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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78253 ***
+
+
+
+
+AN IDYL OF THE WABASH
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+  AN IDYL OF THE WABASH
+  AND OTHER STORIES
+
+  BY
+  ANNA NICHOLAS
+
+  _Made out o’ truck ’at’s jes’ a-goin’ to waste
+   ’Cause smart folks thinks it’s altogether too
+   Outrageous common._--RILEY.
+
+  NEW YORK
+  HURST & COMPANY
+  PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+  Copyright 1898
+  The Bowen Merrill Company
+
+  Copyright 1912
+  The Bobbs-Merrill Company
+
+  An Idyl of the Wabash
+
+
+
+
+TO MY MOTHER
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                  PAGE.
+
+  AN IDYL OF THE WABASH               1
+
+  AT A WAY-STATION                   32
+
+  MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART      60
+
+  AN ABIDING LOVE                    77
+
+  A FARMHOUSE DRAMA                 101
+
+  THE SOLUTION OF A TEXT            131
+
+  AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE              141
+
+  AN ITINERANT PAIR                 177
+
+  A MOVEMENT IN ART                 201
+
+  THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL          221
+
+
+
+
+  Herewith together you have flower and thorn,
+  Both rose and brier, for thus together grow
+  Bitter and sweet, but wherefore none may know.
+
+                                         --ALDRICH.
+
+
+
+
+AN IDYL OF THE WABASH
+
+
+
+
+AN IDYL OF THE WABASH
+
+
+When Miss Callista Rogers first came from her Vermont home to the
+little Indiana town of Honeyport, on the Wabash, she had a sense of
+almost perilous adventure--something like that felt by the pioneer
+women who followed up the ever-advancing and now forever vanished
+frontier.
+
+“It is so very far away,” she said to her family before starting, “and
+while, of course, there are no Indians and no danger of having one’s
+scalp taken, or anything of that sort, still, things will be queer and
+the people can’t be expected to be like those in Vermont, not having
+had the same advantages.”
+
+After she reached Honeyport she wrote to her sister that the people
+were queer, but that they seemed friendly, and she thought she should
+get along real well. At that time Miss Callista was not much past her
+first youth, but she had lived long enough to have imbibed the very
+firm conviction that New England opinions and New England ways were
+the only opinions and only ways worth considering seriously. Holding
+such belief, it might naturally have been expected that she would come
+into conflict with her new associates, but a fair degree of discretion
+prevented her from airing her views too aggressively, and her wholesome
+humor and evident kindliness of spirit led her Hoosier friends to be
+indulgent to such of her unflattering opinions as were inadvertently
+betrayed and to regard her with considerable favor.
+
+She had come to Indiana to teach school, and to Honeyport through the
+intercession in her behalf of Deacon Knox, an old family friend at
+home whose second cousin had married Rev. Calvin Evans, pastor of the
+Presbyterian Church at Honeyport.
+
+In those days--it was soon after the war--teaching, especially in the
+rural districts and village communities, was not the complicated and
+exacting science it has since become. Miss Callista was fairly well
+grounded in the common English branches; in the way of accomplishments
+she knew a little music, and as a crowning acquirement had an
+acquaintance with the rudiments of the Latin language. This last she
+was not called upon to teach, but the consciousness that she was on
+familiar terms--hardly a speaking acquaintance, to be sure--with the
+ancient tongue was a source of infinite satisfaction to her; it gave
+her a sense of superiority and power.
+
+There were some preliminaries to be undergone before she was officially
+authorized to teach the young idea of Honeyport, an examination among
+the rest, but this was not severe, and she stood it successfully. As
+for the methods of teaching to be adopted, there were no fixed rules as
+now under the elaborate and inflexible system in vogue. She was free
+to follow her own judgment, which was for the most part good, being
+based on New England common sense and a power of adaptation to the
+pupils’ individual needs which every successful teacher must have. So
+she taught in one of the two schools of Honeyport very acceptably to
+the people, who were easy-going and not yet affected by the “higher
+education” fad.
+
+But Miss Callista did not so easily adapt herself to her new
+environment in all respects. She did not like the appearance of the
+town and the surrounding country, to begin with. The country was too
+level. Her soul yearned for the hills as the souls of those born among
+them must do till memory fails. She missed the blue distances, the
+lights and shadows, the feeling of companionship the mountains gave.
+The prairie was monotonous and the sky shut down too close. The village
+itself was trying to her sense of thrift and order. She could not free
+her mind concerning it in her letters home, for she was resolved to
+give nothing but agreeable impressions to the mother and sister back in
+the trim and prim but picturesque Vermont town.
+
+To Mrs. Evans, the pastor’s wife, she unburdened her mind when her
+sensibilities were too deeply outraged. In Mrs. Evans she had found
+a congenial acquaintance. That lady had lived in Indiana for so many
+years that she had acquired some of the habits and peculiarities of
+what Miss Callista called the natives, but she had been born in New
+England and cherished its traditions. Consequently, she sympathized in
+a measure with the strictures made by the new teacher, but she was a
+discreet woman, as became a minister’s wife, and the confidences poured
+into her ears went no further. Understanding this, Miss Callista felt
+free to express her true sentiments on all matters. She was especially
+indignant over the slipshod ways of the village.
+
+“It’s perfectly scandalous,” she said, “the way they let the grass grow
+in the gutters and the way they let the pigs and cattle run loose in
+the street. They ought to have more pride. Why, when I rode up Main
+street in the Paw Paw hack that first day and saw the sidewalks almost
+covered by high grass, and cows and pigs lying right on the walks, and
+people stepping around them, I expected to find slovenly housekeeping,
+too. Like town, like people, I thought. Didn’t turn out jest that way,
+I’m free to confess. There are some very nice, neat housekeepers here.”
+
+Another peculiarity of the natives excited Miss Callista’s scorn.
+
+“I never see,” she told Mrs. Evans, “such a dowdy set as they be. Why,
+they don’t care how they look. The women don’t dress up of afternoons,
+and farmers’ wives don’t put on a fresh dud when they come to town;
+jest wear their old limpsy calicoes and sunbunnets. The men ain’t a
+mite better, though, to be sure, that’s the women’s fault. Husbands
+are much what the wives make ’em, as you know. I don’t set no great
+store by fashions and folderols myself,” she went on, “but it’s
+certainly a dreadful shame they don’t slick up more when they go to
+meeting--particularly the Campbellites. Go over to that church an’ you
+won’t see a man with a starched shirt bosom. Not that I look at such
+things, specially, but if you have eyes you must see. Clean enough,
+all of ’em, mebbe, but no stiffenin’. I’d like to clear starch ’em all
+once--men, women and children.
+
+“And there is another thing. Folks around here surmise and wonder,
+but can’t guess one of the main reasons why I set up my own little
+housekeeping. Of course, in the first place, I wanted to economize,
+but, Mrs. Evans, another great thing was that I jest wanted something
+good to eat. I do’ know as I’m so very dainty about my eating, an’ I
+do’ know _but_ I be. Anyhow, I don’t like the cooking I get at most
+places. Of course, if you’d felt clear to take me it would a’ been all
+right s’ far as the table’s concerned, but most places they don’t suit
+me. They can’t make a good cup o’ tea; they don’t know how to make
+yeast bread, and not one of ’em can make a decent pie. I will say for
+’em, though, that they can fry chicken to beat all creation.”
+
+Miss Callista conceived a peculiar animosity toward the religious
+sect variously known as “Disciples,” “Christians” and “Campbellites.”
+Just why was not clear. It may have been due to the fact that she
+had never heard of the denomination back in Vermont, and being, as
+she considered, a purely western product, it was, therefore, to be
+distrusted as somehow unorthodox and subversive of pious principles.
+The sect was numerously represented in that locality, and the
+congregation which worshiped in one of the three churches of Honeyport
+was larger than either the Methodists or Presbyterians could muster.
+
+“I shan’t call ’em Disciples,” sniffed Miss Callista, “jest as if
+they were as good as the Twelve, an’ I shan’t call ’em Christians.
+The idear! Jest as if they had a patent on the name. They don’t like
+to be called Campbellites, but I shall call ’em Campbellites the hull
+time. How any reasonable human being can believe in the docterns of
+that church does beat me. An’ there they’ll set an’ listen to jest the
+scrappiest kind o’ sermons, when, by crossin’ the street, they could
+hear your husband’s stirrin’ discourses.”
+
+It will be seen from this that Miss Callista was not a woman of
+broad mind, and that, though she made her opinions plain to the
+comprehension, they were not expressed in that correct and elegant
+language so desirable in the teachers of youth. It is but just,
+however, to say that she was aware of some of these verbal lapses. As
+she herself remarked:
+
+“Nobody understands grammar, and what is proper language, better than I
+do, and in school I always take great care to speak correctly. When I
+come home, though, it’s too much trouble to be thinking of the parts of
+speech, and I drop into an easier sort o’ talk, as I put on a kitchen
+apron or an old pair o’ shoes.”
+
+Her idioms and accents she was unconscious of, and therefore could not
+drop. The born New Englander seldom does. She would say “Indianar,” and
+“idear,” and “Mariar” to the end of her days. She was quick to detect
+what she considered errors in others, however.
+
+“‘Bucket!’ Don’t let me hear you say ‘bucket,’” she would tell her
+pupils. “It’s a ridiculous word; say ‘pail.’ And don’t say you
+‘reckon’ or ‘low’ you’ll do so and so; say ‘guess.’”
+
+Miss Callista had come West to teach because, even if she could get a
+school at her home, with all the eager candidates in competition for
+every place, better salaries were paid in Indiana. For her own part
+she would have preferred to stay in Vermont, even with the scant wages
+of the district school, but she had a mother and sister who needed her
+earnings, and it was for them she started out to seek a better fortune.
+The mother was a widow with a tiny home to call her own and an income
+hardly in proportion; the sister, a fragile girl with the New England
+scourge, consumption, already making its signs visible. Miss Callista
+must be the bread winner, and she went bravely about her task. She
+loved her family and her home; she had none of the self-assertiveness
+that is needed for those who would get on in the world; she dreaded
+the separation from her dear ones, and yet it never occurred to her to
+rebel against fate that made such a trial possible. She did not dream
+that she was heroic, and yet it is in such actions that the heroism of
+the latter days is found--a heroism not less than that which led the
+knights of old on their crusades.
+
+Many and many a day in her new abiding place homesickness pressed upon
+her like a tangible weight; her heart ached for a sight of dear faces
+and familiar scenes; the very sun shining in the heavens took on a
+forbidding look, and the birds sang a melancholy tune. But if the poor,
+lonely little woman wept it was when no one knew. She kept a brave
+face and wrote cheery letters to the invalid at home. Every penny of
+her salary but that which supplied her own barest needs went to make
+the life of that invalid easier. She not only made no complaint over
+her own deprivations and sacrifices; she made the sacrifices gladly
+and did not know them to be such. Women are often like that. If the
+beneficiaries accepted the gifts as a matter of course and without
+appreciation of the life that was being given also, why, that was not
+unusual either. The human creature is often so.
+
+The years went on until five had passed since Miss Callista had seen
+the faces of her kin and the blue Vermont hills. At the beginning
+she had not dreamed that so long a time would elapse before she
+could return, but one thing and another had delayed her visit. The
+invalid sister had needed so many things. The malady made inroads and
+delicacies were wanted to keep up her strength; medicines, too, and
+the doctor must be paid. Once a famous specialist came up from Boston
+to see her, and that cost money. This fifth winter just ended had been
+spent by the ailing one in Florida, but she was now at home again, and
+a turn of fortune in the shape of a railroad rate war made it suddenly
+possible for Miss Callista to go to see her and the dear mother. The
+cost of travel, the rival passenger agents declared, was less than that
+of staying at home. So, the spring term having just ended, she joyfully
+went her way.
+
+She was in time for the end. Though it was early June and the sun shone
+with torrid strength on the Honeyport prairie, and the roses were in
+bloom, it was not so surely summer but that a wintry blast swept down
+from the north through the Vermont valleys and undid all the healing
+wrought by the Florida airs. The ailing sister was cut down as a lily
+by the frost. She died in Miss Callista’s arms--faithful arms that had
+scarce time to rest before they held the mother’s weary form while
+her soul breathed itself away. The mother had lived for the stricken
+daughter, and that beloved life ended, she, too, was done with earth.
+
+The summer vacation was not over when Miss Callista came back to
+Honeyport. The charm of her childhood’s home was gone. Later in life
+the glamour of the mountains would come back to her and her heart
+would yearn for a sight of them, but now they chilled her and she was
+glad to return to the once despised village on the Wabash, with the
+unbroken, shadowless landscape and the level horizon. Out of the old
+home life were left only memories and a few household goods. When some
+of these treasures were unloaded at the door of her Indiana home--a
+heavy oaken secretary, a spindle-legged table, a straight-backed,
+comfortless-looking chair--the men who lifted them into place wondered
+that she went to the expense of shipping such old-fashioned furnishings
+when she might have bought finer ones at home for less money. But the
+women who saw them did not wonder--women who had found for themselves
+how the heart clings to inanimate things when they alone are left to
+speak of the dead.
+
+So Miss Callista, permanently transplanted, settled down in a bit of
+a cottage next to the Presbyterian parsonage, still occupied by her
+friends, the Evanses, and resumed her occupation of teaching. There was
+no one now to save for and deny herself for, but, being an unselfish
+creature, this only brought her pain. Nevertheless, as time went on
+life grew more comfortable for her. She indulged in an occasional bit
+of finery; now and then she went on an excursion somewhere. Once she
+went to Indianapolis to attend the state fair, and once she went to
+Chicago and came back dizzy and bewildered, glad to be in the quiet
+home away from the busy whirl.
+
+The years went on until more than fifteen had passed since she set foot
+on Hoosier soil. All this time she had not escaped the speculations
+all normally constituted people are bound to indulge in concerning the
+matrimonial prospects of their spinster friends. It was assumed that
+she was not only ready, but anxious to marry when the opportunity and
+the man offered, and kindly neighbors kept a lookout for both. Miss
+Callista alone seemed indifferent. Apparently she took no thought of
+such possibilities. She was polite in a sedate way to the occasional
+marriageable men who showed a disposition to hover around her, but she
+gave encouragement to none. Her Honeyport friends suspected that she
+had wasted her heart on some unappreciative Vermont Yankee, but this
+was not the case.
+
+The truth was that the marriageable male beings who had come within her
+range of possibilities had not been quite to her liking. The farmers
+who constituted the most of these eligibles were too rough and careless
+in dress, too much given to tobacco chewing and too loudly hilarious
+in their conversation to please her somewhat fastidious taste. She
+may not have cherished a definite ideal of the man who would meet her
+requirements, but she had a clear conception of what would not do. So
+the years had gone swiftly by, bringing few changes in the routine of
+her life, or even in her appearance. She was a plump and comely body,
+and in some respects more attractive than in her younger days, for
+lines of care and anxiety and homesickness had given way to placid
+contentment in her work and in every-day affairs. She looked forward
+to no change in her mode of life or her experiences, but, as so often
+happens when change comes into an uneventful existence, it comes
+unexpectedly and creates a complete transformation in the little world.
+
+Mrs. Evans, still her nearest neighbor and closest friend, fell ill and
+came swiftly down to death’s door. Before she passed through she said
+to Miss Callista, who was her faithful attendant:
+
+“When I am gone Calvin will marry again after a proper time. He will;
+oh, yes. It is a man’s way, and it will be Calvin’s way. He will need
+somebody to look after him. I want you to be the one, and I have told
+him so. You will know how and will do for him as I would.”
+
+This was said gaspingly between paroxysms of pain, but with all the
+firmness and decision for which Mrs. Evans was noted when at her best
+estate. It was the supreme proof of a woman’s faith in another that
+she could put her husband into her keeping, and, having given it, she
+closed her eyes and opened them no more.
+
+This last communication made a powerful impression on Miss Callista.
+It was a startling surprise, but she accepted it unquestioningly as a
+guide to her future.
+
+What Mrs. Evans wanted Mr. Evans to do had always been done, and
+she had not the faintest doubt that he would follow his wife’s
+instructions in this, as he had been accustomed to do in all other
+matters.
+
+She grieved for her friend’s death, but almost insensibly she began
+to adjust herself to coming conditions. The bereaved man assumed the
+conventional appearance of gentle melancholy by which the newly-made
+widower is so easily recognized, and his earliest sermons had a
+tenderly pathetic tone that she, in common with the other women of
+the congregation, considered very touching and appropriate. But even
+in this sacred stage of his widowerhood she felt herself looking upon
+him with a new interest and a secret sense of possession. She had
+been brought up to revere ministers as a class, and had always had a
+respectful regard for Mr. Evans because of his profession and because
+he had been kind to her. He was not her ideal of manly beauty, being
+gaunt of frame and bald of head; moreover, he was twenty years older
+than she, being nearly sixty. However, she recognized the fact that
+it was not for her to make age a barrier, since no widower of sixty
+was likely to consider himself other than desirable even to a maid of
+twenty.
+
+She also confessed to herself that she had always considered the wife
+of a minister blessed among women, and that, while she had never hoped
+to marry one, the sudden and unexpected prospect of doing so was very
+agreeable indeed. She felt herself fitted to the labor of smoothing
+life’s pathway for a servant of the Lord. Not that she could assist in
+sermon-writing, as she had suspected the first Mrs. Evans of doing,
+but she could minister to his comfort in a more material way. She
+could take household cares from his shoulders; she could make him
+presentable to the public; she could keep him posted on many ins and
+outs of the parish; above all, she could feed him well, and she held
+that of all men ministers needed to be well fed. She considered it a
+reasonable proposition that a man could administer a far higher degree
+of spiritual consolation to his flock when his stomach was comfortably
+filled than when it was empty or dyspeptic from poor food.
+
+The very church building began to take on a new aspect. She saw that it
+needed a new carpet and a coat of paint, and her mind leaped forward
+to the time when, as minister’s wife, she could have an influence in
+bringing such improvements about. But she kept all such thoughts
+concealed in her own heart. Her manner toward her pastor was more
+sedate and dignified than ever. The knowledge imparted by her deceased
+friend had given her a self-consciousness which put an end to the
+little neighborly attentions she had been accustomed to offer when
+the wife was alive, such as sending over a favorite dish, or now and
+then an embroidered handkerchief, or even taking his hose from the
+mending basket and darning them in the highest style of the art. Now,
+she thought, such things would “make talk”--dreadful bugbear of lone
+women--and she left Mr. Evans entirely to the mercies of Nancy, his
+inefficient and elderly serving woman, and to other female parishioners
+who, with husbands to approve their actions, might safely venture where
+she could not tread.
+
+It was the more easy to give up her accustomed service in her
+reverend neighbor’s house from the fact that her spare hours were now
+largely devoted to the entertainment of the Littledale twins--the
+three-year-old children of the Rev. Amos Littledale, the Campbellite
+minister, who lived across the street.
+
+Miss Callista’s animosity to the Campbellites had in no wise abated,
+and was generally understood in the community, but the feeling was
+directed to them as a sect and not as individuals. Certainly, it did
+not include the babies, especially such sweet and attractive ones as
+these. Long before their mother died, several months back, her heart
+had gone out to those twins, and when they manifested a fondness for
+her, based though she knew it was on her supply of buns and cookies,
+she became their devoted friend. She had once confided to Mrs. Evans,
+with a maidenly blush, that if she had been married and the Lord had
+seen fit to bless her with children, she would have liked twins.
+
+Mr. Littledale’s young sister was his housekeeper and guardian of
+the babies, and Miss Callista, seeing that the burden of care was
+heavy for the girl, cheerfully relieved and aided her in many ways.
+It would do no harm to make the young things happy while it could
+be done, she thought. “It wasn’t at all likely they would have much
+chance to be happy if their father married that flirty young Mattie
+Stone, over on the West pike, as seemed likely. Strange that a man
+couldn’t show better judgment when he married, especially when he
+took a second partner. There was Mr. Littledale, all of thirty-one, or
+maybe thirty-two years old, and Mat Stone wasn’t over twenty, and a
+giddy piece, too. There was Jane Embree, steady and settled, and of a
+suitable age, and willing, and he never so much as looked her way. But
+law sakes, what could you expect of a man and a preacher at that, in a
+church that had the hull New Testament for its creed and no confession
+of faith and no definite thing you could get at to tell what the
+members did believe, or why they couldn’t be just plain Baptists, or
+even Methodists or Presbyterians, who will immerse you if you insist on
+it?”
+
+But, with all her absorption in the infants Miss Callista did not
+fail to keep a watchful eye on Widower Evans. She was a woman and not
+unobservant, and had therefore not failed to note the peculiarities of
+widowers. She knew at about what period deepest grief began to lift
+its clouds and life present some attractions once more; it was a very
+early period in a majority of cases. She could invariably detect the
+first indications that the bereaved one was “able to take notice,” as
+cynical old ladies have it; she knew well the signs that he was not
+only contemplating further matrimonial possibilities in a general way,
+but also when he had ceased to generalize and had fixed his eye upon a
+concrete individual as a desirable consoler. She saw Mr. Evans emerge
+into the first of these stages, her proximity as next-door neighbor
+being a point of vantage. He shaved oftener than he had been accustomed
+to doing; he buttoned his frock coat when he went out, instead of
+allowing it to hang open in a saggy, slovenly way; he carried himself
+more erectly, and with almost a jaunty air. Before his best coat was in
+the least shiny he began to wear it every day, and bought a new one for
+Sundays.
+
+Miss Callista observed this piece of extravagance with a thrill; it
+was significant of immediate activity in the matrimonial field. It
+was barely six months since Mrs. Evans had died, but her expectant
+successor considered it probable that he would wish to marry as soon as
+the conventional year of mourning had expired, and it was a matter of
+course that the necessary preliminaries should be arranged before that
+date.
+
+Almost unconsciously she began to preen herself like a little bird in
+the spring. Her brown hair waved with an extra crinkle; she put a
+fresh bow on her summer bonnet and wore a pink ribbon at her throat
+where brown had been. People said how young Miss Callista looked and
+how well she “held her age.” They also began to say what a suitable
+wife she would make for Mr. Evans; some of them, in the free-spoken
+rural way, said it to her, and made her blush and try to look angry.
+But they began to say, too, that Mr. Evans seemed to be looking with a
+favorable eye upon the Widow Jackson, out on West Main street. He had
+been seen to walk home with her from prayer-meeting, and he dropped in
+with what some considered needless frequency to administer spiritual
+consolation to the widow’s son, who was in the last stages of what was
+known as “decline.”
+
+This information gave Miss Callista a shock. Could it be possible,
+she asked herself, that he was about to disregard his wife’s dying
+injunction? He showed no indications of any leaning in her direction,
+save that he had come over once or twice in a neighborly way, and
+when other neighbors were present, to sit on her little porch and
+chat in the twilight. But he had never walked home with her from
+prayer-meeting, though she attended regularly and it was right in
+his way. She cogitated over the matter a good deal, and as a result
+of her reflections decided upon what she considered a bold move and a
+counter attraction to the widow’s blandishments. She resolved to invite
+him to supper, no matter if folks did say she was setting her cap for
+him. She wasn’t doing anything of the kind, and she wasn’t anyways
+anxious, she said to herself, to marry him, but something was due to
+her friend Mrs. Evans; and certainly that lady would not approve of
+Mrs. Jackson. And what a poor figure she would cut at the head of the
+missionary society and the sewing circle, sure enough! Perhaps, it was
+her (Miss Callista’s) duty gently to remind him of his late partner’s
+wishes. So she spent the most of one Saturday afternoon in concocting
+the preacher’s favorite dishes, and when they were ready to serve,
+stepped to the back fence, and, in a casual way, as if it were a sudden
+thought, asked him to come over and have a bit of supper. She said, she
+knew Nancy had gone to see her folks, and she thought he might enjoy a
+cup of tea and something warm instead of a cold bite by himself.
+
+He came with alacrity, and was presently installed at the table with
+Miss Callista opposite and a Littledale twin at each side of her. It
+had seemed to her that the presence of the twins would at once preserve
+the proprieties and offer no barrier to confidential conversation. The
+babies behaved like little angels, but there was no conversation that
+all the world might not have heard. She plied her guest with fried
+chicken, with the lightest of rolls, with strawberry shortcake and with
+his favorite temperance tipple of diluted blackberry cordial, put up by
+her own hands the year before. He ate heartily and joyously, and made a
+variety of facetious remarks to the twins, but he went home without so
+much as a look indicating a thought of his wife’s sacred injunction.
+
+Miss Callista did not like it. She took the twins to their gate and
+kissed them good-night with an abruptness and irritation of manner
+hitherto unknown to them. She was beginning to have a little resentment
+on her own account as well as on that of the departed Mrs. Evans, whose
+request was being ignored. Her vanity was touched. Queer taste a man
+had, she thought, who could see anything in that Widow Jackson better
+than he saw in her; and everybody knew the widow couldn’t cook a decent
+meal to save her life.
+
+Miss Callista was modest, but no woman is so unduly self-depreciating
+that she does not secretly recognize her own superiority to certain
+other women.
+
+But the supper did have its effect, after all, for during the weeks
+following Mr. Evans fell into the way of walking home with Miss
+Callista after Sunday evening service and of coming oftener to sit on
+her porch in the dusk. But he did not discontinue his visits to the
+widow. The situation was quite interesting to the parishioners and the
+village gossips, and people began to take sides. The women discussed
+the matter over the back fences, and the men who sat around the grocery
+stores wagered small sums on the outcome.
+
+One day in August Miss Callista was surprised by the receipt of a
+letter. It was from Mr. Evans, who had been spending a week or so with
+a sister in Lafayette. It read thus:
+
+  “Miss Callista--Esteemed Friend: I take this means of addressing
+  you in regard to an important matter. When my lamented Jane was in
+  her last illness, she foresaw that I should find the burden of
+  loneliness too great to bear, and she advised me to marry again after
+  a proper time had passed, and strongly recommended you as a suitable
+  partner. Indeed, she was so urgent that she exacted a promise that
+  I would follow her advice. At that time I was much agitated and
+  distressed, and scarcely knew what I was saying, but since I have
+  recently come to reflect upon the matter it has seemed to me that
+  her views were very judicious. The time is near when I can, without
+  reproach, enter again into the marriage state, and for many reasons
+  it seems expedient for me to do so. Inasmuch as you were on terms of
+  close friendship with my dear Jane, and will doubtless desire, as I
+  do, to carry out her wishes as far as possible in all respects, I ask
+  your consideration of the matter in hand. As my wife you can greatly
+  increase your field of usefulness, and I feel assured that the Lord
+  will fit your strength to the new duties and responsibilities. I
+  write this in order to prepare your mind. I shall return to-morrow
+  and will call on you, when we can discuss the subject in all its
+  bearings.
+                                          “Yours in the Lord,
+                                                      “CALVIN H. EVANS.”
+
+Miss Callista read this epistle several times. At first she experienced
+a sense of triumph and elation. There was no longer any doubt about
+the matter. She, and not the Widow Jackson, had won the prize. On the
+second reading she added the comment, “if he is a prize.” The third
+time red spots began to grow on her cheeks, and she talked to herself
+as people who live alone are apt to do.
+
+“He talks as if he were asking me to marry him all on his first wife’s
+account, and had no special interest in the matter himself. Mrs. Evans
+was a good woman, but another woman wants some better reason for
+marrying the widower than that. And then he doesn’t out and out ask me
+to marry him; jest takes it for granted that I will jump at the chance
+once my mind is prepared. Conceited old thing, if he is a preacher. He
+seems to have some doubt, too, of my being equal to the new duties,
+and--and he never even says he likes me or will try to make me happy,
+or anything. A woman, even if she is going to be a second wife and
+isn’t as young as she was, wants a little love-making on her own
+account.”
+
+Miss Callista did not reflect, or perhaps did not know, that men to
+whom it is not given to be sentimental and affectionate on paper are
+sometimes most eloquent of speech in the tender cause. She continued to
+cherish resentment, but, nevertheless, went about preparing green corn
+fritters in case the parson should happen in about supper time.
+
+The twins happened in, as they were wont to do whenever they found the
+gates unfastened, and after them presently came their father ostensibly
+in search of the truants. He had come so often on the same errand that
+he was quite at home, and detected at once Miss Callista’s appearance
+of irritation, for there was a dangerous sparkle in her usually mild
+eyes.
+
+“Have the children worried you? I will take them home at once,” he said.
+
+“Worry me--those dear babies? No, indeed; they couldn’t do that. Older
+people than they are the ones who worry.”
+
+Rev. Mr. Littledale might have made a reputation in the legal
+profession, he had such a knack of getting the information he wanted by
+skillful but apparently purposeless questioning. Miss Callista had no
+intention of telling about Mr. Evans’s proposal, or, more accurately,
+his proposition, but she was full of the subject, and presently sat
+down on the sofa in the cool little parlor, the twins promptly climbing
+up and sitting one on each side with their arms about her.
+
+“What would you think, Mr. Littledale, of a man who would ask a woman
+to be his second wife just because he thought it would please his
+first wife? I know--I know a lady--I have heard of a case of the kind.”
+
+Mr. Littledale was shrewd. He had had his eye on Mr. Evans, and needed
+to know no more.
+
+“Miss Callista,” said he promptly and with shameless disregard of the
+other man’s possible claims, “Miss Callista, such a man isn’t worth
+thinking about. He’s a selfish wretch, and no woman could be happy with
+him. A second wife deserves as much consideration as the first, and on
+her own account, too. And while we are talking about marrying, Miss
+Callista, shall I tell you what I have been wanting to say for some
+time? I want you for my wife. I love you, Miss Callista; the twins love
+you; won’t you come to us?”
+
+The twins, cherubic creatures, promptly echoed, “Love oo, Miss
+C’lista,” and proceeded to embrace her, but were dispossessed by their
+parent.
+
+Miss Callista was taken completely by surprise, but this variety of
+surprise never wholly disconcerts the most timid of women. She thought
+rapidly for a moment.
+
+“There! Mr. Littledale’s been dropping in all summer, staying to supper
+and making himself at home generally, and I never thought anything of
+it, because he’s younger than I be; and, besides, I s’posed he was
+engaged to that Stone girl. Folks will say I tried to catch him.”
+
+Like a flash, too, came the thought: “If I say yes, Mr. Evans will have
+to look somewhere else, and I don’t care if he does. I never made any
+promise to Jane. The Widow Jackson can have him.”
+
+What Miss Callista said was: “Why, Mr. Littledale, I’m seven years
+older than you be, and--and I’m a Presbyterian.”
+
+“What do a few years matter? We won’t count them,” was the reply. “And
+I’m sure I have nothing against Presbyterians. If you mean that I’m a
+Campbellite, why, please try to forgive me.”
+
+Evidently he received forgiveness, for when Mr. Evans arrived that
+evening he found Mr. Littledale sitting with Miss Callista on the
+vine-covered porch, and the corn fritters had all been eaten. The new
+condition of affairs was gently disclosed to him by his successful
+rival, and he was perceptibly discomfited. He had, perhaps, not valued
+Miss Callista at her true worth while he considered her his for the
+asking, but now that another man had taken her from him she suddenly
+seemed highly desirable. Possibly the discovery of Rev. Evans’s designs
+may have inspired Mr. Littledale to unpremeditated action, but this is
+only a surmise. It is the way of man to be so influenced. Mr. Evans
+made but a short call, and when he entered his own home the door was
+heard to slam with what seemed unnecessary violence.
+
+But the Presbyterian pastor was not inconsolable. The very next evening
+he walked home with the Widow Jackson from prayer-meeting and stayed
+till 10 o’clock. The morning after, the widow, under strict injunction
+of secrecy, told Deacon Todd’s wife of her engagement, and by night the
+whole town knew of it.
+
+Miss Callista also confided in Mrs. Todd.
+
+“I never would have supposed that I’d marry a Campbellite, that is, a
+Disciple--never, or that I’d be one myself. Of course, a minister’s
+wife ought, in all decency, to belong to his church, and, of course,
+I will. I ought to be able to accept the doctern if it’s the hull New
+Testament, as they say. And there! I’ll have to be immersed, too, I
+s’pose. I hadn’t thought of that; but I guess I can stand it to go
+through water, or fire either, for them blessed twins.”
+
+
+
+
+AT A WAY-STATION
+
+
+Thirty years ago a certain railroad in Indiana was new enough to be
+still a source of deep interest and curiosity to the people of the
+sparsely-settled region through which it passed. They had not yet
+ceased to gather at the stations, morning and evening, to see the “down
+train” and the “up train.” The projectors of this thoroughfare, having
+in view, perhaps, legislative appropriations and private subscriptions
+of stock, had artfully led the public to think that a farming country
+of marvelous richness was suffering for an outlet; that passengers
+and produce impatiently waited to crowd its cars. So impressed were
+guileless citizens with this idea that only a brave man or a fool
+would have dared to say: “Go to! We need no railroad.” Thus far in the
+existence of the road the great rush of travel and traffic had not
+begun; in the meantime, one train daily each way was found enough for
+all needs.
+
+Few among the rural population along the route ever went from home;
+fewer still expected visitors. Yet they went regularly to see the
+engine and the gayly painted cars; they indulged in wild speculations
+as to the probable business and destination of the travelers of whom
+they caught glimpses. The occasional stranger who stopped at any
+village was confronted on the platform by groups of men in blue or
+butternut jeans, all chewing tobacco and expectorating profusely. He
+passed women in lank calico dresses and limp calico sunbonnets--some
+old and wrinkled, some young enough to be pretty, but, with rare
+exceptions, hopelessly plain. Even the dull-eyed babies, in their
+mothers’ arms, lacked the charm of health and wholesomeness. If the
+traveler chanced to wonder how one woman, with an expanse of toothless
+gums, could endure to smile, he might marvel that the next one appeared
+in public before having her unsightly teeth removed. And while he
+considered the sad effect of quinine, soda and tobacco on human beauty,
+he would have been amazed had he known the curiosity his own person
+excited. “Who is he?” “Where does he live at?” “What brings him down
+this away?” “How long will he stay?” were questions eagerly discussed.
+
+The railroad had given them something to think about. Do you know what
+that means, you who have never lived in the country, remote from a
+business center? It means that the residents, having little outside
+interest, few books, perhaps no newspapers (there are such places
+yet), have narrowed their lives down until fresh subjects for thought
+and conversation are rare. They have talked about each other, about
+the crops, the calves, the pigs and the weather, until each man knows
+what another is going to say while he is yet afar off. Any unusual
+event, a death, an elopement, a fire, is seized upon, talked about
+from every point of view, turned to every light, over and over, until
+each thread and shred of the story is worn with age. Finally, it seems
+to die away, but suddenly revives, and passes on its round until set
+aside by something equally startling. Think, then, of the vast store of
+entertainment afforded by a railroad!
+
+On this October evening, thirty years ago, the echoing scream of the
+locomotive, strange to say, did not draw out the usual number of
+idlers to gape, open-mouthed, as the train halted, then passed on. More
+strange still, many passengers alighted at each stopping place--the
+natives, themselves, returning home with the air of adventurers,
+breathing sighs of relief, too, as of having safely accomplished a
+perilous journey. Capacious lunch-baskets, as well as certain additions
+to their every-day attire--wide hoop-skirts on the women, shirt-collars
+on the men, for example--suggested that some sort of festivities had
+been indulged in.
+
+As the excursionists lingered, reluctant to go while anything remained
+to be seen, their last glances turned from the long line of crowded
+passenger coaches to a baggage-car with the doors tightly closed, and a
+curious hush fell on them as it rolled by. What did it mean? A “through
+passenger,” in search of knowledge, found the path an easy one. The
+long, lean man at his side, with sunburned, straggling beard and a
+mouth like a cavern, was full of information. “Political meetin’! Lord,
+no! ’Lections stirs a feller up some, but there ain’t ary stump-speaker
+in Indiana ’at kin fetch sech an all-fired big crowd as was out to
+Newburg to-day. Hangin’ yo’ know--Bill Murdock’s. Hain’t heard about
+him? Reckon yo’ cain’t live ’round hyer, anywheres, or yo’d a knowed
+the peticklers. Been a powerful sight o’ talk about it, fust an’ last.
+Yo’ see ’t happened ’bout this hyer way: Bill, he tuck a notion one
+night, nigh two months ago now, ’at he’d go down to the Corners to
+Gimble’s an’ get some ten-penny nails.
+
+“He was a-workin’ old Carter’s farm on the sheers an’ lived up there,
+full two mile from the Corners. His wife was a finicky little critter,
+with a mite of a baby, an’ ’peared like she had a warnin’ o’ some kind,
+for she done her best to coax him to stay to home. But go he would,
+though what he wanted with them nails jest at that time, more ’an a
+pin with two heads, no one could ever make out. After he’d bought ’em
+an’ talked with the fellers in the store a bit--mebbe had a drink or
+two in the back room--in come Jake Jillson. Jake was a airy sort o’
+chap--could afford to be, ’cause his father ’d left him one o’ the best
+farms in the township, an’ he was beholden to nobody. Well, there’d
+been some old grutch atween him an’ Bill--no one knows zackly what.
+Some says Jake had courted Bill’s wife in times past, an’ that she
+throwed him over; but I don’t reckon that was it. Jake was married two
+years afore Bill was, an’ taint no ways likely ’at a female woman ’u’d
+give a well-to-do feller like Jake the go-by an’ take up with a pore
+man like Bill. They’re too long-headed, women be. ’T any rate, however
+’twas, the two soon come to a quarrel. Nobody ’at heard ’em seems to
+agree jest how it was. Jake he was aggravatin’ an’ kep’ a naggin’. Bill
+allays was high-tempered, an’ fore anyone seen ’at they was really in
+airnest, Bill he was chasin’ of Jake over the boxes an’ bar’ls. It was
+on’y a minute afore he ketched him an’ hit him. The breath was knocked
+out o’ Jake for good an’ all with that air very pound o’ ten-penny
+nails.
+
+“Jerusalem! What a racket it raised! After the folks come to their
+senses like, they got the sheriff an’ a posse o’ constables an’ scoured
+around the country right smart of a spell huntin’ Bill, afore they
+thought o’ going to his house. At last they went there an’ found him
+a-walkin’ the floor with his baby. He was teetotally wropped up in that
+woman an’ young un o’ his, but sick baby or not he was drug off to
+jail, an’ not a minute too soon. A lot o’ men in masks came a-gallopin’
+down, an’ would a’ made short work o’ him if he’d been there. No, I
+don’t know who they were, an’ ef I did, ’twould be safe fer to keep my
+mouth shet. These hyer things hev to be looked after now an’ then--the
+law bein’ so slow an’ oncertain. Wasn’t much time lost, though, on this
+case. The jury wouldn’t a’ dared to a’ brought in ary other verdict
+than guilty, considerin’ how many rich relations Jake had scattered
+about this county. They’d made it mighty lively for ary juryman ’at
+would vote to clear his murderer. An’ so Bill, bein’, as I said, a pore
+man, with no friends to help him, had no show, an’ had to swing. ’Twas
+all right, I reckon; somebody has to be made a example of.
+
+“Me an’ Mandy--that’s her in the red caliker a settin’ over
+yonder--’lowed we’d go up to Newburg to-day, where the hangin’ was at.
+Hadn’t ary one of us ever saw a man hung, an’ she hadn’t never been
+on the steam kyars. I hadn’t no notion o’ takin’ the boys, but Mandy,
+she says, ‘Lawsy, let ’em go, it’ll be a warnin’ to ’em to behave
+theirselves when they’ve growed up.’ So we all went. An’ jeminey! what
+a crowd! Best part o’ two counties there, I reckon.”
+
+After a pause, during which the long, lean man ejected tobacco juice
+vigorously across the traveler into the aisle, he added reflectively:
+“A circus, I’m free to say, would a’ been more to my taste, but it
+wouldn’t a’ been so improvin’ to the community. Elder Borum says
+circuses are corrupt an’ a snare o’ the devil.”
+
+Another pause and more tobacco.
+
+“The--the--deceased is on a kyar back o’ this hyer.”
+
+Just then the train quivered, slackened, stopped where a lonely country
+road crossed the track; not a human being, not a house in sight--only
+a platform and a pile of walnut lumber to hide the long, straight,
+western horizon beyond miles and miles of “rolling” country. In the
+summer, perhaps, it might have a certain beauty; in the dusk of this
+autumn day it was desolation. Toward the north a grove of girdled
+trees waved white, ghostly arms; rain had fallen and the gray earth,
+the heavy sky alike seemed sodden. The long gray and black curves of
+the wagon-track wound in and out like a huge serpent crawling over the
+earth.
+
+Out upon the platform was helped from the baggage-car a young, slender
+woman with a baby in her arms--a woman in whose eyes was no longer
+hope, were no more tears.
+
+After her was lifted a pine coffin roughly stained. The men who had
+touched her gently were less tender of this other burden. They dropped
+it with a jar that brought a little cry of pain from the woman’s lips.
+She sank down and placed her hand upon the box as if to shield from
+harm that which was within. The child upon her lap stared solemnly at
+the sky. The engine shrieked fiercely as if in haste to go, then rushed
+on, leaving her with her dead and her despair.
+
+Curious passengers, looking back from a bend in the road, saw her
+crouching motionless, while a last red gleam from the setting sun broke
+through the clouds and touched her with a weird light.
+
+Around a curve of serpentine highway they saw, too, a country wagon,
+the driver an old man with bent head, the horses slow and spiritless.
+Then the train swept on out of sight.
+
+Not a pleasant story, do you say?
+
+No, yet “’tis true, ’tis pity.” It is one of those dark threads so
+common in the weft of life that, to our short-sighted eyes, mar the
+pattern that else might be so fair. We even doubt the wisdom of the
+Weaver who permits such defects, such shadows to hide the clearer
+outlines of the web. As if we knew His designs!
+
+Do you wish to hear the sequel--to follow to an end the twisted thread
+that seems to have crossed and tangled uselessly in the loom of fate?
+
+The mother, who was left with her child at the lonely station, would
+have been glad to die, no doubt; but, for the sake of the babe, she
+must live on. She was one of those timid, clinging creatures such as
+all women are exhorted to become. Masculine wisdom says the manifest
+destiny of such a one is to be a wife and mother; the same sagacity
+neglects to go further and provide for her helplessness when destiny
+fails her. But these two lived, and the child grew and thrived. How
+they lived only a woman, poor and alone, who toils for her children,
+day and night, can tell. This mother, like the rest, worked early and
+late at anything her hands could find to do. She sewed, she washed, she
+nursed the sick, she drudged for the farmers’ wives in busy seasons.
+Hours when she should have slept were spent in making the scanty
+garments of baby Nancy. Little sympathy was manifested for her, though
+doubtless more was felt than found expression; the American farmer is
+not demonstrative. She did not ask for pity, and no one saw her weep.
+The neighbors said “Mrs. Murdock bore up right well under her man’s
+takin’ off; lucky ’at she was one o’ them kind ’at didn’t have no deep
+feelin’s.”
+
+Not so with the other widow. Mrs. Jillson’s display of grief was loud
+and violent. Never was woman so cruelly bereaved, she said. She knew
+she could not live. If there were no Murdocks on the face of the earth
+she should die easier; she could grind them to powder herself. “What
+right had that sly, deceitful hussy to be alive? Not a bit of doubt she
+worked Bill up to the murder. Jealous, you see, because Jake looked at
+her once before he knew me.”
+
+Before long, however, her excessive sorrow moderated. She allowed
+herself to think favorably of life once more. Hysterics and “sinking
+spells” grew less frequent. In less than a year she married
+again--entirely on her son’s account, she told her friends. “A lone
+widow woman couldn’t rightly bring up a boy.”
+
+Mrs. Murdock’s feelings toward the family of her husband’s victim
+were curious. For them she cared nothing, but for “Billy’s sake” she
+cherished a strong desire, a feverish anxiety to do them some service.
+Had she been of the Roman Catholic instead of the Methodist faith she
+would have starved herself, if need be, to pay for masses for the
+repose of his soul. As it was, ministers of the gospel--well-meaning
+men--who had “labored and prayed” with Murdock before his execution,
+told her that he had refused the means of grace. While admitting regret
+for the crime committed, he had declared that he did not love God;
+that he knew nothing about Him. “When yo’ talk, Elder, about lovin’,”
+he would say, “I could sense yore meanin’ mighty well ef yo’ was a
+p’intin’ at my woman an’ the little chickabiddy. Them’s all I’ve got
+ary love fer in this hyer world. I never knowed the Lord here, an’
+ef it depends upon my believin’ in an’ lovin’ of Him now, I reckon
+I shan’t know Him in the next place.” With which grim statement the
+preachers were finally forced to silence.
+
+Being taken thus in the blackness of his sins, unconverted, of course
+he must pay the penalty hereafter, they told the grieving wife. The
+penalty, she had always been taught and had undoubtedly believed, was
+unspeakable torture forever and evermore.
+
+Now, in her extremity, she did as we all do when a creed is too narrow
+for our own special needs--she passed it by. Turning from that monument
+of human wisdom, she groped for a gate where hope was not shut out.
+
+“Billy must be punished, for he done a wicked thing, but he was not
+bad, he was not bad. I knowed him so well. He was always kind, on’y his
+temper quick--God must know that too, an’ surely, surely He can’t be
+hard on him always ’cause he lost control over his self jest once. Ef
+I could on’y do something for Mrs. Jillson, seems as if ’twould count
+for Billy some way. Ef she would let me work for her I might see some
+chance, but ’pears like she won’t let me come a-nigh.”
+
+Having no one else, she whispered her thoughts, her wishes to the
+little Nancy. Instead of tender songs and baby talk, the child was
+lulled to sleep with stories of her father, with broken sobs and
+prayers. Who knows how early she became aware of a shadow upon her
+life? How soon she was conscious of a difference between herself and
+other children whom she saw? Her presence was only tolerated by the
+busy farmers’ wives because the mother could not leave her; no noisy
+play, no mischievous pranks were permitted or excused.
+
+The children of the poor and unfortunate learn self-control and
+self-repression at an early age. When Nancy was ten years old she
+was done with childhood. She could make herself useful in many ways
+to the women who wanted “help.” She could “earn her own living,” and
+talk gravely of a half day’s or a full day’s time. Her mother, perhaps
+feeling that she could do no more for her daughter, and having no other
+interest in life, let this world slip from her feeble hold, and went
+out over the border into the unknown.
+
+As she grew up, people were not often unkind to Nancy. On the contrary,
+they were usually friendly in a somewhat condescending way--when she
+did her work well. Had she been a timid, confiding creature, less
+self-reliant and reserved, no doubt they would have shown her many a
+favor that would have made her heart glad. As it was, the occasional
+rude taunts of other children (what is more barbarous than a cruel
+child?) and now and then rough allusions to her father’s death by
+older people, raised in her nature the armor of silence and assumed
+indifference. Withdrawing into herself, asking no help, she was allowed
+to go her way alone as best she could. So she toiled and served until
+she came to eighteen years of age. That time found her in the home of a
+farmer, twenty miles from her birthplace.
+
+Had you asked the girl if she were happy, she might have said yes.
+The farmer and his wife, who had no children, were kind to her. There
+was plenty of hard work, to be sure, but she had known nothing else.
+Metaphysical questions had not troubled her; she had never asked
+herself if life were worth living, had accepted fate without rebellion.
+She had read no novels. Mr. Rhorer, the farmer, sometimes asked her
+to read to him from The Weekly Reaper--“types were so much littler’n
+they used to be, readin’ kind o’ made his head dizzy.” Nancy certainly
+might absorb facts, but not romance, from the able dissertations she
+spelled out upon the treatment of lambs, the weevil in wheat, or the
+advertisements of patent churns. Even the household department of the
+paper did not develop artistic tastes. She had no colored tissue papers
+wherewith to construct lamp-mats. Why should she make elaborate frames
+of walnut shells or crooked sticks, when she had no pictures to put in
+them?
+
+An ignorant, uninteresting serving-maid, you see--very different from
+the æsthetic, cultured heroine, so popular nowadays. Yet this one was
+a woman, “with the heart and the hopes of a woman.” Hardly conscious,
+perhaps, that she had a heart, so long had it been starved. As in her
+childish days, she still held aloof from the young people, though,
+had she been so disposed, more than one young granger would have been
+glad to become her “beau,” for Nancy was fair to see. They were not so
+fastidious as to birth and family that her bright eyes might not have
+won them.
+
+The one small interest and excitement in Nancy’s life this summer was
+watching the evening passenger train. It stopped for a few moments at a
+water station not far below the house, and there she waited, when her
+work was done, to catch a glimpse of the wonderful outside world, that
+she could see in no other way. Day after day found her there, leaning
+against the old gate under a wide beech tree. She liked to look at
+the strange faces, and took deep interest in the variety of hats and
+bonnets, the only articles of apparel visible from her point of view.
+It puzzled her to guess where so many people could always be going. If
+she should ever go traveling she would not look so tired and cross as
+many of them did; she was sure she would feel sorry, too, for girls who
+could only stand outside and see the cars go by. Once she saw a man
+carefully fasten a wrap around his wife’s throat, and heard words of
+tender anxiety for her comfort. She wondered vaguely if any one would
+ever care for her in that way; it was not likely, she thought. Somehow
+she did not wish to stay that night until the train started. She was
+tired, and the hissing of the steam made her head ache.
+
+One day she became conscious that the young man who stood smoking a
+cigar on the back platform was the same one who was there yesterday,
+perhaps the day before that. With eyes turned away she became aware,
+too, that he was looking at her with bold admiration--the subtle
+magnetism, conveyed no scientists quite explain how, made her cheeks
+scarlet.
+
+What was there in a trifle like that to make her sleep that night less
+dreamless than before, in spite of sound health and weary young body?
+
+The next evening she went to the usual place. A little shyness about
+her now, but why should she stay away? She could not know that the
+young man would be there again; but he was there, and this time lifted
+his hat and smiled at her. If Nancy lived to be an old woman, and never
+saw him again, he would stay in her memory for that one act. She looked
+at it, not as an impertinence, but as a mark of respect. No man had
+ever lifted his hat to her before. The rustic beaux had not attained
+that touch of polish, and would have sneered had they seen him, yet
+have envied him his style and city manners.
+
+The refined, accomplished lady of whom we like to read would not have
+been pleased with this young man. She would have seen a “person” of
+twenty-one or twenty-two years of age with sandy hair and a jet black
+moustache. A penetrating odor of hair oil and cinnamon essence diffused
+itself about him. Wherever jewelry is admissible in masculine outfit
+he had given it room--not expensive ornaments, perhaps, but large and
+showy. A hat worn upon one side of his head, a cigar carried in the
+opposite corner of his mouth, as if to balance the organ of brains,
+were peculiarities of his style.
+
+The thrill which filled poor Nancy with delight would have been a
+shudder of disgust to our fastidious maiden.
+
+Poor Nancy? No. Something had entered into her days which made labor
+light and hours short. Only smiles and glances, but these may mean so
+much. Once he threw a kiss at her when no one else could see; she tried
+not to think of that except when by herself, for fear some one might
+guess her thoughts.
+
+One day her heart was set to fluttering, and her cheeks to burning when
+Mr. Rohrer brought the young man--yes, there could be no mistake--the
+same young man home to dinner with him. His name was Valentine Gipe.
+
+“My stepfather’s name, did you say, Mrs. Rhorer? Yes, I’ve always
+went by name of Gipe instead of ----.” (A door slammed and Nancy did
+not catch that.) “Live up at Newburg, with maw an’ paw. Maw, she’s
+that wropped up in me she won’t hardly let me out of her sight. Am
+in business with Uncle Joe, down to the junction, an’ havin’ a free
+pass, it’s just as cheap to board at home, so I go up and down on the
+road every day. We’re dealin’ in stock right smart at present. Heard
+Mr. Rhorer had some fat cattle to sell, an’ have took a run up to see.
+Betcher boots I can’t be beat in jedgin’ the pints of a nanimal. Uncle
+Joe, he knows it, too; has dead loads o’ confidence in me.”
+
+It took a long time to buy those cattle. Mr. Gipe came and went, and
+came again. When one purchase was made another was talked of, and the
+summer was ended before the stock was sold.
+
+Long before that time Nancy’s heart was gone. All the love that other
+girls divide among friends and relatives was concentrated and lavished
+upon a creature who did not know what treasure was laid at his feet. He
+had nothing but empty words to give in return, was having a little fun,
+a little flirtation, he said to himself--but upon these words of love
+Nancy lived and was happy. The world took on a beauty she had never
+seen before. She wondered, as she sang at her work, that she had not
+noticed what a pretty blue was the sky, how bright were the sunsets;
+nothing in heaven, she thought, could be fairer than the moonlit summer
+nights.
+
+The light of her passion brightened everything. Even the gray, heavy
+face of her mistress was touched with a reflected glow. Hitherto the
+girl had felt an unconscious pity for that worthy matron’s plainness.
+With feminine faith in beauty, she had wondered, idly, how Mr. Rhorer,
+himself no Adonis, could ever have married so unprepossessing a
+creature. Now she could see that the good woman might not have been so
+plain, after all, when young.
+
+Mrs. Rhorer saw nothing of the play that went on before her face. Not a
+whisper of the old, old story reached her dull ears. She had forgotten
+that she was young once; she did not remember that the blood of youth
+is riotous, its pulses swift and eager--not sluggish, as her own. The
+girl was “only Nancy.” Her mistress did not see that she was fair, did
+not dream that she had a want that was not supplied by herself. It
+never occurred to her that Valentine’s frequent visits were for any
+one but her husband, because she knew----.
+
+A part of what Mrs. Rhorer knew Nancy learned one day. Summer had gone
+then; the first bleak weather of fall had come, and sitting by the
+kitchen fire, the prudent farmer’s wife began planning for the winter.
+“I wish to goodness Dan’el an’ Val Gipe would finish up their trade
+about that last lot o’ cattle. We don’t want to winter them steers
+over. The young feller’s keen at a bargain, but powerful cautious. It’s
+jest as well, though, I s’pose, fer him to go slow an’ take care of his
+money, fer he’ll have a heap of it some day. His Uncle Joe’s an old
+bachelor, an’ most likely’ll leave him all he’s got, an’ then his pap
+left him right smart of a lump.”
+
+“His pap dead? Why, child, didn’t I ever tell ye ’at Val’s pap was
+murdered when he was a baby? Gipe’s on’y his stepfather--Jillson’s
+rightly his name. The man was hung who did the killin’. ’Member me
+and Dan’el was at the hangin’.----Why! Bless my soul! What ails the
+critter, a whiskin’ out thataway an’ slammin’ of the door? Is she--why
+lawsy, come to think, the man who was hung was her pap, and I clean
+forgot it. Mighty touchy she is, to be sure, but I wouldn’t a’ said
+anything if I’d a’ thought. Was going to tell her about Val’s wedding
+that’s to come off next month. Wonder if we’ll get an invite.”
+
+Nancy’s mind was in a whirl. One thought only was clear. Val was coming
+that night. He would have “something particular” to tell her, he had
+said, and she, in her innocence, had blushed and thought of but one
+thing he could say. Now she must tell him this awful thing; of course
+he did not know it, and what would he say? Quite likely he could not
+marry her now, for his mother would never consent. But how could they
+live apart?
+
+With the simplicity of a woman who loves and knows nothing of coquetry
+or flirtation, she had accepted Val’s tender words without misgiving.
+That he had said nothing of marriage had not troubled her; so far
+the love had been all-absorbing, without thought for the morrow. She
+had not doubted that he knew her history--“everybody did”--and mixed
+with her affection was a strong feeling of gratitude that he had not
+held aloof. She would care for him just the same, she knew, if all
+his relatives were thieves and murderers, but this was different. Her
+early years had left a vivid impression on her mind of the relentless
+hatred of Mrs. Jillson to her mother and herself. It could hardly be
+hoped that time had made much change. If Val should ask his mother,
+perhaps--it might be--
+
+Like one dazed she went about her tasks. Would the day never end? How
+gray and cold it was! The morning, she remembered, had been bright and
+clear. After supper she was sent to the cross-roads grocery, a mile and
+a half away, on some household errand. It grew dark early now, but she
+was not afraid. What was there to fear? She must hurry, though, to be
+back when Val came. It was nearer to go up the railroad than around by
+the turnpike, so she started home that way. It was a lonely walk even
+in the daylight, through dense woods and through deep cuts, but she
+thought only of the man she was hastening to meet.
+
+Suddenly in the darkest part of the road, where it made a short curve,
+she came upon an obstruction. Partly with eyes accustomed now to the
+darkness, partly by touch, she found logs and stones piled high across
+the track.
+
+How they came there she did not stop to consider. Like a flash came the
+thought, “the evening express is due; it will be wrecked and Val is
+on it.” One moment, then followed the thought and the deed for which
+she had lived her eighteen years. “If I can reach the water station I
+can warn the engineer; there is no other way. I shall save Val yet.”
+Softly she crept over the logs; with swift feet she sped up the gloomy
+road, and thought not of the darkness. Like an illumination around her
+was the feeling “My Val shall not die, I will save him.” Swifter yet
+she ran--it was a mile or more. Once she fell; with her ear upon the
+ground she heard the vibrations of the coming train. Could she not go
+faster? On and on, past the woods, through the cornfields now--the
+stalks still standing breast-high after the western fashion. How the
+dry leaves rustled! Her footsteps seemed to echo. Plainly now she heard
+the throbbing of the engine; its fiery eye shone far up the road--there
+was yet time, she was nearly there. Louder sounded the thunder of the
+train, but above that and the beating of her heart she heard again the
+echoing steps. Some one followed her, called to her to halt, threatened
+her, but still she ran faster, faster. A pistol shot, another, but she
+went on, staggering now. The train came thundering on, seeming in the
+gloom, like a destroying monster, stopped impatiently at the station,
+and Nancy dragged herself to the engineer’s cab. Her work was done.
+The creatures who, for malice or plunder, had planned the wreck were
+defeated, but had wreaked vengeance on her.
+
+On board that train were lives worth more than the one for which
+she had given her own--men for whom other women would have died, no
+doubt; wives and children for whom hearts would have broken had they
+come to their homes no more. She had saved these passengers from
+destruction, but her thoughts were only for one. “Val! my Val!” was
+her cry--maidenly shyness gone now in the solemn presence of death. To
+her it was as though they two were alone in all the world. When they
+carried her to the house the young man followed reluctantly.
+
+“I did it for you, Val. I know’d you’d be on the train. Seemed as if
+the Lord must let me get there in time. I kep’ askin’ Him over an’
+over, an’ He did. I reckon it’s all up with me, though. This mornin’
+I’d a been sorry, but it’s just as well. You couldn’t a married me,
+Val, a-knowin’ who I be, an’ it don’t ’pear as if I could a-lived away
+from you. You’re all I’ve got. Mother’ll be glad ’at I did this. Mebbe
+it’ll count for father, as she always was sayin’. Mebbe yer ma’ll
+forgive us all now.”
+
+Valentine Jillson was selfish. Some woman had ministered to his
+comfort, his vanity, all his life. This one, he thought, had only done
+what was proper, everything considered. He was base, but with those
+dying eyes upon his face he did not remind Nancy that he had never
+spoken of marrying her. He could not tell the girl what he had come
+that night to say--that their acquaintance must come to an end, because
+he was to marry Squire Jones’s daughter, Juniata, next month.
+
+And she, even with the prescience of death, could not read his
+treachery. With his hand clasped tightly in her own she did not know
+him false.
+
+Swiftly her life ebbed away. She grew weaker, weaker. “I am--so--tired.
+Kiss me--once more--Val. Say you--love me. My Val. I--love--love--. It
+is--dark.”
+
+With his words, his kiss (heaven would pardon this last deceit),
+Nancy’s eyes closed to open no more on this earth. On the other side,
+it may be, she took up the thread of existence that had lain in the
+shadow here and carried it on into the eternal brightness--the glory
+that is neither of sun nor of moon.
+
+
+
+
+MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART
+
+
+Mrs. Hannah Brooks, “Aunt Hannah,” as she was commonly known, had been
+a consistent member of the Methodist Episcopal Church from the time
+she was eleven years old, and she was now sixty-two. For over fifty
+years she had walked in the strait and narrow path and had never failed
+to observe the ordinances of the church, or to rebuke sin wherever
+she detected it. Many people, even church members, felt that Mrs.
+Brooks’s standard of behavior was a little too exacting and severe for
+nineteenth century use. She was quite as austere in her views as if she
+had been a direct descendant of a Puritan father and had lived all her
+life on stony New England soil instead of having been born in Indiana
+of parents who had come from the “old country.” The Puritan influence
+affects all American character more or less, and it is a mistake to
+suppose that the stern and rigid code of conduct commonly ascribed
+to that influence is confined to one locality or is accepted only by
+Americans whose family trees were planted in this soil before the
+Revolution.
+
+Mrs. Brooks had early been taught to believe that dancing was a device
+of the enemy of mankind to ensnare the souls of youth. Card playing was
+an abomination that none could tamper with without danger of missing
+heaven; while as for the theater, that was simply an open door to the
+place of everlasting torment. All through her life she had frequently
+found it necessary to warn and reprove young people of her acquaintance
+who showed an inclination to indulge in the two first-named
+frivolities, but the theater evil was one she had encountered only
+in recent years. Aunt Hannah had never lived in the city, her home
+having been first upon a farm, and, later, and for many years now, in
+the little town of Cicero, which has no opera house and whose dramas
+are not played upon the stage. With increasing frequency the rumor
+came to her that some young man or maiden had visited the theater in
+Indianapolis to see a performance by graceless play-actors--a “show”
+they called it--and if these erring young persons were in the church
+she invariably took pains to make a personal remonstrance and to urge
+them to turn again to the strait and narrow path.
+
+Among themselves these young people, feeling a little guilty and
+conscience-stricken over their conduct, nevertheless, said sometimes
+that Aunt Hannah was hard and unsympathetic, and that she would not
+talk so if she were not so old-fashioned and understood how harmless
+theaters really were. But Mrs. Brooks was not unsympathetic. She
+believed firmly that all these things were wicked. She had been taught
+so, and had seen no reason to change her opinion. Believing thus, and
+being very direct, outspoken and fearless in her methods, she hesitated
+not to free her mind when occasion seemed to require.
+
+She was an uncommonly intelligent and well-informed woman for one of
+her limited opportunities, being a close reader of such literature as
+came in her way--the range extending from the Bible and the life of
+John Wesley to Roe’s novels and the weekly newspaper. But reading must
+be supplemented by experience and observation before it gives breadth
+of view and liberality of judgment. She realized vaguely that a change
+of sentiment had taken place in recent years concerning card playing,
+dancing and kindred amusements, but she felt that this was merely a
+symptom of the degeneracy of the times and was strongly to be combated.
+Even the ministry was being tainted with moral weakness, for had not
+Presiding Elder Daniels--and he one of the most influential men in the
+conference, too!--said to her one day when she was discoursing on this
+subject--had he not used these almost incendiary words:
+
+“People must have amusements, Sister Brooks, and perhaps it is better
+to let them enjoy their pleasures under the sanction of the church. In
+old times they danced before the Lord, you know.”
+
+This was heresy that horrified the good lady, but she resolved, let
+come what might, that she would abate not a jot or tittle of her
+efforts against sin. Whatever others might do she would obey the
+spirit of the rules and regulations laid down in the Methodist Book
+of Discipline, and one of these rules charged that no entertainment
+be entered into on which the blessing of the Lord could not be asked,
+or words to that effect. And to the best of her ability she did. She
+neglected none of the accepted means of grace. She was a regular
+attendant at prayer-meeting, where her voice was frequently raised
+in exhortation and prayer, as is the custom with devout and elderly
+sisters in that fold. She was faithful at class-meeting, and there
+confessed her shortcomings with such reservations as seemed expedient
+in view of the fact that the listening ears were those of a dozen or
+so neighbors instead of a single father confessor vowed to silence.
+For instance, she saw no necessity for relating in detail that she
+lost her temper and thought a dreadful thought, which if put in print
+would have contained a dash, when her clothesline broke on Monday
+and let her week’s “wash” into the mud. All she considered essential
+was to acknowledge, in a general way, that she was a weak and sinful
+creature, and to ask the prayers of her brethren and sisters that she
+might overcome the old Adam and lay hold more firmly on divine grace.
+If any of her friends and neighbors had dared to arise in the same
+meeting and to speak of her as weak and sinful it would have been a
+very different affair. But none of them did. They only sighed heavily,
+looked dismal and said “Amen!” or “Lord bless!” after the relation of
+each “experience.”
+
+Of late, as it happened, Mrs. Brooks’s attention had been especially
+attracted to matters of a theatrical drift. A son living in Chicago
+occasionally sent her a Sunday paper, and those papers, as everybody
+knows, devote a considerable share of their space to the drama in its
+various phases. She had serious doubts as to the propriety of reading
+these newspapers because they were labeled “Sunday,” but, reflecting
+that it was along in the middle of the week before they reached her,
+she decided, through some obscure train of logic, that there was no
+moral delinquency in finding out just what had been going on in the
+world three or four days before.
+
+It was something of a task to read a twenty, thirty or forty-page
+Chicago paper through from beginning to end with the religious care
+that she did her county weekly, but in the two or three weeks that
+each copy lay around before another arrived she accomplished the task.
+Consequently she read a good deal about the theaters, much of it not
+to edification, because she had never seen a play nor read one, and
+failed to comprehend many allusions. There was something about these
+columns that attracted her, however, and she continued to peruse them
+with interest. One day she found something within her comprehension. In
+response to popular demand, Joseph Jefferson had reproduced his “Rip
+Van Winkle” that season after its semi-retirement for some years, and
+Chicago papers had a great deal to say about it and about him--all in
+the way of praise. Now, Mrs. Brooks knew all about “Rip Van Winkle”
+and all about Jefferson. The daughter of her next-door neighbor on the
+east was a school-teacher in the city--said city meaning Indianapolis,
+of course--and subscribed for the Century Magazine, sending each copy
+home after she had read it. When the family was through with it,
+it was passed around the neighborhood, beginning with Mrs. Brooks.
+Among other things she found in it was Jefferson’s autobiography. She
+began reading this under the vague impression that Joseph Jefferson
+was a statesman of the Thomas Jefferson type; or, if not, perhaps a
+great writer, though she did not remember to have heard of him. At
+any rate, he must be a distinguished man, for only that kind wrote
+biographies of themselves and got them printed. When she learned that
+he was only an actor she felt something of a shock, but by that time
+she was interested in his career and pleased with the good principles
+he seemed to possess and the excellent moral sentiments he enunciated
+incidentally. It did seem strange, though, that such a man should
+engage in so reprehensible a calling.
+
+When she came to the account of his appearance as Rip Van Winkle she
+was again surprised and pleased, for had she not read Irving’s story
+of that good-for-nothing but winsome idler? Her next-door neighbor
+on the west had received a copy of the “Sketch Book” as a prize for
+subscribing for the Weekly Bugle, and, like most other books in the
+village, it had eventually gravitated into her hands.
+
+Altogether, she was fairly well posted in regard to this particular
+bit of drama, and was startled one day by the discovery that she was
+actually wishing to see the play and to see Jefferson. The idea was
+really shocking. She, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in
+good standing, to think of going to the theater of all places in the
+world. Satan himself must have put the suggestion into her mind. Did
+not the church Discipline enjoin members to engage in no pastimes
+which could not be performed to the glory of God? Certainly no one
+could praise God at the theater; and yet--and yet, there was nothing
+especially objectionable about “Rip Van Winkle,” while Mr. Jefferson
+seemed a good sort of man according to his light. However, perhaps the
+theatrical columns of the Sunday papers were just as well left alone,
+and she would have no more of them.
+
+The truth was that Mrs. Brooks had, without suspecting it, a liking
+for the dramatic and for the spectacular. She patronized all the
+entertainments given under church auspices, and was pleased with
+them in proportion as they were picturesque or exciting. She liked
+elocutionary performances, and was partial to the more dramatic
+recitations. She never missed charades or tableaux arranged by the
+young people, and made no criticisms, though the representations were
+scenes from profane history or heathen gods and goddesses arranged in
+white cotton drapery, such as gods never wore before. She liked lively
+music--dance music, if she only knew it--revival meetings of the
+stirring, fervid sort, and temperance meetings where the emotions were
+played upon by skillful speakers.
+
+A week or so after this twinge of worldly temptation Mrs. Brooks went
+to spend a few days with her married daughter in Indianapolis to help
+that young matron with her winter sewing. The very evening of her
+arrival her son-in-law remarked to his wife at the supper table:
+
+“Maria, Joe Jefferson is to play ‘Rip Van Winkle’ to-morrow night. You
+know we have been waiting to see him again, and I have bought tickets.”
+
+Now, Mrs. Brooks knew that since her marriage her daughter had departed
+from the strict ways of her youth, and now and then indulged in that
+perilous frivolity, progressive euchre, and attended the theater. She
+had made vigorous remonstrance, as in duty bound, but, finding her
+protests of no use, had abandoned the fight, at least till an opportune
+season. Out of respect to her mother’s feelings, Maria tacitly ignored
+the subject, and now endeavored to signal her husband to silence, but
+he went placidly on and invited his mother-in-law to go with them,
+saying he would secure another seat. Much to his surprise, and more to
+that of his wife, Mrs. Brooks did not manifest that animosity toward
+theaters which a mention of them in her presence had been wont to
+arouse, and which the artful son-in-law had hoped to excite on this
+occasion for his own delectation. On the contrary, she took up the
+subject with a show of interest more eager than she knew, and displayed
+so much familiarity with Jefferson and his play that the two younger
+people looked at each other in wonder. But when urged to say whether or
+not she would go she suddenly stiffened and responded coldly:
+
+“George Henry, you know my principles in regard to such places.
+To-morrow night I shall go to hear Francis Murphy. I know the way to
+the hall, and am not afraid to go and come alone.”
+
+Next evening came, but Maria had a headache and could not go. George
+proposed to escort his mother-in-law to the Murphy meeting and leave
+her there while he went to the theater for an act or two--“for it was
+really a pity to miss it when we had the tickets and the time. You
+know, Mother Brooks,” he said solemnly, winking at his wife over his
+mother-in-law’s head, “you know going to see Jefferson is not like
+going to see other actors. He plays such nice, clean, moral plays and
+is such a high-toned, moral man--church member, and all that--that it
+is almost as good as going to a religious meeting to hear him.”
+
+“Church member, is he?” was Mrs. Brooks’s only response, but the acute
+George Henry detected an expression in her eye that led him to whisper
+to his wife, as he kissed her good-night: “If we are not home till late
+you may know that I have inveigled your esteemed parent into a wild
+orgy at the theater.”
+
+It was a fair night, and they walked down. The Grand Opera House was
+on the way to Tomlinson Hall, and as they drew near its portals the
+orchestra could be heard discoursing some very lively music preliminary
+to the raising of the curtain. When they reached the entrance George
+Henry turned toward it.
+
+“Come, Mother Brooks, let’s hear Jefferson. You may never have another
+chance. He beats Francis Murphy all hollow. It’s all right. You’ll find
+lots of good people there who wouldn’t go to any other play nor to see
+any other actor for the world.”
+
+There was a faint remonstrance--where were Mrs. Brooks’s accustomed vim
+and decision? There was a feeble holding back of her steps, but her
+eyes were fixed on the distant drop curtain, visible through the open
+doors--and in she went.
+
+It was an event in her life. The stage with its setting, was as novel
+to her as to a child. There it all was, just as she had read about it,
+but so much more real--the village green, the old Dutch burghers, the
+vixenish Gretchen, little Katrina and the happy-go-lucky, lazy, but
+lovable Rip. As played, the story had some points she did not recall
+in the book, but what mattered! There was Rip doing the best he could.
+Suppose he was lazy and shiftless and did get tipsy sometimes, such
+a wife was enough to drive a man to drink. Mrs. Brooks forgot time
+and place in following his fortunes. She leaned forward, filled with
+visible wrath when Gretchen scolded, and when, at last, the wife drove
+him from home with his dog, and Rip turned and bade her and his child a
+touching farewell, tears ran down her cheeks unheeded.
+
+Then, how she thrilled at the thunder of the mysterious ninepins rolled
+in the hollows of the Catskills by Hendrick Hudson’s men; how weird
+those old Dutchmen were; how wonderful was the red fire that flashed
+over them, making them look like creatures from the infernal regions!
+How her heart and her throat ached for the poor, pitiful old man when
+he woke from his twenty years’ sleep and wandered back to his home to
+find the world changed! What a wonderful thing it was altogether that
+one man--for the others in the play did not matter much--that one man
+could make a mere story, an impossible legend, seem so true, such a
+thing of actual life! And what a delightful creature he was, that Rip,
+that Jefferson, with his airy wave of the hand and his confidential,
+infectious smile.
+
+She was glad she had seen him; glad, glad.
+
+And this statement she adhered to. George Henry was discreet enough to
+say very little about this escapade of his mother-in-law, but she knew
+that she would meet no such consideration at home, for in coming out of
+the opera house she had jostled against young Hiram Jones, of Cicero,
+whom she had often rebuked for his theater-going, and whose father
+was her class leader. But she was not cast down. She had no intention
+of concealing her act. Next Sunday she went to church as usual,
+serene in the consciousness of looking well in a brand new, though
+properly plain, bonnet bought in the city. As usual, she appeared in
+class-meeting when the hour came. Her keen eye detected a movement of
+interest and curiosity on the part of others present, which convinced
+her that young Hiram had told his story.
+
+Brother Minshall, being called on after the opening prayer and hymn,
+arose and repeated with nasal emphasis the formula of forty years,
+beginning: “Brethren and sisters, I feel to rejoice that I am spared to
+be with you another Sunday, that I may tell you of the wondrous work of
+grace in my heart.”
+
+Sister Angeline Martin told her hearers in droning phrase that she was
+a weak and sinful worm of the dust, but that she had fixed her trust in
+the Lord and knew that He would lift her up.
+
+Uncle Ezra Hinshaw was glad to add his testimony and to say that he was
+on the Lord’s side, and had been for nigh on to forty year. An hour
+spent here, he said, was worth all the fleeting joys the world could
+give.
+
+And so it went on until Mrs. Brooks arose. She wasted no time in
+preliminaries.
+
+“I take it for granted, brethren and sisters,” she said, “that you know
+I attended the theater when I was in the city last week, and that you
+want to know how I reconcile it with my professions. I did go; I got
+no harm, but very much enjoyment, and, I think, some good. I learned
+that whatever some theater plays may be, some others are as good as the
+best sermons. I have found out that it doesn’t do to abuse all theaters
+because some are bad. I don’t feel that I did anything wrong. I don’t
+advise anybody else to go, and I don’t advise them not. It is a matter
+with their own conscience. Mine is clear. I expect never to go again,
+but I am glad I went, and glad I learned what I learned, and glad I saw
+Joe Jefferson. Praise the Lord!”
+
+“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” said the leader with solemn
+intonation, but with a faint twinkle in his eye. He was a discreet man,
+and had been to the theater in his time, too. So the class sang the
+doxology and was dismissed.
+
+Going out, Aunt Hannah met young Hiram Jones, looking a little
+sheepish, and shook hands with him.
+
+“Wasn’t it beautiful?” said she. “Ain’t you glad you went, and ain’t
+Joseph Jefferson great? May he live long and prosper.”
+
+
+
+
+AN ABIDING LOVE
+
+
+The woman who was a critical reader of magazines met her friend, the
+writer of stories, in the little railroad station at Mullins, in
+southern Indiana. The writer had just arrived from Indianapolis; the
+other was waiting the north-bound train.
+
+“What have you come to this dull, lonely, forlorn place for? Not for
+literary material, surely? My grandmother lives here, and I have known
+the town all my life. Nothing romantic ever happened to anyone here;
+there are no incidents, no tragedies, no characters worth studying; the
+people simply vegetate.”
+
+“I never hunt for ‘material’ anywhere,” replied the woman who wrote.
+“It comes to me--crowds itself on me. I have been sent for by an
+invalid cousin, and expect not to think of literary matters; but if I
+were searching for themes I have no doubt I could find them, even here.”
+
+“I am sure you could not. What, for instance (here the speaker’s
+voice was lowered), what could you make out of that spiritless, meek,
+faded-out creature there? She is a resident here; I have seen her
+often, but she is so colorless I never had the curiosity to ask even
+her name. I am sure she never had a vivid emotion, never really lived
+in all her life.”
+
+“Perhaps not,” laughed the writer, “but I believe she has a story. I
+will find it out and tell it to you.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This is the story she told a month later:
+
+Martin Davis did not look much like a man with æsthetic sentiment
+in his soul as he left his plow in the furrow that afternoon in
+early April and drove his tired horses up the lane. His face was
+weatherbeaten, his hands rough and hard, his clothing cheap and coarse,
+his high boots, into which his jeans trousers were tucked, caked with
+mud. But he was young and vigorous; his eyes were bright and eager, and
+he felt himself a man to be envied, for had he not a wife waiting for
+him at the house--a bride of but a few weeks? In the band of his rusty
+felt hat he had slipped a bunch of yellow violets.
+
+“I knew ye liked posies, Lizzie,” he said as he handed them to her
+at the kitchen door, “and these are the first I’ve seen this season,
+’thout it’s the little white windflowers that wilt while ye’re pickin’
+them. These yellow things are way ahead of time. I’ve never found them
+before earlier than May; they’re not common hereabouts, anyhow, but I
+know of a spot down in the holler where they always flourish.”
+
+When she put them in a teacup and set them on the supper table he
+wondered vaguely why he had never known before that flowers made a
+room look so cheerful--almost as if the sun were shining, though that
+luminary had sunk behind the western hill. He did not know that the
+brightness was not of the flowers, but was the light of love reflected
+from his heart and hers.
+
+It was but a brief time that his happiness lasted. That was the spring
+of ’61, and the country was even then calling upon her loyal sons.
+Martin Davis turned his horses into the pasture, left his crops for
+others to harvest and went unhesitatingly to answer the call. Oh, the
+heroism of the myriads who thus went out from home, and peace, and
+love, to the battlefield in those dreadful years! What if they did
+not know that the ninety days would lengthen until no man could name
+the end, and that the slain would be like the leaves of the forest
+for numbers? What if they did go simply from a matter-of-fact sense
+of duty, and with little feeling of risk and danger, or because the
+riotous spirit of youth yearned for adventure? The fact remains--the
+tremendous, immutable fact--that they went by hundreds, by thousands,
+by tens and hundreds of thousands, and that they offered their lives.
+Greater love than this hath no man, and yet we, in this frivolous later
+day, dare sometimes speak lightly of those men and their sacrifices.
+
+It was a monotonous and a hard life for the most part, that of a
+private soldier in the war for the Union. Its story has been told in
+fragments at home firesides and by campfires, but never in literature
+as a whole for the world to know. Perhaps it never will be. The
+veterans tell of battles and of victories and of stirring events,
+but they do not, as a class, care to dwell upon their hardships and
+sufferings. The experience cut deep, and the scars are even yet too
+sensitive to touch upon.
+
+Martin Davis’s life was not different from the rest. There was the
+drill and the camp life, the picket duty, the marching, the digging of
+trenches and building of breastworks, the skirmishing, the expectation
+of encounters with the enemy--all this for slow and weary months, and
+at last a great battle.
+
+Lizzie, the young wife at home, waited from week to week and month
+to month, as women did in those days, with what show of patience and
+composure they could muster--a proof of courage and patriotism not less
+than that of going to war. The soldiers’ story may sometimes be told,
+but where is the historian who shall portray the agony of the women’s
+waiting hearts, the suffering of uncertainty and suspense? Who shall
+comprehend the anguish of their tears? Who understand that the strain
+of constant dread of evil news from husband and brother and lover was
+greater than that felt by the soldier before the enemy’s guns--that it
+left unhealed scars that aged them before their time?
+
+Lizzie Davis fared like the other women--hoping and praying, living
+upon the letters that came at irregular intervals, going about her
+tasks by day, with heavy heart, and enduring long nights with their
+visions of war and woe. In the little town from which the flower of
+the young men had already gone, existence was not gay at the best of
+times, and was now more monotonous than ever to the women, whose part
+was to wait. There were few things to distract their minds from their
+own anxieties; they were not the “new” women, with many and diverse
+activities, and so they sat at home and thought of what might be. Mrs.
+Davis did not love her husband more than the other lonely women loved
+theirs, perhaps; but without him she was quite alone in the world, and
+it was natural that no event of the war was important in which he had
+no place. That brawny private, that long-limbed, awkward farmer boy,
+was all the world to her. No future opened to her vision which he did
+not share. She was a commonplace little creature, narrow in thought and
+limited in capacity, but other and greater women have found it all of
+life to love one man.
+
+Letters came to her from Tennessee now. Martin wrote that it looked as
+if some fighting would be done very soon that would scatter the rebels
+and end the war. Then came the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson, and he
+wrote with still greater certainty that the war was soon to close. Men
+better informed than he thought so then. After that there was marching
+across country, transportation by boat up the Tennessee, more marching,
+with rain and mud and cold as features of the travel--all this
+described in fragmentary scrawls. One of them, dated April 5th, and
+written on a scrap of paper while he stood in the rain with his company
+awaiting orders, said there would be fighting soon, and added: “Here’s
+a yellow violet; just found it under a bank. Season’s early down here.
+We’re going to beat the rebs out of their boots. Good-bye.”
+
+This note, and then--silence. There had been a battle; it was
+Shiloh--bloody Shiloh. On its gory field, when the 7th of April dawned,
+the dead lay by thousands--the blue and the gray. Oh, Shiloh! the
+waiting hearts that broke when your victory was won!
+
+Private Davis, of Company D, was numbered among the dead. A comrade
+wrote to Lizzie, telling her that Martin had died like a hero. A part
+of his regiment had faced about and retreated, broken in a panic
+before the Confederates’ furious onslaught; but he had remained, had
+seized the flag from the hand of the fleeing color-bearer and gone on
+triumphantly to meet the coming foe. In the thick of the fight he was
+seen to fall, “and,” said the writer, with no art at softening cruel
+truth, “he was buried in a trench.”
+
+To the widow a realizing sense of the death did not come. It is
+often so when those away from home are taken; to their families they
+seem still temporarily absent and likely to return at any hour. She
+accepted the situation dumbly, uncomplainingly. She had no longer a
+keen interest in life, and was without the strength of character to
+rise above her grief and force herself to accept new interests. She was
+simply an every-day woman, who had loved her husband and continued to
+love and to think of him day and night, though he was dead. She sold
+her farm to a rich neighbor, who took advantage of her ignorance to pay
+her but half its value, and she was deprived of a large share of the
+proceeds by a sharper to whom she intrusted them for investment. Then
+she settled down in the little town and became a neighborhood drudge.
+She sewed, nursed the sick, took care of the new babies, and was at the
+beck and call of any housewife who needed her in domestic emergencies.
+
+The years went on with little variety. The war ended, and affairs
+settled into new grooves. A flood of prosperity swept over the country
+and affected even this quiet town, but made little difference in Mrs.
+Davis’s plodding, uneventful existence. No one pitied her especially
+for her lonely and hard-working life. She was spoken of as “the widow
+Davis,” but she was only one among many widows the war had created,
+and, as she made no ado over her woes, no one else thought to do it
+for her. They had their own troubles to think of. They did say, along
+at first, that she didn’t take Mart’s death very hard. She “didn’t
+make no fuss,” they said, and they “’lowed” she was “ruther shaller.”
+Afterwards they practically forgot him, and assumed that she had done
+the same. But she never put off her simple mourning garb; her mouth
+fixed itself in a pathetic little droop; her brown hair faded early.
+And she would not marry again. Ten years after Shiloh, John Holt, a
+thrifty widower, attracted by her quiet, industrious ways, sought her
+as a step-mother for his children.
+
+“No, Mr. Holt,” she said. “I can’t be your wife. Martin Davis is dead
+and buried, but I can’t make him seem dead nohow; I never have, an’ I
+don’t reckon I ever can. I feel as if he was gone jest on a trip; an’ I
+dream of him o’ nights, an’ I’m always glad when night comes, because
+them dreams come, too. I’ll go along by myself till the time comes for
+me to go and meet Martin--but it’s long, long!”
+
+And then, her self-repression overcome by the sudden compassion in the
+man’s eyes, she bowed her head upon the table and sobbed and wept in
+the utter abandonment of a grief which knows no pretense.
+
+John Holt went away thoughtful, and was afterwards heard to say it was
+a “sing’lar dispensation o’ Providence that took a man away from a wife
+like that an’ let other men live whose wives wouldn’t a-mourned for ’em
+over night if they’d drownded theirselves.”
+
+More years went, until, one day, Mrs. Davis heard of an excursion
+that filled her patient soul with longing. This was a trip by boat
+to Shiloh battleground. She had never been further from home than to
+Cincinnati, fifty miles away, where she had gone once when a girl, but
+she determined to make this journey. It was a great undertaking, and
+she got ready for it with an excitement such as had not stirred her for
+years. She never thought of the South but as the rebels’ country, and,
+though she knew there were no rebels now, there was down in her heart a
+dull hatred of all Southerners, because but for them there would have
+been no war--but for a certain one of them who had fired a fatal shot
+she would not have been left in loneliness all these long years.
+
+Men and women of the world who, through contact with people of many
+localities, have gained the ability to judge their fellow-beings
+dispassionately find it difficult to comprehend the limitations of one
+who has but a single point of view. Lizzie Davis had had but one great
+interest in life, and had never been able to consider the outside world
+in any other than its relation to herself.
+
+The trip down the Ohio river, though novel, aroused no emotion; once
+on the Tennessee she began to brighten. Martin had made this journey
+not long before his death. The war, now so far past, was brought close
+to her. The battle seemed but a little while back. On the wooded
+bluffs she could almost see rebel skirmishers in hiding. Her meek,
+feminine soul, which had never before directed a cruel thought toward
+any individual, suddenly throbbed with fierce resentment; the slow,
+easy-going natives, who strolled down to the landings and leisurely
+carried their freight up the bank in primitive fashion, seemed to
+her to represent a bloodthirsty, murderous people. She eyed them
+malevolently.
+
+One day the captain of the boat sat down by her side on the deck. He
+was a middle-aged man of slow, soft speech and gentle manner--as far
+removed from the typical bluff, gruff, profane, aggressive river man
+of literature as possible. He had already won Mrs. Davis’s confidence
+by his deferential courtesy and attentions to which she was a stranger
+at home. There no one was unkind, but certainly no one was noticeably
+considerate of the comfort of women, especially those of no particular
+importance. He narrated to her bits of history about the places along
+the river, with every foot of which he was familiar, and told anecdotes
+of the people, half of whom he seemed to know by their Christian names.
+
+“How can you speak so kindly of them, an’ you a soldier, too?” she
+broke out at last. “Rebels I reckon they were, most of ’em, an’ killed
+our men, an’ would do it again if they had a chance.”
+
+He turned to her slowly and without a sign of surprise; she was not a
+new type to him.
+
+“Madam, these people along heah were mostly Union sympathizers during
+the wah. I was a soldier in the Confede’at ahmy.”
+
+It was a shock. Ex-rebels had found their way to her little village
+since the war, but a good many sons had gone out from there to fight
+for the Union, and never to return, and those wanderers from the South
+were not made welcome, but had mostly drifted on to regions elsewhere
+in Indiana where were friends and sympathizers. She had never so much
+as talked with one before.
+
+Then he told her, in a quiet, reminiscent way, some stories of his
+youth and his far Southern home; of how the South was then all the
+country he knew, and the North a far-off, cold region, whose people, he
+was taught, cared only to buy and sell, and to subjugate and rob the
+South; of how the war broke out and one by one his neighbors joined the
+army, then his brothers, and then himself, a boy of sixteen--all filled
+with fierce patriotism and the blind belief that they were fighting
+for the right; of how his brothers had been slain, and how he had gone
+home, when at last the conflict was over, to find that home dismantled,
+the mother who had been its center forever gone, and he, yet a boy in
+years, lonely, disheartened and forlorn.
+
+It was a revelation to the woman of few ideas that rebels--rebels!--were
+creatures with loves and sorrows like her own.
+
+And they went on up the shining river, and a little of the peace and
+beauty of it entered into her soul. It was May, and the fields and
+forests were in freshest array. The gray-green willows, the rank water
+maples and the glossy oaks that crowded the river bank were fringed
+with undergrowth, and their trunks lost in a tangle of honey-suckles,
+grape-vines and ivy. It was primitive wilderness, such as the Indian
+must have looked at in his day.
+
+Then came Fort Henry. The boat, which stopped accommodatingly wherever
+a would-be traveler waived a handkerchief, obligingly made fast while
+passengers climbed the hill and wandered over the old earthworks that
+made the walls of that famous fort. In the glamour of the moonlight and
+the softness of the shadows could almost be seen the soldiers who had
+once crowded the place--but trees had grown up within the walls since
+that day, and the soldiers--where were they?
+
+Then Pittsburg Landing and Shiloh, and the woman from the little
+Indiana town had reached her Mecca.
+
+They wandered over the battlefield, those tourists; they saw it almost
+as it looked on the fatal Sunday so long ago, only to-day the sun
+shone, and then the very heavens had wept at the sight below. They saw
+the place where the fight was fiercest and most furious--the “Hornet’s
+Nest,” where Union men and Confederates met hand to hand and the
+slaughter was so great that the dead lay in heaps. They saw the pool
+whose margin had been red with the blood of wounded men who had dragged
+themselves there to quench their raging thirst. To-day cattle drank
+from it undisturbed.
+
+There were houses here and there--primitive structures, hardly more
+than cabins. Mrs. Davis stopped at the door of one to ask for water. An
+old woman came out, a woman with a scant calico gown and clumsy shoes,
+and eyes blurred perhaps with age, possibly with tears, but kindly
+still. She grew garrulous in response to a timid question.
+
+“Yes, she had lived hereabouts evah since befo’ the wah. She an’ her
+ole man was Union, but their six boys couldn’t no ways agree, an’ three
+j’ined the Union ahmy an’ three the Confede’at. An’, yes--yes, it’s all
+done ended long ago, but some days the time seems yistiddy, an’ it all
+comes back. Her ole man couldn’t keep out no ways when the boys was
+gone, an’ he jined, too, when General Sherman come along. An’--yes, the
+boys was all killed; three at Donelson, two here at Shiloh Church, an’
+one at Chattanooga. Their pap didn’t live long after; sort o’ broke
+down like. An’ if it wasn’t that the boys who died here were buried
+in a Confede’at trench (did the visitor see the ridge over thataway?)
+she reckoned she’d disremembah which was Union an’ which wasn’t. Such
+things didn’t seem to make no difference, nohow, when they alls was
+gone to rest twel jedgment day.”
+
+The woman who had lost one and the woman who had lost seven looked
+in each other’s eyes and knew the kinship of grief, and somehow the
+visitor from the North felt no longer a personal resentment for her
+loss. Though it might have been a son of this woman who shot her
+Martin, he had thought he was right and meant no evil.
+
+Then she entered the gates of the National Cemetery, where the Union
+dead are laid in long lines, with a granite block marking each resting
+place. The captain of the boat joined her at the gate, and as he passed
+in he plucked a sprig of cedar. The sun shining through the branches of
+the great forest trees flecked the grass upon the graves; a soft May
+breeze scattered the leaves of the early blooming roses. Down between
+the rows of stones they walked, and the captain, pausing at one bearing
+the number 1607, lifted his hat reverently and laid the bit of cedar
+upon it.
+
+“I put a little posy there every time I come,” he said gently; “I
+reckoned that may be the wife or mother of the boy lying there might
+like it.”
+
+The man lying there might be her Martin, thought the little widow, and
+from that moment her heart ceased to cherish animosity toward any man
+who had fought on the other side.
+
+She stood on the bluff and looked down on the sparkling, glinting
+river. The panorama of water and sky and hill stretching for miles
+before her was a vision fair to see. The flag of her country floated
+from the great staff above; the only sound was the singing of the
+birds, and the peace of God was over all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+More years went by, and the Widow Davis plodded patiently through them,
+getting a little more weary as they passed and finding the burden of
+loneliness none the easier to bear as age crept on. That visit to
+Shiloh had taught her some things, toleration among the rest, but it
+had also taken away one thing that had been a secret source of comfort
+to her. Until that time she had pictured to herself the return of her
+husband. She was a woman with but scant imaginative power, but where
+even the dullest mind dwells much upon one subject it weaves about it
+a network of fancy far different from reality. She had not seen her
+husband dead; a battle was a vague thing to her; he had simply gone
+away and had not come back. Perhaps he had been wounded, had lost a
+leg or an arm, and a prisoner in rebel hands was long in recovering.
+Then, perhaps--here her fancy took a wild leap--perhaps he was told by
+some one that she was dead, or that she, thinking him dead, had married
+again, though she didn’t quite see how he could believe she could
+marry another man. But such things had happened--she had read of them;
+and supposing he had believed it, he would wander away and never care
+to revisit his old home until, at last, he somehow learned the truth
+and hastened to her with joy. Or it might be that he had escaped from
+his rebel prison, had reached the sea-coast, had crept on board some
+foreign vessel, and had been carried to far-off lands, whence he would
+some day return.
+
+Vain imaginings, but lonely women dream strange things while they
+go half mechanically about their monotonous daily tasks. Even the
+happiness of happy women is half in this unreal inner life. After this
+visit to Shiloh these comforting pictures were conjured up no more in
+Lizzie’s mind. It was all real now, the battle and the slaughter, and
+she had seen the graves where the soldiers lay; her thoughts centered
+about “1607,” where the captain’s tribute rested, and she felt more
+and more convinced that Martin slept beneath that stone. It was nearly
+thirty years, a lifetime, since he went, and he would come to her now
+only after heaven’s gate had opened to let her in. She had mourned her
+lost love for thirty years. She, a little, commonplace woman of whom
+no one would have thought as a heroine of romance. She would not have
+known what the term “grand passion” meant; she had been simply faithful
+to a memory in a quiet, undemonstrative way; her life had been bound up
+in a sentiment, that was all.
+
+One day in April--it was the 30th Shiloh anniversary--she was at
+her little cottage, no neighbor needing her services as nurse or
+seamstress. It had been an early spring, and she went out in the garden
+to look at the signs of life among her few cherished flowers. In a
+sunny corner wild violets grew and had pushed green leaves above the
+mold, but no buds were yet in sight.
+
+“I remember,” she said, speaking to a neighbor who had paused in
+passing, “I remember seeing violet flowers as early as this.”
+
+She was thinking of those stuck in the band of Martin’s hat that day
+so long ago when he came from the field, and as she spoke she looked
+down the village street, wondering at the unusual boisterousness of
+the school children. They followed after and jeered at a man who came
+slowly and hesitatingly along, as if uncertain of his way. His clothing
+was rough, his shoulders bent and his gait shambling. On his head was
+a military cap, such as some old soldiers still insist upon wearing,
+and on its side was something like a decoration on a woman’s bonnet. It
+was this that made the children jeer. Mrs. Davis put her hand over her
+eyes and looked at it intently. Hardly knowing what she did, she went
+out upon the walk and down the street to meet him. When she came closer
+she saw that the decoration was a bunch of yellow violets. She stopped
+before the man and looked at him. She had never thought of her husband
+as other than erect, and strong, and young; this man was feeble, and
+dim-eyed, and old, but--she knew him.
+
+“Martin!” she said; “Martin!” and reached out her hands, forgetful of
+watching neighbors and wondering children.
+
+Something like a miracle happened in that moment. The years fell away
+from her as a garment; the flush in her cheek, the love light in her
+eyes transfigured her.
+
+“Lizzie!” said the man, the dull, dazed expression clearing from his
+face. “Lizzie,” and he fumbled at his cap, “I--I thought ye’d like some
+posies, and came round by the holler and got them.”
+
+She took him by the hand and led him into the house, her face still
+illumined.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The woman who wrote stories and the other who read them met again on
+the street of Mullins. Toward them came Lizzie Davis. She was the woman
+who had been at the station weeks before, but she was like one born
+again. Her hair was faded, it is true; her complexion gray, her dress
+old-fashioned and rusty, but her eyes were bright, her bearing erect
+and proud, her face smiling. She stopped a moment to speak to the woman
+who wrote.
+
+“Just think, Miss,” she said; “Martin lived over in Jonesboro, just
+beyond the Ohio line, and not fifty miles from here, for twenty years.
+I’ve just seen a man from there. Where he had been before that time the
+Lord knows. The man says that they all knowed something was the matter
+with his head. Seemed to do his work well on the farm, but every now
+an’ then he’d get uneasy an’ talk an’ talk about some place he’d ought
+to go if he could only just think of the name; an’ when he heard any
+one call ‘Lizzie’ he always got worried and fidgety. Come spring, too,
+every year, he’d pick flowers an’ wear ’em in his hat. Then at last
+one day his recollection seemed to come to him sudden, and he up an’
+started off, the man said, acting like a crazy lunatic. He found his
+way here, an’ he’s getting to be more like himself every day, an’ it
+almost seems as if he’d never been away.”
+
+A glow was on her cheek like the blush of a bride; the thirty years of
+loneliness were as naught; the children that might have been hers, the
+happiness and peace she had missed were forgotten. The mother heart
+in her went out to the broken-down man and was satisfied. He came
+shuffling down the walk.
+
+“See how well he looks,” she said, as she hastened toward him, with
+a face through which love shone as it must shine on the faces of the
+angels in heaven.
+
+“You were wrong, you see,” softly said the woman who wrote, to her
+friend; “you were wrong when you declared there was no romance here;
+that the people merely vegetated. That woman has lived.”
+
+“Yes,” said the other, “she has loved.”
+
+
+
+
+A FARMHOUSE DRAMA
+
+
+“It was an exceptional case, that of the Marshalls, Brother Johnson, or
+I never should have advised them to the course they took.”
+
+The speaker, familiarly known as Father Allen to all the region round
+about, was a minister of the Methodist denomination, who, after an
+itinerant life of forty years, had, as his professional brethren put
+it, “assumed the superannuated relation.” This being interpreted, meant
+that he had retired from regular duty and occupied himself, as age
+and strength would permit, in rendering such service to neighboring
+members of his old flock as occasion called for. An old minister comes
+to be identified with a family as no newcomer can. He has comforted its
+members in their sorrows and participated in their pleasures; he has
+been with them at their funerals and their marriage feasts, and in the
+emergencies of life they turn to him.
+
+To-day, Father Allen had accompanied the Reverend Mr. Johnson, the
+young preacher lately stationed at Amber Center, the little Indiana
+town whose roofs were visible far across the prairie, on his first
+round of pastoral calls. They had just taken their departure from
+the white farm-house of the Marshalls, bearing with them the look of
+ineffable content that comes to mankind only after the consumption of a
+bountiful meal, and were discussing the affairs of their entertainers,
+as is the ancient custom of guests of all degree, regardless of canons
+of etiquette.
+
+Acting on the principle that a pastor should be thoroughly acquainted
+with the history of his flock in order to meet its spiritual needs, as
+a physician is better fitted to prescribe for a patient’s ills when
+he understands his physical constitution, the old minister gave, with
+somewhat garrulous, not to say gossipy, detail, particulars of each
+individual’s life to the new shepherd.
+
+“Yes, it was an exceptional case. It is hardly necessary to say, I
+hope, Brother Johnson, that I am opposed to divorce. The ease with
+which legal separations are to be had is one of the greatest evils of
+our time; I need not enlarge on that. Still--Brother Johnson, one must
+use judgment, and it is difficult to make an iron-clad rule for all
+cases. ‘A rule already made,’ do you say? Well, yes, yes--of course.
+As a general thing it is best to abide by the literal scriptural
+injunction, and I am the last person to countenance any other course.
+Nevertheless, my son, you will find, as your experience with the
+realities of the world broadens, that it is sometimes inexpedient to
+insist upon too rigid an application of the letter of the law.
+
+“Now, in the case of the Marshalls, John was very deeply attached to
+his first wife, whom he married on the day of his enlistment in the
+army, twenty years ago; very deeply attached, no doubt of it. His wife,
+pretty Rose Lytle, was fond of him in her way, too, but she was of a
+clinging, dependent nature, and would, perhaps, have been equally happy
+had it chanced to be another than John, who had so devoted himself to
+her. The woman who loved him most deeply on the day of his marriage was
+Rose’s cousin and adopted sister, Mary; but that was her secret. Many a
+woman has such. Rose was a pretty creature. It was twenty years ago,
+but I remember her well. She reminded me--my wife’s name was Rose, too.”
+
+The old man’s voice faltered. It was not upon the prospect near that
+his dim eyes were wistfully fixed, but upon something far beyond.
+Before them the western sky was gorgeous with crimson and purple and
+gold--fit reminder of the gates of the New Jerusalem--but Mr. Johnson
+removed his gaze from the glory of the sunset to glance curiously at
+his aged companion, knowing as he did, that the name of the present
+Mrs. Allen was Sarah, and that the neatly framed portrait of her
+immediate predecessor was carefully labeled, “My beloved consort,
+Matilda.”
+
+“A week later,” resumed the elder gentleman, “John was on his way with
+his regiment to the South, and the women were left to each other’s
+company. The months following went by slowly enough, no doubt, to the
+girl in the lonely prairie home and to the man toiling in Virginia
+trenches, or marching over sodden hills; time moves slowly, you know,
+when one is young and impatient.”
+
+“When the ‘body is in Segovia’ and the ‘soul is in Madrid,’” softly
+interpolated the listener, who was yet young enough to permit
+sentiment to come to the surface now and then.
+
+“But time goes for all,” continued the old minister, “and before the
+year’s close it had ended to the consciousness of one of the pair. A
+report that John had been killed in battle came suddenly to the ears of
+the waiting wife--a false report, as later appeared, like so many that
+came from ‘the front’ in those days. Next day their son was born, but
+the mother had no smile at the sight of the baby face. The shock of the
+news had deprived her of reason. Physical strength came back in time,
+but with its return the insanity increased until she raved with madness
+and became dangerously violent. The husband, who had been wounded only,
+came home on furlough, but his presence excited her to fierce outbursts.
+
+“It was a long time before John or the cousin Mary, patiently devoted
+to mother and child, would consent to send the cherished and petted
+girl away from their own care to an institution for the insane; but
+finally the safety of all demanded it. She was taken to an asylum and
+is there to-day.
+
+“John rejoined his regiment, and when the war was over came back to
+find his home and child well cared for by the faithful Mary. Matters
+went on in this way for a while, with the addition of himself as head
+of the household. Left to himself, he would perhaps have discovered no
+reason why the agreeable conditions should not continue, but when Mary,
+the center of this home life, suddenly resumed her old occupation of
+teaching, and would give no explanation of her course to the bewildered
+man save that she preferred the change, there were neighbors willing
+to enlighten him. In the matter of social conventionalities and
+proprieties people in country communities are very exacting, Brother
+Johnson, and it was not considered proper that Mary should remain as
+housekeeper for a man who was her brother-in-law only by courtesy.
+
+“Naturally, this was the beginning of the end. They soon discovered
+each other’s sentiments and came to me for advice, separately and
+together. The physicians had assured them that Rose was hopelessly
+insane; that while no one could say with absolute certainty that she
+would not recover, the tendencies in her case gave no encouragement for
+such hope. Insanity was not specified as legal cause for divorce, but
+in those days, Indiana courts were allowed by the statutes far greater
+liberty and discretion than now, and, under the circumstances, there
+was no difficulty in the way of securing a decree of separation. The
+only question with these two, Mary and John, was whether it was right
+for John to be divorced even with conditions as they were. They were
+conscientious and argued for and against themselves.”
+
+“To me it seemed one of the exceptional cases. Marshall needed some one
+at the head of his establishment; he had not so warm an affection for
+this woman, perhaps, as for Rose, but he would make her a good husband.
+Mary cared for him as she never could for another. It is best for women
+to marry. It seemed to me expedient that these two should be united,
+and so I advised the divorce. I am still of the opinion that the course
+was wise.”
+
+“Mrs. Marshall’s expression did not strike me as that of a particularly
+happy woman,” said Mr. Johnson. “She looked sad, I thought, and
+anxious.”
+
+“Women, as a class, are foolish,” hastily exclaimed the old man. “The
+best of them have imaginary troubles. Mrs. Marshall allows herself to
+be tormented by the fear that Rose will yet be cured, and reproaches
+herself at the same time for dreading what ought, under other
+circumstances, to be a blessing. However, as I said, women will find
+something to worry over, and if it were not for this fanciful notion,
+Mrs. Marshall, good, sensible woman that she is, would have some other.
+I believe she did well.”
+
+As they drove up the village street in the haze of the late Indian
+summer twilight the young minister breathed a sigh. He had been
+impressed by what the poet calls the large, sweet calmness of the
+prairie; but peace, after all, did not, it seemed, abide with the
+people. He wondered what would be the end if, at last, the innocent,
+but cast-off wife should be restored to the realities of life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Back in the white house on the prairie the first chapter of the sequel
+to the old minister’s story had even then begun.
+
+After the visitors had driven away, John Marshall and his wife stood on
+the steps, his eyes fixed absently on the purple line of the horizon
+far across the level plain, she, with her face turned toward his. A
+question was on her lips, but she did not speak, only touched his arm
+softly while the look of vague apprehension in her eyes deepened into
+what was almost terror. At last he moved until his glance met hers.
+
+“What you have always dreaded has happened,” he said. “Rose has
+recovered her mind.”
+
+The woman at his side did not cry out nor moan--she was not of the
+demonstrative sort; but a change come over her while she stood there as
+if she had suddenly grown old and feeble. Her face looked pinched and
+gray. She took her hand from his arm and moved back a pace--a movement
+that told its own story. After a moment he went on steadily:
+
+“The doctor writes that it is a very unexpected recovery; quite
+remarkable in the history of such cases. She is well as ever, mentally,
+but oddly enough her bodily strength has as suddenly failed, and,
+according to what he says, she is not likely to be better. It is not
+probable at the best that she will live many months--perhaps not even
+weeks; but in order to prolong her life, as well as to retain her
+mental balance, she must be carefully guarded from a shock of any sort.
+This, above all things, must be the care of those about her, he says,
+and explains that he has said nothing to her concerning our family
+affairs. And,” after a pause in which he glanced uneasily at his wife,
+“Rose wants to come home.”
+
+She looked at him with calm, tearless eyes.
+
+“Do you wish her to come?” she asked.
+
+“Well,” he answered, hesitatingly, “it’s a queer fix. We’re all she’s
+got, you know, you and I, and to send her among strangers now--it
+doesn’t seem just right. She was our little Rose, you remember,
+and----. If she were well it would be different, of course. Still,
+if you think it won’t do--if you can’t have it so, let it be as you
+please, Mary.”
+
+“I only wanted to know what you wished. Do you think I would say to
+you, I who took her place, that our doors must be shut against her? We
+will go to-morrow and bring her home, and I will do what I can to make
+her last days happy.”
+
+John Marshall breathed a sigh of relief as if a weight were lifted
+from his mind. He looked at his wife approvingly.
+
+“You are a good woman, Mary,” he said.
+
+Many a man addressing such words to his wife would have followed them
+with a caress, but John Marshall turned away and went about his evening
+tasks while Mary passed slowly and wearily into the house. A coat
+belonging to her husband hung in the hall. She caught the sleeve in her
+hand and kissed it. A girl or a gay young matron might have been thus
+childishly demonstrative without suspicion of any deeper feeling than
+an impulsive outburst of affection toward the owner of the garment.
+Discerning eyes like those of Father Allen, grown keen with a half
+century’s study of human weaknesses, would have seen in the act of this
+middle-aged woman the betrayal of a heart’s hunger.
+
+Mechanically she went about her household duties and preparations for
+the guest, the dread of whose possible coming had hung over her like
+a shadow for fifteen years. No detail was overlooked in arranging for
+the comfort of “John’s wife,” as Mary caught herself calling in her
+thoughts the woman who had dropped out of conscious existence so long
+ago. She had come back to life as from the dead. If a wrong had been
+done to her in her helpless state those who had committed it must, as
+they hoped for mercy hereafter, do what they could to save her from its
+consequences; there was no other way. They, the wrong-doers, she and
+John, must suffer in the performance of their duty; but they had no
+right to complain. It was Rose, little Rose, whom they had loved and
+who had trusted them so completely, who was coming back, and she must
+find the doors open.
+
+Like a dream that day and the next seemed to her afterwards. The
+journey to the city, the meeting with the one so miraculously restored
+to them, the return home, were events that fixed themselves but dimly
+on her memory. The central fact that the companion of her girlhood, the
+wife of John’s youth, was with them again absorbed her faculties to
+the exclusion of lesser matters. It was not until Rose was installed
+in the sunny upper room and the domestic routine had adjusted itself
+to the change in affairs that the second wife realized the nature of
+the task she had set herself to do--that had been imposed upon her she
+whispered in bitter protest sometimes.
+
+Her married life had been haunted by the fear that Rose might regain
+her reason, but the picture formed in her fancy had been of a wan
+and haggard creature heaping reproaches on the husband who had been
+unfaithful in her absence, and on the woman who had promised a dying
+father to care for her and had then usurped her place. Never had she,
+in her wildest dreams, contemplated anything like the reality which she
+now faced.
+
+It was no pallid, wild-eyed woman who sat in the upper chamber, but
+a smiling guest whose every wish was honored. Strangely enough, the
+change that had been wrought in Rose’s mental condition had its
+counterpart in a physical transformation. The deathly paleness, the
+hollow cheek, the look of age which had characterized the insane woman
+had given way to a color rivaling the peachy bloom of twenty years
+before; the blue eyes, dull for so long, shone with all their old
+vivid brilliancy beneath the long lashes; the face was rounded out,
+and its youthful outlines were emphasized by the babyish rings of fair
+hair that lay about the white forehead. The weakness and languor
+that accompanied this change and did not pass away only added to her
+attractiveness. As she leaned back upon the cushions of the chair that
+she seldom left it was difficult to believe that the face was that of
+one who had lived past her girlhood. To the lookers-on it seemed that
+nature had endeavored to compensate for the lost years by a veritable
+renewal of youth and beauty.
+
+It was not the difficult task that had been feared to guard her against
+injurious shocks. She quietly assumed, without question, that the
+relations of her loved ones were as they had been of old; indeed she
+seemed not to realize the time that had passed since she left them.
+John was her husband; Mary, the dear sister who had kept his house and
+awaited her recovery and return. Rose asked for her son but showed
+little emotion when told with hesitant caution--this was one of the
+things that could not be concealed or denied--that he had been a feeble
+child who, after five years of baby life, had left them and gone to
+heaven. The infant had not formed a part of the life she remembered,
+and knowledge of his death did not move her deeply. In telling the
+story of the little one whom she had loved like her own, Mary thought,
+with almost a guilty feeling, of the sturdy boy who called her mother
+and whose existence must be so carefully hidden. The presence of a boy
+in the house might be easily enough accounted for, but he must not come
+where “Aunt Rose” was lest she ask fatal questions.
+
+“It is enough that you and I must deceive her, but my boy shall not
+be taught to lie or to deny his birthright,” said Mary, with fierce
+decision, and John had agreed.
+
+A negro and his wife who had followed John from “ole Kaintuck” to find
+a home in the North, and who had been faithful servants ever since,
+formed the rest of the household. Visitors were few. A prairie road
+after November rains is not a thoroughfare sought by any except those
+on journeys of necessity. The few old friends or curious neighbors
+drawn thither by the news of Rose’s return were quietly cautioned not
+to touch on personal matters in their conversation with the invalid.
+This caution and the chance allusions Rose made to her “husband” led
+the visitors, ignorant of the kindly deceit being practiced upon her,
+and doubtful, as the most intelligent people often are, of the entire
+recovery of those once insane, to believe that her mind was not yet
+sound. So it came about that the little drama being enacted in that
+prairie farm-house had few spectators.
+
+Rose expressed little curiosity concerning events that had happened
+during her absence, and showed no interest in affairs outside their own
+little circle. She was content to live like a child, taking up life
+where she had left it, and thinking nothing of the morrow. One thing
+only she demanded as her right, and that the hardest of all for one
+member of the household to grant. “Her John’s” society she claimed in
+all of his leisure moments, and as a farmer in the position of this man
+is an independent being who orders his own goings-in and comings-out,
+the result was that John, “my dear John,” as Rose called him, was at
+her side many hours in the day. Mary might be there, too; Rose wanted
+Mary also at hand, or within call, but without John she fretted and was
+restless.
+
+At first Mary quieted her misgivings with a sense of shame at their
+existence. John, she said, was, like herself, trying to do his duty.
+She could serve the invalid in other ways; he could only bear her
+company. But the days went on, and that upper room became a place of
+torture for the lawful wife so steadfastly doing that which seemed best.
+
+John was good; he was a good man, she said over and over. Not to
+himself would the loyal soul willingly utter a complaint of the one she
+loved, but at last she could no longer close her eyes to the truth. In
+an agony which could find no expression, Mary acknowledged to herself
+that her husband sought the presence of that transfigured woman who
+had been the bride of his youth, because in that presence he found
+pleasure and delight. All through the fifteen years of her life with
+him she had been conscious of a lack of responsiveness to the cravings
+of her affection; but she had stilled the aching of her heart with the
+thought, not that he mourned the loss of Rose, but that a sentiment of
+self-reproach for having set her aside in her misfortune had raised a
+barrier in his nature between himself and the companion in the wrong
+which he could not overcome. And now she knew that this coldness was
+because he loved this other as he had not loved her.
+
+During those long years she had never been quite happy because of the
+invisible barrier; sometimes she had fancied herself wretched. Looking
+back to that time now, she felt, in the sharpness of her suffering,
+that she had lived in paradise. Then, it was a vague, unsubstantial
+thing that held them apart; now, it was a beautiful woman who thought
+herself his wife.
+
+That room had a fascination for Mrs. Marshall; she suffered when there,
+but after leaving it she hastened back. Neither occupant seemed to
+mind her presence. Rose did not;--conscious of no wrong, why should
+she? John did not, being apparently unaware, as he sat near, and often
+with Rose’s pretty hand in his, that he was exceeding the part of a
+courteous host.
+
+One day, to Mary, going quietly about some task in an outer room,
+floated a voice in soft reproach:
+
+“John, do you love me?”
+
+“Why Rose, my dear Rose, don’t you know we all love you?”
+
+“‘We!’ I am not talking of ‘we,’ but of you. Do you know, John, that
+you have never kissed me since the day I came home? Is that the way a
+man behaves who loves his wife?”
+
+And Mary, her heart faint with pain and shame and outraged love, saw
+the man succumb to the pleading eyes and outstretched arms. A kiss
+like that, she knew, had never been given her. Alive with the quick
+instinct to possess her own she started forward, but in a moment turned
+and crept away like a wounded creature, even then excusing the one who
+had pierced her soul.
+
+“Could any man do differently? Only a saint could resist that
+loveliness for the sake of a woman such as I, worn with care and
+on-coming years.”
+
+She could not breathe under that roof. Out into the chill November day
+she hastened, not caring whither. Heavy gusts of rain swept across the
+sky, shrouding the prairie in a gray mist through which the scattered
+trees loomed dimly, their bare boughs tossing like the spars of a
+ship in a laboring sea. Conscious of little but her own thoughts, she
+hurried on until her footsteps were checked by the surprised voice of
+Father Allen hastening from the performance of some errand of mercy to
+gain shelter from the wintry storm.
+
+“Are you crazy, daughter?”
+
+“It would be better if I were; it would save trouble. If John could
+have left me at the asylum when he brought Rose away how much better
+it would have been. But this life is killing me--I shall die, I shall
+die and be out of their way. Rose will get well--do you hear me, Father
+Allen? When I married John I prayed that Rose, my little cousin Rose,
+might never recover her mind. I founded my happiness on her misfortune.
+Now, I can see no happiness while we both live. I am like a murderer,
+Father Allen! But my punishment has come. The Lord does not wait until
+the hereafter.”
+
+The burst of passion ended in tears and sobs, and the old man,
+dismounting from his horse, led her unresistingly home and delivered
+her into the hands of the faithful black ’Liza, whose ire had long
+since been excited by what she described to her spouse, Tom, as the
+“scan’lous goings on ob dat crazy woman with Mistah John.”
+
+“I will remonstrate with Brother Marshall,” thought the ministerial
+visitor. “It is a peculiar case, and he means no harm, I am sure; but,
+really, it is a very trying position for Sister Marshall, and he should
+be more considerate.”
+
+Mr. Allen was old; the woes of women did not impress him as they might
+have done a younger man, or as they would have impressed him even now,
+perhaps, had not the many sorrowful tales poured into his ears during
+the forty years of his ministry somewhat dulled his sensibilities. So
+it happened that he was not stern and severe in his remonstrance with
+Mr. Marshall when he drew him aside that night after supper, at which
+Mary presided, pale but self-possessed once more.
+
+“If Mary wishes to tell Rose the truth and kill her, she may do so, or
+you may do it; I will not,” said John. “While she is here I shall treat
+her kindly, whatever others may do. Come up and see her.”
+
+The old minister followed his host. In that radiant presence he, too,
+forgot the aching heart below and thought only of Rose and the wife of
+his youth whose likeness he fancied he saw in the face before him.
+
+That night Rose moaned in her sleep, and Mary, rising from her couch
+near by, found the white hands clasped over the heart and wondered if
+the pangs of actual disease could equal her own pain.
+
+Next day the wild storm continued and the minister, who had remained
+over night, prolonged his stay. Mary wandered restlessly over the
+house, now in the kitchen with ’Liza, now talking lightly with Father
+Allen in the pleasant parlor, but never long absent from the spot
+upstairs where all interest centered.
+
+“You look pale--are you not well?” said Rose once. “John, you must not
+let Mary work too hard for me. Dear Mary! How should we do without her?”
+
+Mary’s answer was short and brusque as she hurried away, thinking
+bitterly that John had no thought to spare for any illness of hers.
+Repenting, presently, of her ungracious response to a kind inquiry, and
+returning, she saw repeated the loving scene of the day before. John
+was on his knees by Rose’s side, her arms about his neck.
+
+“I dreamed of our baby last night, John. When I am well--I think I
+shall be well soon--I want you to take me down to see where you have
+laid him. If I should die I want my--there, there--hush! I know you
+love me; I know you do, and I won’t talk again of leaving you. Poor
+John; he has had no one to pet and care for him, and he wants his
+little Rose.”
+
+Half an hour later ’Liza, intent on some household service, found
+Mrs. Marshall lying prostrate on the floor of an unused room. She was
+not unconscious--women out of books do not faint when their hearts
+break--but nature had reached a limit, and after the storm of tears
+and strong crying had come a dullness of feeling that was almost
+insensibility.
+
+’Liza stooped to raise her, but suddenly changed her plan. “This is
+Mistah John’s business, an’ I’ll be boun’ he ’tends to it.”
+
+No delicately conscientious scruples troubled her mind.
+
+“Mistah John’s a mighty good man; nevah had nothin’ to say ’gainst him
+befo’, but it do look mighty cur’ous to see him hangin’ roun’ a crazy
+woman that he divorced hisself from, an’ thinkin’ no mo’ o’ this hyer
+po’ lamb than if the ole elder hadn’t done married ’em fas’ an’ tight.
+’Taint gwine on no mo’, nohow, if this chile kin stop it. Bettah be the
+crazy woman than Mis’ Mary if somebody gwine die fo’ it.”
+
+And ’Liza, muttering ominously, marched to the front room. There even
+she paused.
+
+“Ole ’Liza’s a mighty mean niggah when the blessed Lawd’s grace done
+loose its hold on her, but the devil aint nevah gwine make her huht
+Mis’ Rose, who looks like a angel o’ the ’pocalypse, crazy or no crazy.”
+
+And so, very quietly, she called Mr. Marshall out of the charmed
+presence. Father Allen, on his way upstairs, was summoned also. Once in
+that distant room over the half conscious “Mis’ Mary,” ’Liza’s wrath
+broke forth.
+
+“Ole ’Liza’s done thought a heap o’ you, Mistah John. I nevah reckoned
+I’us trailin’ out o’ ole Kaintuck aftah a man who was gwine have two
+wives undah one roof. Is yo’ that stone bline an’ onfeelin’, Mistah
+John, that yo’ aint see this blessed lamb dyin’ foh the love o’ yo’ on
+’count o’ the way yo’ carryin’ on? What yo’ reckon the Lawd thinkin’ o’
+class-leadah Mahshall ’bout now?”
+
+She was on the floor holding Mary’s head on her ample bosom, loosening
+her dress, chafing her hands.
+
+“Yo’ an’ Eldah Allen, hyer, yo’ alls think its Mis’ Mary’s duty to
+make it easy foh you uns, an’ aint a carin’ if she done make a bu’nt
+offering o’ herself. Yo’ alls may be mighty good in yo’ minds, but yo’
+ain’ got no kind o’ feelin’s. Ary man what wants his wife to stan’
+back an’ be sweet an’ purty wiles he honeys up to a nurrer woman is
+boun’ to get all broke up in he cackleations. No woman, black or white,
+ain’ made thataway. Ole Mis’ Duncan, down in Kaintuck, used to ’low,
+‘’Liza,’ she ’low, ‘ebery male man that was evah bohned would be a
+Mohmon or a heathen Tuhk if he wasn’t ’shamed to have folks know it.’
+Ole Mis’ hadn’t had good luck with her husban’s an’ was down on the
+sect pow’ful ha’d, but the longah I live the mo’ I’s ’pressed with the
+’pinion that a man what wants to get into the heabenly kingdom’s got to
+live mighty close in this worl’, mighty close.”
+
+John made no attempt to check this impetuous tirade, but during its
+progress his eyes had become wide open to the situation. His cheeks
+burned with shame. He took Mary from ’Liza’s arms and laid her upon
+a bed. The sound of his voice brought her to herself. Half dazed she
+struggled to her feet.
+
+“Father Allen,” said the man, “We,--I have made a mistake. One wrong
+can not be set right by another. Mary, here, is my wife. We will
+have done with this deception, and will go and tell Rose, let the
+consequences be what they may.”
+
+Supporting his wife, he moved toward the room across the house,
+followed by the old minister, with ’Liza, alarmed now at the result
+of her temerity, bringing up the rear. Even at that moment, Mary,
+beginning to recover herself, forgot her own grief and pleaded brokenly
+for delay. Strong as had been John Marshall’s resolution of a moment
+before, his steps faltered as they approached the door. A moment more
+and all paused involuntarily--arrested by the words they heard and the
+sight before them.
+
+Standing by Rose’s side was Mary’s son, the lad of twelve. Coming into
+the house he had heard the sharp alarm of Aunt Rose’s bell and, finding
+no one to answer the call, had gone up and peeped bashfully in.
+
+Rose, gasping for breath in sudden faintness, motioned for water and
+air. She revived presently, the boy watching her, meanwhile, with
+wondering eyes.
+
+“I have heard you about the house,” she said faintly but with a smile;
+“why have you never been to see me before?”
+
+“I wanted to come, but they said you must not be worried,” stammered
+the lad.
+
+“‘They’? Who are ‘they’?”
+
+“Why, father and mother,” he answered in surprise.
+
+“Well, your father and mother, whoever they may be, should have known
+that boys would not trouble me; I like them. And what is your name,
+child?”
+
+The group at the door heard this and the boy’s quick answer:
+
+“My name is Richard--Dick, for short--Richard Marshall, you know.”
+
+Mary staggered forward as if to stop the words on the boy’s lips.
+
+“Save her, Lord!” she whispered.
+
+Father Allen held her arm. “Hush! it is too late. It is the will of
+God.”
+
+John stood as one paralyzed.
+
+“Richard Marshall,” she repeated wonderingly--“the same name. And are
+you related to Mr. John Marshall? He did not tell me--”
+
+“Why, Mr. John Marshall is my father, didn’t you know? You must have
+forgotten, Aunt Rose. And, of course, Mrs. Mary Marshall is my mother.”
+
+The revelation which they had so guarded against had been made; the
+shock so dreaded had been given.
+
+Rose seemed to realize the truth slowly. Her startled eyes fell upon
+the terror-stricken group at the doorway. Gradually, as comprehension
+of the situation dawned upon her, a change came over the sweet face. It
+grew gray and sharp; the brightness vanished. She suddenly seemed no
+longer young.
+
+“Is it true, John?”
+
+“It is true,” he whispered.
+
+“Why, then, when you had taken another in my place did you deceive me?
+Why was I allowed to think--”
+
+“Rose, my darling, we did it for the best. We thought you would suffer;
+we had done you a wrong and were afraid--Rose, Rose, it was for your
+sake. Can you not forgive?”
+
+John Marshall had drawn near to the woman on whom the shadow of death
+now plainly lay. Mary crept to the bedside and crouched there with
+head bowed low. For a long time, hours it seemed to the spell-bound
+watchers, the dying woman lay silent with her hands clenched over her
+heart. No sound was heard save the dash of rain upon the window and the
+crackling of the fire upon the hearth. At last she spoke:
+
+“It would be better for us all if I had died long ago, or if I had
+never come to myself in the asylum. I have wanted to live, but it does
+not matter now. I will go to my baby; the Lord will let me have him for
+my own in heaven. I thought,”--the words came slowly and more faint--“I
+thought you were all mine, all mine, and you belonged to Mary. I had no
+one. But John,” triumphantly--it was the last flash of the woman nature
+regardless of human law for love’s sake--“John, you loved me best once;
+you love me now, don’t you, John?”
+
+The man, with his head bent upon the pillow, sobbed aloud.
+
+“Always, my darling.”
+
+After a pause she spoke again:
+
+“You did not mean to hurt. I have been happy--happy. Kiss me, John.”
+
+The face brightened with a strange light.
+
+“Mary, don’t cry. I--am--going--to--my--baby. Do--you--see? Mary,
+forgive----.”
+
+Then the blue eyes looked on death.
+
+A pale gleam of sunshine, the first for days, broke through the clouds
+and fell upon the still face. Father Allen, with uplifted hands,
+whispered softly, “Let us pray.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Six months later, Father Allen and the young pastor, driving across the
+prairie, stopped again at the Marshall home. Only the wife was within.
+In answer to a whispered inquiry from the older man, as he departed,
+she said gently, but with an unconscious touch of defiance in her
+speech: “I am happy, of course. He is mine, now--all mine. One does not
+fear the dead.”
+
+It was not quite a look of peace that filled her eyes as they left her
+gazing wistfully down the length of the level road.
+
+A mile beyond, at the other side of the broad prairie farm, was the
+little cottage where the dead Rose had spent the first brief months
+of her married life. It had never been occupied since by strangers.
+A marble shaft gleamed through the trees near by. Against the fence
+surrounding this leaned John Marshall, absorbed in contemplation of
+the two flower-grown mounds within. His horse, in the road at a little
+distance, neighed impatiently, but the watcher gave no heed.
+
+“It seemed to me expedient,” said Father Allen, half to himself, as
+they drove, unnoticed, by; “but I may have been wrong. The Lord knows.”
+
+
+
+
+THE SOLUTION OF A TEXT
+
+
+  There is a conviction among certain educated people that with
+  increased intellectual culture comes a keener susceptibility to
+  pleasure and pain. Is it so? Turn anywhere among the “short and
+  simple annals of the poor,” and we can find passion, and romance, and
+  tragedy. They do not call these incidents of life by such names; they
+  only live them. When love or suffering--and what else is life?--comes
+  to us, we can analyze our emotions, and label them with high-sounding
+  words; we can tell of them in verse, or in language compared to which
+  theirs is but an inarticulate cry. Are our feelings, therefore,
+  deeper?
+
+“Slave! Yassum, an’ sot free by de prockelmation. Hab I lib in dis yer
+house so long an’ yo’ nebah know I’se done been a slave?” And Aunty
+Smith, the African dame, who represented that domestic institution
+known as “our girl,” gave the fire a vigorous poke.
+
+“Tell yo’ ’bout it? Dar ain’t nuffin’ to tell wuth the while for yo’ to
+listen. An’ ole niggah ain’t got no hist’ry--dat’s for white folkses.
+Didn’t I heah yo’ a readin’ ’bout de hist’ry ob Jawge Washin’ton--an’
+den talkin’ to me? Sho!”
+
+The black lips parted over broad white teeth in a quick laugh, but
+no smile touched the solemn eyes given to her race by generations of
+bondage.
+
+“Time to be a-takin’ yo’ quinine, honey; bettah take it mighty reg’lah
+ef yo’ specks to get dem chills bruck. ‘Trouble?’ Yas, indeedy, I’s
+had heaps ob trouble, but I nebah did go roun’ talkin’ ’bout it. Makes
+mattahs wuss to be forebber a-talkin’ an’ a-talkin’ ob yer trials. An’
+I’s allus noticed dis yer fac’, dat mos’ people likes to tell deir
+own ’sperience ’stiddy o’ hearin’ ’bout yours. Co’se I has to tell
+somebody an’ I tells de Lawd, but ’pears like de Lawd’s a long way
+off, sometimes. Ef I could be shore dat He allus heard a pore niggah I
+couldn’t nebah grieve no mo’.”
+
+“Has doubt seized the believers?” I thought. “If the rest of us were
+sure of that one thing what burdens would be lifted!”
+
+“I’s done been mahied fo’ times. Yassum! By de preachah ebry time; dey
+couldn’t hab no foolishness wid dis chile. My first husband’s name
+was Cæsah Mahshall. He b’longed to Kunnel Mahshall, who at dat time
+was courtin’ my mastah’s daughtah, Miss Betty, an’ ob course Cæsah he
+spen’ a heap ob time ’round dar. Cæsah he a likely boy, an’ all de gals
+tort dey gwine git him. But laws! I knowed he didn’t keer for none
+o’ dem niggahs. I did keep a mighty keen eye, dough, on Lize. She a
+yaller gal allus a-rollin’ her eyes an’ tossin’ her head, an’ thinkin’
+herself good as white folkses; one o’ dese yer sly kind, too, a sayin’
+flatterin’ things dat make a man think she a-dyin’ for lub o’ him. I
+gib her mighty little chance to try any of her sassy tricks on Cæsah.
+Men’s dat pow’ful vain--you des know it’s so, honey--dey swallahs
+ebry soft an’ sugary speech ob de female sect as ef ’twar de libin’
+trufe. But Cæsah he wouldn’t hab no one but des’ me. He sayed I was
+like Solomon’s wife dat de Bible tells ob, ‘black but comely.’ I ax
+de preachah once ef Solomon was a cullud gemlan. He look scared, an’
+sayed he couldn’t ’splain dat tex’ to an ig’nant pusson like me; sayed
+it didn’t mean what it sayed, but was a yallerglory ’bout de chu’ch.
+Preachahs don’t know ebry thing more’n we’uns, an’ what’s de use for
+twis’ de words ob de good book diff’rent from what dey is?
+
+“Well, Cæsah an’ me we done got mahied, an’ lived in a little cabin
+neah my mastah’s house, cause I had to wo’k hahd waitin’ on ole mistis
+an’ de young ladies. Dey wore heaps ob fine muslins an’ lawns in dem
+days an’ no one could do de washin’ an’ i’nin’ to suit dem but me. But
+I had a little time in my own house an’ Cæsah he come often. I was dat
+happy I went roun’ singin’ from mawnin’ twel night; neber tort ’bout
+the nex’ day an’ what it might bring fo’th. Ef I was too happy with de
+things ob dis worl’, de Lawd knows my heart been heavy dis many yeahs
+to pay foh it. ’Pears like all dat’s happen since has des’ teched de
+outside ob my feelin’s an’ lef’ all de heavenly sweetness ob dat time
+shet off to itself.
+
+“De time went by twel one mawnin’ in de summah Cæsah he agwine to come
+an’ tote de chile ober in de hills to a camp-meetin’. She was two munce
+old, an’ I hadn’t neber had her ’way from home befo’. Dar’s no tellin’
+how proud we bofe was ob dat baby.
+
+“Dat mawnin’ I dress her an’ I waited. De people roun’ de place dey get
+ready an’ go. None ob dem stopped to talk, but I ’membered aft’wards
+dey look mighty queah at me. Lize, dat yaller gal I’se tellin’ yo’ ob,
+she run back an’ hug de baby. Yo’ pore crittah, I thought, yo’d gib all
+dat finery for sich a honey-drop!
+
+“An’ I waited. Plenty things might ob happen for to keep Cæsah away,
+so I sang Rosy to sleep. Den somehow I ’gan to ’member de looks an’
+de whispers dat I hadn’t noticed at de time, an’ it seem to grow
+dark, dough de sun was a-shinin’; an’ de chills crep ober me. Ole
+mistis’s mockin’-bird up at de big house, how it did sing! I ’spise
+a mockin’-bird eber sence. I waited--an’ aft’ while ole mistis come
+walkin’ down the paf. She was bawn an’ raised in de Nawf, was ole
+mistis, an’ neber ’peared to like de black people. She hab berry sharp
+eyes--’bout de color ob de blade ob a new razah,--an’ when she come
+close an’ look at me I felt as ef dey cut me clean froo. She hab a soft
+voice, an’ dar was a little smile on her face when she tole me--she
+tole me--she stretch up an’ pick some yaller roses from de bush dat
+grow’d ober de do’, an’ she say dat if I ’spect to git to camp-meetin’
+I better be agwine; dat I’d haf to pack de chile de whole way, for
+Cæsah he fur ’nough off now. She tole me he been sold down Souf, whar
+he’d be ’bliged to pick cotton an’ git ober some ob his fine notions.
+
+“When she were gone ’way I tore de yaller rosebush down an’ tromp it
+undah my feet. Aftah dat for a spell I don’t rightly ’member what
+happened. Dey tole me dat Cæsah he try to ’scape frum de tradahs; dat
+dey chase him wid de dogs, an’ when de men tort he gwine to cross de
+ribah dey done shoot him dead. Heabenly Mastah! an’ I lubed him so!
+
+“I lib through it all. Many a woman, black or white, could tell yo’ dat
+she goes on a-libin’ an’ every night a-prayin’ de Lawd her soul to take.
+
+“I foun’ out dat Kunnel Mahshall he felt so mighty pore dat he had to
+sell some of his people. De Kunnel he one o’ de real Kentucky gemlen;
+great man to be a-bettin’ an’ a-hoss racin’. He’d loss a heap of money
+on his fas’ hoss, ’kase it wasn’t so fas’ as some o’ de rest, an’ he
+an’ Miss Betty gwine to be mahied; so ob co’se he must hab money--an’
+he sold Cæsah.
+
+“Den Rosy died; an’ when I look at her in de little coffin I’s dat glad
+I couldn’t cry. I’s glad, honey, ’kase she nebber hab no trouble.
+
+“Well, de time go on, an’ diff’rent men dey ax me to marry, but I tole
+dem to go off ’bout deir business. But laws! a man cain’t b’lieve a
+woman don’t keer nuffin fer him! So dey kep hangin’ roun’ twel Mistis
+she say I mus’ marry. Mistis she hab a thrifty turn an’ wanted all her
+people to marry an’ raise chillen, kase chillen proputty in dem days.
+Bless de Lawd! I didn’t hab no mo’ chillen fer her to count as I do de
+pigs.
+
+“At las’ I mahied Big Tom to git shet ob him, but I done miss it, fer
+shore as yo’ lib, dat crittah tuck de kinsumption. He war de mos’
+misable, no-’count niggah I ’member to hab knowed. I waited on dat man
+night an’ day, an’ like to run my laigs off; tried to be as good to
+him as ef he were de light ob my eyes; but nuffin pleased him no ways.
+One day he shied a flat-i’n at me an’ cut a gash ober my lef’ year. De
+scar’s dah yit. I’s pow’ful mad den, an’ says I, ‘Ole man, ye kin cough
+yo’ livah an’ lights up foh all me, an’ de soonah de bettah.’
+
+“’Bout dat time mastah done send him down de ribah on some business.
+Tom he were mastah’s right han’, an’ mastah didn’t pay no ’tention to
+de kinsumption dat he say ailded him. Well, de steamboat blowed up,
+an’ I s’pose Tom done get blowed up too, for I’s neber seed him since.
+
+“Aft’ dat, a spell, I mahied Joe, ’kase he was lively, an’ kept us all
+a-laughin’ with his jokes. He played de fiddle like an angel, too, an’
+when I sot an’ listened, seemed as ef I could see beyond the stahs
+clar into de New Jerusalem. But Joe didn’t have good jedgment ’bout
+some mattahs. De wah was gwine on by dis time, an’ nuffin’ would do
+but Joe he mus’ go with Kunnel Mahshall down into Jawgy for to jine de
+’federate ahmy. De Kunnel was his mastah, but he didn’t hab to go. He
+was gwine to be a drummah, an’ was dat heedless he nevah ’flected dad
+he was on de wrong side; reckon he nevah s’posed dar’d be anything else
+but playin’ on de fife an’ drum. In de berry fust’ skrimmage dey had,
+Joe was killed. Might a knowed he’d hab bad luck, an’ I tole him so
+’fore he went. Joe had a good heart, dough, an’ I don’t ‘spect de Lawd
+will be hahd on him for habin’ been bawn so giddy.
+
+“Aftah while, when de prockelmation set de culled people free, de
+family bruck up, an’ I went up to Louieville for to get washin’ an
+i’nin’. Dah I met Mistah Smith at pra’r-meetin’. He were pow’ful in
+pra’r, an’ he seem struck with my ’pearance (I had on my violent dress
+for de fust time). At de second pra’r-meetin’ he tole me he’d had a
+hebenly vision which sayed I was to be his second pahtnah. Co’se I
+couldn’t stan’ out ’gainst de will ob de Lawd, an’ dat’s why I’s now
+Mrs. Smith. His name was Obadiah, but he ’quested me for to call him
+Mistah Smith; sayed it ’corded bettah wid de condition ob de woman to
+be ’spectful to de husban’; man, he say, bein’ so s’perior.
+
+“Mistah Smith an’ me we done git along comf’tably twel he died, which
+was des befo’ I come heah. I nebah had no fault to fine, ’cept dat he
+did talk too much ’bout de fust Mrs. Smith. I’s had a heap ob trouble
+wid dat boy ob hers, but I’s tried to do my juty by him. I’s whipped
+him once a week reg’lah, ’kase he’s pow’ful bad, but he’s mos’ too big
+for me now, an’ I’se ’fraid de debbil’ll ketch him.
+
+“What’ll I do in hebben wid so many husban’s? I won’t hab but one,
+bless de Lawd, an’ dat’s Cæsah. Tom he won’t be dah; Joe he’ll be so
+tuck up wid de harps an’ de banjos dat he won’t think ob nuffin’ else;
+an’ Mistah Smith can ’joy hisself wid dat fust wife.
+
+“I’ll hab Cæsah an’ I’ll hab Rosy, an’ we’ll hab a little mansion with
+a passion vine an’ roses roun’ de do’; an’ we’ll be happy for ebber an’
+ebber. Glory! Glory!”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The light that shone on the black face as she turned away was a token
+of faith and hope; an outward sign of an inward grace the whitest of us
+seldom wear.
+
+Floating back to the room, like an echo of a thought, came a triumphant
+voice:
+
+  “Dah ebahlasting spring abides,
+   An’ nevah fading flowahs.”
+
+
+
+
+AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE
+
+
+Mrs. Abner Hale and Mrs. Silas Adams walked slowly out Main street
+after the regular Thursday meeting of the Branchville Ladies’ Literary
+Circle. When these ladies organized their society they decided to call
+it a circle instead of a club, because the latter word sounded “so
+mannish, somehow.”
+
+“That was a beautiful paper of Alfaretta Miller’s on theosophy,” Mrs.
+Hale remarked, in rather a questioning way.
+
+“Oh, lovely!” said her companion, in the tone women use when they wish
+to be agreeable, no matter what their real thoughts may be concerning
+the matter under discussion. “Yes, Alfaretta can write on most any
+subject. She’s got a good mind. She’s a credit to our Circle.”
+
+“What idea did you get from the paper?” pursued Mrs. Hale,
+hesitatingly, and then, with an impetuous outburst, “Martha Adams, what
+_is_ theosophy, anyway?”
+
+“Land! Mrs. Hale, don’t ask me. I haven’t the faintest idea, and never
+expect to have, if I should hear a dozen papers. Alfaretta wanted me
+to be prepared to discuss the subject and loaned me a book to read up
+in, but it made me dizzy. I did copy a sentence or two out, though,
+that I meant to recite off at the proper time, just to show that I
+wasn’t ignorant, but I forgot it. To tell the truth, I kind of lost
+track of what she was saying in studying out just how the trimming
+was fixed on Jennie Wilson’s new silk waist. I’m making one for my
+Sis, you know. Near as I can get at it, from all I’ve read and heard,
+theosophy is a sort of spiritualism that the heathen believe in and
+that our folks have taken up out of curiosity--sort of a moony, spooky
+thing, with spheres and mahatmas--whatever they are--and astral bodies,
+and ever-so-many-times-on-earth, and all that kind of foolishness.
+I ain’t sure that it’s quite the thing to talk about in our Circle.
+Some that’s not so well balanced as you and me might be influenced by
+it. Not but what there’s deep things that it would be real satisfying
+to know about. Sometimes I think there’s something genuine about
+spiritualism--the rapping and slate-writing kind.”
+
+Mrs. Hale looked at the speaker with an expression of severe
+disapproval, but had no chance to utter a word of protest before that
+voluble lady began again.
+
+“Yes, I do, Mrs. Hale. Lemme tell you something.” Here Mrs. Adams’s
+voice was lowered to a confidential whisper, although no one was within
+sight or hearing. “The most of it’s foolishness, I’ll allow, and
+there’s a lot of humbuggery about it, but there’s queer, unaccountable
+things, too. Cousin Jim Lawson’s wife was telling me one of ’em the
+last time I was in Indianapolis. She’d been to visit a slate-writing
+medium and had had a communication from her mother, who’d died suddenly
+not long before when she was away from home on a visit. Cousin Jim’s
+wife couldn’t reconcile herself to having no last word, and so she went
+to this medium, who, it seems, is no common person, but a real lady.
+She’d always had the power, but only a few knew about it, and she never
+thought of earning money by it until after she was left a widow and had
+to do something to make a living for herself and little girl.”
+
+“Well”--and here the whisper grew more impressive--“Cousin Jim’s wife,
+she went and never told her name or anything, and right inside of that
+double slate, with the medium’s hands laid flat on top in plain sight,
+came a message signed by her mother, Eunice Bascom, telling her she
+(Mrs. Bascom) was very happy, was glad to have the opportunity to talk
+to her and urge her to be reconciled, and also to tell her to give her
+(the mother’s) cashmere dress and her wrappers and aprons to Jane,
+the other daughter, and to keep the new black silk and the fur collar
+herself. Cousin Jim’s wife said you could a’ knocked her down with a
+feather. The thought had come to her several times that that would be
+a fair way to divide their mother’s things, seeing she had so much
+more use for dressy clothes than Jane, who lived in the country and
+never went anywhere, but she hadn’t had the clothes in mind that day
+at all, and had no notion anything would be said about them. It was
+a real comfort to her, though, to have what you might call official
+authority for disposing of the garments, for she’d been a little afraid
+Jane would be inclined to complain; so she bought the slate with the
+writing on and took it home with her. Now, Mrs. Hale, wasn’t that
+remarkable?”
+
+“It seems to me,” protested that lady in reply, “that I shouldn’t
+like to have my mother come back from the other world to talk about
+clothes,” but as she was going on to express her fixed objection
+to such doings, such unholy tampering with sacred things, as she
+considered it, they reached Mrs. Adams’s gate, and that sprightly
+person, after unavailingly urging her companion to enter, hurried in,
+saying she would sew a little on Sis’s waist before dark.
+
+Mrs. Hale, who was not really a townswoman at all, but a farmer’s wife,
+and lived nearly a mile beyond the point where the highway ceased to
+be a street and became the pike, went leisurely on her way over the
+quiet country road, saying to herself, with a shake of the head, that
+Martha Adams was a good soul, but too ready to believe everything she
+heard. Then her mind drifted to other matters. She always remembered
+her wandering thoughts of that afternoon, and sometimes spoke of them
+long after, as showing how little foreknowledge has the human mind. She
+thought complacently of her own paper on the French Revolution, which
+she had read before the Circle the week previous. She was sixty years
+old and had never done such a thing before, and it was a great event in
+her life, but she told her husband, when it was over, that she didn’t
+see but what her piece was “full as good as the average.” She owned
+frankly that she got the most of it from the encyclopedia and the rest
+from an old magazine belonging to Joe, “but, of course, they couldn’t
+expect me to write a thing like that out of my own head,” she said,
+“and if I used the same language, why, what’s the difference? I’m sure
+I couldn’t have said it as well, and, anyway, it was all new to the
+Circle.”
+
+But the Circle soon passed into the background on this autumn
+afternoon, and Joe, never far from the front in the mother’s mind,
+occupied her thoughts exclusively--Joe, the son of her old age, she
+called him. He was a young civil engineer, and through the influence of
+an instructor in the school of which he was a graduate had had the good
+fortune, as he considered it, to be made one of a government surveying
+party to Alaska that summer, starting in April. He was on his way home
+now. A letter had come from Seattle saying he had left the party,
+which was coming east over the northern route, and was about to go
+down the coast in a small sailing vessel, whose captain had happened
+to take a liking to him. He did this because it was inexpensive and
+he wanted a glimpse of California, not knowing when he should visit
+the western coast again. He must have reached San Francisco by this
+time, his mother reflected, and another letter was nearly due, though
+possibly he would not think it worth while to write, he was coming so
+soon himself. Mrs. Hale’s fond heart beat faster at the very thought
+of seeing her boy once more, and as she looked about her over the
+fields, golden with the September sunshine, the sight, dear from long
+association, seemed to take on a new charm. It was a beautiful world,
+she thought, not realizing that it was the contentment of her soul that
+made the Indiana landscape doubly fair.
+
+She entered the door of her home with a song in her heart and upon
+her lips. She put her bonnet carefully away, and, with a look at the
+clock to assure herself that she had yet a few minutes before it was
+time to prepare supper for Abner and the hired man, she sat down to
+rest and to glance at the paper she had brought from the post-office.
+She opened the sheet and looked over it with mild interest. What fate
+turned her eyes straight upon the obscure paragraph that in times of
+much news would have found no space in the inland paper? Thus blindly
+and unsuspectingly are we led into the tragedies of our lives. It was a
+brief dispatch, dated at San Francisco, and mentioning the sinking of
+the schooner Yakima through being run down by the steamship Montana.
+The Yakima was bound for San Francisco with a cargo of coal, and filled
+and sank so rapidly after the collision that only one person on board
+escaped. The Montana put out her boats and picked up one sailor, who
+reported that in addition to the crew the schooner had had on board one
+passenger, a man from Indiana named Hale. The cause of the accident
+would be investigated and the responsibility fixed, said the dispatch.
+
+The mind comprehends slowly the full meaning of death when a loved
+one has gone. It is only as weeks and months pass that the loss, the
+desolation, the awful loneliness are realized. Sitting with her paper
+in her hand that afternoon, Mrs. Hale saw her husband coming through
+the orchard, and her first conscious thought was one of pity for him
+that he had no son. Concerning her own bereavement she had, as yet,
+no sensation; the sudden blow had made her numb. She watched him come
+slowly and heavily through the gate and up the walk--a gray-haired man,
+with bent shoulders, who had not kept his youthful elasticity as had
+his wife.
+
+“He has not many years of grief to bear,” she said, as she went out to
+him, bearing the message of evil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The history of the next few days she could hardly have told later. She
+went about her household tasks mechanically, for the living must eat
+and drink, though the best loved lie dead, but her mind wandered far
+and scarce knew what her hands did. There was a sending of telegraphic
+messages, a writing of letters and the gathering of all the information
+that could be secured, but this was little more than the first
+newspaper dispatch had contained. The Yakima had sunk, only one person
+on board had been picked up at the time--which was just after midnight
+on the 20th of September--and the sea being rough that night there was
+no probability, even had any one been overlooked in the careful search
+made, that a survivor could have remained afloat till morning.
+
+Hope, catching at the faintest chance, died hard, but when weeks went
+by and brought no word Joseph Hale’s death was accepted as a certainty.
+His mother put on a black gown; his father went to and fro about his
+work with a look that made the neighbors say he was aging fast; they
+tried to bear their affliction with the fortitude and resignation
+becoming to their Christian professions, but they knew that for them
+the zest of life had passed with their son’s going, and that the years
+to come must be endured, not enjoyed. They read the grief in each
+other’s eyes, but spoke little of it, Abner being taciturn at all
+times, and his wife, like so many men and women of the Anglo-Saxon
+race, never having learned to express her deepest emotions in words.
+
+One day in October services in memory of the young man were held in
+the Presbyterian church. Sympathy with the bereaved parents was deep,
+and the curious, but not unkindly, desire of their friends to see how
+they were affected by the remarks of the minister, and how they bore
+their sorrow, caused the emotion of a young woman near the door to go
+unnoticed. She was Nellie Hamilton, a teacher in one of the village
+schools. She and Joe Hale had known each other all their lives, and
+were on such friendly footing and so free from self-consciousness
+that no one had thought of them as lovers. She had been aware for
+a long time of the state of her own affections, but it was only a
+few days before his departure that Joe had begun to learn where his
+heart belonged. She had seen the awakening in his eyes; she had felt
+it in the subtle change of manner; she had read his secret through
+the prescience of her own love, and her heart leaped in her bosom
+and was glad. He had not spoken before he went away, but she did not
+feel the less secure, for she saw also that he had not discovered her
+secret, and was in that state of doubt where he feared to test his
+fate. Maiden-like, and with a touch of coquetry, she had refrained
+from betraying a hint of the truth, coyly holding back, confident in
+the knowledge that when she chose to offer a sign he would come. Not
+long since had come a letter telling her that on his return he had a
+question to ask--one which he had “always thought a man ought to be
+brave enough to put to a woman face to face, and not by letter.” A
+reply would not have reached him had she written it, and now he was
+dead; he was dead and would never know; was dead and she had not the
+right to weep for him, but must go about with calm face, for she had
+not let him speak, and he was not hers in the sight of the world. She
+envied his mother the liberty of tears, of outspoken grief and of
+unsmiling face. Life was bitter.
+
+The days went on drearily. Mrs. Hale neglected the Ladies’ Circle,
+the Missionary Society and all the various interests that had made
+her social world, and, shut in her rural home, brooded over her loss.
+October passed and November came, with heavier rains and more lowering
+clouds, it seemed, than ever November had had before. Thanksgiving day
+approached, and Mrs. Hale grew restless. On that day it had been the
+custom to invite to dinner all the kinfolk living thereabout, but this
+time she and her husband could not make festivity for themselves or
+others. When the morning came Mrs. Hale arose and went about her tasks
+with an unusual look of determination.
+
+“Father,” she said to her husband at breakfast, “I don’t feel as if I
+could go to our church this morning, and I am going into the city. I
+know you don’t want to go, so I sha’n’t ask you. I’ll come out on the
+one-o’clock train, which will give me time to have dinner by three.
+It’ll be a good dinner. I’ve fixed ready for it.”
+
+Abner offered no objection to the plan, but hitched up the horse and
+took his wife to the train, meeting her, also, upon her return. Her
+face bore a different expression, he noticed, from that it had worn in
+the morning--a brighter, more cheerful look. They chatted of various
+things on their way home--of Rev. Mr. Willetts’s sermon, which Abner
+had heard; of the music by the new choir, which Abner did not like,
+because he didn’t know what was being sung--tunes or words.
+
+“That Hamilton girl--Nellie is her name, isn’t it?--took sick in
+meeting,” he said casually. “Screamed and had to be helped out to the
+air. Hystericky, I guess.”
+
+“Poor thing!” commented his wife. “I expect she’s overworked and run
+down. I must ask her out to spend some Sunday. She and Joe used to be
+good friends.”
+
+They ate their Thanksgiving dinner rather silently and their thanks
+were not fervent, but perhaps the Lord forgave them, knowing their sore
+hearts. It was not till dinner was over and Abner’s chores done that
+Mrs. Hale disclosed the purpose of her morning’s visit to Indianapolis
+and its result. It had not occurred to her husband’s rather slow-moving
+mind, until that moment, that she had as yet said nothing about it.
+He had assumed that she had attended a city church and had received
+consolation from the words of the pastor. If she was nervous over the
+confession of a different course of action she did not betray the
+feeling, but went boldly about it.
+
+“Father, I’ve got something to tell you. I went in town to-day and
+visited a spiritualist medium--a slate-writer. She didn’t know I was
+coming. She didn’t know my name. She didn’t ask a question, but she
+sat down at a little table, took this little folding slate that Johnny
+Miller left here (I carried it with me), laid her hands on it, never
+a minute out of my sight, and while I was looking the little pencil
+inside began to scratch, and when it stopped here was this writing,”
+and Mrs. Hale produced the slate and began to read from its pages.
+
+“Dear Mother,” the writing ran. “Dear Mother: I am so glad you have
+come at last. Have been looking for you anxiously. I knew you grieved
+because I passed into the spirit world before you, and because you
+knew so little of the going, but I knew you never believed that one
+who had gone could ever return and talk to his friends, so was afraid
+the truth would not be impressed on you and you would not come. But it
+is true, mother. This is your own Joey boy. It was all true about the
+shipwreck; we went down without warning and were drowned. I didn’t have
+time to think about it, and you will be glad to know I didn’t suffer.
+I shouldn’t have wanted to go if I had known beforehand what was to
+happen, but it’s all right now. I am happy--perfectly happy. Everything
+is beautiful here. I can’t tell you just how it is, because we are not
+permitted, but you will know some day. Father isn’t looking well. Now
+that that affair of Lester’s is off his mind he ought to cheer up. Tell
+him not to fret about me. It’s all right. Come and talk to me again
+some day soon. Your loving son, Joseph Albert Hale.”
+
+Down in one corner was added: “What have you done with old Major? I
+don’t see him about.”
+
+Mrs. Hale read this communication, as she called it, slowly and
+impressively, but with visible excitement and elation. Then she paused
+a moment for her husband to speak, but he remained silent, and she
+burst out:
+
+“Isn’t it wonderful, Abner? I know you never believed in spiritualism,
+and neither did I, but you can’t deny that there’s something in this.
+Why, here’s Joe’s very own handwriting, and his signature, with the
+quirl at the end that he always makes and his middle name written out
+in full. That was a notion he picked up when he was at school, but I
+never could get into the fashion of addressing his letters any other
+way than ‘Joseph A.’ And in the letter he calls himself ‘Joey boy.’ I
+used to call him ‘Joey,’ you know, for a pet name. And who but Joey
+could have mentioned that trouble with his cousin Lester, when only we
+four ever knew you got the young rascal out of a scrape, and you know
+very well none of us ever mentioned it--Lester least of all. Then,
+father, he says you are not looking well, which is true, and shows he
+must have seen you. Think of that! And he missed old Major. I never
+wrote to him that the dog had died; kind of hated to. I tell you,
+father, it’s wonderful, wonderful! I never would have believed that I
+could have an atom of faith in spiritualism, and I must say that I wish
+Joe could communicate with us at first hand, and not through a total
+stranger. But this way is better than nothing, and what I’ve got here’s
+a great comfort to me. I’m going again, and if you--”
+
+Abner’s face had slowly assumed an expression that caused his wife to
+pause suddenly and observe him with some apprehension. He looked at her
+fixedly and sternly, then spoke with a voice trembling with anger:
+
+“Sarah Jane!” They addressed each other in the sweet, old-fashioned
+way, as “father” and “mother,” except on those occasions when storms
+loomed in the domestic sky. “Sarah Jane Hale, has it come to this,
+that you, a professing Christian for forty years, a member of the
+Presbyterian church in good standing; that you, the wife of a ruling
+elder, have taken up with this abominable witchcraft, and have the
+indecency to glory in it? Have you not read that the wrath of God
+comes upon those who practice such vile arts? Have you forgotten your
+religion? Do you care nothing for the safety of your immortal soul?
+I am shocked, Sarah Jane! I am astonished and grieved, and I insist
+that there shall be no more of this idolatrous business. It was
+thoughtlessness that led you to the den of the witch this time, may be,
+but the visit must not be repeated. I want you to promise not to go
+again, and I should like to hear you say you are sorry for this visit.”
+
+Mrs. Hale, after a gasp of surprise, got her breath and her bearings.
+
+“She is not a witch, but a respectable lady, I’d have you know, Abner
+Hale, and she doesn’t live in a den, but in a house that’s better than
+this one, and she’s a member of the Baptist church. And I wouldn’t
+be as narrow-minded and stiff-necked as you are for a farm. There’s
+things in this world that you haven’t found out yet, if you are a
+ruling elder; and, anyway, I won’t be dictated to just as if I were a
+disobedient child and had no judgment or rights of my own. You don’t
+seem to understand how I miss Joe. It was a real comfort to me, that
+letter from him, and I’m not sorry I went, and I shall go again if I
+want to. So there!”
+
+After which feminine outburst she threw herself upon the lounge and
+sobbed with as much abandon as if she were ten years old instead of
+sixty. Abner was not moved to compassion by her tears.
+
+“Sarah Jane,” he said, solemnly, “I am disappointed. I have always
+considered you a sensible woman--one not likely to be led away from
+true Christian principles, though at times you haven’t been as faithful
+to the means of grace as would be becoming in an elder’s wife. I know
+Joe’s death was hard on you. He was my son, too, but I haven’t found it
+necessary to consort with Satan’s emissaries for comfort. This taking
+up with evil things is a matter that calls for church discipline. It
+ought to be laid before the session, but I ain’t ready to do that yet,
+Sarah Jane. I want you to have time to consider the iniquity of your
+course before it is made public, and until you can realize it I sha’n’t
+speak a word to you, not a word from this hour.”
+
+Mrs. Hale dried her tears suddenly and sat up, looking at her husband
+with curiosity.
+
+“Are you six years old or sixty-five, Abner Hale, getting mad and ‘not
+speaking?’” she inquired, sharply.
+
+Abner deigned no reply, but wound the clock, kicked the cat out and
+slammed the door with more energy than was becoming to a ruling elder,
+then stalked majestically off to bed in silence.
+
+Mrs. Hale was not especially overcome by this exhibition of conjugal
+authority. The neighbors were wont to speak of Mr. Hale as “terribly
+set in his ways and domineering.” On account of these traits the
+women were inclined to congratulate themselves on not being married
+to him, but this feeling was not really a sound basis for an adverse
+verdict on his character. The disposition of women to wonder how other
+women can “put up” with their respective husbands arises, perhaps,
+out of feminine inability to comprehend thoroughly the idiosyncrasies
+of more than one man at a time. Not all wives are martyrs who seem
+so to outside eyes. At all events, Mrs. Hale had never so regarded
+herself, and did not now. She had lived with Abner for forty years and
+understood him. He had “ways,” and she had adapted herself to them,
+bringing him, in the long run, to her way of thinking; or, at least,
+so modifying his asperities of thought and character as to make him
+quite satisfactory to her. She had never run so directly counter to his
+prejudices as in this case, but was not alarmed at his wrath and only
+moderately resentful.
+
+“I didn’t suppose he’d take it so hard,” she said long afterward, “but
+I might have remembered that he hadn’t been thinking the matter over
+for a month or so, as I had. I ought to have talked it up to him in
+advance and got him into the notion by degrees. Poor soul! He tried
+not to show it, but he grieved for Joe every day and all day while he
+was alone at his work, and his nerves were all wrought up. Women ain’t
+the only ones that get cross and crabbed from nervousness. However,
+I wasn’t going to give in right at once. I didn’t want him to think
+he could dictate to me that way. It doesn’t do to give a man such an
+advantage, even once.”
+
+Down in the village that Thanksgiving night, while this domestic
+episode took place in the farm-house, pretty Nellie Hamilton lay upon
+her bed with wide-open eyes, staring into the dark, her mind intent
+upon the experience of the morning. The choir had performed its final
+“voluntary,” the minister had just given out his text, “Let us come
+before His presence with thanksgiving,” and the congregation was
+settling itself into the pews, when choir, minister and people faded
+out of sight and she looked upon a far different scene--not only looked
+upon it, but seemed a part of it. There before her, almost at her
+feet, was a lake, half shadowed by a mountain, whose bare and rocky
+summit pierced the sky. A vivid green forest, whose appearance was
+strange and tropical, circled the water and was thick about her. In a
+little opening were two or three huts, and near them, swung between two
+trees, was a hammock, in which lay her lover, Joe Hale. Pale and ill
+he looked, but was unmistakably Joe. As she stood, or seemed to stand,
+ready to step forward to his side, so softly as not to awaken him, she
+became aware of a swarthy, half-clothed foreign-looking man slipping
+toward the hammock from the further side. His face wore an evil look,
+and he glanced furtively about. His hand crept toward the pocket in the
+breast of the flannel shirt worn by the occupant of the hammock, but
+the movement, soft as it was, roused the sleeper, and he started up.
+Quicker than it could be told, a bright blade flashed in the air, blood
+spurted over the sick man’s breast and he fell back as if dead. It was
+at this moment that Nellie Hamilton startled the congregation with a
+scream, and was assisted to her home under the belief that she was
+suddenly taken ill.
+
+Lying there, puzzling over it, she could not solve the mystery. It
+could not be a dream. She had just seated herself when the vision came,
+and had had no time in which to grow drowsy if she were so inclined.
+She was thinking of Joe at the time; it was seldom in those days that
+he was far from her mind, but she pictured him as battling with fierce
+waves, and as sinking slowly, surely, and, at last, despairingly, into
+their cruel depths--a hideous vision that haunted her, awake or asleep.
+She had never associated him with far southern lands; she had never
+been outside of her own state of Indiana, yet she knew that an actual
+tropical landscape could never be more real to her than this phantasmal
+scene of the morning. She could almost see it yet--the shining green
+of trees, whose names she did not know, the vines that stretched from
+branch to branch like great serpents, the rank undergrowth, the intense
+blue of the sky, the mountain, with its upper height a bare, stony
+peak. What did it mean? She remembered hearing her Scotch grandfather
+talk mysteriously of second sight, but had never troubled herself to
+know just what he meant, and she had never before had an experience
+like this. Besides, if Joe had been drowned in the Pacific, and he must
+have been drowned, or he would have been heard from long ago, this
+vision must have been a delusion. Could she be losing her mind? she
+wondered drearily, and fell at last into troubled sleep.
+
+The days and weeks dragged slowly by, Abner Hale kept strictly to the
+letter of his threat to speak no word to his wife until she showed
+signs of repentance for what he considered her ill conduct. She
+addressed him freely when occasion required, and sometimes when it did
+not, but he made the hired man his medium of communication, directing
+his remarks ostensibly to that personage, but really to Mrs. Hale; and
+the hired man, being but a stupid creature, concerned more with eating
+all that was set before him than with what went on in the house,
+never discovered that he was used as a convenience. With neighbors who
+dropped in Abner talked freely and even eagerly, which, in view of his
+usual taciturnity, caused them some surprise. Once his wife detected
+him furtively examining the slate containing Joe’s letter, which she
+kept in a drawer of Joe’s old desk, but he showed no sign of interest
+when she made another visit to the city, and he had reason to assume
+that she again visited the woman he had denounced as an agent of the
+evil one.
+
+She did, in fact, visit that person, not once, but twice or more, as
+the holidays drew near, and she felt the need of aid in resisting
+the depressing influences of other people’s gayety. Each time was
+repeated, with somewhat greater amplification, the story that had been
+told on the slate the first day. Each time some allusions were made
+or questions asked which convinced her anew that Joe’s spirit must
+inspire the pencil’s movements, since none but he and herself had
+knowledge of the matters involved. Each time came the assurance afresh
+that the unseen writer was Joe, her son, come back to her in this way
+from the other world. She could not doubt that this was true, but
+somehow the slate writings did not continue to be the comfort to her
+that she had first found them. There was a consciousness of something
+lacking, something unsatisfactory; there was a barrier between her
+and her son that she could not overcome. He told her so little, after
+all. It dawned on her one day that he had really written nothing that
+she had not herself known or believed before. She was thinking of
+this as she left the station one afternoon on her way home from one
+of these visits, and had wondered if it would not be just as well to
+fall in with Abner’s notions and tell him she was willing to give up
+the medium. “But I won’t do it just yet,” she decided. “He hasn’t been
+behaving well, and I don’t want to encourage him in such doings by
+giving in so easily. He ought to come half way, anyhow, and I think he
+will before long. He’s getting very uneasy.”
+
+Nevertheless, she sighed as she thought of her silent home, and when
+she chanced to meet Nellie Hamilton, something wistful in the girl’s
+face attracted her notice and she urged her to accompany her to the
+farm. Visitors were always welcome now.
+
+“Come out and spend the afternoon with me, and if, as you say, you must
+be home to-night, Abner will bring you.”
+
+It was the last day of the year, but the clear, crisp air and the
+bright sunshine brought suggestions of spring, and both women felt
+cheered in a vague way when they reached the country home. Mrs.
+Hale talked to Nellie of her lost son that afternoon, and found a
+sympathetic listener. She related anecdotes of his boyhood; she brought
+out the tintypes and photographs he had had taken at various stages of
+his career; she showed specimens of his handiwork about the house; she
+told how thoughtful and considerate he was always and what a source
+of comfort. But with all the confidences bestowed she did not mention
+her visits to the medium or the story on the slate; all that was
+too intimate an experience to relate to this girl, who, for all her
+evident appreciation of Joe, might have an ignorant prejudice against
+spiritualistic manifestations. She had had it herself not so long ago.
+Nor did Nellie Hamilton venture to tell the elder woman of her vision
+on Thanksgiving day, nor of the later one the day before Christmas.
+
+It rained on the latter occasion, and as she stood on the school-house
+step, looking up the dreary street, after the children had gone home,
+suddenly street and houses vanished, the dark sky cleared, and before
+her stretched a wide sweep of gray, sandy desert, patches of gray-green
+vegetation only adding to the dreariness; not far distant were barren
+hills, and beyond them arose mountains, gray, too, and craggy, with
+lines of white near their summits, glittering in the pitiless sunshine.
+Almost at her feet lay a horse, gasping as if for breath, his tongue,
+cracked and bleeding, hanging from his mouth. Near him a man was
+stretched face downward on the sand. As she looked he raised his head,
+and, with dull eyes, gazed drearily about, but she had not needed the
+movement to know that the man was Joe Hale. He was gaunt of frame,
+but his face was brown, not white, as she had seen it the other time,
+and there was a red scar on his forehead not there before. The gray
+desert stretched away until it melted into the horizon line, and no
+other creature was in sight in all its space. But while she looked,
+and before she could take the one step forward that seemed to divide
+her from the man she loved, the scene was changed, and she stood upon
+the school-house steps, staring blankly into the muddy street of
+Branchville.
+
+She began to be afraid of herself, and would have liked to take Joe’s
+mother into her confidence and ask what these visions could mean, but
+had not the courage. So the two women talked together about one who
+was so dear to both, and each kept from the other her closest thoughts
+concerning him. After supper, when the guest would go, pleading duties
+that demanded her attention in the early New Year’s morning, Abner
+entreated delay, and as they sat about the fire he, too, conscious of
+sympathy, fell to relating stories of the dear lost son. And while
+they talked the gate opened, a step was heard on the walk, then on the
+porch, and Mrs. Hale, her face suddenly radiant with hope and joy, rose
+swiftly, and before he could touch the latch opened the door to her
+son. The intuition of the mother rose superior at this moment to the
+mysterious power that brought visions from far off to the younger woman.
+
+There were laughter and tears, kisses and embraces, and if the visitor
+shared these neither father nor mother stopped to wonder. There were
+incoherent questions and answers when all talked at once and no one
+listened; there was silence of deep emotion as the parents looked
+upon their boy, who had been lost and was found, and put their hands
+upon him again and again to be convinced anew that he was truly in
+the flesh. And when the excitement quieted they all gathered close
+while Joe told them the story of his adventures; how he had been
+shipwrecked, as they had read in the papers; how the steamship had made
+little effort instead of much to save its victims; how he had clung
+to a floating plank till morning and had been picked up by a tramp
+boat which had mysterious errands, whose nature he did not inquire, to
+Central American ports, and was anxious to avoid California harbors for
+reasons that he suspected to have connection with customs officers.
+
+He told how, at his own solicitation, he was put ashore at the first
+Guatemalan port, and how, instead of being able to work his way back
+to San Francisco, as he had hoped, being without money after the
+shipwreck, he fell ill with fever and would have fared badly but for a
+party of American miners and prospectors, themselves scant of funds,
+who ran across him, doctored him, and took him far into the interior
+before he fairly realized their kind purpose. They were going north
+overland in search of one of the famous lost mines of Mexico, to whose
+location they thought they had a clew. It was a wild country they
+traveled through, and their journeying was slow. They did not come near
+the civilization of which railroad trains and telegraph wires were a
+part, and so he wrote no letters, but looked forward to the day when he
+should reach home in person, and fretted that progress was so slow.
+
+“I had one or two close calls,” he said lightly, with the disregard for
+dangers past common to the young. “While I was lying in a hammock one
+day (it was the Thanksgiving day here, by the way, and I was dreaming
+of home), a Mexican thief crept up and gave me this,” touching a scar
+on his forehead, “and another on my shoulder. He aimed at my heart,
+of course, and it’s a wonder he missed. And only last Monday, just a
+week ago to-day, I thought I was gone. I had left my friends to their
+rainbow chasing and started to make the rest of the way to Tucson
+alone. I wandered off the trail, my skeleton of a horse broke down--we
+were both famished for water--and I thought for a bit that the jig was
+up. But while I was on the sand thinking the matter over, what did I
+hear--or, rather, feel--but the faint jarring of a railroad train and
+the echo of a far-off whistle! It was miles away, but I knew I was all
+right. It was the sweetest music I ever heard. Actually, the old horse
+pricked up his ears, scrambled to his feet and jogged on. We struck the
+track after two or three hours and followed it to a station. From there
+I got to Tucson, where Tom Bailey, my old room-mate, is, and he lent me
+money to get home with. So here I am.”
+
+The women shuddered at the tale, and looked upon this youth, who talked
+so carelessly of his perils, as a hero of heroes.
+
+The hour grew late, and Nellie, making a movement of withdrawal, found
+Joe eager with his proposal to accompany her. She was unwilling to
+disturb the family group, but read entreaty in the young man’s eyes,
+and so declined her hostess’s invitation to remain. They scorned the
+thought of driving, and went out gayly to walk the short mile on the
+highway, that was to them that night a path to paradise. Under the
+moonlit sky Joe asked her the question he had said ought never to be
+written, and she whispered her answer so low that even the owl blinking
+in the tree overhead could not hear. But Joe heard.
+
+As they loitered down the road, unmindful that it was the season of
+frost and not of roses, she told him of her visions, and a wonder fell
+upon them that she had seen so true. Yet, after all, they reflected,
+with the beautiful confidence of youth in the supreme power of love, it
+was not so strange that two souls in such harmony as theirs should come
+to each other across the world. As they looked up at the starry sky,
+thinking of this, heaven seemed very near, and they caught a glimpse of
+its mysteries. Then the bells rang that ushered in a new year, and they
+felt that it was the beginning of life for them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Back in the farm-house another subject was under discussion. Mrs. Hale
+had stood in the doorway looking after her son with a pang at her heart
+in spite of her joy at his return. Sudden insight had come to her, and
+she knew that though the lost was found he would never be all her own
+again. She sighed as she shut the door and turned, with absent-minded
+gaze, toward her husband. He sat by the fire, with a hand on each knee
+and a puzzled expression on his face. Through all the confusion and
+excitement of the evening he had remained faithful to his promise, and
+had not addressed a word to his wife, but now, without preamble, and as
+if no silence had intervened, he began:
+
+“Mother, what do you reckon it was that made the writing on them slates
+at Madame Victorine’s?”
+
+“I don’t know,” she answered. “It certainly wasn’t Joe, for he didn’t
+get drowned and he wasn’t dead, and still some of the things written
+were family matters no one could have knowledge of but one of us three.
+But it wasn’t Madame Victorine; it was Mrs. Mary Ellen Johnson who was
+the medium.” Then, with the swift intuition of a woman who reads her
+husband like a book: “Abner Hale, I believe you went to visit Madame
+Victorine yourself to get slate writings, or you wouldn’t know anything
+about her! You did. I know by your sheepish look you did. Madame
+Victorine, of all creatures, too! Why, she isn’t a decent woman, if
+all they say’s true; five or six husbands, and nobody knows where one
+of ’em is, or whether they’re alive or dead. You ought to be ashamed
+of yourself--an elder in the church. And all the time holding off from
+speaking to your own wife.”
+
+Abner got in a word here.
+
+“I wanted to investigate a little on your account, and I thought you
+mentioned Madame Victorine,” he urged, feebly.
+
+“My account--nothing!” was her scornful ejaculation. “You were just
+filled with curiosity, for one thing, and a desire to hear from Joe,
+for another--don’t deny it! And not speaking a word to me for a whole
+month, and talking of church discipline! Huh!”
+
+Abner had risen to his feet and affected a dignity it was obvious he
+did not altogether feel.
+
+“Well, mother,” he said, in a conciliatory tone, but with the masculine
+reluctance to owning himself in the wrong clearly apparent; “well,
+mother, I guess we haven’t either of us done anything we want to talk
+about before folks. It looks as if the devil was in the thing, anyway,
+as I told you at first. I guess we’d better say nothing about the
+matter to any one--to any one, not even to Joe.”
+
+She looked at him intently and reflected for a moment, then laughed a
+little, not being without humor.
+
+“I guess so, too,” she said.
+
+And she never did mention the affair to any one but Joe, who, of
+course, told his wife.
+
+
+
+
+AN ITINERANT PAIR
+
+
+Were you ever at Michigan City, in Indiana? Stop! Let me put the
+question more carefully. Were you ever compelled to wait for a train at
+Michigan City? The first inquiry sounds innocent enough, but a Hoosier
+would detect a covert insult in it. Why? Because one of the three state
+penitentiaries is situated there and is the town’s chief distinction to
+the outside public. A native of the state living elsewhere can conceive
+of no reason why a man should voluntarily take up his residence in the
+place, or even why he should “stop off,” except to visit some erring
+and unfortunate relative. Hence, to avoid trouble, those persons in
+search of local information do well to be on their guard.
+
+I had passed through, many times, on my way to and from Chicago, but
+until this trip had never taken closer observations than through the
+car windows. To-day the “lightning express” on the Michigan Central
+road was three hours too early for the one train that in those
+days--some years ago now--daily jogged along down the road leading
+south. What should I do with the time? I looked into the waiting-room
+of the station. No passenger had left the train but myself, and the
+place was empty save for an old couple, who had evidently just come in
+from the country.
+
+I went out and explored the town. Up one street and down another
+I strolled, until the circuit was made. In every direction was
+sand--mountains of sand, valleys of sand. It was in drifts upon the
+sidewalks, in hillocks in the streets. The houses were built upon
+it. Many dwellings leaned from the perpendicular at various angles,
+according to their age, the shifty foundations had so worn away and
+blown away. Though it was a bright April day but few people were on the
+street, and these seemed in haste to disappear as soon as seen. It may
+have been a biased imagination that saw this, or the cause may have
+been the chill lake wind.
+
+Was it fancy, too, that made the women and children, visible here and
+there at the windows, seem to draw back, as if to hide? The scattering
+tufts of grass in the front yards seemed to have given over the
+ambition to cover the earth with green, and were creeping under the
+sand. Did I imagine a burden in the air, as of grief or guilt? The
+shadow of the prison seemed to hover over the place. It grew oppressive.
+
+In desperation, I resolved to climb the nearest sand-hill and view the
+world from that eminence. Perhaps I might find an elevation of spirits
+when I could survey the prospect from above. Were not poets always
+telling us to commune with nature, and thereby escape from fret and
+care; to seek the solitude of a height and see the earth grow fair
+beneath our feet, the mists and clouds melt into sunlight? Laboriously
+I crept and scrambled up the slippery side of that miserable hill. From
+the foot it had not looked far to the summit--perhaps not over one
+hundred feet--nor yet steep; but with each step forward and each slip
+back it seemed to grow, until, when half way up I stopped to breathe,
+it loomed above me like a mountain. Out to the north was Lake Michigan,
+blue and cold. Far distant could be seen the smoke of steamers;
+nearer, the white wings of sail-boats; but all were outward bound.
+
+Along the shore the sand dunes stretched for miles. Once, long ago,
+the lake is said to have covered this ground. Having been given up by
+water, the earth had not had thrift to reclaim the waste. Even the idle
+train of vagrant weeds had not wandered in to hide the barrenness.
+Beyond the town rose the grim, bare walls of the prison. Hundreds of
+men inside were wearing out the long hours of weary days in toil that
+was heavy and bitter, because it was enforced. Deprived of freedom of
+will, of liberty of body, without hope for the future, they waited--for
+what? For release from bondage, to spend the remnant of their lives
+as Ishmaelites, followed in the world by sneers and suspicion, or
+received, if at all, with a virtuous condescension no easier to bear.
+Probably they deserved their fate. Some of those men had stolen, some
+had forged, some had murdered; and the way of the transgressor was
+hard, we were told. It was right that they should suffer, then; but we
+Pharisees, were we without sin, that we should cast a stone? Had we
+not done those things that we should not, left undone that which we
+should? Perhaps, my friend, you took advantage of a man’s need and made
+an unrighteous profit. Did you not foreclose a mortgage and distress
+a debtor, when you could have waited? Perhaps you did not love your
+neighbor, or, may be, you loved his wife too well. Such things had been
+known. Perhaps--but the catalogue was long. Because the law had not
+touched us, were we to proscribe those on whom its finger was laid?
+Life was bitter at best. What were we, good Lord, that we should take
+all the sweet of existence from any man?
+
+This little sermon I preached to myself, for lack of a better audience;
+but the wind was too keen to encourage moralizing. What should I gain
+by climbing to the top of this hill? Each step higher would only show
+a wider sweep of desolation. Why should I emulate the young man of
+Alpine fame? He was a foolish youth and came to an untimely end. I had
+no ambition; besides I had brought no banner to plant at the top to
+commemorate my deed. It was a gloomy world. Nothing was worth while. I
+would go down.
+
+The descent was rapid and undignified. Eyes, ears and clothing were
+full of sand. To such irritation of mind had I come that I felt ready
+for reckless deeds, but I swallowed wrath and sand together and walked
+on.
+
+Suddenly, in a sunny corner, between a pile of railroad ties and
+another of fragrant pine lumber, I came upon the old couple whom I had
+seen at the station. There they were--she with a napkin spread upon
+her lap and nibbling daintily at a bit of cake; he helping himself
+freely to sandwiches or chicken, now from the lap that served as
+table, now from the basket at their feet. Involuntarily, I paused;
+perhaps, to apologize for the intrusion, perhaps, attracted by the
+people themselves, or drawn, maybe (who knows?) by the luncheon. Who
+can tell afterward just how an acquaintance began? In ten minutes we
+were chatting briskly, and I was cheerfully helping to empty that
+lunch basket. I think the wife opened the conversation by saying that
+they had seen me climb the hill, and only wished themselves a little
+younger, that they might do the same.
+
+No one is so charming to a traveler as a woman, young or old, who knows
+when and how to dispense with formality, and talk kindly, yet with
+dignity, to a stranger. It is a rare grace, however, I have come to
+know.
+
+If my old lady whom I met that day on the sand told too much of her
+own story, it was not her fault, but mine. I asked questions now
+and then to lead her on. As we talked about the weather, of the
+trains, of the time--drifting along in the shallows of conversation
+as strangers do--I became slowly conscious of a something out of the
+common in the manner of these old people. Just what it was was hard
+to define. There was nothing at all remarkable in their personal
+appearance. He was tall, spare, with a mild, benevolent face, and it
+needed only one glance to be assured that he was a minister of the
+Gospel. A Presbyterian minister I would have said, judging from a
+certain stiffness of carriage and gentle dignity, as well as from the
+extreme neatness of his well-worn garments. With a little surprise, I
+learned that he was, as he put it, “the Lord’s servant in the Methodist
+vineyard”--Methodists of the old school whom I had heretofore met being
+noticeable rather for a carelessness of dress and a soldierly bearing,
+as of those who had conquered men. His wife was a slender, nervous
+little body; one of the women who in these days are called “delicate”
+and of whom little is expected; one of those who, when the tests of
+life come, sometimes develop a power of endurance, mental and physical,
+marvelous to see.
+
+“No, we don’t live here,” she said. “We have been spending a day in the
+country with some old friends, but we came up to see a young man who is
+in prison for murder. He was a school-mate of our son Gabriel, and had
+the making of a man; but he took a wild and reckless turn as he grew
+up, and never got on the right track again till now.”
+
+“You smile,” said the old minister; “but you know that building is a
+place of bondage and of punishment for breaking our laws only, and
+not God’s laws. If a man steal, we shut him up to teach him that he
+shall not touch our property; but, unless he repent of his sin, I hold
+that the Lord will punish him still, the same as if we had let him go
+free. This boy drank to excess, he quarreled, and the jury found that
+he had killed a man. For the sake of his dead mother and of our son,
+who is dead and had loved him, we came to see if we could help him on
+the way to be forgiven; and the good God has blessed us. We found him
+wretched and without hope. We could give no comfort; we could only pray
+for help, and the comfort came. Before we came away he began to feel
+that there was mercy waiting for him. A little light shone out of the
+darkness; just a glimpse of the glory beyond. It is not for me to say
+that he was more guilty than another; but we all have need of grace.
+Cynthy and I pray that the little grain of faith in that boy’s heart
+may take deep root, until he can bear his punishment with patience;
+until he can say with humility, ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust in
+Him.’”
+
+“It made my heart ache to leave him,” said Mother Ellis (I knew her pet
+name must be “Mother,” it fitted so well); “but God, who has been so
+good to us, has pity for him.”
+
+There was no want of reverence in this continual allusion to the
+Almighty; no cant, no grating familiarity. This old couple talked of
+Him as of a revered friend, with whom they had constant intercourse
+and in whom they had utter faith. Their simplicity was unworldly and
+beautiful.
+
+“The folks down to Freedom, where we’ve been living lately, wanted
+us to go to Chicago and see the sights, while we were so near; but
+John and I we’re too anxious to get home.” Here she looked at John and
+blushed, and he took her hand in his. They were like a pair of young
+lovers. It was curious.
+
+Presently she went on, with a contented sigh, as if the little by-play
+needed some explanation:
+
+“You see, John and I, we’re going home--to a home of our own--for the
+first time in our lives, though we’ve been married forty years come
+June. Forty years! It’s a long time, looking at it some ways; but
+again it only seems a little while since we were young and lived ’way
+back in York state. Those hills and woods were pretty to look at. I’ve
+never seen their like since. Maybe it’s wicked, but I always think
+o’ the hills ’round the New Jerusalem as being like those about the
+head-waters o’ the Allegheny. Like as not, though, the New York hills
+have been cleared and ‘improved’ till they’re bare enough and ugly; but
+I’ve no fine words to tell ye how they used to look to me. I’ve learned
+now to see beauty in a level country; but it took a long while. When
+we first came to Indiana, John and I, seemed as if I couldn’t any way
+get used to the low land. Do you remember Chestnut Hill, John, over
+toward Cattaraugus? If I were one o’ the painter folks I could make a
+picture of it now. There was a tall, dead tree at the very top, with
+two branches reaching out like arms, making a cross that could be seen
+for miles. When I was young and foolish, I used to wish I were a Roman
+Catholic, that I might go and pray at the foot of that tree rather than
+in church.”
+
+“I don’t remember about the hills being so pretty--’bout the same as
+others, I guess,” said unpoetical John; “but I reck’lect the road
+through the pine woods. Do you, Cynthy?”
+
+Again the faded eyes of both brightened with love that is ever young.
+Again came the blush on the wife’s wrinkled cheek, and this time John’s
+feeble arm went around her waist. There was silence for a little space;
+but I doubt not the air was filled with the fragrance of the pine
+forest, that their ears heard the murmur of the trees. Once more they
+listened with their hearts to the words of long ago, which had made
+that woodland path so fair a memory.
+
+“When I first knew John he taught our district school, and used to come
+to my Uncle Isaac’s pretty often. Teachers boarded around in those
+days, and I did think he took his turn at Uncle’s pretty often. I knew
+he was a pious young man, who’d had a call to be a preacher, and, like
+a silly girl, was a little afraid of him and didn’t want to see him.
+He stayed all summer when there was no school, helping my uncle and
+the neighbors in haying and harvest, studying between times. In those
+days the best of men worked in the harvest-field. Before early apples
+were ripe I mistrusted what was keeping him, and somehow I had got all
+over being afraid of him. I had found out that he was an orphan, like
+myself, and had no home. I was only _staying_ with Uncle Isaac, and it
+must have been that which made my mind turn toward him. But he never
+said anything, John didn’t; only kept hanging ’round and looking as if
+he wanted to speak. John was bashful; but, though I’ve heard o’ men
+too bashful to ask a girl to marry ’em, I never knew one, and I guess
+John ’u’d a plucked up courage after awhile, even if the revival hadn’t
+come. ’Long in October Brother Duzan came along through that region,
+and held meetings that were powerfully blessed. It was early in the
+season for a revival; but everybody turned out to the meetings at our
+school-house. I had never experienced religion then, though Uncle Isaac
+often made me the subject of prayer. I was giddy and thoughtless, and,
+like many another, I couldn’t or, rather, wouldn’t see how good the
+Lord was to me.
+
+“Well, I went with the rest to the meetings; but my heart was hard.
+Seemed as if it grew harder the more the brethren and sisters prayed
+and exhorted, though all the young folks I knew were going forward to
+the mourners’ bench and were being converted. One night Brother Duzan
+preached his dreadful sermon on future punishment of the godless,
+that he always kept for the crowning effort. He told, in awful words,
+how the unconverted sinner would finally suffer and burn in endless
+torment, and everybody was crying and groaning but myself. That threat
+couldn’t soften me then, and I’m free to confess has no effect now.
+Then John, he led in prayer. His voice was so soft and gentle that it
+hushed the excitement. He besought the tender Shepherd, who loved all
+His sheep, to look with special care upon the playful lambs, whose
+willful feet refused to follow whither they were led; to draw them
+back with merciful hands before they should learn, too late, that only
+the narrow, rocky path led to the green pastures that were beside still
+waters.
+
+“I knew he prayed for me, and my heart was melted then; and, for fear
+the tears would come, I slipped out of the door, while the rest were
+on their knees. But John saw me--though how he could, with his back
+turned, I never knew--and I didn’t get far into the pine woods alone.
+He began where the prayer had stopped. ‘The Lord was waiting,’ he said,
+‘for me to stretch out my hands, and He would take me into the blessed
+fold.’ And I? What should I do but cry, as a woman always does when
+she should not. Then John, to comfort me, began to tell how God loved
+me; and from that, some way, it was easy to say how--well, no, John,
+I shan’t tell what you said then, and don’t you, either. I kind o’
+forgot for a minute that we were not alone, and was thinking out loud,
+I guess. I hope our friend will excuse me, for when she comes to be old
+such places in her life will stand out clear in her memory, where many
+another important thing has faded away.
+
+“The next night I went to meeting, and made a profession of religion.
+What could I do but praise the Lord for being so good to me, who was
+so undeserving. Had he not given me John, and what was I that such a
+blessing should be mine?”
+
+Here, the mild eye of Reverend John looked at me over his wife’s head
+with a mischievous twinkle. As she went on, however, his face resumed
+its serenity.
+
+“We have lived many years since then. Sometimes the way has been rough
+and hard. We have had trials and losses; but mercy and goodness have
+followed us, for we have borne the burdens together. I can confess now,
+though I never said so to John, that one of the heaviest crosses of my
+life has been the wish for a home. When we were married, I knew that I
+was taking an itinerant Methodist preacher for better or worse (it has
+always been the better, never the worse, John); but I could not know
+till I had tried it what a wandering, unsettled life it was. Different
+in the early days from now, too. When we came out here, it was looked
+upon as more of an undertaking than going to Europe now. There were no
+railroads then running here and there across the country; so we came
+by water on a flat-boat to Pittsburgh and in a steamboat from there.
+Stopped at Cincinnati to see the sights. It was a fine city then, but
+they say it’s grown since.
+
+“Daughter, a volume would not hold our experience of forty years. We
+have been sojourners, never long in one place. It’s only of late years,
+you know, that Methodist ministers are allowed to labor more than two
+years in one church. Then there was the loneliness; for sometimes John
+would be gone on the circuit, away from his family for weeks at a
+time. I could not go, because of the children. We have been here and
+there, here and there, and used to live in pretty wild places, with few
+neighbors.”
+
+John took up the thread here: “I never was what is called a popular
+preacher,” he said, with a gentle smile. “I tried to do my duty--the
+Lord knows that; but the people would sometimes grow anxious about
+building up the church, and would want a man who could bring in large
+accessions to the membership. I tried to win souls to the Master,
+with His help; but, though I trust my sheaves will contain more than
+weeds, the harvest in my field has been less abundant than in many.
+The elders and bishops are judges of men, and they stationed me where
+I could do best, no doubt. Latterly, some have told me that people
+nowadays do not like to hear so much about Christ and Him crucified,
+that they prefer the religion of humanity, and that I should adapt
+my style to the times; but it is too late. I am too old to learn a
+new religion or to sugar-coat or rarefy the old one. It was a lack
+of faith, I fear, that caused a disappointment when they sent me to
+an obscure corner, a by-way, as sometimes they did. It was all the
+Master’s vineyard, and I should have worked without a murmur; but I
+thought too much, perhaps, about the little earthly reward and that I
+could make no provision for old age. We knew the Lord had always been
+good to us, Cynthy. We should have trusted Him in this, for He had
+never failed us and He never will. ‘Underneath us are the everlasting
+arms.’”
+
+“Yes,” said Cynthy, “the Lord has provided for us. We are to have a
+home of our own in our old age; a home where our children can come to
+visit us or to stay. As I said, I couldn’t complain. It was the will of
+Heaven that we should live as sojourners. We could not set our hearts
+upon this house or that tree, as people will. The room where the son
+died or the daughter married could not be kept sacred, for we must
+leave them; the roses and the vines which we might plant would grow
+to gladden other eyes than ours. Such worldly affections do not seem
+wrong; but they might have been a snare to us. For a year or two John
+has been so afflicted with rheumatism that he could not go about, and
+has been put on the superannuated list.
+
+“If you know anything about Methodists, you know they do not contribute
+to the fifth collection as liberally as to some others, and the fund
+for worn out ministers is small. I suppose they do not realize the
+needs of any one so near them. We have always lived on a little--no one
+knows so well as a Methodist preacher’s family how to make much out of
+nothing; but of late we have been sore pressed. Our children--only five
+are living out of ten--are scattered far and wide. Two are missionaries
+in India; two are teaching in the south, and our oldest son, a farmer
+in Texas, is the only one who is at all forehanded. He has wanted us
+to make our home with him; but we couldn’t quite make up our minds.
+Seemed as if we couldn’t quite give up to go so far and get used to new
+things and a new country. Old people get dreadful set in their ways,
+you know.
+
+“It had got to look, though, as if the Lord meant that we should go,
+and we were beginning to make our plans and to talk of a few farewell
+visits we must make.
+
+“We have some old friends we should want to see once more, and we
+must take another look at the graves where our children were laid at
+rest. It had come to be about settled that we were to go. The Gosport
+Howitzer had mentioned it in its personal column, saying we should be
+greatly missed, when a letter came telling us the Widow Green up at
+Arcady had died and left us her property. We’d been up to see Mrs.
+Green not long before, and she talked then of leaving what she had
+to the Foreign Missionary Society, and we never once thought of her
+mentioning us in her will. But she did leave us the home. Not much,
+maybe you’d say--its only a little cottage and an acre o’ ground; but
+it’s a home, for all that, an’ I’ve wanted one for so many years.
+
+“We regret the Widow Green, of course. She was a good Christian woman,
+though a trifle irritable; but she’d been bedridden and so afflicted
+for many a day that it was her desire to go whenever the call should
+come. We shall have no care for ourselves the rest of our days, for
+the future is provided for. We are such weak creatures that faith is
+not always strong enough to take no thought for the morrow. We want a
+sign--something we can see and touch.
+
+“Is it wrong, I wonder, to think so much about worldly things? I have
+planned how every room shall look. I have seeds of all the flowers
+I can find like the ones that grew in the yard when I was a girl.
+We shan’t have very much money; but, with our share of the Retired
+Preachers’ Fund and with our garden, we shall have enough. I’m spry if
+I be old, and always had a knack at making things grow. John’s a master
+hand to work in the garden, too, when he’s well. I tell John (don’t
+laugh at a foolish old woman)--I tell John that this is like a wedding
+journey. We traveled a long way when we were married; but we didn’t
+reach the home for forty years. John is as anxious to get there as I,
+but is more sensible and not so impatient. We are going to stop at
+Kokomo to-night with Brother and Sister Roberts, and in the morning we
+shall go on home to Arcady. Home! How sweet the word sounds, John!”
+
+There had been a movement of freight cars in our vicinity for some
+minutes; distant whistles of locomotives echoed around, and John had
+become restless. He rose stiffly, but eagerly. “Cynthy, I think it must
+be near time for our train; it would never do for us to miss this one,
+or we shouldn’t get home till to-morrow night. Let us go.”
+
+I left them on the car, with hope and expectation in their faces,
+and said farewell as to old friends. “Come and see us in our home,
+my daughter,” was their last word. “May the Lord bless you as he has
+blessed us, and good-bye!”
+
+As I waited yet a little for my train the benediction seemed to linger.
+The boats were coming gayly in to shore now; the western sun shone with
+a warm glow upon the distant prison windows; school children laughed
+and shouted as if care and crime were not. Truly, the world had not all
+gone wrong. There was hope yet, and life was worth living after all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A year later, in the station at Indianapolis, I caught a glimpse of the
+two kind old faces once more. The eagerness had gone out of them; there
+was peace and resignation instead of hope. They looked out of a car
+that was westward bound. A farmer, standing at my elbow, told the story.
+
+“Father Ellis? Yes. Him and his wife is goin’ West, to jine their son
+’at has a cattle ranch some’rs in Texas. One o’ these yer onlucky
+Methodis’ preachers, the old man is. Preached around on circuits in
+Indianny fer a matter o’ thirty or forty year. Married an’ had right
+smart o’ children, of course, as his perfession allays does. How they
+managed to scratch along an’ raise them young-uns on the skimped wages
+Methodist preachers do get beats me. Seems ’sef people like them ort
+to be fed by the ravens, as Elisha was, or some sech way; or their
+meal-bar’ls filled up, like the widder Cruse’s. How’s’ever, I s’pose
+some way’s allays pervided. In this case the old man had got past his
+preachin’ days, an’ not a nickel saved fer old age, when old Mis Green,
+at Arcady, north o’ hyer, up an’ died, an’ left him her little jag o’
+proputty. Not worth much, to be sure; but a right snug little home.
+
+“With this an’ what he’d get from the superannuated fund, they was
+fixed to inch along comfortable to the end o’ their days. But law! what
+does the old fellow do, when they hadn’t got more’n fairly settled, but
+go security fer Jim Jeffries, out Cicero road! Anybody with a grain o’
+business sense ’ud a knowed it was flyin’ in the face o’ Providence,
+for Jeffries allays was slack an’ shif’less an’ ’twan’t noways likely’t
+he’d be able to meet them notes; an’ he didn’t nuther, an’ Father Ellis
+he hed to pay the debt, but it took all they was. So hyer they be, all
+tore up by the roots, so to speak. Doggoned pity, I say.”
+
+I went aboard the car to speak a word of greeting. The aisle was
+blocked by a small woman, with a large basket, and by a young miss
+who exchanged farewell giggles with a departing friend, interspersed
+with messages to their respective beaux. While I waited just behind
+them, the old wife’s voice reached me, soft and clear, amid all the
+confusion. I listened, and I turned away, sure that they needed no
+comfort I could offer.
+
+“The Lord has been very good to us, John. I can see now that my heart
+was set too much on worldly things, and it was best they should be
+taken away. The Lord doeth that which is good, John. He has left us
+each other.”
+
+“Yes, Cynthy, He has said: ‘I am with thee and will keep thee in all
+places whither thou shalt go.’ We are old, my dear, and night will soon
+pass forever into the dawn of eternal day. May we enter together into
+the land that is no longer very far off. Let us pray, love, that death
+shall not part us; that, still together, when the morning is come, we
+may open our eyes in the Heavenly Kingdom, where a place is prepared
+for us.”
+
+
+
+
+A MOVEMENT IN ART
+
+
+It was Sunday forenoon, and Lodilla Jackson was engaged in “doing
+up” the morning’s work. She had washed the breakfast dishes, put the
+kitchen in order, made the beds, helped get her young brother and
+sister off to Sunday-school and her mother started to church, and
+had got the dinner well under way. Lodilla worked during the week in
+the establishment of a manufacturing chemist, or, as the place was
+otherwise known, a patent-medicine factory, where she pasted labels
+on bottles and pill-boxes, afterwards putting these articles in
+elaborately printed wrappers. Sunday was her “off” day, but she usually
+spent the first half of it in the manner described in order to relieve
+her mother, who was also a hard-working woman, as widows with children
+and little money are apt to be. She was twenty years old, and a good
+girl. Ever since she was fourteen she had been earning money, and,
+with the help of her mother, her brother two years younger, and, now,
+of a younger sister who answered to the call of “H-e-r-e, C-a-s-h,” in
+a dry goods shop, had almost succeeded in clearing their little house
+of the mortgage that encumbered it when her father died. Almost, but
+not quite. There was still necessity for frugality and self-denial,
+and little chance for indulgence in the vanities and luxuries in which
+girls delight. Nevertheless, Lodilla was not downcast or unhappy; far
+from it. She looked forward confidently to the time when debt would
+cease to be a burden, and, meanwhile, planned a little for that happy
+day.
+
+This morning, while the corned beef and cabbage boiled merrily on the
+stove and the molasses cake browned in the oven, she opened the parlor
+door, and, dust-cloth in hand, gazed meditatively about that retreat.
+The room had been a source of great comfort to her mother and herself.
+Its possession seemed to them a visible token of their respectable
+social standing. It was not every one of their neighbors on the quiet
+little South-side Indianapolis street who could afford a parlor. A good
+many of the people in their part of town lived in houses so small,
+or had families so large, that not a corner of their establishments
+could be spared for company uses exclusively. Or, sometimes, when the
+extra room was there, the occupant of the house could not afford the
+necessary outlay for suitable furniture.
+
+The fittings for the Jackson parlor had been bought when the paternal
+Jackson was alive and in the enjoyment of health and good wages. The
+selection of this furniture had been the outcome of much thought,
+consultation and financial calculation on the part of the two older
+members of the family, Lodilla at that time being of an age when her
+opinion on such matters was not influential. There, as the foundation
+of the outfit, was the ingrain carpet, with a green and black vine of
+most luxuriant growth meandering over its bright red ground. There,
+against the widest wall space, was a haircloth sofa, now worn to a
+gloss that rivaled the Russia-iron stove, and with a lumpiness of
+surface and weakness of springs unknown to it when new. The stove, an
+upright cylinder, decorated with much nickel-plating, was regarded when
+purchased as a great ornament to the room, and, although now adapted to
+the use of natural gas instead of the coal for which it was originally
+meant, was still held in much esteem in the household. There were
+several cane-seated chairs, a table which held a large glass lamp, and,
+on a shelf underneath, the family Bible. The crowning glory of the room
+was the small cabinet organ in one corner. Lodilla, at an early age,
+had learned to play “by ear” a few simple tunes and accompaniments, and
+when the family and their visitors gathered there on Sunday afternoons
+and sang “Shall We Gather at the River,” “Hold the Fort,” “Whiter than
+Snow,” “In the Sweet Bye and Bye,” and other “gospel hymns,” Mrs.
+Jackson, for one, felt that she enjoyed many blessings, while the
+pleasure felt by all in the music would certainly have been far less
+intense at a symphony concert.
+
+But it was not on any of these pieces of furniture that Lodilla was
+looking with some discontent visible in her face; it was upon the more
+decorative features of the apartment. Over the high wooden mantel
+hung a crayon portrait of her departed father, enlarged to a head of
+life size from a tintype of thumb-nail proportions by one of those
+mysterious processes practiced by peripatetic artisans. Her father
+had been gone too long for her to feel any deep personal sentiment
+in regard to him, but the picture was invested with the interest of a
+sacred relic, and she had no thought of disturbing it. On the wall,
+over the sofa, hung that pair of chromos, “Wide Awake” and “Fast
+Asleep,” which, when, as newspaper prizes, they found places in a
+multitude of homes years ago, were so universally characterized as
+“perfectly lovely.” Lodilla was a trifle tired of these pictures, not
+because she detected any lack of artistic merit, but because she did
+not think the chubby little girl portrayed in them a pretty child.
+Still, she did not at this time cherish any designs against them.
+
+Her eyes moved slowly along the row of photographs of various sizes
+resting on the mantel, from there passed to the framed marriage
+certificate of her parents hanging above the cabinet organ in a line
+with the framed certificates of baptism of herself and her brother and
+sister, then wandered from these to a large “memorial piece,” framed
+in black and hanging in the place of honor between the windows, and
+rested there with especial dissatisfaction. This piece, which was
+printed in very black inks, with very deep shadows and very white high
+lights, represented a marble tombstone of dazzling whiteness, a willow
+tree and a kneeling widow, who had evidently come to weep, but had
+changed her mind and was looking up with ecstatic gaze at an angel with
+powerful wings bearing the astral body of the occupant of the grave
+up to a heaven beyond a flock of woolly clouds. Printed on scrolls in
+the corners were sundry comforting texts, and below, the full name of
+the deceased Jackson, engrossed in an ornamental, Spencerian hand.
+This remarkable work of art was kindly furnished to the widow for
+$2.75--$1.25 off for an immediate sale--by the agent of an enterprising
+engraving firm soon after her husband’s death.
+
+“I do wish, ma,” said Lodilla to her mother, who entered just then,
+“I do wish I had a photograph album--one like Nell Abbott’s, a big
+plush-covered one. It would be so stylish on the table, and, besides,
+is so much better for keeping photographs than setting them around on
+things. And, ma--”
+
+Here Lodilla hesitated and blushed a little.
+
+“Ma, Joe--Mr. Little--is getting his pictures taken--great big
+cabinets--and if he gives me one it would be nice to have a place to
+put it. He just admires Nell’s album; told her he thought every family
+ought to have one.”
+
+It will be observed that Lodilla, capable young woman that she was, was
+not quite up to date in this matter, but in her behalf it must be said
+that she had not had the advantage of association with young society
+women, who claim to lead in fads and fashions of this sort, and who
+abandoned the album as a drawing-room ornament some time since. Her
+ideas as to the desirability of the article had been gathered from
+visits to the homes of her friends, who were still in the plush album
+and chromo stage of development. She had also gone with her mother
+on one occasion to carry a basket of mended clothing to a bachelor
+apartment, where, in the common sitting-room of the half dozen young
+men, the center-table held six large family albums arranged about
+the lamp, and presumably containing likenesses of the relatives,
+sweethearts and favorite actresses of the respective owners. Lodilla,
+who was much impressed with the luxury of other fittings of this room,
+felt that the albums were the crowning touch of elegance, and had
+longed for one ever since. She had particularly desired one since Joe
+Little, brakeman on the Big Four railroad, had loomed on her social
+horizon. She wanted his picture, and fancied that he would be the more
+willing to bestow it if she had a suitable casket for the treasure.
+She was an unsophisticated girl, you see, unaware that no man needs
+encouragement to his vanity beyond the mere willingness on the part of
+a young woman to accept a likeness of himself.
+
+Mrs. Jackson, who, mother-like, would have been glad to gratify all her
+daughter’s tastes, looked a little troubled.
+
+“I don’t see, Dilly,” she said hesitatingly, “I don’t see how we can
+afford one now.”
+
+“Of course not, ma; of course not,” said Lodilla, with a sudden return
+to cheerfulness. “I know we can’t afford it yet a while, and I’m not
+grumbling. Don’t you think it. I was just wishing and talking, and that
+don’t hurt, you know. But some day, ma, I’m going to have that album,
+and some day I’m going to buy some pictures and get you to put the
+memorial piece and the certificates in your bedroom. They’ve hung where
+they are so long I’d like a change, and the parlor needs a little
+freshening up and more style.”
+
+Her mother sighed a little, without looking at all sad. Her grief for
+the departed Jackson was so mitigated by time that the sighs brought
+by allusions to him were more from habit than emotion, and no longer
+indicated the least depression of spirits.
+
+“I always liked that memorial,” she said. “It’s so sort of
+satisfactory. That angel who’s carrying your pa is so big and strong
+that you can easy enough see how he can do it. He looks so substantial.
+The Widow Thomas, she has one where the angel’s just starting down
+after Thomas--a little, thin, weakly angel you can see through, and
+you know the old man must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds
+if he did one. Of course, we don’t suppose his spirit was heavy, but,
+somehow, there don’t seem to be a fitness in sending such a puny
+messenger after him. It seems a pity to put that memorial out of sight
+in the bedroom, but young folks must have their way, I reckon. You
+don’t think of taking the chromos down, do you?” she asked, anxiously.
+“Your pa gave them to me before we was married, and people come from
+all around to see them, and everybody said they were just the finest
+pictures that had ever been seen in Cherry Corners. Old Mr. Van Lew
+offered ten dollars for them, because Little Wide Awake looked so much
+like his grand-daughter, Lucy Ann Rodibaugh. But I wouldn’t a’ taken
+twice that then.”
+
+Dilly assured her mother that she had no intention of removing “Wide
+Awake” and “Fast Asleep,” and hastened to look after her dinner.
+
+The cabbage which had boiled so long and steadily, was tender, the
+potatoes mealy, the corned beef just as it should be, the molasses cake
+light and sweet and delicious--just the cake that children remember
+all their lives as the kind mother used to make, a memory which causes
+them, when they are old, to wonder why no one else can ever make as
+good.
+
+And if you think the family gathered around that board and partaking of
+that frugal fare were not as happy as it is often given to people to
+be in this rather pleasant world, then you know little of the rewards
+of honest toil, of the delights of home provided, and its comforts
+earned and paid for by the efforts of all; you have forgotten the eager
+appetite of healthy youth, which gives the plainest food a zest that a
+Lucullus feast could not offer now. And if you think Miss Lodilla, with
+her narrow life, her daily labor and her simple hopes and ambitions,
+was wasting time or energy in repinings at her lot, or fancied herself
+in any respect ill-used by fate, then you little understand the serene
+independence of the self-reliant, self-supporting American girl, who,
+confident of her ability to provide for herself, envies no one.
+
+Lodilla, in her neat black skirt and shirt waist, in summer--oh, the
+ever-useful, universal shirt waist!--and her trim cloth jacket over the
+waist in winter, wended her way back and forth each day between home
+and factory, making one of the great army of working women, but having
+her own little plans and cares apart from such associations, and her
+maidenly dreams, just as other girls do with more time for dreams--just
+as all girls do while life is young and love is sweet. Joe Little, the
+big, fair-haired brakeman, figured a good deal in these meditations.
+He came to see her now and then, when he had no “run” to make, but it
+was always on a week-day evening. Sunday evenings he spent with Nellie
+Abbott, Lodilla’s dearest friend. That is, she had been her nearest
+and most confidential friend, the girl to whom she had confided all
+her little secrets, but lately the intimacy had waned somewhat, and
+perhaps Joe Little had, unconsciously to himself, something to do with
+the coolness. These ardent friendships between girls are so apt to die
+a sudden death when an attractive young man comes on the scene.
+
+Joe Little had first met both the girls at a church strawberry
+festival, but had seemed to give preference to Nellie. The chief sign
+of his favor was the fact that his calls upon her were made on Sunday
+nights, and in their social circle this meant more serious intentions
+than an ordinary week-night visit. He was a musician of local repute,
+being known as a “boss fiddler,” and this accomplishment gave him
+welcome admission to the best society of the neighborhood. Nellie,
+being something of a coquette, did not appear to care especially for
+him, and, for that matter, neither did Lodilla--she was too fully a
+woman for that--but she did care, and was learning to think about him
+more and more.
+
+“I really don’t think Nell’s prettier than I am,” she would say to
+herself, looking anxiously in the glass. “Nell’s got a real good
+complexion, lots better than mine, but her nose is pug and her eyes
+are squinty. They are; she can’t deny it, and they do say cross-eyed
+people get to have bad tempers, even if they don’t begin with them.
+Nell’s awful peppery sometimes now when things don’t go her way. It
+can’t be her looks; it must be other things. She’s got a piano and can
+play the ‘Maiden’s Prayer,’ ‘The Brook,’ ‘The Gussie Waltz’ and a lot
+of pieces, and he likes music so. And she’s got a photograph album,
+and, oh dear!”
+
+You people who accept the assurances of novelists and cheap critics
+that women with the smallest claims to comeliness--and where is she
+who has none?--are satisfied with themselves, and unable to recognize
+the charms of their rivals--you merely show your ignorance. The normal
+girl is distinctly aware of her own defects, and as keenly conscious
+of the other girl’s especial attractions. She recognizes, with a pang
+at her heart, the captivating effect of the little curl on her rival’s
+white neck, the dimple in her chin, of the long lashes, under which she
+glances so bewitchingly. She may honestly wonder why the man in the
+case is so stupid and blind as not to detect that other girl’s faults
+of character which are so clear to her, but she never undervalues the
+outward allurements.
+
+Strawberry time and its festivals were now long past, and early winter
+was here, but Joe Little showed no signs of change in his fancy for
+Nellie Abbott, except that his calls at the Widow Jackson’s were
+rather less frequent than they had been. Lodilla began to have little
+heartaches, and if she cried when her sister was asleep and she could
+smother her sobs in the pillow, it would not be at all surprising. But
+if anybody guessed her sadness and its cause it was only her mother,
+and mothers never betray such secrets.
+
+She worked as industriously as ever over her bottles and pill-boxes,
+chattered as gayly with her companions as usual, and loitered before
+the shop windows during the noon hour with the natural and wholesome
+curiosity of a healthy young woman. Love, of the lurid, all-absorbing
+kind we read about, that takes the appetite, banishes sleep and
+destroys other interests of life, is less frequent than the variety
+which permits other sentiments to exist simultaneously and allows the
+sufferer intervals of comparative comfort and cheer.
+
+One evening Mr. Little dropped in unexpectedly and brought his
+fiddle--he did not call it a violin. He did not tell Lodilla that he
+had intended to go to Nellie’s, but from across the street had chanced
+to see William Marvin, freight conductor on his road, enter before him
+and receive a warm greeting from the young lady. He “never could abide
+Bill Marvin,” and wouldn’t spend an hour in the same room if he could
+help it.
+
+Lodilla made herself particularly agreeable that evening. She begged
+him to play for her, and he did play the “Wrecker’s Daughter,”
+“Fisher’s Hornpipe,” “Drunkard’s Heecups”--a tune in which the plunking
+of the strings gives the realistic effect of hiccoughs--the “Arkansaw
+Traveler” and a Strauss Waltz. At least these are what he told her
+they were, and she thanked him and praised him and said she loved the
+fiddle, and could never grow tired of it; and then she sang all her
+songs to the cabinet organ accompaniment with its undertone of wheezy
+groans, suggestive of misery in its inside, and never before had she
+put such feeling and earnestness into tunes or words. And, after the
+visitor had been served with doughnuts and a big glass of unfermented
+grape juice that ma put up herself, he went home, well pleased with
+himself and all the world, Lodilla included. She was happy, but not
+confident. She had still an oppressive fear of her rival.
+
+The very next day she was drawn by irresistible attraction into a crowd
+in front of a big Washington street shoe-shop, and stood there with
+fascinated eyes watching a man in the window who painted a beautiful
+landscape while you waited. There he stood, painting clouds, trees,
+rivers and river banks, grassy knolls, mossy dells and gray rocks with
+lightning swiftness--laying on one color and then another, and bringing
+out marvelous effects before you fairly knew what he had intended.
+
+A yellow circular thrust into her hand by a boy informed her that she
+could have one of these works of art free of cost if she would purchase
+a pair of shoes in the shop--the frame only being charged for.
+
+A sudden ambition filled her mind. She had the money in her pocket for
+a pair of shoes and meant to buy them that very afternoon. Why not
+purchase them here instead of at the little shop on the side street,
+which she had always patronized? They might cost a little more here,
+but then, just for once, and with this prize in view, she might surely
+venture the additional outlay. The frame was extra, but she would take
+a ninety-eight-cent one and save the amount after awhile out of the
+price of her winter gown. Without giving herself time to reconsider,
+she bought the shoes, selected the picture she had seen painted, or one
+precisely like it, and went her way, feeling the fearful joy of a wish
+gratified at the cost of wild extravagance.
+
+The purchase created a sensation at home, and though the careful mother
+shook her head doubtfully over the investment of so much money for
+purely decorative purposes, she did not remonstrate, but joined with
+the rest of the family in admiring the new possession.
+
+“You see, ma,” said Lodilla, with intent to justify herself, “you
+see, hand-painted pictures are the thing now-days; everybody says so,
+and they cost like everything. Nell says her uncle’s sister-in-law
+in Chicago paid twenty-five dollars for a painting not more than ten
+inches across, and Joe Little, he told me about a five-hundred-dollar
+picture he’d seen a man carrying home on the train one day, and there
+wasn’t a thing to it but two or three sheep and a dog on a side-hill.
+And just think! This didn’t cost a cent without the frame.”
+
+The next day was Sunday, and frequent were Lodilla’s visits to the
+parlor to look at her treasure hanging in state between the windows,
+in place of the memorial piece, now retired to the privacy of ma’s
+bedroom. That night who should come but Joe Little to ask her to go
+to church. She accepted the invitation with sedate dignity, but with
+secret joy. Sunday night! That meant so much.
+
+Nellie Abbott was there with the freight conductor, whom Lodilla
+mentally classified at once as “perfectly horrid,” and was instantly
+convinced that her old friend was consumed with envy of her superior
+good fortune in securing the handsome and altogether more desirable
+escort. Filled with which thought, she smiled with great sweetness on
+Miss Nellie.
+
+After services were over Joe came in with intent to sit by the
+sheet-iron cylinder and enjoy an hour of social converse. Lodilla
+wished her new art acquisition to dawn upon him unannounced, and sat
+in tremulous expectation of his verdict. Finally, after talk about
+the weather, ma’s cold, the new choir and various neighborhood topics
+had begun to languish, Mr. Little’s glance chanced to fall upon the
+picture. He rose slowly and stood before it, inspecting it closely with
+a critical eye; then he made a telescope of his hands and viewed it
+from a more distant standpoint. Then he said impressively:
+
+“Lodilla, that’s a mighty good thing; it’s got good points. You don’t
+want to stand too close to one of them hand-painted oil pictures,
+they’re apt to blur, but just get off a piece and they come right
+out. That lightning artist’s a dandy. Shows what a painter man can do
+who puts his mind to it and isn’t afraid to work. It must make those
+fellows who potter over one picture for weeks just sick to see him dash
+them things off at such a rate. I tell you, Lodilla,” he added with
+animation, after a pause and further inspection, “it looks like a place
+on the old farm down home. I’ve set on that rock, or one like it, and
+fished for bass in just such a hole many of a time.”
+
+Then, as if with inspiration of the instant; “And say, Lodilla”--here
+he faltered and his voice grew soft--“say, don’t you want to marry me
+some day and go down there and visit the home place and the old folks?”
+
+It was sudden, but she was equal to the emergency. His arm was around
+her, and her answer was whispered on his shoulder, but not so low that
+he could not hear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Christmas came, a few weeks later, he gave her a big red plush
+album with gilt trimmings and a little mirror set in the corner, and
+she felt that her cup of bliss was full.
+
+The album was a treasure, but Lodilla will value that picture between
+the windows till the end of her days. It brought her love and Joe. Art
+education is not always a rapid process. Her children may learn to
+appreciate picture posters and know what Beardsleyism means, but she
+will be forever satisfied with her landscape painted in nine minutes as
+her mother before her was with the chromos.
+
+
+
+
+THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL
+
+
+A religious revival had been in progress in the churches of Greenbrier,
+Indiana, for six weeks--that is, in the Methodist, the Baptist and the
+Presbyterian churches. The Roman Catholics went on calmly with only
+their usual services, and were regarded with more than the ordinary
+measure of pity by their Protestant neighbors as persons who had never
+been properly converted, and were little better than benighted heathen.
+Episcopalians, too, continued in the even tenor of their way, and had
+their customary dancing and card parties, which were frowned on with
+greater sternness than ever by the rigid Methodist, Presbyterian and
+Baptist brethren who had not yet reached the tolerant stage in relation
+to these amusements attained by members of their denominations in
+larger cities. Even the young people of these churches who had been
+wont to think longingly of the forbidden entertainments, and sometimes
+to participate in them surreptitiously, now looked askance at the
+frivolous givers of the parties and promised themselves that by the
+help of the Lord they would never be led into such evil doings again,
+for these young people were among the fruits of the revival, and had
+bidden farewell to sin.
+
+Such a wonderful ingathering of souls had not been known before in the
+history of Greenbrier. The revival movement began simultaneously in
+the three churches, and almost from the beginning a wave of religious
+emotion manifested itself. Young and old were affected by it; innocent
+children and case-hardened sinners succumbed, the first unresistingly,
+the second reluctantly, to its power. Every night the churches were
+crowded and every night penitents seeking salvation rose for prayers,
+or went forward and knelt at the altar as the custom of the respective
+sects required. Every night numbers of these penitents declared that
+they had found what they sought, that they had shaken off the bonds
+of iniquity and had entered upon a new life. Backsliders returned and
+renewed their faith. The interest was intense. A subdued excitement
+was in the air and affected the transaction of business and household
+affairs throughout the town. People hurried through their evening meals
+in order that they might miss no feature of the coming services. Now,
+after six weeks, though there was no falling off in attendance, it
+began to be said that the meetings would soon close. As one pious but
+practical elder put it, the harvest was gathered, and why go raking
+over the ground? A few sinners remained unconverted, it was true, but
+they were seemingly hopeless and must be left to the Lord’s mercy.
+
+On this Friday night of the sixth week as many people as ever hastened
+along the streets to the places of meeting and the Methodist Church,
+at least, quickly filled with a congregation as large as at any time
+during the revival season. People had come to depend on the excitement
+and dreaded a termination of it. In their narrow village life the
+meetings took the place of drama and opera and social gayeties,
+with the addition of a personal and emotional element that such
+entertainments lack, and that held them through night after night of
+prayer and exhortation without wearying. A thorough-going revival in a
+town of this kind has uses not contemplated by its promoters.
+
+Among the later arrivals was a group of young girls who entered a pew
+not far from the door. There was a little crowding and confusion as
+they passed in, and if Althea Hood, the youngest member of the party,
+had been observant of her companions she would have seen that their
+purpose was to give her a seat next the aisle. She saw nothing and
+sat contentedly enough, her thoughts absorbed in the scene about her.
+Althea was not yet sixteen; until these meetings opened she had never
+attended a religious gathering more exciting than the Sunday morning
+services in the Episcopal church where she went with her parents, and
+the regular weekly Presbyterian prayer-meeting to which she had gone
+with an elderly neighbor on several occasions. Her parents, easy-going
+and indulgent, after the American fashion, had allowed their young
+daughter to take her own way, and when she showed herself disinclined
+to confirmation ceremonies had not insisted, saying to each other it
+was better that she should choose the bonds she would wear when she
+was old enough to know her duty to God and her fellow-creatures. So
+far were they out of sympathy with revival methods that, perhaps, it
+did not occur to them that their self-contained, unemotional child was
+likely to be affected by them, and, indeed, she had shown no signs of
+being so.
+
+One by one her school associates had succumbed to the pleadings of
+the pastors, evangelists or other workers in the vineyard, had passed
+through a period of penitence and grief, and had finally declared,
+in more or less childlike and incoherent phrase, that they felt the
+burden of sin lifted from their souls and an assurance that they were
+saved by divine grace. Henceforth they would turn their backs upon
+the temptations of this world and would love God and praise Him for
+the rest of their days. So many of these school-mates had professed
+conversion that at last Althea was the only one of her circle who
+remained unmoved by the appeals that had so affected the others. She
+took a deep interest in all the proceedings, but seemed to make no
+personal application of the exhortations. She watched her companions
+curiously. That a change of some sort had passed over them was
+plain. It manifested itself in an increased sedateness of behavior;
+she was aware, too, in the presence of certain ones, of a pitying
+condescension, as if she were no longer on an equality with them.
+Others--two or three--went about with a rapt and radiant air as if,
+indeed, they had entered upon a new life, and with glorified vision
+looked out upon a more spiritual world than the unregenerate saw. These
+she observed somewhat wistfully, but it was at no time borne in upon
+her that she, too, could share their joy.
+
+She was not self-conscious; had she been so she would have become aware
+on this Friday night that unusual attention was directed her way. Long
+after, she learned that she had been regarded by the elder brethren and
+sisters as a “soul” whose conversion was, for various reasons, much to
+be desired, and that a determined and concerted effort to break her
+hitherto unmoved calm was prearranged for that evening.
+
+All these meetings were informal. Some one began to sing, “Jesus, Lover
+of My Soul,” and the congregation joined in with more than common
+fervor. It was the old-time tune even more touching than the words.
+Althea added her clear young voice to the rest as she had done before:
+
+  “All my trust on Thee is stayed,
+     All my help from Thee I bring;
+   Cover my defenseless head
+     With the shadow of Thy wing.”
+
+As the verse came to an end an elderly sister, passing by, touched
+Althea softly on the shoulder and whispered:
+
+“You should come, dear, and give yourself to Jesus so you could sing
+that with your heart.”
+
+An aged brother lifted up his quavering voice in prayer. He was
+illiterate, but it is piety and not erudition, we must believe, which
+counts with the Maker of men.
+
+“Oh, Lord,” he prayed, “Oh, Lord, there ain’t but a few sinners left in
+this yer congregation, an’ ef you’ll jest pour out the speret upon us
+to-night, jest pour it out free, we’ll fetch ’em in. They cain’t stand
+out agin that power; they’ll realize thet they’re pore an’ needy. Bless
+us, Lord, bless us right now!”
+
+Then came the pleading hymn:
+
+  “Come ye sinners, poor and needy,
+   Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
+   Jesus ready stands to save you,
+   Full of pity, love and power;
+   He is able, He is able,
+   He is willing, doubt no more.”
+
+The exhortations of the old pastor, commonly so fatherly and gentle,
+had an almost youthful fire that night. He preached the wrath of God
+as he had not done in all the weeks. The guilt of the one withholding
+complete submission was pictured in the darkest colors. Repentance for
+sin, acceptance of atoning grace, love for the Son, were the only means
+of averting this wrath. Neither gifts nor praise, neither good works
+nor clean living, could avail if the doer of righteous things walked
+not humbly by faith in God. Delay meant death. Let the young yield up
+their hearts now, or else risk the loss of life eternal.
+
+After him came a young evangelist who was becoming noted for his
+success as an “awakener.” He was a thin-faced, long-necked young man,
+spoken of by admiring women as ascetic and spiritual. Discriminating
+observers would have been apt to class him as dyspeptic and his
+eloquence as sounding brass; nevertheless, with his peculiarly musical
+voice and pleading manner he won attention where others failed. Althea
+Hood had dreamed dreams about this young man. If she had understood
+the secrets of her own foolish little child-heart she would have
+been aware that his presence was one of the attractions that had
+made her attendance so constant at the meetings. She was not in love
+with him--the sentiment had no such strength as that. She was simply
+experiencing the first faint flutterings of femininity roused to life
+by masculine influence.
+
+The evangelist clasped his hands before him in the praying-Samuel
+position, and tossing back his long mane began to plead with those
+lambs which had wandered away from the Shepherd’s loving arms. He said
+nothing of sin or of guilt, repentence or forgiveness. He only called
+upon the wanderers to come where love, and shelter, and tender care
+awaited them. He quoted beautiful poetic passages from the Bible and
+comforting promises; he talked of green pastures and still waters,
+of light, and life, and love, but love was chiefly his theme. It was
+divine love, of course, but the speaker’s voice was soft and low; his
+eyes were directed toward Althea, and she, poor child, thrilled at his
+tones and only half comprehended his words. In conclusion he held out
+his hands entreatingly and sang:
+
+  “Love divine, all loves excelling,
+     Joy of heaven to earth come down;
+   Fix in us thy humble dwelling,
+     All thy faithful mercies crown.”
+
+These little tenor solos, interspersed through his talks, were
+distinctive features of his methods and were considered especially
+effective. The revival spirit was fully aroused now. Song and prayer
+quickly succeeded each other. Ejaculations of praise and murmurs of
+ecstatic feeling were heard from all parts of the room in antiphonal
+likeness. Brethren and sisters, gifted as pleaders, or led by sense of
+duty to exercise their influence, moved among the congregation, seeking
+out the few who, as the accepted phrase was, had not yet “confessed
+Christ.” One after another besought Althea to yield up her heart. Tears
+fell from the eyes of the old pastor as he urged her to go forward
+to the “mourners’ bench” and take what might be her last chance for
+salvation.
+
+They were singing fervently just then:
+
+  “Alas, and did my Savior bleed,
+   And did my Sovereign die?
+   Would He devote that sacred head
+   For such a worm as I?”
+
+“But I am not a vile sinner,” she protested. “I am not a worm,” and
+would not go.
+
+Her school-mates who had so lately read their own titles clear added
+their petitions; her teacher urged upon her the duty of subduing her
+pride and indifference; women and men for whom she had the greatest
+respect, came to her and pointed out the strait and narrow path. They
+left her still unmoved so far as outward indications showed. The young
+evangelist approached. Her lips set together firmly; her hands, already
+moving nervously, clenched themselves; the strain was becoming great,
+but, “I will not go,” she whispered to herself. He reached out his
+hand. “Come, little sister,” he said. “Come; the Good Shepherd wants
+this lamb that is outside the fold. Come.” And she arose and followed
+him.
+
+In front of the pulpit was a long bench at which already were two
+penitents--an old man who was converted at every revival and as
+regularly became a backslider when the excitement subsided, and a young
+man who was commonly spoken of in the community as a “hard case.” She
+knelt beside them mechanically.
+
+The congregation was singing with great volume of sound, “There’s a
+Land That Is Fairer Than Day.” The young evangelist turned and lifted
+his hand. There was silence, and with hands clasped and eyes uplifted
+he sang “The Ninety and Nine.” It was like a solo by a famous tenor in
+an opera--a feature of the evening that women, at least, would not have
+missed for the world. He sang it through, and when he reached the last
+triumphant strain excitement was at hysterical height:
+
+  “But all through the mountains thunder-riven,
+      And up from the rocky steep,
+   There rose a cry to the gate of heaven,
+     ‘Rejoice! I have found my sheep!’
+      And the angels echoed around the throne,
+     ‘Rejoice! for the Lord brings back His own!’”
+
+There was a chorus of amens. “Bless the Lord!” shouted one brother;
+“Praise His name!” exclaimed another. There were groans and
+inarticulate cries. A woman uttered a piercing shriek, and falling
+prone upon the floor in the aisle, lay there like a log. No one heeded
+her; she had the “power” and would come to herself in good time.
+Breathing was short and quick; faces were flushed; women and girls wept
+silently, or with hysterical sobs, as their temperaments constrained
+them; there was a rhythmical swaying of bodies; some one prayed loudly
+but no one heard; the amens, the groans, and the bless-God’s were still
+louder. Althea, half terrified by the tempest of emotion about her,
+her self-control broken at last, sobbed convulsively.
+
+A mother in Israel knelt beside her and entreated her to open her heart
+and let love and forgiveness come in. The old man at the mourners’
+bench rose with a joyful shout and announced that he felt to rejoice
+that he had once more been anointed with the oil of gladness and had
+obtained forgiveness for his sins.
+
+“Come let us anew our journey pursue” began a voice near by, and the
+congregation took up the strain.
+
+The young man, who was a hard case, rose and stammeringly declared
+that he had given his heart to God and hoped, by His help, to live a
+Christian life from that time on.
+
+As suddenly as Althea’s tears had begun they ceased and her excitement
+was over. She rose to her feet just as her favorite hymn was being
+sung--favorite, because of the pathetic minor cadences, not the words
+whose sentiment was beyond her experience yet. Unconscious as a bird,
+she joined in:
+
+  “Just as I am, without one plea,
+   But that Thy blood was shed for me,
+   And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
+   O Lamb of God! I come.”
+
+The brethren and sisters near the front pressed around her with
+congratulations. The pastor took her hand and patted it, his face
+beaming.
+
+“My daughter, I knew there was a blessing for you if you would take it.
+Add your word of testimony now.”
+
+“But I did not mean,” she said with startled emphasis. “I am not--I
+have not had a blessing.”
+
+They saw her lips move, but no one listened to her words, and the song
+drowned them:
+
+  “Hallelujah ’tis done! I believe on the Son,
+   I am saved by the blood of the crucified One!”
+
+Following this triumphant outburst came the joyful hymn:
+
+      “How happy are they
+       Who their Savior obey,
+  And have laid up their treasures above!
+       Tongue can not express
+       The sweet comfort and peace
+  Of a soul in its earliest love!”
+
+She was counted among the converts. The pastor thanked God for her in
+his prayer, and was a shade less enthusiastic in thanks for the rescue
+of the backslider and the hard case.
+
+Althea did not join in the singing of the doxology. All at once a
+meaning seemed to come into the words which hardly had a meaning to her
+before.
+
+  “Praise God from whom all blessings flow!”
+
+Could she really praise God? Praise Him for what?
+
+As she passed slowly down the crowded aisle hands were stretched
+from every side to grasp hers in the kindly Methodist fashion; many
+a blessing was invoked upon her by the older brethren and sisters;
+younger friends said they were glad she had become one of them. She
+only smiled faintly and was silent. Silence seemed cowardly, but how
+could she tell them that it was not true, that she had experienced no
+change of heart, that she was the same in every way that she had been
+the day before? Or could it be, and she grasped at the thought, could
+it be that a change had come and she did not know it? She had been
+excited, had wept and then become calm like all her newly converted
+friends. Then her eyes fell upon the hard case as he met his mother--an
+old woman with care-worn, tear-stained face, transfigured, now, with
+joy. His reckless, defiant expression had given way to a look of--what
+was it?--determination, gladness, high endeavor? She felt that he had
+attained something she had not and her hopeful thought for herself
+vanished.
+
+Pressed by the crowd into the angle of a doorway she heard the young
+evangelist say in confidential tone to a leading member: “In this
+business you have to make a study of people. Different methods must be
+worked on old and young men, old women and young ones. Not many’ll hold
+out if you go at ’em in the right way. I felt sure I’d fetch the Hood
+girl. You know they say I have a taking way with the ladies,” and he
+laughed foolishly.
+
+“I’m powerful glad ye fetched her, it makes the even one hundred and
+fifty--I don’t count the other two who went for’ard to-night, they
+won’t stick--and one hundred and fifty is a mighty good showing in
+a town like this; they’ll build up the church amazing. Besides, her
+father, Colonel Hood, ’ll be madder’n a hornet. He don’t b’lieve in
+religious revivals. He’s ’Piscopal.”
+
+The old man chuckled in an ungodly way. Althea, hurrying by, felt, with
+the changing impulse of youth, that she hated them both, and, with
+mist of romance suddenly and cruelly cleared, she saw the evangelist
+as a lean, lank, commonplace, self-conceited youth, and an innocent,
+girlish ideal of manliness was forever gone.
+
+It was not a happy frame of mind for a new convert.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few months after the revival, which remains famous in the annals of
+Greenbrier, life began for Althea Hood. This first experience of life
+grew out of acquaintance with death. The destroyer came suddenly to her
+father, not yet an old man. Under the shock the mother drooped and soon
+followed her husband.
+
+Althea, with the bewilderment which comes to the young who encounter
+the great mystery, mourned and suffered as only the young do--without
+the philosophy, the resignation, sometimes the peace and hope that
+bereavement brings to age. Pious friends talked to her of the duty
+of submission--she was still rebellious; of God’s love--she did not
+know their meaning. The experience of the revival had left her without
+religious feeling; it was as if her heart, which might have unfolded as
+naturally to spiritual truth as a rose opens under sun and dew, had
+ceased to grow, like a bud when torn apart by rough hands.
+
+Life was not easy. Poverty was her portion, and a home with uncongenial
+relatives until school days were past and she became a teacher among
+new scenes and new people in the capital of the state.
+
+There are teachers who profess to love their calling for its own sake.
+Being truthful in other matters they must be believed in this. Althea
+Hood was not one of these. She found teaching irksome, and when David
+Phillips asked her to marry him she promptly said yes, and gladly gave
+up her work.
+
+Althea loved her husband with as deep an affection as she was capable
+of entertaining at her stage of development.
+
+In occasional moments of introspection Althea realized that she did not
+have that absorbing, overwhelming affection for him that novelists’
+heroines entertain for their chosen lovers, but satisfied herself with
+the theory that such ardent emotions did not belong to real life.
+
+David Phillips was a prosperous, energetic business man several years
+older than she--a quiet, self-contained person who smiled indulgently
+over his young wife’s æsthetic tastes, her fondness for poetry
+and romance, her little outbursts of sentiment, her feminine ways
+in general. If he did not seem to sympathize he, at least, did not
+antagonize, and she was fairly content in her little daily round.
+There were the housekeeping and social duties, the music, the reading,
+the various odds and ends that fill the time of the woman who has
+no ambitions outside her home, no consciousness of work to be done
+there--these made up her routine. There were no ecstacies, no deep
+emotions; it was a narrow life, and yet a day came when she looked back
+to this period of peace as one of enviable bliss. There are but few
+heights of joy in any life, and, in most, many depths of grief, so it
+may be that the dead level of calm content, the absence of emotion, is
+the happiness to be chosen--if choice were in human power.
+
+Althea attended church during this time. It was respectable to do so;
+it had been her early habit, and, besides, the beauty of the Episcopal
+ritual pleased her. She could join in the prayer, “Have mercy upon us
+miserable sinners,” with an intellectual pleasure in the sonorousness
+of the response, but with as little understanding of heart as when the
+brethren at the revival besought her to seek forgiveness for sin. But
+though she did not comprehend, sometimes she wondered if all those who
+joined in the prayers were as unmoved as she, and, if not, what secret
+they possessed that she did not.
+
+Then, one happy day, a new interest entered into her life. Her baby
+came and her soul began to grow. It is not always so, though it is the
+fashion to talk of mothers as gifted with a world of new spiritual and
+moral graces. To those who look on, it too often seems that motherhood
+means a narrowing of vision and an intensity of selfishness. But
+Althea’s horizon widened. With her own child in her arms she looked out
+upon a new world. Her eyes were suddenly opened to the needs of other
+little ones. A vast pity filled her heart for the waifs, the hapless
+creatures who are born to poverty and know suffering almost with their
+first breath. “The cry of the children” appealed to her as it had never
+done before. Her eyes once open, it was strange what vistas of both
+joy and sorrow spread before them; she questioned why she had not seen
+these things before.
+
+Her little son waxed fat and fair. He was the delight of her days;
+waking and sleeping he was in her dreams. She rejoiced in his infantile
+graces, but her thoughts ran on and on and pictured him as he should
+be as time went by--the sturdy lad loved by his playmates, the youth
+excelling his companions in all noble undertakings, the strong, proud
+man honored by the world, but through all the changes her own dear son,
+still loving and true.
+
+Her husband looked on, pleased at the sight of the maternal joy, the
+look a little wistful at times, perhaps, because the wife was so lost
+in the mother that he seemed half forgotten and quite unessential to
+her happiness.
+
+Then one terrible day the baby died, the little child who had lacked no
+care that love could give. Out of the mother’s arms they took the fair
+dimpled body for the last time; they folded the rose-leaf hands that
+would flutter upon her bosom no more; they took him away, the life of
+her life, and laid him under the flowers.
+
+Is there agony for any human creature greater than that of the mother
+bereaved?
+
+She mourned in bitterness and without hope. Between her and the
+“land that is fairer than day,” the land of which she once sang
+so unthinkingly, rose a wall through which came no answer to her
+resentful cries. In her wretchedness she turned against her husband.
+She fancied that he was not sympathetic, that he really missed
+their child but little. She brooded over this imaginary trouble in
+addition to the genuine woe and brought herself into such a state of
+antagonism that nothing he could do pleased her, and she withdrew
+her companionship from him to a degree that left him bewildered and
+helpless. He ascribed her irritability and coldness to her recent
+bereavement. It was really one of those critical situations that occur
+in most married lives before the art of living together in harmony has
+been mastered. The little rift may close itself or become a chasm never
+to be bridged.
+
+David recommended change of scene. Would she go south and get the
+early spring breezes? Would she come with him on a trip to New York
+which business compelled him to take? Would she go anywhere her fancy
+preferred and win back health to mind and nerves? These were questions
+he asked her, but to all she coldly answered “no.” She “wished to be
+alone,” she said, and he left her reluctantly.
+
+Scarcely had he started on his journey when a thing happened the like
+of which has been known to occur among people we hear of; people of
+whom our friends know and, whispering, tell the tale. A woman called
+to see Althea--a woman who had possibly been comely at one time in her
+life but was no longer, a creature unprepossessing enough now. With her
+was a child two or three years old. It was not a pleasant story she
+told, but she told it in a way convincing to her hearer. She was the
+woman, she said, who should have been David Phillips’s wife; the child
+was hers and his, but he had cast them both off. They were in want;
+would Mrs. Phillips help them?
+
+She gave the woman money and sent her away in haste, telling her never
+to return, and that she did not believe her story; but she never
+doubted its truth for a moment. Would a woman, even a lost creature,
+advertise her shame needlessly? She had never dreamed that her husband,
+David Phillips, had ever been other than upright and honorable, and
+had heard and thought but little in her life about evil of this sort.
+But she had seen that David was changed; he was growing more quiet and
+reticent every day. Perhaps he was losing his love for her, and he had
+not seemed to care when the baby died. Her little son! And he was the
+father of her son.
+
+A whirlwind of rage swept over her at the thought that he had covered
+the memory of this lost darling with shame, that he had brought
+humiliation upon her. How could she go on and live in the same world
+with him and with--those others. A wild impulse to take herself out of
+it came to her; a vision of the river, deep and dark, rose temptingly.
+
+Her wrath turned against the man who had deceived her. At times
+she longed for him to be there that she might face him with her
+knowledge of his iniquity; then, with revulsion of feeling, rejoiced
+at his absence. No one seeing her then could charge her with being
+unemotional. Vindictive passion stirred her one hour, shame weighed
+her down the next, then followed a wave of grief for the vanished
+days of peace. Life was not the joyous thing it had seemed in the old
+Greenbrier days; now, she knew that it meant tears, and heartache,
+and sorrows worse than death. She wrote brief notes in reply to her
+husband’s letters. Why she postponed writing him that their lives
+could not go on together she hardly knew, since she had determined to
+send such a letter. One day she began the task. Before she had finished
+illumination came. She knew suddenly that she loved the man she was
+preparing to put out of her life--loved him in spite of his sins, of
+his wrong to herself, loved him with an intensity she had not dreamed
+of when she married him. It was not the love she had read of and had
+not thought to experience, it was a thousand times stronger. She did
+not want it so; she resented the truth and would have denied it to
+herself but could not.
+
+For days she fought with her impulses, and then resisted them no
+longer. She was too frank and transparent to dream of concealing her
+knowledge of the wretched secret, and, besides, she had conceived a
+plan whose carrying out involved mutual explanation and consultations.
+
+With trembling haste, now that she had resolved upon a course, she
+wrote the letter telling him her story of the woman and child, of her
+grief and resentment, and, finally, of her love and willingness to
+forgive and receive him back. Then she added--it was the crowning bit
+of self-sacrifice--“I want to provide for the child; if you like, I
+will find it and bring it home.”
+
+She sent the letter and waited. With all her spirit of forgiveness and
+her impatience for his return she was not unmindful of the fact that
+she was doing an unusual thing, one he would have no right to expect, a
+truly Christian act. Indeed, the spirit of condescension, of goodness
+stooping to the sinner, was manifest in the letter.
+
+She did not know where the woman and child might be found, but spent
+those days of waiting in wandering about a quarter of the city she had
+known but little of, thinking that by chance she might find them. Once
+she caught a glimpse of the woman in a passing street car--a hard-faced
+creature in tawdry garb she looked in the pitiless sunlight.
+
+Hurrying home, a little belated, one evening, she was driven by a
+sudden spring shower to the nearest shelter, which chanced to be a
+dilapidated warehouse, hardly more than a shed, from whose open door
+the sound of singing issued. By the dim and flickering light of a few
+lanterns hung about she saw a motley company seated on improvised
+benches, or standing next the wall. There were men who looked like
+tramps and others, better clothed, who might be worse. There were women
+who might be honest mothers of families, others who as surely were not.
+Unwholesome looking children of various ages looked curiously on.
+
+But one voice was heard; evidently the crowd was not familiar with the
+words of the song. The man standing by an upturned box with a cheap
+glass lamp upon it was the singer. “There Is a Fountain Filled With
+Blood,” was the hymn; he sang one stanza through alone. As he began the
+second a woman joined in in a thin, uncertain soprano:
+
+  “The dying thief rejoiced to see
+     That fountain in his day;
+   And there may I, though vile as he,
+     Wash all my sins away,
+   Wash all my sins away.”
+
+With the third verse the woman stopped and sat down, sobbing loudly,
+but not before Althea had seen her face; it was that of the woman she
+was seeking.
+
+The man by the box began to speak in a low, conversational tone. As he
+stepped out of the shadow into the light of the lamp she recognized,
+with a start of surprise, the “hard case” of the Greenbrier revival.
+He did not look like a hard case now. He was shabbily dressed, but
+his thin, dark face wore an expression of earnestness, of absorbed
+interest, of what even seemed like love for the people about him.
+
+“I was vile, like that thief,” he said; “I defied God. I cared
+nothing for Him; I believed He cared nothing for me. I broke His laws
+recklessly and rejoiced in my wickedness, or I pretended to rejoice,
+though I could never quite quiet the pricks of conscience, for I
+knew better. I had a mother who loved me and prayed for me. One day
+I suddenly saw all my guilt and was without hope, but light came and
+forgiveness even to me--to me!--to me!--and since that day ‘redeeming
+love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.’”
+
+Then he pleaded with his hearers in impassioned but simple language to
+leave their sins and live good lives for the sake of the One who died
+upon the cross, for their own sakes, for the sake of those about them.
+It was not a sermon; it was not even a connected discourse; it was
+neither learned nor logical, but it was a cry from the heart, and the
+listeners knew it and were moved accordingly.
+
+Althea knew that she had encountered again the mysterious something
+which had passed her by. The hard case whose conversion at Greenbrier
+had been so lightly regarded that he was not counted in by the
+revivalists when they “made up their jewels,” had found there the
+spiritual gift that made him a new man. Sometimes she had suspected
+that those who professed to have consciously won this blessing deceived
+themselves, but there was something genuine here. But she could not
+speculate on this now. She stepped to the side of the yellow-haired
+girl and touched her arm.
+
+“Where is your baby?” she whispered. The girl looked up with red eyes,
+stupidly. “My baby?” she repeated wonderingly, and then comprehended.
+Through the artificial color on her cheeks a genuine red showed. She
+dropped her head and then lifted it and looked straight in Althea’s
+eyes.
+
+“I have no baby, lady; I never had. I was just fooling you. I wanted
+money. I never knew your husband only by name, and he never saw or
+heard of me, I reckon. I read in the paper that he’d gone to New York.
+I wanted money, and I’d seen you, and I guessed you were, well--an easy
+mark, and so I fixed up the story. I thought you looked, too, as if you
+had no sympathy for such as me, and maybe that made me pick on you to
+give you a little trouble instead of another. You didn’t know a body
+could be so wicked, did you? The baby is Mrs. Caffrey’s, across the
+street. His mother’s good to me and lets me take care of him when she
+goes washing. I’ve been a bad girl, lady, but I’m going to be better.
+I’ll pay you back that money some day.”
+
+But Mrs. Phillips was gone. She flew across the street. The door of the
+two-room shanty was open and she stepped in after a hasty knock. The
+baby--she would have known it anywhere--lay asleep on a bed; a woman
+stood at a table ironing.
+
+“Are you Mrs. Caffrey, and whose baby is this?” asked the visitor.
+
+“Oim Mrs. Caffrey, and thot boy is mine, born in howly wedlock, av ye
+plaze, an’ wud have a father this blessed minute av ut hadn’t bin for
+the haythenish shtame cars thot wudn’t shtop to rouse up a man who’d
+set down on the thrack to rest as he was comin’ from a wake. An’ phwat
+wud ye be likin’ to know for, ma’am?”
+
+“It isn’t Maggie Miller’s baby?”
+
+“Maggie Miller--the likes av her! My little Patsy asked av his mother
+was an ondacent famale--him that had an honest father married to his
+mother by the praste. Och, the impident question! Maggie, she’s got no
+baby, betther’s her luck. Not thot Maggie’s so bad, poor body. She’s
+good to little Patsy, an’ she’s over now helpin’ thot preacher man
+sing the hymns she used to hear in the counthry when she was a betther
+gurrl. She’d be betther askin’ the Howly Mother to shpake for her, an’
+be confessin’ her sins to Father Ryan; but av this warehouse religion
+kapes her from divilmint it’s not the likes av me to shpake ill av it.
+But phwat is it, leddy?”
+
+The lady, with a strange look on her face, apologized confusedly for
+her visit and hurried up the street, Mrs. Caffrey peering after her and
+talking volubly to herself. Her mind was in a tumult. She had condemned
+her husband on the first charge against him, without question and
+without giving him a chance for defense. She had emphasized the injury
+by offering to extend pardon to him. Pardon! When she was the one to
+need forgiveness! And he was away and she wanted to see him at once.
+
+In the morning came a message. There had been a railroad accident at
+a junction fifty miles away. David Phillips had been seriously hurt.
+Would she come?
+
+She was on the train in an hour. It seemed years since the calm,
+uneventful period of her early married life when she had sometimes
+fancied that she was born with a limited capacity for emotion. She knew
+better now; depths had been sounded and were stirred. She had learned
+what love and suffering meant, and more suffering was before her. The
+thing that most bewildered her was being suddenly and unquestionably
+in the wrong. She had been accustomed always to be right, or to think
+herself so. She had never been a suppliant to God or man. She wondered
+if she had been self-righteous, and was filled with sudden humility.
+She was ready to humble herself before man, at least. The train did not
+move fast enough. Would David forgive her? Would she reach him in time?
+
+She found him at a farm-house with a broken leg and many bruises, but
+he would live. She had long explanations to make, but as she knelt by
+his side could only gasp:
+
+“I was wrong; it was not true; I was mistaken.”
+
+He drew her face to his, and she knew pardon was hers, and love.
+
+“It hurt me, sweetheart, that you believed the story,” he whispered,
+faintly, “but when you were ready to take me back in spite of what
+you believed, when you could forgive such a wrong, I knew you loved
+me--and--and I had been afraid.”
+
+He closed his eyes with a look of utter peace and the doctors decreed
+silence, but she sat by his side through the day, nor knew that the
+hours were long.
+
+The miracle of spring was being wrought upon the world. But yesterday
+the trees had been bare; to-day in the sunshine their buds had burst
+into green, the peach trees were pink with bloom, the dandelions shone
+yellow in the grass. A sense of growth, of transformation, was in the
+very air.
+
+What comes so suddenly to buds and flowers may come to the human soul.
+
+Under the sod and through the harsh reign of frosts and snows the way
+had been prepared for the wonder of the trees. Motherhood, bereavement
+and tears, injured love and humiliation, and the later happiness had
+done their silent work upon the woman nature. The time had come for a
+new birth.
+
+In the dusk she left David and wandered down a grassy lane. In the
+western sky beyond the broad prairie, the gorgeous tints of the sunset
+faded into blue and pearl. The soft, damp air brought the smell of
+the fresh earth from the newly plowed field; a spicy odor from a wild
+apple tree, now a mass of pale pink, was wafted to her. A robin chirped
+sleepily among the young maple leaves overhead. The tender, elusive
+charm of the season of growth was all about her. But was it only this
+that so moved her, she vaguely wondered. She had known the joy of
+spring before, and it was not like this. Her soul seemed lifted up. She
+felt dimly that a greater glory than she had known was just beyond.
+
+Inside the open door of a little cottage down the lane a woman sat by a
+lamp sewing and singing. Her voice rose sweet and clear:
+
+  “Just as I am--though tossed about.
+   With many a conflict, many a doubt,
+   With fears within and foes without--
+   O Lamb of God, I come!”
+
+All her life she had been familiar with the hymns that expressed the
+thoughts of the world seeking God--hymns of penitence, of agony, of
+peace and praise, of ecstatic worship--and she had not known their
+meaning. All at once light came. She lifted up her arms.
+
+“O Lamb of God! O Lamb of God!” she whispered. The cloud that had
+obscured her spiritual sight lifted. She saw herself an imperfect human
+creature, but, with all her faults and frailties, an atom of the divine
+essence; her little life a part of the divine plan; her sorrows and
+trials the discipline inflicted by love. Before her suddenly appeared
+her lost child, the child she had mourned without hope, a glorified
+vision. Its baby hands beckoned her; its sweet lips smiled. Love for
+child and husband, the old earthly love, filled her bosom with a power
+she had not known, but there was a love greater than this. Could that
+be hers, also?
+
+She tried to pray, but could not form her thoughts. Was that a touch
+upon her hair, a whisper in her ear? Surely she heard the words:
+
+“Come unto Me all ye that are heavy laden.” She stood trembling as in a
+holy presence. Her face turned toward the sky.
+
+“O Lamb of God--O Lamb of God, I come.”
+
+He heard in heaven. Joy enfolded her as a garment. Divine peace fell
+upon her. Her soul was born.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
+
+
+  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
+
+  Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
+
+  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78253 ***
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78253 ***</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter hide"><img src="images/coversmall.jpg" width="450" alt=""></div>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h1>AN IDYL OF THE WABASH</h1>
+</div>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" alt="girl picking flowers"></div>
+</div>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/titlepage.jpg" alt="title page"></div>
+</div>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="titlepage">
+<p><span class="xxlarge">AN IDYL OF THE WABASH</span><br>
+<span class="large">AND OTHER STORIES</span></p>
+
+<p>BY<br>
+<span class="xlarge">ANNA NICHOLAS</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse"><i>Made out o’ truck ’at’s jes’ a-goin’ to waste</i></div>
+<div class="verse"><i>’Cause smart folks thinks it’s altogether too</i></div>
+<div class="verse"><i>Outrageous common.</i>—<span class="smcap">Riley.</span></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="large">NEW YORK<br>
+HURST &amp; COMPANY<br>
+PUBLISHERS</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center">Copyright 1898<br>
+The Bowen Merrill Company<br>
+<br>
+Copyright 1912<br>
+The Bobbs-Merrill Company<br>
+  <br>
+  <br>
+An Idyl of the Wabash</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="ph1">TO MY MOTHER</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table>
+<tr><td class="tdr" colspan="2"><span class="allsmcap">PAGE.</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">An Idyl of the Wabash</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">At a Way-Station</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Mrs. Brooks’s Change of Heart</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">An Abiding Love</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">A Farmhouse Drama</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Solution of a Text</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">An Occult Experience</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">An Itinerant Pair</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_177">177</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">A Movement in Art</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Quickening of a Soul</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_221">221</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">Herewith together you have flower and thorn,</div>
+<div class="verse">Both rose and brier, for thus together grow</div>
+<div class="verse">Bitter and sweet, but wherefore none may know.</div>
+<div class="verseright">—<span class="smcap">Aldrich.</span></div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="ph2">AN IDYL OF THE WABASH</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span>
+<h2 class="nobreak">AN IDYL OF THE WABASH</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="drop-cap">WHEN Miss Callista Rogers first came
+from her Vermont home to the little
+Indiana town of Honeyport, on the Wabash,
+she had a sense of almost perilous adventure—something
+like that felt by the pioneer women
+who followed up the ever-advancing and now
+forever vanished frontier.</p>
+
+<p>“It is so very far away,” she said to her family
+before starting, “and while, of course, there
+are no Indians and no danger of having one’s
+scalp taken, or anything of that sort, still, things
+will be queer and the people can’t be expected
+to be like those in Vermont, not having had the
+same advantages.”</p>
+
+<p>After she reached Honeyport she wrote to her
+sister that the people were queer, but that they
+seemed friendly, and she thought she should get
+along real well. At that time Miss Callista was
+not much past her first youth, but she had lived
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span>long enough to have imbibed the very firm conviction
+that New England opinions and New
+England ways were the only opinions and only
+ways worth considering seriously. Holding
+such belief, it might naturally have been expected
+that she would come into conflict with her
+new associates, but a fair degree of discretion
+prevented her from airing her views too aggressively,
+and her wholesome humor and evident
+kindliness of spirit led her Hoosier friends to be
+indulgent to such of her unflattering opinions as
+were inadvertently betrayed and to regard her
+with considerable favor.</p>
+
+<p>She had come to Indiana to teach school, and
+to Honeyport through the intercession in her
+behalf of Deacon Knox, an old family friend at
+home whose second cousin had married Rev.
+Calvin Evans, pastor of the Presbyterian Church
+at Honeyport.</p>
+
+<p>In those days—it was soon after the war—teaching,
+especially in the rural districts and village
+communities, was not the complicated and
+exacting science it has since become. Miss
+Callista was fairly well grounded in the common
+English branches; in the way of accomplishments
+she knew a little music, and as a crowning
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span>acquirement had an acquaintance with the rudiments
+of the Latin language. This last she was
+not called upon to teach, but the consciousness
+that she was on familiar terms—hardly a speaking
+acquaintance, to be sure—with the ancient
+tongue was a source of infinite satisfaction to her;
+it gave her a sense of superiority and power.</p>
+
+<p>There were some preliminaries to be undergone
+before she was officially authorized to teach
+the young idea of Honeyport, an examination
+among the rest, but this was not severe, and she
+stood it successfully. As for the methods of
+teaching to be adopted, there were no fixed
+rules as now under the elaborate and inflexible
+system in vogue. She was free to follow her
+own judgment, which was for the most part
+good, being based on New England common
+sense and a power of adaptation to the pupils’
+individual needs which every successful teacher
+must have. So she taught in one of the two
+schools of Honeyport very acceptably to the
+people, who were easy-going and not yet
+affected by the “higher education” fad.</p>
+
+<p>But Miss Callista did not so easily adapt herself
+to her new environment in all respects. She
+did not like the appearance of the town and the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span>surrounding country, to begin with. The country
+was too level. Her soul yearned for the hills
+as the souls of those born among them must do
+till memory fails. She missed the blue distances,
+the lights and shadows, the feeling of
+companionship the mountains gave. The prairie
+was monotonous and the sky shut down too
+close. The village itself was trying to her sense
+of thrift and order. She could not free her
+mind concerning it in her letters home, for she
+was resolved to give nothing but agreeable impressions
+to the mother and sister back in the
+trim and prim but picturesque Vermont town.</p>
+
+<p>To Mrs. Evans, the pastor’s wife, she unburdened
+her mind when her sensibilities were too
+deeply outraged. In Mrs. Evans she had found
+a congenial acquaintance. That lady had lived
+in Indiana for so many years that she had acquired
+some of the habits and peculiarities of
+what Miss Callista called the natives, but she
+had been born in New England and cherished
+its traditions. Consequently, she sympathized
+in a measure with the strictures made by the
+new teacher, but she was a discreet woman, as
+became a minister’s wife, and the confidences
+poured into her ears went no further. Understanding
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span>this, Miss Callista felt free to express
+her true sentiments on all matters. She
+was especially indignant over the slipshod ways
+of the village.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s perfectly scandalous,” she said, “the
+way they let the grass grow in the gutters and
+the way they let the pigs and cattle run loose in
+the street. They ought to have more pride.
+Why, when I rode up Main street in the Paw
+Paw hack that first day and saw the sidewalks
+almost covered by high grass, and cows and pigs
+lying right on the walks, and people stepping
+around them, I expected to find slovenly housekeeping,
+too. Like town, like people, I thought.
+Didn’t turn out jest that way, I’m free to confess.
+There are some very nice, neat housekeepers
+here.”</p>
+
+<p>Another peculiarity of the natives excited Miss
+Callista’s scorn.</p>
+
+<p>“I never see,” she told Mrs. Evans, “such a
+dowdy set as they be. Why, they don’t care
+how they look. The women don’t dress up of
+afternoons, and farmers’ wives don’t put on a
+fresh dud when they come to town; jest wear
+their old limpsy calicoes and sunbunnets. The
+men ain’t a mite better, though, to be sure, that’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span>the women’s fault. Husbands are much what
+the wives make ’em, as you know. I don’t set
+no great store by fashions and folderols myself,”
+she went on, “but it’s certainly a dreadful shame
+they don’t slick up more when they go to meeting—particularly
+the Campbellites. Go over to
+that church an’ you won’t see a man with a
+starched shirt bosom. Not that I look at such
+things, specially, but if you have eyes you must
+see. Clean enough, all of ’em, mebbe, but no
+stiffenin’. I’d like to clear starch ’em all once—men,
+women and children.</p>
+
+<p>“And there is another thing. Folks around
+here surmise and wonder, but can’t guess one of
+the main reasons why I set up my own little
+housekeeping. Of course, in the first place, I
+wanted to economize, but, Mrs. Evans, another
+great thing was that I jest wanted something
+good to eat. I do’ know as I’m so very dainty
+about my eating, an’ I do’ know <i>but</i> I be. Anyhow,
+I don’t like the cooking I get at most places.
+Of course, if you’d felt clear to take me it would
+a’ been all right s’ far as the table’s concerned,
+but most places they don’t suit me. They can’t
+make a good cup o’ tea; they don’t know how
+to make yeast bread, and not one of ’em can
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span>make a decent pie. I will say for ’em, though,
+that they can fry chicken to beat all creation.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Callista conceived a peculiar animosity
+toward the religious sect variously known as
+“Disciples,” “Christians” and “Campbellites.”
+Just why was not clear. It may have been due
+to the fact that she had never heard of the denomination
+back in Vermont, and being, as she
+considered, a purely western product, it was,
+therefore, to be distrusted as somehow unorthodox
+and subversive of pious principles. The sect
+was numerously represented in that locality, and
+the congregation which worshiped in one of
+the three churches of Honeyport was larger than
+either the Methodists or Presbyterians could
+muster.</p>
+
+<p>“I shan’t call ’em Disciples,” sniffed Miss
+Callista, “jest as if they were as good as the
+Twelve, an’ I shan’t call ’em Christians. The
+idear! Jest as if they had a patent on the
+name. They don’t like to be called Campbellites,
+but I shall call ’em Campbellites the hull
+time. How any reasonable human being can
+believe in the docterns of that church does beat
+me. An’ there they’ll set an’ listen to jest the
+scrappiest kind o’ sermons, when, by crossin’
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span>the street, they could hear your husband’s stirrin’
+discourses.”</p>
+
+<p>It will be seen from this that Miss Callista was
+not a woman of broad mind, and that, though
+she made her opinions plain to the comprehension,
+they were not expressed in that correct and
+elegant language so desirable in the teachers of
+youth. It is but just, however, to say that she
+was aware of some of these verbal lapses. As
+she herself remarked:</p>
+
+<p>“Nobody understands grammar, and what is
+proper language, better than I do, and in school
+I always take great care to speak correctly.
+When I come home, though, it’s too much
+trouble to be thinking of the parts of speech,
+and I drop into an easier sort o’ talk, as I put
+on a kitchen apron or an old pair o’ shoes.”</p>
+
+<p>Her idioms and accents she was unconscious
+of, and therefore could not drop. The born
+New Englander seldom does. She would say
+“Indianar,” and “idear,” and “Mariar” to
+the end of her days. She was quick to detect
+what she considered errors in others, however.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Bucket!’ Don’t let me hear you say
+‘bucket,’” she would tell her pupils. “It’s
+a ridiculous word; say ‘pail.’ And don’t say
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span>you ‘reckon’ or ‘low’ you’ll do so and so; say
+‘guess.’”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Callista had come West to teach because,
+even if she could get a school at her home,
+with all the eager candidates in competition for
+every place, better salaries were paid in Indiana.
+For her own part she would have preferred to
+stay in Vermont, even with the scant wages of
+the district school, but she had a mother and
+sister who needed her earnings, and it was for
+them she started out to seek a better fortune.
+The mother was a widow with a tiny home to
+call her own and an income hardly in proportion;
+the sister, a fragile girl with the New England
+scourge, consumption, already making its signs
+visible. Miss Callista must be the bread winner,
+and she went bravely about her task.
+She loved her family and her home; she had
+none of the self-assertiveness that is needed for
+those who would get on in the world; she
+dreaded the separation from her dear ones, and
+yet it never occurred to her to rebel against fate
+that made such a trial possible. She did not
+dream that she was heroic, and yet it is in such
+actions that the heroism of the latter days is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span>found—a heroism not less than that which led
+the knights of old on their crusades.</p>
+
+<p>Many and many a day in her new abiding place
+homesickness pressed upon her like a tangible
+weight; her heart ached for a sight of dear faces
+and familiar scenes; the very sun shining in the
+heavens took on a forbidding look, and the birds
+sang a melancholy tune. But if the poor, lonely
+little woman wept it was when no one knew.
+She kept a brave face and wrote cheery letters
+to the invalid at home. Every penny of her
+salary but that which supplied her own barest
+needs went to make the life of that invalid easier.
+She not only made no complaint over her own
+deprivations and sacrifices; she made the sacrifices
+gladly and did not know them to be such.
+Women are often like that. If the beneficiaries
+accepted the gifts as a matter of course and
+without appreciation of the life that was being
+given also, why, that was not unusual either.
+The human creature is often so.</p>
+
+<p>The years went on until five had passed since
+Miss Callista had seen the faces of her kin and
+the blue Vermont hills. At the beginning she
+had not dreamed that so long a time would
+elapse before she could return, but one thing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span>and another had delayed her visit. The invalid
+sister had needed so many things. The malady
+made inroads and delicacies were wanted to
+keep up her strength; medicines, too, and the
+doctor must be paid. Once a famous specialist
+came up from Boston to see her, and that cost
+money. This fifth winter just ended had been
+spent by the ailing one in Florida, but she was
+now at home again, and a turn of fortune in the
+shape of a railroad rate war made it suddenly
+possible for Miss Callista to go to see her and
+the dear mother. The cost of travel, the rival
+passenger agents declared, was less than that of
+staying at home. So, the spring term having
+just ended, she joyfully went her way.</p>
+
+<p>She was in time for the end. Though it was
+early June and the sun shone with torrid strength
+on the Honeyport prairie, and the roses were in
+bloom, it was not so surely summer but that a
+wintry blast swept down from the north through
+the Vermont valleys and undid all the healing
+wrought by the Florida airs. The ailing sister
+was cut down as a lily by the frost. She died
+in Miss Callista’s arms—faithful arms that had
+scarce time to rest before they held the mother’s
+weary form while her soul breathed itself away.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span>The mother had lived for the stricken daughter,
+and that beloved life ended, she, too, was done
+with earth.</p>
+
+<p>The summer vacation was not over when Miss
+Callista came back to Honeyport. The charm
+of her childhood’s home was gone. Later in
+life the glamour of the mountains would come
+back to her and her heart would yearn for a sight
+of them, but now they chilled her and she was
+glad to return to the once despised village on the
+Wabash, with the unbroken, shadowless landscape
+and the level horizon. Out of the old home
+life were left only memories and a few household
+goods. When some of these treasures were unloaded
+at the door of her Indiana home—a
+heavy oaken secretary, a spindle-legged table, a
+straight-backed, comfortless-looking chair—the
+men who lifted them into place wondered that
+she went to the expense of shipping such old-fashioned
+furnishings when she might have
+bought finer ones at home for less money. But
+the women who saw them did not wonder—women
+who had found for themselves how the
+heart clings to inanimate things when they alone
+are left to speak of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>So Miss Callista, permanently transplanted,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span>settled down in a bit of a cottage next to the
+Presbyterian parsonage, still occupied by her
+friends, the Evanses, and resumed her occupation
+of teaching. There was no one now to
+save for and deny herself for, but, being an unselfish
+creature, this only brought her pain.
+Nevertheless, as time went on life grew more
+comfortable for her. She indulged in an occasional
+bit of finery; now and then she went on
+an excursion somewhere. Once she went to Indianapolis
+to attend the state fair, and once she
+went to Chicago and came back dizzy and bewildered,
+glad to be in the quiet home away from
+the busy whirl.</p>
+
+<p>The years went on until more than fifteen
+had passed since she set foot on Hoosier soil.
+All this time she had not escaped the speculations
+all normally constituted people are bound
+to indulge in concerning the matrimonial prospects
+of their spinster friends. It was assumed
+that she was not only ready, but anxious to
+marry when the opportunity and the man offered,
+and kindly neighbors kept a lookout for both.
+Miss Callista alone seemed indifferent. Apparently
+she took no thought of such possibilities.
+She was polite in a sedate way to the occasional
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span>marriageable men who showed a disposition to
+hover around her, but she gave encouragement
+to none. Her Honeyport friends suspected that
+she had wasted her heart on some unappreciative
+Vermont Yankee, but this was not the case.</p>
+
+<p>The truth was that the marriageable male beings
+who had come within her range of possibilities
+had not been quite to her liking. The farmers
+who constituted the most of these eligibles were
+too rough and careless in dress, too much given
+to tobacco chewing and too loudly hilarious in
+their conversation to please her somewhat fastidious
+taste. She may not have cherished a
+definite ideal of the man who would meet her
+requirements, but she had a clear conception of
+what would not do. So the years had gone
+swiftly by, bringing few changes in the routine
+of her life, or even in her appearance. She was
+a plump and comely body, and in some respects
+more attractive than in her younger days, for
+lines of care and anxiety and homesickness had
+given way to placid contentment in her work
+and in every-day affairs. She looked forward
+to no change in her mode of life or her experiences,
+but, as so often happens when change
+comes into an uneventful existence, it comes unexpectedly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span>and creates a complete transformation
+in the little world.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Evans, still her nearest neighbor and
+closest friend, fell ill and came swiftly down to
+death’s door. Before she passed through she
+said to Miss Callista, who was her faithful attendant:</p>
+
+<p>“When I am gone Calvin will marry again
+after a proper time. He will; oh, yes. It is a
+man’s way, and it will be Calvin’s way. He
+will need somebody to look after him. I want
+you to be the one, and I have told him so. You
+will know how and will do for him as I would.”</p>
+
+<p>This was said gaspingly between paroxysms
+of pain, but with all the firmness and decision
+for which Mrs. Evans was noted when at her
+best estate. It was the supreme proof of a
+woman’s faith in another that she could put her
+husband into her keeping, and, having given it,
+she closed her eyes and opened them no more.</p>
+
+<p>This last communication made a powerful impression
+on Miss Callista. It was a startling
+surprise, but she accepted it unquestioningly as
+a guide to her future.</p>
+
+<p>What Mrs. Evans wanted Mr. Evans to do had
+always been done, and she had not the faintest
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span>doubt that he would follow his wife’s instructions
+in this, as he had been accustomed to do
+in all other matters.</p>
+
+<p>She grieved for her friend’s death, but almost
+insensibly she began to adjust herself to coming
+conditions. The bereaved man assumed the
+conventional appearance of gentle melancholy
+by which the newly-made widower is so easily
+recognized, and his earliest sermons had a tenderly
+pathetic tone that she, in common with
+the other women of the congregation, considered
+very touching and appropriate. But even in
+this sacred stage of his widowerhood she felt
+herself looking upon him with a new interest and
+a secret sense of possession. She had been
+brought up to revere ministers as a class, and
+had always had a respectful regard for Mr. Evans
+because of his profession and because he had
+been kind to her. He was not her ideal of
+manly beauty, being gaunt of frame and bald of
+head; moreover, he was twenty years older than
+she, being nearly sixty. However, she recognized
+the fact that it was not for her to make age
+a barrier, since no widower of sixty was likely
+to consider himself other than desirable even to
+a maid of twenty.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span>She also confessed to herself that she had
+always considered the wife of a minister blessed
+among women, and that, while she had never
+hoped to marry one, the sudden and unexpected
+prospect of doing so was very agreeable
+indeed. She felt herself fitted to the labor
+of smoothing life’s pathway for a servant of
+the Lord. Not that she could assist in sermon-writing,
+as she had suspected the first Mrs. Evans
+of doing, but she could minister to his comfort
+in a more material way. She could take
+household cares from his shoulders; she could
+make him presentable to the public; she could
+keep him posted on many ins and outs of the
+parish; above all, she could feed him well, and
+she held that of all men ministers needed to be
+well fed. She considered it a reasonable proposition
+that a man could administer a far higher
+degree of spiritual consolation to his flock when
+his stomach was comfortably filled than when it
+was empty or dyspeptic from poor food.</p>
+
+<p>The very church building began to take on a
+new aspect. She saw that it needed a new carpet
+and a coat of paint, and her mind leaped
+forward to the time when, as minister’s wife, she
+could have an influence in bringing such improvements
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>about. But she kept all such
+thoughts concealed in her own heart. Her
+manner toward her pastor was more sedate and
+dignified than ever. The knowledge imparted
+by her deceased friend had given her a self-consciousness
+which put an end to the little neighborly
+attentions she had been accustomed to offer
+when the wife was alive, such as sending
+over a favorite dish, or now and then an embroidered
+handkerchief, or even taking his hose
+from the mending basket and darning them in
+the highest style of the art. Now, she thought,
+such things would “make talk”—dreadful bugbear
+of lone women—and she left Mr. Evans
+entirely to the mercies of Nancy, his inefficient
+and elderly serving woman, and to other female
+parishioners who, with husbands to approve
+their actions, might safely venture where she
+could not tread.</p>
+
+<p>It was the more easy to give up her accustomed
+service in her reverend neighbor’s house
+from the fact that her spare hours were now
+largely devoted to the entertainment of the Littledale
+twins—the three-year-old children of the
+Rev. Amos Littledale, the Campbellite minister,
+who lived across the street.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span>Miss Callista’s animosity to the Campbellites
+had in no wise abated, and was generally understood
+in the community, but the feeling was directed
+to them as a sect and not as individuals.
+Certainly, it did not include the babies, especially
+such sweet and attractive ones as these. Long
+before their mother died, several months back,
+her heart had gone out to those twins, and when
+they manifested a fondness for her, based though
+she knew it was on her supply of buns and cookies,
+she became their devoted friend. She had
+once confided to Mrs. Evans, with a maidenly
+blush, that if she had been married and the
+Lord had seen fit to bless her with children, she
+would have liked twins.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Littledale’s young sister was his housekeeper
+and guardian of the babies, and Miss
+Callista, seeing that the burden of care was
+heavy for the girl, cheerfully relieved and
+aided her in many ways. It would do no
+harm to make the young things happy while
+it could be done, she thought. “It wasn’t at all
+likely they would have much chance to be happy
+if their father married that flirty young Mattie
+Stone, over on the West pike, as seemed
+likely. Strange that a man couldn’t show better
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>judgment when he married, especially when
+he took a second partner. There was Mr. Littledale,
+all of thirty-one, or maybe thirty-two
+years old, and Mat Stone wasn’t over twenty,
+and a giddy piece, too. There was Jane Embree,
+steady and settled, and of a suitable age,
+and willing, and he never so much as looked her
+way. But law sakes, what could you expect of
+a man and a preacher at that, in a church that
+had the hull New Testament for its creed and no
+confession of faith and no definite thing you
+could get at to tell what the members did believe,
+or why they couldn’t be just plain Baptists,
+or even Methodists or Presbyterians, who will immerse
+you if you insist on it?”</p>
+
+<p>But, with all her absorption in the infants Miss
+Callista did not fail to keep a watchful eye on
+Widower Evans. She was a woman and not unobservant,
+and had therefore not failed to note
+the peculiarities of widowers. She knew at about
+what period deepest grief began to lift its clouds
+and life present some attractions once more; it
+was a very early period in a majority of cases.
+She could invariably detect the first indications
+that the bereaved one was “able to take notice,”
+as cynical old ladies have it; she knew well the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span>signs that he was not only contemplating further
+matrimonial possibilities in a general way, but
+also when he had ceased to generalize and had
+fixed his eye upon a concrete individual as a desirable
+consoler. She saw Mr. Evans emerge
+into the first of these stages, her proximity as
+next-door neighbor being a point of vantage.
+He shaved oftener than he had been accustomed
+to doing; he buttoned his frock coat when he
+went out, instead of allowing it to hang open in
+a saggy, slovenly way; he carried himself more
+erectly, and with almost a jaunty air. Before
+his best coat was in the least shiny he began to
+wear it every day, and bought a new one for
+Sundays.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Callista observed this piece of extravagance
+with a thrill; it was significant of immediate
+activity in the matrimonial field. It was
+barely six months since Mrs. Evans had died,
+but her expectant successor considered it probable
+that he would wish to marry as soon as the
+conventional year of mourning had expired, and
+it was a matter of course that the necessary preliminaries
+should be arranged before that date.</p>
+
+<p>Almost unconsciously she began to preen herself
+like a little bird in the spring. Her brown
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span>hair waved with an extra crinkle; she put a
+fresh bow on her summer bonnet and wore a
+pink ribbon at her throat where brown had been.
+People said how young Miss Callista looked and
+how well she “held her age.” They also began
+to say what a suitable wife she would make
+for Mr. Evans; some of them, in the free-spoken
+rural way, said it to her, and made her
+blush and try to look angry. But they began
+to say, too, that Mr. Evans seemed to be looking
+with a favorable eye upon the Widow Jackson,
+out on West Main street. He had been
+seen to walk home with her from prayer-meeting,
+and he dropped in with what some considered
+needless frequency to administer spiritual
+consolation to the widow’s son, who was in the
+last stages of what was known as “decline.”</p>
+
+<p>This information gave Miss Callista a shock.
+Could it be possible, she asked herself, that he
+was about to disregard his wife’s dying injunction?
+He showed no indications of any leaning
+in her direction, save that he had come over
+once or twice in a neighborly way, and when
+other neighbors were present, to sit on her little
+porch and chat in the twilight. But he had
+never walked home with her from prayer-meeting,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span>though she attended regularly and it was
+right in his way. She cogitated over the matter
+a good deal, and as a result of her reflections
+decided upon what she considered a bold move
+and a counter attraction to the widow’s blandishments.
+She resolved to invite him to supper,
+no matter if folks did say she was setting her
+cap for him. She wasn’t doing anything of the
+kind, and she wasn’t anyways anxious, she said
+to herself, to marry him, but something was
+due to her friend Mrs. Evans; and certainly that
+lady would not approve of Mrs. Jackson. And
+what a poor figure she would cut at the head of
+the missionary society and the sewing circle,
+sure enough! Perhaps, it was her (Miss Callista’s)
+duty gently to remind him of his late
+partner’s wishes. So she spent the most of one
+Saturday afternoon in concocting the preacher’s
+favorite dishes, and when they were ready to
+serve, stepped to the back fence, and, in a
+casual way, as if it were a sudden thought,
+asked him to come over and have a bit of supper.
+She said, she knew Nancy had gone to
+see her folks, and she thought he might enjoy a
+cup of tea and something warm instead of a cold
+bite by himself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span>He came with alacrity, and was presently
+installed at the table with Miss Callista opposite
+and a Littledale twin at each side of her.
+It had seemed to her that the presence of the
+twins would at once preserve the proprieties
+and offer no barrier to confidential conversation.
+The babies behaved like little angels,
+but there was no conversation that all the
+world might not have heard. She plied her
+guest with fried chicken, with the lightest of
+rolls, with strawberry shortcake and with his
+favorite temperance tipple of diluted blackberry
+cordial, put up by her own hands the year before.
+He ate heartily and joyously, and made
+a variety of facetious remarks to the twins, but
+he went home without so much as a look indicating
+a thought of his wife’s sacred injunction.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Callista did not like it. She took the
+twins to their gate and kissed them good-night
+with an abruptness and irritation of manner
+hitherto unknown to them. She was beginning
+to have a little resentment on her own account
+as well as on that of the departed Mrs. Evans,
+whose request was being ignored. Her vanity
+was touched. Queer taste a man had, she
+thought, who could see anything in that Widow
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span>Jackson better than he saw in her; and everybody
+knew the widow couldn’t cook a decent
+meal to save her life.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Callista was modest, but no woman is so
+unduly self-depreciating that she does not secretly
+recognize her own superiority to certain
+other women.</p>
+
+<p>But the supper did have its effect, after all,
+for during the weeks following Mr. Evans fell
+into the way of walking home with Miss Callista
+after Sunday evening service and of coming
+oftener to sit on her porch in the dusk. But he
+did not discontinue his visits to the widow. The
+situation was quite interesting to the parishioners
+and the village gossips, and people began to
+take sides. The women discussed the matter
+over the back fences, and the men who sat
+around the grocery stores wagered small sums
+on the outcome.</p>
+
+<p>One day in August Miss Callista was surprised
+by the receipt of a letter. It was from Mr.
+Evans, who had been spending a week or so
+with a sister in Lafayette. It read thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>“Miss Callista—Esteemed Friend: I take this means
+of addressing you in regard to an important matter. When
+my lamented Jane was in her last illness, she foresaw that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span>I should find the burden of loneliness too great to bear, and
+she advised me to marry again after a proper time had
+passed, and strongly recommended you as a suitable partner.
+Indeed, she was so urgent that she exacted a promise
+that I would follow her advice. At that time I was much
+agitated and distressed, and scarcely knew what I was
+saying, but since I have recently come to reflect upon the
+matter it has seemed to me that her views were very
+judicious. The time is near when I can, without reproach,
+enter again into the marriage state, and for many
+reasons it seems expedient for me to do so. Inasmuch
+as you were on terms of close friendship with my dear
+Jane, and will doubtless desire, as I do, to carry out her
+wishes as far as possible in all respects, I ask your consideration
+of the matter in hand. As my wife you can
+greatly increase your field of usefulness, and I feel assured
+that the Lord will fit your strength to the new duties and
+responsibilities. I write this in order to prepare your
+mind. I shall return to-morrow and will call on you,
+when we can discuss the subject in all its bearings.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="indentright">“Yours in the Lord,</span><br>
+
+“<span class="smcap">Calvin H. Evans</span>.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Miss Callista read this epistle several times.
+At first she experienced a sense of triumph and
+elation. There was no longer any doubt about
+the matter. She, and not the Widow Jackson,
+had won the prize. On the second reading she
+added the comment, “if he is a prize.” The
+third time red spots began to grow on her
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span>cheeks, and she talked to herself as people who
+live alone are apt to do.</p>
+
+<p>“He talks as if he were asking me to marry
+him all on his first wife’s account, and had no
+special interest in the matter himself. Mrs.
+Evans was a good woman, but another woman
+wants some better reason for marrying the widower
+than that. And then he doesn’t out and
+out ask me to marry him; jest takes it for
+granted that I will jump at the chance once my
+mind is prepared. Conceited old thing, if he is
+a preacher. He seems to have some doubt,
+too, of my being equal to the new duties, and—and
+he never even says he likes me or will
+try to make me happy, or anything. A woman,
+even if she is going to be a second wife and isn’t
+as young as she was, wants a little love-making
+on her own account.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Callista did not reflect, or perhaps did
+not know, that men to whom it is not given to
+be sentimental and affectionate on paper are
+sometimes most eloquent of speech in the tender
+cause. She continued to cherish resentment,
+but, nevertheless, went about preparing green
+corn fritters in case the parson should happen in
+about supper time.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span>The twins happened in, as they were wont to
+do whenever they found the gates unfastened,
+and after them presently came their father ostensibly
+in search of the truants. He had come
+so often on the same errand that he was quite at
+home, and detected at once Miss Callista’s appearance
+of irritation, for there was a dangerous
+sparkle in her usually mild eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“Have the children worried you? I will take
+them home at once,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“Worry me—those dear babies? No, indeed;
+they couldn’t do that. Older people than they
+are the ones who worry.”</p>
+
+<p>Rev. Mr. Littledale might have made a reputation
+in the legal profession, he had such a
+knack of getting the information he wanted by
+skillful but apparently purposeless questioning.
+Miss Callista had no intention of telling about
+Mr. Evans’s proposal, or, more accurately, his
+proposition, but she was full of the subject, and
+presently sat down on the sofa in the cool little
+parlor, the twins promptly climbing up and sitting
+one on each side with their arms about her.</p>
+
+<p>“What would you think, Mr. Littledale, of a
+man who would ask a woman to be his second
+wife just because he thought it would please his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span>first wife? I know—I know a lady—I have
+heard of a case of the kind.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Littledale was shrewd. He had had his
+eye on Mr. Evans, and needed to know no more.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Callista,” said he promptly and with
+shameless disregard of the other man’s possible
+claims, “Miss Callista, such a man isn’t worth
+thinking about. He’s a selfish wretch, and no
+woman could be happy with him. A second
+wife deserves as much consideration as the first,
+and on her own account, too. And while we
+are talking about marrying, Miss Callista, shall
+I tell you what I have been wanting to say for
+some time? I want you for my wife. I love
+you, Miss Callista; the twins love you; won’t
+you come to us?”</p>
+
+<p>The twins, cherubic creatures, promptly echoed,
+“Love oo, Miss C’lista,” and proceeded to embrace
+her, but were dispossessed by their parent.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Callista was taken completely by surprise,
+but this variety of surprise never wholly
+disconcerts the most timid of women. She
+thought rapidly for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>“There! Mr. Littledale’s been dropping in
+all summer, staying to supper and making himself
+at home generally, and I never thought anything
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>of it, because he’s younger than I be;
+and, besides, I s’posed he was engaged to that
+Stone girl. Folks will say I tried to catch him.”</p>
+
+<p>Like a flash, too, came the thought: “If I
+say yes, Mr. Evans will have to look somewhere
+else, and I don’t care if he does. I never made
+any promise to Jane. The Widow Jackson can
+have him.”</p>
+
+<p>What Miss Callista said was: “Why, Mr.
+Littledale, I’m seven years older than you be,
+and—and I’m a Presbyterian.”</p>
+
+<p>“What do a few years matter? We won’t
+count them,” was the reply. “And I’m sure
+I have nothing against Presbyterians. If you
+mean that I’m a Campbellite, why, please try
+to forgive me.”</p>
+
+<p>Evidently he received forgiveness, for when
+Mr. Evans arrived that evening he found Mr.
+Littledale sitting with Miss Callista on the vine-covered
+porch, and the corn fritters had all been
+eaten. The new condition of affairs was gently
+disclosed to him by his successful rival, and he
+was perceptibly discomfited. He had, perhaps,
+not valued Miss Callista at her true worth while
+he considered her his for the asking, but now
+that another man had taken her from him she
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span>suddenly seemed highly desirable. Possibly
+the discovery of Rev. Evans’s designs may have
+inspired Mr. Littledale to unpremeditated action,
+but this is only a surmise. It is the way of man
+to be so influenced. Mr. Evans made but a
+short call, and when he entered his own home
+the door was heard to slam with what seemed
+unnecessary violence.</p>
+
+<p>But the Presbyterian pastor was not inconsolable.
+The very next evening he walked home
+with the Widow Jackson from prayer-meeting
+and stayed till 10 o’clock. The morning after,
+the widow, under strict injunction of secrecy,
+told Deacon Todd’s wife of her engagement,
+and by night the whole town knew of it.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Callista also confided in Mrs. Todd.</p>
+
+<p>“I never would have supposed that I’d marry
+a Campbellite, that is, a Disciple—never, or
+that I’d be one myself. Of course, a minister’s
+wife ought, in all decency, to belong to his
+church, and, of course, I will. I ought to be
+able to accept the doctern if it’s the hull New
+Testament, as they say. And there! I’ll have
+to be immersed, too, I s’pose. I hadn’t thought
+of that; but I guess I can stand it to go through
+water, or fire either, for them blessed twins.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">AT A WAY-STATION</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap">THIRTY years ago a certain railroad in Indiana
+was new enough to be still a source of
+deep interest and curiosity to the people of the
+sparsely-settled region through which it passed.
+They had not yet ceased to gather at the stations,
+morning and evening, to see the “down train”
+and the “up train.” The projectors of this
+thoroughfare, having in view, perhaps, legislative
+appropriations and private subscriptions of
+stock, had artfully led the public to think that a
+farming country of marvelous richness was suffering
+for an outlet; that passengers and produce
+impatiently waited to crowd its cars. So impressed
+were guileless citizens with this idea that
+only a brave man or a fool would have dared to
+say: “Go to! We need no railroad.” Thus
+far in the existence of the road the great rush of
+travel and traffic had not begun; in the meantime,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>one train daily each way was found enough
+for all needs.</p>
+
+<p>Few among the rural population along the
+route ever went from home; fewer still expected
+visitors. Yet they went regularly to
+see the engine and the gayly painted cars; they
+indulged in wild speculations as to the probable
+business and destination of the travelers of whom
+they caught glimpses. The occasional stranger
+who stopped at any village was confronted on
+the platform by groups of men in blue or butternut
+jeans, all chewing tobacco and expectorating
+profusely. He passed women in lank calico
+dresses and limp calico sunbonnets—some old
+and wrinkled, some young enough to be pretty,
+but, with rare exceptions, hopelessly plain. Even
+the dull-eyed babies, in their mothers’ arms,
+lacked the charm of health and wholesomeness.
+If the traveler chanced to wonder how one woman,
+with an expanse of toothless gums, could endure
+to smile, he might marvel that the next one appeared
+in public before having her unsightly
+teeth removed. And while he considered the
+sad effect of quinine, soda and tobacco on human
+beauty, he would have been amazed had he
+known the curiosity his own person excited.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span>“Who is he?” “Where does he live at?”
+“What brings him down this away?” “How
+long will he stay?” were questions eagerly discussed.</p>
+
+<p>The railroad had given them something to
+think about. Do you know what that means,
+you who have never lived in the country, remote
+from a business center? It means that the residents,
+having little outside interest, few books,
+perhaps no newspapers (there are such places
+yet), have narrowed their lives down until fresh
+subjects for thought and conversation are rare.
+They have talked about each other, about the
+crops, the calves, the pigs and the weather, until
+each man knows what another is going to say
+while he is yet afar off. Any unusual event, a
+death, an elopement, a fire, is seized upon, talked
+about from every point of view, turned to every
+light, over and over, until each thread and shred
+of the story is worn with age. Finally, it seems
+to die away, but suddenly revives, and passes on
+its round until set aside by something equally
+startling. Think, then, of the vast store of entertainment
+afforded by a railroad!</p>
+
+<p>On this October evening, thirty years ago,
+the echoing scream of the locomotive, strange to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>say, did not draw out the usual number of idlers
+to gape, open-mouthed, as the train halted,
+then passed on. More strange still, many passengers
+alighted at each stopping place—the natives,
+themselves, returning home with the air of
+adventurers, breathing sighs of relief, too, as of
+having safely accomplished a perilous journey.
+Capacious lunch-baskets, as well as certain additions
+to their every-day attire—wide hoop-skirts
+on the women, shirt-collars on the men,
+for example—suggested that some sort of festivities
+had been indulged in.</p>
+
+<p>As the excursionists lingered, reluctant to go
+while anything remained to be seen, their last
+glances turned from the long line of crowded passenger
+coaches to a baggage-car with the doors
+tightly closed, and a curious hush fell on them as
+it rolled by. What did it mean? A “through
+passenger,” in search of knowledge, found the
+path an easy one. The long, lean man at his side,
+with sunburned, straggling beard and a mouth
+like a cavern, was full of information. “Political
+meetin’! Lord, no! ’Lections stirs a feller up
+some, but there ain’t ary stump-speaker in Indiana
+’at kin fetch sech an all-fired big crowd as
+was out to Newburg to-day. Hangin’ yo’
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span>know—Bill Murdock’s. Hain’t heard about
+him? Reckon yo’ cain’t live ’round hyer, anywheres,
+or yo’d a knowed the peticklers. Been
+a powerful sight o’ talk about it, fust an’ last.
+Yo’ see ’t happened ’bout this hyer way: Bill,
+he tuck a notion one night, nigh two months ago
+now, ’at he’d go down to the Corners to Gimble’s
+an’ get some ten-penny nails.</p>
+
+<p>“He was a-workin’ old Carter’s farm on the
+sheers an’ lived up there, full two mile from the
+Corners. His wife was a finicky little critter,
+with a mite of a baby, an’ ’peared like she had
+a warnin’ o’ some kind, for she done her best to
+coax him to stay to home. But go he would,
+though what he wanted with them nails jest at
+that time, more ’an a pin with two heads, no
+one could ever make out. After he’d bought
+’em an’ talked with the fellers in the store a bit—mebbe
+had a drink or two in the back room—in
+come Jake Jillson. Jake was a airy sort o’
+chap—could afford to be, ’cause his father ’d
+left him one o’ the best farms in the township,
+an’ he was beholden to nobody. Well, there’d
+been some old grutch atween him an’ Bill—no
+one knows zackly what. Some says Jake had
+courted Bill’s wife in times past, an’ that she
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>throwed him over; but I don’t reckon that was
+it. Jake was married two years afore Bill was,
+an’ taint no ways likely ’at a female woman ’u’d
+give a well-to-do feller like Jake the go-by an’
+take up with a pore man like Bill. They’re too
+long-headed, women be. ’T any rate, however
+’twas, the two soon come to a quarrel. Nobody
+’at heard ’em seems to agree jest how it was.
+Jake he was aggravatin’ an’ kep’ a naggin’. Bill
+allays was high-tempered, an’ fore anyone seen
+’at they was really in airnest, Bill he was chasin’
+of Jake over the boxes an’ bar’ls. It was on’y
+a minute afore he ketched him an’ hit him. The
+breath was knocked out o’ Jake for good an’ all
+with that air very pound o’ ten-penny nails.</p>
+
+<p>“Jerusalem! What a racket it raised! After
+the folks come to their senses like, they got the
+sheriff an’ a posse o’ constables an’ scoured
+around the country right smart of a spell huntin’
+Bill, afore they thought o’ going to his house.
+At last they went there an’ found him a-walkin’
+the floor with his baby. He was teetotally
+wropped up in that woman an’ young un o’ his,
+but sick baby or not he was drug off to jail,
+an’ not a minute too soon. A lot o’ men in
+masks came a-gallopin’ down, an’ would a’ made
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>short work o’ him if he’d been there. No, I
+don’t know who they were, an’ ef I did, ’twould
+be safe fer to keep my mouth shet. These hyer
+things hev to be looked after now an’ then—the
+law bein’ so slow an’ oncertain. Wasn’t much
+time lost, though, on this case. The jury
+wouldn’t a’ dared to a’ brought in ary other
+verdict than guilty, considerin’ how many rich
+relations Jake had scattered about this county.
+They’d made it mighty lively for ary juryman
+’at would vote to clear his murderer. An’ so
+Bill, bein’, as I said, a pore man, with no friends
+to help him, had no show, an’ had to swing.
+’Twas all right, I reckon; somebody has to be
+made a example of.</p>
+
+<p>“Me an’ Mandy—that’s her in the red caliker
+a settin’ over yonder—’lowed we’d go up to
+Newburg to-day, where the hangin’ was at.
+Hadn’t ary one of us ever saw a man hung, an’
+she hadn’t never been on the steam kyars. I
+hadn’t no notion o’ takin’ the boys, but Mandy,
+she says, ‘Lawsy, let ’em go, it’ll be a warnin’
+to ’em to behave theirselves when they’ve
+growed up.’ So we all went. An’ jeminey!
+what a crowd! Best part o’ two counties there,
+I reckon.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span>After a pause, during which the long, lean
+man ejected tobacco juice vigorously across the
+traveler into the aisle, he added reflectively:
+“A circus, I’m free to say, would a’ been more
+to my taste, but it wouldn’t a’ been so improvin’
+to the community. Elder Borum says
+circuses are corrupt an’ a snare o’ the devil.”</p>
+
+<p>Another pause and more tobacco.</p>
+
+<p>“The—the—deceased is on a kyar back o’
+this hyer.”</p>
+
+<p>Just then the train quivered, slackened,
+stopped where a lonely country road crossed the
+track; not a human being, not a house in sight—only
+a platform and a pile of walnut lumber
+to hide the long, straight, western horizon beyond
+miles and miles of “rolling” country. In
+the summer, perhaps, it might have a certain
+beauty; in the dusk of this autumn day it was
+desolation. Toward the north a grove of girdled
+trees waved white, ghostly arms; rain had
+fallen and the gray earth, the heavy sky alike
+seemed sodden. The long gray and black
+curves of the wagon-track wound in and out like
+a huge serpent crawling over the earth.</p>
+
+<p>Out upon the platform was helped from the
+baggage-car a young, slender woman with a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span>baby in her arms—a woman in whose eyes was
+no longer hope, were no more tears.</p>
+
+<p>After her was lifted a pine coffin roughly
+stained. The men who had touched her gently
+were less tender of this other burden. They
+dropped it with a jar that brought a little cry of
+pain from the woman’s lips. She sank down
+and placed her hand upon the box as if to shield
+from harm that which was within. The child
+upon her lap stared solemnly at the sky. The
+engine shrieked fiercely as if in haste to go, then
+rushed on, leaving her with her dead and her
+despair.</p>
+
+<p>Curious passengers, looking back from a bend
+in the road, saw her crouching motionless, while
+a last red gleam from the setting sun broke
+through the clouds and touched her with a
+weird light.</p>
+
+<p>Around a curve of serpentine highway they
+saw, too, a country wagon, the driver an old
+man with bent head, the horses slow and spiritless.
+Then the train swept on out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>Not a pleasant story, do you say?</p>
+
+<p>No, yet “’tis true, ’tis pity.” It is one of
+those dark threads so common in the weft of life
+that, to our short-sighted eyes, mar the pattern
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>that else might be so fair. We even doubt the
+wisdom of the Weaver who permits such defects,
+such shadows to hide the clearer outlines
+of the web. As if we knew His designs!</p>
+
+<p>Do you wish to hear the sequel—to follow to
+an end the twisted thread that seems to have
+crossed and tangled uselessly in the loom of
+fate?</p>
+
+<p>The mother, who was left with her child at
+the lonely station, would have been glad to die,
+no doubt; but, for the sake of the babe, she
+must live on. She was one of those timid,
+clinging creatures such as all women are exhorted
+to become. Masculine wisdom says the
+manifest destiny of such a one is to be a wife
+and mother; the same sagacity neglects to go
+further and provide for her helplessness when
+destiny fails her. But these two lived, and
+the child grew and thrived. How they lived
+only a woman, poor and alone, who toils for
+her children, day and night, can tell. This
+mother, like the rest, worked early and late at
+anything her hands could find to do. She
+sewed, she washed, she nursed the sick, she
+drudged for the farmers’ wives in busy seasons.
+Hours when she should have slept were spent
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span>in making the scanty garments of baby Nancy.
+Little sympathy was manifested for her, though
+doubtless more was felt than found expression;
+the American farmer is not demonstrative. She
+did not ask for pity, and no one saw her weep.
+The neighbors said “Mrs. Murdock bore up
+right well under her man’s takin’ off; lucky ’at
+she was one o’ them kind ’at didn’t have no
+deep feelin’s.”</p>
+
+<p>Not so with the other widow. Mrs. Jillson’s
+display of grief was loud and violent. Never
+was woman so cruelly bereaved, she said. She
+knew she could not live. If there were no Murdocks
+on the face of the earth she should die
+easier; she could grind them to powder herself.
+“What right had that sly, deceitful hussy to be
+alive? Not a bit of doubt she worked Bill up
+to the murder. Jealous, you see, because Jake
+looked at her once before he knew me.”</p>
+
+<p>Before long, however, her excessive sorrow
+moderated. She allowed herself to think favorably
+of life once more. Hysterics and “sinking
+spells” grew less frequent. In less than a year
+she married again—entirely on her son’s account,
+she told her friends. “A lone widow
+woman couldn’t rightly bring up a boy.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span>Mrs. Murdock’s feelings toward the family of
+her husband’s victim were curious. For them
+she cared nothing, but for “Billy’s sake” she
+cherished a strong desire, a feverish anxiety to do
+them some service. Had she been of the Roman
+Catholic instead of the Methodist faith she
+would have starved herself, if need be, to pay
+for masses for the repose of his soul. As it was,
+ministers of the gospel—well-meaning men—who
+had “labored and prayed” with Murdock
+before his execution, told her that he had refused
+the means of grace. While admitting
+regret for the crime committed, he had declared
+that he did not love God; that he knew nothing
+about Him. “When yo’ talk, Elder, about lovin’,”
+he would say, “I could sense yore
+meanin’ mighty well ef yo’ was a p’intin’ at my
+woman an’ the little chickabiddy. Them’s all
+I’ve got ary love fer in this hyer world. I never
+knowed the Lord here, an’ ef it depends upon
+my believin’ in an’ lovin’ of Him now, I reckon
+I shan’t know Him in the next place.” With
+which grim statement the preachers were finally
+forced to silence.</p>
+
+<p>Being taken thus in the blackness of his sins,
+unconverted, of course he must pay the penalty
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span>hereafter, they told the grieving wife. The penalty,
+she had always been taught and had undoubtedly
+believed, was unspeakable torture
+forever and evermore.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in her extremity, she did as we all do
+when a creed is too narrow for our own special
+needs—she passed it by. Turning from that
+monument of human wisdom, she groped for a
+gate where hope was not shut out.</p>
+
+<p>“Billy must be punished, for he done a wicked
+thing, but he was not bad, he was not bad.
+I knowed him so well. He was always kind,
+on’y his temper quick—God must know that
+too, an’ surely, surely He can’t be hard on him
+always ’cause he lost control over his self jest
+once. Ef I could on’y do something for Mrs.
+Jillson, seems as if ’twould count for Billy some
+way. Ef she would let me work for her I
+might see some chance, but ’pears like she
+won’t let me come a-nigh.”</p>
+
+<p>Having no one else, she whispered her
+thoughts, her wishes to the little Nancy. Instead
+of tender songs and baby talk, the child
+was lulled to sleep with stories of her father,
+with broken sobs and prayers. Who knows how
+early she became aware of a shadow upon her
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span>life? How soon she was conscious of a difference
+between herself and other children whom
+she saw? Her presence was only tolerated by
+the busy farmers’ wives because the mother
+could not leave her; no noisy play, no mischievous
+pranks were permitted or excused.</p>
+
+<p>The children of the poor and unfortunate learn
+self-control and self-repression at an early age.
+When Nancy was ten years old she was done
+with childhood. She could make herself useful
+in many ways to the women who wanted
+“help.” She could “earn her own living,”
+and talk gravely of a half day’s or a full day’s
+time. Her mother, perhaps feeling that she
+could do no more for her daughter, and having
+no other interest in life, let this world slip from
+her feeble hold, and went out over the border
+into the unknown.</p>
+
+<p>As she grew up, people were not often unkind
+to Nancy. On the contrary, they were usually
+friendly in a somewhat condescending way—when
+she did her work well. Had she been a
+timid, confiding creature, less self-reliant and
+reserved, no doubt they would have shown her
+many a favor that would have made her heart
+glad. As it was, the occasional rude taunts of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span>other children (what is more barbarous than a
+cruel child?) and now and then rough allusions
+to her father’s death by older people, raised in
+her nature the armor of silence and assumed indifference.
+Withdrawing into herself, asking no
+help, she was allowed to go her way alone as
+best she could. So she toiled and served until
+she came to eighteen years of age. That time
+found her in the home of a farmer, twenty miles
+from her birthplace.</p>
+
+<p>Had you asked the girl if she were happy,
+she might have said yes. The farmer and
+his wife, who had no children, were kind to
+her. There was plenty of hard work, to be
+sure, but she had known nothing else. Metaphysical
+questions had not troubled her; she
+had never asked herself if life were worth living,
+had accepted fate without rebellion. She had
+read no novels. Mr. Rhorer, the farmer, sometimes
+asked her to read to him from The
+Weekly Reaper—“types were so much littler’n
+they used to be, readin’ kind o’ made his head
+dizzy.” Nancy certainly might absorb facts,
+but not romance, from the able dissertations she
+spelled out upon the treatment of lambs, the
+weevil in wheat, or the advertisements of patent
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span>churns. Even the household department of the
+paper did not develop artistic tastes. She had
+no colored tissue papers wherewith to construct
+lamp-mats. Why should she make elaborate
+frames of walnut shells or crooked sticks, when
+she had no pictures to put in them?</p>
+
+<p>An ignorant, uninteresting serving-maid, you
+see—very different from the æsthetic, cultured
+heroine, so popular nowadays. Yet this one
+was a woman, “with the heart and the hopes of
+a woman.” Hardly conscious, perhaps, that
+she had a heart, so long had it been starved.
+As in her childish days, she still held aloof from
+the young people, though, had she been so disposed,
+more than one young granger would
+have been glad to become her “beau,” for
+Nancy was fair to see. They were not so fastidious
+as to birth and family that her bright
+eyes might not have won them.</p>
+
+<p>The one small interest and excitement in
+Nancy’s life this summer was watching the evening
+passenger train. It stopped for a few moments
+at a water station not far below the house,
+and there she waited, when her work was done,
+to catch a glimpse of the wonderful outside
+world, that she could see in no other way. Day
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>after day found her there, leaning against the
+old gate under a wide beech tree. She liked to
+look at the strange faces, and took deep interest in
+the variety of hats and bonnets, the only articles
+of apparel visible from her point of view. It
+puzzled her to guess where so many people
+could always be going. If she should ever go
+traveling she would not look so tired and cross
+as many of them did; she was sure she would
+feel sorry, too, for girls who could only stand
+outside and see the cars go by. Once she saw
+a man carefully fasten a wrap around his wife’s
+throat, and heard words of tender anxiety for
+her comfort. She wondered vaguely if any one
+would ever care for her in that way; it was not
+likely, she thought. Somehow she did not wish
+to stay that night until the train started. She
+was tired, and the hissing of the steam made
+her head ache.</p>
+
+<p>One day she became conscious that the young
+man who stood smoking a cigar on the back
+platform was the same one who was there yesterday,
+perhaps the day before that. With eyes
+turned away she became aware, too, that he was
+looking at her with bold admiration—the subtle
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span>magnetism, conveyed no scientists quite explain
+how, made her cheeks scarlet.</p>
+
+<p>What was there in a trifle like that to make
+her sleep that night less dreamless than before,
+in spite of sound health and weary young body?</p>
+
+<p>The next evening she went to the usual place.
+A little shyness about her now, but why should
+she stay away? She could not know that the
+young man would be there again; but he was
+there, and this time lifted his hat and smiled at
+her. If Nancy lived to be an old woman, and
+never saw him again, he would stay in her memory
+for that one act. She looked at it, not as
+an impertinence, but as a mark of respect. No
+man had ever lifted his hat to her before. The
+rustic beaux had not attained that touch of polish,
+and would have sneered had they seen him,
+yet have envied him his style and city manners.</p>
+
+<p>The refined, accomplished lady of whom we
+like to read would not have been pleased with
+this young man. She would have seen a “person”
+of twenty-one or twenty-two years of age
+with sandy hair and a jet black moustache. A
+penetrating odor of hair oil and cinnamon essence
+diffused itself about him. Wherever jewelry is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>admissible in masculine outfit he had given it
+room—not expensive ornaments, perhaps, but
+large and showy. A hat worn upon one side of
+his head, a cigar carried in the opposite corner
+of his mouth, as if to balance the organ of brains,
+were peculiarities of his style.</p>
+
+<p>The thrill which filled poor Nancy with delight
+would have been a shudder of disgust to
+our fastidious maiden.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Nancy? No. Something had entered
+into her days which made labor light and hours
+short. Only smiles and glances, but these may
+mean so much. Once he threw a kiss at her
+when no one else could see; she tried not to
+think of that except when by herself, for fear
+some one might guess her thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>One day her heart was set to fluttering, and
+her cheeks to burning when Mr. Rohrer brought
+the young man—yes, there could be no mistake—the
+same young man home to dinner with
+him. His name was Valentine Gipe.</p>
+
+<p>“My stepfather’s name, did you say, Mrs.
+Rhorer? Yes, I’ve always went by name of
+Gipe instead of ——.” (A door slammed and
+Nancy did not catch that.) “Live up at Newburg,
+with maw an’ paw. Maw, she’s that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span>wropped up in me she won’t hardly let me out
+of her sight. Am in business with Uncle Joe,
+down to the junction, an’ havin’ a free pass, it’s
+just as cheap to board at home, so I go up and
+down on the road every day. We’re dealin’
+in stock right smart at present. Heard Mr.
+Rhorer had some fat cattle to sell, an’ have
+took a run up to see. Betcher boots I can’t be
+beat in jedgin’ the pints of a nanimal. Uncle
+Joe, he knows it, too; has dead loads o’ confidence
+in me.”</p>
+
+<p>It took a long time to buy those cattle. Mr.
+Gipe came and went, and came again. When
+one purchase was made another was talked of,
+and the summer was ended before the stock was
+sold.</p>
+
+<p>Long before that time Nancy’s heart was
+gone. All the love that other girls divide
+among friends and relatives was concentrated
+and lavished upon a creature who did not know
+what treasure was laid at his feet. He had
+nothing but empty words to give in return, was
+having a little fun, a little flirtation, he said to
+himself—but upon these words of love Nancy
+lived and was happy. The world took on a
+beauty she had never seen before. She wondered,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>as she sang at her work, that she had
+not noticed what a pretty blue was the sky, how
+bright were the sunsets; nothing in heaven, she
+thought, could be fairer than the moonlit summer
+nights.</p>
+
+<p>The light of her passion brightened everything.
+Even the gray, heavy face of her mistress
+was touched with a reflected glow. Hitherto
+the girl had felt an unconscious pity for that
+worthy matron’s plainness. With feminine faith
+in beauty, she had wondered, idly, how Mr.
+Rhorer, himself no Adonis, could ever have married
+so unprepossessing a creature. Now she
+could see that the good woman might not have
+been so plain, after all, when young.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Rhorer saw nothing of the play that went
+on before her face. Not a whisper of the old,
+old story reached her dull ears. She had forgotten
+that she was young once; she did not remember
+that the blood of youth is riotous, its
+pulses swift and eager—not sluggish, as her own.
+The girl was “only Nancy.” Her mistress did
+not see that she was fair, did not dream that she
+had a want that was not supplied by herself. It
+never occurred to her that Valentine’s frequent
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span>visits were for any one but her husband, because
+she knew——.</p>
+
+<p>A part of what Mrs. Rhorer knew Nancy
+learned one day. Summer had gone then; the
+first bleak weather of fall had come, and sitting
+by the kitchen fire, the prudent farmer’s wife
+began planning for the winter. “I wish to goodness
+Dan’el an’ Val Gipe would finish up their
+trade about that last lot o’ cattle. We don’t
+want to winter them steers over. The young
+feller’s keen at a bargain, but powerful cautious.
+It’s jest as well, though, I s’pose, fer him to go
+slow an’ take care of his money, fer he’ll have
+a heap of it some day. His Uncle Joe’s an old
+bachelor, an’ most likely’ll leave him all he’s
+got, an’ then his pap left him right smart of a
+lump.”</p>
+
+<p>“His pap dead? Why, child, didn’t I ever
+tell ye ’at Val’s pap was murdered when he
+was a baby? Gipe’s on’y his stepfather—Jillson’s
+rightly his name. The man was hung who
+did the killin’. ’Member me and Dan’el was at
+the hangin’.——Why! Bless my soul! What
+ails the critter, a whiskin’ out thataway an’
+slammin’ of the door? Is she—why lawsy,
+come to think, the man who was hung was her
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>pap, and I clean forgot it. Mighty touchy she
+is, to be sure, but I wouldn’t a’ said anything if
+I’d a’ thought. Was going to tell her about
+Val’s wedding that’s to come off next month.
+Wonder if we’ll get an invite.”</p>
+
+<p>Nancy’s mind was in a whirl. One thought
+only was clear. Val was coming that night.
+He would have “something particular” to tell
+her, he had said, and she, in her innocence, had
+blushed and thought of but one thing he could
+say. Now she must tell him this awful thing;
+of course he did not know it, and what would he
+say? Quite likely he could not marry her now,
+for his mother would never consent. But how
+could they live apart?</p>
+
+<p>With the simplicity of a woman who loves
+and knows nothing of coquetry or flirtation,
+she had accepted Val’s tender words without
+misgiving. That he had said nothing of
+marriage had not troubled her; so far the
+love had been all-absorbing, without thought
+for the morrow. She had not doubted that
+he knew her history—“everybody did”—and
+mixed with her affection was a strong feeling
+of gratitude that he had not held aloof. She
+would care for him just the same, she knew, if
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span>all his relatives were thieves and murderers, but
+this was different. Her early years had left a
+vivid impression on her mind of the relentless
+hatred of Mrs. Jillson to her mother and herself.
+It could hardly be hoped that time had made
+much change. If Val should ask his mother,
+perhaps—it might be—</p>
+
+<p>Like one dazed she went about her tasks.
+Would the day never end? How gray and cold
+it was! The morning, she remembered, had
+been bright and clear. After supper she was
+sent to the cross-roads grocery, a mile and a half
+away, on some household errand. It grew dark
+early now, but she was not afraid. What was
+there to fear? She must hurry, though, to be
+back when Val came. It was nearer to go up
+the railroad than around by the turnpike, so
+she started home that way. It was a lonely
+walk even in the daylight, through dense woods
+and through deep cuts, but she thought only of
+the man she was hastening to meet.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly in the darkest part of the road,
+where it made a short curve, she came upon an
+obstruction. Partly with eyes accustomed now
+to the darkness, partly by touch, she found logs
+and stones piled high across the track.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span>How they came there she did not stop to consider.
+Like a flash came the thought, “the
+evening express is due; it will be wrecked and
+Val is on it.” One moment, then followed
+the thought and the deed for which she had
+lived her eighteen years. “If I can reach the
+water station I can warn the engineer; there is
+no other way. I shall save Val yet.” Softly
+she crept over the logs; with swift feet she sped
+up the gloomy road, and thought not of the
+darkness. Like an illumination around her was
+the feeling “My Val shall not die, I will save him.”
+Swifter yet she ran—it was a mile or more. Once
+she fell; with her ear upon the ground she heard
+the vibrations of the coming train. Could she not
+go faster? On and on, past the woods, through
+the cornfields now—the stalks still standing
+breast-high after the western fashion. How the
+dry leaves rustled! Her footsteps seemed to
+echo. Plainly now she heard the throbbing of
+the engine; its fiery eye shone far up the road—there
+was yet time, she was nearly there.
+Louder sounded the thunder of the train, but
+above that and the beating of her heart she heard
+again the echoing steps. Some one followed
+her, called to her to halt, threatened her, but
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span>still she ran faster, faster. A pistol shot, another,
+but she went on, staggering now. The train came
+thundering on, seeming in the gloom, like a destroying
+monster, stopped impatiently at the
+station, and Nancy dragged herself to the engineer’s
+cab. Her work was done. The creatures
+who, for malice or plunder, had planned the
+wreck were defeated, but had wreaked vengeance
+on her.</p>
+
+<p>On board that train were lives worth more
+than the one for which she had given her own—men
+for whom other women would have died,
+no doubt; wives and children for whom hearts
+would have broken had they come to their homes
+no more. She had saved these passengers from
+destruction, but her thoughts were only for one.
+“Val! my Val!” was her cry—maidenly shyness
+gone now in the solemn presence of death.
+To her it was as though they two were alone in
+all the world. When they carried her to the
+house the young man followed reluctantly.</p>
+
+<p>“I did it for you, Val. I know’d you’d be
+on the train. Seemed as if the Lord must let
+me get there in time. I kep’ askin’ Him over
+an’ over, an’ He did. I reckon it’s all up with
+me, though. This mornin’ I’d a been sorry,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span>but it’s just as well. You couldn’t a married me,
+Val, a-knowin’ who I be, an’ it don’t ’pear as if
+I could a-lived away from you. You’re all I’ve
+got. Mother’ll be glad ’at I did this. Mebbe
+it’ll count for father, as she always was sayin’.
+Mebbe yer ma’ll forgive us all now.”</p>
+
+<p>Valentine Jillson was selfish. Some woman
+had ministered to his comfort, his vanity, all his
+life. This one, he thought, had only done what
+was proper, everything considered. He was
+base, but with those dying eyes upon his face
+he did not remind Nancy that he had never
+spoken of marrying her. He could not tell the
+girl what he had come that night to say—that
+their acquaintance must come to an end, because
+he was to marry Squire Jones’s daughter,
+Juniata, next month.</p>
+
+<p>And she, even with the prescience of death,
+could not read his treachery. With his hand
+clasped tightly in her own she did not know him
+false.</p>
+
+<p>Swiftly her life ebbed away. She grew
+weaker, weaker. “I am—so—tired. Kiss me—once
+more—Val. Say you—love me. My
+Val. I—love—love—. It is—dark.”</p>
+
+<p>With his words, his kiss (heaven would pardon
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>this last deceit), Nancy’s eyes closed to
+open no more on this earth. On the other side,
+it may be, she took up the thread of existence
+that had lain in the shadow here and carried it
+on into the eternal brightness—the glory that is
+neither of sun nor of moon.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">MRS. BROOKS’S CHANGE OF HEART</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap">MRS. HANNAH BROOKS, “Aunt Hannah,”
+as she was commonly known, had
+been a consistent member of the Methodist
+Episcopal Church from the time she was eleven
+years old, and she was now sixty-two. For
+over fifty years she had walked in the strait
+and narrow path and had never failed to observe
+the ordinances of the church, or to rebuke sin
+wherever she detected it. Many people, even
+church members, felt that Mrs. Brooks’s standard
+of behavior was a little too exacting and severe
+for nineteenth century use. She was quite
+as austere in her views as if she had been a
+direct descendant of a Puritan father and had
+lived all her life on stony New England soil instead
+of having been born in Indiana of parents
+who had come from the “old country.” The
+Puritan influence affects all American character
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span>more or less, and it is a mistake to suppose that
+the stern and rigid code of conduct commonly
+ascribed to that influence is confined to one locality
+or is accepted only by Americans whose
+family trees were planted in this soil before the
+Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brooks had early been taught to believe
+that dancing was a device of the enemy
+of mankind to ensnare the souls of youth.
+Card playing was an abomination that none
+could tamper with without danger of missing
+heaven; while as for the theater, that was simply
+an open door to the place of everlasting torment.
+All through her life she had frequently
+found it necessary to warn and reprove young
+people of her acquaintance who showed an inclination
+to indulge in the two first-named frivolities,
+but the theater evil was one she had encountered
+only in recent years. Aunt Hannah
+had never lived in the city, her home having
+been first upon a farm, and, later, and for many
+years now, in the little town of Cicero, which has
+no opera house and whose dramas are not
+played upon the stage. With increasing frequency
+the rumor came to her that some young
+man or maiden had visited the theater in Indianapolis
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span>to see a performance by graceless play-actors—a
+“show” they called it—and if these
+erring young persons were in the church she invariably
+took pains to make a personal remonstrance
+and to urge them to turn again to the
+strait and narrow path.</p>
+
+<p>Among themselves these young people, feeling
+a little guilty and conscience-stricken over
+their conduct, nevertheless, said sometimes that
+Aunt Hannah was hard and unsympathetic, and
+that she would not talk so if she were not so
+old-fashioned and understood how harmless
+theaters really were. But Mrs. Brooks was not
+unsympathetic. She believed firmly that all
+these things were wicked. She had been taught
+so, and had seen no reason to change her opinion.
+Believing thus, and being very direct, outspoken
+and fearless in her methods, she hesitated
+not to free her mind when occasion seemed to
+require.</p>
+
+<p>She was an uncommonly intelligent and well-informed
+woman for one of her limited opportunities,
+being a close reader of such literature
+as came in her way—the range extending from
+the Bible and the life of John Wesley to Roe’s
+novels and the weekly newspaper. But reading
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span>must be supplemented by experience and
+observation before it gives breadth of view and
+liberality of judgment. She realized vaguely
+that a change of sentiment had taken place in
+recent years concerning card playing, dancing
+and kindred amusements, but she felt that this
+was merely a symptom of the degeneracy of the
+times and was strongly to be combated. Even
+the ministry was being tainted with moral weakness,
+for had not Presiding Elder Daniels—and
+he one of the most influential men in the conference,
+too!—said to her one day when she
+was discoursing on this subject—had he not
+used these almost incendiary words:</p>
+
+<p>“People must have amusements, Sister Brooks,
+and perhaps it is better to let them enjoy their
+pleasures under the sanction of the church. In
+old times they danced before the Lord, you
+know.”</p>
+
+<p>This was heresy that horrified the good lady,
+but she resolved, let come what might, that she
+would abate not a jot or tittle of her efforts
+against sin. Whatever others might do she
+would obey the spirit of the rules and regulations
+laid down in the Methodist Book of Discipline,
+and one of these rules charged that no entertainment
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>be entered into on which the blessing of
+the Lord could not be asked, or words to that
+effect. And to the best of her ability she did.
+She neglected none of the accepted means of
+grace. She was a regular attendant at prayer-meeting,
+where her voice was frequently raised
+in exhortation and prayer, as is the custom with
+devout and elderly sisters in that fold. She was
+faithful at class-meeting, and there confessed her
+shortcomings with such reservations as seemed
+expedient in view of the fact that the listening
+ears were those of a dozen or so neighbors instead
+of a single father confessor vowed to
+silence. For instance, she saw no necessity for
+relating in detail that she lost her temper and
+thought a dreadful thought, which if put in
+print would have contained a dash, when her
+clothesline broke on Monday and let her week’s
+“wash” into the mud. All she considered
+essential was to acknowledge, in a general way,
+that she was a weak and sinful creature, and to
+ask the prayers of her brethren and sisters that
+she might overcome the old Adam and lay hold
+more firmly on divine grace. If any of her
+friends and neighbors had dared to arise in the
+same meeting and to speak of her as weak and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>sinful it would have been a very different affair.
+But none of them did. They only sighed heavily,
+looked dismal and said “Amen!” or “Lord
+bless!” after the relation of each “experience.”</p>
+
+<p>Of late, as it happened, Mrs. Brooks’s attention
+had been especially attracted to matters of
+a theatrical drift. A son living in Chicago occasionally
+sent her a Sunday paper, and those papers,
+as everybody knows, devote a considerable
+share of their space to the drama in its various
+phases. She had serious doubts as to the propriety
+of reading these newspapers because they
+were labeled “Sunday,” but, reflecting that it
+was along in the middle of the week before they
+reached her, she decided, through some obscure
+train of logic, that there was no moral delinquency
+in finding out just what had been going
+on in the world three or four days before.</p>
+
+<p>It was something of a task to read a twenty,
+thirty or forty-page Chicago paper through from
+beginning to end with the religious care that she
+did her county weekly, but in the two or three
+weeks that each copy lay around before another
+arrived she accomplished the task. Consequently
+she read a good deal about the theaters,
+much of it not to edification, because she
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>had never seen a play nor read one, and failed
+to comprehend many allusions. There was
+something about these columns that attracted
+her, however, and she continued to peruse them
+with interest. One day she found something
+within her comprehension. In response to popular
+demand, Joseph Jefferson had reproduced
+his “Rip Van Winkle” that season after its
+semi-retirement for some years, and Chicago
+papers had a great deal to say about it and
+about him—all in the way of praise. Now,
+Mrs. Brooks knew all about “Rip Van Winkle”
+and all about Jefferson. The daughter of her
+next-door neighbor on the east was a school-teacher
+in the city—said city meaning Indianapolis,
+of course—and subscribed for the Century
+Magazine, sending each copy home after she had
+read it. When the family was through with it,
+it was passed around the neighborhood, beginning
+with Mrs. Brooks. Among other things
+she found in it was Jefferson’s autobiography.
+She began reading this under the vague impression
+that Joseph Jefferson was a statesman of the
+Thomas Jefferson type; or, if not, perhaps
+a great writer, though she did not remember to
+have heard of him. At any rate, he must be a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span>distinguished man, for only that kind wrote biographies
+of themselves and got them printed.
+When she learned that he was only an actor she
+felt something of a shock, but by that time
+she was interested in his career and pleased with
+the good principles he seemed to possess and
+the excellent moral sentiments he enunciated
+incidentally. It did seem strange, though, that
+such a man should engage in so reprehensible a
+calling.</p>
+
+<p>When she came to the account of his appearance
+as Rip Van Winkle she was again surprised
+and pleased, for had she not read Irving’s story
+of that good-for-nothing but winsome idler?
+Her next-door neighbor on the west had received
+a copy of the “Sketch Book” as a prize for subscribing
+for the Weekly Bugle, and, like most
+other books in the village, it had eventually gravitated
+into her hands.</p>
+
+<p>Altogether, she was fairly well posted in regard
+to this particular bit of drama, and was
+startled one day by the discovery that she was
+actually wishing to see the play and to see Jefferson.
+The idea was really shocking. She, a
+member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in
+good standing, to think of going to the theater
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span>of all places in the world. Satan himself must
+have put the suggestion into her mind. Did
+not the church Discipline enjoin members to engage
+in no pastimes which could not be performed
+to the glory of God? Certainly no one
+could praise God at the theater; and yet—and
+yet, there was nothing especially objectionable
+about “Rip Van Winkle,” while Mr. Jefferson
+seemed a good sort of man according to his light.
+However, perhaps the theatrical columns of the
+Sunday papers were just as well left alone, and
+she would have no more of them.</p>
+
+<p>The truth was that Mrs. Brooks had, without
+suspecting it, a liking for the dramatic and for
+the spectacular. She patronized all the entertainments
+given under church auspices, and was
+pleased with them in proportion as they were
+picturesque or exciting. She liked elocutionary
+performances, and was partial to the more dramatic
+recitations. She never missed charades or
+tableaux arranged by the young people, and
+made no criticisms, though the representations
+were scenes from profane history or heathen gods
+and goddesses arranged in white cotton drapery,
+such as gods never wore before. She liked
+lively music—dance music, if she only knew it—revival
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>meetings of the stirring, fervid sort,
+and temperance meetings where the emotions were
+played upon by skillful speakers.</p>
+
+<p>A week or so after this twinge of worldly
+temptation Mrs. Brooks went to spend a few
+days with her married daughter in Indianapolis
+to help that young matron with her winter sewing.
+The very evening of her arrival her son-in-law
+remarked to his wife at the supper table:</p>
+
+<p>“Maria, Joe Jefferson is to play ‘Rip Van
+Winkle’ to-morrow night. You know we have
+been waiting to see him again, and I have
+bought tickets.”</p>
+
+<p>Now, Mrs. Brooks knew that since her marriage
+her daughter had departed from the strict
+ways of her youth, and now and then indulged
+in that perilous frivolity, progressive euchre, and
+attended the theater. She had made vigorous
+remonstrance, as in duty bound, but, finding
+her protests of no use, had abandoned the fight,
+at least till an opportune season. Out of respect
+to her mother’s feelings, Maria tacitly ignored
+the subject, and now endeavored to signal her
+husband to silence, but he went placidly on and
+invited his mother-in-law to go with them, saying
+he would secure another seat. Much to his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>surprise, and more to that of his wife, Mrs.
+Brooks did not manifest that animosity toward
+theaters which a mention of them in her presence
+had been wont to arouse, and which the
+artful son-in-law had hoped to excite on this
+occasion for his own delectation. On the contrary,
+she took up the subject with a show of
+interest more eager than she knew, and displayed
+so much familiarity with Jefferson and
+his play that the two younger people looked at
+each other in wonder. But when urged to say
+whether or not she would go she suddenly stiffened
+and responded coldly:</p>
+
+<p>“George Henry, you know my principles in
+regard to such places. To-morrow night I shall
+go to hear Francis Murphy. I know the way
+to the hall, and am not afraid to go and come
+alone.”</p>
+
+<p>Next evening came, but Maria had a headache
+and could not go. George proposed to
+escort his mother-in-law to the Murphy meeting
+and leave her there while he went to the theater
+for an act or two—“for it was really a pity to
+miss it when we had the tickets and the time.
+You know, Mother Brooks,” he said solemnly,
+winking at his wife over his mother-in-law’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span>head, “you know going to see Jefferson is not
+like going to see other actors. He plays such
+nice, clean, moral plays and is such a high-toned,
+moral man—church member, and all that—that
+it is almost as good as going to a religious meeting
+to hear him.”</p>
+
+<p>“Church member, is he?” was Mrs. Brooks’s
+only response, but the acute George Henry detected
+an expression in her eye that led him to
+whisper to his wife, as he kissed her good-night:
+“If we are not home till late you may know that
+I have inveigled your esteemed parent into a
+wild orgy at the theater.”</p>
+
+<p>It was a fair night, and they walked down.
+The Grand Opera House was on the way to
+Tomlinson Hall, and as they drew near its portals
+the orchestra could be heard discoursing
+some very lively music preliminary to the raising
+of the curtain. When they reached the entrance
+George Henry turned toward it.</p>
+
+<p>“Come, Mother Brooks, let’s hear Jefferson.
+You may never have another chance. He beats
+Francis Murphy all hollow. It’s all right.
+You’ll find lots of good people there who wouldn’t
+go to any other play nor to see any other
+actor for the world.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>There was a faint remonstrance—where were
+Mrs. Brooks’s accustomed vim and decision?
+There was a feeble holding back of her steps,
+but her eyes were fixed on the distant drop curtain,
+visible through the open doors—and in she
+went.</p>
+
+<p>It was an event in her life. The stage with
+its setting, was as novel to her as to a child.
+There it all was, just as she had read about it,
+but so much more real—the village green, the
+old Dutch burghers, the vixenish Gretchen, little
+Katrina and the happy-go-lucky, lazy, but
+lovable Rip. As played, the story had some
+points she did not recall in the book, but what
+mattered! There was Rip doing the best he
+could. Suppose he was lazy and shiftless and
+did get tipsy sometimes, such a wife was enough
+to drive a man to drink. Mrs. Brooks forgot
+time and place in following his fortunes. She
+leaned forward, filled with visible wrath when
+Gretchen scolded, and when, at last, the wife
+drove him from home with his dog, and Rip
+turned and bade her and his child a touching farewell,
+tears ran down her cheeks unheeded.</p>
+
+<p>Then, how she thrilled at the thunder of the
+mysterious ninepins rolled in the hollows of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span>Catskills by Hendrick Hudson’s men; how weird
+those old Dutchmen were; how wonderful was
+the red fire that flashed over them, making them
+look like creatures from the infernal regions!
+How her heart and her throat ached for the poor,
+pitiful old man when he woke from his twenty
+years’ sleep and wandered back to his home to
+find the world changed! What a wonderful
+thing it was altogether that one man—for the
+others in the play did not matter much—that
+one man could make a mere story, an impossible
+legend, seem so true, such a thing of actual
+life! And what a delightful creature he was,
+that Rip, that Jefferson, with his airy wave of
+the hand and his confidential, infectious smile.</p>
+
+<p>She was glad she had seen him; glad, glad.</p>
+
+<p>And this statement she adhered to. George
+Henry was discreet enough to say very little
+about this escapade of his mother-in-law, but
+she knew that she would meet no such consideration
+at home, for in coming out of the opera
+house she had jostled against young Hiram
+Jones, of Cicero, whom she had often rebuked
+for his theater-going, and whose father was her
+class leader. But she was not cast down. She
+had no intention of concealing her act. Next
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span>Sunday she went to church as usual, serene in
+the consciousness of looking well in a brand
+new, though properly plain, bonnet bought in
+the city. As usual, she appeared in class-meeting
+when the hour came. Her keen eye detected
+a movement of interest and curiosity on
+the part of others present, which convinced her
+that young Hiram had told his story.</p>
+
+<p>Brother Minshall, being called on after the
+opening prayer and hymn, arose and repeated
+with nasal emphasis the formula of forty years,
+beginning: “Brethren and sisters, I feel to rejoice
+that I am spared to be with you another
+Sunday, that I may tell you of the wondrous
+work of grace in my heart.”</p>
+
+<p>Sister Angeline Martin told her hearers in
+droning phrase that she was a weak and sinful
+worm of the dust, but that she had fixed her
+trust in the Lord and knew that He would lift
+her up.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Ezra Hinshaw was glad to add his
+testimony and to say that he was on the Lord’s
+side, and had been for nigh on to forty year.
+An hour spent here, he said, was worth all the
+fleeting joys the world could give.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span>And so it went on until Mrs. Brooks arose.
+She wasted no time in preliminaries.</p>
+
+<p>“I take it for granted, brethren and sisters,”
+she said, “that you know I attended the theater
+when I was in the city last week, and that you
+want to know how I reconcile it with my professions.
+I did go; I got no harm, but very
+much enjoyment, and, I think, some good. I
+learned that whatever some theater plays may
+be, some others are as good as the best sermons.
+I have found out that it doesn’t do to abuse all
+theaters because some are bad. I don’t feel
+that I did anything wrong. I don’t advise anybody
+else to go, and I don’t advise them not.
+It is a matter with their own conscience. Mine
+is clear. I expect never to go again, but I am
+glad I went, and glad I learned what I learned,
+and glad I saw Joe Jefferson. Praise the Lord!”</p>
+
+<p>“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,”
+said the leader with solemn intonation, but with
+a faint twinkle in his eye. He was a discreet
+man, and had been to the theater in his time,
+too. So the class sang the doxology and was
+dismissed.</p>
+
+<p>Going out, Aunt Hannah met young Hiram
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>Jones, looking a little sheepish, and shook hands
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>“Wasn’t it beautiful?” said she. “Ain’t you
+glad you went, and ain’t Joseph Jefferson great?
+May he live long and prosper.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">AN ABIDING LOVE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap">THE woman who was a critical reader of magazines
+met her friend, the writer of stories,
+in the little railroad station at Mullins, in southern
+Indiana. The writer had just arrived from
+Indianapolis; the other was waiting the north-bound
+train.</p>
+
+<p>“What have you come to this dull, lonely,
+forlorn place for? Not for literary material,
+surely? My grandmother lives here, and I
+have known the town all my life. Nothing romantic
+ever happened to anyone here; there are
+no incidents, no tragedies, no characters worth
+studying; the people simply vegetate.”</p>
+
+<p>“I never hunt for ‘material’ anywhere,” replied
+the woman who wrote. “It comes to me—crowds
+itself on me. I have been sent for by
+an invalid cousin, and expect not to think of literary
+matters; but if I were searching for themes
+I have no doubt I could find them, even here.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>“I am sure you could not. What, for instance
+(here the speaker’s voice was lowered),
+what could you make out of that spiritless,
+meek, faded-out creature there? She is a resident
+here; I have seen her often, but she is so
+colorless I never had the curiosity to ask even
+her name. I am sure she never had a vivid
+emotion, never really lived in all her life.”</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps not,” laughed the writer, “but I
+believe she has a story. I will find it out and
+tell it to you.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>This is the story she told a month later:</p>
+
+<p>Martin Davis did not look much like a man
+with æsthetic sentiment in his soul as he left his
+plow in the furrow that afternoon in early April
+and drove his tired horses up the lane. His face
+was weatherbeaten, his hands rough and hard,
+his clothing cheap and coarse, his high boots,
+into which his jeans trousers were tucked, caked
+with mud. But he was young and vigorous;
+his eyes were bright and eager, and he felt himself
+a man to be envied, for had he not a wife
+waiting for him at the house—a bride of but a
+few weeks? In the band of his rusty felt hat he
+had slipped a bunch of yellow violets.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>“I knew ye liked posies, Lizzie,” he said as
+he handed them to her at the kitchen door,
+“and these are the first I’ve seen this season,
+’thout it’s the little white windflowers that wilt
+while ye’re pickin’ them. These yellow things
+are way ahead of time. I’ve never found them
+before earlier than May; they’re not common
+hereabouts, anyhow, but I know of a spot down
+in the holler where they always flourish.”</p>
+
+<p>When she put them in a teacup and set them
+on the supper table he wondered vaguely why
+he had never known before that flowers made a
+room look so cheerful—almost as if the sun were
+shining, though that luminary had sunk behind
+the western hill. He did not know that
+the brightness was not of the flowers, but was
+the light of love reflected from his heart and
+hers.</p>
+
+<p>It was but a brief time that his happiness lasted.
+That was the spring of ’61, and the country was
+even then calling upon her loyal sons. Martin
+Davis turned his horses into the pasture, left his
+crops for others to harvest and went unhesitatingly
+to answer the call. Oh, the heroism of
+the myriads who thus went out from home, and
+peace, and love, to the battlefield in those
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span>dreadful years! What if they did not know
+that the ninety days would lengthen until no
+man could name the end, and that the slain
+would be like the leaves of the forest for numbers?
+What if they did go simply from a
+matter-of-fact sense of duty, and with little feeling
+of risk and danger, or because the riotous
+spirit of youth yearned for adventure? The
+fact remains—the tremendous, immutable fact—that
+they went by hundreds, by thousands, by
+tens and hundreds of thousands, and that they
+offered their lives. Greater love than this hath
+no man, and yet we, in this frivolous later day,
+dare sometimes speak lightly of those men and
+their sacrifices.</p>
+
+<p>It was a monotonous and a hard life for the
+most part, that of a private soldier in the war
+for the Union. Its story has been told in fragments
+at home firesides and by campfires, but
+never in literature as a whole for the world to
+know. Perhaps it never will be. The veterans
+tell of battles and of victories and of stirring
+events, but they do not, as a class, care to dwell
+upon their hardships and sufferings. The experience
+cut deep, and the scars are even yet
+too sensitive to touch upon.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>Martin Davis’s life was not different from the
+rest. There was the drill and the camp life, the
+picket duty, the marching, the digging of
+trenches and building of breastworks, the
+skirmishing, the expectation of encounters with
+the enemy—all this for slow and weary months,
+and at last a great battle.</p>
+
+<p>Lizzie, the young wife at home, waited from
+week to week and month to month, as women
+did in those days, with what show of patience
+and composure they could muster—a proof of
+courage and patriotism not less than that of going
+to war. The soldiers’ story may sometimes be
+told, but where is the historian who shall portray
+the agony of the women’s waiting hearts, the suffering
+of uncertainty and suspense? Who shall
+comprehend the anguish of their tears? Who
+understand that the strain of constant dread of
+evil news from husband and brother and lover
+was greater than that felt by the soldier before
+the enemy’s guns—that it left unhealed scars
+that aged them before their time?</p>
+
+<p>Lizzie Davis fared like the other women—hoping
+and praying, living upon the letters that
+came at irregular intervals, going about her tasks
+by day, with heavy heart, and enduring long
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span>nights with their visions of war and woe. In the
+little town from which the flower of the young
+men had already gone, existence was not gay at
+the best of times, and was now more monotonous
+than ever to the women, whose part was to wait.
+There were few things to distract their minds
+from their own anxieties; they were not the
+“new” women, with many and diverse activities,
+and so they sat at home and thought of what
+might be. Mrs. Davis did not love her husband
+more than the other lonely women loved theirs,
+perhaps; but without him she was quite alone
+in the world, and it was natural that no event of
+the war was important in which he had no place.
+That brawny private, that long-limbed, awkward
+farmer boy, was all the world to her. No future
+opened to her vision which he did not share.
+She was a commonplace little creature, narrow
+in thought and limited in capacity, but other and
+greater women have found it all of life to love
+one man.</p>
+
+<p>Letters came to her from Tennessee now.
+Martin wrote that it looked as if some fighting
+would be done very soon that would scatter the
+rebels and end the war. Then came the fall of
+Forts Henry and Donelson, and he wrote with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span>still greater certainty that the war was soon to
+close. Men better informed than he thought so
+then. After that there was marching across
+country, transportation by boat up the Tennessee,
+more marching, with rain and mud and cold
+as features of the travel—all this described in
+fragmentary scrawls. One of them, dated April
+5th, and written on a scrap of paper while he
+stood in the rain with his company awaiting
+orders, said there would be fighting soon, and
+added: “Here’s a yellow violet; just found it
+under a bank. Season’s early down here.
+We’re going to beat the rebs out of their boots.
+Good-bye.”</p>
+
+<p>This note, and then—silence. There had
+been a battle; it was Shiloh—bloody Shiloh.
+On its gory field, when the 7th of April dawned,
+the dead lay by thousands—the blue and the
+gray. Oh, Shiloh! the waiting hearts that
+broke when your victory was won!</p>
+
+<p>Private Davis, of Company D, was numbered
+among the dead. A comrade wrote to Lizzie,
+telling her that Martin had died like a hero. A part
+of his regiment had faced about and retreated,
+broken in a panic before the Confederates’ furious
+onslaught; but he had remained, had seized
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>the flag from the hand of the fleeing color-bearer
+and gone on triumphantly to meet the coming
+foe. In the thick of the fight he was seen to
+fall, “and,” said the writer, with no art at softening
+cruel truth, “he was buried in a trench.”</p>
+
+<p>To the widow a realizing sense of the death
+did not come. It is often so when those away
+from home are taken; to their families they seem
+still temporarily absent and likely to return at
+any hour. She accepted the situation dumbly,
+uncomplainingly. She had no longer a keen
+interest in life, and was without the strength of
+character to rise above her grief and force herself
+to accept new interests. She was simply an
+every-day woman, who had loved her husband
+and continued to love and to think of him day
+and night, though he was dead. She sold her
+farm to a rich neighbor, who took advantage of
+her ignorance to pay her but half its value, and
+she was deprived of a large share of the proceeds
+by a sharper to whom she intrusted them
+for investment. Then she settled down in the
+little town and became a neighborhood drudge.
+She sewed, nursed the sick, took care of the
+new babies, and was at the beck and call of any
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span>housewife who needed her in domestic emergencies.</p>
+
+<p>The years went on with little variety. The
+war ended, and affairs settled into new grooves.
+A flood of prosperity swept over the country
+and affected even this quiet town, but made little
+difference in Mrs. Davis’s plodding, uneventful
+existence. No one pitied her especially for
+her lonely and hard-working life. She was
+spoken of as “the widow Davis,” but she was
+only one among many widows the war had created,
+and, as she made no ado over her woes,
+no one else thought to do it for her. They had
+their own troubles to think of. They did say,
+along at first, that she didn’t take Mart’s death
+very hard. She “didn’t make no fuss,” they
+said, and they “’lowed” she was “ruther shaller.”
+Afterwards they practically forgot him,
+and assumed that she had done the same. But
+she never put off her simple mourning garb; her
+mouth fixed itself in a pathetic little droop; her
+brown hair faded early. And she would not
+marry again. Ten years after Shiloh, John
+Holt, a thrifty widower, attracted by her quiet,
+industrious ways, sought her as a step-mother
+for his children.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span>“No, Mr. Holt,” she said. “I can’t be
+your wife. Martin Davis is dead and buried,
+but I can’t make him seem dead nohow; I
+never have, an’ I don’t reckon I ever can. I
+feel as if he was gone jest on a trip; an’ I
+dream of him o’ nights, an’ I’m always glad
+when night comes, because them dreams come,
+too. I’ll go along by myself till the time comes
+for me to go and meet Martin—but it’s long,
+long!”</p>
+
+<p>And then, her self-repression overcome by
+the sudden compassion in the man’s eyes, she
+bowed her head upon the table and sobbed and
+wept in the utter abandonment of a grief which
+knows no pretense.</p>
+
+<p>John Holt went away thoughtful, and was
+afterwards heard to say it was a “sing’lar dispensation
+o’ Providence that took a man away
+from a wife like that an’ let other men live
+whose wives wouldn’t a-mourned for ’em over
+night if they’d drownded theirselves.”</p>
+
+<p>More years went, until, one day, Mrs. Davis
+heard of an excursion that filled her patient
+soul with longing. This was a trip by boat to
+Shiloh battleground. She had never been
+further from home than to Cincinnati, fifty miles
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span>away, where she had gone once when a girl,
+but she determined to make this journey. It
+was a great undertaking, and she got ready for
+it with an excitement such as had not stirred
+her for years. She never thought of the South
+but as the rebels’ country, and, though she
+knew there were no rebels now, there was down
+in her heart a dull hatred of all Southerners,
+because but for them there would have been no
+war—but for a certain one of them who had fired
+a fatal shot she would not have been left in
+loneliness all these long years.</p>
+
+<p>Men and women of the world who, through
+contact with people of many localities, have
+gained the ability to judge their fellow-beings
+dispassionately find it difficult to comprehend
+the limitations of one who has but a single
+point of view. Lizzie Davis had had but one
+great interest in life, and had never been able to
+consider the outside world in any other than its
+relation to herself.</p>
+
+<p>The trip down the Ohio river, though novel,
+aroused no emotion; once on the Tennessee she
+began to brighten. Martin had made this journey
+not long before his death. The war, now
+so far past, was brought close to her. The battle
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span>seemed but a little while back. On the
+wooded bluffs she could almost see rebel skirmishers
+in hiding. Her meek, feminine soul,
+which had never before directed a cruel thought
+toward any individual, suddenly throbbed with
+fierce resentment; the slow, easy-going natives,
+who strolled down to the landings and leisurely
+carried their freight up the bank in primitive
+fashion, seemed to her to represent a bloodthirsty,
+murderous people. She eyed them
+malevolently.</p>
+
+<p>One day the captain of the boat sat down by
+her side on the deck. He was a middle-aged
+man of slow, soft speech and gentle manner—as
+far removed from the typical bluff, gruff, profane,
+aggressive river man of literature as possible.
+He had already won Mrs. Davis’s confidence
+by his deferential courtesy and attentions
+to which she was a stranger at home. There no
+one was unkind, but certainly no one was noticeably
+considerate of the comfort of women,
+especially those of no particular importance.
+He narrated to her bits of history about the
+places along the river, with every foot of which
+he was familiar, and told anecdotes of the people,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span>half of whom he seemed to know by their
+Christian names.</p>
+
+<p>“How can you speak so kindly of them, an’
+you a soldier, too?” she broke out at last.
+“Rebels I reckon they were, most of ’em, an’
+killed our men, an’ would do it again if they
+had a chance.”</p>
+
+<p>He turned to her slowly and without a sign of
+surprise; she was not a new type to him.</p>
+
+<p>“Madam, these people along heah were
+mostly Union sympathizers during the wah.
+I was a soldier in the Confede’at ahmy.”</p>
+
+<p>It was a shock. Ex-rebels had found their
+way to her little village since the war, but a
+good many sons had gone out from there to
+fight for the Union, and never to return, and
+those wanderers from the South were not made
+welcome, but had mostly drifted on to regions
+elsewhere in Indiana where were friends and
+sympathizers. She had never so much as talked
+with one before.</p>
+
+<p>Then he told her, in a quiet, reminiscent way,
+some stories of his youth and his far Southern
+home; of how the South was then all the country
+he knew, and the North a far-off, cold region,
+whose people, he was taught, cared only
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>to buy and sell, and to subjugate and rob the
+South; of how the war broke out and one by
+one his neighbors joined the army, then his
+brothers, and then himself, a boy of sixteen—all
+filled with fierce patriotism and the blind belief
+that they were fighting for the right; of how his
+brothers had been slain, and how he had gone
+home, when at last the conflict was over, to find
+that home dismantled, the mother who had been
+its center forever gone, and he, yet a boy in
+years, lonely, disheartened and forlorn.</p>
+
+<p>It was a revelation to the woman of few ideas
+that rebels—rebels!—were creatures with loves
+and sorrows like her own.</p>
+
+<p>And they went on up the shining river, and a
+little of the peace and beauty of it entered into
+her soul. It was May, and the fields and forests
+were in freshest array. The gray-green
+willows, the rank water maples and the glossy
+oaks that crowded the river bank were fringed
+with undergrowth, and their trunks lost in a tangle
+of honey-suckles, grape-vines and ivy. It
+was primitive wilderness, such as the Indian
+must have looked at in his day.</p>
+
+<p>Then came Fort Henry. The boat, which
+stopped accommodatingly wherever a would-be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span>traveler waived a handkerchief, obligingly made
+fast while passengers climbed the hill and wandered
+over the old earthworks that made the
+walls of that famous fort. In the glamour of
+the moonlight and the softness of the shadows
+could almost be seen the soldiers who had once
+crowded the place—but trees had grown up
+within the walls since that day, and the soldiers—where
+were they?</p>
+
+<p>Then Pittsburg Landing and Shiloh, and the
+woman from the little Indiana town had reached
+her Mecca.</p>
+
+<p>They wandered over the battlefield, those
+tourists; they saw it almost as it looked on the
+fatal Sunday so long ago, only to-day the sun
+shone, and then the very heavens had wept at
+the sight below. They saw the place where the
+fight was fiercest and most furious—the “Hornet’s
+Nest,” where Union men and Confederates
+met hand to hand and the slaughter was so
+great that the dead lay in heaps. They saw
+the pool whose margin had been red with the
+blood of wounded men who had dragged themselves
+there to quench their raging thirst. To-day
+cattle drank from it undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>There were houses here and there—primitive
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span>structures, hardly more than cabins. Mrs. Davis
+stopped at the door of one to ask for water. An
+old woman came out, a woman with a scant
+calico gown and clumsy shoes, and eyes blurred
+perhaps with age, possibly with tears, but kindly
+still. She grew garrulous in response to a timid
+question.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, she had lived hereabouts evah since
+befo’ the wah. She an’ her ole man was Union,
+but their six boys couldn’t no ways agree, an’
+three j’ined the Union ahmy an’ three the Confede’at.
+An’, yes—yes, it’s all done ended
+long ago, but some days the time seems yistiddy,
+an’ it all comes back. Her ole man couldn’t
+keep out no ways when the boys was gone, an’
+he jined, too, when General Sherman come
+along. An’—yes, the boys was all killed; three
+at Donelson, two here at Shiloh Church, an’ one
+at Chattanooga. Their pap didn’t live long after;
+sort o’ broke down like. An’ if it wasn’t that
+the boys who died here were buried in a Confede’at
+trench (did the visitor see the ridge over
+thataway?) she reckoned she’d disremembah
+which was Union an’ which wasn’t. Such things
+didn’t seem to make no difference, nohow, when
+they alls was gone to rest twel jedgment day.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span>The woman who had lost one and the woman
+who had lost seven looked in each other’s eyes
+and knew the kinship of grief, and somehow the
+visitor from the North felt no longer a personal
+resentment for her loss. Though it might have
+been a son of this woman who shot her Martin,
+he had thought he was right and meant no
+evil.</p>
+
+<p>Then she entered the gates of the National
+Cemetery, where the Union dead are laid in
+long lines, with a granite block marking each
+resting place. The captain of the boat joined
+her at the gate, and as he passed in he plucked
+a sprig of cedar. The sun shining through the
+branches of the great forest trees flecked the
+grass upon the graves; a soft May breeze scattered
+the leaves of the early blooming roses.
+Down between the rows of stones they walked,
+and the captain, pausing at one bearing the
+number 1607, lifted his hat reverently and laid
+the bit of cedar upon it.</p>
+
+<p>“I put a little posy there every time I come,”
+he said gently; “I reckoned that may be the
+wife or mother of the boy lying there might like
+it.”</p>
+
+<p>The man lying there might be her Martin,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span>thought the little widow, and from that moment
+her heart ceased to cherish animosity toward any
+man who had fought on the other side.</p>
+
+<p>She stood on the bluff and looked down on
+the sparkling, glinting river. The panorama of
+water and sky and hill stretching for miles before
+her was a vision fair to see. The flag of
+her country floated from the great staff above;
+the only sound was the singing of the birds, and
+the peace of God was over all.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>More years went by, and the Widow Davis
+plodded patiently through them, getting a little
+more weary as they passed and finding the burden
+of loneliness none the easier to bear as age
+crept on. That visit to Shiloh had taught her
+some things, toleration among the rest, but it
+had also taken away one thing that had been a
+secret source of comfort to her. Until that time
+she had pictured to herself the return of her
+husband. She was a woman with but scant
+imaginative power, but where even the dullest
+mind dwells much upon one subject it weaves
+about it a network of fancy far different from
+reality. She had not seen her husband dead;
+a battle was a vague thing to her; he had simply
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span>gone away and had not come back. Perhaps
+he had been wounded, had lost a leg or an
+arm, and a prisoner in rebel hands was long in
+recovering. Then, perhaps—here her fancy
+took a wild leap—perhaps he was told by some
+one that she was dead, or that she, thinking
+him dead, had married again, though she didn’t
+quite see how he could believe she could marry
+another man. But such things had happened—she
+had read of them; and supposing he had
+believed it, he would wander away and never
+care to revisit his old home until, at last, he
+somehow learned the truth and hastened to her
+with joy. Or it might be that he had escaped
+from his rebel prison, had reached the sea-coast,
+had crept on board some foreign vessel, and
+had been carried to far-off lands, whence he
+would some day return.</p>
+
+<p>Vain imaginings, but lonely women dream
+strange things while they go half mechanically
+about their monotonous daily tasks. Even the
+happiness of happy women is half in this unreal
+inner life. After this visit to Shiloh these comforting
+pictures were conjured up no more in
+Lizzie’s mind. It was all real now, the battle
+and the slaughter, and she had seen the graves
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span>where the soldiers lay; her thoughts centered
+about “1607,” where the captain’s tribute
+rested, and she felt more and more convinced
+that Martin slept beneath that stone. It was
+nearly thirty years, a lifetime, since he went,
+and he would come to her now only after
+heaven’s gate had opened to let her in. She
+had mourned her lost love for thirty years. She,
+a little, commonplace woman of whom no one
+would have thought as a heroine of romance.
+She would not have known what the term
+“grand passion” meant; she had been simply
+faithful to a memory in a quiet, undemonstrative
+way; her life had been bound up in a sentiment,
+that was all.</p>
+
+<p>One day in April—it was the 30th Shiloh
+anniversary—she was at her little cottage, no
+neighbor needing her services as nurse or seamstress.
+It had been an early spring, and she
+went out in the garden to look at the signs of
+life among her few cherished flowers. In a sunny
+corner wild violets grew and had pushed
+green leaves above the mold, but no buds were
+yet in sight.</p>
+
+<p>“I remember,” she said, speaking to a neighbor
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span>who had paused in passing, “I remember
+seeing violet flowers as early as this.”</p>
+
+<p>She was thinking of those stuck in the band of
+Martin’s hat that day so long ago when he came
+from the field, and as she spoke she looked
+down the village street, wondering at the unusual
+boisterousness of the school children. They
+followed after and jeered at a man who came
+slowly and hesitatingly along, as if uncertain of
+his way. His clothing was rough, his shoulders
+bent and his gait shambling. On his head was
+a military cap, such as some old soldiers still insist
+upon wearing, and on its side was something
+like a decoration on a woman’s bonnet. It
+was this that made the children jeer. Mrs. Davis
+put her hand over her eyes and looked at it
+intently. Hardly knowing what she did, she
+went out upon the walk and down the street to
+meet him. When she came closer she saw that
+the decoration was a bunch of yellow violets.
+She stopped before the man and looked at him.
+She had never thought of her husband as other
+than erect, and strong, and young; this man
+was feeble, and dim-eyed, and old, but—she
+knew him.</p>
+
+<p>“Martin!” she said; “Martin!” and reached
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span>out her hands, forgetful of watching neighbors
+and wondering children.</p>
+
+<p>Something like a miracle happened in that
+moment. The years fell away from her as a
+garment; the flush in her cheek, the love light
+in her eyes transfigured her.</p>
+
+<p>“Lizzie!” said the man, the dull, dazed expression
+clearing from his face. “Lizzie,” and
+he fumbled at his cap, “I—I thought ye’d like
+some posies, and came round by the holler and
+got them.”</p>
+
+<p>She took him by the hand and led him into
+the house, her face still illumined.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The woman who wrote stories and the other
+who read them met again on the street of Mullins.
+Toward them came Lizzie Davis. She
+was the woman who had been at the station
+weeks before, but she was like one born again.
+Her hair was faded, it is true; her complexion
+gray, her dress old-fashioned and rusty, but her
+eyes were bright, her bearing erect and proud,
+her face smiling. She stopped a moment to
+speak to the woman who wrote.</p>
+
+<p>“Just think, Miss,” she said; “Martin lived
+over in Jonesboro, just beyond the Ohio line,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span>and not fifty miles from here, for twenty years.
+I’ve just seen a man from there. Where he had
+been before that time the Lord knows. The
+man says that they all knowed something was
+the matter with his head. Seemed to do his
+work well on the farm, but every now an’ then
+he’d get uneasy an’ talk an’ talk about some
+place he’d ought to go if he could only just
+think of the name; an’ when he heard any one
+call ‘Lizzie’ he always got worried and fidgety.
+Come spring, too, every year, he’d pick flowers
+an’ wear ’em in his hat. Then at last one day
+his recollection seemed to come to him sudden,
+and he up an’ started off, the man said, acting
+like a crazy lunatic. He found his way here,
+an’ he’s getting to be more like himself every
+day, an’ it almost seems as if he’d never been
+away.”</p>
+
+<p>A glow was on her cheek like the blush of a
+bride; the thirty years of loneliness were as
+naught; the children that might have been hers,
+the happiness and peace she had missed were
+forgotten. The mother heart in her went out to
+the broken-down man and was satisfied. He
+came shuffling down the walk.</p>
+
+<p>“See how well he looks,” she said, as she
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span>hastened toward him, with a face through which
+love shone as it must shine on the faces of the
+angels in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>“You were wrong, you see,” softly said the
+woman who wrote, to her friend; “you were
+wrong when you declared there was no romance
+here; that the people merely vegetated. That
+woman has lived.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” said the other, “she has loved.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">A FARMHOUSE DRAMA</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap">“IT WAS an exceptional case, that of the Marshalls,
+Brother Johnson, or I never should
+have advised them to the course they took.”</p>
+
+<p>The speaker, familiarly known as Father Allen
+to all the region round about, was a minister of
+the Methodist denomination, who, after an itinerant
+life of forty years, had, as his professional
+brethren put it, “assumed the superannuated relation.”
+This being interpreted, meant that he
+had retired from regular duty and occupied himself,
+as age and strength would permit, in rendering
+such service to neighboring members of
+his old flock as occasion called for. An old
+minister comes to be identified with a family as
+no newcomer can. He has comforted its members
+in their sorrows and participated in their
+pleasures; he has been with them at their funerals
+and their marriage feasts, and in the emergencies
+of life they turn to him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span>To-day, Father Allen had accompanied the
+Reverend Mr. Johnson, the young preacher
+lately stationed at Amber Center, the little Indiana
+town whose roofs were visible far across
+the prairie, on his first round of pastoral calls.
+They had just taken their departure from the
+white farm-house of the Marshalls, bearing with
+them the look of ineffable content that comes
+to mankind only after the consumption of a
+bountiful meal, and were discussing the affairs
+of their entertainers, as is the ancient custom of
+guests of all degree, regardless of canons of
+etiquette.</p>
+
+<p>Acting on the principle that a pastor should
+be thoroughly acquainted with the history of his
+flock in order to meet its spiritual needs, as a
+physician is better fitted to prescribe for a patient’s
+ills when he understands his physical
+constitution, the old minister gave, with somewhat
+garrulous, not to say gossipy, detail, particulars
+of each individual’s life to the new shepherd.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, it was an exceptional case. It is hardly
+necessary to say, I hope, Brother Johnson, that
+I am opposed to divorce. The ease with which
+legal separations are to be had is one of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span>greatest evils of our time; I need not enlarge on
+that. Still—Brother Johnson, one must use
+judgment, and it is difficult to make an iron-clad
+rule for all cases. ‘A rule already made,’ do
+you say? Well, yes, yes—of course. As a
+general thing it is best to abide by the literal
+scriptural injunction, and I am the last person
+to countenance any other course. Nevertheless,
+my son, you will find, as your experience with
+the realities of the world broadens, that it is
+sometimes inexpedient to insist upon too rigid
+an application of the letter of the law.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, in the case of the Marshalls, John was
+very deeply attached to his first wife, whom he
+married on the day of his enlistment in the
+army, twenty years ago; very deeply attached,
+no doubt of it. His wife, pretty Rose Lytle,
+was fond of him in her way, too, but she was
+of a clinging, dependent nature, and would, perhaps,
+have been equally happy had it chanced
+to be another than John, who had so devoted
+himself to her. The woman who loved him
+most deeply on the day of his marriage was
+Rose’s cousin and adopted sister, Mary; but
+that was her secret. Many a woman has such.
+Rose was a pretty creature. It was twenty
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span>years ago, but I remember her well. She
+reminded me—my wife’s name was Rose, too.”</p>
+
+<p>The old man’s voice faltered. It was not
+upon the prospect near that his dim eyes were
+wistfully fixed, but upon something far beyond.
+Before them the western sky was gorgeous with
+crimson and purple and gold—fit reminder of
+the gates of the New Jerusalem—but Mr. Johnson
+removed his gaze from the glory of the sunset
+to glance curiously at his aged companion,
+knowing as he did, that the name of the present
+Mrs. Allen was Sarah, and that the neatly
+framed portrait of her immediate predecessor
+was carefully labeled, “My beloved consort,
+Matilda.”</p>
+
+<p>“A week later,” resumed the elder gentleman,
+“John was on his way with his regiment
+to the South, and the women were left to each
+other’s company. The months following went
+by slowly enough, no doubt, to the girl in the
+lonely prairie home and to the man toiling in
+Virginia trenches, or marching over sodden
+hills; time moves slowly, you know, when one
+is young and impatient.”</p>
+
+<p>“When the ‘body is in Segovia’ and the
+‘soul is in Madrid,’” softly interpolated the listener,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span>who was yet young enough to permit sentiment
+to come to the surface now and then.</p>
+
+<p>“But time goes for all,” continued the old minister,
+“and before the year’s close it had ended
+to the consciousness of one of the pair. A report
+that John had been killed in battle came
+suddenly to the ears of the waiting wife—a false
+report, as later appeared, like so many that
+came from ‘the front’ in those days. Next day
+their son was born, but the mother had no smile
+at the sight of the baby face. The shock of the
+news had deprived her of reason. Physical
+strength came back in time, but with its return
+the insanity increased until she raved with madness
+and became dangerously violent. The husband,
+who had been wounded only, came home
+on furlough, but his presence excited her to
+fierce outbursts.</p>
+
+<p>“It was a long time before John or the cousin
+Mary, patiently devoted to mother and child,
+would consent to send the cherished and petted
+girl away from their own care to an institution
+for the insane; but finally the safety of all demanded
+it. She was taken to an asylum and is
+there to-day.</p>
+
+<p>“John rejoined his regiment, and when the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span>war was over came back to find his home and
+child well cared for by the faithful Mary. Matters
+went on in this way for a while, with the addition
+of himself as head of the household. Left
+to himself, he would perhaps have discovered
+no reason why the agreeable conditions should
+not continue, but when Mary, the center of this
+home life, suddenly resumed her old occupation
+of teaching, and would give no explanation of
+her course to the bewildered man save that she
+preferred the change, there were neighbors willing
+to enlighten him. In the matter of social
+conventionalities and proprieties people in country
+communities are very exacting, Brother
+Johnson, and it was not considered proper that
+Mary should remain as housekeeper for a man
+who was her brother-in-law only by courtesy.</p>
+
+<p>“Naturally, this was the beginning of the
+end. They soon discovered each other’s sentiments
+and came to me for advice, separately
+and together. The physicians had assured
+them that Rose was hopelessly insane; that
+while no one could say with absolute certainty
+that she would not recover, the tendencies in her
+case gave no encouragement for such hope. Insanity
+was not specified as legal cause for divorce,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span>but in those days, Indiana courts were
+allowed by the statutes far greater liberty and
+discretion than now, and, under the circumstances,
+there was no difficulty in the way of
+securing a decree of separation. The only
+question with these two, Mary and John, was
+whether it was right for John to be divorced
+even with conditions as they were. They were
+conscientious and argued for and against themselves.”</p>
+
+<p>“To me it seemed one of the exceptional cases.
+Marshall needed some one at the head of his establishment;
+he had not so warm an affection for
+this woman, perhaps, as for Rose, but he would
+make her a good husband. Mary cared for him
+as she never could for another. It is best for
+women to marry. It seemed to me expedient
+that these two should be united, and so I advised
+the divorce. I am still of the opinion that
+the course was wise.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mrs. Marshall’s expression did not strike
+me as that of a particularly happy woman,”
+said Mr. Johnson. “She looked sad, I thought,
+and anxious.”</p>
+
+<p>“Women, as a class, are foolish,” hastily exclaimed
+the old man. “The best of them have
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span>imaginary troubles. Mrs. Marshall allows herself
+to be tormented by the fear that Rose will
+yet be cured, and reproaches herself at the same
+time for dreading what ought, under other circumstances,
+to be a blessing. However, as I
+said, women will find something to worry over,
+and if it were not for this fanciful notion, Mrs.
+Marshall, good, sensible woman that she is,
+would have some other. I believe she did
+well.”</p>
+
+<p>As they drove up the village street in the
+haze of the late Indian summer twilight the
+young minister breathed a sigh. He had been
+impressed by what the poet calls the large,
+sweet calmness of the prairie; but peace, after
+all, did not, it seemed, abide with the people.
+He wondered what would be the end if, at last,
+the innocent, but cast-off wife should be restored
+to the realities of life.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Back in the white house on the prairie the
+first chapter of the sequel to the old minister’s
+story had even then begun.</p>
+
+<p>After the visitors had driven away, John
+Marshall and his wife stood on the steps, his
+eyes fixed absently on the purple line of the horizon
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span>far across the level plain, she, with her
+face turned toward his. A question was on her
+lips, but she did not speak, only touched his
+arm softly while the look of vague apprehension
+in her eyes deepened into what was almost terror.
+At last he moved until his glance met
+hers.</p>
+
+<p>“What you have always dreaded has happened,”
+he said. “Rose has recovered her
+mind.”</p>
+
+<p>The woman at his side did not cry out nor
+moan—she was not of the demonstrative sort;
+but a change come over her while she stood
+there as if she had suddenly grown old and
+feeble. Her face looked pinched and gray. She
+took her hand from his arm and moved back a
+pace—a movement that told its own story. After
+a moment he went on steadily:</p>
+
+<p>“The doctor writes that it is a very unexpected
+recovery; quite remarkable in the history
+of such cases. She is well as ever, mentally,
+but oddly enough her bodily strength has as
+suddenly failed, and, according to what he says,
+she is not likely to be better. It is not probable
+at the best that she will live many months—perhaps
+not even weeks; but in order to prolong
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span>her life, as well as to retain her mental balance,
+she must be carefully guarded from a
+shock of any sort. This, above all things, must be
+the care of those about her, he says, and explains
+that he has said nothing to her concerning
+our family affairs. And,” after a pause in
+which he glanced uneasily at his wife, “Rose
+wants to come home.”</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with calm, tearless eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you wish her to come?” she asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” he answered, hesitatingly, “it’s a
+queer fix. We’re all she’s got, you know, you
+and I, and to send her among strangers now—it
+doesn’t seem just right. She was our little Rose,
+you remember, and——. If she were well it
+would be different, of course. Still, if you think
+it won’t do—if you can’t have it so, let it be as
+you please, Mary.”</p>
+
+<p>“I only wanted to know what you wished.
+Do you think I would say to you, I who took
+her place, that our doors must be shut against
+her? We will go to-morrow and bring her home,
+and I will do what I can to make her last days
+happy.”</p>
+
+<p>John Marshall breathed a sigh of relief as if a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span>weight were lifted from his mind. He looked
+at his wife approvingly.</p>
+
+<p>“You are a good woman, Mary,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>Many a man addressing such words to his
+wife would have followed them with a caress,
+but John Marshall turned away and went about
+his evening tasks while Mary passed slowly and
+wearily into the house. A coat belonging to
+her husband hung in the hall. She caught the
+sleeve in her hand and kissed it. A girl or a
+gay young matron might have been thus childishly
+demonstrative without suspicion of any
+deeper feeling than an impulsive outburst of
+affection toward the owner of the garment. Discerning
+eyes like those of Father Allen, grown
+keen with a half century’s study of human
+weaknesses, would have seen in the act of this
+middle-aged woman the betrayal of a heart’s
+hunger.</p>
+
+<p>Mechanically she went about her household
+duties and preparations for the guest, the dread
+of whose possible coming had hung over her
+like a shadow for fifteen years. No detail was
+overlooked in arranging for the comfort of
+“John’s wife,” as Mary caught herself calling
+in her thoughts the woman who had dropped
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span>out of conscious existence so long ago. She
+had come back to life as from the dead. If a
+wrong had been done to her in her helpless
+state those who had committed it must, as they
+hoped for mercy hereafter, do what they could
+to save her from its consequences; there was
+no other way. They, the wrong-doers, she
+and John, must suffer in the performance of
+their duty; but they had no right to complain.
+It was Rose, little Rose, whom they had loved
+and who had trusted them so completely, who
+was coming back, and she must find the doors
+open.</p>
+
+<p>Like a dream that day and the next seemed
+to her afterwards. The journey to the city, the
+meeting with the one so miraculously restored
+to them, the return home, were events that fixed
+themselves but dimly on her memory. The central
+fact that the companion of her girlhood, the
+wife of John’s youth, was with them again absorbed
+her faculties to the exclusion of lesser matters.
+It was not until Rose was installed in the sunny
+upper room and the domestic routine had
+adjusted itself to the change in affairs that the second
+wife realized the nature of the task she had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span>set herself to do—that had been imposed upon
+her she whispered in bitter protest sometimes.</p>
+
+<p>Her married life had been haunted by the fear
+that Rose might regain her reason, but the picture
+formed in her fancy had been of a wan and
+haggard creature heaping reproaches on the husband
+who had been unfaithful in her absence,
+and on the woman who had promised a dying
+father to care for her and had then usurped her
+place. Never had she, in her wildest dreams,
+contemplated anything like the reality which she
+now faced.</p>
+
+<p>It was no pallid, wild-eyed woman who sat in
+the upper chamber, but a smiling guest whose
+every wish was honored. Strangely enough,
+the change that had been wrought in Rose’s
+mental condition had its counterpart in a physical
+transformation. The deathly paleness, the
+hollow cheek, the look of age which had characterized
+the insane woman had given way to a
+color rivaling the peachy bloom of twenty years
+before; the blue eyes, dull for so long, shone
+with all their old vivid brilliancy beneath the
+long lashes; the face was rounded out, and its
+youthful outlines were emphasized by the babyish
+rings of fair hair that lay about the white
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span>forehead. The weakness and languor that accompanied
+this change and did not pass away
+only added to her attractiveness. As she
+leaned back upon the cushions of the chair that
+she seldom left it was difficult to believe that the
+face was that of one who had lived past her girlhood.
+To the lookers-on it seemed that nature
+had endeavored to compensate for the lost years
+by a veritable renewal of youth and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>It was not the difficult task that had been
+feared to guard her against injurious shocks.
+She quietly assumed, without question, that the
+relations of her loved ones were as they had been
+of old; indeed she seemed not to realize the
+time that had passed since she left them. John
+was her husband; Mary, the dear sister who had
+kept his house and awaited her recovery and return.
+Rose asked for her son but showed little
+emotion when told with hesitant caution—this
+was one of the things that could not be concealed
+or denied—that he had been a feeble child
+who, after five years of baby life, had left them
+and gone to heaven. The infant had not formed
+a part of the life she remembered, and knowledge
+of his death did not move her deeply. In telling
+the story of the little one whom she had loved
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span>like her own, Mary thought, with almost a guilty
+feeling, of the sturdy boy who called her mother
+and whose existence must be so carefully hidden.
+The presence of a boy in the house might
+be easily enough accounted for, but he must not
+come where “Aunt Rose” was lest she ask fatal
+questions.</p>
+
+<p>“It is enough that you and I must deceive
+her, but my boy shall not be taught to lie or to
+deny his birthright,” said Mary, with fierce decision,
+and John had agreed.</p>
+
+<p>A negro and his wife who had followed John
+from “ole Kaintuck” to find a home in the
+North, and who had been faithful servants ever
+since, formed the rest of the household. Visitors
+were few. A prairie road after November
+rains is not a thoroughfare sought by any except
+those on journeys of necessity. The few
+old friends or curious neighbors drawn thither
+by the news of Rose’s return were quietly cautioned
+not to touch on personal matters in their
+conversation with the invalid. This caution and
+the chance allusions Rose made to her “husband”
+led the visitors, ignorant of the kindly
+deceit being practiced upon her, and doubtful,
+as the most intelligent people often are, of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span>entire recovery of those once insane, to believe
+that her mind was not yet sound. So it came
+about that the little drama being enacted in that
+prairie farm-house had few spectators.</p>
+
+<p>Rose expressed little curiosity concerning
+events that had happened during her absence,
+and showed no interest in affairs outside their
+own little circle. She was content to live like a
+child, taking up life where she had left it, and
+thinking nothing of the morrow. One thing
+only she demanded as her right, and that the
+hardest of all for one member of the household
+to grant. “Her John’s” society she claimed in
+all of his leisure moments, and as a farmer in
+the position of this man is an independent being
+who orders his own goings-in and comings-out,
+the result was that John, “my dear John,” as
+Rose called him, was at her side many hours in
+the day. Mary might be there, too; Rose
+wanted Mary also at hand, or within call, but
+without John she fretted and was restless.</p>
+
+<p>At first Mary quieted her misgivings with a
+sense of shame at their existence. John, she
+said, was, like herself, trying to do his duty.
+She could serve the invalid in other ways; he
+could only bear her company. But the days
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span>went on, and that upper room became a place
+of torture for the lawful wife so steadfastly doing
+that which seemed best.</p>
+
+<p>John was good; he was a good man, she said
+over and over. Not to himself would the loyal
+soul willingly utter a complaint of the one she
+loved, but at last she could no longer close her
+eyes to the truth. In an agony which could
+find no expression, Mary acknowledged to herself
+that her husband sought the presence of that
+transfigured woman who had been the bride of
+his youth, because in that presence he found
+pleasure and delight. All through the fifteen
+years of her life with him she had been conscious
+of a lack of responsiveness to the cravings of her
+affection; but she had stilled the aching of her
+heart with the thought, not that he mourned the
+loss of Rose, but that a sentiment of self-reproach
+for having set her aside in her misfortune had
+raised a barrier in his nature between himself
+and the companion in the wrong which he could
+not overcome. And now she knew that this coldness
+was because he loved this other as he had
+not loved her.</p>
+
+<p>During those long years she had never been
+quite happy because of the invisible barrier;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span>sometimes she had fancied herself wretched.
+Looking back to that time now, she felt, in the
+sharpness of her suffering, that she had lived in
+paradise. Then, it was a vague, unsubstantial
+thing that held them apart; now, it was a beautiful
+woman who thought herself his wife.</p>
+
+<p>That room had a fascination for Mrs. Marshall;
+she suffered when there, but after leaving
+it she hastened back. Neither occupant seemed
+to mind her presence. Rose did not;—conscious
+of no wrong, why should she? John did
+not, being apparently unaware, as he sat near,
+and often with Rose’s pretty hand in his, that
+he was exceeding the part of a courteous host.</p>
+
+<p>One day, to Mary, going quietly about some
+task in an outer room, floated a voice in soft reproach:</p>
+
+<p>“John, do you love me?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why Rose, my dear Rose, don’t you know
+we all love you?”</p>
+
+<p>“‘We!’ I am not talking of ‘we,’ but of
+you. Do you know, John, that you have never
+kissed me since the day I came home? Is that
+the way a man behaves who loves his wife?”</p>
+
+<p>And Mary, her heart faint with pain and
+shame and outraged love, saw the man succumb
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span>to the pleading eyes and outstretched arms. A
+kiss like that, she knew, had never been given
+her. Alive with the quick instinct to possess
+her own she started forward, but in a moment
+turned and crept away like a wounded creature,
+even then excusing the one who had pierced her
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>“Could any man do differently? Only a
+saint could resist that loveliness for the sake of
+a woman such as I, worn with care and on-coming
+years.”</p>
+
+<p>She could not breathe under that roof. Out
+into the chill November day she hastened, not
+caring whither. Heavy gusts of rain swept
+across the sky, shrouding the prairie in a gray
+mist through which the scattered trees loomed
+dimly, their bare boughs tossing like the spars
+of a ship in a laboring sea. Conscious of little
+but her own thoughts, she hurried on until her
+footsteps were checked by the surprised voice of
+Father Allen hastening from the performance of
+some errand of mercy to gain shelter from the
+wintry storm.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you crazy, daughter?”</p>
+
+<p>“It would be better if I were; it would save
+trouble. If John could have left me at the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span>asylum when he brought Rose away how much
+better it would have been. But this life is killing
+me—I shall die, I shall die and be out of
+their way. Rose will get well—do you hear
+me, Father Allen? When I married John I
+prayed that Rose, my little cousin Rose, might
+never recover her mind. I founded my happiness
+on her misfortune. Now, I can see
+no happiness while we both live. I am like a
+murderer, Father Allen! But my punishment
+has come. The Lord does not wait until the
+hereafter.”</p>
+
+<p>The burst of passion ended in tears and sobs,
+and the old man, dismounting from his horse,
+led her unresistingly home and delivered her
+into the hands of the faithful black ’Liza, whose
+ire had long since been excited by what she described
+to her spouse, Tom, as the “scan’lous
+goings on ob dat crazy woman with Mistah
+John.”</p>
+
+<p>“I will remonstrate with Brother Marshall,”
+thought the ministerial visitor. “It is a peculiar
+case, and he means no harm, I am sure; but,
+really, it is a very trying position for Sister Marshall,
+and he should be more considerate.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Allen was old; the woes of women did
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span>not impress him as they might have done a
+younger man, or as they would have impressed
+him even now, perhaps, had not the many sorrowful
+tales poured into his ears during the forty
+years of his ministry somewhat dulled his sensibilities.
+So it happened that he was not stern
+and severe in his remonstrance with Mr. Marshall
+when he drew him aside that night after
+supper, at which Mary presided, pale but self-possessed
+once more.</p>
+
+<p>“If Mary wishes to tell Rose the truth and
+kill her, she may do so, or you may do it; I
+will not,” said John. “While she is here I
+shall treat her kindly, whatever others may do.
+Come up and see her.”</p>
+
+<p>The old minister followed his host. In that
+radiant presence he, too, forgot the aching heart
+below and thought only of Rose and the wife of
+his youth whose likeness he fancied he saw in
+the face before him.</p>
+
+<p>That night Rose moaned in her sleep, and
+Mary, rising from her couch near by, found the
+white hands clasped over the heart and wondered
+if the pangs of actual disease could equal
+her own pain.</p>
+
+<p>Next day the wild storm continued and the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span>minister, who had remained over night, prolonged
+his stay. Mary wandered restlessly
+over the house, now in the kitchen with ’Liza,
+now talking lightly with Father Allen in the
+pleasant parlor, but never long absent from the
+spot upstairs where all interest centered.</p>
+
+<p>“You look pale—are you not well?” said
+Rose once. “John, you must not let Mary
+work too hard for me. Dear Mary! How
+should we do without her?”</p>
+
+<p>Mary’s answer was short and brusque as she
+hurried away, thinking bitterly that John had
+no thought to spare for any illness of hers. Repenting,
+presently, of her ungracious response
+to a kind inquiry, and returning, she saw repeated
+the loving scene of the day before. John
+was on his knees by Rose’s side, her arms
+about his neck.</p>
+
+<p>“I dreamed of our baby last night, John.
+When I am well—I think I shall be well soon—I
+want you to take me down to see where you
+have laid him. If I should die I want my—there,
+there—hush! I know you love me; I
+know you do, and I won’t talk again of leaving
+you. Poor John; he has had no one to pet and
+care for him, and he wants his little Rose.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span>Half an hour later ’Liza, intent on some household
+service, found Mrs. Marshall lying prostrate
+on the floor of an unused room. She was
+not unconscious—women out of books do not
+faint when their hearts break—but nature had
+reached a limit, and after the storm of tears and
+strong crying had come a dullness of feeling that
+was almost insensibility.</p>
+
+<p>’Liza stooped to raise her, but suddenly
+changed her plan. “This is Mistah John’s business,
+an’ I’ll be boun’ he ’tends to it.”</p>
+
+<p>No delicately conscientious scruples troubled
+her mind.</p>
+
+<p>“Mistah John’s a mighty good man; nevah
+had nothin’ to say ’gainst him befo’, but it do
+look mighty cur’ous to see him hangin’ roun’ a
+crazy woman that he divorced hisself from, an’
+thinkin’ no mo’ o’ this hyer po’ lamb than if
+the ole elder hadn’t done married ’em fas’ an’
+tight. ’Taint gwine on no mo’, nohow, if this
+chile kin stop it. Bettah be the crazy woman
+than Mis’ Mary if somebody gwine die fo’ it.”</p>
+
+<p>And ’Liza, muttering ominously, marched to
+the front room. There even she paused.</p>
+
+<p>“Ole ’Liza’s a mighty mean niggah when the
+blessed Lawd’s grace done loose its hold on her,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span>but the devil aint nevah gwine make her huht
+Mis’ Rose, who looks like a angel o’ the ’pocalypse,
+crazy or no crazy.”</p>
+
+<p>And so, very quietly, she called Mr. Marshall
+out of the charmed presence. Father Allen, on
+his way upstairs, was summoned also. Once in
+that distant room over the half conscious “Mis’
+Mary,” ’Liza’s wrath broke forth.</p>
+
+<p>“Ole ’Liza’s done thought a heap o’ you,
+Mistah John. I nevah reckoned I’us trailin’ out
+o’ ole Kaintuck aftah a man who was gwine have
+two wives undah one roof. Is yo’ that stone
+bline an’ onfeelin’, Mistah John, that yo’ aint
+see this blessed lamb dyin’ foh the love o’ yo’
+on ’count o’ the way yo’ carryin’ on? What
+yo’ reckon the Lawd thinkin’ o’ class-leadah
+Mahshall ’bout now?”</p>
+
+<p>She was on the floor holding Mary’s head on
+her ample bosom, loosening her dress, chafing
+her hands.</p>
+
+<p>“Yo’ an’ Eldah Allen, hyer, yo’ alls think
+its Mis’ Mary’s duty to make it easy foh you
+uns, an’ aint a carin’ if she done make a bu’nt
+offering o’ herself. Yo’ alls may be mighty
+good in yo’ minds, but yo’ ain’ got no kind o’
+feelin’s. Ary man what wants his wife to stan’
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span>back an’ be sweet an’ purty wiles he honeys up
+to a nurrer woman is boun’ to get all broke
+up in he cackleations. No woman, black or
+white, ain’ made thataway. Ole Mis’ Duncan,
+down in Kaintuck, used to ’low, ‘’Liza,’ she ’low,
+‘ebery male man that was evah bohned would be
+a Mohmon or a heathen Tuhk if he wasn’t
+’shamed to have folks know it.’ Ole Mis’ hadn’t
+had good luck with her husban’s an’ was down
+on the sect pow’ful ha’d, but the longah I live
+the mo’ I’s ’pressed with the ’pinion that a man
+what wants to get into the heabenly kingdom’s
+got to live mighty close in this worl’, mighty
+close.”</p>
+
+<p>John made no attempt to check this impetuous
+tirade, but during its progress his eyes had
+become wide open to the situation. His cheeks
+burned with shame. He took Mary from ’Liza’s
+arms and laid her upon a bed. The sound of
+his voice brought her to herself. Half dazed
+she struggled to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>“Father Allen,” said the man, “We,—I
+have made a mistake. One wrong can not be
+set right by another. Mary, here, is my wife.
+We will have done with this deception, and will
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span>go and tell Rose, let the consequences be what
+they may.”</p>
+
+<p>Supporting his wife, he moved toward the
+room across the house, followed by the old minister,
+with ’Liza, alarmed now at the result of
+her temerity, bringing up the rear. Even at that
+moment, Mary, beginning to recover herself,
+forgot her own grief and pleaded brokenly for
+delay. Strong as had been John Marshall’s resolution
+of a moment before, his steps faltered
+as they approached the door. A moment more
+and all paused involuntarily—arrested by the
+words they heard and the sight before them.</p>
+
+<p>Standing by Rose’s side was Mary’s son, the
+lad of twelve. Coming into the house he had
+heard the sharp alarm of Aunt Rose’s bell and,
+finding no one to answer the call, had gone up
+and peeped bashfully in.</p>
+
+<p>Rose, gasping for breath in sudden faintness,
+motioned for water and air. She revived presently,
+the boy watching her, meanwhile, with
+wondering eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“I have heard you about the house,” she
+said faintly but with a smile; “why have you
+never been to see me before?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span>“I wanted to come, but they said you must
+not be worried,” stammered the lad.</p>
+
+<p>“‘They’? Who are ‘they’?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, father and mother,” he answered in
+surprise.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, your father and mother, whoever they
+may be, should have known that boys would not
+trouble me; I like them. And what is your
+name, child?”</p>
+
+<p>The group at the door heard this and the
+boy’s quick answer:</p>
+
+<p>“My name is Richard—Dick, for short—Richard
+Marshall, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>Mary staggered forward as if to stop the
+words on the boy’s lips.</p>
+
+<p>“Save her, Lord!” she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Father Allen held her arm. “Hush! it is
+too late. It is the will of God.”</p>
+
+<p>John stood as one paralyzed.</p>
+
+<p>“Richard Marshall,” she repeated wonderingly—“the
+same name. And are you related
+to Mr. John Marshall? He did not tell me—”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, Mr. John Marshall is my father,
+didn’t you know? You must have forgotten,
+Aunt Rose. And, of course, Mrs. Mary Marshall
+is my mother.”</p>
+
+<p>The revelation which they had so guarded
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span>against had been made; the shock so dreaded
+had been given.</p>
+
+<p>Rose seemed to realize the truth slowly. Her
+startled eyes fell upon the terror-stricken group
+at the doorway. Gradually, as comprehension
+of the situation dawned upon her, a change
+came over the sweet face. It grew gray and
+sharp; the brightness vanished. She suddenly
+seemed no longer young.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it true, John?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is true,” he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, then, when you had taken another in
+my place did you deceive me? Why was I
+allowed to think—”</p>
+
+<p>“Rose, my darling, we did it for the best.
+We thought you would suffer; we had done you
+a wrong and were afraid—Rose, Rose, it was
+for your sake. Can you not forgive?”</p>
+
+<p>John Marshall had drawn near to the woman
+on whom the shadow of death now plainly lay.
+Mary crept to the bedside and crouched there
+with head bowed low. For a long time, hours it
+seemed to the spell-bound watchers, the dying
+woman lay silent with her hands clenched over
+her heart. No sound was heard save the dash
+of rain upon the window and the crackling of
+the fire upon the hearth. At last she spoke:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span>“It would be better for us all if I had died
+long ago, or if I had never come to myself in
+the asylum. I have wanted to live, but it does
+not matter now. I will go to my baby; the
+Lord will let me have him for my own in heaven.
+I thought,”—the words came slowly and
+more faint—“I thought you were all mine, all
+mine, and you belonged to Mary. I had no
+one. But John,” triumphantly—it was the last
+flash of the woman nature regardless of human
+law for love’s sake—“John, you loved me best
+once; you love me now, don’t you, John?”</p>
+
+<p>The man, with his head bent upon the pillow,
+sobbed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>“Always, my darling.”</p>
+
+<p>After a pause she spoke again:</p>
+
+<p>“You did not mean to hurt. I have been
+happy—happy. Kiss me, John.”</p>
+
+<p>The face brightened with a strange light.</p>
+
+<p>“Mary, don’t cry. I—am—going—to—my—baby.
+Do—you—see? Mary, forgive——.”</p>
+
+<p>Then the blue eyes looked on death.</p>
+
+<p>A pale gleam of sunshine, the first for days,
+broke through the clouds and fell upon the still
+face. Father Allen, with uplifted hands, whispered
+softly, “Let us pray.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span>Six months later, Father Allen and the young
+pastor, driving across the prairie, stopped again
+at the Marshall home. Only the wife was
+within. In answer to a whispered inquiry from
+the older man, as he departed, she said gently,
+but with an unconscious touch of defiance in her
+speech: “I am happy, of course. He is mine,
+now—all mine. One does not fear the dead.”</p>
+
+<p>It was not quite a look of peace that filled her
+eyes as they left her gazing wistfully down the
+length of the level road.</p>
+
+<p>A mile beyond, at the other side of the
+broad prairie farm, was the little cottage where
+the dead Rose had spent the first brief months
+of her married life. It had never been occupied
+since by strangers. A marble shaft gleamed
+through the trees near by. Against the fence surrounding
+this leaned John Marshall, absorbed in
+contemplation of the two flower-grown mounds
+within. His horse, in the road at a little distance,
+neighed impatiently, but the watcher
+gave no heed.</p>
+
+<p>“It seemed to me expedient,” said Father
+Allen, half to himself, as they drove, unnoticed,
+by; “but I may have been wrong. The Lord
+knows.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">THE SOLUTION OF A TEXT</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="drop-cap">THERE is a conviction among certain educated people
+that with increased intellectual culture comes a
+keener susceptibility to pleasure and pain. Is it so?
+Turn anywhere among the “short and simple annals of
+the poor,” and we can find passion, and romance, and tragedy.
+They do not call these incidents of life by such
+names; they only live them. When love or suffering—and
+what else is life?—comes to us, we can analyze our
+emotions, and label them with high-sounding words; we
+can tell of them in verse, or in language compared to
+which theirs is but an inarticulate cry. Are our feelings,
+therefore, deeper?</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Slave! Yassum, an’ sot free by de prockelmation.
+Hab I lib in dis yer house so long
+an’ yo’ nebah know I’se done been a slave?”
+And Aunty Smith, the African dame, who represented
+that domestic institution known as “our
+girl,” gave the fire a vigorous poke.</p>
+
+<p>“Tell yo’ ’bout it? Dar ain’t nuffin’ to tell
+wuth the while for yo’ to listen. An’ ole niggah
+ain’t got no hist’ry—dat’s for white folkses.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>Didn’t I heah yo’ a readin’ ’bout de hist’ry ob
+Jawge Washin’ton—an’ den talkin’ to me?
+Sho!”</p>
+
+<p>The black lips parted over broad white teeth
+in a quick laugh, but no smile touched the solemn
+eyes given to her race by generations of
+bondage.</p>
+
+<p>“Time to be a-takin’ yo’ quinine, honey;
+bettah take it mighty reg’lah ef yo’ specks to
+get dem chills bruck. ‘Trouble?’ Yas, indeedy,
+I’s had heaps ob trouble, but I nebah
+did go roun’ talkin’ ’bout it. Makes mattahs
+wuss to be forebber a-talkin’ an’ a-talkin’ ob
+yer trials. An’ I’s allus noticed dis yer fac’,
+dat mos’ people likes to tell deir own ’sperience
+’stiddy o’ hearin’ ’bout yours. Co’se I has to
+tell somebody an’ I tells de Lawd, but ’pears
+like de Lawd’s a long way off, sometimes. Ef
+I could be shore dat He allus heard a pore niggah
+I couldn’t nebah grieve no mo’.”</p>
+
+<p>“Has doubt seized the believers?” I thought.
+“If the rest of us were sure of that one thing
+what burdens would be lifted!”</p>
+
+<p>“I’s done been mahied fo’ times. Yassum!
+By de preachah ebry time; dey couldn’t hab
+no foolishness wid dis chile. My first husband’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span>name was Cæsah Mahshall. He b’longed to
+Kunnel Mahshall, who at dat time was courtin’
+my mastah’s daughtah, Miss Betty, an’ ob
+course Cæsah he spen’ a heap ob time ’round
+dar. Cæsah he a likely boy, an’ all de gals
+tort dey gwine git him. But laws! I knowed
+he didn’t keer for none o’ dem niggahs. I did
+keep a mighty keen eye, dough, on Lize. She
+a yaller gal allus a-rollin’ her eyes an’ tossin’
+her head, an’ thinkin’ herself good as white
+folkses; one o’ dese yer sly kind, too, a sayin’
+flatterin’ things dat make a man think she a-dyin’
+for lub o’ him. I gib her mighty little
+chance to try any of her sassy tricks on Cæsah.
+Men’s dat pow’ful vain—you des know it’s so,
+honey—dey swallahs ebry soft an’ sugary speech
+ob de female sect as ef ’twar de libin’ trufe. But
+Cæsah he wouldn’t hab no one but des’ me.
+He sayed I was like Solomon’s wife dat de
+Bible tells ob, ‘black but comely.’ I ax de
+preachah once ef Solomon was a cullud gemlan.
+He look scared, an’ sayed he couldn’t ’splain
+dat tex’ to an ig’nant pusson like me; sayed it
+didn’t mean what it sayed, but was a yallerglory
+’bout de chu’ch. Preachahs don’t know ebry
+thing more’n we’uns, an’ what’s de use for twis’
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span>de words ob de good book diff’rent from what
+dey is?</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Cæsah an’ me we done got mahied,
+an’ lived in a little cabin neah my mastah’s
+house, cause I had to wo’k hahd waitin’ on ole
+mistis an’ de young ladies. Dey wore heaps
+ob fine muslins an’ lawns in dem days an’ no
+one could do de washin’ an’ i’nin’ to suit dem
+but me. But I had a little time in my own
+house an’ Cæsah he come often. I was dat
+happy I went roun’ singin’ from mawnin’ twel
+night; neber tort ’bout the nex’ day an’ what
+it might bring fo’th. Ef I was too happy with
+de things ob dis worl’, de Lawd knows my
+heart been heavy dis many yeahs to pay foh it.
+’Pears like all dat’s happen since has des’ teched
+de outside ob my feelin’s an’ lef’ all de heavenly
+sweetness ob dat time shet off to itself.</p>
+
+<p>“De time went by twel one mawnin’ in de
+summah Cæsah he agwine to come an’ tote de
+chile ober in de hills to a camp-meetin’. She
+was two munce old, an’ I hadn’t neber had her
+’way from home befo’. Dar’s no tellin’ how
+proud we bofe was ob dat baby.</p>
+
+<p>“Dat mawnin’ I dress her an’ I waited. De
+people roun’ de place dey get ready an’ go.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span>None ob dem stopped to talk, but I ’membered
+aft’wards dey look mighty queah at me. Lize,
+dat yaller gal I’se tellin’ yo’ ob, she run back
+an’ hug de baby. Yo’ pore crittah, I thought,
+yo’d gib all dat finery for sich a honey-drop!</p>
+
+<p>“An’ I waited. Plenty things might ob happen
+for to keep Cæsah away, so I sang Rosy to
+sleep. Den somehow I ’gan to ’member de
+looks an’ de whispers dat I hadn’t noticed at de
+time, an’ it seem to grow dark, dough de sun
+was a-shinin’; an’ de chills crep ober me. Ole
+mistis’s mockin’-bird up at de big house, how
+it did sing! I ’spise a mockin’-bird eber sence.
+I waited—an’ aft’ while ole mistis come walkin’
+down the paf. She was bawn an’ raised in de
+Nawf, was ole mistis, an’ neber ’peared to like
+de black people. She hab berry sharp eyes—’bout
+de color ob de blade ob a new razah,—an’
+when she come close an’ look at me I felt as ef
+dey cut me clean froo. She hab a soft voice,
+an’ dar was a little smile on her face when she
+tole me—she tole me—she stretch up an’ pick
+some yaller roses from de bush dat grow’d ober
+de do’, an’ she say dat if I ’spect to git to
+camp-meetin’ I better be agwine; dat I’d haf to
+pack de chile de whole way, for Cæsah he fur
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span>’nough off now. She tole me he been sold down
+Souf, whar he’d be ’bliged to pick cotton an’
+git ober some ob his fine notions.</p>
+
+<p>“When she were gone ’way I tore de yaller
+rosebush down an’ tromp it undah my feet.
+Aftah dat for a spell I don’t rightly ’member
+what happened. Dey tole me dat Cæsah he
+try to ’scape frum de tradahs; dat dey chase
+him wid de dogs, an’ when de men tort he gwine
+to cross de ribah dey done shoot him dead.
+Heabenly Mastah! an’ I lubed him so!</p>
+
+<p>“I lib through it all. Many a woman, black
+or white, could tell yo’ dat she goes on a-libin’ an’
+every night a-prayin’ de Lawd her soul to take.</p>
+
+<p>“I foun’ out dat Kunnel Mahshall he felt so
+mighty pore dat he had to sell some of his
+people. De Kunnel he one o’ de real Kentucky
+gemlen; great man to be a-bettin’ an’ a-hoss
+racin’. He’d loss a heap of money on his
+fas’ hoss, ’kase it wasn’t so fas’ as some o’ de
+rest, an’ he an’ Miss Betty gwine to be mahied;
+so ob co’se he must hab money—an’ he sold
+Cæsah.</p>
+
+<p>“Den Rosy died; an’ when I look at her in
+de little coffin I’s dat glad I couldn’t cry. I’s
+glad, honey, ’kase she nebber hab no trouble.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span>“Well, de time go on, an’ diff’rent men
+dey ax me to marry, but I tole dem to go off
+’bout deir business. But laws! a man cain’t
+b’lieve a woman don’t keer nuffin fer him! So
+dey kep hangin’ roun’ twel Mistis she say I mus’
+marry. Mistis she hab a thrifty turn an’ wanted
+all her people to marry an’ raise chillen, kase
+chillen proputty in dem days. Bless de Lawd!
+I didn’t hab no mo’ chillen fer her to count as I
+do de pigs.</p>
+
+<p>“At las’ I mahied Big Tom to git shet ob
+him, but I done miss it, fer shore as yo’ lib, dat
+crittah tuck de kinsumption. He war de mos’
+misable, no-’count niggah I ’member to hab
+knowed. I waited on dat man night an’ day,
+an’ like to run my laigs off; tried to be as good
+to him as ef he were de light ob my eyes; but
+nuffin pleased him no ways. One day he shied
+a flat-i’n at me an’ cut a gash ober my lef’ year.
+De scar’s dah yit. I’s pow’ful mad den, an’
+says I, ‘Ole man, ye kin cough yo’ livah an’
+lights up foh all me, an’ de soonah de bettah.’</p>
+
+<p>“’Bout dat time mastah done send him down
+de ribah on some business. Tom he were
+mastah’s right han’, an’ mastah didn’t pay no
+’tention to de kinsumption dat he say ailded
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span>him. Well, de steamboat blowed up, an’ I
+s’pose Tom done get blowed up too, for I’s
+neber seed him since.</p>
+
+<p>“Aft’ dat, a spell, I mahied Joe, ’kase he was
+lively, an’ kept us all a-laughin’ with his jokes.
+He played de fiddle like an angel, too, an’
+when I sot an’ listened, seemed as ef I could see
+beyond the stahs clar into de New Jerusalem.
+But Joe didn’t have good jedgment ’bout some
+mattahs. De wah was gwine on by dis time,
+an’ nuffin’ would do but Joe he mus’ go with
+Kunnel Mahshall down into Jawgy for to jine de
+’federate ahmy. De Kunnel was his mastah,
+but he didn’t hab to go. He was gwine to be
+a drummah, an’ was dat heedless he nevah
+’flected dad he was on de wrong side; reckon
+he nevah s’posed dar’d be anything else but
+playin’ on de fife an’ drum. In de berry fust’
+skrimmage dey had, Joe was killed. Might a
+knowed he’d hab bad luck, an’ I tole him so
+’fore he went. Joe had a good heart, dough,
+an’ I don’t ‘spect de Lawd will be hahd on him
+for habin’ been bawn so giddy.</p>
+
+<p>“Aftah while, when de prockelmation set de
+culled people free, de family bruck up, an’ I
+went up to Louieville for to get washin’ an i’nin’.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span>Dah I met Mistah Smith at pra’r-meetin’. He
+were pow’ful in pra’r, an’ he seem struck with
+my ’pearance (I had on my violent dress for
+de fust time). At de second pra’r-meetin’ he
+tole me he’d had a hebenly vision which sayed
+I was to be his second pahtnah. Co’se I
+couldn’t stan’ out ’gainst de will ob de Lawd,
+an’ dat’s why I’s now Mrs. Smith. His name
+was Obadiah, but he ’quested me for to call him
+Mistah Smith; sayed it ’corded bettah wid de
+condition ob de woman to be ’spectful to de
+husban’; man, he say, bein’ so s’perior.</p>
+
+<p>“Mistah Smith an’ me we done git along
+comf’tably twel he died, which was des befo’ I
+come heah. I nebah had no fault to fine, ’cept
+dat he did talk too much ’bout de fust Mrs.
+Smith. I’s had a heap ob trouble wid dat boy
+ob hers, but I’s tried to do my juty by him. I’s
+whipped him once a week reg’lah, ’kase he’s
+pow’ful bad, but he’s mos’ too big for me now,
+an’ I’se ’fraid de debbil’ll ketch him.</p>
+
+<p>“What’ll I do in hebben wid so many husban’s?
+I won’t hab but one, bless de Lawd,
+an’ dat’s Cæsah. Tom he won’t be dah; Joe
+he’ll be so tuck up wid de harps an’ de banjos
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span>dat he won’t think ob nuffin’ else; an’ Mistah
+Smith can ’joy hisself wid dat fust wife.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll hab Cæsah an’ I’ll hab Rosy, an’ we’ll
+hab a little mansion with a passion vine an’
+roses roun’ de do’; an’ we’ll be happy for ebber
+an’ ebber. Glory! Glory!”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The light that shone on the black face as she
+turned away was a token of faith and hope; an
+outward sign of an inward grace the whitest of
+us seldom wear.</p>
+
+<p>Floating back to the room, like an echo of a
+thought, came a triumphant voice:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="first">“Dah ebahlasting spring abides,</div>
+<div class="verse">An’ nevah fading flowahs.”</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap">MRS. ABNER HALE and Mrs. Silas Adams
+walked slowly out Main street after
+the regular Thursday meeting of the Branchville
+Ladies’ Literary Circle. When these ladies
+organized their society they decided to call it a
+circle instead of a club, because the latter word
+sounded “so mannish, somehow.”</p>
+
+<p>“That was a beautiful paper of Alfaretta Miller’s
+on theosophy,” Mrs. Hale remarked, in
+rather a questioning way.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, lovely!” said her companion, in the
+tone women use when they wish to be agreeable,
+no matter what their real thoughts may be concerning
+the matter under discussion. “Yes,
+Alfaretta can write on most any subject. She’s
+got a good mind. She’s a credit to our Circle.”</p>
+
+<p>“What idea did you get from the paper?”
+pursued Mrs. Hale, hesitatingly, and then, with
+an impetuous outburst, “Martha Adams, what
+<i>is</i> theosophy, anyway?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span>“Land! Mrs. Hale, don’t ask me. I haven’t
+the faintest idea, and never expect to have,
+if I should hear a dozen papers. Alfaretta
+wanted me to be prepared to discuss the subject
+and loaned me a book to read up in, but it
+made me dizzy. I did copy a sentence or two
+out, though, that I meant to recite off at the
+proper time, just to show that I wasn’t ignorant,
+but I forgot it. To tell the truth, I kind of lost
+track of what she was saying in studying out
+just how the trimming was fixed on Jennie Wilson’s
+new silk waist. I’m making one for my
+Sis, you know. Near as I can get at it, from
+all I’ve read and heard, theosophy is a sort of
+spiritualism that the heathen believe in and that
+our folks have taken up out of curiosity—sort of
+a moony, spooky thing, with spheres and mahatmas—whatever
+they are—and astral bodies,
+and ever-so-many-times-on-earth, and all that
+kind of foolishness. I ain’t sure that it’s quite
+the thing to talk about in our Circle. Some
+that’s not so well balanced as you and me might
+be influenced by it. Not but what there’s deep
+things that it would be real satisfying to know
+about. Sometimes I think there’s something
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span>genuine about spiritualism—the rapping and
+slate-writing kind.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hale looked at the speaker with an expression
+of severe disapproval, but had no chance
+to utter a word of protest before that voluble
+lady began again.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I do, Mrs. Hale. Lemme tell you
+something.” Here Mrs. Adams’s voice was lowered
+to a confidential whisper, although no one
+was within sight or hearing. “The most of it’s
+foolishness, I’ll allow, and there’s a lot of humbuggery
+about it, but there’s queer, unaccountable
+things, too. Cousin Jim Lawson’s wife
+was telling me one of ’em the last time I was in
+Indianapolis. She’d been to visit a slate-writing
+medium and had had a communication from her
+mother, who’d died suddenly not long before
+when she was away from home on a visit. Cousin
+Jim’s wife couldn’t reconcile herself to having
+no last word, and so she went to this medium,
+who, it seems, is no common person, but a real
+lady. She’d always had the power, but only a
+few knew about it, and she never thought of
+earning money by it until after she was left a
+widow and had to do something to make a living
+for herself and little girl.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span>“Well”—and here the whisper grew more
+impressive—“Cousin Jim’s wife, she went and
+never told her name or anything, and right inside
+of that double slate, with the medium’s hands
+laid flat on top in plain sight, came a message
+signed by her mother, Eunice Bascom, telling
+her she (Mrs. Bascom) was very happy, was
+glad to have the opportunity to talk to her and
+urge her to be reconciled, and also to tell her to
+give her (the mother’s) cashmere dress and her
+wrappers and aprons to Jane, the other daughter,
+and to keep the new black silk and the fur collar
+herself. Cousin Jim’s wife said you could a’
+knocked her down with a feather. The thought
+had come to her several times that that would be
+a fair way to divide their mother’s things, seeing
+she had so much more use for dressy clothes
+than Jane, who lived in the country and never
+went anywhere, but she hadn’t had the clothes
+in mind that day at all, and had no notion anything
+would be said about them. It was a real
+comfort to her, though, to have what you might
+call official authority for disposing of the garments,
+for she’d been a little afraid Jane would
+be inclined to complain; so she bought the slate
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span>with the writing on and took it home with her.
+Now, Mrs. Hale, wasn’t that remarkable?”</p>
+
+<p>“It seems to me,” protested that lady in reply,
+“that I shouldn’t like to have my mother
+come back from the other world to talk about
+clothes,” but as she was going on to express
+her fixed objection to such doings, such unholy
+tampering with sacred things, as she considered
+it, they reached Mrs. Adams’s gate, and that
+sprightly person, after unavailingly urging her
+companion to enter, hurried in, saying she would
+sew a little on Sis’s waist before dark.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hale, who was not really a townswoman
+at all, but a farmer’s wife, and lived nearly a mile
+beyond the point where the highway ceased to
+be a street and became the pike, went leisurely
+on her way over the quiet country road, saying
+to herself, with a shake of the head, that Martha
+Adams was a good soul, but too ready to believe
+everything she heard. Then her mind
+drifted to other matters. She always remembered
+her wandering thoughts of that afternoon,
+and sometimes spoke of them long after, as
+showing how little foreknowledge has the human
+mind. She thought complacently of her
+own paper on the French Revolution, which she
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span>had read before the Circle the week previous.
+She was sixty years old and had never done
+such a thing before, and it was a great event in
+her life, but she told her husband, when it was
+over, that she didn’t see but what her piece was
+“full as good as the average.” She owned
+frankly that she got the most of it from the encyclopedia
+and the rest from an old magazine
+belonging to Joe, “but, of course, they couldn’t
+expect me to write a thing like that out of my
+own head,” she said, “and if I used the same
+language, why, what’s the difference? I’m sure
+I couldn’t have said it as well, and, anyway, it
+was all new to the Circle.”</p>
+
+<p>But the Circle soon passed into the background
+on this autumn afternoon, and Joe, never
+far from the front in the mother’s mind, occupied
+her thoughts exclusively—Joe, the son of
+her old age, she called him. He was a young
+civil engineer, and through the influence of an
+instructor in the school of which he was a graduate
+had had the good fortune, as he considered
+it, to be made one of a government surveying
+party to Alaska that summer, starting in April.
+He was on his way home now. A letter had
+come from Seattle saying he had left the party,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span>which was coming east over the northern route,
+and was about to go down the coast in a small
+sailing vessel, whose captain had happened
+to take a liking to him. He did this because it
+was inexpensive and he wanted a glimpse of California,
+not knowing when he should visit the
+western coast again. He must have reached
+San Francisco by this time, his mother reflected,
+and another letter was nearly due, though possibly
+he would not think it worth while to write,
+he was coming so soon himself. Mrs. Hale’s
+fond heart beat faster at the very thought of
+seeing her boy once more, and as she looked
+about her over the fields, golden with the September
+sunshine, the sight, dear from long association,
+seemed to take on a new charm. It was
+a beautiful world, she thought, not realizing that
+it was the contentment of her soul that made the
+Indiana landscape doubly fair.</p>
+
+<p>She entered the door of her home with a song
+in her heart and upon her lips. She put her
+bonnet carefully away, and, with a look at the
+clock to assure herself that she had yet a few
+minutes before it was time to prepare supper for
+Abner and the hired man, she sat down to rest
+and to glance at the paper she had brought
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span>from the post-office. She opened the sheet and
+looked over it with mild interest. What fate
+turned her eyes straight upon the obscure paragraph
+that in times of much news would have
+found no space in the inland paper? Thus
+blindly and unsuspectingly are we led into the
+tragedies of our lives. It was a brief dispatch,
+dated at San Francisco, and mentioning the sinking
+of the schooner Yakima through being run
+down by the steamship Montana. The Yakima
+was bound for San Francisco with a cargo of
+coal, and filled and sank so rapidly after the collision
+that only one person on board escaped.
+The Montana put out her boats and picked up
+one sailor, who reported that in addition to the
+crew the schooner had had on board one passenger,
+a man from Indiana named Hale. The cause
+of the accident would be investigated and the
+responsibility fixed, said the dispatch.</p>
+
+<p>The mind comprehends slowly the full meaning
+of death when a loved one has gone. It is
+only as weeks and months pass that the loss, the
+desolation, the awful loneliness are realized.
+Sitting with her paper in her hand that afternoon,
+Mrs. Hale saw her husband coming
+through the orchard, and her first conscious
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span>thought was one of pity for him that he had no
+son. Concerning her own bereavement she had,
+as yet, no sensation; the sudden blow had
+made her numb. She watched him come slowly
+and heavily through the gate and up the walk—a
+gray-haired man, with bent shoulders, who
+had not kept his youthful elasticity as had his
+wife.</p>
+
+<p>“He has not many years of grief to bear,” she
+said, as she went out to him, bearing the message
+of evil.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The history of the next few days she could
+hardly have told later. She went about her
+household tasks mechanically, for the living
+must eat and drink, though the best loved lie
+dead, but her mind wandered far and scarce
+knew what her hands did. There was a sending
+of telegraphic messages, a writing of letters and
+the gathering of all the information that could
+be secured, but this was little more than the first
+newspaper dispatch had contained. The Yakima
+had sunk, only one person on board had been
+picked up at the time—which was just after
+midnight on the 20th of September—and the
+sea being rough that night there was no probability,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span>even had any one been overlooked in the
+careful search made, that a survivor could have
+remained afloat till morning.</p>
+
+<p>Hope, catching at the faintest chance, died
+hard, but when weeks went by and brought no
+word Joseph Hale’s death was accepted as a
+certainty. His mother put on a black gown;
+his father went to and fro about his work with a
+look that made the neighbors say he was aging
+fast; they tried to bear their affliction with the
+fortitude and resignation becoming to their
+Christian professions, but they knew that for
+them the zest of life had passed with their son’s
+going, and that the years to come must be endured,
+not enjoyed. They read the grief in
+each other’s eyes, but spoke little of it, Abner
+being taciturn at all times, and his wife, like so
+many men and women of the Anglo-Saxon race,
+never having learned to express her deepest
+emotions in words.</p>
+
+<p>One day in October services in memory of the
+young man were held in the Presbyterian church.
+Sympathy with the bereaved parents was deep,
+and the curious, but not unkindly, desire of
+their friends to see how they were affected by
+the remarks of the minister, and how they bore
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span>their sorrow, caused the emotion of a young woman
+near the door to go unnoticed. She was
+Nellie Hamilton, a teacher in one of the village
+schools. She and Joe Hale had known each
+other all their lives, and were on such friendly
+footing and so free from self-consciousness that
+no one had thought of them as lovers. She had
+been aware for a long time of the state of her
+own affections, but it was only a few days before
+his departure that Joe had begun to learn
+where his heart belonged. She had seen the
+awakening in his eyes; she had felt it in the
+subtle change of manner; she had read his secret
+through the prescience of her own love, and her
+heart leaped in her bosom and was glad. He
+had not spoken before he went away, but she
+did not feel the less secure, for she saw also that
+he had not discovered her secret, and was in
+that state of doubt where he feared to test his
+fate. Maiden-like, and with a touch of coquetry,
+she had refrained from betraying a hint of
+the truth, coyly holding back, confident in the
+knowledge that when she chose to offer a sign
+he would come. Not long since had come a
+letter telling her that on his return he had a
+question to ask—one which he had “always
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span>thought a man ought to be brave enough to put
+to a woman face to face, and not by letter.” A
+reply would not have reached him had she written
+it, and now he was dead; he was dead and
+would never know; was dead and she had not
+the right to weep for him, but must go about
+with calm face, for she had not let him speak,
+and he was not hers in the sight of the world.
+She envied his mother the liberty of tears, of
+outspoken grief and of unsmiling face. Life was
+bitter.</p>
+
+<p>The days went on drearily. Mrs. Hale neglected
+the Ladies’ Circle, the Missionary Society
+and all the various interests that had made her
+social world, and, shut in her rural home,
+brooded over her loss. October passed and
+November came, with heavier rains and more
+lowering clouds, it seemed, than ever November
+had had before. Thanksgiving day approached,
+and Mrs. Hale grew restless. On
+that day it had been the custom to invite to
+dinner all the kinfolk living thereabout, but this
+time she and her husband could not make festivity
+for themselves or others. When the
+morning came Mrs. Hale arose and went about
+her tasks with an unusual look of determination.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span>“Father,” she said to her husband at breakfast,
+“I don’t feel as if I could go to our church
+this morning, and I am going into the city. I
+know you don’t want to go, so I sha’n’t ask
+you. I’ll come out on the one-o’clock train,
+which will give me time to have dinner by three.
+It’ll be a good dinner. I’ve fixed ready for it.”</p>
+
+<p>Abner offered no objection to the plan, but
+hitched up the horse and took his wife to the
+train, meeting her, also, upon her return. Her
+face bore a different expression, he noticed,
+from that it had worn in the morning—a brighter,
+more cheerful look. They chatted of various
+things on their way home—of Rev. Mr. Willetts’s
+sermon, which Abner had heard; of the
+music by the new choir, which Abner did not
+like, because he didn’t know what was being
+sung—tunes or words.</p>
+
+<p>“That Hamilton girl—Nellie is her name,
+isn’t it?—took sick in meeting,” he said casually.
+“Screamed and had to be helped out to
+the air. Hystericky, I guess.”</p>
+
+<p>“Poor thing!” commented his wife. “I expect
+she’s overworked and run down. I must
+ask her out to spend some Sunday. She and
+Joe used to be good friends.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span>They ate their Thanksgiving dinner rather
+silently and their thanks were not fervent, but
+perhaps the Lord forgave them, knowing their
+sore hearts. It was not till dinner was over and
+Abner’s chores done that Mrs. Hale disclosed
+the purpose of her morning’s visit to Indianapolis
+and its result. It had not occurred to her
+husband’s rather slow-moving mind, until that
+moment, that she had as yet said nothing about
+it. He had assumed that she had attended a
+city church and had received consolation from
+the words of the pastor. If she was nervous
+over the confession of a different course of action
+she did not betray the feeling, but went boldly
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>“Father, I’ve got something to tell you. I
+went in town to-day and visited a spiritualist
+medium—a slate-writer. She didn’t know I was
+coming. She didn’t know my name. She didn’t
+ask a question, but she sat down at a little table,
+took this little folding slate that Johnny Miller
+left here (I carried it with me), laid her hands
+on it, never a minute out of my sight, and while
+I was looking the little pencil inside began to
+scratch, and when it stopped here was this writing,”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span>and Mrs. Hale produced the slate and
+began to read from its pages.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear Mother,” the writing ran. “Dear
+Mother: I am so glad you have come at last.
+Have been looking for you anxiously. I knew
+you grieved because I passed into the spirit
+world before you, and because you knew so little
+of the going, but I knew you never believed
+that one who had gone could ever return and
+talk to his friends, so was afraid the truth would
+not be impressed on you and you would not
+come. But it is true, mother. This is your
+own Joey boy. It was all true about the shipwreck;
+we went down without warning and were
+drowned. I didn’t have time to think about it,
+and you will be glad to know I didn’t suffer. I
+shouldn’t have wanted to go if I had known
+beforehand what was to happen, but it’s all
+right now. I am happy—perfectly happy.
+Everything is beautiful here. I can’t tell you
+just how it is, because we are not permitted, but
+you will know some day. Father isn’t looking
+well. Now that that affair of Lester’s is off his
+mind he ought to cheer up. Tell him not to
+fret about me. It’s all right. Come and talk
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span>to me again some day soon. Your loving son,
+Joseph Albert Hale.”</p>
+
+<p>Down in one corner was added: “What have
+you done with old Major? I don’t see him
+about.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hale read this communication, as she
+called it, slowly and impressively, but with visible
+excitement and elation. Then she paused
+a moment for her husband to speak, but he remained
+silent, and she burst out:</p>
+
+<p>“Isn’t it wonderful, Abner? I know you
+never believed in spiritualism, and neither did
+I, but you can’t deny that there’s something in
+this. Why, here’s Joe’s very own handwriting,
+and his signature, with the quirl at the end that
+he always makes and his middle name written
+out in full. That was a notion he picked up
+when he was at school, but I never could get into
+the fashion of addressing his letters any other
+way than ‘Joseph A.’ And in the letter he
+calls himself ‘Joey boy.’ I used to call him
+‘Joey,’ you know, for a pet name. And who
+but Joey could have mentioned that trouble with
+his cousin Lester, when only we four ever knew
+you got the young rascal out of a scrape, and
+you know very well none of us ever mentioned
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span>it—Lester least of all. Then, father, he says
+you are not looking well, which is true, and
+shows he must have seen you. Think of that!
+And he missed old Major. I never wrote to
+him that the dog had died; kind of hated to. I
+tell you, father, it’s wonderful, wonderful! I
+never would have believed that I could have an
+atom of faith in spiritualism, and I must say that
+I wish Joe could communicate with us at first
+hand, and not through a total stranger. But
+this way is better than nothing, and what I’ve
+got here’s a great comfort to me. I’m going
+again, and if you—”</p>
+
+<p>Abner’s face had slowly assumed an expression
+that caused his wife to pause suddenly and
+observe him with some apprehension. He
+looked at her fixedly and sternly, then spoke with
+a voice trembling with anger:</p>
+
+<p>“Sarah Jane!” They addressed each other
+in the sweet, old-fashioned way, as “father”
+and “mother,” except on those occasions when
+storms loomed in the domestic sky. “Sarah
+Jane Hale, has it come to this, that you, a professing
+Christian for forty years, a member of
+the Presbyterian church in good standing; that
+you, the wife of a ruling elder, have taken up
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span>with this abominable witchcraft, and have the
+indecency to glory in it? Have you not read
+that the wrath of God comes upon those who
+practice such vile arts? Have you forgotten
+your religion? Do you care nothing for the
+safety of your immortal soul? I am shocked,
+Sarah Jane! I am astonished and grieved, and
+I insist that there shall be no more of this idolatrous
+business. It was thoughtlessness that led
+you to the den of the witch this time, may be,
+but the visit must not be repeated. I want you
+to promise not to go again, and I should like to
+hear you say you are sorry for this visit.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hale, after a gasp of surprise, got her
+breath and her bearings.</p>
+
+<p>“She is not a witch, but a respectable lady,
+I’d have you know, Abner Hale, and she doesn’t
+live in a den, but in a house that’s better than
+this one, and she’s a member of the Baptist
+church. And I wouldn’t be as narrow-minded
+and stiff-necked as you are for a farm. There’s
+things in this world that you haven’t found out
+yet, if you are a ruling elder; and, anyway, I
+won’t be dictated to just as if I were a disobedient
+child and had no judgment or rights of my own.
+You don’t seem to understand how I miss Joe.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span>It was a real comfort to me, that letter from
+him, and I’m not sorry I went, and I shall go
+again if I want to. So there!”</p>
+
+<p>After which feminine outburst she threw herself
+upon the lounge and sobbed with as much
+abandon as if she were ten years old instead of
+sixty. Abner was not moved to compassion by
+her tears.</p>
+
+<p>“Sarah Jane,” he said, solemnly, “I am disappointed.
+I have always considered you a sensible
+woman—one not likely to be led away
+from true Christian principles, though at times
+you haven’t been as faithful to the means of
+grace as would be becoming in an elder’s wife.
+I know Joe’s death was hard on you. He was
+my son, too, but I haven’t found it necessary
+to consort with Satan’s emissaries for comfort.
+This taking up with evil things is a matter
+that calls for church discipline. It ought to
+be laid before the session, but I ain’t ready to do
+that yet, Sarah Jane. I want you to have time
+to consider the iniquity of your course before it
+is made public, and until you can realize it I
+sha’n’t speak a word to you, not a word from
+this hour.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span>Mrs. Hale dried her tears suddenly and sat
+up, looking at her husband with curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you six years old or sixty-five, Abner
+Hale, getting mad and ‘not speaking?’” she
+inquired, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>Abner deigned no reply, but wound the clock,
+kicked the cat out and slammed the door with
+more energy than was becoming to a ruling
+elder, then stalked majestically off to bed in
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hale was not especially overcome by this
+exhibition of conjugal authority. The neighbors
+were wont to speak of Mr. Hale as “terribly
+set in his ways and domineering.” On account
+of these traits the women were inclined to
+congratulate themselves on not being married to
+him, but this feeling was not really a sound
+basis for an adverse verdict on his character.
+The disposition of women to wonder how other
+women can “put up” with their respective husbands
+arises, perhaps, out of feminine inability to
+comprehend thoroughly the idiosyncrasies of
+more than one man at a time. Not all wives are
+martyrs who seem so to outside eyes. At all
+events, Mrs. Hale had never so regarded herself,
+and did not now. She had lived with Abner
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span>for forty years and understood him. He
+had “ways,” and she had adapted herself to
+them, bringing him, in the long run, to her way
+of thinking; or, at least, so modifying his asperities
+of thought and character as to make him
+quite satisfactory to her. She had never run so
+directly counter to his prejudices as in this case,
+but was not alarmed at his wrath and only moderately
+resentful.</p>
+
+<p>“I didn’t suppose he’d take it so hard,” she
+said long afterward, “but I might have remembered
+that he hadn’t been thinking the matter
+over for a month or so, as I had. I ought to
+have talked it up to him in advance and got him
+into the notion by degrees. Poor soul! He
+tried not to show it, but he grieved for Joe every
+day and all day while he was alone at his work,
+and his nerves were all wrought up. Women
+ain’t the only ones that get cross and crabbed
+from nervousness. However, I wasn’t going to
+give in right at once. I didn’t want him to think
+he could dictate to me that way. It doesn’t do
+to give a man such an advantage, even once.”</p>
+
+<p>Down in the village that Thanksgiving night,
+while this domestic episode took place in the
+farm-house, pretty Nellie Hamilton lay upon her
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span>bed with wide-open eyes, staring into the dark,
+her mind intent upon the experience of the
+morning. The choir had performed its final
+“voluntary,” the minister had just given out his
+text, “Let us come before His presence with
+thanksgiving,” and the congregation was settling
+itself into the pews, when choir, minister and
+people faded out of sight and she looked upon a
+far different scene—not only looked upon it, but
+seemed a part of it. There before her, almost
+at her feet, was a lake, half shadowed by a
+mountain, whose bare and rocky summit pierced
+the sky. A vivid green forest, whose appearance
+was strange and tropical, circled the water
+and was thick about her. In a little opening
+were two or three huts, and near them, swung
+between two trees, was a hammock, in which
+lay her lover, Joe Hale. Pale and ill he looked,
+but was unmistakably Joe. As she stood, or
+seemed to stand, ready to step forward to his
+side, so softly as not to awaken him, she became
+aware of a swarthy, half-clothed foreign-looking
+man slipping toward the hammock from the
+further side. His face wore an evil look, and
+he glanced furtively about. His hand crept
+toward the pocket in the breast of the flannel
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span>shirt worn by the occupant of the hammock, but
+the movement, soft as it was, roused the sleeper,
+and he started up. Quicker than it could be
+told, a bright blade flashed in the air, blood
+spurted over the sick man’s breast and he fell
+back as if dead. It was at this moment that
+Nellie Hamilton startled the congregation with a
+scream, and was assisted to her home under the
+belief that she was suddenly taken ill.</p>
+
+<p>Lying there, puzzling over it, she could not
+solve the mystery. It could not be a dream.
+She had just seated herself when the vision came,
+and had had no time in which to grow drowsy
+if she were so inclined. She was thinking of
+Joe at the time; it was seldom in those days that
+he was far from her mind, but she pictured him
+as battling with fierce waves, and as sinking
+slowly, surely, and, at last, despairingly, into
+their cruel depths—a hideous vision that haunted
+her, awake or asleep. She had never associated
+him with far southern lands; she had never been
+outside of her own state of Indiana, yet she knew
+that an actual tropical landscape could never be
+more real to her than this phantasmal scene of
+the morning. She could almost see it yet—the
+shining green of trees, whose names she did not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span>know, the vines that stretched from branch to
+branch like great serpents, the rank undergrowth,
+the intense blue of the sky, the mountain, with
+its upper height a bare, stony peak. What did
+it mean? She remembered hearing her Scotch
+grandfather talk mysteriously of second sight,
+but had never troubled herself to know just what
+he meant, and she had never before had an experience
+like this. Besides, if Joe had been
+drowned in the Pacific, and he must have been
+drowned, or he would have been heard from long
+ago, this vision must have been a delusion.
+Could she be losing her mind? she wondered
+drearily, and fell at last into troubled sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The days and weeks dragged slowly by,
+Abner Hale kept strictly to the letter of his
+threat to speak no word to his wife until she
+showed signs of repentance for what he considered
+her ill conduct. She addressed him
+freely when occasion required, and sometimes
+when it did not, but he made the hired man his
+medium of communication, directing his remarks
+ostensibly to that personage, but really
+to Mrs. Hale; and the hired man, being but a
+stupid creature, concerned more with eating all
+that was set before him than with what went on
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span>in the house, never discovered that he was used
+as a convenience. With neighbors who dropped
+in Abner talked freely and even eagerly,
+which, in view of his usual taciturnity, caused
+them some surprise. Once his wife detected
+him furtively examining the slate containing
+Joe’s letter, which she kept in a drawer of Joe’s
+old desk, but he showed no sign of interest
+when she made another visit to the city, and he
+had reason to assume that she again visited the
+woman he had denounced as an agent of the
+evil one.</p>
+
+<p>She did, in fact, visit that person, not once,
+but twice or more, as the holidays drew near,
+and she felt the need of aid in resisting the depressing
+influences of other people’s gayety.
+Each time was repeated, with somewhat greater
+amplification, the story that had been told on
+the slate the first day. Each time some allusions
+were made or questions asked which convinced
+her anew that Joe’s spirit must inspire
+the pencil’s movements, since none but he and
+herself had knowledge of the matters involved.
+Each time came the assurance afresh that the
+unseen writer was Joe, her son, come back to
+her in this way from the other world. She
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span>could not doubt that this was true, but somehow
+the slate writings did not continue to be
+the comfort to her that she had first found them.
+There was a consciousness of something lacking,
+something unsatisfactory; there was a barrier
+between her and her son that she could not
+overcome. He told her so little, after all. It
+dawned on her one day that he had really written
+nothing that she had not herself known or
+believed before. She was thinking of this as
+she left the station one afternoon on her way
+home from one of these visits, and had wondered
+if it would not be just as well to fall in
+with Abner’s notions and tell him she was willing
+to give up the medium. “But I won’t do
+it just yet,” she decided. “He hasn’t been
+behaving well, and I don’t want to encourage
+him in such doings by giving in so easily. He
+ought to come half way, anyhow, and I think
+he will before long. He’s getting very uneasy.”</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, she sighed as she thought of her
+silent home, and when she chanced to meet Nellie
+Hamilton, something wistful in the girl’s face
+attracted her notice and she urged her to accompany
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span>her to the farm. Visitors were always
+welcome now.</p>
+
+<p>“Come out and spend the afternoon with me,
+and if, as you say, you must be home to-night,
+Abner will bring you.”</p>
+
+<p>It was the last day of the year, but the clear,
+crisp air and the bright sunshine brought suggestions
+of spring, and both women felt cheered
+in a vague way when they reached the country
+home. Mrs. Hale talked to Nellie of her lost
+son that afternoon, and found a sympathetic listener.
+She related anecdotes of his boyhood;
+she brought out the tintypes and photographs
+he had had taken at various stages of his career;
+she showed specimens of his handiwork about
+the house; she told how thoughtful and considerate
+he was always and what a source of comfort.
+But with all the confidences bestowed she
+did not mention her visits to the medium or the
+story on the slate; all that was too intimate an
+experience to relate to this girl, who, for all her
+evident appreciation of Joe, might have an ignorant
+prejudice against spiritualistic manifestations.
+She had had it herself not so long ago.
+Nor did Nellie Hamilton venture to tell the elder
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span>woman of her vision on Thanksgiving day, nor
+of the later one the day before Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>It rained on the latter occasion, and as she
+stood on the school-house step, looking up the
+dreary street, after the children had gone home,
+suddenly street and houses vanished, the dark
+sky cleared, and before her stretched a wide
+sweep of gray, sandy desert, patches of gray-green
+vegetation only adding to the dreariness;
+not far distant were barren hills, and beyond
+them arose mountains, gray, too, and craggy,
+with lines of white near their summits, glittering
+in the pitiless sunshine. Almost at her feet lay
+a horse, gasping as if for breath, his tongue,
+cracked and bleeding, hanging from his mouth.
+Near him a man was stretched face downward
+on the sand. As she looked he raised his head,
+and, with dull eyes, gazed drearily about, but
+she had not needed the movement to know that
+the man was Joe Hale. He was gaunt of
+frame, but his face was brown, not white, as she
+had seen it the other time, and there was a red
+scar on his forehead not there before. The gray
+desert stretched away until it melted into the
+horizon line, and no other creature was in sight
+in all its space. But while she looked, and before
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span>she could take the one step forward that
+seemed to divide her from the man she loved,
+the scene was changed, and she stood upon the
+school-house steps, staring blankly into the muddy
+street of Branchville.</p>
+
+<p>She began to be afraid of herself, and would
+have liked to take Joe’s mother into her confidence
+and ask what these visions could mean,
+but had not the courage. So the two women
+talked together about one who was so dear to
+both, and each kept from the other her closest
+thoughts concerning him. After supper, when the
+guest would go, pleading duties that demanded
+her attention in the early New Year’s morning,
+Abner entreated delay, and as they sat about
+the fire he, too, conscious of sympathy, fell to
+relating stories of the dear lost son. And while
+they talked the gate opened, a step was heard
+on the walk, then on the porch, and Mrs. Hale,
+her face suddenly radiant with hope and joy,
+rose swiftly, and before he could touch the latch
+opened the door to her son. The intuition of
+the mother rose superior at this moment to the
+mysterious power that brought visions from far
+off to the younger woman.</p>
+
+<p>There were laughter and tears, kisses and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span>embraces, and if the visitor shared these neither
+father nor mother stopped to wonder. There
+were incoherent questions and answers when all
+talked at once and no one listened; there was
+silence of deep emotion as the parents looked
+upon their boy, who had been lost and was
+found, and put their hands upon him again and
+again to be convinced anew that he was truly in
+the flesh. And when the excitement quieted
+they all gathered close while Joe told them the
+story of his adventures; how he had been shipwrecked,
+as they had read in the papers; how
+the steamship had made little effort instead of
+much to save its victims; how he had clung to
+a floating plank till morning and had been
+picked up by a tramp boat which had mysterious
+errands, whose nature he did not inquire, to
+Central American ports, and was anxious to
+avoid California harbors for reasons that he suspected
+to have connection with customs officers.</p>
+
+<p>He told how, at his own solicitation, he was
+put ashore at the first Guatemalan port, and
+how, instead of being able to work his way back
+to San Francisco, as he had hoped, being without
+money after the shipwreck, he fell ill with
+fever and would have fared badly but for a party
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span>of American miners and prospectors, themselves
+scant of funds, who ran across him, doctored
+him, and took him far into the interior before
+he fairly realized their kind purpose. They
+were going north overland in search of one of
+the famous lost mines of Mexico, to whose location
+they thought they had a clew. It was a
+wild country they traveled through, and their
+journeying was slow. They did not come near
+the civilization of which railroad trains and telegraph
+wires were a part, and so he wrote no letters,
+but looked forward to the day when he
+should reach home in person, and fretted that
+progress was so slow.</p>
+
+<p>“I had one or two close calls,” he said lightly,
+with the disregard for dangers past common
+to the young. “While I was lying in a hammock
+one day (it was the Thanksgiving day here,
+by the way, and I was dreaming of home), a
+Mexican thief crept up and gave me this,”
+touching a scar on his forehead, “and another
+on my shoulder. He aimed at my heart, of
+course, and it’s a wonder he missed. And only
+last Monday, just a week ago to-day, I thought
+I was gone. I had left my friends to their rainbow
+chasing and started to make the rest of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span>way to Tucson alone. I wandered off the trail,
+my skeleton of a horse broke down—we were both
+famished for water—and I thought for a bit that
+the jig was up. But while I was on the sand
+thinking the matter over, what did I hear—or,
+rather, feel—but the faint jarring of a railroad
+train and the echo of a far-off whistle! It was
+miles away, but I knew I was all right. It was
+the sweetest music I ever heard. Actually, the
+old horse pricked up his ears, scrambled to his
+feet and jogged on. We struck the track after
+two or three hours and followed it to a station.
+From there I got to Tucson, where Tom Bailey,
+my old room-mate, is, and he lent me money to
+get home with. So here I am.”</p>
+
+<p>The women shuddered at the tale, and looked
+upon this youth, who talked so carelessly of his
+perils, as a hero of heroes.</p>
+
+<p>The hour grew late, and Nellie, making a
+movement of withdrawal, found Joe eager with
+his proposal to accompany her. She was unwilling
+to disturb the family group, but read entreaty
+in the young man’s eyes, and so declined
+her hostess’s invitation to remain. They scorned
+the thought of driving, and went out gayly to
+walk the short mile on the highway, that was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span>to them that night a path to paradise. Under
+the moonlit sky Joe asked her the question he
+had said ought never to be written, and she
+whispered her answer so low that even the owl
+blinking in the tree overhead could not hear.
+But Joe heard.</p>
+
+<p>As they loitered down the road, unmindful
+that it was the season of frost and not of roses,
+she told him of her visions, and a wonder fell upon
+them that she had seen so true. Yet, after all,
+they reflected, with the beautiful confidence of
+youth in the supreme power of love, it was not
+so strange that two souls in such harmony as
+theirs should come to each other across the
+world. As they looked up at the starry sky, thinking
+of this, heaven seemed very near, and they
+caught a glimpse of its mysteries. Then the
+bells rang that ushered in a new year, and they
+felt that it was the beginning of life for them.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Back in the farm-house another subject was
+under discussion. Mrs. Hale had stood in the
+doorway looking after her son with a pang at
+her heart in spite of her joy at his return. Sudden
+insight had come to her, and she knew that
+though the lost was found he would never be all
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span>her own again. She sighed as she shut the
+door and turned, with absent-minded gaze, toward
+her husband. He sat by the fire, with a
+hand on each knee and a puzzled expression
+on his face. Through all the confusion and
+excitement of the evening he had remained
+faithful to his promise, and had not addressed a
+word to his wife, but now, without preamble,
+and as if no silence had intervened, he began:</p>
+
+<p>“Mother, what do you reckon it was that
+made the writing on them slates at Madame
+Victorine’s?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know,” she answered. “It certainly
+wasn’t Joe, for he didn’t get drowned
+and he wasn’t dead, and still some of the things
+written were family matters no one could have
+knowledge of but one of us three. But it wasn’t
+Madame Victorine; it was Mrs. Mary Ellen
+Johnson who was the medium.” Then, with
+the swift intuition of a woman who reads her
+husband like a book: “Abner Hale, I believe
+you went to visit Madame Victorine yourself to
+get slate writings, or you wouldn’t know anything
+about her! You did. I know by your
+sheepish look you did. Madame Victorine, of
+all creatures, too! Why, she isn’t a decent
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span>woman, if all they say’s true; five or six husbands,
+and nobody knows where one of ’em is,
+or whether they’re alive or dead. You ought
+to be ashamed of yourself—an elder in the
+church. And all the time holding off from
+speaking to your own wife.”</p>
+
+<p>Abner got in a word here.</p>
+
+<p>“I wanted to investigate a little on your account,
+and I thought you mentioned Madame
+Victorine,” he urged, feebly.</p>
+
+<p>“My account—nothing!” was her scornful
+ejaculation. “You were just filled with curiosity,
+for one thing, and a desire to hear from Joe, for another—don’t
+deny it! And not speaking a word
+to me for a whole month, and talking of church
+discipline! Huh!”</p>
+
+<p>Abner had risen to his feet and affected a
+dignity it was obvious he did not altogether feel.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, mother,” he said, in a conciliatory
+tone, but with the masculine reluctance to owning
+himself in the wrong clearly apparent; “well,
+mother, I guess we haven’t either of us done
+anything we want to talk about before folks. It
+looks as if the devil was in the thing, anyway,
+as I told you at first. I guess we’d better say
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span>nothing about the matter to any one—to any one,
+not even to Joe.”</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him intently and reflected for a
+moment, then laughed a little, not being without
+humor.</p>
+
+<p>“I guess so, too,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>And she never did mention the affair to any
+one but Joe, who, of course, told his wife.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">AN ITINERANT PAIR</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap">WERE you ever at Michigan City, in Indiana?
+Stop! Let me put the question
+more carefully. Were you ever compelled to
+wait for a train at Michigan City? The first inquiry
+sounds innocent enough, but a Hoosier
+would detect a covert insult in it. Why? Because
+one of the three state penitentiaries is situated
+there and is the town’s chief distinction
+to the outside public. A native of the
+state living elsewhere can conceive of no reason
+why a man should voluntarily take up his residence
+in the place, or even why he should
+“stop off,” except to visit some erring and
+unfortunate relative. Hence, to avoid trouble,
+those persons in search of local information do
+well to be on their guard.</p>
+
+<p>I had passed through, many times, on my
+way to and from Chicago, but until this trip had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span>never taken closer observations than through
+the car windows. To-day the “lightning express”
+on the Michigan Central road was three
+hours too early for the one train that in those
+days—some years ago now—daily jogged along
+down the road leading south. What should I
+do with the time? I looked into the waiting-room
+of the station. No passenger had left the
+train but myself, and the place was empty save
+for an old couple, who had evidently just come in
+from the country.</p>
+
+<p>I went out and explored the town. Up one
+street and down another I strolled, until the circuit
+was made. In every direction was sand—mountains
+of sand, valleys of sand. It was in
+drifts upon the sidewalks, in hillocks in the
+streets. The houses were built upon it. Many
+dwellings leaned from the perpendicular at various
+angles, according to their age, the shifty
+foundations had so worn away and blown away.
+Though it was a bright April day but few
+people were on the street, and these seemed in
+haste to disappear as soon as seen. It may
+have been a biased imagination that saw this, or
+the cause may have been the chill lake wind.</p>
+
+<p>Was it fancy, too, that made the women and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span>children, visible here and there at the windows,
+seem to draw back, as if to hide? The scattering
+tufts of grass in the front yards seemed
+to have given over the ambition to cover the
+earth with green, and were creeping under the
+sand. Did I imagine a burden in the air, as of
+grief or guilt? The shadow of the prison seemed
+to hover over the place. It grew oppressive.</p>
+
+<p>In desperation, I resolved to climb the nearest
+sand-hill and view the world from that
+eminence. Perhaps I might find an elevation
+of spirits when I could survey the prospect
+from above. Were not poets always telling us
+to commune with nature, and thereby escape
+from fret and care; to seek the solitude of a
+height and see the earth grow fair beneath our
+feet, the mists and clouds melt into sunlight?
+Laboriously I crept and scrambled up the slippery
+side of that miserable hill. From the foot
+it had not looked far to the summit—perhaps
+not over one hundred feet—nor yet steep; but
+with each step forward and each slip back it
+seemed to grow, until, when half way up I
+stopped to breathe, it loomed above me like a
+mountain. Out to the north was Lake Michigan,
+blue and cold. Far distant could be seen
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span>the smoke of steamers; nearer, the white wings
+of sail-boats; but all were outward bound.</p>
+
+<p>Along the shore the sand dunes stretched
+for miles. Once, long ago, the lake is said to
+have covered this ground. Having been given
+up by water, the earth had not had thrift to reclaim
+the waste. Even the idle train of vagrant
+weeds had not wandered in to hide the barrenness.
+Beyond the town rose the grim, bare
+walls of the prison. Hundreds of men inside
+were wearing out the long hours of weary
+days in toil that was heavy and bitter, because
+it was enforced. Deprived of freedom of will,
+of liberty of body, without hope for the future,
+they waited—for what? For release from bondage,
+to spend the remnant of their lives as Ishmaelites,
+followed in the world by sneers and
+suspicion, or received, if at all, with a virtuous
+condescension no easier to bear. Probably they
+deserved their fate. Some of those men had
+stolen, some had forged, some had murdered;
+and the way of the transgressor was hard, we
+were told. It was right that they should suffer,
+then; but we Pharisees, were we without sin,
+that we should cast a stone? Had we not done
+those things that we should not, left undone that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span>which we should? Perhaps, my friend, you
+took advantage of a man’s need and made an
+unrighteous profit. Did you not foreclose a
+mortgage and distress a debtor, when you could
+have waited? Perhaps you did not love your
+neighbor, or, may be, you loved his wife too
+well. Such things had been known. Perhaps—but
+the catalogue was long. Because the law had
+not touched us, were we to proscribe those on
+whom its finger was laid? Life was bitter at best.
+What were we, good Lord, that we should take
+all the sweet of existence from any man?</p>
+
+<p>This little sermon I preached to myself, for
+lack of a better audience; but the wind was too
+keen to encourage moralizing. What should
+I gain by climbing to the top of this hill? Each
+step higher would only show a wider sweep of
+desolation. Why should I emulate the young
+man of Alpine fame? He was a foolish youth
+and came to an untimely end. I had no ambition;
+besides I had brought no banner to plant
+at the top to commemorate my deed. It was a
+gloomy world. Nothing was worth while. I
+would go down.</p>
+
+<p>The descent was rapid and undignified. Eyes,
+ears and clothing were full of sand. To such
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span>irritation of mind had I come that I felt ready
+for reckless deeds, but I swallowed wrath and
+sand together and walked on.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, in a sunny corner, between a pile
+of railroad ties and another of fragrant pine lumber,
+I came upon the old couple whom I had seen
+at the station. There they were—she with a napkin
+spread upon her lap and nibbling daintily at a
+bit of cake; he helping himself freely to sandwiches
+or chicken, now from the lap that served
+as table, now from the basket at their feet. Involuntarily,
+I paused; perhaps, to apologize for
+the intrusion, perhaps, attracted by the people
+themselves, or drawn, maybe (who knows?) by
+the luncheon. Who can tell afterward just how
+an acquaintance began? In ten minutes we
+were chatting briskly, and I was cheerfully helping
+to empty that lunch basket. I think the
+wife opened the conversation by saying that they
+had seen me climb the hill, and only wished
+themselves a little younger, that they might do
+the same.</p>
+
+<p>No one is so charming to a traveler as a
+woman, young or old, who knows when and
+how to dispense with formality, and talk kindly,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span>yet with dignity, to a stranger. It is a rare
+grace, however, I have come to know.</p>
+
+<p>If my old lady whom I met that day on the
+sand told too much of her own story, it was
+not her fault, but mine. I asked questions now
+and then to lead her on. As we talked about
+the weather, of the trains, of the time—drifting
+along in the shallows of conversation as strangers
+do—I became slowly conscious of a something
+out of the common in the manner of these old
+people. Just what it was was hard to define.
+There was nothing at all remarkable in their
+personal appearance. He was tall, spare, with
+a mild, benevolent face, and it needed only one
+glance to be assured that he was a minister of
+the Gospel. A Presbyterian minister I would
+have said, judging from a certain stiffness of carriage
+and gentle dignity, as well as from the extreme
+neatness of his well-worn garments. With
+a little surprise, I learned that he was, as he
+put it, “the Lord’s servant in the Methodist vineyard”—Methodists
+of the old school whom I
+had heretofore met being noticeable rather for
+a carelessness of dress and a soldierly bearing,
+as of those who had conquered men. His wife
+was a slender, nervous little body; one of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span>women who in these days are called “delicate”
+and of whom little is expected; one of those who,
+when the tests of life come, sometimes develop a
+power of endurance, mental and physical, marvelous
+to see.</p>
+
+<p>“No, we don’t live here,” she said. “We
+have been spending a day in the country with
+some old friends, but we came up to see a young
+man who is in prison for murder. He was a
+school-mate of our son Gabriel, and had the
+making of a man; but he took a wild and reckless
+turn as he grew up, and never got on the
+right track again till now.”</p>
+
+<p>“You smile,” said the old minister; “but
+you know that building is a place of bondage
+and of punishment for breaking our laws only,
+and not God’s laws. If a man steal, we shut
+him up to teach him that he shall not touch our
+property; but, unless he repent of his sin, I
+hold that the Lord will punish him still, the
+same as if we had let him go free. This boy
+drank to excess, he quarreled, and the jury
+found that he had killed a man. For the sake
+of his dead mother and of our son, who is dead
+and had loved him, we came to see if we could
+help him on the way to be forgiven; and the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span>good God has blessed us. We found him wretched
+and without hope. We could give no comfort; we
+could only pray for help, and the comfort came.
+Before we came away he began to feel that there
+was mercy waiting for him. A little light shone
+out of the darkness; just a glimpse of the glory
+beyond. It is not for me to say that he was
+more guilty than another; but we all have need
+of grace. Cynthy and I pray that the little
+grain of faith in that boy’s heart may take deep
+root, until he can bear his punishment with
+patience; until he can say with humility,
+‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust in
+Him.’”</p>
+
+<p>“It made my heart ache to leave him,” said
+Mother Ellis (I knew her pet name must be
+“Mother,” it fitted so well); “but God, who
+has been so good to us, has pity for him.”</p>
+
+<p>There was no want of reverence in this continual
+allusion to the Almighty; no cant, no
+grating familiarity. This old couple talked of
+Him as of a revered friend, with whom they
+had constant intercourse and in whom they had
+utter faith. Their simplicity was unworldly and
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>“The folks down to Freedom, where we’ve
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span>been living lately, wanted us to go to Chicago
+and see the sights, while we were so near; but
+John and I we’re too anxious to get home.”
+Here she looked at John and blushed, and he
+took her hand in his. They were like a pair of
+young lovers. It was curious.</p>
+
+<p>Presently she went on, with a contented sigh,
+as if the little by-play needed some explanation:</p>
+
+<p>“You see, John and I, we’re going home—to
+a home of our own—for the first time in our
+lives, though we’ve been married forty years
+come June. Forty years! It’s a long time,
+looking at it some ways; but again it only seems
+a little while since we were young and lived ’way
+back in York state. Those hills and woods were
+pretty to look at. I’ve never seen their like
+since. Maybe it’s wicked, but I always think o’
+the hills ’round the New Jerusalem as being like
+those about the head-waters o’ the Allegheny.
+Like as not, though, the New York hills have
+been cleared and ‘improved’ till they’re bare
+enough and ugly; but I’ve no fine words to tell ye
+how they used to look to me. I’ve learned now to
+see beauty in a level country; but it took a long
+while. When we first came to Indiana, John
+and I, seemed as if I couldn’t any way get used
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span>to the low land. Do you remember Chestnut Hill,
+John, over toward Cattaraugus? If I were one
+o’ the painter folks I could make a picture of it
+now. There was a tall, dead tree at the very
+top, with two branches reaching out like arms,
+making a cross that could be seen for miles.
+When I was young and foolish, I used to wish I
+were a Roman Catholic, that I might go and
+pray at the foot of that tree rather than in
+church.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t remember about the hills being so
+pretty—’bout the same as others, I guess,” said
+unpoetical John; “but I reck’lect the road
+through the pine woods. Do you, Cynthy?”</p>
+
+<p>Again the faded eyes of both brightened with
+love that is ever young. Again came the blush
+on the wife’s wrinkled cheek, and this time John’s
+feeble arm went around her waist. There was
+silence for a little space; but I doubt not the air
+was filled with the fragrance of the pine forest,
+that their ears heard the murmur of the trees.
+Once more they listened with their hearts to the
+words of long ago, which had made that woodland
+path so fair a memory.</p>
+
+<p>“When I first knew John he taught our district
+school, and used to come to my Uncle
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span>Isaac’s pretty often. Teachers boarded around
+in those days, and I did think he took his turn
+at Uncle’s pretty often. I knew he was a pious
+young man, who’d had a call to be a preacher,
+and, like a silly girl, was a little afraid of him
+and didn’t want to see him. He stayed all summer
+when there was no school, helping my
+uncle and the neighbors in haying and harvest,
+studying between times. In those days the
+best of men worked in the harvest-field. Before
+early apples were ripe I mistrusted what
+was keeping him, and somehow I had got all
+over being afraid of him. I had found out that
+he was an orphan, like myself, and had no home.
+I was only <i>staying</i> with Uncle Isaac, and it must
+have been that which made my mind turn toward
+him. But he never said anything, John
+didn’t; only kept hanging ’round and looking
+as if he wanted to speak. John was bashful;
+but, though I’ve heard o’ men too bashful to
+ask a girl to marry ’em, I never knew one, and
+I guess John ’u’d a plucked up courage after
+awhile, even if the revival hadn’t come. ’Long
+in October Brother Duzan came along through
+that region, and held meetings that were powerfully
+blessed. It was early in the season for a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span>revival; but everybody turned out to the meetings
+at our school-house. I had never experienced
+religion then, though Uncle Isaac
+often made me the subject of prayer. I was
+giddy and thoughtless, and, like many another,
+I couldn’t or, rather, wouldn’t see how good
+the Lord was to me.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I went with the rest to the meetings;
+but my heart was hard. Seemed as if it grew
+harder the more the brethren and sisters prayed
+and exhorted, though all the young folks I knew
+were going forward to the mourners’ bench and
+were being converted. One night Brother Duzan
+preached his dreadful sermon on future punishment
+of the godless, that he always kept for
+the crowning effort. He told, in awful words,
+how the unconverted sinner would finally suffer
+and burn in endless torment, and everybody was
+crying and groaning but myself. That threat
+couldn’t soften me then, and I’m free to confess
+has no effect now. Then John, he led in prayer.
+His voice was so soft and gentle that it hushed
+the excitement. He besought the tender Shepherd,
+who loved all His sheep, to look with special
+care upon the playful lambs, whose willful
+feet refused to follow whither they were led; to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span>draw them back with merciful hands before they
+should learn, too late, that only the narrow,
+rocky path led to the green pastures that were
+beside still waters.</p>
+
+<p>“I knew he prayed for me, and my heart was
+melted then; and, for fear the tears would come,
+I slipped out of the door, while the rest were on
+their knees. But John saw me—though how he
+could, with his back turned, I never knew—and
+I didn’t get far into the pine woods alone. He
+began where the prayer had stopped. ‘The
+Lord was waiting,’ he said, ‘for me to stretch
+out my hands, and He would take me into the
+blessed fold.’ And I? What should I do but
+cry, as a woman always does when she should
+not. Then John, to comfort me, began to tell
+how God loved me; and from that, some way,
+it was easy to say how—well, no, John, I shan’t
+tell what you said then, and don’t you, either.
+I kind o’ forgot for a minute that we were not
+alone, and was thinking out loud, I guess. I
+hope our friend will excuse me, for when she
+comes to be old such places in her life will stand
+out clear in her memory, where many another
+important thing has faded away.</p>
+
+<p>“The next night I went to meeting, and made
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span>a profession of religion. What could I do but
+praise the Lord for being so good to me, who
+was so undeserving. Had he not given me
+John, and what was I that such a blessing should
+be mine?”</p>
+
+<p>Here, the mild eye of Reverend John looked
+at me over his wife’s head with a mischievous
+twinkle. As she went on, however, his face
+resumed its serenity.</p>
+
+<p>“We have lived many years since then. Sometimes
+the way has been rough and hard. We have
+had trials and losses; but mercy and goodness have
+followed us, for we have borne the burdens together.
+I can confess now, though I never said so
+to John, that one of the heaviest crosses of my
+life has been the wish for a home. When we
+were married, I knew that I was taking an
+itinerant Methodist preacher for better or worse
+(it has always been the better, never the worse,
+John); but I could not know till I had tried it
+what a wandering, unsettled life it was. Different
+in the early days from now, too. When
+we came out here, it was looked upon as more
+of an undertaking than going to Europe now.
+There were no railroads then running here and
+there across the country; so we came by water
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span>on a flat-boat to Pittsburgh and in a steamboat
+from there. Stopped at Cincinnati to see the
+sights. It was a fine city then, but they say
+it’s grown since.</p>
+
+<p>“Daughter, a volume would not hold our experience
+of forty years. We have been sojourners,
+never long in one place. It’s only of late
+years, you know, that Methodist ministers are
+allowed to labor more than two years in one
+church. Then there was the loneliness; for
+sometimes John would be gone on the circuit,
+away from his family for weeks at a time. I
+could not go, because of the children. We
+have been here and there, here and there, and
+used to live in pretty wild places, with few
+neighbors.”</p>
+
+<p>John took up the thread here: “I never
+was what is called a popular preacher,” he said,
+with a gentle smile. “I tried to do my duty—the
+Lord knows that; but the people would
+sometimes grow anxious about building up the
+church, and would want a man who could bring
+in large accessions to the membership. I tried
+to win souls to the Master, with His help; but,
+though I trust my sheaves will contain more
+than weeds, the harvest in my field has been
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span>less abundant than in many. The elders and
+bishops are judges of men, and they stationed
+me where I could do best, no doubt. Latterly,
+some have told me that people nowadays do not
+like to hear so much about Christ and Him
+crucified, that they prefer the religion of
+humanity, and that I should adapt my style to
+the times; but it is too late. I am too old to
+learn a new religion or to sugar-coat or rarefy
+the old one. It was a lack of faith, I fear, that
+caused a disappointment when they sent me to
+an obscure corner, a by-way, as sometimes they
+did. It was all the Master’s vineyard, and I
+should have worked without a murmur; but I
+thought too much, perhaps, about the little
+earthly reward and that I could make no provision
+for old age. We knew the Lord had
+always been good to us, Cynthy. We should
+have trusted Him in this, for He had never failed
+us and He never will. ‘Underneath us are the
+everlasting arms.’”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” said Cynthy, “the Lord has provided
+for us. We are to have a home of our own in
+our old age; a home where our children can
+come to visit us or to stay. As I said, I couldn’t
+complain. It was the will of Heaven that we
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span>should live as sojourners. We could not set our
+hearts upon this house or that tree, as people
+will. The room where the son died or the
+daughter married could not be kept sacred, for
+we must leave them; the roses and the vines
+which we might plant would grow to gladden
+other eyes than ours. Such worldly affections
+do not seem wrong; but they might have been
+a snare to us. For a year or two John has been
+so afflicted with rheumatism that he could not go
+about, and has been put on the superannuated
+list.</p>
+
+<p>“If you know anything about Methodists, you
+know they do not contribute to the fifth collection
+as liberally as to some others, and the
+fund for worn out ministers is small. I suppose
+they do not realize the needs of any one so near
+them. We have always lived on a little—no
+one knows so well as a Methodist preacher’s
+family how to make much out of nothing;
+but of late we have been sore pressed. Our
+children—only five are living out of ten—are
+scattered far and wide. Two are missionaries
+in India; two are teaching in the south, and
+our oldest son, a farmer in Texas, is the only
+one who is at all forehanded. He has wanted
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span>us to make our home with him; but we couldn’t
+quite make up our minds. Seemed as if we
+couldn’t quite give up to go so far and get used
+to new things and a new country. Old people
+get dreadful set in their ways, you know.</p>
+
+<p>“It had got to look, though, as if the Lord
+meant that we should go, and we were beginning
+to make our plans and to talk of a few farewell
+visits we must make.</p>
+
+<p>“We have some old friends we should want to
+see once more, and we must take another look at
+the graves where our children were laid at rest.
+It had come to be about settled that we were
+to go. The Gosport Howitzer had mentioned
+it in its personal column, saying we should be
+greatly missed, when a letter came telling us the
+Widow Green up at Arcady had died and left us
+her property. We’d been up to see Mrs. Green
+not long before, and she talked then of leaving
+what she had to the Foreign Missionary Society,
+and we never once thought of her mentioning us
+in her will. But she did leave us the home.
+Not much, maybe you’d say—its only a little
+cottage and an acre o’ ground; but it’s a home,
+for all that, an’ I’ve wanted one for so many
+years.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span>“We regret the Widow Green, of course. She
+was a good Christian woman, though a trifle
+irritable; but she’d been bedridden and so afflicted
+for many a day that it was her desire to
+go whenever the call should come. We shall
+have no care for ourselves the rest of our days,
+for the future is provided for. We are such
+weak creatures that faith is not always strong
+enough to take no thought for the morrow. We
+want a sign—something we can see and touch.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it wrong, I wonder, to think so much about
+worldly things? I have planned how every
+room shall look. I have seeds of all the flowers
+I can find like the ones that grew in the yard
+when I was a girl. We shan’t have very much
+money; but, with our share of the Retired
+Preachers’ Fund and with our garden, we shall
+have enough. I’m spry if I be old, and always
+had a knack at making things grow. John’s
+a master hand to work in the garden, too, when
+he’s well. I tell John (don’t laugh at a foolish
+old woman)—I tell John that this is like a wedding
+journey. We traveled a long way when
+we were married; but we didn’t reach the home
+for forty years. John is as anxious to get there
+as I, but is more sensible and not so impatient.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span>We are going to stop at Kokomo to-night with
+Brother and Sister Roberts, and in the morning
+we shall go on home to Arcady. Home! How
+sweet the word sounds, John!”</p>
+
+<p>There had been a movement of freight cars in
+our vicinity for some minutes; distant whistles
+of locomotives echoed around, and John had become
+restless. He rose stiffly, but eagerly.
+“Cynthy, I think it must be near time for our
+train; it would never do for us to miss this one,
+or we shouldn’t get home till to-morrow night.
+Let us go.”</p>
+
+<p>I left them on the car, with hope and expectation
+in their faces, and said farewell as to old
+friends. “Come and see us in our home, my
+daughter,” was their last word. “May the Lord
+bless you as he has blessed us, and good-bye!”</p>
+
+<p>As I waited yet a little for my train the benediction
+seemed to linger. The boats were coming
+gayly in to shore now; the western sun
+shone with a warm glow upon the distant prison
+windows; school children laughed and shouted
+as if care and crime were not. Truly, the world
+had not all gone wrong. There was hope yet,
+and life was worth living after all.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span>A year later, in the station at Indianapolis, I
+caught a glimpse of the two kind old faces once
+more. The eagerness had gone out of them;
+there was peace and resignation instead of hope.
+They looked out of a car that was westward
+bound. A farmer, standing at my elbow, told
+the story.</p>
+
+<p>“Father Ellis? Yes. Him and his wife is
+goin’ West, to jine their son ’at has a cattle
+ranch some’rs in Texas. One o’ these yer
+onlucky Methodis’ preachers, the old man is.
+Preached around on circuits in Indianny fer a
+matter o’ thirty or forty year. Married an’ had
+right smart o’ children, of course, as his perfession
+allays does. How they managed to scratch
+along an’ raise them young-uns on the skimped
+wages Methodist preachers do get beats me.
+Seems ’sef people like them ort to be fed by the
+ravens, as Elisha was, or some sech way; or
+their meal-bar’ls filled up, like the widder Cruse’s.
+How’s’ever, I s’pose some way’s allays pervided.
+In this case the old man had got past his
+preachin’ days, an’ not a nickel saved fer old
+age, when old Mis Green, at Arcady, north o’
+hyer, up an’ died, an’ left him her little jag o’
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span>proputty. Not worth much, to be sure; but
+a right snug little home.</p>
+
+<p>“With this an’ what he’d get from the superannuated
+fund, they was fixed to inch along comfortable
+to the end o’ their days. But law!
+what does the old fellow do, when they hadn’t
+got more’n fairly settled, but go security fer
+Jim Jeffries, out Cicero road! Anybody with
+a grain o’ business sense ’ud a knowed it was
+flyin’ in the face o’ Providence, for Jeffries
+allays was slack an’ shif’less an’ ’twan’t noways
+likely’t he’d be able to meet them notes; an’
+he didn’t nuther, an’ Father Ellis he hed to
+pay the debt, but it took all they was. So
+hyer they be, all tore up by the roots, so to
+speak. Doggoned pity, I say.”</p>
+
+<p>I went aboard the car to speak a word of
+greeting. The aisle was blocked by a small
+woman, with a large basket, and by a young
+miss who exchanged farewell giggles with a departing
+friend, interspersed with messages to their
+respective beaux. While I waited just behind
+them, the old wife’s voice reached me, soft and
+clear, amid all the confusion. I listened, and I
+turned away, sure that they needed no comfort
+I could offer.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span>“The Lord has been very good to us, John.
+I can see now that my heart was set too much
+on worldly things, and it was best they should
+be taken away. The Lord doeth that which is
+good, John. He has left us each other.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, Cynthy, He has said: ‘I am with
+thee and will keep thee in all places whither thou
+shalt go.’ We are old, my dear, and night will
+soon pass forever into the dawn of eternal day.
+May we enter together into the land that is no
+longer very far off. Let us pray, love, that
+death shall not part us; that, still together,
+when the morning is come, we may open our
+eyes in the Heavenly Kingdom, where a place
+is prepared for us.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">A MOVEMENT IN ART</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap">IT was Sunday forenoon, and Lodilla Jackson
+was engaged in “doing up” the morning’s
+work. She had washed the breakfast dishes,
+put the kitchen in order, made the beds, helped
+get her young brother and sister off to Sunday-school
+and her mother started to church,
+and had got the dinner well under way. Lodilla
+worked during the week in the establishment
+of a manufacturing chemist, or, as the place was
+otherwise known, a patent-medicine factory,
+where she pasted labels on bottles and pill-boxes,
+afterwards putting these articles in elaborately
+printed wrappers. Sunday was her “off” day,
+but she usually spent the first half of it in the
+manner described in order to relieve her mother,
+who was also a hard-working woman, as widows
+with children and little money are apt to be.
+She was twenty years old, and a good girl.
+Ever since she was fourteen she had been earning
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span>money, and, with the help of her mother,
+her brother two years younger, and, now, of a
+younger sister who answered to the call of
+“H-e-r-e, C-a-s-h,” in a dry goods shop, had
+almost succeeded in clearing their little house of
+the mortgage that encumbered it when her father
+died. Almost, but not quite. There was
+still necessity for frugality and self-denial, and
+little chance for indulgence in the vanities and
+luxuries in which girls delight. Nevertheless,
+Lodilla was not downcast or unhappy; far from
+it. She looked forward confidently to the time
+when debt would cease to be a burden, and,
+meanwhile, planned a little for that happy day.</p>
+
+<p>This morning, while the corned beef and cabbage
+boiled merrily on the stove and the molasses
+cake browned in the oven, she opened the
+parlor door, and, dust-cloth in hand, gazed meditatively
+about that retreat. The room had been
+a source of great comfort to her mother and
+herself. Its possession seemed to them a visible
+token of their respectable social standing.
+It was not every one of their neighbors on the
+quiet little South-side Indianapolis street who
+could afford a parlor. A good many of the
+people in their part of town lived in houses so
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span>small, or had families so large, that not a corner
+of their establishments could be spared for
+company uses exclusively. Or, sometimes,
+when the extra room was there, the occupant of
+the house could not afford the necessary outlay
+for suitable furniture.</p>
+
+<p>The fittings for the Jackson parlor had been
+bought when the paternal Jackson was alive and
+in the enjoyment of health and good wages.
+The selection of this furniture had been the outcome
+of much thought, consultation and financial
+calculation on the part of the two older members
+of the family, Lodilla at that time being of
+an age when her opinion on such matters was
+not influential. There, as the foundation of the
+outfit, was the ingrain carpet, with a green and
+black vine of most luxuriant growth meandering
+over its bright red ground. There, against the
+widest wall space, was a haircloth sofa, now
+worn to a gloss that rivaled the Russia-iron
+stove, and with a lumpiness of surface and weakness
+of springs unknown to it when new. The
+stove, an upright cylinder, decorated with much
+nickel-plating, was regarded when purchased as a
+great ornament to the room, and, although now
+adapted to the use of natural gas instead of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span>coal for which it was originally meant, was still
+held in much esteem in the household. There
+were several cane-seated chairs, a table which
+held a large glass lamp, and, on a shelf underneath,
+the family Bible. The crowning glory of
+the room was the small cabinet organ in one corner.
+Lodilla, at an early age, had learned to
+play “by ear” a few simple tunes and accompaniments,
+and when the family and their visitors
+gathered there on Sunday afternoons and sang
+“Shall We Gather at the River,” “Hold the
+Fort,” “Whiter than Snow,” “In the Sweet
+Bye and Bye,” and other “gospel hymns,”
+Mrs. Jackson, for one, felt that she enjoyed
+many blessings, while the pleasure felt by all in
+the music would certainly have been far less intense
+at a symphony concert.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not on any of these pieces of furniture
+that Lodilla was looking with some discontent
+visible in her face; it was upon the more
+decorative features of the apartment. Over the
+high wooden mantel hung a crayon portrait of
+her departed father, enlarged to a head of life
+size from a tintype of thumb-nail proportions by
+one of those mysterious processes practiced by
+peripatetic artisans. Her father had been gone
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span>too long for her to feel any deep personal sentiment
+in regard to him, but the picture was invested
+with the interest of a sacred relic, and she
+had no thought of disturbing it. On the wall,
+over the sofa, hung that pair of chromos, “Wide
+Awake” and “Fast Asleep,” which, when, as
+newspaper prizes, they found places in a multitude
+of homes years ago, were so universally
+characterized as “perfectly lovely.” Lodilla
+was a trifle tired of these pictures, not because
+she detected any lack of artistic merit, but because
+she did not think the chubby little girl
+portrayed in them a pretty child. Still, she
+did not at this time cherish any designs against
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes moved slowly along the row of photographs
+of various sizes resting on the mantel,
+from there passed to the framed marriage certificate
+of her parents hanging above the cabinet
+organ in a line with the framed certificates of
+baptism of herself and her brother and sister,
+then wandered from these to a large “memorial
+piece,” framed in black and hanging in the place
+of honor between the windows, and rested there
+with especial dissatisfaction. This piece, which
+was printed in very black inks, with very deep
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span>shadows and very white high lights, represented
+a marble tombstone of dazzling whiteness, a
+willow tree and a kneeling widow, who had evidently
+come to weep, but had changed her mind
+and was looking up with ecstatic gaze at an
+angel with powerful wings bearing the astral
+body of the occupant of the grave up to a heaven
+beyond a flock of woolly clouds. Printed on
+scrolls in the corners were sundry comforting
+texts, and below, the full name of the deceased
+Jackson, engrossed in an ornamental, Spencerian
+hand. This remarkable work of art was kindly
+furnished to the widow for $2.75—$1.25 off for
+an immediate sale—by the agent of an enterprising
+engraving firm soon after her husband’s
+death.</p>
+
+<p>“I do wish, ma,” said Lodilla to her mother,
+who entered just then, “I do wish I had a photograph
+album—one like Nell Abbott’s, a big
+plush-covered one. It would be so stylish on
+the table, and, besides, is so much better for
+keeping photographs than setting them around
+on things. And, ma—”</p>
+
+<p>Here Lodilla hesitated and blushed a little.</p>
+
+<p>“Ma, Joe—Mr. Little—is getting his pictures
+taken—great big cabinets—and if he gives me
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span>one it would be nice to have a place to put it.
+He just admires Nell’s album; told her he
+thought every family ought to have one.”</p>
+
+<p>It will be observed that Lodilla, capable
+young woman that she was, was not quite up to
+date in this matter, but in her behalf it must be
+said that she had not had the advantage of association
+with young society women, who claim to
+lead in fads and fashions of this sort, and who
+abandoned the album as a drawing-room ornament
+some time since. Her ideas as to the desirability
+of the article had been gathered from
+visits to the homes of her friends, who were still
+in the plush album and chromo stage of development.
+She had also gone with her mother on
+one occasion to carry a basket of mended clothing
+to a bachelor apartment, where, in the common
+sitting-room of the half dozen young men,
+the center-table held six large family albums
+arranged about the lamp, and presumably containing
+likenesses of the relatives, sweethearts
+and favorite actresses of the respective owners.
+Lodilla, who was much impressed with the luxury
+of other fittings of this room, felt that the
+albums were the crowning touch of elegance,
+and had longed for one ever since. She had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span>particularly desired one since Joe Little, brakeman
+on the Big Four railroad, had loomed on
+her social horizon. She wanted his picture, and
+fancied that he would be the more willing to bestow
+it if she had a suitable casket for the treasure.
+She was an unsophisticated girl, you see,
+unaware that no man needs encouragement to
+his vanity beyond the mere willingness on the
+part of a young woman to accept a likeness of
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jackson, who, mother-like, would have
+been glad to gratify all her daughter’s tastes,
+looked a little troubled.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t see, Dilly,” she said hesitatingly,
+“I don’t see how we can afford one now.”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course not, ma; of course not,” said
+Lodilla, with a sudden return to cheerfulness.
+“I know we can’t afford it yet a while, and I’m
+not grumbling. Don’t you think it. I was just
+wishing and talking, and that don’t hurt, you
+know. But some day, ma, I’m going to have
+that album, and some day I’m going to buy
+some pictures and get you to put the memorial
+piece and the certificates in your bedroom.
+They’ve hung where they are so long I’d like a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span>change, and the parlor needs a little freshening
+up and more style.”</p>
+
+<p>Her mother sighed a little, without looking at
+all sad. Her grief for the departed Jackson was
+so mitigated by time that the sighs brought by
+allusions to him were more from habit than
+emotion, and no longer indicated the least depression
+of spirits.</p>
+
+<p>“I always liked that memorial,” she said.
+“It’s so sort of satisfactory. That angel who’s
+carrying your pa is so big and strong that you
+can easy enough see how he can do it. He
+looks so substantial. The Widow Thomas, she
+has one where the angel’s just starting down after
+Thomas—a little, thin, weakly angel you can
+see through, and you know the old man must
+have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds if he
+did one. Of course, we don’t suppose his spirit
+was heavy, but, somehow, there don’t seem to be
+a fitness in sending such a puny messenger after
+him. It seems a pity to put that memorial out of
+sight in the bedroom, but young folks must have
+their way, I reckon. You don’t think of taking
+the chromos down, do you?” she asked, anxiously.
+“Your pa gave them to me before we
+was married, and people come from all around
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span>to see them, and everybody said they were just
+the finest pictures that had ever been seen in
+Cherry Corners. Old Mr. Van Lew offered ten
+dollars for them, because Little Wide Awake
+looked so much like his grand-daughter, Lucy
+Ann Rodibaugh. But I wouldn’t a’ taken
+twice that then.”</p>
+
+<p>Dilly assured her mother that she had no intention
+of removing “Wide Awake” and “Fast
+Asleep,” and hastened to look after her dinner.</p>
+
+<p>The cabbage which had boiled so long and
+steadily, was tender, the potatoes mealy, the
+corned beef just as it should be, the molasses
+cake light and sweet and delicious—just the
+cake that children remember all their lives as
+the kind mother used to make, a memory which
+causes them, when they are old, to wonder why
+no one else can ever make as good.</p>
+
+<p>And if you think the family gathered around
+that board and partaking of that frugal fare were
+not as happy as it is often given to people to be
+in this rather pleasant world, then you know little
+of the rewards of honest toil, of the delights
+of home provided, and its comforts earned and
+paid for by the efforts of all; you have forgotten
+the eager appetite of healthy youth, which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span>gives the plainest food a zest that a Lucullus
+feast could not offer now. And if you think
+Miss Lodilla, with her narrow life, her daily
+labor and her simple hopes and ambitions, was
+wasting time or energy in repinings at her lot,
+or fancied herself in any respect ill-used by fate,
+then you little understand the serene independence
+of the self-reliant, self-supporting American
+girl, who, confident of her ability to provide
+for herself, envies no one.</p>
+
+<p>Lodilla, in her neat black skirt and shirt waist,
+in summer—oh, the ever-useful, universal shirt
+waist!—and her trim cloth jacket over the waist
+in winter, wended her way back and forth each
+day between home and factory, making one of
+the great army of working women, but having
+her own little plans and cares apart from such
+associations, and her maidenly dreams, just as
+other girls do with more time for dreams—just
+as all girls do while life is young and love is
+sweet. Joe Little, the big, fair-haired brakeman,
+figured a good deal in these meditations.
+He came to see her now and then, when he had
+no “run” to make, but it was always on a week-day
+evening. Sunday evenings he spent with
+Nellie Abbott, Lodilla’s dearest friend. That
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span>is, she had been her nearest and most confidential
+friend, the girl to whom she had confided all
+her little secrets, but lately the intimacy had
+waned somewhat, and perhaps Joe Little had,
+unconsciously to himself, something to do with
+the coolness. These ardent friendships between
+girls are so apt to die a sudden death when an
+attractive young man comes on the scene.</p>
+
+<p>Joe Little had first met both the girls at a
+church strawberry festival, but had seemed to
+give preference to Nellie. The chief sign of his
+favor was the fact that his calls upon her were
+made on Sunday nights, and in their social circle
+this meant more serious intentions than an ordinary
+week-night visit. He was a musician of
+local repute, being known as a “boss fiddler,”
+and this accomplishment gave him welcome admission
+to the best society of the neighborhood.
+Nellie, being something of a coquette, did not
+appear to care especially for him, and, for that
+matter, neither did Lodilla—she was too fully a
+woman for that—but she did care, and was learning
+to think about him more and more.</p>
+
+<p>“I really don’t think Nell’s prettier than I
+am,” she would say to herself, looking anxiously
+in the glass. “Nell’s got a real good complexion,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span>lots better than mine, but her nose is pug
+and her eyes are squinty. They are; she can’t
+deny it, and they do say cross-eyed people get
+to have bad tempers, even if they don’t begin
+with them. Nell’s awful peppery sometimes
+now when things don’t go her way. It can’t
+be her looks; it must be other things. She’s
+got a piano and can play the ‘Maiden’s Prayer,’
+‘The Brook,’ ‘The Gussie Waltz’ and a lot of
+pieces, and he likes music so. And she’s got
+a photograph album, and, oh dear!”</p>
+
+<p>You people who accept the assurances of
+novelists and cheap critics that women with the
+smallest claims to comeliness—and where is she
+who has none?—are satisfied with themselves,
+and unable to recognize the charms of their
+rivals—you merely show your ignorance. The
+normal girl is distinctly aware of her own defects,
+and as keenly conscious of the other girl’s
+especial attractions. She recognizes, with a
+pang at her heart, the captivating effect of the
+little curl on her rival’s white neck, the dimple
+in her chin, of the long lashes, under which she
+glances so bewitchingly. She may honestly
+wonder why the man in the case is so stupid
+and blind as not to detect that other girl’s faults
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span>of character which are so clear to her, but she
+never undervalues the outward allurements.</p>
+
+<p>Strawberry time and its festivals were now
+long past, and early winter was here, but Joe
+Little showed no signs of change in his fancy
+for Nellie Abbott, except that his calls at the
+Widow Jackson’s were rather less frequent than
+they had been. Lodilla began to have little
+heartaches, and if she cried when her sister was
+asleep and she could smother her sobs in the
+pillow, it would not be at all surprising. But
+if anybody guessed her sadness and its cause it
+was only her mother, and mothers never betray
+such secrets.</p>
+
+<p>She worked as industriously as ever over her
+bottles and pill-boxes, chattered as gayly with
+her companions as usual, and loitered before the
+shop windows during the noon hour with the
+natural and wholesome curiosity of a healthy
+young woman. Love, of the lurid, all-absorbing
+kind we read about, that takes the appetite,
+banishes sleep and destroys other interests
+of life, is less frequent than the variety which
+permits other sentiments to exist simultaneously
+and allows the sufferer intervals of comparative
+comfort and cheer.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span>One evening Mr. Little dropped in unexpectedly
+and brought his fiddle—he did not call it a
+violin. He did not tell Lodilla that he had intended
+to go to Nellie’s, but from across the
+street had chanced to see William Marvin,
+freight conductor on his road, enter before him
+and receive a warm greeting from the young
+lady. He “never could abide Bill Marvin,” and
+wouldn’t spend an hour in the same room if he
+could help it.</p>
+
+<p>Lodilla made herself particularly agreeable
+that evening. She begged him to play for her,
+and he did play the “Wrecker’s Daughter,”
+“Fisher’s Hornpipe,” “Drunkard’s Heecups”—a
+tune in which the plunking of the strings gives
+the realistic effect of hiccoughs—the “Arkansaw
+Traveler” and a Strauss Waltz. At least these
+are what he told her they were, and she thanked
+him and praised him and said she loved the fiddle,
+and could never grow tired of it; and then
+she sang all her songs to the cabinet organ accompaniment
+with its undertone of wheezy
+groans, suggestive of misery in its inside, and
+never before had she put such feeling and earnestness
+into tunes or words. And, after the
+visitor had been served with doughnuts and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[216]</span>a big glass of unfermented grape juice that ma
+put up herself, he went home, well pleased with
+himself and all the world, Lodilla included. She
+was happy, but not confident. She had still an
+oppressive fear of her rival.</p>
+
+<p>The very next day she was drawn by irresistible
+attraction into a crowd in front of a big
+Washington street shoe-shop, and stood there
+with fascinated eyes watching a man in the window
+who painted a beautiful landscape while
+you waited. There he stood, painting clouds,
+trees, rivers and river banks, grassy knolls, mossy
+dells and gray rocks with lightning swiftness—laying
+on one color and then another, and
+bringing out marvelous effects before you fairly
+knew what he had intended.</p>
+
+<p>A yellow circular thrust into her hand by a
+boy informed her that she could have one of
+these works of art free of cost if she would purchase
+a pair of shoes in the shop—the frame
+only being charged for.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden ambition filled her mind. She had
+the money in her pocket for a pair of shoes and
+meant to buy them that very afternoon. Why
+not purchase them here instead of at the little
+shop on the side street, which she had always
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span>patronized? They might cost a little more
+here, but then, just for once, and with this prize
+in view, she might surely venture the additional
+outlay. The frame was extra, but she would
+take a ninety-eight-cent one and save the
+amount after awhile out of the price of her winter
+gown. Without giving herself time to reconsider,
+she bought the shoes, selected the
+picture she had seen painted, or one precisely
+like it, and went her way, feeling the fearful joy
+of a wish gratified at the cost of wild extravagance.</p>
+
+<p>The purchase created a sensation at home,
+and though the careful mother shook her head
+doubtfully over the investment of so much money
+for purely decorative purposes, she did not
+remonstrate, but joined with the rest of the family
+in admiring the new possession.</p>
+
+<p>“You see, ma,” said Lodilla, with intent to
+justify herself, “you see, hand-painted pictures
+are the thing now-days; everybody says so, and
+they cost like everything. Nell says her uncle’s
+sister-in-law in Chicago paid twenty-five
+dollars for a painting not more than ten
+inches across, and Joe Little, he told me about
+a five-hundred-dollar picture he’d seen a man
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span>carrying home on the train one day, and there
+wasn’t a thing to it but two or three sheep and
+a dog on a side-hill. And just think! This
+didn’t cost a cent without the frame.”</p>
+
+<p>The next day was Sunday, and frequent were
+Lodilla’s visits to the parlor to look at her treasure
+hanging in state between the windows, in
+place of the memorial piece, now retired to the
+privacy of ma’s bedroom. That night who
+should come but Joe Little to ask her to go to
+church. She accepted the invitation with sedate
+dignity, but with secret joy. Sunday
+night! That meant so much.</p>
+
+<p>Nellie Abbott was there with the freight conductor,
+whom Lodilla mentally classified at once
+as “perfectly horrid,” and was instantly convinced
+that her old friend was consumed with
+envy of her superior good fortune in securing
+the handsome and altogether more desirable escort.
+Filled with which thought, she smiled
+with great sweetness on Miss Nellie.</p>
+
+<p>After services were over Joe came in with
+intent to sit by the sheet-iron cylinder and enjoy
+an hour of social converse. Lodilla wished her
+new art acquisition to dawn upon him unannounced,
+and sat in tremulous expectation of his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span>verdict. Finally, after talk about the weather,
+ma’s cold, the new choir and various neighborhood
+topics had begun to languish, Mr. Little’s
+glance chanced to fall upon the picture. He
+rose slowly and stood before it, inspecting it
+closely with a critical eye; then he made a telescope
+of his hands and viewed it from a more
+distant standpoint. Then he said impressively:</p>
+
+<p>“Lodilla, that’s a mighty good thing; it’s got
+good points. You don’t want to stand too close
+to one of them hand-painted oil pictures, they’re
+apt to blur, but just get off a piece and they
+come right out. That lightning artist’s a dandy.
+Shows what a painter man can do who puts his
+mind to it and isn’t afraid to work. It must make
+those fellows who potter over one picture for
+weeks just sick to see him dash them things off
+at such a rate. I tell you, Lodilla,” he added
+with animation, after a pause and further inspection,
+“it looks like a place on the old farm down
+home. I’ve set on that rock, or one like it, and
+fished for bass in just such a hole many of a
+time.”</p>
+
+<p>Then, as if with inspiration of the instant;
+“And say, Lodilla”—here he faltered and his
+voice grew soft—“say, don’t you want to marry
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span>me some day and go down there and visit the
+home place and the old folks?”</p>
+
+<p>It was sudden, but she was equal to the emergency.
+His arm was around her, and her answer
+was whispered on his shoulder, but not so low
+that he could not hear.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>When Christmas came, a few weeks later, he
+gave her a big red plush album with gilt trimmings
+and a little mirror set in the corner, and
+she felt that her cup of bliss was full.</p>
+
+<p>The album was a treasure, but Lodilla will
+value that picture between the windows till the
+end of her days. It brought her love and Joe.
+Art education is not always a rapid process. Her
+children may learn to appreciate picture posters
+and know what Beardsleyism means, but she will
+be forever satisfied with her landscape painted in
+nine minutes as her mother before her was with
+the chromos.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">THE QUICKENING OF A SOUL</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap">A RELIGIOUS revival had been in progress
+in the churches of Greenbrier, Indiana, for
+six weeks—that is, in the Methodist, the Baptist
+and the Presbyterian churches. The Roman
+Catholics went on calmly with only their usual
+services, and were regarded with more than the
+ordinary measure of pity by their Protestant
+neighbors as persons who had never been properly
+converted, and were little better than benighted
+heathen. Episcopalians, too, continued
+in the even tenor of their way, and had their
+customary dancing and card parties, which were
+frowned on with greater sternness than ever by
+the rigid Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist
+brethren who had not yet reached the tolerant
+stage in relation to these amusements attained
+by members of their denominations in larger
+cities. Even the young people of these churches
+who had been wont to think longingly of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span>forbidden entertainments, and sometimes to participate
+in them surreptitiously, now looked
+askance at the frivolous givers of the parties and
+promised themselves that by the help of the
+Lord they would never be led into such evil doings
+again, for these young people were among
+the fruits of the revival, and had bidden farewell
+to sin.</p>
+
+<p>Such a wonderful ingathering of souls had
+not been known before in the history of Greenbrier.
+The revival movement began simultaneously
+in the three churches, and almost from the
+beginning a wave of religious emotion manifested
+itself. Young and old were affected by it;
+innocent children and case-hardened sinners succumbed,
+the first unresistingly, the second reluctantly,
+to its power. Every night the churches
+were crowded and every night penitents seeking
+salvation rose for prayers, or went forward and
+knelt at the altar as the custom of the respective
+sects required. Every night numbers of these
+penitents declared that they had found what they
+sought, that they had shaken off the bonds of
+iniquity and had entered upon a new life. Backsliders
+returned and renewed their faith. The
+interest was intense. A subdued excitement
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span>was in the air and affected the transaction of
+business and household affairs throughout the
+town. People hurried through their evening
+meals in order that they might miss no feature
+of the coming services. Now, after six weeks,
+though there was no falling off in attendance, it
+began to be said that the meetings would soon
+close. As one pious but practical elder put it,
+the harvest was gathered, and why go raking
+over the ground? A few sinners remained unconverted,
+it was true, but they were seemingly
+hopeless and must be left to the Lord’s mercy.</p>
+
+<p>On this Friday night of the sixth week as
+many people as ever hastened along the streets
+to the places of meeting and the Methodist
+Church, at least, quickly filled with a congregation
+as large as at any time during the revival
+season. People had come to depend on
+the excitement and dreaded a termination of it.
+In their narrow village life the meetings took
+the place of drama and opera and social gayeties,
+with the addition of a personal and emotional
+element that such entertainments lack,
+and that held them through night after night of
+prayer and exhortation without wearying. A
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span>thorough-going revival in a town of this kind
+has uses not contemplated by its promoters.</p>
+
+<p>Among the later arrivals was a group of
+young girls who entered a pew not far from the
+door. There was a little crowding and confusion
+as they passed in, and if Althea Hood, the
+youngest member of the party, had been observant
+of her companions she would have
+seen that their purpose was to give her a seat
+next the aisle. She saw nothing and sat contentedly
+enough, her thoughts absorbed in the
+scene about her. Althea was not yet sixteen; until
+these meetings opened she had never attended
+a religious gathering more exciting than the
+Sunday morning services in the Episcopal
+church where she went with her parents, and
+the regular weekly Presbyterian prayer-meeting
+to which she had gone with an elderly neighbor
+on several occasions. Her parents, easy-going
+and indulgent, after the American fashion, had
+allowed their young daughter to take her own
+way, and when she showed herself disinclined
+to confirmation ceremonies had not insisted,
+saying to each other it was better that she
+should choose the bonds she would wear when
+she was old enough to know her duty to God
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[225]</span>and her fellow-creatures. So far were they out
+of sympathy with revival methods that, perhaps,
+it did not occur to them that their self-contained,
+unemotional child was likely to be affected by
+them, and, indeed, she had shown no signs of
+being so.</p>
+
+<p>One by one her school associates had succumbed
+to the pleadings of the pastors, evangelists
+or other workers in the vineyard, had passed
+through a period of penitence and grief, and had
+finally declared, in more or less childlike and incoherent
+phrase, that they felt the burden of
+sin lifted from their souls and an assurance that
+they were saved by divine grace. Henceforth
+they would turn their backs upon the temptations
+of this world and would love God and
+praise Him for the rest of their days. So many
+of these school-mates had professed conversion
+that at last Althea was the only one of her circle
+who remained unmoved by the appeals that had
+so affected the others. She took a deep interest
+in all the proceedings, but seemed to make
+no personal application of the exhortations. She
+watched her companions curiously. That a
+change of some sort had passed over them was
+plain. It manifested itself in an increased sedateness
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[226]</span>of behavior; she was aware, too, in the
+presence of certain ones, of a pitying condescension,
+as if she were no longer on an equality with
+them. Others—two or three—went about
+with a rapt and radiant air as if, indeed, they
+had entered upon a new life, and with glorified
+vision looked out upon a more spiritual world
+than the unregenerate saw. These she observed
+somewhat wistfully, but it was at no time borne
+in upon her that she, too, could share their joy.</p>
+
+<p>She was not self-conscious; had she been so
+she would have become aware on this Friday
+night that unusual attention was directed her
+way. Long after, she learned that she had been
+regarded by the elder brethren and sisters as a
+“soul” whose conversion was, for various reasons,
+much to be desired, and that a determined
+and concerted effort to break her hitherto unmoved
+calm was prearranged for that evening.</p>
+
+<p>All these meetings were informal. Some one
+began to sing, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” and
+the congregation joined in with more than common
+fervor. It was the old-time tune even
+more touching than the words. Althea added
+her clear young voice to the rest as she had done
+before:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[227]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="first">“All my trust on Thee is stayed,</div>
+<div class="indent">All my help from Thee I bring;</div>
+<div class="verse">Cover my defenseless head</div>
+<div class="indent">With the shadow of Thy wing.”</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As the verse came to an end an elderly sister,
+passing by, touched Althea softly on the shoulder
+and whispered:</p>
+
+<p>“You should come, dear, and give yourself
+to Jesus so you could sing that with your
+heart.”</p>
+
+<p>An aged brother lifted up his quavering voice
+in prayer. He was illiterate, but it is piety and
+not erudition, we must believe, which counts with
+the Maker of men.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Lord,” he prayed, “Oh, Lord, there
+ain’t but a few sinners left in this yer congregation,
+an’ ef you’ll jest pour out the speret upon
+us to-night, jest pour it out free, we’ll fetch ’em
+in. They cain’t stand out agin that power; they’ll
+realize thet they’re pore an’ needy. Bless us,
+Lord, bless us right now!”</p>
+
+<p>Then came the pleading hymn:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="first">“Come ye sinners, poor and needy,</div>
+<div class="verse">Weak and wounded, sick and sore;</div>
+<div class="verse">Jesus ready stands to save you,</div>
+<div class="verse">Full of pity, love and power;</div>
+<div class="verse">He is able, He is able,</div>
+<div class="verse">He is willing, doubt no more.”</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[228]</span>The exhortations of the old pastor, commonly
+so fatherly and gentle, had an almost youthful
+fire that night. He preached the wrath of God
+as he had not done in all the weeks. The guilt
+of the one withholding complete submission was
+pictured in the darkest colors. Repentance for
+sin, acceptance of atoning grace, love for the
+Son, were the only means of averting this wrath.
+Neither gifts nor praise, neither good works nor
+clean living, could avail if the doer of righteous
+things walked not humbly by faith in God. Delay
+meant death. Let the young yield up their
+hearts now, or else risk the loss of life eternal.</p>
+
+<p>After him came a young evangelist who was
+becoming noted for his success as an “awakener.”
+He was a thin-faced, long-necked young
+man, spoken of by admiring women as ascetic
+and spiritual. Discriminating observers would
+have been apt to class him as dyspeptic and his
+eloquence as sounding brass; nevertheless, with
+his peculiarly musical voice and pleading manner
+he won attention where others failed. Althea
+Hood had dreamed dreams about this
+young man. If she had understood the secrets
+of her own foolish little child-heart she would
+have been aware that his presence was one of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[229]</span>the attractions that had made her attendance so
+constant at the meetings. She was not in love
+with him—the sentiment had no such strength
+as that. She was simply experiencing the first
+faint flutterings of femininity roused to life by
+masculine influence.</p>
+
+<p>The evangelist clasped his hands before him
+in the praying-Samuel position, and tossing
+back his long mane began to plead with those
+lambs which had wandered away from the Shepherd’s
+loving arms. He said nothing of sin or
+of guilt, repentence or forgiveness. He only
+called upon the wanderers to come where love,
+and shelter, and tender care awaited them. He
+quoted beautiful poetic passages from the Bible
+and comforting promises; he talked of green
+pastures and still waters, of light, and life, and
+love, but love was chiefly his theme. It was
+divine love, of course, but the speaker’s voice
+was soft and low; his eyes were directed toward
+Althea, and she, poor child, thrilled at his tones
+and only half comprehended his words. In conclusion
+he held out his hands entreatingly and
+sang:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="first">“Love divine, all loves excelling,</div>
+<div class="indent">Joy of heaven to earth come down;</div>
+<div class="verse">Fix in us thy humble dwelling,</div>
+<div class="indent">All thy faithful mercies crown.”</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[230]</span>These little tenor solos, interspersed through
+his talks, were distinctive features of his methods
+and were considered especially effective. The
+revival spirit was fully aroused now. Song and
+prayer quickly succeeded each other. Ejaculations
+of praise and murmurs of ecstatic feeling
+were heard from all parts of the room in antiphonal
+likeness. Brethren and sisters, gifted as pleaders,
+or led by sense of duty to exercise their influence,
+moved among the congregation, seeking
+out the few who, as the accepted phrase was,
+had not yet “confessed Christ.” One after another
+besought Althea to yield up her heart.
+Tears fell from the eyes of the old pastor as he
+urged her to go forward to the “mourners’
+bench” and take what might be her last chance
+for salvation.</p>
+
+<p>They were singing fervently just then:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="first">“Alas, and did my Savior bleed,</div>
+<div class="verse">And did my Sovereign die?</div>
+<div class="verse">Would He devote that sacred head</div>
+<div class="verse">For such a worm as I?”</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>“But I am not a vile sinner,” she protested.
+“I am not a worm,” and would not go.</p>
+
+<p>Her school-mates who had so lately read their
+own titles clear added their petitions; her teacher
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[231]</span>urged upon her the duty of subduing her pride
+and indifference; women and men for whom she
+had the greatest respect, came to her and
+pointed out the strait and narrow path. They
+left her still unmoved so far as outward indications
+showed. The young evangelist approached.
+Her lips set together firmly; her
+hands, already moving nervously, clenched themselves;
+the strain was becoming great, but, “I
+will not go,” she whispered to herself. He
+reached out his hand. “Come, little sister,” he
+said. “Come; the Good Shepherd wants this
+lamb that is outside the fold. Come.” And
+she arose and followed him.</p>
+
+<p>In front of the pulpit was a long bench at
+which already were two penitents—an old man
+who was converted at every revival and as regularly
+became a backslider when the excitement
+subsided, and a young man who was commonly
+spoken of in the community as a “hard case.”
+She knelt beside them mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>The congregation was singing with great volume
+of sound, “There’s a Land That Is Fairer
+Than Day.” The young evangelist turned and
+lifted his hand. There was silence, and with
+hands clasped and eyes uplifted he sang “The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[232]</span>Ninety and Nine.” It was like a solo by a famous
+tenor in an opera—a feature of the evening
+that women, at least, would not have missed
+for the world. He sang it through, and when
+he reached the last triumphant strain excitement
+was at hysterical height:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="first">“But all through the mountains thunder-riven,</div>
+<div class="indent">And up from the rocky steep,</div>
+<div class="verse">There rose a cry to the gate of heaven,</div>
+<div class="indent2">‘Rejoice! I have found my sheep!’</div>
+<div class="indent">And the angels echoed around the throne,</div>
+<div class="indent2">‘Rejoice! for the Lord brings back His own!’”</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There was a chorus of amens. “Bless the Lord!”
+shouted one brother; “Praise His name!” exclaimed
+another. There were groans and inarticulate
+cries. A woman uttered a piercing
+shriek, and falling prone upon the floor in the
+aisle, lay there like a log. No one heeded her;
+she had the “power” and would come to herself
+in good time. Breathing was short and
+quick; faces were flushed; women and girls
+wept silently, or with hysterical sobs, as their
+temperaments constrained them; there was a
+rhythmical swaying of bodies; some one prayed
+loudly but no one heard; the amens, the groans,
+and the bless-God’s were still louder. Althea, half
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[233]</span>terrified by the tempest of emotion about her, her
+self-control broken at last, sobbed convulsively.</p>
+
+<p>A mother in Israel knelt beside her and entreated
+her to open her heart and let love and
+forgiveness come in. The old man at the
+mourners’ bench rose with a joyful shout and
+announced that he felt to rejoice that he had
+once more been anointed with the oil of gladness
+and had obtained forgiveness for his sins.</p>
+
+<p>“Come let us anew our journey pursue” began
+a voice near by, and the congregation took
+up the strain.</p>
+
+<p>The young man, who was a hard case, rose
+and stammeringly declared that he had given
+his heart to God and hoped, by His help, to
+live a Christian life from that time on.</p>
+
+<p>As suddenly as Althea’s tears had begun they
+ceased and her excitement was over. She rose
+to her feet just as her favorite hymn was being
+sung—favorite, because of the pathetic minor
+cadences, not the words whose sentiment was
+beyond her experience yet. Unconscious as a
+bird, she joined in:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="first">“Just as I am, without one plea,</div>
+<div class="verse">But that Thy blood was shed for me,</div>
+<div class="verse">And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,</div>
+<div class="verse">O Lamb of God! I come.”</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[234]</span>The brethren and sisters near the front pressed
+around her with congratulations. The pastor
+took her hand and patted it, his face beaming.</p>
+
+<p>“My daughter, I knew there was a blessing
+for you if you would take it. Add your word
+of testimony now.”</p>
+
+<p>“But I did not mean,” she said with startled
+emphasis. “I am not—I have not had a blessing.”</p>
+
+<p>They saw her lips move, but no one listened
+to her words, and the song drowned them:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="first">“Hallelujah ’tis done! I believe on the Son,</div>
+<div class="verse">I am saved by the blood of the crucified One!”</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Following this triumphant outburst came the
+joyful hymn:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="first2">“How happy are they</div>
+<div class="indent3">Who their Savior obey,</div>
+<div class="verse">And have laid up their treasures above!</div>
+<div class="indent3">Tongue can not express</div>
+<div class="indent3">The sweet comfort and peace</div>
+<div class="verse">Of a soul in its earliest love!”</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She was counted among the converts. The
+pastor thanked God for her in his prayer, and
+was a shade less enthusiastic in thanks for the
+rescue of the backslider and the hard case.</p>
+
+<p>Althea did not join in the singing of the doxology.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[235]</span>All at once a meaning seemed to come
+into the words which hardly had a meaning to
+her before.</p>
+
+<p class="center">“Praise God from whom all blessings flow!”</p>
+
+<p>Could she really praise God? Praise Him for
+what?</p>
+
+<p>As she passed slowly down the crowded aisle
+hands were stretched from every side to grasp
+hers in the kindly Methodist fashion; many a
+blessing was invoked upon her by the older
+brethren and sisters; younger friends said they
+were glad she had become one of them. She
+only smiled faintly and was silent. Silence
+seemed cowardly, but how could she tell them
+that it was not true, that she had experienced
+no change of heart, that she was the same in
+every way that she had been the day before?
+Or could it be, and she grasped at the thought,
+could it be that a change had come and she did
+not know it? She had been excited, had wept
+and then become calm like all her newly converted
+friends. Then her eyes fell upon the
+hard case as he met his mother—an old woman
+with care-worn, tear-stained face, transfigured,
+now, with joy. His reckless, defiant expression
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[236]</span>had given way to a look of—what was it?—determination,
+gladness, high endeavor? She felt
+that he had attained something she had not and
+her hopeful thought for herself vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Pressed by the crowd into the angle of a doorway
+she heard the young evangelist say in confidential
+tone to a leading member: “In this
+business you have to make a study of people.
+Different methods must be worked on old and
+young men, old women and young ones. Not
+many’ll hold out if you go at ’em in the right
+way. I felt sure I’d fetch the Hood girl. You
+know they say I have a taking way with the ladies,”
+and he laughed foolishly.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m powerful glad ye fetched her, it makes
+the even one hundred and fifty—I don’t count
+the other two who went for’ard to-night, they
+won’t stick—and one hundred and fifty is a
+mighty good showing in a town like this; they’ll
+build up the church amazing. Besides, her
+father, Colonel Hood, ’ll be madder’n a hornet.
+He don’t b’lieve in religious revivals. He’s
+’Piscopal.”</p>
+
+<p>The old man chuckled in an ungodly way.
+Althea, hurrying by, felt, with the changing impulse
+of youth, that she hated them both, and,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[237]</span>with mist of romance suddenly and cruelly
+cleared, she saw the evangelist as a lean, lank,
+commonplace, self-conceited youth, and an innocent,
+girlish ideal of manliness was forever gone.</p>
+
+<p>It was not a happy frame of mind for a new
+convert.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>A few months after the revival, which remains
+famous in the annals of Greenbrier, life
+began for Althea Hood. This first experience
+of life grew out of acquaintance with death.
+The destroyer came suddenly to her father, not
+yet an old man. Under the shock the mother
+drooped and soon followed her husband.</p>
+
+<p>Althea, with the bewilderment which comes
+to the young who encounter the great mystery,
+mourned and suffered as only the young do—without
+the philosophy, the resignation, sometimes
+the peace and hope that bereavement
+brings to age. Pious friends talked to her of
+the duty of submission—she was still rebellious;
+of God’s love—she did not know their meaning.
+The experience of the revival had left her without
+religious feeling; it was as if her heart,
+which might have unfolded as naturally to spiritual
+truth as a rose opens under sun and dew,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[238]</span>had ceased to grow, like a bud when torn apart
+by rough hands.</p>
+
+<p>Life was not easy. Poverty was her portion,
+and a home with uncongenial relatives until
+school days were past and she became a teacher
+among new scenes and new people in the
+capital of the state.</p>
+
+<p>There are teachers who profess to love their
+calling for its own sake. Being truthful in
+other matters they must be believed in this.
+Althea Hood was not one of these. She found
+teaching irksome, and when David Phillips asked
+her to marry him she promptly said yes, and
+gladly gave up her work.</p>
+
+<p>Althea loved her husband with as deep an
+affection as she was capable of entertaining at
+her stage of development.</p>
+
+<p>In occasional moments of introspection Althea
+realized that she did not have that absorbing,
+overwhelming affection for him that novelists’
+heroines entertain for their chosen lovers, but
+satisfied herself with the theory that such ardent
+emotions did not belong to real life.</p>
+
+<p>David Phillips was a prosperous, energetic
+business man several years older than she—a
+quiet, self-contained person who smiled indulgently
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[239]</span>over his young wife’s æsthetic tastes, her
+fondness for poetry and romance, her little outbursts
+of sentiment, her feminine ways in general.
+If he did not seem to sympathize he, at
+least, did not antagonize, and she was fairly content
+in her little daily round. There were the
+housekeeping and social duties, the music, the
+reading, the various odds and ends that fill the
+time of the woman who has no ambitions outside
+her home, no consciousness of work to be
+done there—these made up her routine. There
+were no ecstacies, no deep emotions; it was a
+narrow life, and yet a day came when she looked
+back to this period of peace as one of enviable
+bliss. There are but few heights of joy in any
+life, and, in most, many depths of grief, so it
+may be that the dead level of calm content, the
+absence of emotion, is the happiness to be
+chosen—if choice were in human power.</p>
+
+<p>Althea attended church during this time. It
+was respectable to do so; it had been her early
+habit, and, besides, the beauty of the Episcopal
+ritual pleased her. She could join in
+the prayer, “Have mercy upon us miserable
+sinners,” with an intellectual pleasure in the
+sonorousness of the response, but with as little
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[240]</span>understanding of heart as when the brethren at
+the revival besought her to seek forgiveness for
+sin. But though she did not comprehend, sometimes
+she wondered if all those who joined in the
+prayers were as unmoved as she, and, if not, what
+secret they possessed that she did not.</p>
+
+<p>Then, one happy day, a new interest entered
+into her life. Her baby came and her soul
+began to grow. It is not always so, though it
+is the fashion to talk of mothers as gifted with
+a world of new spiritual and moral graces. To
+those who look on, it too often seems that motherhood
+means a narrowing of vision and an intensity
+of selfishness. But Althea’s horizon
+widened. With her own child in her arms she
+looked out upon a new world. Her eyes were
+suddenly opened to the needs of other little ones.
+A vast pity filled her heart for the waifs, the
+hapless creatures who are born to poverty and
+know suffering almost with their first breath.
+“The cry of the children” appealed to her as it
+had never done before. Her eyes once open, it
+was strange what vistas of both joy and sorrow
+spread before them; she questioned why she
+had not seen these things before.</p>
+
+<p>Her little son waxed fat and fair. He was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[241]</span>the delight of her days; waking and sleeping he
+was in her dreams. She rejoiced in his infantile
+graces, but her thoughts ran on and on and pictured
+him as he should be as time went by—the
+sturdy lad loved by his playmates, the youth
+excelling his companions in all noble undertakings,
+the strong, proud man honored by the
+world, but through all the changes her own dear
+son, still loving and true.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband looked on, pleased at the sight
+of the maternal joy, the look a little wistful at
+times, perhaps, because the wife was so lost in
+the mother that he seemed half forgotten and
+quite unessential to her happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Then one terrible day the baby died, the little
+child who had lacked no care that love could
+give. Out of the mother’s arms they took the
+fair dimpled body for the last time; they folded
+the rose-leaf hands that would flutter upon her
+bosom no more; they took him away, the life
+of her life, and laid him under the flowers.</p>
+
+<p>Is there agony for any human creature greater
+than that of the mother bereaved?</p>
+
+<p>She mourned in bitterness and without hope.
+Between her and the “land that is fairer than
+day,” the land of which she once sang so unthinkingly,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[242]</span>rose a wall through which came no
+answer to her resentful cries. In her wretchedness
+she turned against her husband. She fancied
+that he was not sympathetic, that he really
+missed their child but little. She brooded over
+this imaginary trouble in addition to the genuine
+woe and brought herself into such a state of antagonism
+that nothing he could do pleased her,
+and she withdrew her companionship from him
+to a degree that left him bewildered and helpless.
+He ascribed her irritability and coldness
+to her recent bereavement. It was really one
+of those critical situations that occur in most
+married lives before the art of living together in
+harmony has been mastered. The little rift may
+close itself or become a chasm never to be bridged.</p>
+
+<p>David recommended change of scene. Would
+she go south and get the early spring breezes?
+Would she come with him on a trip to New
+York which business compelled him to take?
+Would she go anywhere her fancy preferred and
+win back health to mind and nerves? These
+were questions he asked her, but to all she coldly
+answered “no.” She “wished to be alone,”
+she said, and he left her reluctantly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[243]</span>Scarcely had he started on his journey when
+a thing happened the like of which has been
+known to occur among people we hear of;
+people of whom our friends know and, whispering,
+tell the tale. A woman called to see Althea—a
+woman who had possibly been comely
+at one time in her life but was no longer, a
+creature unprepossessing enough now. With her
+was a child two or three years old. It was not
+a pleasant story she told, but she told it in a
+way convincing to her hearer. She was the
+woman, she said, who should have been David
+Phillips’s wife; the child was hers and his, but he
+had cast them both off. They were in want;
+would Mrs. Phillips help them?</p>
+
+<p>She gave the woman money and sent her
+away in haste, telling her never to return, and
+that she did not believe her story; but she
+never doubted its truth for a moment. Would
+a woman, even a lost creature, advertise her
+shame needlessly? She had never dreamed that
+her husband, David Phillips, had ever been
+other than upright and honorable, and had heard
+and thought but little in her life about evil of
+this sort. But she had seen that David was
+changed; he was growing more quiet and reticent
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[244]</span>every day. Perhaps he was losing his love
+for her, and he had not seemed to care when
+the baby died. Her little son! And he was
+the father of her son.</p>
+
+<p>A whirlwind of rage swept over her at the
+thought that he had covered the memory of this
+lost darling with shame, that he had brought
+humiliation upon her. How could she go on
+and live in the same world with him and with—those
+others. A wild impulse to take herself
+out of it came to her; a vision of the river, deep
+and dark, rose temptingly.</p>
+
+<p>Her wrath turned against the man who had
+deceived her. At times she longed for him to
+be there that she might face him with her knowledge
+of his iniquity; then, with revulsion of feeling,
+rejoiced at his absence. No one seeing her
+then could charge her with being unemotional.
+Vindictive passion stirred her one hour, shame
+weighed her down the next, then followed a
+wave of grief for the vanished days of peace.
+Life was not the joyous thing it had seemed in
+the old Greenbrier days; now, she knew that it
+meant tears, and heartache, and sorrows worse
+than death. She wrote brief notes in reply to
+her husband’s letters. Why she postponed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[245]</span>writing him that their lives could not go on together
+she hardly knew, since she had determined
+to send such a letter. One day she began
+the task. Before she had finished illumination
+came. She knew suddenly that she loved
+the man she was preparing to put out of her life—loved
+him in spite of his sins, of his wrong to
+herself, loved him with an intensity she had not
+dreamed of when she married him. It was not
+the love she had read of and had not thought to
+experience, it was a thousand times stronger.
+She did not want it so; she resented the truth
+and would have denied it to herself but could
+not.</p>
+
+<p>For days she fought with her impulses, and
+then resisted them no longer. She was too
+frank and transparent to dream of concealing her
+knowledge of the wretched secret, and, besides,
+she had conceived a plan whose carrying out
+involved mutual explanation and consultations.</p>
+
+<p>With trembling haste, now that she had resolved
+upon a course, she wrote the letter telling
+him her story of the woman and child, of
+her grief and resentment, and, finally, of her
+love and willingness to forgive and receive him
+back. Then she added—it was the crowning bit
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[246]</span>of self-sacrifice—“I want to provide for the
+child; if you like, I will find it and bring it
+home.”</p>
+
+<p>She sent the letter and waited. With all her
+spirit of forgiveness and her impatience for his
+return she was not unmindful of the fact that she
+was doing an unusual thing, one he would have
+no right to expect, a truly Christian act. Indeed,
+the spirit of condescension, of goodness
+stooping to the sinner, was manifest in the letter.</p>
+
+<p>She did not know where the woman and child
+might be found, but spent those days of waiting
+in wandering about a quarter of the city she had
+known but little of, thinking that by chance she
+might find them. Once she caught a glimpse
+of the woman in a passing street car—a hard-faced
+creature in tawdry garb she looked in the
+pitiless sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>Hurrying home, a little belated, one evening,
+she was driven by a sudden spring shower to
+the nearest shelter, which chanced to be a dilapidated
+warehouse, hardly more than a shed,
+from whose open door the sound of singing issued.
+By the dim and flickering light of a few
+lanterns hung about she saw a motley company
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[247]</span>seated on improvised benches, or standing next
+the wall. There were men who looked like
+tramps and others, better clothed, who might
+be worse. There were women who might be
+honest mothers of families, others who as surely
+were not. Unwholesome looking children of
+various ages looked curiously on.</p>
+
+<p>But one voice was heard; evidently the crowd
+was not familiar with the words of the song. The
+man standing by an upturned box with a cheap
+glass lamp upon it was the singer. “There Is a
+Fountain Filled With Blood,” was the hymn;
+he sang one stanza through alone. As he began
+the second a woman joined in in a thin, uncertain
+soprano:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="first">“The dying thief rejoiced to see</div>
+<div class="indent">That fountain in his day;</div>
+<div class="verse">And there may I, though vile as he,</div>
+<div class="indent">Wash all my sins away,</div>
+<div class="verse">Wash all my sins away.”</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>With the third verse the woman stopped and
+sat down, sobbing loudly, but not before Althea
+had seen her face; it was that of the woman she
+was seeking.</p>
+
+<p>The man by the box began to speak in a low,
+conversational tone. As he stepped out of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[248]</span>shadow into the light of the lamp she recognized,
+with a start of surprise, the “hard case”
+of the Greenbrier revival. He did not look like
+a hard case now. He was shabbily dressed,
+but his thin, dark face wore an expression of
+earnestness, of absorbed interest, of what even
+seemed like love for the people about him.</p>
+
+<p>“I was vile, like that thief,” he said; “I defied
+God. I cared nothing for Him; I believed
+He cared nothing for me. I broke His laws
+recklessly and rejoiced in my wickedness, or I
+pretended to rejoice, though I could never quite
+quiet the pricks of conscience, for I knew better.
+I had a mother who loved me and prayed for
+me. One day I suddenly saw all my guilt and
+was without hope, but light came and forgiveness
+even to me—to me!—to me!—and since
+that day ‘redeeming love has been my theme,
+and shall be till I die.’”</p>
+
+<p>Then he pleaded with his hearers in impassioned
+but simple language to leave their sins
+and live good lives for the sake of the One who
+died upon the cross, for their own sakes, for the
+sake of those about them. It was not a sermon;
+it was not even a connected discourse; it was
+neither learned nor logical, but it was a cry
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[249]</span>from the heart, and the listeners knew it and
+were moved accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>Althea knew that she had encountered again
+the mysterious something which had passed her
+by. The hard case whose conversion at Greenbrier
+had been so lightly regarded that he was
+not counted in by the revivalists when they
+“made up their jewels,” had found there the
+spiritual gift that made him a new man. Sometimes
+she had suspected that those who professed
+to have consciously won this blessing deceived
+themselves, but there was something genuine
+here. But she could not speculate on this now.
+She stepped to the side of the yellow-haired girl
+and touched her arm.</p>
+
+<p>“Where is your baby?” she whispered. The
+girl looked up with red eyes, stupidly. “My
+baby?” she repeated wonderingly, and then
+comprehended. Through the artificial color on
+her cheeks a genuine red showed. She dropped
+her head and then lifted it and looked straight
+in Althea’s eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“I have no baby, lady; I never had. I was
+just fooling you. I wanted money. I never
+knew your husband only by name, and he never
+saw or heard of me, I reckon. I read in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[250]</span>paper that he’d gone to New York. I wanted
+money, and I’d seen you, and I guessed you
+were, well—an easy mark, and so I fixed up the
+story. I thought you looked, too, as if you had
+no sympathy for such as me, and maybe that
+made me pick on you to give you a little trouble
+instead of another. You didn’t know a body
+could be so wicked, did you? The baby is Mrs.
+Caffrey’s, across the street. His mother’s good
+to me and lets me take care of him when she
+goes washing. I’ve been a bad girl, lady, but
+I’m going to be better. I’ll pay you back that
+money some day.”</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Phillips was gone. She flew across
+the street. The door of the two-room shanty
+was open and she stepped in after a hasty knock.
+The baby—she would have known it anywhere—lay
+asleep on a bed; a woman stood at a table
+ironing.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you Mrs. Caffrey, and whose baby is
+this?” asked the visitor.</p>
+
+<p>“Oim Mrs. Caffrey, and thot boy is mine,
+born in howly wedlock, av ye plaze, an’ wud have
+a father this blessed minute av ut hadn’t bin for
+the haythenish shtame cars thot wudn’t shtop to
+rouse up a man who’d set down on the thrack to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[251]</span>rest as he was comin’ from a wake. An’ phwat
+wud ye be likin’ to know for, ma’am?”</p>
+
+<p>“It isn’t Maggie Miller’s baby?”</p>
+
+<p>“Maggie Miller—the likes av her! My little
+Patsy asked av his mother was an ondacent famale—him
+that had an honest father married to
+his mother by the praste. Och, the impident
+question! Maggie, she’s got no baby, betther’s
+her luck. Not thot Maggie’s so bad, poor
+body. She’s good to little Patsy, an’ she’s over
+now helpin’ thot preacher man sing the hymns
+she used to hear in the counthry when she was a
+betther gurrl. She’d be betther askin’ the
+Howly Mother to shpake for her, an’ be confessin’
+her sins to Father Ryan; but av this warehouse
+religion kapes her from divilmint it’s not
+the likes av me to shpake ill av it. But phwat
+is it, leddy?”</p>
+
+<p>The lady, with a strange look on her face,
+apologized confusedly for her visit and hurried
+up the street, Mrs. Caffrey peering after her and
+talking volubly to herself. Her mind was in a
+tumult. She had condemned her husband on
+the first charge against him, without question
+and without giving him a chance for defense.
+She had emphasized the injury by offering to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[252]</span>extend pardon to him. Pardon! When she
+was the one to need forgiveness! And he was
+away and she wanted to see him at once.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning came a message. There had
+been a railroad accident at a junction fifty miles
+away. David Phillips had been seriously hurt.
+Would she come?</p>
+
+<p>She was on the train in an hour. It seemed
+years since the calm, uneventful period of her early
+married life when she had sometimes fancied
+that she was born with a limited capacity for
+emotion. She knew better now; depths had
+been sounded and were stirred. She had learned
+what love and suffering meant, and more suffering
+was before her. The thing that most bewildered
+her was being suddenly and unquestionably
+in the wrong. She had been accustomed
+always to be right, or to think herself so.
+She had never been a suppliant to God or man.
+She wondered if she had been self-righteous, and
+was filled with sudden humility. She was ready
+to humble herself before man, at least. The
+train did not move fast enough. Would David
+forgive her? Would she reach him in time?</p>
+
+<p>She found him at a farm-house with a broken
+leg and many bruises, but he would live. She
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[253]</span>had long explanations to make, but as she knelt
+by his side could only gasp:</p>
+
+<p>“I was wrong; it was not true; I was mistaken.”</p>
+
+<p>He drew her face to his, and she knew pardon
+was hers, and love.</p>
+
+<p>“It hurt me, sweetheart, that you believed
+the story,” he whispered, faintly, “but when
+you were ready to take me back in spite of what
+you believed, when you could forgive such a
+wrong, I knew you loved me—and—and I had
+been afraid.”</p>
+
+<p>He closed his eyes with a look of utter peace
+and the doctors decreed silence, but she sat
+by his side through the day, nor knew that the
+hours were long.</p>
+
+<p>The miracle of spring was being wrought
+upon the world. But yesterday the trees had
+been bare; to-day in the sunshine their buds
+had burst into green, the peach trees were pink
+with bloom, the dandelions shone yellow in the
+grass. A sense of growth, of transformation,
+was in the very air.</p>
+
+<p>What comes so suddenly to buds and flowers
+may come to the human soul.</p>
+
+<p>Under the sod and through the harsh reign of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[254]</span>frosts and snows the way had been prepared for
+the wonder of the trees. Motherhood, bereavement
+and tears, injured love and humiliation,
+and the later happiness had done their silent
+work upon the woman nature. The time had
+come for a new birth.</p>
+
+<p>In the dusk she left David and wandered
+down a grassy lane. In the western sky beyond
+the broad prairie, the gorgeous tints of the sunset
+faded into blue and pearl. The soft, damp
+air brought the smell of the fresh earth from
+the newly plowed field; a spicy odor from a
+wild apple tree, now a mass of pale pink, was
+wafted to her. A robin chirped sleepily among
+the young maple leaves overhead. The tender,
+elusive charm of the season of growth was all
+about her. But was it only this that so moved
+her, she vaguely wondered. She had known
+the joy of spring before, and it was not like
+this. Her soul seemed lifted up. She felt
+dimly that a greater glory than she had known
+was just beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the open door of a little cottage down
+the lane a woman sat by a lamp sewing and
+singing. Her voice rose sweet and clear:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[255]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="first">“Just as I am—though tossed about.</div>
+<div class="verse">With many a conflict, many a doubt,</div>
+<div class="verse">With fears within and foes without—</div>
+<div class="verse">O Lamb of God, I come!”</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>All her life she had been familiar with the
+hymns that expressed the thoughts of the world
+seeking God—hymns of penitence, of agony, of
+peace and praise, of ecstatic worship—and she
+had not known their meaning. All at once
+light came. She lifted up her arms.</p>
+
+<p>“O Lamb of God! O Lamb of God!” she
+whispered. The cloud that had obscured her
+spiritual sight lifted. She saw herself an imperfect
+human creature, but, with all her faults
+and frailties, an atom of the divine essence; her
+little life a part of the divine plan; her sorrows
+and trials the discipline inflicted by love. Before
+her suddenly appeared her lost child, the
+child she had mourned without hope, a glorified
+vision. Its baby hands beckoned her; its sweet
+lips smiled. Love for child and husband, the
+old earthly love, filled her bosom with a power
+she had not known, but there was a love greater
+than this. Could that be hers, also?</p>
+
+<p>She tried to pray, but could not form her
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[256]</span>thoughts. Was that a touch upon her hair, a
+whisper in her ear? Surely she heard the words:</p>
+
+<p>“Come unto Me all ye that are heavy laden.”
+She stood trembling as in a holy presence. Her
+face turned toward the sky.</p>
+
+<p>“O Lamb of God—O Lamb of God, I come.”</p>
+
+<p>He heard in heaven. Joy enfolded her as a
+garment. Divine peace fell upon her. Her
+soul was born.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<div class="transnote">
+<p class="ph1">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:</p>
+
+<p>Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.</p>
+
+<p>Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.</p>
+
+<p>Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.</p>
+</div></div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78253 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #78253
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78253)