Chapter II: Part 2

Of late I have found a very good and sincere friend who has, since then been an actual inspiration to me. For many years we knew of each other’s existence, but we did not move in the same orbit, one might say, so we never met to touch and smile as we passed each other in the busy pursuits of life. We seemed to pass each other in the dark, and so far apart that our binnacle lights could only be dimly seen away off in the gloom of the night.

And all the time we were dreaming the same dreams, cultivating the same love, nourishing the same hope, fanning the same laudable ambition, admiring the same poems, worshipping the same God of Nature. And we continued to pass in the dark. I had my struggles and deferred hopes and pinching poverty and unsatisfied desires, mellowed and made smooth, however, with the love of friends and companions who lived with me in the broad daylight of recognition and mental appreciation; and he had his friends and hopes and dreams and slights and heart-affecting episodes and burning ambition and love of humanity—and thus we continued to pass and repass in the dark.

Dimly and intermittingly the thought began to develop and dangle before our mental eyes that some day the lights would grow brighter in our binnacles, the shadows become less opaque and the distance diminish when passing by. The thought waves we were setting in motion as we moved around in our orbits, came together and intermingled and blended in mutual harmony, and moved us together in our wake, drawing us closer together, even when passing in the dark. And our binnacle lights grew brighter and finally dispelled the darkness so much that we no longer passed unrecognized, but too far apart to hail each other on the social sea.

What strange and subtle influence was it that planted the seeds of a mutual desire in each heart, that some day in passing, we could call across the narrow sea and hear the sound of each other’s voice? Was it caused by the thought waves that came over the mysterious dream sea and beat softly on the sides of our spiritual ship? Mutual confessions afterwards revealed the fact that our final meeting was not by accident, but through the individual, independent, unknown designs of each other. We felt the approach of each other’s frail boat while still in the dark distance, and realized that we were soon to meet and touch, with a hand-shake and a heart-ache that would never cease nor diminish until we have accomplished something to light the darkness where other poor mariners on the stormy sea of life pass each other, with no binnacle lights shining out over the troubled water, and no friendly call coming out of the darkness to those in distress.

No man can do successful work alone. We need the help and the moral support and the sincere appreciation of all those whom we know to be in sympathy with souls who are still pulling against the stream and through the darkness of obscurity and neglect. Every one of us have friends who pass us in the dark—friends that we could sincerely love and respect, and who could aid us and cheer us as we pull against the streams of life with the sad realization that sooner or later, we shall all be washed away.

Let us get closer together. Let us flash the binnacle light of love and God speed and good cheer as we pass in the dark. Too often we turn down the light at the approach of an unknown ship, and use our utmost endeavors to pass unseen and unknown. Is it because our mutual thoughts are out of tune?

And would it be thus if we were all mutually working for the uplifting of humanity? Would it be thus if we were all willing to throw out a line to the human boats drifting, without a rudder, down the rapids of poverty and want?

We are all ultimately going out on the unknown sea—why not sail closer together on the sea of life? Soon we will drift so far apart that absolute darkness will hide us from the living world; so, while we live let us avoid passing friends without calling to them over the water.

VOICE OF THE STONE

Passing through a country graveyard one day last summer, and reading the sad stories engraved on the many head stones, I was attracted by the silent voice of one particular stone, erected over the grave of a six-year-old boy: “How Many Hopes Lie Buried Here!” Was it an exclamation, or an interrogation? How many hopes? Only the fathers and mothers can truly tell who have buried hopes in similar graves.

These bereaved parents had pictured their baby boy as a man, going out into the world to accomplish great things and fill their declining years with pleasure and delight.

Often they had pictured their boy in his manly beauty, able to defend himself from the enemies that always cross the path of the successful, and attempt to retard their progress. They had pictured him on the stage of life swaying men with the power of his logic and his persuasive voice. Men were cheering at the bare mention of his name, for he had taught the people to love him and believe in him.

They saw him holding high positions in the social and political world, and always going higher, always gaining more and more, always accomplishing greater things—ah, perhaps holding the highest office in the land—President of the United States!

Or they may have been more modest in their hopes. They may have seen their boy, grown to sturdy manhood, following the plow and reaping the golden grain; and, instead of going out into the world to win glory and fame, they may have pictured him contented in the old home, sitting with them in the evening under the vine clad porch and discussing the modest hopes of the village people.

Great hopes are not always dreams of future glory and fame. The modest life and unostentatious efforts of the humble worker bring greater joys to some hearts than all the glories of political success. So the hopes that are buried with a favorite child are as many and as varied as the flowers of the hills and meadows.

But, whatever the hopes, the heart-aches are ever as deep and pathetic, and the tears as bitter with regret.

HOW MANY HOPES LIE BURIED HERE

How many hopes lie buried here
With our darling, we loved so dear!
When his dear life ended,
The shadows blended
With the darkness so cold and drear.
And the sad refrain,
Again and again,
Tells of a mother’s tears and pain,
Year after year, year after year.

How many hopes? Ah, God alone
Knows how many lie under this stone!
Of the mind well directed,
Of the man they expected—
Death ended all, the spirit has flown.
And that sad refrain,
Again and again,
Tells of a father’s great heart pain,
Always yearning for the boy that is gone.

How many hopes? The breezes sigh,
Softly whispering while passing by:
Fondest hopes of a mother’s breast,
Hopes that pleased the father best,
Reaching from earth to the sun-lit sky.
Now the sad refrain,
Again and again,
Tells of the father’s and mother’s pain—
A great heartache that will never die.

Ask the mother how many tears
To wash that memory from the years?
Ask the gloomy father why
Comes that half-unconscious sigh?
As the sound of a lov’d voice disappears.
Ah, that sad refrain,
Again and again.
Tells the story of grief and pain,
Which the mellow-hearted reader hears.

INGRATITUDE

Ingratitude is the crime of weak, inferior intellects. The man who will eagerly accept favors of another, and not feel grateful towards the donor afterwards, displays the coarse inferiority of the brute. The savages and barbarians are noted for their spirit of gratitude. They never forget a kindness. The genuine superlative ingrate is generally the spectacular white man. The man in whom vanity and self-interest predominates all the finer feelings of the soul.

Very often he is a self-sainted molder of public opinion, standing high in the church and political circles, with an inordinate appetite for public position where he can be observed by the passing world. He is the self-stuffed hypocrite who pretends to love humanity—for the profit it will bring him.

I have in my mind a parasitical vampire in human form who had a friend moving in political circles where railroad passes where supposed to be gifts of friendship. This was before the anti-free pass law came into effect. The parasite begged his friend to secure a pass for him, and it was secured and given to him, midst a shower of profound thanks and pledges of eternal gratefulness. The pass was used to a gluttonous extent, and renewed at its expiration, and again accepted with many obsequious bows and renewed pledges of everlasting friendship.

A few years ago the friend died, and his relatives expected words of kindly remembrance from the parasite. Even the dead man’s enemies spoke kindly of him after death had silenced his tongue and put the eternal chill upon his warm heart. It is one feature of our higher civilization to always speak well of the dead—to overlook the dead man’s faults and remember only his good qualities. To spurn the dead body of one’s fellow man is considered cowardly, dastardly and inhuman. But when a supposed friend turns on the body of one whom he made a victim of his hypocrisy and deceit while living, and stings the dead with the venom of a treacherous viper, the world looks on and blushes for very shame.

This was the case with the parasite I have referred to. No sooner had the breath left the body of the man who had so often befriended him, than he began circulating stories that told how corrupt his dead friend had always been during life.

Did the public applaud the ungrateful parasite? Did he gain favor from even the dead man’s most bitter enemies? Far from it! Those who remembered how the fawning sycophant had groveled at the feet of the dead man for the favors so lavishly bestowed while life lasted, had only feelings of contempt for the cowardly traducer of a dead friend’s character.

The world said: “If the dead man was as bad and corrupt as this false friend paints him, why did he wait until after death has sealed his tongue with the lock of eternal silence? Why did he court the dead man’s society as long as there was a favor within reach? Was it not his sacred duty to reform the corrupt man, instead of sharing gluttonously all the good things with him, with the greed of a vampire sucking the life’s blood from a sleeping child?”

The story he now tells of his dead friend is but the flapping wings of the vampire fanning his new victims to sleep while he sucks favors from the veins of their unsuspecting generosity. Once a parasite, always a parasite, and the attempt to build a character out of abuse heaped upon the memory of a dead friend, is but wasted energy. The public is a pretty good judge of humanity, and the human vampire can not paint his wings and pass for a dove, no odds how saint-like he may “coo” to the other birds of prey.

Another case of ingratitude came to me just the other day: One man asked another for a loan of $200. It was taking great risks to loan the fellow anything, but the friend took chances and loaned him half as much as he asked for. Now the fellow hasn’t a single kind word to speak of the generous lender. This is not only injuring the man who so kindly befriended him, but the abuse may sour the lender against humanity in general, as some day some other honest but unfortunate man may be turned away empty handed, on account of the wound made by the ingratitude of the human parasite.

Those who are not thankful for small favors, are absolutely barren of gratitude, and deserve no favors at all. And where there is no gratitude there are no generous impulses, no spirit of charity, no love for humanity, either dead or alive. And the world is full of them. I have only referred to two cases—two of the most common cases—every reader knows of a dozen other cases. Ingratitude is the white man’s great sin against humanity.

ORPHAN EVA

Sitting at the window one cold frosty morning I saw little Eva Yarnell passing the house with a bundle of clothes under each arm. Eva is a girl of twelve years, and an orphan. Her mother died when she was but six years old. I’ve always been interested in the child because she had been shifted from pillar to post, as the saying goes, one relative keeping the little girl as long as their means lasted, when she would be moved on to another aunt or uncle or cousin or grandmother. Her relatives were all poor, and it seemed as though Providence was forcing little Eva to share all the poverty and want of her relatives.

She has at times been a schoolmate of my boy, so when he came into the room I asked him where little Eva was moving to.

“Oh, she’s all right now, papa!” the boy exclaimed. “She’s going to live with Bingman’s, just above town, on a farm. She’s such a good worker, and I believe Mrs. Bingman will appreciate Eva and make it pleasant for her. The poor child is just about naked, and I’m sure Mrs. Bingman will dress her better than she was ever dressed in her life.”

I caught my boy’s hopeful feeling and inwardly rejoiced over little Eva’s good fortune. But after sitting for a time thinking about the life of orphan Eva, it struck me forcibly about the child’s recommendation. “She’s such a good worker,” my boy said. Working her way through life “at the age of twelve.” “What an age! What a stern life for a girl of twelve! God help you, child, and send you a kind mistress!” I said aloud, as I turned to my desk with a queer sad feeling tugging at my heart.

Lately I had written a sketch describing the heart-aches of Foster’s colored boy, of whom he sang in the tender words of “The Old Folks at Home,”—the far off home on the Suanee river; and I had cried over the boy I had pictured in my mind, because I, too, have suffered with heart-aches and loneliness and soul hunger. But here was a little homeless girl who could never more dream of a mother back in the old home. There was no one at home to wish her back again, not even a home. There was no one waiting with heart-aches to see her, unless there are heart-aches beyond the grave.

I opened the door to catch a last glimpse of the little orphan and saw her bravely trudging up the wet street, occasionally shifting the bundles from one arm to the other, for one of the bundles was much larger than the other—so large that it cramped her chubby arm while holding it close to her body.

“Such a good worker!” The words persisted in coming back to me, leaving a sadness at my heart that could not be shaken off. How long has she been a good worker? When did she first learn how to work? Such an age for such a grand reputation!

I thought of the drones all over the country who never win such a reputation, though they live on the fat of the land, and feel as far above little Eva Yarnell as the gods are supposed to feel above a toad. In whom, I wonder, do the gods feel the most interest—in Eva Yarnell, or in the fat and sleek drones who sit in upholstered chairs and try to mold the opinions of the world.

I do not know—I can not believe that this world is ruled by the hand of love, no odds whether that hand is divine or not. Law is stern, severe and unrelenting; the one side padded with the down of mercy, but the reverse side rough with cruel thorns and painful projections. And the reverse side seems always turned towards the weak and the helpless—towards the motherless orphan I had in my mind—little Eva Yarnell.

“Such a worker!” Such an age! God send her kind mistress and a sheltering home!

LOVING THE WORLD

There is a difference between loving the world for the world’s wealth’s sake, and loving the world for the sake of humanity. There is often this difference between the patriotism of men. Some patriots love the surface of the world where they are located far more than they love the people who share it with them. Some patriots love the wealthy of their neighboring countries, while they are totally indifferent towards the toiling poor of that same country. In America the people who love humanity for humanity’s sake, give their sympathies to the plundered and outraged peasantry of Russia, while those who love the world for wealth’s sake give their sympathies to Emperor Nicholas and the parasitical royalty of that unhappy country.

This is why the United States are not unanimously in sympathy with the oppressed people of all other countries—the reason why the people of this country are not unanimously in sympathy with the toilers of our own land—the difference between loving the world’s wealth, and the world’s people. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” is possible only where worldly interests are mutual and agreeable. Where two men are striving for the dirty dollar in sight, love is sure to dodge out of sight and silently steal away.

Even where men love the world for humanity’s sake, there is a difference in the intensity of that love. Some men love with a hopeful optimistical fervor, dreaming of a day when there shall be no oppression or plundering of the weak by the powerful. They see the millennium of earthly tranquillity and peace in the near future, when all men shall be brothers, and co-operation shall take the place of bitter competition, and motherhood and childhood shall be the great care and protection of the nation, and no one shall go to bed and cry themselves to sleep to forget the pangs of hunger and drown the memory of personal wrongs.

In most cases these hopeful altruists never suffered real hunger or bitter wrongs. They have always had enough of the world’s material wealth to drive the wolf of hunger away from their door, and only see the real poor through their dreams. Once in my life I cried for bread when there was not a crumb in my mother’s house, nor even a single penny to buy bread. It was only for one day, but the horror of that one day pictured poverty to my youthful mind in all its horrible and unrelenting want and squalor. And the old gloom-blistered memory of that one day of unsatisfied hunger haunts me still, like the recollections of the most poignant pain.

I firmly believe that that recollection of absolute poverty in my childhood days is what makes my love for humanity so hopeless and moist with despondent tears. I can not even dream of a day when love and justice will rule the world. Greed, greater than all else, human greed predominates over all the world. “For what will a man not give in exchange for his own life?” This can be carried still lower and made to read, “For what will a man not sacrifice for his own comfort?” And when it comes to a sacrifice, who so easy to offer up as the “helpless poor?”

Abraham hadn’t the remotest idea of offering himself up on the altar he had built. Helpless Isaac would have been the victim, had not the more helpless ram appeared tangled in the bushes, and was substituted for the lad.

The primitive originators of the sacrificial altar had only the weak and helpless and defenseless in mind as the intended sacrifice to their God. The innocence of the lamb and the dove did not appeal to their calloused hearts. They were intent on saving themselves, even though the whole world must be sacrificed.

That spirit is still prevailing where the weak and the strong meet in the struggle for existence, and the weak and innocent do not appeal to sympathetic hearts when they ask for mercy. The business and commercial altars must have a sacrifice for the benefit of the strong. This picture is always before me. My love for the world is like the love of a despondent mother for her sick child.

LOST IN THE SNOW

No one who has never lived near an Indian school has any idea of the loneliness and homesickness that fills the poor little hearts of the Indian youths who have been torn away from the rude Indian home and herded together between gloomy brick walls, so different from the teepee of their semi-savage parents. The government department in charge of these schools talk of abolishing the schools located at a distance from the reservations, and building school houses right in the village, retaining only four such schools as that of Carlisle, Pa., to serve as high schools for the larger youths.

I believe there is much sense and good judgment in this. Civilization should not force painful conditions upon the children of our copper-skinned wards.

I recall to mind the desertion of five little Indian boys from a school near which the writer spent several years, and a more pathetic tale never was told. Like the instinct of bees and animals, these Indian boys knew that their native village lay to the southwest of the school, and when homesickness felt so unbearable that it could not be endured, they stole from their dormitory one dark night in November, swam the river and started to climb the rugged side of the great Rocky Mountains.

Little Jake Hargison was but six years old, and the baby of the deserters, but he struggled through the dark and up the rocky side of the towering mountain with courage stimulated by the hope of seeing home and parents within a few days. Being only boys, they had not provided food for the journey, each lad carrying only a small lunch in his pockets.

At daylight they were far up on the mountain side, half frozen; for they had come to an impassable cliff and so were obliged to wait until the daylight came, not daring to build a fire lest it be seen from the valley where the school buildings were located.

It was past noon when they finally reached the top of the mountain and struck out boldly to cross the broad mesa extending far to the southwest. Far in the distance they could see the mountain range at whose foot nestled the Indian village they called home. They knew it was seventy-five long miles away, but they never flinched or thought of turning back.

Late in the afternoon the sky grew gray with bleak clouds, and the northeast wind chilled them to the bone. There were already four inches of snow on the mesa, and the eldest of the boys knew instinctively that another snow storm was in the air. But they had on stout government shoes, and did not fear the snow.

By dark the snow storm burst on them in all the fury of a Rocky Mountain blizzard, and the boys began to search for a sheltering rock. Fortunately they came to the brow of a great range of mountains, and down below the rim rock they knew there would be shelter from the storm and the winds. Slowly and tortuously the boys climbed down through a crevice in the great rim rock, and 200 feet below they came to a level plateau, where they gathered wood and built a fire close up to the perpendicular wall.

Sitting by the warm fire they ate their lunch, having saved it all through the weary day, and they could hear the storm king howling through the spruce trees and shrieking through the canyons on either side.

And where they had camped the snow was drifting over the cliff and falling upon them very fast. They knew the history of these snow drifts—knew that the snow sometimes stacked up to the depth of fifty feet on the lee side of the rim rock, but it was too late to retreat now.

At midnight their fuel became exhausted, and the snow drift was so deep that they could not get more. Little Jake complained of being sleepy, and his older brother sang an Indian song to keep him awake. The little fellow began to repeat the prayer his teacher taught him, and fell asleep with the words still on his lips. The others soon followed him into dreamland, and all night long the merciless snow drifted over the tall rock and buried them under many feet of spotless robes. The winds howled, the storm shrieked and groaned and higher the snow drift grew upon them.

Late in July a prospecting party found them, the elder brother holding little Jake in his stiffened arms.

A PLEA FOR CHILDHOOD

In the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, and in the name of Him who died for men, I would make a plea for the little children who are born into the world to be landless and homeless through life. Does it seem possible to the thickest headed thinker that a just God would send children into a world already privately owned by previous generations? Are God’s laws similar to the European laws of primogeniture, giving the best of all to the first born—to the first generations, and to be handed down from father to son, to hold and own forever?

I can’t believe that there is any priority handed down to a special few from the God of All. Every sense of common justice rebels at such an idea. If it is our God, and our heaven, and our eternity, it must then surely be our earth, our land, and our oceans, and our mountains, and our air. Will a higher civilization recognize this picture of simple justice? And will we reach a higher state of civilization without giving all an equal share in God and the earth?

I do not know. It might create serious complications to remove the priority claim of the selected few who now claim the natural wealth of the world. The present state and condition of the social world and the industrial world may be exactly as God wishes it to be. Every one must answer this question for himself; for while it is true that God created man, every individual creature has a peculiar way of forming the character and attributes of his God. Men still quote scripture to prove that God believed in human slavery. If this is true, then God surely allowed little innocent babes to be born into slavery, and to be driven by the lash from the cradle to the grave.

If this is true, then child labor in our mills and factories for wages, is not nearly so horrible as chattel slavery, and God must look with approbation at the little consumptive boy or girl dying by inches while watching the shuttles fly back and forth in the loom, of which they are part of the machinery.

These questions each one must settle for himself; but doesn’t it seem more natural and human to decide in favor of the children? When you look into the innocent eyes of the child sitting in its mother’s arms, can you consign that child to the slavery of the factories and mills, and then wash your conscience clean with the wet sponge of tearful prayer? Sit right up straight in your chair at this very minute and decide the case between yourself and the children and your God—did God, or did he not send these helpless and dependent children into the world to become mere slaves, and to live landless and homeless until he calls them hence? Yes?

Within the eyes of each trusting child
That look straight into mine,
There is a plea, so meek and mild,
So humble and supine—
A plea for mercy and human love,
For justice and for right,
For a share in the earth and the God above,
And all the blessings in sight.

Perhaps it was God who planted there
This plea, ere they were born;
This innate plea for an equal share
Of all the meat and corn,
How can men rob them of their right?
And hear their loud demands,
When they see the wealth of the world in sight,
And their father’s empty hands.

I know the sigh of each full grown breast
For a home and an acre of soil;
A vine and a fig tree; to sit and rest,
When weary of work and toil.
Did the God of Nature plant that sigh
In the babe, long ere it smiled?
And this plea, like a rainbow, in the eye
Of the trusting, yearning child?

May the God of heaven pity us all!
But pity the children now!
Let us kiss the spot hurt in each fall
And smooth the troubled brow;
For how shall we, as a little child,
Win back a place in heaven,
If the child is robbed, long ere it smiled
Of the part Great God has given?

THOUGHTS ON IMMORTALITY

I do not know; yet the longings and yearnings of my soul cry out always for immortality. I seem to hope always that somewhere in the universe there is stored away a great pity that responds to the longings and yearnings of my soul, and stands ready to help me when the earth fades away from sight and the shadows fall thick and deep around me. I do not know. The desire in my soul is father to my trembling hope, and hope may pass away when life goes out into the unknown and my body of clay is left to crumble and decay and disintegrate and go back to the original elements.

There will be a physical change, the light and heat and movement will go out of my body, like the light blown out in a vacant house when the inhabitants move away. But whither goes the inhabitants that now dwell within me when the lights are blown out and the doors locked and sealed with the eternal lock that will not open to the key of time, I do not know.

In my sober contemplation of all that lies before, it seems to me that love and justice and mercy and hope are of ephemeral existence if they last only while the light is in the body. And I ask myself: “Is there no life and light and mercy and hope and pity beyond these things we feel and hear and see? Are we to suffer injustice during life that will never be righted for us? Are we to love, and lose the object of our love, and never find it again? Are these bright minds of ours, so capable of dreaming such beautiful dreams, to be brought to the very highest possible heights of intelligence, and then suddenly be snuffed out, like blowing the lighted flame from a candle, leaving all in darkness and gloom?”

I do not know. The prophets and philosophers were only men, with yearnings and longings like my own, and as weak and helpless to pull aside the curtains and peep into the future as I find myself. And yet I am not satisfied to die forever; for I do know that there is an eternity for all these things existing in space. Space is eternity itself. The human mind can not picture a condition when worlds and planets and space will be no more. Nothing can come from nothing, neither can matter pass into nothing and leave no trace behind. The length of the universe is eternity, and so is the width and the breadth. It can not pass away and leave but a hole, for even a hole must have sides and dimensions.

I do not know; perhaps the ox in the field knows more about immortality than man, perhaps less, perhaps nothing at all. It would not need to know much about it to outstrip me in knowledge on this one particular subject. He may have longings and yearnings, the same as me, for how shall the ox receive his share of justice and equity if he passes away with this life and is known no more?

I do not know; justice must surely mean the same rewards for the ox as it means for man, for how can simple justice discriminate between animals, and still remain simple justice? And the man who is willing to grasp an immortality that discriminates between him and the ox, is neither merciful, charitable, nor just. Immortality must surely embrace all the living creatures, or part of life would be left behind, and immortality would be incomplete and imperfect. God must be the God of all. If the ox is an inferior creature, the fault lies with the creator and not with the created thing. If there is no justice and mercy for the ox, then justice and mercy have limits, and God is not so powerful to save his creatures as he is to create them.

I do not know; my faith in immortality may be the child of my hopes and longings. If I am always to be I always was in existence somewhere. I am positively certain that I know of no evidence to prove a past existence, for hope does not lead backward. Hope points always ahead, from where the winds of the future are always blowing. I know that I desire to live always, to think always, to hope always, to love on and on forever and ever.

TEACH SENTIMENT

Sentiment is a creature of education. A child will naturally imitate its parents. If they are unfeeling and cruel, the child will be the same, at least until it falls under a different influence. Sentiment is not inherited. The average child is cruel and heartless until old enough to imitate the sentimental spirit of old people. Therefore, it should be the first lesson impressed upon the child mind that cruelty and wanton heartlessness is brutal, and does not belong to civilized man.

In my own case I have always been opposed to keeping pet animals or birds confined in a cage—no, not always: When a boy I was always catching birds and squirrels and rabbits to start a menagerie. I remember one time of keeping a red squirrel in a cage for two years. I hadn’t then learned that kindness to the weakest of God’s creatures shows a largeness of the human heart. I was then a lad of fifteen years.

But one day while watching the red squirrel leaping from one side of the cage to the bottom, then bounding to the other side and back again, and on to the opposite side and back again, over and over again, all through the day, and day after day, for the exercise it needed to keep its health—one day while watching the poor imprisoned animal at its daily exercise, the thought came to me that the little animal would be so much happier outside the cage. Then it dawned on me that I was simply keeping the poor thing imprisoned to gratify my own selfish pleasure. Simply to look at and enjoy its efforts to make life tolerable under such distressing conditions. I had actually been enjoying the restless efforts of the squirrel to make prison life healthful; for had the animal sat down to mourn and pout and sorrow for the freedom it once enjoyed, it would have died in a few weeks.

My heart smote me. I saw what a cruel jailor I had been. It’s bad enough to imprison bad men and shut them away from the sunlight and flowers and the smiles of good women and children, just as though darkness and heartaches and misery would make a human being better. But here I was imprisoning an innocent animal simply for the selfish pleasure that comes from the possession of things not justly my own. Like the millionaire who gets a monopoly on the necessaries of life, and forces the people to pay tribute into his coffers for the sole and only pleasure of possessing more dollars than his neighbors.

If he has sentiment enough to use those dollars for the benefit of civilization and to relieve the distress of the people, it is not so bad, but hoarding up for the pleasure that comes from sheer possession, is worse than brutal—it is maniacal.

Well, my conscience smote me on the educated end of my sentiment, and one day I opened the cage and let the squirrel go back to the woods. I had learned a lesson I never forgot. The awakened sentiment in my soul never slumbered again.

Sentiment is contagious. My boy caught the happy mental disorder much earlier than his father did. A few weeks ago, he, too, started a menagerie. He caught two mice and put them in a cage. At the end of two weeks his young heart felt the sentimental pangs of conscience, and he liberated his unwilling prisoners.

The world is growing better. The boy’s sentiment did as much for him in two weeks as mine did for me in two years. The two liberated mice may do me a trifle of damage while at large, but when I consider that the boy let his heart out at the same time he liberated the mice, I knew the world would be the gainer in the end.

THE SOUL OF SORROW

Sorrow is not always gruesome and heart-breaking. It has a lifetime influence, providing the fiber of the soul is strong enough to withstand the strain. Not long ago there was a musical contest in a Pennsylvania city, and one of the young ladies to take part in it had given up the thought of going into the contest, because her mother lay at the point of death the day previous to the departure of the companies who were going to the distant city to show what their town could do in a musical way.

But during the night the mother’s condition changed for the better, and she urged her daughter to go; for on her the town depended to bring back some of the prizes to be given to the sweetest singers of the state.

And so she went, her heart very much lighter since the happy change in her mother’s condition. Anyhow, going out into the world to compete for a prize, with some hope of winning, has a buoyant effect on the heart. Oh, if all the world could but feel a slight hope of winning a prize when starting out in the world, how much happier the world would be! But to most of the average people the world’s prizes are hanging up so distressingly high that only the well prepared have any chance of winning them.

The parents who carelessly or helplessly send their children out into the world uneducated, to compete with college graduates, are sending them into a hard proposition. And the state government that will sleep while one portion of the people are being educated to take care of themselves, and a larger number are growing up in helpless ignorance and sent out into the world to compete with the few educated ones—the state or public that can sleep while such an injustice is being perpetrated on the weakest and most helpless of its subjects, needs to have its conscience touched with the awakening finger of justice. The boasting cry that in this country everybody’s child has an equal opportunity to gain a livelihood, is as false as hell. There are colleges in our so-called free land where the son of a ditch digger or a washerwoman could no more enter than a miserly rich man can enter the kingdom of heaven.

But I have drifted. I can’t help but drift. Every time I try to paint a picture, the injustice of the unjust crowd in and fill the distant perspective, and get painted into the sunset and change the gold into blackened lead.

Just one hour before the young lady was to go on the stage to sing her solo, a dispatch brought the sad and shocking news that her mother was dead. Nobody who knew of the sad news thought for a moment that the bereaved and heartbroken girl would attempt to sing. They were all disappointed, of course, but who could ask her to go on the stage with a sorrow as deep as hers? But she did not break down. Oh, she had been so confident of winning the prize, and her town’s people would be so greatly disappointed if she failed!

She told the manager she would try, providing he would tell the audience of her great sorrow. She wanted the sympathy of the people—it would give her strength, while it would give them patience and tolerance.

After the manager had gone before the footlights and told the sad story the people waited in silence for the young singer to appear. There was no applause. The people felt the presence of death, or sorrow and heart aches. The accompanist struck the first note and the brave girl commenced to sing. The song was suitable for a sad heart to sing. She could sing her sorrow from the depths of her soul.

The crowded house sat spellbound. That song from her soul of sorrow thrilled every heart as it had never been thrilled before. The notes, clear and sweet, came laden with the tears her brave soul was holding back. The people sat in deep silence, but with beating and throbbing hearts and active minds. They pictured the dead mother in that distant town, sleeping silence—ah, never again, never to awaken to greet her daughter on her return.

And the singer pictured that angeled mother listening from that far off shore, and she sang to her while the audience listened. For as much as a minute the people sat in silence after the singer had left the stage, and then the cheers and tears told of the prize she had won.

VISITING THE OLD HOME

My last visit to the home of my childhood filled me with gloomy thoughts. Nothing remained of the old home but the ruins of the cellar walls. The house had been torn down and removed from the spot. I had expected to wander through the deserted rooms and try to recall the old hopes and memories that filled my soul when I lived in the old log cottage. These memories came back but slowly, because the old landmarks had been removed and there was nothing to suggest the old incidents that filled my life when a boy.

The location of the house was in a deep, narrow valley, with hills on three sides and a dense woods in front, with no other human habitation in sight. It was in this secluded spot I dreamed the dreams of dissatisfied youth. And yet these dreams are very dear to me now, as I dig them out of memory, clothed in their old rags and hunger and famished ambition. The memories of the pain I suffered in this dreamy spot came back to me like old friends who suffered with me in those days.

It was here that I held my dear old father’s hand while he passed over the bar and drifted out on the Sea of Death. How plainly the scene comes back to me as I stand on the crumbling walls and recall every feature of the room in which he passed away. He asked for me in the last hour and requested me to stay with him. Perhaps he understood me better than the older boys, or he may have believed that I understood him best of all the family.

It was not his desire to go. He had hoped for ten more years of life, but now he realized that the end was near at hand. He spoke not a word of being prepared to go nor did he ask me to meet him in heaven. He belonged to the class of thinkers who do not know, and, realizing that he knew nothing of the future, did not speculate on possibilities. The last words he said were: “You may look upon men when dying, but ah, my son, you will never know what death is until you come to die yourself!”

These words have haunted me all through life, and I often think of the dreaded experience he prophesied for me. At that hour I could have gone away with him contentedly, and I really wished then, while I held his hand, that we two could go out together, and I never, never return.

But I could not keep my mind on death even then; for I noted the droning of a bumble bee that beats its head against the window and tried to escape from the room. And while looking at the bee I noted the voice of a catbird out in the orchard, singing his sweetest notes. I tried to locate him, and did finally detect him sitting on the branch of an apple tree father had planted for me when I was yet a child. Then a bluebird lit on a tall weed just outside the window: the weed bent and the winds caused the bird to dance and sway up and down, and from right to left.

And there was sobbing and crying in the outer room. My old mother was heartbroken at the parting and my older brother was trying to console her. When the catbird flew away, followed by the blue one—the bumble bee found the raised window and flew away. Then I turned to the bed—father had likewise gone away. Only the cold clay remained.

Standing on the ruins of the old home I recalled it all once more as vividly as though it happened but yesterday.

How strangely we live, how strangely we die, how strangely we live on after loved ones have gone from us. How strangely we recall the old scenes when they are suggested to us by a chain of memories passing through our mind. Ah, many of my old hopes and ambitions lie now in ruins more complete than the old walls of my childhood’s home. Many of the people I met in this old home were closely connected with those old hopes that have crumbled into gloomy dreams. Still I live on and hope on—new hopes and a new life.

THE WAYWARD BOY

Today I want to talk to the boys who neglect their mother. They are not all bad boys, but all are careless and thoughtless boys. At an early age these wayward boys go away from home and leave a fond mother to worry and fret and grieve over their absence. Some times they neglect to write home for years and years, leaving the dear old mother to nurse her lonely and hungry heart and hug the old, old memories when her boy was but a child. If any wayward and wandering young man should chance to read these lines—any wayward boy who knows of a mother waiting at home—won’t he sit down this very day and write her a few lines?

I have for a neighbor a loving mother who is wasting her life in grieving for her wayward son. He went away two years ago, and has never written her a single line. He is a wanderer on the earth, working a few weeks at one place, then jumps a freight train and rides to new scenes. About a year ago the mother dreamed an awful dream about her boy. In that vision she was in a strange land sitting under a large tree on a sloping hill, around whose base a railroad curved and stretched out for miles on either side. She looked away to the east, and saw the smoke of an approaching train. It was coming like the wind.

Then she heard the whistles of a locomotive in the west, and looking in that direction she beheld another train sweeping down the track to meet the one coming from the east.

There was only a single track. One of the trains must pull into a switch, or there would be a collision. The trainmen could not see around the curve, and were not aware of the other train’s existence. She rushed to the brow of the hill where she could look down upon the track and took off her skirt and waved it aloft to signal the on-coming trains. Neither engineer saw her, and the trains came rushing onward to their inevitable doom. As the train from the east passed where she stood she saw a man sitting on the bumpers between two red cars. He looked up and waved his hand to her. She recognized the face—it was her son Edward!

Then came the shrill whistles of the two locomotives. The engineers had discovered their danger when too late to save the trains. She stood fascinated and watched the two iron monsters come together with an awful crash. They stood up on end like two angry animals in deadly combat, and the sound of crashing, tumbling cars drowned the noise of the escaping steam. The two locomotives tumbled over, tearing and wrenching iron bars from each other as they fell and then lay with heads together like two giants of the woods who had fought to the death and lay with tooth and claws imbedded in each other’s body. A few freight cars that were standing on end fell over with a crashing sound, a cloud of dust arose from the awful wreck, a hissing sound of escaping steam continued for a few minutes, and then all was still. The hand of death seemed to grasp trains and crews, and silence settled down with an awful significance. She felt herself fainting, just as the moans and cries of human beings in distress reached her ears.

When she came to and looked down upon the wreck it was night, but lanterns flitted here and there on both sides of the dead engines, and a voice asked: “Have we found all the men belonging to the ill-fated crews?” and a voice just below where she stood replied: “Yes, all of the two crews, and the body of a hobo besides—they are all dead but two brakemen, and they are still unconscious.”

She looked down the embankment and saw the dead stretched out upon the ground and at the east end of the line she recognized her son Edward—dead and covered with his own blood.

She screamed aloud and her daughter came into the room to see what was the cause of her alarm. That was a year ago. Her boy has never written since, and she firmly believes her Edward was killed just as she saw in her dream. If he is still alive somewhere in the world, think of the joy he could send her in just a short letter—just enough to show her that he is still alive. Boys, write to your mother. She may be dreaming of you.

A WASTED LIFE

Across the river from where I now live stands the old, old house where the man of the wasted life was born. I did not know him as a boy, but the old people of the neighborhood spoke of him as the handsomest boy on the McElhattan side, and the place was noted for handsome people. He was a full grown man when I first saw him, while I was yet a boy. How handsome he was, standing six feet tall, with eyes and hair coal black and a face that showed the brain force seething behind the beautiful mask.

His discontent was transparent to every reader of the human face. Even the droop of his dark mustache reminded one of the weeping willow branches hanging disconsolate over the tomb where sleeps the beloved dead.

When I first met him I was only just awakening to the hopeless condition of my future life. Weak of body and with an untrained intellect, his broad education and power of deep meditation made him to tower above me like a mountain towering above a mouse; but he stooped to meet me half way, showing me the interior of his disappointed soul and receiving my sincere sympathy in exchange. At the hotel, where we many nights slept together in the same bed, the people complained of us talking all night long, to the annoyance of the other lodgers. And it was true. Many the night we lay in the dark and discussed everything on top of the earth, even going out of our sphere to discuss the orthodox dream of heaven.

One night he spoke of the words that should some time decorate his tomb, and I still regret that I never mentioned his request to his relatives and family, and that now his marker does not display these solemn words: