Chapter III: Part 3

“I am what was, what is, and what is to be; and no living man shall ever roll away the stone that closes the door to the mystery into which I go. What is, is right or else the whole universe is wrong. I am not lost or wasted, for the economy of Nature hoards all the wealth of the world in a grasp that crushes life to get back her own.”

What made this sublime thinker a bit of flotsam on the sea of Time? He told me once when in a confidential mood that the loss of the one woman he loved darkened his life and drove him to drink. The woman married another, and was still living when he told me his story, but he did not tell me who she was, nor whose fault it was that she became lost to him.

How I pitied the big man, whose heart was as tender as that of a refined woman. What a power he could have been in the intellectual world if mated to the one woman he loved. When he lost her his grasp on ambition and enthusiasm weakened and he folded the desires of his soul into a shapeless mass and sat down upon them to brood over his loss.

Poor M——! Chained to his early disappointment, and intellectually so far removed from his plodding neighbors that none thought it necessary to offer him their sympathy. How little the average man knows the average human heart. Education only strengthens the soul’s hunger for sympathy, love and fellowship, and because I sympathized with the man of the wasted life, and he sympathized with me in my almost hopeless struggles, a warm friendship grew up between us, and he allowed me to see farther into the shadows that shrouded his disappointed soul than any of his family ever penetrated.

He was one of those retentive minds that could not forget, and he tried to dull the pain at his heart with drink. Sometimes he would make a strong effort to reform and rebuild his wasted resolutions, and for several months he would toil on the farm like a hired man. But his mind was too active for such a vegetable existence, and his books would take him out of the fields of physical labor. Then the old discontent, the memory of the old love would fill his soul and again he would drown everything in liquor, like a second Edgar Allen Poe. In one of these sprees he died, and his wasted life ended in a death that shocked his many friends.

GARRET MEMORIES

My boy expressed a fear to go up on to the attic one day recently, and when I asked him what he found to fear up in a dusty old garret, he said there was so much old stuff up there that belonged to people who were dead, and if these old things had memories they must surely be thinking of the old days and the old friends, and had no welcome for the boys of the present generation.

Well, wife and I know the old garret has many memories, or at least articles that suggest old memories, and we seldom make a trip to the old store house of family heirlooms without coming away with a queer feeling of loneliness tugging at our hearts. No doubt the boy has often detected the subdued and solemn expression on our sobered faces; and learned his lesson of awe and veneration from reading the lines and shadows he has so often seen there.

The last time we were up on the garret, the three of us, we set about digging up old memories, because a lady’s side saddle hanging to a rafter started us to digging up some old family lore. The saddle belonged to wife’s great-grandmother, and is almost a century old. It was on this saddle her great-grandmother made the ride of nine miles through the dark to warn her father that burglars were trying to break into their house.

It seems her father sold some cattle and hogs a few days previously and had the money locked up in the bureau of his room. It was for this reason that the daughter and the hired girl were told to take the twins, and the four of them sleep in this particular room every night, while the parents attended camp meeting. Some great revivalist on the style of Peter Cartright was stirring up the people and everybody for miles around flocked to the camp meeting and pitched their tents and were prepared to spend several days on the camp ground.

There were several bad characters in the neighborhood and they knew the old squire had money in the house because he hadn’t been to town since selling the cattle and would hardly carry it with him to camp meeting. On the second night after the squire and his wife had left home three men broke through a kitchen window and began a search of the first floor rooms, knowing the hired man and the boys slept up stairs.

When they discovered that some one inside the squire’s room was holding the bolt in place they threatened to kill everybody inside the room if they didn’t let them in. The twins (girls of six) screamed aloud on hearing this threat, and their older sister called to the hired man up stairs to come to their assistance. But no answer came from the upper precincts. The hired man and the boys were too much scared to even make any reply.

Then it was that the sister unbolted the window and crawled through and dropped to the ground, ran quietly to the stable and saddled her horse, with this very saddle, and rushed off to the distant camp ground through a darkness that would frighten women of less nerve. Almost breathless she reached the camp meeting just when the shouting hilarity was the highest, and was told that her father was at the altar seeking salvation.

Without stopping to ask permission of anybody she walked swiftly up the aisle to where her father was kneeling, recognizing him by the green coat he wore, stooped and whispered in his ear: “Come home, father, at once; there are burglars trying to break into the house!”

“Hell!” he exclaimed loud enough to be heard by the mourner on either side of him, and said no more until he had saddled his own horse just back of the camp ground, and the two galloped back home in time to prevent the robbery. The burglars had taken their own good time to cut a hole through the door, through which they could reach a hand and pull back the wooden bolt; but the brave hired girl had stabbed the hand with a pair of scissors every time it was thrust through, and thus protected the house until the arrival of the squire and his fearless daughter.

The burglar on watch outside the house heard the approaching horses, and warning his two pals inside, they all escaped. Next day the burglar with the scissors wounds on his hands was arrested, and finally confessed and gave the names of his pals, and the trio served two years in prison.

No, the family history doesn’t enlighten us as to whether the old squire went back to camp meeting to resume his prayers for salvation, or not. Quite likely the saving of his cattle and hog money satisfied him for that particular season. Men weren’t as greedy in those days as they are now, and he may have left the great supply of saving grace for others to enjoy.

YOUR BABY STILL

A short time ago an old schoolmate friend wrote me that they had lost their darling—a baby boy of ten months, and the mother was grieving herself sick over her great loss. “Couldn’t you write something to console her—something to make a bright spot out in the future to look ahead to with hope?” he wrote. How easy to ask this, but how hard to comply. How impossible to wipe away the sorrow from a bleeding heart and persuade the heart to cease bleeding and the bereaved soul to cease its grieving.

After a little thought it struck me forcibly that the memories and recollections of a dead child must always picture the child as it was when death took it away. And I sat down and put myself in that mother’s place and wrote as though I were writing the words of hope that sometime would surely fill her loving soul. I print them now for the hundreds of other sorrowing mothers who see before them, day and night, the dear face of their darling who sleeps out in the church yard, the land where babies never grow old.

I could write out of that mother’s heart, because I, too, have a baby sleeping in the land of perpetual youth. Had she lived she would now be a grown woman—perhaps today weeping over a little grave where her own darling lay sleeping.

Weeping over his little bier,
Kissing the lips of her baby dear,
Touching the eyes in their endless sleep—
Dreaming, I see a mother weep.
Mother, he’ll be your baby still,
Let the changes bring whate’er they will;
When the coming years silver your hair,
You will dream of your baby fair;
Other sorrows your heart may fill—
He’ll be your darling baby still.
Tho’ he may lie in the churchyard cold,
In your dreams he’ll never grow old;
In your slumbers you’ll kiss his brow,
Sweet and pure as you see him now.
Ah, for ever your baby will
Be, in fond mem’ry, your baby still!

Other mothers are happy today
Kissing their darling’s tears away,
Looking far out in the world so wide,
Swelling their mother-heart with pride;
For they see their child to manhood grown—
Proud are they to call him their own;
Dreaming dreams of all he shall be—
The man they picture—the man they see;
Proud and defiant, leader of men,
Making history with tongue and pen.
Surely their baby must change to be
The full grown man of the picture they see.

Ah, better for her and her mother pride,
Better, ah, better that child had died
With innocent smile on his baby face,
Than live to manhood and disgrace.

“What news is this? Oh, tell me true!
What did the boy of my fond hopes do?
Murdered his sweetheart? Oh, loving God!
This comes from the wicked path he trod.
A drunken quarrel? She led him on!
And he’s a murderer! my son, my son!”

Mother, when bidding your child farewell,
With heartaches more than tongue can tell,
When laying him low in the cold, cold ground,
And tenderly heaping the little mound—
There’s a land of hope just over the hill,
Where your baby will be your baby still.
No news of him will ever pain
Your aching, loving heart again.
Silent he sleeps in the earth’s cool breast,
And when life’s sun has set, in the west,
And you lie down at his side, he will
Be your darling baby still.

Only a little while ahead—
A little nap for the silent dead—
A little trouble, and sorrow, and pain,
And you will be with your child again.
Safer with you is the child you find
Than the full-grown man you leave behind.
And tho’ the promised future is dim,
’Tis enough to know—you shall sleep with him,
And all through eternity your baby will
Be your darling baby still.

WISH I WERE A JEW

I wish I were a Jew. The more I study the situation, the more I wish to be a Jew. I have found fault with the Jews, from the Christian point of view, and I would like to turn around and fire a few broadsides into my delinquent Christian friends from the Hebrew standpoint. Not that I would condemn Jesusism, but to show the Christian world how far they are off the track of the meek and lowly Jesus, when he commanded his followers with a new commandment. Did Jesus mean anything when he said: “A new commandment I give unto you; that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”

If I were a Jew I would ask my fellow Christians whether they believe that Christ only loves them after the style and fashion of their love for one another? I would ask them if these great navies and mighty armies of armed men, trained to kill each other in new and improved style, are imitations of Christ’s great love for men? Are England and Germany and France and Russia and the United States and Spain and Italy and all the South American republics loving each other as Christ loved the world? If these are truly Christian nations, then the Jews must take it for granted that they are imitating the love of Jesus, as ordered in the “New Commandment.” If these so-called Christian nations are not obeying the “New Commandment,” then they are not Christian nations, and their pretense is sheer hypocrisy.

Loving your neighbor as you love yourself is poorly displayed in taxing him to build navies for the purpose of killing a lot of other people Christ loved and died for. Christ died to establish universal peace, but to judge him through the work of those who pretend to be his followers, he died for the purpose of ordaining priests and preachers to bless the armies and navies of civilization.

As a boy I was taught to look upon the Jews as the rejecters, betrayers and crucifiers of Christ, the man sent of God to establish peace and good will. I was taught to look upon Judas Iscariot as the meanest of all men—the man who pretended to love Jesus, but who betrayed him for thirty pieces of silver. If I were a Jew, I would point to the Christian churches, pretending to love the people as Christ loved them, but openly turning the blessings of Christ from their natural channels of peace, to blessing the armies and navies that go out to do violence. Judas only betrayed Christ once, and was sorry for it, while the Christians betray him every day in the year, and boast of it. They boast of their armies and navies and sing their praises, feeling more secure in the ability of their armed forces than they do in the love of their Christ.

Did the Jews do worse in rejecting Christ, then the Christians do in accepting him, and then disobey the newest commandment that came from his lips? They preach his gospel of peace and then organize for the purpose of destroying peace. If the Christian church turned against militarism, and abandoned the war departments in their efforts to enforce commercialism and the extension of trade, the war-loving people would not contribute their thirty pieces of silver.

If I were a Jew I would set up the character of Judas against the work of the Christians in the betrayal of business.

Judas was part of the original plan—to establish a living example of the perfidy attached to the work of treachery. Have the Christians profited by the example? Have they not deceitfully handed the gospel of Christ over to the enemies of peace? Have they loved one another similar to the love Christ died for? Are the slums of our large cities examples of Christ’s love for the lowly and the oppressed? Is the treatment of the Jews in Christian Russia an example of “Love your neighbor as yourself?” The more I think over the situation, the more I regret that I am not a Jew.

MEMORIES

The old people had been living in their village home long before I went there to become their neighbor. They had reared their family of five children in the old house, and they had all married and gone elsewhere to live. The old people were now past 65, and rather old for transplanting in a new home, but the death of a relative brought to their door a small fortune, and the children insisted that they must remove to the city and live in better style, as becomes people in affluent circumstances.

We called on them in the evening of their last day in the old home and found them sitting on the front porch, resting and dreaming after a day of packing up goods for the removal. The old lady had been silently weeping, and her heart was so full of going away that she broke down and tearfully assured us that going away was breaking ties that affect her heart for all time to come.

“Jim and me are too old to be torn up by the roots and transplanted to a town lot. We’ve lived here so long that we can’t ever make ourselves believe that a grander house and a stylish lot of neighbors is to become our home for all time.

“Why, every nook and corner of this old place is peopled with loving memories. The house seems to be a store-house filled with the echoes of our children’s happy voices and their merry laughter. I sometimes even imagine that I hear the prattling echo of little Ruth’s baby voice, the child who died when four years old.

“It may be foolish, Mr. Haiden, but no other house can ever produce the same pleasant illusions. I hear them all, when I listen, just as I heard their real voices in the long ago. But it won’t be so in the new home. They ain’t going to let me take any of the old furniture along—the chairs and the sideboard and the bureau that are all scratched with the hands of the children. And the old pictures of George Washington crossing the Delaware, and the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, and the Soldier’s Dream, and the Soldier’s Farewell—they say they’re out of date, and must be packed away on the garret.

“If these old things are out of date, what’s to be said of Jim and me? We love those old pictures and scratched pieces of furniture better than anything that’s new and has no history connected with it. We don’t want to be separated from the past so ruthlessly and violently. It’s bad enough to be torn away from our old friends and acquaintances, and taken so far away and stored away in such a grand house that none of the old neighbors will ever come to see us, and will finally grow indifferent toward us, and blame us for being stuck up and proud, and declare we were glad and willing to move away and sever the ties of love and friendship between us and our rustic neighbors.

“And if our money leaves us as suddenly as it came, and we are obliged to come back here, it will be like a spirit forced to come back to its dead and deserted body. For all these old memories and childish echoes must surely die after we are no longer here to hear them, and the house will become as dead to us as the memories that died of loneliness after we went away.

“For memories live on our love, Jim,
On the heartstrings tied to them;
They’ll die when we once remove, Jim,
And break them off love’s stem;
For they lie on my breast,
Like children at rest,
And nurse at love’s fountain brim.

And all have a beautiful head, Jim,
With faces upturned for a kiss;
I feel in my heart they’re not dead, Jim,
But living in innocent bliss;
But when we depart;
They’ll die in my heart—
And, oh, their presence I’ll miss!

They are echoes of voices so dear, Jim,
They are whispering now in my heart.
Come closer, and put your ear, Jim,
Just over the place—don’t start!
Ah, you hear the song,
That is all the day long
Singing the mournful part.”

SWEETENED WITH SORROW

People who suffer in the slow fire of sorrow are purified from many of the weaknesses and faults of humanity. Perfection comes only after we have paid the price. Men are always better and kinder to their second wife than they were to their first, for in the loss of the first wife sorrow opened the door to a wider vision and a broader view. Sorrow is part of our education. The giddy young have not yet been purified in sorrow’s flames, and they are blind to many things that must be learned before they win the hearts of the people.

The kindest man I ever knew was the saddest looking when his face was in repose. He had a good word for everybody. He seemed to know why men and women go wrong and could find an excuse for all their short-comings and evil doings. He came into our village life as though by accident, setting up housekeeping with his white-haired mother and two hired servants on the little farm just west of the town. They farmed only a little bit, keeping but one horse and two cows. The postmistress said he sent some large packages of first-class mail matter to a certain publishing house in the city, and we guessed that the man was an author or journalist.

I met him afterwards when we sat together at the old stone bridge fishing in the deep pool at the mouth of the little creek. It was a good place to catch the fish when gathering there previous to their migrating up the creek for the season. Bit by bit, I learned his story, for he was hungry for sympathy. A woman had broken his heart. She had married him for his money. He had been a business man in the big city—a banker, but occasionally writing for a newspaper in which he held some stock.

A family moved into the neighborhood where the bank was located, and he met the daughter at the house of a friend. A mutual admiration began from the first. She was of a literary turn, and was in sympathy with his ambition and hopes, and showed in many ways that she admired him. She was pretty and intelligent, and he was recovering from a love disappointment and was hungry for love and sympathy. He proposed, was accepted, and in a few months after the first meeting they were married. He was only twenty-five then, frivolous and happy and without a care.

Six weeks after the wedding he discovered by sheer accident that the woman had a living husband from whom she was not divorced, and whom she met clandestinely and gave him money with which to gamble. She wasn’t his wife at all, but an unscrupulous adventuress who associated with criminals.

He sold out his interest in the bank and came out into the country with his widowed mother to live a quiet life and try to forget.

That same summer a strange woman came to the village to spend a few months in this quiet retreat, and one night I sat with my melancholy friend in church when the strange lady sang a solo. She had the sweetest voice I ever heard—mournfully sweet, with a peculiar cadence that filled one’s eyes with moisture and sent thrills of unknown feelings tingling through every nerve. And oh, how beautiful was her face when she sang. I turned to my companion at the conclusion of the song and remarked: “God only bestows a voice like that upon a very few women.”

“Yes,” he replied sadly, “upon the few women who involuntarily pay the great price.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“No woman can sing so sweetly who has not suffered. Somebody has broken that frail woman’s heart. She has suffered in the slow fire of deep sorrow. A man is driven into great philanthropy; music, or literary work that touches the heart, through deep sorrow, but the woman who has a voice for singing pours all her sorrow out through the channel of sweetened song.”

I glanced at him and knew he had learned the story that can only come to a man whose heart has been broken; and I knew that he had guessed whence came the sweet cadence in the singer’s voice. Somehow it struck me forcibly that these two people who had been made sweet and lovable in the fire of sorrow would make life companions, if they could be brought together. I told my wife all I had on my mind and she fell in with my views at once. She is a chronic matchmaker.

She courted the woman’s society and learned her story. Her husband had been a defaulter, embezzler, bigamist and scoundrel. He had since been killed by a woman. She was making her living singing on the stage. I told her, when better acquainted, of how my friend had guessed of her sorrow, and she became greatly interested in my sad friend’s history. We finally brought the two strangers together. She sang for us and he read his latest poem. The sweetness of sorrow touched us all. She sang again and we all cried together. The charm of sorrow was over us all—over the entire house.

That was two years ago. They are now happily married. The sweetness of sorrow is in their love for each other, and life is filled with love’s sweet song.

IN HER DREAMS

In the lonesomest road I travelled while homeward bound from Reading, I stopped at a little faded cottage to inquire the way and the distance to the nearest town. An old white haired woman came to the door and gave as much information as she possessed, but she confessed she hadn’t been to town for more than sixteen years.

“And do you live all alone in this dreary place the year ’round?” I inquired. “No, not always alone,” she replied, with a peculiar smile. “Once a month the groceryman sends the boy out with my store goods and flour, and a neighbor living just over the hill comes over every week to see if I have any wood chopped, and to fix the pasture field fence so that my cow can’t get away. Besides this one or two neighbor women call sometimes and do their sewing while telling me the news from the outside world.”

“But at night you are alone, and that is the dreariest time of all,” I suggested.

“No, I’m not alone even during the night, stranger. I have very realistic dreams while I sleep. During the year I am visited by all of my old friends and schoolmates. Not all at one time, to be sure, but every night one or the other of them will call on me, and we’ll all be young again and play the dear old games we loved so well when we were boys and girls. And the boy who was killed in the mines away back in ’78 comes back once a week and in my dreams I mend his clothes and wash his shirts, the same as I used to do in the long ago.”

“Sort of a sad dream,” I remarked.

“No, not at all! Why should it make one sad to dream of those we loved, and who loved us long ago? Last night my husband came back to see me, and he was killed in the mines away back in ’67. He was just like he appeared to me the morning he went to the mine and to his death.”

“Were you glad to see him?” I asked, for she stopped short and was looking out toward the wooded hills with a glad smile on her face.

“Glad to see him? Why, I was just as glad as I was when he used to come courting me down in Lebanon a half century ago! He always puts his arms around me and gives me a gentle embrace, and kisses me on the lips, just as he did when he was my lover and I was his girl sweetheart. And then he sits at the chimney and lights his pipe and smokes in silence, and I mend his clothes. By and by I fill his dinner pail, and before he starts away he asks me to the door, where he embraces me once more, and I hold up my lips for his farewell kiss; and then I stand there in the early morning light and watch him pass down the road and around the bend and disappear behind the bunch of laurels, just as I used to watch him long ago.”

“And your dreams make you feel happy during the next day, I suppose,” I remarked, for she was again looking dreamily towards the hills.

“Not always,” she sadly replied. “For when my dead baby comes back in the night and begins to feel with his dead hands all over my bosom, and with his dead mouth tries to find my breast, I then recall that many and many the time that same baby groped for my breast when he was starving for the want of proper food; for in those days John was drinking hard; and did not provide for his family, and my half-starved body furnished but poor watery food for my baby boy; and all night long his baby hands reached for the fountain that had run dry. The doctor said he was so nearly starved that he could not stand the pneumonia and recover, so he died.”

“Could you forgive your husband after baby died?” I asked.

“Yes, after a manner. You see he straightened up for a time after baby died, and wasn’t drinking so very hard when he was killed. And he is always young and sober and industrious in my dreams, the same as he was when we were married, but baby is always hungry and groping with his dead mouth for my shriveled breast.”

THE MORTGAGED MOTHER

The home was located in an isolated and lonely spot, with hills on two sides of it and a ragged woodland in the rear, and the front side leading into a deep ravine that grew wider as it neared the valley far below. The road came up the steep ravine, passed the house and wound over the hill in the rear. It was so steep that few people traveled the road unless going to call on the owner of the home, Jack Wier.

Jack was sitting on the porch as we drove up to the house, and looked the picture of despair. Children came running out of the house to see who was coming, and the open doorway was filled with frowsy heads, besides the bolder ones who hung over the rail of the porch and gazed at us like so many startled rabbits. We counted nine, and Jack said the youngest was sleeping in the cradle.

“Ten children, after a marriage of twelve years!” he said, with a melancholy tinge in his voice.

“Surely there is no race suicide here!” I exclaimed.

“No, there is no race suicide, but there has been a mother sacrificed,” he said, and there was a sob in his throat. “Two days after the birth of our last baby girl the poor worn-out mother died. Nature could not sustain her frail body after so many years of torture. Common sense should have taught me that my wife was making a sacrifice of herself, but I was blind. Suddenly I was awakened. I was left with a family of ten children, and the eldest only eleven years old. Of course, I am fond of the children, but the price paid was too much—twelve years of painful sacrifice, and then an eternal rest in the bosom of mother earth.

“And what am I to do with my children? We have been getting along, after a manner, but the children are now showing the effects of neglect. It may require another sacrifice before the children are all pulled through. Bessie, my eldest girl, has never had any childhood. She has been forced into womanhood before she fairly tasted the joys of happy girlhood, and she is growing into that peculiar condition where the overburdened body takes on the appearance of age, and the dream-light no longer shines in the hopeless eyes.”

“You take things too seriously,” I said, by way of cheering him up.

“That may be,” he replied, “but God knows how seriously things are taking me! I love my children and would educate them all, if possible, but it looks now as though I will never be able to educate any of them. This poor hillside farm is all I have in the world, and debts accumulate much faster than crops grow. When a man gets so far in debt that release seems hopeless, the future looks uninviting to that man.

“And it’s all owing to my blind ignorance! So long as my wife lived I was proud to be called the father of ten children. It put me in a class with those patriarchs of old, who gloried in their many offspring. I forgot that these same old patriarchs gloried in their many wives, as well.”

Then pointing down the valley he asked: “Do you see that white house over yonder? That man has two children. They are now attending high school over in the city. He is able to give them both a good education, and no doubt the two will accomplish more good in the world than my ten, who must grow up in ignorance and be fit to only perform menial and poorly paid labor.

“And that’s not all, nor the worst: Growing up without a mother’s care and loving hand to guide them, I often tremble for their safety. The pitfalls and traps set to catch the unsophisticated girls are numerous and temptations lurk in every dark corner. Race suicide may be a sin, but mother sacrifice is a barbarous outrage. Outraged nature is taking revenge out of me. I painted this picture myself, with living pictures, but the face of a martyred mother is in the background.”

THE TOY MAKER

Just across the river lives the old toy maker, an old bachelor who has been living the life of a hermit for many years. He is now almost seventy years old, but works at his bench as vigorously as he did when I first knew him. He will not discuss his past life, but avoids it as though old memories give him pain. But his relatives say he was once disappointed in love—jilted on what was to be his wedding day. Some pretend to know of a wedding suit still preserved and packed away in a trunk, but never to be worn by a bridegroom while the old toy maker lives and has the clothes in his possession.

He avoids women, and doesn’t want to be bothered with children, yet he devotes his life to making wagons and sleds for boys. Somewhere down in his unsatisfied heart there is a love for the children still, though it was denied him to have children to bear his name.

There is something tender and affectionate about the picture of a toy maker, and how could this be so, unless the toy maker himself is tender and affectionate? It is safe to say that this particular toy maker can weave more heartaches into the toy he is making for some happy, careless boy, than he could pound into a large farm wagon for men. There is a peculiar sentiment in working for the children, which people feel, even though their education is so barren that they do not know what the word “sentiment” means. The old toy maker may think he hates boys, but his work contradicts him. He does not manufacture his wagons for profit, for the price is so low that he scarcely earns fifty cents a day at the work.

The truth is, the old toy maker loves children in spite of his studied seclusion. He avoids them because they are so closely in touch with women, and to a woman he owes his cheerless life. How foolish to turn against the whole world because one woman proved false. There are true women all around us, and a man should be strong enough to pull the false woman out of his heart and forget her in the society of the good and true. The strong man is made wiser and better through disappointment and the deception of a false woman, and it teaches him how to value a true woman when he finds her waiting to be loved.

The man who gives up at one defeat is to be pitied. His acknowledgment of defeat shows that he is a man of tender nature, preferring to go out of the crowd and live alone, to renewing the contest and do battle with the false and cruel. Every time I see the old toy maker bending over his work, which he does so carefully and perfect, I realize that a loving, trusting heart throbs under his soiled coat. Somehow I can’t help but love the toy makers, because they unconsciously love children. They can’t help it. They may scold and frown and threaten punishment for any trifling offense, but deep down in their soul they do, and can not help but love children.

During the last fifteen years of President Cleveland’s life I was not his friend. I believed that he had gone back on the common people and given his support to plutocracy. I said many bitter things about him, and called him a Judas and a betrayer of his friends. But soon after his death I saw a picture of the ex-President sitting at a table mending toys for his little son.

When I looked upon that picture I could not believe the man was false to his friends. I had only misunderstood him and his motives while serving his country. A false leader of men, or a tyrant, would not stoop to become a toy mender.

He would have no time for sentiment and tender paternal feelings.

Here was a man upon whom the eyes of the world had rested, whose name was familiar to millions, sitting at a table mending broken toys. I was won back to him before I had looked upon the picture two minutes. I could overlook all his faults, because his faults were human, just the same as his love for children was human. The simplicity of the picture showed the man and the father and the companion, mutely telling the story of his great love for the boy whom he never hoped to see when grown to manhood. He fully realized that when the boy became a full-grown man he would not be there to see him and help him and guide him with his great love.

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW

There never was a woman who made a more loving mother, nor a mother more proud of her son than Mrs. Taylor. Tom was a boy that any mother might be proud of, so obedient and affectionate. But Tom was going to get married and bring his wife to the old home, and the widow Taylor assured me that she was going to be such a model mother-in-law that there would be never a cloud of discontent hover over the Taylor home. Tom’s girl was such a sweet little soul that anybody could get along with her; and even if she was not, Tom would not let his mother be abused or slighted or made discontented in her own home.

I didn’t return to the Taylor home for ten years, but I noticed at once a change in the Widow Taylor. There was a look of sadness in her white face and she seemed to have grown old very fast since I saw her last. I knew she couldn’t be more than sixty, but she looked to be easily seventy-five years old. When I found myself alone on the wide porch with the sad faced woman I made bold to inquire: “Well, Mrs. Taylor, did you succeed in playing the part of a model mother-in-law?”

She smiled at me with a look of pain in her face, and slowly said: “I don’t believe there could be such a thing. Perhaps a mother could be a model mother-in-law to a son-in-law, but she couldn’t be one to her son’s wife, and live in the old home. When Tom brought Bessie to this house it was my home. My word was law. You well know that I couldn’t be a tyrant if I tried, yet it was a satisfaction to arrange the house to suit my taste and run things after the style I had practiced for years.”

Then, in answer to my startled look, she continued: “No, Bessie and I have never quarreled. I wouldn’t allow myself to do so. She is Tom’s wife, and he loves her to devotion. If I quarreled with Bessie Tom would have to take one side or the other. I wouldn’t want him to decide against his wife, and if he turned against me it would break my heart. So I try to bear my lot without complaining, but I can hardly help the feeling that I am a stranger in my own home. I have no longer any authority about the house. The pictures are no longer arranged as they were ten years ago. The portraits of the family no longer grace the walls of the downstairs rooms. Bessie says it is not fashionable, so the pictures of Tom’s father and my own, are banished to the narrow confines of my own bed room.

“And my bedroom has been changed, too. I no longer sleep over the parlor, facing the public road. Bessie thought it would make such a pleasant spare room for visitors, so I was removed to the east room over the kitchen. When Bessie’s mother visits her she occupies my old room, while I must go off to my den over the kitchen. I may be selfish, though I pray God to keep me from thoughts that are narrow; but it does hurt an old woman to be thus set aside in her own home.

“And no longer any callers or visitors come to see me. I’m a back number. Even you came to see Tom, and not me. I am a deposed ruler. My kingdom has been handed over to another and my own son is a subject of the new ruler. I never complain to Tom, because he does not understand. He thinks that I ought to be satisfied with things as they are, and maybe I should, for I have nothing to do. Well, nothing to do is the hardest life a person can live. I can go and come at will, but that is not enough to satisfy a woman. I long for the old home in which I was once an entity, a moving force, a working energy.

“Where nothing is expected of the mother-in-law, she can expect nothing in return. I am reduced to an eating, drinking, sleeping non-entity. I once overheard Bessie tell a caller that I was getting queer. Maybe I am, for I certainly feel queer under present conditions. Neither responsibility nor authority rests on me. I am on the scrap pile, an unwilling supernumerary.

“But oh, Mr. Haiden, I am so much more fortunate than some mothers-in-law I know of! I know a poor old mother who is obliged to live with her son’s wife in the home that belongs to the daughter-in-law. And the poor old mother is told of this every day. The daughter-in-law is an unnatural, ungrateful tyrant, and she plays tyrant all the year ’round. And the son is obliged to take sides with his wife, for the sake of peace. When I talk to that poor old mother I feel that I ought to be thankful, and that my daughter-in-law is a saint; but she ought to consult me now and then on household matters. She ought to give me some of the responsibilities and cares. She should at least make me vice-president of the home, since she usurped the presidency. Two women can not live happily in the same house unless they share the cares and responsibilities, and the honors. Every young woman going into her mother-in-law’s home should be taught this fact. It would save many a tear and heartache on the part of the poor old mothers.”

BOB WHITE

Passing by a country graveyard one day last summer I noticed an old man throwing stones at a bird. When I asked him why he did so he stammered: “I—I thought it was a Bob White, but it was only a thrush. There is a Bob White comes here every day through the summer time and calls the one name I so bitterly despise, and I chase him away. I don’t want the dead to hear him call that name.”

I passed on, but at the first house west of the old country graveyard, where I stopped to get a drink, a woman told me the old man’s story. He was engaged to a beautiful young girl, but an Englishman came into the neighborhood, pretending to be very wealthy, and turned the girl’s head. She was attracted by his supposed wealth, and eloped with him to New York. Less than a year afterward her dead body was sent home for burial in the old home graveyard, her husband having deserted her a few months after their unholy marriage.

The Englishman’s name was Robert White. The old man I saw stoning the birds, had never married after losing his promised bride, and the neighbors say he acted very queerly from the day the girl ran away with the Englishman, and has been watching her grave ever since her body was brought home for burial. He imagines the quail is mocking him, or taunting the dead woman with the repetition of the man’s name who wronged both in the long ago.

Hark, I hear the Bob White call!
I wonder where he can be?
Ah, sitting on the old stone wall
Under the maple tree—
The maple tree in the graveyard old,
Where my sweetheart is sleeping,
Clasped in the arms of the earth so cold,
While the rain drop tears are seeping.

Bob White, Bob White!
The man who bought a bride;
Bob White, Bob White!
With a broken heart she died;
I sing this song
The whole day long—
Bob White, Bob White!

She married a man for his gold and land,
After plighting her troth, you see;
He turned her head, and she gave her hand,
But her soul was in love with me.
He proved a brute from the very start,
And in one short year, she died;
He beat her body and broke her heart—
She was only a purchased bride.

Bob White, Bob White!
The man who received her life;
Bob White, Bob White!
The man who bought a wife;
That spiteful call,
From the old stone wall—
Bob White, Bob White!

And the name of the man was Robert White,
A Britain, from over the sea—
A man with a heart as black as night,
And he stole my sweetheart from me.
The bird comes back to the grave each year,
And sits on the old stone wall,
And seems to say to the dead, My dear,
Do you love the man I call?

Bob White, Bob White!
The man who broke your heart!
Bob White, Bob White!
Does it make your mem’ry start?
Oh, I love to shout
This vile name out—
Bob White, Bob White!

I must go and chase the bird away,
So the woman I love may sleep—
The woman still dear to me today,
Tho’ the world must not see me weep.
I hate the name of the man he calls,
And the dead, tho’ buried from sight,
Must curse each note that spitefully falls,
And the name of the man—Bob White.

Bob White, Bob White!
My curse be on your head!
Bob White, Bob White!
Go, leave in peace the dead;
Her soul is mine,
Tho’ her body was thine,
Bob White, Bob White!

Go away, you bird of spiteful song,
My sweetheart is at rest;
But through your calling the whole day long
Sad memories might pain her heart.
And my own heart still bleeds anew
While you call, from mourn to night,
That name, so spitefully sung by you—
That hated name—Bob White!

Bob White, Bob White!
Be gone, you evil bird!
Bob White, Bob White!
My soul is within me stirred;
Call not in shame
That dastard’s name—
Bob White, Bob White!

WHIPPING A CHILD

In spite of the fact that Solomon advised whipping the child, I question the benefits of giving pain. I never struck my boy but once, and that was when he was a child in kilts. God forgive me, I was angry at the time. We were out in the fields gathering dandelions for greens, and the lad persisted in throwing clods into the vessel in which the dandelions were. I told him several times to desist, but he laughed in childish glee and did it again and again. He did not intend to be bad. It was a child’s estimation of fun—to have somebody scolding. I do not know what ailed me that morning, but I soon became so angry that I broke off an elder sprout and struck the child a cruel blow across his little back. One blow—that was all, and then my heart smote me. When I felt the little form writhing in pain, as I held him by one arm, it dawned on me that I was a brute.

I can shut my eyes still and see that little child sitting on a bank of coarse grass and weeping bitter tears. How I despised myself! I would have taken him in my arms and begged his forgiveness, but I felt sure the child would not think my remorse sincere, and might think me a hypocrite. No, I thought it best to let the child think me a brute, rather than believe me a hypocrite. He must have faith in my honesty, even though I was an honest brute.

I resolved right then and there that I never would strike my child again. My paternal heart told me that Solomon was wrong—that if he had but one boy he would try love, and not the lash. Solomon had so many children and so many wives, that he couldn’t love any of them truly and sincerely. I would not take advice from any man who made women slaves to his animal passion, and who encouraged the brutal act of inflicting pain on the tender flesh of a helpless child. The child that is beaten must surely grow hard of heart, as well as calloused of back, where the rod leaves welts and scars.

I asked my boy only the other day—he is fourteen now—whether he still remembered the cruel blow I struck him, and when he replied that he did, my head fell and my heart felt a peculiar pain. Oh, to recall that one brutal blow, or have it forgotten by the boy who was once that quivering, sobbing child!

I am certain that the boy is just as obedient as any other boy in the neighborhood, and would be just the same if never struck that one blow. I still tell him how sorry I am that I once lost my head and beat a child. I want him to feel and know that love is a better ruler than the rod. And after I am gone, and the boy recalls my face, I want him to think kindly of me and realize how that one blow has pained me all through life, and made one shadow of paternal shame.

Not long ago I heard a mother boasting of how she conquered her thirteen-year-old daughter. For some trivial disobedience she struck the child with a rod, which stung the child to anger, and roused her rebellious spirit. She refused to beg her mother’s pardon until deep red scars and seams lined her back, through which the red blood was seeping, and then pain forced her to break down and ask pardon. But was the girl sincere? Was she conquered, subdued? Was her spirit broken?

I hope not. A child with a broken spirit is a pitiable object. Her pride is forever injured. And the child that fears her mother can never love her in the true sense of filial affection. And if she was not sincere in begging her mother’s pardon, if it was only to escape the awful pain, then the first seeds of hypocrisy have been sown, and the child will never be truthful again.

I know a father who imagines that it is his paternal prerogative to punish his child whenever required, and he is to be the judge and jury to decide when the child needs punishment, and the extent of that punishment. He quotes Solomon to prove his position.