"THIRTEEN" 
 
 BARTON Ot AYLESWOHTH

 
 "THIRTEEN" 
 
 AND TWELVE OTHERS 
 
 FROM THE ADIRONDACKS AND ELSEWHERE. 
 
 BARTON O. AYLESWORTH. 
 
 ST. Louis : 
 CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 
 1892.
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY 
 
 CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY.
 
 THIS little volume is faithfully inscribed to 
 the Students and Faculty of Drake University, 
 whose loyalty and efficiency have made my duties 
 the most pleasant of my life. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 DRAKE UNIVERSITY, 
 Dts Moines, Jov;a. 
 
 2061806
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 I. "THIRTEEN." . . . . .9 
 
 II. THE FAIRIES AT Au SABLE CHASM. . . 38 
 
 III. MAIDEN ROCK. ..... 50 
 
 IV. A WOMAN? 83 
 
 V. A DREAM. . . . ' . . .110 
 
 VI. JIM'S VICT'RY 120 
 
 VII. "AUNT MODGIE." . . . .134 
 
 VIII. JOHN BROWN. (A Poem.) . . . .147 
 
 IX. A DOUBLE REVELATION. .... 148 
 
 X. A CHRISTMAS STORY. ..... 196 
 
 XI. ODUNA. 207 
 
 XII. "WHERE THERE is LIFE THERE is HOPE."(?) . 218 
 
 XIII. A SOUL'S RESURRECTION. 235
 
 Braving the Pagan superstition that Thirteen is an unlucky 
 number, I send this hopeful little fraternity out upon its mis- 
 sion. If it shall succeed in annoying some and cheering others, 
 many more of the latter than of the former, I trust it will 
 have done its duty and served its whole purpose. 
 
 While the bee is capable of stinging, it also has the instinct 
 of honey-making. Its saccharine processes have much to do 
 with flowers.
 
 " THIRTEEN " AND TWELVE OTHERS. 
 
 " THIRTEEN." 
 
 " THIS will never do," cried Mrs. Mannell. 
 
 " What is wrong ? " exclaimed Judge Bryan. 
 
 " There are only thirteen at the table, and I am 
 sure I am not ready to be called home, either on 
 earth or to glory." 
 
 "Well," said Mr. Mannell, "there is no Judas 
 to put out, shall we call in the maid ? " 
 
 " That would at least be fulfilling the scriptural 
 injunction," urged the Rev. Barton, " to go into 
 the by-ways and hedges and compel them to 
 come in." 
 
 "If only Mr. Andrews had come back; the 
 ' meountins ' must have an uncommon fascination 
 for him. But, then, we ought to have known 
 better than to have fourteen in camp ; somebody 
 is sure to be absent from every meal." 
 
 "I move you that all the ill-luck of each day be 
 ordered upon the absent member," said Mr. Street, 
 who, being a retired railroad official, knew how to 
 punish the careless. 
 
 (9)
 
 10 "THIRTEEN." 
 
 "No, no; he will have enough bad luck in miss- 
 ing his rations of pork and beans," exclaimed one 
 of the ladies. 
 
 " And you forget," said Mrs. Andrews, " that in 
 this case I, as one of the thirteen, should be afflicted 
 if anything befall my absent husband ; so we 
 should not escape after all." 
 
 "As this is to be an occasion of radical mo- 
 tions," said the Judge, taking a radish delicately 
 between his thumb and finger, "I move that we 
 conduct ourselves as belonging to an enlightened 
 age, eschew old women's fables, and possess our 
 souls in peace. Of course none of us thinks that 
 if we thirteen sit at meat to-night, any law of 
 nature or grace will be broken on account of the 
 number of the company. Hence no ill can befall 
 us from that source." 
 
 "The Judge has spoken wisely, as usual," re- 
 marked the Minister. " Nature is too large, and 
 God too unchanging to permit any whim or acci- 
 dent of our little lives to alter the procession of 
 His plans." 
 
 " Well, it looks to me just like flying into the 
 face of Providence," whispered a pious little soul 
 to her neighbor. 
 
 " Why not into His arms just as well ? " was the 
 reply. 
 
 " It may be true," said Mr. Merritt, " that thir- 
 teen per cent, of the race are traitors, but it does
 
 " THIRTEEN." 11 
 
 not follow that there must be a Judas in every 
 group of thirteen." 
 
 "That's a business man's view of the matter, 
 and quite sensible ; " said Mrs. Truner, whose 
 knowledge of affairs as well as books was rare. 
 
 "All this assumed or real fear of warnings, 
 signs, and dreams arises from a false notion of 
 the Deity and His government," broke in Rev. 
 Barton. "From some source our slavish minds 
 got the idea that God was doing a small barter 
 business with us, taking our prayers and giving 
 us rods in return ; but, that he was kind enough 
 to make a dead clock strike, or an owl hoot, a few 
 hours before the calamity came, that we might 
 have a slight forewarning for penitence. A narrow 
 notion of God, and it has kept the concepts of men 
 small and contracted, and will, until there is a 
 strike for truth." 
 
 "I don't see but that these delicacies taste just 
 as well as if there were a score here," said the 
 Judge. " It is a matter of conscience as to our 
 inner happiness, and a matter of physical law as 
 to our outer comfort. I do not mean to say, ' Let 
 us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die ; ' 
 that is still worse than Paganism. Rather, that 
 we should obey the ' Thou oughtest ' of the Soul, 
 and nature's laws as far as we are able. Then 
 thirteen or thirty, the results will be the same." 
 
 " Thirteen men on a jury are sometimes vexing, 
 are they not, Judge?"
 
 12 " THIRTEEN." 
 
 " What do you mean, Mr. Street? " 
 
 "I mean the twelve jurymen and the winning 
 attorney." 
 
 "Not so vexing as when there are fourteen of us." 
 
 " Good ! the Judge has dealt with wits so long 
 he knows how to keep his own." 
 
 " Thanks, Sir Preacher ; allow me to return by 
 saying that you often give yours away." 
 
 " You are mistaken ; I draw my salary regularly, 
 even through a summer vacation." 
 
 "Ah! then that accounts for your not being 
 orthodox. It is rank heresv for a preacher to 
 receive his salary." 
 
 "A heresy for which he is not likely to be 
 burned unless he shouldn't spend it well." 
 
 "Keep those two gentlemen out of Hell, Mrs. 
 Mannell." 
 
 " I will ; " refilling their glasses with ice water. 
 
 " The part of Lazarus ? " 
 
 " Come, come ; the conversation is entirely too 
 religious for me," protested Mr. Mannell, whose 
 chief occupation was to convince country mer- 
 chants that the universe swings around the jobbing 
 house of Jewell & Company. 
 
 " I have a suggestion," quietly interrupted Mrs. 
 McLaylin, who thought a vast deal more than she 
 said. " Let us keep strict account, each one for 
 himself, during our first week in the Adirondacks, 
 and note whatever of evil or good befalls ; then 
 call an Anti-superstition convention here in Camp
 
 " THIRTEEN." 13 
 
 Flume, one week from last night. Let that for- 
 ever decide it." 
 
 "Agreed," assented all except the pious little 
 woman, who protested : " Let the week begin with 
 to-day ; you forget yesterday was Friday." 
 
 " Good ! " roared the gentlemen. 
 
 " I never could understand," mused the Minister, 
 "why any Christian should be afraid of Friday, 
 since it is such a significant day in his faith. It 
 seems to me that everything great, everything 
 involving human life and human love, should 
 begin on this crucifixion day, if days are to be 
 marked at all. Friday should be my wedding- 
 day if it were to do over again. I wish I had been 
 born on Friday." 
 
 " Oh, dear, if I can only keep those home-sick 
 whip-poor-wills quiet to-night ! If I don't you 
 must please count me out, for I just can't stand it; 
 something will happen." 
 
 " How would it do, Mrs. Fearling, to put cotton 
 in your ears ? I suppose if you didn't hear them, 
 nothing could happen.' 7 
 
 "I don't know, I'm sure." 
 
 "I want to add a suggestion to yours, Mrs. 
 McLaylin." 
 
 " Do so, Judge." 
 
 "It is this: that none of us permits a single 
 action to be governed by superstition, old or new, 
 during this week." 
 
 " With a forfeit if one forget ? "
 
 14 " THIRTEEN." 
 
 " Yes ; everyone who is caught, or catches him- 
 self, so governed, or about to be so governed, shall 
 pay one dollar into the summer's reading fund." 
 
 "Please leave me out," sighed Mrs. Fearling 
 again. "It would break me up ; I haven't money 
 enough now to last until Mr. Fearling comes if 
 he comes at all, and I just know he won't; some- 
 thing will be sure to happen. He had to go back 
 twice the day we started to the train ; I wanted 
 him to walk backwards to the house, but " 
 
 " There's the first dollar, Mrs. Fearling." 
 
 "First dollar? From me? How do you make 
 that out ? I'm sure " 
 
 " How could Mr. Fearling's going back affect his 
 future conduct ? " 
 
 " Why, don't you see, Judge," said Mr. Street, 
 "a man so forgetful as that could easily forget 
 he had a wife at all. And more than likely when 
 Mrs. Fearling gets home, she will find her place 
 taken by a younger and handsomer woman if 
 that be possible." 
 
 " You brute." 
 
 "Et tu brute?" 
 
 " Slang is worse than superstition." 
 
 " Slang? That is Latin, the best of old Roman 
 pronunciation." 
 
 "Well, how shall we put in the day? The 
 Judge and the Preacher will follow the shades of 
 Walton. The ladies are going to the Flume for a
 
 "THIRTEEN." 15 
 
 little sketching and climbing, with the children." 
 
 " I don't know whether to try the rod to-day or 
 not," replied the Judge. " I heard the cry of a loon 
 last night, and they say trout won't bite " 
 
 " Hold ! there, my Arbiter of Justice," shouted 
 Mr. Merritt. " A dollar, please. What a weak 
 race we are to let these Pagan notions control us, 
 or to listen to old women's fables ! What has the 
 cry of a loon to do with trout biting? The dollar 
 biter is bit." 
 
 " Gentlemen, if you will be quiet a minute, I 
 shall convince you of your error. It is not super- 
 stition. It is a scientific fact that the two 
 phenomena are always found together." 
 
 " So, too, with the ground-hog's shadow and the 
 late spring," said one. 
 
 "The four-leaf clover and fortune," said an- 
 other. 
 
 " Horseshoes and witches," cried a third. 
 
 "And rain on Easter." 
 
 " Well, I have noticed time and again," 
 eagerly exclaimed Mrs. Fearling, " that if it rains 
 on Easter " 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! The Judge and Mrs. Fearling are 
 two of a kind." 
 
 " Come, Judge, fork over the fine, you are in the 
 habit of imposing them, try paying one." 
 
 "I still insist that I am right, scientific " 
 
 "So does Mrs. Fearling. You drink from the 
 same fountain."
 
 16 " THIRTEEN." 
 
 " Say no more, gentlemen ; here is the dollar." 
 
 "Who shall be our treasurer? The prospects 
 are that it will be a very responsible office." 
 
 " I move the Judge be given the office ; it will be 
 convenient for him, especially if he wishes to make 
 himself a loan to meet the demands of the old 
 women's fables." 
 
 " How far are we from the Canada line ? " 
 
 " If you gentlemen would read, you would know 
 that that joke is antique since the new extradition 
 laws. Now let us be honest in the day's record." 
 
 " Certainly, Judge, unless we should run across 
 some scientific correlation." 
 
 "That must do, or I will pole the jury," swing- 
 ing his fishing rod high above their heads. 
 
 There was little in the vicinity of Camp Flume 
 to encourage superstition ; but very much to lift 
 the mind into a broader view of nature, and of the 
 Absolute. It was in the midst of the beautiful 
 Keene Valley, said to be the rarest mountain- 
 guarded rest-spot in America. Near by are 
 double-helrneted Giant, nearly four thousand 
 feet above the level of the sea ; Noon-Mark ; Dix, 
 rising in its splendor of five thousand feet ; while 
 to the right and far away, old Marcy, vast and 
 consummate in its strength, toys with the incon- 
 stant clouds in stately indifference. 
 
 The Au Sable river from the south runs its 
 pilgrimage the winding length of the maple and 
 elm shaded valley, hurrying on to meet its bride
 
 " THIRTEEN." 17 
 
 from the Indian Pass, journeying soon together 
 through Au Sable Chasm to the lake. 
 
 Flume Camp gets its name from an audacious 
 little sprite of a brook, scampering down its narrow 
 way to the river. Sometimes a hanging thread, 
 again a little sun-shot pool, and then a loiterer, 
 climbing by easy stages carefully down its rock- 
 ladder, between straight stone walls a hundred 
 feet high, covered an inch or more with moss. 
 
 A little, tiny, daring thing, braving giant rocks 
 and forbidding caverns; singing, careless, free, 
 wayward but winning, it never fails in obedience 
 to its Master. 
 
 A child in Nature. A wee part of the great, 
 stupendous whole, the Universe, which clashes, 
 and dashes, and rushes, or, is dead calm to our 
 senses ; but forever and forever yielding to One, 
 absolutely yielding, every instant. 
 
 Whether the mocking brook, or the reason which 
 measures, admires or reproduces it in art, all is in 
 the Process, all in the deeper Plan, of the Universal 
 Reason. 
 
 To thoughtful minds, mountain ranges are not 
 productive of little gods. All nature becomes 
 only one vast kissed face under the fall lips and 
 inspiring breath of the Infinite. 
 
 No fretful cringing of nerves, no disordered 
 functions of the body, not even deranged functions 
 of the brain, can long take the place of reverent 
 faith there.
 
 18 " THIRTEEN." 
 
 Nature may be crystallized Evolution. Humanity 
 has a better fate. 
 
 All is well. 
 
 The God of nature and of grace is One the gods 
 of clod-fashioned fancy are not at all. 
 
 What does one care, for the attic of religious 
 rubbish, the debris of the effete ages, when he 
 stands on Mount Marcy's Summit, in the revealing 
 sunlight against the cobalt blue of the hill-banded 
 horizon? 
 
 Little fears and puny dogmas snap under his 
 feet like the century-dead pine twigs, as he climbs. 
 Little forms of worship slip from off his soul 
 like the moss on the damp logs, as he marches 
 over their prostrate lengths. 
 
 Nature is great. Man, the fulfillment and fur- 
 ther prophecy of nature is still greater. But He, 
 the Absolute, the Source and End of both, is 
 Greatest ! 
 
 "Here comes Mr. Andrews now; we must in- 
 itiate him into the new society. " 
 
 " Keep quiet, " said the Judge, " and let him fall 
 into the pit. " 
 
 " Oh, he is too sensible to weave any dead 
 paganism into his thoughts. " 
 
 "Thank you," rather sharply responded the 
 Judge. 
 
 "But I wonder what's the matter. See how fast 
 he walks. Hello, Jonathan !"
 
 " THIRTEEN." 19 
 
 " Where's Martha ? " his wife. 
 
 " She is in the tent." 
 
 "And all right?" 
 
 " Certainly, what's wrong ? You act as though 
 you had seen a ghost." 
 
 " I came frightfully near it. I went to sleep up 
 by the Flume while I was writing, and talk about 
 dreams, gentlemen ! I can't say I believe in them." 
 
 " Belshazzar did, " said the Judge gravely, nudg- 
 ing Street. 
 
 " I thought I heard my name called three times 
 distinctly." 
 
 "That was just as we began to eat, thirteen of 
 us. I told you something terrible would happen," 
 soberly interrupted Mrs. Fearling. 
 
 " Hush !" whispered the Judge close at her ear. 
 
 " And then I saw Martha fall from the high cliffs 
 just above me. I jumped to catch her, and blame 
 me if I didn't come confounded near falling into 
 the gorge before I could get awake. It may be 
 superstition, friends, but I ran nearly all the way 
 down here ; I never had such a shock in my life. If 
 there had been anything wrong with Martha, I 
 never should have scoffed at dreamers again. " 
 
 "But since there isn't anything wrong," said the 
 Judge, eager to avenge himself, "it will cost you 
 just one dollar. I am the treasurer, and I demand 
 payment." 
 
 " A dollar for what ? " 
 
 " For admission into the Anti-superstition Amal-
 
 20- "THIRTEEN." 
 
 gamated Association, assembled for the summer at 
 Camp Flume, Essex county, New York, " 
 
 Then the whole affair was gone over in minutia. 
 In his glee over the hallucination of his dream, 
 Mr. Andrews handed the treasurer a two-dollar 
 note. " Keep the change. One payment in ad- 
 vance. " 
 
 The camp broke up for the day in high spirits. 
 Soon Judge Bryan and Mr. Barton were wending 
 their way to the nearest rapids to throw for trout. 
 
 "Isn't there danger, Barton, of carrying this 
 business too far? See little Mrs. Fearling; al- 
 ready she thinks we are worse than Infidels. And 
 are we not on the road to undermine all faith, 
 amusing as our little contract seems ? " 
 
 " Some kinds of faith need undermining, or, 
 rather, need showing up, that men may see that 
 there is nothing beneath them to be mined away. 
 One of them is this man-idea of God. An angry 
 God, a fancy tickled God, an impatient, quick- 
 tempered, son-murdering, and race-damning God ! 
 I tell you, Judge, my soul revolts at the shameful 
 turning of Hebrew poetry, child-symbols, into the 
 religious realism of the nineteenth century. We 
 have gone mad dogmatizing, we Protestants. It is 
 time for a new Protestantism. It is coming. Not 
 led by the priests this time, but by the people. 
 We have attempted to put into human concept 
 and speech the expressionless idea of God His 
 Attributes and Activities. We have dogmatized
 
 " THIRTEEN." 21 
 
 the Son, the Holy Spirit, the Incarnation, and the 
 Atonement, until it is a wonder there is a worship- 
 er in all the world. The makers of dogmas may 
 have had some larger and unexpressed concepts 
 back of their creeds, but the masses of the people 
 possess only the form. The Roman Catholic idea, 
 originally, was to have the people see God through 
 images, but the untaught masses persist in seeing 
 God in the image. Protestantism has not done 
 much better ^until recently. Just now the cries of 
 the people for bread instead of stones, and above 
 all, the creedless Christian Endeavor movement, 
 are hopeful signs. It may all have been a part of 
 the mind's Evolution towards the true God idea." 
 "I think so, and we ought to be charitable." 
 " True, if being charitable does not also mean 
 being blindly contented. Did it ever strike you 
 as peculiar that Jesus always spoke of His Father 
 as Love an emotion ? Indeed his oneness with the 
 Father lay chiefly in that he was the manifesta- 
 tion of that Love; its image, as it were. Necessarily 
 God is more than that. For above all real emotion 
 must be thought. As absolute as is God's Love 
 must be also his Intelligence. And when one has 
 thought and emotion he will unqualifiedly have 
 Will, action. 
 
 " The stir of the nations just now is proof, in addi- 
 tion to the activity of Nature for so many seons, 
 that God is the Absolute Personality, combining 
 these three elements in Infinity. There is no per-
 
 22 "THIRTEEN." 
 
 sonality without them. What deeper personality 
 can be conceived ? Why insist, then, that God's 
 personality goes beyond these, when it cannot ? If 
 their compound in Man is beyond comprehension, 
 surely much more so in the Eternal. With me, 
 these elements of myself are a matter of self- 
 consciousness. And also, chief of all, their exist- 
 ence in the selfhood of God is a matter of con- 
 sciousness in me, His offspring. Revelation, and 
 design in Nature may confirm it and give it di- 
 rection, they cannot prove it. Kant said truly: 
 'It is not certain, (or demonstrable) that there is a 
 
 "That gives me a new idea. I have long seen 
 that the law of our land is meant to be the mani- 
 festation of the three-fold personality of the peo- 
 ple, but I never applied it to theology. The law 
 of God's processes in the physical realm and in 
 mind, is the manifestation of his Personality." 
 
 "The Greeks were right. God is Immanent. 
 Not as a blind force, but as Intellectual, Emotion- 
 al and Actual Force. What a beautiful picture 
 Jesus drew for his disciples of this great fact! 
 * Not a sparrow falleth ; ' ' Every hair of your head 
 is numbered. ' And again, when he soothed an- 
 gry Galilee, loosened nature's grip from off 
 the very body of Lazarus, and blighted with the 
 lightning of his eye the barren fig tree. " 
 
 " What, then, is the true relation of the indi- 
 vidual to God?"
 
 " THIBTEEN." 23 
 
 " To get his thought, emotion, and willed ac- 
 tivity as nearly as possible into line with God's, 
 so far as God has revealed them relative to hu- 
 man life." 
 
 " The incidents of nature, pain and death, are 
 not evils to him, then, you mean ? " 
 
 "That is just it. We count them evil because 
 their issue lies out of the realm of the senses to 
 which we are such willing slaves. They are parts of 
 the whole plan. They come to all, and not to 
 each one a's an Independent Will may decree, 
 but to each as his contact with his environment 
 brings the condition of their coming. But if by 
 prayer and worship he shall have come up to 
 God in will, even these present ills may be 
 averted or turned into blessings." 
 
 "What a comforting faith !" 
 
 " What a true faith. All truth is comforting. 
 The promise of the Holy Spirit was comforting to 
 the disciples because it should ' guide them into 
 all truth.' What cared they for prisons or martyr- 
 dom ? God was at hand." 
 
 " You believe in the miracles of Christ, then ? " 
 
 "Surely. Why deny them ? What is a miracle ? " 
 
 " We ordinarily define it as a violation of natur- 
 al law by some higher power. " 
 
 " And ordinarily give both God and reason the 
 lie. The resurrection of Christ from the dead is 
 no more a miracle than a flash of electricity. 
 One we see every day, it has become ordinary;
 
 24 " THIS TEEN." 
 
 the other is not usual, but is extraordinary. We 
 can't comprehend, much less explain either. To 
 my mind they are both of one realm, and of one 
 spirit, and of one movement the one lower, the 
 other higher towards a common end. There can 
 be no greater miracle than life, whether in a 
 moss-leaf or in a risen Christ. 
 
 " We all believe in Evolution. It means passing 
 from lower to higher forms by resident forces the 
 resident Infinite force, I would add. If the human 
 condition has already attained the height of 
 Reason, Love and Worship (since nothing is ever 
 lost) what must be L its next condition ? But we 
 also believe that phenomena are not life, that the 
 essence of life is hidden. Even Spencer admits 
 that the atom is a mode of the Infinite. It it were 
 not for our physical senses there would be no uni- 
 verse as we now see it. If, then, true life is un- 
 derneath phenomena, and is not material at all 
 and every great science admits it why may 
 not the next condition of the soul, in its evolu- 
 tion, be super-sensible, wholly spiritual ? What 
 more does revelation reveal than science guess- 
 es?" 
 
 " I am charmed, my brother. Your logic is 
 invincible, even upon scientific hypotheses ; your 
 philosophy, saving and purifying." 
 
 " But, Judge, the speckled beauties are slipping 
 through these waters, and we shall go hence 
 empty-handed, loon or no loon. We must desist.
 
 " THIRTEEN." 25 
 
 But this fine air, this patient quiet, will be conduc- 
 ive to high thinking. And to-night we can string 
 our thoughts. May there be as many fish on 
 your string as thoughts." 
 
 " Thanks for your delicate compliment. There 
 will be if you angle for me." 
 
 " There, that will do." 
 
 " A telegram for Mrs. Fearling," announced the 
 bell boy from Flume Cottage. 
 
 "Oh dear ! ch dear ! it has come sooner than I ex- 
 pected. I knew all this wicked plotting against 
 Providence would have some fearful end." 
 
 "Now, Mrs. Fearling," said the Minister, in 
 whom, superstitiously, she had unbounded confi- 
 dence despite his heresies, " don't worry. It may 
 not be anything bad at all. Shall I read it for 
 you?" 
 
 " Yes ; wait till I get my camphor bottle." 
 
 The Judge wanted to add that since she had been 
 the only one to defend the "faith," surely no 
 calamity would come upon her. 
 
 " Come home as soon as you can. Nellie not 
 well. No danger. D. H. F. " 
 
 " Oh ! my dear girl ! to think I should have come 
 away and left you at such a time ! When can I 
 start? Nellie and her husband live at Chicago, 
 you know. Can I go to-night?" 
 
 When she was gone, a sober little spell came 
 upon the now definitely-fixed thirteen. It look-
 
 26 " THIRTEEN." 
 
 ed a little queer. Had misfortune already push- 
 ed open the door they had too rudely shut ? Was 
 this the grim mocking of Fate, thus suddenly to 
 imprison them within the horrible condition of 
 just thirteen and no more, until every moment 
 would be lived in expectation of some horror ? 
 
 Ten minutes passed without a word. Even 
 jocose Mr. Street was silent, and evidently far 
 away. 
 
 It was getting serious. Who would break the 
 spell ? 
 
 Had they not better abandon the project after 
 all? Was it wise to play with the invisible? 
 
 The Judge gravely rose from his chair, and 
 seizing a mountain-cap started around the room. 
 
 " As treasurer of the A. A. S. A. I demand 
 the forfeit of one dollar each. We agreed that 
 if any member should be caught, or should catch 
 himself, being governed " 
 
 " Enough, Judge, " said Mr. Street, "that's my 
 first, anyway; you are still one ahead of me." 
 
 There were twelve dollars in the cap when it 
 came to Mr. Barton. " We were to be honest. I 
 will be so. My only thought on the matter was, 
 that since Mrs. Fearling was the only one who 
 had not betrayed the * faith,' she was not Judas ; 
 and, therefore, though suddenly called from us, 
 no harm could befall her, though the whole thing 
 were true and not a delusion. I believe I am 
 free from superstition. Until I am convinced that
 
 "THIBTEEN," 27 
 
 I am not, I cannot contribute to the funds of 
 the society." 
 
 " Let him off, Judge. His funds are probably 
 low, and then, since Judas is still here the sus- 
 picion will arise that perhaps Mr. Barton is he." 
 
 "Friends, I feel that we must not again, even 
 in this innocent way, speak lightly of that most 
 solemn night and sacred company. It is revolt- 
 ing to think that an irreverent church has coupled 
 it with a senseless superstition, putting it in the 
 mouth of every profane wretch. But we, as the 
 guardians of the sepulchre and its associations, 
 must teach a better lesson. Avarice, theft, treach- 
 ery, will always be the black-visaged stranger, 
 traitor, at the Lord's Communion; while trust, 
 yearning, and crying, 'The Comforter, the Com- 
 forter!' with Peter, will always be the Lord's 
 most pleasing friend, supping with Him. We do 
 well to uncover the fallacy of such a supersti- 
 tion, but let us do it with reverent hands. I 
 know I have not offended you. " 
 
 "No, but have called us to ourselves," earn- 
 estly replied the Judge." 
 
 " Will you please come to order ? " said the 
 Judge, pounding the rough table with his fist. 
 It was the end of the seventh day at Camp 
 Flume. 
 
 " Do I hear a nomination for the chairman 
 of this Association ? "
 
 28 " THIRTEEN." 
 
 "I move that the Rev. Barton, the only non- 
 contributor to the forfeit fund, become its per- 
 manent chairman," said Mr. Merritt. When the 
 vote had been declared, Mr. Barton took the 
 chair with a soberness in marked contrast with 
 the general jollity. 
 
 " I feel that we are about to institute a great 
 movement. I have determined, through the agency 
 of the various Young People's Societies of the 
 church, to organize groups of thirteen all over 
 the land, to be known as Anti-superstition Com- 
 panies. Not to evangelize the world, not for 
 charities, but for the sole purpose of ridding 
 individual lives of the * fear ' of God and a false 
 notion of worship. I will not enter into details 
 to-night. Suffice it to say, that in my judgment, 
 it will do more to purify Romanism, Calvinism, 
 Christian Science and Spiritualism of their false- 
 hoods, and converge all great movements towards 
 one absolute God, one revealing Christ, and one 
 reverent life, than all the expositions ever written. 
 It runs deep. It touches many great dogmas : the 
 operation of the Holy Spirit, Conversion, Prayer, 
 the Devil, and even Hell itself. But to the pur- 
 pose of the evening. First we shall listen to the 
 report of the treasurer." 
 
 The Judge soberly arose, and adjusting his 
 spectacles, proceeded to read in deep chest-tones : 
 "Mr. Street, two fines. One for self-confessed 
 alarm over Mrs. Fearling's telegram, the other for
 
 " THIRTEEN." 29 
 
 a remark concerning a red-headed girl and a white 
 horse." 
 
 " I give notice here of protest against the second 
 item," shouted Mr. Street, " on the ground of its 
 being irrelevant, immaterial and irreligious." 
 
 Mr. Street was called down by the chairman : 
 " The treasurer will proceed without further inter- 
 ruption." 
 
 "Mrs. Truner, three fines. One for telegram, 
 another for an incautious remark about spilled 
 salt, and the third for asking the treasurer to make 
 a wish over the new moon. Mrs. Mannell, one 
 for telegram, the other for moving away from, a 
 ' death-tick ' in the west door-post of Camp 
 Flume." 
 
 But we need not follow the list of fines 
 further. They were nearly all of a humorous na- 
 ture, closing with the Judge's three, the loon, the 
 telegram, and a proposed " philopena " with Mrs. 
 Merritt. There were thirty-six dollars in the 
 treasury. Twenty would be sufficient for the 
 summer reading supply. It was voted to hand 
 over the remainder to the chairman as a corre- 
 spondence fund in the organization of the new or- 
 der. 
 
 Following are a few of the reports of the week's 
 good and ill luck : 
 
 Mr. Street's : "Haven't missed a meal." 
 
 " That has been our misfortune," cried several. 
 
 " Have climbed to the top of the Giant without
 
 30 " THIRTEEN." 
 
 a guide and returned alive. Have a deer's head, 
 as you all know, mounted ready for shipment 
 home." 
 
 " He bought it at the ' Adirondack House ' 
 for seventeen dollars," whispered the Judge to 
 Mrs. Truner. 
 
 "Have just had a letter from Charley, saying 
 the house had finished a deal netting ten thou- 
 sand dollars. Heard of a bear that was caught 
 several miles away from here last winter. Traced 
 the story and found, first, it had only left one 
 foot in the trap; and last, that the foot belonged 
 to a cat of the pole persuasion. No, I didn't buy 
 the trap. Havn't had a single mosquito bite. Con- 
 science has been clear, and, best of all, every mail 
 brings me word of the health and content of my 
 babies at home God bless them." 
 
 Mrs. Truner's report : " The pain in my head 
 is gone. I have lived more in seven days in 
 these mountains than in seven years before." 
 
 " That makes you six years my senior, doesn't 
 it, dear ? " said her husband. A look silenced him. 
 
 " I never knew how near one could get to 
 Heaven, and how much one could love friends un- 
 til now. It has been a sweet, tender, dream-like 
 week to me. If thirteen had nothing to do with 
 it, twelve of you had, I know." 
 
 " Count God," exclaimed Mr. Barton. 
 
 " I have, and as I never did before. If thir- 
 teen has affected me at all, it has been in the
 
 " THIRTEEN." 31 
 
 thought that, after all, when Judas repented, and 
 threw down the accursed silver, he may have 
 been forgiven by his Master and the number thus 
 kept unbroken, a symbol of God's mercy rather 
 than a mark of fear to little souls." 
 
 " I have long believed that, Mrs. Truner," again 
 exclaimed the Minister. 
 
 " I have written a little verse out of the full- 
 ness of my joy. I ask to have it made a part 
 of my report : 
 
 "Thy tears, oh son of perdition, may later quench 
 The fires of thy soul-losing love of place and pelf. 
 His blood may redder be than all thy scarlet sin, 
 His mercy deeper than thy hateful, traitrous self." 
 
 A solemn hush had come upon all from the ex- 
 perience of this true woman. 
 
 The Judge followed. " Camp Flume will long 
 be held sacred in my memory.' For some time 
 and this is my confession I have been hanging 
 between my old, blind faith and atheism. Strange 
 that, a teacher of discrimination in law, I had 
 never learned it in religion. My mind -turned 
 away from the idea of the absolute sovereignty 
 of Deity and the slavery of man. An avenging 
 God, taking his pleasure in over-riding weak 
 mortals upon whom the sin-taint of centuries 
 had come, leaving them all broken and help- 
 less, was the nightmare of my religious musings. 
 My own consciousness told me that God is, and 
 that the soul is of Him, and immortal; and that
 
 32 " THIETEEN." 
 
 the struggle after righteousness can be the only 
 bond between God and man. But I failed to discern 
 between my superstition and my rational faith. 
 I came near giving intuition and reason the lie, 
 denying myself, and crying out ' There is no God.' 
 Nothing at times but the haunting voice of my 
 youth, saying, ' The fool hath said in his heart, 
 There is no God,' kept me in my pride from this 
 open denial. Prayer only mocked me. I had 
 been taught to pray for physical blessings as 
 though they depended upon my praying. I now 
 know that prayer is a spiritual petitioning for 
 spiritual blessing, and has its answer not merely 
 in the changed mood of the petitioner, but in an 
 actual answering with spiritual strength and con- 
 solation from the Great Heart. I never was more 
 grateful than now, however, for physical blessings, 
 for existence in a -physical condition where law is 
 so unchanging, and bounty so unfailing, that indi- 
 vidual effort can secure daily bread ; gratitude 
 make it doubly sweet. 
 
 " I never understood Revelation. I know now that 
 God and immortality are in all human conscious- 
 ness ; that revelation comes, not as a mystifier, but 
 as a revealer of particular ends to be reached by 
 particular means. The Bible has ten-fold more 
 meaning to me now than it did. Authorship, in- 
 cidents and methods of inspiration, have no rela- 
 tive value compared with the Christo-centric 
 prophesy in the old, and fulfillment in the new
 
 " THIRTEEN." 33 
 
 Covenant. The Trinity as a psychological prob- 
 lem maddened me into sullenness at times. Now, 
 I apprehend the one God, Eternal, Everlasting; 
 Jesus his special exponent in the flesh, now be- 
 come King of kings, and Lord of lords ; and the 
 Holy Spirit the personified process of the Father's 
 saving activities. I am surprised to find how 
 clearly Jesus taught that the Holy Spirit's work 
 should be hidden from the senses of men, his 
 testimony to be made through chosen human 
 agents by mouth and pen. 
 
 " The whole field of Eschatology seems clear to 
 me now. Sin is the violation of known law. No 
 guilt attaches otherwise. There is one life, here 
 and hereafter. But where there is irresponsible 
 ignorance here, light will be given hereafter. 
 
 To know God is to love men in the sacrificial 
 spirit of Jesus Christ. I believe, therefore, the 
 Sermon on the Mount to be real, whereas I once 
 thought it merely ideal, figurative. I am con- 
 vinced that the ' meek shall inherit the earth.' 
 
 " I feel as though I had been the betrayer, but am 
 at last willing to confess my faith, even before the 
 priests, before whom I am resolved to fling the 
 purchase price of my denying kiss. Even this 
 thirteen of Camp Flume shall have no Judas but a 
 repentant one." 
 
 As this great man talked, the place seemed like 
 the Camp of Israel with the flaming Shekinah. 
 Fine in physique, noble of brow, strong in mental 
 
 3
 
 34 " THIRTEEN." 
 
 power, magnetic, fall of great impulses, renowned 
 on the bench for his justice, stern in his denuncia- 
 tion of the violation of law ; it is not surprising 
 that the little company felt in the presence of a 
 master, who had become as a little child. His 
 voice was tremulous, not with any maudlin senti- 
 ment, nor by overwrought nerves, but with an 
 emotion of worship, and a mental grasp of great 
 and high truths. He had traveled a long way 
 in seven days toward the very heart of the 
 Mighty ; and while it made him eloquent as 
 Paul, he had also become as tender as Mary. 
 No Damascus light had called him to Apostleship, 
 but the light that lighteth every man which 
 cometh into the world had been shining through 
 the shadows of his life all the week. As children 
 lean against their mother's knees, while she talks 
 of angels and of the Bethlehem cradle, so these 
 listened and watched, dim-eyed. They caught, 
 every one, some large measure of his spirit. The 
 mood divine was upon all. No little physical or 
 hysterical thrills were moving within them. No 
 boisterous manifestation without. They had seen, 
 often with disgust, the hypnotic influence of relig- 
 ious excitement ; but now they were the witnesses 
 of the power of the truth over mind. Gospel truth, 
 Holy Spirit-quickened truth. They remembered 
 how on Pentecost the spoken words of Peter con- 
 vinced and converted; how Paul preached to 
 Lydia, and Philip opened his mouth to the Ethio-
 
 " THIRTEEN." 35 
 
 plan's conversion. Always and everywhere men 
 have been truly converted only through the truth 
 put into the form of their mental conception. 
 
 " The truth shall make you free" 
 
 "Now, Mr. Barton," suggested some one, quietly. 
 
 "You have just had my report. Everything 
 else of the week is lost to me in that. I was never 
 so sure of God, so sure of revelation, so sure of 
 Eternal Mercy and Life as now. It has been a 
 blessed week, an upper-chamber company. Our 
 Lord and Master has not been far away.", 
 
 All was silence for many minutes. The cool 
 air of the mountain summits came softly down its 
 pine-fragrant way, soothing away doubt as a 
 mother's evening song, but astir with the breath 
 of God. 
 
 Away to the southwest, serene Hurricane leaned 
 against the star-flecked sky in repose, and with 
 an uplift of stature like one who, feeling his secu- 
 rity, stands poised between great dangers, confi- 
 dent of the issue. The lonely whip-poor-will told 
 his tale of faithful watch-care ; in it was no dismal 
 note of death- warning to these exalted souls think- 
 ing now of home, of burdens laid aside for this 
 brief rest. 
 
 Down the valley the northern lights were moving 
 in splendid panorama from east to west. Their 
 uplifted arms gave one the thought that some- 
 where a mighty chorus of voices was chanting 
 Nature's vespers. From the cottage near by a
 
 36 " THIRTEEN." 
 
 clear, soprano strain grew upon them by swelling 
 measures, until it awakened within them echoes 
 of some far-off, half-lost music of other years. 
 Sweeter, but stronger, it came : " Hope thou in 
 God." 
 
 Faint, delicate echoes came up from the brook- 
 riven flume below, like the accompaniment of 
 unseen singers. The spell could not be broken ; 
 they would not break it for golden wealth. The 
 heavenly portals were ajar. The earth- soul was 
 in tune with the Over-Soul. Their quiet rapture 
 and deepening resolution were a prayer, an all- 
 controlling prayer. In his wordless heart of 
 hearts, Mr. Barton was communing in marvelous 
 nearness with the Mountain Preacher of Judea. 
 If words could express his emotion they would 
 be: "Dear, wounded, despised, pierced Man of 
 Sorrow ; Lover of wounded, despised, pierced men 
 of griefs ; Walker of crested waves, and Healer 
 of sick souls; Thou earth-held Son of the Infinite 
 Love, Thou constant, tenderest, Only Brother of 
 my infirm and inconstant self; by Thy Spirit, by 
 Thy truth, Thyself lead me to think only God, to 
 feel only God, to will only God. Thus let the 
 Highest dwell in me, until that great day when I 
 shall dwell with Thee forever and forever. Through 
 me, come Thou, O Christ, into other helpless souls, 
 until the brotherhood of man shall be truly begun. 
 Amen and Amen." 
 
 The Judge was the first to break the silence.
 
 "THIRTEEN." 37 
 
 " How I wish Mrs. Fearling might be here to-night. 
 I believe this reverent spirit would seem infinitely 
 better to her than her small religious fears ; her 
 quakings and unrest." 
 
 "A telegram for the chairman of the A. Anti- 
 superstition Association. Charges paid," came 
 the shrill voice of the bell-boy, startling them half 
 out of their wits. 
 
 " What in the world can that mean ? " 
 
 " Who knows of our existence ? " 
 
 " Or our whereabouts ? " came from several 
 voices. 
 
 " Read it quick !" 
 
 " Give it to Mr. Barton." 
 
 " Nellie is the mother of fine twin boys. All 
 doing well. I am a convert. Will send two 
 dollars for the forfeit-fund by next mail. GRAND- 
 MA."
 
 THE FAIRIES AT AU SABLE CHASM. 
 
 " THE LODGE " was locked. It was dead of 
 night. But Au Sable Chasm was countlesbly 
 thronged. For the first time gay laughter could 
 be heard above the roar of the channel-plunged 
 torrent. 
 
 The moon for some time had been gleaming 
 down upon the long and sinuous water-flow wind- 
 ing along like some angry monster between 
 straight rock-walls, lifting sheer two hundred feet 
 their inlaid columns of inexpressible beauty. On 
 this particular night her path would long lie just 
 overhead, and the fairies might dare the darkness 
 of the chasm without risk to their supple limbs. 
 
 For many seasons they had heard of the wonders 
 of Au Sable. Boastful little sprites on Mount 
 Marcy and old White Face, and even the contented 
 little elves, centuries old, on Lake Placid, had 
 been vexed again and again as they overheard 
 thoughtless visitors extol the charms of the 
 gardened- Gorge miles away. 
 
 For days past tiny runners had been leaping 
 from rock to rock, swinging from pine to pine, 
 swimming brooks and lakes, until the news 
 
 (38)
 
 THE FAIEIES AT AU SABLE CHASM. 39 
 
 had gone like forest fire: "A midnight meet at 
 Au Sable." 
 
 From Marcy to Avalanche, from Mclntyre to 
 Seward across the Indian Pass, from Placid and 
 the Saranacs down to Hurricane, from Keene and 
 Pleasant Valleys, the energetic and thoroughly 
 excited little kings and their entire kingdoms were 
 prepared for flight, when the signal should burn on 
 Marcy's heights. 
 
 The Adirondacks were never so astir. It was 
 rumored that on this night the signal flames would 
 fly. The birds, frightened-eyed, were hushed all 
 day. Little children danced back and forth to 
 their mammas with the strangest puzzling ques- 
 tions. Even papas nodded at their pole's end, and 
 dreamed queer dreams of streams where the 
 trout always bite. ^ 
 
 Not a soul slept in all the Range when night 
 came on. Some said there was too much electric- 
 ity in the air, and that it would storm before 
 morning. Others danced like mad on the polished 
 floors of the great hotels. The babies kept their 
 wide-awake nurses running from parlor to parlor 
 for numberless good-night kisses from bright-eyed 
 mammas. 
 
 Just as the clock struck twelve every papa and 
 mamma yawned and lazily sought their beds, 
 while the sweet babies turned their faces to the 
 wall and slept sound and dreamless. The flames 
 on Marcy had kissed the moonbeams just at
 
 40 THE FAIBIES AT AU SABLE CHASM. 
 
 twelve with gay little quirks of half-strange em- 
 barrassment. 
 
 Like a rising, sun-smitten mist the invisible 
 populace of the Adirondacks from lake and moun- 
 tain swept up, and converged Eastward. Soon 
 vast Lake Champlain was seen asleep under the 
 watching thousand-eyed sky. It stirred gently in 
 faint ripples, like a babe smiling in its dreams, as 
 it felt the thrill of the oncoming host of fairies. 
 
 Swooping down at last, and settling in serried 
 ranks on poised wings, they hovered just below 
 the "Rainbow Falls," near the entrance of Au 
 Sable Chasm. 
 
 Thousands of human eyes have beamed with 
 the reflection of the tinted bows in the spray, seen 
 here in the bright sunlight. But never before had 
 moon-and-star-beam rainbows been seen by the 
 sharpest eyes. There they hung, ten thousand 
 times ten thousand, crossing and recrossing in 
 countless curves set in inimitable geometric de- 
 signs. The whir of wings after a moment's 
 silence was finely expressive of their pleased 
 astonishment. 
 
 Suddenly the after-silence was broken by a 
 sonorous, rotund voice calling above the waters. 
 At once they knew it to be their great Priest and 
 Prophet, who had been foremost in their new 
 venture upon undiscovered territory. They turned 
 with fixed attention, as was their wont when their 
 religious teacher spoke.
 
 THE FAIBIES AT AU SABLE CHASM. 41 
 
 He stood on the loftiest pinnacle of "Pulpit 
 Rock," just at the bend of the Gorge as one goes 
 down. A huge pile of layered granite overhangs 
 the foam here a fit place for elemental nature's 
 Priest to interpret her laws if He would. 
 
 But the power of the night and the scene were 
 upon this elfin prophet. He spoke of light and 
 truth ; that his people were Nature's highest 
 expression. He declared that music and pictures 
 and motion were personified in them. They must 
 make no discords, nor group into any ugly forms, 
 nor move out upon any unlighted lines. So what 
 had threatened to be a frenzied assault and 
 seizure, suddenly turned to an altar hour and 
 worship. 
 
 A chant followed. I wish you might have heard 
 it. All the songs of tho birds, all the hum of the 
 bees, all the murmur of waters, and the sighing of 
 winds were in it. Yes, and at its close, all the 
 thunder and swell of all the torrents, in all the 
 gorges, as it swung up and up to the stars, and to 
 the Fashioner of stars ! 
 
 Then slowly and reverently they began their 
 descent into the Chasm. Clinging to jutting 
 ledges, clasping bending ferns, drinking dew from 
 the thousand blue-bells, regardless of the iron rail 
 and path, they came to the very water's edge. 
 
 They stood in astonishment before the "Ele- 
 phant's Head," projecting from huge " Spit Rock." 
 The Gothic Mountain people declared that it
 
 42 THE FAIEIES AT AU SABLE CHASM. 
 
 belonged to the "Elephant's Body" of their 
 mountain, so plainly seen from Lake Placid, and 
 began to talk of gigantic schemes for its immedi- 
 ate removal. "The head and body must be put 
 together." 
 
 Still others gasped with delight in the dashing 
 spray, plunging back and forth in a whirlpool of 
 waters. 
 
 Many scanned the rocks for sign -boards to 
 catch the human idea of this unsurpassed beauty. 
 As they turned to the left they read: "Devil's 
 Oven," and " Hell Gate." They groaned with in- 
 dignation that anything so sublime should be 
 coupled with such repulsive and horrible notions. 
 Their religion was chiefly of heaven anyway. 
 They had heaven already, they said. Why think 
 of hell? They hated the Devil. They wanted 
 nothing whatever to do with him. 
 
 They instantly changed these offensive names 
 to "Elves' Cave," and " Moonbeam Pass," for just 
 then the moon hung directly over their heads so 
 that there was scarcely a shadow in the Gorge save 
 at the sharp corners here and there. But when, 
 leaping on, they saw "Jacob's Ladder " rising 
 straight and inviting out of the very water up to the 
 stars, step by step, their exultation knew no 
 bounds. They leaped across, they bounded up to 
 its very heights, singing their hallelujahs from 
 its moon-lit summit.
 
 THE FAIRIES AT AU SABLE CHASM. 43 
 
 Others kept on, walking on tiny rock-ways where 
 not even birds dared to perch. 
 
 The hallelujah chorus from the top of Jacob's 
 Ladder sent down showers of maple leaves upon 
 the now quieter waters. They were seized eager- 
 ly and made to serve as boats, guided with unerr- 
 ing skill. As the elves leaned over the boat- 
 edges they looked down into forty feet of dark, 
 shadowy water. But shot with moonbeams as it 
 was, their keen eyes saw to the very bottom, where 
 lay a wealth of stones, both as to color and form 
 never equaled in their most secret brooks on Marcy 
 and Hurricane. 
 
 Ten, twenty, and thirty feet apart, the great 
 colored walls rose until the sky seemed to rest 
 upon them. Seamed and rent and notched at 
 the curves like great wheels, now moss-covered, 
 now bare and smooth like marble, now hung with 
 ferns, and plants growing with iiower-cups down, 
 they were veritable hanging gardens. 
 
 The elves did well to re-name the Gorge 
 " Heaven's Shorter Path." 
 
 Above the clatter they heard once more the 
 prophet's voice. They hastened on, expecting 
 another surprise. Poised above one another's 
 heads until they formed a hollow dome, looking 
 down they saw the wonderful "Jacob's Well." 
 Into a little plateau of hard rock some water-spun 
 stone had ground out through the years when the 
 waters were higher than now, a resting place of
 
 44 THE FAIEIES AT AU SABLE CHASM. 
 
 concentric circles. It had rest, doubtless, only 
 when it was worn out. As the result, a perfect 
 stone well had been sunk thirty feet or more. In- 
 side it looked as though hugh stone rings had 
 been laid one upon another. 
 
 With solemn tone the prophet told them of 
 Jacob and the Egypt of the Sun-elves, until they 
 hung listening with bated breath. 
 
 Suddenly a belated firefly flashed in the great 
 side-depths of "Hyde's Cave," just across from 
 "Jacob's Well." Ten thousand sprites started 
 for its double entrance cut a hundred feet high. 
 They rolled round pebbles down the steep incline 
 and set the water quivering, tipping the tiny boats 
 from side to side. It was marvelous how these 
 boatmen shot the fiercest rapids with their bend- 
 ing leaves. Whirled about and under, they came 
 out only the fresher for their warm bath. 
 
 " Hide's Cave " they re-named " Lovers' Confes- 
 sional." Here, they said, lovers must separate at 
 the entrace, go within, and commune alone ; then 
 return, meet again, and confess every desire. 
 
 Returning to the opposite side they came sud- 
 denly upon " Smuggler's Pass." They shivered and 
 passed quickly by, but paused and appointed a 
 committee of one hundred to return, explore and 
 re-name. Observing so many notched, wheel-like 
 stones on either side of the defile, they reported 
 " the Cave of the Mills." It was accepted. 
 
 In a moment they were at the "Post Office" an
 
 THE FAIRIES AT AU SABLE CHASM. 45 
 
 overhanging, narrow room, cut into a hundred cell- 
 like boxes for honeyed letters. Instantly every elf 
 fell to writing on blades of grass and flower 
 leaves with colored bits of sand. Such mirth, such 
 rallying of contending parties over a race for the 
 largest number of letters ! Such comparing of 
 notes and whispered "quizzes" as made the Gorge 
 echo from " Pulpit " to " Table Rock.! " 
 
 Soon " Table Rock " was reached and proved a 
 delightful resting place. Just back of and be- 
 yond it lay the "Anvil," beneath whose shelter 
 a little booth had been built where " views " and 
 " soda pop " were sold to visitors at " reduced 
 rates." They did not need the views. Ten thou- 
 sand negatives had already been impressed upon 
 a thousand tiny kodaks' film. 
 
 But the " pop ! " The little elves from the 
 Lakes knew the pop of corks and-fizz of foam well 
 enough to look very wise. But how to get at it was 
 the question. As the first bottle of "strawberry" 
 lay on the bar it looked like a hugh cannon load- 
 ed and primed. A brave little Avalanche king 
 suggested that they fasten the wire to a nail and 
 then pry the bottle up until it should slip out and 
 let the cork fly. In a minute all was in readiness. 
 Hundreds gathered about to see the fun and to 
 cheer their hard-working little brothers. The bottle 
 had been severely shaken in the melee. When at 
 last it slipped its wire, out came the cork with a 
 thunderous report, knocking a hundred little men
 
 46 THE FAIRIES AT AU SABLE CHASM. 
 
 backward into the water, and sending the foaming 
 pop over ten times as many more. Then there were 
 cries of distress and fright, and shouts of laughter 
 and derision. A few were silent. They were pour- 
 ing the remainder of the contents into bluebell 
 cups, and with little gurgles of delight letting the 
 red juice run down their dry throats. 
 
 Even fairies learn by experience. So bottle af- 
 ter bottle was opened with the muzzle of the can- 
 non pointed towards the opposite shore. When 
 the empty bottles had been replaced in the ice- 
 chest they called for a dance upon the broad rock. 
 
 Behind the " Anvil " rose " Sentinel " and " Ca- 
 thedral Rocks " rounded columns straight from 
 water-edged base to tree-pinnacled point. In the 
 spaces between these they arranged the orchestra. 
 Tier above tier they sat, noisy, nervous, tuning, 
 turning their music to catch the moonlight. They 
 soon were swaying with the baton of the leader, 
 who stood bold and commanding on the top of the 
 " Anvil." 
 
 One had but to listen to know where Mozart, 
 Schumann and Chopin fonnd their themes. In 
 dreams the fairies had been their masters. But a 
 dream's interpretation is never all the dream was. 
 
 The half-crying, half- slumbering waltz ; the 
 bright, wakeful schottische, and the great, four- 
 square, solemn, stately march, sung their senses 
 away. In a dreamy maze of emotion they cele- 
 brated the finding of so marvelous a Palace.
 
 THE FAIRIES AT AU SABLE CHASM. 47 
 
 For already, as by one thought, it had been de- 
 termined to transfer the Supreme Throne from 
 Marcy to Au Sable. It needed now but the de- 
 cree of the Grand Council, and the sanction and 
 blessing of the Prophet Priest. 
 
 They stood looking off from the edge of " Table 
 Rock," wondering what lay beyond, but too ex- 
 hausted by the dance to climb further the rough 
 paths, while a ventursome little elf, exploring an 
 under-rock path, discovered the great boat which 
 has carried so many awe-spelled travelers down 
 the Gorge, shooting fretful rapids and plunging 
 over great wave-swells. But one word was needed. 
 The boat was instantly filled, hundreds clinging 
 to its sides. 
 
 I do not know what unseen guide kept them 
 off the rocks as they dashed madly on. We 
 know so little at best of life and its forces. But 
 harmlessly Nature led them through. They live 
 so close to her, she may be kinder to them than to 
 us. I know that neither lightning, nor flood, nor 
 wind has ever hurt one of them, while fire is 
 their panacea for all pain. Whereas, by our 
 rebellion against nature, we are torn and bruis- 
 ed and killed, they live on unscathed. Perchance 
 when the millennial age shall come, and the 
 New Jerusalem shall be let down out of heaven, 
 our spiritual bodies may realize this old earth 
 spiritualized a Paradise Regained. 
 
 .After the half-mile ride, over depths of water
 
 48 THE FAIRIES AT AU SABLE CHASM. 
 
 sixty feet, the cliffs growing lower, they landed 
 at last on a level plateau. With a shout and a 
 scramble they turned back over the hills until 
 they came to the great " Stairway," with its 
 foot at " Table Rock." Descending, they re- 
 assembled with one accord about the Highest, 
 as they name their Supreme Monarch. 
 
 The council had held its session here in their 
 absence. The decree was ready. These were 
 the words : " By decree of the Grand Council of 
 the elves of the Adirondacks we proclaim these 
 words, signed by the light of Serius and seal- 
 ed with the blood of the Hidden Altar. This 
 riven hill, with its living fountain, shall be and is 
 forever henceforth the sacred and inviolable dwell- 
 ing place of the Highest and His Court. Here pe- 
 titions shall be heard. Here justice declared and 
 mercy counseled. If there be strife between two, 
 here it shall melt into warm embrace. If black- 
 ness of mind, here shall be recreative light. If the 
 death-touch which comes only when one wishes 
 for what another has here, under due penitence, 
 it shall be removed. Every elf an elf, no more, 
 no less. Rulers and ruled alike. We rule for 
 Elfdom, you serve for Elfdom. One end the 
 happiness of all. It is done." 
 
 The Priest and Prophet standing on the crown 
 of " Cathedral Rock," two hundred feet above 
 them, enrapt in a soft but glowing light that seem- 
 ed to come from some single star (I wish I knew
 
 THE FAIRIES AT AU SABLE CHASM. 49 
 
 which one ; I should surely tell you), with uplifted 
 hands, seen by every eye and heard by every ear, 
 catching the exact pitch of the falling waters, in 
 musical cadences atune with the night and the 
 place, breathed down upon them his Amen and 
 Amen. 
 
 And thus the empty, unhallowed, Au Sable 
 Chasm, beautiful but soulless, came to be possess- 
 ed of the very heart of life. 
 
 And now every fern, every moss-leaf, every 
 fleck of spray, and every shadowy deep, the whole 
 length and depth of Au Sable is instinct with life 
 the breathing, pulsing, communing Soul of the 
 Adirondacks. 
 
 4
 
 MAIDEN ROCK. 
 
 THE point, as well as the place, of attack was 
 Maiden Rock. He had been premeditating it all 
 day. He did not want to seem abrupt, but in his 
 present mood nothing seemed precipitous. 
 
 She had been like flint to all his sparks thus 
 far. He wondered if there were any tinder about 
 her. 
 
 He must speak some time. The sooner well, 
 it might be for better, it might be for worse ; he 
 hoped it would be for both. 
 
 Surely if scenic properties could add anything to 
 his cause, the present moment could not be sur- 
 passed. Below them one hundred and thirty feet 
 lay Bouquet River. Just beyond, the famous 
 " Split Rock Falls " began its descent of one hun- 
 dred feet, down its rock-rough gorge channel. 
 
 On the edge of this very rock where they stood, 
 Eutoka, a jealousy-mad Indian maiden, years 
 ago, restless over her lover's unkept promise to 
 tryst with her at this romantic spot, had leaped 
 dumb and resolute into the shallow waters below. 
 Surely nature and romance were with him but 
 Fate? Well, a word, and Fate would be with 
 
 (50)
 
 MAIDEN BOCK. 51 
 
 him, too; but what? It was the uncertainty of 
 the issue that made him hesitate. 
 
 The "Hermit Guide" who presides over the 
 destinies of those who visit his Gorge, had shrewdly 
 stepped aside after relating the legend of the rock. 
 A confirmed old bachelor of nearly forty winters 
 summers would be better, since everything in the 
 Adirondacks is counted by summers yet he had 
 not forgotten how much more some minutes are to 
 some people than to others. He had at once 
 guessed the secret of the young man. He was not 
 so sure that the sweet-faced young girl had a 
 secret yet. 
 
 " What an odd genius the guide is." 
 
 The silence was too oppressive ; after waiting 
 several minutes she had decided to break it her- 
 self. Merlin Hall, her lover, had been afraid to 
 open his mouth for fear the first word would be 
 some kind of a blunder. This was a happy relief 
 for the moment. It gave him a decision, too. He 
 would wait now until Fate gave him a hint. He 
 would not hazard everything at a single venture. 
 
 He replied rather sarcastically : " If you have 
 reference to his dress and manner, I should say, 
 yes." 
 
 "But I don't. The idea of his building that 
 rustic pavilion back there in the woods. Why, it 
 is a perfect piece of art. Did you notice his 
 peculiar eyes ? "
 
 52 MAIDEN BOCK. 
 
 "No; I noticed the peculiar cut of his hair. 
 There wasn't any cut." 
 
 " Oh, didn't you see anything good about him ? 
 I should have thought his playing 'Home, Sweet 
 Home,' on the one string of his old violin would 
 have impressed you." 
 
 "Yes, that was rather a remarkable feat. You 
 noticed probably that he used his feet somewhat 
 in playing it." 
 
 " Oh, well, that is because he plays so much for 
 balls. You know he said that was his recrea- 
 tion." 
 
 "Yes, I should imagine that if he danced it 
 would be recreation, an all-four, bear-fashion 
 recreation." 
 
 " Come, you are getting positively gross." 
 
 " Well, who wouldn't ? Here in the face of 
 this white, tumbling water, and these jagged 
 rocks, yes, and perhaps in the presence of the 
 unhappy Eutoka, wooed, as it were, by nature, 
 you can talk of nothing but the guide." 
 
 " Well, let us change the subject then. Shall I 
 talk about about " 
 
 "Me. Talk about me. Can't you see, Bessie, 
 what must be so plainly before your eyes ? I I 
 fancy everyone else notices it, if you do not. Even 
 the guide has left us in the middle of his story. 
 I can forgive all his sins for that one righteous 
 act." 
 
 He had not waited very long for a "leading
 
 MAIDEN EOCK. 53 
 
 from Fate." Nor did he begin it himself very 
 gracefully. But he was an impetuous youth, 
 abounding in energy. He could never wait. He 
 had been born early in the sixties and was full 
 of that unspent bravery, and yearning desire for 
 action, which the mothers felt so keenly in the 
 long war days, when the fathers of even tiny babes 
 were on the distant field. Merlin liked nothing 
 better than leaping from rock to rock across some 
 dangerous mountain stream. He boasted that he 
 never fished, but preferred to hunt. He loved the 
 rush and noise of the chase and shot, but could not 
 endure the quiet of the ducking cork, even though 
 a speckled beauty were a possibility at the other 
 end of the line. He declared there was sure to be 
 one at the dry-end of it mosquitoes were his bete- 
 noirs. 
 
 Something of the heroism of this war spirit was 
 in his wooing just now. To wait quietly he could 
 not, no matter how often he might resolve upon it. 
 Better, like Eutoka, leap and have it done with, 
 than climb the hills and boat the lakes in endless 
 suspense. 
 
 To say that Bessie looked surprised would cer- 
 tainly not be extravagant. Girlish in her inno- 
 cence, though well-bred and cultivated, not only 
 in the fine arts, but having a fairly liberal educa- 
 tion as well, she had had no dreams as yet of love 
 by day. She had liked Merlin, since they had 
 met three weeks before on the steamer from West
 
 54 MAIDEN EOCK. 
 
 Port to Plattsburg by the charity of a common 
 friend who knew they had chosen the same route 
 for the summer. Bessie was with her brother, just 
 from Harvard, and a little older than herself. 
 Merlin was alone, resting up from his first long 
 season in the law, in which, by this same war 
 spirit, he had been phenomenally successful, 
 having tried and gained his lirst case in the Su- 
 preme Court of Iowa against great legal odds. 
 The Iowa State Recorder had spoken of him as " one 
 of the most audaciously promising young men at 
 the Iowa bar." 
 
 Bessie had liked him because he could tell her 
 something of everything they saw ; he was exceed- 
 ingly entertaining, particularly in repartee ; and, 
 best of all, was a lover and a student of good 
 books. 
 
 Their very first conversation had plunged into 
 American literature. They had talked of Aldrich, 
 Stedman, and Gilder until the twilight chill drove 
 them from the upper deck. By some good fortune 
 they had both been reading Gilder's best volume of 
 poems, The Celestial Fire, and^were both fascinated 
 by its perfect mechanism and pure-souled themes. 
 Merlin confirmed her faith in Gilder's integrity by 
 telling her of his acceptance of a story for The 
 Century, and the payment of a large sum for it, 
 but its subsequent return to the author on account 
 of a semi-Mexican abandon on the part of the 
 hero, which at first had not struck the editor as
 
 MAIDEN BOCK. 55 
 
 being so objectionable as upon a second reading. It 
 afterwards appeared in another leading magazine. 
 There were presumably two checks. 
 
 She startled him at the close of the conversation, 
 as they arose, by referring to The Century as the 
 simultaneous prophecy and fulfillment of this 
 century of American literature and art. He had 
 not given her credit for so great discernment. His 
 respect for her increased from that moment. By 
 easy stages their friendship grew until with her it 
 had come to be a persistent belief in his honorable- 
 ness, a recreative delight in his accomplishments, 
 and a sisterly desire to be with him just for the 
 rest it gave her. Her analysis went no further. 
 With him, for a whole week now, friendship had 
 been love. Half concealed, lest it should drive 
 her from him, half revealed, because he was truth- 
 ful by nature. 
 
 She turned toward him with startled eyes, her 
 innocent, not coquettish face, begging for an ex- 
 planation, with just a first consciousness beginning 
 to bloom on either cheek. His pleading eyes 
 needed no words to help him in their message. 
 But they would come. 
 
 "Don't look so frightened, Bessie. You make 
 me think of a snared bird. Nothing shall hurt 
 you. There isn't anything threatening but, 
 but my love. It it threatens nothing but your 
 alarm, Bessie. Don't be frightened. I thought I 
 felt small and powerless before these awful hills,
 
 56 MAIDSff SOOf. 
 
 but I feel helpless as a child before your sweet 
 face. You could strike me down if you would, 
 not I, you. But you won't, Bessie? You will let 
 me live ? Your sweet, tender eyes will lose their 
 scared look by and by, won't they? Just one 
 dimpled smile. Have they all flown ? Oh, I love 
 you. Even nature cannot love the brooding spirit 
 of its Creator more. Bessie, speak to me." 
 
 " I can't," she gasped. "I can't. I don't know 
 what to say. I never dreamed you you " 
 
 " Loved you, loved you, Bessie? What a good 
 word it is, when you say it right out loud. ' I love 
 you.' "Won't you try it, Bessie ? " 
 
 " I can't ; I must not now. I don't know what 
 oh, I must go back." 
 
 "Alone?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " But you remember Eutoka," he replied, laugh- 
 ingly, to relieve her from her distress. He felt 
 there could be but one answer finally. At last he 
 was content to wait. But was it waiting \ Did he 
 not know already ? He thought he did. But she 
 was so shy all the way as they walked that he 
 scarcely dared take her hand to help her over the 
 slippery rocks. 
 
 Like a deer frightened at a gunshot, she was all 
 a-quiver lest she should hear it again. He talked 
 of the trail, for they soon lost it; of the absent 
 guide, willing now in his new mood to concede to 
 him all the virtues. He did possess a variety of
 
 MAIDEN BOCK. , 57 
 
 them. Observing he was also communicative; 
 uncultivated, yet a gentleman ; a wayfarer, yet a 
 lover of his mountain home. 
 
 Merlin plucked every flower he could see as they 
 crossed tiny brooks and their little blossoming 
 valleys, and gave them to her with their homely 
 names. He seemed possessed of a kind of frenzy. 
 Just as when a boy, he had offended his little 
 sister, and had offered her every coveted toy to win 
 her back before she cried, so now he had a similar 
 but more intense thought. "See these tiny little 
 dots, Bessie, little drops of gold from, the stars. 
 And here," as a fancy for yellow caught him, " are 
 the sweetest of all, the dear old buttercups, fresh 
 as the morning dew ; they never grow old. Ah, 
 now I have a trinity of yellow for you, Bessie ; this 
 bold Johnswort complements the modest dots and 
 cups. Won't you take them ? " 
 
 She took them mechanically, avoiding the touch 
 of his hand, with scarcely a word. She clutched 
 them tightly, however, as she stooped and turned 
 to keep in the path he made for her through the 
 bending pines. 
 
 "Now I shall gather a trinity of white." He 
 might easily have doubled his trinity of yellow, 
 with golden-rod, yellow daisies, and the wild hops. 
 "Here, first of all, is the beautiful 'partridge 
 berry.' I think I should have named it ' dove 
 berry.' Come, see it, Bessie." He fell upon his 
 knees, seeking the little white wax cups, the long
 
 58 MAIDEN BOCK. 
 
 stem of each corolla turning into soft fur, delicate 
 and fairy-like beyond description, in its wealth of 
 round, dark green leaves. But Bessie stood 
 straight and still before him. He could only hope 
 she was watching him. He dared not look up. 
 " See, here is its red berry on this stem," and he 
 held the bright crimson berry, not larger than a 
 ripe currant, towards her. He felt her take both 
 the flower and the berry more gently than before. 
 But when he arose, she turned away. 
 
 " These white daisies I picked over by the 
 Maiden-Rock, now if I can find one more white 
 flower here it is now, this wild buckwheat, with 
 its tiny lily-of-the-valley bloom." He might have 
 added " deerweed," " yarrow," and the " bride's 
 flower" to his trio of white. 
 
 " White and yellow, these shall be my colors on 
 the field of glory. White for brotherly love to 
 men, yellow for honor. I shall wear them for my 
 Queen Bess." 
 
 Just then they came into a little open space, 
 under the half shadows of the lighter branches. 
 She seemed so alone, so distressed and far away, 
 that he felt he must fall upon his knees, and pray 
 back her dim eyes and dull ears. They seemed to 
 see only beyond the pines, and to hear only the 
 roar of the now distant falls. His soul went out 
 to her with mighty power. He must bring her 
 back to him. 
 
 Who can tell what psychological forces were at
 
 MAIDEN HOCK. 59 
 
 play. For as he looked upon her averted face 
 she turned slowly toward him with a gentle lifting 
 of her hand, but his yearning, intense look drove 
 her back more securely than ever into herself. 
 
 She started on ahead. With blinding tears of 
 mortification and alarm he followed, reaching for 
 her arm in his frenzy, but an escaped branch of 
 spruce struck him full in the face, making his 
 eyes smart for a moment with intense pain. He 
 stood an instant pressing them with his hand- 
 kerchief. Then he thought that if she could be 
 alone for awhile, it might serve to recover her 
 from the strange condition his declaration had 
 brought upon her. 
 
 "Bessie, where are you?" he said gently, after 
 an interval, tremulous with his violent heart-beat- 
 ings. No reply. " Bessie ! " a little louder. " I 
 wonder if the poor child is crying ? Why couldn't 
 I have waited? I must do something for her, if it 
 is only to go after the guide and leave her with 
 him awhile. Perhaps he can soothe her." 
 
 He peered through the understructure of the 
 woods, but there was no sign of her. Calling quite 
 loud, getting no answer but a faint echo of his own 
 voice, like the sweet, mocking witchery of some 
 playful child, he grew very uneasy. He hurried 
 this way and that, shouting at every turn. Per- 
 plexed and undecided, he sat down helplessly upon 
 a broken pine. 
 
 A half hour had probably passed, it seemed
 
 60 MAIDEN EOCK. 
 
 endless to him, when the guide came upon him, 
 attracted by his shouts. He told him his story. 
 It brought out all the good in his straight, lank, 
 unkempt nature. He seemed to know, without 
 being told, just what the difficulty was. Some 
 faint memory of his own youth, long in perspec- 
 tive, may have been quickened. He suggested the 
 trail ; that they search in both directions, before 
 an alarm be raised. 
 
 The trail was soon found. For some reason 
 unaccountable to himself Merlin chose the way 
 back to Mai den -Rock. A short but difficult climb 
 brought him within sight of it. There at its very 
 edge sat Bessie, sobbing and swaying as if in 
 terror. Merlin was speechless with fear. He 
 dared not say a word lest the shock cause her to 
 lose her balance and slip to the awful grave be- 
 low. There was but one thing to do. The roar of 
 the water would cover his footfalls. He would 
 creep stealthily to her, and seizing her in his arms, 
 bear her back before she could resist. 
 
 His only thought was that some sudden dementia 
 had taken her, and that her life must be saved at 
 any cost He was soon just behind her, his 
 breath coming fast and in gasps surely she would 
 hear his heart beat. She was talking to herself in 
 little moans. " I do I do love him, and I've hurt 
 him so. I wouldn't even look at him. What 
 shall I do ? " In a moment, she never knew jusf
 
 MAIDEN BOOK. 61 
 
 how, she was standing back on the rocks with two 
 strong arms about her. 
 
 "Forgive me, Bessie, won't you? I forgot you 
 were just a little girl. And I love you so much. 
 I couldn't wait to tell you." 
 
 He knew what it all meant now. He remembered 
 by her own story, and by her anxious, tender, half-K 
 puzzled distress over her brother's reckless speech 
 and manner, that she was just as innocent of the 
 world's rougher thought as it is possible to be and 
 live anywhere in this loose century. By wise 
 mother-care, by a mind kept full of great arid good 
 things, by not a prudish, but a sweet, womanly 
 horror of " daring," she had grown through these 
 eighteen years utterly without guile. No half- 
 aroused affection to be blunted by jest, and a mock- 
 ery of love, had been hers. No evil realism either 
 in life or fiction had ever painted black pictures 
 for her secret musings. Simply a whole-souled, 
 capable, healthy young woman kept inviolate for 
 one love, one heart, one life. The hollow mockery 
 of flattery had never taught her to dissemble. 
 She had never been "coached" by her mother 
 upon how to develop and receive declarations of 
 love. 
 
 To her, love was some inner manifestation of the 
 divine nature. She believed it always brought 
 woman to her best. A woman's love should be a 
 transparent crystal in the simplicity of its passion, 
 but flushed with an inner flame, like some fine
 
 62 31 AIDE y HOCK. 
 
 ruby. To her, love contained all the secrets of the 
 primal morn of creation, all the poetry of hope, 
 and all the permanence of a vital faith. 
 
 Moreover, in it were all the issues of her own 
 individuality. On one side it seemed to her like 
 the cloud and fiery pillar to the Egyptians, as 
 it threateningly lay between the avenging 
 pursuers and the sea-bound Israelites, dark and 
 terrible. Then she shivered and fled. On the 
 reverse side she saw it as the Hebrews saw, full of 
 the glory of the Eternal. 
 
 No insinuating touch had ever set her heart 
 fluttering with desires she could not understand. 
 No subtly-couched words had ever started currents 
 of thought fanning into flame misguided fancies. 
 A woman in letters and in reason, she had known 
 nothing more than her babyhood love until an 
 hour ago. Even her regard for Merlin until the 
 moment of his impulsive declaration had been in 
 keeping with her whole life before. 
 
 But now it seemed as though she had been all 
 this while ascending a steep hillside with its half- 
 hidden trail, vine-walled and moss-carpeted, until 
 this very moment she had stepped out upon a 
 great, jutting ledge, commanding the curves of a 
 bounteous valley, and the circuit of innumerable 
 hills. So had her life widened, deepened, lifted 
 within an hour. 
 
 It came when in his yearning eyes she saw her- 
 self. Such strange emotions ; such fears, and yet
 
 MAIDEN BOCK. 63 
 
 such longings. Her heart beat so fast she could 
 only gasp. She was beside herself for the moment. 
 So new, so strange, so delightful, so absorbing, so 
 alarming, she felt like a new creature in a new 
 world. As she confessed, standing on the rock 
 that evening: "It seemed that I could hear that 
 poor Indian ghi all the while calling me, and that 
 I must come back to this rock. Something, I 
 could not understand what, guided me here. I felt 
 strong when I stood here for a moment, until I 
 thought of you back there alone and hunting for 
 me ; then I almost fainted with the pain of it, until 
 I felt about me some thrillingly strong force, like 
 some great, free spirit, buoyant as fine air and 
 cheering as wine. I felt then that nothing could 
 harm me. I went with perfect calm to the edge of 
 the rock and sat down. But .by and by the wail of 
 the water came up like a half-stifled sob from the 
 rocks, and then I seemed to go all to pieces, as it 
 were, calling for you and crying. I think in 
 another moment I should have fallen." 
 
 " But you did not, Bessie. Are you glad? " 
 " I will tell you some time, not now." 
 He knew now how beautiful a gem he had found. 
 Not a flaw made by false art. It had weaknesses, 
 as all life must have, but they were natural and 
 not cultivated. Holding her lightly and reverent- 
 ly, scarcely daring yet to kiss her unkissed lips, 
 he vowed that no evil should come to her from 
 him in word, or deed, or desire.
 
 64 MAID EX BOCK. 
 
 To her, the world had more good than evil, be- 
 cause she had more. The movement of the race 
 was. upward. She knew there were evil shadows, 
 but she seldom saw them. If she had she would 
 have shone upon them with her purifying light. 
 She believed in men. Consequently she believed 
 in God. Necessarily, therefore, she believed in 
 herself, and yet with humility. 
 
 But to our story. With a parting look over the 
 deep Indian grave's edge, they turned toward 
 the valley once more. They came soon upon the 
 " hermit guide," sitting lonely upon a rock waiting, 
 for them, but without comment, or even good- 
 natured raillery. 
 
 He led them silently down and into the rustic 
 pavilion. They urged him to play and sing. 
 
 "Oh, I'm no musician," he modestly protested. 
 
 " Ah, but we were here awhile ago, you must 
 remember. We know." 
 
 He smiled thankfully for the compliment. 
 
 "I don't know anythin' to fit the occasion." 
 
 " Oh, the occasion is all right," said Merlin ; 
 " give us something lively." 
 
 "Would you object to a love song?" This 
 very slyly. 
 
 " Not at all, if it ends well." 
 
 " I can't dew much without my old fiddle. I de- 
 clare I must git the rest of them strings. A 
 fiddle with only one string is a good deal like a
 
 MAIDEN HOCK. 65 
 
 meule with a sore fut. It hain't much company. 
 But I'll try.'" 
 
 Their happy faces rejuvenated him. Quicker 
 and quicker flew his bow on the one string, firmer 
 grew the light of his flashing, steel eyes. With 
 a nervous little peck at his eyebrows, in the 
 middle of each verse, he gave himself up to such 
 comic songs as were most expressive of his sym- 
 pathy and well wishes. 
 
 The first was the " Rose of Caroline." The first 
 verse ran something like this : 
 
 I am happy as the morning, I am happy as the eve, 
 I am a happy nigger all day long, I never sigh nor grieve, 
 For I love a darling creature, whose form so light and fine, 
 She's a gay gazelle, a beauty, is my Rose of Caroline. 
 Features fair and curly hair, this charmer sealed my fate. 
 I won my Rose of Caroline while swinging on the gate. 
 
 The abandon with which he threw himself into 
 the chorus was highly entertaining. With a swing 
 of the head and a steady tap of his foot he gave to 
 his song what so few people give to anything, 
 zest. 
 
 " I sing another. Mebbe you wouldn't like to 
 hear it." 
 
 " If it is as good as Rosy produce it." Merlin 
 was evidently in a better humor toward the 
 " hermit guide." Perhaps he felt that as a carpet 
 knight he would have suffered defeat ; but that 
 the accompaniment of "falls," and ledge, and
 
 66 MAIDEN BOCK. 
 
 rocks, and flower-colored nooks, had been of no 
 small assistance to him. Anyway he was beam- 
 ing. He caught himself keeping time all over to 
 this queer song : 
 
 I'm over head and heels in love, the truth I'll tell, with a turtle- 
 dove, * 
 
 She ought to be in the skies above, an angel she should be. 
 
 Her laughing eyes with a dimpled chin, her face so sweet and 
 fair, 
 
 She looks so neat and so complete with a mass of silk-like hair. 
 
 She's pretty as she dances on her pretty little toes, 
 
 She looks as neat and sweet as a little tuba rose. 
 
 She charms all the people as up the street she goes. 
 She's my little augar-plum. 
 
 " Well, that's my best. But then I don't charge 
 you anything for it." 
 
 " I think we ought at least to take up a collec- 
 tion,'' suggested Bessie. 
 
 " No, indeed, never. You may not have noticed 
 it sir," turning to Merlin, "but I am a Mason. 
 Yes, sir, a free and accepted Mason. I've long 
 had my eyes upon that Maltese cross on your 
 chain, sir. In. hue signit winches. That's Latin, 
 sir; genuine Latin. I may live out here in the 
 meountins, but I know Latin when I see it. And 
 I always fraternize with the brethren. Great 
 thing that third degree. Hiram Abiff, the widder's 
 son, was jest my sort. Any favors I can show 
 you, sir, pleased to serve you. Always on the 
 square."
 
 MAIDEN BOCK. 67 
 
 Thus, out in the hills and wilds this odd 
 man had learned the lesson of fraternity. He 
 needed it. 
 
 Soon their carriage was bouncing along the 
 rocky road toward Elizabethtown, eight miles 
 away, where Merlin' and Bessie were sojourning a 
 few days before advancing to Keene valley, and 
 on to Lake Placid by stage. The little brook 
 running at their side, the twinkling stars ju-st 
 showing like bits of silver gray, the call of the 
 valley farmer to his lazy herd on the slopes, and 
 the memory-waking whip-poor-will far up on the 
 ledges guarding his nest, all blended into a repose 
 that came upon their happy lives like the soft 
 look of a mother down upon the half-face of her 
 babe, as she sings it to its sleep at her breast. 
 
 "But what will you do with your innocent little 
 girl and her intense lover ? Is not she too delicate 
 for his world and his life ?" We shall see. 
 
 Jack Tremain was as good natured a fellow 
 as ever lived. He was .a friend to everybody. 
 Vagabonds, truly helpless unfortunates, and ad- 
 venturers alike, had found him an easy prey. 
 By reason of his social influence and wealth he 
 had been a club-man of high degree at the Uni- 
 versity. A more selfish man might have come 
 through, not much the worse for the wear, as the 
 world estimates it ; but Jack had been too easy 
 in his friendships, and too generous in hisjudg-
 
 68 MAIDEN HOCK. 
 
 ments of men and women. I will not give the 
 details of an unfortunate affair in which he be- 
 came involved, and for which he had been "rustic- 
 ated " in his junior year. Suffice it to say that 
 among the little group of men and women of 
 the town, into whose company Jack's club life 
 had led him, was a woman several years his 
 senior, but superbly handsome, and ruinously 
 fascinating, when she set her head to win a coveted 
 point. For more than a year Jack Tremain had 
 been the point. She did not love him, she could 
 not. It was not in her nature. Bat he was a 
 great catch, was rich, and well, she liked to know 
 that men were talking about her and her daring 
 breaks. 
 
 She soon found that Jack's ideals of womanhood 
 were high in theory, however low some of them 
 might be in practice. As much as was in her 
 power she assumed a sort of dignified superiority 
 to her surroundings when with him. She admitted to 
 him the evil about her, but pretended to be care- 
 lessly indifferent to it. Her idea of morality could 
 go no higher than that. So long as she was even 
 negatively good she did not repel him. 
 
 He fell into some misunderstanding about this 
 time with a club man which threatened to become 
 very annoying to him. Matrice Bonner, by her 
 strategic shrewdness, was able to settle the diffi- 
 culty amicably much against her personal pleas- 
 ure, for " a quarrel in real life," as she called it,
 
 MAIDEN SOCK. 69 
 
 was a great delight to her. But she knew whence 
 her gain in the matter would issue. 
 
 Jack overwhelmed her with gratitude. He for- 
 got everything else about her except that she had 
 greatly befriended him. He was her sworn friend 
 from that day. 
 
 Little by little she undermined his manhood, his 
 ideals, and his fate. Wine parties had no little to 
 do with the final results. Never vicious, he had 
 become at last simply weak, vacillating, yielding, 
 moody, revengeful and gay by turns, as the occa- 
 sion changed. At twenty-three he was simply a 
 wreck on the shore of " high-life." Why " high" 
 I do not know, unless it is because the fall is 
 usually so marked and so fatal. 
 
 A month at home with his mother and sister 
 had been his first strength for more than a year. 
 He had gained one point ; he was thoroughly con- 
 vinced that he had been " worked." Nothing galls 
 a man so much as the discovery of that fact 
 particularly if everyone else has discovered it 
 too, and earlier. He had partially gained an- 
 other point: that he had been guilty of great 
 wrongs, both to his family and to himself. He 
 knew the things done were evil; he was not quite 
 sure that he had been wholly to blame. 
 
 This summer's outing had been planned for him 
 and by him in part. He knew what it meant. 
 His old-time love for his sister Bessie, returning 
 now, had refreshed his ideals of womanhood. He
 
 70 MAIDEN HOCK. 
 
 had " looked on this picture and then on this," 
 until he knew the difference between love and 
 appetite. 
 
 He had assumed, perhaps from his knowledge 
 of the world, a sort of watch-dog protection over 
 her. He was her constant companion. It was 
 thought that if he felt thus that her safety and 
 pleasure depended solely upon him, as it would 
 upon a journey like this, it would nerve him to 
 resistance and duty, more than would an idle 
 life at home. He had not drank since he re- 
 turned. He had taken up his guitar again, and 
 the old life seemed slowly creeping back. 
 
 Thus far on the route there had been nothing 
 but pleasure. They had met a number of old 
 friends, and had formed some new acquaintances, 
 among whom was Merlin Hall. He and Jack 
 found good fellowship at once. In fact, Jack gave 
 Bessie over to him almost from the first. This 
 may have been the cause of his fall. 
 
 Merlin and Bessie reached the Windsor House 
 in time for a late supper, though they were both 
 too much excited for hunger. 
 
 " I must see Jack right away. I suppose in the 
 absence of other authorities I must look to him for 
 confirmation of my rash act," said Merlin. 
 
 " I'm so glad for Jack's sake." 
 
 " And not for your own, Bessie ? " 
 
 " You know whatl mean." 
 
 " Yes, I do ; and we will lift the poor boy out.
 
 MAIDEN ROCK. 71 
 
 I had a long talk with him only yesterday. He 
 told me his only fear now was of that woman. He 
 said he trembled at every corner lest he should 
 meet her. He made me promise that I would 
 take him away and hide him if she should find us. 
 He thinks she is hunting him up." 
 
 " God pity him if she is ! What a life ! What 
 becomes of a woman's soul do you think when she 
 falls to such a level ! " 
 
 " She damns it." 
 
 " Beyond hope, do you think ? " 
 
 " If deeds are to be the judgment test." 
 
 "But may there not be mercy? Is not one's 
 heredity and early training taken into the evi- 
 dence ? Surely it must." 
 
 "Probably, when one's fall is through the mach- 
 inations of others, and because of some inherited 
 weakness. But for premeditated, calculating 
 debauchery of body and soul, deeds must decide. 
 Such a man fixes his life in evil, and loves it. He 
 ought to possess it forever." 
 
 " But do they never have any remorse ? Do 
 they feel no longings for release? Suppose you 
 should read ' Beyond the Gates,' to such a woman 
 as Matrice Bonner, would it have no effect ? " 
 
 " Yes, she would laugh at you, and call you an 
 'innocent little -chit,' but missing life's real mean- 
 ing." 
 
 " Do you think she would dare ? " 
 
 " I think she would."
 
 72 MAIDEN HOCK. 
 
 " If you could tell her the story of Romola " 
 " The probabilities are that if the Savior Him- 
 self were here, and were to give her choice between 
 your life and seven devils, she would take the 
 devils." 
 
 "I don't believe any soul on earth is so de- 
 praved." 
 
 " I am glad you don't. That's one reason I love 
 you." 
 
 " Because you think I am so ignorant ? " 
 " No, but because you are so pure yourself. By 
 the way, do you remember that sweet couplet of 
 Emerson's Threnody : 
 
 ' Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain, 
 Heart's love will meet thee again.' 
 
 It has been in my ears with the roar of the falls 
 ever since I found you sobbing on the rocks. 
 Oh, Bessie, just to think " 
 
 "Let's don't think about that. Go on with 
 Emerson." 
 
 " Do you know, I believe in Emerson as a poet ; 
 he did not concern himself much about rhythm, 
 but his creative imagination is matchless. There 
 has been but one other in all our literature, and 
 she did so little verse, that one scarcely ever 
 thinks of her as a poet. Dear Helen Hunt. I 
 have always liked that better than her wedded 
 name. I have a strong autograph-letter showing 
 her at her b,est, which I will send you after I
 
 MAIDEN HOCK. 73 
 
 return home, also a pair of scraps from Emer- 
 son's pen. To me they are priceless." 
 
 " Speaking of Emerson calls to my mind a new 
 volume of Carlyle which I read recently. It is 
 an assortment of notes made by some one on a 
 series of lectures on literature delivered several 
 years before his death. I found it very unsatis- 
 factory. One might as well try to take the 
 Niagara by dictation, as to transmit Carlyle by 
 notes." 
 
 " The new Isaiah. He was to England what 
 Tolstoi is to Russia. A different type of man, as 
 one would naturally expect. Russian institutions 
 and philosophy could never make a Carlyle." 
 
 "Nor English a Tolstoi." 
 
 " Oh, he might do after Wannamaker had 
 trimmed him up a little." 
 
 " He wears glasses. I am told they are blue." 
 
 " Wannamaker, you mean ? " 
 
 Certainly." 
 
 " The Russian sees things as they are in Russia. 
 He knows but little of the domestic life in a 
 civilized land like ours. His censors should read 
 his 'Work While it is Yet Day,' if they still 
 doubt his ideals of home life." 
 
 " Are all the masters aged or dead, in America ?" 
 
 "A hundred disciples have arisen for every mas- 
 ter. That is better ; it is more democratic. Then 
 too, just now, the theme of a book has become more 
 significant than the author's name. Take it in
 
 74 MAID EX BOCK. 
 
 sociology for instance, and we care more that we 
 have Social Phases of Christianity, Murvale East- 
 man, Jason Edwards, A Hazard of New Fortunes, 
 and How the Other Half Lives, than that we have 
 an Ely, Tourgee, Garland, Howells or Kiis. The 
 book is vital now. Does it help on the evolu- 
 tion of things ? If not, it has no raison d'etre. 
 But Jack must be in by this time. He usually 
 comes to the parlor. He may have gone up to his 
 room. I will slip up and see. If I am not back 
 in ten minutes don't wait. G-ood night, my love." 
 A soft little pressure of her clinging hand was all. 
 
 Five minutes had not passed, when he returned 
 with a peculiar but resolute look on his face. Slip- 
 ping quite to her side and stooping, he said softly, 
 but calmly : " Come up to Jack's room, Bessie. 
 He needs us both." 
 
 She knew as well as though he had told her all. 
 Jack had slipped. But perhaps they could catch 
 him before he lost every hold. 
 
 " Is she here ? " she whispered as she clung to 
 his arm on the stairs. 
 
 " She has been here, but I hope she is gone." 
 
 "I want to see her now, that she is here." 
 
 " You see her, Bessie ? " 
 
 "Yes, I must." 
 
 "Well, you know best." 
 
 Poor Jack lay upon the couch moaning. He 
 had not drank enough to bring on stupor, but just
 
 MAIDEN BOCK. 75 
 
 enough, now that the first gay mood was gone, to 
 leave him wretched and undone. 
 
 "Oh, Bessie, why didn't you stay here? I 
 thought I was all right. I ran up here the 
 moment I saw her, but she followed me. I was 
 weak enough to let her in. It was all over then. 
 Keep her out. There has something gone wrong. 
 She looks terrible. I should never have known' 
 her but for her eyes. She is desperate about some- 
 thing." 
 
 "Keep quiet, Jack," said Bessie, soothingly, 
 taking his fine head upon her knees and kissing 
 him. "I won't leave you any more, and Jack, 
 Merlin has come to stay, too. He wants you to 
 congratulate him, though I don't see why he 
 should expect any one to do that." So perfect 
 was her love that it seemed not at all immodest to 
 talk of it. 
 
 Jack looked up with a feeble smile. 
 
 " This time yesterday how pleased I would have 
 been to hear it. But to-day my God, how did I 
 let it happen !" 
 
 " Keep up, old fellow," said Merlin, sitting on 
 the edge of the couch. " No one knows it but 
 Bessie and me. "We'll prop you. You'll be able 
 to go alone by-and-by." 
 
 " She knows it, and that's the devil o*f it excuse 
 me, but that's just the situation !" 
 
 " I'm going to see her myself, Jack."
 
 76 MAIDEN BOCK. 
 
 " Good God ! you, Bessie ? Never. I'll murder 
 her if she speaks to you." 
 
 He was thoroughly excited now. It was good 
 for him. This revulsion of feeling would not pass 
 away without some permanent results. 
 
 " You must let me have my way in this, Jack." 
 
 " What does she mean, Merlin ?" 
 
 "I give it up, Jack, and you had better. She 
 will have her way in spite of us," with a reassur- 
 ing twinkle in his eyes. 
 
 " She said she would be back at nine. I don't 
 know why she went away. There's something 
 up." 
 
 " It is nine now," said Bessie. " You take Jack 
 to your room ; I will remain here until she comes." 
 
 " Bessie you must not do it. Think what she 
 is." 
 
 " I have thought of all. I shall stay." 
 
 A knock. An open door. Two women face to 
 face. One much surprised, the other very calm. 
 
 " Come in ; my brother Jack will be back soon. 
 He was not feeling well, and is resting with a 
 friend." 
 
 Matrice Bonner had never yielded before. She 
 did now. She sat upon the couch where she had 
 left Jack an hour before. 
 
 " Are you his sister ?" she ventured. 
 
 " Yes, Jack's my only brother. My first recol- 
 lection is of his holding me while we sat in the
 
 MAIDEN BOCK. 77 
 
 old swing. There was a little place between his 
 soft neck and his firm shoulder, where my liead 
 could just lie, while he held it from bobbing with 
 his warm chin." 
 
 Impulsive natures act rapidly. Something in 
 that baby picture touched the proud woman. Or, 
 there may have been weeks of preparation for this 
 one final influence. She threw up her hands with 
 a look of intense pain, and as they fell, clasping 
 them tight, let her head sink lower and lower, 
 until Bessie imagined she had swooned. Going 
 to her very quietly, she placed both her hands on 
 her temples to lift her head. As though stung by 
 the touch, she lifted her face and leaned back with 
 flashing eyes. Then with a pitiful, hunted look in 
 them, cried : 
 
 " Do you touch me ? And do you know who I 
 am?" 
 
 " You are a woman. You are in distress. I 
 have forgotten the rest." 
 
 " Oh, why should help always corne too late ?" 
 
 " I wonder if it is ever too late." 
 
 " What do you mean ?" 
 
 "Tell me all your trouble. It is nothing light, I 
 am sure." 
 
 " Light, if the rocks and mountains of the judg- 
 ment day shall be light." 
 
 " Tell me of the past and present. When we get 
 them straight, the future is already straight." 
 
 She hesitated, looked with mesmeric, searching
 
 78 MAIDEN ROCK. 
 
 eyes into Bessie's trustful face, as though deter- 
 mined to find what subtle motive lay back of her 
 winning ways. The look satisfied her. She told 
 all. 
 
 She had secretly married one of the club men 
 soon after Jack was sent home, with the agree- 
 ment that at the end of a year, when he should 
 become of age, and heir to great estates, he was 
 to acknowledge her as his wife. The year had 
 passed. He had deserted her. Something was 
 wrong with the marriage certificate. It would cost 
 hundreds of dollars to attempt to establish her 
 claim. Her babe was two months old. She was 
 penniless, and " out of the swim." Grown desper- 
 ate over the hunger of her babe, half frenzied her- 
 self, friendless, too proud to beg, and with no room 
 to work with her infant, as a last resort she had 
 come after Jack, having seen by accident the 
 notice of his proposed visit to the mountains, and 
 the route. She had pawned her last piece of jew- 
 elry, a bracelet Jack had given her, that she might 
 make the journey. Her purpose had simply been 
 to appeal to him for help, until she could get 
 strong enough to fight her way bitterly through. 
 But as she talked to him, the old spirit came back, 
 a yearning to forget the awful present. She had 
 but to suggest it in a moment's weakness, and the 
 wine was ordered. As she drank, instead of gaiety, 
 remorse came. Jack soon became tender, as was 
 his wont when under the influence of liquor. She
 
 MAIDEN HOCK. 79 
 
 could not bear his embraces, and abruptly left 
 him, promising to return when he had sobered up 
 a little, and then make known her real mission. 
 
 " I have told you all. I never dreamed I should 
 have told it just as it was to Jack, much less to a 
 woman, and that woman his sister. I have been a 
 proud, stubborn woman. I am broken now. Here 
 on my knees I beg mercy for my baby's sake. I 
 have held his poor little head under my chin, just 
 as Jack used to hold yours, his little hot hands 
 twitching in mine. My heart is breaking now as 
 I think of him left alone with the coarse and 
 filthy nurse who is keeping him for me. She may 
 be drunk this very minute, and my boy dead ; my 
 poor white-faced little lamb ! God pity him, and 
 pity me. You must know I had a woman's respect 
 after all for your brother, that I should venture to 
 him with this awful message. Think of a proud 
 woman hunting her old lover to beg a crust for 
 herself and babe, the ruins of another man's pas- 
 sion. Your eyes are soft as an angel's. Surely 
 they will pity me. What can I do ? where shall I 
 go ? Anything and anywhere, in the wide world, 
 only so that I can keep my baby and give him 
 bYead. Tell me. Don't forsake me. I will do 
 anything you say." 
 
 What a life was this drifting wreck ! A disman- 
 tled hulk floating so near a white-sailed vessel. 
 Would it plunge the trim little ship down with its
 
 80 M AID EN 11 CK. 
 
 woeful weight, or would there be sail enough to 
 put both into harbor? 
 
 Had Bessie been anything less than a pure- 
 souled, earnest woman, she would have been 
 tempted to scorn this appeal, or turn away in dis- 
 may. Being both, she said nothing about " de- 
 pravity," "the wages of sin," -"the way of the 
 transgressor," " the Magdalene's Home " or " the 
 Orphans' Asylum." 
 
 Must I write it? Will the reader finish my 
 story ? He shall read this next sentence, and it 
 shall not fade from his memory forever. 
 
 " Poor, broken-winged bird, your flying was too 
 bold, the rocks were hard. You are a woman, and 
 the mother of a hungry babe. I love you, and I 
 will not leave nor forsake you." 
 
 Farewell, Priest ; farewell, Levite. The Good 
 Samaritans will keep me close company to the 
 end. 
 
 When Jack and Merlin had heard the story, as 
 Bessie alone could tell it, they sat so still they 
 heard the little silver clock on the table tick a 
 hundred times or more. 
 
 Merlin never felt so sharply before the reality 
 of Time. It was a trying moment to Bessie as to 
 each of the others. She had repeated to them her 
 resolution and promise. What would Merlin say ? 
 Would it end their just-begun relationship ? It
 
 MAIDEN BOCK. 81 
 
 would test him, that much she knew. If he did 
 not bear it, then she had mistaken him. To know- 
 it now were far better than to discover it little by 
 little, and too late. 
 
 She waited. Her heart got the same measure 
 the clock had. Would they never speak ? It came 
 at last, like a far-away voice out of the shadows 
 of the imlighted room, half choking, as though 
 shamedly struggling to show no womanly weak- 
 ness : '"Bessie, you are the noblest woman 
 this side of heaven." It was Merlin's voice. 
 "Amen ! " added Jack. It was the most religious 
 thing he had done since he left home three years 
 before. 
 
 Bessie felt she must cry. The strain had been- 
 too hard. Had the answer been different, she 
 would not have shed a tear. How joyous it was to 
 feel them gushing through her fingers as she 
 pressed her face. But when her lover, never so 
 dear to her as now, took them away in his own 
 strong hands, and kissed both her cheeks, tears 
 and all, and holding her to him sealed for the first 
 time his vows of the day, it was heaven let down 
 beneath stars. 
 
 But that poor, waiting, troubled heart without ! 
 She must go to her. Kissing Jack, she whispered 
 to him the " open sesame " of his permanent re- 
 covery : " Devote the coming year to this poor 
 woman and her baby, Jack. See that she gets up 
 again. Give her courage, and keep yourself un-
 
 82 MAIDEN BOCK. 
 
 spotted from the world." The heroic in his soul 
 came out in bold relief, in quick response. 
 
 Matrice makes her own living and her boy 
 Jack's. She sings at her work. No great ambi- 
 tion stirs her. To have a home and watch her 
 baby boy, and keep his face bright and his heart 
 clean, is her highest ambition. To-day has been 
 a particularly happy one for the mother and the 
 boy. His "Aunt Bessie," and both his uncles, 
 Jack and Merlin, and little cousin, baby Matrice, 
 have been with them all day. The delicate repast, 
 all the work of Matrice's hands, at the close of the 
 afternoon, was but one more proof of the calmness 
 and the cleanness of her life without and within. 
 
 No evil has come into Bessie's simple life. More 
 than one demon of lust and hate has fled at her 
 approach. 
 
 So does the Miracle Worker of Galilee " do 
 greater works than these," through his own. 
 
 " Ye are my friends." Oh, sweet Galilean ! to 
 be Thy friend is to be friendly to the whole World.
 
 A WOMAN? 
 
 CHAP TEE I. 
 
 ACEOSS Mirror Lake the angle of the " Bald- 
 win " lights squared the irregular water line. To 
 the left a tower of light rose above the " Ste- 
 phen's." Directly to the right round Cobble rose 
 into the night, as the head of a wondering child at 
 play rises above the grass, to " spy the coast." 
 Back behind all, one cheek alone partly visible in 
 the moon-smitten night, lay White Face, most 
 striking and popular of the Adirondacks. In the 
 nearer distance, but hidden, Lake Placid slept 
 beside the wind-singing pines, while one kept 
 thinking of the white, dead spruces just in its 
 water's edge, standing like ghostly sentinels. 
 
 " I know I am wrong, and that it is more like a 
 bear than a man to say it, but I wish you wouldn't, 
 Elaine." 
 
 "Don't you like music ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And and me ?" 
 
 "How can you ask ?" 
 
 " Well, don't we blend, music and I, and your 
 love 2" 
 
 (83)
 
 84 A WOMAN. 
 
 "Certainly, my dear ; but don't you see the dif- 
 ference ? Music and yourself in my own home I 
 can pray for nothing more ; but your music and 
 you in a public drawing-room, or or , upon the 
 concert stage, is what distresses me, and a crowd 
 of men staring at you, and not speechless either, 
 I can assure you." 
 
 " Why, Maxwell Harley ! would you have them 
 blind and dumb ?" 
 
 It was in a shadowy corner of the broad veranda 
 of the Mirror Lake Hotel, just up the spreading 
 slope from Mirror Lake. The speakers had evi- 
 dently been upon good terms, to say the least. 
 Elaine Humeston was a rising young cornetist of 
 Boston. Max Harley was her admirer, and it 
 would seem from what we have just heard, an ac- 
 cepted lover. Of his love for her there could be 
 no doubt. As between her love and her music 
 there were occasionally vexing doubts, particularly 
 when, as now, he sought to divide her life. She 
 had accepted an invitation from the proprietor of 
 the hotel, an old friend, for the season of well, a 
 nameless season. She had done so because she 
 needed the hills and the pure air. Her half inva- 
 lid mother needed them more. They were not 
 rich. Her career had just begun. As usual, the 
 expenses of the few brief tours she had made with 
 two of her Boston musical friends, under the man- 
 agement of the brother of one of them, had kept 
 pretty even pace with the revenue. She seized
 
 85 
 
 as a gift from heaven this opportunity for rest and 
 pleasure with her pale, but sweet-faced mother. 
 That she herself must often play for the hotel 
 guests, sometimes even for their dancing, had not 
 troubled her in the least, except, when talking it 
 over with Harley one evening, instead of the con- 
 gratulations she expected, there came a puzzling 
 frown, and a commonplace remark which could 
 have no bearing whatever upon the, to her, all- 
 absorbing matter. A summer in the Adirondacks 
 and at Lake Placid, and Max not enthusiastic! 
 
 Of course she had expected a lover's protest 
 against so long an absence, some half-pouting en- 
 dearment ; but his chilling silence was more than 
 a prohibition. Then she remembered his old heart 
 ailment : " She was his, and not the property of 
 the public." She did not congeal easily. Indeed 
 she could be very warming when the air grew too 
 chill for her comfort. Max left in a better humor. 
 In that sort of a humor a man works himself into 
 works is the word I want to use when he knows 
 the woman he loves has come to a decision ; and 
 if he would not be omitted entirely from its issues, 
 he must, with more or less grace, yield. 
 
 Man is a queer animal. Even if he is to suffer 
 defeat, he likes to be on the field when the fight 
 is on. Just two weeks after Elaine had settled 
 herself and the dear little mother in a cosy corner 
 of their summer home, with a soothing view of the 
 quiet lake and quieter hills, imagine her surprise,
 
 86 A W03TAX. 
 
 half glad, half painful, to find herself face to face 
 with Max Harley as she walked one evening to 
 the grand Chickering in the great parlor, her fin- 
 gers closely clasped about her silver pet. 
 
 "Maxwell Harley!" 
 
 She always added the " well" when surprised, 
 or attempting unusual dignity. 
 
 " O yes, it's I. Thought I would run up for a 
 couple of days. Town is confounded still. 
 Nothing in motion but the river, and an occasional 
 train. Took one, and here I am. Fine place." 
 
 " Have you just come ?" 
 
 "Yes. Came by stage from Saranac." 
 
 " Beautiful drive, isn't it ?" 
 
 " Didn't see it." 
 
 "Didn't see it?" 
 
 " No I I was in somewhat of a hurry." 
 
 "Oh ! Well, come into the parlor, Max, I must 
 play for an hour, and then we I will be free. 
 There is a mammoth whist party on for the even- 
 ing, and they won't need much music to-night." 
 
 She turned without giving him time to protest. 
 She was a woman, a budding professional woman, 
 and had learned already to keep her business en- 
 gagements, a rare quality which I have noticed in 
 every professional woman of my acquaintance. It 
 is a sort of unreasoning fidelity to her word. Per- 
 haps I am wrong in the adjective a conscience 
 fidelity, I should call it. 
 
 For an hour Max sat in a distant corner. The
 
 A WOMAN. 87 
 
 only sympathy be showed with the beautiful cor- 
 netist was unconscious ; he kept his huge chair 
 rocking in perfect time with her music. He sat 
 apart, as though ashamed of her. She was con- 
 scious of it all. She never played with such zest. 
 The guests gathering about the card tables, and 
 receiving their delicately-ribboned ivory souve- 
 nirs, paused to listen. Already the favorite of 
 every one, she seemed to hold them with a firmer 
 grasp j ust now. 
 
 She was worthy of their wondering admiration 
 in every way. Not alone in her music was she 
 graceful and expressive. Tall, with the grace and 
 symmetry of the hemlock, pliant, thrilling with 
 health, she walked like a queen along the pol- 
 ished floors of the great drawing-rooms. Not as 
 a dominant queen, but queenly by her unconscious 
 power. Her sweet-faced modesty was made strong 
 with a soldierly bearing her father gave her before 
 he fell at Chickamauga in '63. Every child in 
 the company loved her ; not as children love for 
 bon bons, but as they cling for a kiss. 
 
 Never was she so full of power and grace as 
 to-night. She was playing the familiar "prison 
 song " from II Trovatore, so old, and yet always 
 calling the heart from every other emotion. It 
 was the background to-night for her joy; a foil 
 to her happiness. To be sure, Max was not en- 
 rapport. But love conquers so easily. 
 
 Standing, her white satin slipper firmly set upon
 
 88 A WOMAN. 
 
 the soft velvet rug, she swayed with the rhythm of 
 her music until the electric lights hung like great 
 glistening mists before the tearful eyes of her thrill- 
 ed audience. Even Max felt himself giving way 
 under the spell. But the burst of applause as 
 she sat down brought back the old jealousy. He 
 rose in rather an ungallant manner to meet her, 
 as she drew near him, he and she now the center 
 of all attention. 
 
 " Shall we go out now, and see if we can find a 
 star ?" she asked tremulously, for the passion of 
 her music had not subsided. She so hoped it 
 might blend into the other and become a part of 
 it to-night if only he wouldn't look so glum. 
 
 " These people seem to think they have found 
 one here," he replied. He was trying to be com- 
 plimentary ; the words were ; the tone, anything 
 else. 
 
 She took his arm and they escaped out to the 
 sweeping piazza, through a group of admirers 
 waiting to repeat their kind words of other even- 
 ings. There the reproachful words at the begin- 
 ning of the story were spoken. 
 
 " If a woman has a gift, and you insist that I 
 have, why should she put it in a napkin ? or, to be 
 more realistic, in a dish-rag ? or why should ap- 
 preciation of it by others be any more a disgrace 
 than when a man has the power to please or 
 help?" 
 
 " Simply because a woman is something more
 
 A WOMAN. 89 
 
 than any gift. Something else, by her very nature, 
 is the prominent element of her life. With men 
 their gifts are their best, sometimes their all. We 
 are willing to let a man liv^e as he chooses, if only 
 he will paint us good pictures or write us real 
 verses. But a woman must be well, womanly, vir- 
 tuous above all." 
 
 "Virtue is distinctly a womanly quality, then ? I 
 had not expected you would admit as much." 
 
 " You know what I mean ; virtue and genius are 
 not synonymous. A woman must have the first. 
 A man may have either, but must have the latter, 
 if he succeed." 
 
 " He rarely has both, then, you think ?" 
 
 " Oh, you take me too literally." 
 
 " I simply took your words. You know mind- 
 reading is not my gift." 
 
 " Come, Elaine, we must not do this. I came 
 here for my loneliness. The moonlight is too soft 
 for harsh words." Taking her hand and catching 
 the thrill of her aroused spirit, he longed to take 
 her into his arms and hush all questionings. But 
 she seemed to feel that a crisis was upon them. 
 Her mind was quickened into bolder thought than 
 usual, and she went on. 
 
 " You must surely admit that a woman's virtue 
 need not be spoiled by the possession of inferior 
 gifts ; particularly the gifts of the fine arts."' 
 
 " Not the possession of them, surely, but such use
 
 90 A WOMAN. 
 
 of them as will bring her into the polluted cur- 
 rents of the world's life." 
 
 It was with a tinge of scorn, and you will for- 
 give her, that she replied, directing his attention 
 through the open windows to the scene within. 
 
 " Those innocent girls at the card-tables are not 
 in the polluted current, are they? Last night 
 they danced, some of them, with more than a 
 score of men, the most of whom they never saw 
 before. Were they in the current, or out of it ? 
 You know I am not opposed to their doing it. I 
 do it myself. But I simply was curious to know 
 whether you thought them safe and only myself 
 unsafe." 
 
 " Oh, Elaine, you are so persistent. Of course 
 you are safe here. This is a choice company of 
 men and women. I presume none of them are 
 vampires. But this is only the beginning of a 
 public life which will soon carry you out into the 
 full currents of the common people, where you 
 know there is every species of contaminating ill." 
 
 " As I understand your philosophy, then, it is 
 that a man or woman will surely fall away from 
 virtue if once in the active world. Man may do so, 
 but if he possess genius may still succeed. 
 Woman can not." 
 
 " Something like that, only I don't mean that 
 every woman would become depraved, but that the 
 public would so regard her, simply because she 
 was out of her place. And I must confess, too,
 
 A WOMAX. 91 
 
 that I believe any woman under such influences 
 would fall into hard, worldly ways of thinking, 
 would grow more and more a stranger to womanly 
 affection arid purposes, and become more masculine 
 and unattractive." 
 
 "Public opinion is still your criterion, is it? 
 And delicate, fancy-work, hysterical women are 
 still your ideals ! I so scorn the one, when I face 
 duty, and so detest the others, that I fear lest we . 
 be unable to find mutually congenial friendships." 
 
 " Elaine, you must not say that. You know you 
 are my ideal woman. I dislike weak, and admire 
 strong women, just as much as you do." 
 
 " Strong in what ? Mere negative virtue ? By 
 the way, what is this virtue you worship before ? 
 Is it something in nature apart from one's facul- 
 ties and accomplishments ? A resident inherit- 
 ance in a small portion of the human family ? I 
 have thought virtue was character, and character 
 is as varied as men are. Yours is the sum of 
 your capabilities and their uses. Mine is no less. 
 If yours is to plead for justice for men, to be crit- 
 icised, probably hated by the lawless and oppres- 
 sive, why not mine, in keeping myself unspotted 
 from the world, to make it forget its sullen selfish- 
 ness, and sing to itself of noble living under my 
 leading ? Or is it the prerogative of man alone to 
 lead and help the many ? woman's to lead and 
 help the two or three of her household, and that 
 with sixteenth century limitations ?"
 
 92 A WOMAN. 
 
 " But you would unsex the race, my dear." 
 " Perhaps it needs a little unsexing. If woman's 
 sphere is fixed by her sex to be either domestic 
 service or the gratifying of the smaller and more 
 ignoble propensities of men ; if she can only suffer 
 and then see another accomplish ; if her work and 
 glory, yes, and immortality, are forever to be by 
 proxy, because of her sex ; if man must always 
 be master and director, and the winner of all good 
 things by reason of his sex, then to unsex the race 
 were not a bad mission. If I remember correctly, 
 the ideal relations of men and women, as an- 
 nounced by the Great Teacher, are to know no 
 distinction of sex ; while the life beyond is de- 
 clared to be wholly without, sex relations, even 
 marriage itself being abrogated. If these be ideal, 
 then to make the whole lives of men and women 
 gravitate about- two wholly dissimilar centers, with 
 a dead line between, is to disprove evolution. 
 And ideals are never to be attained. 
 
 "But it is false. All life is one, differing in 
 
 minor details, but common in essentials. The 
 
 same elements are in manhood and womanhood." 
 
 "I confess that seems as true as strange to me." 
 
 "Then neither man nor woman can succeed 
 
 without virtue. Genius in either case can only 
 
 enhance virtue. If the virtue depart, it is not on 
 
 account of genius, but in spite of it." 
 
 "Well, I didn't come all this way, Elaine, to 
 become a convert to woman's rights. There is
 
 A WOMAN. 93 
 
 one woman right, just right, and she is right here. 
 Let us see the lake wooing the moon. Perhaps 
 it will change our mood." 
 
 " If I have seemed earnest, Max, it is because I 
 have no higher ambition in the world than to have 
 my life measure with yours. I will not be a 
 dwarf. If I may riot be of your stature, I will not 
 walk beside you." 
 
 " Elaine, I have no impulse, no thought, no will, 
 that does not already and always look up to find 
 your face and its approval. Here by the still 
 water of this centuried lake, constant through the 
 infinite variety of its moods, contented and restful 
 in the enlocking arms of these trusty hills, at peace 
 with the world, I again and again give all, reserv- 
 ing no thought, no emotion, all, to thee, Elaine. 
 I would not limit a gift of yours any more than 
 I would strangle a babe at its mother's breast. 
 I do not always see with your eyes, nor think 
 with your brain. You. would not have me do so. 
 But, and perhaps I have learned it fully just to- 
 night, I do not want you to see with my eyes, 
 nor think with my brain. My devoutest wish is 
 that we may see the same things. So endeth the 
 first lesson severe in the lettering, sweet and 
 helpful in the sentence. If to-morrow you will 
 teach me another, as simple and as trusting, I will 
 be your most grateful pupil." 
 
 " And you will never doubt me again, Max ; I 
 mean my ambitions, my real motive in life?"
 
 94 A WOMAN. 
 
 "Not again." 
 
 " Then I am doubly glad you came.' 5 
 For a long time they sat, lulled into absolute 
 peace by the communing waves, laughingly shying 
 back arid forth at their feet, clapping their tiny 
 hands, wringing their fairy-like fingers in mock 
 astonishment, lisping crooning little baby words, 
 and dancing time to the gentle wind's ballads. 
 Out and beyond, the dimly waving line of the hills 
 rose higher and higher into the heavens, a 
 shadowy way for the soul's ascent. Lake, river 
 and sea ; plain, hills, and mountain ; earth and 
 sky arid stars, each a new expression of the Infi- 
 nite, were, after all, one vast universe. Aye, uni- 
 verse and Infinite were not parts, but One. So, 
 too, their different and changing hopes, and faiths, 
 and endeavors were one communion, one love, and 
 one life. Was not the Infinite in them both? 
 Did they not both worship Him in His hills, and 
 stars, and reason ? 
 
 CHAP TEE II. 
 
 THE Lakes were aquiver with the new day, the 
 hill-sides were gardens of the birds, as Max and 
 Elaine started out for Lake Placid, a sharp little 
 walk from the hotel. 
 
 " Now for the second lesson," said Harley. 
 
 " Don't let's 'scuss anything to-day, Max."
 
 A WOMAN. 95 
 
 " We won't ; we'll just talk, and if I learn any- 
 thing I hope I'll have the grace to say so." 
 
 They stopped a moment to look back upon the 
 sweeping horizon so far away. 
 
 " Can you see The Pass yonder between Mcln- 
 tyre and Wall Face ? It seems impossible that we 
 are so close to that remote savagery of the red 
 men. Every hill has been tracked with their 
 trails." 
 
 "And their women have raised corn in these 
 very valleys. That's woman's rights for you, 
 Elaine." 
 
 " How can you be so cruel ?" 
 
 "I didn't mean it." 
 
 " Anyway, the argument is mine. Their women 
 were slaves, too, their lords simply gave them dif- 
 ferent tasks from some of ours. I don't know ; I 
 believe I would prefer raising corn to domestic ser- 
 vice. Not that I dislike housework or home life. 
 I love it. Mamma and I always do our own work 
 when I am at home. But to know nothing else, 
 and to be compelled to do it as the only way of 
 pleasing your master that, never !" 
 
 " Well, you needn't." 
 
 " Here is the public library. Let us take some 
 books with us ; you may want to read to me." 
 
 " What shall we select?" 
 
 " Oh, something appropriate. Here is Sanborn's 
 ' John Brown.' By the way, we must visit John 
 Brown's grave before we return. It lies a few
 
 96 A WOMAN. 
 
 miles back, on the road to Keene Valley. I have 
 ail irresistible longing to sing 'John Brown's body 
 lies a-mouldering in the grave," over his very 
 dust." 
 
 " You might see his soul go marching on." 
 
 " I feel it now. Liberty is in the air, even for 
 us poor slaves of the hearth." 
 
 *' Don't. I can hear your chains clanking now." 
 
 "No, that's just the trouble. You men don't 
 hear them. It's like the hum of insects or the 
 ticking of a clock, you've gotten used to it." 
 
 " Ah ! here is Bishop Potter's ' Way -Marks.' 
 You honor the dead, and I will remember the liv- 
 ing." 
 
 " Do you know, Lake Placid would not be what 
 it is without the Potters ? A true friend to liberty, 
 the Bishop is, too." 
 
 " I am sorry now I took it. With you on the 
 one hand, and John Brown and the Bishop on the 
 other, I fear an ambush. But I love Sanborn's 
 musical lines so well I can lose myself in them and 
 escape. I was under the spell of his poetic fervor 
 for two summers at Concord, when Alcott was still 
 living and called together his Transcendental 
 Saints in the Orchard School of Philosophy. Next 
 fo the old Vegetarian, I admired Sanborn. Gentle, 
 tender, far-seeing, but close to one all the while, 
 leading you by easy stages a long way, out toward 
 the soul of things. It was like the starting up of 
 a cool breeze after Plato and Hegel's disciples had
 
 A WOMAN. 97 
 
 exhausted the oxygen, to have Sanborn talk. He 
 knew the poets as brothers. He and Herbert were 
 kindred souls." 
 
 " There you can see Placid through the pines. I 
 wonder they don't take those dead stumps away. 
 This approach is distressingly marred by them. 
 We must go farther up. Here is the trail to an 
 old camp. It leads to a quiet spot." 
 
 "Lead on, thou rejuvenated Indian maiden, re- 
 turned to teach these nineteenth century bucks the 
 emancipation of woman !" 
 
 " Hush ! you will frighten the birds." 
 
 A mocking little thrush peeped, and laughed to 
 himself. He too had loved. That wouldn't frighten 
 him; oh, no. These were lovers' woods. To be 
 sure, he did the singing, and provided the worms, 
 but a submissive little lord was he. He was 
 neither master nor slave. Not even nature belies 
 her impulse of freedom. What nature speaks in 
 instinct, revelation never denies in law. Man alone 
 perverts both instinct and law. 
 
 " Here, I think, you see Placid at its best. 
 Northeast is Moose Island, and West Lake is just 
 beyond. I sat here one evening last week while a 
 cloud hung over White Face, against which the 
 setting sun made, not a rainbow, but a square of 
 tints. It was evidently an end of what would 
 have been a huge bow had there been cloud 
 enough. But every tint was there. I thought of 
 it as life in outline. Every soul, no matter how
 
 98 A WOMAN. 
 
 limited or cut off by its environment, has in it the 
 primary colors. Other lives, however lengthened 
 and arched by education and culture, cannot by 
 any means add an eighth color." 
 
 "A pretty picture, my dear." 
 
 " Truer even than pretty. It is not a question 
 as to whether men or women shall do this or that. 
 It is, whether any person shall be permitted to do 
 anything which any other is not permitted to do. 
 Shall not law, and custom, and creed come to be 
 the same for all men at last ? Is it any worse for 
 the few to rule, than for the few to make the laws, 
 or to establish doctrine ?" 
 
 " But are the people capable ?" 
 
 "No. But children fed upon soup sicken at 
 meat. If you had always been told that you were 
 idiotic, or untrustworthy, or born with a certain 
 bent of character, you would have believed it after 
 a while, and lived it too. It is as though I were 
 to cage that mountain thrush yonder and say to 
 it every morning : ' Fly, you idler. Don't you know 
 what wings are for? Don't droop your head. 
 Shame upon you ! See what gifts God has be- 
 stowed upon you! You need only to use them. 
 See where others of your kind have flown and 
 builded their nests. Fly !' " 
 
 " But many of the * caged birds ' do fly. Wit- 
 ness the children of poverty who have become 
 rich or great." 
 
 "Yes, the cage has not been as strong as some
 
 A WOMAN. 99 
 
 would have it. Now and then an over-zealous 
 prisoner has broken out and has risen in spite of 
 his imprisonment." 
 
 I wish you could have seen the fine scorn on this 
 young girl's face. We have studied her at the re- 
 spectful distance of the hotel parlor, let us look at 
 her now with her lover's eyes. Notice first her 
 peculiar mouth ; as sweet as a baby's at the cor- 
 ners, but firm as a soldier's two thirds of its 
 breadth. Max always wanted to kiss her where 
 the curves turned into dimples on either side of 
 her beautiful chin. Her hazel eyes are far apart 
 but large, covered with full lids and long, sweep- 
 ing lashes. They make her face like tinted mar- 
 ble when she sleeps, like irresistible, half divine 
 energy when she wakes. In the cornea there is 
 the tint of the bluebells, giving them that delicacy 
 of expression unpicturable. Her forehead, too 
 noble for the current idea of beauty, is partially 
 hidden by a roll of glossy hair hanging carelessly 
 free not a bang, how gratefully do I record it ! 
 To see this head with its queenly poise, was to 
 know that it was incapable of any small thoughts. 
 Her superb figure bears out the indication of her 
 face and head. Even the very tips of her fingers 
 are expressive of fine feeling, fine execution. A 
 nobility which will protect her like a circle of fire 
 anywhere in America clothes her like a garment. 
 Max is convinced of this at last ; still a homesick-
 
 100 A WOMAN. 
 
 ness hurts him all over when he thinks of her as 
 the servant of the people. 
 
 " Elaine, I cannot, cannot give you to the world. 
 You are mine, eyes, Voice, soul, every gift." 
 
 " Maxwell, I cannot, cannot give you to the 
 world. You are mine, eyes, voice " 
 
 " Don't." 
 
 " But you see where it ends. Men can praise, 
 admire, and employ you, but not your wife." 
 
 " But the family must have sustenance and pro- 
 tection. Man alone can furnish that." 
 
 " Do you think so ? It is not difficult to imagine 
 your loss of health a reality if you don't rest 
 more, Max. It would be no disgrace then for me 
 to earn money, would it ?" 
 
 " Certainly not. Nor for yourself and mother 
 now." 
 
 " Well, then is it not a matter of pride more 
 than a matter of ' eternal fitness,' that you men 
 insist upon earning all of the living?^ But after 
 all, do we not do as much to earn it, when we do 
 our part in domestic service ? The only difference 
 in this latter course is that we do our share of the 
 labor, often more, but have no share in the emolu- 
 ments or even in the development of the husband's 
 life except by proxy. The moon is very sweet, 
 and subdued, shining by the reflected light of the 
 sun but, thanks, I prefer to be a star at least, and 
 shine in my own light."
 
 A WOMAN. 101 
 
 " But the home life, its duties and burdens, who 
 shall bear them ?" 
 
 "The wife and mother. First, she ought to be a 
 willing wife, and no less a willing mother. Then 
 her work for the world should be no more than 
 her inclinations, her time, and her capacity will 
 tit her for. Woman asks for nothing more than 
 that she shall be permitted to do anything she 
 can within the sex line limitation. Little by little 
 she has worked her way into the arts, trades and 
 professions ; into the colleges and universities. 
 She cannot stop here. An education, a created 
 ambition, with nothing to gratify it, means ani- 
 malism. She must go on. But there ought to be 
 but one test for men and women alike : Can she, 
 can he, do this work ? Yes ; then she, then he, 
 ought." 
 
 " Very fine, my little reformer, I agree. That 
 saves me. No one can go starring across the con- 
 tinent when her husband's garments are in tatters. 
 I can imagine you lifting the people up to ' Home, 
 Sweet Home,' after getting a telegram like this : 
 ' Come home, bread sour, buttons off, the maid 
 eloped. M. H." " 
 
 " I did not want to have to tell you, Max, that 
 no ambition of mine shall ever tempt me to a 
 thought of leaving my home uncared for. I shall 
 be a fixed star. In music and art, and in every 
 way, I shall seek to be helpful to my own city, 
 already so kind to my poor gifts. But I shall ex-
 
 102 A WOMAN. 
 
 pect from you no prolonged absences, professional 
 or otherwise. We shall be at home together, we 
 shall go abroad together. But I promise you now 
 I shall figure in every case you plead, and in the 
 acceptance of cases as well as in the pleading. 
 They say there is nearly always a woman in every 
 lawsuit. There shall be one in all yours. I have 
 been secretly reading law for more than a year. 
 How do you like it ?" 
 
 " If I were to sue for a divorce, you would figure 
 double, wouldn't you ?" 
 
 "Possibly treble, for I would certainly plead 
 my own case. But if I have health,- and your 
 help, I mean that the world shall never think of 
 Maxwell Harley without also thinking of his wife. 
 I mean it very modestly, Max, but I mean it most 
 thoroughly." 
 
 " I believe you, and believe in you. I would not 
 have it otherwise, if I could. But say, Elaine, you 
 won't vote, will you ?" 
 
 " Yes, if we live in Boston. Not that I think 
 the ballot is the outer circle of woman's sphere ; 
 it is only incidental to it. The great thing is 
 equality. Spiritual that is conceded. Mental 
 we assume it. Physical God wills it; not in 
 strength, but in the rights of body." 
 
 " I have it now ; the lecture field. We'll take 
 an evening together. Joint discussion, say. You 
 deny, and I'll affirm the proposition: 'Is man 
 woman's equal in any sense ?' "
 
 A WOMAN. 103 
 
 "You will need to read up zealously to prove it." 
 
 "Oh, just in sport, you know. I'll step out at 
 the close, and admit that I am defeated, that I 
 really take the same side that my wife does." 
 
 " You would need to do that to set the audience 
 square with you mentally, Max." 
 
 " Why will you be so stinging ? " 
 
 " Because I'm your honey bee, I guess." 
 
 " I wish you would attend to the honey part a 
 little more carefully." 
 
 He leaned toward her with such yielding tender- 
 ness, she forgot all else but that she loved him. 
 The little thrush suddenly bethought him of a 
 leafly bower, where an unguarded nest held a very 
 lonesome mother bird. With a faintly- twittered 
 pang over his neglect, he flew to his own love-tree, 
 the air vibrant with his vocal joy. 
 
 So endeth the second lesson. 
 
 Clouds filed into solemn line from White Face 
 to Marcy, and beyond to Hurricane. Quietly as 
 death comes in, unannounced, the battalions of 
 heaven were wheeled into line for action. The 
 lake was lead in motion and color. Every bird- 
 voice was hushed. One could almost hear the 
 beating of his heart. The Adirondacks were 
 asleep. 
 
 But the enemy stole on apace. A gleam of 
 swords, sunbright, but not the sound of a rattling 
 wheel or rolling drum. Again and again .the tern 
 pest swords gleamed like some mighty pre-battle
 
 104 A WOMAN. 
 
 drill. Now low over the distant hills the rumble 
 of a nearer approach is heard. The whistling fife- 
 winds suddenly herald the rapid on-coming. Be- 
 fore one can think, or turn, with dash and fury, 
 with hissing rain like shot, and crashing boughs 
 shaking like spears, with push and blinding smit- 
 ing of sheeted water, the storm hordes are upon 
 the earth. The lake rushes here and there for 
 escape. The trees dodge in blind frenzy only to 
 lean into the arms of the grasping tornado. Too 
 frightened to cry out, the earth is dumb, in bug, 
 and bird, and beast. It bows to the enemy and 
 surrenders. 
 
 Between the mists and parting branches might 
 have been seen, could one have faced the tempest, 
 a man and a woman. They were standing with 
 bowed heads in the midst of the battle of elements, 
 quiet, waiting, filled, in spite of the danger, with 
 awe before such superb grandeur. Neither was 
 braver than the other, neither clung alone to the 
 other. Each sheltered, each fortified the other. 
 
 The Universe is one whether in storm or calm. 
 All is one. They were one. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Poor John Hedderson is on trial for his life, 
 charged by the State of Massachusetts with de- 
 liberately shooting one Stepen Miller, a Pinkerton 
 detective, while, in company with a hundred of his
 
 A WOMAN. 105 
 
 band, endeavoring to get possession of the Union 
 Woolen Mills. Not only had the employes been 
 forced to a reduction in wages of twelve per cent, 
 under a plea of a falling market, bnt it was beyond 
 question another pooled effort on the part of cap- 
 ital to break into fragments the Amalgamated 
 Association of labor. The men had struck peace- 
 ably, but resolutely, saying they and their famil- 
 ies were confronting starvation now ; it were better 
 to die for their rights and for the future, than to 
 starve. They would do no damage to the property, 
 but none should work but their own. 
 
 In a bloodhound attempt to drive them away the 
 Pinkertons had been shipped into the grounds. 
 After a slight skirmish they were driven back; 
 several had been wounded, one Stephen Miller, was 
 killed. A policeman standing, no one knew where, 
 swore John Hedderson fired the fatal shot. He is 
 on trial, indicted by the Grand Jury for murder in 
 the first degree. Powerful legal talent is arrayed 
 against him. So common has become the feeling 
 against the Pinkertons, so bitterly are they hated 
 by the workingmen, that this is to be made a test 
 case. The slayer must be hung, or their days of 
 service are numbered. 
 
 Maxwell Harley is Hedderson's attorney. He is 
 alone. The poor fellow has no money and the treas- 
 ury of the association is nearly empty on account of 
 the long strike. No, not alone. Every brief, every 
 decree of the higher courts, the impeachment of the
 
 106 A WOMAN. 
 
 police officer, every extenuating circumstance in 
 the prisoner's position arid relation to the affray, 
 have been scrutinized, corrected, and the advocate 
 himself filled with inspiration by a noble woman 
 bringing her intuition, her legal learning, and, 
 above all, her sympathies, her whole nature into 
 the case. That woman is Elaine Harley. Beside 
 her husband at the opening of the case, two- thirds 
 of his jury selections were made by her final de- 
 cision. She seemed to read every man as he stood 
 for examination. Every hour of the trial she has 
 supplied notes and references ; in cross-examina- 
 tion twice her whispered questions have proved 
 fatal to the prosecution. 
 
 On the morning of her husband's address to the 
 jury she has filled him with an almost religious 
 devotion to his cause, and a resolute affection for 
 his client and his overpowered brethren. The vast 
 audience wondered what impassioned orator had 
 been suddenly let down among them. The mil- 
 lionaire proprietors of the mills fidgeted, sneered, 
 reddened, paled, trembled before his denunciation 
 of the power of monopoly, and the unjust purchas- 
 ing power of money. Men in coarse clothes wept 
 like children in a death-chamber, sobbing piteously 
 as though with bursting throats, while he pictured 
 their hardships, struggles and helpless woes. The 
 jury leaned forward with eyes fixed under the half- 
 hypnotic suggestion of his awful truth. 
 
 It was his second speech ; there was to be no
 
 A WOMAN. 107 
 
 reply. He cleared the field. Not an opposing 
 argument stood erect when he was done. Men 
 wondered where he found his facts as well as his 
 eloquence. Surely he had been one of these men. 
 No; but by a woman's sympathy he had learned to 
 be one of them without passing through their very 
 trials. They had stood in the empty homes of 
 the poor too often not to know something of the 
 high crimes society commits against them. When 
 he described these poor men standing in the de- 
 fense of their homes and babies, before the bull- 
 dogs of treacherous, unlicensed, and un-American 
 warfare, the judge looked up from the charge 
 which he was already writing, as though spell- 
 bound. 
 
 Elaine's eyes burned like coals of fire. It was 
 more than she had even dreamed he could do. In 
 a moment more it was over. A noise like swollen 
 waters breaking through a dam was heard, until 
 the judge's gavel fell. In stern tones he read the 
 charge, adding his own doubt of the officer's testi- 
 mony, closing with the customary caution concern- 
 ing the benefit of a doubt. 
 
 The jury retired. In four minutes they returned 
 and rendered their verdict, "Not guilty." No 
 power on earth could have stilled the storm. It 
 rose higher and higher. At first low, ominous ; 
 then lighter, happier, louder, freer, until with 
 shouts the people bore the acquitted man, and his 
 brave defender on their brawny arms from the
 
 133 A WOMAN. 
 
 court room. The judge and the prosecuting attor- 
 neys alone remained to congratulate the red- 
 cheeked woman, who stood their peer in law, 
 although not admitted to the rights of the bar. 
 They did it unreservedly and heartily. 
 
 Tremont Temple is filled to its utmost capacity. 
 The greatest pianist of the age is to be received by 
 the musicians and the artists of Boston. Expec- 
 tancy is at its highest. Who will do the honors of 
 Boston ? All eyes scan the program. Without 
 exception a sigh of relief is heard. "Elaine Har- 
 ley, the celebrated cornetist." 
 
 Her name divides the numbers of the program 
 into two groups. As she appears the applause is 
 greater, if possible, than when Europe's greatest 
 artist bowed himself out for the third time a 
 moment before. She has arranged a medley from 
 Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words," closing all 
 with the Battle Hymn of the Republic. 
 
 Like delicate waves of ether, her first tones steal 
 away the senses of men and women not accustomed 
 to yield easily. A stillness like Lake Placid 
 asleep before the storm, chained every listener. A 
 shock in change of key, time and theme, sets every 
 nerve twitching, to be followed by wailing anguish, 
 tearful, tender pleading, every tone a sob. Then 
 prayers of gratitude came, lifting the soul from its
 
 A WOMAN. 109 
 
 droopings upon sweeping wings of praise, and then, 
 like a revelation of national glory, the Battle Hymn. 
 She has at last found the secret pitch of this 
 American^ assembly. It trembles and sways, and 
 swings; great beating waves surge to and fro. The 
 People, the People freedom, liberty. They rise 
 with the closing strain, and sing it as one man. 
 The proudest man in Boston that night was Max- 
 well Harley.
 
 A DREAM. 
 
 JULY 13th, 1892, in a spirit of adventure, I built 
 a pine-blazing fire on the very pinnacle of Cobble 
 Hill. In a mystic sense it was the most dangerous 
 and hazardous deed of my life. I little dreamed 
 of the consequences ; it was done in half-thought- 
 less bravado. The climbing had been circuitous 
 and difficult. But the higher air was strangely 
 revivifying. The vast mountain-riven horizon, 
 spread like two great wings in either valley, until 
 one's spirit mounted on them to an exultation ex- 
 pressible first in shouts, then in the desire for some 
 new endeavor. What more novel than to send the 
 cedars' blue smoke curling where for generations 
 nothing but sun, air, and sound-waves had moved. 
 
 The tinder-dry pine was carried up by not very 
 easy stages until the mirthful crackle and then 
 the sheeted roar of the fire told how delighted 
 were the imprisoned sun-sprites to be free, rushing 
 frantically into the embracing air. But, alas! what 
 other spirits had my rash exuberance set forth ! 
 
 Wearied at last with the sport, and the sweep- 
 ing spaces of vision whose only limits were the 
 more distant mountains to the west, and Lake 
 
 (110)
 
 A DREAM. Ill 
 
 Champlain in the east, I sought a shelter from the 
 now noon-sun, and found it beneath the jutting 
 pinnacle, in a half-concealed cave, whose shadows 
 lay far back like hunted lives from the searching 
 light. My " blue serge " coat folded over an age- 
 rounded stone for a pillow, made my last wish as 
 sleep came on, that this might b,e another Bethel. 
 
 And, indeed, how little we see with our eyes or 
 hear with our ears! How the great unguessed 
 mystery of the eternal and spiritual pulses unfelt 
 all about our boastful senses when we wake! We 
 say indifferently enough, " Here is life." The 
 chemist laughs, and cries, " No, here is life, un- 
 derneath all you saw." The biologist nervously 
 plucks our mental sleeve, to suggest, half-hesitat- 
 ingly : " No, here is life, deeper still. Not the 
 molecule, but the atom, is the constituent unit." 
 Then the metaphysician whispers, " Not so ; or- 
 ganization is not life. The Infinite alone is life. 
 Not things of sense are life, but a somewhat of 
 activity by which things seen in multiform phe- 
 nomena seem to be to the mind this is life. 
 The lump is not. The mind, acting and acted 
 upon by mind, through phenomena, alone is." So 
 away from things to entities I passed as I slept. 
 
 Then all at once I knew what awful conse- 
 quences had followed my almost childish sport. I 
 had with unwitting hands built the signal fire of 
 the ancient Indian councils, calling from the un- 
 happy hunting-ground the departed spirits of the
 
 112 A DEEAM. 
 
 war-like but reverent Iroquois. The unpeopled 
 Adirondacks were in a moment as populous as is 
 the sea with waves. They seemed to come at first 
 not as individual chiefs and warriors, but in indis- 
 tinct groups of spirit. I soon understood this to 
 be the other world classification. Those similar 
 in nature had grown closer together, until so com- 
 mon were their tastes, desires and habits, it was 
 difficult to distinguish one from the other, or to be 
 sure of identity at all. But as a company of them 
 passed the wide front of my cave-couch, I saw that 
 waving about each spirit was an outline of gleam- 
 ing light, closely resembling the electric flash 
 passing through a vacuum when the receiver is put 
 into contact with the opposite wires of an electric 
 battery. I thought at first these were physical 
 outlines, but I soon saw that it was merely the 
 suggestion of my own mental images of person- 
 ality. 
 
 There was action of some high sort, but it 
 seemed more like a glowing thought than any- 
 thing material. I knew then that the highest per- 
 sonality is not anthropomorphic, but intellectual, 
 emotional and willful, and that possibly the Greek 
 conception of God is truer than the Latin. (So 
 did I blend my waking dreams with this awful 
 vision). 
 
 . Not long could I observe thus these new spirit- 
 ual phenomena. In almost an instant nothing was 
 observable but the sadness of these myriad faces.
 
 A DEEAM. 113 
 
 It seemed that it had become possible to so indi- 
 vidualize emotion as to make it appear to be the 
 whole person for the time. Each form seemed 
 the personification of sadness. It was the strang- 
 est fascination I had ever experienced. No subtle 
 hypnotism could resemble it. I yielded to it 
 without an effort of resistance. 
 
 You have felt your throat beating with some 
 awful sorrow, until you had to hold your hot hand 
 against it lest you gasp for breath. Imagine one's 
 whole nature to have come into such a condition. 
 My eyes were not wet, for I seemed all tears. I 
 knew nothing in the universe but that these souls 
 were sad. I had swooned to all else. 
 
 Is this the heavenly sympathy? Had they cast 
 it upon me like a strange spell ? Will it ever 
 come to be a condition of this poor, self-killed 
 humanity here on earth? I hope it may. My 
 throat seems bursting now with the memory of that 
 awful consciousness of other hearts' woe. If a 
 score of us could invoke it to abide, the world 
 would be saved. Aye, if one. And has there 
 not been One ? 
 
 I listened at first for words. There were none. 
 There was no need. Even in this life we never 
 speak the best things ; we communicate them. So 
 now every glance, every motion, every posture was 
 a communion with my outdrawn soul. I began to 
 be conscious of their emotions without uttered 
 speech. I knew they were inexpressibly sad, just 
 
 8
 
 114 A VKEAX. 
 
 as I know even in this life that there is God. 
 Echoes of my own words came to me by and by. 
 But the echo, as happens when many walls return 
 the sound, was fuller, intenser by far, than the 
 original words. " Homeless," " Exiled," "Wan- 
 derer." Every pulse of their palpitating spirits 
 was a letter's sound. They were vibrant with 
 awful emotion. 
 
 It came to me at last, that there is but one 
 world. Life is continuous. It moves on in divers, 
 even diverse directions. It may reverse its ten- 
 dencies still, only one life. 
 
 I knew then the cause of this all-controlling 
 emotion. These cedar-fretted hills, these foaming 
 brooks, these rifted vales, this very signal-fire pin- 
 nacle of old Cobble, were of old, and are still, the 
 earth-holdings of these ancestors and their forbid- 
 den progeny. The woe of a race without a home, 
 groaning with the instinct to perpetuate itself, was 
 upon these restless spirits. Great desire was in 
 their eyes, such as Sarah must have known before 
 the angels' visit. A baffled purpose ; a remem- 
 bered hope oh, the hopes which look back ; and 
 a sighing energy. These were painfully plain. 
 
 Then a new consciousness came upon me instant- 
 ly, just as when one stands in a tempest night, 
 lost, and a sudden, sweeping flood of lightning re- 
 veals his surroundings. As dreams turn in keyless 
 phantasmagoria, so now I knew I dreamed, and yet
 
 A DREAM. 115 
 
 separated myself from the dreamer long enough 
 to see a real vision of my own time. 
 
 A vast, countless throng, hungry, restless, 
 blindly toiling; cursing by their prayers, some- 
 times praying by their very curses ; homeless, 
 friendless ; at war, not with their enemies, their 
 foes were too shrewd for that ; they made them 
 murder each other, it made the number less, and 
 in part satiated their frenzy for blood. The hills, 
 the plains, the fields, the seas, all theirs, by every 
 right of life or reason. Earning but not receiving, 
 making but never owning, building but never 
 dwelling within. Millers without flour, weavers 
 without raiment, tillers without grain, diggers of 
 coal without even the hearthstone, the fathers of 
 babes without kisses, the lovers of God without a 
 church. (Without a Christ ? Let none blaspheme!) 
 This is the life of the homeless, I thought. What 
 shall be their future condition, if one may guess 
 from the face of that noble chief who stood just at 
 my side. Once proud, with uplift of head like a 
 Homeric god, swift and dauntless. So broken 
 now, as to draw pity from a slave. If what I have 
 just described be the life of the homeless poor 
 now, and this mountain vision be the condition into 
 which we push them hereafter, what fate awaits 
 those whose iron-handed greed pushes les miser- 
 ables from their own into hell ? 
 
 Then I lost all, even myself. I was a toiler. 
 The rock split beneath my work-bent body as I
 
 116 A DUE AM. 
 
 arose. I hung suspended in the abyss. A voice 
 came up on the vapors of the pit ; ," Come, behold 
 your masters." I laughed, I hissed, and with 
 blood-bursting veins of demoniac glee, turned to 
 look downward. 
 
 But the long-dwelling God-soul in me drove the 
 passion out of me as I gazed with incalculable 
 horror below. I wept, in spite of my cruel pain 
 through the years, pitying tears into the yawning 
 depths. Aye, I even prayed that my tears might 
 quench the tormenting flames. 
 
 Then once more I was a dreamer on my stone 
 bed, enwrapped with the Iroquois emotion. Beck- 
 oning to the bowed chieftain as he drew near, I 
 looked into his eyes for a solution of a deeper 
 mystery which my dream within a dream had sug- 
 gested. I looked in vain for the fire-gleam, for the 
 roving glance of distrust, and the. quivering pupil 
 of the crouching animal. On the earth, between 
 days of chase and battle, there had been minutes 
 in his life of moody sadness and prostration before 
 the breathings of the Great Spirit. These minutes 
 had grown into days now through the long pro- 
 cesses of evolution. And through the ages still to 
 come these drooping ones, doubtless, would lift 
 their heads again with a new spirit and a new 
 understanding. So does God right all wrong, so 
 does he keep his compact with men signed into 
 nature's bond.
 
 A DEEAM. 117 
 
 Bat and now dream turned philosophy when 
 shall man leave off damming up God's currents, 
 compelling them to slowly wear their way through, 
 when his real mission is to straighten and deepen 
 the channels, even as John cried out in the wilder- 
 ness? 
 
 Just now as we ruthlessly rob the poor and 
 deprive them of their inheritance of the earth and 
 its products, do we build the gold-dam of covet- 
 ousness. But woe to us who build our palaces iii 
 the valley below! Comparably, Johnstown lay in 
 the course of a mere mountain brook. 
 
 While I thought, a silence came about, as when 
 one lifts the hands in prayer. I listened to, or 
 rather felt, the circle of thought issuing from this 
 untimely council which I would now have gladly dis- 
 banded and sent back beyond the clouds if I could 
 have done so. But the signal had flamed from the 
 mountain. It was too late. I felt that some awful 
 event was impending. I dared not guess. I felt 
 resolution rising like a mighty tide out of the dead 
 calm of their sadness. It rose with no lashing 
 lines on its crest. Not for revenge, not for recov- 
 ery, not for self at all. The old conditions had 
 been left behind too long for these. Something 
 better, more indomitable, winning. I knew it as 
 soon as they. I shuddered for the immediate 
 consequences of it; I rejoiced over the inevitable 
 end. I seemed to be impressed with their own will, 
 as I lay scarce daring to breathe.
 
 118 A DBEAJf. 
 
 " We are spirits of nature. We loved our 
 mother, her hills, and stars, and sun-filled stalks 
 and pods. We loved to be close to her bosom. 
 We believed the simple lodge of the forest was 
 better than the gilded mansion of our pale-faced 
 brother. We still believe it. Our summit of 
 vision beyond the earth-life has confirmed our 
 faith, ignorant and physical as were our concep- 
 tions then. Great cities, mighty structures, vast 
 wealth parcelled out, or kept with joint stiffened 
 clutch, commercial billions, are not civilization, are 
 not progress, are not life, are not happiness, are 
 not God-winning ! They curse ! 
 
 " We know well how spirit guides spirit, though 
 hindered by flesh. We, here by Mt. Cobble's 
 signal flame, holy as was our Israel fathers' Car- 
 mel-fire, solemnly covenant with the Great Spirit? 
 Jehovah Father, and with one another, that each 
 shall choose for himself one of earth's bravest, 
 most heroic souls, and shall be to it a constant 
 fellowship, whispering our nature and God-given 
 secret into its innermost heart, until the nations 
 shall learn that happiness, fraternity and eternal 
 life alone are found close to nature, and, in that 
 which we have since learned on yonder high 
 plains peace." 
 
 I groaned with the thought of revolution. But 
 I exulted in hope of evolution. I saw it all, though 
 it shook my soul to the very arms of death. I 
 lived on the border of two conditions for an hour,
 
 . 119 
 
 with awful indecision-. To enter that and take on 
 new activities, or remain in this, and help turn the 
 stony face of humanity back to the morning. Can 
 it turn ? Is there any morning ? Instinct answers : 
 " Back to nature." The Christ answers : " Up to 
 peace." And now abideth these three : faith, 
 hope, and fraternity, but the greatest of these is 
 Fraternity. 
 
 There are ashes on Cobble Hill, but is there not 
 a flame in your soul, my brother ?
 
 JIM'S VICT'RY. 
 
 THE last, bright-tinted leaves had turned brown 
 and ugly, and their number was growing less and 
 less upon the more hardy stems of the birch and 
 maple boughs of the Adirondack forest-home 
 of one who shall be nameless here, as he was 
 nameless always by reason of excessive modesty 
 except to a small circle of friends who knew him 
 simply because they lived near him, and were 
 often in want. The nearly bare branches, and the 
 swaying, slender, sappling trees, standing erect and 
 defiant, as youthful conceit ever does, not recog- 
 nizing that the great-hearted trees generations old 
 about them alone kept them from snapping in the 
 first stiff gale, and the wind-stirred leaves on the 
 acorn-covered ground made music to all ears but 
 his, very unlike that of spring, when the first green 
 leaves and sprouting stems sing sprightly in the 
 warming winds. 
 
 To all, this music of autumn was wild and un- 
 canny, such as they thought accompanied disem- 
 bodied spirits when at night they prowl forth from 
 their dust-dry graves in quest of an abode where 
 the worm cometh not. In their homes at night 
 
 (120)
 
 JIM' 8 VIC TRY. 121 
 
 these superstitious people shivered and paled in 
 spite of loud laughter, as the gusty wind swooped 
 down from its perch on the highest trees, down 
 through the seared leaves still hanging there in 
 spite of their fate, and dancing with many a whirl 
 in the rustling leaves on the ground. It never 
 sobered them, however ; it merely drove them far- 
 ther within, and made them seek for amusement 
 and dissipation, and forgetfulness of their half- 
 stirred consciences. 
 
 Thus the men, while the women, the wives and 
 daughters of these ignorant foresters, sad eyed and 
 lonely, sat apart from the glee and sparkling 
 glass, not conscious of wrong deeds or thoughts, 
 but feeling with a woman's deep intuition that 
 something was wrong, yet not knowing how to 
 remedy it. To them the autumn winds seemed 
 like voices from the great unknown world of which 
 they had some faint conception, ignorant as they 
 were, and to which they sometimes offered feeble 
 prayers in their distress. To the mother it seemed 
 like the last wail of her sick babe when it fretted 
 with pain in her arms, and struggling, at last died, 
 long before she knew it was in danger ; when she 
 hud held it for hours alone, so cold that its icy 
 hands seemed no less warm than when in health it 
 had toyed with her fingers. 
 
 To the shy, almost speechless girl, just bud- 
 ding into fair womanhood, the autumn wind in 
 the long evening, as she sat back in the shadovrs
 
 122 JIM'S VIC T BY. 
 
 cast by the flickering flames of the wide fire-place, 
 was like the last words of her lover, when one 
 morning he hurriedly left her in company with a 
 band of friends who were bent on seeing the new 
 city springing up into prominence some fifty miles 
 away. She felt a dreary presentiment that she 
 should never see him again, and his words, " Good 
 bye, Prue," she could hear over and over again in 
 the sobbing wind. 
 
 But he of whom we write this story heard in the 
 wind no such gloom and misery, nor did he ever 
 need stimulant of any sort to drive away its pres- 
 ence. 
 
 To him, it sang the same song that the spring 
 sang, in the same key, the same theme ; that was 
 the major, this the minor, and of the two he loved 
 the minor more. The one was bright and rejoicing 
 over life and health, which had come, in bud and 
 flower and beauty ; the other was a song of trust 
 to him, rather than fear. It seemed to say : " The 
 summer is gone, the flowers are dead, but the soul 
 is still alive, and its God is about it, and warming 
 it evermore. Nature may blight, the earth grow cold, 
 the stars go out and the sun lose its radiance, this 
 body perish as does the leaf, but God liveth still, 
 endlessly." It told him that under all these dead 
 leaves and in every black stem were germs of life, 
 now hidden, waiting for the springtime. That life 
 never dies, no winter kills it ; the soul is life ; life 
 is God.
 
 JIJTS VIC TRY. 123 
 
 But there is a story. This lover of nature lived 
 far more out in the field than he did within his 
 comfortable house, even in winter, for he found 
 crystals from heaven on the earth, helpless twigs 
 held by a load of ice which he could remove, lame 
 rabbits and limping birds to call his attention and 
 care. He had lived in this same spot fprty years. 
 
 No one knew whence he came. His hair was 
 already white with the frosts and snowfalls of sixty 
 winters. The lines on his peculiar face were many 
 and deep, but not such as fear or doubt make, nor 
 remorse ; rather, the lines of thought and care. 
 
 His wealth consisted in the increased value of 
 his land by improvement, chiefly by his own 
 hands, and such little accumulation of valuable 
 stores as naturally comes to one long busy in the 
 same place. His, the only well kept fences, the 
 only trimmed trees, the only repaired house and 
 barns, and, above all, his the only flower gar- 
 dens in all that community. To these, visitors 
 often came from the little town, springing up some 
 miles away. The mail stage, on its weekly journey 
 staid rarely enough anywhere else than before 
 the wide gate of this primitive home. But its 
 burden was always much lighter after stopping 
 here. So regular were its visits that a rude water- 
 ing-trough had been constructed by the huge gate 
 post, and always contained fresh water on the 
 morning of the stage's expected arrival. 
 
 In this ripe autumn time it was, as the hermit
 
 124 JIM'S VIC THY. 
 
 lover of nature stood ready to receive his mail one 
 Friday morning, that the driver, as he whipped 
 his horses up to the trough, upon reaching back 
 for the mail-bag, asked hurriedly, who lived in the 
 log-house a quarter of a mile back, at the turn in the 
 road. "Jim Allison," replied Mr. Armile thus we 
 shall name him "Every one calls Allison, Jim." 
 " Guess they're in trouble, the old woman come 
 a-runnin' out as I passed, with her apron up to her 
 face and asked me as I would please to tell you to 
 come up, that Jim had 'em agin. I told her as 
 that I would, and she bellered louder than ever. 
 Snaked if I see whar the boys git the stuff out 
 here. I'll be swigged if ever I bringed 'em any." 
 Mr. Armile looked as if he had some doubt about 
 this assertion. 
 
 The cloud deepened upon his face as he said, 
 half to himself: "I had some hope of him this 
 time. But I told him this was the last ; once 
 more, and I must let him go on his way forever. 
 Too long now have I held him up without hope. 
 But then I did have faith this time. He talked 
 differently ; something unusual must have hap- 
 pened." 
 
 " Well, I guess there were," said the stage driver, 
 while he put up the reins of the now satisfied 
 horses, " from what that black dwarf down at 
 the creek said." 
 
 " Who was that ? Joe Dives ? " " ' Pears to me 
 he did call himself Dives or somethin' of the kind."
 
 VIC THY. 125 
 
 " Tf he is here it is easy to account for the oilier, 
 for his heart is blacker than his face, and his soul 
 more bent than his ugly body." 
 
 " Well, as to that I am not able to testify ; but 
 least-ways he said as how there was trouble ahead 
 for somebody, and wanted to know if he could ride 
 with me to the 'line,' and I told him he could fora 
 dollar. He asked if I still druv by your place. I 
 told him I guessed there wouldn't be much use for 
 me through here if I didn't. Said he'd see a friend 
 and overtake me at the cross-roads if he decided to 
 go, and for me to rest here as long as I could." 
 
 Turning quickly toward the driver as the 
 thought flashed upon him what to do, Mr. Armile 
 asked : " You have an official commission, have 
 you not, to arrest anyone who may molest you, or 
 seem suspicious, on your route ?" 
 
 " Yes-sir-ee ; only last week I tuk a fellar to 
 Princeton to jail for skulkin' along inside the 
 fence, and lookin' kinder dangerous." 
 
 " Well, I want you to drive over and arrest the 
 dwarf, for he will be at the cross roads ; of that I 
 am sure. Take him with you to Princeton and 
 hand him over to the sheriff with this note. He 
 will be wanted there, I can assure you, and I will 
 be responsible for the part I ask you to do. He is 
 guilty of enough crimes to jail him for life, and 
 we have sufficient proofs." 
 
 The driver drove on at a good jolt, glad of a 
 chance to show his authority.
 
 126 jnrs r 
 
 Mr. Arraile hurried down the road towards the 
 humble home of him whom his mother in her 
 quaint way had said to be in a drunken fit. He 
 muttered as he walked : " If I can only get the 
 dwarf out of here forever, I can save half of these 
 men. Of course they are worth saving. A 
 broken-winged bird, fluttering on the ground, its 
 shining eyes bursting from its little head in its 
 fright, is worth saving ; even a flower, half broken 
 by the dashing rain, ought to have a friendly hand 
 and a prop. Surely a man, a prince in this world 
 of nature, the highest of all life on the earth 
 more than that, given a promise by his Creator 
 that this life is not cut off, but goes on forever 
 surely he, when broken-winged or bent by the 
 storm, needs a hand and a prop ! Maybe my 
 hand can help this poor fellow ; if only he will 
 lean on the support the Good Father gives us all." 
 
 At the close of these meditations he found him- 
 self at the bend in the road, and in sight of Alli- 
 son's log house a home rough in exterior, and 
 not much better within, with bare floor and walls, 
 and scant furniture. But it had been the field of 
 as hard battles as ever were fought on the earth. 
 For there is no conflict like that between appetite 
 for strong drink and a man's desire to be worthy 
 and to conquer. It had been an equal combat up 
 to this time. Jim's home, his aged mother, his 
 three motherless babies, his desire to be respect- 
 able, the friendship of Mr. Armile, and a verv
 
 JIM'S VIC T BY. 127 
 
 faint idea of God taught by this one great-hearted 
 man, who now crossed his wretched household 
 these on one side ; and ignorance, superstition, an 
 aimless life, love of sport, whisky, Joe Dives the 
 black dwarf, and Hell, on the other side. In the 
 last battle these had won, and the defeat was 
 shameful. 
 
 On the hard couch in the dimly-lighted room lay 
 the poor fellow with his face to the wall. Over 
 him his aged mother had thrown an old coat which 
 had served through many winters ; it seemed to 
 cling to him as though some sort of affection had 
 grown up between them in all those years of 
 mutual hardship. 
 
 As the visitor entered, he tiptoed across the 
 creaking floor,hafin hand, and sat upon the low 
 stool beside the couch. He laid his strong hand 
 upon the .shoulder of the sleeper. He moved 
 under it, and turning slightly saw who it was, 
 when, with a groan he turned back again. 
 
 " Jim, my boy," came the warm, mellow voice of 
 the forest hermit, " I am sorry to see you down 
 here. How did it all happen, the old story again 
 I fear ?" Then the weak man turned toward the 
 speaker as if to say something. 
 
 " Not now, Jim, you are not fit to talk now. Wait 
 until to-morrow and then we will talk it all over." 
 
 " But, sir," began the man with quivering lips. 
 
 "No, not a word now, no more rash promises. 
 We can fix it up to-morrow, if it isn't too late.
 
 128 jnrs vie THY. 
 
 Jim , Jim ! " lie almost sobbed, losing for a 
 moment his self-control, for so long had he loved 
 these poor men of his community, all whipped by 
 appetite as they were, that his heart was as soft 
 as a child's. Rough to look upon, almost stern in 
 his words, nevertheless his soul was sweetly tuned 
 to nature's music, and little children loved him 
 more than their own fathers. 
 
 In the meanwhile the old mother had gone out 
 to take the children to Mr. Armile's for something 
 to eat, and to be away from the scene, by his own 
 command. 
 
 With a sad shake of his head, and placing his 
 hand on the cot, he bent over that he might the 
 more closely observe the face of the man and see 
 how deep his intoxication had been, for somehow 
 he seemed to be unlike himself. There was a 
 nervous twitching, a restlessness never before 
 noticed in him when recovering from his stupor. 
 
 No sooner had he done speaking, than Jim 
 seized his hand in his, fairly raising himself up 
 on his other arm, his eyes burning like coals of 
 fire through the shadows in the room, and cried 
 out : " Hear me, hear jne, for God's sake ! It is 
 not whiskey can't you see ? I am not drunk. I 
 have kept my word to you. It has cost me my 
 life," he gasped. " I didn't dare tell mother, nor 
 the babies, but I am stabbed. All night my life- 
 blood has been dripping away, drop at a time. I 
 just prayed one prayer. Let me live until the
 
 JIM'S vie TRY. 129 
 
 only man in the world who loves me and has 
 saved me, can get here, and know why I am 
 dying. Now you are here. I tried to speak when 
 you first came in, but my tongue seemed stiff. But 
 your sad face let it loose. You thought I had fall- 
 len again. I would not have died for all of that 
 heaven you talk about, and had you believe me 
 drunk. I feel strong with you here. If it was not 
 for the great, wet blood-pool under my side I be- 
 lieve I might get up. It sickens me. I know it is 
 too late now, but I can tell you how it was." 
 
 Slowly he told the story : " Late last night I 
 heard a rap at the loor, and when I opened it the 
 black dwarf came hobbling in. You know how 
 we hate him, you and I ; we have cause to, for he 
 has robbed me of everything. He seemed fierce, 
 and before he had stood long in front of the fire 
 there, he asked for a drink of whisky. I told him 
 I had none in the house, that I had reformed. 
 With a sneer on his face which must be like that 
 of the damned, he hissed between his teeth. I 
 was determined he should not disturb me. He 
 gave me the lie twice, but I kept my temper. He 
 was raving by this time, and swore he would have 
 a drink or he would burn me out. Just then Nel- 
 lie came up to me for something, and before I 
 could see or think he had her by her little thin 
 arms, shaking her till she lost her breath. 
 
 '"Tell me, you little white-faced witch, where 
 the whisky is. Tell me, or I'll kill you.'
 
 130 JUTS VIC T BY. 
 
 " She looked like an angel, sir. She never trem- 
 bled or nothing, but looked straight at him. She 
 was always afraid of him before. She said : ' My 
 father don't drink any more since Mr. Armile ' 
 and, sir, your name seemed to make him crazy, for 
 he lifted her in his little iron arms, and whirled 
 with her toward the blazing fire-place. Like the 
 wind I was at his side and undid his hands, and 
 carried her, sobbing, to the cot here, and as I 
 bent over to lay her down, wondering what I should 
 do with the wretch, I felt something in my side, 
 first cold, and I shivered, then hot, and I fairly 
 burned with fever. I fell beside the child, while 
 he escaped through the door. She put her arms 
 about me and said, ' Father, are you hurt ?' I told 
 her no, that I felt a little sick, and would rest 
 awhile. Soon mother come in from the neighbor's 
 with the other children. I told them I was not 
 well, but all the while I could feel the hot blood 
 settling about my flesh. And this morning when 
 I looked at Nellie's hands I saw blood on one of 
 them. Her father's blood, made by whisky ! 
 Child of woe ! Oh, the night, the blood !" 
 
 Mr. Armile saw that the fever was raging high 
 now, and that the poor man's brain was crazed. 
 He checked him, and keeping down the great, 
 choking sobs that would swell up in his throat in 
 spite of himself, he took the dying man's hand, 
 and soothed him as best he could. 
 
 He grew calmer soon, but was so weak he could
 
 JIM'S VIC THY. 131 
 
 only pant ; lie had outdone himself. " Tell me the 
 story you told me one day," he whispered, " out in 
 the great woods. You had a flower; it was losing 
 its leaves ; you said it was dying for others like 
 itself, but Jesus died for men who hated Him. 
 Tell me again. I never hated Him, but I didn't 
 know Him. I knew you, I loved you, I did what 
 you told me ; and now, tell me, where will I be, 
 and who will be there ?" 
 
 " Yes," said the great man of nature, " I told 
 you of the flower. It died when its time came to 
 drop its seed. But Jesus, who loved men more 
 than I have loved you, was nailed to the death- 
 tree until He died. His great heart broke, Jim, 
 broke. He shed His blood ; you have shed yours 
 for your Nellie, and for all these neighbors of 
 yours, for they will curse whiskey forever when 
 they stand at your grave. But these were your 
 companions. Jesus shed His blood for the very 
 men who murdered Him. He spreads His hands 
 above every head that bows in the whole world. 
 
 "You have fought a noble fight, the best I ever 
 knew. You had nobody but me to hold you up, 
 but you fought it through. It has cost you your 
 life here, but, Jim, not your life up yonder." 
 
 " Will the flower live again ?" he whispered. 
 
 " I believe so, Jim, but I know you will, and 
 forever." 
 
 "Yes, yes," murmured the fast-dying man. 
 " Bessie, she died last year, for me, when I
 
 132 JIM'S VIC TRY. 
 
 was mad with whisky ; she will be there ; Bessie, 
 I married her, almost a girl ; she did her best. 
 'Pears to me I hear her ; Bessie, Bessie, is 
 that you ?" 
 
 And clutching the great brown hand of his only 
 friend on earth, he shivered and died. His body 
 was ice, but on his face played a smile as warm 
 as a sunbeam and so peaceful that when his old 
 comrade looked upon his face at the grave, he said 
 aloud: "Jim whipped that time; I can see the 
 smile of vie fry on his face." 
 
 Twenty strong men, with wet eyes and shaky 
 hands, put their mark over their names as Mr. 
 Armile wrote them under the pledge, beside that 
 new grave. 
 
 So in a forsaken region, with no church, no 
 teacher, scarcely a Bible within its borders, twen- 
 ty-one ignorant, careless men were saved from 
 awful death by one man. 
 
 Long did Mr. Armile stand out in the open field, 
 the night after the burial. He felt not the increas- 
 ing chill in the night air, but leaning against a 
 kingly hemlock, he looked up through its moving 
 branches at a bright star in the measureless space 
 above. The swaying boughs moved to and fro as 
 if trying to hide the star from him, but always he 
 saw it. So it seemed, our sorrows, our woes, our 
 very sins, swing between us and the Christ, as if 
 trying to hide Him from us, but always through 
 them all we see Him still, brighter and brighter.
 
 jnrs vie THY. 133 
 
 In the warm southern room of his own home that 
 night, the autumn winds sang three motherless, 
 fatherless babies to sleep. Fatherless no more," 
 for the great Father had given them a guardian, 
 and that guardian, the lover of the stars, and the 
 great nature-world around him, soon after fell into 
 happy sleep, while the wind, like some great 
 winged angel of glory from the distant mountains, 
 and as if guarding him, sang all the night long, 
 " Peace, peace, everlasting peace."
 
 "AUNT MODGIE." 
 
 IT happens, now and then, that where one least 
 expects it, is to be found the most beautiful bit of 
 scenery, in both nature and humanity. 
 
 Not far from Cedar Rapids, as one climbs un- 
 adorned hills and is satiated with unchanging 
 fields, he suddenly looks from a hill summit down 
 upon as beautiful a valley as the sun ever shone 
 into. Especially is this beauty remarkable if it be 
 looked upon in the month when the gold begins to 
 gleam on the green of the grain and the meadow. 
 
 Strange that in prosaic Iowa a gem from poetic 
 Italy should have hid itself through all these years, 
 a stranger from its nature-loved home, where the 
 skies 'are never brazen, nor the climate cruel. 
 
 The depth of this valley is almost cavernous. 
 The shadows of the great hills round about fall 
 into it like the presence of slumbering giants, 
 while the shifting lights and shades on the hills 
 themselves are full of motion, made by the turning 
 leaves now dark green, now lighter, as the winds 
 reverse them ; or still more marked by the over- 
 shadowing sweep of some pilgrim cloud, which, 
 straying from a great cloud convention in the West, 
 
 (134)
 
 1 ' A UNT MOD GIE: ' 135 
 
 dares to brave the sun all alone, eclipsing it sec- 
 tion by section. 
 
 A path winds in from the main road, and follows 
 the curve of the brook until it is lost in the broad 
 porch which alone marks the front of an old brick 
 house. Its one story and a half took on shape 
 some half century ago, when, doubtless, its mag- 
 nificent pile of brick and walnut stood as a mon- 
 ument of pride and " bigishness," in the eyes of 
 envious neighbors, who were wont to say their 
 unselfish prayers beneath the " clapboard " roofs 
 of palaces, whose strength was the heart of their 
 oak logs. An ugly house, and standing out upon 
 a plain of sand and weeds, would have no sugges- 
 tion of home-likeness ; but in the center of this 
 valley, it seemed also the center of life, about 
 which all these moving beauties of brook, and 
 path, and hill, and leafy tree, revolved. 
 
 The red bricks sent their color thrill far out into 
 the shadows and the subdued colors of the valley, 
 until it carne to be at last like the song a great 
 singer sings, which animates all the silent ones, 
 until to the listener every one seems to sing, even 
 himself. So, this bit of red colored with a living 
 glow all the somber darkness of its surroundings. 
 Thus that which alone would be unattractive, when 
 fulfilling its mission, in its place, grew strangely 
 beautiful. Has this no analogy in the life which 
 is human ? 
 
 One would expect, under the spell of this valley's
 
 136 " A UNT XODGIE." 
 
 charms, an ideal life must be found. Happy the 
 controlling life which rules in the old red house, 
 moulded day after day by the influence of the 
 mystic hills ! Surely, thinks the poet, to look up 
 to those towering summits morning and night, 
 wondering what lies beyond them, studying their 
 whisperings and sighings, or their moody silence 
 surely, a perfect life might find the end of its 
 development here. 
 
 But let us see. We will follow the path, and 
 resisting the whispered entreaties of the rippling 
 brook, continue, until we near the house undis- 
 covered. 
 
 " Saliny, Saliny," wails a peevish voice, heard 
 distinctly through the open window; "where are 
 ye ? You do beat all to git away where no one 
 can find ye : come here." No answer. 
 
 " I'll be bound she's gone down to that brook 
 agin ; I never seed sich a gal. These yer four walls 
 is no home fer her, no more than if they want 
 here; deed, I do believe she wishes they were 
 pulled down. The pesky woods and hills are Tier 
 home. If it want for me she would never come 
 home except to sleep. It is kinder hard for the 
 poor thing to hev to wait on me so much, but sick 
 folks is sick folks, and ye hev to wait on them or 
 they'll die, and if I don't git helped in a minute, 
 die I shall ; Saliny ! " 
 
 " Yes, I'm coming." 
 
 "Ye are always comin', I wish ye'd git here
 
 ' ' A UNT MOD GIE. ' ' 137 
 
 once ill a while ; my back is nearly broke in two, 
 layin' here waitin* to be turned; now do be easy." 
 
 She was easy; not by reason of a strong form, or 
 well developed muscle, but because of that grace 
 and skill which so often accompany the lithe and 
 delicate body. She wasted no strength, made no 
 awkward movements ; there was no half-lifting, 
 and then a sudden laying down for a renewal of 
 strength. She knew just how to lift the almost 
 helpless body of "Aunt Modgie," as she always 
 called her. Not a very appropriate name, to be 
 sure ; but the one she had lived by, and she said 
 it was " good enough to die by." 
 
 They were in no way related, these two women. 
 The younger had been adopted by the elder, when 
 she was four years old, out of an Orphans' Home, 
 in the city near by, "for better or for worse," as 
 she said, when she took her, mistaking the occa- 
 sion, doubtless, for the one she in her lonely 
 spinsterhood had long been secretly longing for. 
 But that was not to be; in the glory and strength 
 of her youth she had loved with her whole heart, 
 but her hero had gone away without a word of 
 warning, and she had never again seen him. For 
 a long time she had waited, looking down this 
 same winding path. Often in the shadows of 
 evening she thought she saw his familiar form, 
 and often she awoke from her dreams with his 
 step ringing in her ears. 
 
 She and her brother had kept the little valley
 
 138 " AUNT MODGIE." 
 
 place, until at last he had died. She had hardly 
 righted the house after the funeral, until she had 
 determined what to do. " I cannot live alone I 
 could live all alone, but I arn not alone now any 
 more ; some one is always near me. But I am a 
 hundred times lonesomer than if he was not always 
 comin' back to me. I must have some one here 
 who will take up my attention. No one of my 
 own age can do that ; nothin' will do it but a sick 
 person, or a baby. They say the 'sylum is very 
 full this season. I believe I will look 'em over. I 
 would ruther have a sickly one if only it wouldn't 
 die ; but I'll see." 
 
 Her untrained mother -heart sobbed, and sob- 
 bed again, as she looked upon that multitude 
 of motherless waifs at the asylum, cared for by 
 the matrons of the home, but motherless still! No 
 great thrill of child-life would ever set their hearts 
 quivering with affection. So soon they must make 
 way for others and step out into what paths, what 
 ways, into what struggles, what destinies ! She 
 silently wept as she thought of it. 
 
 She wanted to take half a dozen of the puniest 
 and palest ones, and had nearly decided to do so, 
 when the fierce pain in her breast, stinging for a 
 moment, repeated its old warning. She might be 
 more helpless than they before many years, and 
 she ought not to make so many lives dependent 
 upon her without being able to carry them 
 through.
 
 "AUNT NODGIE." 139 
 
 As she looked, a little, frail thing, in the arms 
 of an older child, let its nodding head fall back 
 against the bosom of its little nurse. The day 
 was warm, and it had been too severe a trial to 
 bring it from its half-finished sleep. She had 
 noticed its eyes fixed upon her when first she had 
 entered, and had instantly felt drawn towards it. 
 Some familiar look, some half-forgotten, nameless 
 wistfulness in its eyes, seemed to speak to her, 
 until her heart had been stirred, as we have seen, 
 to be a mother to all these waifs if only she might 
 be able. 
 
 " Let me take her and rest you," she said to the 
 child, who gladly gave her up from her aching 
 arms. " How light she is, poor thing ! Are her 
 parents both dead ?" 
 
 " We think so," replied the matron ; " we know 
 her mother to be dead. Her father came with her 
 here, and said he would return, but he has never 
 done so. He looked very strange-like, and seemed 
 rather unsettled in his mind. He was very poor, 
 and looked like he had eaten nothing for two or 
 three days. The child has his eyes, with the same 
 wistful look in them." 
 
 " Bid you see the mother ?" she asked. 
 
 "We only saw her in her coffin," said the 
 matron. "She was large, and rather coarse-fea- 
 tured, with the mouth firmly set. They say her 
 hands were clinched when she died, and no one 
 could open them. The child had this little locket
 
 140 "AUNT MODGIE." 
 
 and chain about her neck when she was brought 
 here. In it is a picture of her father." 
 
 " May I see it ?" She half dreaded to look at it 
 for some reason, but she opened it bravely. Sure 
 enough, the presentiment which had swept over 
 her a moment before was verified. She had worn 
 the locket many a time herself. It was the face of 
 him who had gone from her, but kept coming back 
 to her memory and in her dreams. 
 
 She understood it all now. He had spoken once 
 of a woman whom he had met in his boyhood, 
 who held a strange spell over him. He told her 
 he had vowed never to see her again. She knew 
 now that he had seen her again ; that she had* 
 followed him, and he had at last given up the 
 struggle and gone with her in spite of his nobler 
 love. She had married him, and this was their 
 child. The mother was dead, perhaps the father. 
 The child was unmistakably like its father. She 
 must take it, and in her love for it, hide some of 
 her awful pain, for the wound was throbbing 
 again and breaking under this new pressure. 
 
 So home with her, and close in her arms all the 
 way, had gone the baby with the beautiful eyes. 
 Through the years these two lives had come up high- 
 er and higher, almost out of the valley to the very 
 hills. The child lost its frailness and pallor, and 
 took on the glow and % strength of the woods and 
 the flowers. Her voice was tuned to the music of 
 the birds and brook.
 
 "AUNT MODGIE." 141 
 
 Yet there were discords and surprises. The 
 child caught a certain waywardness from nature; 
 stormy, moody, almost violent at times; but love 
 and tenderness always soothed her, and when her 
 returning calmness re-assumed control, she fled 
 always to the hills for penitence, not returning 
 until the smiles played through her tears, as the 
 refreshed flowers after a heavy rain nod beneath 
 their pearly crowns. 
 
 She was loyal to "Aunt Modgie," and shirked no 
 duty which love could prompt. 
 
 On the other hand, as great changes had come 
 upon "Aunt Modgie." The pain had come andgone, 
 until she had begun to expect it at regular inter- 
 vals. At last, after a sharp attack of lung fever, 
 during one long-remembered, damp winter, it came 
 to stay. Her very voice grew hollow with the sound 
 of disease. The hands, once so soothing, were nerv- 
 ous and quick, and seemed sometimes almost to 
 sting when they meant to caress. Where it had 
 been her wont to entreat Salina for she had chris- 
 tened her thus at adoption she now commanded. 
 This had come about gradually, just as the help- 
 lessness had grown, scarcely perceptibly. 
 
 But the stoop in Salina's shoulders was more 
 marked, while an old look of many years had 
 come into her eyes. 
 
 The hills and the brook were still her delight, 
 and at times her only comfort. The ravine that 
 led from the brook up into the hills seemed now,
 
 142 "AUNT aiOD&IE." 
 
 more and more, like an entrance into the presence 
 of the Infinite, and in those long, silent commun- 
 ions she found a gracious strength. 
 
 Struggles like the battles of armed hosts, equal 
 in strength and number, came to those two lonely 
 women. The one with the dreams of youth full 
 upon her, longing to see the great world, half 
 doubting sometimes between it and her afflicted 
 benefactor; for this her only home was, she knew, 
 the gift of this lonely woman. To the elder, in 
 the impatience of pain arid unrest, came the old 
 fight. Was God merciful ? So long had she 
 waited, so hard had she tried to forget the father 
 in the child, and yet felt- the defeat, as only her 
 aching heart could know! To-day she had deter- 
 mined Salina should know the story of her birth, 
 and their relation to each other. The peevishness 
 with which she summoned her upon the morning 
 of which this story speaks was by no loss of love, 
 but because of the nervousness and weakness of 
 one who, though long sick, undertakes a great task. 
 
 "Come closer to me, dear, I hev somethin' to 
 tell you. I do this because I feel the mornin' is 
 dawnin' over the hills at last, and the shadows of 
 the valley are a-liftin'. Now you must not say a 
 word until I am done. Take this little locket; 
 you have wondered why I looked at it so often, 
 oftener than you did, even. But I hev never looked 
 at it without lookin' at you, too. There is a great 
 secret here, and you must know it. Saliny, my
 
 ' ' A UNT HOD GIE. ' ' 143 
 
 child, these eyes of your father's, so like your 
 own, were mine once, and were like the stars of 
 the night to one lost. They looked down into my 
 soul, and I loved him. No, wait a moment; I want 
 to tell you all." 
 
 Then she told her all she knew of his life, his 
 temptation and weakness, and how she hoped that 
 he still lived. 
 
 "Oh, Aunt Modgie," Salina sobbed, as she clung 
 to her, " why did you not tell me years ago ? Oh, 
 the bitter words I have said to you, the many 
 times I have neglected you, and your heart .so full 
 of pain! How can I live and know you have suf- 
 fered so much, and that I might have helped you 
 infinitely more than I did ?" ^ 
 
 " Be still, child, you know not what you say. 
 Between the storms of my life there hev been 
 calms without number, hours when I was positive- 
 ly happy a-carin' for you. Long ago I would hev 
 died, had it not been for you, and died, Saiiny, 
 worst of all, a-hatin' God ; but you hev carried me 
 to the hills yonder so often, that I found the great 
 heart of the Father at last, and it's all like a sea, 
 Saiiny, a mighty sea of peace. I'm lookin' for the 
 dawn yonder. See, its faint glimmerin's a-peepin' 
 over the old hills in the east ! The day is a'most 
 here. I must sleep once more, and then I will not 
 be tired when the day comes. Wake me when 
 the night is all gone. Just one word, dear child
 
 144 " A UNT MOD GIE. ' ' 
 
 find your father, if lie is alive ; save him as you 
 have me ; he needs you." 
 
 Long into the morning the feverish young 
 woman, now so pitifully undone, lay with her head 
 on the bed, with one hand outstretched, groping 
 now and then for the fingers that each time she 
 felt them, grew colder and stiffer. Once they 
 stirred with a quivering of the body, in which a 
 whisper seemed to be half formed " the dawn, 
 the mornin' " and then the night was all gone. : 
 
 By some strange volition, the morning of the 
 next day a stranger came slowly up the path to 
 the house. He was stooped and gray ; his face 
 curved with pain and wistful longing. From his 
 eyes all the hope had gone out long ago. Came, 
 he knew not why, unless it was to look at the old 
 brick house once more, and die, for his life had 
 been a struggle without end, without hope. He 
 had no thought of going in ; no thought of being 
 recognized, for the face of the man was not like the 
 face in the locket ; by days of sorrow, penitence 
 and age his old strength and beauty were almost 
 gone. 
 
 But there was crape on the door, the scent of 
 heliotrope came through the open windows, and a 
 silence held the place like that which death alone 
 makes. 
 
 He scarcely knew what he did. He was in the 
 room in an instant ; for the first time in all the 
 long years since they parted, he wept. Such tears
 
 " AUNT MODGIE." 145 
 
 as no mother ever weeps over her dead boy, or a 
 child over a mother's death-face ; tears of heart's 
 love and heart's pain distilled through years of 
 sorrow and care for this one hour. 
 
 If his face told not the secret, his tears did ; and 
 told it to her who alone was watching with her 
 dead. She waited, half alarmed, until the first 
 burst of grief was over, then throwing her arms 
 about his neck, she pressed her lips to his wrin- 
 kled forehead and almost sobbed into his ears, 
 " Father, father, I have loved her, too, ever since 
 she took me, a baby, to be her own." 
 
 Too sacred for utterance are some heart-com- 
 munions such were these. The father had never ex- 
 pected to see her again. To him she had been the 
 scar of his weakness and almost crime. But now 
 he was sanctified by the love of these two women, 
 the living dead, the dead alive, both of whom he 
 had wronged. 
 
 The clinging girl had his heart instantly. She 
 gave new life to him, and healed his wounded 
 spirit, revived his dead faith in God, and set flow- 
 ing again the currents of a life long stagnant, more 
 powerful in its energies, more wonderful in its 
 strength to do good to men by reason of its weak- 
 ness and cross. Together they prospered; fed, 
 clothed, and made homes for hundreds .of poor 
 waifs. 
 
 Father and daughter, victims of error, restored 
 10
 
 146 "AUNT MODGIE." 
 
 by tears and suffering, came into a saving fellow- 
 ship with men on earth, and into a blessed immor- 
 tality.
 
 JOHN BROWN. 
 
 (WRITTEN AT JOHN BROWN'S GRAVE IN THE ADIRONDACK^, 
 JULY 17TH, 1892.) 
 
 MAECY holds no firmer place along the silent 
 Adirondack guard 
 
 Thau Thou, rough-hewn old Chieftain, 'mong those 
 who for liberty have dared. 
 
 Thy dust, rock-held by Placid's copious deeps with. 
 
 songs of pines for requiem of state, 
 Is no securer kept, than in the hearts of patriots, thy 
 
 valors great. 
 
 Here amid thy farmer friends thou taughtst the 
 weakling grain 'twixt bruising rocks to grow; 
 
 The teacher since of weakling souls, o'er-topping 
 Fate, their powers to know. 
 
 Thou clay-marked son of earth, I wonder what divine 
 emanations filled thy toil-bent form, 
 
 Till riding over hatreds dire, like fire-charged, cleans- 
 ing storm, 
 
 Foes like forests fell; and dammed up streams of 
 ancient, stagnant, love of self were burst, 
 
 And love of men, aye, slaved and famished men, and 
 suff'ring Christ were first. 
 
 * * * * # #'* * 
 
 Oh, Pentecostal Christ, quick-wing another dauntless 
 
 soul to storm the citadel of caste, 
 Till slaves and kings of Toil alike the Patmos dream 
 
 shall see at last. 
 
 (147)
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 "Is THAT really a tally-ho?" 
 
 " Well, it has that appearance ; part tally-ho, 
 part horse ; six of one and half a dozen " 
 
 " How in the wide world does one get up ?" 
 
 "You will find the world wider than you have 
 dreamed when once you are up and going. So 
 very wide, I fear that you may try to fill two 
 places at the same time with that sprightly little 
 body of yours." 
 
 " No matter. I shall have one tally-ho lark if I 
 occupy three places at one time." 
 
 It was at Westport. It was their first experience 
 with mountains. Like the amateur tourists they 
 were, they had decided to follow the guide-book, 
 simply because there was nothing else to follow. 
 They bought their tickets to Westport, and not 
 somewhere else, for the sole reason that " it was 
 the entrance to the gateway of the Adirondacks." 
 Adrian Winake had been a college man through 
 four or five indifferent years, at a quiet western 
 school, with a diversified record between the ex- 
 tremes of " remarkable brilliancy," and "logging," 
 a western term for "playing" the professors. 
 
 (148)
 
 A DOUBLE HE DELATION. 149 
 
 He had learned one valuable lesson not in the 
 text : To assume knowledge where the effort is 
 not too great, ani the ends to be gained consider- 
 able. Hence his wise remark upon, the tally-ho. 
 The effort of saying it was not great, the end to be 
 gained, to make a passing impression upon this 
 rather vivacious young lady, his friend's sister, 
 who had been entrusted to his care as far as Eliza- 
 bethtown. Here Hoi well Berkeley would join them 
 within a week from ^Tew York, having prolonged 
 his stay there in business engagements. 
 
 Leona Berkeley was a typical young western 
 girl. She was full of curiosity, a bright, quizzical, 
 healthy curiosity, not the common sort, inherited 
 from abandoned paradise. Generous, sometimes 
 to indiscretion, wholly and almost absurdly inno- 
 cent. A little knowledge of Greek and Analytics 
 had given her, she imagined, keys to every closed 
 door of intellectual attainment. She was not slow 
 to try them, either. A few had proved rusty and 
 rebellious. She had not found fault with her keys, 
 however. Withal, an entertaining, thoroughly 
 good young lady, and with a much wider horizon 
 than one would have at first supposed. That one 
 is much concerned about the pebbles or flowers at 
 his feet, does not always indicate that he has not 
 discovered any heights, or looked far, this way and 
 that. 
 
 Full of chatter about little things, of quick 
 repartee and smiles, assuming innocence for effect,
 
 150 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 half pouting when you took her too seriously, 
 gently kind to your faults, and soothing to your 
 little heart-aches, confidential, but with an invio- 
 lable reserve when she imagined you were becom- 
 ing too sentimental such a wide-awake sight-seer 
 was Leona Berkeley. 
 
 She took in everthing rapidly, vividly. No 
 kodak's delicate film ever took or held quicker or 
 more natural impressions of the sunlit world. She 
 caught the edges of things. The striking, the par- 
 ticular, was always pleasing or alarming her. 
 Winake had noted the depot, the hurrying crowd, 
 the distant, first slopes of the hills, all in one 
 sweeping glance. She saw only the idol of her 
 dreams for weeks the tally-ho with its six creamy 
 horses. Trunk checks, inquiries as to route, time 
 of destination, these might concern more sordid 
 minds, but the top of the coach was her ultima 
 thule. She fairly clapped her hands, unmindful 
 of the attention she drew, when, having climbed 
 the stumpy little ladder, she sat perched upon the 
 last and highest seat. 
 
 The first range of hills set her wild, not by their 
 loftiness, for they were not very high, but by their 
 outline, their depths of green and encircling near- 
 ness. Changing her mood, she grew dreamy, 
 almost sad, when looking back, she saw the glis- 
 tening waves of Lake Champlain and the mist- 
 darkened Green Mountains beyond. She was get- 
 ting her first impressions of new space relations.
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 151 
 
 Her emotion is a common one. The desire to be at 
 some hazily distant cliff or peak, the impulse to 
 start at once, it cannot be far, you think, then 
 the baffling after- thought of the miles of wearying 
 way, indeed the utter impossibility of attaining it ; 
 a whole life of yearning and struggle and surren- 
 der, has its miniature in that first emotion spring- 
 ing from the mountain horizon. 
 
 When at last the eight miles between Westport 
 and Elizabethtown were nearly finished, and she 
 had shouted question after question down to the 
 rather reticent driver, Raven Hill, with its black 
 wings darker than ever, just then under a raven 
 cloud-shadow, loomed up before her, and then 
 further on, emerging from a sinuous alder-sheltered 
 mile, she saw Pleasant Valley spreading like a lit- 
 tle world before them, river, fields of daisies and 
 grain, village and all, this prairie-visioned girl, for 
 the first time since she had left New York City, 
 was speechless. 
 
 "Elizabethtown!" shouted the driver with a 
 crack of the whip, as the coach rolled down and 
 around the declining slopes, thundering across the 
 bridge of songful little Bouquet Eiver, halting 
 with a grand flourish at the post-office in the 
 valley. 
 
 " When, pray, do they find time to read letters, 
 much less write them here ? I wouldn't want to be 
 disturbed, not even by the shortest telegram." 
 
 "Suppose Holwell should be prevented from
 
 152 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 meeting us here, you would want to know " 
 
 "Stop, Mr. Winake. I won't even think anything 
 that is in discord with this place." 
 
 "Don't you suppose people ever sin or die here ? 
 Didn't you notice the graveyard a mile or so 
 back ?" 
 
 " When did you take your Bachelor of Divinity 
 degree? Don't preach. " 
 
 " Ah, there is a church on the hill. Had we not 
 better turn back ?" 
 
 " I do wonder what need they have for churches 
 here. I should think every hill would be a ser- 
 mon." 
 
 " Wouldn't they be rather rocky ?" 
 
 "Mr. Winake, I shall walk up this hill and 
 alone, if you do that again. I am ashamed of you, 
 positively ! Slang in the Adirondacks !" 
 
 " What in the Sam Hill are ye drivin' so fast fer, 
 Tom ? Don't yer see yer critters is about to drap?" 
 came up from the street. 
 
 Adrian made a gesture towards her as though 
 expecting her to faint. " You must get used to it, 
 Miss Berkeley. I know it's a sudden shock. I 
 have passed through it myself. I once visited 
 Concord, and standing with bated breath bated 
 is good at the very door of Emerson's home, I 
 heard an Irishman swear like a trooper. Metaphor- 
 ically I carried myself out for interment. I ven- 
 ture that you will find that a majority of the poets, 
 novelists, and 'lovers of nature,' as you would
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 153 
 
 say in the Adirondacks, are summer boarders. 
 The average of the natives will ran about as it 
 does the world over. But look yonder ! Can I be- 
 lieve ray eyes, or rather can you believe them? 
 There is a jail, and a court-house ! Can it be pos- 
 sible they need wardens and lawyers in such an 
 environment ?" 
 
 " I believe you expect to study law next year, 
 Mr. Winake." 
 
 "Well, why?" 
 
 " Oh, nothing, only I thought you spoke of them 
 as a sort of associated evil with jails and wardens.'* 
 
 " The Windsor House." 
 
 " A waltz, Miss Berkeley, in the drawing-room ! 
 Better try some other house, hadn't we ?" said 
 Winake with a teasing twinkle in his genial eyes. 
 
 " If you say another word I shall be vexed. Of 
 course, I knew that people ate and drank and slept, 
 and even danced right in the very eyes of old 
 White Face it must be near here somewhere ; 
 where is the guide-book ? But I think you might 
 let me indulge in a little imagination when you 
 know I" 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Miss Leona ; but I only 
 wanted to prepare you for the uripoetic side of life, 
 even in Pleasant Valley. I may be over-inclined 
 to see that side of it. But I couldn't help observ- 
 ing, as we came, that the meadows are nine parts 
 white and yellow daisies to one of timothy, that 
 in spite of the stone fences picked up from the
 
 154 A DOUBLE EE VELA TION. 
 
 fields, the corn has to fight its way through the 
 rocks, and that the push and prosperity of our 
 great West are like unbelieved dreams to these 
 hard-toiling mountain people. You saw the poetry 
 of the daisies, the stone fences, .and the pic- 
 turesque huts. I am glad you did. I saw the 
 reverse side." 
 
 " Yes, and when we climb old Marcy, you will 
 be growling about the * steep and brambled trail,' 
 and just keep me discouraged all the way up," 
 she pouted. 
 
 "No, I'll promise to sing 'Onward, Christian 
 Soldiers,' all the way up, just as we used to in 
 chapel." 
 
 " I wish Prexy were here to lead it for us." 
 
 " Thanks, awfully." 
 
 " Oh, not but that you can sing, Mr. Winake, 
 but you won't half mean it." 
 
 They had gone into the parlor as they talked. 
 
 " Are you Mr. Winake ?" said the bell-boy, com- 
 ing from the hotel register. " Here is a telegram 
 for you." 
 
 " Oh, already ! It is my punishment, I suppose." 
 
 " I hope it is nothing " 
 
 "It is from Hoi well, saying he will be here to- 
 morrow morning. Must have made the deal sooner 
 than he expected." 
 
 " Then I shall have some sympathy." 
 
 " Yes, Holly is something of a dreamer." 
 
 " Well, he won't go to raising hay and corn the
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 155 
 
 first thing. He takes his hat off to nature." 
 
 " Not a descendant of William Tell, then." 
 
 " Do you think nature is a tyrant ? But I don't 
 blame you if you can't discover her doing any- 
 thing better." 
 
 " Than raising corn ?" 
 
 " What shall we do with the rest of the day, 
 Miss Berkeley?" It was after dinner. "I should 
 like to take a walk if the condition of the natives 
 won't distress you too much." 
 
 "Oh, no ; I am a philanthropist by nature, and I 
 may open a bureau of relief here." 
 
 " We can at least study the guide-book. Why, 
 Marcy is not near here at all. It is beyond Keene 
 Valley. We are not in the mountains at all yet. 
 O yes, Hurricane can be seen in the distance. 
 What would we do without our ' dear little blue 
 book.' " 
 
 " I suggest a rest until Holly comes. He has 
 been here before. What have we to read ? " 
 
 "I have just finished Howells' 'Quality of 
 Mercy.' " 
 
 "A departure in psychology, isn't it ? " 
 
 " It is the best soul analysis we have in our new 
 fiction." 
 
 "And yet, from a sociological standpoint, I do 
 not like any of Howells' nearly so well as Garland's 
 stories. Garland never seems afraid of conclusions. 
 He states the definite wrong of society and attacks
 
 156 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 it manfully, often proposing remedies for distinct 
 social ills." 
 
 " But is not the other truer art ? Howells arouses 
 all your indignation by his realistic conditions. 
 You make your own conclusions, and propose your 
 own remedies." 
 
 "It may be better art, but isn't art a little slow 
 for the demands of the age ? There isn't much 
 art about the affairs at Homestead just now. I am 
 convinced those poor men would like to do the 
 right thing for their families and their fellows. 
 Who shall tell them what it is? Their condemna- 
 tion of the unfortunate anarchistic shooting' is 
 heroic, and confirms the public confidence in their 
 integrity. Their hearts are right. What little art 
 can do for them has been done. But who shall 
 point them the way out ? " 
 
 "Congress." 
 . "When was Congress converted? " 
 
 "In the campaign of '90." 
 
 "You know what I mean. When have the 
 masses had a law from Congress as against the 
 classes ?" 
 
 " The McKinley " 
 
 "Don't be foolish, Mr. Winake." 
 
 " Well, I wasn't going to say anything." 
 
 " You were in a fair way to say nothing. Noth- 
 ing but the public conscience can open the way to 
 toilers, nothing else can lead them out when it is 
 open. ' The novelist of to-day finds here his great-
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 157 
 
 est power. Just as the Teacher of Nazareth aroused 
 
 by parables the conscience of his time, so now " 
 
 " But did not J.esus' parables show consummate 
 art in their concealment of ways and means ?" 
 
 " Certainly, for the time was not yet at hand. 
 But after the enduement did Peter conceal any- 
 thing? 'Ye have crucified him.' 'Repent.' To 
 my mind that was the higher art, coming from the 
 same spirit, for it brought immediate action. No 
 one can deny the fullness of time this very minute 
 in social reform. This is the golden day of letters. 
 The editor, the moralist, the novelist, the econo- 
 mist, and even the preacher have come to their 
 own at last. The pen is mightier than dynamite. 
 The wielder of the pen alone can snatch the fuse 
 from the anarchist's bomb. I would rather write 
 the new ' Uncle Tom's Cabin,' than to do the 
 honors of the White House." 
 
 " You think a woman will write it, do you ? " 
 "A woman wrote the first, why not ? " 
 " I admire the color in your cheeks and the al- 
 most terrible light in your eyes, Miss Leona. In 
 fact, I feel myself yielding to your hypnotism, if 
 not to your logic. But I must remind you that we 
 are in the Adirondacks. Had you forgotten ?" 
 
 " I was dead, but am alive again. Let us go 
 forth and worship." 
 
 " The churches are not open yet " 
 
 " The churches ? " With a penetrating accent. 
 " I spoke of the mountains."
 
 158 A DO UBLE HE VELA TION. 
 
 " Bat don't you remember ' that neither in yon- 
 der mountain nor at Jerusalem " 
 
 " Your exegesis is musty, like your theology. 
 The Jewish and Samaritan strife is supposed to 
 have ended, or at least is transferred to new fac- 
 tions. After awhile we shall learn when and how 
 to worship in Spirit. Churches then -will be 
 armories, not altars. Every spot will be an altar. 
 All unrighteousness the foe." 
 
 Adrian's half-cynical mood died away as he 
 walked beside this enthusiast for man and the 
 home of man. A home made so beautiful, so 
 sheltered and overflowing by the Creator, in moun- 
 tain, in forest, and plain, but made so hard, and 
 ugly, and empty for the millions, by thoughtless 
 or designing men. The woman impulse began to 
 take hold upon him with new and not unpleasant 
 effect. He loved nature, he believed in the race, 
 though he often groaned with anguish as he 
 thought of the long journey and the meager prog- 
 ress of humanity. Unfortunately he had culti- 
 vated a light way of treating all serious subjects 
 when with his friends, that gave one the false im- 
 pression that he was both selfish and indifferent. 
 
 They walked, facing the setting sun, towards 
 Deep Hollow. Just before them, like an emerald 
 set in gold, was Cobble Hill in the last spreading 
 light of the already hidden sun. Numerous hills 
 lay on either hand, regular in outline, while to the 
 south they grew larger and more broken. They
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 159 
 
 were told that the road led to " Split-Rock Falls," 
 eight miles to the southeast, a popular resting-day 
 place for tourists stopping at Elizabeth town. Be- 
 hind them Raven stood, proud, glossy black, in the 
 soft sunset light. Returning they passed on down 
 into the quiet village. They rested for awhile on 
 the bridge, watching the eager little Bouquet 
 scurrying away as though the night would catch 
 it before it reached the lake. It did overtake it, 
 and always will. It seemed to Leona as though 
 the unfortunate were always hurrying just so, run- 
 ning from pain and poverty out to the realm of re- 
 pose, but always overtaken by the night. It was 
 still light enough to observe the sober colors of 
 the water-worn rocks in the river. They were seal 
 and clay, olive, bronze, arid granite-green, drab and 
 gray, ochre and white ; and yet when held up out 
 of the water they looked very much alike. So it 
 seemed to her, men, viewed under the light-refract- 
 ing element of caste and vocation, appear much 
 more dissimilar than upon close inspection. Under 
 common emotions they act very much like the sons 
 of a common father. 
 
 Is not each one a father, a son, or a brother ? 
 Will he not wince if you prick him ? Will he 
 not show gratitude if you caress him ? If he suffer, 
 will he not moan ; if he be happy, will he not 
 laugh ? If his own die, will he not weep ? If he 
 sin, will he not feel conscience's stinging reproof? 
 If he die, will he not see visions this side the part-
 
 160 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 ing veil ? If lie live again, will it not be by virtue 
 of his inheritance from the Eternal ? 
 
 Wherein do men differ ? Surely in nothing but 
 judgment. Otherwise the same qualities obtain. 
 The heathen mother strangles her baby girl ; the 
 Christian teaches hers chastity in the growing 
 years. Each, because her Deity so commands her 
 reason. Each obeys conscience and commies no 
 sin there is no guilt in either. But God pity the 
 one if she teach not chastity ! 
 
 No stern pen like mine can reproduce the fine, 
 secret, womanhood emotions and purposes, sweep- 
 ing through Leona Berkeley's gentle soul as she 
 stood introspectively in the twilight, gazing on the 
 bridge. 
 
 It was a communion hour without priest, wafer, 
 or cup. 
 
 " Mr. Marveley, this is my sister Leona, and our 
 friend, Mr. Winake. I know you will be friends 
 in an hour. Mr. Marveley is an old classmate of 
 mine at Andover. A quiet fellow then, he has 
 made a great stir since. We all three read your 
 new book, or rather Leona read it to us, on the 
 boat last week. It is .superb. I am proud of you/' 
 
 " Very kind of you, I am sure. I happened to 
 meet Holwell ; " turning to Leona, " or * Holly- 
 hock,' as we used to know him at Andover, in New 
 York. I was lounging towards the Catskills, but
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 161 
 
 you know his way, Miss Leona ; it is irresistible ; 
 so here I am." 
 
 "A regular four-in-hand." 
 
 " You will be pleased to learn, Leona, that Mr. 
 Marveey is fresh from the Homestead strike, in- 
 tending to lay his next story there." 
 
 " That's a secret, Berkeley. We have to keep 
 the reporters off, or they will have the whole story 
 in the papers before I write a line." 
 
 " One woman, three men. Three to one we keep 
 it," said Winake. 
 
 "And no takers," quietly replied Leona. 
 
 " I am more pleased than I can tell you that you 
 can give us the very latest, and the facts, about 
 Homestead. I never wanted to go anywhere so 
 much in my life. And this will be almost as good. 
 I think I need not ask which side you take." 
 
 " There is but one side, to the thoughtful man on. 
 the ground, Miss Berkeley." 
 
 " I was sure of it." 
 
 " Stage for Keene Valley," shouted the driver. 
 
 " We are ready," came back the hearty reply. 
 It was a glorious morning for a ride. Three other 
 guests were going along, making the wide, four- 
 seated mountain wagon a roomy, jostling, rattling 
 triumphal car. 
 
 " To the left you see the peak of Hurricane, pro- 
 nounced in three distinct syllables, with a world 
 11
 
 162 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 of stormy meaning by the natives," shouted Hoi- 
 well. 
 
 " Just in front of us is Saddle-back Hill. Can't 
 you see the pigmy soldier seated on his steed, 
 ready for the rush ? " 
 
 "Not a soldier, Holly, let's call it the elfin 
 rider. Make him the hero of your next story, Mr. 
 Marveley." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," came from the back seat, 
 " but is this Mr. Eugene Marveley? " 
 
 " It is," replied Berkeley, " and I shall be pleased 
 to present you to him." 
 
 " We are a party of three from Boston," giving 
 their names, " and have been in raptures over Mr. 
 Marveley's stories, particularly the last one. We 
 certainly regard the pleasure of meeting him as 
 the chief thing of our visit." 
 
 "And just think of it, broke in one of the young 
 ladies, to ride in the same wagon, and see the 
 same mountains." 
 
 " I beg of you say no more," cried Mr. Marveley, 
 as though the whole affair were a huge joke. 
 
 It is very easy for tourists to become acquainted. 
 Often some long looked-for peak coming into sight 
 suddenly, an accident of some kind, and sometimes 
 only a smile is needed to make strangers confi- 
 dential friends. A friendship this, foreign to the 
 high-pressure life of every day. It results from a 
 leveling environment. Exalted things make smaller 
 ones more alike, and if they be men, cause them to
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 163 
 
 draw closer together. When all men shall come 
 to look up to the Highest they shall be brethren 
 indeed. 
 
 For nearly seven miles they climbed up easy 
 slopes, while the dashing Bouquet just at their side 
 came down with many a mocking little laugh that 
 anybody should want to go up hill. Often they lis- 
 tened to what seemed a shower of raindrops on 
 the leaves up the hill, only to find shy, little falls 
 of water with ten or twelve feet descent. After 
 about an hour, every moment of which was filled 
 with some swift-changing scene, they reached 
 Pitch Off Pass, sheltered by a rugged cliff at a 
 height of nearly two thousand feet. They have 
 stolen upon Hurricane so stealthily that he stands 
 for some moments in plain view, so near that it 
 seems one could almost leap into his green depths, 
 so illusive and alluring are mountain distances. 
 A thousand feet below they sight the famed Keene 
 Valley, stretching its ten miles of Italian beauty 
 from Keene to the An Sable ponds. 
 
 "How can I wait?" mused Leona. 
 
 " For what ?" 
 
 " For the valley ; it seems like heaven." 
 
 " I thought heaven was up, not down," said 
 Adrian. 
 
 " Yes, some people do think they will find no 
 heaven until they can fly. They don't know that 
 it is a condition and not a place."
 
 164 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 " Do yon think they will ever discover their 
 mistake ?" 
 
 " I doubt it." 
 
 " Look ! far beyond the ranges rising west of the 
 valley, you can see White Face. You must look 
 quickly however, or yo.u will lose it. s"ext to 
 Marcy it is the grandest pile in the Adirondacks." 
 
 As they descended rapidly, the Gothics, a dis- 
 tinct range within themselves, appeared to the 
 south, while to the southwest a little later, Marcy 
 itself was distinguishable." 
 
 " Isn't there an Indian name for Marcy ?" 
 
 "Tahawus; a much stronger name every way. 
 The fact that it is an Indian name makes it much 
 more appropriate, even if it had no special signifi- 
 cance ; but meaning, as it does, ' I cleave the 
 clouds,' it ought to be accepted without question." 
 
 " One reads," remarked Mr. Marveley, " that 
 among the first summits to appear above the 
 water in primeval times were these loftiest of the 
 Adirondacks. Doubtless Tahawus was first to 
 cleave the universal cloud, and White Face first to 
 reflect the soft, prophetic light of life." 
 
 "Isn't it wonderful to think that here old 
 mother earth began," half sighed Leona. 
 
 " I presume terra firma was uttered for the first 
 time that day." 
 
 " How can you, Mr. Winake ! .Besides there 
 were no days yet. Didn't the Dean teach you that 
 the sun, moon, and stars were not made until in
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 165 
 
 the third epoch, and that there was no distinction 
 between the solar day and night until then ?" 
 
 "You forget I am not a theolog." 
 
 " Ah, yes," with a deeper sigh. 
 
 "Here we turn into the valley proper. Six 
 miles further we will find St. Hubert's Inn (known 
 for years as Beede's) and dinner." 
 
 In spite of the hot sun, the valley drive was 
 cooled with a fragrant breath from, off the hills 
 which rise immediately out of the plains, in this 
 respect unlike any other portion of the range. 
 
 "Every mountain range has an outline-figure 
 peculiar to itself. Sometimes it is round, again 
 sharp and peaked, but the Adirondacks take the 
 long, wavy contour. Almost every conceivable 
 shape can be seen along the horizon. A wealth of 
 design worthy a sculptor. One could not easily 
 tiie of them for that reason," explained Mr. 
 Marveley. 
 
 Passing Keene Valley post-office, they discover 
 several beautiful cottages, maroon and yellow, 
 nestled back on the first levels of the hills. 
 
 " What delightful nooks in which to hide from 
 figures, pork and stocks," suggested Winake. 
 
 " While for the really tired, there is no rest," 
 returned Leona. 
 
 Just after a long hill-pull they are at St. 
 Hubert's, the most modern and inviting hotel in the 
 Adirondacks. It is a whirl of civilization set down 
 in the midst of majestic repose. Everything that
 
 166 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 eye or ear or palate is accustomed to in the outer 
 world, or can wish, is here in profusion. What 
 monumental stillness settles about it. To the 
 east is Hopkiirs Peak, and the Giant of the val- 
 ley with its Sphinx-like I. V. W. in black and 
 green. No mind has had the gift to read that dire 
 secret of the ages. Some antediluvian giant may 
 have carved his challenging initials as he strode 
 from range to range in Homeric rage. 
 
 Between east and south is Noonmark, with its 
 shadow-players appearing each day in a new role 
 "a pantomime of the angels," as a little friend of 
 mine suggested. The east branch of the Au Sable 
 River runs but a little distance away, drawing to 
 its quieter level the falls of Roaring Brook, three 
 hundred -feet down the side of the Giant. Chapel 
 Pond and the Giant's Washbowl are two other 
 attractions in the Giant's great show, easily 
 reached from the Inn. 
 
 " Now we shall rest/' said Berkeley. " Early to- 
 morrow we will start for the Au Sable ponds to find 
 the chief of all the valley's charms. The Upper 
 Au Sable for beauty, Tahawus for grandeur. 
 And yet so many other lakes and mountains fall 
 so little behind them, that discrimination is diffi- 
 cult." 
 
 " Now Mr. Marveley can tell us about Home- 
 stead." 
 
 " You will have a more sympathetic staging if 
 we walk out a little way from the haunts of the
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 167 
 
 guests," suggested Adrian. u Such, an indiscreet 
 gang of socialists as we, are liable to be mobbed 
 by the aristocracy." 
 
 "The suggestion is a good one." 
 
 " Which half, Miss Berkeley ?" 
 
 "Oh, you can't divide Mr. "VVinake's proposi- 
 tions. They have to be taken whole, like oysters." 
 
 " The supply of sauce seems to hold out well," 
 replied Adraiu sharply. 
 
 "Well, Kussell's Falls are just a few steps 
 away. We will go up there and save our necks," 
 said Berkeley. 
 
 " Of course, you must understand," began the 
 novelist, " that I did not go to Homestead in cold 
 blood, for a story. That has been an after-thought, 
 in fact, a necessity. I must overflow somehow. I 
 will. give it a channel. Perhaps rny indignation 
 and sympathy may do some good for other toilers, 
 if not for the men at Homestead now. 
 
 " It was a strange experience. To see thousands 
 of workingmen idle, even on a gala day, is a novel 
 sight ; but to see them dejected, solemn arid smile- 
 lessly earnest, and waiting restlessly, is quite 
 another sight. A whisky-laugh, now and then, 
 just to bring out the soberness of the vast throng, 
 a mocking, jeering face among five hundred, to 
 deepen the lines of care and dread. To stand at 
 one side and look upon such a crowd would quick- 
 en any pulse, but to become a man with them as I 
 did, would almost stop the heart's beating. Some-
 
 168 A DOUBLE BEVELATION. 
 
 how they found out who I was. I think the post- 
 master gave them the information. You see, they 
 were watching for spies all the time. A number 
 of them had read 'A Toiler's Struggle,' and 
 trusted me from the first. They took me into their 
 homes and left me beside their sick babies. Never 
 accustomed to speak, I found myself addressing 
 vast throngs of men, quiet, orderly, but fearfully 
 grim. I refused again and again, until their re- 
 proachful eyes nerved me to the ordeal. I am not 
 sorry I did it. I was afraid of just what has hap- 
 pened. Rumors had already reached us, in fact, 
 open propositions from the anarchists, either to 
 remove the offending parties, or destroy the works. 
 A few only gave heed to the hiss of this serpent, 
 labor's most subtile and tempting devil. I rejoice 
 that every word of warning I uttered was ap- 
 plauded to the echo. I know the published pro- 
 tests of the strikers since the shooting to be truth- 
 ful. They feel they have been most grossly mis- 
 represented and maligned by the bloody deed. I 
 thundered in their ears, by no trick of rhetoric, for 
 I know none, that anarchy seeks to bless by curs- 
 ing, to heal with the dagger, and moves towards 
 its heaven through hell." 
 
 " What do you think of the issue, Mr. Marveley?" 
 asked Leona. 
 
 " It is difficult to say. One thing is settled for- 
 ever, I take it. The Pinkerton bull-dogs will have 
 to stay in their kennels. Blood-hounds for slaves,
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 169 
 
 soldiers for freemen. One other thing has been 
 settled. No private soldier will ever again be 
 hung up by his thumbs, and branded with barbers' 
 tools by the officer in command, on American soil. 
 Perhaps a third fact is almost determined. A 
 book entitled ' Triumphant Democracy ' will have 
 an increased sale. 
 
 "But, more generally; the people and honest 
 labor asking its own, are closer by this strike ; 
 the day is nearer when the profits of money plus 
 toil will be more equally distributed between cap- 
 ital and labor. The bitterest days are over." 
 
 " I am glad to hear you say that. I have been 
 very apprehensive." 
 
 "No need of it, Berkeley. The anarchists will 
 show their hand within three years. Few in 
 number, mad in brain, and possessed in soul, they 
 will be exterminated at a single blow. The sepa- 
 ration between law-hating and law-abiding took 
 place at Hayrnarket Square. A stream of blood is 
 between them now. Its current was quickened at 
 Homestead last week. It will never be crossed. 
 
 " The steadying hand of the teacher and the 
 writer came just in time. Had no one called a 
 halt and pointed another way, * Caesar's Column ' 
 would have been built ere this. The ' face about * 
 has come. The army has been re-enforced ten-fold 
 since then, from every profession and rank of life. 
 The best, the wisest, the most relentless in battle, 
 of America's sixty millions are faced now with
 
 170 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 labor towards its goal just compensation. I in- 
 clude the noblest and most truly cultured women 
 of the land." 
 
 "It is woman's problem more than man's," 
 broke in Leona. " It concerns directly the home, 
 its children, and its virtue. Sometime the anti 
 and pro-tariff shouters will put their mouths in the 
 dust and the protection of the home will stir every 
 heart. The home-lovers for it ; the home damners 
 against it." 
 
 "Rostrum, rostrum," called Winake, who never 
 could endure that a private conversation should 
 become so serious and tragical. 
 
 " Miss Berkeley will doubtless take it when the 
 conflict comes," musingly said Mr. Marveley, in 
 Leona's defense, whose intelligent sympathy with 
 current reform had strangely affected him. He was 
 not accustomed to that sort of thing in the East. A 
 bright, girlish, laughing young lady, evidently 
 used to the best society, well-dressed, with an air 
 of cultured repose when the occasion required, and 
 yet so thoughtful, so well-read, so definitely set on 
 one side or the other of every great question, was 
 an anomaly to Marveley. What a character she 
 would make, and, yes, what a friend she could be ; 
 and if a friend, what a helper. 
 
 Adrian saw the intense but unconscious expres- 
 sion on his face. Whether or not he himself had 
 had any serious intentions toward Leona, he with- 
 drew at once from the contest with a nobility native
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. . 171 
 
 to him, though not always on the surface. He 
 knew his advantage as a friend of the family, but 
 he saw the eternal fitness of things, and secretly 
 promised aid rather than interference. 
 
 Aroused from his revery by Leona's suddenly 
 uplifted face, as though to question him further, 
 Marveley went on : "I have not told you the chief 
 motive for going to Homestead. It is somewhat 
 painful, and yet not really so, after all. One of 
 the leaders of the strike is an older brother of 
 mine. So you see I am tied to that cause, and to 
 this particular issue, by a cord of flesh. He wrote 
 me for advice. I answered in person. Two of the 
 principal events of the strike were the result of his 
 high-minded and yet loyal fairness. I arn not at 
 liberty to name them now. But you see, what I say 
 of the case I can vouch for. Above everything else 
 I have said or shall say, I want this to be heard : 
 Ninety-five out of every one hundred of these men 
 will protect any human life with their own. They 
 are not haters of men. I doubt if more can be said 
 of any ten thousand men in the world." 
 
 A peculiar feeling came over Adrian as he 
 learned how close Marveley was to the great con- 
 flict. First he felt a gulf sinking between them ; 
 iu an instant he hated himself for it ; then a strange 
 longing broke through his whole being, spreading 
 like some fearful contagion. A longing to be one 
 of those helpless, hopeless men possessed him. 
 He arose from the rock-bench, arid stepping out
 
 172 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 into the open light, pretended to be looking away 
 for some distant peak. 
 
 Truly he was looking away for that summit 
 every soul of us feels compelled at times to climb 
 toward. He walked a little way, until the placid 
 music of the falls overcame the voices of the earn- 
 est talkers. The mood deepened upon him. He 
 was almost alarmed. He struggled as a soldier 
 might against the rising fever which he knows 
 will keep him in camp and from the field. He. was 
 still looking out over the hilltops when he heard 
 Leona's voice above the brook's waters for a mo- 
 ment. It came clear, searching, as a general's 
 would in the midst of battle if it were a woman 
 leading. Not an entranced Joan of Arc, but a 
 brave, rational, race-loving woman. He felt im- 
 pelled to look with more directness. All the good 
 in him was rising and marshaling his forces. Self, 
 the cynic self, the provoking, half-idle self, was 
 laying down its flashing wit-sword, and his dead 
 father's heroic spirit was taking possession, as by 
 some new philosophy of post-natal transmigration 
 of souls. 
 
 He looked again. Now he saw the summit. Bat 
 a fearful consciousness had come with it. It was 
 a frightful price he was paying for his redemption. 
 He loved Leona. Loved her, not for her girlish 
 beauty and winning ways, but for her womanly 
 love of men, and her unyielding devotion to the 
 cause of liberty. Loved her, and he had just
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 173 
 
 pledged himself to aid another, a stranger, and 
 one already in the fall of her sympathy by their 
 common interests, one whom the world called 
 great. His pledge he would keep at all hazards. 
 The summit he would reach, and alone. 
 
 By some strange impulse he felt moved to make 
 immediate record of his awakening. Taking his 
 diary, he wrote : " Russell's Falls, Adirondacks, 
 July 26th, 1892, 4:40 P. M. Two revelations. One, 
 the summit of my life : devotion to the cause of 
 honest labor in America. The other begins and 
 ends in myself. One complements the other; 
 doubtless, one the cause, the other the effect. A. 
 Winake." Poor fellow, he would analyze things 
 by his old habit, though it killed him. However, 
 the analysis helped him. He saw that the effect 
 had come to take the place of the unattainable 
 cause. Otherwise he would die. To have loved 
 Leona Berkeley, and to have remained indifferent 
 to the race, or lightly jesting to her impulses, 
 would have been either to have lost her irrevoca- 
 bly, or having gained her, to chill her into a most 
 wretched existence, bringing lifelong misery to 
 both. She would at least respect him now that 
 lie had the right to claim and to hold. 
 
 There was no great mystery in Adrian's sudden 
 change. It was in his very nature. He had stifled 
 these mercy-voices all his life. At college, where 
 the environment was conducive to their develop- 
 ment, he fought the* harder against their influence.
 
 174 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 But now a great desire had given him a great pur- 
 pose. He had the true nature back of it. 
 
 I have talked with many an indifferent student 
 to find a single sentence awakening ambition and 
 purpose. Education means no less than this. 
 
 What surer teacher can there be than love ? 
 
 I shall not undertake to account for what fol- 
 lows. Indeed, I am not sure that any explanation 
 can be given. There are those who would say that 
 this sudden uprising of Winake's nobility was the 
 result of mind-influence remote mind-influence. I 
 am not a convert to that philosophy yet. There are 
 strange things wholly believed by good men with 
 strong minds. It is no longer a sign of weakness to 
 believe in mental influence through space. But I am 
 simply not convinced that it is not wholly subjec- 
 tive. I think the only mind influence in this case, 
 however, came from Leona Berkeley's beautifully 
 turned little skull, with its delicate quality of 
 brain. 
 
 But you want the fact, and not theories, mine or 
 theirs. 
 
 "A special delivery letter for you, sir," said the 
 clerk to Winake, as they sauntered into the vast 
 lobby of the hotel. Still tremulous with the emo- 
 tion of his "revelation,", as he called it, it is not 
 strange that he appeared very nervous as he tore 
 the letter open. 
 
 " I hope it is only good news, Adrian."
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 175 
 
 Leona never had called liiru Adrian before. I 
 don't know why she did it now. Something in his 
 manner all the way from the Falls, a subdued, 
 gentle, sober mood, had impelled her to a sisterly 
 affection for him, particularly as he had appar- 
 ently been shut out of their councils. She had 
 already determined that the after-supper conversa- 
 tion should be literary, that Adrian might show 
 himself to better advantage before Mr. Marveley. 
 
 Pale as death, and with his lips a-quiver, he 
 handed her the letter and went out. 
 
 " Oh, dear !" she exclaimed as she read. " What 
 will the poor boy do ? " 
 
 How it would have hurt him had he heard her, she 
 little knew. Her words meant that with his great 
 fortune gone what would become of him poor 
 wretch. Yes, that was the total of it. A western 
 bank, in whose hands were all his large interests, 
 had failed. His attorneys wrote him that unless a 
 certain deal could be made, whose details neither 
 Adrian nor Leona had noted in the letter, the 
 thousand dollars which he now had with him in 
 drafts for his outing, would be the extent of his 
 wealth. Berkeley and Marveley read the letter. 
 Holly was fearfully distressed, even to tears. He 
 felt very much as Leona had expressed herself, but 
 with a man's greater knowledge of men's ways, he 
 knew that Winake could find something to do. 
 
 "Adrian would make a fine journalist. He has 
 just the tact to find, and the nerve to write up
 
 176 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 news. That sarcastic cynicism of his would make 
 spicy reading." 
 
 "Well, it just occurs to me," said Marveley, 
 " that there is a first-class opening on the staff of 
 the ' World,' where I have some influence, sufficient, 
 I think, to secure a favor of this sort. You could 
 recommend him Berkeley ? It is a very responsi- 
 ble place." 
 
 " Indeed I can. I have always urged him to try 
 reportorial work when he had finished at college. 
 He has half-way promised to do it." 
 
 "I shall hope he will turn his sharp criticism 
 for the cause of humanity. I ask no other return. 
 The ' World ' lies that way." 
 
 " I know him to be in full accord with current 
 reform," 'said Leona, " though he likes to deny it. 
 He is full of noble impulses. I thoroughly believe 
 in him. But the shock will be so very severe." 
 
 " I presume he will have to leave us ? " 
 
 " Oh, dear, I hope not," replied Leona. 
 
 " No, he must not," added Berkeley. " I think 
 I can arrange it so that he will not feel it. If he 
 can go to work early in September, there is no 
 reason why he should not remain with us until 
 that time." 
 
 " I will write at once to the * World.' " 
 
 " Had we not better wait until we consult him ? 
 He may have some plans of his own," suggested 
 Leona. 
 
 " I doubt it, but we shall wait. We are all very
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 177 
 
 grateful to you, Marveley, for this kindly aid. 
 Adrian is just like a brother to me. I must go 
 now and find him. I can do more for him than 
 anyone else." 
 
 He learned from the porter .that Winake had 
 taken the path back to the Falls. 
 
 It was early twilight. Once or twice a late bird 
 sang a timid little trill far away. Adrian had 
 noted several flying across the open space in front 
 of the falls, hurriedly, as though hunted, and then 
 disappear in the sheltering woods. A pillar of 
 cloud rested on the broad summit not far away. 
 White at first, it caught soon the gold of the sun- 
 set. "A cloud by day and a pillar of fire by 
 night,'' thought Adrian. " I have crossed the sea. 
 That I know by the psalm that keeps chanting 
 itself within me. I have heard, too, the voice of 
 the leader. The promised land is far off, doubtless, 
 but in it is the heavenly mount." 
 
 He looked down at his feet. A massive, seamed 
 rock lay like the strength of ages beneath him. 
 Its up-reaching side was both a shelter and a 
 shadow ; under it was a gushing spring. At last 
 he had an image of the Absolute. David saw it 
 centuries before, but he had forgotten that. It 
 was his now. 
 
 "Well, my boy." 
 
 Berkeley had been afraid of frightening him 
 12
 
 178 A DO UBLE HE VELA TION. 
 
 in his nervousness, and tried to approach in full 
 sight, but Adrian's in-looking had been too ab- 
 stracted. He looked up very calmly. 
 
 " It was kind of you to come, Holly. But I guess 
 I am all right." 
 
 " Of course you will be all right, Adrian. No 
 new thing has happened ; new to you, but not to 
 the world. You have brains," he went on, not 
 wishing to give him time to despair but to have 
 hope at once, " and a splendid education. The 
 world has claims upon you. Now it stands a bet- 
 ter chance of making them good. It looks like 
 providence, but at this very moment the way 
 opens for the fulfillment of your promise to me. 
 Marveley has at his command a vacancy on the 
 ' World ' staff. You can step at once into promi- 
 nence as a young journalist. Your qualifications 
 are ample, and Marveley will prove a true friend 
 until you can gain some experience." 
 
 " They say losses make gains. I am sure mine 
 have. Such timely and courteous help is rare. I 
 thank you and Mr. Marveley and Leona for this 
 thoughtful kindness. But, Holly, I want to show 
 you something. I am glad I wrote it now. It will 
 prove that my determination is no spasmodic im- 
 pulse, or nervous re-action. As you talked here 
 this afternoon, on this very spot, I had what I call 
 my ' revelation.' Of course that's the poetry of it. 
 In reality I came to myself; that is all. I have 
 been wanting to do so this long time, but didn't
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 179 
 
 have the courage, or motive, or, something. But 
 read this and you will understand." 
 
 " This is exceedingly strange, Adrian. Its out- 
 lines are too large for me yet. I will grow to them 
 by and by. I gather here that an hour before your 
 sad letter came, you had resolved to go among the 
 laboring men and with them strive for their ends." 
 
 " You are accurate in every word." 
 
 " The second revelation, " 
 
 Adrian paled. 
 
 " I see that is all yours. I will not touch it. 
 But may I ask a single question ? You need not 
 answer it unless you wish. I will tell you some- 
 time why I ask. Had it any connection with the 
 message you afterwards received a mental fore- 
 'warningof coming disaster?" 
 
 " I will answer. It had not the least." 
 
 Berkeley thought he had a gleam of light. But 
 his face was blank. He would probe no further. 
 It was a sacred secret, and should be respected. 
 
 He put his strong hand on Adrian's shoulder as 
 they stood together. The significance of the great 
 event was coming in on Berkeley. His fervent and 
 poetic nature was aliame under the thought of it. 
 
 Here is work for an artist. A night-fall from 
 the mountain tops, great shadows lying wide and 
 deep upon the valley, cut by a thin wedge of light 
 entering through a distant pass, touching with sil- 
 ver the water against the rocks, showing against 
 the side-shadows the faces of two men. It is a
 
 180 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 Pauline fellowship: "Fraternity vaunteth not 
 itself, is not puffed up, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth 
 in all things." The little valley is a baptismal 
 font ; the fading light the sacred element; the Holy 
 Spirit is breathed upon them from the stillness 
 overhead. 
 
 There were no words from either. Words were 
 in the moving trees, in the early stars, in the fast- 
 ness of the great Tahawus, in the waving air. 
 Everywhere the universe was vocal. It had the 
 sound and the spirit of the Beatitudes. 
 
 " You would rather not see anyone, Adrian, 
 until morning?" ventured Holly. 
 
 " It would be better." 
 
 "In the meantime Leona and Mr. Marveley shall 
 know all, and our meeting in the morning will be 
 as usual. Good night, and don't stay here long. I 
 haven't a single fear for you, though. For it was 
 from a mountain that the Brother of men went 
 down to the furious sea and its frightened prey in 
 the fishers' boat. Calm begets calm. So vast was 
 His repose after the mountain-prayer, that nothing 
 could roar or surge or wreck in His presence. 
 So much greater was His repose after the sepulcher, 
 that even the riot of sin grew still before Him. 
 Keep to the repose you have found, and you shall 
 be a soother of men. Good-night." 
 
 " Good-night." 
 
 Calm, and yet astir with emotion such as he had 
 never known even in dreams before, we leave him
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 181 
 
 with the night, so like him in its repose, yet the 
 energies of life are beating doubly quick under its 
 shadows. 
 
 " This is the Adirondack Mountain Reserve," 
 explained Berkeley, as they drove through a wide 
 gate early the next morning, paying a toll of one 
 dollar for the privilege. "It is a private park of 
 twenty-two thousand acres in the possession of an 
 incorporated syndicate. They have made an ex- 
 cellent drive-way through it to the lower Au Sable 
 pond, three miles and a half. They have cut sev- 
 eral trails to the top of the mountains ; and be- 
 sides building the boat-house we shall soon see, 
 they have stocked the lakes and streams with fish, 
 intending to preserve one spot untouched by com- 
 mercial hands." 
 
 Many charming views were had as they rolled 
 smoothly along over the solid road. The woods on 
 the right hand presented a peculiar appearance. 
 The foliage of long, slender maples and poplars 
 was not so dense as that of the pines, but gave the 
 sun its share of the space. As a result, designs 
 innumerable of quivering shade and sun-color were 
 all about the slopes. It seemed like some prime- 
 val palace alight for the return of its regal occu- 
 pants. A " chasm," of which Berkeley had for- 
 gotten the name, attracted them from their seats 
 to gaze into its quiet depths of water. " Stairway
 
 182 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 Falls " they christened a broad expanse of rock 
 cut away in steps down a slight decline, with a 
 narrow strip of flowing carpet lying its length. 
 Leona was much impressed with several huge rocks 
 by the wayside, upon whose bare surface trees 
 stood. They did not get their life from the rock, 
 but through large roots which ran across and down 
 on all sides of the stone into the ground. 
 
 " Of what do they remind you, Mr. Marveley ?" 
 she asked. 
 
 " Of the struggle for life the thousands have to 
 make. Their barren homes do not seem to give 
 them sustenance at all, but over the rock of their 
 poverty you will find the roots piercing the mould 
 of love and fellowship ; not always of high order, 
 to be sure, but it is better than nothing." 
 
 One of these was so odd they halted to examine 
 it. A large tree growing at the edge of the rock 
 had broken and fallen across it. A branch which 
 pointed down its side had imbedded itself in the 
 earth and become a root, while another standing 
 out from the upper surface of the log, had grown 
 straight up into -a slender but symmetrical tree. 
 
 "That," cried Leona, "is an illustration of the 
 desperate makeshifts that the many have to make. 
 For religion, for hope, for content, the natural 
 roots of every normal life, they are compelled to 
 distort love of sick children, a single year's steady 
 employment ahead, and satisfied stomachs once a 
 week. And yet out of it all will sometimes grow
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 183 
 
 a slender but beautiful life, like that young girl 
 we saw in the city last week, secretary of the As- 
 sociated Charities, grown from a ragged tenement- 
 rat to an educated, refined, Christian young 
 woman, helping others. But oh, how rare!" 
 
 " There is the lower Au Sable at the foot of the 
 hill, with the boat-house to the left," shouted 
 Holly. 
 
 " And that must be Indian Head further on to the 
 left, looking up the lake," were the first words 
 Adrian had said since they set out, beyond the 
 usual morning greetings. They had respect for 
 his silence and had made no attempt to break it. 
 
 " How stern he looks," he continued, " from the 
 profile view, as though angry over his brutal lone- 
 liness. The sole remnant of a race whose only 
 history lies almost obliterated in these moun- 
 tains." 
 
 " Yes," said Marveley, catching the fine mood of 
 his awakening compatriot, " below him are his 
 three watch dogs set one just above the other on 
 the rising levels of the hills. In the rough, but a 
 noble design for a master-piece representing the 
 irony of fate the chief and his dogs waiting the 
 coming of justice to his people. The very vultures 
 above his head scream, ' Too late! too late ! ' ' 
 
 " Beyond on the same side is Mount Colvin, ris- 
 ing two thousand feet sheer from the lakes. But 
 on the right is my favorite in the Keene Valley, 
 Mount Ressagonia, lying the full length of the
 
 184 A DOUBLE REVELATION, 
 
 ponds. See how it is terraced, tier after tier of 
 regular buttresses. Now as we row opposite its 
 broad side, look straight at its wealth of wood and 
 tell me what you see," commanded Holly. 
 
 " Thousands of slender, straight, creamy- white 
 columns, supported by a canopy of green." 
 
 "Yes, the finest growth of birch I have ever 
 seen. Try the echoes, Leona, I want to note the 
 difference in quality between yours and a man's 
 voice." 
 
 She uttered a sort of swelling, crooning strain, 
 which came back with the same volume and tim- 
 bre, a second Leona. 
 
 " I wish I could find the hidden Leona in Ressa- 
 gonia," sighed Adrian to himself; "I would not 
 pledge her away before I knew whether I loved 
 her or not." 
 
 " The guide has something for us, I think. He 
 is pulling into the left shore." 
 
 " Take a little rest up here, if you wish. The 
 famous ' ice cave. ' ' They sprang ashore. " I 
 presume," calmly said Marveley, " these huge 
 rock crevices are filled with ice in the winter, giv- 
 ing it its queer name." 
 
 Holly smiled as he watched them climbing the 
 easy ascent. 
 
 " Why, how cool it is," shouted Leona, as Adrian 
 gently handed her up to the mouth of the deep 
 cave. 
 
 " Freezing," cried Marveley.
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 185 
 
 " Look down, and you will understand," exhorted 
 Holly. 
 
 " Oh, I see piles of snow and ice," shivered Le- 
 ona. 
 
 " Yes, for generations, probably ; perpetual ice." 
 
 From balmy, restful, echoing Au Sable to frigid 
 ice caves, and at a single step. 
 
 " Extremes in life often lie closer than these," 
 said Adrian, scarcely conscious he was being so 
 personal or so revealing. It was said without bit- 
 terness, and I think chiefly with an eye upon the 
 condition of the society he was so soon to enter. A 
 new quality had come into his voice, a new man- 
 ner; a sort of clinging in his bearing towards 
 Leona. He did not know it. It was a part of the 
 new relationship he had determined upon for them 
 in his coming work. She clung to his hand as he 
 helped her down the rocks, and into the boat, so 
 friendly, as though begging for his confidence, 
 that he almost forgot everything else but his 
 resistless yearning to tell her all his plans and 
 purposes. It was later than two o'clock the night 
 before when he sought his room. Holly knew he 
 would not leave the night until he had definitely 
 fixed the future in his own mind. Adrian wondered 
 if he could tell her part and not all. Better noth- 
 ing than to violate his pledge. 
 
 A walk of a mile along the silver thread which 
 connects the two ponds brought them to the upper 
 Au Sable. Its two miles of water reflect some fa-
 
 186 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 mous piles : Boreas, Haystack, Basin, Saddleback, 
 the Gothics andRessagonia. Here nature seems to 
 have rested for an age, leaving her tenderest smile 
 and most artistic touch upon the broken surface 
 of the earth. 
 
 But the emotions of my hero are too strong to 
 keep him in longer silence, even on silent Au 
 Sable. The light lunch is ended. Marveley and 
 Berkeley are smoking, Adrian and Leona have 
 gone by common impulse to a huge rock over- 
 hanging the pond. As they lean over its edge 
 they can see their forms reflected clearly in the 
 deep mirror. 
 
 " What a shadowy picture of ourselves. "Which, 
 after all, is real, the shadow or the substance? 
 Perhaps we saw our souls then, Leona ? " 
 
 She looked at him in ill-concealed astonishment. 
 This was not his usual style of opening a conversa- 
 tion. Generally it was by jest, or some keenly 
 critical remark concerning one's self, or situation. 
 
 " I hope our souls are not out of us to stay." 
 
 " I feel as though mine had j ust entered after a 
 frightfully long absence. I had really doubted 
 sometimes whether I had any. I think my closing 
 work in the University, a birds-eye view of all 
 philosophies, showing a general convergence to- 
 wards the Absolute and Immaterial, and then a 
 close and crutinizing study of the nature of Life 
 and its relation to the Infinite, did more than all 
 the sermons I ever heard to make me understand
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 187 
 
 that if there is no soul and no Absolute, there is 
 not anything; then our very senses deceive us; 
 we are only a bundle of nerves; when the band 
 breaks we fall apart and are not. But I shall 
 worry no more about that. I am convinced so 
 thoroughly now, that I know a single human life is 
 worth more than the whole world." 
 
 "And this is my old friend Adrian talking to 
 me ? " tenderly smiled Leona up to his face. 
 
 " Never so much your friend as now." 
 
 "And never so respected and cherished as now," 
 she responded. 
 
 Already he had found what he had set out to 
 win through years. Perhaps but no, a broken 
 pledge would be a poor beginning. Then it was 
 too late anyway. Doubtless this very happiness 
 of hers, so open and brotherly, was an overflow 
 from some deep emotion Marveley had set in mo- 
 tion by his love. 
 
 " I thank you for that, Leona. There is a world 
 of help in it for me. May I lay one of my plans 
 before you? " 
 
 " Nothing would please me so much." 
 
 " You know I have to enter the lists unarmed 
 now. I had intended to take all my fortune and 
 expend it in education of, and in homes for, the 
 poor. But that dream is past. I go now simply a 
 working-man with the rest. But I have a plan. I 
 shall widen the circle as there is need." 
 
 For more than an hour he talked earnestly, seri-
 
 188 A DOUBLE EEVELATIOX. 
 
 ously, almost dramatically at times, so much un- 
 like himself, that Leona could only wonder as she 
 listened. 
 
 "You see, its central fact is a regard for all 
 human life. A hopeful appreciation of what life 
 is, and can become. A sort of practical working 
 of the Declaration of Independence, isn't it ? 'Life, 
 liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' It is evolu- 
 tionary in its tendencies, rather than revolutionary, 
 and yet it need not be so very slow in bringing 
 forth results. It would have been different a hun- 
 dred years ago. The age is ripe for it now. Do 
 you think it visionary ? " 
 
 " I never heard of anything more practical, or 
 abounding in common sense." 
 
 " Then I am satisfied. But, Leona, my great lack 
 will be in myself. My plan will succeed in time. 
 Working-men will trust me. But there will be 
 days when I shall be weary and ready to die with 
 the suspense, with the scorn and hatred of the men 
 whom we must oppose. Many of them are my 
 own friends, who never will comprehend the work. 
 My soul cries out for some steady hand, some 
 cheery heart, some strong companion." 
 
 He scarcely knew what he said. He was like 
 one caught talking to himself, when he realized 
 what his words meant. Something in Leona's face 
 alarmed him. He sprang to her ; but she smiled 
 before he reached her, saying: "It's nothing. I
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 189 
 
 think looking at the water has made me dizzy. 
 Let us go down now." 
 
 What did it all mean ? Not for the world would 
 he have said what he had, believing that it could 
 give her pain, and hurt both their lives. What 
 could he have been thinking about! It made him 
 almost rudely cold as he walked back to the 
 luncheon ground. Leona busied herself mechan- 
 ically, as Adrian could see, putting away the dishes 
 and preparing for their return. 
 
 It was rather a silent little group on the home- 
 ward way. Marveley was thinking of another se- 
 cret which he had not let even these dear friends 
 into yet. Berkeley was watching Adrian in the 
 seat in front of him, wondering what he would do 
 in his place, and smiling to himself, half-amused, 
 half-contented, as he thought of the " second revela- 
 tion." Adrian was silent between two moods. One 
 of self-reproach for his ill-timed words. The other 
 of hope for his plan. It was not all his own. A 
 little coterie of them at the University had often 
 talked it over; it was their joint property. It had 
 been only an ideal. None of them ever dreamed 
 of advocating it seriously. It grew out of a debate " 
 on political parties. It looked to the gradual 
 eflfacement of every issue but that of ill-paid labor 
 and its consequent conditions. It was just such a 
 plan, sprung from college enthusiasm and stand- 
 ards, as Gladstone would have wrought out had 
 he been an American instead of an English states-
 
 190 A DO UDL E HE VELA TION. 
 
 man. Adrian was wondering now if he could get 
 any of the seven others in the original band to 
 share the issue with him. He must have some co- 
 workers soon, for the plan meant a personal visit- 
 ing of every one hundred workmen in the country. 
 He had that morning counted over his private 
 resources and discovered that nearly live thousand 
 dollars was still intact. No one had lost but him- 
 self; he was under no obligation to restore any- 
 thing to any man. With that sum he could get 
 his work well underway, he thought. Help would 
 come. He had decided to ask Leona to get Mr. 
 Marveley interested in the plan, when his eager 
 words at the Pond had prevented. If only he 
 would enter with him, he could more easily endure 
 his own great loss. 
 
 Leona thought well, she has kept them close, 
 very close, for a woman; I cannot record them. 
 
 They were very tired. The soft beds and cool 
 rooms of the Inn seemed like a paradise of rest. 
 What realities were fashioned in dreams before 
 the sun rose, I cannot say. 
 
 They were all aglow with the morning's glory, 
 when the porter shouted, " Stage for Lake Placid." 
 
 Down the valley, then to the west, and on to the 
 beautiful lakes, they were carried. They crossed 
 the third range of mountains west of Lake Cham- 
 plain, slowly climbing up, until at an elevation of 
 two thousand feet they suddenly emerged in full 
 view of Cascade lakes lying between Long Pond
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 191 
 
 Mountain on the north and Pitch Off on the south. 
 A perfect wilderness of crowding hills close one in 
 at this point, until the feeling of smallness and 
 utter dependence comes to even the bravest. The 
 lakes are long and very narrow, with only a rivulet 
 between. On the right is the Cascade House, a 
 stroke of red and yellow against the green and 
 gray. Opposite it, a cascade falls nearly six hun- 
 dred feet from the edge of the wall-like mountain, 
 to the lake, like a measuring-line. 
 
 After a prolonged rest and relished refreshment, 
 they push on and out upon the broad plain of 
 North Elba, coming soon within the horizon which 
 makes Lake Placid so famous. For the first time 
 Mt. Tahawus comes into splendid view. The 
 Gothics lie this side of Tahawus with their many 
 queer outlines, the ' Elephant's Back ' clearly dis- 
 cerned. Then Golden, remarkable for its abysses, 
 and great Mclntyre, between which and Wall Face 
 the Indian Pass links the west with the east. 
 What a trail of aboriginal commerce it was once ! 
 What a desolation now! 
 
 Leaving these to the left and rear, John Brown's 
 old farm conies into sight along the Au Sable river, 
 on an inviting hill summit, where, beneath a monu- 
 mental boulder, his body, but not his marching 
 soul, lies. 
 
 Then the great hotels of Lake Placid came into 
 sight; by-and-by an unsightly little village, just 
 before reaching the loveliness, serenity, and peace
 
 192 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 of Mirror arid Placid lakes, restful at the foot of 
 old White Face, most beautiful and most loved of 
 all the Adirondacks. White Face is the only 
 mountain that smiles. Its broad expanse of coun- 
 tenance seems to greet you with good cheer and a 
 royal welcome which at once puts you in a good 
 humor and gives a comfortable home feeling. 
 
 "And that is White Face ; dear old grandfather. 
 I love him already," Leona chirruped. 
 
 " No matter how often you go away, or how long 
 you stay, he will always be here smiling when 
 you come back , " said Holly. " Now for the first 
 time I really feel at home. A good supper, a ride 
 on Sweet Mirror lake, small, but so entrancing, so 
 wooing, and then sleep beneath White Face's 
 watchful eyes ! Oh, this is life, happiness, wealth, 
 everything ! " 
 
 Even Adrian had quit eyeing Leona with half 
 scared little glances in an attempt to read her 
 thoughts, and had turned to the wonderland about 
 them. Away to the south the great barricade 
 of mountain peaks stands insurmountable. One 
 forgets first the world, then himself, but comes 
 back with God by and by, to self and to the world, 
 a new creature. 
 
 " I must have my mail the very first thing," 
 shouted Marveley, going on ahead of the others 
 into the hotel. As they entered later, they saw 
 him intently reading a tinted and scented little 
 square paper, with a singular but silent smile. He
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 193 
 
 looked np as they came in, and put it away care- 
 fully in his inner pocket with a little pat, as much 
 as to say, " Quiet my heart a little in there, if you 
 can." 
 
 The hour was late. They were about to break 
 the little group into its constituent atoms for rest. 
 The converse had been high and strong. First, of 
 books, in which Adrian had shown himself a mas- 
 ter far beyond Marveley's guesses, and often be- 
 yond his range, for he had been a student of men 
 rather than of books. Then they talked of the 
 problems of the hour. Leona had drawn Adrian 
 out, until, diffused with warm blood, his face had 
 shone as in a transfiguration, as little by little he 
 unfolded his plan. It was marvelous how it took 
 hold of them a new demonstration of his power 
 over men. Marveley came over, and extending his 
 hand, said, " I want to be just behind the origina- 
 tor of that inspired scheme for the uplift of labor. 
 Everything I have, arid can do, belongs to it from 
 this hour." 
 
 Adrian's eyes were full of tears of glad surprise. 
 He could not say a word. Berkeley promised im- 
 mediate aid. Leona alone sat apart, silent. What 
 had happened ? Had he been too bold ? Had he 
 told them secrets she wanted kept for herself 
 alone? No, she was not a selfish woman. But 
 something was wrong. There was a half terrified 
 look upon her face. Then it came to him. Mod- 
 is
 
 194 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 
 
 estly he thought of it ; with a great swell of joy at 
 first ; and then a quiver of dread. She doubtless 
 had promised either Holly or Marveley to receive 
 the latter's suit with favor. She was discovering 
 now too late that it was a mistake ; that her life 
 and work ought to be with Adrian. 
 
 Just then Marveley sat down again. "As this is 
 a night of confidences, I have one." Taking the lit- 
 tle fragrant missive from his pocket, he said, " I 
 beg leave to read a line from this. It is from a 
 beautiful young woman in Boston, whom you will 
 all love some day, I know. She is an artist, but 
 loves the race, and, the strangest part of it all, she 
 loves me. And in answer to a question I asked 
 her recently, having begged time for a decision, 
 she writes very sweetly and modestly, as follows : 
 
 "Dear Eugene: After several days of quiet and 
 calm looking within and without, especially upon 
 your face upon my easel, I find it the happiest mo- 
 ment of my life when I write will it make you 
 very happy, my dear that little word, the moun- 
 tain peak of the English language ' Yes.' 
 
 " HELENE." 
 
 Oh, joy ! oh, rapture ! Life's aglow. There's 
 warmth and hope everywhere. Oh, to-morrow. 
 All things are good, yea and forever! 
 
 They are leaving the room after congratulations, 
 and a second good-night. Adrian still standing at
 
 A DOUBLE REVELATION. 195 
 
 the piano, called very softly : " Leona, can you stay 
 a moment ? " 
 
 " Yes, Adrian, if you want me." 
 
 " I do."
 
 A CHRISTMAS STORY. 
 
 THEEE were voices everywhere. The music of 
 the crystals underfoot seemed like clear, tinkling 
 bells to the merry throngs crossing, turning and 
 parting at every corner of the streets. Under the 
 glare of the street lamps just lighted, the convolu- 
 tions of the great crowds at these center points 
 of turning seemed like some splendid spectacular 
 phenomenon of the stage. 
 
 But to a little, old man who, with hanging head 
 and knotted brows, impatiently halted until a 
 group of heedless children should get out of his 
 way, there was rhythm neither in the graceful 
 throng, nor in the crystals. The latter was like 
 the sharp, shrill shrieking of discontent and rest- 
 lessness ; a hissing, jeering insinuation, reminding 
 him of the sneers of one who darts a suspicious 
 glance into your face, hoping to take you un- 
 awares. 
 
 But the crystals were not to blame, for the chil- 
 dren's voices were not more musical to him. They 
 were lisping a single refrain. Their eyes, their 
 dancing feet, and gracefully gesturing arms, as 
 well as their birdling voices, were all singing. 
 They were extemporizing from that old theme, the 
 
 (196)
 
 A CHRISTMAS STORY. 197 
 
 ground of all the music of childhood, whether of 
 voice, or motion, or desire : " To-morrow, oh, how 
 delightful !" But to him it was even more dis- 
 cordant than the song of the frost ; he could grind 
 under his feet the noisy ice-singers. The other 
 song seemed like that strange key-note every 
 structure, great or small, is said to have, which if 
 prolonged under proper conditions will set the 
 whole mass vibrating, slightly at first, until after- 
 wards it sways beyond the law of its equilibrium 
 and falls. It is not sympathy between the mass 
 and the vibrating string, but a law of its nature. 
 
 To this nervous old man it was exceedingly dis- 
 tressful ; and every new group of merry little ones 
 he encountered shook him deeper, until in wretched 
 unrest he reached his own door. He would not 
 admit that he was irresolute, or less determined 
 now than in the morning of this u day before 
 Christmas." " It was all nonsense, and the relic 
 of a superstitious barbarism ; the remnant of a 
 faith which civilization was having some difficulty 
 to remove from the human mind, so desperately do 
 these fools cling to their savage ancestry." A 
 philosopher? Why not? Discontent has made 
 the greater part of the philosophy of every age. 
 
 Into a not uncomfortable house did the heavy 
 door open in obedience to his nervous pushing; 
 the appointments were maintained with a consid- 
 erable degree of taste. But while the flameless 
 fire in the great Westminster did all it could under
 
 198 A CHRISTMAS STORY. 
 
 the dignity of a scientific process of burning to 
 brighten up the rooms into which the shadow of 
 the night was fast creeping, it had little success. 
 
 The easy elegance which half slept under the 
 steady glow of the anthracite fire did nothing to 
 calm the irritation which had unaccountably pos- 
 sessed him. On the contrary, it made him remem- 
 ber, in spite of himself, the open fire on the hearth, 
 of his distant boyhood distant by far more than 
 intervening years ; distant by changed thoughts 
 and broken ideals, and immeasurably distant by 
 reason of a buried faith, from whose sepulchre 
 rock the seal had not been broken since the be- 
 trayal, trial and crucifixion of that spirit of trust 
 given him in the very pain-throes of birth, in- 
 spired by every, look of his beautiful young 
 mother, whose only life had been her boy and her 
 unyielding trust. I will not relate how a Judas- 
 like love of money brought about this death 
 within him. 
 
 When by his command the gas was lighted, and 
 the luxurious comfort of the room aroused itself 
 and did its best to welcome and cheer him, all 
 a-glitter with life, he still felt no better. The flash 
 of the gas-light from the many jets only brought 
 to mind the flickering candle-light of those other 
 distant days. He saw the tall, yellow " dip." with 
 the miniature lake of fuel at its summit, which 
 was constantly pumped into the flame to feed its 
 quiet burning, by the currents which played
 
 A CHRISTMAS STORY. 199 
 
 about the slowly-consumed wick the puzzle of 
 his boyhood. Its rich, yellow light, not dazzling 
 but mild, bathed table and ancient books, spin- 
 ning-wheel and sanded floor in a wave of soft 
 illumination, until now, as he recalled it, with the 
 face of his mother in the midst of it, it seemed 
 like the picture of some German master, the 
 sweet-faced woman its glory, about whom the can- 
 dle-light played, a halo of blessed hallowing. 
 
 Then there was the first Christmas of his recol- 
 lection. They had placed the candle on the table 
 but had not yet lighted it. They were content, 
 she and he, in the milder baptism of the wood- 
 flame. His head had lain upon her knee, as he 
 sat on the low stool at her side, feeling the pres- 
 sure of her warm clinging arm around him. He 
 had gazed into the slowly dying flames with that 
 fixed stare which so irresistibly possesses one be- 
 fore an open fire, while his quick imagination 
 peopled the hearth with the heroes and heroines 
 of the delightful old-fashioned story she was tell- 
 ing him. 
 
 After a long silence, he had, without taking his 
 eyes from the fire, or moving his head from its 
 resting place, softly asked her to tell him once 
 more the story of the baby Christ. As her voice 
 grew low arid gentle, but trembling with the 
 pathos of her great mother-heart, as she thought 
 of Mary in the Judean inn, so needy, in so trying 
 an hour, he pictured it all in the coals and pieces
 
 200 A OSSISTMA8 STOUT. 
 
 of charred wood. Yonder in the far corner of the 
 fire-place, where the shadows lay deep, he fancied 
 the shepherds were silently watching ; a number 
 of burnt-out coals, white with their ashes, were 
 the sleeping sheep. Suddenly a "chunk" falling 
 from its place, against the iron, sent up a bright 
 flame for a moment, that shone far into the dark 
 corner, and started the shepherds to their feet. In 
 the blue tips of the flame he could see the dim 
 outlines of angels' faces, while the lengthening, 
 waving and turning flames seemed to make long 
 folds like the robes he had always imagined the 
 angels wore. It needed but the rising wind with- 
 out, to make the music for them, and angels and 
 chorus of song were all there. 
 
 Then he had turned his eyes to the other corner 
 of the hearth where it was still darker. There, he 
 thought, stood the inn where the babe was born. 
 Three huge coals, lying out alone from the fallen 
 "chunk," were the three wise men seeking the 
 new-born King. He had only to shut his eyes 
 tight to see the wondrous star hanging over the 
 dark corner, and the three bright coals moving 
 closer and closer. He had lain there a long time 
 with his eyes shut, when the dark corner grew 
 strangely bright and beautiful ; he saw the babe 
 in its mother's arms, like the picture in the big 
 Bible, and the wise men with their arms full of the 
 most lovely presents. He thought the mother 
 looked so happy, and the child so wise, as if he
 
 A CHRISTMAS STORY. 201 
 
 knew all that was said and done, when suddenly 
 he heard his own mother's voice close down at his 
 ear. calling his name gently. He had fallen asleep 
 while she talked. He shivered as he awoke, for 
 the room had grown cold. 
 
 And now under the gas-light and fire-glow of his 
 splendid home, the old shivering came back upon 
 him, just as the other memories had come, only 
 the strange trembling was more real. He tried to 
 steady himself against the great chair in which he 
 sat, but a hot flush in his face, and his trembling 
 hands, told him something was wrong. 
 
 " Must have worked too hard at the books to- 
 day," he muttered. "That confounded book- 
 keeper has got 'em into a muddle that is enough 
 to give anybody a nervous chill." He managed to 
 get to his own room, and ringing for his servant, 
 gave directions for his relief. 
 
 As he had entered the door earlier in the even- 
 ing, a fluttering dress might have been seen at the 
 head of the stairs. And let me tell you before 
 you guess it, that it belonged to as beautiful a 
 child as ever called a cross old man "grandpa." 
 Her face glowed like a bunch of roses whenever 
 she could win a caress from him, for somehow she 
 loved him in spite of his crustiness. He always 
 seemed to be troubled about something, and she 
 never blamed him for anything he did. Such faith 
 do children have in us in spite of ourselves. For 
 a half hour she had been peeping from the turn in
 
 202 A CSSISTMAB STORY. 
 
 the winding stairway, to see "if grandpa had any 
 bundles when he came in." Something in the way 
 the door was pushed open told her he had none, 
 and she just succeeded in getting out of sight as 
 he entered. 
 
 "Well," she declared, "if he had just brought 
 one tiny little bundle I would have forgiven him 
 all he said about Cousin Ben and Christmas, this 
 morning ; but now, well oh, I suppose I will have 
 to give it to him, but I don't believe he will ever 
 look at it, or at me either. Bat then I know he is 
 feeling bad about something, for Uncle Jo said 
 something was going wrong in grandpa's accounts 
 down town. Oh, dear, I hope his bookkeeper won't 
 catch the absconda something, I've forgotten now 
 what it is, and have to be sent away to Canada, 
 like the one at Jennie May's papa's bank. That 
 was just awful ; and what if grandpa should get it 
 too, oh, dear!" beginning to relent already. 
 
 Just then her mamma called her for she and 
 her mamma and brother Gilbert lived with her 
 grandpa, to "make home for him," as she ex- 
 pressed it. She called her to come down stairs, 
 for grandpa was not feeling very well, and had 
 asked for her. 
 
 "Asked for me?" and her bright eyes danced, 
 while she almost forgot his sickness in the joy of 
 being "asked for." She started to throw a strand 
 of gold beads about her neck, but remembering 
 that they were his only Christmas present to her,
 
 A CHRISTMAS STORY. 203 
 
 she was afraid lie might take it as a hint for 
 another. She rushed away without them to the 
 room her grandpa called his own, and was ready 
 to say something cheerful to him as she pushed 
 the door open gently, to " take him by surprise;" 
 but when she saw his pale face, as he sat propped 
 up in bed, he looked so tired and worn, and full 
 of pain, that she caught her breath, and tip-toeing 
 towards him, almost sobbed, as hard as she tried 
 not to. 
 
 He opened his eyes feebly, as she came up to 
 his side, and putting out his hand drew her to 
 him. Never could she remember such a mark of 
 affection from him. It touched her so that, half 
 frightened as she was, she hid her face in the 
 great white pillow beside his, yellow and wrinkled 
 with a lifetime of hard thinking, and sobbed pite- 
 ously. 
 
 He spoke to her gently, saying he was not very 
 ill ; that he would be up and around to-morrow ; 
 that it was Christmas eve, and he guessed, if the 
 porter at the office didn't forget it, there would be 
 a box brought up before morning ; he didn't know 
 just what all was in it, but he guessed it was 
 something good little girls with blue eyes would 
 like, if a certain good little girl didn't rub her 
 eyes too hard. 
 
 "Oh, grandpa, I am so sorry but I can't tell 
 you about it ; I thought maybe you wouldn't you 
 hadn't; no, I did not think anything of the kind.
 
 204 A CHRISTMAS STOEY. 
 
 Something else thought it, I didn't, so there. I 
 knew all the time you were the best grandpa in 
 the whole world." 
 
 A sudden paroxysm of pain forced a moan from 
 him as she finished speaking. A pain in both his 
 hearts, but that in the inner heart was the keener 
 of the two, and lasted much longer. She was too 
 alarmed to speak, bat he patted her hand, as much 
 as to say, " It will be over in a moment." To her 
 question, if she should call her mamma, he shook 
 his head. After a moment he inclined his head 
 toward her on the pillow, and half whispered: 
 " Tell me about Christmas, Enie ; do you love it?" 
 
 "Love it, grandpa ? Indeed I do." 
 
 " Why ? " he asked quickly. 
 
 She was more than alarmed at his queer .look, 
 but being a brave little body, she tried to answer 
 him. She was about to say, " Because I find out 
 how much everybody loves me then," when it 
 seemed to her that would be out of place now. 
 She thought of the Christ story she had so often, 
 read, and dreamed about, but somehow she had 
 always been afraid to speak to him about Christ. 
 She stopped a moment, as if to analyze her new 
 feeling, for it seemed just right to speak to him 
 to-night. After looking closely at his face, for the 
 light was turned low, to see if his eyes were open, 
 and finding them closed, she rested her head 
 against his hand, as if to think the better, and 
 began :
 
 A CHRISTMAS STORY. 205 
 
 "Oh, so many years ago, long before your 
 grandpa was born, I guess, a little child was born 
 across the ocean. Some shepherds heard about it, 
 from a band of singing angels, and were so glad 
 that they began to sing, and ran to find Him, for it 
 seems they had been expecting Him for a great 
 many years, although I don't exactly understand 
 how they could know. And they were so glad, 
 that when Christinas comes, for He was born on 
 Christmas, you see, I always feel glad too. There 
 is a song in one of my books about it, and I always 
 sing it now on Christmas morning." 
 
 "Won't you sing it now?" he asked. 
 
 She sang for him in that sweet, pleading voice 
 of childhood the first verse of " On Judean Hills 
 Afar." 
 
 Had the light been brighter she could have seen 
 the tears running down his cheeks, but she went 
 on : "They brought Him presents, because He was 
 a present to them from God. I can't quite under- 
 stand why God should have taken Him away from 
 them so soon, but mamma says it was to make 
 them love Him more ; that they were cruel to Him 
 while He lived, but that after He died they began 
 to love Him still better." 
 
 "Yes, they loved Him when it was too late to do 
 Him any good," muttered the old man to himself. 
 
 " But the Bible says it did them good, after all, 
 to love Him, for His Father has a great house with
 
 206 A CHRISTMAS STOUT. 
 
 thousands of rooms, one for everybody who 
 comes to live there." 
 
 " Yes, room enough for those who love Him ; yes, 
 we ought to love Him He is merciful," speaking 
 to himself in a feeble tone. 
 
 "And that is the reason why I love Christmas, 
 don't you, grandpa? Don't you, grandpa?" she 
 repeated. 
 
 "I guess he is asleep. I'll call mamma;" and 
 she" stole out of the room, not knowing she had 
 been a gracious present to him on that strange 
 Christmas eve. 
 
 He had known the Nazarene Christ in his early 
 years, when his mother still lived ; let us hope his 
 head rested again upon her bosom, her arms about 
 him, and that the fire-fancies glowed and bright- 
 ened into the great Christ-Land, as a child, long 
 wandering and long forgetful, returns to the old 
 homestead to die. God is merciful, and child- 
 hood winning.
 
 ODUNA. 
 
 WHERE the majestic Mississippi bends with a 
 great, sweeping curve towards the Illinois forests, 
 just below the little village of Okoth, some miles 
 south of Quincy, is a little old colony of "New 
 Yorkers." Fifty or sixty years ago they came to 
 this river-bend, and took it by the might of a 
 squatter's sovereignty. Some of those who were 
 children then have grandchildren now, and feel a 
 sort of kinship with the old river whose mid-chan- 
 nel currents, heedless and strong as death, have 
 stopped not in all the years, whether marked by 
 birth, marriage or unwakeful sleep. 
 
 It is a magnificent view which stretches out 
 before a little group, on the morning of which this 
 tale relates. The great, matchless river goes hur- 
 rying by, far out in its age-worn channel, sending 
 into the shore, as its only recognition of other life 
 than its own, little ripples of faint laughter that- 
 waste into sighing on the pebbled beach. To the 
 innocent children these wavelets smile, winning 
 and friendly, as they yield their soft, plump, little 
 feet to their embraces ; but to the two or three old 
 men still living from the original settlement, it 
 
 (207)
 
 208 ODUNA. 
 
 seems like the mesmeric smile of a demon, the 
 Mephistopheles of the great valley. 
 
 They never forget his fierce, revengeful moods, 
 when the long, dashing rains lash and prick him 
 into fury, arousing his winter-cooled ire, until he 
 hurls himself down his path, boiling and roaring, 
 heaving, in angry breathings, his coritortioned 
 body further and further inland, seeking for vic- 
 tims with whom to appease his wrath. His rage 
 seldom subsides until his passion has been 
 glutted. 
 
 On this day the oldest of the ancient men sits 
 in a deep reverie. His head is bowed upon both 
 his hands, clasped over his old hickory staff; he 
 hears not even the prattle of the children at his 
 feet. Indeed, his favorite, a little girl, with eyes 
 so strange and yet so winning that one at first 
 starts back, and then comes at once to touch her, 
 fails to catch his glance, though she tries more 
 than once to have him look upon her. 
 
 He lifts his face at last, but a film of tears hides 
 all but the river ; it seems, through his sorrowful 
 veil, to stretch itself into some slimy, threatening 
 monster, from whom he would fly, but cannot. 
 His thoughts are running back through the years, 
 more swiftly than a bird flies back to its nest 
 before the storm. He had again noticed, as they 
 sat upon the rock that morning, a peculiar look in 
 the face of the girl. It came to him for the first
 
 ODUNA. 209 
 
 time just the day before. He wondered now that 
 "he had not seen it long ago. 
 
 She was his great-grandchild; her father had 
 been the eldest son of his only daughter, and he 
 was just discovering that she was taking on the 
 form and actions, indeed, the very features of the 
 woman who was once his babe, his tender girl, and 
 at the last the very affection of his heart. The 
 child's face, and a long scar on his own cheek, of 
 which a few moments before he had caught a fee- 
 ble reflection in a shell filled with water, which 
 she had held up to his lips, laughingly begging 
 him to drink, had borne him back as waves bear a 
 disabled ship back to the dangerous shore, from 
 whence it sailed. It seemed to him that he had 
 returned and was fighting with the perils he 
 remembers now better than the events of yester- 
 day. 
 
 When Oduna, his daughter, the child bore the 
 same name was sixteen, she met, on a great fete 
 day, a young soldier, a proud, overbearing, 
 haughty, handsome boy of twenty-one. She loved 
 him, gentle as she was, because he was so daring, 
 so defiant ; but she loved him chiefly because he 
 could be so tender to her. His proud form bent 
 gracefully to caress, and hot words died away into 
 gentlest whispers when she came near him, such a 
 spell does love hold over its own. She was a 
 beautiful girl, not queenly, nor stately, but beau- 
 
 14
 
 210 ODUNA. 
 
 tiful with the grace of winning ways and a lovely 
 face. She stood always, innocently, with a poise 
 of dependence and helplessness that made her ad- 
 mirers her defenders at once. Her blue eyes were 
 like deep, living crystals, warm and wooing. 
 
 Her father saw only, the scornful, lofty bearing 
 of the young soldier; thus do men conceal them- 
 selves from each other. In his uniform he unques- 
 tionably looked a fearless, and one might guess, a 
 reckless youth. Such a contrast was there between 
 him and the gentle Oduna, that the father trem- 
 bled for her happiness when he saw how fond of 
 him she was becoming. He sought with a few 
 wise words to turn her heart from him before it 
 should b too late. But it was too late even as he 
 spoke ; she had pledged herself to her lover, and 
 she was as firm as she was affectionate, in spite of 
 her mild manner. She told her father confidently 
 all she hoped from, and believed of her hero, until 
 at last he gave reluctantly his consent not con- 
 sent, for that he never gave but he offered no 
 denial when together they asked his favor. Most 
 lovingly did he bless them after the long service 
 at the old church-altar was finished. 
 
 They began their journey at once to the West in 
 company with a number of friends and relatives. 
 They took up their way, sad to leave so much be- 
 hind, but glad with a great hope for the future. 
 Into the trustful heart of Oduua came the best and 
 most precious hopes, looking to the new home
 
 ODUNA. 211 
 
 somewhere in the great valley toward which they 
 were slowing moving. Her soldier husband had 
 given up his army life with all his ambitions to 
 become a leader of men, and gave a willing hand, 
 with much good cheer, to the preparation for the 
 journey; long on the way, he was -guide and 
 scout for the whole party, fearful of no foe, and 
 dauntless. 
 
 The elements of our poor human nature are 
 strangely blended. So strong in danger, so ready 
 in battle, after the first few weeks of the monot- 
 onous journey wore away, when to be the guide of 
 a peaceable company of emigrants no longer 
 seemed so great a lot, and missing the comrade- 
 ship and cheer of the camp, the impetuous youth, 
 became less companionable, and more silent and 
 moody, almost to sullenness. There was no change 
 in his treatment of Oduna. I doubt if there ever 
 should have been. But to all others he seemed 
 impatient, discontented, and given to taking his 
 own course in a masterful way. Often did they 
 yield to him in the face of their better judgment, 
 fearful to awaken something that lay hidden within 
 him, half slumbering but alive. 
 
 Whether or not it was a fascination is hard to 
 determine, but his new bearing pleased Oduna ; 
 she believed him always in the right, and fought 
 his battles with a strange persistence. It may 
 have been that she saw in him qualities unrevealed 
 to others ; at least, she believed him born for a
 
 212 ODUNA. 
 
 stormy and fateful life among his peers, and not 
 thus to waste his energies among peaceful men 
 and timid women. I do not know what spirit of 
 war and command came into the world with his 
 birth, and can only dream of what he might have 
 done had his fate been tried on heroic fields. To- 
 gether the gloomy leader and his yielding bride 
 were drifting away from the little company ; more 
 and more they talked alone, and sadder grew the 
 face of the father, who now believed he had fore- 
 seen all this from the first. He lost none of his 
 love for Oduna, but watched over her with jealous 
 care. 
 
 All days of their journey were much alike ; in- 
 deed, the only variety was in the changing mood 
 of their half-feared leader. One day had seemed 
 longer than the others by his increased sullenness, 
 and the heart of the father had felt unusually 
 lonely as he watched Oduna clinging to her 
 estranged husband more closely than ever, as they 
 lingered just behind in the darkening shadows of 
 the oncoming twilight. The company, wandering 
 aimlessly, had stopped beside a small stream, 
 swollen by recent floods, thinking to camp for the 
 night, and hunt for a safer ford by the morning 
 light. But their now reckless leader urged them 
 to cross at once to the higher ground on the oppo- 
 site shore. 
 
 His proposition met with such evident disap- 
 proval as to madden him He declared that he
 
 ODUNA. 213 
 
 would cross it to show them what cowards they 
 were. The stream was narrow, and for this reason 
 dangerous. But he would brook no interference, 
 and turning to Oduna he commanded, with ringing 
 voice, " Come with me." 
 
 For the first time she hesitated, and turned pale. 
 She glanced up at her father, who shook his head, 
 as if glad to test his power over her with her 
 husband's. 
 
 " I dare not," she replied. 
 
 u I'll do the daring, you follow me." 
 
 The words were not harsh, but they were full of 
 his native power, and I doubt if any man in the 
 company would have dared stand still had he 
 been addressed in the same way. Her father, hop- 
 ing to settle the matter, pleaded that the horse was 
 not a safe one, that water always made him frantic. 
 Without answering he rode to her side, and with 
 one arm lifted her to his knee. The very strength 
 of his arm gave her such assurance that, had she 
 looked into the very eyes of death, she would have 
 had no fear. She leaned her head upon his 
 shoulder, sobbing under the nervous strain, and 
 the pain of her father's cold disapproval and 
 astonishment. 
 
 The nervy horse, prancing as though eager for 
 the struggle, plunged into the stream. Those on 
 the shore were too surprised to make any resist- 
 ance, and silently let them go splashing down into 
 the river. It had deceived them all as to its depth
 
 214 ODUXA. 
 
 and current. Long before the horse reached the 
 center of the stream, they could see that it was 
 being borne down by the current against its will. 
 It was out of its depth, and could not swim against 
 so strong a force, weighted as it was with its pre- 
 cious burden. Its quick pantings could be dis- 
 tinctly heard; snorts of fear were followed by a 
 shriek of terror, terribly human, as it struggled 
 madly with the stream, keenly feeling its respons- 
 ibility. All stood speechless, spellbound, save the 
 father, who, running down the river, came abreast 
 of the plunging horse. He could hear Oduna's 
 moans above the noisy flow of the water. Call- 
 ing to her in firm tones not to give up, he kept be- 
 side them. Suddenly they came to a bend in the 
 river where the current rushed in close to the shore 
 before shooting on down the long channel. The 
 poor horse had been bravely fighting to keep its 
 feet down, but this sudden change in the course of 
 the river sent it side-long to the shore. The riders 
 still clung to the saddle-straps. The night had 
 come on swiftly ; out of the parting clouds shone 
 the early moon, and its soft gleams wreathed about 
 the white face of the soldier-boy, so loved, so 
 feared, a halo of silvery light his only chaplet, as 
 he fought with death, an unequal battle, not for 
 himself, but for his loved Oduna. 
 
 To the father he seemed to grow cowardly weak, 
 but the gray eye-witness who told me the story, 
 said he believed the boy's heart burst with the
 
 ODUNA. 215 
 
 awful fight, for, in an instant his arm relaxed, and 
 he slipped away from the shore and his beautiful 
 wife as silently and as swiftly as an arrow from the 
 bow. Oduna, unconscious of her husband's fate, 
 after an instant loosed her hold, and with a moan 
 threw up her white hands as if praying for help ; 
 rising and falling on the waves, she sank once, 
 twice, then rose again a little farther down the 
 river. 
 
 The friends had gathered near the spot by this 
 time, distraught by their powerlessness to help. 
 The desperate father alone grasped the situation. 
 He saw that she had been thrown towards the 
 shore, and leaped in fearlessly. He struck his 
 head against a jutting rock. So intense was his 
 emotion that he imagined the shock to be merely 
 the force of the water. He bore the scar always. 
 As he came up he clutched at and finally grasped 
 an overhanging limb, just within his reach, on 
 account of the high water. From it he could reach 
 the white hand beating despairingly against the 
 water. He drew his lost child near him until to- 
 gether they were helped ashore. 
 
 As he lifted her from the water, it seemed to 
 cling to her, and gurgle about the spot where last 
 it held her, as hounds moan and sigh over a lost 
 trail. 
 
 The night was a long and a dreary one with its 
 watching and its loss. The camp missed its fierce 
 and moody leader.
 
 216 ODUNA. 
 
 By dawn Oduna was able to ride in one of the 
 covered wagons, propped up with pillows. But 
 how pale was her face, how sad her eyes, no word 
 can tell, for the black steed and its rider, her 
 proud, daring soldier-boy, had gone with the cruel 
 current to the ocean, where haply he would find 
 some point of equipoise in mid-sea, and rest at 
 last in horrible calm, as do sunken vessels. 
 
 It seemed to Oduna that her heart had washed 
 out to some great ocean and was hanging in a 
 calm, to break which would be the happiest relief. 
 No tears, no words, no rest, nothing above, nothing 
 beneath, nothing about her, yet held by some 
 intangible force, and crushed with it all. 
 
 Ere long they reached their destination on the 
 Mississippi, where Oduna lay looking ever toward 
 the great river. It seemed so majestically quiet in 
 its great course. 
 
 It was late in the fall when her fatherless babe 
 was born ; the river was full of the fall floods, and 
 its roar was sullen and incessant. It filled her 
 with painful unrest; she had looked into the 
 babe's face but a few times until, at last, with the 
 river's increased noise and lashing, as it crept 
 farther up the dikes, the deathly calm was broken, 
 and in a breaking up of her heart's great fountains 
 her soul went down the current of that other stream 
 whose ocean is the Eternal, and where the calm is 
 Best. 
 
 The boy had always a sad look in his face, a
 
 ODUNA. 217 
 
 sad, far-away look. Little Oduna came to cheer 
 him at last in his manhood, as she is no.w trying 
 to cheer the old, old man out on the rock. To her 
 life is glad, and the waves come dancing in like 
 children at play ; but to him the river's music is 
 ever a sad wail of lost love and death. 
 
 It sobs, and his failing ears catch th sound 
 coming in on every wave, " Oduna, Oduna," just 
 as he had heard the soldier-boy cry out that night 
 so long ago, when he was so cruelly parted from 
 his bride ; calling as if pleading for forgiveness for 
 his overmasterful spirit, ere he should sink. 
 
 "Oduna, Oduna." 
 
 His tear-dimmed eyes see no white sail out on 
 the river, only the black steed and the moon-kissed, 
 white face of the soldier, for as the years have 
 passed he has come to love the impetuous, brave 
 lover of his lost Oduna, and to hold them both 
 alike, watching for him beyond life's last sullen 
 stream.
 
 WHILE THERE IS LIFE THERE IS HOPE(?) 
 
 " WELL, he's dead, my bebby is," she said bit- 
 terly, tearlessly. "Maybe it will sober Jim up 
 for a- day 'r two any how," trying to discover a 
 crumb of comfort in her heart's famine. 
 
 Her name ? It does not matter. She was a com- 
 mon, helpless scrub-woman in a tumbled-down 
 tenement-house at the corner of Mulberry and 
 Park streets, just off of the Bowery, with the or- 
 dinary drunken husband. Even in the vile Italian 
 district, this haggish old ruin in which she lived 
 seemed viler than its surroundings. With a rot- 
 ten-odored grocery on the ground floor, and a 
 stenciling stable joining at the rear; sliced into by 
 a narrow, slimy stairway, too dark and ugly to 
 ascend just the way down into some vampire's 
 retreat ; the air heavy with the decay of vegeta- 
 bles and meat on the stalls under the scorching 
 sun, the only marvel was that the baby had lived 
 the half of six months. Indeed when one studied 
 the face and figure of the stoical mother, her mein, 
 wild, hungry and hunted in spite of her assumed 
 indifference, he wondered that that frail piece of 
 
 (218)
 
 WHILE THERE IS LIFE THERE IS HOPE. 219 
 
 flesh which she called her " bebby " had ever 
 drawn a single breath. 
 
 One could at least heartily agree with the com- 
 forting neighbor who had dropped in, more be- 
 cause a death was an event even in that charnel 
 street, than through sympathy, when she said : 
 
 "Oh, well, it couldn't have lived through the 
 summer no way ; better be dead now than cry an- 
 other whole month." 
 
 And the mother sadly replied, " Yes, that's so." 
 
 I wish I could bring this house into your sight. 
 Its devil-fish owner had evidently tried some years 
 before to jest with his conscience by having the 
 wide boards of the first story painted a light blue, 
 and the remainder of the building yellow trimmed 
 with red. A harlequin in a vault. He should 
 have painted it iron grey, with huge skull and 
 cross-bones on the front and sides. Dante alone 
 could have designed for the rear. 
 
 I climbed with a friend to its attic, one hot July 
 day, having observed the notice, " rooms to let," 
 on the stair-post. Of a sweet-faced old lady with 
 a, mixed, foreign accent, I learned that the eight or 
 ten feet square under a sloping ceiling, with a sin- 
 gle little triangle of light at one end, could be had 
 for five dollars a month. She paid five and a half 
 for hers just across the little, narrow hallway, but 
 her daughter's family occupied it with her. 
 
 The devil is not long in taking the cue from his
 
 220 WHILE THESE IS LIFE THEEE IS HOPE. 
 
 imps. We shall hear yet that apartments in hell 
 are being let at so much a month. 
 
 But to my story. I do not know how this Amer- 
 ican mother came to be down on this extreme 
 foreign level. There she was, and will sink lower, 
 doubtless, until she strikes bottom at last, with us 
 all, in the grave. No, I forgot. Hers will be in 
 Potter's Field. So have we challenged the Lev- 
 eller himself. Have we ? I fancy I hear him 
 laugh. 
 
 She was tall, but stooped ; half her teeth were 
 gone ; eyes far back in their sockets ; the nose 
 thin ; ears transparent, but yellowish. In dark 
 blue veins her blood lay stagnant. Only a poor 
 skeleton, its joints held in place by chaffed skin. 
 The labor-saving machine of a brutal husband, 
 the slave of his ungratified passions, the unwilling 
 mother of his eight, scrawny, nervous, incapable 
 children. The oldest was a boy, already a drunk- 
 ard ; the next a girl of seventeen, into whose eyes 
 the last two weeks had brought the hunted look, 
 so common, so pitiful, the precursor of the brazen 
 stare and bold invitation. 
 
 Can't you take the scorn out of your soul and 
 say with her over her dead " bebby," " Yes, that's 
 so?" 
 
 She took it finally from the ragged comforter on 
 the floor, and laid it on the only table in the room. 
 
 "I oughtn't to lay it up there," she said, "Jim 
 won't like it, when he comes in. But I don't know
 
 WHILE THERE IS LIFE THESE IS HOPE. 221 
 
 what else to do. The children '11 be fightin' in a 
 minute, and like as not fall all over it. Well, I 
 reckon they'll be glad enough it's gone, it's been a 
 sight o' trouble to 'em." 
 
 The inventive genius, or rather the memory of 
 the half-kind neighbor, suggested a way out of 
 the difficulty. She brought the single chair from 
 her own room, and putting it with its rickety mate, 
 laid the wash-board upon them, and rather ten- 
 derly placed the now stiff body upon this impro- 
 vised bier. 
 
 For one day at least that board must lie idle. 
 It had torn the mother's fingers' ends so many 
 hard days, and now she could never look at it 
 again without a deeper hurt. 
 
 "There," she said, "I guess that'll do. No, you 
 needn't undress it, it ain't got anything but that 
 one slip. I wish it was cleaner, but nobody'll see 
 it, I guess. Here is a handkerchief I left out of 
 the washing^last week; I will put it over its little 
 face. I can't get its eyes shut." 
 
 " They say they's in purgatory for some reason 
 or nother when they act like that," said the neigh- 
 bor, who was a devout Catholic in times of trouble. 
 " Has it ever been baptized ? " 
 
 "No. I've come to have my doubts whether 
 they have any souls or not bebbies or men." 
 
 "God forgive ye," cried the other, crossing her- 
 self superstitiously.
 
 222 WHILE THERE IS LIFE TIIEEE IS HOPE. 
 
 "Well, I am sure He don't treat us much as 
 though He thought we had any." 
 
 With a dead baby in the house, and not a crust 
 in the cupboard; with a drunken husband without, 
 and a gnawing pain within, the heart can doubt 
 with little effort, especially if it has believed the 
 dogma that an inscrutable providence orders every 
 particular event of every particular life, with a 
 particular purpose for that life. 
 
 Did you ever try to analyze a soul ? Try it now. 
 Here is a hungry woman ; she has not laughed for 
 years ; has sung no hymn, had no altar of prayer, 
 not even a secret closet. Her love for her children 
 has been animal, not human. She has no great 
 ambition for their future only a horrible fear. 
 No training of souls toward ideals she has lost 
 her own. No visions come to her of old age in the 
 arms of her beloved even now they are strangers. 
 She trembles before her husband ; she even stub- 
 bornly protested against her babe's robbing her of 
 her life blood for its food. If she thinks of God at 
 all, it is with clinched hand; if of death, it is to 
 crave it, even with Hell it surely cannot be worse 
 than this, she thinks. 
 
 Take her hand, put it on the frozen snow of her 
 baby's cheek ; draw her down gently till her lips 
 are blistered with its death-frost ; with a word, set 
 her whole frame a-quiver with nervous agony. 
 Start the echoes of her youth vibrating through 
 the empty chambers of her impoverished soul, till
 
 WHILE THESE IS LIFE THERE IS HOPE. 223 
 
 the night comes on. Watch with her by the flick- 
 ering light of the dim candle, whose shadows move 
 like restless ghosts in the grim corners of the' 
 attic death-room. Keep your wide-opened eyes, 
 nervously strained, intent upon her face, while she 
 sleeps a moment, even under the dread expectancy 
 of her husband's drunken cough ; see the shadows 
 come and go on her quiet face, so faint beside the 
 deep, black shadows on her soul, as in fitful dream 
 she looks back, and beyond, and forgets the pres- 
 ent. Sit and watch till the morning. Then if you 
 can keep scornful, and reproachful, and accusing, 
 your soul is already damned under that Divine 
 law, " Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the 
 least of these, ye did it not to me. Depart from 
 me, ye accursed." 
 
 Have you ever analyzed a soul ? 
 
 Tour own ? 
 
 Across the street, an unclean Italian, with dis- 
 tressing cries, is calling his little circle of patrons 
 to his stall to celebrate the cutting of a half- 
 decayed melon. He shares with them for a 
 "penny a slice." Half-naked children at the 
 breast, or screaming at their mother's skirts, 
 pledge the continuance of human misery for at 
 least another generation. Fakirs stand at every 
 twenty feet with wares to tickle the fancy of silly 
 youths and maidens. A street of commerce to 
 turn one's heart sick if he did not see the exact
 
 224 WHILE THERE 18 LIFE THERE 18 HOPE. 
 
 counterpart, enlarged, on Broadway. The same 
 strife and noise, curses and blows, lying speech 
 and chuckling glee over ill-gotten gains the only 
 addition, dignified concealment. Then is the 
 heart sick indeed. 
 
 But the babe sleeps would Grod the mother 
 slept, too, the same long, unbroken, dreamless 
 sleep. But at last the stupor nature so kindly 
 furnishes when the death-blow strikes one, begins 
 to disappear. Every nerve is trembling, her face 
 is twitching, objects quiver before her eyes, her 
 ears are throbbing with the heavy tread of the 
 creaking stairs. 
 
 " Jim is cominV' she gasps to the now sympa- 
 thetic neighbor. " Don't go ! help me ! He'll say 
 I've killed it." 
 
 But a worse trial is before her. Jim has heard 
 on the way from the shop that his baby is dead. 
 He had been waiting for work all day. No money, 
 no credit, no liquor, no hope. Weak and nervous, 
 lie stumbles up the rickety stairway, like the 
 ruined, frightened, helpless, hopeless man he is. 
 What ancestry failed to do for his wrecking, alco- 
 hol has supplemented. No curses, no blows ; 
 nothing but self-condemnation, self-beatings. . She 
 could have endured blows better than these. 
 
 The weakness of a broken body ; the more ter- 
 rible weakness of a reeling reason, is upon him. 
 The reaction is such as none but lost and depraved 
 men can know. It is a species of insanity. Per-
 
 WHILE TIIEEE IS LIFE THERE IS HOPE. 225 
 
 haps the Compassionate One counts it often as the 
 last effort of wretched souls toward sanity. 
 
 "My God, Mary, where is the bebby? Jack said 
 it was dead. I told him he lied. He said it 
 starved to death. And then I called him a d d 
 liar. Where is the little clover ? There, I thought 
 I heard it cry. I don't know, mebby I'm drunk 
 agin. No, not a glass to-day ; haven't got a red 
 to my name. Pull that curtain back and let me 
 see my little chick. God ! what's them chairs 
 doin' there ? Why, you have been ciying child. 
 What's wrong ? I feel all run down myself." 
 
 " Look, what yer doing, Jim ?" the mother cried, 
 as he grasped one of the chairs to sit down, "don't 
 you see the bebby is there ? " 
 
 She fell to the floor in a death -like swoon ; the 
 strain had been too long, the struggle too hard. 
 Her only chance for life, however, had come in this 
 enforced rest. 
 
 But no such rest came upon Jim. As he stooped 
 to examine the half-covered board a corner of the 
 white handkerchief lifted with the light current of 
 air stirring through the window. The white face 
 with its unclosed eyes lay before him like a frozen 
 passion, the hot, consuming passion of his life ; all 
 his passions in ice. He shivered like one called in 
 the dead of night, by some one unseen, in a haunted 
 house. Then he burned with the fever of the 
 plague. Falling upon his knees he crooned be- 
 
 15
 
 226 WHILE THERE IS LIFE THERE IS HOPE. 
 
 tween his sobs such wailing words as soothsayers 
 might envy, but no life returned. 
 
 "Oh, my precious clover, my hungry bebby; 
 poor lUtle starved bebby ; pa's boy. So cold, and 
 my head so hot; mebbe I kin warm you. God, 
 how cold ! Come, I'll hold you, oh, so tight. Oh, 
 I can't bend its arm around my neck any more, it's 
 so stiff; what shall I do? Wake up, Mary, quick, 
 the bebby 's hungry. He don't like his pa any 
 more, he wants you." 
 
 In the meantime the crying neighbors had resus- 
 citated the poor mother, whose pain was just begin- 
 ning its real throbs. She lay like a corpse in form, 
 but never so sensitive to every sound, every mo- 
 tion as now. Her long fingers were nervously 
 twisting the untidy sheet thrown over her. For an 
 instant she did hear her babe, she did feel it in her 
 arms, alive and happy, so near did she draw to the 
 wavy line where the finite merges into the Infinite. 
 
 But that wail from across the room : " Come, 
 Mary, take the baby, he don't seem to know me 
 any more," held her on this side. 
 
 Through the night and the next day the mother 
 lay unnaturally calm upon the rough bed piled in 
 the corner ; lay watching every movement of friend 
 and stranger alike. Her great hollow eyes fol- 
 lowed wherever any one turned. She made no 
 other sign, except when some one approached the 
 spot where her baby lay. Then invariably she
 
 WHILE THERE IS LIFE THEEE IS HOPE. 227 
 
 rose upon one arm and with heaving breast seemed 
 just about to speak. 
 
 You have watched a mother-cat keeping silent 
 guard over her dead kitten? The same animal 
 instinct was here, pitiful and smiting. Once when 
 a kind Sister of Charity came by invitation of the 
 Catholic neighbor, and put her hand on the child's 
 face, as one accustomed to the dead is apt to do in 
 search for some lingering warmth which is never 
 found, she gave a faint little scream, and would 
 have crawled from the bed if others had not 
 restrained her. 
 
 The other children, dressed in the only whole 
 clothes the entire house could afford, gathered in 
 from the various families' scant wardrobes, drew 
 no attention from her. She did not see them. 
 When no one was moving she would turn herself 
 so she could look at Jim. Without stirring, for 
 half an hour, she would keep her eyes upon him. 
 There may have been a slight delirium, just 
 enough to calm her, as is frequently the case, but 
 I believe the poor woman knew all that had hap- 
 pened. The mystifying veil had been rudely rent. 
 She saw all. Her difficulty lay in solving the 
 problem. Her weak brain was lost in the maze of 
 these inexplicable facts. 
 
 It was just the reverse with Jim. Not the problem, 
 but the facts troubled him. A pauper, a drunkard, 
 and a dead child in the house his own child ; starv- 
 ed to death, and to be laid to-morrow in Potter's
 
 228 WHILE THESE IS LIFE THESE IS HOPE. 
 
 Field. These the elements ; these and an awful 
 pain, a hideous remorse, a dread of the future. 
 All the first night; he moaned, with occasional 
 spasms of grief. When once he realized that the 
 child was dead, he did not go near it again. He 
 avoided that part of the room, even with his eyes. 
 A crushing horror had possession of him. I be- 
 lieve he would have died of nervous fear had he 
 been compelled to touch the dead body again. In 
 his changing moods he would talk it all over with 
 some of the men as they tiptoed in with awkward 
 embarrassment, hat in hand : the lowest will not 
 stand covered in the presence of death. Talked of 
 how he had been away all day ; hadn't known the 
 baby was very sick ; had been out of luck lately, 
 and guessed this was part of the game. Every- 
 body seemed dead against him. Then the grief 
 would come again. Fortunately no one had asked 
 him to drink during the day. He may have 
 thought of it a few times himself; but why ? He 
 hadn't a cent. 
 
 The Associated Charities Committee had been 
 informed of the case and had the funeral in 
 charge. It was announced through the house for 
 ten o'clock the following day. The second night 
 passed, bringing a little rest to the tired ones ; 
 then came the trying day. fy> matter how re- 
 signed one may become, and philosophical, the 
 funeral hour of his beloved will open the wound 
 afresh. The silent friends gathering in; harsh
 
 WHILE THE HE IS LIFE THERE IS HOPE. 229 
 
 footfalls breaking the awful stillness ; the quick- 
 ening of the heart under the final emotion. How 
 familiar ! 
 
 It happened that Dr. Goodwest, a visitor in the 
 city at the great Christian Endeavor Convention, 
 was in conversation with a member of the Chari- 
 ties Committee early in the morning of this funer- 
 al day concerning the work of the Society, and 
 was invited to attend the services that his own eyes 
 might be better witnesses for him than the words 
 of others. Standing, a dozen of them, in that 
 crowded little attic chamber, the good doctor was 
 moved beyond measure by what he saw. It was 
 all new and strange to him ; he had only read of 
 such scenes; that he should be a part of one, af- 
 fected him beyond anything he had ever known. 
 He was asked to pray. I trust the reader will per- 
 mit me to record that prayer here, as it is in 
 heaven. 
 
 Jim was sobbing ; the mother, propped up with 
 old garments, ley panting on the bed, close to 
 which the doctor stood. He lost his ordinary 
 reckonings, this great-souled man. He knew noth- 
 ing but that a man and woman were undone, and 
 that God is a Healer. 
 
 " Great Father, thou lovest all thy children, but 
 best of all, thy little, weak, helpless, smitten chil- 
 dren. Thou wouldst not hurt a sparrow, but 
 wouldst notice even its fall. Surely, then, Thou 
 wouldst not hurt these dear souls of Thine, these
 
 230 WHILE THERE IS LIFE THESE / HOPE. 
 
 sick, hungry, naked, and imprisoned little ones of 
 our dear Lord. Jesus, who came to heal, to seek 
 and to save the lost, could not love Thee nor obey 
 Thee unto death, if Thou wast not the God of 
 Love. In the change of things here, pain and 
 death come. But over them all Jesus has 
 triumphed. Oh, God of mercy, bind up this man's 
 hurt, for he is wounded of nature and of Satan. 
 In Thee alone is his help. This poor woman, oh, 
 Thou Son of Mary, do Thou be her Son, her Broth- 
 er, her All. This little babe sleeps in thy tender 
 arms, to waken in sinless Eden. Keep these and 
 us unto that same end. By Mary's forgiven sins, 
 by the prodigal son's tears, I pray thee forgive, and 
 restore, and save, even by this loss, this man, this 
 woman, unto eternal life. It is of Thee, oh, Christ, 
 I ask it. Amen." 
 
 No anguished cries followed these lofty words, 
 as is so often the case where ignorant comforters 
 talk of God's heavy, chastening hand. A calm, 
 a Galilean quiet fell upon thoe ignorant lis- 
 teners under the tenderness and earnestness of his 
 musical voice. Where they failed to follow the 
 word, the spirit of his prayer moved them. No 
 sermon followed, fortunately, though one had been 
 suggested by a member of the committee. The 
 doctor went over to Jim's side and putting his mag- 
 netic hand on his bent shoulder filled him with 
 new strength. He did not say : " Your child is 
 in heaven ;" " It was best for it to die now ;" or,
 
 WHILE THERE IS LIFE THEEE IS HOPE. 231 
 
 " be resigned to the inscrutable mysteries of 
 Providence." How gratefully I record it ! he said 
 infinitely more. This is what he said : 
 
 " You will be sick, my dear man. You must 
 come away with me now. The friends will see 
 that everything is done just right; I have a plan 
 to propose to you for the future." To the mother, 
 who needed kindness more than words, he simply 
 said : " Don't get up. Let these good people 
 look after you. You need a little rest. All will 
 be well." 
 
 After the little procession had moved slowly 
 down the stairs, Dr. Goodwest took Jim by the 
 arm and started on his mission. As they passed 
 up the Bowery, the great, surging, stolid, dull- 
 eyed crowd, well-nigh froze the hope in his heart. 
 Which way blew the winds, which way coursed 
 the tides ? The sea was fathomless, the swimmer 
 faint and worn ; the man overboard was far from 
 being rescued. In a quieter spot they waited for 
 an up-town car. 
 
 He had begun right, and had he possessed the 
 power would have finished this man's reforma- 
 tion, in all probability; but as yet all such efforts 
 find one man pulling at the oar while a steady, re- 
 lentless current of public opinion and public indif- 
 ference is pushing him down toward the gulf. 
 
 A score of questions flooded into utterance. How 
 long had it been since Jim left his last place 
 of work, and for what reason ? What plans had
 
 232 WHILE THERE IS LIFE THERE IS HOPE. 
 
 he now, and where had he tried for work ? Had 
 he any friends who could help him ? What were 
 his average earnings when sober, and how often 
 did he become intoxicated ? They were like flash- 
 ing saber-stabs upon a cotton ball. " The black 
 list," and " Pat Rooney's Place," were the only 
 intelligible responses. There was nothing in his 
 replies calculated to melt ice. 
 
 The good Doctor was following an impulse 
 which in his western home might have led to suc- 
 cess. Had he personally conducted any one, how- 
 ever unpromising, to one of his several parishion- 
 ers who employed men, with a request for his 
 employment, his petition would have been imme- 
 diately granted, out of respect for the Doctor, and 
 because there is less organization among employ- 
 ers West. He had a single hope now. An old- 
 time friend of his was a large manufacturer in a 
 Brooklyn suburb. He would present Jim at the 
 city office, and ask for aid for friendship's sake. 
 
 He scarcely stopped to think that should this 
 succeed, there were ten thousand other hopeless, 
 helpless, heredity -smitten, soul-killed men for 
 whom there was no pitying Dr. Goodwest. 
 
 The greetings were made as brief as possible, 
 for his energies were always direct or nothing. 
 
 "Nothing would please me more than to help 
 you, Doctor," with the emphasis upon the you. "I 
 will have him looked up, and if he is not on the 
 black-list I will try him a week,"
 
 WHILE TIIEEE IS LIFE THERE IS HOPE. 233 
 
 " But he is on the list," pleadingly broke in the 
 minister. 
 
 " That settles it. I am powerless. "We must 
 protect one another. We would soon become the 
 prey of designing and thieving tramps, whose de- 
 light would be the destruction of our property and 
 doubtless our lives. Let him keep sober, learn to 
 be thrifty and keep out of trouble. Every man 
 has his chance. If he loses it he must not blame 
 you and me, Doctor." 
 
 The Doctor made no reply; his heart was 
 too full, and his thoughts too hot. 
 
 He kept thinking : " Why not make his clerk 
 read Homer ; why not open the insane asylums 
 and flog the inmates for their lost chances." 
 
 " I wrote my check yesterday for a cool thou- 
 sand to build a mission church adjoining my 
 works. I do not say it to boast, but that you may 
 understand me. That is the only way to help 
 these people, and that is confounded slow." 
 
 Dr. Goodwest arose respectfully, and without 
 reply withdrew with his burden. They stood a 
 moment on the curbstone of the city's greatest 
 thoroughfare. " What shall I do with him ?" came 
 rushing into his consciousness. His home deso- 
 late ; his wife a hopeless invalid, soon to become 
 a mother again; his children ruined already before 
 learning what sin really is ; the passion for drink 
 being even then in his restless eyes ; distrustful of 
 every soul the Doctor can feel a gulf sinking
 
 234 WHILE THERE IS LIFE THESE IS HOPE. 
 
 between them deeper every moment. No work but 
 the lowest sort of drudgery, an hour at a time. 
 No ambition, nothing to appeal to but his animal 
 affection for his dead child, and even that has 
 turned to horror. 
 
 The indifferent crowd hurried by, some with rude 
 jostling and half-muttered imprecation. Each face 
 knotted in selfish thought of to-morrow, or open 
 with careless mirth. As a rising tide eddies and 
 courses about a black rock on the shore line, and at 
 last covers it from sight, so threatened this 
 thoughtless, irresistible tide of humanity. 
 
 "My God, what shall I do with this poor 
 wretch ?" unconsciously cried the man of mercy 
 aloud. 
 
 "I'm dummed if I know," came in swaggering 
 indifference from the man at his side, fast slipping 
 back into the sea. 
 
 What would you haw done?
 
 A SOUL'S RESURRECTION. 
 
 I WONDER what fate lias against me now; what 
 old score is she about to settle ? That of all times, 
 this day should be heavy with mists and clouds, 
 goes beyond my usual shrewdness in interpreting 
 her moods. As if to make her victory complete 
 she lashed me into unrest with horrible dreams 
 through the whole night. Dreams of sins of which 
 she declared my youth the only gleam in all this 
 shadow of a doomed life had been guilty; and 
 she further declared with her accustomed shriek, 
 that like scars on the face of one we love, made 
 by our own demoniac temper, so should these sins 
 come ever before me ; not distinct, like so many 
 demons, with hateful leer, to taunt me, but in the 
 hurts and unhealed wounds of my friends their 
 grinning heads should pop up, stained with clotted 
 blood, and mocking, disappear, leaving a flame 
 whose distressing odor should vex when mine eyes, 
 no longer able to see them through their film of 
 disease, should be blind! 
 
 I am sore with vain tossings to turn away from 
 the sad and reproachful eyes of those I once have 
 loved, and do still remember when my own sorrows 
 
 (235)
 
 236 A SOUL'S XES US SEC TION. 
 
 will let me. Me, they have forgotten ; from their 
 sight I have sunk forever ; I could hate them 
 for it with a poisoning hatred. 
 
 At last exhausted with mind-racings up and 
 down the narrow cell of my dream-prison, I awoke, 
 xvhile a loud crash of thunder made my already 
 quivering nerves jerk with pain. This day was to 
 have been the birthday of a new purpose. An 
 energy of body and soul, to goad myself into mo- 
 tion out of my environment, had been the plan for 
 this half-cycle of the earth. How this old sun-curs- 
 ed planet goes on maddened to its doom ! I verily 
 believe I should like to be alive the day it goes 
 crushing against some burnt-out sun, and is dashed 
 into atoms, if only this wrecked brain could be 
 crushed too ; but what if some thought should live 
 on apart from the brain that created it horrible 
 possibility ! I had infinitely rather be this rotten- 
 ing brain, sure to crumble ere long, than to be any 
 thought of my last ten years, and eternal! 
 
 I do entreat thee, thou great force, somewhere, 
 everywhere, let me live not ; not even in thought; an- 
 nihilate, annihilate, leave no atom, no purpose, no 
 longing anywhere inwrought with my personality ! 
 I want to die, I will die ! What was that ? Must I 
 dream of the accursed devils with my eyes wide open? 
 Is there no smiting, fate-detaining, no untrembling 
 hand ? My soul cowers like a whipped cur. Soul ? 
 Ha, ha ! Come hither, thou subtle trickster. If 
 thou art, let me conjure thee forth where mine eyes
 
 A SOUL'S RESURRECTION. 237 
 
 may behold tliee. Ah, shame-faced, thou hidest 
 deeper still ! I get no pulse of thy life. Thou art 
 not. Gods ! what a crash was that. Even the 
 heavens are breaking with their weight of woe. 
 The roar of the sea is lost in the tempest thunder. 
 The window is veiled with a sheet of rain. The 
 air is close. My heart has quit beating, and 
 trembles, as though about to say farewell to its 
 wretched house. Is there no help? Can no one 
 hear rny cries ? Must I perish alone ? Save me ; 
 Zeus, Almighty, save ah ! down ! A baby's puny 
 wails are not so pitiful. No more tricks like that, 
 or I'll give thee to elemental clay, thou old barna- 
 cled hulk of worn-out passions. But that this, of 
 all days, should be so hellishly dark! To-day, 
 when the friend of my youth is to greet me ! Here 
 is the crumpled note now, where I flung it in my 
 rage last night. " By to-morrow's sunset I will 
 see your face once more !" My face ; bah ! Where 
 is that cracked mirror, the only thing in the uni- 
 verse that dares face me. Here, you accursed re- 
 vealer, show me perdition's grim features once 
 more. How my hand trembles ! My face ; yellow, 
 wrinkled, soulless. Yes, it is my face. Oh, that 
 sudden pain ; w r as it in my flesh or in my spirit ? 
 After all, are they not the same? A thought came 
 with it, whatever its source ; the demons peering 
 from some gaping wound might magnetize my 
 blood with their poisoned eyes until I should turn 
 to a stone. (That miserable dream.) What a monu-
 
 238 A SOUL'S RESURRECTION. 
 
 ment of human folly would my poor body make, 
 petrified, and set upon a pedestal on some great 
 thoroughfare, where the mighty multitude, push- 
 ing on to its unconscious doom, should jeer at my 
 ruins, not knowing that they were prophetic of 
 their own ! 
 
 I shall be helpless by sunset ; sunset how like 
 the olden times is that word ! He was a poet then, 
 my lost Raphael. We stood on many a hill to- 
 gether and sighed with sleepy nature as she shut 
 her eyes in the soothing twilight. I loved him, I 
 don't know why. Strange that one man should 
 love another, in this heartless age. But I did. 
 My heart and eyes moved with the rhythm of his 
 speech. But his hand let mine go one day, to take 
 the warm, responsive hand of one he loved from 
 that instant better than he did me. My soul 
 cried out, and my face spoke a silent language my 
 lips refused to utter, as I let him pass away, plead- 
 ing with me, but not restored. Ah! I thought I 
 heard a laugh. Who would dare pierce this 
 gloom with a dart of light. There again ; but no 
 sunlight is in it, only the chill of the moon. Ah ! 
 the demons ! Why should I have had that dream? 
 
 " See my face once more and grasp my hand ; " 
 ray hand ; see how it shakes, it pricks as though 
 with nettles; I wonder if it will sting his touch, 
 and poison him ? 
 
 What if he should laugh like the imps ; what if 
 he came to mock me in my weakness ! I would
 
 A SOUL'S RESURRECTION: 239 
 
 strangle no, he had a kind heart always, and de- 
 spite my cloudiness, shone at me as if he meant to 
 melt away my coldness. If only the day had been 
 fresh and bright for me, I might have started the 
 old rusty wheels again. But I fear my power is 
 gone. Another hand might. But what hand ? I 
 dare not try it, and yet, just one touch might be 
 like a charm to set in motion no, no, it is too late. 
 I must submit. 
 
 A diseased, death-stricken child must indict its 
 generator, when its mind turns logical, for the 
 crime of its suffering ; and if it shall hate him at 
 last, the syllogism shall be nearer perfect. What 
 then shall be the emotion of a race of children 
 toward their common Father (according to the 
 theologues), if every breath is accompanied with 
 intense pain ? What infinite imperfections, what 
 diseased vitals must afflict Him, the Creator, that 
 such an inheritance has fallen to his creatures. 
 To be sure, the poets and theologians speak in 
 rather disparaging terms of our Mother Earth, and 
 pour out on her frail head the vials of their un- 
 seemly wrath, and insinuate unblushingly that 
 scandals innumerable have blackened her fair 
 name, while to our generator, -which after an 
 ancient custom, they name God, they impute all 
 virtues and excellences. With sly thrusts and 
 declamatory denunciations, they seek to pile upon 
 her bony shoulders, weakened as she is by over- 
 much maternity, the responsibility of all the in-
 
 240 A SOUL'S 
 
 herited diseases of body and soul, together with 
 all acquired ones, and not a few imaginary ones 
 in their " unbelieving " neighbors. As usual, fem- 
 inine weakness has not dared to refute these 
 charges except in an occasional cyclone or vol- 
 cano, when so black grows her placid features, so 
 fiery her temper, that even I am led to suspect her 
 usual smiles and pleasing moods, as being a sort 
 of coquetry innocent, doubtless, and an involun- 
 tary condition of her sex ! And, I am more than 
 puzzled, when in the midst of her choicest favors 
 and bestowals, she suddenly turns away and hides 
 her face under her spotless veil of white, pouting 
 in freezing silence, her very tears turning to ice- 
 drops, when lately they were warm and pleading. 
 And worse than all, I am certain that while she 
 dashes our love for her with sleety floods, double- 
 faced, she flames with immodest lust towards those 
 who are gathered at her side away from us, until 
 in the tropics, life shoots up in supreme and waste- 
 ful rankness and profusion. Moody, passionate, 
 promising, but not fulfilling, generous to a fault 
 when inclined, or selfish, cold, destructive in tem- 
 pest and fire, what if after all, the poets and 
 preachers are right! Her children resemble her 
 somewhat, I must own. 
 
 But it cannot be the truth, or the preachers never 
 could have hit upon it. I am convinced, and any 
 sound mind ought to be. 
 
 Moreover I make answer to these half truths, by
 
 A SOUL'S EESURRECTION. 241 
 
 quoting the preacher's own Book of facts (?) : "God 
 made man, and breathed into him the breath of 
 life, and he became a living spirit." That should 
 end the dispute and forever settle the origin of 
 these pains, convulsions and fears. No God would 
 do the like ; but such conditions do exist, there- 
 fore there is no God. As a matter of course, the 
 pulpitarian replies with his usual bravado and in- 
 timidation, that the same Book declares, " God 
 made man out of the dust of the earth." 
 
 Well, what if he did ? What has that to do 
 with it? There was no life until the breathing 
 took place, and the breather is responsible for all 
 that has resulted from that breathing. See the 
 folly of their argument ; any one but a bigoted 
 theologian would discover that it leads directly to 
 evolution, and he dare not advocate that because 
 of a slight financial embarrassment which might 
 ensue professionally. I only wish that he might 
 get entangled in that net, he and all his kind ; for 
 of all nonsensical, sentimental trumpery, to my 
 mind, Evolution is the airiest. It proves too 
 much. It proves an intelligent beginning, and a 
 providential continuing and developing. It proves, 
 too, an adequate destiny as the certain end of this 
 growth. Admit these legitimate demands of Evo- 
 lution, and you admit the preacher's wildest as- 
 sertions. 
 
 There is no growth, because there was no intel- 
 
 16
 
 242 A SOUL'S EESURRECTIQN. 
 
 ligent beginning ; there can be no destiny! A 
 germ sprouts only when it happens to fall into the 
 environment its nature needs. One dare not say 
 his own life is the result of any plan merest 
 chance. He finds his whole nature is pre-deter- 
 mined by pre-natal influences over which he had 
 no control. 
 
 The sun happens to shine against a cloud as 
 the rain falls, and the rainbow appears, just as at 
 this instant it spans the eastern sky yonder. 
 
 At last the sun is coming. How have I gotten 
 through this day? For an hour I had forgotten 
 the night and its visions. But the setting sun re- 
 minds me that my visitor will soon arrive. What 
 a mood is this for receiving one who years ago be- 
 longed to the inner circle. How the years have 
 piled the mountains between us. I am told he has 
 found the delight of his earlier ambitions in much 
 success and applause. It is well. I seem to have 
 stood still on the same spot where we parted, ex- 
 cept that I have been slowly sinking. Perhaps he 
 may give me a hand ; but no, I will not have it so! 
 Let him keep his woman's philosophy. I want 
 none of it. I am myself, and if I sink, it will be 
 into oblivion ; but will it be into forgetfulness ? To 
 that question I get no answer. Oh, the pain, and 
 the demons again ! Did I then so wrong my old 
 friend that his return persists in bringing to my 
 memory a sin half forgotten ? 
 
 But see the budding sunset blooming into its
 
 A SOUL'S RESURRECTION. 243 
 
 full flower. A perfect garden of color and form. 
 And the sea is at his flattery again. He takes on 
 the mood of the sky, and throwing himself into 
 wooing the graceful queen of the air, wins her 
 almost to his arms, the white drapery of her beau- 
 ful garments sinking down until the highest waves 
 kiss them. As she looks longingly down, behold- 
 ing her imaged self in the sea's embrace, she 
 abandons herself to the delights of her imagina- 
 tion. But this is all. The law of each holds them 
 apart, and they may only wish and dream. God ! 
 this maddening law which, separates ! So my 
 youthful fancy lived and loved in vain. My love, 
 her own sweet answer with promised favors gave, 
 but Fate shook his hoary locks about his stern, 
 accursed face with his emphatic denials. I dare 
 not count how many black figures in my life's sum 
 are due to this denial. How many long hours, 
 hopeless, bringing forth their dark-visaged brood 
 to trouble me and my kind ; how much discontent 
 and hatred ! 
 
 How they border in lines not easily seen, these 
 two realms of hate and love. When one sets his 
 heart into pulses of love, the twitch of a single 
 nerve may change it to hate. I hated, not her lost 
 self, but the world, men, women, and even innocent 
 children, the days, the race, because of the aid 
 they rendered Fate against me so gratuitously. 
 Alas! as I recall it now, it was because of this that 
 first I distrusted my heart's charm and solace,
 
 244 A SOUL'S EESVItKECTION. 
 
 that friend whose presence just now seems to draw 
 nigh, like an influence one feels but does not see. 
 
 A step at last. How the old porch creaks under 
 Ms steady tramp ! Perhaps some evil spirit is 
 exorcised by his coming. Aha, the old knocker 
 has fallen off! His bare hand will knock at my 
 portal oh, what emotions ! am I so weak then 
 what and he should beat at my poor heart with 
 his bare hand. Could I refuse him ? Fie, art thou 
 craven then ? Down } a child's heart could be less 
 simple. 
 
 Yes ; a firm knock was that. 
 
 I believe I can stand. 
 
 " Come in, my come in, I say." How unnat- 
 ural I feel. " Why is this, dear me, how much 
 you have no, not changed, but grown, I was 
 about to say. Oh, excuse me, I am very feeble 
 to-day. I must sit down ; be seated, do. I 
 scarcely , you seem to be something more than 
 the old Raphael of Yarrow. Oh yes, I know. 
 Don't refer to them. There are years and years. 
 I have one, you the other. Sorry to see me so 
 feeble ? Oh, yes, I am feeble ; it's my ill health. 
 I, well you see, hard work in the laboratory, and 
 all that. But let us to your work. I can see in 
 your face that all I have heard is true. The ex- 
 travagances of your friends ? Oh, no, you must 
 allow me ; I feel stronger than for days, it really
 
 A SOUL'S RESURRECTION. 245 
 
 does me good through and through to see you 
 again. You knew me at the first glance ? Well, I 
 was afraid you might not. You know we old ras- 
 cals don't like to be thought changing much. 
 Younger than you ? Impossible ! Yes, I remem- 
 ber now. Oh, yes, of course, ill health, that 
 accounts for it ; you are right. Make me young 
 again? Well, I wish you might. But can you 
 recall all enough of that, however ? 
 
 " Tell me of the years since we parted. Your 
 mother dead ? Alas, how it presses upon us all ; 
 and no, not Eleanor, your wife! She dead, can it 
 be ? And you live still and smile ? Resignation ? 
 There is none, it is only an iron will, stronger than 
 emotions. I never had it. It makes me bitter to 
 think of it. 
 
 " But then the years have brought you compen- 
 sation. Ah, what did you say? I was thinking 
 of that day ; go on." 
 
 " Such compensation," my friend replied, " as 
 only sacrifice, and the unexpected both in joy and 
 in sorrow bring. Through sorrow and unceasing 
 pain have I come to what I have. God hath so 
 led me." 
 
 " God yes well, you know I am not what we 
 were then. Perhaps my sufferings may have done 
 it. But the old ideas of Providence are all in 
 ruins in my brain." 
 
 " I will not say my own have not changed since 
 our youthful speculations. It does not seem to me
 
 246 A SOUL'S RES UBEEC TION. 
 
 that God stops natural law for the individual, but 
 makes the individual the instinctive, intelligent 
 subject of laws which do not vary ; but in their 
 in variableness is oar protection and sole safety. 
 Yet I do believe that His spiritual Kingship can 
 make any physical calamity which our disobe- 
 dience brings upon us, lose much of its force, when 
 by it we come in line with His purposes. For ex- 
 ample, a misstep may lame me for life in spite of 
 God ; but as a cripple I may, in accord with His 
 thought, and by His grace, be more in this present 
 life than I could otherwise have been, and better 
 adapted to the environment of the life to come. 
 But I am wearying you." 
 
 "No, indeed," was the quick answer; "this 
 seems new to me, and refreshing, after this long 
 fever-time. My temples have throbbed with the 
 pain of angry thought so long, that your very 
 tones seem like a gentle touch." 
 
 " I am not sure but that pain is to be the saviour 
 of the world. You know we had great boyish 
 conceptions of an ideal life in the days of our 
 youth. Somewhere in the world there were heights 
 cloud-wrapt and commanding. Upon these we 
 were to stand. Just how, we did not know ; cer- 
 tainly not by climbing ; that was much too 
 antique a way of ascent. We fairly believed 
 some ingenious elevator system would present it- 
 self for our service. But I learned before many 
 days that it was a long, long tramp to the foot of
 
 A SOUL'S RESURRECTION. 247 
 
 the mountain, and toilsome, exhausting climbing 
 even to moderate cliffs from which one might get 
 a wider horizon, while its summit seemed to lift 
 itself into the snows more rapidly than I could 
 climb. Since then I have been content, in some 
 measure, to remain where my strength can carry 
 me." 
 
 " Ah, yes, and I ; I frantically beat and tore my 
 poor hands against barriers giants could not re- 
 move, bitterly, accusingly, until the pain struck to 
 my heart, and I slipped down from the position I 
 had gained, nerveless, to the very beginning, and too 
 weak to attempt it again. I have had the pain, 
 too ; tell me why it should bless you and curse 
 me ? Answer me you seem to know all. Oh, my 
 friend, I beg of you not to heed me, I am beside 
 myself. Forget such words as these. But the 
 mystery is so baffling." 
 
 " I can only reply that my pain awakened my 
 resistance to hindrances, and the experiences of 
 the hardships of the day drew me closer to my 
 friends and the All-Soul. I remember it now, 
 though I had half forgotten then, that in the days 
 that are now like a dream, the days of my boy- 
 hood, I had much concern for the life of Mary's 
 Son. My mother and I were reading together the 
 story of His life. We had read as far as the gar- 
 den-scene ; the Savior's rising up and bidding the 
 sleeping disciples follow Him. T was separated 
 from her for a few days, I do not remember why,
 
 248 A SOUL'S RESURRECTION. 
 
 nor does it matter now. I did not dare go on with 
 the reading without her. I went about the house 
 like one daft, and bereft of friends. I knew some- 
 thing of the incidents of the crucifixion, but had 
 never read them in their historic connection. I 
 was wondering what He would do next after the 
 horrible pain. It was terrible to me that He 
 should have been alone and neglected when He 
 was craving sympathy. But He appeared so 
 strong when He rose up that I adoringly worshiped 
 Him in my boyish admiration. Then I tried to 
 imagine what He would do next ; and all I could 
 think of was a host of angels besieging Him and 
 begging Him to return with the.m, and not-go forth 
 on His dark, forsaken way. I can remember it 
 now, the look of astonishment and grief that came 
 upon His face as He turned to them, His hands 
 hanging down by His side motionless. He said 
 not a word, but such resolution was carved on His 
 face that they withdrew at once ; when all alone, 
 leaving the disciples to follow on behind, He went 
 out into the heavy darkness. It was a simple, 
 childish fancy, but I learned that day what pain 
 can do, and how it makes heroes. I was feeling 
 the separation from my mother sharply and some- 
 what rebelliously ; that picture ever-recurring gave 
 me resolution. I turned to my duties at once ; I 
 never forgot it." 
 
 " Simple and childish, you say, but reverent for 
 a child. Ah, from the currents of another life
 
 A SOUL'S RESURRECTION. 249 
 
 have you received such a faith, such a hope, than 
 have I received my distrusts. There is the rub. 
 Inheritance and environment, who can resist these! 
 Rather bid the straw resist the torrent, the leaf 
 rescue itself from the whirlpool. Better reprimand 
 the leafless oak for its rotten heart, than one of 
 my mold and shape for disbelief and distrust. 
 
 "I have fought in this very room with the 
 demons that curse me. These windows rattle now 
 with my shrieks, and the trembling of mad tramp- 
 ing is still upon the floor. This has been my 
 grave, and I have struggled like one who comes to 
 life in his clay-weighted coffin, tearing out his 
 snaky hair, and cramping his joints until his 
 bones snap like reeds, and with bursting eyes 
 struggles to be free, to breathe ! Here I slowly 
 smothered, and felt my heart stopping ; it is my 
 birthright. Explain it if you can." 
 
 " I will not attempt it, my dear friend ; my heart 
 goes out to you with all the old-time affection. 
 You were ever a strange boy and man. But do 
 you remember the hunchback that brought our 
 not too plentiful linen from his mother's hut, at 
 the close of her ironing day ? I see you do. He 
 was always repulsive to you. You have at least 
 heard of those articles in the Quarterly Review, on 
 the new philosophy of faith ; they are the talk of 
 the thinking world, profound, sweet-toned and 
 helpful. I know them to be the work of our own 
 hunchback.
 
 250 A SOUL'S RESURRECTIOX. 
 
 " Pain ? What can be more crushing than the 
 jeers and insults of the men you meet, while you 
 are dying already with the consciousness of your 
 shame and disgrace. Add to these the whisky 
 curse, poverty, lack of education ; and in spite of 
 them all, the mind, the heart, genius victors ! 
 There you read my answer to your question, and I 
 "beg you will not think it a harsh one." 
 
 " I had my ideals," came my evasive answer, 
 " beautiful, inspiring. I was always a lover of the 
 beautiful, and fairly revelled in the" philosophy of 
 nature's life and destiny. You were ever the bet- 
 ter artist. But I had my ambition and promises 
 as well. "Why should I be cheated, while the 
 hunchback, without a hope, without an ideal, prob- 
 ably, gained the full prize. I tell you it is all a 
 damnable lottery ; it is fate. Set out towards what 
 end you will, it is written in your very blood, upon 
 your brain cells, whether or not you will ever 
 reach it." 
 
 " I believe your mistake lies largely in the false 
 notion of the beautiful and the ideal. As we look 
 back towards the throne of the Caesars, we ex- 
 claim, ' There has been but one life supremely 
 beautiful.' It came out of the most despised com- 
 munity, and among an enslaved people. From the 
 lowliest of the earth its outwardness, from the 
 highest divinity its flaming inwardness. Its 
 beauty lay in the interfitting of these two parts, 
 and in its fitness with its environment. From the
 
 A SOUL'S SESUBKECTIOX. 251 
 
 summit of this spiral down to the chemical affinity 
 of atoms is the range of the ideal. Nor will the 
 quality suffer any change in the descent, no matter 
 how vast a gulf divide between any two embodi- 
 ments of it. The answer to the question, Why is 
 the Son of Mary beautiful, will answer the same 
 question in relation to the law of gravity. Har- 
 mony with its real environment, and the fulfill- 
 ment of its destiny ! And that not in a blind or 
 mechanical sense, but in a manner spontaneous, 
 natural, evolutionary. This makes individuality 
 the secret of life and motion. Every atom has its 
 unlikeness to all others, because of its peculiar 
 place and relation to other atoms a peculiarity 
 no less marked by the Creator than that which 
 distinguishes between one man. and another. I 
 am not sure but that sustained individuality will 
 be the eternal existence of which we dream. The 
 ability to sustain it by the overpowering life of 
 Deity, happy existence ; the thrust upon and en- 
 forced sustainment by sin, unhappy existence. 
 The one will be perfect beauty, the other absolute 
 ugliness and deformity. 
 
 " The soul's only natural environment is spiritual 
 truth ; spiritual presences collated about a central 
 individual and spirit force. The soul that by sin 
 shall be thrust into darkness, impurity and disin- 
 tegrating elements, is out of its environment, and 
 therefore unhappy. 
 
 "Again, it is the destiny of the soul to gain,- at
 
 2-32 A SOUL'S RESURRECTION. 
 
 first gradually, and afterwards absolutely, superi- 
 ority over the body. This it does slowly under 
 Christ here, and completely in the eternal life, at 
 some stage of that life. It is not certain that the 
 soul does not so adulterate itself with the physical 
 habit of thought and love of this earth-life, to the 
 degree that at its very best, it can only hope for 
 absolute freedom at some remote period of the 
 eternal existence, when the influence of the un- 
 tainted Spirit over all shall have wrought in the 
 soul its perfect work. 
 
 " But in the darkness and ruin which sin brings 
 upon the soul after death, it is neither in its nat- 
 ural environment nor fulfilling its destiny ; indeed 
 the very opposite is true. Hence, there must be an 
 utter lack of beauty! This is the definition of 
 beauty, and the illustration of its meaning. But 
 you got some foolish ideas in your head do not 
 think me unfriendly in this which made you think 
 yourself born for certain high ends and nothing 
 less. It was the case with myself, I remember ; 
 it was the science of nature to which I proposed to 
 devote my life ; and I proposed to do it by rapid 
 intuitions, half-revelations, which no one had yet 
 known. You see how all this has changed. I 
 have not the analytical mind, nor the classifying 
 tendencies. I would soon have grown bitter in my 
 disappointment and belabored fate. But I have 
 been taught that one's work is that which he can 
 do. Only thus have I been able to set in motion a
 
 A SOUL'S RESURRECTION. 253 
 
 small wave of happiness in the hearts of my 
 friends." 
 
 " You mean to say, then, that I have missed my 
 calling? " 
 
 " The most of the people we meet are dissatisfied, 
 having had high ideals which were never realized. 
 A smaller number, but larger than Matthew Ar- 
 nold's ' remnant,' is stayed by Christian resigna- 
 tion, until they do not allow themselves to be very 
 much surprised by, or disappointed over, any lot; 
 while a very small number, and the smaller the 
 better for us all, so wedded to their optimism, will 
 declare everything to be just as they dreamed it, 
 even after they have looked upon the reality. Their 
 punctured bubbles never collapse, their saw-dust 
 people never lose their graceful roundness. Hero 
 worship has had not a little to do with our general 
 estimates ; we grant to a leader, a genius, all the 
 virtues our imagination can conjure, more possi- 
 bilities, in fact, than he himself ever dreamed of; 
 much as some very imaginative people read into a 
 poem a hundred things of which the poet himself 
 was not conscious. It is very natural that when 
 our worshiped heroes fail of the standard we set 
 up, we should feel it keenly, and blame them for 
 unsuspected weakness. Much of ancient and 
 modern fiction has played no small part in the es- 
 tablishment of this habit. I remember you as a 
 firm believer in the rornancist's statement of life. 
 Romance has its place in the domain of letters, but
 
 254 A SOUL'S BESUERECTION. 
 
 not as the fashioner of our daily thoughts and 
 wishes. Howells may not be far wrong when he 
 pronounces Tolstoi, the prince of realists, the great- 
 est novelist of all ages. I recognize the necessity 
 of a high standard of hoping and living ; that if we 
 were not capable of ideals, we would be with the 
 beasts ; that ambition is the fly-wheel of all life's 
 motion and achievement ; that hope is a Divine 
 gift and keeps the heart ; that to the child, maturity 
 of thought and work is the ultima thule. But is it 
 necessary that we set before us an unreasonable, 
 unattainable perfection in order that we may attain 
 some degree of perfection, though we do fall short 
 of the ideal? Is it not a pernicious habit we have 
 fallen into, and does it not dwarf our lives at last ? 
 Is it necessary that the love-blinded swain shall 
 imagine every grace, every virtue, belongs to his 
 chosen, before he will run the risk of merging their 
 fortunes? I wonder if sordid, money-loving, mes- 
 alliance-hsiting society has not unconsciously 
 wrought a good work in cultivating the habit of 
 walking into the matrimonial state with open eyes, 
 each conscious of the other's defects and shortcom- 
 ings. Not to attain all is not to fail, nor does it 
 make any less the ideal toward which we strug- 
 gled." 
 
 " Your words seem wholesome, but under them 
 must be something that is false and deceptive ; my 
 own life marks them so." 
 
 " Say rather, that you have made your life what
 
 A SOUL'S RESURRECTION. 255 
 
 it is, by resisting both nature and God. She 
 moulded you in form for both strength and honor ; 
 the Infinite stood ready to fill you with a grace 
 Divine. But as a flower, had it will, might lay its 
 face on the black ground and turn its parched 
 mouth from the dew and rain, so did you. I would 
 God I might lift the flower back to the sun and 
 showers." 
 
 "Your words are gracious," I cried, my soul 
 all astir, " but to what end ? It is like my old 
 dreams of heaven, to have you here by my side, 
 for it has been lonelier than death. No children's 
 tripping feet have ever crossed this bare floor, no 
 cheery voices have shaken the cobwebs of my 
 shadowed room, or of my deeper-shadowed brain. 
 No friend has for years entered into sincere 
 converse with me. Many have frowned, or smiled, 
 and passing the day, passed by. Not one has 
 stopped to say, ' Do you rest ? Are you lonely ? 
 May I come in ? ' 
 
 " None, till you came, have dared meet my doubt- 
 ing, scorning gaze. Like some sweet spirit you 
 have knelt at my ruined altar, and with your 
 human words smitten the dead rock of my hopes, 
 until a tiny stream begins to flow. But, no ; there 
 is no hope. It is as though one blind were led to 
 the sea, and another should say, ' Look, behold 
 the vast deep, blue as the domed sky ; its waves 
 are coming in like frothing thoughts in a mad 
 chase. Look, do you not see its sublime, billowy
 
 256 A SOUL'S RESURRECTION. 
 
 self?' And then the sightless sufferer should 
 say, * No, no ; I only hear a confusing roar, at first 
 holding and inspiring, then a booming and swish- 
 ing of waters at my feet that terrify me.' And 
 then like myself this moment, would cry out, 
 ' Lead me away, haste, for the boom of the sea is 
 mixing with the sullen roar of my half-mad brain. 
 I cannot endure it.' No, no, my friend, it is be- 
 yond hope. The blind must see. Only a miracle 
 can do that." 
 
 "Just a word. By some strange freak of hu- 
 man nature we rush from superstition to atheism, 
 and back again to superstition. You think naught 
 but a miracle, like that given to the blind man of 
 Judea, will recover for you your inner sight. You 
 hang wholly on God's power and notion to give 
 you sight. Call back your reason and regard 
 yourself. 
 
 " Who came to this lonely spot of self-hate and 
 God-distrust ? " 
 
 " I, myself." 
 
 "Who loved it in spite of its pain ?" 
 
 (( J 55 
 
 " Who now talks of helpless blindness, conscious 
 of his condition ? " 
 
 .. J 55 
 
 " Who, but this instant, hopes and yearns for 
 the old life, the new life ? " 
 " I, myself." 
 " Then thou canst arise, and find Him of whom
 
 A SOUL'S RE SUEEEOTION. 257 
 
 thou knowest much in spite of thy gloom. For- 
 give me if I have been over-earnest, or seemed to 
 urge myself upon you. But I felt, and do feel, 
 that my soul's own brother cried to me in that 
 pitiful prayer, and that I must help or die." 
 
 " Go on, go on. It is restful. It is like a good 
 dream one dreams, and wakes, and dreams again. 
 But it is only restful. One does not undo the 
 convolutions of his brain-cells in an hour. The 
 light does not come at the wish. But to see you, 
 even dimly, in the shadows that have fallen around 
 me, is a significant beginning. If ever it shall 
 happen that I may lift up my earth-bound eyes, it 
 will be not by some sudden and astonishing revela- 
 tion, or inward work of grace or ungrace. It will 
 be because I was able to see thee, thyself. I mean, 
 to hear the tones of thy voice, feel thy presence, 
 then afterwards to know one of the simplest truths 
 perhaps, and then another, until at last I can take 
 truth for truth's sake, and not thine and love's 
 sake. At last it may happen, if I might hope for 
 it, that I may discern another form, its outline 
 against the eastern window the window of the 
 dawning ; a form, upon which the sunlight may af 
 last pour, revealing Him of whom you and your 
 dead mother dreamed. What if I should close 
 my eyes some night in your presence, in this so 
 long demon-haunted room, and when I should 
 awaken in the morning light I should behold His -
 
 258 A SOUL'S RESURRECTION. 
 
 presence in your stead, would there be any miracle 
 there ? I think not ; a natural development, not 
 in you, but in me. Ah, what fanciful dreams are 
 these? I cannot even rise from my chair alone ; I 
 am broken, shattered, lost. You have given me a 
 glimpse of what might have been, but not now ; it 
 is too late ! " 
 
 " I like the high quality of your despair," my 
 friend returned in his musical tones. " It suits the 
 case well ; you have named the only process by 
 which you may recover your mental health, and if 
 that be recovered, perchance your bodily health. 
 It will be by an evolution wrought by the warmth 
 and moisture of your friend's love, until the germ- 
 ing is over, then by adjusting yourself to your 
 environment. God speaks truth by men. 
 
 " I must ask you to say two words to-night before 
 we part. Words you have not uttered since those 
 early days, and not often then. Words by which 
 Divinity exists. Words which make men, by in- 
 heritance, sons of the Divine, and by grace, joint- 
 heirs with the older Brother. Words by which 
 Jife came, but they are not in all life. They are 
 not in all highest life, for the spirits of the Throne 
 have them not. They are the sign of humanity, 
 the soul of Divinity. They marked the hunch- 
 back from the most beautifully formed and grace- 
 ful animal that ever started up from its forest con- 
 cealment. They can remove you from yourself, 
 until your identity is wholly changed. They are
 
 A SOUL' S RES URRE C TION. 259 
 
 the secret of immortality, if I mistake not. They 
 made the Man of Sorrows change his blood-sweat 
 agony into God-like composure. They melt sin. 
 They vanquish it. For the Great One does ever 
 work in them when they are the echo of his own. 
 He has uttered them ever since time first began, in 
 every revelation. Men have no higher privilege 
 than to echo them not the echo of a hollow sound, 
 not an earth-born cry, nor a demoniac shout but 
 an echo of the Divine. You know them, your des- 
 tiny depends upon them. Will you say them? 
 Dare you be silent now and live? Say them, my 
 brother, my comrade of the hills, of the hopes of 
 youth ; by the love I bear thee still, say them!" 
 
 " I I I WILL." 
 
 "Amen ! "
 
 A 000033093 6