gold of the East shall be mine in full measure,
+     My ship shall come home overflowing with treasure,
+     And love is not need, but only a pleasure,
+     So I wait for my ship to come in.
+
+     Silent, half troubled, I wait in the shadow,
+     No sail do I see between me and the dawn;
+     Out in the blue and measureless meadow,
+     My ship wanders widely, but Love has not gone.
+     "My arms await thee," she cries in her pleading,
+     "Why wait for its coming, when I am thy needing?"
+     I pass by in stillness, all else unheeding,
+     And wait for my ship to come in.
+
+     See, in the East, surrounded by splendour,
+     My sail glimmers whitely in crimson and blue;
+     I turn back to Love, my heart growing tender,
+     "Now I have gold and leisure for you.
+     Jewels she brings for thy white breast's adorning,
+     Measures of gold beyond a queen's scorning"--
+     To-night I shall rest--joy comes in the morning,
+     So I wait for my ship to come in.
+
+     Remembering waters beat cold on the shore,
+     And the grey sea in sadness grows old;
+     I listen in vain for Love's pleading once more,
+     While my ship comes with spices and gold.
+     The sea birds cry hoarsely, for this is their songing,
+     On masthead and colours their white wings are thronging,
+     But my soul throbs deep with love and with longing,
+     And I wait for my ship to come in.
+
+
+
+
+Romance and the Postman
+
+
+A letter! Do the charm and uncertainty of it ever fade? Who knows what
+may be written upon the pages within!
+
+Far back, in a dim, dream-haunted childhood, the first letter came to
+me. It was "a really, truly letter," properly stamped and addressed,
+and duly delivered by the postman. With what wonder the chubby fingers
+broke the seal! It did not matter that there was an inclosure to one's
+mother, and that the thing itself was written by an adoring relative;
+it was a personal letter, of private and particular importance, and
+that day the postman assumed his rightful place in one's affairs.
+
+In the treasure box of many a grandmother is hidden a pathetic scrawl
+that the baby made for her and called "a letter." To the alien eye,
+it is a mere tangle of pencil marks, and the baby himself, grown
+to manhood, with children of his own, would laugh at the yellowed
+message, which is put away with his christening robe and his first
+shoes, but to one, at least, it speaks with a deathless voice.
+
+It is written in books and papers that some unhappy mortals are
+swamped with mail. As a lady recently wrote to the President of the
+United States: "I suppose you get so many letters that when you see
+the postman coming down the street, you don't care whether he has
+anything for you or not."
+
+Indeed, the President might well think the universe had gone suddenly
+wrong if the postman passed him by, but there are compensations in
+everything. The First Gentleman of the Republic must inevitably miss
+the pleasant emotions which letters bring to the most of us.
+
+The clerks and carriers in the business centres may be pardoned if
+they lose sight of the potentialities of the letters that pass
+through their hands. When a skyscraper is a postal district in
+itself, there is no time for the man in grey to think of the burden he
+carries, save as so many pounds of dead weight, becoming appreciably
+lighter at each stop. But outside the hum and bustle, on quiet streets
+and secluded by-ways, there are faces at the windows, watching eagerly
+for the mail.
+
+The progress of the postman is akin to a Roman triumph, for in his
+leathern pack lies Fate. Long experience has given him a sixth sense,
+as if the letters breathed a hint of their contents through their
+superscriptions.
+
+The business letter, crisp and to the point, has an atmosphere of its
+own, even where cross lines of typewriting do not show through the
+envelope.
+
+The long, rambling, friendly hand is distinctive, and if it has been
+carried in the pocket a long time before mailing, the postman knows
+that the writer is a married woman with a foolish trust in her
+husband.
+
+Circulars addressed mechanically, at so much a thousand, never
+deceive the postman, though the recipient often opens them with
+pleasurable sensations, which immediately sink to zero. And the
+love-letters! The carrier is a veritable Sherlock Holmes when it comes
+to them.
+
+Gradually he becomes acquainted with the inmost secrets of those upon
+his route. Friendship, love, and marriage, absence and return, death,
+and one's financial condition, are all as an open book to the man
+in grey. Invitations, cards, wedding announcements, forlorn little
+letters from those to whom writing is not as easy as speech, childish
+epistles with scrap pictures pasted on the outside, all give an
+inkling of their contents to the man who delivers them.
+
+When the same bill comes to the same house for a long and regular
+period, then ceases, even the carrier must feel relieved to know that
+it has been paid. When he isn't too busy, he takes a friendly look at
+the postal cards, and sometimes saves a tenant in a third flat the
+weariness of two flights of stairs by shouting the news up the tube!
+
+If the dweller in a tenement has ingratiating manners, he may learn
+how many papers, and letters are being stuffed into the letter-box, by
+a polite inquiry down the tube when the bell rings. Through the subtle
+freemasonry of the postman's voice a girl knows that her lover has not
+forgotten her--and her credit is good for the "two cents due" if the
+tender missive is overweight.
+
+"All the world loves a lover," and even the busy postman takes a
+fatherly interest in the havoc wrought by Cupid along his route. The
+little blind god knows neither times nor seasons--all alike are his
+own--but the man in grey, old and spectacled though he may be, is his
+confidential messenger.
+
+Love-letters are seemingly immortal. A clay tablet on which one of the
+Pharaohs wrote, asking for the heart and hand of a beautiful foreign
+princess, is now in the British Museum. But suppose the postman had
+not been sure-footed, and all the clay letters had been smashed into
+fragments in a single grand catastrophe! What a stir in high places,
+what havoc in Church and State, and how many fond hearts broken, if
+the postman had fallen down!
+
+"Nothing feeds the flame like a letter," said Emerson; "it has intent,
+personality, secrecy." Flimsy and frail as it is, so easily torn or
+destroyed, the love-letter many times outlasts the love. Even the
+Father of his Country, though he has been dead this hundred years or
+more, has left behind him a love-letter, ragged and faded, but still
+legible, beginning: "My Dearest Life and Love."
+
+"Matter is indestructible," so the scientists say, but what of the
+love-letter that is reduced to ashes? Does its passion live again in
+some far-off violet flame, or, rising from its dust, bloom once more
+in a fragrant rose, to touch the lips of another love?
+
+In countless secret places, the tender missives are hidden, for the
+lover must always keep his joy in tangible form, to be sure that it
+was not a dream. They fly through the world by day and night, like
+white-winged birds that can say, "I love you"--over mountain, hill,
+stream, and plain; past sea and lake and river, through the desert's
+fiery heat and amid the throbbing pulses of civilisation, with never
+a mistake, to bring exquisite rapture to another heart and wings of
+light to the loved one's soul.
+
+Under the pillow of the maiden, her lover's letter brings visions of
+happiness too great for the human heart to hold. Even in her dreams,
+her fingers tighten upon his letter--the visible assurance of his
+unchanging and unchangeable love.
+
+When the bugle sounds the charge, and dimly through the flash and
+flame the flag signals "Follow!" many a heart, leaping to answer with
+the hot blood of youth, finds a sudden tenderness in the midst of its
+high courage, from the loving letter which lies close to the soldier's
+breast.
+
+Bunker Hill and Gettysburg, Moscow and the Wilderness, Waterloo,
+Mafeking, and San Juan--the old blood-stained fields and the modern
+scenes of terror have all alike known the same message and the same
+thrill. The faith and hope of the living, the kiss and prayer of the
+dying, the cries of the wounded, and the hot tears of those who have
+parted forever, are on the blood-stained pages of the love-letters
+that have gone to war.
+
+"_Ich liebe Dich_," "_Je t'aime_," or, in our dear English speech, "I
+love you,"--it is all the same, for the heart knows the universal
+language, the words of which are gold, bedewed with tears that shine
+like precious stones.
+
+Every attic counts old love-letters among its treasures, and when the
+rain beats on the roof and grey swirls of water are blown against the
+pane, one may sit among the old trunks and boxes and bring to light
+the loves of days gone by.
+
+The little hair-cloth trunk, with its rusty lock and broken hinges,
+brings to mind a rosy-cheeked girl in a poke bonnet, who went
+a-visiting in the stage-coach. Inside is the bonnet itself--white,
+with a gorgeous trimming of pink "lute-string" ribbon, which has faded
+into ashes of roses at the touch of the kindly years.
+
+From the trunk comes a musty fragrance--lavender, sweet clover,
+rosemary, thyme, and the dried petals of roses that have long since
+crumbled to dust. Scraps of brocade and taffeta, yellowed lingerie,
+and a quaint old wedding gown, daguerreotypes in ornate cases, and
+then the letters, tied with faded ribbon, in a package by themselves.
+
+The fingers unconsciously soften to their task, for the letters are
+old and yellow, and the ink has faded to brown. Every one was cut open
+with the scissors, not hastily torn according to our modern fashion,
+but in a slow and seemly manner, as befits a solemn occasion.
+
+Perhaps the sweet face of a great-grandmother grew much perplexed at
+the sight of a letter in an unfamiliar hand, and perhaps, too, as is
+the way of womankind, she studied the outside a long time before she
+opened it. As the months passed by, the handwriting became familiar,
+but a coquettish grandmother may have flirted a bit with the letter,
+and put it aside--until she could be alone.
+
+All the important letters are in the package, from the first formal
+note asking permission to call, which a womanly instinct bade the
+maiden put aside, to the last letter, written when twilight lay upon
+the long road they had travelled together, but still beginning: "My
+Dear and Honoured Wife."
+
+Bits of rosemary and geranium, lemon verbena, tuberose, and
+heliotrope, fragile and whitened, but still sweet, fall from the
+opened letters and rustle softly as they fall.
+
+Far away in the "peace which passeth all understanding," the writer of
+the letters sleeps, but the old love keeps a fragrance that outlives
+the heart in which it bloomed.
+
+At night, when the fires below are lighted, and childish voices make
+the old house ring with laughter, Memory steals into the attic to sing
+softly of the past, as a mother croons her child to sleep.
+
+Rocking in a quaint old attic chair, with the dear familiar things of
+home gathered all about her, Memory's voice is sweet, like a harp
+tuned in the minor mode when the south wind sweeps the strings.
+
+Bunches of herbs swing from the rafters and fill the room with the
+wholesome scent of an old-fashioned garden, where rue and heartsease
+grew. With the fragrance comes the breath from that garden of
+Mnemosyne, where the simples for heartache nod beside the River of
+Forgetfulness.
+
+In a flash the world is forgotten, and into the attic come dear faces
+from that distant land of childhood, where a strange enchantment
+glorified the commonplace, and made the dreams of night seem real.
+Footsteps that have long been silent are heard upon the attic floor,
+and voices, hushed for years, whisper from the shadows from the other
+end of the room.
+
+A moonbeam creeps into the attic and transfigures the haunted chamber
+with a sheen of silver mist. From the spinning-wheel come a soft hum
+and a delicate whir; then a long-lost voice breathes the first notes
+of an old, old song. The melody changes to a minuet, and the lady in
+the portrait moves, smiling, from the tarnished gilt frame that
+surrounds her--then a childish voice says: "Mother, are you asleep?"
+
+Down the street the postman passes, bearing his burden of joy and
+pain: letters from far-off islands, where the Stars and Stripes gleam
+against a forest of palms; from the snow-bound fastnesses of the
+North, where men are searching for gold; from rose-scented valleys and
+violet fields, where the sun forever shines, and from lands across the
+sea, where men speak an alien tongue--single messages from one to
+another; letters that plead for pardon cross the paths of those that
+are meant to stab; letters written in jest too often find grim earnest
+at the end of their journey, and letters written in all tenderness
+meet misunderstandings and pain, when the postman brings them home;
+letters that deal with affairs of state and shape the destiny of a
+nation; tidings of happiness and sorrow, birth and death, love and
+trust, and the thousand pangs of trust betrayed; an hundred joys and
+as many griefs are all in the postman's hands.
+
+No wonder, then, that there is a stir in the house, that eyes
+brighten, hearts beat quickly, and eager steps hasten to the door of
+destiny, when the postman rings the bell!
+
+
+
+
+A Summer Reverie
+
+
+     I sit on the shore of the deep blue sea
+       As the tide comes rolling in,
+     And wonder, as roaming in sunlit dreams,
+       The cause of the breakers' din.
+
+     For each of the foam-crowned billows
+       Has a wonderful story to tell,
+     And the surge's mystical music
+       Seems wrought by a fairy spell.
+
+     I wander through memory's portals,
+       Through mansions dim and vast,
+     And gaze at the beautiful pictures
+       That hang in the halls of the past.
+
+     And dream-faces gather around me,
+       With voices soft and low,
+     To draw me back to the pleasures
+       Of the lands of long ago.
+
+     There are visions of beauty and splendour,
+       And a fame that I never can win--
+     Far out on the deep they are sailing--
+       My ships that will never come in.
+
+
+
+
+A Vignette
+
+
+It was a muddy down-town corner and several people stood in the cold,
+waiting for a street-car. A stand of daily papers was on the sidewalk,
+guarded by two little newsboys. One was much younger than the other,
+and he rolled two marbles back and forth in the mud by the curb.
+Suddenly his attention was attracted by something bright above him,
+and he looked up into a bunch of red carnations a young lady held in
+her hands. He watched them eagerly, seemingly unable to take his eyes
+from the feast of colour. She saw the hungry look in the little face,
+and put one into his hand. He was silent, until his brother said: "Say
+thanky to the lady." He whispered his thanks, and then she bent down
+and pinned the blossom upon his ragged jacket, while the big policeman
+on the corner smiled approvingly.
+
+"My, but you're gay now, and you can sell all your papers," the bigger
+boy said tenderly.
+
+"Yep, I can sell 'em now, sure!"
+
+Out of the crowd on the opposite corner came a tiny, dark-skinned
+Italian girl, with an accordion slung over her shoulder by a dirty
+ribbon; she made straight for the carnations and fearlessly cried,
+"Lady, please give me a flower!" She got one, and quickly vanished in
+the crowd.
+
+The young woman walked up the street to a flower-stand to replenish
+her bunch of carnations, and when she returned, another dark-skinned
+mite rushed up to her without a word, only holding up grimy hands with
+a gesture of pathetic appeal. Another brilliant blossom went to her,
+and the young woman turned to follow her; on through the crowd the
+child fled, until she reached the corner where her mother stood,
+seamed and wrinkled and old, with the dark pathetic eyes of sunny
+Italy. She held the flower out to her, and the weary mother turned and
+snatched it eagerly, then pressed it to her lips, and kissed it as
+passionately as if it had been the child who brought it to her.
+
+Just then the car came, and the big grey policeman helped the owner of
+the carnations across the street, and said as he put her on the car,
+"Lady, you've sure done them children a good turn to-day."
+
+
+
+
+Meditation
+
+
+     I sail through the realms of the long ago,
+       Wafted by fancy and visions frail,
+     On the river Time with its gentle flow,
+       In a silver boat with a golden sail.
+
+     My dreams, in the silence are hurrying by
+       On the brooklet of Thought where I let them flow,
+     And the "lilies nod to the sound of the stream"
+       As I sail through the realms of the long ago.
+
+     On the shores of life's deep-flowing stream
+       Are my countless sorrows and heartaches, too,
+     And the hills of hope are but dimly seen,
+       Far in the distance, near heaven's blue.
+
+     I find that my childish thoughts and dreams
+       Lie strewn on the sands by the cruel blast
+     That scattered my hopes on the restless streams
+       That flow through the mystic realms of the past.
+
+
+
+
+Pointers for the Lords of Creation
+
+
+Some wit has said that the worst vice in the world is advice, and it
+is also quite true that one ignorant, though well-meaning person can
+sometimes accomplish more damage in a short time, than a dozen people
+who start out for the purpose of doing mischief.
+
+The newspapers and periodicals of to-day are crowded with advice to
+women, and while much of it is found in magazines for women, written
+and edited by men, it is also true that a goodly quantity of it comes
+from feminine writers; it is all along the same lines, however, the
+burden of effort being to teach the weaker sex how to become more
+attractive and more lovable to the lords of creation. It is, of
+course, all intended for our good, for if we can only please the men,
+and obey their slightest wish even before they take the trouble to
+mention the matter, we can then be perfectly happy.
+
+A man can sit down any day and give us directions enough to keep us
+busy for a lifetime, and we seldom or never return the compliment.
+This is manifestly unfair, and so this little preachment is meant for
+the neglected and deserving men, and for them only, so that all women
+who have read thus far are invited to leave the matter right here and
+turn their attention to the column of "Advice to Women" which they can
+find in almost any periodical.
+
+In the first place, gentlemen, we must admit that you do keep us
+guessing, though we do not sit up nights nor lose much sleep over your
+queer notions.
+
+We can't ask you many questions, either, dear brethren, for, as you
+know, you rather like to fib to us, and sometimes we are able to find
+it out, and then we never believe you any more.
+
+We may venture, however, to ask small favours of you, and one of these
+is that you do not wear red ties. You look so nice in quiet colours
+that we dislike exceedingly to have you make crazy quilts of
+yourselves, and that is just what you do when you begin experimenting
+with colours which we naturally associate with the "cullud pussons."
+
+And a cane may be very ornamental, but it's of no earthly use, and we
+would rather you would not carry it when you go out with us.
+
+Never tell us you haven't had time to come and see us, or write to us,
+because we know perfectly well that if you wanted to badly enough, you
+would take the time, so the excuse makes us even madder than does the
+neglect. Still, when you don't want to come, we would not have you do
+it for anything.
+
+There is an old saying that "absence makes the heart grow fonder"--so
+it does--of the other fellow. We don't propose to shed any tears over
+you; we simply go to the theatre with the other man and have an
+extremely good time. When you are very, very bright, you can manage
+some way not to allow us to forget you for a minute, nor give us much
+time to think of anything else.
+
+When we are angry, for heaven's sake don't ask us why, because that
+shows your lack of penetration. Just simply call yourself a brute, and
+say you are utterly unworthy of even our faint regard, and you will
+soon realise that this covers a lot of ground, and everything will be
+all right in a few minutes.
+
+And whatever you do, don't show any temper yourself. A woman requires
+of a man that he shall be as immovable as the rock of Gibraltar, no
+matter what she does to him. And you play your strongest card when you
+don't mind our tantrums--even though it's a state secret we are
+telling you.
+
+Don't get huffy when you meet us with another man; in nine cases out
+of ten, that's just what we do it for. And don't make the mistake of
+retaliating by asking another girl somewhere. You'll have a perfectly
+miserable time if you do, both then and afterward.
+
+When you do come to see us, it is not at all nice to spend the entire
+evening talking about some other girl. How would you like to have the
+graces of some other man continually dinned into your ears? Sometimes
+we take that way in order to get a rest from your overweening raptures
+over the absent girl.
+
+We have a well-defined suspicion that you talk us over with your chums
+and compare notes. But, bless you, it can't possibly hold a candle to
+the thorough and impartial discussions that some of you get when girls
+are together, either in small bevies, or with only one chosen friend.
+And we don't very much care what you say about us, for a man never
+judges a woman by the opinion of any one else, but another woman's
+opinion counts for a great deal with us, so you would better be
+careful.
+
+If you are going to say things that you don't mean, try to stamp
+them with the air of sincerity--if you can once get a woman to fully
+believe in your sincerity, you have gone a long way toward her heart.
+
+Haven't you found out that women are not particularly interested in
+anecdotes? Please don't tell us more than fifteen in the same evening.
+
+And don't begin to make love to us before you have had time to make a
+favourable impression along several lines--a man, as well as a woman,
+loses ground and forfeits respect by making himself too cheap.
+
+If a girl runs and screams when she has been caught standing under the
+mistletoe, it means that she will not object; if she stiffens up and
+glares at you, it means that she does. The same idea is sometimes
+delicately conveyed by the point of a pin. But a woman will be able to
+forgive almost anything which you can make her believe was prompted by
+her own attractiveness, at least unless she knows men fairly well.
+
+You know, of course, that we will not show your letters, nor tell when
+you ask us to marry you and are refused. This much a woman owes to
+any man who has honoured her with an offer of marriage--to keep his
+perfect trust sacredly in her own heart. Even her future husband has
+no business to know of this--it is her lover's secret, and she has no
+right to betray it.
+
+Keeping the love-letters and the offers of marriage from any
+honourable man safe from a prying world are points of honour which all
+good women possess, although we may sometimes quote certain things
+from your letters, as you do from ours.
+
+There's nothing you can tell a woman which will please her quite so
+much as that knowing her has made you better, especially if you can
+prove it by showing a decided upward tendency in your morals. That's
+your good right bower, but don't play it too often--keep it for
+special occasions.
+
+There's one mistake you make, dear brethren, and that is telling a
+woman you love her as soon as you find it out yourself, and the most
+of you will do that very thing. There is one case on record where a
+man waited fifteen minutes, but he nearly died of the strain. The
+trouble is that you seldom stop to consider whether we are ready to
+hear you or not, nor whether the coast is clear, nor what the chances
+are in your favour. You simply relieve your mind, and trust in your
+own wonderful charms to accomplish the rest.
+
+And we wish that when the proper time comes for you to speak your mind
+you'd try to do it artistically. Of course you can't write it, unless
+you are far away from her, for if you can manage an opportunity to
+speak, a resort to the pen is cowardly. And don't mind our evading the
+subject--we always do that on principle, but please don't be scared,
+or at least don't show it, whatever you may feel. If there is one
+thing a woman dislikes more than another it is a man who shows
+cowardice at the crucial point in life.
+
+Every man, except yourself, dear reader, is conceited. And one
+particular sort of it makes us very, very weary. You are so blinded by
+your own perfections, so sure that we are desperately in love with
+you, that you sometimes give us little unspoken suggestions to that
+effect, and then our disgust is beyond words.
+
+Another cowardly thing you sometimes do, and that is to say that we
+have spoiled your life--that we could have made you anything we
+pleased--and that you are going straight to perdition. If one woman
+is all that keeps you from going to ruin, you have secured a through
+ticket anyway, and it's too late to save you. You don't want a woman
+who might marry you only out of pity, and you are not going to die of
+a broken heart. Men die of broken vanity, sometimes, but their hearts
+are pretty tough, being made of healthy muscle.
+
+You get married very much as you go down town in the morning. You run,
+like all possessed, until you catch your car, and then you sit down
+and read your newspaper. When you think your wife looks unusually
+well, it would not hurt you in the least to tell her so, and the way
+you leave her in the morning is going to settle her happiness for the
+day, though she may be too proud to let you know that it makes any
+difference. Women are quick to detect a sham, and they don't want you
+to say anything that you don't feel, but you are pretty sure to feel
+tenderly toward her sometimes, careless though you may be, and then is
+the time to tell her so. You don't want to wait until she is dead, and
+then buy a lily to put on her coffin. You'd better bring her the lily
+some time when you've been cross and grumpy.
+
+But don't imagine that a present of any kind ever atones for a hurt
+that has been given in words. There's nothing you can say which is
+more manly or which will do you both so much good as the simple
+"forgive me" when you have been wrong.
+
+Rest assured, gentlemen, that you who spend the most of your evenings
+in other company, and too often find fault with your meals when you
+come home, are the cause of many sorrowful talks among the women who
+are wise enough to know, even though your loyal wife may put up a
+brave front in your defense.
+
+How often do you suppose the brave woman who loves you has been
+actually driven in her agony to some married friend whom she can trust
+and upon her sympathetic bosom has cried until she could weep no more,
+simply because of your thoughtless neglect? How often do you think she
+has planned little things to make your home-coming pleasant, which you
+have never noticed? And how often do you suppose she has desperately
+fought down the heartache and tried to believe that your absorption in
+business is the reason for your forgetfulness of her?
+
+Do you ever think of these things? Do you ever think of the days
+before you were sure of her, when you treasured every line of her
+letters, and would have bartered your very hopes of heaven for the
+earthly life with her?
+
+But perhaps you can hardly be expected to remember the wild sprint
+that you made from the breakfast table to the street-car.
+
+
+
+
+Transition
+
+
+     I am thy Pleasure. See, my face is fair--
+       With silken strands of joy I twine thee round;
+     Life has enough of stress--forget with me!
+       Wilt thou not stay? Then go, thou art not bound.
+
+     I am thy Pastime. Let me be to thee
+       A daily refuge from the haunting fears
+     That bind thee, choke thee, fill thy soul with woe.
+       Seek thou my hand, let me assuage thy tears.
+
+     I am thy Habit. Nay, start not, thy will
+       Is yet supreme, for art thou not a man?
+     Then draw me close to thee, for life is brief--
+       A little space to pass as best one can.
+
+     I am thy Passion. Thou shalt cling to me
+       Through all the years to come. The silken cord
+     Of Pleasure has become a stronger bond,
+       Not to be cleft, nor loosened at a word.
+
+     I am thy Master. Thou shalt crush for me
+       The grapes of truth for wine of sacrifice;
+     My clanking chains were forged for such as thee,
+       I am thy Master--yea, I am thy vice!
+
+
+
+
+The Superiority of Man
+
+
+Without pausing to inquire why savages and barbarians are capable of
+producing college professors, who sneer at the source from which they
+sprung, we may accept for the moment the masculine hypothesis of
+intellectual superiority. Some women have been heard to say that they
+wish they had been born men, but there is no man bold enough to say
+that he would like to be a woman.
+
+If woman can produce a reasoning being, it follows that she herself
+must be capable of reasoning, since a stream can rise no higher than
+its fountain. And yet the bitter truth stares us in the face. We have
+no Shakespeare, Michelangelo, or Beethoven; our Darwins, our Schumanns
+are mute and inglorious; our Miltons, Raphaels, and Herbert Spencers
+have not arrived.
+
+Call the roll of the great and how many women's names will be found
+there? Scarcely enough to enable you to call the company mixed.
+
+No woman in her senses wishes to be merely the female of man. She
+aspires to be distinctly different--to exercise her varied powers in
+wholly different ways. Ex-President Roosevelt said: "Equality does not
+imply identity of function." We do not care to put in telephones or to
+collect fares on a street-car.
+
+Primitive man set forth from his cave to kill an animal or two, then
+repaired to a secluded nook in the jungle, with other primitive men,
+to discuss the beginnings of politics. Primitive woman in the cave
+not only dressed his game, but she cooked the animal for food,
+made clothing of its skin, necklaces and bracelets of its teeth,
+passementerie of its claws, and needles of its sharper bones. What
+wonder that she had no time for an afternoon tea?
+
+The man of the twentieth century has progressed immeasurably beyond
+this, but his wife, industrially speaking, has not gone half so far.
+Is she not still in some cases a cave-dweller, while he roams the
+highways of the world?
+
+If a woman mends men's socks, should he not darn her lisle-thread
+hosiery, and run a line of machine stitching around the middle of the
+hem to prevent a disastrous run from a broken stitch? If she presses
+his ties, why should he not learn to iron her bits of fine lace?
+
+Some one will say: "But he supports her. It is her duty."
+
+"Yes, dear friend, but similarly does he 'support' the servant who
+does the same duties. He also gives her seven dollars every Monday
+morning, or she leaves." Are we to suppose that a wife is a woman who
+does general housework for board and clothes, with a few kind words
+thrown in?
+
+A German lady, whom we well knew, worked all the morning attending to
+the comforts of her liege lord. In the dining room he was stretched
+out in an easy chair, while the queen of his heart brushed and
+repaired his clothes--yes, and blacked his boots! Doubtless for a
+single kiss, redolent of beer and sausages, she would have pressed his
+trousers. Kind words and the fragrant osculation had already saved him
+three dollars at his tailor's.
+
+By such gold-brick methods, dear friends, do men get good service
+cheap. Would that we could do the same! Here, and gladly, we admit
+masculine superiority.
+
+Our short-sightedness, our weakness for kind words, our graceful
+acceptance of the entire responsibility for the home, have chained us
+to the earth, while our lords soar. After having worked steadily for
+some six thousand years to populate the earth passably, some of us may
+now be excused from that duty.
+
+Motherhood is a career for which especial talents are required. Very
+few women know how to bring up children properly. If you don't believe
+it, look at the difference between our angelic offspring, and the
+little imps next door! It is as unreasonable to suppose that all women
+can be good mothers as it is to suppose that all women can sing in
+grand opera.
+
+And yet, let us hug to our weary hearts, in our most discouraged
+moments, the great soul-satisfying truth that men, no matter what they
+say or write, think that we are smarter than they are. Otherwise, they
+would not expect of us so much more than they can possibly do
+themselves.
+
+In every field of woman's work outside the house, the same
+illustration applies. They also think that we possess greater physical
+strength. They chivalrously shield us from the exhausting effort of
+voting, but allow us to stand in the street-cars, wash dishes, push a
+baby carriage, and scrub the kitchen floor. Should we not be proud
+because they consider us so much stronger and wiser than they?
+Interruptions are fatal to their work, as the wife of even a business
+man will testify.
+
+What would have become of Spencer's _Data of Ethics_ if, while he was
+writing it, he had two dressmakers in the house? Should we have had
+_Hamlet_, if at the completion of the first act Mr. Shakespeare had
+given birth to twins, when he had made clothes for only one?
+
+The great charm of marriage, as of life itself, is its unexpectedness.
+The only way to test a man is to marry him. If you live, it's a
+mushroom; if you die, it's a toadstool!
+
+Or, as another saying goes: "Happiness after marriage is like the soap
+in the bath-tub; you knew it was there when you got in."
+
+Man's clothes are ugly, but the styles change gradually. A judge on
+the bench may try a case lasting two weeks, and his hat will not be
+hopelessly behind the times when it is finished. A man can stoop to
+pick up a fallen magazine without pausing to remember that his front
+steels are not so flexible this year as they were last.
+
+He is not distressed by the fear that some other man may have a suit
+just like his, or that the neighbours will think it is his last year's
+suit dyed.
+
+We women fritter ourselves away upon a thousand unnecessary things.
+We waste our creative energies and our inspired moments upon pursuits
+so ephemeral that they are forgotten to-morrow. Our day's work counts
+for nothing when tested by the standards of eternity. We are unjust,
+not only to ourselves, but to the men who strive for us, for
+civilisation must progress very slowly when half of us are dragged by
+pots and pans.
+
+A house is a material fact, but a home is a fine spiritual essence
+which may pervade even the humblest abode. If love means harmony, why
+not try a little of it in the kitchen? Better a perfect salad than a
+poor poem; better a fine picture than an immaculate house.
+
+
+
+
+The Year of My Heart
+
+
+     A sigh for the spring, full flowered, promised spring,
+     Laid on the tender earth, and those dear days
+     When apple blossoms gleamed against the blue!
+     Ah, how the world of joyous robins sang:
+     "I love but you, Sweetheart, I love but you!"
+
+     A sigh for summer fled. In warm, sweet air
+     Her thousand singers sped on shining wing;
+     And all the inward life of budding grain
+     Throbbed with a thousand pulses, while I cling
+     To you, my Sweet, with passion near to pain.
+
+     A sigh for autumn past. The garnered fields
+     Lie desolate to-day. My heart is chill
+     As with a sense of dread, and on the shore
+     The waves beat grey and cold, and seem to say:
+     "No more, oh, waiting soul, oh nevermore!"
+
+     A sigh for winter come. No singing bird,
+     Nor harvest field, is near the path I tread;
+     An empty husk is all I have to keep.
+     The largess of my giving left me bare,
+     And I ask God but for His Lethe--sleep.
+
+
+
+
+The Average Man
+
+
+The real man is not at all on the outskirts of civilisation. He is
+very much in evidence and everybody knows him. He has faults and
+virtues, and sometimes they get so mixed up that "you cannot tell one
+from t'other."
+
+He is erratic and often queer. He believes, with Emerson, that "with
+consistency a great soul has nothing to do." And he is, of course, "a
+great soul." Logical, isn't it?
+
+The average man _thinks_ that he is a born genius at love-making.
+Henders, in _The Professor's Love Story_, states it thus:
+
+     "Effie, ye ken there are some men ha' a power o'er women....
+     They're what ye might call 'dead shots.' Ye canna deny,
+     Effie, that I'm one o' those men!"
+
+Even though a man may be obliged to admit, in strict confidence
+between himself and his mirror, that he is not at all handsome,
+nevertheless he is certain that he has some occult influence over that
+strange, mystifying, and altogether unreasonable organ--a woman's
+heart.
+
+The real man is conceited. Of course you are not, dear masculine
+reader, for you are one of the bright particular exceptions, but all
+of your men friends are conceited--aren't they?
+
+And then he makes fun of his women folks because they spend so much
+time in front of the mirror in arranging hats and veils. But when a
+high wind comes up and disarranges coiffures and chapeaux alike, he
+takes "my ladye fair" into some obscure corner, and saying, "Pardon
+me, but your hat isn't quite straight," he will deftly restore that
+piece of millinery to its pristine position. That's nice of him, isn't
+it? He does very nice things quite often, this real man.
+
+He says women are fickle. So they are, but men are fickle too, and
+will forget all about the absent sweetheart while contemplating the
+pretty girls in the street. For while "absence makes the heart grow
+fonder" in the case of a woman, it is presence that plays the mischief
+with a man, and Miss Beauty present has a very unfair advantage over
+Miss Sweetheart absent.
+
+The average man thinks he is a connoisseur of feminine attractiveness.
+He thinks he has tact, too, but there never was a man who was blessed
+with much of this valuable commodity. Still, as that is a favourite
+delusion with so large a majority of the human race, the conceit of
+the ordinary masculine individual ought not to be censured too
+strongly.
+
+The real man is quite an expert at flattery. Every girl he meets, if
+she is at all attractive, is considered the most charming lady that he
+ever knew. He is sure she isn't prudish enough to refuse him a kiss,
+and if she is, she wins not only his admiration, but that which is
+vastly better--his respect.
+
+If she hates to be considered a prude and gives him the kiss, he is
+very sweet and appreciative at the time, but later on he confides to
+his chum that she is a silly sort of a girl, without a great deal of
+self-respect!
+
+There are two things that the average man likes to be told. One is
+that his taste in dress is exceptional; the other that he is a deep
+student of human nature and knows the world thoroughly. This remark
+will make him your lifelong friend.
+
+Again, the real man will put on more agony when he is in love than is
+needed for a first-class tragedy. But there's no denying that most
+women like that sort of thing, you, dear dainty feminine reader, being
+almost the only exception to this rule.
+
+But, resuming the special line of thought, man firmly believes that
+woman cannot sharpen a pencil, select a necktie, throw a stone, drive
+a nail, or kill a mouse, and it is very certain that she cannot cook a
+beef-steak in the finished style of which his lordship is capable.
+
+Yes, man has his faults as well as woman. There is a vast room for
+improvement on both sides, but as long as this old earth of ours turns
+through shadow and sunlight, through sorrow and happiness, men and
+women will forgive and try to forget, and will cling to, and love each
+other.
+
+
+
+
+The Book of Love
+
+
+     I dreamt I saw an angel in the night,
+     And she held forth Love's book, limned o'er with gold,
+     That I might read of days of chivalry
+     And how men's hearts were wont to thrill of old.
+
+     Half wondering, I turned the musty leaves,
+     For Love's book counts out centuries as years,
+     And here and there a page shone out undimmed,
+     And here and there a page was blurred with tears.
+
+     I read of Grief, Doubt, Silence unexplained--
+     Of many-featured Wrong, Distrust, and Blame,
+     Renunciation--bitterest of all--
+     And yet I wandered not beyond Love's name.
+
+     At last I cried to her who held the book,
+     So fair and calm she stood, I see her yet;
+     "Why write these things within this book of Love?
+     Why may we not pass onward and forget?"
+
+     Her voice was tender when she answered me:
+     "Half child, half woman, earthy as thou art,
+     How should'st thou dream that Love is never Love
+     Unless these things beat vainly on the heart?"
+
+
+
+
+The Ideal Man
+
+
+He isn't nearly so scarce as one might think, but happy is the woman
+who finds him, for he is often a bit out of the beaten paths,
+sometimes in the very suburbs of our modern civilisation. He is,
+however, coming to the front rather slowly, to be sure, but
+nevertheless he is coming.
+
+He wouldn't do for the hero of a dime novel--he isn't melancholy in
+his mien, nor Byronic in his morals. It is a frank, honest, manly face
+that looks into the other end of our observation telescope when we
+sweep the horizon to find something higher and better than the rank
+and file of humanity.
+
+He is a gentleman, invariably courteous and refined. He is careful in
+his attire, but not foppish. He is chivalrous in his attitude toward
+woman, and as politely kind to the wrinkled old woman who scrubs his
+office floor as to the aristocratic belle who bows to him from her
+carriage.
+
+He is scrupulously honest in all his dealings with his fellow men, and
+meanness of any sort is utterly beneath him. He has a happy way of
+seeing the humorous side of life, and he is an exceedingly pleasant
+companion.
+
+When the love light shines in his eyes, kindled at the only fire where
+it may be lighted, he has nothing in his past of which he need be
+ashamed. He stands beside her and pleads earnestly and manfully for
+the treasure he seeks. Slowly he turns the pages of his life before
+her, for there is not one which can call a blush to his cheek, or to
+hers.
+
+Truth, purity, honesty, chivalry, the highest manliness--all these are
+written therein, and she gladly accepts the clean heart which is
+offered for her keeping.
+
+Her life is now another open book. To him her nature seems like a harp
+of a thousand strings, and every note, though it may not be strong
+and high, is truth itself, and most refined in tone.
+
+So they join hands, these two: the sweetheart becomes the wife; the
+lover is the husband.
+
+He is still chivalrous to every woman, but to his wife he pays the
+gentler deference which was the sweetheart's due. He loves her, and is
+not ashamed to show it. He brings her flowers and books, just as he
+used to do when he was teaching her to love him. He is broad-minded,
+and far-seeing--he believes in "a white life for two." He knows his
+wife has the same right to demand purity in thought, word, and deed
+from him, as he has to ask absolute stainlessness from her. That is
+why he has kept clean the pages of his life--why he keeps the record
+unsullied as the years go by.
+
+He is tender in his feelings; if he goes home and finds his wife in
+tears, he doesn't tell her angrily to "brace up," or say, "this is a
+pretty welcome for a man!" He doesn't slam the door and whistle as if
+nothing was the matter. But he takes her in his comforting arms and
+speaks soothing words. If his comrades speak lightly of his devotion,
+he simply thinks out other blessings for the little woman who presides
+at his fireside.
+
+His wife is inexpressibly dear to him, and every day he shows this,
+and takes pains, also, to tell her so. He admires her pretty gowns,
+and is glad to speak appreciatively of the becoming things she wears.
+He knows instinctively that it is the thoughtfulness and the little
+tenderness which make a woman's happiness, and he tries to make her
+realise that his love for her grew brighter, instead of fading, when
+the sweetheart blossomed into the wife. For every woman, old,
+wrinkled, and grey, or young and charming, likes to be loved.
+
+The ideal man will do his utmost to make his wife realise that his
+devotion intensifies as the years go by.
+
+What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they
+are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest
+upon each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain,
+to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment
+of the last parting?
+
+God bless the ideal man and hasten his coming in greater numbers.
+
+
+
+
+Good-Night, Sweetheart
+
+
+     Good-night, Sweetheart; the winged hours have flown;
+     I have forgotten all the world but thee.
+     Across the moon-lit deep, where stars have shone,
+     The surge sounds softly from the sleeping sea.
+
+     Thy heart at last hath opened to Love's key;
+     Remembered Aprils, glorious blooms have sown,
+     And now there comes the questing honey bee.
+     Good-night, Sweetheart; the winged hours have flown.
+
+     My singing soul makes music in thine own,
+     Thy hand upon my harp makes melody;
+     So close the theme and harmony have grown
+     I have forsaken all the world for thee.
+
+     Before thy whiteness do I bend the knee;
+     Thou art a queen upon a stainless throne,
+     Like Dian making royal jubilee,
+     Across the vaulted dark where stars are blown.
+
+     Within my heart thy face shines out alone,
+     Ah, dearest! Say for once thou lovest me!
+     A whisper, even, like the undertone
+     The surge sings slowly from the rhythmic sea.
+
+     Thy downcast eyes make answer to my plea;
+     A crimson mantle o'er thy cheek is thrown
+     Assurance more than this, there need not be,
+     For thus, within the silence, love is known.
+                   Good-night, Sweetheart.
+
+
+
+
+The Ideal Woman
+
+
+The trend of modern thought in art and literature is toward the real,
+but fortunately the cherishing of the ideal has not vanished.
+
+All of us, though we may profess to be realists, are at heart
+idealists, for every woman in the innermost sanctuary of her thoughts
+cherishes an ideal man. And every man, practical and commonplace
+though he be, has before him in his quiet moments a living picture of
+grace and beauty, which, consciously or not, is his ideal woman.
+
+Every man instinctively admires a beautiful woman. But when he seeks a
+wife, he demands other qualities besides that wonderful one which is,
+as the proverb tells us, "only skin deep."
+
+If men were not such strangely inconsistent beings, the world
+would lose half its charm. Each sex rails at the other for its
+inconsistency, when the real truth is that nowhere exists much of
+that beautiful quality which is aptly termed a "jewel."
+
+But humanity must learn with Emerson to seek other things than
+consistency, and to look upon the lightning play of thought and
+feeling as an index of mental and moral growth.
+
+For those who possess the happy faculty of "making the best of
+things," men are really the most amusing people in existence. To hear
+a man dilate upon the virtues and accomplishments of the ideal woman
+he would make his wife is a most interesting diversion, besides being
+a source of what may be called decorative instruction.
+
+She must, first of all, be beautiful. No man, even in his wildest
+moments, ever dreamed of marrying any but a beautiful woman, yet, in
+nine cases out of ten when he does go to the altar, he is leading
+there one who is lovely only in his own eyes.
+
+He has read Swinburne and Tennyson and is very sure he won't have
+anything but "a daughter of the gods, divinely tall, and most divinely
+fair." Then, of course, there is the "classic profile," the "deep,
+unfathomable eyes," the "lily-white skin," and "hair like the raven's
+wing," not to mention the "swan-like neck" and "tapering, shapely
+fingers."
+
+Mr. Ideal is really a man of refined taste, and the women who hear
+this impassioned outburst are supremely conscious of their own
+imperfections.
+
+But beauty is not the only demand of this fastidious gentleman; the
+fortunate woman whom he deigns to honour must be a paragon of
+sweetness and docility. No "woman's rights" or "suffrage rant" for
+him, and none of those high-stepping professional women need apply
+either--oh, no! And then all of her interests must be his, for of all
+things on earth, he "does despise a woman with a hobby!" None of these
+"broad-minded women" were ever intended for Mr. Ideal. He is very
+certain of that, because away down in his secret heart he was sure he
+had found the right woman once, but when he did, he learned also that
+she was somewhat particular about the man she wanted to marry, and the
+applicant then present did not fill the bill! He is therefore very
+sure that "a man does not want an intellectual instructor: he wants a
+wife."
+
+Just like the most of them after all, isn't he?
+
+The year goes round and Mr. Ideal goes away on a summer vacation.
+There are some pleasant people in the little town to which he goes,
+and there is a girl in the party with her mother and brother. Mr.
+Ideal looks her over disapprovingly. She isn't pretty--no, she isn't
+even good-looking. Her hair is almost red, her eyes are a pale blue,
+and she wears glasses. Her nose isn't even straight, and it turns up
+too much besides. Her skin is covered with tiny golden-brown blotches.
+"Freckles!" exclaims Mr. Ideal, _sotto voce_. Her mouth isn't bad, the
+lips are red and full and her teeth are white and even. She wears a
+blue boating suit with an Eton jacket. "So common!" and Mr. Ideal goes
+away from his secluded point of observation.
+
+A merry laugh reaches his ear, and he turns around. The tall
+brother is chasing her through the bushes, and she waves a letter
+tantalisingly at him as she goes, and finally bounds over a low fence
+and runs across the field, with her big brother in close pursuit.
+"Hoydenish!" and Mr. Ideal hums softly to himself and goes off to find
+Smith. Smith is a good fellow and asks Mr. Ideal to go fishing. They
+go, but don't have a bite, and come home rather cross. Does Smith know
+the little red-headed girl who was on the piazza this morning?
+
+Yes, he has met her. She has been here about a week. "Rather nice, but
+not especially attractive, you know." No, she isn't, but he will
+introduce Mr. Ideal.
+
+Days pass, and Mr. Ideal and Miss Practical are much together. He
+finds her the jolliest girl he ever knew. She is an enthusiastic
+advocate of "woman" in every available sphere.
+
+She herself is going to be a trained nurse after she learns to "keep
+house." "For you know that every woman should be a good housekeeper,"
+she says demurely.
+
+He doesn't exactly like "that trained nurse business," but he admits
+to himself that, if he were ill, he should like to have Miss Practical
+smooth his pillow and take care of him.
+
+And so the time goes on, and he is often the companion of the girl. At
+times, she fairly scintillates with merriment, but she is so
+dignified, and so womanly--so very careful to keep him at his proper
+distance--that, well, "she is a type!"
+
+In due course of time, he plans to return to the city, and to the
+theatres and parties he used to find so pleasant. All his friends are
+there. No, Miss Practical is not in the city; she is right here. Like
+a flash a revelation comes over him, and he paces the veranda angrily.
+Well, there's only one thing to be done--he must tell her about it.
+Perhaps--and he sees a flash of blue through the shrubbery, which he
+seeks with the air of a man who has an object in view.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His circle of friends are very much surprised when he introduces Mrs.
+Ideal, for she is surely different from the ideal woman about whom
+they have heard so much. They naturally think he is inconsistent, but
+he isn't, for some subtle alchemy has transfigured the homely little
+girl into the dearest, best, and altogether most beautiful woman Mr.
+Ideal has ever seen.
+
+She is domestic in her tastes now, and has abandoned the professional
+nurse idea. She knows a great deal about Greek and Latin, and still
+more about Shakespeare and Browning and other authors.
+
+But she neglects neither her books nor her housekeeping, and her
+husband spends his evenings at home, not because Mrs. Ideal would cry
+and make a fuss if he didn't, but because his heart is in her keeping,
+and because his own fireside, with its sweet-faced guardian angel, is
+to him the most beautiful place on earth, and he has sense enough to
+appreciate what a noble wife is to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The plain truth is, when "any whatsoever" Mr. Ideal loves a woman, he
+immediately finds her perfect, and transfers to her the attributes
+which only exist in his imagination. His heart and happiness are
+there--not with the creatures of his dreams, but the warm, living,
+loving human being beside him, and to him, henceforth, the ideal is
+the real.
+
+For "the ideal woman is as gentle as she is strong." She wins her way
+among her friends and fellow human beings, even though they may be
+strangers, by doing many a kindness which the most of us are too apt
+to overlook or ignore.
+
+No heights of thought or feeling are beyond her eager reach, and no
+human creature has sunk too low for her sympathy and her helping hand.
+Even the forlorn and friendless dog in the alley looks instinctively
+into her face for help.
+
+She is in every man's thoughts and always will be, as she always has
+been--the ideal who shall lead him step by step, and star by star, to
+the heights which he cannot reach alone.
+
+Ruskin says: "No man ever lived a right life who has not been
+chastened by a woman's love, strengthened by her courage and guided by
+her discretion."
+
+The steady flow of the twentieth-century progress has not swept away
+woman's influence, nor has it crushed out her womanliness. She lives
+in the hearts of men, a queen as royal as in the days of chivalry, and
+men shall do and dare for her dear sake as long as time shall last.
+
+The sweet, lovable, loyal woman of the past is not lost; she is only
+intensified in the brave wifehood and motherhood of our own times. The
+modern ideal, like that of olden times, is and ever will be, above all
+things--womanly.
+
+
+
+
+She Is Not Fair
+
+
+    She is not fair to other eyes--
+      No poet's dream is she,
+    Nor artist's inspiration, yet
+      I would not have her be.
+    She wanders not through princely halls,
+      A crown upon her hair;
+    Her heart awaits a single king
+      Because she is not fair.
+
+    Dear lips, your half-shy tenderness
+      Seems far too much to win!
+    Yet, has your heart a tiny door
+      Where I may peep within?
+    That voiceless chamber, dim and sweet,
+      I pray may be my own.
+    Dear little Love, may I come in
+      And make you mine alone?
+
+    She is not fair to other eyes--
+      I would not have it so;
+    She needs no further charm or grace
+      Or aught wealth may bestow;
+    For when the love light shines and makes
+      Her dear face glorified--
+    Ah Sweetheart! queens may come and go
+      And all the world beside.
+
+
+
+
+The Fin-de-Siecle Woman
+
+
+The world has fought step by step the elevation of woman from
+inferiority to equality, but at last she is being recognised as a
+potent factor in our civilisation.
+
+The most marked change which has been made in woman's position during
+the last half century or more has been effected by higher education,
+and since the universities have thrown open their doors to her, she
+has been allowed, in many cases, to take the same courses that her
+brother does.
+
+Still, the way has not been entirely smooth for educated and literary
+women, for the public press has too often frowned upon their efforts
+to obtain anything like equal recognition for equal ability. The
+literary woman has, for years, been the target of criticism, and if we
+are to believe her critics, she has been entirely shunned by the
+gentlemen of her acquaintance; but the fact that so many of them are
+wives and mothers, and, moreover, good wives and mothers, proves
+conclusively that these statements are not trustworthy.
+
+It is true that some prefer the society of women who know just
+enough to appreciate their compliments--women who deprecate their
+"strong-minded" sisters, and are ready to agree implicitly with every
+statement that the lords of creation may make; but this readiness is
+due to sheer inability to produce a thought of their own.
+
+It is true that some men are afraid of educated women, but a man who
+is afraid of a woman because she knows something is not the kind of a
+man she wants to marry. He is not the kind of a man she would choose
+for either husband or friend; she wants an intellectual companion, and
+the chances are that she will find him, or rather that he will find
+her. A woman need not be unwomanly in order to write books that will
+help the world.
+
+She may be a good housekeeper, even if she does write for the
+magazines, and the husbands of literary women are not, as some folks
+would have us believe, neglected and forlorn-looking beings. On the
+contrary, they carry brave hearts and cheerful faces with them always,
+since their strength is reinforced by the quiet happiness of their own
+firesides.
+
+The _fin-de-siecle_ woman is literary in one sense, if not in
+another, for if she may not wield her pen, she can keep in touch with
+the leading thinkers of the day, and she will prove as pleasant a
+companion during the long winter evenings as the woman whose husband
+chose her for beauty and taste in dress.
+
+The literary woman is not slipshod in her apparel, and she may, if she
+chooses, be a society and club woman as well. Surely there is nothing
+in literary culture which shall prevent neatness and propriety in
+dress as well as in conduct.
+
+The devoted admirer of Browning is not liable to quote him in
+a promiscuous company and though a lady may be familiar with
+Shakespeare, it does not follow that she will discuss _Hamlet_
+in social gatherings.
+
+If she reads Greek as readily as she does her mother tongue, you may
+rest assured she will not mention Homer in ordinary conversation, for
+a cultivated woman readily recognises the fitness of things, and
+accords a due deference to the tastes of others. She has her club and
+her friends, as do the gentlemen of her acquaintance, but her children
+are not neglected from the fact that she sometimes thinks of other
+things. She is a helpmeet to her husband, and not a plaything, or a
+slave. If duty calls her to the kitchen, she goes cheerfully, and,
+moreover, the cook will not dread to see her coming; or if that
+important person be absent, the table will be supplied with just as
+good bread, and just as delicate pastry, as if the lady of the house
+did not understand the chemicals of their composition.
+
+If trouble comes, she bears it bravely, for the cultured woman has a
+philosophy which is equal to any emergency, and she does the best she
+can on all occasions.
+
+If her husband leaves her penniless, she will, if possible, clothe her
+children with her pen, but if her literary wares are a drug on the
+market, she will turn bravely to other fields, and find her daily
+bread made sweet by thankfulness. She does not hesitate to hold out
+her hands to help a fellow-creature, either man or woman, for she is
+in all things womanly--a wife to her husband and a mother to her
+children in the truest sense of the words.
+
+Her knowledge of the classics does not interfere with the making of
+dainty draperies for her home, and though she may be appointed to read
+a paper before her club on some scholarly theme, she will listen just
+as patiently to tales of trouble from childish lips, and will tie up
+little cut fingers just as sympathetically as her neighbour who folds
+her arms and who broadly hints that "wimmen's spear is to hum!"
+
+Whether the literary woman be robed in silk and sealskin, or whether
+she rejoices in the possession of only one best gown, she may,
+nevertheless, be contented and happy.
+
+Whether she lives in a modest cottage, or in a fashionable home,
+she may be the same sweet woman, with cheerful face and pleasant
+voice--with a broad human sympathy which makes her whole life glad.
+
+Be she princess, or Cinderella, she may be still her husband's
+confidant and cherished friend, to whom he may confide his business
+troubles and perplexities, certain always of her tender consolation
+and ready sympathy. She may be quick and versatile, doing well
+whatever she does at all, for her creed declares that "whatever is
+honest is honourable."
+
+She glories in her womanhood and has no sympathy with anything which
+tends to degrade it.
+
+All hail to the woman of the twentieth century; let _fin de siecle_
+stand for all that is best and noblest in womanhood: for liberty,
+equality, and fraternity; for right, truth, and justice.
+
+All hail the widespread movement for the higher education of woman,
+for in intellectual development is the future of posterity, in study
+is happiness, through the open door of the college is the key of a
+truer womanhood, a broader humanity, and a brighter hope. In education
+along the lines of the broadest and wisest culture is to be found the
+emancipation of the race.
+
+
+
+
+The Moon Maiden
+
+
+     There's a wondrous land of misty gold
+       Beyond the sunset's bars.
+     There's a silver boat on a sea of blue,
+       And the tips of its waves are stars.
+
+     And idly rocking to and fro,
+       Her cloud robes floating by,
+     There's a maiden fair, with sunny hair,
+       The queen of the dreamy sky.
+
+
+
+
+Her Son's Wife
+
+
+The venerable mother-in-law joke appears in the comic papers with
+astonishing regularity. For a time, perhaps, it may seem to be lost in
+the mists of oblivion, but even while one is rejoicing at its absence
+it returns to claim its original position at the head of the
+procession.
+
+There are two sides to everything, even to an old joke, and the artist
+always pictures the man's dismay when his wife's mother comes for a
+visit. Nobody ever sees a drawing of a woman's mother-in-law, and yet,
+the bitterness and sadness lie mainly there--between the mother and
+the woman his son has chosen for his wife.
+
+It is a pleasure to believe that the average man is a gentleman, and
+his inborn respect for his own mother, if nothing else, will usually
+compel an outward show of politeness to every woman, even though she
+may be a constant source of irritation. Grey hair has its own claims
+upon a young man's deference, and, in the business world, he is
+obliged to learn to hold his tongue, hide his temper, and "assume a
+virtue though he has it not."
+
+The mother's welcome from her daughter's husband depends much upon
+herself. Her long years of marriage have been in vain if they have not
+taught her to watch a man's moods and tenses; when to speak and when
+to be silent, and how to avoid useless discussion of subjects on which
+there is a pronounced difference of opinion. Leaving out the personal
+equation, the older and more experienced woman is better fitted to get
+along peaceably with a man than the young girl who has her wisdom yet
+to acquire.
+
+Moreover, it is to the daughter's interest to cement a friendship
+between her mother and her husband, and so she stands as a shield
+between the two she holds dearest, to exercise whatever tact she may
+possess toward an harmonious end.
+
+     "A son's a son till he gets him a wife,
+     But a daughter's a daughter all the days of her life."
+
+Thus the old saying runs, and there is a measure of truth in it,
+more's the pity. Marriage and a home of her own interfere but little
+with a daughter's devotion to her mother, even though the daily
+companionship be materially lessened. The feeling is there and remains
+unchanged, unless it grows stronger through the new interests on both
+sides.
+
+If a man has won his wife in spite of her mother's opposition, he can
+well afford to be gracious and forget the ancient grudge. It is his
+part, too, to prove to the mother how far she was mistaken, by making
+the girl who trusted him the happiest wife in the world. The woman who
+sees her daughter happy will have little against her son-in-law,
+except that primitive, tribal instinct which survives in most of us,
+and jealously guards those of our own blood from the aggression of
+another family or individual.
+
+One may as well admit that a good husband is a very scarce article,
+and that the mother's anxiety for her daughter is well-founded. No man
+can escape the sensation of being forever on trial in the eyes of his
+wife's mother, and woe to him if he makes a mistake or falters in his
+duty! Things which a woman would gladly condone in her husband are
+unpardonable sins in the man who has married her daughter, and taken
+her from a mother's loving care.
+
+A good husband and a good man are not necessarily the same thing. Many
+a scapegrace has been dearly loved by his wife, and many a highly
+respected man has been secretly despised by his wife and children.
+When the prison doors open to discharge the sinners who have served
+long sentences, the wives of those who have been good husbands are
+waiting for them with open arms. The others have long since taken
+advantage of the divorce laws.
+
+Since women know women so well, perhaps it is only natural for a
+mother to feel that no girl who is good enough for her son ever has
+been born. All the small deceits, the little schemes and frailties,
+are as an open book in the eyes of other women.
+
+"If you were a man," said one girl to another, "and knew women as well
+as you do now, whom would you marry?"
+
+The other girl thought for a moment, and then answered unhesitatingly:
+"I'd stay single."
+
+Women are always suspicious of each other, and the one who can deceive
+another woman is entitled to her laurels for cleverness. With the keen
+insight and quick intuition of the woman on either side of him, when
+these women are violently opposed to each other, no man need look for
+peace.
+
+In spite of their discernment, women are sadly deficient in analysis
+when it comes to a question of self. Neither wife nor mother can
+clearly see her relation to the man they both love. Blinded by
+passionate devotion and eager for power, both women lose sight of the
+truth, and torment themselves and each other with unfounded jealousy
+and distrust.
+
+In no sense are wife and mother rivals, nor can they ever be so.
+Neither could take the place of the other for a single instant, and
+the wife foolishly guards the point where there is no danger, for, of
+all the women in the world, his mother and sisters are the only ones
+who could never by any possibility usurp her place.
+
+A woman need only ask herself if she would like to be the mother
+of her husband--to exchange the love which she now has for filial
+affection--for a temporary clearness of her troubled skies. The mother
+need only ask herself if she would surrender her position for the
+privilege of being her son's wife, if she seeks for light on her dark
+path.
+
+Yet, in spite of this, the two are often open and acknowledged rivals.
+A woman recently wrote to the "etiquette department" of a daily paper
+to know whether she or her son's fiancee should make the first call.
+In answering the question, the head of the department, who, by the
+way, has something of a reputation for good sense, wrote as follows:
+"It is your place to make the first call, and you have my sympathy in
+your difficult task. You must be brave, for you are going to look into
+the eyes of a woman whom your son loves better than he does you!"
+"Better than he does you!" That is where all the trouble lies, for
+each wishes to be first in a relation where no comparison is possible.
+
+When an American yacht first won the cup, Queen Victoria was watching
+the race. When she was told that the _America_ was in the lead, she
+asked what boat was second. "Your Majesty," replied the naval officer
+sadly, "there is no second!"
+
+So, between wife and mother there is no second place, and it is
+possible for each to own the whole of the loved one's heart, without
+infringing or even touching upon the rights of the other.
+
+Few of the passengers on a lake steamer, during a trip in northern
+waters a few years since, will ever forget a certain striking group.
+Mother and son, and the son's fiancee, were off for a week's vacation.
+The mother was tall and stately, with snow-white hair and a hard face
+deeply seamed with wrinkles, and with the fire of southern countries
+burning in her faded blue eyes. The son was merely a nice boy, with a
+pleasant face, and the girl, though not pretty, had a fresh look about
+her which was very attractive.
+
+She wore an engagement ring, so he must have cared for her, but
+otherwise no one would have suspected it. From beginning to end, his
+attention was centred upon his mother. He carried his mother's wraps,
+but the girl carried her own. He talked to the mother, and the girl
+could speak or not, just as she chose. Never for an instant were the
+two alone together. They sat on the deck until late at night, with the
+mother between them. When they changed, the son took his own chair
+and his mother's, while the girl dragged hers behind them. At the end
+of their table in the cabin, the mother sat between them at the head.
+Once, purely by accident, the girl slipped into the nearest chair,
+which happened to be the mother's, and the deadly silence could be
+felt even two tables away. The girl turned pale, then the son said:
+"You'll take the head of the table, won't you, mother?"
+
+The steely tone of her voice could be heard by every one as she said,
+"No!"
+
+The girl ate little, and soon excused herself to go to her stateroom,
+but the next day things were as before, and the foolish old mother had
+her place next to her son.
+
+Discussion was rife among the passengers, till an irreverent youth
+ended it by saying: "Mamma's got the rocks; that's the why of it!"
+
+Perhaps it was, but one wonders why a man should slight his promised
+wife so publicly, even to please a mother with "rocks!"
+
+To the mother who adores her son, every girl who smiles at him has
+matrimonial designs. When he falls in love, it is because he has been
+entrapped--she seldom considers him as being the aggressive one of the
+two. The mother of the girl feels the same way, and, in the lower
+circles, there is occasionally an illuminating time when the two
+mothers meet.
+
+Each is made aware how the other's offspring has given the entrapped
+one no peace, and how the affair has been the scandal of two separate
+neighbourhoods, more eligible partners having been lost by both sides.
+
+In the Declaration of Independence there is no classification of the
+rights of the married, but the clause regarding "life, liberty, and
+the pursuit of happiness" has been held pointedly to refer to the
+matrimonial state. If the mother would accord to her daughter-in-law
+the same rights she claimed at the outset of her own married life, the
+relation would be perceptibly smoother in many instances.
+
+When a woman marries, she has a right to expect the love of her
+husband, material support, a home of her own, even though it be only
+two tiny rooms, and absolute freedom from outside interference. It is
+her life, and she must live it in her own way, and a girl of spirit
+_will_ live it in her own way, without taking heed of the
+consequences, if she is pushed too far.
+
+On the other hand, the mother who bore him still has proprietary
+rights. She may reasonably claim a share of his society, a part of his
+earnings, if she needs financial assistance, and his interest in all
+that nearly concerns her. If she expects to be at the head of his
+house, with the wife as a sort of a boarder, she need not be surprised
+if there is trouble.
+
+Marriage brings to a girl certain freedom, but it gives her no
+superiority to her husband's family. A chain is as strong as its
+weakest link, and the members of a family do not rise above the
+general level. Every one of them is as good as the man she has
+married, and she is not above any of them, unless her own personality
+commands a higher position.
+
+She treasonably violates the confidence placed in her if she makes
+a discreditable use of any information coming to her through her
+association with her husband's family. There are skeletons in every
+closet, and she may not tell even her own mother of what she has seen
+in the other house. A single word breathed against her husband's
+family to an outsider stamps her as a traitor, who deserves a
+traitor's punishment.
+
+The girl who tells her most intimate friend that the mother of her
+fiance "is an old cat," by that act has lowered herself far below the
+level of any self-respecting cat. Even if outward and visible disgrace
+comes to the family of her husband, she is unworthy if she does not
+hold her head high and let the world see her loyalty.
+
+Marriage gives her no right to criticise any member of her husband's
+family; their faults are out of her reach except by the force of
+tactful example. Her concern is with herself and him, not his family,
+and a wise girl, at the beginning of her married life, will draw a
+sharp line between her affairs and those of others, and will stay on
+her own side of the line.
+
+When a man falls in love with a thoughtless butterfly, his womenfolk
+may be pardoned if they stand aghast a moment before they regain their
+self-command. In a way it is like a guest who is given the freedom of
+the house, and who, when her visit is over, tells her friends that the
+parlour carpet was turned, and the stairs left undusted.
+
+Another household is intimately opened to the woman whom the son has
+married, and the members of it can make no defence. She can betray
+them if she chooses; there is nothing to shield them except her love
+for her husband, and too often that is insufficient.
+
+A girl seldom stops to think what she owes to her husband's mother.
+Twenty-five or thirty years ago, the man she loves was born. Since
+then there has been no time, sleeping or waking, when he has not been
+in the thoughts of the mother who has sought to do her best by him.
+She gave her life wholly to the demands of her child, without a
+moment's hesitation.
+
+She has sacrificed herself in countless ways, all through those years,
+in order that he might have his education, his pleasures, and his
+strong body. With every day he has grown nearer and dearer to her;
+every day his loss would have been that much harder to bear.
+
+In quiet talks in the twilight, she teaches him to be gentle and
+considerate, to be courteous to every woman because a woman gave him
+life; to be brave, noble, and tender; to be strong and fine; to choose
+honour with a crust, rather than shame with plenty.
+
+Then comes the pretty butterfly, with whom her son is in love. Is it
+strange that the heart of the mother tightens with sudden pain?
+
+With never a thought, the girl takes it all as her due. She would
+write a gracious note of thanks to the friend who sent her a pretty
+handkerchief, but for the woman who is the means of satisfying her
+heart's desire she has not even toleration. All the sweetness and
+beauty of his adoring love are a gift to her, unwilling too often,
+perhaps, but a gift nevertheless, from his mother.
+
+Long years of life have taught the mother what it may mean and what,
+alas, it does too often mean. Memories only are her portion; she need
+expect nothing now. He may not come to see his mother for an old
+familiar talk, because his wife either comes with him, or expects
+him to be at home. He has no time for his mother's interests or his
+mother's friends; there is scant welcome in his home for her, because
+between them has come an alien presence which never yields or softens.
+
+Strangely, and without any definite idea of the change, he comes to
+see his mother as she is. Once, she was the most beautiful woman in
+the world, and her roughened hands were lovely because they had
+toiled for him. Once, her counsel was wise, her judgment good, and the
+gift of feeling which her motherhood brought her was seen as generous
+sympathy.
+
+Now, by comparison with a bright, well-dressed wife, he sees what an
+"old frump" his mother is. She is shabby and old-fashioned, clinging
+to obsolete forms of speech, hysterical and emotional. When the mists
+of love have cleared from her boy's eyes, she may just as well give
+up, because there is no return, save in that other mist which comes
+too late, when mother is at rest.
+
+The wife who tries to keep alive her husband's love for his family,
+not only in his heart, but in outward observance as well, serves her
+own interests even better than theirs. The love of the many comes with
+the love of the one, and just as truly as he loves his sweetheart
+better because of his mother and sisters, he may love them better
+because of her.
+
+The poor heart-hungry mother, who stands by with brimming eyes,
+fearful that the joy of her life may be taken from her, will be
+content with but little if she may but keep it for her own. It is only
+a little while at the longest, for the end of the journey is soon, but
+sunset and afterglow would have some of the rapture of dawn, if her
+son's wife opened the door of her young heart and said with true
+sincerity and wells of tenderness: "Mother--Come!"
+
+
+
+
+A Lullaby
+
+
+           Sleep, baby, sleep,
+     The twilight breezes blow,
+     The flower bells are ringing,
+     The birds are twittering low,
+           Sleep, baby, sleep.
+
+           Sleep, baby, sleep,
+     The whippoorwill is calling,
+     The stars are twinkling faintly,
+     The dew is softly falling,
+           Sleep, baby, sleep.
+
+           Sleep, baby, sleep,
+     Upon your pillow lying,
+     The rushes whisper to the stream,
+     The summer day is dying,
+           Sleep, baby, sleep.
+
+
+
+
+The Dressing-Sack Habit
+
+
+Someone has said that a dressing-sack is only a Mother Hubbard with a
+college education. Accepting this statement as a great truth, one is
+inclined to wonder whether education has improved the Mother Hubbard,
+since another clever person has characterised a college as "a place
+where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed!"
+
+The bond of relationship between the two is not at first apparent, yet
+there are subtle ties of kinship between the two. If we take a Hubbard
+and cut it off at the hips, we have only a dressing-sack with a yoke.
+The dressing-sack, however, cannot be walked on, even when the wearer
+is stooping, and in this respect it has the advantage of the other; it
+is also supposed to fit in the back, but it never does.
+
+Doubtless in the wise economy of the universe, where every weed has
+its function, even this garment has its place--else it would not be.
+
+Possibly one may take a nap, or arrange one's crown of glory to better
+advantage in a "boudoir negligee," or an invalid may be thus tempted
+to think of breakfast. Indeed, the habit is apt to begin during
+illness, when a friend presents the ailing lady with a dainty affair
+of silk and lace which inclines the suffering soul to frivolities.
+Presently she sits up, takes notice, and plans more garments of the
+sort, so that after she fully recovers all the world may see these
+becoming things!
+
+The worst of the habit is that all the world does see. Fancy runs riot
+with one pattern, a sewing-machine, and all the remnants a single
+purse can compass. The lady with a kindly feeling for colour browses
+along the bargain counter and speedily acquires a rainbow for her own.
+Each morning she assumes a different phase, and, at the end of the
+week, one's recollection of her is lost in a kaleidoscopic whirl.
+
+Red, now--is anything prettier than red? And how the men admire it!
+Does not the dark lady build wisely who dons a red dressing-sack on a
+cold morning, that her husband may carry a bright bit of colour to the
+office in his fond memories of home?
+
+A book with a red cover, a red cushion, crimson draperies, and scarlet
+ribbons, are all notoriously pleasing to monsieur--why not a red
+dressing-sack?
+
+If questioned, monsieur does not know why, yet gradually his passion
+for red will wane, then fail. Later in the game, he will be affronted
+by the colour, even as the gentleman cow in the pasture. It is not the
+colour, dear madame, but the shiftless garment, which has wrought this
+change.
+
+There are few who dare to assume pink, for one must have a complexion
+of peaches and cream, delicately powdered at that, before the rosy
+hues are becoming. Yet, the sallow lady, with streaks of grey in her
+hair, crow's feet around her eyes, and little time tracks registered
+all over her face, will put on a pink dressing-sack when she gets
+ready for breakfast. She would scream with horror at the thought of a
+pink and white organdie gown, made over rosy taffeta, but the kimono
+is another story.
+
+Green dressing-sacks are not often seen, but more's the pity, for in
+the grand array of colour nothing should be lacking, and the wearers
+of these garments never seem to stop to think whether or not they are
+becoming. What could be more cheerful on a cloudy morning than a
+flannel negligee of the blessed shade of green consecrated to the
+observance of the seventeenth of March?
+
+It looks as well as many things which are commonly welded into
+dressing-sacks; then why this invidious distinction?
+
+When we approach blue in our dressing-sack rainbow, speech becomes
+pitifully weak. Ancient maidens and matrons, with olive skins,
+proudly assume a turquoise negligee. Blue flannel, with cascades of
+white lace--could anything be more attractive? It has only one
+rival--the garment of lavender eiderdown flannel, the button-holes
+stitched with black yarn, which the elderly widow too often puts on
+when the tide of her grief has turned.
+
+The combination of black with any shade of purple is well fitted to
+produce grief, even as the cutting of an onion will bring tears. Could
+the dear departed see his relict in the morning, with lavender
+eiderdown environment, he would appreciate his mercies as never
+before.
+
+The speaking shades of yellow and orange are much affected by German
+ladies for dressing-sacks, and also for the knitted tippets which our
+Teutonic friends wear, in and out of the house, from October to July.
+Canary yellow is delicate and becoming to most, but it is German taste
+to wear orange.
+
+At first, perhaps, with a sense of the fitness of things, the negligee
+is worn only in one's own room. She says: "It's so comfortable!"
+There are degrees in comfort, varying from the easy, perfect fit of
+one's own skin to a party gown which dazzles envious observers, and
+why is the adjective reserved for the educated but abbreviated Mother
+Hubbard?
+
+"The apparel oft proclaims the man," and even more is woman dependent
+upon her clothes for physical, moral, and intellectual support. An
+uncorseted body will soon make its influence felt upon the mind. The
+steel-and-whalebone spine which properly reinforces all feminine
+vertebra is literally the backbone of a woman's self-respect.
+
+Would the iceman or the janitor hesitate to "talk back" to the
+uncorseted lady in a pink dressing-sack?--Hardly!
+
+But confront the erring man with a quiet, dignified woman in a crisp
+shirt-waist and a clean collar--verily he will think twice before he
+ventures an excuse for his failings.
+
+The iceman and the grocery boy see more dressing-sacks than most
+others, for they are privileged to approach the back doors of
+residences, and to hold conversations with the lady of the house,
+after the departure of him whose duty and pleasure it is to pay for
+the remnants. And in the lower strata they are known by their clothes.
+
+"Fifty pounds for the red dressing-sack," says the iceman to his
+helper, "and a hundred for the blue. Step lively now!"
+
+And how should madame know that her order for a steak, a peck of
+potatoes, and two lemons, is registered in the grocery boy's book
+under the laconic title, "Pink"?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After breakfast, when she sits down to read the paper and make her
+plans for the day, the insidious dressing-sack gets in its deadly
+work.
+
+"I won't dress," she thinks, "until I get ready to go out." After
+luncheon, she is too tired to go out, and too nearly dead to dress.
+
+Friends come in, perhaps, and say: "Oh, how comfortable you look!
+Isn't that a dear kimono?" Madame plumes herself with conscious pride,
+for indeed it is a dear kimono, and already she sees herself with a
+reputation for "exquisite negligee."
+
+The clock strikes six, and presently the lord of the manor comes home
+to be fed. "I'm dreadfully sorry, dear, you should find me looking
+so," says the lady of his heart, "but I just haven't felt well enough
+to dress. You don't mind, do you?"
+
+The dear, good, subdued soul says he is far from minding, and dinner
+is like breakfast as far as dressing-sacks go.
+
+Perhaps, in the far depths of his nature, the man wonders why it was
+that, in the halcyon days of courtship, he never beheld his beloved in
+the midst of a gunny--no, a dressing-sack. Of course, then, she didn't
+have to keep house, and didn't have so many cares to tire her. Poor
+little thing! Perhaps she isn't well!
+
+Isn't she? Let another woman telephone that she has tickets for the
+matinee, and behold the transformation! Within certain limits and
+barring severe headaches, a woman is always well enough to do what she
+wants to do--and no more.
+
+As the habit creeps upon its victim, she loses sight of the fact
+that there are other clothes. If she has a golf cape, she may venture
+to go to the letter-box or even to market in her favourite garment.
+After a while, when the habit is firmly fixed, a woman will wear a
+dressing-sack all the time--that is, some women will, except on rare
+and festive occasions. Sometimes in self-defence, she will say that
+her husband loves soft, fluffy feminine things, and can't bear to see
+her in a tailor-made outfit. This is why she wears the "soft fluffy
+things," which, with her, always mean dressing-sacks, all the time he
+is away from home, as well as when he is there.
+
+It is a mooted question whether shiftlessness causes dressing-sacks,
+or dressing-sacks cause shiftlessness, but there is no doubt about the
+loving association of the two. The woman who has nothing to do, and
+not even a shadow of a purpose in life, will enshrine her helpless
+back in a dressing-sack. She can't wear corsets, because, forsooth,
+they "hurt" her. She can't sit at the piano, because it's hard on her
+back. She can't walk, because she "isn't strong enough." She can't
+sew, because it makes a pain between her shoulders, and indeed why
+should she sew when she has plenty of dressing-sacks?
+
+This type of woman always boards, _if she can_, or has plenty of
+servants at her command, and, in either case, her mind is free to
+dwell upon her troubles.
+
+First, there is her own weak physical condition. Just wait until she
+tells you about the last pain she had. She doesn't feel like dressing
+for dinner, but she will try to wash her face, if you will excuse her!
+When she returns, she has plucked up enough energy to change her
+dressing-sack!
+
+The only cure for the habit is a violent measure which few indeed are
+brave enough to adopt. Make a bonfire of the offensive garments, dear
+lady; then stay away from the remnant counters, and after a while you
+will become immune.
+
+Nothing is done in a negligee of this sort which cannot be done
+equally well in a shirt-waist, crisp and clean, with a collar and
+belt.
+
+There is a popular delusion to the effect that household tasks
+require slipshod garments and unkempt hair, but let the frowsy ones
+contemplate the trained nurse in her spotless uniform, with her snowy
+cap and apron and her shining hair. Let the doubtful ones go to a
+cooking school, and see a neat young woman, in a blue gingham gown and
+a white apron, prepare an eight-course dinner and emerge spotless from
+the ordeal. We get from life, in most cases, exactly what we put into
+it. The world is a mirror which gives us smiles or frowns, as we
+ourselves may choose. The woman who faces the world in a shirt-waist
+will get shirt-waist appreciation, while for the dressing-sack there
+is only a slipshod reward.
+
+
+
+
+In the Meadow
+
+
+     The flowers bow their dainty heads,
+       And see in the shining stream
+     A vision of sky and silver clouds,
+       As bright as a fairy's dream.
+
+     The great trees nod their sleepy boughs,
+       The song birds come and go,
+     And all day long, to the waving ferns
+       The south wind whispers low.
+
+     All day among the blossoms sweet,
+       The laughing sunbeams play,
+     And down the stream, in rose-leaf boats
+       The fairies sail away.
+
+
+
+
+ One Woman's Solution of the
+ Servant Problem
+
+
+Being a professional woman, my requirements in the way of a housemaid
+were rather special. While at times I can superintend my small
+household, and direct my domestic affairs, there are long periods
+during which I must have absolute quiet, untroubled by door bell,
+telephone, or the remnants of roast beef.
+
+There are two of us, in a modern six room apartment, in a city where
+the servant problem has forced a large and ever-increasing percentage
+of the population into small flats. We have late breakfasts, late
+dinners, a great deal of company, and an amount of washing, both house
+and personal, which is best described as "unholy."
+
+Five or six people often drop in informally, and unexpectedly, for
+the evening, which means, of course, a midnight "spread," and an
+enormous pile of dishes to be washed in the morning. There are,
+however, some advantages connected with the situation. We have a
+laundress besides the maid; we have a twelve-o'clock breakfast on
+Sunday instead of a dinner, getting the cold lunch ourselves in the
+evening, thus giving the girl a long afternoon and evening; and we are
+away from home a great deal, often staying weeks at a time.
+
+The eternal "good wages to right party" of the advertisements was our
+inducement also, but, apparently, there were no "right parties!"
+
+The previous incumbent, having departed in a fit of temper at half an
+hour's notice, and left me, so to speak, "in the air," with dinner
+guests on the horizon a day ahead, I betook myself to an intelligence
+office, where, strangely enough, there seems to be no intelligence,
+and grasped the first chance of relief.
+
+Nothing more unpromising could possibly be imagined. The new maid was
+sad, ugly of countenance, far from strong physically, and in every way
+hopeless and depressing. She listened, unemotionally, to my glowing
+description of the situation. Finally she said, "Ay tank Ay try it."
+
+She came, looked us over, worked a part of a week, and announced that
+she couldn't stay. "Ay can't feel like home here," she said. "Ay am
+not satisfied."
+
+She had been in her last place for three years, and left because "my's
+lady, she go to Europe." I persuaded her to try it for a while longer,
+and gave her an extra afternoon or two off, realising that she must be
+homesick.
+
+After keeping us on tenter-hooks for two weeks, she sent for her
+trunk. I discovered that she was a fine laundress, carefully washing
+and ironing the things which were too fine to go into the regular
+wash; a most excellent cook, her kitchen and pantry were at all times
+immaculate; she had no followers, and few friends; meals were ready
+on the stroke of the hour, and she had the gift of management.
+
+Offset to this was a furious temper, an atmosphere of gloom and
+depression which permeated the house and made us feel funereal,
+impertinence of a quality difficult to endure, and the callous,
+unfeeling, almost inhuman characteristics which often belong in a high
+degree to the Swedes.
+
+For weeks I debated with myself whether or not I could stand it to
+have her in the house. I have spent an hour on my own back porch, when
+I should have been at work, because I was afraid to pass through the
+room which she happened to be cleaning. Times without number, a crisp
+muffin, or a pot of perfect coffee, has made me postpone speaking the
+fateful words which would have separated us. She sighed and groaned
+and wept at her work, worried about it, and was a fiend incarnate if
+either of us was five minutes late for dinner. We often hurried
+through the evening meal so as to leave her free for her evening out,
+even though I had long since told her not to wash the dishes after
+dinner, but to pile them neatly in the sink and leave them until
+morning.
+
+Before long, however, the strictly human side of the problem began to
+interest me. I had cherished lifelong theories in regard to the
+brotherhood of man and the uplifting power of personal influence. I
+had at times been tempted to try settlement work, and here I had a
+settlement subject in my own kitchen.
+
+There was not a suggestion of fault with the girl's work. She kept her
+part of the contract, and did it well; but across the wall between us,
+she glared at--and hated--me.
+
+But, deliberately, I set to work in defence of my theory. I ignored
+the impertinence, and seemingly did not hear the crash of dishes and
+the banging of doors. When it came to an issue, I said calmly, though
+my soul quaked within me: "You are not here to tell me what you will
+do and what you won't. You are here to carry out my orders, and when
+you cannot, it is time for you to go."
+
+If she asked me a question about her work which I could not answer
+offhand, I secretly consulted a standard cook-book, and later gave her
+the desired information airily. I taught her to cook many of the
+things which I could cook well, and imbued her with a sort of sneaking
+respect for my knowledge. Throughout, I treated her with the perfect
+courtesy which one lady accords to another, ignoring the impertinence.
+I took pains to say "please" and "thank you." Many a time I bit my
+lips tightly against my own rising rage, and afterward in calmness
+recognised a superior opportunity for self-discipline.
+
+For three or four months, while the beautiful theory wavered in the
+balance, we fought--not outwardly, but beneath the surface. Daily, I
+meditated a summary discharge, dissuaded only by an immaculate house
+and perfectly cooked breakfasts and dinners. I still cherished a
+lingering belief in personal influence, in spite of the wall which
+reared itself between us.
+
+A small grey kitten, with wobbly legs and an infantile mew, made the
+first breach in the wall. She took care of it, loved it, petted it,
+and began to smile semi-occasionally. She, too, said "please" and
+"thank you." My husband suggested that we order ten kittens, but I let
+the good work go on with one, for the time being. Gradually, I learned
+that the immovable exterior was the natural protection against an
+abnormal sensitiveness both to praise and blame. Besides the cat, she
+had two other "weak spots"--an unswerving devotion to a widowed sister
+with two children, whom she partially supported, and a love for
+flowers almost pathetic.
+
+As I could, without seeming to make a point of it, I sent things to
+the sister and the children--partially worn curtains, bits of ribbons,
+little toys, and the like. I made her room as pretty and dainty as my
+own, though the furnishings were not so expensive, and gave her a
+potted plant in a brass jar. When flowers were sent to me, I gave her
+a few for the vase in her room. She began to say "we" instead of
+"you." She spoke of "our" spoons, or "our" table linen. She asked,
+what shall "we" do about this or that? what shall "we" have for
+dinner? instead of "what do _you_ want?" She began to laugh when she
+played with the kitten, and even to sing at her work.
+
+When she did well, I praised her, as I had all along, but instead of
+saying, "Iss dat so?" when I remarked that the muffins were delicious
+or the dessert a great success, her face began to light up, and a
+smile take the place of the impersonal comment. The furious temper
+began to wane, or, at least, to be under better control. Guests
+occasionally inquired, "What have you done to that maid of yours?"
+
+Five times we have left her, for one or two months at a time, on full
+salary, with unlimited credit at the grocery, and with from fifty to
+one hundred dollars in cash. During the intervals we heard nothing
+from her. We have returned each time to an immaculate house, a
+smiling maid, a perfectly cooked and nicely served meal, and an
+account correct to a penny, with vouchers to show for it, of the sum
+with which she had been intrusted.
+
+I noticed each time a vast pride in the fact that she had been so
+trusted, and from this developed a gratifying loyalty to the
+establishment. I had told her once to ask her sister and children to
+spend the day with her while we were gone. It seems that the children
+were noisy, and the lady in the apartment below us came up to object.
+
+An altercation ensued, ending with a threat from the lady downstairs
+to "tell Mrs. M. when she came home." Annie told me herself, with
+flashing eyes and shaking hands. I said, calmly: "The children must
+have been noisy, or she would not have complained. You are used to
+them, and besides it would sound worse downstairs than up here. But it
+doesn't amount to anything, for I had told you you could have the
+children here, and if I hadn't been able to trust you I wouldn't have
+left you." Thus the troubled waters were calmed.
+
+The crucial test of her qualities came when I entered upon a long
+period of exhaustive effort. The first day, we both had a hard time,
+as her highly specialised Baptist conscience would not permit her to
+say I was "not at home," when I was merely writing a book. After she
+thoroughly understood that I was not to be disturbed unless the house
+took fire, further quiet being insured by disconnecting the doorbell
+and muffling the telephone, things went swimmingly.
+
+"Annie," I said, "I want you to run this house until I get through
+with my book. Here is a hundred dollars to start with. Don't let
+anybody disturb me." She took it with a smile, and a cheerful "all
+right."
+
+From that moment to the end, I had even less care than I should have
+had in a well-equipped hotel. Not a sound penetrated my solitude. If
+I went out for a drink of water, she did not speak to me. We had
+delicious dinners and dainty breakfasts which might have waited for
+us, but we never waited a moment for them. She paid herself regularly
+every Monday morning, kept all receipts, sent out my husband's
+laundry, kept a strict list of it, mended our clothes, managed our
+household as economically as I myself could have done it, and, best of
+all, insured me from any sort of interruption with a sort of fierce
+loyalty which is beyond any money value.
+
+Once I overheard a colloquy at my front door, which was briefly and
+decisively terminated thus: "Ay already tell you dat you _not see
+her_! She says to me, 'Annie, you keep dose peoples off from me,' and
+Ay _keep dem off_!" I never have known what dear friend was thus
+turned away from my inhospitable door.
+
+Fully appreciating my blessings, the night I finished my work I went
+into the kitchen with a crisp, new, five-dollar bill. "Annie," I said,
+"here is a little extra money for you. You've been so nice about the
+house while I've been busy."
+
+She opened her eyes wide, and stared. "You don't have to do dat," she
+said.
+
+"I know I don't," I laughed, "but I like to do it."
+
+"You don't have to do dat," she repeated. "Ay like to do de
+housekeeping."
+
+"I know," I said again, "and I like to do this. You've done lots of
+things for me you didn't have to do. Why shouldn't I do something for
+you?"
+
+At that she took it, offering me a rough wet hand, which I took
+gravely. "Tank you," she said, and the tears rolled down her cheeks.
+
+"You've earned it," I assured her, "and you deserve it, and I'm very
+glad I can give it to you."
+
+From that hour she has been welded to me in a bond which I fondly hope
+is indestructible. She laughs and sings at her work, pets her beloved
+kitten, and diffuses through my six rooms the atmosphere of good
+cheer. She "looks after me," anticipates my wishes, and dedicates to
+me a continual loyal service which has no equivalent in dollars and
+cents. She asked me, hesitatingly, if she might not get some one to
+fill her place for three months while she went back to Sweden. I
+didn't like the idea, but I recognised her well-defined right.
+
+"Ay not go," she said, "if you not want me to. Ay tell my sister dat
+I want to stay wid Mrs. M. until she send me away."
+
+I knew she would have to go some time before she settled down to
+perpetual residence in an alien land, so I bade her God-speed. She
+secured the substitute and instructed her, arranged the matter of
+wages, and vouched for her honesty, but not for her work.
+
+Before she left the city, I found that the substitute was hopelessly
+incompetent and stupid. When Annie came to say "good-bye" to me, I
+told her about the new girl. She broke down and wept. "Ay sorry Ay try
+to go," she sobbed. "Ay tell my sister dere iss nobody what can take
+care of Mrs. M. lak Ay do!"
+
+I was quite willing to agree with her, but I managed to dry her tears.
+Discovering that she expected to spend two nights in a day coach, and
+remembering one dreadful night when I could get no berth, I gave her
+the money for a sleeping-car ticket both ways, as a farewell gift. The
+tears broke forth afresh. "You been so good to me and to my sister,"
+she sobbed. "Ay can't never forget dat!"
+
+"Cheer up," I answered, wiping the mist from my own eyes. "Go on, and
+have the best time you ever had in your life, and don't worry about
+me--I'll get along somehow. And if you need money while you are away,
+write to me, and I'll send you whatever you need. We'll fix it up
+afterward."
+
+Once again she looked at me, with the strangest look I have ever seen
+on the human face.
+
+"Tank you," she said slowly. "Dere iss not many ladies would say dat."
+
+"Perhaps not," I replied, "but, remember, Annie, I can trust you."
+
+"Yes," she cried, her face illumined as by some great inward light,
+"you can trust me!"
+
+I do not think she loves us yet, but I believe in time she will.
+
+The day the new girl came, I happened to overhear a much valued
+reference to myself: "Honestly," she said, "Ay been here more dan one
+year, and Ay never hear a wrong word between her and him, nor between
+her and me. It's shust wonderful. Ay isn't been see anyting like it
+since Ay been in diss country."
+
+"Is it so wonderful?" I asked myself, as I stole away, my own heart
+aglow with the consciousness of a moral victory, "and is the lack of
+self-control and human kindness at the bottom of the American servant
+problem? Are we women such children that we cannot deal wisely with
+our intellectual inferiors?" And more than all I had given her, as I
+realised then for the first time, was the power of self-discipline
+and self-control which she, all unknowingly, had developed in me.
+
+I have not ceased the "treatment," even though the patient is nearly
+well. It costs me nothing to praise her when she deserves it, to take
+an occasional friend into her immaculate kitchen, and to show the
+shining white pantry shelves (without papers), while she blushes and
+smiles with pleasure. It costs me nothing to see that she overhears
+me while I tell a friend over the telephone how capable she has been
+during the stress of my work, or how clean the house is when we come
+home after a long absence. It costs me nothing to send her out for a
+walk, or a visit to a nearby friend, on the afternoons when her work
+is finished and I am to be at home--nothing to call her attention to a
+beautiful sunset or a perfect day, or to tell her some amusing story
+that her simple mind can appreciate. It costs me nothing to tell
+her how well she looks in her cap and apron (only I call the cap a
+"hair-bow"), nor that one of the guests said she made the best cake
+she had ever eaten in her life.
+
+It costs me little to give her a pretty hatpin, or some other girlish
+trifle at Easter, to bring her some souvenir of our travels, to give
+her a fresh ribbon for her belt from my bolt, or some little toy "for
+de children."
+
+It means only a thought to say when she goes out, "Good-bye! Have a
+good time!" or to say when I go out, "Good-bye! Be good!" It means
+little to me to tell her how much my husband or our guests have
+enjoyed the dinner, or to have him go into the kitchen sometimes,
+while she is surrounded by a mountain of dishes, with a cheery word
+and a fifty-cent piece.
+
+It isn't much out of my way to do a bit of shopping for her when I am
+shopping for myself, and no trouble at all to plan for her new gowns,
+or to tell her that her new hat is very pretty and becoming.
+
+When her temper gets the better of her these days, I can laugh her
+out of it. "To think," I said once, "of a fine, capable girl like you
+flying into a rage because some one has borrowed your clothesline
+without asking for it!"
+
+The clouds vanished with a smile. "Dat iss funny of me," she said.
+
+When her work goes wrong, as of course it sometimes does, though
+rarely, and she is worrying for fear I shall be displeased, I say:
+"Never mind, Annie; things don't always go right for any of us. Don't
+worry about it, but be careful next time."
+
+It has cost me time and effort and money, and an infinite amount of
+patience and tact, not to mention steady warfare with myself, but in
+return, what have I? A housemaid, as nearly perfect, perhaps, as they
+can ever be on this faulty earth, permanently in my service, as I hope
+and believe.
+
+If any one offers her higher wages, I shall meet the "bid," for she is
+worth as much to me as she can be to any one else. Besides giving me
+superior service, she has done me a vast amount of good in furnishing
+me the needed material for the development of my character.
+
+On her own ground, she respects my superior knowledge. Once or twice
+I have heard her say of some friend, "Her's lady, she know nodding at
+all about de housekeeping--no, nodding at all!"
+
+The airy contempt of the tone is quite impossible to describe.
+
+A neighbour whom she assisted in a time of domestic stress, during my
+absence, told me amusedly of her reception in her own kitchen. "You
+don't have to come all de time to de kitchen to tell me," remarked
+Annie.
+
+"Doesn't Mrs. M. do that?" queried my neighbour, lightly.
+
+"Ay should say not," returned the capable one, indignantly. "She nefer
+come in de kitchen, and _she know, too_!"
+
+While that was not literally true, because I do go into my kitchen if
+I want to, and cook there if I like, I make a point of not intruding.
+She knows what she is to do, and I leave her to do it, in peace and
+comfort.
+
+Briefly summarised, the solution from my point of view is this. _Know
+her work yourself, down to the last detail_; pay the wages which other
+people would be glad to pay for the same service; keep your temper,
+and, in the face of everything, _be kind_! Remember that housework is
+hard work--that it never stays done--that a meal which it takes half a
+day to prepare is disposed of in half an hour. Remember, too, that it
+requires much intelligence and good judgment to be a good cook, and
+that the daily tasks lack inspiration. The hardest part of housework
+must be done at a time when many other people are free for rest and
+enjoyment, and it carries with it a social bar sinister when it is
+done for money. The woman who does it for her board and clothes, in
+her own kitchen, does not necessarily lose caste, but doing it for a
+higher wage, in another's kitchen, makes one almost an outcast.
+Strange and unreasonable, but true.
+
+It was at my own suggestion that she began to leave the dishes piled
+up in the sink until morning. When the room is otherwise immaculate,
+a tray of neatly piled plates, even if unwashed, does not disturb my
+aesthetic sense.
+
+Ordinarily, she is free for the evening at half-past seven or a
+quarter of eight--always by eight. Her evenings are hers, not
+mine,--unless I pay her extra, as I always do. A dollar or so counts
+for nothing in the expense of an entertainment, and she both earns and
+deserves the extra wage.
+
+If I am to entertain twenty or thirty people--the house will hold no
+more, and I cannot ask more than ten to dinner--I consult with her,
+decide upon the menu, tell her that she can have all the help she
+needs, and go my ways in peace. I can order the flowers, decorate the
+table, put on my best gown, and receive my guests, unwearied, with an
+easy mind.
+
+When I am not expecting guests, I can leave the house immediately
+after breakfast, without a word about dinner, and return to the right
+sort of a meal at seven o'clock, bringing a guest or two with me, if I
+telephone first.
+
+I can work for six weeks or two months in a seclusion as perfect as I
+could have in the Sahara Desert, and my household, meanwhile, will
+move as if on greased skids. I can go away for two months and hear
+nothing from her, and yet know that everything is all right at home. I
+think no more about it, so far as responsibility is concerned, when I
+am travelling, than as if I had no home at all. When we leave the
+apartment alone in the evening, we turn on the most of the lights,
+being assured by the police that burglars will never molest a
+brilliantly illuminated house.
+
+The morose countenance of my ugly maid has subtly changed. It
+radiates, in its own way, beauty and good cheer. Her harsh voice is
+gentle, her manner is kind, her tastes are becoming refined, her ways
+are those of a lady.
+
+My friends and neighbours continually allude to the transformation as
+"a miracle." The janitor remarked, in a burst of confidence, that he
+"never saw anybody change so." He "reckoned," too, that "it must be
+the folks she lives with!" Annie herself, conscious of a change,
+recently said complacently: "Ay guess Ay wass one awful crank when Ay
+first come here."
+
+And so it happens that the highest satisfaction is connected with the
+beautiful theory, triumphantly proven now, against heavy odds.
+Whatever else I may have done, I have taught one woman the workman's
+pride in her work, shown her where true happiness lies, and set her
+feet firmly on the path of right and joyous living.
+
+
+
+
+To a Violin
+
+(Antonius Stradivarius, 1685.)
+
+
+     What flights of years have gone to fashion thee,
+     My violin! What centuries have wrought
+     Thy sounding fibres! What dead fingers taught
+     Thy music to awake in ecstasy
+     Beyond our human dreams? Thy melody
+     Is resurrection. Every buried thought
+     Of singing bird, or stream, or south wind, fraught
+     With tender message, or of sobbing sea,
+     Lives once again. The tempest's solemn roll
+     Is in thy passion sleeping, till the king
+     Whose touch is mastery shall sound thy soul.
+     The organ tones of ocean shalt thou bring,
+     The crashing chords of thunder, and the whole
+     Vast harmony of God. Ah, Spirit, sing!
+
+
+
+
+The Old Maid
+
+
+One of the best things the last century has done for woman is to make
+single-blessedness appear very tolerable indeed, even if it be not
+actually desirable.
+
+The woman who didn't marry used to be looked down upon as a sort of a
+"leftover" without a thought, apparently, that she may have refused
+many a chance to change her attitude toward the world. But now, the
+"bachelor maid" is welcomed everywhere, and is not considered
+eccentric on account of her oneness.
+
+With the long records of the divorce courts before their eyes, it is
+not very unusual for the younger generation of women nowadays
+deliberately to choose spinsterhood as their independent lot in life.
+
+A girl said the other day: "It's no use to say that a woman can't
+marry if she wants to. Look around you, and see the women who _have_
+married, and then ask yourself if there is anybody who can't!"
+
+This is a great truth very concisely stated. It is safe to say that no
+woman ever reached twenty-five years of age, and very few have passed
+twenty, without having an opportunity to become somebody's mate.
+
+A very small maiden with very bright eyes once came to her mother with
+the question: "Mamma, do you think I shall ever have a chance to get
+married?"
+
+And the mother answered: "Surely you will, my child; the woods are
+full of offers of marriage--no woman can avoid them."
+
+And ere many years had passed the maiden had learned that the wisdom
+of her mother's prophecy was fully vindicated.
+
+Every one knows that a woman needs neither beauty, talent, nor money
+to win the deepest and sincerest love that man is capable of giving.
+
+Single life is, with rare exceptions, a matter of choice and not of
+necessity; and while it is true that a happy married life is the
+happiest position for either man or woman, there are many things which
+are infinitely worse than being an old maid, and chiefest among these
+is marrying the wrong man!
+
+The modern woman looks her future squarely in the face and decides
+according to her best light whether her happiness depends upon
+spinsterhood or matrimony. This decision is of course influenced very
+largely by the quality of her chances in either direction, but if the
+one whom she fully believes to be the right man comes along, he is
+likely to be able to overcome strong objections to the married state.
+If love comes to her from the right source, she takes it gladly;
+otherwise she bravely goes her way alone, often showing the world that
+some of the most mother-hearted women are not really mothers. Think of
+the magnificent solitude of such women as Florence Nightingale and our
+own splendid Frances Willard! Who shall say that these, and thousands
+of others of earth's grandest souls, were not better for their
+single-heartedness in the service of humanity?
+
+A writer in a leading journal recently said: "The fact that a woman
+remains single is a tribute to her perception. She gains an added
+dignity from being hard to suit."
+
+This, from the pen of a man, is somewhat of a revelation, in the light
+of various masculine criticisms concerning superfluous women. No woman
+is superfluous. God made her, and put her into this world to help her
+fellow-beings. There is a little niche somewhere which she, and she
+alone, can fill. She finds her own completeness in rounding out the
+lives of others.
+
+It has been said that the average man may be piloted through life by
+one woman, but it must be admitted that several of him need somewhere
+near a dozen of the fair sex to wait upon him at the same time. His
+wife and mother are kept "hustling," while his "sisters and his aunts"
+are likely to be "on the keen jump" from the time his lordship enters
+the house until he leaves it!
+
+But to return to the "superfluous woman,"--although we cannot
+literally return to her because she does not exist. Of the "old maid"
+of to-day, it is safe to say that she has her allotted plane of
+usefulness. She isn't the type our newspaper brethren delight to
+caricature. She doesn't dwell altogether upon the subject of "woman's
+sphere," which, by the way, comes very near being the plane of the
+earth's sphere, and she need not, for her position is now well
+recognised.
+
+She doesn't wear corkscrew curls and hideous reform garments. She is a
+dainty, feminine, broad-minded woman, and a charming companion. Men
+are her friends, and often her lovers, in her old age as well as in
+her youth.
+
+Every old maid has her love story, a little romance that makes her
+heart young again as she dreams it over in the firelight, and it
+calls a happy smile to the faded face.
+
+Or, perhaps, it is the old, sad story of a faithless lover, or a
+happiness spoiled by gossips--or it may be the scarcely less sad story
+of love and death.
+
+Ibsen makes two of his characters, a young man and woman who love each
+other, part voluntarily on the top of a high mountain in order that
+they may be enabled to keep their high ideals and uplifting love for
+each other.
+
+So the old maid keeps her ideals, not through fulfilment, but through
+memory, and she is far happier than many a woman who finds her ideal
+surprisingly and disagreeably real.
+
+The bachelor girl and the bachelor man are much on the increase.
+Marriage is not in itself a failure, but the people who enter unwisely
+into this solemn covenant too often are not only failures, but bitter
+disappointments to those who love them best.
+
+Life for men and women means the highest usefulness and happiness, for
+the terms are synonymous, neither being able to exist without the
+other.
+
+The model spinster of to-day is philanthropic. She is connected, not
+with innumerable charities, but with a few well-chosen ones. She gives
+freely of her time and money in many ways, where her left hand
+scarcely knoweth what her right doeth, and the record of her good
+works is not found in the chronicles of the world.
+
+She is literary, musical, or artistic. She is a devoted and loyal club
+member, and is well informed on the leading topics of the day, while
+the resources of her well-balanced mind are always at the service of
+her friends.
+
+And when all is said and done, the highest and truest life is within
+the reach of us all. Doing well whatever is given us to do will keep
+us all busy, and married or single, no woman has a right to be idle.
+The old maid may be womanly and mother-hearted as well as the wife and
+mother.
+
+
+
+
+The Spinster's Rubaiyat
+
+
+     I
+
+     Wake! For the hour of hope will soon take flight
+     And on your form and features leave a blight;
+     Since Time, who heals full many an open wound,
+     More oft than not is impolite.
+
+     II
+
+     Before my relatives began to chide,
+     Methought the voice of conscience said inside:
+     "Why should you want a husband, when you have
+     A cat who seldom will at home abide?"
+
+     III
+
+     And, when the evening breeze comes in the door,
+     The lamp smokes like a chimney, only more;
+     And yet the deacon of the church
+     Is telling every one my parrot swore.
+
+     IV
+
+     Behold, my aunt into my years inquires,
+     Then swiftly with my parents she conspires,
+     And in the family record changes dates--
+     In that same book that says all men are liars.
+
+     V
+
+     Come, fill the cup and let the kettle sing!
+     What though upon my finger gleams no ring,
+     Save that cheap turquoise that I bought myself?
+     The coming years a gladsome change may bring.
+
+     VI
+
+     Here, minion, fill the steaming cup that clears
+     The skin I will not have exposed to jeers,
+     And rub this wrinkle vigorously until
+     The maddening crow's-foot wholly disappears.
+
+     VII
+
+     And let me don some artificial bloom,
+     And turn the lamps down low, and make a gloom
+     That spreads from library to hall and stair;
+     Thus do I look my best--but ah, for whom?
+
+
+
+
+The Rights of Dogs
+
+
+We hear a great deal about the "rights of men" and still more,
+perhaps, about the "rights of women," but few stop to consider those
+which properly belong to the friend and companion of both--the dog.
+
+According to our municipal code, a dog must be muzzled from June 1st
+to September 30th. The wise men who framed this measure either did not
+know, or did not stop to consider, that a dog perspires and "cools
+off" only at his mouth.
+
+Man and the horse have tiny pores distributed all over the body, but
+in the dog they are found only in the tongue.
+
+Any one who has had a fever need not be told what happened when these
+pores ceased to act; what, then, must be the sufferings of a dog on a
+hot day, when, securely muzzled, he takes his daily exercise?
+
+Even on the coolest days, the barbarous muzzle will fret a
+thoroughbred almost to insanity, unless, indeed, he has brains to free
+himself, as did a brilliant Irish setter which we once knew. This wise
+dog would run far ahead of his human guardian, and with the help of
+his forepaws slip the strap over his slender head, then hide the
+offending muzzle in the gutter, and race onward again. When the loss
+was discovered, it was far too late to remedy it by any search that
+could be instituted.
+
+And still, without this uncomfortable encumbrance, it is unsafe for
+any valuable dog to be seen, even on his own doorsteps, for the
+"dog-catcher" is ever on the look-out for blue-blooded victims.
+
+The homeless mongrel, to whom a painless death would be a blessing, is
+left to get a precarious living as best he may from the garbage boxes,
+and spread pestilence from house to house, but the setter, the collie,
+and the St. Bernard are choked into insensibility with a wire noose,
+hurled into a stuffy cage, and with the thermometer at ninety in the
+shade, are dragged through the blistering city, as a sop to that
+Cerberus of the law which demands for its citizens safety from dogs,
+and pays no attention to the lawlessness of men.
+
+The dog tax which is paid every year is sufficient to guarantee the
+interest of the owner in his dog. Howells has pitied "the dogless
+man," and Thomas Nelson Page has said somewhere that "some of us know
+what it is to be loved by a dog."
+
+Countless writers have paid tribute to his fidelity and devotion, and
+to the constant forgiveness of blows and neglect which spring from the
+heart of the commonest cur.
+
+The trained hunter, who is as truly a sportsman as the man who brings
+down the birds he finds, can be easily fretted into madness by the
+injudicious application of the muzzle.
+
+The average dog is a gentleman and does not attack people for the
+pleasure of it, and it is lamentably true that people who live in
+cities often find it necessary to keep some sort of a dog as a
+guardian to life and property. In spite of his loyalty, which every
+one admits, the dog is an absolute slave. Men with less sense, and
+less morality, constitute a court from which he has no appeal.
+
+Four or five years of devotion to his master's interests, and four or
+five years of peaceful, friendly conduct, count for absolutely nothing
+beside the perjured statement of some man, or even woman, who, from
+spite against the owner, is willing to assert, "the dog is vicious."
+
+     "He is very imprudent, a dog is," said Jerome K. Jerome. "He
+     never makes it his business to inquire whether you are in
+     the right or wrong--never bothers as to whether you are
+     going up or down life's ladder--never asks whether you are
+     rich or poor, silly or wise, saint or sinner. You are his
+     pal. That is enough for him, and come luck or misfortune,
+     good repute or bad, honour or shame, he is going to stick to
+     you, to comfort you, guard you, and give his life for you,
+     if need be--foolish, brainless, soulless dog!
+
+     "Ah! staunch old friend, with your deep, clear eyes, and
+     bright quick glances that take in all one has to say, before
+     one has time to speak it, do you know you are only an animal
+     and have no mind?
+
+     "Do you know that dull-eyed, gin-sodden lout leaning against
+     the post out there is immeasurably your intellectual
+     superior? Do you know that every little-minded selfish
+     scoundrel, who never had a thought that was not mean and
+     base--whose every action is a fraud and whose every
+     utterance is a lie; do you know that these are as much
+     superior to you as the sun is to the rush-light, you
+     honourable, brave-hearted, unselfish brute?
+
+     "They are men, you know, and men are the greatest, noblest,
+     wisest, and best beings in the universe. Any man will tell
+     you that."
+
+Are the men whom we elect to public office our masters or our
+servants? If the former, let us change our form of government; if the
+latter, let us hope that from somewhere a little light may penetrate
+their craniums and that they may be induced to give the dog a chance.
+
+
+
+
+Twilight
+
+
+     The birds were hushed into silence,
+       The clouds had sunk from sight,
+     And the great trees bowed to the summer breeze
+       That kissed the flowers good-night.
+
+     The stars came out in the cool still air,
+       From the mansions of the blest,
+     And softly, over the dim blue hills,
+       Night came to the world with rest.
+
+
+
+
+Women's Clothes in Men's Books
+
+
+When asked why women wrote better novels than men, Mr. Richard Le
+Gallienne is said to have replied, more or less conclusively, "They
+don't"; thus recalling _Punch's_ famous advice to those about to
+marry.
+
+Happily there is no segregation in literature, and masculine and
+feminine hands alike may dabble in fiction, as long as the publishers
+are willing.
+
+If we accept Zola's dictum to the effect that art is nature seen
+through the medium of a temperament, the thing is possible to many,
+though the achievement may differ both in manner and degree. For women
+have temperament--too much of it--as the hysterical novelists daily
+testify.
+
+The gentleman novelist, however, prances in boldly, where feminine
+feet well may fear to tread, and consequently has a wider scope for
+his writing. It is not for a woman to mingle in a barroom brawl and
+write of the thing as she sees it. The prize-ring, the interior of a
+cattle-ship, Broadway at four in the morning--these and countless
+other places are forbidden by her innate refinement as well as by the
+Ladies' Own, and all the other aunties who have taken upon themselves
+the guardianship of the Home with a big H.
+
+Fancy the outpouring of scorn upon the luckless offender's head if one
+should write to the Manners and Morals Department of the Ladies' Own
+as follows: "Would it be proper for a lady novelist, in search of
+local colour and new experiences, to accept the escort of a strange
+man at midnight if he was too drunk to recognise her afterward?" Yet a
+man in the same circumstances would not hesitate to put an intoxicated
+woman into a sea-going cab, and would plume himself for a year and a
+day upon his virtuous performance.
+
+All things are considered proper for a man who is about to write a
+book. Like the disciple of Mary McLane who stole a horse in order to
+get the emotions of a police court, he may delve deeply not only into
+life, but into that under-stratum which is not spoken of, where
+respectable journals circulate.
+
+Everything is fish that comes into his net. If conscientious, he may
+even undertake marriage in order to study the feminine personal
+equations at close range. Woman's emotions, singly and collectively,
+are pilloried before his scientific gaze. He cowers before one
+problem, and one only--woman's clothes!
+
+Carlyle, after long and painful thought, arrives at the conclusion
+that "cut betokens intellect and talent; colour reveals temper and
+heart."
+
+This reminds one of the language of flowers, and the directions given
+for postage-stamp flirtation. If that massive mind had penetrated
+further into the mysteries of the subject, we might have been told
+that a turnover collar indicated that the woman was a High Church
+Episcopalian who had embroidered two altar cloths, and that suede
+gloves show a yielding but contradictory nature.
+
+Clothes are, undoubtedly, indices of character and taste, as well as a
+sop to conventionality, but this only when one has the wherewithal to
+browse at will in the department store. Many a woman with ermine
+tastes has only a rabbit-fur pocket-book, and thus her clothes wrong
+her in the sight of gods and women, though men know nothing about it.
+
+Once upon a time there was a notion to the effect that women dressed
+to please men, but that idea has long since been relegated to the
+limbo of forgotten things.
+
+Not one man in a thousand can tell the difference between Brussels
+point at thirty dollars a yard, and imitation Valenciennes at ten or
+fifteen cents a yard which was one of the "famous Friday features in
+the busy bargain basement."
+
+But across the room, yea, even from across the street, the eagle eye
+of another woman can unerringly locate the Brussels point and the
+mock Valenciennes.
+
+A man knows silk by the sound of it and diamonds by the shine. He will
+say that his heroine "was richly dressed in silk." Little does he wot
+of the difference between taffeta at eighty-five cents a yard and
+broadcloth at four dollars. Still less does he know that a white
+cotton shirt-waist represents financial ease, and a silk waist of
+festive colouring represents poverty, since it takes but two days to
+"do up" a white shirt-waist in one sense, and thirty or forty cents to
+do it up in the other!
+
+One listens with wicked delight to men's discourse upon woman's
+clothes. Now and then a man will express his preference for a tailored
+gown, as being eminently simple and satisfactory. Unless he is married
+and has seen the bills for tailored gowns, he also thinks they are
+inexpensive.
+
+It is the benedict, wise with the acquired knowledge of the serpent,
+who begs his wife to get a new party gown and let the tailor-made go
+until next season. He also knows that when the material is bought, the
+expense has scarcely begun, whereas the ignorant bachelor thinks that
+the worst is happily over.
+
+In _A Little Journey through the World_ Mr. Warner philosophised thus:
+"How a woman in a crisis hesitates before her wardrobe, and at last
+chooses just what will express her innermost feelings!"
+
+If all a woman's feelings were to be expressed by her clothes, the
+benedicts would immediately encounter financial shipwreck. On account
+of the lamentable scarcity of money and closets, one is eternally
+adjusting the emotion to the gown.
+
+Some gown, seen at the exact psychological moment, fixes forever in a
+man's mind his ideal garment. Thus we read of blue calico, of
+pink-and-white print, and more often still, of white lawn. Mad colour
+combinations run riot in the masculine fancy, as in the case of a man
+who boldly described his favourite costume as "red, with black ruffles
+down the front!"
+
+Of a hat, a man may be a surpassingly fine critic, since he recks not
+of style. Guileful is the woman who leads her liege to the millinery
+and lets him choose, taking no heed of the price and the attendant
+shock until later.
+
+A normal man is anxious that his wife shall be well dressed because it
+shows the critical observer that his business is a great success.
+After futile explorations in the labyrinth, he concerns himself simply
+with the fit, preferring always that the clothes of his heart's
+dearest shall cling to her as lovingly as a kid glove, regardless of
+the pouches and fulnesses prescribed by Dame Fashion.
+
+In the writing of books, men are at their wits' end when it comes to
+women's clothes. They are hampered by no restrictions--no thought of
+style or period enters into their calculations, and unless they have a
+wholesome fear of the unknown theme, they produce results which
+further international gaiety.
+
+Many an outrageous garment has been embalmed in a man's book, simply
+because an attractive woman once wore something like it when she fed
+the novelist. Unbalanced by the joy of the situation, he did not
+accurately observe the garb of the ministering angel, and hence we
+read of "a clinging white gown" in the days of stiff silks and rampant
+crinoline; of "the curve of the upper arm" when it took five yards for
+a pair of sleeves, and of "short walking skirts" during the reign of
+bustles and trains!
+
+In _The Blazed Trail_, Mr. White observes that his heroine was clad in
+brown which fitted her slender figure perfectly. As Hilda had yellow
+hair, "like corn silk," this was all right, and if the brown was of
+the proper golden shade, she was doubtless stunning when Thorpe first
+saw her in the forest. But the gown could not have fitted her as the
+sheath encases the dagger, for before the straight-front corsets there
+were the big sleeves, and still further back were bustles and
+_bouffant_ draperies. One does not get the impression that _The_
+_Blazed Trail_ was placed in the days of crinolines, but doubtless
+Hilda's clothes did not fit as Mr. White seems to think they did.
+
+That strenuous follower of millinery, Mr. Gibson, might give lessons
+to his friend, Mr. Davis, with advantage to the writer, if not to the
+artist. In _Captain Macklin_, the young man's cousin makes her first
+appearance in a thin gown, and a white hat trimmed with roses,
+reminding the adventurous captain of a Dresden statuette, in spite of
+the fact that she wore heavy gauntlet gloves and carried a trowel. The
+lady had been doing a hard day's work in the garden. No woman outside
+the asylum ever did gardening in such a costume, and Mr. Davis
+evidently has the hat and gown sadly mixed with some other pleasant
+impression.
+
+The feminine reader immediately hides Mr. Davis' mistake with the
+broad mantle of charity, and in her own mind clothes Beatrice properly
+in a short walking skirt, heavy shoes, shirt-waist, old hat tied down
+over the ears with a rumpled ribbon, and a pair of ancient masculine
+gloves, long since discarded by their rightful owner. Thus does lovely
+woman garden, except on the stage and in men's books.
+
+In _The Story of Eva_, Mr. Payne announces that Eva climbed out of a
+cab in "a fawn-coloured jacket," conspicuous by reason of its newness,
+and a hat "with an owl's head upon it!"
+
+The jacket was possibly a coat of tan covert cloth with strapped
+seams, but it is the startling climax which claims attention. An owl!
+Surely not, Mr. Payne! It may have been a parrot, for once upon a
+time, before the Audubon Society met with widespread recognition,
+women wore such things, and at afternoon teas where many fair
+ones were gathered together the parrot garniture was not without
+significance. But an owl's face, with its glaring glassy eyes, is
+too much like a pussy cat's to be appropriate, and one could no
+wear it at the back without conveying an unpleasant impression
+of two-facedness, if the coined word be permissible.
+
+Still the owl is no worse than the trimming suggested by a funny
+paper. The tears of mirth come yet at the picture of a hat of rough
+straw, shaped like a nest, on which sat a full-fledged Plymouth Rock
+hen, with her neck proudly, yet graciously curved. Perhaps Mr. Payne
+saw the picture and forthwith decided to do something in the same
+line, but there is a singular inappropriateness in placing the bird of
+Minerva upon the head of poor Eva, who made the old, old bargain in
+which she had everything to lose, and nothing save the bitterest
+experience to gain. A stuffed kitten, so young and innocent that its
+eyes were still blue and bleary, would have been more appropriate on
+Eva's bonnet, and just as pretty.
+
+In _The Fortunes of Oliver Horn_, Margaret Grant wears a particularly
+striking costume:
+
+     "The cloth skirt came to her ankles, which were covered with
+     yarn stockings, and her feet were encased in shoes that gave
+     him the shivers, the soles being as thick as his own and
+     the leather as tough.
+
+     "Her blouse was of grey flannel, belted to the waist by a
+     cotton saddle-girth, white and red, and as broad as her
+     hand. The tam-o-shanter was coarse and rough, evidently
+     home-made, and not at all like McFudd's, which was as soft
+     as the back of a kitten and without a seam."
+
+With all due respect to Mr. Smith, one must insist that Margaret's
+shoes were all right as regards material and build. She would have
+been more comfortable if they had been "high-necked" shoes, and, in
+that case, the yarn hosiery would not have troubled him, but that is a
+minor detail. The quibble comes at the belt, and knowing that Margaret
+was an artist, we must be sure that Mr. Smith was mistaken. It may
+have been one of the woven cotton belts, not more than two inches
+wide, which, for a dizzy moment, were at the height of fashion, and
+then tottered and fell, but a "saddle-girth"--never!
+
+In that charming morceau, _The Inn of the Silver Moon_, Mr. Viele puts
+his heroine into plaid stockings and green knickerbockers--an
+outrageous costume truly, even for wheeling.
+
+As if recognising his error, and, with veritable masculine
+stubbornness, refusing to admit it, Mr. Viele goes on to say that the
+knickerbockers were "tailor-made!" And thereby he makes a bad matter
+very much worse.
+
+In _The Wings of the Morning_, Iris, in spite of the storm through
+which the _Sirdar_ vainly attempts to make its way, appears throughout
+in a "lawn dress"--white, undoubtedly, since all sorts and conditions
+of men profess to admire white lawn!
+
+How cold the poor girl must have been! And even if she could have been
+so inappropriately gowned on shipboard, she had plenty of time to put
+on a warm and suitable tailor-made gown before she was shipwrecked.
+This is sheer fatuity, for any one with Mr. Tracy's abundant ingenuity
+could easily have contrived ruin for the tailored gown in time for
+Iris to assume masculine garb and participate bravely in that fearful
+fight on the ledge.
+
+Whence, oh whence, comes this fondness for lawn? Are not organdies,
+dimities, and embroidered muslins fully as becoming to the women who
+trip daintily through the pages of men's books? Lawn has been a back
+number for many a weary moon, and still we read of it!
+
+"When in doubt, lead trumps," might well be paraphrased thus: "When in
+doubt, put her into white lawn!" Even "J. P. M.," that gentle spirit
+to whom so many hidden things were revealed, sent his shrewish "Kate"
+off for a canter through the woods in a white gown, and, if memory
+serves, it was lawn!
+
+In _The Master_, Mr. Zangwill describes Eleanor Wyndwood as "the
+radiant apparition of a beautiful woman in a shimmering amber gown,
+from which her shoulders rose dazzling."
+
+So far so good. But a page or two farther on, that delightful minx,
+Olive Regan, wears "a dress of soft green-blue cut high, with yellow
+roses at the throat." One wonders whether Mr. Zangwill ever really saw
+a woman in any kind of a gown "with yellow roses at the throat," or
+whether it is but the slip of an overstrained fancy. The fact that he
+has married since writing this gives a goodly assurance that by this
+time he knows considerably more about gowns.
+
+Still there is always a chance that the charm may not work, for Mr.
+Arthur Stringer, who has been reported as being married to a very
+lovely woman, takes astonishing liberties in _The Silver Poppy_:
+
+     "She floated in before Reppellier, buoyant, smiling, like a
+     breath of open morning itself, a confusion of mellow
+     autumnal colours in her wine-coloured gown, and a hat of
+     roses and mottled leaves.
+
+     "Before she had as much as drawn off her gloves--and they
+     were always the most spotless of white gloves--she glanced
+     about in mock dismay, and saw that the last of the righting
+     up had already been done."
+
+Later, we read that the artist pinned an American Beauty upon her
+gown, then shook his head over the colour combination and took it
+off. If the American Beauty jarred enough for a man to notice it, the
+dress must have been the colour of claret, or Burgundy, rather than
+the clear soft gold of sauterne.
+
+This brings us up with a short turn before the hat. What colour were
+the roses? Surely they were not American Beauties, and they could not
+have been pink. Yellow roses would have been a fright, so they must
+have been white ones, and a hat covered with white roses is altogether
+too festive to wear in the morning. The white gloves also would have
+been sadly out of place.
+
+What a comfort it would be to all concerned if the feminine reader
+could take poor Cordelia one side and fix her up a bit! One could pat
+the artistic disorder out of her beautiful yellow hair, help her out
+of her hideous clothes into a grey tailor-made, with a shirt-waist of
+mercerised white cheviot, put on a stock of the same material, give
+her a "ready-to-wear" hat of the same trig-tailored quality, and, as
+she passed out, hand her a pair of grey suede gloves which exactly
+matched her gown.
+
+Though grey would be more becoming, she might wear tan as a concession
+to Mr. Stringer, who evidently likes yellow.
+
+In the same book, we find a woman who gathers up her "yellow skirts"
+and goes down a ladder. It might have been only a yellow taffeta
+drop-skirt under tan etamine, but we must take his word for it, as we
+did not see it and he did.
+
+As the Chinese keep the rat tails for the end of the feast, the worst
+clothes to be found in any book must come last by way of climax. Mr.
+Dixon, in _The Leopard's Spots_, has easily outdone every other knight
+of the pen who has entered the lists to portray women's clothes.
+Listen to the inspired description of Miss Sallie's gown!
+
+     "She was dressed in a morning gown of a soft red material,
+     trimmed with old cream lace. The material of a woman's dress
+     had never interested him before. He knew calico from silk,
+     but beyond that he never ventured an opinion. To colour
+     alone he was responsive. This combination of red and creamy
+     white, _with the bodice cut low, showing the lines of her
+     beautiful white shoulders_, and the great mass of dark hair
+     rising in graceful curves from her full round neck,
+     heightened her beauty to an extraordinary degree.
+
+     "As she walked, the clinging folds of her dress, outlining
+     her queenly figure, seemed part of her very being, and to be
+     imbued with her soul. He was dazzled with the new revelation
+     of her power over him."
+
+The fact that she goes for a ride later on, "dressed in pure white,"
+sinks into insignificance beside this new and original creation of Mr.
+Dixon's. A red morning gown, trimmed with cream lace, cut low enough
+to show the "beautiful white shoulders"--ye gods and little fishes!
+Where were the authorities, and why was not "Miss Sallie" taken to the
+detention hospital, pending an inquiry into her sanity?
+
+It would seem that any man, especially one who writes books, could be
+sure of a number of women friends. Among these there ought to be at
+least one whom he could take into his confidence. The gentleman
+novelist might go to the chosen one and say: "My heroine, in moderate
+circumstances, is going to the matinee with a girl friend. What shall
+she wear?"
+
+Instantly the discerning woman would ask the colour of her eyes and
+hair, and the name of the town she lived in, then behold!
+
+Upon the writer's page would come a radiant feminine vision, clothed
+in her right mind and in proper clothes, to the joy of every woman who
+reads the book.
+
+But men are proverbially chary of their confidence, except when they
+are in love, and being in love is supposed to put even book women out
+of a man's head. Perhaps in the new Schools of Journalism which are to
+be inaugurated, there will be supplementary courses in millinery
+elective, for those who wish to learn the trade of novel writing.
+
+If a man knows no woman to whom he can turn for counsel and advice at
+the critical point in his book, there are only two courses open to
+him, aside from the doubtful one of evasion. He may let his fancy run
+riot and put his heroine into clothes that would give even a dumb
+woman hysterics, or he may follow the example of Mr. Chatfield-Taylor,
+who says of one of his heroines that "her pliant body was enshrouded
+in white muslin with a blue ribbon at the waist."
+
+Lacking the faithful hench-woman who would gladly put them straight,
+the majority of gentlemen novelists evade the point, and, so far as
+clothes are concerned, their heroines are as badly off as the Queen of
+Spain was said to be for legs.
+
+They delve freely into emotional situations, and fearlessly attempt
+profound psychological problems, but slide off like frightened crabs
+when they strike the clothesline.
+
+After all, it may be just as well, since fashion is transient and
+colours and material do not vary much. Still, judging by the painful
+mistakes that many of them have made, the best advice that one can
+give the gallant company of literary craftsmen is this: "When you come
+to millinery, crawfish!"
+
+
+
+
+Maidens of the Sea
+
+
+     Far out in the ocean, deep and blue,
+       Where the winds dance wild and free,
+     In coral caves, dwells a beautiful band--
+       The maidens of the sea.
+
+     There are stories old, of the mystic tide,
+       And legends strange, of the deep,
+     How the witching sound of the siren's song
+       Can lull the tempest to sleep.
+
+     When moonlight falls on a crystal sea,
+       When the clouds have backward rolled,
+     The mermaids sing their low sweet songs,
+       And their harp strings are of gold.
+
+     The billows come from the vast unknown--
+       From their far-away unseen home;
+     The waves bring shells to the sandy bar,
+       And the fairies dance on the foam.
+
+
+
+
+The Technique of the Short Story
+
+
+An old rule for those who would be well-dressed says: "When you have
+finished, go to the mirror and see what you can take off." The same
+rule applies with equal force to the short story: "When you have
+written it out, go over it carefully, and see what you can take out."
+
+Besides being the best preparation for the writing of novels,
+short-story writing is undoubtedly, at the present time, the best
+paying and most satisfactory form of any ephemeral literary work. The
+qualities which make it successful are to be attained only by constant
+and patient practice. The real work of writing a story may be brief,
+but years of preparation must be worked through before a manuscript,
+which may be written in an hour or so, can present an artistic result.
+
+The first and most important thing to consider is the central idea.
+There are only a few ideas in the world, but their ramifications are
+countless, and one need never despair of a theme. Your story may be
+one of either failure or success, but it must have the true ring.
+Given the man and the circumstances, we should know his action.
+
+The plot must unfold naturally; otherwise it will be a succession of
+distinct sensations, rather than a complete and harmonious whole.
+
+There is no better way to produce this effect than to follow Edmund
+Russell's rule of colour in dress: "When a contrasting colour is
+introduced, there should be at least two subordinate repetitions of
+it."
+
+Each character should appear, or be spoken of, at least twice before
+his main action. Following this rule makes one of the differences
+between artistic and sensational literature.
+
+The heroine of a dime novel always finds a hero to rescue her in the
+nick of time, and perhaps she never sees him again. In the artistic
+novel, while the heroine may see the rescuer first at the time she
+needs him most, he never disappears altogether from the story.
+
+Description is a thing which is much abused. There is no truer
+indication of an inexperienced hand than a story beginning with a
+description of a landscape which is not necessary to the plot. If the
+peculiarities of the scenery must be understood before the idea can be
+developed, the briefest possible description is not out of place.
+Subjectively, a touch of landscape or weather is allowable, but it
+must be purely incidental. Weather is a very common thing and is apt
+to be uninteresting.
+
+It is a mistake to tell anything yourself which the people in the
+story could inform the reader without your assistance. A conversation
+between two people will bring out all the facts necessary as well as
+two pages of narration by the author.
+
+There is a way also of telling things from the point of view of the
+persons which they concern. Those who have studied Latin will find
+the "indirect discourse" of Cicero a useful model.
+
+The people in the story can tell their own peculiarities better than
+the author can do it for them. It is not necessary to say that a woman
+is a snarling, grumpy person. Bring the old lady in, and let her
+snarl, if she is in your story at all.
+
+The choice of words is not lightly to be considered. Never use two
+adjectives where one will do, or a weak word where a stronger one is
+possible. Fallows' _100,000 Synonyms and Antonyms_ and Roget's
+_Thesaurus of Words and Phrases_ will prove invaluable to those who
+wish to improve themselves in this respect.
+
+Analysis of sentences which seem to you particularly strong is a good
+way to strengthen your vocabulary. Take, for instance, the oft-quoted
+expression of George Eliot's: "Inclination snatches argument to make
+indulgence seem judicious choice." Substitute "takes" for "snatches"
+and read the sentence again. Leave out "seem" and put "appear" in its
+place. "Proper" is a synonym for "judicious"; substitute it, and put
+"selection" in the place of "choice."
+
+Reading the sentence again we have: "Inclination takes argument to
+make indulgence appear proper selection." The strength is wholly gone
+although the meaning is unchanged.
+
+Find out what you want to say, and then say it, in the most direct
+English at your command. One of the best models of concise expressions
+of thought is to be found in the essays of Emerson. He compresses a
+whole world into a single sentence, and a system of philosophy into an
+epigram.
+
+"Literary impressionism," which is largely the use of onomatopoetic
+words, is a valuable factor in the artistic short story. It is
+possible to convey the impression of a threatening sky and a stormy
+sea without doing more than alluding to the crash of the surf against
+the shore. The mind of the reader accustomed to subtle touches will at
+once picture the rest.
+
+An element of strength is added also by occasionally referring an
+impression to another sense. For instance, the newspaper poet writes:
+"The street was white with snow," and makes his line commonplace
+doggerel. Tennyson says: "The streets were _dumb_ with snow," and his
+line is poetry.
+
+"Blackening the background" is a common fault with story writers. In
+many of the Italian operas, everybody who does not appear in the final
+scene is killed off in the middle of the last act. This wholesale
+slaughter is useless as well as inartistic. The true artist does not,
+in order that his central figure may stand out prominently, make his
+background a solid wall of gloom. Yet gloom has its proper place, as
+well as joy.
+
+In the old tragedies of the Greeks, just before the final catastrophe,
+the chorus is supposed to advance to the centre of the theatre and
+sing a bacchanal of frensied exultation.
+
+In the _Antigone_ of Sophocles, just before the death of Antigone and
+her lover, the chorus sings an ode which makes one wonder at its
+extravagant expression. When the catastrophe occurs, the mystery is
+explained. Sophocles meant the sacrifice of Antigone to come home with
+its full force; and well he attained his end by use of an artistic
+method which few of our writers are subtle enough to recognise and
+claim for their own purposes.
+
+"High-sounding sentences," which an inexperienced writer is apt to put
+into the mouths of his people, only make them appear ridiculous. The
+schoolgirl in the story is too apt to say: "The day has been most
+unpleasant," whereas the real schoolgirl throws her books down with a
+bang, and declares that she has "had a perfectly horrid time!"
+
+Her grammar may be incorrect, but her method of expression is true to
+life, and there the business of the writer ends.
+
+Put yourself in your hero's place and see what you would do under
+similar circumstances. If you were in love with a young woman, you
+wouldn't get down on your knees, and swear by all that was holy that
+you would die if she didn't marry you, at the same time tearing your
+hair out by handfuls, and then endeavour to give her a concise
+biography of yourself.
+
+You would put your arm around her, the first minute you had her to
+yourself, if you felt reasonably sure that she cared for you, and tell
+her what she meant to you--perhaps so low that even the author of the
+story couldn't hear what you said, and would have to describe what
+he saw afterward in order to let his reader guess what had really
+happened.
+
+It is a lamentable fact that the description of a person's features
+gives absolutely no idea of his appearance. It is better to give a
+touch or two, and let the imagination do the rest. "Hair like raven's
+wing," and the "midnight eyes," and many similar things, may be very
+well spared. The personal charms of the lover may be brought out
+through the mediations of the lovee, much better than by pages of
+description.
+
+The law of compensation must always have its place in the artistic
+story. Those who do wrong must suffer wrong--those who work must be
+rewarded, if not in the tangible things they seek, at least in the
+conscious strength that comes from struggling. And "poetic justice,"
+which metes out to those who do the things that they have done, is
+relentless and eternal, in art, as well as in life.
+
+"Style" is purely an individual matter, and, if it is anything at all,
+it is the expression of one's self. Zola has said that, "art is nature
+seen through the medium of a temperament," and the same is true of
+literature. Bunner's stories are as thoroughly Bunner as the man who
+wrote them, and _The Badge of Courage_ is nothing unless it be the
+moody, sensitive, half-morbid Stephen Crane.
+
+Observation of things nearest at hand and the sympathetic
+understanding of people are the first requisites. Do not place the
+scene of a story in Europe if you have never been there, and do not
+assume to comprehend the inner life of a Congressman if you have never
+seen one. Do not write of mining camps if you have never seen a
+mountain, or of society if you have never worn evening dress.
+
+James Whitcomb Riley has made himself loved and honoured by writing of
+the simple things of home, and Louisa Alcott's name is a household
+word because she wrote of the little women whom she knew. Eugene Field
+has written of the children that he loved and understood, and won
+a truer fame than if he had undertaken _The Master_ of Zangwill.
+Kipling's life in India has given us _Plain Tales from the Hills_ and
+_The Jungle Book_, which Mary E. Wilkins could not have written in
+spite of the genius which made her New England stories the most
+effective of their kind. Joel Chandler Harris could not have written
+_The Prisoner of Zenda_, but those of us who have enjoyed the wiles of
+that "monstus soon beast, Brer Rabbit," would not have it otherwise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You cannot write of love unless you have loved, of suffering unless
+you have suffered, or of death unless some one who was near to you has
+learned the heavenly secret. A little touch of each must teach you the
+full meaning of the great thing you mean to write about, or your work
+will be lacking. There are few of us to whom the great experiences do
+not come sooner or later, and, in the meantime, there are the little
+everyday happenings, which are full of sweetness and help, if they are
+only seen properly, to last until the great things come to test our
+utmost strength, to crush us if we are not strong, and to make us
+broader, better men and women if we withstand the blow.
+
+And lastly, remember this, that merit is invariably recognised. If
+your stories are worth printing, they will fight their way through
+"the abundance of material on hand." The light of the public square
+is the unfailing test, and a good story is sure to be published
+sooner or later, if a fair amount of literary instinct is exercised in
+sending it out. Meteoric success is not desirable. Slow, hard,
+conscientious work will surely win its way, and those who are now near
+the bottom of the ladder are gradually ascending to make room for the
+next generation of story-writers on the rounds below.
+
+
+
+
+To Dorothy
+
+
+     There's a sleepy look in your violet eyes,
+       So the sails of our ship we'll unfurl,
+     And turn the prow to the Land of Rest,
+       My dear little Dorothy girl.
+
+     Twilight is coming soon, little one,
+       The sheep have gone to the fold;
+     See! where our white sails bend and dip
+       In the sunset glow of gold.
+
+     The roses nod to the sound of the waves,
+       And the bluebells sweet are ringing;
+     Do you hear the music, Dorothy dear?
+       The song that the angels are singing?
+
+     The fairies shall weave their drowsy spell
+       On the shadowy shore of the stream;
+     Dear little voyager say "good-night,"
+       For the birds are beginning to dream.
+
+     O white little craft, with sails full spread,
+       My heart goes out with thee;
+     God keep thee strong with thy precious freight,
+       My Dorothy--out at sea.
+
+
+
+
+Writing a Book
+
+
+Having written a few small books which have been published by a
+reputable house, and which have been pleasantly received by both the
+press and the public, and having just completed another which I
+devoutly pray may meet the same fate, I feel that I may henceforth
+deem myself an author.
+
+I have been considered such for some time among my numerous
+acquaintances ever since I made my literary bow with a short story
+in a literary magazine, years and years ago. Being of the feminine
+persuasion, I am usually presented to strangers as "an authoress." It
+is at these times that I wish I were a man.
+
+The social side of authorship is extremely interesting. At least once
+a week, I am asked how I "came to write."
+
+This is difficult, for I do not know. When I so reply, my questioner
+ascertains by further inquiries where I was educated and how I have
+been trained. Never having been through a "School of Journalism," my
+answer is not satisfactory.
+
+"You must read a great deal in order to get all those ideas," is
+frequently said to me. I reply that I do read a great deal, being
+naturally bookish, but that it is the great object of my life to avoid
+getting ideas from books. To an author, "Plagiarist" is like the old
+cry of "Wolf," and when an idea is once assimilated it is difficult
+indeed to distinguish it from one's own.
+
+I am often asked how long it takes me to write a book. I am ashamed to
+tell, but sometimes the secret escapes, since I am naturally truthful,
+and find it hard to parry a direct question. The actual time of
+composition is always greeted with astonishment, and I can read the
+questioner's inference, that if I can do so much in so short a time,
+how much could I do if I actually worked!
+
+This is always distasteful, so I hasten to add that the composition
+is really a very small part of the real writing of a book, and that
+authors' methods differ. My own practice is not to begin to write
+until my material is fully arranged in my mind, and I often use notes
+which I have been making for a period of months. Such a report is
+seldom convincing, however, to my questioners. I am gradually
+learning, when this inquiry comes, to smile inscrutably.
+
+It seems strange to many people that I do not work all the time. If I
+can write a short story in two hours and be paid thirty dollars for
+it, I am an idiot indeed if I do not write at least three in a day!
+Ninety dollars a day might easily mount up into a very comfortable
+income.
+
+Still, there are some who understand that an author cannot write
+continuously any more than a spider or a silkworm can spin all the
+time. These people ask me when, and where, and how, I get my
+material.
+
+"Getting material" is supposed to be a secret process, and I am
+thought a gay deceiver when I say I make no particular effort to get
+it--that it comes in the daily living--like the morning cream! I am
+then asked if I rely wholly upon "inspiration." I answer that
+"inspiration" doubtless has its value as well as hard work, and that
+the author who would derive all possible benefit from the rare flashes
+of it must have the same command of technique that a good workman has
+of his tools.
+
+The majority learn with surprise that there is more to a book than is
+self-evident. It was once my happy lot to put this fact into the
+understanding of a lady from the country.
+
+With infinite pains I told her of the constant study of words,
+illustrated the fine shades of distinction between synonyms, spoke of
+the different ways in which characters and events might be introduced,
+and of the subordinate repetition of contrasting themes. She listened
+in breathless wonder, and then turned to her daughter: "There, Mame,"
+she said, "I told you there was something in it!"
+
+There is nothing so pathetic as the widespread literary ambition among
+people whose future is utterly hopeless. It is sad enough for one who
+has attained a small success to see the heights which are ever beyond,
+and it makes one gentle indeed to those who come seeking aid.
+
+One ambitious soul once asked me if I would teach her to write. I
+replied that I did not know of any way in which it could be taught,
+but that I would gladly help her if I could. She said she had
+absolutely no imagination, and asked me if that would make any
+difference. I told her it was certainly an unfortunate circumstance
+and advised her to cultivate that quality before she attempted
+extensive writing. I suppose she is still doing it, for I have not
+been asked for further assistance.
+
+People often inquire what qualities I deem essential to literary
+success. Imagination is, of course, the first, observation, the
+second, and ambition, perseverance and executive ability are
+indispensable. Besides these I would place the sense of humour, of
+proportion, sympathy, insight,--indeed, there is nothing admirable in
+human nature which would come amiss in the equipment of a writer.
+
+The necessity for the humourous sense was recently brought home to me
+most forcibly. A woman brought me the manuscript of a novel which she
+asked me to read. She felt that something was wrong with it, but she
+did not know just what it was. She said it needed "a few little
+touches," she thought, such as my experience would have fitted me to
+give, and she would be grateful, indeed, if I would revise it. She
+added that, owing to the connection which I had formed with my
+publishing house, it would be an easy matter for me to get it
+published, and she generously offered to divide the royalties with me
+if I would consummate the arrangement!
+
+I began to read the manuscript, and had not gone far when I discovered
+that it was indeed rare. The entire family read it, or portions of it,
+with screams of laughter, and with tears in their eyes, although it
+was not intended to be a funny book at all. To this day, certain
+phrases from that novel will upset any one of us, even at a solemn
+time.
+
+Of course it was badly written. Characters appeared, talked for a few
+pages, and were never seen or heard from again.
+
+Long conversations were intruded which had no connection with such
+plot as there was. Commonplace descriptions of scenery, also useless,
+were frequent. Many a time the thread of the story was lost. There
+were no distinguishing traits in any one of the characters--they all
+talked very much alike. But the supreme defect was the author's lack
+of humour. With all seriousness, she made her people say and do
+things which were absolutely ridiculous and not by any means true to
+life.
+
+I think I must have an unsuspected bit of tact somewhere for I
+extricated myself from the situation, and the woman is still my
+friend. I did not hurt her feelings about her book, nor did I send it
+to my publishers with a letter of recommendation. I remarked that her
+central idea was all right, which was true, since it was a love story,
+but that it had not been properly developed and that she needed to
+study. She thanked me for my counsel and said she would rewrite it. I
+wish it might be printed just as it was, however, for it is indeed a
+sodden and mirthless world in which we live and move.
+
+As the editors say on the refusal blanks, "I am always glad to read
+manuscripts," although, as a rule, it makes an enemy for me if I try
+to help the author by criticism, when only praise was expected or
+desired.
+
+Having written some verse which has landed in respectable places, I
+am also asked about poetry. Poems written in trochaic metre with the
+good old rhymes, "trees and breeze," "light and night," soldered on at
+the end of the lines, are continually brought to me for revision and
+improvement.
+
+Once, for the benefit of the literary aspirant, I brought out my
+rhyming dictionary, but I shall never do it again. He looked it over
+carefully, while I explained the advantage for the writer in having
+before him all the available rhymes, so that the least common might
+be quickly chosen and the verse made to run smoothly.
+
+"Humph!" he said; "it's just the book. Anybody can write poetry with
+one of these books!"
+
+My invaluable thesaurus is chained to my desk in order that it may not
+escape, and I frequently have to justify its existence when aliens
+penetrate my den. "It's no wonder you can write," was said to me once.
+"Here's all the English language right on your desk, and all you've
+got to do is to put it together."
+
+"Yes," I answered wickedly, "but it's all in the dictionary too."
+
+Last week I had a rare treat. I met a woman who had "never seen a
+literary person before," and who said "it was quite a novelty!" I
+beamed upon her, for it is very nice to be a "novelty," and after a
+while we became quite confidential.
+
+"I want you to tell me just how you write," she said, "so's I can tell
+the folks at home. I'm going to buy some of your books to give away."
+
+Mindful of "royalty to author," I immediately became willing to tell
+anything I could.
+
+"Well, I want to know how you write. Do you just sit down and do it?"
+
+"Yes, I just sit down and do it."
+
+"Do you write any special time?"
+
+"No, mornings, usually; but any time will do."
+
+"What do you write with--a pen or a pencil?"
+
+"Neither, I always use a typewriter."
+
+"Why, can you write on a typewriter?"
+
+"Yes, it's much easier than a pen, and it keeps the ink off your
+hands. You can write with both hands at once, you know."
+
+"You have to write it all out with a pencil, first, don't you?"
+
+"No, I just think into the keys."
+
+"Wouldn't it be easier to write it with a pencil first and then copy
+it?"
+
+"No, or I'd do it that way."
+
+"Do you dress any special way when you write?"
+
+"No, only I must be neat and also comfortable. I usually wear a
+shirt-waist and take off my collar. Can't write with a collar on, but
+I must be well groomed otherwise."
+
+There was a long silence. The little lady was digesting the
+information which she had just received.
+
+"It seems easy enough," she said. "I should think any one could write.
+What do you do when it is done?"
+
+"Oh, I go all over it and revise very carefully."
+
+"Why, do you have to go all over it, after it is done?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Then it takes you longer than it does most people, doesn't it?"
+
+"I cannot say as to that. Everybody revises."
+
+"Why, when I write a letter, if I go over it I always scratch out so
+much that I have to do it over."
+
+"That's the idea, exactly," I replied. "I go over it until there isn't
+a thing to be scratched out, or a word to be changed."
+
+"But you've got lots left," she said, enviously. "When I go over a
+letter there's hardly anything left."
+
+Innumerable questions followed these, but at last she had her
+curiosity partially satisfied and turned away from me. I trust,
+however, that I shall some day meet her again, for she too is "a
+novelty!"
+
+The mechanical part of a book is a source of great wonder to the
+uninitiated. My galley proofs were once passed around among the guests
+at a summer hotel as if they were some new strange animal. They did
+not understand page proofs nor plates, nor how I could ever know when
+it was right.
+
+The cover is frequently commented upon as a thing of beauty (which
+with my publishers it always is), and I am asked if I did it. I am
+always sorry that I do not know enough to do covers, so I have to
+explain that an artist does that--that I often do not see it until the
+first copies come from the bindery, and that I am of such small
+importance that I am not often consulted in relation to the
+matter--being merely the poor worm who wrote the book.
+
+There are many people who seem to be afraid to talk before me lest
+their pearly utterances be transformed into copy. Time and time again
+I have heard this: "We must be very careful what we say now, or Miss
+---- will put us into a book!"
+
+People are strangely literal. An author gets no credit whatever for
+inventive faculty--his characters and stories are supposedly real
+people and real things. I am asked how I came to know so much about
+such and such a thing. I once wrote a love story with an unhappy
+ending and it was at once assumed that I had been disappointed in
+love!
+
+When my first book came from the press I was pointed out at a
+reception as the author of it. The man surveyed me long and carefully,
+then he announced: "That's a mistake. That girl never wrote that book.
+She's too frivolous and empty headed!"
+
+I have tried, until I am discouraged, to make people understand that a
+book does not have to be a verity in order to be true--that a story
+must be possible, instead of actual, and that actual circumstances may
+be too unreal for literature.
+
+There are always people who will ask that things, even books, may be
+written especially for them. People often want to tell me a story and
+let me write it up into a nice book and divide the royalties with
+them! During a summer at the coast, I had endless opportunities to
+write biographical sketches of the guests at the hotel--to write a
+story and put them all into it, or to write something about anything,
+that they might have as "a souvenir!" As a matter of fact, there were
+only two people at the hotel who could have been of any possible use
+as copy, and one of these was a woman to whom only Mr. Stockton could
+have done justice.
+
+It was hard to be always good-natured, but I lost my temper only once.
+We stayed late into the autumn and were rewarded by a magnificent
+storm. I put on my bathing suit and my mackintosh and went down to the
+beach, in the teeth of a northwest gale. Little needles of sand were
+blown in my face, and I lost my cap, but it was well worth the effort.
+For over an hour we stood on the desolate beach, sheltered from the
+sand by a bath house. I had never seen anything so grand--it was far
+beyond words. At last it grew dark and I was soaked through and stiff
+with the cold. So I went back to the hotel, my soul struck dumb by
+the might and glory of the sea. My heart was too full to speak. The
+majestic chords were still thundering in my ears; that tempest-tossed
+ocean was still before my eyes. On my way upstairs I met a woman whom
+I had formerly liked.
+
+"Oh, Miss ----, I want you to write me a description of that storm!" I
+brushed past her, rudely, I fear, and she caught hold of the cape of
+my mackintosh with elephantine playfulness. "You can't go," she said
+coquettishly, "until you promise to write me a description of that
+storm!"
+
+"I can't write it," I said coldly. "Please let me go."
+
+"You've got to write it," she returned. "I know you can, and I won't
+let you go until you promise me."
+
+I wrenched myself away from her, white with wrath, and got to my room
+before she did, though she was still pursuing me. I locked my door and
+had a hard fight for my self-control. From the beach came the distant
+boom of the surf, mingled with the liquid melody of the returning
+breakers.
+
+Later, just as I had finished dressing for dinner, there was a tap at
+my door. My friend (?) stood there beaming. "Have you got it done? You
+know you promised to write me a description of that storm!"
+
+She remained only three days longer, and I stayed away from her as
+much as possible, but occasional meetings were inevitable. When the
+gladsome time of parting came, she hung about my neck.
+
+"I want you to come and see me," she said. "You know you haven't done
+what you said you would. Don't you forget to write me a description of
+that storm!"
+
+My business arrangements with my publishers are seemingly a matter of
+public interest. I am asked how much it costs to print a book the size
+of mine. People are surprised to find that I do not pay the expenses
+and that I haven't the least idea of what it costs.
+
+Then they want to know if the publisher buys the book of me. I explain
+that this is sometimes done, but that I myself am paid upon the
+royalty basis, ---- per cent. on the list price of every copy sold.
+This seems painfully small to the dear public, but it is comparatively
+easy to demonstrate that the royalty on five or six thousand copies is
+quite worth while.
+
+They shortly come to the conclusion, however, that the publishers make
+more money than I do, and that seems to them to be very unfair. They
+suggest that if I published it myself, I should make a great deal more
+money!
+
+It is difficult for them to understand that writing books and selling
+books are two very different propositions--that I don't know enough to
+sell books, and that the imprint of a reputable house upon the
+title-page is worth a great deal to any author.
+
+"Well," a man once said to me, "how much did you make out of your book
+this year?"
+
+I explained that the percentage royalty basis was really an equal
+division of the profits, everything considered, and that all the
+financial risk was on one side. I named my few hundreds, with which I
+was very well satisfied. He absorbed himself in a calculation on the
+back of an envelope.
+
+"I figure out," said he, at length, "that they must have made at least
+a third more than you did. That isn't fair!"
+
+My ire arose. "It is perfectly fair," I replied. "Paper is cheap, I
+know, but composition isn't, and advertising isn't. They are welcome
+to every penny they can make out of my books. I'd be glad to have them
+make twice as much as they do now, even if my own income remained the
+same."
+
+At this point, I became telepathically aware that I was considered
+crazy, so I changed the subject.
+
+I am often asked how I happened to meet my publishers and "get in with
+them," and as a very great favour to me, and to them, I am offered the
+privilege of sending them some "splendid novel which was written by a
+friend" of somebody--as they know me, "they have decided to let my
+publishers have the book!"
+
+They are surprised to hear me say that I have never met any member of
+the firm, though I was in the same city with them for over a year.
+More than this, there is nothing on earth, except a green worm, which
+would scare me so much as a summons to that publishing house.
+
+I have walked by in fear and trembling. I have seen a huge pile of my
+books in the window, and on the bulletin board a poster which bore my
+name in conspicuous letters, as if I had been cured of something. But
+I should no more dare to go into that office than I should venture to
+call upon the wife of the President with a shawl over my head, and my
+fancywork tucked under my arm.
+
+This is incomprehensible to the uninitiated. The publishers have ever
+been most courteous and kind. They are people with whom it is a
+pleasure to have any sort of business dealings, but we are not bosom
+friends--and I very much fear that they do not care to become chummy
+with me.
+
+There may be some authors who have taken nerve tonics and are not
+afraid to meet an editor or publisher. I have even read of some who
+will walk cheerfully into an editorial sanctum--but I've never seen a
+sanctum, nor an editor, nor a publisher. I don't even write to an
+editor when I send him a piece--just put in a stamp. He usually knows
+what to do with it.
+
+Fame, or long experience, may enable authors to meet the arbiters of
+their destiny without becoming frightened, but I have had brief
+experience, and still less fame. The admirable qualities of the
+pachyderm may have been bestowed upon some authors--but not on this
+one.
+
+
+
+
+The Man Behind the Gun
+
+
+     Now let the eagle flap his wings
+       And let the cannon roar,
+     For while the conquering bullet sings
+       We pledge the commodore.
+     First battle of a righteous war
+       Right royally he won,
+     But here's a health to the jolly tar--
+       To the man behind the gun!
+
+     Now praise be to the flag-ship's spars--
+       To the captain in command,
+     And honour to the Stripes and Stars
+       For whose defence they stand;
+     And for the pilot at his wheel
+       Let the streams of red wine run,
+     But here's a health to the man of steel--
+       The man behind the gun!
+
+     Here's to the man who does not swerve
+       In the face of any foe;
+     Here's to the man of iron nerve,
+       On deck and down below;
+     Here's to the man whose heart is glad
+       When the battle has begun;
+     Here's to the health of that daring lad--
+       To the man behind the gun!
+
+     Now let the Stars and Stripes float high
+       And let the eagle soar;
+     Until the echoes make reply
+       We pledge the commodore.
+     Here's to the chief and here's to war,
+       And here's to the fleet that won,
+     And here's a health to the jolly tar--
+       To the man behind the gun!
+
+
+
+
+Quaint Old Christmas Customs
+
+
+Compared with the celebrations of our ancestors, the modern Christmas
+becomes a very hurried thing. The rush of the twentieth century
+forbids twelve days of celebration, or even two. Paterfamilias
+considers himself very indulgent if he gives two nights and a day to
+the annual festival, because, forsooth, "the office needs him!"
+
+One by one the quaint old customs have vanished. We still have the
+Christmas tree, evergreens in our houses and churches, and the yawning
+stocking still waits in many homes for the good St. Nicholas.
+
+But what is poor Santa Claus to do when the chimney leads to the
+furnace? And what of the city apartment, which boasts a radiator and
+gas grate, but no chimney? The myth evidently needs reconstruction to
+meet the times in which we live, and perhaps we shall soon see
+pictures of Santa Claus arriving in an automobile, and taking the
+elevator to the ninth floor, flat B, where a single childish stocking
+is hung upon the radiator.
+
+Nearly all of the Christmas observances began in ancient Rome. The
+primitive Italians were wont to celebrate the winter solstice and
+call it the feast of Saturn. Thus Saturnalia came to mean almost
+any kind of celebration which came in the wake of conquest, and
+these ceremonies being engrafted upon Anglo-Saxon customs assumed
+a religious significance.
+
+The pretty maid who hesitates and blushes beneath the overhanging
+branch of mistletoe, never stops to think of the grim festival with
+which the Druids celebrated its gathering.
+
+In their mythology the plant was regarded with the utmost reverence,
+especially when found growing upon an oak.
+
+At the time of the winter solstice, the ancient Britons, accompanied
+by their priests, the Druids, went out with great pomp and rejoicing
+to gather the mistletoe, which was believed to possess great curative
+powers. These processions were usually by night, to the accompaniment
+of flaring torches and the solemn chanting of the people. When an oak
+was reached on which the parasite grew, the company paused.
+
+Two white bulls were bound to the tree and the chief Druid, clothed
+in white to signify purity, climbed, more or less gracefully, to the
+plant. It was severed from the oak, and another priest, standing
+below, caught it in the folds of his robe. The bulls were then
+sacrificed, and often, alas, human victims also. The mistletoe thus
+gathered was divided into small portions and distributed among the
+people. The tiny sprays were fastened above the doors of the houses,
+as propitiation to the sylvan deities during the cold season.
+
+These rites were retained throughout the Roman occupation of Great
+Britain, and for some time afterward, under the sovereignty of the
+Jutes, the Saxons, and the Angles.
+
+In Scandinavian mythology there is a beautiful legend of the
+mistletoe. Balder, the god of poetry, the son of Odin and Friga, one
+day told his mother that he had dreamed his death was near at hand.
+Much alarmed, the mother invoked all the powers of nature--earth, air,
+water, fire, animals and plants, and obtained from them a solemn oath
+that they would do her son no harm.
+
+Then Balder fearlessly took his place in the combats of the gods and
+fought unharmed while showers of arrows were falling all about him.
+
+His enemy, Loake, determined to discover the secret of his
+invulnerability, and, disguising himself as an old woman, went to the
+mother with a question of the reason of his immunity. Friga answered
+that she had made a charm and invoked all nature to keep from injuring
+her son.
+
+"Indeed," said the old woman, "and did you ask all the animals and
+plants? There are so many, it seems impossible."
+
+"All but one," answered Friga proudly; "all but a little insignificant
+plant which grows upon the bark of the oak. This I did not think of
+invoking, since so small a thing could do no harm."
+
+Much delighted, Loake went away and gathered mistletoe. Then he
+entered the assembly of the gods and made his way to the blind Heda.
+
+"Why do you not shoot with the arrows at Balder?" asked Loake.
+
+"Alas," replied Heda, "I am blind and have no arms."
+
+Loake then gave him an arrow tipped with mistletoe and said: "Balder
+is before thee." Heda shot and Balder fell, pierced through the heart.
+
+In its natural state, the plant is believed to be propagated by the
+missel-thrush, which feeds upon its berries, but under favourable
+climatic conditions one may raise one's own mistletoe by bruising the
+berries on the bark of fruit trees, where they take root readily. It
+must be remembered, however, that the plant is a true parasite and
+will eventually kill whatever tree gives it nourishment.
+
+Kissing under the mistletoe was also a custom of the Druids, and in
+those uncivilised days men kissed each other. For each kiss, a single
+white berry was plucked from the spray, and kept as a souvenir by the
+one who was kissed.
+
+The burning of the Yule log was an ancient Christmas ceremony borrowed
+from the early Scandinavians. At their feast of Juul (pronounced
+_Yuul_), at the time of the winter solstice, they were wont to kindle
+huge bonfires in honour of their god Thor. The custom soon made its
+way to England where it is still in vogue in many parts of the
+country.
+
+One may imagine an ancient feudal castle, heavily fortified, standing
+in splendid isolation upon a snowy hill, on that night of all others
+when war was forgotten and peace proclaimed. Drawn by six horses, the
+great Yule log was brought into the hall and rolled into the vast
+fireplace, where it was lighted with the charred remnants of last
+year's Yule log, religiously kept in some secure place as a charm
+against fire.
+
+As the flames seize upon the oak and the light gleams from the castle
+windows, a lusty procession of wayfarers passes through, each one
+raising his hat as he passes the fire which burns all the evil out of
+the hearts of men, and up to the rafters there rings a stern old Saxon
+chant.
+
+When the song was finished, the steaming wassail bowl was brought out,
+and all the company drank to a better understanding.
+
+Up to the time of Henry VI, and even afterward, the Yule log was
+greeted with bards and minstrelsy. If a squinting person came into the
+hall while the log was burning, it was sure to bring bad luck. The
+appearance of a barefooted man was worse, and a flat-footed woman was
+the worst of all.
+
+As an accompaniment to the Yule log, a monstrous Christmas candle was
+burned on the table at supper; even now in St. John's College at
+Oxford, there is an old candle socket of stone, ornamented with the
+figure of a lamb. What generations of gay students must have sat
+around that kindly light when Christmas came to Oxford!
+
+Snap-dragon was a favourite Christmas sport at this time. Several
+raisins were put into a large shallow bowl and thoroughly saturated
+with brandy. All other lights were extinguished and the brandy
+ignited. By turns each one of the company tried to snatch a raisin
+out of the flames, singing meanwhile.
+
+In Devonshire, they burn great bundles of ash sticks, while master and
+servants sit together, for once on terms of perfect equality, and
+drink spiced ale, and the season is one of great rejoicing.
+
+Another custom in Devonshire is for the farmer, his family, and
+friends, to partake of hot cake and cider, and afterward go to the
+orchard and place a cake ceremoniously in the fork of a big tree, when
+cider is poured over it while the men fire off pistols and the women
+sing.
+
+A similar libation, but of spiced ale, used to be sprinkled through
+the orchards and meadows of Norfolk. Midnight of Christmas was the
+time usually chosen for the ceremony.
+
+In Devon and Cornwall, a belief is current that, at midnight on
+Christmas Eve, the cattle kneel in their stalls in honour of the
+Saviour, as legend claims they did in Bethlehem.
+
+In Wales, they carry about at Christmas time a horse's skull gaily
+adorned with ribbons, and supported on a pole by a man who is wholly
+concealed by a white cloth. There is a clever contrivance for opening
+and shutting the jaws, and this strange creature pursues and bites all
+who come near it.
+
+The figure is usually accompanied by a party of men and boys
+grotesquely dressed, who, on reaching a house, sing some verses, often
+extemporaneous, demanding admittance, and are answered in the same
+fashion by those within until rhymes have given out on one side or
+the other.
+
+In Scotland, he who first opens the door on Christmas Day expects more
+good luck than will fall to the lot of other members of the family
+during the year, because, as the saying goes, he lets in Yule.
+
+In Germany, Christmas Eve is the children's night, and there is a tree
+and presents. England and America appear to have borrowed the
+Christmas tree from Germany, where the custom is ancient and very
+generally followed.
+
+In the smaller towns and villages in northern Germany, the presents
+are sent by all the parents to some one fellow who, in high buskins,
+white robe, mask, and flaxen wig, personates the servant, Rupert. On
+Christmas night he goes around to every house, and says that his
+master sent him. The parents and older children receive him with pomp
+and reverence, while the younger ones are often badly frightened.
+
+He asks for the children, and then demands of their parents a report
+of their conduct during the past year. The good children are rewarded
+with sugar-plums and other things, while for the bad ones a rod is
+given to the parents with instructions to use it freely during the
+coming year.
+
+In those parts of Pennsylvania where there are many German settlers,
+the little sinners often find birchen rods suggestively placed in
+their stockings on Christmas morning.
+
+In Poland, the Christmas gifts are hidden, and the members of the
+family search for them.
+
+In Sweden and Norway, the house is thoroughly cleaned, and juniper or
+fir branches are spread over the floor. Then each member of the family
+goes in turn to the bake house, or outer shed, where he takes his
+annual bath.
+
+But it is back to Old England, after all, that we look for the
+merriest Christmas. For two or three weeks beforehand, men and boys
+of the poorer class, who were called "waits," sang Christmas carols
+under every window. Until quite recently these carols were sung all
+through England, and others of similar import were heard in France and
+Italy.
+
+The English are said to "take their pleasures sadly," but in the
+matter of Christmas they can "give us cards and spades and still win."
+Parties of Christmas drummers used to go around to the different
+houses, grotesquely attired, and play all sorts of tricks. The actors
+were chiefly boys, and the parish beadle always went along to insure
+order.
+
+The Christmas dinner of Old England was a thing capable of giving the
+whole nation dyspepsia if they indulged freely.
+
+The main dish was a boar's head, roasted to a turn, and preceded by
+trumpets and minstrelsy. Mustard was indispensable to this dish.
+
+Next came a peacock, skinned and roasted. The beak was gilded, and
+sometimes a bit of cotton, well soaked in spirits, was put into his
+mouth, and when he was brought to the table this was ignited, so that
+the bird was literally spouting fire. He was stuffed with spices,
+basted with yolks of eggs, and served with plenty of gravy.
+
+Geese, capons, pheasants, carps' tongues, frumenty, and mince, or
+"shred" pies, made up the balance of the feast.
+
+The chief functionary of Christmas was called "The Lord of Misrule."
+
+In the house of king and nobleman he held full sway for twelve days.
+His badge was a fool's bauble and he was always attended by a page,
+both of them being masked. So many pranks were played, and so much
+mischief perpetrated which was far from being amusing, that an edict
+was eventually issued against this form of liberty, not to say
+license.
+
+The Lord of Misrule was especially reviled by the Puritans, one of
+whom set him down as "a grande captain of mischiefe." One may easily
+imagine that this stern old gentleman had been ducked by a party of
+revellers following in the wake of the lawless "Captaine" because he
+had refused to contribute to their entertainment.
+
+We need not lament the passing of Christmas pageantry, if the spirit
+of the festival remains. Through the centuries that have passed since
+the first Christmas, the spirit of it has wandered in and out like a
+golden thread in a dull tapestry, sometimes hidden, but never wholly
+lost. It behooves us to keep well and reverently such Christmas as we
+have, else we shall share old Ben Jonson's lament in _The Mask of
+Father Christmas_, which was presented before the English Court nearly
+two hundred years ago:
+
+     "Any man or woman ... that can give any knowledge, or tell
+     any tidings of an old, very old, grey haired gentleman
+     called Christmas, who was wont to be a very familiar ghest,
+     and visit all sorts of people both pore and rich, and used
+     to appear in glittering gold, silk and silver in the court,
+     and in all shapes in the theatre in Whitehall, and had
+     singing, feasts and jolitie in all places, both citie and
+     countrie for his coming--whosoever can tel what is become of
+     him, or where he may be found, let them bring him back again
+     into England."
+
+
+
+
+Consecration
+
+
+     Cathedral spire and lofty architrave,
+     Nor priestly rite and humble reverence,
+     Nor costly fires of myrrh and frankincense
+     May give the consecration that we crave;
+     Upon the shore where tides forever lave
+     With grateful coolness on the fevered sense;
+     Where passion grows to silence, rapt, intense,
+     There waits the chrismal fountain of the wave.
+
+     By rock-hewn altars where is said no word,
+     Save by the deep that calleth unto deep,
+     While organ tones of sea resound above;
+     The truth of truths our inmost souls have heard,
+     And in our hearts communion wine we keep,
+     For He Himself hath said it--"God is Love!"
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+
+Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors;
+otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's
+words and intent.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Threads of Grey and Gold, by Myrtle Reed
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