rPPING "ONlrS APP1NESS HARRIET PRE5COTT SPOFFORD AUTHOR OP Inheritance," "Tr>e Scarlet Poppy," "Hester 5t&r>ley at St. A\arHs," "Hartb arj^ House," Etc., Etc. Published by THE CHRISTIAN HERALD LOUIS KLOPSCH, Proprietor BIBLE HOUSE, /SEW YORK, 1897 Copyright, 1897, by Louis KLOPSCH N all Ages, the Search for Happiness has been the ultimate aim and desire of human effort Happiness here and hereafter. To those Searchers, in every station in life, this Book is dedicated, in the hope that it may be the means of guiding them, by pleasant paths, to the true Temple of Happiness, whence flow those delectable streams that refresh the hearts and rejoice the souls of all who enter the quest with a pure and resolute purpose. Happiness is equally attainable to the poor and the rich, the youth and the veteran ; and though multitudes have missed the Path, STEP- PING STONES TO HAPPINESS will lead them back to the way, by which they may surely find it. May they, in turn, extend loving help to other struggling wayfarers on the same journey. Go, Book of mine, go forth And give thy cheer, Go where upon the hearth The fire burns clear; Go where the evening lamp A rosy glow Sheds while the storms without Their wild blasts blow. Go under greenwood shade ; Find open doors Where babes like sunbeams play About the floors, And say the hand that wrought Would only bless And lend the simple art Of happiness. Go then, the world is wide, And give thy cheer; Perhaps some tender heart Will hold thee dear; Perhaps some pleasant hand Thy pages turn; Perhaps some gentle soul Thy message learn ! OfiHEN one writes for publication, however great the surrouqdiqg solitude, th[ere is always oqe compaqion present, It is the personage known in literature as the Geqtle Reader. This readar is kiqder thaq one's self; has almost as much to do with the progress of the pages ; cheers, eqcourages, and helps witrj both^ subtle aqd outright sympathy, And wr\en the manuscript has goqe to do its work in tr^e world, it is not of the great public that tr)e writer thinks, but of this single debonair reader. It is for those of like rqaqners aqd feeliqgs tr^at these chapters have been written, Geqtle Reader, out iq th[e unknown, be geqtle still ! Whoever and wherever you may be, wr^eq you opeq theee leaves remerqber your old kiqdliness aqd forbear to criticise too r}arshly th[e pen tr^at would help you on the way across the Stepping Stones to Happiness. HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. CHAPTER I ..................................................... The Use of the Present On a Texas Prairie A Mirage The Present Time The Uses of This World Advancing Years Looking Backward Disenchantment Illusions Idle Re- grets. PAGE. ..17 CHAPTER II ................................... ................ Going Over Dry Shod Perpetual Hope An Ideal World A Child's Discovery The Surprise Mrs. Mulgrave's Story. CHAPTER III A Pause By the Way Self- Reliance and Self-Reverence St. Augustine's Dream The Spiritual Mind Reticence Real Troubles The Armor of Patience A Mutual Dependence- Man's Majesty The Happy Warrior Miss Moggaridge's Pro- vider. CHAPTER IV A Family Tree Household Association Plutarch's Advice The Story of Xerxes and Ariamenes Love of Ancestors The Coat of Arms. (7) .88 8 CONTENTS. PAGE. CTIAPTER V 99 A Home in Town Owning the House The Sense of Perma- nence Moving Inside the House The Vacation Advan- tages of Town Life City Children Music at Home The Piano-forte Music Abroad The Opera Shopping In the Street Car The Cheery Town The City Parlor Old China The Spinning Wheel in the Parlor The Distaff The Spinster The Adventures of a Pound of Cotton Society The Gay Season City Window Gardens Louise Forester's Story. CHAPTER VI 151 Under Green Boughs Comparative Views of Town and Coun- try Great Ideas Start in City In a Suburban Town The Love of Nature Michelet's Twilight Experience Sunlight. CHAPTER VII 167 Vine and Fig Tree The Garden The Almanac The Apple- Tree Woman in Agriculture Among the Lake Dwellings A Picturesque Sight The Story of Mrs. Royal's Garden. CHAPTER VIII i 93 The House in the Country Necessary Foresight The Piazza In the Furnishing The Parlor The Library The Rosillon House. CHAPTER IX 216 The Health of the Home Old Water-courses in Town Rock and Gravel The Cellar The Prevention That is Better than Cure The Only Curse on the House We or Providence to Blame Children's Diseases Disinfectants The Scarlet Fever CONTENTS. 9 PAGE. The Children of the Poor The Lively Fly At Autumn Time The Birds When the Days Shorten Light-Hearted October By the Hearth. CHAPTER X 243 The Light of the House The Mother The Ideal Mother The Everyday Mother The Story of Old Margaret and Her Boy. CHAPTER XI 260 A Well-Spring of Joy The Baby The Care of the Baby The Moral Growth of the Child Help From the Great Educators Froebel The Kindergarten The Gifts in Froebel's System School Another World On Visiting a Kindergarten John Wesley's Mother Slojd The Happy Result The Story of the Hurricane Light. CHAPTER XII 306 Other Children Medicine Rather Than Punishment Hered- ity Sparing the Rod Loving Children They Who Really Love Children Troublesome Children Keeping Silence Amusing the Small People With Pencil and Paper A New Game Another Game The Story of Laddy's Burglar. CHAPTER XIII 343 Angels Unawares What a Boy Thought of His Grandmother Old Age Growing Old Gracefully The Satisfactions of Age The Refinement of Old Age The Town "Lady" Ailments in the Family The Right Sleep The Grandmother's Charm Delight in Poetry The Story of a Perpetual Thanksgiving. ,0 CONTENTS. PAGE. CHAPTER XIV 376 About Pets Poor Dog Tray Famous Dogs The Dog in Literature Harmless Necessary Cat The Cat's Beauty The Cat's Virtues The Cat a Fireside Ornament The Little Egyptian Cat The Cat's Usefulness The Norway Rat The Bird in the Cage Pretty Poll The Children and the Parrot- Famous Parrots A Kerry Cow Advantages of the Cow Pegasus The Woman Who Used To Drive The Woman Who Drives Now. CHAPTER XV 395 The Household Conduct The Ideal Household Managing and Ruling Tyranny and its Result in Cunning Working Together Daily Cares The Hired Housekeeper The Strong- Box A Vacation Schools For Cooks A Radical Procedure Old Cookery Books Ancient Feasts The Peacock at Banquets A Bat tie at Table Some Economies The Englishwoman's Economy Saving On a Small Scale Old Dishes Different Kitchens Undreamed Dishes The Mushroom The Story of Sylvia Dexter. CHAPTER XVI .' 429 Work Mrs. Browning's Word The Value of Work to Char- acter All Creation Works Conscience in the Work Work Here and Abroad Love of Art Equaling Conscience Those Who Are Down On Their Luck Rest After Work The Rest of Travel The Mind in Travel The Reader in Travel Travel in Our Own Land. CONTENTS. ii PAGE. CHAPTER XVII 449 Love of Others Associated Charities Transmission of In- itiated Organisms Extremes of Wealth and Poverty Giving at the Door Lovely Examples A Degrading Course The Poor a Benison What the Poor Have Done The Story of Anstress. CHAPTER XVIII 472 The Genial Temper An Unpleasant Idiosyncrasy Love of Injury Fancied Slights Quid Pro Quo The Undisciplined Temper The Sinners Themselves The Sulky Soul A Remedy The Perfecting of the World Protoplasm and Dust Right and Light Transmuting Clay Self-Forgetfulness The Child's Troubles Another World To Complete This Changing Our Condition For Another's Rejoicing in An- other's Joy The Golden Time For Love On Tranquil Heights Hand in Hand With Angels The Riches of Angels True Happiness At Last Matthew Arnold's Wish. ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The Journey 1 8 Bells Ring Love's Story Song 19 As We Rolled on Through This Marvelous Landscape 20 Herd of Cattle Coming Down to Drink 22 Solitude 25 Truly We Are Not of Their Number 27 At Morning We Used to Feel It Was Going to Be Morning All Day. ... 28 The Illusion that Surrounds the Dead with a Halo Is Certainly a Blessed One 30 The Home of Childhood 32 The Contemptuous Stare of Somebody in a Paris Hat 33 Dripping that Wears the Stone 34 Expectancy a much more Emphatic Thing than Hope 35 The Bright Drapery of Dreams and Pleasant Fancies 37 Never Birds Sang as I Heard Them 39 In the Wave-Washed Sand 41 The Ship that Is Coming into Harbor 42 If It had Been the Queen a-Commg In 44 You Couldn't Shut a Drawer 46 That Sea View Would Be Good as a Picture 47 I Was the Most Unhappy Woman 49 Dwelling upon the Spiritual 53 The Sweet Influence of a Loving Sympathy 57 A Happy Face Does a Service to Humanity 59 "We Are Most of Us Inclined to Sympathize 61 (12) ILLUSTRATIONS. 13. PAGE. The Good Are Lifting Up the Bad 67 To Every Earnest, Striving Soul 69 A Letter Came to Miss Ann 76 The Ship Went to Pieces 80 Bonds of Blood Relationship 87 The Same Mother's Knee 89 Reverence of the Young for the Old 91 The Stiff, Prim Likeness cf Some Grandam 93 Tenderness for Those Dead and Gone 95 The Possession of a Home 97 Industry 100 On the Wing 102 Sunshine of Pleasant Faces 104 Steamer Trips . . , 107 Professors Find Their Support in Cities 109. The Music-room Conservatory in Music's Largest Audiences in the Town 113 Shopping 115 Satchel-bearing Suburbans n'6 The Distaff 1 24 The Spinning-wheel 127 Rude as the Spinning-wheel Seems to Us Now 129 Flock of Sheep 131 (From a Painting by Anton Mauve.) Always a Gay Season in Town 134 John Ruskin 137 (Bust by Sir Edgar Boehm, R. A.) Bowers of Loveliness 138 Flowers 139 Flowers the Only Comfort that I Had 140 So Still and Dark and Solemn "143 A Box out of Every Window in the House 144 I Came Home with Ladies' Tresses 145 The Corner of My Dear Wild Flowers 146 i 4 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE. This Place of Enchantment 150 You Must Have Known I Loved You 152 The Sweet Look that Nature Wears 154 The Loneliness of Rural Regions 157 A Sewing Circle 158 Some Lovely Landscape 161 Mountains Lifting Their Heads into Heaven 162 White and Innocent Fields : . . 1 63 A Luxury of Life Is Theirs in the Spring 164 The Dark Shadow of the Branch -hung Stream 166 The Twilight Hour 168 Every Man Loves His Garden 171 The Modest Kitchen Garden 173 Title Page of Poor Richard's Almanack for 1733 177 Who Owns an Apple-tree and Does not Wish for Two? 180 The Harvest of the Grain Field 182 Making Grow Where Nothing Grew Before 185 A Picturesque Object in the Landscape 187 (Painted by Jules Breton. ) Itself Draped with Vines 200 Such a Place Should be Made Attractive 212 Unable to Look a Man in the Face 217 Reeled and Fell Backward 220 Looking Down at Him 222 He Remembered the Place 224 Mother's Devotion 248 Sitting and Playing His Banjo 250 Practicing for a Long Migration 256 What a Singular Charm There Is about the First Fire of Wood 263 Rock Me to Sleep, Mother 268 She Spells out the Lesson with Her Child 274 Beauty and Glory of Motherhood 276 Helpless Morsel of Humanity 286 ILLUSTRATIONS. 15 PAGE. The Child Will Have a Love of Work 288 The Little Face Lies Near Her Own 290 The Hurricane Light-House 293 Love Lines of the Kindergarten Methods 308 Not to Fail in Exhaustless Gentleness. 310 Little Merchants 312 The Young Expanding Intellect 315 Reprimanded 317 The Opening Soul of Childhood 319 Necessary that the Little Things Should Be Made Happy 321 Love of the Child for Drawing 323 Monument at New Plymouth to the Pilgrim Fathers 325 A Way of Making It a Charming Amusement 327 He Saw the Club Roll By 33 1 Laddy Slipped Out of Bed 335 The Sweet Serenity of Silver-haired Age 345 That Tenderness Felt for the Old 347 Gayeties of Her Grandchildren 349 Gentle and Well Bred, and that Is the Whole Lady 353 Drawing and Sculpture During the Palaeolithic Epoch 364 Her Few Letters Were Spasmodic and Brief 366 That Turkey will be Looking Like a Big Heathen God 373 Not the Sole Constituents of the Family 377 Cats Are a Part of the Lares and Penates 382 The Ideal Household 399 Banquet of Vitellius 407 Look at the Jewels. Oh, What a Glitter! 422 From One Sick-bed to Another 425 Inundation of the Nile ._.... 439 Ascent of Mont Blanc 441 Dryburgh Abbey from the East 443 Kenil worth Castle 445 The Switzer Trail, Sierra Madre Mountains, California 447 i6 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE. More Agreeable if We could Sit down at Our Fancy Work 455 The Most We Can Do for the Poor is but a Debt We Owe 457 Love Is a Potent Shield against Many Troubles 479 It Is not Easy to Think It Is not as Fine as It Can Be 481 To Go to Bed Just as the Lamps are Lighted 488 Rolling by in Her Luxurious Coach 490 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. CHAPTER FIRST. One Stepping Stone The Use of the Present. HOW good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy ! Browning. Remember that man's life lies all within this present, as 'twere but a hair's breadth of time ; as for the rest, the past is gone, the future yet unseen. Marcus Aurelius. Now is the accepted time. St. Paul. Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, Rut an eternal now does always last. Cowley. Catch, then, oh catch the transient hour. Winter. Count them by sensation and not by calendars, and each moment is a day Disraeli. O last regret, regret can die ! Tennyson. 18 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 'V. . THE JOURNEY. On a Texas Prairie. It was in one of the long journeys across Texas that the train stop- ping at a water-tank was boarded by a half-dozen children of the village that had grown up about the station, children to whom the train came like a herald and messenger from the great outside world. I sat at the end of the observation car, looking out over the wide prairie whose ineffable green under an immense arch of dazzling blue sky billowed away into the low horizon. The gentlemen had stepped down to look at some curiosity near by, and being mistress of the occasion I allowed the children the liberty of the car, which they enjoyed to the utmost. "I thought I would give you fifty dollars, if you would let me ride in this car," said one adventurous and STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 19 bare-footed little damsel, who had never seen fifty cents in the world, although her father was rich in lands and herds. "Why did you want to ride in this car?" I asked. .'Oh, I thought it would be such happi- ness!" she cried. "But I reckon I would like the burro best." Her dream of happiness! To ride in the car. And mine so opposite to be out of it. And then the porter came in his august plenitude of power and shooed the children off, and the gentlemen returned from their call upon the people who summered and wintered a dozen years in their tent, and we presently went our way again. As we rolled on through the marvelous landscape, its great dells and dingles of live oak, its streams outlined by ribbons of white lilies, where the duck rose and skimmed away, its blazes of scarlet phlox, its coverts where the deer started at our coming, and its stretches where the wild horses galloped ; there suddenly rose in the distance the vision of a river blue as blue crystal, mirroring trees hung with long wreaths of swaying moss, a herd of cattle com- ing down to drink there, and behind it the dim but gilded domes and spires of a city shone % , the whole bathed in a soft atmosphere like that light which never was on sea or shore. BELLS RING LOVE S STORY SONG. A Mirage. It was a mirage that hung there before us for a little while, like reality, and then as we would have approached, it vanished. "It is like happiness," I said to myself, "the little girl's, or mine, or an- other's. It is always before us; it disappears as we think we approach. No rapture is so sweet as its anticipation was. Happiness is a mirage." And an old verse came to mind : For here we have no abiding city. Well, then, I thought, that mirage, at any rate, represents something to which we wish to attain. It is an image of that abiding city elsewhere; and every day of our lives there are stepping-stones for us to use in reach- ing it. 20 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. AS WE ROLLED ON THROUGH THIS MARVELOUS LANDSCAPE. If the mirage vanishes as we draw near, we have always in the present the measure of happiness that comes with brave endurance; in the fu- ture that comes with expectancy ; and one day we reach the great goal. Let us be content then, day by day, with the stepping-stones. The Present Time. It is a singular thing that the present is something which most of us are always scouting. The past lies in an inwrapping mist that hides all pettiness, all daily annoyance, and leaves only the salient facts of pleasure or displeas- ure apparent, and has about it in our fancy some of the sacred character with which we surround the dead. The future, too, wears a halo rimmed with joy- ous expectancy, and is a Delectable Land gilded in a sunlight of possibility. But the present the here and now is our every-day life, is dull and commonplace, and worth little. What we might have done in the past we re- gard with a certain fondness ; what we may do in the future, with eager antici- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 21 pation ; what we can do in the present, with doubt and disgust. Never do to- day what you can put off till to-morrow, is a reversal of the ancient maxim that goes to the heart of many of us. We are too apt to have that contempt for to-day which we have for all familiar things, and we disregard its opportunities, just as we think, in piping times of peace, that we could have done so much better if we had been born in a stirring era; or in war times, that we "should have come to something" if we had had the opportunities that peace affords ; just as we think, if our surname is a common one, that it would have been very different with us if we had been born Montmorencysor Grosvenors; if we are pcor, that with wealth we could have sprung upward as the vaulter flies with the upward impulsion of the spring-board ; if we are rich, that per- haps poverty would have spurred us to a worthy exertion. There are few of us that willingly take to-day as a stepping-stone, few of us who think cf it as a stepping-stone at all. Yet if we so frequently fail to avail ourselves now of the opportunities of the moment, when to-morrow is to- day shall we regard it as any better worth, or do anymore wisely with the new possession? And yet we all know that if we are going to do anything with to-morrow we must be making ready to-day. When to-morrow comes rising over us it may be as full of opportunities as the cloud is of lightnings, but if we have not our kite ready to fly, we shall draw none of those lightnings down. But while, on the one hand, this disregard and waste of the present is loss to ourselves, on the other hand, it involves a peculiar selfishness, a sort of psy- chological anomaly, that is seldom guessed or considered. We delay the dis- agreeable duty, put off the laborious effort, till to-morrow, for what reason? Because to-morrow is another country, another climate, an unknown region, and because the person of to-morrow is quite another person from the person of to-day so very much another that the person of to-day saves himself all the difficulty and trouble possible by pushing it over to the person of to-mor- row. It is only another form of that selfishness which we exhibit when we in- dulge ourselves in any license, in any pleasure of the present, for which we fcnow to-morrow will bring in a heavy price and penalty to be paid. The per- son of to-day is to have the license and the pleasure, the person of to-morrow must pay the penalty. It is indeed only another form of that terrible selfishness which allows the parent to practice a self-indulgence which shall some day ruin the child, who does not inherit any share of the pleasure of that self-in- dulgence, but only the ruin of its penalty. But the selfishness of this evasion of the present rises into more metaphy- sical regions. The folly of it is something that even the simplest thinker can hardly fail to see. For the present is all that we certainly have, and to let it slip by unimproved is to make ourselves so much the poorer, since the mo- vSTEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS HERD OF CATTLE COMING DOWN TO DRINK. merit that we improve is ours forever, but the moment that we do not seize, do not improve, escapes us, has nothing to do with us, never enriches us, never was, indeed, so far as we are concerned, and our life is by that much more a blank. The present is as safe as time; to-morrow is as vague as eter- nity. Eternity may have its own uses ; we know nothing about them ; it is among infinite things, and we are among finite. The uses of time we know well, and that one of them is to make ourselves round and complete as a star for our course through that infinity. "Ages past the soul existed ; Here an age 'tis resting merely, And hence fleets again for ages." STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 23 The Uses of This World. The poet Browning, in some of his verses, speaks of this world and this life as something that sets the scene, as one might say, of this particular por- tion of the drama of our soul's existence; and that act incompletely rendered, the whole drama fails of perfection. Suppose, for instance, it were the stage set merely for the love scene of the drama; were that lost, then the whole thing would want point and meaning, and the soul be by that much the more barren. "Else it loses what it lived for, And eternally must lose it; Better ends may be in prospect, Deeper blisses, if you choose it. But this life's end and this love bliss Have been lost here." It would be but a poor and material supposition, though, to conjecture that the world were only the resting-place for spirits on the wing, pausing but long enough for that one experience, however great, however beautiful, it may be. To the young it might possibly seem a charming fancy; they do not give the world for love, but have an idea, indeed, that the world was given them for love, and in that view they certainly cannot be accused of not improv- ing the present, which is the world. But love, the love of man and woman, is merely one wondrous phase of our soul's existence, like the ray that sparkles in the brilliant jet of some special color as the crystal takes the light. Love of another kind, the love of fellow-men, the love of man and God, is the very medium, indeed, that surrounds us and gives us communication, atom by atom, with the universe, that will accompany us forever, it is to be hoped. And there are far other purposes apparent in life than the wedding of twin souls. For, since this love is the to-day of youth and the yesterday of age, it can not be the present of any other era, and one era deserves as much of fate as the other. But whatever the present be, whether the time to love or the time to hate, the time to weep or the time for rejoicing, it is only those that live in it that can do anything with it. And they who forget all its claims, and live only in the future, live only to and for the future. Even those who make a religious point of it, as if the future were a thing any dearer to the Creator than the present, are quite as unwise as they who risk everything on the sea of the passing moment. "This world is all a fleeting show," says the one side. "Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die,." says the other. And the one side forgets that God lives in His world, and that it is not theirs to contemn it or to deride a portion of His work, and the other side forgets that this mortal shall put on immortality. 2 4 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. Of a truth it befits us to make the most of the present; for there comes at last to most of us a season when all at once we wake to the fact that we are no longer young, and something angry with fate, with ourselves, with the laws of the universe, and with those that observe them in relation to us, we experi- ence surprise and indignation, as if we were the only ones who ever grew old. Advancing Years. Any trifle will scratch the match, but it kindles a great fire, in which the dreams and hopes of youth begin to dissipate in smoke and vapor. Someone incidentally speaks of us as "middle-aged," whereas our mothers hardly seem to us to have passed that meridian, the boundary line of a different land from youth ; but after a fair debate with facts and the looking-glass, we have had to yield the point. The daughter of our old schoolmate, married on or about her graduation- day, who has now grown up and come before us to replace her mother in some mysterious way, receives our embrace as a "good motherly kiss, " and arouses us to the circumstance that whatever we have been thinking of her as our con- temporary, she has been thinking of us as her mother's contemporary. We have never given the subject a thought before; it has been one of the things taken for granted with us that of course we are young, just as the sky- is blue or the earth round, because we always have been young that, in truth, all people are young till they feel old. But what are the facts? For the first time we consider them. As far as years go to make up the count, we must ad- mit that we have crossed the median line, perhaps: our years are no longer the years of romance and poetry. As far as looks go well, it is true there are silver threads among the gold ; we had regarded them as accidents, but they were not accidents they were necessities ; there are wrinkles round the eyes, more or less, which have no longer the firm young muscle to hold them full; some teeth are missing, or the dazzle of the enamel is gone; there is the sus- picion of a horrid hollow on the cheek; under the best conditions, and however attractive the face may remain, the rosy roundness there is gone. So far as feelings go well, it has seemed to us till now only as if life deepened and en- riched itself each year. Then we begin to look about us, peradventure to see how the thing strikes the rest of the world. We have spent years in listening, in learning, in making ourselves companionable and possibly entertaining; we see the veriest chit, with her luscious flesh and color, ignorant of life and of everything else but her own senses, preferred before us. Ah! then other people found out long ago what has just been revealed to us: we are old, and have been making fools of ourselves in masquerading as young. We declare STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 2 5 to our self-investigation, then, that we do not care for the successes of the pretty girl; it may be that we had as much in our day, we do not find it in our heart to envy her; perhaps we pity her that the beam in which she sports so soon must fade. Then suddenly we see that we are pitying the young; truly we are not of their number! And if we had no sensation of the sort be- fore, henceforth we acknowledge that we have one foot in the grave. Then, by slow access of meditation, we are aware that much of the freshness of feel- ing is gone, much of that which once gave us rapture, our power of joyous ap- preciation, our fullness of enthusiasm ; we are not again rapt by the spell of any great painting into fairy-land, as the case has been with us, when all the lovely hues and aerial distances seemed to be portions of the region to which we traveled, that region into which the coming years were sure to bring us; no single dash of color in the sky fills us with unspeakable delight and longing after the unknown; we do not lean out into the star-lit nights with conscious companionship of the spirits of the stars and the deeps and the dark we are a little afraid of the damps and draughts and rheum- atism ; we remember all these things; we do not feel them afresh. Nor do the same books please us, we find, that once we read and re-read ; the poems that we ruin- ed with our pencil marks 26 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. and underscoring have ceased to charm, and the volumes that in the days of those pencil-marks we would have scorned, now attract us at first sight; the bread-and-butter novel moves us to derision; we feel sufficient acquaint- ance with life and its passions and subtle motives and secret springs to read the books of darker dealings. Dancing does not seem to us, either, the pleasantest way in the world in which to spend time. We do not think a youth of twen- ty-one or twenty-two the ideal being for whom the heavens and earth were cre- ated. Possibly we prefer lamp-light and people to all the moonlight and soli- tude in the world. What then? It seems that middle age has its pleasures, which it would not exchange for those of youth ; why will we persist in look- ing back so regretfully on those of youth, which we would no longer enjoy if we had them ? Looking Backward. If we do not wish to dance, why do we envy those who do? If a dried date does not taste to us now rich with all spicy flavors of unknown lands, but like a commonplace sweetmeat, compensation comes in the fact that we have no craving for the date. And yet it seems to be insufficient compensation: we wish we had that craving, remembering the pleasure of its satisfaction. We are not like the old proverb's dog in the manger, that neither wants a thing himself nor is willing that another should have it; on the contrary, we are much more like the little boy who eats his cake and wants it, too. Nothing would .induce us to forego the various happinesses of the period to which we have arrived, the calmness and repose, the clear-headed comprehension of vexed problems, the wealth of memory, the power of looking out on the world and not only seeing as in youth, but of summarizing and philosophizing on what we see. Yet, for all that, we remember how round was the cheek of youth, how delicious was life at the dawning; and here is the shadow of the unknown future beginning to fall over us, and full socn shall we feel the breath of the dark river; and we see fresh meaning in the words of the old preacher: "'Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun, but if a man live many years and rejoice in them all, yet let him remem- ber the days of darkness, for they shall be many. " As the monarch considers a demand for the surrender of his sceptre, so do we hate to lay down our sover- eignty, to retreat as the new generation becomes regnant, to become not only the mere commoners and superannuaries of the present, but the pensioners of the past, to feel, perhaps, a passing remembered and reflected thrill of the keen, quick joy at the fragrance ot a wind, at bell notes on the evening air, at TRULY WE ARE NOT OF THEIR NUMBER. 28 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. AT MORNING WE USED TO FEEL IT WAS GOING TO BE MORNING ALL DAY. so many other delightful things that once we felt in full, to feel, when that wind blows, and that bell rings, and that love story is sung, and that evening STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 29 air grows purple, that our thrill is only the memory of the thrills of years and years ago, to know that a multitude of choicest pleasures now are no more the objects of actual experience, but are only an impalpable procession of blood- less ghosts. But for all that, the past was not so perfect when it was the present that we need to compare it too strenuously with to-day. While that itself was the present there was much amiss with it. It is true that when we were very young every object in creation seemed gilded with the glory of our own dawn. At morning we used to feel that it was going to be morning all day, with blue sky and sparkling dew and flower scents and freshness; but at noon we hardly remembered another joy than those under the meridian ; and our only shadow of vexation was that night must needs come to put an end to it alL But when we ceased to be very young how sorry we sometimes were to open our eyes and find it morning ! How glad we were fain to be when night came and brought another day to its close ! Fortunate they who, in middle life and in still more advanced years, carry the morning always with them, and love the hour, whatever it may be, and the fortune it brings with it. Yet, sooth to say, there are very few of us who bring our ideals up to the end with us all unbroken. The mists of early day magnify the objects we see through them. This fruit is sweeter to the virgin palate than it ever will be to the taste accustomed to all impressions ; that flower scent never can be found again ; that music on the water never sounds to us, now that even-song has sung, as it did when blown on the winds of morning. When Henry Es- mond met Father Holt, after he had grown to be a man, he "smiled to think that this was his oracle of early days, only now no longer infallible or divine." Disenchantment. How many a young person there must be who, dominated over by a ma- turer mind and personality, with attractions and conjurations of its own, shakes off the spell in after-times, and sees with amazement that the god, if not made of putty, yet is only common flesh and blood ! How many a woman has waked, after years of marriage with the one idolized at the outset, to find that the idol had feet of clay! How many a man has married a doll, and by the slow process of disenchanting years has felt no surprise when at last he saw the sawdust I Yet they who find the demi-god of youth still a demi-god, when middle life has rubbed the cobwebs out of their eyes, when the high noon has dissipated those magnifying mists of morning, they who preserve their idols and find them and their informing spirits golden still, they who have no occasion to be reminded that there is such a thing as sawdust in the THE ILLUSION THAT SURROUNDS THE DEAD WITH A HALO IS CERTAINLY (30) A BLESSED ONE. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 3 r world how blest are they, blest with the good fortune that is theirs, blest even if it is illusion and they themselves are not wise enough to be aware of it I Illusions. For surely there is a pleasure in our illusions, so long as we do not know them to be illusions. So long, indeed, as we are ignorant of that, they are not illusions, but as blessed verities as any of the fixed truths of the universe. To believe a person great and good is to endow him with all the great and good qualities we revere, and if by the added exaltation which we might de- rive from him if he really exerted those qualities upon us, it does not actually matter, for, on the contrary, by insisting upon it that he shall have the noble characteristics, they have to be created somewhere, and if only in our imagin- ation, then at least that far we have been exalted by being their creators ourselves. It is our own natures that have been the matrices of the statue we have reared to him, and he is none the worse and we are somewhat the better. The illusion, too, that surrounds the dead with a halo is certainly a blessed one, all that was ignoble or unlovely in them sinking out of sight and memory and only the beautiful remaining, till, if they are not angels in the unseen sphere they visit, so much of them as remains in our memory is altogether angelic. And if we may have blessed illusions concerning those that are gone away from us, how equally blessed are those concerning the affairs that might have come to us but never do ! The songs we never sang are far the sweetest ; the wife who was never wed, the hero for whom the maiden waits, the little children never born and never to be born what perfectness enwrap them all ! Elia's Dream Children were lovelier and sweeter, and dearer, too, than any children that Charles Lamb ever met. It is a thing to be thankful for when any experience of our earlier years is left to us untouched by the tarnishing fingers of time; that we can still visit the house that used to seem to us in our childhood the House Beautiful, and find there the fair chamber looking to the east ; that the young girl who hardly needed wings for her translation seems as ethereal still ; that the child who went early and never grew up to mundane coarseness is still to us a cherub out of heaven, who folded his wings awhile ere he fled back to heaven again. And perhaps it is another thing to be quite as thankful for, the illusions we all have more or less about ourselves. As we never fairly see ourselves in the mirror, the right side there becoming the left, so that we get none but a false and distorted vision of ourselves, what virtues, what triumphs of truth, kindness and generosity do we not seem in that inner vision to possess! For STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. THE HOME OF CHILDHOOD. would we not make such and such great gifts, and perform such and such magnanimous acts, if things were only a little different with us? If we had the bank account of that billionaire, would we not be paying off the national debt? As it is, we have hardly enough for ourselves. And what Ithuriels we are, too, in that inner vision we who scorn all untruth except that which may be absolutely necessary to save ourselves from other people's ill opinion ! and what angels of mercy are we in that picture we delight to look at we who roll the last scandal under our tongue for a choice morsel, and are glad when what we have is better than what our neighbor has! Well, if we are to sit in sackcloth and ashes for our sins, our bad traits, hereditary or otherwise, our good traits uncultivated, we shall have a sad time of it; and so blessed be these, with all the other of our illusions that hinder us ever from seeing a grain of sawdust in any doll we have. For if a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things, how often the reverse is true, and how we find ourselves forced to smile at the very affairs that seemed unbearable in the bearing, but which have proved to be, if not angels in disguise, yet things that took a glory on their flying wings. Last year how bitter and detesta- ble was that experience! This year the conditions are changed; the situation is otherwise; it seems to have been a very trifle about which to make such a fuss ; we laugh at ourselves and at that trouble of the past. The fact is that a person must be of a very sympathetic cast in order to feel intensely the troubles of others; it is not quite possible to realize them; every one has not sufficient self-forgetfulness to be able to displace himself, or sufficient imagination to plant himself on another centre as regards the THE CONTEMPTUOUS STARE IN A PARIS HAT. 34 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. universe, and occupy the position of an- other party. But that is what must be done if one would feel very keenly the pains of the past, for to-day you are your- self, but yesterday, as it has been said, you were quite another person; the ka- leidoscope has taken another turn, and the relation of atoms is a new one. DRIPPING THAT WEARS THE STONE. Idle Regrets. Last year's toothache does not hurt us; it seems as though it hurt some one else; in truth it seems as if that tooth might have been saved. Last year's affront makes us smile to think we should have been such fools as to mind it; the misery we endur- ed a twelve-month since, in our old bon- net, from the contumelious stare of some- body in a Paris hat, is now, in the distance, too infinitesimal for us to conde- scend to remember. But then it is quite possible that we have a new hat our- selves this year, that nobody is affronting us, that our teeth are in fine order; we should not dream of allowing ourselves to be unbalanced by such trifles anyway now what are they to be compared to the sore hangnail of the pres- ent moment, to the sudden cracking and unexpected shininessof our best silk, to the bill with no money to pay it! Yesterday's troubles vanish in the per- spective of two narrowing lines, to-day's hover just before the sight, and shut out everything else. We cannot, to be sure, forget the facts of the past trou- bles, but all their sting and anguish is over and gone. Of course we are not speaking of the real and significant griefs, the vital sorrows of the past, the unavailing regrets, the losses never to be made good events whose meaning has entered into our being, and incorporated itself with our soul. Those things die only when we do, and will not, it may be, die even then, for their discipline may have been the thing we needed most, and nothing that is really valuable and necessary for us can ever be lost out of our posssesion. In "My Summer with Dr Singletary," Whittier says: "The present will live hereafter, memory will bridge over the gulf between the two worlds, for only in the condition of their intimate union can we preserve our identity and EXIECTANCV A MUCH MORE EMPHATIC THING THAN HOPE. 36 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. personal consciousness. Blot out the memory of this world, and what would heaven or hell be to us? Nothing whatever. Death would be simple anni- hilation ot our actual selves and the substitution therefor of a new creation in which we should have no more interest than in an inhabitant of Jupiter or the fixed stars." Still, although memory may thus be the vital current of our identity, we doubt if we shall carry with us into any life whatever, memory of the little teasing details of our annoyances, although their effect may be felt forever in countless touches on cur natures, like the fret of that ceaseless drip- ping which wears a stone. It is, indeed, only the exceptional nature, and often the morbid one, that is able to recall pain, that is saddened by its recollection, but we can all of us thrill again with the recollection of old joys; and the op- timist might well argue, from experience of the truth, that pain is perishable, but ioy is immortal. Perhaps if we recognized this more forcibly, the petty provocations, the little teasing troubles, that are so "tolerable and not to be endured" while we are laboring through them, would cease to make the present uncomfortable, would wear less detestable aspects as they came, would no longer excite, in the rebellion against them, our ill temper, malice, hatred, and all uncharita- bleness, and would make less final impressions upon our nature than even now they do; we might refuse to be provoked or teased by them, and remem- bering the evanescence of pain and vexation, and the permanency of joy, we might yet learn a lesson from the trees of the forest that heal their wounds with precious gums; from the oysters that mend their shells with pearls. Led by a kindlier hand than ours, We journey through this earthly scene, And should not. in our weary hours. Turn to regret what might have been. And yet these hearts, when torn by pain, Or wrung by disappointment keen Will seek relief from present cares In thought of joys that might have been. But let us still these wishes vain; We know not that of which we dream ; Our lives might have been sadder yet; God only knows what might have been. Forgive us. Lord, our little faith. And help us all. from morn till e'en. Still to believe that lot the best Which is not that which might have been. G. Z, Gray. THE BRIGHT DRAPERY OF DREAMS AND PLEASANT FANCIES. (37) 3 8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. CHAPTER SECOND. Dry Shod. 'Tis expectation makes a blessing dear, Heaven were not heaven if we knew what it were. Sir John Suckling. If a flower Were thrown yon out of heaven at intervals You'd soon attain to a trick of looking up. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In all the splendor farther on We missed the morning's maiden blush, The soft expectancy was gone, The brooding haze, the trembling flush. Margaret E. Sangster. I place faith in three friends and they are powerful and invincible ones namely, God, and your head, and mine. -Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. For every minute is expectancy Of rhore'arrivance. Shakespeare. Hope to joy is little less in joy than hope enjoyed. Shakespeare. But although the art of living chiefly in the present, and of letting the dead past bury its dead, gives us two of the stepping-stones to happiness, still, would we go over dry-shod, the next one must not be overlooked. It is the joy of perpetual hope. Perpetual Hope. For there are few joys of life comparable with that of expectancy, espe- v; cially the expectancy of people of imagination. This is a singular fact, and speaks largely for the spiritual side of our nature; for few of the joys of real- ization and possession ever quite reach the heights of hope and imagination. Expectancy is, however, a much more emphatic thing than hope, since it sig- nifies certainty, where the other is uncertain signifies assurance and right, NEVER BIRDS SANG AS I HEARD THEM. (39) 40 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. signifies hope with the seal of authority upon it. We hope for many things without a shadow of ground for our hoping; we only expect that which we feel is sure to come. And what a pleasure is there in the expectancy, calling upon senses that know no sating! As the world within the looking-glass is an ideal world; as the scene in the Claude Lorraine glass is transfigured; as any commonplace thing, when reflected out of the actual and tangible, takes on an aura of grace and refinement so expectancy gives us sensations just beyond reality, refines the real and idealizes facts. An Ideal World. One living in a state of expectancy, however temporary, lives really in an ideal world while it lasts. Every thing that comes within it is taken out of bald facts, and clothed in the bright drapery of dreams and pleasant fancies. Exactly what is expected never comes, to be sure, and unconsciously in these seasons of expectancy all of us are more or less poets. The maiden who wonders if her lover's steed "keeps pace with her expectancy and flies," is looking for a lover many degrees finer and tenderer than the lover who at last arrives, and divides the enjoyment of his love-making with the enjoyment of his cigar. The wife who awaits her husband, her heart beating at every sound, "listening less to her own music than for footsteps on the walk," pic- tures to herself, although perhaps without an articulate thought about it, a sort of model King Arthur, a noble pattern of all the excellencies, and in her love of this superior being of her conjuration forgets all about the real man, who, when he comes, will complain if his slippers have not been warmed, if his supper is not to his mind, who wants his wife well dressed on nothing a year, wants his table well set, but grumbles over the bills, and in general plays the part of that Pharaoh who would have bricks made without straw. And in turn, the husband whose wife has been absent, and who has missed her order- ing, her bustling, her fault-finding, her presence in the house, so long that he has had time to forget the disagreeable part of her and remember only the cheerful and sweet, strangely recalls, now that he awaits her return, the wife of his youth, the girl he fell in love with, and who seemed to him at that time far "too good for human nature's daily food," and is somehow so fondly ex- pecting that seraphic being, that he experiences an actual shock of surprise over the arrival of the woman who does come at last, only to dispute the hack- man's charge, to reproach the servants, to complain of the misdoings during her interregnum, to set things straight with fury, and to tease for money. The merest trifle, in short, when we expect it and it has not yet arrived, IN THE WAVE- WASHED SAND. THE SHIP THAT IS COMING INTO HARBOR. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 43 seems something better than the truth. Even the bonnet on its way from the milliner's is changed in our waiting from a tolerably pretty affair into a be- witching and delicate confusion of straw and lace and ribbons and flowers, that with some throws a glamor of itself over the commoner bonnet when that arrives, and with others utterly annihilates the poor bonnet that falls un- der rione of its provisions. And so of every other mote in the world it is gold while it swims in the sun ; it is dust when it falls on our arm. The pleasures'of this expectancy are something that you may see little children begin to indulge in early. Half of their plays are made of it, and this, that, 1 and the other joy and glory are to be theirs when they are big boys and girls-; 'when they grow up ; when they take off petticoats, forswear knick- erbockers, 'wear long dresses, have a tall hat ; when they are ladies ; when they are soldiers; when they go to college; when they have children of their own; when the great future arrives, with all that they expect in it. Who of us, even in middle life, is not expecting his ship to come in? And who of us cannot recall the magnificent expectancy concerning that vague realm of un - known labors and rewards which we used to call the great world, and to think of as a delightful region into which we should presently be launched, which lay always just below the horizon ? And what would life be worth if that other world were cut off from it that world lying just beyond the horizon of life, which somehow casts its glory back over this actual world of to-day, and serves in our expectancy as perpetual compensation for all the ills and wrongs existing here? Everybody remembers that child experience of Mrs. Browning, when in her sylvan rambles she came across a spot that never seemed the same again, if again she ever found it : I affirm that since I lost it, Never bower has seemed so fair; Never garden creeper crossed it With so deft and brave an air; Never bird sang in the summer As I saw and heard them there. A Child's Discovery. We recollect, ourselves, a child of our acquaintance who, playing on the beach at Newcastle, discovered a deposit of garnets there in the wave-washed sand, and ran hallooing up the shore for spades and bags to carry off the treasure, and whose dismay was only surpassed by that of the fox whose buried goose had been unearthed and stolen by another fox, when, on her 44 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. IF IT HAD BEEN THE QUEEN A-COMING IN. returning full of expectancy, with a quickly assembled party, there was not a garnet to be found ; and she would have been deemed guilty of falsehood or STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 45 of fancy if her little apron full of rough gems had not been witness to her veracity, and Hugh Miller had not afterward come to her support with rela- tion of similar facts. So far from quenching the spirit of expectancy within her, the circumstance seemed to stimulate it during all the rest of her life, as if time and fate must needs atone for the loss by giving everything else she looked for a value beyond itself. Many of our mental processes are as yet quite inscrutable and past finding out, and thus it would be of little use to endeavor to say why expectancy so doubles the value of consummation. Surprise. There is a sudden joy and ecstatic heart-beat in the very welcome surprise that sometimes overtakes us, but who would exchange it for the long-drawn- out sweetness of that expectation in which we count the days, the hours, the moments, picture to ourselves the truth, gloat over every item of the coming joy, live it and re-live it, and extract the last drop of its deliciousness before it is actually here? The surprise is precious, doubtless; it lasts a moment. The expectation is equally precious-, it lasts for hours. Our heart goes out and flies before the ship that is coming into harbor, goes out to greet the guest, goes out to receive the blessing, and is doubly dowered with every reasonable day's delay. To expect sorrow, and supreme sorrow, surely to expect it, is as wearing and wearying and unendurable as the suffering is when the blow falls; to expect joy, and surely to expect it, is to enjoy it by so much the longer and by so much the more exquisitely as it may happen with us that the ideal in our being exceeds the real. Thus it may be seen that happy expectation, al- most another name tor content, is an important factor in our happiness. I suppose it was a lesson of content in the present and of joy in the future, of the delight of vague expectancy and constant hope, that Mrs Mulgrave had when looking at her new house in process of construction, she saw what she described as "Two Sides to a Bureau." Mrs. Mulgrave's Story. It is Mrs. Jim, however, who speaks first. This is one side of it: You must know, she said, that when I turned round and she was coming in the door. I'm sure I thought I was dreaming. If it had been the Queen a-com- ing in, I shouldn't have been more surprised; and the three children with vSTEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. their three faces like little pigs! "Here, you," whispered I to Benjamin Franklin, "you just go 'long and stick your face in some water, quick metre! And give Johnny's a scrubbing, too." And I wet the corner of my apron be- tween my lips in a hurry, and rubbed Sue's mouth; and then I made believe I hadn't seen her before and dusted the other chair for her; and she sat down, and I sat down, and we looked at one another. Lord! she was that fine! Her flounces were silk, and they were scalloped like so many roses, and lace show- ing under the edges of them ; and she had such boots, setting like gloves just enough to make your eyes water. But the flowers in her hat you should have seen them I declare you could have smelled them ! Well, she seemed to fill up the little room, and if ever I was glad of anything, I was glad that I'd scrubbed the fleer that very day, so that it was clean enough to eat off of glad, too, that I'd taken Jim's old hat out of the broken window and put in the smooth bottom of a box with a good respectable-looking tack. Jim might have mended that window, for he's a perfect Jack-at-all trades; but he'd rather play the fiddle than eat, and he was a-playing it out in the tie-up that moment, with all the wind there was blowing. However, I couldn't complain, for he'd just mended the chair, so that it was almost as good as new, and had put me up as tidy a shelf as you please over the stove for the brush and comb and the hair-oil bottle. If I'd been a little slicked up myself, with my new print and my pink apron, cr if I'd only had my bang on, I wouldn't a-minded. But when Benjamin Franklin came back with just the top dirt rinsed off, and the rest all smears, I did feel so vexed that I gave him as good a shaking as a nut-tree gets in harvest. ' ' Bless my heart ! ' ' says she, ' ' what are you doing that for ?" "Because he's so aggravating," says I. "There, you go 'long; ' and I gave him a shove. "Why," says she, "don't you remember how it used to feel to be shaken yourself?" "1 don't know as I do," says I. "As if you were flying to atoms? And your body was as powerless as if it had been Lin the hands of a giant, and your heart as (full of hate? ' "Why, look a-here," says I. 'Be you a YOU COULDN'T SHUT A DRAWER, missionary?" STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 47 THAT SEA VIEW WOULD BE GOOD AS A PICTURE "A missionary?" says she, laughing 'No. I m Mr. Mulgrave's wife. And I came up to see how the new house was getting on ; but the house is so full of plaster dust inside and the whirlwind is blowing the things off the roof so outside, that I thought I would venture in here till the cloud passed," "Oh," says I. "J knocked, but you didn't hear me." 4 8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. "I'm real glad to see you," says I. "It's a dreadful lonesome place, and hardly anybody ever comes. Only I'm sorry everything's so at sixes and sevens. You see, where there's a family of children, and the wind blowing so," says I, with a lucky thought it's always good to have the wind or the weather to lay things to, because nobody's responsible .for the elements "things will get to looking like ride-out." "Children do make confusion," says she; "but confusion is pleasanter with them than pimlico order without them." "Well, that's so," I answered; "for I remember when Johnny had the measles last year I thought if he only got well I'd let him whittle the door all to pieces if ever he wanted to again. Here, Benny," says I, for I began to feel bad to think I'd treated him so if he'd mortified me, 'twas no reason why I should mortify him, and right before folks so "take that to little sis- ter," and I gave them something to keep them quiet. "I suppose you wouldn't care for any water?'' says I to her then. "Not if I put some mo- lasses in it? I didn't know but the wind would have made you dry. Yes, children do make trouble. One of Jim's songs says, ' Marriage does bring trouble ; A single life is best; They should never double Who would be at rest.' But there! I wouldn't be without them for all the fine clothes I used to have when I was single and worked in the shop I worked down at Burrage's I suppose you never buy shoes there any' "What makes you suppose so?" says she, smiling. "Well, because your boots don't look like our work; they look like like Cinderella's slippers. Yes, I worked at Burrage's, off and on, a good many years on most of the time. I had six dollars a week. Folks used to wonder how I got so many clothes with it, after I'd paid my board. But I always had that six dollars laid out long before pay-day in my mind, you know so that I spent it to the best advantage. There's a great deal of pleasure in that. " "A great deal," says she. "That's what I say to Jim ; and then he says his is all spent before pay- day, too but with a difference, you know. I suppose you've got a real good, steady husband?" "Oh, yes, indeed,'* says she, laughing some more. "You must, to have such a nice house as that is going to be. But there! I shouldn't know what to do with it, and I don't envy you a bit/' 'Oh, you needn't," says she, a-twitching her shoulder; "I expect to have trouble enough with it.'' STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 49 I WAS THE MOST UNHAPPY WOMAN. "Not," says I "I don't mean that Jim isn't steady. He's as steady as a clock at that old fiddle of his. But sometimes I do wish he loved his regular trade as well, or else that that was his trade. But I suppose if fiddling was his trade, he'd want to be wood carving all the time." "Why don't you speak to him, " says she, "seriously?" "Well, you can't," says I. "He's so sweet and good-natured and pleasant that when I've got my mind all made up to give him a sound talking to, he makes me like him so and sets me to laughing and 5 o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. plays such a twirling, twittering tune, that I can't do it to save my life." You see, I'd got to talking rather free with her, because she listened so, and seemed interested, and kept looking at me in a wondering way, and at last took Sue up on her lap and gave her her rings to play with. Such rings! My gracious! one of them flashed with stones all round, just like the Milky Way. I should think it would have shone through her glove. "But," says she, "you should tell him that his children will be growing up presently, and"- "Oh, I do that," says I. "And he says, well, he'll do for the bad exam- ple they're to take warning by; and, at any rate, it's no use worrying before the time comes, and when they do grow up they can take care of themselves just the way we do. " "And are you contented to leave it so?" says she. "Well, I'm contented enough. That is, in general. But I do wish some- times that Jim would go down to his work regular every day, with his tin pail in his hand, like other men, and come back at night, and have a good round sum of money in hand at once, instead of just working long enough to get some flour and fish and pork and potatoes and sugar, and then not so much as lifting his finger again till that all gives out; it's such a hand-to- mouth way of living," says I. "And of course we can't get things together, such as a rocking-chair, and a sofa, and a good-sized looking-glass, and an eight-day clock. Not that I care much; only when a lady like you happens in I'd like to give her a seat that's softer. And there's a bureau. Now you wouldn't believe it, but I've never owned a bureau. " "Indeed," says she. "Yes. I don't think it's good manners to be always apologizing about the looks of a place; and so I don't say anything about all the boxes and bundles I have to keep my things in, that do give a littery look; but I am always meaning to have a bureau to put them in, if I can compass it ever. You see, it's hard getting so much money in a pile; and if I do happen to, why then there's something I must have, like Jim's boots, or flannel and yarn and cloth, or a little bed because you can't sleep with more than two children in one bed. And so, somehow, I never get the bureau. But then I don't give it up. Oh, I suppose you think my notions are dreadful extrava- gant," says I, for she was looking at me perfectly amazed; really, just as if I was a little monster, and she'd never seen the like. "And perhaps they are. But people must have something to ambition them, and it seems to me as though, if I ever could get a bureau, I should 'most feel as if I'd got a house!" "Well, I declare!" says she, drawing of a long breath. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 51 "I did come precious near it last fall," says I for I wanted her to see that it wasn't altogether an impossibility, and I wasn't wasting my time in vapors "when Jim was at work up here, helping lay out the garden. He was paid by the day, you know; Mr. Mulgrave paid him; and he was paid here, and I had the handling of the money; and I said to myself, 'Now or never for that bureau!' But, dear me, I had to turn that money over so many times to get the things I couldn't do without any way at all, that before I got round to the bureau it was every cent gone!" Yes," she says, "it's apt to be so. I know if I don't get the expensive thing when I have the money in my purse, the money is frittered away and I've nothing to show for it." "That's just the wayit is with me," says I. "But somehow I can't seem to do without the shoes and flannel, and all that. Oh, here's your husband! That's a powerful horse of his. But I should be afraid he'd break my neck if I was behind him." "Not when my husband's driving," says she. And she bids me good- day, and kisses Sue, and springs into the wagon, and is off like a bird, with her veil and her feathers and her ribbons and streamers all flying. Well, so far so good. Thinks I to myself : "She'll be a very pleasant neigh- bor. If she's ever so fine, she don't put on airs. And it does you good once in a while to have somebody listen when you want to run on about yourself. And maybe she'll have odd chores that I can turn my hand to plain sewing, or clear-starching, or an extra help when company comes in. I shouldn't wonder if we were quite a mutual advantage." And so I told Jim, and he said he shouldn't wonder, too. Well, that evening, just at sunset now I'm telling you the real truth and if you don't believe me, there it is to speak for itself Jim was a-playing "Roslin Castle," and I was a-putting Sue to sleep, when I happened to lookout the window, and there was a job wagon coming straight up the hill, with something in it that had a great canvas hanging over it. "It's a queer time o' day," says I to myself, "to be bringing furniture into Mr. Mulgrave 's house, and it not half done, either. But it s none of my business. Maybe it's a refrigerator to be set in the cellar. ' ' And I went on patting Sue, when all at once Jim's fiddle stopped short, as if it broke, and I heard a gruff voice say- ing, "Where'll you have it? Here, you, sir, lend a hand. " And I dropped Sue on the bed and ran to the door, and they were a-bringing it in there, look at it, as pretty a bureau as you'll find in a day's walk. It's pine, to be sure, but it's seasoned, and every drawer shuts smooth and easy; and it's painted and grained, like black-walnut, and there's four deep drawers, and a shallow one at the bottom, and two little drawers at the top ; and in the upper 5 2 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. drawer of the deep ones there's a place for this all parted off, and a place for that, and a place for the other; and, to crown the whole, a great swinging glass that you can see yourself in from head'to belt. Just look' Oh, I tell you it's a great thing. "With Mrs. Mulgrave's compliments," says the man, and went off and shut the door. I never waited for anything. Sue was screaming on the bed ; I let her scream. I never minded Benny's rassling nor Jim's laughing. I got down every bandbox and basket and bundle I had on the shelves, got out every bag there was under the bed and behind the doors, and in ten minutes that bureau was so full you couldn't shut a drawer. Then I took them all out and fixed them all over again. "It's ours, Jim! "says I; and then I just sat down and cried. The Other Side of the Bureau. "Well, Lawrence, I'm so glad you've come! I thought you never would. And I've had such a lesson read me!" "Lesson? Who's been reading my wife a lesson, I should like to know?" "Who do you think ? Nobody but that little absurd woman there that Mrs, Jim. But I never had such a lesson. Drive slow, please, and let me tell you all about it this horse does throw the gravel in your face so! I'm expecting every moment to see the spokes fly out of the wheels There, now, that's reasonable. This horse is a perfect griffin has legs and wings, too." "Well steady, Frolic, steady' now let's have your lesson. If there's any one can read you a lesson, Mrs. Fanny Mulgrave, I should like to hear it" "Now, Lawrence! However, you know I came up to look at the house, for I've been having my misgivings about that big room. And when I went in, it did look so big and bare! I was dismayed. I paced it off this way and paced it off that way, and thought about what I could put in the corners', and how that window with the sea view would be as good as a picture; and how the whole mantel-piece from dado to cornice, with its white marble carvings and gildings and mirror, was a perfect illumination; and how 1 must con- front it in that great square alcove with a mass of shadow ; and we haven' t a sin- gle thing to go there; and how magnificent an ebony and gold cabinet like that Mrs. Watrous and I saw at the Exhibition the one 1 went into ecstasies over, you know, that goes from floor to ceiling would fill the place. And the more I thought cf it, the more indispensable such a great ebony and gilt cabi- net seemed to be. And I knew it was perfectly impossible" - "How did you know it, may 1 inquire?" DWELLING UPON THE SPIRITUAL. 54 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. "Oh, they cost oh, hundreds of dollars. And, of course the house itself takes all you can spare. But I felt that it would be utterly out of my power to make that room look anything like what I wanted without it. And I kept seeing how beautiful it would be with those gold colored satin curtains of your aunt Sophy's falling back from the windows on each side of it. And I sat down and stared at the spot, and felt as if I didn't want the house at all if I couldn't have that cabinet. And I thought you might go without your cigars and your claret and your horses a couple of years, and we could easily have it. " "Kind of you, and cheerful for me." "Oh, I didn't think anything about that part of it. Just fancy! I thought you were the most selfish man in the world, and I was the most un- happy woman; and all men were selfish, and all women were slaves; and and that ebony and gold cabinet was obscuring my whole outlook on life. I felt so angry with you, and with fate, and with everything, that hot, scalding- hot tears would have shaken down if you had happened to come just then. I'm so glad you didn't, Lawrence, dear; I couldn't have spoken to save my life, and I should have run directly out of the room for fear, if I did speak, I should say something horrid.' "Should you, indeed? And do you imagine I shouldn't have followed?" "Oh, I should have been running." "And whose legs are longest, puss?" "Well, that's nothing to do with it. Just then the whirlwind came up, and the window-places being open, all the dust of the building, all the shav- ings and splinters and lime and sand about, seemed to make a sudden lurch into the room, and I couldn't see across it. And there I was in my new hat! And I made for the door as fast as my feet could fly." "Silliest thing you could do." "I suppose so; for when I was out-doors, the boards on the scaffoldings were pitching through the air at such a rate that I could neither stay there nor go back; and I saw that little shanty just round the corner, and ran in." "That was sensible." "Thanks. And there she was, pots and pails about the door, and a hen just blowing in 'before me, and a parcel of dirty-faced, barefooted children tum- bling round. And such a place! - It fairly made me low-spirited to look at it. I was in mortal fear of getting a grease spot on my dress. But I was in be- fore I knew it, and there was no help for it, and the wind was blowing so I had to stay. "And the lady of that house read you a lesson?" "Such a lesson! You'd have thought, to begin with, that it was a palace. She did the honors like a little duchess. It didn't occur to her, apparently, STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 55 that things were squalid. And that made it so much easier than if she apolo- gized, and you were forced to tell polite fibs and make believe it was all right, you know. She was a trifle vexed because the face of one of the children wasn't clean, and afterward she repentingly gave him the molasses jug to keep him quiet; but another of the children was such a little darling! Well, presently her tongue was loose." "Humph!" "Humph? Didn't you want to hear about it? Oh, I know the whole story of my tongue, but I find you like to listen to it." "So I do, my dear; so I do. And then?" "Well, as I was saying, presently her tongue was loose, and I had the benefit of her experience. And I know she has a good-for-naught of a hus- band, whom she loves a great deal better than I love you oh yes she does, for she seems never to have thought one hard thing concerning him, and I was thinking so many of you, you know! And there she is, and has been, with her cooking stove and table, her two chairs, a bed, and a crib, with a con- tented spirit and a patient soul, and her highest ambition and her wildest day- dream just to have" "An ebony and gold cabinet?" "Oh, no, no! Do drive faster, Lawrence. How this horse does crawl' I want to get it up to her to-night. A bureau. To think of it, only a bureau! You needn't laugh at me. I've an awful cold in my head. And I mean she shall have it, if it takes every cent you gave me for my new jacket. I'll wear the old one. I think I can get what she'll consider a beauty, though, for twelve dollars, or thereabouts. Drive to Veneer's, please, dear. I do feel in such a hurry, when it takes such a little bit to make a woman happy. " "An ebony and gold cabinet, for instance. ' "Oh, nonsense! How you do love to tease, Lawrence! I never want to hear of such a thing again. I wouldn't have it now." "Stop, stop, good wife! You'll say too much. You silly little woman, didn't you know that ebony and gold cabinet which you and Mrs. Watrous saw was made for the place between your windows?" 56 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. CHAPTER THIRD. A Pause By the Way, Who know to live and know to die, Their souls are sale, tfieir triumph nigh. Anon. Who sweeps a room as to God's law Makes that and the action fine, Herbert Never content yourself with doing your second best. Gen. Phil. Sheridan. Has made me King! Now in my new estate What duties must I do, what honors bear? More than all men the King must feel the weight Of constant self-restraint, of watchful care; Beneath his firm control his passions bring. And rule himself if he would be a King. -S. M. Day. But Pallas where she stood Somewhat apart, her clear and bared limbs O'er thwarted with the brazen-headed spear Upon the pearly shoulder leaning coid. The while, alone, her full and earnest eye Over her snow-cold breast and angry cheek Kept watch, waiting decision, made reply. ''Self -reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power. .Yet not for pcwer (power of herself Would come uncalled for), but to live by law, Acting the law we live by without fear; And, because right is right, to follow right, Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence." Tennyson. Self-Reliance and Self-Reverence. We should do poorly with our content with life as it is, if we did not find one of the strongest and firmest of our stepping-stones as we cross the stream to our shining goal of happiness, in the habit of self-reliance and self-rever- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 57 THE SWEET INFLUENCE OF A LOVING SYMPATHY. ence. The eloquent preacher Whitefield is reported to have asked Ten nant: " Do you not rejoice that your time is so near .at hand, when you will be called home and freed from all the difficulties ot this checkered scene? "No," was the reply. "My business is to live as long as I can, as. well as I 5 8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. can, and to serve my Lord and Master as faithfully as I can, until He shall think proper to call me home." The aged saint knew that to every one is appointed his place and duty, and that he is to fill it and to fulfil it till relieved, and that thus his character is developed and strengthened. "The greater the power of thought in any individual," some one has said, "the greater is his spontaneous action; and the greater the spontaneous action the more completely will he live and be. A thousand influences lie in wait to ensnare mortal man. The whole world is an influence. The strongest of all is individual character. Character makes the man. Man can boast of nothing as his own, except the energy which he displays. If unable to arouse this energy let him assume it, let him place himself by a sudden effort in circumstances where he must will." Character then is developed by doing and not by dreaming. St. Augustine's Dream. When St. Augustine determined to give three days and nights to prayer and meditation concerning the deep mystery of the Trinity, on the third night he was very naturally overcome with sleep. In his sleep he dreamed that he was walking by the sea, where a child had made a hole in the sand with his tiny heel and then pouring water into it from a shell he held in his little hand. "What dost thou?" said St. Augustine. "I am pouring the sea into this hole," said the boy. "That cannot be done, my child," said the saint, with a pitying smile. Then all at once a gleam of heaven shone in the child's eyes it was no longer a child. "I can do that, Augustine," he said, with a mighty voice, "as readily as thou canst understand the nature of thy thoughts and of the Trinity." The Spiritual Mind. But this does not imply that one should not dwell upon spiritual thoughts at the proper time, should not, in effect, be more spiritually minded than any- thing else, for to be spiritually minded is to have a sense, a conviction, an as- sured knowledge of the reality, solidity and security of spiritual things. "To find in the unseen region of a heavenly existence a source of motive power, a vast auxiliary, an inexhaustible reservoir of strength, coming in aid of nat- ural conscience, which alone is insufficient to direct or reclaim us, but which we enforce from the divine works, irresistibly triumphs with our first moral A HAPPY FACE DOES A SERVICE TO HUMANITY. 60 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. victory. A supreme uncreated excellence and glory must haunt, elevate, sanctify, and draw us to another citizenship than that which we hold amid these clay built abodes; before the spiritual mind, which is life and peace, can be unfolded within us." Apropos of this, it is Bishop Huntingdon who says "that spiritual serenity is spiritual strength; it comes in by no softness of sen- timent, but by thorough work. It comes by a faith that emboldens and en- ergizes the whole soul " Spiritual or not, every one has his own life to live, and to live alone, alone as he came into being, alone as he will go out into the next stage of being. "There is something awful in this terrible solitude if we look at it. ... One may indeed strive to break in upon the stillness of our solitary being, by crowding others around us, by the tever of excite- ment, or the sweet influence of a loving sympathy, but in all the pauses of out- ward things the solemn voice comes back and the vision of our single, proper, solitary being overshadows the spirits.' We have each one this burden of a separate soul, and we must bear it. How do all deep thinking persons, even in the daily routine, live apart from others, and more or less feel that they do so. Even ordinary life hears voices which add their witness to the truth if we will listen to them." It is in this inner solitude in which we all live that our habit of self-respect, of something more, of self-reverence, takes rise. Reticence. We cultivate it at first, very like, by a fit and proper reticence. We re- member that the world is not very much interested in our especial suffering or joy, and that our haps and mishaps have not the interest of romances to other people. There are, indeed, let us say by the way, many sorrows and troubles of which the old proverb, "least said soonest mended/' holds true. There are some things best hidden in secret receptacles with the lid shut down, rather than aired in the sight of all. Whoever wears a happy face does a service to humanity; for it is infinitely tetter that the world should seem full of sunshine than of gloom, that the general heart should be lifted in gratitude rather than abased with rankling injury; and happiness meanwhile, or its semblance, be- gets happiness, like a dollar at usury, and enriches the moral world as sun- shine does the earth. Those who go about baring their private woes might learn, if they were able to lose the thread of their discourse tor one moment, that most of the rest of the race are busy with the thread of their own discourses, and that although they turn to listen to a plaint and even to give a share of sympathy and pity, it is quite as a matter aside, an affair as much of self- respect as of respect for us, and they are presently hurrying on with their own STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 61 WE ARE MOST OF US INCLINED TO SYMPATHIZE. interest again almost as indifferently as Nature herself seems to hurry. But even allowing that the sympathy is very great, given for a long time, without stint, and actively felt, there comes an end to all things, and perpet- ual draughts must only reach the lees of that. If one is going to demand sympathy forever, one should be very careful as to the manner in which it is demanded, as it is no impossible thing to wear out the patience even of those who love us most. 62 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. Real Troubles. Real troubles can never fail to receive the tribute of warm and enduring compassion ; but real troubles do not last forever, nor are they the ones con- cerning which the most rout is made, for deep sorrow is apt to seek to wrap itself in silence, and of the literally cureless diseases of the body, these the sufferer conceals to the last possible moment, and those, by the very fever they excite in the blood, kindle cheerfulness. We are so constituted, both physi- cally and spiritually, that, under too heavy a burden for us to bear, we sink and fail ; and real trouble of any amount wears us out, be it of body or of soul, before any great lapse of time, and puts an end to any need of sympathy- wears us out before we have a chance to wear patience out. It is, except for very rare and phenomenal cases, the unreal troubles, the actually slight ones, those to be in some measure avoided, mitigated, or overlooked, that are spread before other people with loudest iteration and demand for sympathy. This is especially to be noticed in cases of partial illness, where much dis- comfort is experienced, some pain, great weariness, perhaps, yet not positive danger ; but you will observe that where there is an invalid suffering such illness, no guest enters the door who is not hospitably entreated with a detailed account of that invalid's least symptoms and, unless the guest be nurse or physician, to what result? It is even then ten to one if the ccmplainer be well listened to, the first words having recalled some similar instance in the guest's experience, impatience to recount which, according to the very same tendency, dulls the ear to all the rest of the sickly recital. It is perhaps ex- ceedingly sad and dreary to be obliged to suffer as this invalid does ; we pity greatly; but when the invalid still lives on, growing no worse, we sometimes feel obliged to husband our resources, and to question if good taste would not try to wear the bright face instead of saddening the world with the darkest side. In reality, we are most of us inclined to sympathize generously with sorrow, with injustice, with pain ; but the instinct of self-preservation pre- vents our being able, if we are willing, to endure a too prolonged strain, and it may be pronounced as an axiom that the individual receives the best and surest sympathy who makes the least outcry, and bears the sad lot with fortitude. - It is a little singular, withal, tnat the possessors of these numerous pri- vate woes private ? one should rather say public ! so frequently forget com- mon self-respect. What would the same individuals say of the beggar who goes about showing his sores? And are they doing any differently? Are they not exhibiting a corresponding sort of uncleanness, the same want of modesty and shame, making themselves, as far as in them lies, and with the STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 63 mere difference and not always that that 'exists between the ills of body and mind, as loathsome in all comparative degree? The chief thing to be done in this regard by those who consider them- selves the victims of any remarkable affliction is always to remember that, in spite of all kindness shown, nobody is so interesting to another as he is to himself, and that dignity requires one to keep one's sorrows, as well as one's joys, rather sacred than otherwise. As a rule, in the ecstasies of our great happiness or our great grief, we prefer to be alone. Why in our small happinesses and small griefs do we need so much more companionship? It seems as if one must, after all, be the possessor of a very reassuring amount of vanity to suppose that one should receive more consideration or consolation from one's acquaintances than Job did from his friends. If keeping our woes to ourselves is one help to self-respect, another is the habit of taking life as it comes, sure that it*is the best for us that comes, that we are not inferior wretches in the divine eyes, but that we are here to per- form an appointed part. We will not then spend time in waiting for a path to open for us: "We will go ahead and open it." "By doing my own work," says Ruskin, "poor as it may seem to some, I shall better fulfil God's end in making me what I am, and more truly glorify His name than if I were either going out of my own sphere to do the work of another, or calling another into my sphere to do my proper work for me." The Armor of Patience. There are people to be sure, who may not open the path, to whom it is appointed to wait. "They also serve who only stand and wait," said the blind poet. And we shall find those who really seem to have little else to do than to wait: perhaps they lost their places early in this great procession of travelers from one darkness to another, and so nothing comes to them at the appointed time; they wait for love, for home, for happiness, for work, for wealth, for fame ; usually they wait in vain, and at last they have only to wait for death. Whether it is owing to some of the cross purposes of fate that these people are so unfortunate, or whether it is the fault of their own organism that they have failed to profit by occasion, there is always something very pathetic about the thought of their unsatisfied lot. Others of us know something of the annoyances of waiting, are acquainted with the impatience, the nervousness, the disappointment, if not anger, the vexation of vainly expecting some trifle that in reality is unim- portant; some of us know the misery of waiting for those who do not return; 64 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. every one has listened for desired footsteps, heard them coming from afar, heard them go by; and if such waiting be misery, we can paint to ourselves what a lifetime of waiting is. Of course, with the patient sufferers there is not the poignancy of acute disappointment in a matter of pressing present in- terest, such as that where hangs the life or welfare of a beloved one, or the pivot of our personal fortunes; but with them it is one dull expectancy, one long ache; other waitings come to an end, but this knows neither the pierc- ing pang of certain sorrow and denial, nor ever any sudden lifting of gratifica- tion and content. The outlook, the hopes, the experience, narrows as chance never arrives, and fruition never happens, and they who look at the enduring patience of one thus waiting are sure that, if for no other reason, there must needs be an immortality in order to do justice to those thus wronged of what their soul most craves, although they have everything else in the world. For it is of no consequence to any what else they have in the world if they have not the one precise thing wanted. He who wants the hymns of Homer can not be put off with the Mecanique Celeste, or, to go from great to less, it makes no odds to the woman who has no gloves that she has two dozen handker- chiefs; under no conditions will she who longs for a home of her own be quite satisfied with the home of other people, and he who wishes for recognition of genius does not care to be pointed out for his fine eyes. He waits foi recog- nition ; she waits for love and home ; another waits for a chance of self-educa- tion ; another for freedom from a hated bond ; and whether they wait all their lives, or get the desire at last, while they are waiting it is pitiful. It seems as if there were not happiness enough in this world to go round. "There's chairs enough, " said the suddenly inundated country host, "but there's too much company;" and in this case there is no help for it but that some must go to the wall and wait. Possibly there are some of these waiting ones who are waiting for some- thing more serious than any of the small affairs of the daily paths, who await an answer to the great riddle of life, for the first glimpse of the things beyond, and have girded themselves with the armor of patience, till sight and knowl- edge shall be vouchsafed ; and others there are who, undisturbed by such emo- tion, wait only for the leading of the power that rules the universe to do the will of that power, and help onward its work ; and yet others who, all hope of further helping over, fold their hands and wait only for the word that gives them the freedom of the eternal city. But all such are waiting in good com- pany they wait with the hosts who stand with folded wings about heaven's throne. If there is something lofty in this sainted waiting, not for the blisses of this life, but for the communion of saints beyond, all the other waiting dc- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 65 pends for its merit upon the spirit in which it is taken. If it is quarrelsome, petulant, impatient, we fail to be touched by it; if it is idle and shiftless it renders us indignant, and disapproval almost destroys pity; if it is, on the whole, merely a waiting for opportunity to come, as the boy waited for the river to flow by that he might cross, unaware that opportunity is almost always in the passing moment if we have the knack of seizing it, it receives only a pity that is too near contempt to be pleasant. Yet it behooves us, be the waiting of what sort it may, to keep some sparks of a better pity undestroyed, as we hope for it ourselves, for in one shape or another we are all of us waiting for something that in all our three- score years and ten we fail to find. A Mutual Dependence. Although we must stand alone in the spiritual life, we can not stand alone in the material one, for life is like a great interwoven fabric where one thread holds another. Think of the way in which all the relations of our social life are complicated, so that no one lives in the civilized world who is not doing something for some one else, either physically or intellectually or spiritually, paying rent, it might be said, for the lease of life. The bad are pulling down the good, the good are lifting up the bad, the poor are working for the rich, the rich are spending for the poor, and even the baby of the pauper is creating a demand that some one must supply. The wealthy woman stepping from her stone mansion to her carriage is an illustration, in her mere material affairs, of the way in which all humanity works together, and works for each member of itself. To say nothing of those influences that have shaped her heart and soul, how many workers have contributed to send her abroad in the guise in which she appears ? to how many workers has she contributed a fractional support? The quarry-man has wrought the stone for the mansion; the kiln-man has burned the brick; the woodman has felled the lumber; the miner has sent the iron and lead; carpen- ter and turner, mason and blacksmith and marble-worker and plumber, and all the kindred trades, have been at her service. The watchman has patrolled the street at night for her soft slumbers in that mansion ; the laborer has made that street, and has cleaned it; the lamp-lighter has lighted the gas before it; powerful officials, learned doctors of the boards of health, committees of the city government, have seen that all this was properly done, and she has paid her stipend to assessors, recorders, and receivers of taxes for having it done. Slaughterers, leather-dressers, carriage-makers, again, have afforded her the 66 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. coach into which she steps ; some one of the old countries, or rather the influ- ences working there, have probably sent her coachman and footman ; the far- mer, who supplies much on her table, has raised her horses. And for that same table has the vaquero driven the herd of steers that came sweeping up from bayou and prairie of the far New Mexican and Texan regions; have flocks of fowl been brought from the Northwest ; have fruits been pulled in the tropics, and sweetmeats been sent from the East ; has the fisher in the Columbia taken salmon, and the Hindoo on the bank of the Ganges sent hot sauces; has the peasant of the Rhine tended his grapes, and pressed the must. Look then at her array : the negro has bent under the sun picking the cotton that enters into some portion of it; the flax-raiser has been in her employ; the barefooted Irish girl at home has turned the woven linen for her in sun and dew; the maidens of France have tended the silkworms for her, and reeled the cocoons; the shuttles have tossed to and fro for her in the looms of Lyons; swarthy Orientals have squatted at their rude frames embellishing the rich stuffs she folds about her ; while slaves in the diamond mines have dug and delved for her at one side of the globe, and fishermen have stripped the seal at the other. For her, too, have the keels of ships been laid, to bring her these silks and cashmeres and furs^and jewels ; for her have sailors braved the mid-ocean storms, have pilots gone out to bring the ships to port through curl- ing breakers ; for her the watcher in his solitary sea-washed tower kindles the light-house lamp each evening on the edge of dark. For her, too, have the shining lines of railway steel been laid, and the trains led thundering over them by engineer and fireman, bringing her fineries and dainties ; for her has the daily paper been struck off, with editor, reporter, and printer on her pay- roll ; for her delectation did the morning news run at midnight over the tele- graph wires ; for her safety has the sentinel paced all night on the lonely sea- wall in the harbor defense, and have bodies of troops been moved up and down on the frontier haunted by the tomahawk: For her pleasure has the in- spiration of the musician come, has painter painted, and statuary carved ; has the performer spent weary hours of practice with his instrument ; has the actor plodded through his lines, the dancer through her steps, before the cur- tain rises on the scene where all joy and suffering are fused in swift sparkle and beauty For her the judge sits on his bench to administer justice; for her even the chief of the nation holds the reins of power, and one might say that for her all the nations of the earth exist, and kings and queens and em- perors sit upon their thrones. And to each and all of these, from peasant to prince, who thus work for her she pays tribute, and is, in turn, their feuda- tory. She can not do without them, as they can not do without her; her life is their life, her wishes give them their wishes. And what is true of the rich THE GOOD ARE LIFTING UP THE PAP. 68 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. woman is true of the poor woman as well. For although she have not a dol- lar but what she earns with her hard and pitiful laundry-work, she does not spend it without receiving service and paying tribute also to all the crafts and trades that supply her needs, and the radius in which she is felt is just as the circle of her wants is wide or narrow; and the rich woman is her "bound woman" again, for one furnishes the other with the clean linen that she wants, and one furnishes the other with the money that she wants! With the un- equal fortune of the two there is also a mutual dependence, And if the dependence is so intimate in purely material things, how close is it in things of the spiritual domain, in the mental and moral world. What surmise and suspicion of evil does not swing from one to another in scandal, till it mows down its swath before it? What theft, in the simple injury of the loss of the loser, does not entail trouble passing again from one to another, and in the injury of the crime to the taker does not entail other trouble on all with whom his degradation comes in contact, not only in his diminished power to do good, but in his increased aptitude to do evil ? What wicked thought can prompt the speaking of a wicked word that its vibration shall not cause the air to thrill, and make some other voice its echo? For we can neither do nor think wrong without injuring, in degree as the cuttle-fish darkens the water about him all those within the limit of our influence. Let us be ever so much accountable to fate and to our consciences as separate individuals, we are yet more certainly congregated and bound together in one great circulation and interchange than the atoms of some vast polyp building its coral reef in the South Pacific, and every one's self-respect and reverence must have its effect upon the individuality of every other soul. Man's Majesty. There are, however, those who call themselves philosophers to whom self- reverence, in any high degree, seems as futile as any of their early hopes and dreams, since they consider the human race and its concerns to be only among the smaller affairs of the universe. These people declare that there is some- thing a little mortifying to their vanity in the sense of the insignificance of the human race which almost invariably overcomes them when they see it in a mass. Not, be it understood, when they see it in the roaring, turbulent mass of an infuriated mob; then it assumes, indeed, some of the greatness of elemental forces, and swells and surges like the sea, with one wave fortifying another ; but in the common stream of population going to and fro upon a thousand pitiful small errands along some thoroughfare. Watching this STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 69 stream for any length of time, it irresistibly occurs to them that just so the ants go and come with their little burdens, their wealth of grains of wheat and barley bigger than themselves, just so their soldiers march to battle, just so their slaves toil on at home; and they half won- der if to any su- perior eyes that chance to rest on us we can be of more consequence than these ants are in our own. At the same time they confess that it is odd that recur- rence and multi- tude should make small and common that which in the single and isolated instance is often found to be grand and uncommon in the great sena- tor, mighty sol- dier, singing poet, lovely woman. Yet we have only to take the separate features of any of these isolated instances of humanity say, the malcontents to find the same sensation recurring, and to feel assured that if man be made in the image of any thing divine, it is his inner and spiritual body, and not all the varying eyes and ears and noses. For if it were one of these, even so much as one ear, for example, which one, of all that we meet? This little curled, pink-rimmed, and shell-like ear of the maiden, with its jeweled tip, this pair that stand out on either side of the head like vase handles, these that remind one of the an- swer of the worthy who, on being asked if the story he was about to relate was fit for the auditor's ears, replied that they were long enough, or those TO EVERY EARNEST, STRIVING SOUL. 70 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. where old age, as it too often does, has smoothed out all the charming whorls and creases, and left only a large flat surface of cartilage, those that hold themselves pricked up, alert companions, as if they meant no whisper should escape them, those pinned back so flatly that what goes in on one side may easily come out at the other, those that wag as the scalp moves, those that have the pointed segment of the faun's ear, those that are lobeless, or those that project themselves into space like a trumpet? Yet when one can find so much in the mere outward guise of so small a portion of the frame, so tiny a member as the ear, and is aware that its inner construc- tion is so complicated and delicate with vibrant membrane and laby- rinthine passage, it is not easy to recur to such a fancy as that of the insig- nificance of the owner of such an instrument. No! Man 'who has dared, and who has been given the power to dare, to search almighty secrets, to weigh the sun, to catch the colors of the elements from which stars are made, is a being of importance in the creative eyes, and he owes a debt of self- respect to the Power that made him. "Your body," says Rutherford, "is the dwelling-place of the spirit, and therefore for the love you carry to the sweet Guest give a due regard to His house of clay, for the house is not your own." We read in the "Records of a Quiet Life" that it is one of the hardest things in the world to be true to one's self in one's intercourse with others. "There is scarcely anything that requires more real courage. How little is there of true freedom from all put-on conversation and manner! The more truly Christian is our spirit, the more truly shall we rise out of this bondage, which is of the earth earthly, to preserve our truth and uprightness of charac- ter, to be in all places and at all times and with all people one and the same, not equally open or equally communicative, but equally free from what is artificial and constrained, and steadfast in keeping fast hold of those princi- ples and feelings which are known to be according to God's will and law." The great poem of the "Happy Warrior" does not apply to the soldier merely, but to every earnest, striving soul on earth. "Who is the Happy Warrior? Who is he That every man in arms should wish to be? It is the generous spirit, who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought; Whose high endeavors are an inward light That makes the path before him always bright; Who, with a natural instinct to discern What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn, Abides by this resolve, and stops not there. But makes his moral being his prime care. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 7 , But who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which 'heaven has joine. Great issues, good or bad for human kind, Is happy as a Lover, and attired With sudden brightness like a man inspired; And through the heat of conflict keeps the law In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw; Or if an unexpected call succeed, Come when it will, is equal to the need." I have thought that the story of Miss Moggaridge's Provider was an illus- tration of that sweet self -reverence which implies absolute belief and truth in Providence, and of the truth of the saying of Thomas A Kempis that, "From a pure heart proceedeth the fruit of a good life." Miss Moggaridge's Provider. The way in which people interested themselves in Miss Moggaridge's affairs would have been a curiosity in itself anywhere but in the seacoast town where Miss Moggaridge lived. But there it had become so much a mat- ter of course for one neighbor to discuss the various bearings of all the inci- dents in another neighbor's life, and if unexplained facts still remained to supply the gap from fancy in addition to the customary duty of keeping the other neighbor's conscience, that it never struck a soul among all the wor- thy tribes there that they were doing anything at all out of the way in gossip- ing, wondering, conjecturing, and declaring this, that, and the other about Miss Moggaridge's business after a fashion that would have made any one but herself perfectly wild. But Miss Moggaridge was a placid soul, and as the fact of her neighbor's gossip implied a censure which perhaps she felt to be not altogether unde- served, while, on the other hand, their wonder was not entirely uncomplimen- tary, she found herself able to disregard them altogether, and in answer to query, complaint, or expostulation concerning her wicked waste, which was to make woful want, always met her interlocutor with the sweet and gentle words, "The Lord will provide." Poor Miss Moggaridge's father had been that extraordinary phenomenon, a clergyman possessed not only of treasure in Heaven, but of the rustier and more corruptible treasure of this world's goods an inherited treasure, by the way, which he did not have time to scatter to the four winds in person, as it was left to him by an admirer (to whom his great sermon on the Seventh 72 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. Seal had brought spiritual peace), but a few years before his death, which happened suddenly ; and the property was consequently divided according to his last will and testament between two of his three children, giving them each a modest competency, but leaving the third to shift for himself, as he always had done. The first thing which Miss Moggaridge did with her freedom and her money was to imitate the example of the "fearless son of Ginger Blue," and try a little travel, to the great scandal of souls in her native borough, who found no reason why Miss Moggaridge should want to see any more of the world than that borough presented to her, and never shared her weak and wicked desire to see what sort of region it was that lay on the other side of the bay and the breakers. "The idea, Ann!" said Miss Keturah Meteyard, a well-to-do spinster whose farm and stock, and consequently whose opinion, were the pride of the place "the idea of your beginning at your time of life to kite round like a young girl. The eyes of the fool are in the ends of the earth," quoted Miss Keturah, with a long sigh. "For my part, the village is good enough for me!" "And for me too, Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge. "I am not going any great distance; I I am going to see Jack." Now Jack was the scapegrace Moggaridge, who had run away to sea and therewith to the bad ; and the stern clergyman, his father, having satisfied his mind on the point that there was no earthly reclamation possible for Jack, had with true, old-style rigor commenced and carried on the difficult work of tearing the boy out of his heart, that since Heaven had elected Jack to damna- tion there might be no carnal opposition on his own part through the weak bonds of the flesh; and Jack's name had not been spoken in that house from which he fled for many a year before the old man was gathered to his fathers. For all that, every now and then a letter came to Miss Ann and another went from her in reply, and her father, with an inconsistency very mortifying but highly human, saw them come and saw them go, convinced that he should hear from Ann whatever news need might be for him to hear; and so it came to pass that Miss Ann knew of Jack's whereabouts, and that Miss Keturah, hearing her intent of seeking them Miss Keturah with one eye on the com- munity and one on her old pastor held up her hands a brief instant in holy horror before memory twitched them down again. 'Ann!" said she, solemnly "Ann, do you know what you are doing?" "Doing?" said Miss Moggaridge. "In going to see Jack, do you mean? Certainly I do. A Christian duty." "And what," said Miss Keturah "what constitutes you a better judge STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 73 of Christian duty than your sainted father, a Christian minister for fifty years breaking the bread of life in this parish?" "Very well," said Miss Moggaridge, unable to answer such an argument as that for Miss Keturah fought like those armies that put their prisoners in the front, so that a shot from Miss Moggaridge must necessarily have demol- ished her father the clergyman "very well," said his faithful daughter, "perhaps not a Christian duty, we will say not; but, at any rate, a natural duty." "And you dare to set a natural duty, a duty of our unregenerate condi- tion, above the duties of such as are set apart from the world?" "My dear Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge, "I am not sure that we ever are or ever should be set apart from the world ; that we are not placed here to work in it and with it till our faith and our example leaven it." "Ann Moggaridge!" said the other, springing to her feet, with a lively scarlet in her yellow face, a color less Christian perhaps than that of her re- marks, "this is rank heresy, and I won't stay to hear it!" "O pooh, Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge, listening to the denunciation of her opinions with great good-humor, "we've gone all through that a hundred times. Sit down again we'll leave argument to the elders I want to talk about something else. "Something else?" with a change as easy as Harlequin's. "Yes, I want to talk to you about that corner meadow. It just takes a jog out ot your land, and I've an idea you'd like to buy it. Now say so, freely, if you would." "Humph! what has put that into your head, I'd like to know? You've refused a good price for it, you and your father, every spring for ten years, to my knowledge. You want," said Miss Keturah, facing about with uplifted forefinger like an accusing angel in curl-papers and brown gingham "you want the ready money to go and see Jack with! ' "Well, yes. I don't need the meadow and I do need the money; for when you have everything tied up in stocks, you can't always get at it, you know." "That's very shiftless of you, Ann Moggaridge," said Miss Keturah. "When the money's gone, it's gone, but there the meadow'll always be." 'Bless your heart, for the matter of that, I've made up my mind to get rid of all the farm."' "Get rid of the farm!' "Yes. I'm not well enough nor strong enough to carry it on by m3 T self, now father's gone, and his means are divided. Your place would make me blush like a fever beside it. No, I couldn't keep it to advantage; so I think 74 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. I shall let you take the corner meadow, if you want it, and Squire Purcell will take the rest." "And what will you do with yourself when you come back from from Jack, if you really mean to go?" "O, board with the Squire or anywhere; the Lord will provide a place; perhaps with you," added Miss Moggaridge, archly. "No, indeed," said Miss Keturah, "not with me! We never should have any peace of our lives. There isn't a point in all the Westminster Catechism that we don't differ about, and we should quarrel as to means of grace at every meal we sat down to. Besides which, you would fret me to death with your obstinacy when you are notoriously wrong as in this visit to Jack, for instance." "Jack needs me, Kitty. I must go to him." "It is your spiritual pride that must go and play the good Samaritan!" "Jack and I used to be the dearest things in the world to each other when we were children, you know," said Miss Ann, gently. "We had both our pleasures and our punishments together. The severity of our home drove him off I don't know what it drove him to. I waited, because father claimed my first duty; now, I must do what can be done to help Jack into the narrow path again. ' "The severity of your home!" said Miss Keturah, who had heard nothing since that; "of such a home as yours, such a Christian home, with with"- "The benefit of clergy," laughed Miss Moggaridge. "Ann, you're impious!" exclaimed Miss Keturah, bringing down her um- brella hard enough to blunt its ferule. "Much such a spirit as that will do to bring Jack back! It isn't your place to bring him back, either. You've had no call to be a missionary, and it's presumption in you to interfere with the plain will of Providence. You will go your own gait, of course, but you sha'n't go without knowing that I and every friend you have disapprove of the pro- ceeding. And it's another step to total beggary, for the upshot of it all will be that Jack coaxes and wheedles your money." "My money?" said Miss Ann. "There will be no need of any coaxing and wheedling; it's as much his as mine." "His!" "I know father expected me to do justice, and so he didn't trouble him- self. I should feel I was wronging him in his grave if I refused." "And what is Luke going to do, may I ask?" inquired Miss Keturah, with grim stolidit} "Because Luke won't give up any of his, is no reason why I shouldn't." STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 75 "Luke won't? That's like him. Sensible. Sensible 1 He won't give the Lord's substance to the ungodly." "So he says. But I m atraid not to the godly, either. I'm afraid he wouldn't even to me if 1 stood in want, though perhaps 1 oughtn t to say so." 'Not it you'd wasted all you have on Jack, certainly." "1 shall divide my property with Jack as a measure of simple Justice, Kitty, ' ' said Miss Moggaridge, firmly " It is as much his as mine, as 1 said. " "And when it s all gone, 15 continued Miss Keturah, "what is to become of you then?" "When it's all gone? O, there's no danger of that." 'There's danger of anything between your butter-fingers, Ann. So if it should happen, what then?" "The Lord will provide," said Miss Ann, sweetly. "The Lord "helps them that help themselves," said Miss Keturah. "Well, I'm gone. I'd wrestle longer with you if !t was any use you're as set as Lot's wife. I suppose," she said, turning round after she had reached the door, "youTI come and see me before you go. I've I've something you might take Jack; you know T ve been knitting socks all the year and we've no men-folks,'"' and then she was gone. Poor Miss Keturah a good soul after her own fashion, which was not Miss Moggaridge s fashion once she had expected the wicked Jack to come home trom sea and marry her; and the expectation and the disappointment together had knit a bond between her and his sister that endured a great deal ot stretching and striving. The neighbors said that she had pious spells; but if that were so, certainly these spells were sometimes so protracted as almost to become chronic, and in fact frequently to assume the complexion of a com- plaint; but they never hindered her from driving a bargain home to the head, from putting royal exactions on the produce of her dairy, from sending her small eggs to market, and from disputing every bill, from the tax- man's to the tithes, that ever was presented at her door. But somewhere down under that crust of hers there was a drop of honey to reward the adventurous seeker, and Miss Ann always declared that she knew where to find it. So Miss Moggaridge went away from the seacoast tor some seasons, and the tides ebbed and flowed, and the moons waxed and waned, and the years slipped off after each other, and the villagers found other matter for their gossip; and the most of them had rather forgotten her, when some half dozen years later she returned, quite old and worn and sad, having buried tlie wretched Jack, and a goodly portion of her modest fortune with him. and bringing back nothing but his dog as a souvenir of his existence a poor little shivering hound that in no wise met the public approbation. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. A LETTER CAME TO MISS ANN. But Miss Moggaridge did not long allow her old acquaintance? to remain unaware of her return among them. The very day after her arrival a disas- trous fire in the village had left a family destitute and shelterless; and, head- ing a subscription list with a moderate sum, she went round with it in person, as she had been wont to do in the old times, till the sight of her approaching STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 77 shadow had caused the stingy man to flee. And now, with every rebuff she met, every complaint of hard times, bad bargains, poor crops, she altered the figures against her own name for those of a larger amount, till by night-fall the forlorn family had the means of being comfortable again, through the goodness of the village and Miss Moggaridge; for had not the village given the cipher, whatever might be the other figures which Miss Moggaridge had of herself prefixed thereto ? True to her instincts, Miss Keturah Meteyard waylaid her old friend next day. "I've heard all aboutit, Ann, soyouneedn't pretend ignorance," she began. "And you may think it very fine, but I call it totally unprincipled. Are you Croesus, or Rothschild, or the Queen of Sheba come again, to be running to the relief of all the lazy and shiftless folks in the country? Everybody is talking about it; everybody's wondering at you, Ann!" "Everybody may reimburse, me, Kitty, just as soon as they please." 'Perhaps they will, when they're angels. The idea of your"- 'But, Kitty, I couldn't see those poor Morrises without a roof over them; and if you want the truth," said Miss Moggaridge, turning like the trodden worm, "I can't imagine how you could. Why, where on earth could they go?" "There was no need of seeing them without a roof. The neighbors'd have taken them in till they rebuilt the place. Perhaps that would have spurred Morris up enough to make an exertion, which he never did in his life. If he'd been one atom forehanded, he'd have had something laid by in bank to fall back on at such a time. I declare, I've no patience!" cried Miss Keturah, with nobody to dispute her. And any one would be glad of those two girls as help, " she continued. "Great lazy, hulking, fine ladies they are ! And the first thing they'll do with your money will be to buy an ingrain carpet and a looking-glass and a couple of silk gowns, whether there's enough left for a broom and a dish-cloth or not. Go?" cried Miss Keturah, now quite at tne climax of her virtuous indignation. "They could go to the poorhouse, where you'll go if some of your friends don't take you in hand and have a guardian appointed over you!" But Miss Moggaridge only laughed ana kissed her censor good by, and made up her mind to save the sum of her prodigality out of her own expenses in some way ; by giving up her nice boarding-place, perhaps, and boarding herself in two or three rooms of a house she still owned, where she could go without groceries and goodies, for instance, in such things as fruit and sugar and butter and eggs and all the dainties to be concocted therewith; for bread and meat and milk would keep body and soul together healthily, she reasoned, and acted on her reasoning. But instead of making good, by this economy, the sum she had extracted from her hoard, she presently found that the sav- 7 8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. ing thus accomplished had been used upon the outfit of a poor young minister going to preach to the Queen of Madagascar. Miss Keturah was not so loud in her disapproval of this as of some of Miss Moggaridge's other less eccen- tric charities; but as giving away in any shape was not agreeable to her, she could not help remarking that, if she were Miss Moggaridge, she should feel as if she had lent a hand to help cast him into a fiery furnace, for that would undoubtedly be the final disposition of the unfortunate young minister by the wicked savages of the island whither he was bound. She herself only bestowed upon him some of her knitted socks to walk the furnace in. What she did cavil at much more was the discovery that Miss Moggaridge was living alone. "Without help, Ann Moggaridge! "she said, laying her hands along her knees \n an attitude of fine Egyptian despair. "And pinching yourself to the last extremity, I'll be bound, for these Morrises and young ministers and what not ' What would your father say to see it ? And if you should be sick in the middle of the night and no one near to hear you call" "The Lord'll provide for me, Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge, for the thousandth time. "He won't provide a full-grown servant-girl, springing up out of noth- ing." "But there's no need of worry, dear, with such health as mine." "It's tempting Providence!" "Tempting Providence to what?' "Ann!" said Miss Keturah, severely, "I don't understand how any one as good as you for you are good in spite of your faults"- "There is none good but One," Miss Moggaridge gently admonished her. "As good as you," continued Miss Keturah, obliviously, "and enjoying all your lifelong privileges, can indulge in levity and so often go so near the edge of blasphemy, without a shudder." "Dear Kitty,'' said Miss Ann, laughing, "we shall never agree, though we love each other so much; so where is the use? For my part, I think it blasphemy to suppose Providence could be tempted." "Ann! Ann!" said Miss Keturah, solemnly. "Don't indulge such thoughts. They will lead you presently into doubting the existence of a per- sonal Devil! And now, " continued she, reverting to the original topic, "I sha'n't go away till you promise-me to take in help, so that you needn't die alone in the night, and be found stiff in the morning by a stranger' " And poor Miss Moggaridge had to promise, at last, though it upset all her little scheme of saving in groceries and firewood and wages, and went to her heart sorely. It was not very long after this expostulation of Miss Keturah's that a STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 79 stout-armed serving-woman having been added to Miss Moggaridge's family another more singular addition made itself on the night when a ship was nipped among the breakers behind which the town had intrenched itself, and went to pieces just outside the cove of stiller water, at whose head stood the house in which were Miss Moggaridge's rooms. Of all the freighting lives on board that doomed craft, one thing alone ever came to shore a bird, that, as Miss Moggaridge peered from the door which Bridget held open for her, fluttered through the tumultuous twilight air and into her arms. Miss Mog- garidge left Bridget to set her back to the door and push it inch by inch, till one triumphant slam proclaimed victory over the elements, while hastening in herself to bare her foundling before the fire. It was a parrot, drenched with the wave and the weather in spite of his preening oils, shivering in her hands, and almost ready to yield to firelight and warmth the remnant of life that survived his battling flight. Miss Moggaridge bestowed him in a basket of wool in a corner of the heated hearth, placed milk and crumbs at hand, and no more resumed her knitting -and soft-voiced psalm-singing, but fidgeted about the darkened windows and wondered concerning the poor souls who, since they never could make shore again themselves, had given the bird the liberty of his wings. She was attracted again to the fireside by a long whistle of unspeakable relief, and, turning, saw the bird stepping from the basket, treading daintily down the tiles, and waddling to and fro before the blessed blaze, while he chuckled to himself unintelligibly, but quite as if he had prac- ticed the cunningest trick over storm and shipwreck that could have been de- vised. Bridget would have frowned the intruder down, and did eventually give warning "along of the divil's imp," as she called him ; but Miss Mogga- ridge was as pleased as a child; it was the only thing of the sort in the village, and what a means to attract the little people, whom she loved, and at the same time to administer to them diluted doses of the moral law! Had she chosen, to be sure, it would have been one of the great gray African things she had read of, that spread a scarlet tail and seemed the phoenix of some white- washed brand in which the smouldering fire yet sparkles. But this was a lit- tle fellow with scarlet on his shoulders and his wings, a golden cap on his head, and it would have been hard to say whether the glistening mantle over his back were emerald crusted with gold or gold enameled with emerald, so much did every single feather shine like a blade of green grass full of flint. While she looked, and admired, and wished, nevertheless, that it were gray, another door was pushed gently open and Folly entered Jack's slim white hound, as much a miracle of beauty in his own way made at the bird with native instinct, then paused with equally native cowardice, and looked at Miss Moggaridge and wagged his tail, as who should say, "Praise my forbearance."" 8o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS But the par- rot, having surveyed Master Fol- ly on this side and on that from a pair of eyes like limpid jewels, op- ened his mouth and barked. No- thing else was needed; the p h a n - torn of the gray parrot disappeared whence he came; more intelligence no child could have shown. Miss Mogga- ridge caught him up, re- ceived a vicious bite for her 'pains, but, notwithstanding, suffered him to cling upon her fingers, tightly grasping which, he looked down upon the hound, flapped his gorgeous wings and crowed ; then he went through an astonishing series of barn-yard ac- complishments, finally ending in a burst and clatter of the most up- roarious and side-splitting laughter. Having done this, he had exhaust- ed his repertory, and never for all the time during which he delighted the heart of Miss Moggaridge and forced Miss Keturah to regard him as a piece of supernatural sin created by the Evil One in mockery of the crea- THE SHIP WENT TO PIECES. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 81 tion of man, so that had she but been a good Catholic she would have crossed herself before him, and, without b.eing an ancient Persian, did frequently pro- pitiate him after the fashion of the Ahrimanian worship never during all that time did he catch a new sound or utter an articulate syllable to denote from what nationality Spanish, Portuguese, or Dutch he had received his earliest lessons. But he had done enough. Folly, never particularly brilliant in his wits, and not more strongly developed in his affections, was given hearth-room on sufferance for his lissome limbs, and on general grounds of compassion for himself and Jack together; but the parrot, luring one on with perpetual hopes of new attainment, and born of the tropical sun that made a perpetual mirage in her imagination, became cherished society, and had not only a shining perch, but a nest in Miss Moggaridge's affections as well a nest that cost her dearly some years afterward. But before the town had much more than done wondering at Miss Mog- garidge's parrot, and telling all the gossipry of his deeds and misdeeds of the way he picked the lock of his cage, walked up the walls, tearing off the pa- pering as he went, bit big splinters from the window-blinds, drove away every shadow of a cat, and made general havoc Miss Moggaridge gave such occa- sion for a fresh onslaught of tongues, that the bird was half forgotten. It was when her name was found to have been indorsed upon her brother Luke's paper Luke being the resident of another place and in his failure the larger portion of her earthly goods was swept out of her hands. One would have supposed that Miss Moggaridge had been guilty of a forgery, and that not her own property, but the church funds, had been made away with by means of the wretched signature ; and a particular aggravation of the ca- lamity, in the eyes of her towns-people, seemed to be its clandestine charac- ter; if they had been consulted or had even been made aware that such a thing might possibly be expected, much might have been condoned. As it was, they were glad, they were sure, that she felt able to afford such fine doings, but they had heard of such a thing as being just before you were gen- erous, and they only hoped she wouldn't come upon the town in her old age in consequence, that was all ; for much that close-fisted Luke would do for her, even if he got upon his feet again Luke who had been heard to remark tloat the loss of a cent spoiled the face of a dollar ! But Luke never got upon his feet again, and during the rest of his lire he struggled along from hand to mouth, with one child binding shoes and an- other in the mills, a scanty board, a thread-bare back ; and though Miss Mog- garidge was left now with nothing but a mere pittance of bank stock over and above the possession of the house in which she reserved her rooms, yet out of the income thus remaining she still found it possible now and then to 8a STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. send a gold-piece to Luke a gold-piece which in his eyes looked large enough to eclipse the sun, while she patched and turned and furbished many a worn old garment of her own, in order that she might send a new one to her sister- in-law, of whom Miss Keturah once declared that she put her more in mind of an old shoe-knife worn down to the handle than of anything else in the world. "As if it would make the least difference in her appearance, " said Miss Keturah, who had a faculty of mousing out all these innocent crimes against society on Miss Moggaridge's part, "whether she wore calico or homespun? Dress up a split rail ! And you rigging yourself out of therag -bag so as to send her an alpaca. Why can't she work? /work." "Bless you, Kitty, doesn't she work like a slave now for the mere privi- lege of drawing her breath? What more can she do?" "That's no business of mine, or yours either. Your duty, " said Miss Keturah, "your bounden duty's to take care of yourself. And here you are wearing flannels thin as vanity, because you've no money left to buy thick ones; and you'll get a cold and a cough through these Luke Moggaridges that'll carry you out of the world; and then," exclaimed she, with an unus- ual quaver in her piercing tone "then I should like to know what is to be- come of" "The Lord will provide for me, Kitty." "So I've heard you say!" she snapped. "But I was talking about my self He won't provide me with another Ann Moggaridge" And there Miss Keturah whisked herself out of sight, possibly to prevent any such catas- trophe as her friend's seeing a tear in those sharp eyes of hers unused to such weak visitants. Yet as a law of ethics is the impossibility of standing still in face of the necessity of motion, either progressive or retrograde, so Miss Moggaridge went on verifying the worst prognostications of her neighbors; and it was surmised that the way in which she had raised the money to pay for having the cataract removed from old Master Sullivan's eyes eyes worn out in the service of two generations of the town's children which she was one day found to have done, was by scrimping her store of wood and coal (Bridget's departure having long left her free to do so), to that mere apology for a fire the winter long to which she owed a rheumatism that now began to afflict her hands and feet in such a manner as to make her nearly useless in any physical effort. It was no wcnder the townsfolk were incensed against her, for her conduct implied a reproof of theirs that was vexatious; why in the world couldn't she have let Master Sullivan's eyes alone? He had looked out upon the world and had seen it to his satisfaction or dissatisfaction for three- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 83 > score years and over ; one would have imagined he had seen enough of a place whose sins he was always bewailing! But a worse enormity than almost any preceding ones remained yet to be perpetrated by Miss Moggaridge. It was an encroachment upon her cap- ital, her small remaining capital, for the education of one of the Luke Mog- garidges, a bright boy whom his aunt thought to be possessed of too much ability to rust away in a hand-to-hand struggle with life. Longing, perhaps, to hear him preach some searching sermon in his grandfather's pulpit, and to surrender into safe and appreciative keeping those barrels full of sacred man- uscripts which she still treasured, she had resolved to have him fitted and sent to college. Very likely the town in which the boy lived thought it a worthy action of the aunt's, but the town in which he didn't live regarded it as a piece of Quixotism on a par with all her previous proceedings, since the boy would have been as well off at a trade, Miss Moggaridge much better off, and the town plus certain tax money now lost to it forever. It was, however, re- served for Miss Keturah to learn the whole extent of her offence before the town had done so to learn that she had not been spending merely all her in- come, dismissing Bridget, freezing herself, starving herself, but she had been drawing on her little principal till there was barely enough to buy her a yearly gown and shoes, and in order to live at all she must spend the whole remainder now, instead of waiting for any interest. "Exactly, exactly, exactly what I prophesied!" cried Miss Keturah. "And who but you could contrive, let alone could have done, such a piece of work ? You show ingenuity enough in bringing yourself to beggary to have made your fortune at a patent. You have a talent for ruin!" "I am not afraid of beggary, Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge. "How often shall I quote the Psalmist to you? 'I have been young and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. ' ' "I know that, Ann. I say it over often. It's the only thing that leaves me any hope for you." And Miss Keturah kept a silent meditation for a few moments. "As if it wasn't just as well," she broke forth at length, "for that Luke Moggaridge boy to dig potatoes or make shoes, as to preach bad ser- mons, or kill off patients, or make confusion worse confounded in a lawsuit!" Whether Miss Moggaridge thought it a dreadful world where every one spoke the truth to his neighbor, or not, she answered, pleasantly ," Kitty, dear, I should have consulted you as to that" "As to what ? Shoes or sermons? He might have made good shoes. " "Only," continued Miss Moggaridge, meekly but determinedly "only you make such a breeze if you think differently, that I felt it best to get him through college first" 84 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. "Why couldn't he get himself through?" "Well, he's sickly." *'O dear Lord, as if there weren't enough of that kind! Serve Heaven because he can't serve the flesh! Taking dyspepsia and blue devils for faith and works!" "You mustn't now, Kitty, you mustn't. I meant for us all to advise to- gether concerning the choice ot a profession after his graduation. For he has real talent, he'll do us credit." "Well," said Miss Keturah, a little mollified, "it might have been wise. It might have saved you a pretty penny, /might have lent the young man the money he needed, and it would have done him no harm to feel that he was to refund it when he was able," "That is exactly what 1 have done, Kitty. And I never thought of let- ting any one else, even you though I'd rather it should be you than any one while I was able. And I'm sure I can pinch along any way till he can pay me. and if he never can pay me, he can take care of me, for he is a noble boy a noble boy. " "And what if he shouldn't live to do anytnmg of the sort?" "O, I can't think of such a thing." ''He mightn't, though. There's many a hole in the skimmer." "I don t know 1 don't know what 1 should do. But there, no matter. I shall be taken care of some way, come what will. I always have been. The Lord will provide." "Well now, Ann, I'm going to demand one thing by my right as your next friend, and one caring a great deal more about you than all the Lukes in the world. You won t lend that boy, noble or otherwise, another penny, but you'll let him keep school and work his way through his profession him- self." "No indeed. Kitty' That would make jt six or seven years before he got his profession. There are only a few hundreds left, so they may as well go with the others." "Light come, light go,"' sniffed Miss Keturah. "If you'd had to work for that money What. I repeat, what in the mean time is to become of you ?" "Don't fear for me. the Lord will provide." "The pooihouse will, you mean! Why in the name of wonder can't he work his way up. as well as his betters f" 'Well, the truth is. Kitty, he's he's engaged. And of course he wants to be married And" But Miss Keturah had risen from her chair and stalked out, and slammed the door behind her. without another syllable. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 85 Poor Miss Moggaridge. It was but little more than a twelvemonth after this conversation that her noble boy was drowned while bathing; and half broken-hearted for she had grown very fond of him through his constant let- ters and occasional visits she never called to mind how her money, princi- pal and interest and education, had gone down with him and left her abso- lutely penniless, save for the rent of the residue of the house where she kept her two or three rooms. But Miss Keturah did. Miss Moggaridge was now, moreover, quite unable to do a thing to help herself. Far too lame in her feet to walk and in her hands to knit, she was obliged to sit all day in her chair doing nothing, and have her meals brought to her by the family, and her rooms kept in order, in payment of the rent, while her time was enlivened only by the children who dropped in to see the parrot an entertainment ever new ; by a weekly afternoon of Mrs. Morris', who came and did up all the little odd jobs of mending on which she could lay her willing hands; by the calls of Master Sullivan, glowering at the world out of a pair of immense spectacles, through which he read daily chapters of the Psalms to her; and by the half -loving, half-quarreling visits of Miss Ke- turah. She used to congratulate herself in those days over the possession of the parrot. "I should forget my tongue if I hadn't him and the hound to talk with/' she used to say, in answer to Miss Keturah's complaints of the screech- ing with which the bird always greeted her. "He is a capital companion. When I see him so gay and good-natured, imprisoned in his cage with none of his kind near, I wonder at myself for repining over my confinement in so large and airy a room as this, where I can look out on the sea all day long." And she bent her head down for the bird to caress, and loved him none the less on the next day when Miss Keturah would have been glad to wring his neck for the crowning disaster of her life, which he brought about that very evening. jr For the mischievous fellow, working open the door of his cage, as he had done a thousand times before, while Miss Moggaridge sat nodding in her chair, had clambered with bill and claw here and there about the room, calling in the aid of his splendid wings when need was, till, reaching a match-safe and securing a card of matches in his bill with which he made off, pausing only on the top of a pile of religious newspapers, on a table beneath the chintz window-curtains, to pull them into a multitude of splinters; and the conse- quence was that presently his frightened screams woke the helpless Miss Mog- garidge to a dim, hall -suffocated sense that the world was full of smoke, and to find the place in flames, and the neighbors rushing in and carrying her, and the parrot clinging to her, to a place of safety, upon which Miss Keturah swooped down directly and had her removed to her own house and installed in 86 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. the bedroom adjoining the best-room, without asking her so much as whether she would or no. "Well, Ann," said Miss Keturah, rising from her knees after their even- ing prayers, "it's the most wonderful deliverance I ever heard anything about" 'It is indeed," sobbed the poor lady, still quivering with her excitement. "And, under Heaven, I may thank Poll for it," she said, looking kindly at the crestfallen bird on the chair's arm, whose screams had alarmed the neigh- bors. "Indeed you may!" the old Adam coming uppermost again strange they never called it the old Eve "indeed you may thank him for any mischief picking out a baby's eyes or setting a house afire, it's all one to him. But there's no great loss without some small gain; and there's one thing in it I'm truly grateful for, you can't waste any more money, Ann Moggaridge, for you haven't got any more to waste!" "Why, Kitty, there's the land the house stood on, that will bring some- thing" profoundly of the conviction that her possession was the widow's cruse, and with no idea of ever taking offence at anything that Miss Keturah said. "Yes, something. But you'll never have it," said Miss Keturah, grimly. "For I'm going to buy that land myself, and never pay you a cent for it; so you can't give that away! And now you're here, I'm going to keep you, Ann; for you're no more fit to be trusted with yourself than a baby. And I shall see that you have respectable gowns and thick flannels and warm stockings and the doctor. You'll have this room, and I the one on the other side that I've always had; and we'll have your chair wheeled out in the daytimes; and I think we shall get along very well together for the rest of our lives, if you're not as obstinate and unreasonable" "O Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge, looking up with streaming eyes that showed how great, although unspoken, her anxiety had become, and how great the relief from that dread of public alms which we all share alike "O Kitty! I had just as lief have everything from you as not. I had rather owe" "There's no owing in the case!" said Miss Keturah, tossing her head, to the infinite danger of the kerosene from the whirlwind made by her ribbons. "O, there is! there is!" sobbed Miss Moggaridge. "Debts, too, I never can pay! You've always stood my next best friend to Heaven, dear; and didn't I say," she cried, with a smile breaking like sunshine through her tears "didn't I say the Lord would provide?" ;vA BONDS OF BLOOD RELATIONSHIP. (87) 88 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. CHAPTER FOURTH. A Family Tree. And hie him home at evening's close To sweet repast and calm repose. Gray. He that hath a house to put's head in has a good head-piece. Shakespeare. She is my home, My household stuff, my field, my barn. Shakespeare. From our own selves our joys must flow And that dear hut our home. Nathaniel Cotton. Who hath a family Stands not alone, Buttressed by clansmen, Holpen by bannermen, Battle all merrily Many as one. Old Song. Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam, His first best country ever is at home. Goldsmith. When one has made up one's mind to live in the present and to find a great joy in expectancy, that is to foster a sunny disposition and cease re- gretting the past, and when one is entrenched in a firm self-respect, one turns first for happiness to the family relation. God setteth the solitary in families is a text that we all receive with grateful hearts, and the more so the older we grow. The homely saying that blood is thicker than water is one of the truths that it is usually held there is no gainsaying, and it is believed that it contains, as many another law does, the concentrated wisdom of years. Yet we have always doubted if, after all, it were natural feeling that predominated among us so much as family feeling, if one can discriminate between the two ; for natural feeling is shared with brutes and savages, but the other belongs STEPPING vSTONES TO HAPPINESS. 89 THE SAME MOTHER S KNEE. truly to those that are bound in the bonds of blood-relationship. The brute shows none of it, except in relation to the mate, and not always then, and for a very brief season to the offspring. The love of brothers and sisters, of grandparents and cousins, does not distinguish savages, many of whom are known to leave their old and sick to lonely and speedy death But the moment that civilization advances at all, families and clans become established, the blood that flows in kindred veins 90 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. begins to be recognized and felt. Some of this sentiment might possibly be traced to the sense of possession, for although we do not reason it out in cor- responding words, we are aware of it perhaps through those dark senses that are to the others what the dark rays of the spectrum are to the seven colors these people are ours, are in some degree a part of ourselves, certainly of our lives; their conduct is an honor or a dishonor to us; we are forced to think of them, and it flatters our self-love to think well of them ; what they are it is possible that we, of the same descent, may be also, and this little thread of pride feels a pull at the third generation Household Associations But cannot much more of the sentiment be traced to association ? There must be ties, equal to those of blood, in life from the earliest remembrance about the same hearth and at the same mother's knee that mother who re- mains sacred, we will not say either because of instinct or because of the re- sult of long teaching, but because she bore us. And while we are a portion of the flesh and blood of our parents, and love is thus compelled, they would be strange beings if we might not also love them for themselves. But whether or not, we see that there is no time, in all that season when emo- tions are fresh and character is forming, in which the others of the family are not integral and inherent portions, and again through our very love of self they are dear to us. But whether this family feeling is, in its essentials, a God-given instinct or a matter of growth and education, it is at the foundation of all our civil polity, and the family is at the base of the town, as the town is at the base of the State ; and so long as the family relation is kept pure and undefiled among any people, so long as children honor their parents, as parents bear in mtnd their responsibility concerning those whom they have brought into the world, as the hearts of brothers and sisters beat as one, so long will that people possess shields and safeguards against enemies in having homes and altar-fires worth fighting tor. There are few things more beautiful to see than this family affection, the solicitude of the old for the young, the reverence of the young for the old, the gentle ties of affiliation between sister and sister, the noble loyalty of brother fcr brother, the attention to trifles that makes happiness for one an- other, the deadening of strife and destruction of envy, the mutual aiding and uplifting. REVERENCE OF THE YOUNG FOR THE OLD. 92 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. Plutarch's Advice. Something of this was known to Plutarch, who advises his readers to imi- tate one who, "when he knows himself far superior to his brother, calls for his help and advice, whether it be the business of a rhetorician, a magistrate, or a friend ; in a word, he that neglects or leaves him out in no honorable em- ployment or concern, but joins him with himself in all his noble and worthy actions, employs him when present, waits for him when absent, and makes the world take notice that he is as fit for business as himself, but of a more modest and yielding disposition, and all this while he has done himself no wrong, and has bravely advanced his brother." This same old heathen au- thor, indeed, who speaks so commendably of brotherly honor and help, has a great deal more to say in the same vein, which makes one see that fine family feeling, if not universal with the ancients, was yet by no means confined to our later day; and one can not but be struck at the advice he gives a young man in relation to a married brother, adjuring him, to "have the highest es- teem and honor for his brother's wife, respecting and honoring her as the most sacred of all his brother's sacred treasures, and thus to do honor to him ; condoling with her when she is neglected, and appeasing her when she is aii- gercd ; if she have a little offended, to intercede and sue for her peace ; if there have been any private difference between himself and his brother, to make his complaint before her in order to reconcilement When he has children, let him express his affection and respect to both parents with the greater ardency. Let him love the children equally with his own, but be more favorable and indulgent to them, that, if it chance that they commit some of their youthful faults, they may not run away and hide themselves among naughty acquaintances through fear of their parents' anger, but may have in their uncle a recourse and refuge where they will be admonished lov- ingly, and will find an intercessor to make their excuse and get their pardon." If all this were in accordance with advice and custom among the best in heathen times, how much further should fraternal feeling go now, led along in the gentle paths of Christianity! Yet although great things are some- times more easily done than small ones, we doubt if there are, in our own virtuous days, any better instances of brotherly love than that between two Eastern brothers whose dust has for thousands of years been a portion of the common earth, "in a question," to quote our good old Plutarch again, "not concerning a little patch of land, nor a few servants or cattle, but no less than the kingdom of Persia. When Darius was dead, some were for Ariamenes' succeeding to the crown, as being eldest son ; others were for Xerxes, who was born to Darius of Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, in the time of his reign /"w imf/mmmi/^/,mfmmMmKmm^mmmeiimmm^ * THE STIFF, PRIM LIKENESS OF SOME GRANDAM. (93) 94 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. over Persia. Ariamencs, therefore, came from Media, in no hostile posture, but very peaceably, to hear the matter determined. Xerxes, being there, used the majesty and power of a king. But when his brother was come he laid down his crown and other royal ornaments, went and, meeting, greeted him. And sending him presents, he gave a charge to his servants to deliver them with these words: 'With these presents your brother Xerxes expresses the honor he has for you ; and if by the judgment and suffrages of the Per- sians I be declared king, I place you next to myself. ' Ariamenes replied : ' I accept your gifts, but presume the kingdom of Persia to be my right. Yet for all my younger brethren I shall have an honor, but for Xerxes in the first place. ' The day of determining who should reign being come, the Per- sians made Artabanus, brother to Darius, judge. Xerxes excepting against him. confiding most in the multitude, his mother, Atossa, reproved him, say- ing: 'Why, son, are you so shy of Artabanus, your uncle, and one of the best men among the Persians ? And why should you dread the trial where the worst you can fear is to be next the throne, and to be called the King of Persia's brother?' Xerxes, at length submitting, after some debate Artab- anus adjudged the kingdom to Xerxes. Ariamenes presently started up and went and showed obeisance to his brother, and taking him by the hand, placed him in the throne. And from that time, being placed himself by Xerxes next in the kingdom, he continued the same affection to him, inso- much that, for his brother's honor engaging himself in the naval fight at Sal- amis, he was killed there." It is not every crowned Christian that in the years since Salamis has riv- aled the behavior of these brothers. It is not every one in private life that rivals them to-day. For, however the blood may run in our veins, neither natural affection nor family feeling is always quite sufficient to carry us through all the temptations and trials and small annoyances of daily life with- out constant use of the Golden Rule, without hourly remembrance of that Divine love which shadows forth all family love. It is true that the jest concerning the man who, in settling the estate left him by his brother, had so much trouble with it that he "almost wished he hadn't a' died," is still for some households more a literal interpretation of the prevailing spirit there than anything hyperbolic and absurd. But we thank Heaven that we are able to believe such households are not many ; that, so far as domestic happiness and union go, most of our homes are as full of peace as the House Beautiful ; that our land is one long succession of such homes ; and that few of us need to learn a lesson in these high morals from such a people as the Persians, or from such a man as Xerxes. But although doing their whole duty to the living, there are many people STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 95 TENDERNESS F.OR THOSE DEAD AND GONE. who are unable to feel an interest in those of their race who have passed from earth, beyond at furthest the last two generations. Perhaps they have half a sensation that these people are strangers, they are so remote they would not care for them, so why should they do more ? Love of Ancestors. Yet, if they think of it, in every link of the chain of relationship the ten - derest closeness of affection has probably subsisted ; they themselves were 9 6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. kissed by lips that in turn received the kisses of those behind, and they again received the love and caresses of those yet behind, kisses and caresses form- ing the long chain between people dear to one another, and not strangers, though the last known be many generations gone. As they look at the stiff, prim likeness of some grandame five or six times removed, they would not regard her so critically if they bethought themselves how that face had lighted up with smiles, and those lips had gathered sweets from the babies that grew up to hand down the line that ends in themselves; they would feel as if they, too, had come in for some share of the warmth of her nature, and recognize the kinship of race; they would possibly find themselves even loving this woman whom they have never seen, and of whom they know nothing but that she lived and loved. It is not easy always to throw ourselves into the personality of those who belonged to a life so long past and so different from our own; but we are sure to know that, whatever their lives were, their hearts were the hearts of mothers and fathers, and into those imagined natures, then, there is not a heart of their posterity which beats that cannot pulse some of its own warm life-blood, and make them for the nonce alive. There can hardly be too much closeness in family ties between the mem- bers of an existing generation ; there is none too much love broadcast in the world, and if it is not our duty to value and cherish those of our own blood, it would be hard to say whose duty it is. The more this obligation is recog- nized, the better for the world in general, and surely for the world in partic- ular, for there is nothing that smooths the way through life like love, and love that is also a duty has an added force, and is twice love Family Traditions. Few things stimulate this family love more than the treasuring in com- mon of family love and tradition, the looking for the repetition of family traits in mind and body, and a certain jealous respect for the honor of those who are not here to maintain their own honor, no matter should it even go so far as to make sure that the descendants of these ancestors shall them- selves be decent and honorable people. A certain tenderness for these dead and gone persons is a worthy feeling that, far from doing harm, is deepening and enlarging to the nature ; a certain determination to feel this tenderness puts one already into the attitude of reverence that, if it does no other good, inclines one to consider more warmly the good of their other descendants and bind more nearly the family tie. One need not, in order to do fit reverence to the old root of a family tree, follow the example of the Chinese, and make STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 97 THE POSSESSION OF A HOME a solemn business of wor- shipping one's ancestors with prayer and sacrifice and genuflection; nor even the example of those among our- selves who, judged by their conversation with its boasts of past splendor, would seem to be trying to make other people worship their ancestors in order to throw glorification on themselves. For, after all, the most fit act of reverence that we can pos- sibly show this old family tree of ours is to prove to the world that the best part of it is not that which is under the sod. To be sure there is a certain pride in armorial bearings and titled de- scent, with which a republican people have and should have little or nothing to. do, and which to those who believe ardently in our institutions seem but agencies of harm, even if looked at more as matters of curiosity and art than in any other way. The Coat of Arms. Yet it is pleasant to know, albeit in a country where coats of arms are out of order, what the coat of arms was that fell to one's ancestors in the great 98 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. strifes for existence and booty in previous centuries, as historically illustra- tive of the character and attainment of a man whose ever-so-many-times-di- luted blood may run in our veins, and of the standard which he was obliged to live up to, as we now try to live up to our blue china. And one also nat- urally takes pride in the motto that indicates, if it chances so to do, a lofty character in the man from whom we have some part of our character as well as of our blood. Many a coat of arms, indeed, as well by its bearings, its crest, as its motto, indicates the whole character and nature of a family a nature impressed so powerfully that all the other sides of the house have failed to make themselves felt in material modification, and if the family were to be characterized by heraldry to-day, it might be in the same manner. Thus one may actually have an interest in the arms of the family that is per- fectly legitimate, and not a subject of pompous parade or improper pride an interest in the expression of heroism, or force, or whatever it may be that they commemorate, shut up in that little space as if it were crystallized there ; and one feels a right to hope that something of such worthy ancestry may at some time re-appear in one's self or in one's children. For other use than this, which may be called a virtual and virtuous use, citizens of a republic have no need of a coat of arms, which is recognized neither by the laws nor the customs of a republic ; and it is to be expected that it will be looked on with suspicion, when blazoned abroad in all its brav- ery, by those who are jealous of the preservation of so costly a boon as lib- erty, wrenched as that was from the hands of those who still display their ar- morial bearings in countries that do not present so fair a view of human na- ture in the masses as this one, in which the common people mount heights of thought and education and comfort hand in hand with the liberty that their fathers gained. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 99 CHAPTER FIFTH. A Home in Town. He that holds fast the golden mean, And lives contentedly between The little and the great, Feels not the wants that pinch the poor, Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door. Coivper' s Translation of Horace, Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep, And all that mighty heart is lying still. Wordsworth. As many ways meet in one town As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea. Shakespeare. I must live among my neighbors. Shakespeare. I will go lose myself And wander up and down to see the city. Shakespeare. Good talkers are found only in Paris. Francois Villon. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of every town or city. Dr. H.hnes. Then rose Elaine and glided through the fields And past beneath the weirdly sculptured gates Far up the dim rich city to her kin. Tennyson. Having our personal condition satisfactory, in the determination to make the most of the present, and to surround ourselves with the atmosphere of hope and of self-respect, we find our next stepping-stone to happiness in the possession of a home. There are many of us who, on account of our work, our business, or our family relations, or from a long habit of genera- tions of our people, must have our home in the city, and so prefer it. 100 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. Owning the House. It is not always easy to own a house there; not only because large hold- ers of property there are unwilling to part with it, but because the first ex- pense is too much for the light purse. If it is the want of funds that oblige one to forego the happiness of owning the house, it is not impossible to prac- tice a strict economy till enough money is laid by for a first payment, if the house is purchasable; and then a mortgage is easily to be negotiated at any savings bank or with any money-lender, and the house is practically ours. We find then that there is something to live up to in laying by money each 3 T ear that otherwise we should have wasted in uncourted and unthinking ways; and it gives us presently a great pleasure to do this, and almost before we know it the mortgage is wiped out. But if that may not be, it is our best interest to obtain a long lease of the house, not only that the rent may not rise upon us, but that we may not lose it at a landlord's caprice or at the wish of another tenant, and also and more important than either, that we may secure permanence and establish the idea of home. For when our children have to note the years of their lives "when we lived in the Blank Street house," and "when we were living in the Naught Square house" and the rest, it is impos- sible that they should have the idea of home that a permanent stay in any one spot gives. The house is a residence then and not a home. As it is, moving frcm house to house has become a sort of habit with us, and one of the first signs of advancing spring among us is a certain restlessness begin- ning to be apparent in every house-holder, together with an anxious inspec- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 101 i tion of those placards that are then blossoming out in the windows, and in the advertising columns of the daily news, with more unerring instinct as to season than the dandelions have in the parks. As the days grow longer, and the robins are seeking us out again, and the swallows are flitting round the eaves, these other migratory beings are also on the wing running from house to house in search of a proper place for their nests ; that is to say, judging whether or not their furniture will look better in this house than it does in that, and if all other things are equal, not to say a trifle superior. It is a sin- gular commentary upon the insufficiency of our builders that this is so Moving. People do not move for the sake of moving, for the pleasure to be found in ripping up and putting down carpets, packing books and trunks, having mirrors smashed and paintings gashed and china destroyed and tables scarred, for the sake of going through all the trouble of hanging curtains, driving nails, directing labor, repairing damages, living in a world of dust, and taking the risks of soaking rains on all their household gods. There are pleasanter ways of spending one's time: smoking at the club, visiting one's friends, lying on a sofa and reading novels, counting one's money are all of them more cheerful and agreeable occupations ; and when they are put by for all the excitations of moving, it is only because there is reason, and people are flying from the ills they have to those they know not of. To those they know not of, we say, because they will no sooner be established in their new quarters, where all looked as if it might be made so comfortable, than they will find the world is hollow even there ; and if the drains are not out of or- der, then the water-pipes are, or the heaters are, or the next neighbors are, or the attic is haunted, and there is a pea-hen somewhere. Of course those people would be very foolish who endured a wrong that they saw any way of righting, but they should be very sure it is going to be righted before they bring upon themselves all the calamities of moving, re- duced to a science now though moving be. But besides the breakage and ruin and irritation and fatigue, too fre- quent moving brings a worse effect to pass, for it has a tendency to uproot character, and make one like floating weed ; there is no sense of stability, nor much of that recognition of social responsibility which it is desirable to have in order to be saved from the Bohemian, and which a more permanent resting-place of the Lares and Penates gives. There is a certain moral sup- port in the walls that have surrounded us for any length of time, and that are ON THK WING. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 103 known to have done so ; we share their permanence and acquire their respect- ability ; they fit us now, and the new ones are to be broken in. In the annual march of which we are speaking there is too often the mere desire for change, and restless dissatisfaction with circumstances that will hardly be improved by such means. The surrounding walls are different, but the discontent has removed, too, and remains the same. To these cases we would recommend the old story of the farmer who, troubled by the per- sistent attentions of a ghost, packed his goods for another place, and on the way encountered an inquiring neighbor: "What! you're flitting?" "Yes, we're flitting," says the ghost (for they had packed the spectre among their beds). "Oh, well," says the farmer, "you flitting with us, too? Jack, turn the horses' heads, and home again!" Better than the moving, when the family has increased, and when the cir- cumstances are sufficiently improved to warrant a house of twice the size, would be the total disregard of unfashionable neighborhood, and the pur- chase or hire of the next house, turning both into one. No matter whether the street be the most desirable or not, it is the spot where home is, the spot to which we wish the children's thoughts to return when absent, and it is bet- ter to enlarge, enrich and beautify that than to move into other houses so fre- quently that it is impossible for them to call any place home. Inside the House. Nevertheless in the city it is not so much the location or anything of the exterior that has to do with happiness so much as it is the inside of the house. Outer sunshine is important there, of course; but the sunshine of gentle manners and pleasant faces is more important still, and the social en- joyment of friends that is to be had in the city i? something that is impossi- ble anywhere else for a length of time. The large rooms, the airy sleeping rooms, the hot and cold water and gas, the bath at any hour of day or night, the physician at telephone call, comfortable conveniences for getting about, cheap means of reaching some of the most superb gardens of the world, such as Druid, Fairmount, Prospect, and Central and Franklin parks; all these things add a great deal to the enjoyment of life The Vacation. If one wants more there is the summer vacation for many, in which the clerk, the student, the tired house-keeper, the business man, the journalist, the STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. SUNSHINE OF PLEASANT FACES. professional man, can go out and lie in the sun on the grass, and feel the pulse of the old planet, or sit on the sand, watching the rise and fall of the sea like the placid heaving of a mighty breast, hide in the shadow of the woods, till they feel like the wild- wood creatures themselves, launch their boat in the breakers, and know the exhilaration of conquering the unconquerable, or slip it through lily-pads, and watch their doubles in the depths below, receive the freedom of the fields, as heroes are given the freedom of cities, and take hold of the real business of life when they return to town with renewed youth ; each enjoying the en- joyment of friend or neighbor, as it is narrated to him, as if it were his own again. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 105 Social Pleasure. And even when there is no vacation, the city gives a social pleasure of companionship when sitting on steps and stoops in the warm evenings, in the strolls after ices, in the visits to the roof gardens, the steamer trips, the trol- ley rides, that have a pleasure all their own. It is certain that there is a great human happiness in the congregation and aggregation of life in towns, of which the widely separated rural populace can know but little, while the free interchange is stimulating to mental growth and the reception of new ideas. Advantages of Town Life. The opportunities for growth and improvement are innumerable. Is there a painter whose canvases bring the beauty of the world into the com- pass of a few feet the sight and the inspiration are at cur command; is there a speaker of world-wide repute, a singer to whom kings and emperors are glad to listen, a preacher that moves men's souls, it is ours to listen, too; is there a play that thrills, a spectacle that delights, a song that charms, it is all within our reach in the city. We gather the news of the world there on a larger scale than that on which it is given to rustic communities, and we have absorbed and assimilated the last new thing before it has reached what is sometimes called the Provinces, and have gone on to something newer yet. City Children. The children of the city, too, have, in the mass, the advantages of schools that are the most enlightening, and of teachers in art whose talent and rank make it impossible to have them outside of the wealthy city. Take music alone ; the best professors of that art must needs find their support in cities, and the child who has their instruction frcm the start has the best chance of success. Music at Home. \7e frequently hear derision cast upon the prevailing habit of instructing- young ladies indiscriminately in the art of music, and especially of piano- playing, when they have shown no very peculiar talent for it. But we think this derision a great mistake. These young people would be doing nothing better if tliey were not practicing their finger exercises. They give them- selves, undeniably, a pfreat pleasure, and they make themselves able to pro- duce a great deal for ctne-rs throughout their little circle. The mistake is to 10 6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. be found in the supposition that it is necessary they should play like Aus der Ohe, as if nobody might be allowed to read who could not roll his periods like Edmund Kean. It seems reasonable that children should be taught the al- phabet of all arts, and go farther if nature prompts the desire. As for the piano-forte, perhaps both maker and inventor would feel repaid for their cen- turies of thought and work if they could see, as we have done, those tired fathers that, hearing their young daughters thrum their tunes on the instru- ments they have toiled so hard to buy, close their eyes and listen delightedly to the poor little music and feel as if they enjoyed indeed a foretaste of heaven. It is nearly a hundred and twenty-five years ago since an announcement of a concert was made in a London newspaper, and it was promised that a certain singer would sing, accompanied by Mr. Dibdin "on a new instrument called the piano-forte." The Piano-Forte. A hundred years ago and to what a growth has that new instrument at- tained! Then it was comparatively of rude manufacture, a slender case, standing on slight supports, and with keys tinkling like a music-box, and scarcely so much like the modern piano-forte as the little tea-kettle engine with which the inventors first ran over the road is like the ponderous locomo- tive of the present day that bites the rail as it thunders on with a planetary tread. There had been one or two pianos, though, nearly seventy years before that era, but so very imperfect that it took a multitude of new ideas, improve- ments and patents to bring even the perfection cf the one of 1776. Still some of the great composers had written wonderful music for the instrument even in that crude state, whether satisfied with it cr foreseeing its advance. And from what it had advanced! The timbrel, the dulcimer, the clavichord, the spinet, the harpsichord, the harp itself, each contributed its separate idea to the composition of the wonderful mechanism on which Mr. Dibdin played that day, and which has advanced so much farther now that it seems to be as perfect as an instrument that does not meet the pure euharmonic scale can hope to be, and that stands, when its lid is closed, as some one has described it, like the sarcophagus of unrisen music, and whose manufacture, moreover, has reached in London alone an average of more than a hundred thousand instruments a year, produced by some two hundred makers, and giving em- ployment and livelihood, of course, to an immense train of workmen and their families. It is interesting to note how many various countries enter the lists in ca- STEAMER TRIPS. I0 8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. taring for our daily music and in finishing the case and works. Take, for in- stance, a fine Erard. Switzerland has sent the fir, Norway the deal, Eng- land the pear and sycamore and holly wood and the iron, Riga the oak, the tropical forests of Honduras the mahogany, and of South America the cedar; from Ceylon comes the ebony, from Rio the rosewood, from India the satin- wood, from Africa the ivory, from Russia the leather, from America the pine, and copper and silver and cloth from almost every meridian. And all this is brought together; for this great minds have wrestled, great minds have writ- ten, and all to delight the heart of the little miss who longs to rattle off her notes as she sees her elders do it, and breaks her little back for hours every day in the effort. And why not? Why should not great minds write and wrestle for such results? Is there any better result than that of bringing the pleasure into the household that this instrument does? As you sit and hear it and look about on the group of pleased listeners, you think it equal to a hearth any day in its power to 'gather and to cheer; and it has seemed to me in certain family circles where the members clustered round the piano-forte as a center that it was a sort of household altar at whose shrine the family assembled, and where the father looks on his little daughter, who can evoke this magic, as on some- thing too precious and perfect to be his, and that the moral health and refine- ment of the whole household are assisted by the music, no matter how imper- fect it may be when measured by great standards; and I have thought that every child ought to feel repaid for all her toil in the happiness she affords the fond father and mother in these hours of their satisfaction. Music Abroad. Music, on a broader scale, moreover, has its best cultivation and its larg- est audiences in the town, where opera has asserted a sort of sovereignty and immense throngs never think of grudging immense sums of money, glad to get music at its best on any terms. For the opera is the idealization and apotheosis of the drama; it is the drama set to music, and where the subtile inflections and far-reaching influences of tune and harmony shall do more than words can do shall make the prosaic impassioned, and the impassioned divine. The Opera. Beside the opera, to those that understand its spirit and love its exalta- tions, the spoken drama is something infinitely petty; the mask and the co- PROFESSORS FIND THEIR SUPPORT IN CITIES. (I0 9 ) ,,o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. thurn seem then to belong only to the region into which song lifts them. For the opera is, after all, little else than the old Greek play perfected in the mat- ter of its representation, and with the eloquence of language translated more thoroughly into music. There is the chorus and there are the instruments, both of them far transcending the old simple idea; all the appliances of mod- ern illumination and machinery take the place of the ancients' open roof of the blue in those theatres that were "clean scooped Out of a hill-side, with the sky above, And sea before our seats in marble row;" and after all that, all passion and suffering and joy being crowded into the action now as then, tone and tune lift it on their mighty wings, and love and sorrow are heightened and deepened into the universal sympathy by the magic of modulated numbers, the ineffable power of music. But in old times all Greece attended the representations of the drama. The merits of the new play were discussed by the populace as freely as the price of provisions. Balaustion and her listeners were not the only ordinary Greeks who knew Euripides and Sophocles by heart ; their verses belonged to the people, and they had their roots in the common soil. But with us, on the contrary, the opera is as costly as all other exotics are; it is designed only for the rich the boys who sang the women's part to the Greeks did not dream cf being able to melt pearls in their drink in the way our prime-donne can do if they will and by force of circumstances the poor have little part in it. Nevertheless, among those who do frequent it here there are several perfectly distinct classes of patrons: there are those who go because it is the fashion, as they would stay away if it were the fashion, who go because opera hats and cloaks are becoming, who go because they are in- vited, because all their friends are there, because they want to say they went, want to be seen, want to be excited; then there are those who go as a matter of curiosity, because it is a novelty to them, because they want to educate themselves in all those things that touch the finer senses; and lastly, there are those who go to intoxicate soul and sense in a luxury of sound, to revel in the beauty of motion and light and color, the eagerness of dramatic interpre- tation, the satisfaction of song who go because to them the opera is a real thing, a thing they love, and that repays them with an affluence of pleasure. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. in Shopping. And there is still another pleasure and advantage of life in the city that affords a singular exhilaration and satisfaction the pleasure of going shop- THE MUSIC ROOM CONSERVATORY. ping. There is an excitement about this shopping that must be forever un- known and unfelt by the masculine shopper, we fancy. In point of fact, though, there is no masculine shopper. A man goes and orders what he wants, and there an end, but a woman flutters from shop to shop and from street to street, day after day and week after week, like a bee 112 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. humming over sweets, and only retires from the work at last when not only she herself, but all her friends as well, have no money left. And what a throng it is of which these shoppers make a part the haughty urbans stepping from their satin-lined carriages; the satchel-bearing suburb- ans; the young country school-mistress who thinks the firm would possibly become embarrassed if she did not buy her new black silk there, and, the ar- ticle once bought, feels a happy consciousness of benefits conferred, and a proud sense of having enlarged the trade of the place in all the markets of the world ; then there is the penniless companion of the shopper, who has no purse to open, and before whose indifferent eyes all these things the peo- ple, the noise, the bustle, the confusion pass like disordered phantasms; there is the woman who never lets her purchase out of hei sight after the money has passed, and laughs to scorn the parcel delivery, and the woman who wears a circular cloak and is afraid to go neai the counters for fear she shall be accused of stealing, and the woman who wears a circular and takes precious good care to keep near the counters and watch her chance for steal- ing; there is the professional shopper who buys for others on commission, and who knows what there is in the place better than the clerks themselves know ; the young bride who never thinks of blushing as she adds treasure after treasure to her trousseau ; the young mother who is nothing but a blush as she chooses her nainsooks and long lawns and edgings and insertings ; there is the wretched gentleman who accompanies some shoppers as purse-bearer, and in all the crowd of women never felt so exquisitely uncomfortable in his life; and there are the shoppers who have no idea of buying at all, but who have come only to see what it is that the rest of the world is buying. And what beautiful things they are that the world is buying! One would say ingenuity in design and beauty of fabric and prodigality of undreamed- of colors never reached before the point they touch to-day ; for although stuffs have been made more barbarously rich, we doubt if they have ever been more artistically beautiful. The shopper whose check-book is not unlimited needs to pause bewildered among all the brocades and damasks, to beg for patterns, and then to go home and ponder and balance and decide in peace, where her fancy will not be disturbed by rival claims, where the jostling of the crowd will not have made her nervous and cross and difficult to please, and where the elation of the recently given largess for her shopping will not have so turned her head that she is pleased too easily and buys too soon. And, after all, the whole business is much like a lottery. One starts out in the morning quite ignorant whether one is to draw prize or blank; whether the bargain will prove a bargain or otherwise; whether what looked precisely right in the shop will not look precisely wrong at home, away from its acces- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. \UDIENCES IN THE TOWN. series, and face to face with the necessities of its future companion pieces of dress ; whether the silk will not wear shiny, the basket cloth wear satiny, the damasse rub up fluffy. One's ideas, too, are apt to build such charming pic- tures of unattainable shapes and colors that the result may be heart-breaking. One marvels that out of all that wilderness of beauty and lustre in the shops, I14 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. to which the four quarters of the globe have contributed muslins from Farther India, shawls from Cathay, gold-wrought wefts from Egypt, silks from France, furs from the North Pole one has contrived to reach only such a beggarly and unbecoming end. And then to the disappointed young shopper, who has not been broken in by a long series of disappointments, there seems to be little more to live for, until some rival shopper, when all is over, says how perfectly that plume falls along the brim! what a lovely contrast that color is with the skin! with what grace that stuff takes folds and falls! groans for such a knack ot making herself picturesque, and begs for her company when next she rides abroad, and knows well that neither theatre, nor dance, nor drive, nor sail has any such swift and sweet excitement as shopping has for the skillful shopper. In the Street Car. But in all the delight of shopping there is still a drawback, and that is the street-car and its discomforts and the discussion of her conduct there. She knows that it is said of her that it is she who swings her parasol at the car-driver, from the greatest allowable distance, and walks with more or less deliberation toward the car while it waits, where a man would have run with good speed; that she holds the car, the door open, while she gives her friend the last message or the superfluous kiss and takes her parcels, and drops them, and has to pick them up on the steps; that it is she who refuses to budge an inch to make room for the new arrival ; that it is she who slips into the vacated seat without a word of thanks. All these things, it cannot be denied, are offenses; yet, if we look into them, we may find some little excuse for their existence. "It must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. " On our first glance, for instance, at the woman who swings her parasol a square off, and walks deliberately to the car, we see no apology ; but she sees one perfectly in the fact that every man in the car will make her a subject of mer- riment and of unpleasant remark if she runs, that her clothes make it very difficult for her to run, and that the laws of deportment, which have had to re- ceive the stamp of masculine approbation in all ages before they could pass current, make it one of the high misdemeanors for a woman to be seen run- ning. For another count in the indictment there is really nothing to be said. The woman who keeps the car waiting for her kisses and good-bys and mu- tinous parcels is a child who should be taken by the shoulders and pushed in. Nor can much defense be made for the woman who refuses to budge, since that is an unkindness, a churlishness, in which she is untrue to her sex ; yet STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. SHOPPING. the truth is that, having- paid for her seat, she has a right to enjoy it without relinquishing a third of it on either side only to have her apparel ruined by 11" STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. the heavy weight crushed upon it, and frequently not merely a heavy weight, but a soiled and contamina- ting one. For the last accusation, and the one more dwelt upon than any, it is, with- out doubt, occasion- ally true that women take a proffered seat and neglect to express their obliga- tion. Yet here again it may be said in their behalf, in the first place, that they would almost invariably rather stand than force another person to do so, and generally take the seat only to avoid a scene and the appearance of anything conspicuously ungracious. In the next place, the confusion and embarrassment incident probably divert the mind from the conventionality for a convention- SATCHKL-BEARING SUBURBANS. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 117 ality it is, when the giver in his own mind knows that, of course, the taker can not help but thank him, whether she says so or not. Again, it is not easy to thank a person who perhaps vacates his seat without a word or a nod, and whose back is too quickly turned for him to receive them if there are thanks to give ; and one is in as unpleasant a position when sending thanks at a man's back as in not rendering them at all. And finally, to say nothing of the fact that a woman's fare is as good as a man's fare, and entitles her to a seat, or of the circumstance that it is an affair of noblesse oblige with the stronger party to care for the weaker, and the man thus does it as something due to himself, and not at all in order to please the individual woman, and therefore does not make her his debtor, yet so long as men refuse to women their obvious equality in human rights, she does not so much wrong, after all, as we implied in the beginning, in claiming privilege; and since all that she might be and do and rise to is taken from her in exchange for protection, a seat is her privilege, for which she owes no more thanks than a convict does for fetters. Nevertheless, we think no woman of any self-respect ever fails in giving thanks when the opportunity is allowed her. In the mean time the men who stare the women out of countenance; who put their arms unnecessarily about the women in helping them along their way; who soil the floor, according to their unclean custom, where the women must tread and drag their dresses, even if they do not exercise their skill in targetry on those dresses themselves such men (and there are, to say the least, as many of them as of the thankless women) should have very little to say about courtesy in the cars. The Cheery Town. With all these pleasures and distractions, even with their drawbacks, the city-dweller will tell you there is no place one-half so good, so bright, so cheery as the town. He will tell you that throughout sacred Scripture itself Heaven is described as a city, the celestial city, and the most splendid vision of the Apocalypse is of a city descending from the sky. He will tell you that all great movements have their origin in the lively thought and action of the town. The City Parlor. And he will tell you that in lesser matters the city, always in advance, has reached elegance and an inhabited appearance much earlier than the nS STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. country at large, and drawing-rooms were darkened there the first and crowded with plenishing, and there were paintings and statuary in them before these objects traveled farther, and there were portieres and screens and placqucs and brass-work and bronze and old silver and china and beveled glass and needle painting, dark walls and multiplied mantels shelf over shelf, short curtains and long curtains, huge vases and little panels and the rest. And all this while the rural parlor was ornamented only with the framed sampler, and the family-tree, and the lady with the big handkerchief at the tomb under weeping willows, with at best four prints in gilt frames or pos- sibly a couple of crude portraits or black silhouettes, always excepting, of course, those colonial mansions that rejoiced in "Smyberts" and ''Copleys." Surely the city parlor had the right of it. The moral forces are not necessa- rily strengthened by contact with bare and uninviting walls; the nature, in- stead of being developed to better things, will be constantly returned upon it- self, in the absence of objects stimulating the fancy and leading the thought outward. And certainly the intellectual forces in almost every such instance are starved, and where one is of such build that he chances to be improved by the concentration of thought that such ascetic dwellings might foster, others are only dwarfed and withered. The age that has become famous for its unhealthy self-introspection could hardly do a better thing than make the surrounding material walls of its daily life diverting and interesting, while all that hangs upon them or lies between them leads the thought out to larger life and experience, to the past history of art, to its future hopes, and to its effect upon humanity ; and if the harmony of all, the lovely and luxurious combination, excite the pleasure-lov- ing senses, the controlling brain also is excited in memory, imagination, in- vention, and appreciation. One realizes the falsehood of that old, strict idea that one could not be good and be comfortable, understands that enjoyment of fine colors and fine contours does not belong exclusively to the Scarlet Lady, and that beauty and brimstone are really not inseparable. Old China. If the city parlor, in its best estate, of course, had nothing else but its old china on which to rely, it would have sufficient excuse for its being. The fabric itself is so exquisite, in the translucent material, in the enamel, in the tints, in the shapes, that one would search in vain outside the kingdom of jewels and flowers for anything so alluring to the eye as that bit of china in which, when held before the light, the spirit of lambent flame seems to STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 119 float as it does in an opal, and whose designs, even when not intrinsically charming, are always interesting through history and through suggestion, and the love o^ which among our own people dates back more than two hundred years. There is more quaint and curious tradition clustering round the stoiy of pottery and porcelain than of any other of the arts, from the tale of the man who, in despair, after ceaseless efforts to produce the quality at which he aimed, leaped into his furnace, and produced the desired flux in the consum- ing of his own body, and has been worshiped ever since among the less enlight- ened practicers of the ceramic art, to the touching story of Palissy the Pot- ter, and the noble work of Wedgwood. As far back in Roman record as the time when Numa Pompilius reigned a king, we find a school or college of pottery founded, from which we can judge that the subject was held in high esteem even at that day. The Greeks al- ready had potteries at Samos and at Corinth and elsewhere and we all know the absolute charm which the Etrurians had reached in such productions while the most exquisite enamel has been found in the tombs of the Egyp- tians. At perhaps still remoter periods, in the gloom of what we call the early twilight of civilization, the Orient had reached perfection in pottery, and rivaled the best the world has done in porcelain, the tower of Nankin, whose tiles are of the rarest faience, being the one concerning which the above legend of the sacrifice of a life is related. It is not merely for their beauty, though, that these things acquire their interest. The historian has made them subserve many a matter of profound research. When he finds the remnants of a race some bones scattered in a cave or under a bank of earth, weapons round about, and even traces of food he knows instantly at what point of civilization that race perished, not by its stone or copper knives and axes, but by its jars and pipkins or the absence of them; for their presence signifies that a race has reached, as we may say, the boiling-point; shows that man then was no longer in the condition of the mere animal, devouring raw meat with teeth and .talons. And the antiqua- rian, meanwhile, in his search among the ruins of the buried Asian cities, is enabled by the style of the pottery he finds to say what power ruled, and what people obeyed the rule. Of course the manufacture of china is something far beyond that of pot- tery in importance, but the one is the crude alphabet of which the other is the poem ; and pottery itself has now and then risen to a height where even china falters, as in those instances of majolica that it has not been disdained to adorn with the work of Raphael and Julio Romano and Titian. If one could but own such marvelous specimens to delectate the eyes, one's cars could lao STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. endure all the sarcasms of those in ignorance of such beauty with exceeding equanimity. Addison, to be sure, was among the ignorant in this respect, or pretended that he was. "There is no inclination in women that more sur- prises me than this passion for china," he somewhere takes occasion to say. 'When a woman is visited with it, it generally takes possession of her for life. China vessels are playthings for women of all ages. An old lady of forescore shall be as busy in cleaning an Indian mandarin as her great-grand- daughter is in dressing her baby." But when we remember that Horace Walpole was of precisely the opposite persuasion, that Kingsley was an ama- teur and Gladstone a collector, we can afford merely to pity one who did not know how to enjoy the bits of delicate color and light with which we are fond of adorning our cabinets. What is there, in sooth, that can be lovelier than a cup of that delicious sea-green called the Celadon, a concretion of sea-foam out of which the nereids themselves might sup, and one of which Robert Cecil gave Queen Elizabeth, as being a fit gift for royalty, unless it is that egg-shell cup through which the light falls rosy as through a baby's upheld fingers, while the odd designs upon them both tell strange tales cf life and worship and floral fancies among the curious people who make them. And yet one would pause a moment be- fore giving them the palm over this claret-colored Chelsea cup, with its gold anchor mark ; over that delicious Dresden candelabrum where the hand of Summer seems to have scattered the flowers; or this vase in Capo di Monte china, where the high relief of the figures dancing round about it throws a shadow on the tints beyond ; or these miracles of Sevres, exhibited every Christmas in the Louvre along with the latest work of the Gobelin looms, the cups and vases painted after Watteau, now in bleu du rci, now in rcse du Barry \ now in vert prc, looking as if the wings of birds and the petals of blos- soms had simply been cast under a spell beneath the gloss of enamel, and now made more precious yet with jewels. Where all are so lovely it is hard to choose; and a collector is tolerably sure that if she selects a vase of Henri Deux, with its yellow glory, she will long for a basket of Palissy's ware in violet relief; if she has Dresden, she will want Berlin, that she will never think her china closet complete with- out a bit of old Bow with its bee beneath the handle; and that, in fact, hav- ing once begun, she will never be happy again so long as the snow-white shapes encircle the blue of the Portland vase itself and are not hers. And meanwhile the lover of the quaint and the suggestive has united town and country in another article cf ornamentation only the good countrv housewife would never have it in her parlor, as the city wife is eager to do'. Perhaps its adoption yields a little too much to the rococo, but, it is interest- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 121 ing inasmuch as it makes the necessary article of earlier centuries the play- thing of the later. It can, indeed, hardly be anything but a plaything, for what machinery already does so perfectly is unlikely to be rivaled by the amateur fine lady's fingers; and the thing is now only saved from absurdity by its history, which is something inquisitorial in the bondage it imposed, by its associations, which are sacred, and by its outlines, which are those of clear beauty The Spinning-Wheel. The spinning-wheel is certainly a pretty sight, whether we should see it in a drawing-room or in the moty sunbeam slanting through some old gar- ret; and the little linen-wheel which our great-grandmothers used to stand at their knees is a real object for an artist. Who can see its slant lines, its lovely curves, see its swift revolving cir- cles, and the fine thread trembling to a mist as it draws out its length, and hear the pleasant hum it makes, without thoughts of sunny mornings, and bees in flowers, and all sweet rural sights and sounds? Few of us in looking at it think of the imprisonment of the spinner, still wetting her broadening thumb as the sunshine fell without, and she longed to be there, too the spinner like her of Mendelssohn's "Song Without Words," who sings her tune to the whirr of the wheel while the birds carol and the bees hum outside. ' Rude as the spinning-wheel seems to us now, it was as wonderful an ad- vance in its day from the hand-distaff as the jenny and mule and power-loom have been in their turn from the spinning-wheel. The distaff, indeed, made few improvements in itself in all its long career, the only notable changes being that from the time when very primitive people, who had little or no use of metal, loaded its spindle with a perforated stone, and others carried the load at the top instead of at the bottom of the spindle; but save for these sim- ple changes, and the fact that the distaff which princes' daughters used was overlaid with gold, the distaff with which Clotho spun was the same as that which Burns' Jean took to her "rocking on Fasten's Eve" "rock" being the old term for the distaff and spindle. It was the simplest sort of pretty apparatus, not much more inelegant to carry than the modern tatting. No dame or damsel went abroad without it. The good spinner loaded her distaff with the tow at its upper end, and carried it protruding from under her left arm, and as she pulled the thread out between thumb and finger, the weight of the hanging and leaded spindle twisted it round and round still closer, and she wound it measure by measure about the body of the spindle as she twisted. i iaa STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. The Distaff. The first day after the twelve winter holidays used to be known as St. Distaff's Day, for then the women renewed the work that play had so long in- terrupted. It was still, in real fact, only another holiday, for the men made a point of leaving their own work to set fire to the flax the women were bring- ing out, and the women, in turn, provided themselves with buckets of cold water to dash over the depredators, and all was good humor. 'If the maids a-spmnmg go, Burn the flax and fire the tow ; Bring in pails of water then, Let the maids bewash the men,' sang Herrick ; by which we may judge the custom to have been tolerably prevalent. It is observable that the occupation of the distaff and the spinning-wheel has associated itself with women even to the point of contempt, our first pic- tured memorials of the race on Egyptian and Hindostanee monuments show- ing women with the useful toy in hand the toy despised by all men but Achilles and Hercules. "On the side of the spear" was an old legal phrase- ology to signify a descent in the male line, "on the side of the distaff" to in- dicate female descent. In the early times, when rapine and all violence were the distinguishing masculine traits or, we may say, employments, honor was held to come only from such work as bloodshed, conquest and plunder; there was none given for the quiet performance of the duties at home ; and as women stayed at home pursuing their quiet duties, preparing food and clothes and nursing the wounded, the distaff became disdainfully associated with them. "The Crown of France never falls to the distaff," said the contemptuous French proverb; but it is more than a French proverb that womanVs wit can- not overreach, and the distaff has in reality frequently and secretly been the sceptre there, the power behind the throne, making and unmaking the for- tunes of the nation. It was not till the fourteenth century that the distaff was superseded by vile spinning wheel , and not till about a hundred years later that the wheel appeared at which the spinner could sit instead of stand; and almost imme- diately afterward the term spinster in our language was modified so as to be descriptive only of an unmarried woman below the rank of a viscount's daugh- ter, and not of all unmarried women though why unmarried at all is a ques- tion we leave for Rosa Dartle; for although the farm-wives of good condition were wont to hire their spinning done by any spinner in need of the work, there was never a farm-wife who did not know how to do it herself. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 123 The Spinster. The distinctive nature of the term spinster, as applicable to none above a viscount's daughter in rank, is a slight curiosity in history : it is probably due to the fact that the increase of wealth and the introduction cf printed literature enabled ladies of rank to find amusement and employment otherwheres than at the wheel, which was abandoned to the use of those unable to command the luxury of their own time women presumably below the rank of a vis- count's daughter. Wonderful things used to be done with the wheel, though in those times before machinery made nothing of wonders. One girl was known to spin a pound of wool into eighty-four thousand yards of thread, almost equal to forty-eight miles; and another at a later period spun the same quantity into a thread something more than one hundred and fifteen miles in length but she was a famous spinner. The Adventures of a Pound of Cotton. Since steam, that great afrite, has put the hand to shame, these wonders have probably been eclipsed, and the adventures of a single pound of cot- ton, borne on its wings, and for sale in the London market, are like a tale of the Arabian Nights journeying from the Indies to London docks, thence to Lancashire to be spun, thence to Paisley to be woven, to Ayrshire to be tam- boured, to Dumbarton to be hand-sewed, back to Paisley, on to Glasgow for a finish, and once more in London, having traveled five thousand miles by sea and one thousand by land, supporting by the labor spent on it one hun- dred and fifty people, and increasing its own value some two thousand per cent. The spinning-wheel, certainly as much as anything, has been a badge of woman's servitude. For while all her time was needed to make the clothing for her family, there was none for her to spend in illuminating her mind. And so it is not unpleasant to-day to see this old badge made the sport of circumstance, and what was once a slavery now affording pastime in the draw- ing-room. Broken and disused, and in dishonor, and shorn of its locks, as it is, it was once a mighty tyrant ; and we should think the lovely ladies, free to pursue pleasure, art, learning, to mount the ladder to the stars with men, and who have adorned their drawing-rooms with the mimicry and mockery of its old estate, might in some twilight be haunted by a strange dream of it, pull- ing down the temple of their freedom and happiness about them. And as they play with it now, in all their liberty and possibilities and comparative 124 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. THE DISTAFF enlightenment, they may do well to be mindful of the bondage in which it held their "forebys, " and in which its rude forerunner, the distaff, still holds certain of their sisters. "The art of spinning," says an elegant writer, "in one of its simplest and most primitive forms, is yet pursued in Italy, where the country-women of Caia still turn the spindle unrestrained by that ancient rural law which forbade its use without doors. The distaff has outlived the consular fasces, and survived the conquests of the Goth and the Hun But rustic hands alone now sway the sceptre of Tanaquil, and all but the peasant disdain a practice which once beguiled the leisure of high-born dames." Society. Such rooms as those of which the old china and rich draperies and costly bric-a-brac make part are necessary in a place where what is known as Society takes on its most splendid guise, and where there is such a positive thing as STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 125 the gay season. For it makes no difference how much want and suffering may be abroad in the town or in the land, there is always a gay season in town, and probably there always will be one. For as one generation tires, another is springing upon the scene, and all the fardels belonging to the glit- ter and frolic that these are dropping from their hold those are ready to catch as they dance on. The new belles and the new beaux will always have a mu- tual attraction ; the old belles drop off, to be sure, but the old beaux linger to see these fresh young beauties who are just taking up the business of life with such a sparkle in their wondering eyes, such a vitality in their veins, and when any of these old beaux drops off, some one of the young belles usu- ally drops off with him. The Gay Season. Yes, there probably will always be a gay season so long as society holds together by its present structure, and even those who have and desire to have nothing to do with it must witness more or less of it and be aware of it, how- ever unwillingly. Artistically considered, it has a certain value, if only as showing the possibilities of beauty attainable under the present conditions of favorable life. We need not go to the ancients in these times for the ideal of loveliness in the outward forms of social mingling. Some daylight sacrifi- cial festival by the blue waters of the ^Egean, with torches turning pale in the sunshine, with the flower-decked and filleted victim, the dancing youths and maidens under the festoons of their floral ropes and wreaths, may have been more remotely poetical ; a Roman supper may have been more voluptu- ous; a Pompeiian revel may have been more wild and wanton; but a mask of the gods could hardly be more beautiful than are some of the nightly enter- tainments of the gay season of the present. Winter changed to summer, night into softly glowing day, bare walls to bowers of bloom out of which gleam statues like the gods just alit, and pictures like dreams of a yet lovelier life all this constitutes an enchanted background for the throngs that troop across it, the dark shadows of one class of the participants in the pleasure throwing out all the brilliance of the other portion with its rosy flesh and glistening hair and starry eyes and curving outlines, the brilliance, moreover, of the material in which this beauty robes itself, to whose lustrous wealth neither the dreams of poets nor the facts of antiquity ever approached ; for laces and silks and velvets, at any rate, are of the modern world, and the sub- stance in which poets clothe their dreams of beauty is filmy and vaporous stuff as thin as moonshine. And meanwhile, if the gay season is an artistic sue- i 2 6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. cess, wherever it kindles the wit in any degree and puts a sparkle into con- versation, it is intellectual success as well. Those who admire and excuse this series of festive pageants declare that there is another view of it worthy of a pause, and that is a consideration of its beneficent nature in our social econ- omy, in the part of the good Samaritan which it so undoubtedly plays. Does this seem an impossible or Quixotic view? Give, then, but a glance to the army of workers glad and thankful to be workers whom this gay season calls to the front; not merely housemaid and cook, coachman and groom, milliner and seamstress, but the multitude of those who produce and prepare the raw material which these ultimately handle, the multitude of underlings who assist them all, till the work ramifies through a thousand far-extended avenues, so that some single ball not only calls into requisition the forces of market-men, the finest fancies of florists and designers, the running of the steamships that import its novelties, but saves from starvation and beggary the denizen of many an attic. The gay season may in itself as those who roll to swell its triumph, with plume and jewel, with epaulet or train, forget the existence of any others less fortunate than themselves be called as heartless as any other great machine ; but, like most great machines, it does unconsciously a tremendous work, and, with the industries it necessitates, tides over the dark and cruel winter months, when there is little hope and less joy to those who otherwise might have no season at all. May there always be a gay season, then, its uphold- ers exclaim net too gay a season, not a mad revel, but a brief and brilliant tournament of youth and beauty! May the early years enjoy it, and the ad- vancing years look on well pleased with the pageant ! May it charm for the passing moment, but not captivate one instant beyond its proper power; and, while its light burns ever so brightly, may it not put out the sun! For, after all, there are those of good reason who totally disapprove of the extravagance and the waste of time. The philosophers and the political economists deny that there is any advantage in the expenditure of wealth after this fashion, assuring us that only injury is wrought thereby. Mr. Ruskin says that as long as there is cold and nakedness in the land, splendor of dress is a crime. "As long as there are any," he says, "who have no blankets for their beds, and no rags for their bodies, so long it is blanket- making and tailoring we must set people to work at not lace." Society is of course a charming thing: the reunion of kindred souls in scenes made as lovely as artifice can make them ; people always at their best, and conscious of it; with every enjoyment to pass the time pleasure, excite- ment, admiration, the dance, the opera, the theatre, the drive. But it is life in too concentrated a form, like the nourishment where nothing goes to waste, ia8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. and which, while it enriches the blood, causes the atrophy of certain of the or- gans. % The experiment having been tried of feeding guinea-pigs with sugar alone, it was found that the little creatures lived a short space of time, and then those that did not die became blind. Too long and too undiluted a diet of gay life would be no better for the soul than the undiluted saccharine mat- ter was for the unfortunate animal; and it is a merciful arrangement that, after the faculties have received sufficient stimulus and the senses sufficient enjoyment, puts an end to it all with the total and arbitrary change of habit that the Lenten season brings. Then the swift rout is succeeded by the quiet life, the nightly revel by the morning walk, the call of charity, the household duty, the neglected book, and the performance of all those little acts postponed when the days only waited on the nights to bring the next one round. Then one has time to recall the fact that there are those less favored by fate than one's self; then one has time to put one's self in one's enemies' place and see what their justification may be ; time to look over one's own life, and learn what has been amiss, to make new resolutions, and indulge them a little while before beginning to break them ; then there is time to enter on the search for those less favored ones, if they are not at the door, and to do what may be done toward striking the balance in this life that death will strike at last when the earth is cast upon one. City Window Gardens But there is another gay season for the city lover than that of the winter and its routs; it is when spring opens, and before people begin to leave town, and the flower-boxes in varied windows are called into bloom. To be sure, all winter long the florists' windows are bowers of loveliness, and so are many of the windows of the wealthy, under which the children of the poor often stop in admiring groups. But let the chill once forsake earth and air and even in the poorer quarters of the town the little boxes at the windows begin to show that nature will everywhere repay love and care, ftow to make these flower-boxes answer a purpose, and how to make the miserable little backyards beautiful and useful, Miss Louise Forester may tell us in a way that shall perhaps help another young gardener in her work. A City Window Garden. I never was the pretty one, said Louise Forester, or the bright one; and I had no accomplishments and no lovers. And I suppose that is what made it all surprise me so at the end. Perhaps I was well-looking enough, ,30 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. being healthy; although nobody would give me a second glance; and I had common sense, 6f course; and sometimes I used to wish the other girls hadn't such a turn for accomplishments, and would help me a little more about the house. But then Clara was like somebody made of roses and lilies, so tall, so slight, so fair; and Emily could read the most difficult music, and could talk about'high art in a way that sounded to me like Japanese; and you ought to have heard Annabel recite, and have seen her go through the thirty-five ges- tures, alarm, fascination, listening, delight, and all the rest. I used to think it was Siddons come again, and twice as great, and needing only her oppor- tunityand she was always so obliging, and would give you the gestures every time you asked. We all knew that if Annabel went on the stage she would make the family fortunes and her own everlasting fame. For you see the family fortunes needed making or mending or some other very particular attention. We owned our house and yard in the narrow street 'of the crowded city, and took care of ourselves with the money we made by taking in lodgers-; and sometimes we had enough to scrimp along on, and sometimes we didn't, arid that was oftenest; and then we got on as we could, pinching in our clothes, and pinching in our food, and never going any- where. At least /didn't go anywhere; the girls used to go to the theatre, or down to the sea, with the particular lover in favor at the time for most of our lodgers were young gentlemen who came to us with letters of introduc- tion, or came to me, rather; since, although I was the youngest, I was the one that the girls put forward and made transact the business. They were awfully shrinking and sensitive, Clara, and Annabel, and Emily; and some- how they always used to feel, and so did I, when we had an unsuccessful sea- son, that it was all owing to my inefficiency. "I'm sure we might do better if you made more exertion, Louise," Clara would say. "If instead of wasting every spare moment, the way you do, over your absurd flower beds and boxes, you ever made a business of talking with the lodgers and getting them interested in us, they might stay on. We can't go and talk about ourselves ; but you, being the ostensible manager, could often meet them, or make them little calls when you carry up the monthly bills, instead of leaving those bills under the door the ridiculous way you do, and so gradually get into conversation, and speak of our circumstances, and praise Emily's music, and Annabel's elocution, and wish she could have an en- gagement at the theatre not to say anything that might be said about me. But there ! what do you care about your sisters, so long as you can attend to your flowers? I never saw such selfishness. Sometimes I feel so enraged with the things I could go and trample them down!" and her blue eyes flashed like great angry sapphires. , 3 a STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. Of course this was very unjust; as if I were not doing all I could for them every day. And I really could have cried if I hadn't also felt some indigna- tion at the talk about my flowers my flowers, the only pleasure or comfort that I had. The other girls had their talents, and their flatteries, their peo- ple to take them to the park or to the concert, their own consciousness, too, of what they were and what they could do, which was truly a pleasure ; and I had nothing at all but my flowers. But then the thought of Clara in one of her rages trampling down my flowers, and of what it was that might be said about her and her tempers, if I chose, made me laugh. And so I went out of the room quite gayly ; and I heard her say to Annabel before I closed the door: "Any heart was left out of her composition. She hasn't the least atom of one." And Annabel said nothing, but Emily replied, "No, she doesn't care for anything in the world but her ridiculous flowers." And Clara was pinning in her belt a big bunch of red roses that I had just given her off my bush, and Emily was putting on her hat, which was the third hat she had had that year out of my share of the four divisions of the income after the house- hold expenses had been paid. But nobody ever thought of such things as that ; there was no reason why I should have new bonnets when I looked as well in the old one; and why in the world should I not give Clara my flowers when they set off her white beauty so through the open window as young Mr. An- nersley let himself in ? But I had a heart ; and Allen Annersley knew it. For I had talked with him about the girls, and had canvassed with him the ways and means of hav- ing scholars found for Emily, or an opportunity for Annabel to show some theatrical manager what she could do ; and he kept' a book and music store over on the Avenue, where the theatrical people went. It was a long time be- fore the girls knew that he kept a book and music store; they insisted that he was the son of the rich Mr. Annersley, on the Heights, who had been a mem- ber of Congress ; and that he probably had a whim of having separate lodg- ings of his own because it was English. And after the blow fell, and they knew he kept a shop, they could not get out of their heads what they had so firmly implanted there, the idea of his belonging to something or somebody on a different scale of grandeur. 'He is, maybe, an Anarchist," said Anna- bel, "or a Nihilist, or a Socialist of some sort. And he has left his father's splendid surroundings and is seeing for himself what life, means among those that have to earn their living." "He visits a great deal next door, and the people there are very well off," said Clara. "There are no people there but the housekeeper and old gentleman, and he does writing there," said I. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 133 "You always so contrive to dampen every enthusiasm, Louise, " said Clara. "I'm sure," said Emily, "if I didn't think he was something superior to most of our lodgers I should never give him a second thought. He is insig- nificant enough to be the very pink of gentility." "How can you talk so?" said Clara. "As if the aristocracy hadn't every opportunity for physical perfection." "Maybe they have," said I. "But they don't improve their opportuni- ties. The fathers and mothers keep marrying for money and for lands, and not for love, or good looks or intellect, and they are the result ; that's what the old housekeeper says next door" "How in the world did you know her?" "Oh, we made acquaintance over the garden wall, and she told me that Mr. Annersley keeps books for her master, and he's not only poor, but in debt for his stock in trade, and never had any rich or grand relations." "The idea of your talking like that with our neighbors' servants! You always did like low company, Louise!" said Emily. "But I must say! How perfectly abominable!" cried Clara. ** What is he here for, with his false pretences! It's a regular imposition going about with his air of seclusion, and keeping a coat of arms in his room" "Did you think that was a coat of arms?" asked I. "Why, it's the di- ploma of a commercial school." "I don't spend so much time as you do, Louise, in the lodgers* rooms, studying up their belongings. As if I cared what it was a low-bred person !" "It's very unkind of you to talk so, Clara, when he's trying to do so much to help us. He is going to take Annabel himself to the manager of the Avenue theatre to-morrow morning. And I'm to bring Emily to his store this afternoon, when the Director of the Symphonies is to hear her play, and give her pupils if he is satisfied. " "Satisfied! I rather think there's no danger that any one Mr. Annersley's likely to know will be anything else but satisfied with Emily's playing!" I thought so myself. And I must say I was thunderstruck, after Emily had played two of her very best pieces that afternoon, to hear Mr. Deboisson, the director, who, at first sitting in dead silence, presently fidgetted enough to drive one wild, cry out : "It is utterly useless. It is utterly hopeless! Of what can the young lady be thinking? Has she a mind to think with at all? It is necessary to be plain. How can she give lessons without talent, with- out technique with absolutely no qualification! Her hand was spoiled in the beginning. She has no idea of the master's meaning. She cannot even read the music. It is childish play, Mr. Annersley!" and he stalked out of the shop as if he had been insulted. 134 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. ALWAYS A GAY SEASON IN TOWN. But Emily, for whose sak'e I felt so badly, was not in the least disturbed. "What a crusty old simpleton!" she exclaimed. "As if nobody knew any- thing but himself! And who knows whether he does or not?" And she rat- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 135 tied off one of her show pieces in great disdain of him, and went home with, me scolding- about Allen Annersley all the way. For if he had taken the least pains to prejudice Mr. Deboisson in her favor, it would all have been differ- ent, she said. I must confess that, when Annabel came home crying, the next noon, and told us that the manager had pronounced her efforts idle, weakly amateurish, and out of the question for business, I felt as if Fate was against us, and there were some gigantic mistake somewhere. And I hated the manager even while I wondered at his blunder, and I cried a good deal myself over my flowers, as I trimmed and watered them. . But my crying only made Emily indignant. "I should think you thought our enemies were in the right," she cried. "/ don't cry. What such a person as that Mr. Deboisson says makes no odds to me. There are people who say he's no sort of a director! I shall go on with my playing just the same, and so will Annabel with her elocution. And you can attend to your precious flowers and not worry yourself about us!" But Anna- bel kissed me that night before she went to sleep. So I went back to my flowers ; and they were the greatest comfort to me. I had a box out of every window in the house, and when they were full of blossoms it did make the house mightily attractive; and I used to think that was one reason why the lodgers came. But when I said so, the girls greeted me with shouts of laughter and with reproaches for my self-conceit ; and Clara said she shouldn't wonder if beautiful young women in a house were quite as attractive as flower-boxes at the windows. But all around the edges of the yard, at first, I had my beds, and at last I covered every bit of space in the yard with them. I had a world of trouble, though, because the soil was so hard and clayey there; and I did question if I were not too selfish to live when I had a cart-load of fresh loam and some fertilizers hauled on the yard once, at a time when the girls had all gone out. But I went without butter and sugar for two whole months, so as to be sure that I had not wronged them in doing it. And I was sorry then that sugar was so cheap ; if it had only been a dollar a pound, I need not have gone without anything like as long. Everybody must have some pleasure, I fancy, and the pleasure I had with those flowers of mine was past reckoning; and sometimes Mr. Annersley came home when the girls were out, and went about from window to window with me, admiring them as much as I did. He knew a good deal about flowers, and once in a while he brought home some rare little thing that he had got in a greenhouse, and I felt richer than if it had been a pearl ; and sometimes I found something that I could root, in an old chance bouquet thrown from her carriage by some beauty going home from a ball, maybe. One day the friendly next-door housekeeper asked me, over the fence, if I would not like , 3 6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. to take a drive into the woods with her old master; and as all the rooms were in order, and lunch just over, I was delighted. For the old gentleman and I were very good friends in a small way, and after we were off the pavement he began. to talk about my flowers; he was something of a botanist, he said, and he had enjoyed looking over in my little yard and seeing me make some- thing out of nothing; and he thought if I were so fond of flowers as all that, I might like a drive in the woods (where I had hardly ever been), to see some of them in their own homes, although it was still only the last of May. ' 9 How lovely it was in the woods! So still and dark and solemn, with long vistas away into golden green sunshine, and, when you were wonted there, the murmuring whisper of the treetops, swelling and falling like the echo of a wave upon a distant shore. We left the carriage, and went wandering into the mossy glades, I often in advance, for my old friend was too feeble to go very far, and I came back to him with this and that treasure of the wild growth that I found white violets, anemones, straw-bells. "Ah!" said he, as I came back once with a strange and charming pink-purple flower, as much of the wet black earth about it as I had been able to take from the ground, "now you have a real treasure! That is the Showy Orchis. Yes, lam glad you have found that ; and doubtless there are others here. It belongs to the most interesting and curious of all the flowers flowers that mimic animal life. Do you know, there is a damp shady corner 'in your little yard, under the pear tree, that you can make rich enough to grow this and several others of its kind. We will come again with a big bag and fill it with this peaty soil." And so we did, several times, the girls marveling why I liked driving out in the country with that old creature, and not at all admiring the weeds that I brought back. And in those times I found many wonders, and among them one that he told me was the Arethusa, the loveliest purple thing alive, and a Calypso, too ; and he was just as pleased as I was. Sometimes, once or twice, after he heard about it, Allen took me in the street cars as far as they ran, and we walked the rest of the way, although somehow I never liked to tell the girls; and it is certainly odd how your senses are trained and warned all unconsciously, to find what you are looking for; but I had no sooner seen the old gentleman's pleasure over my Arethusa, than what should I spy, one sweet June day, but the small white moccasin flower, and then the big yellow one, and presently the little yellow one, frag- rant as a tropical jungle might be. And I carried them home to the old gen- tleman, with Allen, and he said it was an unexampled find, all in one day. "Three different specimens of Cypripedium," said he, "all in one day! But flowers know their lovers. They know to whom to reveal themselves. Come July, we will go through the woods again, and I dare venture you'll come JOHN RUSKIN. (Bust by Sir Edgar Boehm, R. A.) STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. home with the big" pink ladies' slip- per, a perfect bal- loon, and the crane -fly, to boot!" And of course I really did it would have been impolite to seem to contradict him by not doing so, you know. And I came home, moreover, with the greenish- white ladies' tresses, and the adder's mouth with its tiny green blossom, too; and one day I found myself half crying r 4.1. for joy over the sudden beauty of the white fringed orchis; and in August there never was such luck! I found the yellow fringed orchis, and the ineffably sweet purple fringed one ; and by that time the little rich wet corner of my yard was a perfect chamber of jewels to me, with more than the treasure-house of any Oriental king, with here a quaint rose-purple flower whose white lip was spotted purple, and here a sweet-scented, blushing be- gonia. For the other flowers in the yard had grown as all common flowers do; but these things that I had brought home from the dark, wild wet woods and swamps seemed to belong to some other planet, and to tell of some other life some strange, fantastic, foreign principle of life. They told of another life for human beings, too, different from this crowded brick and mortar one. "A life," I said to Mr. Annersley once, "that I suppose I never shall have but a life on a farm in the country with one corner of a garden running down into wet woods." He stopped and looked at me, quite gravely, a moment. "Per- haps you will have it," said he. "I think it depends on yourself whether you will or not. 1 ' BOWERS OF LOVELINESS. FLOWERS. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. Well, well, those things were not all my wealth by any means. What pinks I had, such great globy crimson carnations and white ones, too; one box, outside the parlor floor lodger's window, was all nothing else, and another box was full of snowy sweet alyssum and forget-me-nots and mignonette, and another box was all yellow oxalis and blue lobelia, and just as soon as they could blow out doors I had all sorts and colors of double columbines shaking in the wind, white, golden, blue, purple and scarlet, in the box out of Mr. Annersley's window, and over the sides another box brimming with yel- low escholtzias and marigolds ; I had crimson cypress vines, and sulphur tinted canary bird flowers, and nasturtiums of all deep, rich impossible blood- colors streaming ; and then I had purple cinerarias and yellow coreopsis and Star of Bethlehem, all an odd prickly velvet, over its midnight blue, and bachelors' buttons and balsams and four o'clocks; and there were pots full of violets, full of geraniums, of purple and carmine colored gloxinias ; and an oleander-tree that when it bloomed was like a rosy sunrise in the room ; and in the yard was the corner of my dear wild flowers, and my June peonies, and my larkspurs, bluer than blue, and my little rows of sweet peas, and morn- ing glory and scarlet runners covering all the sides of the fence, and a vast orange trumpet flower and a purple clematis and a wistaria running up the back of the house, and hollyhocks, stately as old-fashioned lovely ladies, and a dahlia and a prince's feather, each in their season, and last of all my white chrysanthemums and scarlet salvias a perfect little wild garden, every inch used, and not a half an inch wasted. I used to look out over the yard in the morning and wonder at myself, and I used to look up at the house when I came home from market, and think it looked as if it ought to be Paradise in- side. But it wasn't. I really don't know where they all came from, these darlings of mine. This person gave me one, and that person gave me another, and some I (140) FLOWERS THE ONLY PLEASURE A! AND COMFORT THAT I HAD. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. i 4I begged, and some I bought, and one, yes, one I stole. You'll never believe how wicked I was. I stole it walking in the Park. And I tried so hard to look innocent, passing the policeman, that I know he knew I was guilty, and I hope I made up for it afterwards a little, by scattering a whole handful of its very own seed in the same spot in the spring; and I do believe that the great patch you see there like live brown and gold velvet in the sun, came from those iden- tical seeds. Those seeds, and the seeds of the others, too, gave me no end of trouble, by the way ; for people all up and down the street, and people who passed that jvay, strangers, too, and all our acquaintances of course, used to come and beg me for some of the seed of this, that, or the other. And it grew to be a real nuisance, it took so much of my time, and I was afraid, too, I would have none left for myself. I was doing some up to give away one day, when Mr. Annersley came in. "It isn't generosity at all," I said. "I don't like to do it. I wouldn't mind so much, though, if I thought they really wanted them. But it's only a freak, because our flowers look so pretty. I don't believe they'll ever come to anything. They're just wasted." "Sell them, then. Don't give them away. It will amount to something in the year." _ "Oh dear, no I should be ashamed. "Ashamed of turning an honest penny? I'm not.' 1 "But they're not worth a penny. '' "Oh yes,. they are. "Why, you know there are some establishments for nothing else than the sale of flower seeds. Do them up in neat packages, and I'll take them to the store. Those that want them will want them enough to pay for them. And they won't be wasted, either." I should never have done it, you see, but for him; he was always looking out for my interest that way. And what did I see the next week but a great black and white placard in the shop window: "Flower seeds from Miss Forester. " The girls were so outraged! But he didn't take the placard down for all that; and I kept putting up and sending round to him my flower seeds as fast as they ripened, and in the late spring he handed me more money than I would believe could come from their sale. One way and another, all the time, the house gradually became an actual bowei. Once some men came staggering in, not looking at all like men, but more like Birnam Wood, and they carried between them an immense azalia bush, a mound of snow and sweetness, with the compliments of the old gen- tleman next door. The girls said of course it couldn't be for me; but as they' couldn't make up their minds for which one of them it was, it didn't matter; and I returned thanks, and did it so carefully not to mention any names, that Mr. Annersley, who was writing in there, looked up at me with a laugh in his brown eyes, and the old gentleman said, "You're a little girl as sweet as those I42 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. flowers themselves, and I know somebody else that thinks so." And then I ran away. A few days after that Mr. Annersley bought me a tiny Southern orchid, just the least flower of one, an air-plant that had no root, and which there couldn't be any doubt he gave to me. "There's a fortune in those things," he said, "although I fail to understand why. And if you would like, Miss Louise, there's an exhibition of orchids to-morrow, and we might see them together, if you will." If I would ! Of course I would. And I hurried along with him next day, my pleasure and ardor not at all abated by the wonder and disbelief and con- tempt of the girls, whom he didn't ask, although I should have been delighted if he had. But I thought no more of the girls when I was once in the hall of the ex- hibition. The anteroom, full of startled cyclamens, plats of primroses, dishes of pansies, and great jacqueminots with half -yard long stems, was nothing be- side this place of enchantment where, tier over tier, rose the weird, wondrous creatures with their threads and filaments sailing on the air, with all their beauty and diablerie, like flowers and serpents speaking together, each uncer- tain if it were not the other. "They resemble, more than anything else, the floral ornament of the cinque-cento painting and carving," said Allen. "You think it is a fish, with all its scales and contours and colors, and suddenly it is a flower. Nature had done with work when she made them and was in a mood of wanton freak and frolic." "See that upper one over there," I said. "It is a flower but how it is trying to be a bird ! ' ' "Perhaps it is a bird," he answered, "that has just succeeded in becom- ing a flower " "And there are others in disguise, trying not to seem the flowers they are, but other flowers. If they were not so cool, so calm, so refined, wouldn't you say they were full of the wildest fun, playing surprises and making jests?" "There is a sort of dignity through it all, though, as if they were of a separate order of creation, and were only obedient to the elfin law of their be- ing. Perhaps the dignity takes root in their prices," he added gayly. "Are they dear?" "Immensely so. This collection is worth thousands and thousands of dollars. They outweigh gold in preciousness. " "Oh!" and the falling accent in my voice, I suppose, told him the story of my little secret hope of wearing my old gown and boots another while, and getting some bulb or shoot or seed among them all. "Oh, that caps the whole!" I exclaimed. "That just shows they are the very spirits of flowers, STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. -- * SO STILL AND DARK AND SOLEMN. to be capable of such work as outweighing gold. Perhaps they are ghosts of the dead and gone gnomes and trolls who handle the gold and gems in the heart of the hills in the fairy stories. I suppose that gnomes could have ghosts. See that scarlet fellow with the white spathe they are the witches and warlocks of flowers. How I should like to look in here when the moon 144 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. shines to-ni ght through the great win- dows, and see them at their wild play all alone! If one only had ears fine enough to hear their lan- guage!" "Do you know," said he, suddenly stop- ping and turning to- ward me, for we were in a corner by our- selves, "that you have something in common with these orchids? Yesterday a little un- noticeable body, sud- denly something has clothed you to-day with a beauty lovelier than Clara's. What freak was Nature play- ing when she gave you this color, this smile, this sparkle, to hide yesterday and come to-morrow?" 4 'Oh, hush, hush!" I said. "You musn't speak, to me so. No- body ever speaks to me so. They talk so to the other girls. They don't talk so to me." "I can think it just the same, can't I?", he said, smiling. "There you go again. The enthusiasm has died down, the flame is wrapped in gray smoke, the cloud has come over the sun ; the great shining orchid that you were, with your illumined eyes and changing blush a moment ago, has turned A BOX OUT OF EVERY WINDOW IN THE HOUSE. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. US "back and become the little forget-me- not. But I have seen it before, many a time, as I looked at you out of the windows next door, when you found one of your new plants in bloom." "I I am sorry you said so," I murmured. ' ' For now perhaps I shall never feel quite free again when when I'm there." "Then I must never look at you out there again, and that would be a good deal more than I would like to deprive myself of," he said. "So you think I am jesting?" he said, all his old barriers suddenly seeming to give way. "Look up at me, look tip at me a moment. Why do you keep those blue eyes veiled so? Lift those white lids just for one swift, shy glance, one sweet shy glance, and see if I am not in earnest." And I tried to, and my lip quivered; but determined not to yield I did raise my eyes, and out spurted the tears. "Louise!" he exclaimed, but under his breath, and standing be- tween me and the crowd beyond. "My darling, I didn't dream I was hurt- ing you! Do you suppose I would hurt the thing I love best in the world?" TRESSES, ETC. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. "You love best in the world!" I repeated, in amazement, look- ing up at him. through all my tears and in spite of them. "Yes," he said. "Does that surprise you? It ought not. I have always wanted to tell you when I felt I might. Does it surprise you? Why, who is it that you love best in the world?" he ask- ed, quickly. "You!" I said, before I thought a word. And then, when in a moment I could have cried out at myself, and would have turn- ed and tried per- haps to run away, "That is all right then," he said, coolly. And he took my hand and tucked it tinder his arm in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, and walked off with me. "You must have known I loved you," he said. "I never doubted that you loved me. After my stock is paid for and the day for our marriage is THE CORNER OF MY DEAR WILD FLOWERS. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 147 fixed, I shall tell you all I have thought about you for this long time as I have seen you going and coming. I shall tell you I was always afraid you would put out wings like any other angel, and flyaway and leave me desolate." "I I think you musn't say any more to me just now," I murmured. "I am afraid I I shall do something silly. " "Whatever you do," answered he, "will be the best and wisest thing a woman could do. But come! I've a greater surprise than this in store for you. For I believe you knew this all the time" "I I never dreamed of it! " I answered, catching my breath, for fear it would turn into a sob of joy. And just then we stopped before some shelves clothed in moss, and there, in several trays, in pots and baskets, were some wild flowers which I couldn't see, and a large card which I couldn't read, for the unshed tears and doubles of everything, dancing like sparks before my eyes. "I will read it for you then, my darling," he said. " 'Prize for the best collection of native specimens of Orchidaceae, Miss Louise Forester, fifty dollars. ' The old housekeeper and I took them up the moment you went in after watering them. ' ' "I I think I must go home," I half sobbed "It is all too much for me. I don't know what the girls will say.'' "I know what the president and manager of the Horticultural Society will say, " he exclaimed. "They will say : 'Buy your flower seeds of Miss Louise Forester, at Mr. Annersley's book and music store.' And people will flock to buy at once, you see if they don't! so many of them that it will crowd out all the books and music. And our fortunes will be made in the twinkling of a snap-dragon seed!" And so he ran on, to direct the current of my too intense feeling. And while he was talking, there they were all about me, the president, and managers, and the board of ladies, saying all sorts of pleasant things about my pretty orchises, not all of which, of course, were in bloom, asking me questions, and waiting for my replies. And be- fore I was conscious of it, I was talking with them just as easily as with the friendly housekeeper, and telling them all the little I knew. "And I was proud of you," said Allen, when on the way home. "There wasn't one among STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. them knew as much as you did, and nobody half so modest! You were like a little encyclopaedia made easy. The president said you were already a botanist who would take rank anywhere." "It's the dear old gentleman who taught me," I said. And then the house was near; and it seemed to lift itself so strangely and look so like another place, that at first I couldn't make out what was the matter. "Oh, the whole world has been changed, Allen!" I said. And he drew me inside the door, and in the dark hall he folded me close in his dear arms and gave me one long deep kiss the first lover's kiss I had ever had, the first kiss, except for Annabel's, that had ever touched my lips since my dear mother died. It seemed to me the next day as if everything were happening at once. I had hardly told the amazed girls about my prize, and I was going round the house in my light-hearted, happy maze, singing with a whole heart in my songs, when the dear old gentleman next door sent for me to come in. Allen was there, and we stayed for an hour or two, and a lawyer came, and we signed our names to papers, and I don't know what and all. When Icame back Annabel was waiting for me. "I've been making you a bonnet," said she. "It made me ashamed to see you yesterday, and we flaunting about in all the finery we could catch." "I am so glad that you did it, Annabel, before you knew," I said "Knew what?" "That I am going to be married and to live in the country, ten miies from here, on a little farm that the old gentleman is to let us have till we can pay for it. A flower farm it is to be, and the Horticultural Society will sell my seeds for me. And as soon as we get it well under way Allen will give up his other business, and we shall do nothing else than raise and sell flower , STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. seeds. And we expect to pay for the place, and create a greatbusiness, and make our fortune and mak e, be- sides, oh, such great and beautiful flow- ers by giving our whole souls to it and having all out-doors to do it in!" 'Oh, Louise!" she cried. "What a life you are going to live ! Who would have thought of it from just the beginning of those window-boxes and tiny beds in the yard? Oh, it isn't be- cause of the flowers only it's because you were in earnest and never thought of yourself! And now you are going to be so happy" ' ' Would you like to come with me?" I said. "Clara and Emily can take care of the house and themselves here, and you can help me enough to have a salary, presently, if all goes right. Allen said something about it, his very self." And then An- nabel flung her arms about me and we both cried together for all at once I felt that I had found a sister as well as a lover. And tell you I took care never to lose her. But you ought to see my garden now no little back yard at all, but of blossom. There is one half-acre of tuberoses alone that drives the T 49 I can acres wind STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. THIS PLACE OF ENCHANTMENT. before it heavy with delicidhisness. And there, at another season, are the roses, such roses! they climb over walls and poles and trellises, and they fill whole garden plots, drift-white, and maiden-blush, and cream, and crimson red, and purple red to blackness. And sometimes, in late spring, when Al- len and I go out and stand in the middle of a bed of violets, and the satiating sweetness rises round us in heavenly clouds, we feel, not as if we were in a lit- tle flower seed farm that had paid for itself and was making a large income, but as if we were in the very heart and center itself of the Garden of Eden ! STEPPING STONED TO HAPPINESS. 151 CHAPTER .SIXTH. Under Green Boughs. No tears Dim the sweet look that Nature wears. Longfellow. And not from Nature up to Nature's God, But down from Nature's God look Nature through. R. Montgomery. I have heard the mavis singing Its love-song to the morn, I've seen the dew-drop clinging To the rose just newly born. Charles Jeffreys. The meanest floweret of the vale, The simplest note that swells the gale, The common sun, the air, the skies, To him were opening Paradise. Gray. The breeze of Nature stirring in his souL Wordsworth. O Love ! what hours were thine and mine, In lands of palm and Southern pine; In lands of palm, of orange blossom, Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine ! Tennyson. They who best cherish this family tradition, and this family feeling, are they who most value the home and its influences and are eager to make it all that is good for its various members. For a home is the best of all the stepping stones to happiness. Where the home may be is a matter of compara- tively little importance beside the character of the home itself. Wherever it is, in city or in country, its occupants will probably congratulate themselves that their lives are better spent than if it were in the other place. There is so much less to distract the attention and so much more to help toward the concentration of thought in the loneliness of rural regions that people there are oTEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. wont to think the absence of frivol- ity among them is a question past dispute, although perhaps a cir- cumstance o n which they have no right to pride themselves, since they can hardly claim a voluntary agency in this affair of the favor of Providence, but which, if not to be set down to- their credit, cer- tainly is to their advantage. In the city, they reason, are the unceasing enter- tainments of all sorts, complicat- ed and simple, lectures, c o n - certs, theatres, operas, crowds on Sundays at the churches where this choice singer or that draws a large salary, picture stores, galleries, libraries, exhibitions of things from the four corners of the earth, morning calls, strolls down thoroughfares as good as foreign lands, dinner parties, afternoon teas, one perpetual round of change and excitement, not the least part of which is the mere observation of the throngs that line the streets, with the equipages and the way-farers streets which to the rustic are a theatrical entertainment in themselves, of which one is not immediately wearied ; and in the mean time when life in THE THEATER FOYER. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. '53 the country has subsided to quiet sleep, it is under full headway in the town for hours afterward. Comparative Views of Town and Country. In the country, on the other hand, the reasoner continues, how few are the changes and how necessarily less frittered are time and attention by the need and habit of giving a thought to this and a thought to the other. All public entertainments, with the exception of a possible weekly lyceum course, are things unknown, and church-going arid evening meeting and preparatory lecture are the only general assemblages. Social calls are but half-yearly or- dinations, although neighbors may go across lots of a winter evening to be regaled with new cider and apples, or loiter a half -hour or so about each other's gates in the summer dark before the nine-o'clock bell rings everybody into bed with its remembrance of the ancient curfew. The missionary meeting and sewing-circle exist ; but what are gatherings taking place once a fort- night or once a month, where every one is expected to be busy, where a good book is read, or where there is time for solid conversation, compared to the kettledrums and high teas of every day in the city life, where to get into a serious talk would be bad taste ? For what time there is left to the country resident after these mild pleasures and they occupy but a small fraction there is an unremitting industry requisite for these who, living away from the emporiums in which every desire may be gratified for money, have to do everything for themselves, and have not the money for such gratification anyway, if the rest were equal. . A new book there is not to be thrown aside and succeeded by a newer after a light skimming; if it is anything to read at all, it is something to exhaust, to repeat, to talk about for a goodly season; and news is so rare that when anything takes place, not only the history of '54 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. the actors is their grand - countryman the frivoli- claim of be- t h a n those considered, but that of their fathers and fathers. On the whole, it seems to the as if there was up time in his life for ties, and that he has a right to the ing more serious and more in earnest bred among the distractions of cities. Yet again, the dwellers in cities will have some- thing to say for themselves, and be heard to set up the same claim. In the first place they will urge on their side, possi- bly, the preposter- ousness of there being any distraction for them in the throng of the city streets; they were born among them; they have been familiar with them - - THE SWEET LOOK THAT NATURE WEARS. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 155 since the day they could walk alone; every alteration in them has come gradually, and stamped itself on their consciousness without any intel- lectual effort on their part, or any consequent waste of thought; the unending processions in those streets occupy no more of their attention than the pebbles of the country read do that of the rustics. If, to go on, the day begins later and prolongs itself later in the city, the amount of time compassed is equal, and the possibilities of time greater. As for the strolls and rides and the shopping, they have their rural equivalents, or ought to have, as they merely belong to the concerns of health or of neces- sary life. For other things, such as the routs and balls and visits, it is but a limited class that have them to enjoy, and with those that do have them they are a sort of routine, after all, which from continued custom requires cer- tainly little expenditure of brain tissue, if they do require expenditure of time. As the conjurer Houdin, from long practice, could tell every article in a show-window at a single glance, and without conscious endeavor at all, so the persons frequenting these entertainments do it as a stale custom; they give so much time and so much thought, and no more, and the rest is left free for earnest work ; while it is not to be denied that many of the entertain- ments are but a stimulus to earnest work, are creators of thought, kindlers of ambition, rest and refreshment after effort, and far from feeders of frivolity to those who use them as a means and not an end. * Certainly great things are done in the cities, as it has already been said in these pages; great ideas are started there, great works go forward there, great charities have their origin and bring about their wonderful results there, and it takes people with but little of the frivolous about them to attend to them all. And when we come to individual life we shall find that there is hardly any girl in the city who has finished her direct attendance at school who is not still pursuing some special study, and that far from superficially, but in I5 6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. earnest, either because her interest is deep, or because some rivalry has spurred it, or because it is the custom in her set; or who is not engaged in personal charities that require her careful oversight, and use half her day in deeds that are neither vain nor frivolous, nor unnecessary to the health of the world. The measure of human nature is probably the same wherever it is found, ana the men and women of the country are not very different from those of the town. Condemnation of either by the other is the most frivolous affair that either encourages, while it will surely do neither of them any harm if a serious rivalry should exist between them as to who shall make the most of life, and leave the world better behind him. For our own part, were we called to decide the dispute, since the farm is needed for the city and the city for the farm, we would let them balance the matter between them and would decide for the golden mean that is home near a large suburban town, not too remote from a great city on occasions, but sufficiently remote to let one enjoy rural life and indulge the love of nature. The Love of Nature. Indeed, is not this love of nature itself a stepping stone to happiness? Few things so soften the asperities of life. Let other things go awry, let the roof leak, the dinner burn, the goodman grumble, and after a glance from the window at some lovely landscape that chances to lie below a good long gaze in which the beauty works its spell upon the soul all the troubles seem light and easily to be borne: that is, if one really loves nature, and does not merely pretend to do so. They with whom the love of nature is a passion find her rising to meet them in all their joys, to quiet them in all their vexa- tions, to solace them in all their sorrows. "What I wanted when my father died," said a musician, "was to hear a certain piece of music. If I could have heard that, it would have seemed like a precious friend comforting me. But I could not, and so I was desolate, and my heart fed on itself. " And it is just so with the love of nature in any similar stress. The soft meadow scene of a champaign country, where the purple vapors veil the distant edges, and the sunbeams slant across them with that straight-cutting line in which light pen- etrates a jewel ; the infinite joy of the wide sea scene, with the everlasting play of its frolicking waves by day, its infinite melancholy, tenderness, and mystery by night; the magnificent inclosure of the mountains, lifting their heads into heaven to catch the light and translate it for the beholder, com- panions of the stars and yet companions of ourselves all these speak to their THE LONELINESS OF RURAL REGIONS. A SEWING CIRCLE. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 159 I lover as some delightful friend might speak, as some great all-wise friend, in- deed, sometimes the very voice of God Himself. They comfort insensibly, when comfort is needed, too, not by the mere pleasure of the eye, but, as beauty always must, by composing and resting, by silent influence, and by the inevitable consciousness that the existence of such a thing shows an ever-liv- ing and ever-loving care; and beholding the scene so perfect, it would seem as if we were, almost unaware to ourselves, called upon by all these viewless forces to do our best toward perfection, too. We have known a person, very sensitive to all these forces, who in a season of religious despair was made whole merely by a winter's walk in the country, looking toward sunset, where the snow-white and innocent fields grew faintly rosy and smiling, and a ruddy orange lay low in the west, like a vast hearth-fire, and in its suggestion of warmth and home and shelter, made the sufferer in some way feel that the universe was under care, and every atom of it was regarded as precious and not to be spared by its Maker. And are we not, all of us, atoms in it ? And if the lovers of nature can be satisfied in such wise in the time when her pictorial and delightsome effects are less easy to be felt, what joy can they experience in the other seasons, when she is an utter spendthrift of beauty, like a player at whist who plays trumps because he has nothing else at all in his hand ! What a luxury of life is theirs in the spring, when the callow wil- lows make a sort of green sunshine near and far, and scatter their delicate fragrance through the land ; in the summer, when the boat slips along the dark shadow of the branch-hung bank, the shadow full of deep olive tints, with now a yellow star-glint beneath, and a heaven of stars bright as the brede of some immortal scarf hung overhead ; or in the fall, when the sun shines through the gilded and reddened leaves and transfigures them to flame, and earth seems a vast garden of brilliant bloom, whose vividness is only softened by the tender hazes everywhere dropping and folding about it! If all the ineffable charm of such scenes will not, indeed, pluck out a rooted * sorrow, it will, at all events, if once really felt, go far towards alleviating the sorrow, acting perhaps as chloroform is said to do in spasmodic diseases, ob- taining possession of the brain first, and rendering it in some way less acute to the touch of the other. Michelet's Twilight Experience. To those who sincerely and understandingly cherish these influences of nature, with whom the love is no intellectual pretense, she assumes a real personality a personality so strange that sometimes when night or twilight is superadded, this thing that is so dear to us puts on a mystery that becomes 160 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. weird and uncanny, as if we were visited by the ghost of one we loved. "La petite chaine, par exemple, qu'on appelle le Rocher d'Avon, nousavaitsalues le matin, dans la.senteur des bruyeres, de la plus gaie lumieredel'aube, d'une ravissante aurore qui rosait le gres; tout semblait sourire et s'harmoniser aux Etudes innocentes d'une ame poetique et pieuse. Le soir, nous y retour- nons, mais la fee fantasque a change. Ces pins qui nous accueillircnt sous leur ombrelle legere, devenus tout a coup sauvages, ils roulent des bruits Granges, des lamentations de mauvais augure. Ces arbustes, qui le matin invitaient gracieusement la robe blanche & s'arreter, a cueillir des baics ou des fleurs, ils ont 1'air de receler maintenant dans leurs fourres jene sais quoi de sinistre des voleurs ? ou des sorcieres ? Mais le changement le plus fort est celui des rochers qui nous re?urent et nous firent asseoir. Est-ce le soir? Est-ce 1'orage imminent qui les a changed? Je 1'ignore; mais les voila devenus de sombres sphinx, des elephants couches a terre, des mammouths et autres monstres des mondes anciens qui ne sont plus. Ils sont assis, il est vrai; mais s'ils allaient se lever? Quoi qu'il en soit, 1'heure avance, marchons . . . L'on se presse a mon bras." This singular personality which Michelet here gives the rocks and stones, others have been known to give to members of the vegetable kingdom. All growing things are alive to them, and full of purpose and intelligence ; a flower is not to be plucked with inadvertence; a river rolls because it is called by the sea, as youth is called by love ; and even the trees assume the same intelligence that elder mythology gave them in peopling the green or hollow stems with dryads. A botanist once declared to us that he had seen a tree manifest all the intelligence of a human being. This tree grew in the chink of a rock on the brink of a slight precipice, with a mere handful of soil to nourish it, and it was nourished so poorly that it spindled and had few leaves, and seemed altogether worthless. One day the person claiming the "animula, vagula, blandula" for the little sapling saw a thread that had been put forth from among the roots a mere slender white thread creeping over the brink of the precipice and dangling there, blown about by the wind, and growing longer every day. At the foot of the precipice was a spring of water and some deep, rich soil ; on the hither side the soil was boggy, on the farther it was rich and suitable. The little thread did not merely drop into the nearest place and take root in the boggy hither side ; it wavered and wavered and pushed out till it landed at last on the other side of the spring, where the ground was firm and good ; and before long the fine thread was a coarse one, the coarse one was a yarn, the yarn was a cord, a rope, a great stem, and in time it looked as if it were the tree itself and not a mere rootlet that it thrust down where it felt the water. Very soon after it struck root, the sapling, re- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. ceiving the rich food and drink of the spring, sent out a fresh head of leaves, presently fresh branches, and began to flourish with a vigor that had never been dreamed of for it with such a vigor that the winds caught in the full-leaved head of the top-heavy little thing, and it was in danger of being up- rooted. What now did intelligence do ? It put forth a rootlet on the other side, curled it round and round the main stem in the crevice, till finally, as the root grew large and thick, it looked as though it had been poured fluid into the mould of that crevice to anchor that tree, which it did securely, and probably for genera- tions. If we may not accord intelligence, rather than the mere accident of situ- ation, to the work of this sapling, yet do we all of us on occasion personify some noble oak or pine, as Olive's lover did the oak that stood knee deep in fern and brake ; we all of us personify a mountain eternally couchant, and we all of us find the love of nature a free-masonry that even when circumstances, station, and education are all at odds, make us the children of one mother. MOUNTAINS LIFTIN THEIR HEADS INTO HEAVEN. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 163 WHITE AND INNOCENT FIELDS. Sunlight. If. we have decided that that home is happier which is in a measure in the country, we must further resolve that the home shall be full of sunshine, both of the soul and of the heavens. There is more than idle fancy in the old sun worship of the Persian and of the Mexican, the inhabitants of two regions with the diameter of the globe between them, but where kindred climate gave birth to kindred instincts. There, with the sun powerful and beneficent above them, at the touch of whose rays earth seemed to blush with bloom, like at- tendants upon which the winds came laden with perfume and delicious warmth, with whose reign life resolved itself into a mere pleasure of exist- ence, under such circumstances, and with no revelation of another form of re- ligion, it was not wonderful that to these people the sun seemed to be the splendid shroud of a divine power dwelling within it. They saw the sun the center of the universe, and all things seeming to revolve around him. They saw the seed lying, for eons it might be, in the bosom of the mother earth, but never springing into life till touched by the fructifying power of the sun. They saw those portions of the earth remotest from his influence wrapped in ice and frigor, desolation and darkness, while between such parallels as lay perpetually beneath him a prodigious vegetation and life and beauty reveled ; and they felt that behind this creative power the Creator Himself must be ensphered the Creator, the Friend, the Benefactor, the Father of all, Who when He came brought hope and joy with Him, and when He went left darkness and doubt and fear to creep in behind Him. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 165 After all, it was at once the simplest and the most beautiful of the an- cient and heathen religions. It had none of the complexity of the Grecian paganism that, a natural offshoot under JEgean winds and skies and the artis- tic fancy indigenous there, became an utterly artificial manufacture when transplanted into the Roman atmosphere. It had in its early form none of the mysticism of the Hindostanee, none of the barbarity of the Polynesian and its related religions. It was the idea that must have suggested itself at once to the reason and the imagination of primitive man in a happy and com- fortable condition. It cumbered itself with no personalities, and it perplexed itself with no dogmas. Before the revelation of the truth, of a religion of self-sacrifice and endeavor, nothing could have been purer or more joyous than this worship of the sun. We have learned better now than to worship the instrument as the orig- inator. But for all that, the most of us remember our home in the East, that great breeding-place of the race; some traditions of it cling to us yet, and among them we have a veneration for the sunshine, the ancient and unal- terable sunshine. Whatever melancholy there may be in our composition as- serts itself at the twilight hour when the sun is withdrawing from us. All our gladness and gayety break forth in the morning hour when his smile kindles the heavens. The dark days when cloud hides him throw their veil over our own spirits also, and it seems in that thick weather as though noth- ing would go amiss if only the sun were out. Nor is it anywise strange that it should be so ; for apart from the physical pleasure it affords, this sweet, soft, penetrating sunshine is the emblem of all tenderness and strength, of all benevolence and impartiality ; like the rain, it falls on the just and on the unjust, and wherever it falls a blessing springs up to meet it. For when the sun shines, we can all of us cry out with the joy of the old Earth in the "Prometheus:" "It interpenetrates my granite mass; Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers; Upon the winds, among the clouds, 'tis spread; It wakes a life in the forgotten dead They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers!" (i 66) THE DARK SHADOW OF THE BRANCH-HUNG STREAM. STEPPING STONES -TO HAPPINESS. 167 CHAPTER SEVENTH. Vine and Fig Tree. Throw hither all your quaint enameled eyes That on the green turf suck the honied showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies. The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose and the well attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears. Milton. God Almighty first planted a garden. Bacon. There is no ancient gentleman but gardeners. Shakespeare. And add to these retired Leisure That in trim gardens takes his pleasure. Milton. When tillage begins other arts follow. Daniel Webster. No daintier flowre or herbe that growes on grownd, No arborett with painted blossoms drest, And smelling sweete, but there it might be fouwnd. To bud out faire and throwe her sweete smels al arownd. Spenser. But if the house is in what is called the country or on the country's edge, we shall find another stepping stone to happiness in the possession and cul- tivation of a garden, and if we live in town, still we love a garden. Every man loves his own garden. It is the delight and the desire of the farmer's wife and the dream of the old sailor coming off the sea. The turning up of the earth is in obedience to one of the natural instincts, perhaps almost the only inheritance we carried with us out of the Garden of Eden. Gardening STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. indeed, or rather the pretty potter- ing round a garden, directing some- body else with the heavy work, and attending one's self to the pictur- esque, is an occupation than which there is none pleasanter, as all those know who are blessed with a bit of ground. The first pulling over of last year's flower bed is like coming back from long absence and enjoying the society of a mother; and as strength and vigor come to us while we meddle with the soft brown soil of the healing and purifying earth, we easily understand that Antaeus as well as Adam was a gardener. The Garden. Nor is there anything more soothing than this same occupation for a mind vexed and worried by many cares. The breaking up of the ball of loam, the raking together of scattered waste, the sowing of seeds, the cutting of weeds, the removal of worms, the trimming of branches all that distract the thoughts from trouble, together with the slight fatigue of bodily labor calm the nerves and reduce things to harmony. And while the occupation is both pleasing and soothing, it is the one work of all which has most promise and most accomplishment in it ; we know that little is done there in vain, the reward is constantly before us, and the fulfill- ment of the first part comes while we are working on the last. We see the STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 169 thing grow under our hands the seed sprouts, the bud sets, the flower bloom s, the fruit ripens, and all so that we can count ourselves, if not like the Orien- tal conjurers under whose hands the seed springs from shoot to fruit in twenty minutes' time, yet, at any rate, as if we had had a small hand in helping on the seasons and the fruits of the earth, each after its kind. An Old-Fashioned Garden. And what in the world is there lovelier than an old-fashioned garden one not so carefully kept as to be a nuisance rather than an enjoyment ? Over the old walls clamber the grape-vines and the scrambling blackberries, beneath them are the currant bushes, and here and there is a rare plum or pear tree, or honeysuckles, trained on tall trellises, to keep a sentinel's watch on the rest. Here stand the queenly hollyhocks in all their splendid hues, here the sweet stocks; here beds of carnation spice the air all day long; and pansies, violets, roses, southern-wood, evening primroses, and lilies all in their turn, and sometimes altogether make the mere breath a luxury; while in some neg- lected corner a forgotten sunflower absorbs all the warmth and wealth of its region, and suddenly spires up and spreads its broad disk like a fiery illumin- ation. We do not care for scientific work in our old-fashioned garden, nor do we perplex ourselves with massing and separating the colors much : the sight of them all, as nature happened to throw them together, is. pleasure enough ; while in the distance the modest kitchen-garden throws in a sturdy back- ground of greenery, with its fluttering bean and pea blossoms, with the great green roses of its cabbages, with the reddening boet-tops, the feathery car- rots, and the waving plumes of corn. When the chief care and labor are over not great at any time, certainly to sit on summer days with book or work in a garden chair on the reserved grass-plot of such a place, is a satisfaction that few who are not bound by the city have need to deny themselves. And when we add to the satisfaction of the senses the fuller satisfaction of looking en a scene that would not have been but for our own hands, of feeling that we have added by our personal exertion to the beauty and to the wealth of the world, that summer is more summer for our flowers, and mankind is richer for our potatoes and tomatoes* we wonder everybody does not hasten to the study of the almanac and the task of laying out a garden ! The Almanac. For in the habit of studying the almanac lies a part of the pleasure of having a garden. When we open the Old Farmer's or the first pages of our 1?0 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. handy volume diary, we hunt up our birthdays, consider on what days the festivals of the next year may be found, look to see if any eclipses will hap- pen in our part of the world, and take more or less unconscious pleasure in the cabalistic pages, some of which still, in spite of all that has been done for us, we understand no better than the peasant, who, bewildered with his first one, cried, "Well, well, it maffles and talks; but all I could make out is that Collop-Monday falls on a Tuesday next year. " The almanac as we have it was not enjoyed by our grandmothers. If they wanted such a thing at all, they had to be content and doubtless were with one full of fortune-telling and astrology, to which the days and tides and moons were quite subsidiary lucky if they could read it any way. For in its present state the almanac is almost a modern invention, since, although the Greeks of Alexandria had one as early as the first century, it would hardly be taken for a poor relation of ours. In Rome, in the primitive times, an officer proclaimed the day and the weather in the streets, and a placard of the fact was put up in public places. But the first almanac worth attention at all must have been that of Solomon Jarchus, issued in the middle of the twelfth century. Even the origin of the thing's name is a subject of as much mys- tery as any other of its facts, these holding that it belongs to the Arab alma- nak a record and those, that it is from the Saxon al-mon-aght the heed of the moon all the changes of our satellite having long been carved on a stick thus named; indeed, a stick or "clog" having been brought in from Denmark so artistically carved with symbols of time as to be a subject of a good deal of scholastic interest. In a library at Oxford is an almanac computed by Peter of Darcia in 1300, and in this that mythical, allegorical, and, to most, inexplicable figure called the "man of the signs" makes his debut. Oxford, indeed, after this, gave its authority to all the English calendars 'of the Middle Ages, and one made there in the last years of the fourteenth century had the calendar of the rainy days to be expected, and the precise statement of what season it is good to build or marry in, and all the science of the day, the "Houses of the Planets, events from the birth of Cain, short notes on medicine, movable feasts, and blood-letting," which, after all, was not so unlike some still among us. However, the second, if not really the first, one printed on the European continent came from Buda, in Hungary, and was calculated for three years, containing little but the eclipses and the places of the planets. But we may well take heart of grace in this age of free distribution when we remember that this sold for ten crowns in gold. The Sheapard's Kalcndar, translated from the French, is thought to be the first one printed in England, which did not have printed ones till fifty STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 171 3' ears after France. In 1558 comes one that carrieson its title- page the words, ''Wherein is ex-, pressed the Change and Full of the Mocne, with their quar- ters. The varie- tie of the Ayres and also of the Windes through- out the whole yere, with Vnfor- tunate Times to Bieand Sell." Nevertheless, in Leonard Digges* time, a half-dozen years earlier than this last brochure, there had already arisen numerous doubters and sneerers at the astrological por- tion of the al- manacs, whom this worthy stoutly com- bated. Having declared that the rising of Orion, Arcturus, and Corona provoked tempestuous weather, and the Hyades rain, "Who is ignor- ant," he exclaims, "though poorly skilled in astronomy, that Jupiter with Mercury, or with the sun, enforces rage of winds ? What is he that perceives EVERY ONE LOVES A GARDEN. , 72 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. not the fearful thunders, lightnings, and rains at the meeting of Mars and Venus, or Jupiter and Mars? Desist, for shame, to oppugn these judgments so strongly authorized!" In France, the astrological character of the work had allowed the taking of great liberties, and it was found necessary to forbid the prophesying against affairs of state or of people the fulfilled prophecy of the downfall of the Du Barri having given great encouragement to true believers. But in England full latitude was never interfered with by the state, except that a monopoly of the publication was given the Company of Stationers and the two universities, the latter, however, soon selling out to the former. This done, there came to be two strong parties in the matter of almanac-making, the philomaths and the astrologers, and hot was the warfare between them. But in the time of the civil wars superstition was still rampant, and those with the most gloriously impossible predictions were the most eagerly bought. * Poor Robin's Almanac did, perhaps, as much as anything else in the exter- mination of this kind, it was published in 1664, and although often low and coarse, had much good-humored raillery at the ignorant sort. "We may ex- pect," it ran, "some showers of rain this month, or the next, or the next after that, or we shall have a very dry spring." Robert Herrick had a hand in this, as Decker had in a slightly earlier one of a similar nature. John Eve- lyn, of "Diary" fame, had already published one of an entirely serious and suitable nature for the sole use of gardeners. At last, in 1708, Dean Swift tried his hand at this literature, and issued one in which he satirically de- clared that a certain Partridge, an importer in the line of astrological alma- nacs, should die on a fixed day, at eleven at night of a fever. Partridge, after that fixed day, certified to the fact that he was still alive. In Swift's amusing; epitaph on the man are the lines: "And you that did your fortunes seek, Step to his grave but once a week, This earth, which bears his body's print, You'll find has so much virtue in't, That I durst pawn my ears 'twill tell Whate'er concerns you full as well, In physic, stolen goods, or love, As he himself could when above." Half a century after all this, Andrews was doing work on the regular al- manac so as to increase its circulation to five hundred thousand, although him- self never receiving more than twenty-five pounds a year. Yet the first really decent one of all appears to have been our own Poor Richard's Almanac by Benjamin Franklin; and it was not until the first quarter of the present cen- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. tury that the astrological parts disappeared from the usual British almanac, while we all still tol- erate the promise of snow or rain "at about this time." We may, then, thank the stars, that are no longer consulted in the making of almanacs, that we may open our diaries, or our little Lady's Almanac, and no longer be tormented with predictions of the de- struction of the world, being glad that almanac- makers, at any rate, have relegated that work to the astronomical savants, who may tell us that the earth is drying up to- day, and dropping into the sun to-morrow, with- out troubling us a whit if we do not have to read the fact every day of our lives in finding the day ^gi^,,| of the month. ^_ But for all this we have known the almanac 11 do strange things in its : ;;; ^ way. Indeed, we knew a family where it was not only a cloud-compelling Zeus, ordaining the weather, making the days of the month walk up to the mark, and bringing about eclipses and convulsions of nature at its will, but where it really wrought nothing less than magic. It al- ways hung by the side of the huge chimney-piece, along with other mystical paraphernalia of that hearth ; and when an offence had been committed whose perpetrator was undiscoverable by common earthly means, the family of chil- THE MODEST KITCHEN GARDEN. i 7 4 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. dren were summoned, and were ranged in a solemn row before the head of the house, who took down the almanac, read aloud those terrible things about Aries and Libra and Scorpio and Gemini, and made the awful signs of the Zodiac with the tongs in the ashes, and turned the leaves and consulted the quarters of the moon and flow of the tides, all interspersed with swift-scru- tinizing glances at the waiting row, till suddenly the pale and trembling culprit of the ordeal was singled out by name ; and great was the birch rod, and the almanac was its prophet there. But it hardly needs the almanac to tell us that when snow is gone, the sun is shining and the birds are building; then it is time to begin to turn up the earth, and let the air of heaven in to nitrogenize the under side of the clods. The Apple Tree. It is often a pathetic sight as one drives along the rural roads to see the effort that the wife of the laborer, or the small farmer, has made to get her little garden with its patch of color. But if it be in the spring-time that one drives, the pathos is sometimes lost in the beauty of the apple orchard that rises behind the garden and throws it into foreground. For who, living in the country or the large country town, in the parallels of its habitat, pretends to own a home without an apple tree ? And who owns an apple tree and does not wish for two ? And who would own a farm without an orchard ? And who that has one does not feel a kind of family affection for the old gnarled and moss-grown stem which has so rooted itself in the soil, and has so long been a part of the family life, as to seem little less than an ancestor? There are harvests the world over, each having a peculiar charm and 'beauty of its own. In one place it is the harvest of the vineyard on the cas- tled slopes of the Rhine, on the hills of France, or the volcanic sides of Vesu- vius, in the fields of Greece harvests around whose bald facts are woven images of beauty in form and hue that painters and sculptors and singers have been swift to seize. Then there is the harvest of the grain field, with its reapers, its sheaves, its wains, its sweet old stories, such as that of Ruth in the corn ; its pictures, such as that famous one of the ' ' Blessing of the Wheat' ' ; its vast Western existence on this continent of boundless horizons, and won- der-working machines tossing sheaves to right and left like giants at play. If less universal than these, yet hardly less beautiful, is the hop harvest, with its lovely blooming bunches in a sort of simulation of the grape, and the scenes of its merry pickers down their long green lanes. But quite as full of STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 175 attraction as any other is the apple harvest of New England and those regions where the apple-tree is as much an institution as the house itself. From the first flake of the pink snow that drifts across their boughs in May with clouds of fragrance and songs of nestlings and lights of glancing wings, to the heavy drooping of their branches dropping thick shade in the deeps of summer, to the time when they are starred with their ruddy wealth, the apple-tree is a pleasure to the eye and to the senses perfect in its spring- time beauty, and with an air of homely heartiness and health the rest of the year; a matronly, motherly thing, happy, it would almost seem, in giving happiness, as if it knew how grateful was its summer shade, its autumn juices; as if it knew the good times it furnished to the gay guests of the "par- ing bee" ; to lovers sitting by the fire and watching their greenings sputter as they roast before the coals and tell the tale of which loves the best; to the roysterers of All-halloween ducking their heads in water tubs for the red re- treating sphere ; to friends and neighbors on a winter night who, having trudged across the snowy fields, are regaled with mellow fruit and mellower cider; to all the light-limbed gatherers on autumn days who climb among the boughs or roll the bright heaps together in the orchard corners. There are few scenes pleasanter to the eye of those that from childhood have known the apple-tree in garden and field and about the back door than those of the apple gathering. The branches, that all the summer have hung a little more heavily day by day, have long been hiding under their dropping weight the far-stretching orchard aisles whose arched roofs and turfed floors have seemed fit for fairy dancing-halls; now men and boys have climbed among them with baskets and ladders, or are emptying their loads by the piles of barrels, this load yellow as the apples of the Hesperides, that red as rubies are, and all as fragrant as the first apple that ever tempted Eve. The girls and the women of the family are usually as busy as the men are, too; and even the horses of the waiting teams arch their necks and turn their wistful eyes, appreciative of the sweet morsels that they love so well. In all the time of the harvest no other work is to be done, no men can be hired to lay stone or haul gravel or cart wood; the "appling, " before the frost can work its mischief, or the high winds toss and hurt the fruit, has tasked the ener- gies of a whole neighborhood. How picturesque, then, are the cider mills with their enormous heaps of fruit about them! how far and how deliciously on every hand you can scent the air they load with their aroma as you ride along, as if the virtue of golden pippin, and of the gillyflowers, the richness of whose deep red skin stains the snowiness of the black-seeded white flesh with a crimson tinge of snow-apple, and of nonesuch, had all melted into the atmosphere, and become a part of 1?6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. it! And although the sky be full of the promise of winter, and although the heap of fruit be chill to the touch, one feels, in receiving the rich odor, in looking at the rich colors of the glittering heaps on the ground, something of the warmth and cheer of which they will presently be a part ; of red-embered fires, and beaming faces round them that they will help illuminate fires no more red and shining than the apples that toast before them; of "turn-overs," and of "pan-dowdies," and of "apple-jack" ; and one feels that the apple har- vest is valued none too much, and that, from the blossoms of May to the "dried- apple smice" of March, the apple tree is the special blessing of its owners and growers, all that the date is to the Arab, a rough-coated, warm-hearted friend, a vegetable guardian angel of hearth and home and happiness. Woman in Agriculture. But whether she has an orchard or not, every woman who has ten feet* of earth about her door thinks herself an object of blame if she has not at least a rose-bush, a cluster of coleus, and a honey-suckle in it ; and she may be seen in spring and fall and in the heats of summer watering and pruning and digging as she would think herself abominably used if it were expected of her now-a-days in relation to any matter pertaining to the economies, such as hoeing the corn or digging the potatoes, or doing anything of the sort, let it be lighter or heavier work, whose end is not purely aesthetic. She has no idea of returning to the tasks of her savage ancestress ; she has sublimated and idealized those tasks. But unconsciously though she makes the offering, yet nevertheless every blossom that blows under her hands is a tribute to that ancestress, an offering on her altar, a memorial service to her who first dis- covered and turned to her advantage the warmth and fertility and creative power of the mother earth. Among the Lake Dwellings. "The ruins of so-called lake dwellings," says a graphic address of Mr. Lyman before an agricultural society, "covered for long ages with water, have revealed the beginnings of such culture in Europe. Among the charred piles which once supported wooden cabins built in a lake have been found bones of oxen, dogs, and goats, and beside them heaps of wheat and barley. No writ- ing, monument, or tradition remains to tell us who were these primitive til- lers of the soil who thus sought safety from enemies amid the waters. By their implements, fished up in quantities from the bottom, we know that some of them still maintained the good old fashion of stone tools, while others, more Poor Richard, AN Almanack For tlte Year of Chrift 1 733> Being the FirH after LEAP YEAR: ks Jince tht. Creation, "By the Account of the aftem. an' it wor the same to him as his own childer, more betoken." When Mr. Rosillon again became conscious he hesitated to open his eyes his first idea that he was dead, changing to the assurance that without any doubt he was in prison. Yet there had been familiar sou ads and then a quick, 2I4 . STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. wary glance showed him his wife and Angela and the accustomed things of his own room. His lips moved, but he could say nothing. 4; It is all right, papa, it is all right! " cried Angela. " And, oh, we are so glad and thankful ; we are so proud of you, papa ! " This was a new revelation. And as all things come to him that waits, Mr. Rosillon waited. From time to time in his drowsing, and as he lay silent, he gathered that the fire had been extinguished with but little damage to the bank, and that he had done something heroic. He took the drops and the nourish- ment that were brought to him and fell off again into deep sleep. He had, of course, been stunned, and there had been some fear of concussion of the brain; a doctor and a hospital nurse were busy about him for a while, he was vaguely aware, and then by slow degrees full consciousness came back to him. But he said nothing. He was thinking, thinking, feebly at first, and then with all his might, that if he were really to get out of this clear, and all could by any possibility be as before, the cost of the safe and the expenses of the fire could be paid back to the bank in small sums and excite no suspicion, and he could account for his presence there. How could he account for his presence there ? Oh, yes, it had slipped his mind he had let Murphy go. He ought not to have let Murphy go. But the child was sick. And he had felt uneasy and had gone back. That was the truth. If it was not the whole truth, if it were a lie masquerading as the truth, he would have to live under the shadow of so much of it as was a lie all his life. That would have to be his punish- ment. It seemed to him that it would be an unspeakable relief if he could believe that for that little while he had been mad. Mr. Rosillon was past all danger, lying back among his pillows, pale and weak, and with hardly any hold on life ; it seemed as if, indeed, it were some- thing loathsome that he dreaded to take up again, when Mr. Thursden came in. Angela opened the door to him, standing up straight and tall like a young silver birch, in her pale green gown, her face rippling with sunshine and joy. " Well, Rosillon," said Mr. Thursden, " glad to get you back, by all that's good! We thought we were going to lose you one time." "Mr. Thursden," said Rosillon, his great hollow eyes dark with shadows, as the president's big, warm hand closed around his feeble fingers, " I have been down to the gates of hell ! " " I should have been down there if it hadn't been for you, you mean ! I swear, Rosillon, I haven't any words to express my sense of what you did. never heard, I never dreamed of such devotion to duty as that ! Why, it's superhuman, such courage! Going to the safe and getting out the valuables for us in the face of that fire and that explosion. I wouldn't have done it for all the gold in Christendom, or the whole plant of ' Pipsissewa.' And I tell you STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 215 the directors feel just as I do about it. And we've had a meeting and cast about in some way to show our appreciation for your act, and we have decided I confess the proposition was mine, knowing your wish that the old Rosillon house shall be a testimonial of our gratitude. And it won't tell the half of it. Where the deuce is my handkerchief ? And now, shall we have the deeds made out in your name or in the name of your wife ? " And the president, whose voice a moment before had been trembling quite humanly, began to swell visibly with his magnanimity. " Mr. Thursden," said the other, " if you think I have done my duty"; "Oh, duty ! Duty carried to the highest point ! Duty"- " Then I can take no other reward. I want no reward for doing my duty." " But, Rosillon, my good fellow " "No, no. I have been doing some thinking while lying here. I have turned over what you said it seems a year, a lifetime ago that the house would be a millstone around my neck. I don't want it. I can't take it. I am sensible of your goodness, of the generosity of the directors, but it must end here . I will go back to the bank when I am able if you will allow me " "Allow you !" " And all shall be as before. But no reward, Mr. Thursden." " I see, I see. By George, Rosillon, you're the noblest fellow no, you're the most foolish, the most quixotic I ever met. Just think twice about the house. Why, if you don't want to keep it you can sell it " " Sell that house ! No I I mean let Jersey have it, if he wants. I will stay here. This house where my wife and I set out the trees and planted the garden, where my children were born, where I have come up out of hell to find not deserving it this angel waiting for me," the gloomy eyes resting on Angela, the lips breaking into a smile, " this shall be the Rosillon house, and I will have no other." 2l6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. CHAPTER NINTH. In a Dangerous Place. Thou treadst upon enchanted ground, Perils and snares beset thee round. Anon. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Adapted from Cur ran. O Rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. William Slake. If the germs gave the fever, why didn't they have the fever? How could they give a thing they didn't have? A Child's Story. The river Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne, But tell me, nymphs, what power divine Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine? Coleridge. Better to hunt in fields for health unbought Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. Dryden. Health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of a blessing that money cannot buy. Izaak Walton. The Health of the Home. In obtaining this house which is to be so dear a shelter, be it on the as- phalt or under the green bough, we have of course been particular about the site, for it may be "writ large but the country is healthful only when it is healthful," and this sanitary condition is not to be taken for granted. Rose- bushes in the door-yard in too frequent cases supersede drain-tiles under it, STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 217 and the cupola too rarely holds a ventilating shaft. In the city there are many houses that are built over old water courses, and the would- be occupant is wise when he procures an old map of the city, which will let him know whether or not he is subject to this danger. It is the houses built over these old choked or diverted water courses, whose occupants are the sufferers from malaria. In the country house the chief risks to health come from the pollution of the water sup- ply, and of the air, by contact with waste mat- ter. Owners of property are left to build or not to build their drains and to bestow them perhaps as ignorance and indolence prompts, with no official supervision, and the consc quence is, that sometimes the loveliest spots are nests of low fever, diphtheria and dysentery. Rock and Gravel. In choosing the location of the country house, it is to be supposed that we have given preference to a region of gravelly or sandy soil, or where we UNABLE TO LOOK A MAN IN THE FACE. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. could have founded it on a rock, clay soils holding the surface water too long, and making the air damp and chilly. Wherever the waste could contaminate drinking water with putrefying organic matter, we shall have found it the safer way to substitute rain-water for cooking and drinking purposes. If the roof and gutters are kept clean, and the rain water collected and stored in cisterns, and then filtered, all which can be easily done, the supply will be sufficient, and perfectly healthful. It is, however, wiser to boil it for drinking, then cool, and afterward aerate it. If filters are used for purification, they must be taken apart and the strainers carefully washed and dried at least once a fortnight. Otherwise they become useless, the sand and charcoal retaining organic impurities, and imparting a disagreeable taste to the water. No kitchen slops, either from wash-tubs or dish-pan, must be thrown upon the ground, or into that open drain too often found at the back of the usual country dwelling. Organic waste festers in the hot sun, and the satu- rated ground gives forth incense fit for Beelzebub, god of flies. All house- hold waste should be removed as fast as it gathers, and lightly buried. In the dark laboratory of the earth noxious matter is turned at once to sweet and wholesome uses. Lawn and garden thrive on what is fatal to man. But if this can not be done, then the kitchen waste should be burned two or three times a day. No standing pails of garbage should be allowed to tempt flies and defile the fragrant air. The Cellar. The condition of the cellar is far more important than that of the parlor. In light rooms dirt is comparatively harmless. In dark places it is a lurking -danger. No old wood, no vegetables, no rubbish of any kind, should be allowed to cumber the cellar, which should have a water-proof and air-tight floor, to prevent ground air and soil moisture from rising to the living-rooms. Whether the floor and walls be cemented or not, it is necessary that all cellar doors and windows should be daily opened for free circulation of air. The water from the eaves, if not saved in a cistern, should be carried so far from the house in well-laid pipes that there will be no contiguous sur- face dampness or wet foundation walls. Dampness is a ready vehicle for disease, as well as a fruitful cause of it. Another source of danger is decay- ing vegetable refuse in garden or grounds. Careless servants leave rhubarb leaves, prunings of vines, or weeds wherever they fall, instead of taking them to the compost pit or burning them. If they are out of sight they are out of STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 219 mind, till they recall themselves in visitations of headaches, aching bones, or irritable tempers. In short, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty from disease, as from other usurpers. Voltaire said that incantations would destroy a flock of sheep {/administered with the proper quantity of arsenic. But if we put a super- stitious faith in country air, to the neglect of constant scrutiny and intelli- gent precaution, it is likely that our last state will be worse than our first. It is when the early autumn weather sets in, bringing cool nights, treading close upon the heel of hot days, that the demon of fever and infection is most apt to walk abroad, and our house-holders will find there is no time so good as the later autumn weather, just as the black frost falls, for exorcising the be- ing that makes such destruction. Then, in the safe chilliness of the nights and days the places that he has haunted can be barricaded against his return, and the nests in which his evil attendance has brooded can be cleared of their presence for once and all. The Prevention that Is Better than Cure. It is when pickling and preserving and house-cleaning are over that the good house-wife will turn her attention to these affairs, more vital by far than anything that conduces merely to the pleasure of the eye, or of the table, and will look about her to see if her drains and sinks, her well and water-pipes, are in good order, and if her cellar is what a cellar should be, underlying as it does, the whole life of the house, and capable of sending, from its position in the sub-structure, bane or blessing, pure air or fetid, through every crevice of the dwelling. And there is no circumstance, by-the-way, that points more plainly to the wisdom of making every exertion to own one's home, of fore- going luxury and display and all other gratification that can be foregone with safety to soul and body, and laying away the wherewithal to purchase the place with which one can do as one chooses, and, uprooting what is already wrong, plant wells and dig drains where it is best: wisdom, since although the expenditure of the same money in choice food, in fine raiment, or in costly equipage may be even more delightful, there are no delights that are equal to those of health, and health can only be permanently secured when we are masters of our own situation. If the drain that receives the outflow of the house be connected with the refrigerator or too near the well, or if the con- duits from the sink, apt to be made of wood, and frequently leaking on the way, are equally near, there is no human power that can bar out the infectious fever from that house except the removal of the drains and conduits to a safe 220 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. distance; for, inappreciably to taste or scent, atom by atom, drop by drop, the well is poison- ed, the milk in the refrigerator is poisoned, and life is surer and better underneath the dew of the upas-tree. But the position of these things it is not always in the housewife's power to determine, and she must make the best of things as they are, and the best is to have them cleansed yearly in the frosty weather, when the evil germs set free at their opening perish of the withering chill before they can reach the stomachs and lungs of the inmates of the house. A thorough cleansing of these spots every fall is not so expen- sive as a course of doctor's visits, and does not mount up like the druggist's bill; and if it is disa- greeable, it is one of the prices we must pay for enjoyment of com- fort and health, remembering that there is no such thing as immunity from the trouble of this oversight while in a state of civilization ; that this oversight, in fact, is the groundwork of civilization, and that in matters of sickness and suffering, as in matters of politics, the old adage holds equally true, that " eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." But if it is ruinous to poison the water of the well from which we drink, it is quite as ruinous to poison the air which we breathe, and that is the part in the house which the neglected cellar has it in its power to play. Wherever vegetables have been stored, there some have run over the bins and been trodden on the floor, or have run into the dark corners of the bins and been overlooked, till they have decayed and transmitted their decay to others; there has been a "sup of milk" spilled on the floor, a bit of butter, a few drops of the drippings, some greasy brine from the barrel, some festering stuff from a broken bottle ; there is a bit of mould here, a fungus there in REELED AND FELL BACKWARD. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 221 short, the witches' caldron is as ready as when the witches danced round it on the heath of Forres, and threw into it their horrid ingredients. Let now a wet season arrive upon this condition of things, let a hot and humid August come, or let a January thaw of snow and slush set in, let some water trickle into the cellar, or let the stones of the wall merely absorb the dampness and suffer it to ooze through there, and the putrid air that steals up through the studding of the walls, behind every partition, up beside every chimney, and through every door and every crack, brings disease stalking in with the death's-head behind it, only to go out of the door feet foremost. The Only Curse on the House. "There's a curse on the house, sure," said an old servant once. "The children all die as sune's they're born. The first of 'em went with the dysen- tery; then Miss Ellie, the darlint, follows, with what's this ye're afther callin' it? the dipthairy; the twins have gone, too, with the scarlet faver; and there's the master down himself now with the typhus. " "Perhaps the fault is in the house," we suggested. "Dadeabitof it, thin!" cried the faithful woman. "Wasn't it claned in the spring, and, as ye may say, scraped? And wasn't there bushels of the wet dirt, such as you niver see, carried out of the cellar and spread over the garden, till the -;orn was that splendid the one ear was big enough for two?" There surely was a curse on that house the curse of carelessness, un- cleanness, and unthrift; and the hands that would have been thrust into fire for those dead children had dealt them their death-blows. Throughout the world's history everywhere this subject of pure air in the dwelling has received the attention of the thoughtful, and been laughed at by the ignorant. Certain of the ancients had a fancy that various plants of pungent odor prevented infection, and they set them in the way and about their homes a practice at which while we of to-day smile, the camphor bag is carried in our pockets whenever small-pox or cholera prevails. When the plague raged in Italy, all the people who were able left Rome and flocked into a little town round which the laurel grew in luxuriance. We imagine there could have been nothing in it, or else the growth of the laurel would have been fostered round that Italian city into which some friends of ours once strolled and found the stone and sculptured houses, the deep-rutted paved streets, the churches and market-place and stalls, all intact but overgrown, and forsaken by every living soul. The fever had been there before them, and had desolated it. 222 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. Yet physicians have thought that a fearful cholera season was caused by an absence of ozone from the atmosphere, that bracing and life-giving principle which we seek at the sea-side, and which is largely generated by elec- trical and phosphoric agen- cies. And as many plants notably, it is said, various laurels, lavender, hyacinth, mignonette, and the ber- gamot orange evolve ozone in the oxidation of their aromas, and as in our own day the eucalyptus feas been found to be of such immense value in ma- larial regions in absorbing and converting the poison, it would seem as if there were some spark of reason in the idea of the ancients just mentioned, and that they did not plant the most aromatic flowers and offer the richest balsams on the altar of the pestilence for nothing. But this is at best somewhat fanciful and experimental, and at any rate none of us can rely on such uncertain aid in securing the safety of our daily and nightly breathing should we try it. Let us plant as many odorous flowers as we will about our dwellings, it will be none the less necessary for us to purge those dwellings of all accumulated foulness whenever the season arrives in which it can be done with safety to ourselves and others, and whitewash our cellar walls and sprinkle their floors, and all other equally dangerous spots with copperas, or with that guardian of domestic life, the ill-smelling but beneficent chloride of lime. Only by such provision can we hear the dread- LOOKING DOWN AT HIM. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 223; ful names of the autumnal diseases without a shudder, and only when we have exercised it have we a right to consider the load of responsibility lifted from our shoulders. We or Providence to Blame ? When we read of great natural calamities, the floods, the freezings,, the fires, or of the great unnatural ones, the murders, and wars, and famines, we class them under the head of Acts of Providence, forgetful that almost every one of them is within our own control. We read that a dis- tant city is little better than one great pest-house with the small-pox ; that diphtheria is seen to be moving by the reports that come into the physicians' offices, and are jotted again on the map with the slow but sure tread of an army on a march, through the midland country ; that the scarlet fever is ram- pant like a terrible fiend in the North. The only one of these things that we make any positive preparation for is the small-pox ; we secure ourselves from it, as far as *nay be, before it comes, by vaccination, and society puts us in quarantine if it should reach us, and demands fumigation and disinfection when it has left us. For the others, they always seem less tangible and possi- ble ; they are far off, and they may not affect us ; we seldom dream of any preparation to hinder their fell visits, and society laughs at the idea of extra precaution to prevent the diseases from spreading, or of much attempt at purification after they have passed and left us for fresh prey. So much is this the case that we have even known patients in diphtheria to be incensed at not receiving the kisses customary in health; have seen fine ladies making calls in a house where two or three children were down with scarlet fever, quite careless as to whether their next call was to be made in one where the children had not yet received the dark guest; and have met with the servants of a house as yet safe chatting cozily in the kitchen with the servants of the house where the nursery was a hospital of contagion; and this when that es- pecial disease is the most dreadful in all the known category of diseases ; both at its height and in its results, and when the germs of its contagion live for weeks, and are so subtile and powerful that they have even been carried hun- dreds of miles in a letter. We fear the small-pox, it would appear, chiefly because it robs us of what beauty or comeliness we may possess; because it isolates us from neighbors and condemns us to some weeks of solitude; because it occasions so much more fuss and inconvenience in the house than most forms of illness do. It can hardly be anything else that moves us particularly in regard to it, since it is not more loathsome, not more painful, seldom if ever more deadly, 224 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. HE REMEMBERED THE PLACE. than the other diseases named. To be sure, these other diseases are the par- ticular foes of children, while the former attacks ourselves as well, and so brings a more selfish element into play when we are people who have no children ; but when we are people who have children, there is no suffering we would not take upon ourselves rather than have scarlet fever and diphtheria come where our children are. But every physician will assure you that he prefers to deal with the small-pox rather than with the others, for that has a plain and open course, and he always knows where to find it day by day; but the fiend of its kindred fever burrows in the dark, and sometimes under- mines the whole foundations of life before its deadly presence is suspected. When there shall be abroad among all people, as there is now among intelli- gent and well-informed people, the same wholesome horror of scarlet fever and diphtheria that there is of small-pox and of leprosy and of typhus, the world will begin to make some headway in the effort to be rid of these cruel desolators. Children's Diseases. We all love our children as we love ourselves; it is, in fact, an instinct rather than a virtue ; and we would protect them at the sacrifice of our own. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 225 lives. But let there be an epidemic of this nature in the town where we live, and, heroic as our will may be, with what discretion do we exercise it? In the first place, we shut the babies up from the free air lest a whiff of the sick- ness should enter at the window or door, and so we force them to breathe, to large extent, a vitiated atmosphere that makes them the easier prey if at- tacked. Then we allow them to play with the cats and the long-haired dogs which have access everywhere, running up everybody's back-yard at all hours, and prevented by nothing known from carrying the contagion of any disease in their convenient coats. In the mean time, if a stranger comes to the house, ignorant though we may be of what he is and where he came from, we never think of such a thing as hindering him from petting the children if he pleases. We keep no disinfectant in constant use after we know the epi- demic exists ; and finally, we let the children have as much as they wish of the companionship of the maids, who, by reason of their crowded church- going, are so very likely to gather the contagion in their garments. Look a moment at that last statement. Disease finds its favorite food in the region of poverty, bad air, narrow quarters, and in the unhealthy blood made by poor and insufficient diet. It is universally acknowledged that such spots are the hot-bed and propagating ground of everything of the sort. The unfortunate people whom the disease thus victimizes, frequently going through the trial without a physician, knowing nothing of fumigation or dis- infection, and laughing to scorn what they happen to hear of it, seldom deny- ing themselves the pleasure of free going and coming, can not but be the means of sadly spreading the evil from which they suffer. If there are half a dozen families in a house, as not unfrequently happens, and the sickness be in one of those families, none of the well members of that family would think of staying at home from church, and of course none of the members of the other five families who do not feel themselves to be affected; and what is there, then, to prohibit them from taking out with them and scattering through the congregation the germs of the disease, and the maid from inno- cently and ignorantly bringing them home in her shawl to the ruin of the child whom she also loves in common with the rest of the house, and whom she would do her utmost to save ? It seems then as if it were not at all too much to say that it is no act of Providence by which we are smitten when such disease invades us, but only our own neglect and that of others. Disinfectants. It would be a simple and easy thing to keep a dish of carbolic acid or other better disinfectant, exhaling in the house in order to kill, or to make 22 6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. ( the effort to kill, and, at all events, weaken, any of the poisonous germs that might effect an entrance on the air; to dissolve a little chloride of lime; to "burn a pinch of coffee every now and then, or some sugar or vinegar: if it is disagreeable, it is safe; and no one can positively assert what prevention it might not prove to far worse trouble than a slightly offensive odor ever is. We are told that it was given to man to "reduce the earth." When in some distant era that shall be effectually done, it is to be hoped that the germs of many of these terrors will have no breeding-place left there. But till then it is our duty to assist in the great work ; and we venture to believe that if every house where such contagious and heart-breaking disease is found were to be quarantined by the yellow flag as small-pox is, and if it were fumigated with sulphur smoke, purified with atomized disinfectants during the reign and on the disappearance of the trouble, the ravages of the malignant monster, deso- lating households as it goes, would be largely checked, if the monster itself were not thus finally destroyed from the face of the earth. The Scarlet Fever. We can need all these precautions for nothing so much as for the scarlet fever, which, although like death it has all seasons for its own, nevertheless seems always to rage with more vehemence when the mercury gets down among the small figures. Unlike their habit when the measles are in question, which many mothers think it desirable for their children to have early, there is almost no pains which wise mothers will not take to avert from their children this evil of scarlet fever, than which no other disease is so much to be dreaded. And it is justly that this dread is felt ; for the scarlet fever, even if the little patient escapes with life, is likely to poison the blood, to injure the brain, to destroy the hearing, or to affect to deadly purpose some vital organ with long and slow and painful decay. Poe's terrible story of the Masque of the Red Death had in it some elements of the horror that belongs to this pestilence that walketh ,by noonday and I have known an aged physician who never could speak of ( this especial form of fever without tears springing to his eyes, so much misery to child and parent and household had he seen it bring about. When we see a disease which, even on recovery, drags after it in most instances long sequelae of other ailments, often veiled and obscure and not easy to reach and treat kidney affections, lung troubles, glandular difficul- ties, idiocy, and the rest we can judge of the virulence of the original thing itself. And if by any chance we see the child itself enduring the first dis- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 227 tress, the final agony, crying out in blind wonder at its own suffering, yield ing up its brief life perhaps in delirium, perhaps in faintness, with the pangs of suspense and despair of the mother bending over it, and the desolation of the home it leaves so empty of its sweet presence, till it seems as if there were nothing but suffering in the world when by any chance we have seen all this, have fought our own fight with a disease capable of working such woe then it seems to us that we would almost give our own life rather than be the means of diffusing such trouble, of increasing the suffering of the world, of bringing such pain and sorrow upon anothsr person who loved r. child. Yet it is an almost universal thing for families ev^ry individual of whom would feel all this shrinking from increasing the sorrows of the world in- stead of doing their utmost to prevent the spread of the terrible infection, acting with an almost criminal carelessness in the matter, and that, of course, with no intention other than good ones, but partly from ignorance and partly from thoughtlessness and partly from a general trusting to luck. There if. a case of fever in the house; they isolate it, and then they think they have done their whole duty; they themselves, if not needed in attendance, go and come, here and there, in and out, as they please. "Oh, it is only a slight case!" they answer you if you question their action, forgetful of the fact that the most malignant form can be developed from tli3 contagion of the very slightest case of scarlatina, scarlatina being the gsnsric nam-5 of the disease in any form, and not merely of its slightest developmsnt. The doctor goes and comes unavoidably through the hall and up and down the common stair- way between the door and the sick-room ; nobody knows how many germs of the disease clinging to the woolen fibres of his garments to be scattered in the hall and on the stairs, over which the rest of the family pass necessarily many times a day, to gather them up in their own clothes, and have them ready to disseminate whenever they go out among people. The nurses, too, and those in attendance on the sick-room, go up and down into the kitchen and elsewhere about the house, carrying with them more or less of the atmos- phere of the room and all that belongs to it, again to be possibly caught up by those who have never gone near the patient; and, as I have said, the very dogs and cats about the place, to say nothing of the flies, are liable to gather the dangerous unknown force in their long fur, and Dring it to the other members of the family. If then these other members of the family, thus vir- tually contaminated, go out freely on the street, what deadly work is it they do, all unintentionally and unconsciously, what seeds of death and sorrow do they scatter with every wave of their garments as they walk and as they encounter people on the streets or venture into houses' 22 8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. Doubtless it is hard and unpleasant, a sort of imprisonment, indeed, for people not immediately concerned in the work for the sick to shut themselves up when such a trouble is in the house , but there are always ways for them to get enough fresh air to keep themselves in health. And for the rest of it, if the thing comes, it should be received like any other dispensation, and borne with becoming strength and self-denial, even if that requires abstinence from church and concert and call, the foregoing of the morning shopping and the afternoon stroll. For fully three weeks after the patient is out of danger and convalescing a process called desquamation a shedding of the scarf skin goes on with the little person, and every flake of that cuticle wafted abroad is but inoculation of the disease wherever received. Isolation, then, can not be too much regarded; every one in the world must now know the value and necessity of disinfection, in its most extended form; but many forget or are not aware of the need of this complete isolation. There is nothing fine in the courage or bravado of those who would visit or go errands to the dwellings where this sickness exists. It is very easy to be courageous for other people, and it is other people, and not one's self, that the grown person endangers by going into the way of the disease, and those other people helpless little children. Grown people are seldom in much danger of receiving the contagion for themselves, but they can carry it in their clothes; and knowing this, and knowing the alarming vitality of the germ, and how long afterward it can maintain this devastating vitality with unimpeached power, they would be acting with total want of principle, and even of decent human charity, if they did not avoid going to the house where scarlet fever exists, and did not also avoid those who come out of that house. When people who are aware of the danger do avoid those who have come out from these fatal doors, it is not for themselves, it should be remembered, nor indeed always for those dear to them as life itself, but quite as often for the sake of those dear as life to others ; and no one has a right to be offended at this avoidance. It is not the people themselves who are thus avoided ; it is the terrible trouble whose companionship lurks about them. The very individuals who avoid them, or who feel compelled to con- demn their want of consideration and care in going abroad, would, it is very likely, go to their houses and remain with them, helping and cheering them as long as the necessity lasted, but not daring to go out into the world again while the least danger of communicating the evil remained. Instead of being offended at the avoidance, all persons, on the other hand, would do well to prevent the necessity of such avoidance by keeping out of the way them- selves and by voluntarily and spontaneously, with noble even if Quixotic re- gard, for others, maintaining themselves and their house in a sort of quaran- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 229 tine, which, uncomfortable as it may be to them, is infinitely better than sickness and death and the sorrow of vacant houses to others The Children of the Poor. When all has been done that can be done to secure sweet aii and sur- roundings to the family, whether in town or country, the heads of the house- hold have reason to congratulate themselves on the immunity that their own darlings have when contrasted with the condition of the children of the very poor, especially of those in the worst districts of the city. Often when people who have loved and cared for their children to the last degree have at length lost them, they think that if their children had been allowed to run at large, unwashed, unkempt, unfed, all but undressed, in the wet and in the sun, they would have been left alive ; and they look with envy at the washerwoman's sturdy babies rolling in the gutter as they go by, while their own dear ones, on which they spent such cares, are laid away in silence. Their complaint and their envy, however, betray simply an ignorance that is widespread concerning the very great mortality among the children of the poor in cities. With these poor it is only the sturdy and the hardy that do not die in infancy ; those are examples of the survival of the fittest. When they, in turn, have children of their own, those children inherit a great deal of their parents' hardiness, and live through nearly everything but murder. But murder comes to them ; and the community allows the murderer to stalk boldly unchallenged at broad mid-day, while he decimates the ranks of those that can not afford houses by themselves, with light and st>ace, pure air, pure water and dry floors. Of all the children rolling in the gutters only a mere fraction endure the rough treatment and live. In damp dwellings, pervaded by the foul smell of countless sinks and deposits of filth, with fever already, doubtless, in more 23 o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. than one of all the many rooms of the tenement, with little to eat, with no cleanliness, with unhealthy beds, with insufficient warmth in winter, with terrible heats in summer, what an amount of strength does it not need in or- der to meet such ills and conquer them ! The mother who nurses these children in their babyhood is half starved herself. As soon as they are old enough to be left, and sometimes before, she is obliged to let them look out for themselves while she is away at her daily drudgery, from which she re- turns to them heated and tired out, and all unfit; a little older, and they are out-doors in her absence, fighting with the great Shanghai for an apple-core or with the neighboring bulldog for a bone, or in-doors setting fire to their clothing; and woe betide them, at all times, if they fall sick, for then the whole grand army of noxious things marches into the breach, and it is found almost impossible for very sick children of these quarters to recover, if left in the place where they fell, 'as any physician will tell you who has had the pain of seeing these children mowed down. What the effect of their sur- roundings is may be judged from the following instance: "About the year 1767 it was ascertained that not more than one in twenty-four of the poor children received into the work-houses in London lived to be a year old; so that out of two thousand and eight hundred, the average number annually admitted, two thousand six hundred and ninety died. This alarming mortal-' ity induced the Parliament to pass an act obliging the parish officers to send their infant poor to be nursed in the country at a proper distance from town. After this measure was adopted only four hundred and fifty out of the whole number died annually, and the greater part of those deaths happened during the three weeks that the children were kept in the work-houses." Human nature at any rate, its physical portion has not changed during the century sufficiently to weaken the force of such a statement, and no broader comment- ary can ever be made on the way in which every country wastes its bone and sinew in permitting such a state of things to continue, and in not making the purification of its by-ways and alleys a matter of public economy. Of course more than air is needed water, time in which to use it, and food but clean air would go a great way toward obviating every evil, and would doubtless vastly decrease the bill of mortality. Air that is unvitiated is positively es^ scntial to the health of children in dwellings and out-doors; it is by its means that the blood is oxygenated, purified of ill elements, and kept bounding along the veins; and it is through the medium of bad air that a fearful throng of diseases are admitted to the tender system. And meanwhile, however it may be with the poor, there is many a mother among those by no means poor who thinks her own dead darling wanted for nothing, when, if she but knew the truth, it wanted the air of heaven, and the air with which she so carefully STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 231 surrounded and shut it in, the air of her foul cellar and unpurified sinks, was its murderer. When we have abolished all our nuisances, we will find that we have abol- ished with them one almost as bad as many of the others, that of the omni- present fly, the little wretch that makes life in town or suburb equally hard to bear, but who will not live in multitude unless he has foul provender on which to batten. I remember seeing at an entertainment of one of the many min- strel troops of old times, whose members, by the way, a friend of the colored people declared were blacker inside than outside, for all their "quips and cranks and wanton wiles," a performance, known as the "Lively Flea," which always elicits roars of laughter and rounds of applause, as the play-bills have it. It is a very simple performance, a mere monodrame; for it consists solely of one rather ragged colored person sitting in a chair and playing his banjo the other performer being invisible, not to say imaginary'. As the player dreamily picks the string and hums the strain, he just as dreamily pauses to fillip his ear, as if something had disturbed him there, but it was not much matter, and goes on with his tune. But before the end of another bar the right hand leaves the string again to give a heartier fillip on another spot, and still the tune goes on ; when suddenly the left hand, flinging the neck of the banjo to the right, gives, no fillip, but a good sound slap on a fresh por- tion ot the person, and the music resumes its course again, as if that thing was settled. But hardly has another stave of the sweet song been sung so sweet that the audience begins to be as much annoyed by that lively flea as the sufterer more directly concerned when up goes the right hand dreamily again and seems to rub away some slight thing on the cheek or in the whis- ker, and no sooner is that done than the left is obliged to explore the back of the neck, and the right picks a string and darts off to the sole of the foot, picks another and flies to the left scapula, picks another and deals a blow at a knee-cap, suddenly catches the banjo by one string as the left hand in an agony flies to the distracted forehead, and the melody of the banjo and of the song breaks up incontinently in a sort of double and treble shuffle dance, in \Yhich hands, feet, head, shoulders, hips, and banjo all join in pursuit of that lively flea, which is caught and cracked to the satisfaction of the spectators, in order that the singer may calmly and sweetly conclude his song. Well, we all laughed at the poor plantation hand and his flea, some of us in spite of ourselves, and all of us without the least idea that scarcely would the summer come before we ourselves would be as laughable objects, figuring in just such a drama, with the simple difference that the place of that invisi- ble lively flea would be taken by the only too visible and just as lively fly that nimble wretch that the moment we have finished proclaiming our July 232 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. independence, surrounds us with his legions, is in our bread, in our tea, in our ink, in our cup generally; that gets crushed in our books, lost in the labyrinth of our hair, tickles our eyes, grudges us our flesh and blood, makes our life a burden to us! The Lively Fly. Yet what an innocent being the little creature seems when in his single blessedness he hums about the wintry pane ! A cheerful and companionable soul left over from the summer, and managing to exist on what sunshine he can find in our window. If we do not hold him really in affectionate regard then, yet we would no sooner harm him than harm a household pet. We put a bit of sugar in his path, we brush down the spider that waylays him and we feel flattered if he deserts his luminous retreat to pay a call to the wax in our work-basket, or ramble round the margin of our inkstand, or stroll across our hand. But when at length the summer comes we realize in ourselves all the difference that exists between the calm inhabitant of temperate zones and the fiery and cruel native of the tropics. Ruskin tells us that the modification of the curve of the drip-stone in the Lombard architecture, as seen in the North and seen again under Italian skies, marks the whole round curve of the earth between those distant parallels ; and just as broad a curve of the earth is shown in the difference in our feelings toward the fly in December a.nd in July, and we pursue the little innocent of other weather as vindictively as though he was some wild beast out of his lair; as vindictively as he in his turn pursues us.' It seems impossible to us then to believe that we were once so weak as to regard him as harmless and show him mercy. If we really did, we anathe- matize the folly that in saving one saved the mother of millions. That little being, so busy, so blithe, so much occupied with his toilette, is no longer a friendly sprite, but has become foul and unclean, singly impish, and in mul- titude demoniac. His pleasant song has changed to a bagpipe drone, save when it gathers in a shrill alarm of attack. We hear it faintly across our dreams, sounding the signal as the first flush of the aurora runs before the dawn ; and from that dead hour of prime till at last we rise, haggard and un- rested, and driven from our stronghold, we are engaged in a hand-to-hand strife with him for the possession of our nose or ears or eyes, whichever it is that he may have taken a fancy for, and we feel like that dull book-magnate that Mr. Browning threw into the puddle of the hollow tree, where the little live creatures "tickled and toused and browsed him all over." We descend to breakfast. Be the safeguards what they may, we find two or three of him STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. in the cream jug, a swarm of him in the sugar bowl ; he hovers over the chops, gets mired in the butter, watches his chance for the morsel on the way to our mouths, and we feel a sort of surprise on break- ing the eggs or the baked potatoes that he does not tumble out of them. There is not a point of the rest of the day that he fails to dispute with us. There is a mould in the inkstand ; we fish it out it is a raft of flies. We sit down with our sewing; he comes and sticks needles and pins into us. He is up our sleeve, down our neck, between our lips. He grows aware of the charms of the baby in her warm and rosy nap, and eats her up alive. We go for our bath, he is there before us; we go to dinner, and he has rendered us suspicious of every object, and taken the zest from appetite; while at tea he mixes himself with the blueberries, and turns plain cake to currant. We brush him off, and he re- turns, with a defiant and insulting buzz and threat, nearer than before; we aim a blow at him, and inflict a fatal one upon ourselves. We hail a spider as a bosom friend. And at last we grow tired of the unequal contest, and resolve upon getting sleep while we may, and forgetful of the morning's rout, we ascend to the cool seclusion of our respective rooms. Already half asleep we open the door, and the instant the light enters up starts from their own slumbers on every coigne of vantage a cloud of witnesses, filling all the air with that hot and hateful hum ; and we close the windows, and set down the lamp, and tie a knot in the end of a towel, and go to work and slay like Sam- son. C est le premier pas qui coute. After that we feel like the Malays, or the Berserkers, who run with their big knives, crying, "Kill! kill!" With what vigor we prosecute destruction, and are almost destroyed ourselves in the effort! We set dishes of water, in which the patent poisoned paper is soak- ing, about the house, and the flies drink and die, and the kitten, beloved play- thing, and the Spitz, the baby's faithful guardian, eat the fallen victims of STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. that poison, and die, too. We procure cruel sheets of a viscid preparation and lay them in tempting spots, and the flies alight never to extricate themselves from the toils again, and a gust of wind blows those' sticky sheets over our sewing, upon our best book-rack, upon our new silk, and the flies avenge themselves in dying. Finally we buy a cage, where a wire cone fits inside of a wire cylinder, a tiny aperture in the top of the cone admitting the prey to the cylinder but not appearing very obvious to him again, and we observe with eagerness the adventuring fly as he slowly explores that cone and ap- proaches that aperture. What a dramatic interest attaches to the moment! He is the hero of a tragedy he is David in the cave's mouth he is Jean Valjean. -He nears the opening of the trap: will he mount? will he descend? He thinks better of it; he goes down, and our hearts go down with him; he wheels, he puts his head over the brink for ourselves, we palpitate he con- siders, he crawls boldly in, he is lost! And wretches that we are with but little difference in all these centuries between ourselves and those Roman women who watched wild beast and gladiator fight in the arena, and turned their thumbs down at the end we feel paid for all our vexation, and we wateh fly after fly passing through the fatal aperture, and we go off to sleep, secure in the slaughter of Patroclus and his men to wake up and find Achilles and his myrmidons in the field, fell avengers. For it was only a momentary victory, a mere ruse de guerre; and we are half inclined to abandon ourselves to fate and the fly, and to believe that com- ing into the world before the extermination of vermin we came an aeon too soon, till we remember a happy possibility, and at every window we have a screen of wire gauze, better than the Chinese wall against our enemy, and a thing which the least ingenuity can devise and shape, and we make that place a desert so far as the fly is concerned, and breathe again in peace, sure that we are not going to be tickled wide awake out of our pet nap, and that we are not going to be inoculated with all sorts of diseases from that little proboscis that fed last one knows not where. And yet fools that we are, we find our- selves in the end regarding the one fly left over and humming in the window- pane as we did before as a cheerful and companionable sort of cherub, who reminds us of summer and its vanished glories. At Autumn Time. And when we have enjoyed our screens all summer, and have seen to sink and drain and spout and cellar, and to all the work necessary to health which we find it best to do in the fall, whether our lives be cast in town or STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 2 35 country, we have time to look about and enjoy a world of small dramas:still going on about us, and at which we may assist if we will as spectators. One observes then, for instance, just as much in the city park as in the rural field, the way nature works in her laboratory, the way in which the plants prepare themselves for their wintry term, and in which the little wild animals, even the squirrels and their kind in town, make themselves ready for that great general enemy, the cold. The Birds When the Days Shorten. There is nothing more interesting to watch than the birds and their habits, at the time when the days begin to shorten ; the manner in which they congregate and confabulate in daily increasing numbers; the swarms on swarms of them that suddenly rise from some low meadow as you drive by, and for one beautiful moment darken the sky, while their multi- tudinous wings quiver and beat and separate; the trial flights in which they seem to be practicing for the long migration; the wonderful music that their innumerable shapes seem to dot along the bars made by the tele- graph and telephone wires where they alight; the vast chattering and hum- ming wherever they are ; and the profound indifference of those birds that have no idea of making a journey, but that intend to take the winter as they find it, notably the town sparrows. How much charm these bright beings have added to the year, when one 236 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. has been where one could observe them, it would not be easy to compute ; for who can tell the value of a lilting measure, or weigh the worth of a flash of color? The thrill of gladness one feels when, almost before the ground is bare of snow, a robin's pipe is heard; the sweetness that fills the dead prime of the day when one awakes before the dawn sends his flushes up the east, and hears the world alive with music who would forego these that has known them, or change them for other rapture that out-door nature gives? What amusement they make when, fat and saucy with all the stolen cherries, they skip along the grass at your side, and presently are disputing with your fingers the very pear ard plum as they ripen ! And what heartsome pleasure they give in their first and in their second nesting, as they steal the thread from your spool on the window-sill, the string from the baby's toy and even alight upon the old horse himself to pluck some good strong hairs from his tail for the better security of the new cradle anything exceeding their sturdy impudence never having been known. Then come the excitements of the brood to the on-lookers the amazement at the tremendous greed of the little ones, and the untold lives sacrificed at their shrines; the admiration of the show of fondness and industry by the father, who is fabled to share the labors equally with the mother, but who brings, comparatively speaking, very few worms to the young Molochs, and sings only when he thinks it is about time that his wife was done with this business; and the horror and anxiety when one of the fledgelings falls from the lofty nest out of which it is a wonder they did not all fall at the first and can not be returned, and Grimalkin is known to be ranging abroad^ A friend of ours living in town once found an almost featherless member of one of these little broods peeping in the grass, and neither nest nor parents being in sight, took the little orphan into the house, and placing it in a soft nest of cotton-wool in a cage, fed it with the yolks of hard-boiled eggs, put down its gaping throat on a pen -handle, making herself a slave to that throat by rising long before day to light her spirit-lamp and boil her egg. As the little creature thrived and grew, she felt it must have stronger food, and stifling her repugnance, procured earth-worms with her own delicate fingers, and proceeded to mince them for Master Rob's dinners. By this time the little creature was as round and feathered and shining as a bird could be, and skipped from room to room after his mistress, stoutly resisted the cage, and visited her pillow every morning to pick her eyes open when it was time for his breakfast. At length he was able to live upon the same fare as the family had, and took his regular place at the break- fast table, the moment that the bell rang flying to the sugar bowl, helping himself afterward to his favorite dish, and always perching on the morning paper, and fighting for his rights upon it, having the advantage of the oth.^ STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 237 children in his wings, which bore him off at a signal of danger, and kept him out of reach till his offenses were forgotten. Anything like a racket de- lighted his little soul ; any noise was as good to him as the piping of Pan , in the putting in of coal he flew to and fro through the cloud of black dust, enjoying himself with song and chatter; while the manoeuvres of the laun- dress and the iridescence of the soap-bubbles of her *'suds" gave him such peculiar pleasure that once when she left her occupation for some other he gave battle, and nobody knows with what result, if his mistress had not been called to the scene by the woman's screams, as she had often before been summoned by the indignant cries of the cats that held him only in terror, by no means regarding him as an object of prey, but as a monster that had in- vaded their domestic peace. Finally, one day, this little imp that so took the world for all his own, slipped out of an open window, was heard of once at the windows of another house a couple of blocks away, and then, like a bird that flew through the Northumbrian king's palace from one darkness to an- other, was seen no more. But our friend would not have been without the excitement and pleasure of his summer's visit for anything you could name. And not only are such little romances afforded us by the tiny creatures, but there are the epics and heroics of their skirmishes and deadly fights, to watch which, if old Greek poets could condescend to describe the battles of the pygmies and the cranes, are not entirely beneath our notice. In fact, to the last of the bluebirds that, when we walk abroad in the country 01 come to the end of our trolley-ride from town, we see fluttering in crowds about the berries of ash and elder and woodbine just before the robins go, to the flocks of chickadees that suddenly appear with the snow, to the long strings of the wild-geese that go clanging through the heavens with their wild music, to the witch-like crows that never go at all, if one uses one's senses there is hardly pleasanter amusement to be had than is found in following the habits of these little actors on the boards of summer, with the human passions re- peated in a miniature mimicry, and in a grand theatre where the blue sky and the waving boughs make the painted scenery and properties, where the winds and waters are real, the orchestra, seen and unseen, pipes from the leafy screens of the summer that is over and gone all too soon, and whose departure makes one impatient for the next, that, among all the other prob lems to be solved, it may be seen if the empty nest will be refilled again, and if the same bird will sing again to his mate, to his brood, to the universe, that song to which, as Michelet says, he himself is, after all, the most delicate auditor, but which may even give pleasure to that creating power "gui regarde tendrement un brin d'herbe autantqu'une elotle, " 83 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. Light-Hearted October. And while ali this goes on, we seem to be breathing new life, and sure that all is right in our home we enjoy the invigoration of early autumn with a clear conscience. It seems strange that we associate with this season the idea of cheerfulness and mirth and light-hearted labor. One might suppose that exactly the opposite effect would be produced upon us by all the threatening tokens. The dreary time of short dark days, gray weather, and storms is approaching, the imprisonment of the snow, the bleak winter cold. The flowers are gone, the leaves are going ; frost is already upon us; the summer's sauntering is over, the moon-lit stroll, the sunset sail; the winds are keen and nipping, the ground is damp and sodden, and one might suppose it debatable whether it were best to keep alive or not, instead of rejoicing ourselves over the circumstance of life, as if, under such condi- tions, it were a boon worth the having. And yet such is the perversity of human nature that not when spring- rustles all her promise of perfume and blossom, of warmth and ease and beauty, when the sap mounts and the blood bubbles and the year opens with renewal of youth's freshness, are we half so cheerful as when this red autumn hangs out his banners. We take no heed then of the future, and we forget that all the splendor of his army changes presently, like fairy money, to ashes. "Bright yellow, red, and orange, The leaves come down in hosts, /he trees are Indian princes, But soon they'll turn to ghosts" ghosts whose apparition does not give us an apprehension. The dazzling color is enough for us now ; and with the golden sunshine of the elms and beeches, the royal purple of the ash, the dull crimson and brown of the oak, the superb and scarlet flaming of maple and tupelo and sumac, the whole atmosphere is full of splendor, and we catch the spirit of jubilee perhaps s battailous and triumphant jubilee as we march out to conquer the coming- hosts ot winter, "Red leaves, trailing, Fall unfailing, Dropping, sailing, From the wood That, unpliant, Stands defiant. Like a giant Dropping blood. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 239 Autumn Cheer. How much of this cheerfulness is due to the bracing influence of the air, which is apt to work like iron in the veins, and how much to the effect of light and color upon the nerves, it is not quite easy to determine. By the bracing atmosphere of the sea-side or of the mountains, however, we are not always made particularly cheerful, but by that of the sunny fall days, other things being equal, the happy change seldom fails to be wrought, and we may proudly imagine in ourselves an unguessed and unconscious susceptibility to beauty that is able to work miracles and turn even dead leaves into the bril- liant jewels of the trees of the Arabian's garden. There is such an illumination present everywhere, such an airy splendor lifting the woods themselves, such a field of the cloth of gold set among all dead ferns and brakes and stubble, there is such a lofty soaring of the lighted sky above us and around, that the will of beauty must be wrought unaware upon the veriest dolt and clown among us. Far off, too, on the horizon such hazes brood, with their soft deep violet tints, now and then letting a sheet of sunlight through to sift upon the scene, leading into the unknown, and bor- rowing of the infinite, and giving a certain satisfaction in the view; for wherever any suggestion of the infinite is given, comfort is to be found by those mortals to whom the idea of mortality is heavy with gloom. Thus it is not impossible that out of the mere affairs of the fancy, the hues of leaf and sky and landscape, a positive happiness is wrought quite equal to the happiness usually given by what are reckoned more substantial things. It is well known that among the most cheerful sensations produced by externals are those produced by the various degrees of red, especially the shades of cherry, carnation, and deep crimson. The coquette understands this as she knots a red ribbon in her hair, and the beauty, too, whose damask blush is her chief ornament; the crimson-carpeted room is the one which in- stantly reminds us of warmth and pleasure, and in which any great fall of spirits from a high temperature seems impossible ; it is the gray sea picture 'into which Turner thrusts .the vermilion-colored buoy, and transforms it; it is the russet-colored autumn that nature enlivens with the scarlet leaf. And yet these reds are the color of blood, the signal of battle, the exponent of slaughter and of fire ; and why a color that is the very flag of war, and the representative of cruel wounds and death, should give us pleasant and com- fortable sensations is only explicable by the supposition that in itself the rosy ray acts as a stimulant upon the nerves, exciting these comfortable sensations. There is, indeed, something rather flattering to our vanity in the belief that we are thus strongly affected by such aesthetic forces; but if it is supposable 24 o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS that the most of us have souls, the idea is neither very extraordinary nor fan- tastic. But quite apart from this merely intellectual or nervous action upon our batteries in this matter of the autumn cheer, is the much more earthly and solid content occasioned by the completion of harvest and harvesting, the knowledge that the round world over the laborer is reaping his reward, that the earth has again paid her dividend to the race, that nature has done her duty and kept her promise, that the Great Guardian still sees that neither seed-time nor harvest fails in its season. Indeed, if the bursting of the leaf and flower makes one feel that God is alive in His world, then the ripening of the broad fields from east to west of the planet, the filling of the vast granaries, the gift of the year's food to man and beast, give one even firmer assurance that the great pulse is beating through the days and nights, and that the eternal life and the eternal love go hand in hand. What wonder, then, that, although we do not pause to consider it, the consciousness that we are so surrounded by the Divine care that no malice of the fierce elements can reach us should make us light-hearted enough to go forward gayly to meet the icy darts that winter slings, secure in our power of protection, and delighting to turn old Januarius from an enemy to a friend ? Who, indeed, can be anything but gay, unless there are some facts of actual care and sor- row and pain to supervene and strip away all the bright glamor from Jife, when the world around is so gay that nature seems to make holiday and to hold him a churl who refuses to join the revel the revel where the noon sun hangs in an azure sky, and soft breezes curl, and resinous balms inform the air, and splendid colors set the scene ? And then, as twilight hangs in the heaven, ready to fall, and a soft solemnity of that hour takes the place of jollity, it seems rather a sacrifice of praise and thanks, on whose altar has been shed the heart's blood of the year. And in that who is it, whether full of bliss or full of pain, that has no part ? Thus we see that, after all, there is nothing so singular in this autumn cheerfulness, and that, indeed, a contrary spirit would be the singular thing, while few follies could be greater, having this charming present, than to ignore it through fear of to-morrow, and that it is wisdom as well as pleasure to enjoy this bright day while it lasts, since "before to-morrow's sun Cold winds may rise, and shrouding shadows dun Obscure the scene : yet shall these fading hues And fleeting forms their loveliness transfuse Into the mind, and memory shall burn The painting in on her enameled urn In undecaying colors." STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 241 By the Hearth. And when the heavier chill does come, and the keen wind and cold dews announce the end of out-door freedom, with what lively pleasure do we light the first fire, whether it is for the many-colored flame of the driftwood fire at the shore, or the branches and cone of the wood-side place, or the sea-coal of the grate in the back parlor of the city house! No one ever feels that summer is quite long enough, that it is quite time for it when the early dark draws down and cuts short the once long day ; and when the cool autumn dusk appears, most of us sympathize with those who speak of heaven under no other name than that of the Summer-Land. For whatever pleasures of its own there may be in the coming imprisonment of winter, they are still in strong measure, the pleasures of imprisonment, while summer, on the other hand, is one long freedom. One hardly tires of the large out-door life in its infinite variety, the going and coming at will, the liberty of costume, the abounding verdure and bloom, the unrestricted enjoy- ment of breeze and bird and stars; of the warm nearness and friendliness of the moon in opposition to its wintry cold remoteness ; of the water-life in skiffs and yachts, in the surf and on lily ponds of all the prodigality of air and sunshine. And we do not wonder that in all the myriads of human be- ings no one has ever pictured heaven as any place of rugs and lamps and fires, or as anything but a land of everlasting summer. We make the most of winter; we are happy in it; we see an immensity of beauty in its vivid contrasts of sparkling snow and azure, its web-like trac- ery of bare boughs and purple sprays, its frost-ferns on the frozen pane; its ice blocks riven by restless tides, its white whirl of storms, and we think of the round earth then as a winged dazzle among the stars. But when we have admired our most, we can never make any idealization of it into a heavenly state, but the majority of us, on the contrary, agree with Dante's ideas in making ice and snow and freezing blasts the inner circle and pivotal point of the last place of punishment. Yet for all that what a singular charm there is about the first fire of wood laid on the hearth, herald as it is of the cold im- prisonment, laid there not any more for its heat than for its necromantic power of dispelling gloom when the weather begins to shiver, and its depres- sion begins to overcome ourselves. How we welcome it, as if it were an old friend long gone and just returned! How we gather about it, and rejoice in it ! How late we linger about it, how we open our hearts over it, as if thoughts and feelings were thawed out by its genial spell! and how heedlessly we assist, as its sacrificial flames wallow up the chimney, at the funeral rites of summer! - Still after all, that first fire, tumbling wave over wave up and 242 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. ut into the darkness, is the concentrated essence of the spice and sweetness of what countless summers! What years of sunshine and dew have gone to the growth of the wood whose embers crumble from the andirons as we bend over them ! The spirit and being of how many mornings of brightness afe condensed there in stem and branch, and of what moon-lighted evenings! what red sunrises have glistened in the dark dew that fed it! what bird-song has measured the rhythm of its increase! what gentle evening winds have swayed it! what lovers have leaned against it! what storms have bowed and bent it! And as it burns before us and drops away into white ashes, what comprehension and memory of all this sparkle in every fresh burst of flame, in every dying coal, and diffuse themselves about us, and make that first little autumn fire for us the expression and ideal embodiment of perpetual summer. And yet greater is our delight when it is the first fire of all on. our own hearth and in our own house. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 243 CHAPTER TENTH. The Light of the House. A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive. Coleridge. Happy he With such a mother! Faith in womankind Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high Comes easy to him. Tennyson. His first love? Yes, I knew her very well Yes, she was young and beautiful, like you; With cheeks rose-flushed, and lovely eyes that fell If people praised her overmuch, but true And fearless, flashing out as blue eyes can At any cruelty to beast or man. His first love? Oh, you do begin to see That he might love her dearly, and that yet His manhood's love to you might guerdon be, Upon your woman's brow its coronet. Dear girl, accept the gift. There is no other First love so holy as she gained his mother! - Margaret E. Sangster. Her children arise up and call her blessed. Proverbs. Rock 'me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep. E. A. Allen. What will not woman, gentle woman, dare When strong affection stirs her spirit up? Southey. The light of love, the purity of grace, The mind, the music, breathing from her face, The heart whose softness harmonized the whole, And oh, the eye was in itself a soul! Byron. She gave me eyes, she gave me ears, And humble cares, and delicate fears, A heart the fountain of sweet tears And love and thought and joy. Wordstvor-th. 244 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. Me, let the tender office long engage To rock the cradle of reposing age, With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death ; Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, And keep a while one parent from the sky. Pope. Not a house as fine as Aladdin's palace will give us the stepping stone to happiness that we have expected it to be if it is not inhabited by certain fine and sweet spirits. And first of all these is the mother. It is one of the time-honored beliefs, old enough, those observers who have but a poor opinion of the modern society mother are saying, to have reached a foolish dotage, or old enough to know better, as you please that there is no love like mother-love, as a modern poet phrases it; and it is true in so far as it implies that there ought to be no love like mother's love ; but as mothers are as fallible as wives and daughters and sisters, we too frequently meet specimens of them that make us think that if there is no love like mother's love, we are glad of it, and we should think that children would be, too. A Mother. Of course these observers are not intending to deny the great fact of maternal devotion, of the self-sacrifice that bares its own breast to protect its young, that dies for it if need be. But there are mothers and mothers, and whenever we see an inherently selfish woman we see also one who, if she is a mother, is of the sort that, if there is any dying to do, lets her children die for her. Although occasionally this mother is of the description that makes you wonder how she ever happened to be chosen to preside over a home, usually she is the tender and petted pretty woman, gentle and sweet and incapable, whose children ride over her, as the word goes, not because she loves them so that she can refuse them nothing, but because she loves herself too much to undertake the trouble of resistance, and without saying it herself exactly, her actions say for her that she would rather the children came to grief than that she should be obliged to make an exertion or forego a pleasure to prevent it. This is the mother who lies at home reading a novel while the nurse-girl, fresh to our fashions and full of her own interests, drags the baby out in crowded thorough- fares, often with its eyes in the sun, or just as often among horses' heels, with her own head turned the other way, and so busy with her gossips and flirtations that the child might be stolen under her hand and she know no more about it than the nurse of the child who replaced Pomona's baby did ; the mother who STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 245 sits on the seaside piazza, with her crewel-work and her friends while her child is in danger of drowning, or is off about her pleasure while the servant has her children sweltering in the neighbors' kitchens, and eating whatever they can lay their hands on. When, knowing their mothers' whereabouts and "behavior, we see these neglected little beings, and find their pulses fevered, their diges- tion disordered, and their whole state just what it should not be, we say to our- selves that that mother's children ought to be taken away from her, and usually Providence seems of our way of thinking, and they are taken away. It is well for one's opinion of one's own race that there is another sort of mother in the world mothers whose lives, unlike those of such cuckoo moth- ers, resemble more the lives of the domestic hens, lives which are one long act of maternity. It is fortunate that one can remember the self-forgetfulness of one's own mother, listen believingly to the story of the sacrifices of one's hus- band's mother, see daily the argus-eyed care of one's wife's mother, feel sure that no dumb creature ever excelled in watchful provision the efforts of one's friend's mother, remember the great mothers in history, and not suffer the selfish short-comings of this incapable and worse than worthless mother to outweigh them all. The Ideal Mother. There are mothers in the world who feel that they are responsible for the sprits called from the vasty deep and for the bodies that clothe them, who do not know how to rest unless every condition of health and safety has been fulfilled. They would scorn the suggestion of the shiftless mother who takes no pains because she may have no thanks, for to them the thanks are in the deed, the reward is in the doing; they would be wretched if they failed to do, and they are happy in their endeavor. What an amount of good is it that these mothers render the world ! To them more than to any other single and separate influence is due the health that follows the race up out of savagery, and attends it perhaps to unguessed development of strength ; and to them their hands upheld doubtless as the prophet's were on the mountain, by the help they have is largely due that improved moral excellence, to prove the reality of which, if casuists deny its existence, one needs only to point to the difference in public and private life between the mass of people in the nineteenth and that of the fifteenth, the thirteenth and the eleventh centuries, and as much farther back as undoubted history can take us. And if the development of the brain of the race is not directly due to these or any mothers, it is, at any rate, to their watchful help that it owes the opportunity of development. For oftener thani any one else it is the mother who spells out the lessons with the child, even aftejtr 246 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. it has escaped her tutelage, and is in the hands of masters, up betimes in the morning, and bending over the book in the evening. It is she who denies her- self the money, that the price of the education may be had, and the clothes for pride or for decency, if there is any denial to be done ; and she who by her own exertion spares the tired little student in every way when studies and classes are over for the day; and it is she who fires the ambition and fans it with daily and hourly breath; and she who looks out for the play-time and pleasure between the tasks. Yet we would not take any credit from the fathers in allowing so much to these mothers who are mothers and fulfill their destiny. In the greater number of cases where there are such mothers there are fathers who encourage them by leaving no duty undone on their part, wise men who know how to choose wise women to wife, and whose exactions do not make life so hard to them as wives that they have no heart to do their work as mothers. These are the mothers whose love there is no other love to equal ; and it will never be from them, or from any like them, that radical disturbers of the peace will talk of taking their children to be reared by the State , thinking that even the artificial mother, like the false incubator of the barn-yard family, is better than the mother who neither broods her young nor scratches for them. There is a great deal of sentimental cant, one must allow, in the com- mon talk about the beauty and glory of motherhood, but veryjittle practical appreciation of that beauty and glory among the talkers. The accepted formu- las would lead one to believe that the whole thing was a mere exhibition and enjoyment of loveliness and tenderness, without responsibility, or work, or weariness ; without a moment of terror, or agony, or despair. Art ha"s so far taken up the fancy and helped it forward that its perpetual presentation of motherhood is either the blissful young being aureoled with happiness, and holding her baby in her arms, or else the saintly old woman who, with her silver hair and serene smile, sits down for a placid breathing space at the end of he'r labors. But with the intermediate mother, the real mother, the mother of many cares, of constant effort, of daily and nightly anxieties, neither Art nor Poetry occupies itself; and though her children may some day rise up and call her blessed, yet for long and weary years her virtue is its own reward. Indeed, there is little about her that is picturesque enough for the painter or the singer to use. The heavenly Madonna smiling from the canvas, all calmness and strength and joy, is available as the image of utter perfection in the idea; the daily drudge attending to prosaic duties and relieving ignoble wants, is not sufficiently gilded by the beauty of her self-denial and her love to give her the conditions that pen and pencil find desirable and requisite ; she is, in point of verity, too near and too commonplace for Art. For the young STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 247 mother with her baby, the old mother with her accomplished life, have, so to speak, a sort of aerial perspective, as if the one were an object among the dreams of the future, the other among the memories of the past. The present is seldom poetic; it is only when leagues of blue and misty distance intervene that the hard, bare path we climb to-day becomes the vision of a beautiful and ideal ascent into heaven. The Every-Day Mother. And yet this artistic beauty is a merely superficial one. The true beauty lies with the commonplace mother the mother who not once in ten thousand instances fails in the fulfillment oc all that routine, so seldom estimated at its worth when performed, so surely bringing condemnation if in any iota neglected. The true beauty, we repeat, is with this mother who rises in the middle of the night to see if her children are covered ; who springs from warm and comfortable and needed rest at the hoarse breath or the restless toss; who lies awake plotting and planning, in these early years, how to get two articles of dress out of the cloth meant for one in those later years, how to divine the bent of this child's genius, of that child's inclinations; who perhaps kindles the fires, perhaps prepares the breakfast, certainly sees the children contentedly off to school ; who toils and moils all day long, endeavoring to have the home what it is desirable it should be for husband and children ; measuring this way and that to make both ends meet; never glancing aside at the enticing romance; forbidding her feet to follow the pleasant path to some neighbor's gossipy fire- side ; denying herself sometimes necessaries in order that her children may have luxuries; foregoing social outside pleasure that the evening lamp may always be trimmed and burning, and the best-loved spirit of the bright fireside never wanting; bearing her pains and her sorrows with silent composure, that no thought of them may darken the young lives about her, and when all is done, and while all is doing, finding perfect recompense in the happiness afforded by the opportunity of the sacrifice and devotion. The compensation seems to come to every real mother in every moment. She forgets her suffering from the first in the joy of her possession ; and as the bird strips her breast of down to warm the nest for her young, so there is no self-abnegation that is too great for a mother to make, and none that does not bring with it a satisfying joy. " Wearie is the mither that has a stone wean, A wee stumpie stoussie that canna rin his lane, That has a battle aye \vi' sleep before he'll close an ee But a kiss f rae aff his rosy lips gies strength anew to me !" STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. MOTHER S DEVOTION. It will only be when we understand, in gazing on tbe beautiful picture of the young mother, that she is so lovely because all this exertion and devotion and sacrifice are before her, in gazing at the old one, that she is so saintly be- cause trial and labor and love have refined her in their furnaces, that our talk about the beauty of maternity and the sacred name of mother will cease to be poetical cant and become realized truth. The Story of Old Margaret and Her Boy. Let me tell you the story of Old Margaret, who was one of the self-for- getting mothers. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 249 There are certain feminine instincts that assume in many eyes the charac- ter rather of virtues than of instincts, and the manifestation of which in any individual seems to touch all other women neatly. Among these instincts, so to call them, is that maternal one which causes the year-old baby to hold her mother's needle-book or roll of work on her little breast and hush it off to sleep, which causes her half a dozen years afterward to wake up in the night and see if her doll is warm enough, and which, a score of years later yet, knits a tie between herself and every tender little child she sees. A strange tie, without the immense joy of a mother's love that joy which overflows the inner cells of the most desolate heart with vital warmth, which is fulfilled with satisfaction and with that ineffable yearning where earth, touches close on heaven a barren tie beside that divinely complete thing, and with more pain than pleasure in it. It is as if the bitter lot of women in this world caused them to feel the pathos of the fate of every child born into it, and gave them a pity that is all but love. "Little butterfly in the cunshine and among the flowers," it seems to say, " by-and-by night is coming, darkness and heavy dew and the night-hawk. If only I could protect you ! " Whenever I used to see a little bent old woman go by my window with a child in her arms, these and kindred thoughts would follow her. I did not know her name, and I could not see her face; but she interested me far more than the bright-cheeked and golded-haired young creatures that tripped by on their way from the finishing school. Her clean but utterly faded calico was so short that it showed the clumsy village-ties and drab stockings of her knobby and rheumatic feet ; her shawl was a threadbare black blanket: her bonnet was a rusty poke; an alpaca apron was her only vanity; her poor old hands were bare and bony and misshapen, but they seemed to me fairer than any idle lady's in the land when I saw the way in which they clasped the child she held; the way in which, as she walked, 'she used to pause and lift the child higher, and lay the little face against her own, and step off again as if she were young and happy. Day by day I saw her pass. As the child grew, and sat up in her arms and looked about, she would straighten her bent form to bear him more erectly. Often she would kiss him rapturously as she went along, and she was always crooning some low tune to him, or talking a loving gibberish that he seemed to understand. Evidently the child had no mother, perhaps no father, either, for he was clothed in odds and ends; a great sacque and hood wrapped him for a long time, and when the spring came his head emerged with the short yellow curls crowned by a hat that seemed to delight him, so often he tore it off with his little hands to look at it, and set it on again awry, but which she must have rescued from an ash-barrel, and have scoured and trimmed with scraps of cambric from her rag bag. I longed to ask them in while they were slowly TTIXG AND PLAYING HI.3 BANJO. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 251 going by; but I have an uncomfortable reverence for reserves, and I fancied she was one of those who had rather suffer than be seen to suffer. But when the baby grew so heavy that she had to rest every little while, she sat down one day on my garden step, and then I opened the door to go out, and stopped and made friends with the child, and gave him a cup of milk and a cake, and began with her an acquaintance which if I do not in another life resume, it will be because I am not fit. Years and years ago old Margaret Ewins had been young; it seems as though no one could guess the fact were it not plainly stated, so gray and wrinkled and seamed was the face with which she looked up at you. "Years and years ago," she said once. "It's hard to believe it now when you see me, child ; but every wrinkle is a care, and every furrow is a tear. There were no wrinkles norfurrows, no cares nor tears it was all fresh and blooming when I married Stephen." When she married Stephen ! That was full forty years ago. And thirty years he had been under the sod. Doubtless his image had grown dimmer than once, but he was still to her the fine and noble fellow that won her heart. She forgot that she was a withered crone, that he was a handful of dust; she set her love beside his inmortal youth, and looked forward to the end. Stephen had left her with an only child, born on the day he died. Other chil- dren had come and been laid away before, but this girl was last and the dearest of all. In her the father seemed to live and breathe again ; for her the mother lived indeed. She was a pretty thing as she grew into womanhood. Perhaps her mind was not altogether of the strongest; but one would have to be fastid- ious who paused to think of that in gazing at the red and white of her face, the clear blue of her great eyes, the gilding of her chestnut hair, her sweet and innocent mouth. Of course she had lovers, and of course there was a favored one the least deserving of the whole, but the son of a family of vastly superior circumstances to her own. For poor Bessie's circumstances were those which belong to the children of poverty and labor the world over. Her mother owned the little house in which they lived, and the larger part of which they rented to others ; and for the rest they did sewing, nursing, clear-starching, whatever came to hand. But needy as they were, Bessie always had on a clean print dress, though she had to rise before day to wash and iron it; she always had a bright ribbon for her throat; she always looked as perfect as a rose. And old Margaret's pride and joy lay in seeing her so. She wore her own brown gingham till it fell apart, so that Bessie might have a bishop's lawn for sumjmer Sundays. She pretended dire dyspepsias, and lived on crusts so that Bessie might keep her b'ood sweet and rich with the little milk and meat there 252 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. was. Long after Bessie had come home from her moon-lit stroll with the hand- some and worthless James Falconer, Margaret sat over her needle or her Ital- ian irons abridging the morrow's work, that Bessie's pretty shoulders might learn no stoop, or else turning an extra penny, that she might surprise Bessie with the bit of trimming: for which she had heard the girl longing. Poor Mar- garet i she little knew the crop she sowed, nor recognized the tact that Bessie was becoming to herself as well as to her mother the chief person in the drama - f she failed to see the springing and ripening selfishness in the girl, the wilful spirit, the deadly love of finery, the lack of reason. She only saw her standing in the light and looking at her with her father's eyes those burning blue eyes that seemed at once to revel in the brilliance of the world and scorn it, too and she felt that all she could have was not too much for her. Still as she glanced from the window sometimes, and saw her by moonbeam or star gleam leaning against the gate post, with James Falconer across the little wicket, as tall and dark and glittering as Lucifer, a misgiving would cross Margaret as to whether she was right in letting the thing go on; as to whether it was possible for young Falconer to stoop from his ancient degree and his father's place to marry this clear-starcher. But then the child looked so bright and rosy and lovely as her mother gazed at her that she could but fold her hands above her beating heart and whisper to herself that all might be for the best, for stranger things than that had happened. But the years went slowly wearing by, each one of them taking a degree of Bessie's bloom with it, and Bessie was old enough to know better, and still James Falconer followed her and did not marry her, and other lovers had fallen away, and the mother, through some hidden sense, was half aware that Bessie's name was spoken lightly. And one day Falconer had disappeared, leaving a defalcation behind him, and Bessie had gone, too. No search was made for the defaulter ; a little of his father's wealth could repair the breach in the bank, and for his father's sake no suit was entered against him. Indeed, there were those who half excused him, and laid the blame on the shameless girl who had allured him, as they said, to his ruin. And certainly no search was made for Bessie. What could one feeble little old woman do ? Nothing in the world, nothing but pray pray over seam and stove, by day and night! "What am I crying for? " she would say, dashing away her tears. " God is on my side, and with Him on my side, am I going to lose? No; Bessie will come back to me." And so for five years she toiled and moiled, not for herself, but that when Bessie came home there might be something laid by to let rest and comfort greet her. And every night she swept the hearth and brightened the lamp for her, and every morning she made the place spotless, thinking it might hold STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 2 53 Bessie before night. And her eyes longed and her heart ached and ber hands trembled to see her. Her expectation was always at fever heat. She hardly knew that the tears wet her pillow at night, such comfort was there in the thought that Bessie might come to-morrow. Five long, lonesome years! If old Margaret were sick, there was no one to soothe her; if she was cast down, there was no one to cheer her. But she clasped a sure faith; her hope brightened her days; and one night, as she had forefelt, Bessie came home, A weary woman got down from the stage, and tottered up the yard, and came in, and fell upon the floor, and in the night Tier boy was born, and in the morning consciousness seemed to come back an instant; for she looked up into her mother's face with those blue eyes and half smiled Margaret always said it was a smile and died; and all without one word '. without a word ! And if she could but have spoken for there was no ring on her finger. Five long and lonesome years and just for this! Poor Margaret had no tears. A fierce, dry anger with fate burned them away at their source Now, indeed, she was wretched. In those five years she saw she had been happy- happy with her hope. She took the child and cared for it mechanically; she laid it down between whiles as she went about her work, and suffered it to cry if it would. "Let it cry!"che said. "It's James Falconer's child. Crying's too good for it." But once as the little thing was sobbing, she went to it and saw the great tears shining in its blue eyes. "Ah, it is Bessie's child! " she cried. " I have been a cruel wretch ! <1 and she caught it up and warmed it at lier heart, and anger and grief went together; and thenceforth she was bound in the child. "I would have treated an outcast better," she sobbed at last. "Ah, my poor little lad, with such a life before Mm!" And so she lived and strived, and had no other end in view than the well-being of little Steve, as she had named him. For him now she sat up at night, 254 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. as she had sat up for his mother; for him she denied herself as of old. That came natural enough. It seemed to her, she said to herself, as if she were doing still for Bessie. All she had laid by during the five years went in Bessie's burial. Anxious to have something beforehand again in case of her own illness, or in preparation for little Steve's future jacket and trousers, or schooling, she spared herself no pains. Her eyesight had failed so, what with years and what with tears, that she could no longer do fine sewing or starching. She was. obliged to go out to the rougher labor of the tub, and another old woman from the other part of the house: too old, indeed, for anything but to hinder the baby from rolling off the bed used to come in and keep watch for her while her poor old arms were in the suds. But people hardly liked to employ her, not only because she could not see well, but because it seemed as if they had better be doing the work themselves than imposing it upon that gray-headed woman. Her proud, keen spirit felt that it was more in charity than anything else that she was hired at all. And she hailed the fact, as if a miracle had been wrought in her behalf when rents grew so dear in the town that she was at liberty to receive twenty-five dollars more a year on the other part of her little house, of which she now reserved but one room and a closet for herself, and so was allowed to leave the wash tub. Thus on one hundred dollars a year old Margaret lived and reared her child. It is that which seems the miracle to you; but her wants were very few, and she was not uncomfortable. She asked no aid of any for little Steve least of all of the Falconers, who never knew from her that such a child existed. Her bread and milk was all he wanted as yet, and he wore, as I have said, almost anything The Old Ladies' Society of the town gave her a monthly allowance of good Oolong tea, and she accepted it as a public benefit of the same nature as the streets to walk on , or the use of the corner pump, or the ringing of the nine-o'clock bell, to none of which she contributed tax money. And now, with nothing to do but to keep her two rooms and her two people clean, to- teach little Steve his first steps and first words, she abandoned herself to her first real bliss in years, and when I was pitying her most she was needing it least. Her first real bliss, for not a fear disturbed it. " God takes care of the sparrows," she would say. " And he will take care of little Steve." " But when he is bigger," croaked the old grandam from the other part of the house, nearly as fond herself of the boy as Margaret was, though quite disapproving Margaret's devotion, "he will want different food from your bread and milk. He will need red meat, and where is he to get it ? " " Where the young lions get theirs," said Margaret, and went on joyously; and it was in the days that I first saw her, taking her morning and her afternoon walk with the child in her arms, talking gayly to him all the time, and kissing; STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 255 him at every other step. What visions she had of little Steve's future, and how she used to confide them to the child as they went ! And the boy would lift his little head and pat her cheek approvingly, as if he understood them all, and give her now and then a great wet kiss of his rosy mouth in return a kiss that knew no difference between her shriveled vellow cheek and the blushing velvet of youth. How, after her hard experience of life Margaret could have had such a thing as a vision passes conjecture; but she was so light-hearted in her love that she believed in everything that another might have seen to be impossible and unattainable. The clothes which little Steve was to wear when he went to school; the errands he was to run in order to get the money to buy the clothes; the school to which he was to go no common school at all, but one where her care of the rooms was to balance his term bill; the prizes he was to win; the day he was to graduate and speak his piece, and be applauded by the people and be mentioned in the Morning Herald next day; the apprenticeship he was to serve in a lawyer's office ; the cases he was some day to plead ; the lives he then was to save ; the good, the glory ; and by-and-by President what a daz- zling structure that she built up on the foundation of her little span of life and strength ! And meanwhile, as she waited for the time when all these things should be accomplishing, she took her pleasure in her boy. Perhaps Bessie's babyhood had been as lovely, her tongue as apt, her feel- ings as quick, as little Steve's were now; but Margaret had had no time then to enjoy any of it all now she had nothing else to do. It seemed to her that no cherub -slumbering in beds of amaranth and asphodel inside the sculptured gates of heaven could be so beautiful as little Steve was with the dew of sleep upon him as he lay on the old patchwork quilt. The day that the boy laughed heartily and intelligently she felt that she had assisted at a fresh creation of the human soul, and to her mind nothing more remarkable in the record of the race had ever occurred than the first articulate sound that little Steve uttered. His recognition of herself was an ever-recurring miracle; she snatched him up each time and covered him with kisses, as if it needed a special act of gratitude ; the detestable old cat from whose back he pulled a handful of hair became a sacred being she wondered that the cat did not like it; he was welcome to as many handfuls of her gray hair as he would take ! " Do not talk about this earth's being a dark place ! " she cried, to the old grandam of the other part of the house, " for it seems to me as bright as the sun itself! It must be bright when all the children that are born meet it with such a gay heart. I used to pity them all. But now look at him ! he smiles at everybody, all the world are friends it is beautiful ! The angels must feel just so. Oh, you don't think, do you, that he is too bright and good to live ? Oh, my darling ! " she would < 25 6) PRACTICING FOR A LONG MIGRATION. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 257 cry, that single gleam of trouble bringing back the one dark thought of her life, " if I only knew that you had a right to the name you bear ! " And so the days passed on, each one a festival, each new one bringing a new feat of little Steve's to be shown and admired and praised, the child thrived and prospered, and more and more with each day the little old woman seemed to become a child with him. They used often now to come in and see me. I had the children's deserted toys for little Steve, that delighted him, and there were others which could not be taken away, sucn as the great music box, and the aquarium, and the fernery, over which he hung spell-bound, and I had cer- tain innocent dainties whose whereabouts he early learned to know ; and when he twisted his little lips into coaxing kisses on the air between, his grandmother, proud as she was, could not resist the child's insistence to be brought across the street to me. The sight of age is always a pathetic sight to the young and strong, especially of age forgetting its miseries and the near grave in the love of others ; but there was something exquisitely pathetic in the sight of this little old creature lugging the heavy child about, none the less so for her uncon- sciousness of it. Once, when she saw a shadow of the thought on my face, " Don't you pity me,'* she cried; " I am too happy for that! Keep your pity for the old women that are not grandmothers ! " "You set too much by the boy, Margaret," said the grandam, who had walked out with her that morning. <( What if he should be taken from you ? " " What if he should be taken from me ? " she repeated, opening her sunken eyes as if they had never seen the possibility before. " Well, then, I should go, too! It couldn't be for long. But no, no; he is as stout and healthy as he is bright and handsome. I only pray not to be taken myself till he can spare me !" Poor old Margaret ! It was well for her that she enjoyed herself while the sun shone, for the darkness was coming soon enough. One day, just as little Steve came out of his bath, and, running away from her, was toddling about the room, his little body shining with water-drops, his curls dripping in wet, bright rings, there was heard a man's foot on the step and in the entry, a rap on the door, and the visitor had come in unbidden and stood before her. It was James Falconer. " I have come for my boy," said he. Margaret, risen to fetch the child, staggered and fell back upon her seat, and caught little Steve and clutched him closely. She trembled from head to foot; but she glared at her enemy like a lioness defending her whelp. "I suppose you do not deny that he is my child?" said the visitor, no longer the dark and handsome youth, but a worn and haggard man. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. " He is his mother's child," said Margaret hoarsely; " and so mine. There was no ring on Bessie's finger ! " Falconer paused a moment and gazed at the boy ; and the boy, full of roguish glee and kindliness, looked archly up at him, and kissed the air after the pretty fashion that he had. 4t Yes, he is Bessie's boy fast enough," said the man. " And he is mine, too, you will have to understand. And I have come to get him !" "Go away, James Falconer!" cried Margaret, "or I will set the law on you 1 . M "There is no law to set on me," he said " there is no law for me, except the law that gives a man his child, born in honest wedlock." Margaret blanched as she heard him. Her heart rose and sank, and sent a pulse over her in hot waves. To clear Bessie's name from stain J But at such a price I Was it was it possible? She looked at the vanishing ambro-type that, framed in its wreath of dead roses, hung beneath the clock the bright, beau- tiful face with the smile. " Was he," she whispered presently "was he born so ? Was my Bessie a lawful wife >" He nodded. " Do you swear to it, James Falconer ? Will you publish it in the Morning Herald* " She ran and brought her Bible, over which she had sat so raany a night spelling out the big type that promised blessings to the widow and the fatherless. She held it out at arm's length. 4 1 Kiss the book t " she exclaimed, "and swear it all." James Falconer bent his head and kissed the book. '* Then you can take the boy," she said. " But take him quickly, before it breaks my heart !" And the man went his way with his own. " O, Bessie, Bessie," she cried, as the door closed and left her all alone, "you bright and careless girl, what an awful price have I paid for your good name ! I have sold my little Steve, his hopes, his future, his life and soul, to that man to that man and to evil." That night the old grandam fumbled at Margaret's latch to come in, according to her custom, for a social gossip in the twilight Margaret did not answer her. She opened the door and saw her lying on the bed. "I've had a stroke i" was all that Mar- garet said, as the other old woman bent over her " I've had a stroke " "God bless me! The palsy! We'll have the doctor here" "Oh, no, it's not that," murmured Mar- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 259 garet, slowly. " But just the heart is dead within me." The next day the poor soul did not attempt to rise. She lay there with the Morning Herald, in which at last was printed the day and date of Bessie's marriage, nearly seven years ago, spread out upon the pillow, as if in little Steve's place. To them that would have ministered to her she seemed in a stupor till she lifted her eyes, as wild and suffering as those of a dumb creature in mor- tal pain. She did not listen to what anybody said; she did not speak herself; she tasted the nour- ishment that was brought and turned away the tide of life was ebbing out, and she was letting go her hold upon the earth that had grown worthless to her. She lay in that half dream, and whether we came in or out she neither knew nor cared. Once only she spoke sighed rather than spoke. "That is right," she said. "Punish me! punish me well for ever having dared to doubt my Bessie !" But Sunday morning, just as the great first flush of the dawn came into the room, and all the air rippled with the tumultuous music of the birds, Margaret sat up in bed, and looked at the morning star sinking back into the rose and glory. It cast the shadow of the window sash in a long dark cross upon her bed. She glanced at the shadow and faintly smiled the brighter light would' soon efface the shadow, soon she would lay her cross aside! And the cross 1 paled and faded, and was gone; and then, as a child's voice somewhere in the 1 distance sweetly and shrilly joined the chorus of the birds, she shivered and! her head fell forward and dropped upon her breast and the dawn came slowly and softly up and shed a silver splendor round the poor old head, and showed us that Margaret had passed into the fuller day. 2 6o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS, CHAPTER ELEVENTH. A Weil-Spring of Joy. God's child, with His dew On thy gracious gold hair. Browning. The merry merry lark was up and singing, And the hare was out and feeding on the lea, And the merry merry bells below were ringing, When my child's laugh rang through me. Charles Kingsley, Happy is the man that has his quiver full of them. Psalms. So build we up the being that we are. Wordsworth. A mither bairn who had never known Aught save the tenderest care, She had fared to the heavenly land alone, As the souls of all must fare. Margaret E. Sangster. The children gather the table round, And this is rosy and that is fair, No dearer group in the land is found, With their laughing eyes and their golden hair. Margaret E. Sangster. Among these latter busts we count by scores, Half emperors, and quarter emperors, Each in his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest, Doric and low-browed Gorgon on his breast ; One loves a baby face with violets there, Violets instead of laurel in the hair, As those were all the little locks could bear. Browning. But one house will be only half peopled if there comes there no new life in the little child to carry on and enlarge the old. When the first whisper comes to the young mother's heart which calls to her, "Blessed art thou among women," which tells her that the strength of STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 261 Tier love has kindled a new being, it is not of the great gulf of death that she must cross to win her treasure that most she thinks, but of the field of her past years, and of the influences that have made her what she is for good or ill. "There are two moments in a diver's life: One, when a beggar he prepares to plunge, One, when a prince he rises with his pearl," she may perchance repeat, but not until she rises with her pearl from the black depths into which she plunged more bravely than any man ever went to battle, not until that most awful of all moments when she has felt the pres- ence of the Lord of Life beside her, not until that sweetest of all moments when the little face lies near her own, when her tired arms clasp that which yesterday was not and to-day is, does she penetrate the secret and burden of those past years to its full meaning, and in the cup of her joy find a bitter tang, the sting of her own sins and errors, the effect of*\vhich the silent work of nature has passed over to her child, and made him in great degree that which she has made herself. Every mother knows something of the bitter- ness of this regret, unless she be immeasurably centered in the sphere of her own self-conceit; and from tha instant of the experience her life is bent toward undoing any evil the child may have inherited from her or from an- other, and toward bringing all good influences to bear in developing his being symmetrically and in making him a blessing to his race, something lovely in the Eternal eyes, it may be, something worthy of the full receipt of that life which is love. She may be the sternest disbeliever in religious doctrine and dogma, finding no satisfaction to reason in the substance of any creed, but in this moment a sterner doubt will possess her: the dcubt if this little spirit can be anything less than immortal; and she finds herself proceeding on that supposition, and, in the peradventure, doing her best to give him a good start in immortality. When those die whom, living, we adored, it seems blasphemy to them to doubt of their continued existence ; when those are born of our love, as we know that love is everlasting we are assured that they partake of the nature of that which gave them existence. As the mother lies quiescent in the long days, in the still watches of the night, more often than otherwise her mind is busy with the great verities; she is rehearsing the child's future for him; she is weighing and judging his possibilities; she is thinking how this one fault that is his father's may be brought to naught in him, those noble qualities be brought to light, how those boundless faults that are her own may be exterminated or rendered abortive, how the moral and spiritual inheritances from his ancestry may be handled, how best shall be developed this last flower o:* the race. She sees that growth STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. X is the unfolding of life; that ^here is in it something of the divine; that it must not be hindered ; and that possibly all she may be able to do is to keep off injurious influence. If she never prayed before, she prays now; if she never suffered before, she suffers now ; if she was never glad before, she is glad now ; glad with a sweet awe that she and the Eternal Powers of goodness are to work together in making this child worthy not only of his mortal, but also of his immortal, parentage. The Baby. The helpless morsel of humanity and flannel that has come into the house and has presently through his imperious necessities turned it upside down and made all its people slaves, is not three days old before he has found out who is master. When* this little immortal being yells, he yells with all the force of his immortality behind him ; the household prostrates itself as if be- fore the vast outside agencies of the unknown. A kitten might squeal, a puppy howl ; we would relieve it ; but it would not be that matter of vital concern and effort that the relief cf the baby becomes ; and although we are not conscious of it, it is not our sense of selfish possession that prostrates us so much as our consciousness of this new being's identity, with the first grop- ing of his hands, the first wandering of his eyes, and of his being the latest manifestation of this vast unknown, the finest and last result of a long line of generation, the crown of our own existences, the thing we love as a part of ourselves, and perhaps as a part of heaven, too. Be that as it may, the little child has not learned to focus his eyesight, when, lying on his face across his nurse's knee, he may be seen to lift his head and survey his surroundings. In that survey he has made up his mind about many things and evolved the germ of his self-will. The problem that presents itself is not to break that will but to direct it ; never to awake it in contradiction to the superior will, never to let the child know the need of screaming or insisting, or the possibility of any gratification following such screaming or insisting, to let him find that, strong as his will may be, the superior will is stronger, and it is profitless to resist it; that there is to be no yielding or changing after refusal or command, no playing fast or loose, biit wise determination in the first and a firm hold of that determination after- ward, no matter under what pressure of the child's wish or of a personal de- sire to the contrary. And with that the child is led to see that neither one will nor the other is of any use in contest with the facts of the universe, that fire will burn, that water will drown, that blows will hurt, and that there STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 263 must be accommodation to the truth, and he will have taken then his first conscious step into the world outside his own narrow periphery, the world of law. If one asked the young mother what was her first duty, she would reply that it was to establish habits of health in her child. Undoubt- edly she is right. But if she has fed her child at such regu- lar intervals that he has never had to exercise lungs, stom- ach, or temper in demanding food; if she has put him to sleep alone so early that he lias never known any other way, and has never had to have his nerves rasped or his terrors excited by the unac- customed fact, then she has already established some habits of physical health, even while attending at the same time and in a small way to matters of the higher nature. Of course it is a self-evident fact that no thoroughly harmonious nature can be expanded from an unsound body; and that the work calculated to achieve or to maintain the sound body must be coincident with other work, and must be unremit- ting. WHAT A SINGULAR CHARM THERE IS ABOUT THE FIRST FIRE OF WOOD! The Physical Care of the Baby. It is almost presumptuous to say to the mother that her child must be watched from the first, in order that it may be known how well or how ill his food agrees with him; that if he is obliged to resort to artificial food it must be prepared with the greatest care and cleanliness, with no long tubes and coils in his drinking-vessels to nourish the deadly ptomaines, and that the 2 6 4 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. child must never be allowed to become so hungry as to gulp down greedily more than can be disposed of healthfully instead of such amount as the stomach can handle with slow and gentle satisfaction. Constant care is the price of everything valued in this world, and the bodily habits must be made a matter of close observation, and if in any way they fail, the physician must be summoned and obeyed. That the child must be kept dry, that chafing 'must be prevented by the use ot home-made unguents pleasantly scented, or of finely sifted starch rather than of the possibly dangerous and highly perfumed powders to be bought, that a few drops of oil, a soft sponge and soap and water must be relied on to cleanse his head, that his hands and feet must be always warm, that the sleep must not be made restless by too much clothing, creating a heat that weakens, all these again are so self-evident facts that one feels like apologizing for mentioning them. The mother herself must judge whether the child, if puny and delicate, shall sleep alone or have the warmth of her arms; her mother- wit will tell her that he must be handled as little as love can allow, must be fondled and breathed over no more than is indispensable, must be excused from promis- cuous kissing from all sorts of lips, must not have his brain excited by too many faces, too much talking, too much going and coming about him. This same mother-wit, too, will abolish the long picturesque skirts loaded with finery that bear and deform the baby's legs and feet, and will shorten all skirts at the first moment in which the growth of the baby and the tempera- ture of the weather act together, and will, moreover, cover the neck and arms, so lovely to look at and to kiss, with high-throated and long-sleeved slips, if indeed it does not keep the baby in little night-dresses for many weeks rather than in embroideries, laces, and ruffles. Mother-wit, too, will make the bath in tepid water a daily habit and joy from the first ; in the early days, wash- ing and wiping and covering a little surface at a time, and the full plunge bath when the little bather is able to splash the water with glee and compre- hension ; but even then the child will not be left in the water long enough to become blue or to receive the least chill. Much of all this is such intuitive knowledge that many mothers may consider even the suggestion an impertinence. Nevertheless, the mother who follows these hints, whether naturally or otherwise, and further sees to it that her house, her drinking water, and the drinking water of her cow, as well as all her own habits, are healthy, will be rewarded with the possession of such rosy wholesomeness, such beaming intelligence as only a thoroughly comfortable baby can show, and with such joy as only the possession of such a treasure can give a yearning and a tender heart. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 265 The Moral Growth of the Child. From the healthy animal being made sure, by circumspection and solici- tude, we may hope to see the healthy mental and moral being evolved. Men- tal and moral being will be evolved in some way, since that is an affair in- cident to all in the process of the opening out of that integral germ of in- dividuality which belongs to each child as much as the development of seed and flower belongs to the plant. Out ot its own mysterious sources will come the unfolding of the sturdy oak from the acorn, of the butterfly from the worm, of the storm-sweeping eagle from the egg, of the sage, the hero, the Saviour, from the first feeble morsel of humanity. But the determination of that unfolding, of the quality and direction of that mental and moral being, are very lovely in the power of the child's environment, and thus in that of his mother and father. Resting in this germ of individuality, it has been widely proved, lie many of the capacities of generations of ancestors, although certainly not all of those capacities ; for some have been annihilated by inter- marriage with contradictory and stronger ones, some have been atrophied by disuse. Those remain by re-inforcement and accretion either from the re- mote or recent past, while others are dormant but not yet withered, and capa- ble under re-animating circumstances of being brought into use whether for good or evil. We see in almost every family some one person in whom have survived the traits of those dead and gone this many a year, traits long ago dropped by all the rest of the connection. The careful parent will not allow the possibilities these thoughts suggest to be forgotten ; and in this view, knowledge concerning one's lineage is always to be desired. If among these dormant capacities there are any of value, it is the parent's part to vivify them, to stimulate and strengthen them in action, and if there are any noxious ones, to use every endeavor still further to asphyxiate and destroy them. This recurrence of traits is seen so surely in the physical life that we might know the natural corollary of it all is in the moral. In certain house- holds a peculiarity of the eyes will re-appear from time to time till it is known as the family eye, and it will be seen in old portraits, where they exist, for ten generations back. Where there has been a hunch-back, it is tolerably sure that somewhere in succeeding generations there will be another; it will be thought and declared then to be the result of accident, but investigation will probably discover the congenital weak spine in some shape all along the line, and knowledge of the liability will tend to make us overcome the cast in the eye and strengthen the weakness of the back. The same thing is familiar to us in the moral world; certain families are known to be of jealous and vin- dictive natures; certain ones to have parsimonious qualities; of these one is 266 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. as sure of their benevolence as of their name; in others a scholarly habit has existed since they were known as a family at all. Thus the work of the guardians of the child is plainly set before them ; to repress here, to forward there, to increase existing power, to nullify wrong tendencies. It looks like a vast task; but when it is remembered that it means but a word at a time, day after day, one recalls the discontented pen- dulum, and is not so much appalled. The carrot, some one tells us, has to have twenty generations of culture before it is edible ; but, en the other hand, let it be left alone for five generations and it is again worthless. Still, although so gradual, this task of directing the child's growth is an unceasing one; for going along at the same time with the destruction of evil inheritances and the stimulation of good ones, there is usually also the im planting of other distinct and positive characteristics as they are seen to be necessary. It ought not to be a difficult one, however; for some of the de- sired traits are but the revival of those originated or taught by our earliest Aryan fathers, courage, truth, and worship, and much of it is done in letting our children see the noble qualities in our own lives and conduct. There is a sort of creative happiness in the work, meantime. We have seen a young mother who experienced deadly fear in a thunder storm, her heart sinking with every flash, hold her little child up to look at the lightning with smiles on her face, as if nothing were more to be admired than the blue and rosy splendor of the flash, and lift her finger the while inclining her head to listen, as if the reverberations of the thunder, the house shaking with the concussion, were music in her ears, because she was determined the child should not be the heir, of the tremors and sufferings of others. It may have been an ordeal to her, but it would have been a worse ordeal to have her son a coward ; and she was but repeating the lesson the first Aryan mother taught her son far away in the abyss of past ages, and she has a joy in doing it that more than compensated her, for she was creating a hero. Deny the existence of original sin, as we may, the survival and appear- ance of these ancestral traits, whether rudimentary or full-flowered, which we shall constantly see in our children, if we look for them, amount in practical dealing to the same thing. Selfishness, fear, falsehood, cruelty, sensuality, will be the ghosts coming to revisit the pale glimpses of the moon, vastly modified, it is to be hoped, but still the same as in the mother of all the Jukes, and some one of them probably to be contended with by any one who has the care of the last inheritor of all the virtues and vices gene before, the last heir of all the ages, the child of any household. Yet it is not to be for- gotten that good has been inherited with the evil, the good of all the strug- gles against temptation, the effort toward the better and higher, the refusal STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 267 to surrender to sin, till that effort, that struggle, that refusal, till, in short, virtue becomes an hereditament. Hence to stultify the evil, to foster the good, is the burden that the parents take up with their first-born's first breath. It is a burden they have no right to lay down for a day. They are responsi- ble for the child's existence, and so for what he does with his existence. It was they who called these spirits from the vasty deep; it is they who must lead them as Solomon led the genii in a leash. When a child commits its first theft of apple, or cake, or what-not, the mothei may well feel a horrible fear of the apparition of the original cave-dwelling savage, of the foraging marauder, the highwayman, the thieving borderer, the vassal or serf who attended the high-handed raider who knew no other law than that of might. When the child strikes its first angry blow, she sees all that old original savage rising in him. "Opy the door!" cried a two-year- old child. "When I say 'opy the door,' opy the door!" And the mother knew that the time had come for her to obey tremblingly or to resist to the death the domineering spirit that had never been laid to rest with bell, book, or candle, capable of ruining the peace of a family to come as it might have ruined the peace of those dead and gone. "You said I would feel better when I had given away some of my caramels," said another little re-embodied trait. "I don't feel any better. When shall I begin to feel better?" And this mother saw something appalling as any old family ghosts, the old miserly spirit of one strain of his ancestry rising to contest, not with the desire for a peaceful conscience, but with the spirit that loves luxury and ease so much that it never does right, but only with the slothful dislike of the consequences of wrong; and while others smiled at the naivet of the urchin she saw a problem before her as intricate as one in the calculus of imaginaries. Per- haps it would help her to remember that one of the fairy fancies of science has been that owing to the thinner and lighter atmosphere of the planet Mars, the birds got the start there, in the matter of evolution, making the intelli- gent being of Mars, the human being there, a winged creature. It is her art to make his moral atmosphere that which shall develop the winged being in her child's nature. Help in the Problem from the Great Educator. In the solution of the mother's problem as to the right way to develop the minds of her children many great minds have come to her assistance; but none of them more practically than Pestalozzi, Rousseau, and Froebel, the latter with a patient working out of system that was creative. It is Froebel's 2 68 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. ROCK ME TO SLEEP, MOTHER. ideas that now govern nearly all primary edu- cation, even where his whole plan of teaching is not carried out. The inten- tion of his work is to evoke a universal and all-round devel- opment of the nature and the faculties, and this is done by turning the nat- ural activities of the child to use, by develop- ing the body through gentle and rhythmical gymnastics, and the soul through the simultane- ous action of the senses and of the social sympathies and instincts. Froebel. It is by the slow process of many years that the excellence of Froebel' s ideas has been proved, and the process was accompanied by ridicule and obstruction till it triumphed. But the wonderful man had stanch adherents and powerful friends in his life-time. When some one spoke of him as an old fool, a. learned professor replied that STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 269 Socrates was that sort of fool ; when he died, his grave was filled with flowers by children whose lives he had developed as those flowers had themselves been developed from wildlings. His work beginning- with one school a school of whose pupils Prof. Fichte, the son of the great philosopher, declared that they showed exceptional in- telligence in the Universities and elsewhere is now the compulsory system of Austria and of several other European countries, and is on the way to be widely adopted in the United States, very notably in the schools of Boston an interesting fact because it was toward us that Froebel looked for welcome. Among prominent people who have interested themselves in the work is the Empress Frederick, who had her children reared according to its plan, and who is the patroness of certain institutions in London, where Robert Owen introduced it; and the Princess Pauline of Lippe-Detmold, and the Duchess Helene of Orleans have made use of it, in forms somewhat modified for the very young and the very poor. It is even used among those having most success in the schools for the blind, and it is undoubtedly to become the one and only method of educing and training the intelligence of children the world over. "The most delicate, the most difficult and the most impor- tant part of the training of children," writes the Baroness Marenholtz-Bulow, in quoting Froebel, "consists in the development of their inner and higher life of feeling and of soul, from which springs all that is highest and holiest in the life of men and of mankind ; in short, the religious life, the life that is at one with God in feeling, in thought, and in action. When and where does this life begin ? It is as with the seeds in spring; they remain long hidden under the earth before they become outwardly visible. It is as with the stars of heaven, which astronomers tell us have shone for ages in space ere their light has fallen on our eyes. We know not, then, when and where this relig- ious development, this process of re-union with God, first begins in the child. If we are over-hasty with our care and attention the result will be the same as with the seedling which is exposed too early and too directly to the sun's heat or to the moisture of rain. If, on the other hand, we are behind- hand, the consequences will be equally fatal. What then must education do ? It must proceed as gently and gradually as possible, and in this respect, as with all other kinds of development, work first only through general influ- ences. As the child's physical condition is healthily or injuriously affected by the badness or goodness of the air which it breathes, so will the religious atmosphere by which it is surrounded determine its religious development.^ 1 Music, gesture, expression, love, are the first agencies which Froelei would use in his work; and in taking advantage of the intimate communication between the mother and the child, he would have all the mother's moods fine, 270 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. and in the school those of the young teacher or kindergartner, the mother for the moment, because the child shares these moods. And while he makes the kindergarten a miniature world for the child, he makes its system a school for mothers. Indeed a school for mothers has been established on this basis and with this name in Prussia, and it is much to be wished that we might have the same thing here. Something of the sort, to be sure, has been attempted, but one class of mothers had no time from their work, and the other class from their play, and nothing has as yet resulted. In the modern system of training children the work begins at the earliest moment ; for as there is no moment too early for the implanting of evil, it is to be counteracted and prevented at the outset. " A tender young leaf pricked ; n the spring-time with the finest needle will show a scar of continually in- creasing size, till it withers in the fall." If one were to condense the system to a few words, one would merely repeat Froebel's own intention of satisfying the child's demands as much as possible, of being wisely indulgent, and of allowing the child, so far as consistent with safety, to learn by experience. By this means when the child attains his seventh year and leaves the kinder- garten, character has been expanded, habits of discipline, obedience, exacti- tude, niceness, and unselfishness have been formed, the will has been trained through the exploitation of wise motives and reflection on the result of action, the intellect and the emotions have been exercised, while all the social in- stincts have been fed and strengthened to demand yet more food, instincts that are our joy, and, so far as much of the happiness of this life is concerned, are almost our salvation. And in the mean time the child has learned some- thing of his relation to inorganic nature,, to nature even in the iron in his blood, the chalk in his bones, to human nature, and, it is claimed, to God, and to God in nature. At seven years the child has attained one-half his stature, one-third his weight, and his brain, save in exceptional instances, is as large as it is going to be. But although the brain has attained its size, it has not made much progress toward differentiation ; its structural development is still very em- bryonic, but has been given tendency and direction, for, in the words of an authority, "all brain activity reacts on the particular structure engaged, modi- fying it in some unknown way, and bringing about a subsequent physiological disposition to act in a similar manner," establishing thus a habit, perhaps a faculty, as a gardener establishes a new variety. It is during this plastic period before the seventh year that Froebel puts in his work the period that used to be thought of small account, in which the child was dealt with as a little animal, or not much more, and in which he has-been, until lately, left to the care of nurses and ignorant servants, where there were nurses and ser- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 271 vants to be had, and left to run wild where there were not. To deal with this period now, all the intelligence, learning, moral culture, and civilized graces, are not thought too much ; and the work may be done in the preliminary school, or it may be done in the home nursery. The Kindergarten. All the methods of the kindergarten work are the result of the most ex- quisite study and elaboration. They go so far as to analyze the character of the child's pleasure, in the game of bo-peep, for instance the willing surren- der of the sight of the mother's face for the sake of the fresh joy of seeing it again ; and in the later game of hide-and-seek, they show that the hiding is for the instinctive delight of being found, and that in carrying this play too far, or in leaving the child unsatisfied by expressions of pleasure at the rind- ing, there is danger of letting the interest degenerate from the social and unselfish pleasure into the love of hiding for its own sake and so into love of concealment, into slyness and deceit. How many years ago is it that Plutarch said that children should be taught to avoid all that savors of secrecy, which tends to lead them away from uprightness and to accustom them to wrong ! It is through the child's play that all this study of his nature and effort to meet his necessities proceeds. For play is the expression of the child's nature, it is the way in which he attacks life, in which he reproduces his ex- periences, classifies his tendencies, and exhibits his inmost being and all its outreaching. In this play the child acts over again all that he has seen and would fain comprehend, and in this play he individualizes the inner spark which is himself and which is to be the agent of good or evil in him. One of Froebel's chief interests was in seeing the progression of the whole race from its savage days in the play of the child. "He draws a parallel," says Miss Blow, "between the child's love for running and wrestling, and for all games of physical prowess, and that first stage of human society when all men were hunters, warriors and athletes. He connects the child's love for digging in the ground with that agricultural instinct which transformed nomadic tribes into nations of husbandmen. He shows us the germ of rights and prosperity in the boy's love of ownership, opens our eyes to see in mud pies a faint straggle of the plastic instinct, persuades us to hear in the rhythmic cooing of the baby a prophecy of music, and bids us reverence the dawn of science in the eager habit of investigation. But he lingers most lovingly of all over those manifestations which reveal essential human connections, and never tires of following the soul as it struggles from darkness into light." As it has already been said, the very beginning of Froebel's system lies 272 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. in his deep intimacy with the hearts of mothers, his knowledge of them, and fellowship with them. He has for the mother almost a divine tenderness; he educates her while he shows her how to make her child a symmetrical and a spiritual being. As the kindergarten is the next step from the mother's arms, it is con- tinued in the mother's spirit; and as the smile is the first expression of love between mother and child, in the spirit of that smile is a subsequent training to be given and received. In the kindergarten book of nursery songs and games, with every song for the child there is a motto for the mother, to show her the feeling in which the little game would best be played or the song sung. Froebel went about among the people studying mothers and babies : and it would seem as if he had caught and preserved every emotion of the little being in its first taking hold of life, and he taught mothers what their own natural play with their babies meant, and how it might be made yet more effectual. In this way motherhood is formulated into a science, but all so naturally that one sees, as it were, an apotheosis of pure family life in every household where these ideas are adopted and their leading followed, that of "father, mother, child, of light and love and life." It is through the mother that the child reaches that self-knowledge which is also self -reverence and self-control ; it is through her instant sympathy that his instinctive activity compasses all culture ; it is through the mother that the world of self, of others, of all the outside universe is first reached by the child ; but it is all under a process not of forcing but of self -development. Love is to call out faith, needs are to demand fulfillment, as in the in- stance given by one of his exponents, of the little child who being abused by her nurse, and wishing to complain to her mother, who was absent, exclaimed desperately, "Father in Heaven tell her!" and uttered her first cry for spirit- ual help that way. "Can you tell, O Mother, " Froebel asks, "when the spirit- ual development of your child begins? Can you trace the boundary line which separates the conscious from the unconscious soul? In God's world, just because it is God's world, the law of all things is continuity there are and can be no abrupt beginnings, no rude transitions, no to-day which is not based upon yesterday. The distant stars were shining long before their rays reached our earth. The seed germinates in darkness, and is growing long before we can see its growth. So in the depths of the infant soul a process goes on which is hidden from our eyes, yet upon which hangs more than we can dream of good or evil, happiness or misery." , In raising mothers to this height, it is recognized, even if unconsciously, that until now the race has "received its stamp from the male half only," and in teaching mothers how to turn even their instincts to account in educating STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 273 theif children, a new era is opening, in which the children of the race will have the benefit intellectually of mothers as well as fathers in a way they have not known before, and which must be enlarging and elevating and en- nobling. In this light it is not so much matter whether mothers talk baby- talk to their children or not; indeed Rousseau says that words are of almost no consequence in the early months, and that accent is all-important. It is the harsh sentence, the sharp emphasis, the unmusical tone that must not be given by the mother. It is quick and absolute sympathy that should be shown by her: for as Froebel says, "The whole after life of the human being, with all its deep significance, passes in dim, shadowy presentiments through the child's soul. But the child himself does not understand the importance of these presentiments, these dim strivings and forebodings, and they are seldom noticed or attended to by the grown-up people who surround him. What a change there would be in all the conditions of life, of children, of young people, of humanity in general, if only these warning voices were listened for and encouraged in early childhood and apprehended in youth in their highest meaning, 1 " It is because the mother guides and governs intuitively that she is peculiarly fitted to translate and to illumine these intuitions, intimations, or presentiments, and if she is the mother that she should be, to glorify them, and demonstrate the inner meaning of the universe through the experience of love. It being to the mother, then, that Froebel gives his first assistance, it is out of her caresses and endeavors at entertainment that he builds up his sys- tem in a logical sequence of games that are satisfying, delighting, and de- veloping to the child, adding little more, only enlarging and illumining the old. The child's first movements are made contributory to certain expansive gymnastic exercises, especially those for the hand, the most valued member of the body the weathercock being the name of one of the earliest games, since, after light, the child osberves motion, which is life, and by holding the hand out flat with the thumb erected, a weathercock is imitated, and by the movement from north to south, from east to west, the connecting muscles of the wrist are brought into action, the action being accompanied by a little song which arouses a spark of thought The next step is to make the child look for the wind, the invisible force behind. In another game the fingers represent father and mother, brother and sister, and the children are named and counted and put to bed. Another game is called the sun-bird, and con- sists of the vain attempt to catch the reflection of the sunbeam flashed to and iro by means of a piece of glass. "The child thus learns at an early age that it is not only material possession that gives pleasure, that beauty has the power to penetrate to the soul and to produce greater happiness than mere (274) SHE SPELLS OUT THf UfesSON' WtfTH H*ER CHILD. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 275 enjoyment of the senses can afford." With this the little household pets and animals, pigeons, chickens, cats, whether real or imaginary, are to be called around, exciting observation and friendship, and tempting the child's desire for further knowledge. He is taught family-life by means of a nest of birds; in one hand-game he rounds his hands into the likeness of a nest, and he is taught then that every little bird is taken care of in a special way, how it builds its nest, where it is safe from danger and where the food it requires is within reach, and that it builds this nest and hatches its young ones at the time of year when the unfledged little creatures will be protected by the warmth of the spring sun. And then the mother drawing the child's atten- tion to the fearlessness with which the little birds lie quietly in their nest, waiting for the return of their mother who has gone to fetch them food, re- peats these words : "The heavenly Father's glorious sun Warms thy home, too, and makes it bright. He shines on thee and every one Look up, and thank Him for His light!" There is another hand-game, called the watering-pot, in which the child is taught the pleasure of doing for others, in imitating the action of giving water to the flowers, while his intelligence is awakened to the fact that all things require care. The child thus is taught, first, love for the father and mother, then for mankind, and then for the Infinite. He discovers for him- self that he is "the child of nature, the child of humanity, and the child of God," even although he does not put his discovery into words; he is led to perceive later, and his parents are led to perceive with him, that the laws of the mind and the laws of the universe are the same; and those parents, in beholding the soul grope for and grasp the organs of the body, and use their hitherto unspiritualized substance, so far from doubting the existence of the immortal part of their child, will, under the light that Froebel gives, see it blossom and unfold before their eyes. It is now evident that the office of education is that of assisting and guid- ing natural development, that the beginning gives a bias to all the rest, that the spiritual and the physical go on together, that the child's intuitions furnish a. natural basis, and by using the physical wants we reach the spiritual, the senses being the slaves of the soul, the will, and the intellect, that instinctive notice is to be led into conscious action, that as only through physical im- pressions is the soul awakened, so those impressions should be the object of care and not be left to chance, and that, as the last springs from the first, the^process by education is to be continuous. Thus it will be seen the simple (2 7 6) BEAUTY AND GLORY OF MOTHERHOOD. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. -277 gymnastics for the hand, advised "by Froebel, contain the seed and essence of all later instruction. That the comprehension and practice of this require a good deal of study on the part of the mother is not to be denied, but it is simple, so gradual, that it is not to be feared, and it is all the time accompanied by the unfolding and perfecting of the flower of being in the dearest and tenderest thing on earth. The Gifts in Froebel's System. Froebel wisely begins by recognizing play as the absolute business of a child's life; and he utilizes the fact by leading play unawares into work and the business of the maturer life. He accomplishes this largely by the intelli- gent use of certain toys that he calls his "gifts," wholesome to handle, not easily injured, thus repressing the destructive tendency; toys of lovely sug- gestion, and most of them not so complete in themselves that they cannot afford the opportunity of doing something more with them. They can be used illustratively in later periods than that for which they were first given ; and they are chosen to teach form, color, and distinctive qualities like weight and size, to teach also the love of lav; and the comprehension of unity in the each and all of the universe, each set of "gifts" preparing the way for the next. These objects, and the brief drill accompanying them, teach obedience, promptness, industry, facility, arouse imagination, quicken originality, and strengthen the body. In order that they shall be intelligently and faithfully employed, an educated and grown-up teacher is necessary, the child having left his mother's arms; and it is thought best that no class shall number more than fifteen children. The first gift, which, indeed, belongs to early babyhood, consists of six woolen balls, three of the primary and three of the secondary colors, "the si-x children of light in the rainbow, the symbol of highest peace." These afford the child the means of judging of form, of color, of direction, up and down, to right and left, each ball having a string so as to be under control, afford exercise, and lead to the second gift. With any one of these balls begins the application of the law of contrasts, the first contrast lying in the object as one opposed to or outside of the child's self or identity, and afterward coming that of the varying colors, that of one or many of rest or motion, of the latter in straight lines or curves, given in tossing, or belonging to it in rebounding. Then, too, it is seen that the ball is always the same, equal in all directions, is a representation of all concentered force; it gives the child's first impres- sion its own roundness and completeness. 278 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. The second gift is a wooden ball, and with it a cube and a cylinder. The ball carries on the lessons of the first gift ; it represents motion and life, the cube, rest and inertia; the cylinder combines both; standing, it has in- ertia, rolling it has life. "Thus the three appear as representatives of the vague essence of the three kingdoms of nature; in the cube, life sleeps as in the mineral kingdom, i and the cube moves only when placed on edge or corner, to return again to sleep; in the cylinder, the type of the vegetable kingdom, axial life in certain 1 directions begins to manifest itself; and in the ball, as in the animal king- dom, all-sided life, life in all directions is reached. Again, the second gift presents types of the principal phases of human development; from the easy mobility of infancy and childhood the ball we pass through the half-steady stages of boyhood and girlhood, represented in the cylinder, to the firm char- acter of manhood and womanhood for which the cube furnishes the formula." By revolving the cube, we find a cylinder; by revolving the cylinder, a sphere; by which we learn, "not only that each member of the second gift contains each and all of the others, but that whatever is in the universe is in every individual part of it ; that even the meanest holds the elements of the noblest ; that the highest life is even in what in short-sighted conceit we call death. And when, on the other hand, we revolve the sphere, and see that, try as we may, it will ever remain the same, we learn that all-sided ani- mal life is, indeed, the highest manifestation of existence, that death means decay, and that only all-sided development can keep us from this." The third gift, or the child's joy, as it is called, is a larger cube, cut so as to divide into eight equal cubes. This makes a step in development ; for hitherto all has been whole, indivisible, and complete, all impressions have come as units, and now analysis and synthesis begin, of course in the sim- plest forms, and the most easily to be digested and assimilated, that of taking apart and putting together, of dividing, changing, and joining, of using will and inventive faculty, all in the exercise of the first glad activity, and all un- der that control which the shape and nature of the small cubes make inevit- able, so that destructiveness and rude vandalism are impossible ; and in the mean time number is taught by this, and the idea of the fraction. The child cannot re-create the toy he has shattered ; but let the big cube be broken, and, "Oh, wonder and joy! each of its parts resembles the whole, the original ; he has not destroyed, he has not killed his own joy, he has more, more or the same delightful playthings. . . . And, behold, when they are put to- gether again when the synthesis is made what a wealth of new forms, what a store of new playthings grow as by charm out of the parts. . . . All the while, the child is gaining and fixing new cognitions; new relations of posi- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 279 tlon, direction, shape, number, motion, life; acquiring ever fuller and clearer control of language, ever greater, higher, manual skill, bringing ever more unity into his thoughts, feelings, and expressions. Can we fail to see," adds Mr. Hailmann, from whom these sentences on the soul of Froebel's gifts are quoted, " that with such playthings, judiciously presented and managed by a tnother whose wisdom is equal to her love, the child's instinct for activity, Ids awakening consciousness of power, grow, not in the direction of destruct- iveness and cruelty but toward skill, to imitate, to reproduce, to invent." 'The fourth gift is again a cube made of smaller oblong blocks. The fifth gift, another cube made of twenty-seven smaller ones, introduces the oblique line, aids in the study of angles, and later in the comprehension of square and cubic measures. The sixth gift is another cube of twenty-seven oblongs, designed to help in building and in arranging symmetrically. All these im- press upon the child the principles of unity and universality in their like and Tinlikeness. These six gifts are the most important ; but all the others are of untold value in their various uses. With the seventh gift come what are called tablets, slices of wood or of thick cardboard, from which the element of thickness is withdrawn so that only the element of surface is left, with which the child constructs representa- tions or flat pictures or what he may, and the use of which is thought to mark .an important point of his mental growth. The eighth gift is of slender wooden sticks of various lengths and tints, for making rude objects prepara- tory to drawing, the shapes of the letters of the alphabet, for interlacing into spaces for the multiplication table, for acquiring perception of length apart from breadth and thickness, and for similar uses. The ninth gift is of half .and whole wire rings, for instruction in curves, leading to elementary science, to botany, astronomy, and geography. The tenth gift is of slates and papers netted in squares, by means of which both drawing and proportion are taught, and later the drawing of maps "in the net" is thus made exceedingly easy. The eleventh gift is paper and cards to be perforated, a needle with a handle, and a pad to lay beneath in this elementary form of drawing. The twelfth ^ift is made of perforated cards, and silks, and needles for simple embroidery. The thirteenth is of papers folded and cut in many ways that produce inter- Besting designs and afford the delighted child the lawful opportunity to use scissors, thus turning his mischievous propensities into charming interplay of fancy. The fourteenth gift is strips of colored paper to be woven together in any pattern, wonderfully exciting to the inventive powers. The fifteenth is of hard wood slats which are to be interlaced into all sorts of figures. The sixteenth is of slender slats joined together, representing innumerable com- binations of angles. The seventeenth is of colored paper strips, eight or ten 2 8o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. inches long, to be folded lengthwise and bent into shape, according to rules given with them. The eighteenth is again of paper in squares, triangles, and circles, out of which many other objects are formed. The nineteenth is of pointed wires, corks, and peas the ends of the wires to be united in the corks, or in the peas soaked and softened, and so erected into skeleton de- signs. The twentieth gift is of potter's clay, with a modeling board and tools. Of all these gifts, perhaps none are made more useful than the last ; for it can be made to take the place of almost all the others. Of clay, the child, delightedly can create the ball, the cylinder, and later on express his percep- tion of all other objects, and even can approach the threshold of art, although, all unaware and as unconscious as Raphael's two cherubs that overlook the bat- tlements of heaven. And in the modeling, a use of the hands has been ac- quired hardly to be had in any other way, an acquaintance with natural objects and laws, and an opportunity for the expansion into ideal artistic life for those in whom the artistic nature predominates. We are told that "the moral effect of this occupation is special, the yielding nature of the clay seems to develop conscious power, to prophesy the dominion over material nature commanded in the morning-hymn of creation that begins the Bible; while the indestructibility reveals the inexorableness of law ; truths which are op- posite but not contradictory." The uses of all these gifts can be grouped into exercises with solids, with planes, with lines, with points ; and with their employment comes a series of physical games, such as the drill, singing, ball-throwing, a change from manual to vocal work, and the rest to be found in calling upon other organs and muscles. School Another World. That school is important for the evolution of the social nature is appar- ent. "He who learns to swim must go in the water" ; he who is to be happy or useful in the world must mingle with his fellows ; and so in his first social experience the child should have a society as near perfection as it can be made, a society of the innocent, a society where personal liberty is supreme > where each has all his rights and chances and no interference from another. "Such a society does all it can to aid each member in the attainment of his individual ends, while he, in return, finds his highest aims in common pur- poses; such a society thanks the child cordially for his successful activity, and he gratefully acknowledges as his greatest triumphs those in whose attain- ment he played only a part ; such a society enjoys the result even of his in- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 281 dividual activity with full, unfeigned pleasure, and he again soon learns to seek his greatest joy in he joy of others, his highest ideals in the welfare of the whole. ... In the kindergarten Froebel would provide a pedagogic society which answers to these requirements. Here the child finds a number of others of similar age, as nearly his equals in power, capacity, and scope as individuality will permit; a number of social elements with whom he can- fully sympathize, and who sympathize fully with him in all manifestations of growing life, among whom he finds nothing inexplicable, unattainable, un- enjoyable ; playmates, associates, fellow-beings in embryo, with whom he can assimilate, coalesce organically without giving up his self. Here the child becomes familiar with the high value of union with others. Heretofore, self was the main center of his desires; now he begins to find aims beyond self; the germs of love, of devotion, of a widening humanity swell in his soul and burst into life ; he is aroused to a consciousness of his worth as a part of the whole. ' ' At school," then, it is evident the child is stimulated by others, pleased with companionship, and all his social instincts that is, his relations to his kind are developed at the same time with the rest of his better nature. Here the mental work, or sport if you please, is for fifteen minutes, and then the physical game, the song, the dance, the pretty play, is taken up for change and relief for as long a time. The child sees that it is a privilege to join the game, and that it is punishment to be unemployed. In building with the blocks, the natural destructive element is restrained by the obligation of taking down instead of knocking down any and every structure, and of putting things away in place. The learning of the alpha- bet, which was once a dreary effort of memory, becomes a pleasure when the letters are fashioned with the sticks of the eighth gift ; the first group of the letter I, and the figure i, being made of the single stick, the next of X, V, L, by two sticks, and so on. Among the effects of this system of preparatory education, at the end of which the child is found to know thoroughly much that used to be taught through that wearisom,e memorizing which makes the world a desert for the time, are many purely moral gains. Thus the child has been given, first, per- ception of absolute truth and of reverence for the fixed laws of the universe in the mere handling of his blocks, and, later, love for his little fellow-mortals, and the spirit of true democracy. The old system of mnemonics may have its value, the mechanical and the ingenious systems, such as that artificial way by which we of an older growth were taught to remember, for instance, the year of the death of Charle- magne, 814, because the figure 8 resembles the hour-glass, the symbol of war; STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. - the figure 4 a ploughshare, the symbol of peace. But here all the child's knowledge is firsthand knowledge, that has come out of his own experience, and is thus a part of himself and not to be forgotten. And with all the rest of his moral gain he has learned that self-control which calls into exercise those among the higher brain-centers. All his toys, while they have taught him inductive reasoning, have been archetypes of nature ; in the ball he has the earth and stars, the ideal of per. fection in shape and motion ; in the cylinder he has growth in trees and in animals, and further along he finds there the foundation of pottery; in the cube he has the mineral kingdom, crystallization, and by and by architecture; he himself in any childish experiment of play may see salt crystallize into cubes, and alum into octahedrons ; everywhere he has been led upward in the way in which only geometry and geometrical forms lead ; and all without a text-book he has been made mastei of much that text-books give. In Visiting a Kindergarten. One can find by personal observation the value of the Froebel system much more exactly than it can be comprehended by reading. If one visits a kindergarten watches the children building any object with their blocks, each one alone, and each one individualizing his work ; hears the teacher tell them all a story concerning that object afterward, helping them by the details of the story to see if they have done their work correctly; listens to them then singing the song appropriate to the exercise ; if one watches them unite and contribute to build a village, learning the while a new lesson of association ; or if one only follows them in their playtime, one will still observe that with every chance for individual effort there is always the joy of united effort, of co-ordination without subordination, all in an atmosphere of joyous love and sympathy. "Do you not see," asks Hailmann, "the gentle, steady hnpulse for growth, the abundance of food for development, whicli each and every in- dividuality gains from this intercourse with nature ? Do you not see that the full and respectful consideration, which the little society awards to true merit in every direction, teaches these little artists, discoverers, inventors, thinkers, to feel and to appreciate? . . . Do you not see that it is not in the power of a single home, no matter how great its wealth, material and mental, to supply the mighty influence for all sided growth, individual as well as social, which is wielded by the free and full appreciation of individual worth and the just and moderate demands upon individual powers on the part of a STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 283 society of equals ? And do you not feel that it would be a crime to keep the .growing human being from this influence, when his nature calls for it? Do you not feel that it would be sin to let it be exerted without proper guidance?" Physically, morally, intellectually, and artistically the methods of the Froebel system, it must be seen, we think, are those which will soonest lift the child to those levels from which the great, perfect race to come shall take its departure. When children emerge from the kindergarten their whole being is in a condition which renders them susceptible to the loftiest sort of instruction. "Their faculties and their conscience are all alert, and they are ready to take liold of the great world of knowledge after the technical fashion and make it their own. Much yet remains that they may be taught experimentally, as, for example, in the woods the growth of trees, on the shore the structure of shell and sponge and seaweed, in the open country the movement of stars and planets. "What shall be attempted," asked Mrs. Hopkins, one of the supervisors of the Boston schools, "for the child who comes from the kinder- garten all ready to learn, but as yet unacquainted with books? I answer, all, and more than all, that may be found in elementary treatises in every de- partment of natural science may be given him in object-lessons, in a compara- tively short time, with what is of vastly more importance an enthusiastic love for these studies, a habit of careful observation, and a training of the senses which shall be a great addition to his power in science, art, or practical life. He may at the same time lay up in his memory the ground facts of written and spoken language and mathematics. Then, by natural stages, he will turn with avidity to records of the observations of others, until a concep- tion of arrangement, generalization, and inference will grow up within him, the dawn of a higher epoch in the harmonious education of the mind." Mrs. Hopkins goes on to tell of a year's work with a class of children some ten years of age, in which for history they studied that of the United States with Mr. Higginson's text-book and the help of the pictures in Loss- ing's Field-books and Catlin's North American Indians; Dickens' Child's History of England, with an examination of many illustrative prints ; and a good portion of Greek and Roman mythology. With this, they studied also the geography of the United States, drew maps, made imaginary journeys, and traded products of the different portions of the country till they were tolerably familiar with the whole of it. Instead of a drill in grammar, they were shown that they already knew grammar in an elementary way and could parse simple sentences ; while they had exercises in dictation and composi- tion with constant reading and spelling and recitations of poetry. In arith- TH - "ic they mastered fractions, decimals, compound numbers, and the metric 284 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. system, having treated all these subjects as variations of the rules of numera- tion, addition, and subtraction. In botany they analyzed flowers, learned the properties of tendrils, the propagation of the orchid, the multiplication of cells, studied forest trees, a first book in zoology, besides reading several ele- mentary books on natural science, and making drawings of birds, all as if a new world were opening to them, and with delighted and eager apprehension They drew, under a special teacher, learned to talic simple French with a native teacher, could play a French game, and in German could read Grimm's Tales. In all of this, learning seemed to be simply a delight. For example, says Mrs. Hopkins, in that invaluable little book for mothers and teachers, "How Shall My Child Be Taught?" "One day last spring, to reward those who had braved the storm to come, I took a dry account from a compendium of general history, and attempted to teach in an hour or two the lesson of the Crusades. The children had had but a glimpse of the matter, in connection with their lessons in English history, the previous year. Read- ing to them in some such way as I have described (that is, interrupted with questions and answers and brief conversations, using the skeleton of the book, and making, as it were, an impromptu translation of the text), writing on the board a schedule of names and dates as they occurred in the reading, in order to make the outline clear before their eyes ; tracing the localities and move- ments on the map; reading verbatim passages from 'The Talisman,' also showing with it the engravings from a rare illustrated edition of Scott, and with pictures and a little of the text from 'Ivanhoe,' I found at the close of the session that, in the glow cf the whole theme upon the clear mirror of their minds, they had received a comprehensive as well as a particular knowledge of the subject, a perfectly orderly outline of its facts, a vivid apprehension of its purpose, philosophy, connections, and results, as well as a strong scenic impression of the drama of the whole epoch." But not only the method of study, but the matter given in the desultory reading of the child is a subject demanding serious consideration. This is no new idea ; for, more than two thousand years ago, Plato said, in substance, that we must be scrupulous about the stories our children have ; in them there must be nothing derogatory to the dignity of the gods ; they must not mislead by false statement ; they must not present the characters of the great in an unworthy light ; they must inculcate courage and self-control ; and they must be written in a simple style. We see now how much depends upon the teacher, and how vital it is that the mind which imparts should be full and strong and replete with overflow- ing thoughts, and how unfortunate it is if resort to books and statistics and dry repetition itself is found necessary. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 285 We are in the habit of thinking that the teacher of the advanced classes of later years has the higher rank; but when we more fully understand the office of the teacher of these early years, see that a whole generation is clay in her hands, that her work "covers the most impressible period of 1 fe, it de- mands the most earnest enthusiasm, the clearest wisdom, and the rncst varied experience in one who undertakes it ; in particular it requires intense sym- pathy with children in their tastes, in their outlook and ways of thinking, as well as in the singleness of their moral nature ; it requires, moreover, a capa- city of child-likeness which is the attribute only, of harmonious maturity or of genius. "It is the unspeakable gift to become as little children. . . . Sympa- thy not indifference, antagonism, or hostility should be the medium of the teacher's influence. Desire for the pupil's advancement will awaken desire in him for that end, courage arouse courage, determination evoke determina- tion; joy in the teacher's heart will communicate its stimulus and lead to vic- tory , enthusiasm will kindle enthusiasm and create a vital atmosphere in which the child's being expands almost unconsciously. Intelligence should precede memory ; imagination should accompany recollection ; nature never set a child to learn by rote ; those things which must finally be subjected to an act of memory should be approached as a discovery, as the symbol of ideas. Respect for the common-sense of mankind, faith in its formulated ex- periences will grow out of an intelligent attention to results of thought and conduct, will be accepted as guides for action." A famous instructor some years ago, who said that he spent his days leading jackasses up Parnassus, would not be of much use to-day in this view of his duty and this exemplification of his love for his work. Another re- quirement of the teacher in the modern treatment of children is the ability to exalt and increase the strength of the will. "A culture of the will is a neces- sity of right culture for body, mind, and, soul," continues Mrs. Hopkins in the wise and wonderful pages from which extracts have been given here. "It must be remembered that the fundamental law of growth by exercise is as applicable to the will as to any other power of man or nature. The will must be kept active in the child by leading him to determine and work for himself. If he is driven blindly to the accomplishment of the task set for him, he will never develop the power to set tasks for himself and put himself to work, which is his only chance for real achievement of either power or result. Give motive and stimulus sufficient to arouse the will until it commands the facul- ties successfully. It is immediate, clear, and decisive action which best defines the mental and moral ideas, executes theii purposes, and evolves the will-power. Children should not be advised when they are competent tc ad- ( 2 86) HELPLESS MORSEL OF HUMAlSUJjy. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 287 vise themselves, but thrown upon their own resources for determination of aim and means as far as possible." John Wesley's Mother. The mother of John Wesley would have disagreed with this, for she once declared that the first thing to be done is to conquer the will, and while the improvement of the understanding is a work of time, the subjection of the will is something to be done at once, and the sooner the better. But if Mrs. Wesley were unwise here, she had some regulations in relation to her children that were worthy of remembrance. It had been observed in her family, she wrote, that cowardice and fear of punishment often led children to lie until the act became habitual ; she therefore made laws that whoever confessed his fault should not be whipped, that no child should be punished twice for the same fault, or upbraided for it again ; that every instance of obedience or self-denial should be praised or rewarded ; and that good intentions should be respected. Certainly by these rules,' or in spite of them, Mrs. Wesley had a measure of success with her children. There are some things in the old methods, it would seem, as useful and as good as anything in the new. But, on the whole, the old methods treated a child as if he were a piece of mechan- ism ; the new methods treat him as if he were a living, growing, and unfold- ing soul. The old methods attend upon that which he knows; the new methods upon that which he is, regarding chiefly that most marvelous of all the phenomena of life, the capacity for growth, and seeking to bring about an intellectual and spiritual tran substantiation of the facts of the universe. By this new method, if we had not alreadv a soul, we should develop one. Siojd. Perhaps as potent a factor as any other in the new methods of rearing- children is the adoption of technical instruction or manual training, in the manner commonly known as slojd. Experts are still discussing whether we shall leave dead languages and go forward to that which is new, and whether the moods and declensions and analyses of grammar shall deaden and stultify the nervous centers much longer, whether arithmetic shall be simplified and much of it abbreviated and passed over to algebra, whether we shall leave the old wasteful ways, wasteful as regards life, time, and intelligence ; but they are beginning to be of one mind as to slojd. No such advance in mentality can be imagined as that god-like one which demands that the child shall not (-38) THE CHILD WILL HAVE A LOVE OF WORK. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 28$ only observe and describe an object, but that he shall create it. The handling of tools, the manufacture of articles, however tririing, begets a habit of men- tal precision, of concentration, of clarity, of truth, that is precious; it breaks up brain-destroying monotony, gives relief from sedentary occupation, and vitalizes the effect and result of study. The ethical influence, too, of this manual training is immense ; the child will have a love of work, will have ac- quired dexterity, patience, perseverance, practicality, invention, force of will, command of body, will have seen the beauty and virtue and need of order; the self-conceit of the merely glib memory will receive a paralyzing shock in the presence of the clear intellectual vision trained to exactitude and percep- tion of right relations ; and that will introduce true democracy which shows vivid intelligence, refined habits, a cultured family line, sharing the stains of the hands of toil. There are economic views of the benefit of slojd, moreover; it has been said, owing to the tyranny of trades-unions, that an American child can learn a trade only in the penitentiary, yet any finished student in manual training it being remembered, too, that the intellectual training is coincident has learned the use of tools so that he needs but a few months to make himself master of any trade he will. But there is a greater economic view of the matter in observation of the effect of the system on the child's brain, body, and soul. But when school and lessons and master are done with, or very nearly so, the result of all that has been done is to be evident in the home. It will then be seen, if knowledge of the eccentricity of Mercury's orbit, if the skill to calculate eclipses, and acquaintance with the most ancient or the most modern tongue, has developed faithfulness in the young student's orbit, if the moral and emotional qualities have been as well rounded and perfected as the mental ones, and if an intellectual monster has been produced, instead of a loving and sympathetic being. Surely the answer will be a favorable one, if from the beginning the mother has given her child that full sympathy which creates both return of sympathy and unfettered confidence; has held before it the standards of honor and of truth, has taught it the joy of brotherhood, the love of humanity, and far from being the tyrannical ruler of days and doings, has been the sharer of studies, hopes, fears, joys, and dreams; and if the father has been in himself the fulfillment of his child's ideal of him The daughter of that mother, of the mother who deserves her, will not have been trained merely to books, to the pencil, the piano, belles-lettres, but to all the virtues of home as well. She will know the kitchen arts, at least elementarily; she will be able to take the charge of a younger child's ward- robe off the mother's hands, the care of the drawing-room, the arrangement 293 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. THE LITTLE FACE LIES NEAR HER OWN. of flowers, of table decorations; and she will know enough of the arts of the hospital, of bed-making, of bandaging, of the dressing of wounds, not to be half heart-broken at her inability to give relief to the suffering whom she loves. She will remember that we are all alike the children of life ; she will be a sister to the beggar within her gates ; she will be incapable of small de- ceits. And the son of that mother will reverence her as the visible expres- sion to him of heavenly power on earth, will have learned from her how to famish his evil passions, to nourish his loftier ones, will have acquired self- control, self-abnegation, the strength of his father, the purity of his sister. And if there is any further beauty to be known than the relations of such a mother and her son, of such a father and his daughter, it is to some other sphere that we must go to find it. At the Hurricane Light. The children of the Hurricane Light are not examples of the kindergar- ten methods rather of Mrs. Wesley's plan than of anything else. But I STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 291 think that neither Jack nor Emeline would have been as fine characters if they had not been reared on the true kindergarten principle, that of love. The summer hotel stood alone on a point of rock in the sea, the narrow peninsula that led back to the mainland, washed over by frozen tides till, long before midwinter, there was no peninsula to be seen, only something like a broad floe of broken, tumbled blocks of ice full of crevasses and water-streaks and danger, although there was a sort of way along it. But the father of the children staying there had some idea of frosting the malaria out of their blood, and thought it would be a novel experience, doing them good in many ways, while giving him the very chance he wanted for investigating some scientific matters in relation to ice and snow, germ-life and sea-currents. And so he had proposed, as long as somebody must stay in the hotel where they had passed the summer, to keep it from burning down, as summer hotels are apt to do if left vacant, that he would remain and attend to his studies there. If Clara had been older she would have seen a world of poetry in the un- usual life; for, when they were established in the big dining-hall, nothing could be quainter. Their father had put a heater in the basement, and the air from that, together with the fires in three huge stoves and in the open chimney, gave the room a summer warmth. At the lower end was the kitchen stove ; and here were temporary shelves for the bright tins and the pans of milk skimmed by the pretty Swedish girls, whose long yellow braids made one think the serving-maids of the middle ages looked just that way. On one side of the room the windows were full of Aunt Marion's plants, and on the other were a tall book-case, a secretary for papa's papers, scientific tables, trays, and cabinets, and his charts upon the wall ; and at the upper end was mamma's table and easel and work basket, and the piano and mirror and open fire, soft rugs and lounges and arm-chairs. And, as Aunt Marion said, it was the old hall of the primitive castle over again, with the lady on her dais at one end, and the maids and their spinning at the other. Their sleeping- rooms were just overhead ; but they were in no hurry to go to them when, through the wide windows and through the glass doors on every side, they could see the sun set over the sea and the moon rise over the land, and dark- ness gathering on the waters, and storms coming up, and now and then dis- tant sails slipping by like dreams, catching the sparkle of the light-house lamp that for an instant brought them into life and light. After all, the days however long they may have been to Aunt Marion went by without seeming of appreciable length at all to the children, what with lessons, and practicing and watching papa's experiments, and climbing; about the broken ice near the house, and skating on one of the broad piazzas 292 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. that had been flooded and frozen for them. And presently, indeed, the days were far too short for Clara's and Nell's mysterious preparations for Christ- inas, which at last was close at hand. When this all too sudden twilight came, Tom and Clara used often to conjecture about the children over at the Hurricane Light the great white tower that loomed over the blue sea, the tower from whose summit they had so many times seen the light tremble and grow strong over the purpling waters of summer eves, with its narrow wooden causeway across waters always foaming between the tower and the rest of the island rock. They fancied all sorts of things concerning them ; for they had heard there were two children there little Jack and Emeline with their father, the sturdy keeper of the light, and his assistant, Dan. But that was all they knew. "Do you suppose there is any mother?" asked Will, with his nose flat- tened on the glass, as they watched for the light. ' ' No, " said Clara. "Of course not. ' ' "Gh! How can they do without a mother?"' "I don't see, I'm sure. But Emeline takes care of their clothes, I guess; and the man helps her do the work and lifts the heavy things. And some- times I shouldn't wonder she sews at the little windows and looks out and thinks about how many children there are here. And perhaps she watches for our lights just as we do for hers, and wishes we could go over and play there of an afternoon. Aud sometimes her father lets her go up with him when he lights the lights. There they are now ! Red and green, ruby and emerald just a blaze! Oh! isn't it like Providence? Sure to be there the moment the twilight thickens; always there; I never thought about it in the summer." "Yes," said Tom. "And don't you know, I'd rather keep a light-house than do anything else on earth; or water either" stopping to consider if a light-house belonged to earth or water. "What! Rather than be doctors, like papa and Uncle John, or be in business, or preach "- "Anybody can preach. Aunt Marion's always preaching; and besides, I've heard mamma say a person should be sure he can preach well before he takes charge of folks' souls. But the light-housekeeper saves men's bodies every time he lights his lamps." And Tom felt like a preacher him- self. "What would happen," asked Will, anxiously, hugging his kitten closer, "if he didn't light the lamps?" "The ships at sea wouldn't see it, and they wouldn't know where they were. They wouldn't say 'Hallo! Here's old Hurricane Light! Nowwe've STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 2 93 THE HURRICANE LIGHT-HOUSE. Wreckers' Reef to keep clear of on the larboard and Drowned Man's Ledge on the port, and the Tushes to give a wide berth to ' "Larboard and port mean the same thing." "Oh! you know too much, Clara!" continued Tom. "It doesn't make any odds. The ships know there are all these dangers 'round the spot where this light burns, and they luff and bear away." "And so, if the light shouldn't burn," began Will, tearfully "And so, if the light shouldn't burn," said Tom, solemnly, "first a red and then a green flash, first a red and then a green, all night long, the coast would be strewn with wrecks from Maine to Mexico. I heard papa say so." "Do you suppose, " asked Nell, pushing Will aside for her own better view, "that Jack and Emeline ever go ashore?" "No. Everything's laid in for the winter; and so they don't need to go, " said Tom. "And they couldn't go easily if they did, papa says. It's all anybody can do to get over from here." "They could come across that strip of water in their boats." "Now look here! That strip of water is black as ink. A man might 2 9 4 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. maybe. But what boy, the size of Jack, would be crawling down those slip- pery sides of the icy rock to get into a swinging boat sliding away from under? 1 ' 'I would," said Will. "Folks always would do what they can't, " said Tom, with grandeur. "I guess Jack and Emelme don't do it very often. I wouldn't." "And if they could," said Clara, "and could get on our headland, the ice changes with every tide, and the blocks are too big to climb over, and there's deep water in between. If Uncle John does come to-morrow, I don't see how he'll ever get out, or ever get back/' "Uncle John," said Tom, "can do everything." "I should think Aunt Marion would be so worried!" "Do you suppose Jack and Emeline will hang up their stockings?" asked Will, not interested in sentimental matters. "How is Santa Glaus going to get out therewith his reindeers?" answered Tom, loftily. "Why, of course they will," said Clara. "Emeline has knit Jack some- mittens, and Jack " "Do you suppose," said Nell, u that they know there's Tom and Clara and Will and Russ and me here?" "Perhaps they don't call us Tom and Clara. Perhaps they call us Dick and Bell, just as we call them." "I tell you," said Will. "Don't you think it would be nice if we made some Christmas for them?" "But we couldn't get it out to them; don't you know?" said Tom. "Uncle John could get it out to them when he comes," said Russell, with the general faith in Uncle John. "What would you make for them?" "Isa cquld bake a cake early to-morrow morning" "With plums in it!" "And frosting'" "And Aunt Marion would pick a bunch of her flowers, roses and violets, if you ask her, Tom," said Nell. "And a calla-lily." "And papa could give them a silver dollar." "But that wouldn't be us," said Clara, on whom it dawned that they were very generous with other folks' things. "They can have my ^Girls' Own Book, ' ' "And my 'Robinson Crusoe. ' "And my 'Pilgrim's Progress,' " said Tom. "I would give them my top, if I had another," said Russell. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. "You always were a stingy!" exclaimed Clara. "I'm not stingy! I don't want to give it to them if I want it myself; do I?" "Well, perhaps they have a top. There's your parchesi-board. " "We like to play with that sometimes, you know. " "Or the kaleidoscope." "Why, of course I'm not done with my kaleidoscope!" "I guess Russell won't give anything," said Nell. "Yes, I will, too! I'll give the transparent slate." "'Tisn't yours to give, " said Nell. "It's mine. But I'd just a Jef. And Emeline may have my doll Queenie ; that is, if Queenie would like to go-" "And her cradle?" "Ye-e-s." "Well, I guess I shall have to give Jack my box of tools," said Tom, with a fine air, "and trust to luck or Uncle John for another." "And they might have the little camera that doesn't belong to anybody, and the second-best box of colors, with the old geography to paint over." "Do you suppose they'd like a kitten?" asked Will. "Pshaw! They have half a hundred, very likely, now." "Half a hundred kittens! Oh! how I wish I lived in a light-house!" "Well, you do; the next best or the next worse thing. Though I never dreamed we should have neighbors. They really are neighbors, you know, if we don't see much of them or anything of them," said Clara. "There, if Aunt Marion will make a lot of her cider-candy to-morrow, to put in, I think that will do for Jack and Emeline. Don't you? The question is, how ever shall we get it out to them?" "Wait for Uncle John. He will," said Nell. "I'm glad they don't want the kitty," murmured Will, hugging his pet, 296 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. as they went off to bed. " It's only one more day now. If there isn't a red collar on the tree tor my kitty I shall be awful cross!" "I really think," said Clara to her Aunt Marion, when they said good- night, and a broad ray of the light-house lamp came skimming into the room, "that it isn't so bad as I thought it was going to be here, seeing we have some neighbors." Every few moments those great rays went sweeping by and bridging the darkness between the lonely hotel and the white pillar of the light-house in the night. Perhaps it was on that bridge that Jack's and Emeline's fancies traveled across the water and the long tongue of ice-wrapped land, to these children, with their pretty heads huddled together in the window-panes of the vast empty hotel. "There's children over there," said Emeline. "I saw them through father's glass. They were playing on the long piazza." "I wish we had a piazza/"' said Jack. "Our causeway's just as good, in calm weather." "No, it isn't. The ball bounces off into the water, and then I have to> swim for it, and sometimes it's too cold, and sometimes there's a sea on and I can't go for it." "I always make another, you know," said the motherly little body beside him. "And we can't play marbles there, because they all roll off. " "We can play catch." "Well, sometimes it's too wet with the breaking sea. Shouldn't you like to live, Erri, where there isn't any sea?" "The Bible says there isn't any sea in heaven. But I don't believe we should like it there. I guess we should miss the sea. Not to hear it, not to see it it would be like not having any mother over again. It always sings us to sleep." "Mothers don't make such a noise as this old surf does some nights, when you can't hear yourself breathe. Say, Em, do you remember mother?' "A little. Not much/' answered Emeline, "Only just that her eyes- were the color the sea is far out under the sky in soft weather. Dove's eyes, that it tells of in the Bible. " "Hard on father to do without her; aint it? But he says you're just mother over again, any way. Only not your eyes. For yours are the color of the pools where the sun shines through the brown sea-weed. Do you sup- pose mother knew when Christmas came? Father doesn't." "No matter. We do. Father has so much to think of. It's so awfully important to keep the light all night. It would be so terrible if the light went STEPPING STONES. TO HAPPINESS. 297 out and the ships and people went down ; and only think, so many fathers on them, too; with children waiting for them at home. Oh ! it's awfully important, you see; and he can't think of everything." ''Well, if I had a lit- tle boy, I'd think of Christmas, I know. I'd give him a plane and a saw and chisel, any way. ' ' "Perhaps he will. He'll think of it when I give him the comforter I've made." "I know what he'll say. the best little comforter." "Oh!" said Emeline, with her cheeks glowing: "We have to be very good to father, he's had so much trouble. It was dreadful for him to lose mother, and have us babies to bring up. And he's real good to u- Some fathers whip their boys." "Whip their boys! I guess so. How you talk! Fat'ucr never whipped me. He shook me once. I thought then I'd run away. Any way, I don't mean to stay here when I'm a man. Days when the sea is gray and black, and the rain is driving by, and the waves go off like great guns, I think I'll get away any time." "And leave father and me?" said Emeline, pitifully, "when you're all we have?" "I'd send for you. I couldn't do without you, you know. Oh! There's their light! The children's over on the reef. Now let's get father's glass again and look at them." And Jack fitted the long spy-glass to his eye with expedition. "There's ever so many of them. I should think there was a dozen. And one of them has a kitten. Oh! say, Em, I wish we had a kit- ten! And one has pushed the kitten boy away. I guess they're talking, by the way their heads go. What if they are talking about us?'' "Oh! they wouldn't be. I don't suppose they know of us. Maybe He'll say just what he did last year; that you're 2 9 S STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. they're watching the witches make tea. I used to like to watch the witches making tea, before I knew it was only the picture of our lamp in the window pane, dancing out there. See the long rays of the tower-lamps wheeling about there now; one of them made a bridge clear way over to the children. They always make me think of that Bible verse about God's laying the beams of His chambers upon the waters." "Things always put you in mind of the Bible. Does it say anything about Christmas there?" And while he still used the glass, Emeline went to the table and read him the story St. Luke tells about the shepherds keeping their flocks. "I think of it often," said Emeline, "summer nights when we are all sitting up outside the tower, and the Milky Way seems a road right into heaven, and the stars are spirits great shining spirits sweeping along. It will be splendid, oh! it will be splendid, after we are dead if we are just such great spirits, sweeping and shining with stars on our foreheads." "I'd rather be alive," said Jack. "Yes," said Emeline, half regretfully. "Of course; so should I; with you and father." "But I suppose," said Jack, "we might just as well be three spirits all alone out there in the night as three people all alone here in the light-house. Only it's warm here and light. Say, Em, what do you suppose those children .are going to have Christmas?" "Oh! everything. They may have a Christmas tree. And if it's clear -weather we may see it through the glass to-morrow night." "To-morrow? Day after to-morrow's Christmas." "But to-morrow's Christmas Eve. Folks always have their trees, I guess, Christmas Eve. We always hear the bells ringing from the towns, if we lis- ten, you know." "Oh!" said Jack. "I suppose we could make some molasses candy with nuts in it, any way," he added, presently. "And father will tell us the story of when he was a little boy"- " It doesn't seem as if father ever was a little boy; does it? There, they've gone to bed, now," as he shut up the spy-glass. "I say, Em, it's first rate to have neighbors, ain't it? They're just as good as deaf and dumb neighbors anyhow. We can see 'em if we can't talk to 'em." "Yes; we never did have neighbors in the winter before. I wish we could send them some of our nut-candy," said Emeline. "Yes, it's real nice to have neighbors. " And before long, while the light-keeper toiled up and down his winding stairs to attend to the clock-work of the lamps, the children were asleep, while STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 299 the broad beams went on their way through the darkness, leading the great ships by with the green and crimson rays glancing on their stiff and frozen sails. There was enough frost in the gray air next day for Christmas weather, certainly; but the blue sky and sunshine, that go with the last Christmas errands, were not to be seen. Indeed, the atmosphere was full of frozen spiculae of snow too chill to fall. Nor was there any of the clear, night sparkle, where the stars seem to join crisp tones with the glad ringing of the bells. In the mediaeval hall, as Aunt Marion called it, the children were pranc- ing about the screens that hid the unlighted tree, and wondering why Uncle John didn't come, and if he wasn't coming at all, and if they would have the tapers lit before he came, and adding something every little while to the par- cel that was to be gotten over to the light-house by hook or by crook, when Uncle John came, if he ever did come. And in the light-house home, Emeline had the spider on the stove, and the molasses bubbling, while Jack was picking the meats out of the nuts, and their father was up busy with the lamps; for the night was going to be so cold he feared it might congeal the oil; and the dim day was growing dim- mer. The nuts were in at last, and with one more boiling up Emeline's platter was buttered, and the compound that had already made Jack's mouth water was set out to cool in the twilight. "Oh! if it isn't cold!" she said, with a shiver, shutting the door. "And I declare I believe I've upset the trough that father has those frozen sea creatures in to find out if they'll come to life when they thaw out in the spring. I must see. And it's dark, so dark! How I pity children without homes on such a night as this! How quick it grew dark. I didn't notice it." "Nor I," said Jack, still picking at a nut-shell. k 'I can't bear the dark," said Emeline, bustling about for a candle. "Nor I," said Jack again. "It it always seems like a great a great- thing out there, you know." " I suppose it's because we've always had the light, the beautiful great beams of the tower light. And Why, Jack! where is the light? Oh! where is the light? We never were this way before! Can't father light it ? O, father!" and she opened the door, to dart up the tower stairs, and tripped over something lying at their foot. It was her father lying there. He had fallen from what height who could tell, or whether stumbling, or whether with a stroke! He lay cold and unconscious. He might be dead. She did not utter another syllable; but she used all her strength and dragged him over the threshold, and stopped 300 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. and pulled a little way again, till Jack sprang to her aid, and between them they got him across the room to his bed. It had taken almost a half hour to- do it. Emeline threw herself beside him, her mouth on his, her tears raining over his cold face. "He's breathing! He's breathing!" she cried out. And suddenly she was on the floor again. "The lamps! The lamps!" she ex- claimed. "O, Jack, you know how. You must go up and light them!' "I can't! Oh! I can't, Em," he said, between his sobs. "I can't go up there in the dark!" "You must!" she answered. "I can't leave father yet. Oh! do go, Jack!" she cried, in an agony. "Just think of the ships, of the wrecks, of the other children's fathers drowned and dead, if the light isn't burning; if you don't go!" "I I can't," he said. "But if you don't, I shall have to. I shall have to leave father; and perhaps he'll die if I do. ' He may never come to if I don't get the mustard on! Do, Jack dear! Do go, Jack!" She was already hurrying about for clothes and hot water. "I I can't!" said Jack again. "But well, I'll try." And he lighted the lanterns slowly, and left the door open, and began to climb the stairs, stopping at every step. And Emeline was binding the mustard plasters on her father's feet and neck, and filling jugs with hot water to put on either side of him, and holding his rough hand and kissing it, crying and trembling and frightened ; for now he was breathing, indeed ; breathing in such a fear- ful way that she thought every breath must be the last. But why didn't the beams sweep out ? Why was it still so dark out there ? Couldn't Jack light the lamps? Hadn't he gone? She ran to the doorway. There he sat crouched half way up. "Oh! haven't you gone, Jack?" she cried in despair. "I I told you I couldn't!" he replied. "I feel as if all those dreadful things that will happen if the lamps ain't lighted are up there now." She glanced back at her father. She could do no good if she stayed be- side him. Up she dashed, caught the lantern from Jack, who meekly fol- lowed her as she almost flew on her upward way. One glance when well within the tower-chamber, and she saw that the clock-work which turned the wheel about was broken ; and it was in his anxiety and haste for some neces- sary tool with which to mend it that her father had fallen. "Oh! what made us let Dan off for his Christmas?" she groaned. "There is nothing but to turn the wheel with our hands. " And she lighted lamp after lamp and began to drag the wheel about. "And one of us must do it all night long; and one of us must go for the doctor. Which shall it be?" STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 307 St And Jack, in the bottom of his cowardly little soul, felt that it would not be he. It was impossible; he could not do either. Stay there alone in that place, dragging the wheel around, with his father dying, perhaps dead stiff and cold and dead and the horrible vacancy where he had been ? Oh ! he never, never could. He would rather die at once, himself, here, with Eme- line beside him. And he didn't want to die; he wasn't like Emeline; death was something unspeakably dreadful to him. But then, on the other hand, to go down into that black water underneath the causeway in the pitchy dark, and try to climb those icy shores opposite, and make his way in the night across those heaps of ice with the deep channels between them, and not a star, only the black, monstrous dark all about ; and he would be lost and drowned and frozen. Oh ! he never, never could. "But father will die if we can't get a doctor; and he would rather die than have the lamps go out," urged Fmeline. "One of us must go. It's nothing to stay here and turn the wheel, that's a good boy, dear, and I will go for the doctor. I can do that as well as you, you know. ' ' And so she could; for she could handle a boa. as easily ?.s other girls could trundle a hoop. As Jack gazed at Emeline aghast, her face seemed to be shining and smil- ing on him like an angel's. She already looked like one of those white shin- ing spirits she had spoken of the night before. He felt as if it were a sort of sign if she went she would become one of those great shining spirits, not his little loving, living Emeline. His little Emeline out there in all those icy horrors and the blackness! The tears spurted out at the thought. He said something seemed to snap in his head or his heart, he could not tell which, and let him out, let him free from all his fear and shrinking. "Good-bye, Emeline," he called out, choking. "I'll go. And if I don't come back" 3 o2 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. "If you don't," she cried, stopping to throw her arms about him, "father will be dead, and I will, too, and it will be all the same ; for we shall be together somewhere else!" And Jack took the lantern and came running back with her cloak and hood ; and then his step rang on the stairs again, she heard the tower door slam, and nothing more, while she kept on her weary way dragging the lamps around, and out there the sea made its cry. Poor little Jack ! As he plunged into the night Emeline's white look seemed stamped on the darkness, together with the fixed and suffering face, livid and purple, on his father's pillow. How could any fear, he thought now, keep him from bringing help? He did not stay to untie the painter of his boat, cased in ice, as it was ; he cut it with his jack-knife when he had dropped into the boat, and dipping his oars into the blackness, ferried across, guided by the flashing of the lamps that Emeline dragged round, in which everything started out one moment, and then was lost in blacker shadow. I can't imagine how he climbed those rocks of the headland, mere sheets of ice ; but he did. Boys can do almost anything. And he caught the rope in a cleft of the ice, knowing it would freeze there and keep the boat waiting for the doctor. He never doubted the doctor's coming through all the dan- ger; for it is a way that doctors have. Behind him now the lamps kept up their flashing. Far, far off on his left glimmered the windows of the hotel where the children were ; far, far ahead the town lights flickered. On he ran ; swiftly wherever snow lay frozen and smooth ; climbing and slipping, down and up again, where the ice-blocks had been piled. Now there was a streak of water only two yards wide, he saw by his lantern ; he jumped, and the ice- cake tilted and rocked ; and he jumped again and clung to solid rock. Up and down, sliding, falling, rolling, but always moving on, on through this hideous gloom, with only the eyes of the glancing lights in it. What a hor- rible noise there was everywhere in the grinding, griding, crashing, of the ice. It seemed as if the whole cruel North moved down in a body on him. He thought of pjeople caught on ice floes, of packs of wolves racing and scratching along them, of some polar bear protecting her cubs there; and he ran all the faster. But what was there in all out-doors, then he thought, i which would be allowed to hurt a boy encountering such dangers for his father's sake and Emeline's? And he waited for his breath, his heart palpitat- ing' furiously, his Itmgs like red-hot brass. As he s?ood there, a little fellow in his pea-jacket, with the dull lantern in his hand, it was like some hero de-- fying the powers of cold and darkness with the might of his holy errand. He went on slowly $ for the way grew more difficult on this narrow neck of the long peninsula, where the tide pushed the ice about and jammed it iu STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 303 mock icebergs glinting to the light-house beams which, fainter' though they were with distance now, strengthened him, every time they came, with thought of Emeline at the wheel. He was scratched and bruised and bleeding; his clothes were torn, and his cap was gone-, but he was conscious of nothing ex- cept that he must get on. He climbed laboriously a huge, sloping block of ice tipped over the way, slipping back half its height; and all at once he felfc it move with him, pushed by another block, keep moving. And with a thrill of terror he realized that the tide was coming in, would shove and jam and heap and sweep across the neck of land, and if it did not crush him between the great pieces of ice, it would take him out to sea on the other side, do what he would! Just ahead, Jack knew, must lie the old road that took people to the hotel in summer, raised a little from the level, and so offering a barrier that it might take the rising ice some little time to surmount. If he could only gain it! He dashed forward with redoubled speed, bumping, splashing, tumbling, on his knees, on his back, on his hands and feet, cutting himself on sharp corners, clutching his lantern all the time, and all the time making progress, when suddenly the darkness came down like a heavier pall, unrent by any rift of light, impenetrable. The long beams of the light-house lamps had ceased to flash. There were no more of them. He gazed behind him, and about him; he could see nothing. The lamps had gone out- The piled-up ice-drift hid the windows where the happy children looked for their Uncle John, where the beautiful dark eyes so often looked over their shoulders ; hid the sparkle of the town as well. He did not know which way to turn; there was nothing but unbroken blackness, blackness and cold about him; he was getting numb with standing still and wpndering; the ice was crunching like great jaws at work; the snow was beginning to fall over it all. He was lost. Back in the mediaeval hall, the children peered through the Window. "I don't believe Uncle John means to come at all!" cried Clara. "Perhaps he had some sick patient that he couldn't leave," urged her mother, coming to her side, a little anxious lest Aunt Marion were anxious. "Besides it isn't time for him, quite." "You don't suppose Uncle John can be lost?" whispered Will, as he felt Aunt Marion's hand tremble. "No, indeed," said his father. "My dear/' turning to his wife, "hadn't you better light the tree? It is already late." "Oh! stop! stop! stop!" cried Tom and Clara then in one breath. 'iSomething something has happened to the lighthouse! Oh! the world is coming to an end! The light has gone out! " 3 o4 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. "And how will Uncle John ever see to get here?" cried Will, as Aunt Marion suddenly clasped him in her arms. "And what do you suppose has become of Jack and Emeline?" exclaimed Nell, bursting into tears. "Light the tapers, and divert the children quickly as you can," said the father hurriedly to anybody in the universe. "I will get the men and see what can be done about crossing over there!" "Oh! you never will try that!" exclaimed his wife. "You know it is impossible!" " If it is, I shan't do it," he said, smiling. "But what could you and two men do ? Wait at any rate, for John and his man. You will be lost and drowned 1 I know you will !" " Nonsense, my love! I will run no unnecessary risk. But that light out to-night, snow thickening, and storm coming, means shipwreck that I can't have on my conscience. Hands off, dear! It must be done. But first of all have half a dozen of the lanterns lighted and tied to a pole and thrust out of the cupola window for John's direction. Hurry now!" And then one was getting his long boots, and another his coats, and another the lights; and in the midst of it all, the screens slid away and the tapers blazed out, and one of the doors burst open with much stamping and outcry, and there was Uncle John and his companion and the burden that they bore among their other parcels "A little lad half frozen," said Uncle John, staying to greet nobody, and laying his burden on a lounge. ' ' Lucky the train was late. I heard him, and saw his lantern, just beside the old road. Bring some of that snow, and be quick about it! Now rub for your life!" And then Uncle John had turned and opened his arms and the beautiful brown eyes were hid upon his breast. When Jack was well tucked away in bed, and the people had made their way to the light-house, they found the oil in the lamps congealed and Emeline fainted beside the wheel. But Uncle John knew how to right all that; and what to do for the father, too. And while the rest obeyed directions in the tower, he attended to the light-keeper's concussion of the brain, and spent his Christmas with Emeline. "How glad I am we stayed here," said Clara, afterward. "If we hadn't, you know, the ships would have been wrecked ; the light-house keeper would have died, and Emeline and Jack would have frozen to death. It's the nicest Christmas Eve I ever knew! Everybody ought to spend Christmas Eve out in old seaside taverns, I think!" And one would suppose Clara had done so purposely. "I thought I had really died and gone to heaven, you better believe, " STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 3>S said Jack, telling Emeline his adventures for the hundredth time, "when I opened my eyes, and that Christmas tree was twinkling, all lights and colors, with the children, and those women like angels! And I don't know but what I did! For it's like heaven to think father's going to help these doctors about their experiments and things, and you and I will live with the children, and grow up with Tom and Clara, and never lay eyes again on old Hurricane Light!" 3 o6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. CHAPTER TWELFTH. Other Children. Wax to receive, and marble to retain. Byron. I remember, I remember How my childhood fleeted by The mirth of its December, And the warmth of its July. W. M. Praed. With the smile that was childlike and bland. Bret Hart e. We pardon in the degree that we love. Rochefoucauld. Use three physicians Still first Dr. Quiet ; Next Dr. Meryman And Dr. Dyet. Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum. Nature fits all the children with something to do. /. R. Lowell. How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start When memory plays an old tune on the heart. Eliza Cook. There was a place in childhood that I remember well, And there a voice of sweetest tone bright fairy tales did tell. Samuel Lover. Tbemostocles said; The Athenians command the rest of Greece; 1 command the Athe- nians; your mother commands me; and you command your mother. Plutarch. It is not all children that are reared in the love lines of the kindergar- ten methods, or in any other method that makes them a blessing to themselves or to the community. Often circumstances master the parents, and the children shift for themselves and are in reality reared by their hereditary traits; and sometimes when the young mother has little knowledge or skill and no assistance, and proceeds with the old fear of sparing the rod, she is halt beside herself by reason of the development of those traits before her STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 307 eyes, and finds that, labor as she may to bring about happiness in her home, the very things that should make for happiness, the children, themselves, are growing up to precisely an opposite result. But since it has been discovered that homesickness is a disease, that laziness also is a disease, apt to be in- curable that an inclination to petty thefts of things not wanted, and sometimes thrown away at once, is a mania, often inherited, and no more within the power of the patient to control than any more violent mania is it is to be imagined that many other emotional matters may come under the same head, and gradually reach a similar classification as ailments to be medicined rather than wickednesses to be punished. Medicine Rather Than Punishment In no way will this theory be of more useful application than in the rear- ing of children, who, from having been regarded since time began as full of the old Adam, which is to be chastised and whipped out of them, will now be seen as victims of the diseases of their tender years, and be untiringly diag- nosed and medicated therefor. Not that the maternal rhubarb bottle will take the place of the maternal slipper, but that divine patience will be more frequently invoked to fill out the measure of human patience, and it will be comprehended that naughti- nesses are no more to be whipped out of children than spots out of a leopard, or evil desires out of grown people; and that if you can not "reason with a mule," you can with a child, even but just escaping babyhood, if you are will- ing to curb your own temper, to forget yourself, and not to fail in exhaustless gentleness ; and that only those that can so curb temper and exercise self-f or- getfulness have any business to be about children at all. How many people do we see who are punishing children for their own faults, inherited and repeated without choice in the matter, administering the punishment all in good faith, and because they know the trouble those faults have given themselves, and are likely to give the little victims as they in- crease in years and find themselves in the toils, and because they think it best in pure love to drive out the evil spirit, as if the very process of such sweep- ing and garnishing, in exciting enmity and rage, and heating blood and brain, did not invite the other seven worse than the first to enter and take possession ! Heredity. All parents are happy in viewing themselves when repeated in their children, as if it were a sure pledge of immortality that this line of face, that breadth of temple, this curve of eyebrow or of lip, were to be handed down (508) THE LOVE LINES OF THE KINDERGARTEN METHODS. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 309 the generations ; and pleasant as they find all that, just so bitter do they find it when unfortunate traits, that previously might have been repressed in themselves, tut that have not been, and that only afford misery, are brought into action through inheritance, and they see their own sins finding them out again. Yet although they may have reason to doubt if any rod ever hindered their lying, or did anything but drive them to concealment; if any depriva- tion of desired things ever made unselfishness in them, or did anything but aggravate avarice; if any ridicule ever made the difficult problem easy of comprehension, or if any of the compulsory and primitive methods wrought any but momentary and superficial gaining of an object, and lasting harm and hurt still they go on with these methods, the rod, the dark closet, the make-game, the robbery (to call it its true name), and hinder the mental and moral growth of the generation by just so much unwise action in treating children like criminals. That children have always been regarded as delicious and delightful tilings, when giving nobody any anxiety as to their real welfare, is quite un- disputed ; but when this anxiety arises, whether they are criminals or have been but too often the victims of criminals is a question that might be con- sidered to their advantage. Meanwhile even our treatment of criminals grows to partake less and less of the punitive character, and more and more of the hindering and curative. Sparing the Rod. If we look with condemnation on the whipping-post for grown people in the full possession of all the faculties they ever had, how can we approve of the slipper used on children with faculties but half developed ? The general sense of all civilization now seems to be that we shall not revenge ourselves for crime, but shall simply prevent its further commission ; how, then, can we treat tender little beings, without the power to help themselves, with any less consideration ? Assuredly the time is not distant when duty in this regard will be seen at a different point of view from that of the past. The half-opened blossom will not be made to suffer unnecessary pain for the worm at its heart, nor shut up away from the sunshine that the worm may be left to eat in peace, but gentle forces will find the blight and remove it, and let the bud bloom to what perfection it may in all the sunshine it can have. That it may take almost infinite patience to bring up children as children, and not as criminals, is not to weigh in the least against the necessity. Infinite patience is the first fruit of all true love, and no mother, no aunt, no guardian of children, has a right to be without a 310 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. NOT TO FAIL IN EXHAUSTLESS GENTLENESS. goodly supply of it, and while attending to the good of the children other- wise, to be busy besides in the active cultivation of this heavenly plant in themselves. There are numberless ways of repressing evil without exciting it, and of cutting off sin, not by lopping the little branches, but by gently digging round the root, and exterminating as much as can be reached at once in the yet imperfect system, which is to grow more perfect as each generation regards its successors as something, if not already superior to itself, at any rate to be made so, and not to be kept inferior by the lash of tongue and rod. But it requires love to repress evil gently and firmly, to rear children with the tenderness that condemnation of rude methods requires, and every one does not naturally possess this love. That is a bold person who con- fesses so flagrant a fault as an absence from the composition of the love of children, not one's own merely, but all people's children. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 311 Loving Children. For that love has become universally recognized as a necessary feature of a worthy nature, as something by the absence of which one is indeed unnatural, not to say monstrous. Owing to this fact, it is very seldom that one admits, even when feeling it, that children are a nuisance, and more generally people consider it wise to pretend interest and affection whether it is genuine or not. Of course, as everybody knows, the politic person, the electioneering man, the woman with an object to gain, always begins by kissing the children ; and the behavior of many young ladies in regard to the matter was long since caricatured by Dickens in one of his sketches, where he represents them crowding round the nurse who brings in the baby to the christening, and asking, as if with innocent ignorance and a reminiscence of kittens and puppies, if the dear little thing can open its eyes yet. But there are many people who honestly think they do love children, and would be mightily indignant if told that they deceived themselves, that children annoyed them, and were on the whole rather disagreeable than otherwise to them. These individuals do love children for a little while, as an amusement when they have nothing else to do, and to caress when the child is sunny and pretty and sweet and clean. But let the child be ugly, and it does not attract them; let it be neglected, and of a dirty face, and it repels them ; let it scream, and they can't for the life of them see why people bring their children on journeys, or to church, or into the drawing-room, or at the table according to the situation of the particular annoyance at the moment. But they who surely and absolutely love children do not stay to see whether their faces and frocks are clean and pretty or not the child is a lovely thing to them under all the mask of the dust of which we are made, the soil, the wear and tear; they do not much care whether the child screams or not; often, indeed, to them, as to the old miner in the Califor- nia theatre who, when a baby set up its pipes, called out to the orchestra to stop their strumming and let him hear the baby yell, the sound is a sort of music; and like the man who considered being beaten at whist the next pleasure to beating, they had rather hear a baby yell than not have one around at all. Those who love children are not those who merely love the pleasure they can get from children; those love, not the children, but that pleasure, and the moment it ceases to be pleasure, then farewell to the children. Those who really love children, love all about them, the troubling and the LITTLE MERCHANTS. STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 31$ teasing that they make, the washing and wiping and worrying; they do not tire with their fretting, they are not disgusted with their care, they are not annoyed with their questioning, they are not made nervous by their bawling; they take them in their entirety; it never occurs to them to say that these things are disagreeable, for, in reality, the agreeable things, the loveliness, the velvet cheeks, the exquisite mouth with its little pearls, the perfect eyes, the opening soul, the charming intelligence, the constant sense of the creation of a new human being going on under the eyes, the receptivity of love, the thing for love, all so far overbalance anything that is not in accord with them as to put it entirely out of sight and mind. To- those who love children it does not occur to wait before giving love- in or- der to see if they are willful and spoiled, whether they cry too much, whether they are going to give trouble or not; they only say, "Here is a child; let us love it." They are ready to get up in the night with it, to- walk the floor with it, to tread on tiptoe if it sleeps, to abandon themselves to its amusement if it wakes, to sing to it, to talk to it, to obey all its little tyrannies, to stay at home from other pleasure for it and think it no sacri- fice, to forget themselves in its existence, and when it is the most trouble to be thankful that there is a baby in the house. They Who Really Love Children. These are the people who do love children, not merely they, it may be seen, who love the peachy cheek which yields to their kisses with pleasant sensation, and the fragrance of the sweet baby breath; not merely they who like the tickling that their vacant or tired minds receive from the action of the young expanding intellect of the tiny creature, who are enter- tained by the stammering of the first thoughts and the effort after the first syllables, who are pleased in fine weather and run away in foul. These latter are the summer friends of the little people, and full soon do the little people find it out; for, as a general rule, one needs no better criterion as. to who it is that loves children than observation of the fact of whom it is that the children love. It is true that children will be amused and pleased for a while by the summer sort of friends; but let a tumble, a grief, a pain, come to them, and the summer friend is discarded unerringly for the one whose sympathy is steadfast, and who does not ask whether it is a good child or a bad one, a pretty or a plain one, a rich or a poor, but only whether it is a child. "Frank, I love good little boys/' said a worthy parent, trying to do his duty to an obstreperous young son. ''Yes, papa," 3 i 4 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. came the reply of the four-year-old, "but Uncle So-and-So loves little boys whether they are good or not. " And that, it seems to us, is the only way to love them ; for is it not the way in which we hope we ourselves are loved, not only by one another, but by the power above us? It is also, in- deed, the only way in which to obtain lasting pleasure from the little be- ings ; for it is only when we have surrendered ourselves, without thought of what we obtain in return, but because we can not help it, and would not help it if we could, that we find out what they have done for us, the light and joy that they have brought into the house, with all the labor and con- fusion and care that they have brought there, too; for more than once has it chanced that into a tumultuous and hating household the advent of a little child has brought peace and harmony, and love, too, not only for itself, but for all around it, till it has made lives dear and desirable that before it came seemed impossible to live ; for there are few such peacemakers as a baby ; none such, if we may believe the poet, as a baby's grave. Yet, while it is to be believed that all people love their own children, even if their love for the children of others is questionable, it would be a wise precaution on the part of one living or visiting in a house where there are children to learn something of child-love beforehand, if they wish to have any enjoyment of their life or of their visit, or to be a welcome member of the family. For unless there is our ideal mother in the house, and some- times it must be confessed if there is, the children will be apt to run riot. It is not every one who knows how to entertain and to take care of children properly at the same time. The little people are to their authors and owners astonishing and delightful circumstances, revelations of wonder; it is a marvel that they exist at all ; and how much greater marvel that they are so lovely, so bright, so precocious, that they know black from white, that they can count three; how sweet the little syllables drop from their lips! how charming is the assertion of their will! how charming that they have a will at all! is all this possible? and is all this theirs? And the child is not only worshipped as a part of themselves and a possession, but as a subject of de- lightful awe and mystery in the very fact of its being. Troublesome Children. Of course this is quite right and pleasant with our own children ; but somehow or other it does not seem so right and pleasant with other people's children ; and they are not half so charming in the assertion of their wills when they dispute the seat or the book with us, while politeness to their elders makes it rather difficult for us to assert our wills ; and they are subjects THE YOUNG EXPANDING INTELLECT. 3 iC STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. of no delightful awe and mystery at all when they are tumbling all over us *vith sticky fingers and daubed faces ; when they burst into our sleeping- rooms in the morning; when they insist on crowding into the carriage already full ; when they set up a bawl in the middle of an interesting conversation, and instead of being scooped up and swept out of the room are expostulated with ; when they disturb the peace of breakfast, dinner, and tea; when every- thing is interrupted by the demanding of these cherubs, and everything is so in abeyance to their wishes that elderly people seem to have no rights in the world at all, and the whole pleasure of one's visit to the parents, or the parents' visit to one's self, is destroyed by their presence and behavior, till we are inclined to believe that the correct definition of the word cherub is that other word imp. Of course parents owe an undisputed duty to their children, and it is necessary that the little things should be made happy; that their proper pleasures should be unrestricted ; that their questions should be answered ; that they should not be grieved or outraged ; that their lives should be one long remembrance of happiness as far as their parents can make them so. But these same people owe, also, an undisputed duty to their guests, when they have guests, and if they can not perform it, they certainly should not put themselves in the way of failing in it by having any guests; and it is just as right that the guests should not be grieved and outraged as that the children should not be. Only those people do that which is either agreeable or decent who regard their guests as wards, for the time being, if not actively to be made happy, yet to be allowed to be happy if they will, and who take into consideration whether or not these persons, who are thus at their mercy, can be happy with other people's children tyrannizing over them in the manner that one may so frequently see them do. It would seem as though plain common sense must teach people that their children are not as lovesome to all the world as to themselves; and that even if others find them very attractive, yet they may weary of what the natural ties of flesh and blood make it im possible that they themselves should ever weary; and that it is to betaken for granted that certain things are disagreeable, and that it is not to be left to the guest to complain, or else pretend politely that it is all as it should be, when trodden and trampled on by a parcel of little people without fear of man. One, indeed, may be as fond of children as the next person, but, it is always to be understood that that means children in the right place, and where the guest is concerned the right place is never the first place. And if we happen to be the guest of the occasion how swiftly our thoughts run, and how much to the purpose. REPRIMANDED. 3 i8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. The Guest with Children. How differently, we say, we would bring these children up if we had them, and how badly they are being brought up by those that do have them ! In what cold blood do we look at them! They are not always children to us the lovely blossoming things. They are little men and women, our neighbors in miniature, having the trajts of their ancestors, of which traits we are apt through our family gossip to know more than the descendants of those ancestors do themselves, repeating this uncle or that aunt, or the old grandfather long gone, and exciting our animadversion, or, not so often, possibly our admiration, by the fact. Moreover, we forget in looking at them that we were ever children ourselves; we speak and think of them as of beings of a separate species, not quite of a lower order perhaps, and not quite cherubs certainly. But we expect of the little creatures whom we are unable to class the virtues and often the behavior of the grown folk, and we in our loftiness are capable of ruining their reputations, and giving them a name that it will take years of right living on their part in the future to overcome, if their little vagaries do not suit our own whims, while the high animal spirits of their happy years lead them into pranks that are not in conformity with our own staid and quiet way of life, in which the fermentation is over ; and, stern critics that we are, we sit in judgment like those that break butter- flies upon wheels. They would never conduct themselves in this fashion if we had them, or if we had had them in season. Keeping Silence. It is a question whether these views are not better hidden in the depths of our own consciousness than given to the world of friends and neighbors. They certainly do no good to ourselves, to the children, or to the parents of the children. On the contrary, the expression of them only serves to exas- perate the parents, and to irritate ourselves to still further expression, till one listening would suppose from our conversation that all the children we knew were candidates for the gallows. The encouragement of these views may have, besides, a hardening and injurious effect upon ourselves, which would be a pity, when they arise from so evident a desire to improve humanity, for they must lead us all the time into the habit of seeing more evil than good a habit whose aim is easily transferable to objects of more advanced years and equal terms, and they must cause us to yield as unlovely an appearance as those do who do not care for children at all, good or bad, and do not criticise their behavior, not from any want of hostility, but from complete indiffer- ence; people to whom children are like flies and night-moths, evils to be en- THE OPENING SOUL OF CHILDHOOD. 3 2o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. dured, since there is no way of being rid of them if the lamps are lighted. For our own sakes, then, as well as theirs, if we can not praise them, it might be well to pause before letting ourselves get into the habit of condemn- ing other people's children. Yet in some respects, if we make no loud expression of it, this critical mood of mind may serve our own mere personal comfort in the long run as "Well as another which is quite at variance with it; for if in the other, or coun- terpart of it, we might be of some benefit to the little people, it is usually at considerable cost to ourselves. It is then not the case of condemning, but of loving other people's children too much. Of course there is no such thing as too much love in the world, and, if there were, few children are in the receipt of too much of it ; it is not often that they are injured by its possession so much as by its lack. There is love, to be sure, that does them more harm than good ; the love that follows them after parental correction and tries to soften the effect of it, for instance a poor sort of love, more often self-love than pure love of the little culprit for whose better good the correction was administered. But the love of self-sacrifice that forgets itself in the child, the love of effort that takes trouble for it, remembers that the atmosphere of childhood is carried along to make the whole atmosphere and temperament of later life, and sees to it that it shall be a roseate one; the love of patience, that stops to think of the reason why before saying nay, and strains a point against the nay; that uses all preventive power to hinder wrong-doing or temp- tation to wrong-doing, instead of reserving itself to punish wrong-doing when done that love, indeed, can not exist in too great quantity or force. Yet that is for the child ; for ourselves, at first glance, there would seem to be no question that there is such a thing as giving too much love to other people's children for our own selfish ease. Our love may help to make the way smooth for them, but how is it going to work with us? It is an ignoble way of feeling, it must be admitted, as all views are that dwell simply on the light cast on our own future; but there are laws of self-preservation, and if there is no instinct to warn us, then experience must discover that whatever we do for other people's children we must do for love of them, and not for love of ourselves, for in the end the likelihood is that we shall be forgotten in the matter, and our love return upon us in bitterness. Of course we are not speaking of simple liking and pleasant sufferance, but of the intense and yearning affection that the lonely heart extends to clasp round the little child in the house, in the family, or in the neighborhood. Yet with all that yearning affection, one to whom the child does not belong will have, as a general thing, reason to figure less and less in the life and thus in the thoughts of that child as the years pass, till one dwindles at first into STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 321 NECESSARY THAT THE LITTLE THINGS SHOULD BE MADE HAPPY. insufficiency and then into f orgetf ulness and the oblivion of all but temporary presence. Nor does one always have to wait long for that fate which, if possibly it may not come at all, just as possibly is sure to come for no sooner may we have poured out the fullness of our tenderness about it, and made the child a part of our heart's blood, than the owners of it can take it from our sight and grasp, and put seas and continents and lifetimes between us. It had become all but our own child, and is snatched out of our arms; and, 322 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. so far as we are affected it is in its grave, for it is dead to us in just the de- gree that the unloving, the indifferent, the disliking, or the cruel parent chooses. What are we to do, then? love nobody's children? It would be a dreary world for most of us in that case and a hard one for all the little people who are helped along their way by love, no matter whose. It is a necessity of some natures to love that would leave a great gap in life if unsatisfied, and if they have not one thing, they will have another, and will give the love that should have made the wilderness blossom like a rose for some child to weeds and stocks and stones, or what amounts to the same thing. Feeling with the poet, however, that it is "Better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all," it would seem, on the whole, the best thing even for ourselves, and our own selfish ease ultimately, to forget self in the affair, and love other people's children wherever we find them, since one is so much the happier for loving, for having loved, for having love to remember, and since our small quantity of love may do its share in the elevation of all the world, however slight that share. It may give us more real happiness to close our eyes to those things in children which show that they belong to an imperfect race, and to take our draught of the infinite pleasure of loving as we go. And perhaps even that love may be retroactive in the end, nothing being lost in the universe, and soften the hearts of those round whom it was shed ; and as the dreaded and fateful years go by, these so loved children will look back with love as we have looked forward with it, and feel for the old all that indiscriminate ten- derness which we have felt for the young, and we ourselves come in for our portion. Amusing the Small People. But much of the annoyance that other people's children give the sojourner and wayfarer in the house might be hindered by that person's taking a little pains to give them amusement or entertaining instruction. If, for instance, the guest should take out some drawing materials, how soon would every noisy child become a quiet spectator of the magic of the working fingers. And still greater quiet may be evoked by giving these children paper, or cardboard, with pencils, and showing them how to use the new tools. Many people have a notion that it is useless to instruct a child in any art for which no particular talent has been shown the art of drawing for example. But every child, no matter in what condition, even the child of LOVE OF THE CHILD FOR DRAWING. 324 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. the savage, loves to make a picture. To these unbelievers unless the child is found making his own colors, and cutting hairs from the cat's tail for his brushes, after the fashion of Benjamin West, and securing wonderful effects with chalk and blackboard, red lead and barn door, it will not seem worth while to cultivate his talent ; and even if it should seem worth while then, it will be thought it can be done only by means of a teacher who is himself an artist. With Pencil and Paper. But in reality it is well to teach every child certain of the rudiments of the various arts, and the very effort may burst the shell inclosing the germ of some capacity for them, especially in this very matter of drawing, since an impulse toward the imitation of shapes, the representation of outlines, and the expression of thoughts by means of a picture, is instinctive with us all, and an inheritance from the primitive man, whose only writing it was; and it is a further whim of ours that, strange as it may at first appear, a great deal of preliminary instruction may be given by the mother or teacher who can not herself, perhaps, draw either straight line or circle. Every child has some inclination in this direction ; the margins of all his school books are scratched over with his favorite designs, and if he has been so fortunate as to possess a shilling box of colors, the pages of his atlas and of his history bear witness to his aspiration, and perhaps not only to his aspiration, for it is to be doubted if Turner's "Carthage" ever gave the artist such joy as the well- daubed prints of the "Landing of the Pilgrims, " or "Georgian Girls in the Slave Market," in the geography book, have given to most of us in our child- hood. It is no instruction, now, to take the pencil and paper and draw the line for the child to see and then to copy ; he would be copying the line, not representing the object to be drawn. But it is real instruction to make the child actually see the object, and then set down on paper the lines that answer to what he sees. William Hunt used to say that the reason we do not draw an object correctly is because we do not see it correctly, or see it but partially ; we think we see it, and see the whole of it; but if we do, there is nothing in the world to hinder our setting down its fac-simile. And thus the first thing to do is to teach the child to see, to see shape, relation of lines, shadow, mass, relief, dwelling first upon proportions and not till afterward on details. All that can be done before the child has taken a pencil in hand, and his eye may be in process of training a long time first, and a long time afterward, even while he is practicing on simple strokes and free lines before an object is put up for him to copy, but when his eye is somewhat trained, and one is satis- STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 325 MONUMENT AT NEW PLYMOUTH TO THE PILGRIM FATHERS. fied that he has seen the shape of a thing, its projection and its proportion, and its light and shade, there is no reason why he should not represent it if there is any skill in his fingers, and he then will learn by his mistakes, each one of which to the right gazer is a step on the upward ladder. There are some, it is to be acknowledged, who have no finger knack, who can but copy, and that laboriously, by line and rule, for whom form has no attraction, who can not interpret color in black and white, and can not be drilled into the ap- preciation of masses and values; who, caught early, may be enlightened to some extent only sufficient to show the futility of the effort so far as any great results are concerned, yet doubtless the instruction relative to shape, propor- tion, and shade has opened their eyes to what would never have been seen by them without it. while within a limited degree the effort to do more has been of real benefit. Whether or not one is going to make pictures that will stir the heart with dreams of beauty, and live when the hand that created them is dust, it is ex- ceedingly desirable from a utilitarian point of view, that one should be led to 32 6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. "look carefully and see clearly, leaving imagination out of the question. A drawing is but a report of what one sees, hand and eye working together; if one can execute it, so much the better; but if that is not to be, even the verbal report will be the more accurate for any such early training as may have been given to the eye. Just as a matter of business the advantage of the instruction is easily seen ; the traveler, whose eye has been early taught its functions and who would write the story of his sight-seeing, needing no other hand than his own to illustrate his work, doubles his profits; and if un- able to do so much as that, is yet able to write with a sharpness of outline that bites into the memory, while the report of the traveler who sees all things but vaguely and pleasantly is blurred and forgotten ; and so of the mecha- nician who needs no duller brain with apter fingers to stand between him and the model of his machine, and is able to sketch his own ideas as they come to him ; of the naturalist whose specimens can not evade his pencil and vanish altogether, and of countless others. Thus in the light of the relations of money-getting, of science, of convenience, apart from any considerations of a possible genius to be developed, of a talent not to be wrapped in a napkin, it were well to give every child instruction in the art of drawing, encourage- ment to his endeavors, and praise to his success; not that unjust and indis- criminate praise which, not being deserved, makes a fool of one, but that praise which obliges a person to live up to its standard, remembering the while if the talent really exists, it is there for a purpose and to be fostered toward an end, and that, not existing, it would be a forgery upon nature to pretend that it was there. But besides the pictorial way, there is many another fashion in which the children can be beguiled from noise and mischief. Let the person who wishes to bring peace but of their little pandemonium provide herself with a black- board, easily procurable anywhere, and provide the children with slates, and tell them they are going to have a play with the round world on which they live. A New Game. Every one remembers the tears and struggles which the really simple and delightful study of geography used to cost; but there is a way of making it a charming amusement. Let our friend in question take chalk crayon and make a map of an island on the blackboard, not at all, however, out of his or her own head, but according to the instructions the children shall give. This map is then to be transferred from the blackboard to the slates. It was easy enough to measure the table by a chalk and string, and order a line of that STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS OF MAKING IT A CHARMING AMUSEMENT. length to be measured and drawn on the board ; but it is a different thing to transfer that line to their slates, and thus learn at once the significance of the * 'scale." This done at last, though, a map of the school-room is made; then one of the way to school, with the streets and paths diverging from it. From this arises the necessity of knowing the points of the compass nothing being taught till its need is felt and the instruction is given in a calisthenic exer- 328 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. else, in which the children are formed in a hollow square, facing outward, and the sides of the square are marched to their respective points till they are understood and remembered, upon which their application to the map on the board is mere play. When sufficient elementary knowledge has thus been acquired, intelligence is called more positively into play, and the children are told, for instance, as one way of doing this, that they may colonize an island. A rough sketch, a sort of land in the distance, being made on the board, every point in the shape of the island is left to be arranged by the children, who are to give reasons for their decisions. Some would have it a smooth plain, such as a hoop could be trundled on all day; some are for mountains and adventures. Mountains carry the day, and determine the nature of the shores. The reason assigned for the choice of mountains is that they are places for mines ; iron and copper, if not silver and gold, will be wanted in the colony mines will afford them ; pasturage will be wanted for cattle, too the mountain-sides will give it; rain will be wanted the mountain-tops arrest the clouds and produce it ; lastly, as the teacher suggests, rivers will be wanted. Shall the rivers flow from the sea into the mountains ? Criticism is invited. Who ever heard of water's running up hill? The teacher draws a river, starting nowhere in particular and going anywhere in general, and requires the pupils to say why it is not right, till they see that nature does nothing at haphazard ; and rivers, as well as other things, always run from some cause to some end, so that in this island they must rise among the hills in the springs that the rains and vapors make and swell, and then flow downward to their outlet where they feed the sea. And here, if the teacher is able, a digression explains the dead rivers of California and the rivers lost upon the desert. But why do they want rivers at all on the island ? For roads, one says; for fishing, says another; to drain the lands; to water them ; to turn wheels ; to carry merchandise. As voice after voice resounds, a zest springs up, till the scene is as eager, if not as clamorous, as the gold room. And what kind of rivers is wanted for these things? is next asked. For car- rying merchandise, let us say. A stream full of eddies and rapids that a vessel must skirt and struggle with, or a deep and quiet one that upbuoys the vessel which the wind carries along? And for turning wheels shall it be a slow and sluggish current, or a swift one full of falls? All these things hav- ing been settled, the map of the island drawn in a satisfactory manner, and the colony being supposed to be on the way to it, the teacher asks if it is de- sirable to plant the colony in the interior or on the sea-shore; and the sub- ject being well weighed, and the opposing reasons given, it is resolved to have it on the sea-shore, on account of the unexplored and uncleared nature of the interior, and from considerations of safety and of accessibility all of STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 329 which the children appreciate quite as much as they would the exploits of Hans or the escapes of Gretchen in their story-books. In this method the colony being established, so far as its geographical condition is concerned, it is proposed to send off a second colony to a point farther in the interior. Shall they strike out at a venture? Follow the river, cries one. Follow the river, by all means, and have your way open behind you. But how far? to the source? to the falls? To the falls. There they are, to move machinery, to saw lumber, to grind corn ; ships can go up no farther ; the tide rises no farther. The falls, then, are at the head of tide-water. Another Game. Sometimes this kind of exercise alternates with one which affords as much pleasure as the old game of ''Dr. Busby. " This is a game played with cards, evenly distributed, and on the back of each of which is written the name of a town or city, and on the face, in double rows, a statement of the usual imports and exports of the place. Any one can prepare these cards by the help of a school gazetteer. The scholar who begins the game, examining the cards allotted, finds that Rio Janeiro, it maybe, has rose-wood, diamonds and tapioca to export, with other tropical staples, and is in sore need of linen for her ladies, cotton goods for her colored people, cordage for her ships, and straightway demands these articles. Liverpool can furnish them, and take Rio Janeiro's goods in payment. If, then, the scholar having the card Liverpool does not immediately cry "Here!" the Rio Janeiro merchant can take that card with- out further ado. If, however, the possessor of it does cry "Here!" then Rio Janeiro can not take it unless able to give its name Liverpool. But suppos- ing it taken, the Rio Janeiro merchant then looks at the Liverpool card and sees hardware to spare there, and cutlery and cotton goods; an immense busi- ness to be done, in short, in all sorts of exports and imports; and if Monrovia, glistening like the lady in the dentist's chair with gold, gums, and ivory, does not answer at the call for them, or for palm-oil and feathers and spices, then Monrovia also goes to swell the stock of the first merchant. But if, on the contrary, Rio Janeiro, having asked for the Liverpool goods, or for the Monrovian or other, can not give the name of the place furnishing them Liverpool or Monrovia, or as the case may be then the Rio Janeiro card is forfeited to the owner of the card with that place on the back, who then pro- ceeds to make exchanges until brought up with some round turn which affords opportunity to the next. Thus a knowledge of the world and of its balances and counterbalances is gained that books could hardly teach, and that is usually only half learned in the maturer life of the man of business. It is play that takes the place of 330 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. experience; and not only have the thought-producing qualities been early strengthened and ripened for service, but the little people have had almost as much pleasure as if they had gone campaigning and playing pirate, and peace has reigned where they made racket and riot before. It is only a boy that needs the best of interest and amusement at home that can furnish such a record of misdeeds, of good inclinations and bad re- sults as Laddy did when all unintentionally he played the burglar himself. The Story of Laddy's Burglar. The great shining wheel, shod with silence and swiftness, sweeping on like a spirit a bicycle was that which, of all created things, Laddy longed for most. He saw the club roll by, he heard their warning bells tinkle like drops of sweetest sound, he saw their tiny red lights flashing in the dark, and his soul was full of desire for this steed which bears one as the outspread wings of the Afrite Danhash carried Badoura to Camaralzaman, a sort of visi- ble whirlwind. For Laddy to see one of these lofty riders on his giant wheel, whose spokes, now viewless with motion, now dazzling as the sun's rays, seemed to be parts of the living thing, here slipping out of sight along the road, here mounting a hill and outlined on the sky, was to experience the same ecstasy of pleasure that you or I might have over a picture or a poem. And he had made up his mind to become, by hook or by crook, chiefly crook, just such a poem himself, if his father, who could amply afford it, would lis- ten to reason and buy a bicycle. Grass never grew under Laddy's feet, es- pecially in the winter, and having mastered the unruly creature, by dint of hiring and borrowing, he had never lost a chance of presenting to his father such considerations as his tireless running of errands, and general good be- havior in the family, to the effect that he had fairly earned his gratification. Laddy felt himself a very important member of the family, and had no more conception of his real standing there than many of us have who, half unconsciously, wonder how the world would get on without us. It was a jolly family, on the whole, that which was thus indebted to him, and it was such a numerous one, that it could hardly have experienced stagnation had there been no Laddy. There were a father and mother and grandmother, of course ; it would have been a queer family that did not begin with those. And then there was a great-grandmother, too and it was not every family that had a great-grandmother, if she was so disabled that she could neither speak nor move, but only sit all day in her chair and look about her with a pair of little sunken eyes, that blinked as the stars blink in heaven, and gave STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS HE SAW THE CLUB ROLL BY. you the idea of her belonging- already to some other world than this. And then there was Aunt Mat, who did everything for everybody ; and all the serv- ants, particularly Michael; and the three older sisters and their two brothers; and the half dozen children, more or less, of the younger brood, who made noise enough for nil- the children that followed the Pied Piper of Hamelin. For when Sacie was not tittering, Katharine was singing, or Lucy was bawling, or Tom was whistling, or Johnny was playing his jews-harp, or they were all shouting Laddy's shout being a roar. They banged on the piano, tramped up the stairs, slid down the banister, and would perhaps have swung on the chandeliers if they could have reached them. And every little while there was a fearful agitation all over the place, for Laddy was in the river, or Johnny was being brought out of the river, or the whole crew of them, with Tom for captain, were adrift upon the river. The elder sisters painted and embroidered and practiced, and went driving, and young Sylvester came to 332 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. see them came very often, by the way, and stayed very long, and always took Sophy down to the gate with him. Sometimes Rosy and Katharine were found rendered useless by meddling with the clay of which the three elder sisters had been moulding jars and vases ; or Sacie and Lucy might be seen smeared from ear to ear with Laura's water-colors, or with their gowns sewed up in Eleanor's flosses and crewels; or half of Sophia's music would have been taken to make Johnny's kite, which had ended by falling into the water and going out to the sea. Yes, it was a jolly family, Laddy thought; es- pecially when time came toward Christmas and Aunt Mat was helping the kitchen-girl pick over currants and giving any loiterer a good handful, and grandmother was showing them how to make sausage meat, and Laura, streaked with chrome yellow from top-knot to shoestring, was learning the mystery of squash pies, and the little people were allowed to slice the citron, and everybody was busy with a secret. Nothing could be more to Laddy's mind than this state of affairs, unless it was the building of the Tower of Babel. He could think of but one thing possible in the way of making life still livelier, and that was possession of the bicycle which he had told every- body was to be his share of the Christmasing, and which he meant to ride down the front stairs, if not the banisters! "I like to see things fly round!" said Laddy, leaving one to guess whether he meant things in general, or only the bicycle. His mother used to say that it was no wonder she was ill; the wonder was that anybody was well in that house. I suppose it is to be admitted, before going further, that Laddy was the bad boy of the family. Yet he was a taking little scamp, with the honest wide blue eyes in his sunburned face a face where no amount of tan could obliterate a swarm of dimples that made his smile as sweet as honey. For all that, no one loved a bit of roguery so well as Laddy did. It was he that tied Lucy's and Sadie's long braids together, so that when they rose to go different ways he might enjoy the consequences. It was he that made "apple-pie" of Johnny's sheets and seasoned it with red pepper. It was he that scared the whole parlor by coming down with a candle in his hand and beginning to climb the mantel-shelf as if preparatory to crawling on the ceil- ing like a fly, walking in his sleep when he was really wide-awake, and laugh- ing so gayly and sweetly when, like a bottle of medicine he was taken and shaken, that nobody could be very angry with him. It was he that emptied Rosy's doll of its stuffing and filled the body with red-cedar sawdust, leaving a little crack in one arm so that when Rosy saw the red sawdust trickling out she really thought her doll was bleeding to death. It was he that tied all the bells in the house with one string, and in the middle of the night woke all the sleepers with their furious ringing. And, in general, one might say it was he STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 333 that cried peace, peace, when there was no peace ! And there was nobody like Laddy for getting out of a scrape. He never looked guilty. When on Sun- day he was bringing the pot of baked beans, suspended on a string, from the baker's, and met the people going to church, he accidentally hit the pot against a lamp-post, and knocked out its bottom, so that the steaming beans poured in a mortifying mess over the sidewalk mortifying to any one but Laddy ; but Laddy never once glanced down at the ruin ; he simply opened his fist and dropped the string and passed on as if they were anybody's beans but his; he had nothing to do with them, and didn't know there was such a thing as a baked bean in the world, in fact. Ex pede Herculem. Perhaps the worst thing Laddy ever did was But I hesitate to tell you. It really was too shocking. Still, I don't know if you will promise never to speak of it and then I hardly think he realized what he was doing. If he and Johnny had not been left alone that day but they were alone with great-grandmother, and had been told to take care of her, and see that she didn't fall into the fire, till grandmother came back. Grandmother herself seemed almost a young girl in comparison with poor old great -grandmother, who never stirred from the moment she was put into her arm-chair in the morning till she was taken out of it at night. Laddy sat looking at her with I know not what strange fancies flitting through his mind. Possibly there came over him such a sensation as one might have when looking down the crater of a burned-out volcano, or over a picture where the painting had been wiped out. For all at once he whispered to Johnny, "Larks, Johnny, larks! let's do it!" How far the little wretches would have gone in their wicked work nobody knows ; for they were interrupted by grandmother, who had thought matters were too quiet to be wholesome in there, and who seized them both and shook them till they did not know whether they were on this star or on several others. And then the little torments ran back to their mother at last, saying they couldn't stay with great-grandmother any longer, because grandmother was so cross! Laddy was a good deal younger then than at this present writing, but I am afraid he had some reprehensible be- ginnings in him. Yet, after all, I suppose I could find as many good things to tell of him. I remember that once he gave his own shoes to a beggar, and would have gone barefooted all summer if he had not known of a pair of Tom's that fitted him ; he was always polite to the cook, and she, at any rate, did not believe it had anything to do with sly turnovers now and then; he never robbed birds' nests he had business with his marbles, indeed, at birds'-nest- ing time; he never called a boy names behind his back, and he always gave away the core. In spite of everything, he was an affectionate little fellow, 334 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. and loved his people as much as he tormented them. If his mother sternly called him "Lawrence!" it hurt him more than a whipping from his father did. Laddy had been busy several weeks with chips and tools, frequently run- ning in from his place of seclusion to ask on what day of the month Christmas came this year, and forgetting again as soon as he was told. He had been fashioning a foot-rest for great-grandmother, having often exercised himself, since the enormity of his intended behavior on a certain previous occasion had been felt, in doing one little odd turn and another for the poor old lady's comfort. Now, by the help of the lathe, bright-headed tacks and varnish, he had succeeded in quite an effective bit of work. With his head first on this side and then on that, he contemplated it in satisfaction, as he thought of poor old great-grandmother's tired feet resting on its soft cushion, whose down he had himself plucked, last summer on the farm, from under the wings of the old gander, at the imminent risk of his life; and he found something a little touching in the contrast between the rest of this cushion and the soul of speed and motion in the bicycle for which he had such a raging desire. Bobbins, and sheaths, and various other small wooden trifles had his carpentry devised for the rest, and he only finished the last as the girls were hanging up the green and the bells were ringing for Christmas Eve. Having deposited his. little accumulation in safe hiding, he went to bed, answering questions as to his gifts in rather surly fashion, in order to avoid having more of them to answer, and waited breathlessly, till every one in the house should be asleep, that he might steal down secretly and dispose of them among the array of the other gifts. It had seemed to Laddy as* if that Christmas Eve would never come. He had told his mother that he wanted new skates; and to his father he had been eloquent on the charms of that or any other bicycle. Grandmother would probably give him a little purse of money and he wanted money sadly; Johnny, he knew pretty certainly, was going to give him his ball; and Rosy, and Lucy, and Sacie, and Katharine, had united their funds toward a knife with a pair of scissors at one end. What Tom had in store for him, what Laura and Eleanor and Sophia, not to speak of his grown-up and prospering brothers Will and Harry, had prepared for him, he did not venture to imagine something very desirable without a doubt, for when Christmas came Laddy knew that all his sins were condoned and forgotten. How long it took that red sunset to fade into orange over the snowf How slow the stars were about coming out, how the family dallied about getting through tea, and what a tittering fracas Katharine and Lucy and the rest of them had to make in putting their paper parcels in convenient places STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 335 for their elders to distribute by direc- tion ! What fools girls were ! And when up-stairs at length, what a splashing and chat- tering, what danc- ing about from room to room of the little night-gowned figures, and what choruses of glad giggles about noth- ing, till the hush of heavily-breath- ing slumber came and found him still waiting, waiting for the elder people to seek their sleep in turn. He watch- ed the stars through the uncurtained window while he tried to keep his eyes open; they seemed to get caught in the huge pine boughs, and to make thin streams of white fire there ; then came an aurora borealis, like a web of white gauze burning and shaking over the whole heavens; he thought of the dreams stepping about from pillow to pillow, and he was pretty sure that he had been asleep himself when he started with a ray of the moon in his face, to find the house so still that it was plain everybody, young and old, were in what he called the arms of Murphy. Making quite sure of it, Laddy slipped out of bed, and gathered his foot- rest, and bobbins, and knitting sheaths, 'and brackets, and their remainder > LADDY SLIPPED OUT OF BED. 336 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. into his arms, and tiptoed down the thickly carpeted stairs to the sitting- room, where everything else was already in place and waiting for the morn- ing. And what a scene it was! The fire was out upon the hearth, the fire that it was Michael's pride to build every morning, and the bulging stockings hung from the nails driven into a long board laid upon the mantel-shelf. Laddy knew of old that there were only jokes in the stockings, the candy mouse, the toy fiddle, the china dog. The real presents were laid out on tables at either side of the chimney place; Aunt Mat had seen to it all. There was the silver cream jug that mamma had wanted when these new aesthetic things made her tired of her old silver; there were the engraved onyx but- tons for papa from the big boys, and the driving blanket, wrought by the fingers of the older girls; there was the sealskin sacquethat Eleanor had been sighing for ever since he could recollect, and that now everybody had joined in giving her; and the brooch for grandmother of a braid of gray hair set in seed pearls; and there was Rosy's new doll, as big as she was; and a fur cap, yes, a fur cap for himself, for if L-a-w-r-e-n-c-e didn't spell Laddy, what did it spell? And there were some gold bangles for Laura only Will and Harry could afford to make pre'sents like that he should himself, some day. And a lace-pin in the shape of a fan, made of something like sky-blue sealing-wax Laddy was not acquainted with turquoises for Sophia; and what was this for Sophia, too? A pair of great white diamond ear-rings, winking and blaz- ing like the sun in the dew. Laddy started back, and then looked again in virtuous indignation. Was Sophia engaged to anybody without telling him ? Was that tall, dark Sylvester fellow coming here to take Sophia away? And Sophia was his favorite sister! And here were presents from his people to Sophia, as their little labels said^-a great pearl ring from the Sylvester mother, and a curious piece of paper, folded like his composition on the Four Seasons, from the father; he opened it for he had seen bonds before a United States bond for a thousand dollars. Well, that was a great go! Grandmother's gold thimble, the smoked pearl pencil-cases, the silver pocket- knives, the slippers, and smoking-caps, and afghans, and silk socks, and all the rest, fell into insignificance. And nobody had told him ! As the thought recurred he began to feel ex- ceedingly wide awake; he was of no account at all in the family; even Muff and Tippet, the cats, knew more of what was going on. And thinking it over he shrank back unconsciously into the yet warm corner of the fireplace, where he was quite in shadow, while the great moonbeam that had waked him fell into the room and lay over the two tables and all the beautiful ob- jects glittering there, struck th6se stones sparkling like imperishable drops STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 337 of dew, that pearl white as concentrated moonshine itself, the blood-red onyxes, the turquoises, blue as Eleanor's eyes, struck and glorified all that store where the love was even more than the treasure. By the merest acci- dent, as Laddy looked along this display, his eye fell upon the mirror, and he saw the whole thing faintly repeated, with dim colors and dark flashes and the hoar frost of the moonshine. And in another moment he had seen some- thing else; he had seen the figure, the shadow, the vague outline of a man in the doorway! Laddy was a born fighter. To spring and grab the poker, and to confront the man, crouching, with the mouth of his bag just opened to sweep all the precious things into it, took him but an instant. "You clear out!" he cried, *'just the way you came! Or if I can't kill you myself, I'll make such a noise that somebody else will! There's the man in the house, and my father, and my big brothers, and" the fellow, who did not know Laddy had carefully closed the door leading from the stairway, lest his own proceedings should be Tieard, had turned and fled without waiting to hear the whole list of his enemies; the sight of Laddy, whose voice could raise [the house, was enemy enough. He tried to hit Laddy a clip first, but Laddy. dodged it and followed liim, brandishing his poker with one hand, and tucking up his little night- gown with the other, and putting down and hasping after him the window through which the burglar leaped. Nobody ever felt more like a man than Laddy did at that moment. The "bed-rooms were quite remote, the inner hall door was closed, and people were tired and sleeping soundly, so nobody had heard him, or, if any one had heard, it was thought he was talking in his sleep, and thus he alone and by himself liad put a house-breaker to flight! He had put a house-breaker to flight, and yet his father would not let him have an air-gun! He went back to the place of the presents, and there they still shone as calmly as if nobody had just tried to sweep them into a bag. Somebody would be trying again ; it would never be given up so. He would wait a while, and see what would happen. What a very imprudent thing it was, after all, to leave such valuables unguarded in this way, thought Laddy, as he again surveyed them all. What if somebody had stolen them; it would have been a pretty how d 'you do! People as thoughtless and careless as ^this really deserved to lose. But how that man ran just fluking! And Laddy doubled up with silent laughter at the recollection. And, meanwhile, across all these reflections and this laugh- ing, an awful shadow was stalking, for Laddy , still looking around, was slowly coming to a realizing sense of the fact that there was no bicycle anywhere leaning up against the wall for him! No ; no bicycle. After all that he had hinted and spoken outright, and 338 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. even begged no bicycle. And then he grew hot all over, and very angry. He had never known what it was before to be very angry, it seemed He could not have told you whether it was a minute or an hour he stood there and ground his teeth, but when he saw more clearly, his mental articulation was repeating the last words he had distinctly thought, without acknowledg- ing the reason of his anger even in his inner consciousness. Certainly people as careless as this deserved to lose. What if anybody and then an idea struck Laddy what if anybody gave this family a scare, and made them think they had lost their Christmasing I For his part he had lost all the Christmasing he cared for. With Laddy a thing was no sooner said than done. There was still five or ten minutes of good light from the moon. He remembered that one of the old-fashioned white dado panels in the side of the chimney. place was a closet opening with a sunken ring, where a hearth-brush and kindlings were once kept, although disused now. He went and pulled at the ring. It was so long since it had been opened that it stuck. He took the new silver paper- knife that was to be papa's to morrow, but which, in Laddy 's mind, was nobody's just yet, and ran it along the cracks and pulled again. It opened with such force as to throw him on his back, although, owing to the spring in its hinge, it immediately shut again. But it had disclosed the most charm- ing hiding-place in the world all one side of it shelves made by the receding brick-work of the chimney-pier. Laddy did not lose a moment in hesitation, but setting it open again, he was scarcely longer than it takes to tell of it in transferring to this receptacle every article from the two tables, and every stocking from the mantel, woefully disturbed the while lest the clinking of sil- ver and gold and glass and china should betray him. At last it was done, although not quite to his satisfaction. He was afraid lest a scrap of lace, a thread of Kensington work, should protrude and tell the secret; the last ray of the moon had gone, and in the gloom he had to fee? rather than see. He got farther into the closet than he knew, in arranging matters, and then his movement happening to push away the little prop that had kept the door open, it swung together, and shut him in with all the hidden gear and the dark. For a moment Laddy felt as if there was no heart in his body. He groped about, hardly daring to move lest he should break something, and fumbled all over the place. There was no handle on the inside of that door, as the case is with most closets, and there it was plain he must stay till he was let out unless he hallooed. Should he halloo? What a time it would make if he did! Father and mother and the big boys and the little girls would all come rushing down it STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 339 would take more than his hallooing to get the big girls out of bed and maybe great.grandmother would have a fit and then, besides, everybody would be sick and cross to-morrow. No, he would wait a little while and see what would happen. Perhaps Johnny or Tom would be the first to come in in the morning, and could let him out, and they would enjoy the joke together and creep back to bed. So thinking, Laddy laid his hands on the driving-blanket for his father, and wrapped it round himself, for it was none too warm In that closet which, besides its other uses, had been part of an old cellar ventilating-flue. A fresh sense of injury in relation to the bicycle overcame him, as he folded the blanket his father's pleasure was provided for. And then he chuckled to think how mad the folks would be in the morning'. But it would do them good. They wouldn't leave diamonds and pearls, and bonds and sealskins and purses of money round in that manner again, with burglars prowling about the house! He rolled up his eyes in a little sanctimonious virtue, thinking of the lesson he was giving his elders, and saw something overhead shining brighter than Sophia's diamonds a star, like an immense jewel on the deep dark-blue velvet of the bit of sky above him, and then he realized that the place, running up in a hollow shaft beside the chimney to its top, was open to all the winter night, let the opening be ever so narrow, and he grew, perhaps, sixty degrees colder in a second. Goodness, how cold he was-. His teeth began to chatter, he felt his throat tickling, his head stuffing, his back aching, and he was confident he would have a lung fever before day- break. He put his bare feet against the chimney bricks; to be sure there was some warmth in those but what was that in a place open to all out- doors? For some of the top bricks had fallen, weathering to storms of half a century, and made the hole larger than that crack through which the draught originally whistled. And what if it should begin to rain or snow! Laddy, in his mind's eye, was already buried in a snow-drift, and he began to think that he had better make a noise about it. He was, perhaps, to be suffocated there in a drift that no St. Bernard dogs would ever find, nobody would ever know anything about it, and his mother would miss him in the morning he was just on the edge of tears and cries. But before the tears could gather and fall, a new thought flashed over Laddy. What had he done ? He had taken all those objects of value and made away with them. That was what he had done, and what anybody would say he had done. What difference, to all appearance, would there seem to be be- tween him and that other house-breaker? What if they should hold mm to be a thief? The awful thought made his pulse stop, and his feet turn icy cold. 340 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. The very hair on his head began slowly to rise as he pictured the scene to himself, when his father should take him by the shoulder and wheel him about to look in his face; when the constable should spring the handcuffs round his wrists, and march him down to the police court with a crowd of hooting boys following and there the terrible old judge would be sitting in his chair! Laddy knew just how that court-room looked ; for once, when the boys had been nutting in old Jacques's pasture, old Jacques had surprised them, and driven them all into town in front of him like a flock of sheep, and walked them up into the court-room, seated them on a bench, and left them there, cooling their heels, as he had called it, and gradually finding out, through their sobs, and gulps, and lamentations, that that was the end of it. But remembering his sensations of shame and horror then, Laddy had never been able to think of the place since without a shudder. And now if he were to be taken there in earnest for here he was, with all his plunder about him, and of course his father, never dreaming that his