Chapter VI: Part 6

And the latest outrage Wrong has perpetrated against the world was the murder of Ferrer, the Spanish reformer. And they tell me it was done in the name of religion! The shameless idea of that half-idiot, Alfonso, King of Spain, ordering the death of a man towering intellectually so far above the pigmy dummy who ornaments the Spanish throne, insults the very fiber of my soul.

Ferrer was teaching the men the science of human rights, just as Socrates had done centuries ago. The crime is always the same, and the excuse for killing the reformer is always the same. The world is made to believe that the killing is done to protect religion, and to defend God. The plot is dark and deep—deeper than orthodox hell itself; for hell is said to be the everlasting abode of wrong, and wrong doers.

Will the mists ever clear away from men’s eyes, so that they can recognize Wrong on the throne and Right hanging by the neck on the scaffold erected by the willing tools of Wrong? Will they? I very much doubt it. The world’s history has been written by the sword of the tyrant, dipped in the blood of the many victims who died for the cause of human liberty, and the sleeping world has been made to believe that it was all done in the name of religion.

Does God care? Go to the graves of the millions slain by Wrong; go to the stake where the thousands were burned and left their ashes to cry to high heaven for human liberty; go to the prison dungeons where the thousands of martyrs wasted their lives and died in filth and misery—and ask there if God cares that this monster, Wrong, shall longer rule the destinies of men. I cannot see a single ray of hope. These insects we call men, are brutal as the beasts of the field. They glory in bloodshed.

THE VOICES WE UNDERSTAND

Even child life is full of tragedy. In their helplessness they stand in the way of advancing events, a mother or a father taken away while yet they need their helping hand, and often the mother is stricken down while the child has no other means of existence but the milk that flowed from the maternal breast of the dead woman. If this is by design, who can justify the designer while looking through the orphan’s tears? No, the designer of all these heartaches and sorrows does not ask to be justified by those who suffer most. The same God who created conditions that give pain to his creatures, also gave the suffering creature voice to protest and cry out against the treatment they receive. Tears and sobs are also a protest against the pangs of sorrow and pain.

Yes, tragedy is forced into each life at the hour of birth. Show me a child a year old, and I can write of its history in a way to bring tears to your eyes, and to my own. Its little tiny wail at the hour of birth is a protest against the pains of the world, and only when it sleeps does instinct cease to cry out for mercy and assistance. For this is a cruel world to be born into. Nature has provided a thousand sources of torture to direct the child mind into choosing the proper way through life. God does not temper the hot stove to the tender hand of a child, and when one falls into the fire Nature does not halt to pull it out and pour a soothing balm upon the blisters. No, Nature moves on as unrelentingly as the cogs of two great wheels in a mill crushing all that falls between the meshing cogs.

I know an orphan boy who was one of several children when his mother died, and was sent from the western home to the grandparents in the East. They were kind to him and did all they could to make him happy, but often in the silent hours of the night, they could hear him sobbing and crying as though his little heart were breaking. They were the sobs of a homesick child, for when they would ask him why he was crying so bitterly, he would say: “Oh, I fear I will never see my little brothers nor my papa again. They are so far away, and I am so small, and they will forget me.”

Something had gone out of his life when his mother died which no human love could replace. He lost something that would never, never be found and restored to the child; and in my blind way I can never reconcile the death of a loving mother with the work of a loving God. Does he love to hear the bitter cries and heart-broken sobs of a homesick child?

Who knows how much influence these bitter cries have over the designs of the great Creator? If God listens to prayer, is he deaf to the sobbing cries of a homesick orphan? Is not the pathetic music sweeter than all other strains of harmonious sound? Perhaps God loves the pathetic and the heart-cries of children far better than the coarser songs of the full-grown people.

We do not know, but there must be some reason for all these sad causes and effects. The child outgrows its many distresses, and the orphan soon lives down its sorrows, and happiness blooms in the ashes of child memories. A loving God would not send all these afflictions for sport. They all mean something in the universal design. Perhaps to soften older hearts and to water the tender plant of love with a child’s tears.

These sobs and tears may be necessary as the sunshine and showers of rain, else why do they exist? It may be as impossible to run this old sphere without human sorrow and heartaches as it is to run a living world without an atmosphere and clouds. Who knows that the clouds do not suffer afflictions when they pour out their raindrops, or the wind feel pain and heartache when it wails at our doors?

Do the trees feel sad when they droop their leaves, or the vines and shrubs feel melancholy when their flowers wither and die on their stems? They have a language of their own, no doubt, and one that we can not understand. Man can only listen and have his sympathies awakened by the voices he can understand. If he knew all the pain and the suffering the other things are obliged to endure, he might hesitate to cut a tree or to plow up the bosom of the earth and force it to produce vegetables and grain.

We are in the midst of a great mystery, and only the songs and laughter, the sermons and the tears of others are evidence that we are all human creatures.

CHASING THE COWS UP

I want to talk today to the boys on the farm, and the old gray-haired boys who were raised on the farm. I think the old boys will appreciate my talk the most because they have had the experience I shall talk about. The farm boy nowadays knows nothing of the old experience that used to come to us older farm boys who were obliged to go barefooted the greater part of the summer and autumn. Say, you old gray-headed farm hand, do you remember how you used to chase the cows up on a cold, frosty morning, and use the warm spot to warm your half-frozen feet? I do. Often when obliged to go to the fields for the cows on a frosty October morning I would chase the cows up and then stand in the warm spot to thaw out my red feet.

Well, that game has been reversed on me a hundred times since that day, and I have been chased up from my bed that others might warm their feet at my expense. Once in particular I owned, or thought I owned, a tract of mountain land. I was saving the timber for a future day. It was all the property I had in the world. The man who owned the tract adjoining mine sold it to my neighbor. This neighbor was an amateur surveyor, and spent much time running old lines through the woods. I thought it was for the practice he was getting out of the work, but I soon learned differently.

He had discovered an old line running through the centre of my tract of mountain land. It was two years older than the line between his new possessions and my land. He jumped the tract and said that all above the old line he found was his—that it belonged to the tract he had purchased. He began at once to cut down the timber I had been saving for a future day, and laughed at me when I protested and told him I had bought the land in good faith, and it belonged to me.

I employed a surveyor, who counted the growths of the trees since the blazes were made, and he agreed with my surveying neighbor that he was right—the line to which he claimed was two years older than the line to which I had purchased land. I was obliged to get up and let him warm his feet in the one spot on earth I had warmed.

It all came back to me how I used to chase the cows up to warm my bare feet. It wasn’t exactly bread coming back on the water, but it was the cold coming back to my feet. I was taken with cold feet and gave up the land.

Since then I learned that the old line that served so well to swindle me out of my mountain land was an old township line, and had nothing to do with dividing the tracts of privately owned land. Did my surveying neighbor know this to be a fact at the time? I fear he did, for he had previously gone over that same township line from the starting point at the river, and had learned the truth about the line through the woods. With this knowledge he chased me out of my warm spot and proceeded to warm his feet.

Strange to say, we are friends today. I wouldn’t do him an injury for any price, and I don’t think he would injure me—any more than to chase me out of a warm spot again, and warm his feet at my expense; for this seems to be the game of life with most business people. Some of them prosper and some of them do not. My neighbor has gained but little. He took all I had in the world, but it didn’t prosper in his hands. I would not trade positions or future prospects with him today.

It doesn’t always pay to chase a man up to get possession of the warm spot he occupied.

It didn’t pay me at all when I used to chase the cows up for the same purpose. The intermittent moments of cold and warm feet made the cold feel all the more chilly when I left the warm spot and stepped into the frost-laden grass.

No doubt my neighbor realizes the same truth now. He would be far happier if he had never wronged me—if he had never chased me up to get possession of the spot I had warmed. We all feel that way, dear readers, no odds how hard we try to hide the fact from the world. We are far happier in occupying only the small spot we have warmed ourselves; for it is not natural to treat human beings the same as we sometimes treat the inoffensive cows.

FLOWERS FOR THE LIVING

Sending flowers to the dead is a beautiful tribute to their worth while living. Some day I shall lie in my coffin with closed lips and folded hands, looking through dead and expressionless eyes into the great eternity that opens to receive me; and those who loved me will bring sweet flowers and lay them near my hard bed and drop a tear to mark the place of our parting. But I will not be able to smell the flowers, nor to see the tear, nor to look into their beloved faces and catch the gleam of friendship and the glory of human love. It will then be too late for a responsive smile and hand squeeze and a tender word of recognition; for I will be far away from the touch of friendship, and only the cold clod of the senseless mortal will be there to receive the gift of love.

Below I publish a bouquet that was sent to me while my heart is hungry for appreciation, and my soul longs for congenial companionship; for we are all groping our way through this jungle of theory and blindfolded guess work, and we are glad to know that others are going our way:

Reading, Pa., January 7, 1910.

Jake Haiden, Esq.,
Chatham Run, Pa.

My Dear Sir—Permit me to introduce myself for the purpose
of expressing my appreciation of the beautiful sentiments
contained in your “philosophy,” appearing in the “Reading
Times” daily. I was particularly impressed with the article
in today’s issue, and thank you sincerely for same. I am
looking forward to the time when the citizens of this community
will become better and more generally acquainted with you
personally and with your writings, and I assure you that if
my recommendation to my friends and neighbors will in any
measure help to call attention to the increasing value and
attractiveness of the “Times,” I unreservedly give it, for
I feel that if our merchants, business men and men in all
walks in life, should spend a few moments each day in silent
communion with you, we will all feel better and accomplish more
for the philosophy of “Jake Haiden.”

With my very best wishes, I am,

Yours truly,

JENKIN HILL.

These are the bouquets that give new life to the living, new hope to the despondent, new inspiration to the writer who has often doubted the value of his work. For any one who treads on new paths and leaves the old beaten tracks where the thoughtless millions have trod for centuries, is so likely to be misunderstood. When the independent thinker finds himself away from the old ruts where the heavy chariots of plodding thought have left deep gutters for the millions to follow, he feels that he is traveling alone, and is ever reaching out to grasp some friendly hand and feel the warmth of a congenial living body and a progressive mind.

Some day Mr. Hill will carry a bouquet to a dead friend, but the flowers will not be able to bring new hope and new inspiration and new courage, like his letter has brought to me. And yet, I have never met Mr. Hill, to touch his hand and look into his face and express pleasure in meeting him. Our bodies are total strangers to each other, but out on the sea of thought we met and touched each other’s boat, and now go floating down the storm-tossed stream toward the land of God knows where—out beyond these shadows that hide our faces and our motives from our neighbors and cause us to misjudge our fellow man, and to throw him thorns and thistles instead of the sacred flower of human love.

If you are out on the sea of thought, drifting before the winds that are ever blowing us away from the land of knowledge, and making life an endless pull against wind and current—and you meet others out there in the shadow—don’t go off quietly and hide until they are past. Hail them—call to them in friendly tones and tell them you are going the same way and would enjoy their companionship. Don’t wait until the storms of life have wrecked their boat and you find their dead body on the shore, beyond the reach of your flowers and love and appreciation.

After all is said, the religion of humanity comes nearest to our hearts. We need no towering church spires, nor cold stone walls to make our place of worship a secluded spot. The world is our book, and humanity our altar, on which we may lay our white rose of love and our pale lily of charity, and reach out to the Great Jehovah, through the responsive heart-throbs of our friends and neighbors.

THE HOBO’S STORY

Looking down the new road that leads up to the church and my own humble home, my wife and I saw a strange man approaching. We thought he was deformed at first glance, for he seemed to be out of proportion in many ways. As he drew nearer the window we noticed that he wore three or more coats, and the same number of inseparable pants—at least each pair was inseparable.

At the church he hesitated, glancing at the parsonage, and then back to our back door. He was rather an old man, past sixty, judging from his hair and whiskers. At last he decided to try our house.

I did not ask him, but I suspect that he mistook our house for the Methodist parsonage, since the church and our house are painted the same colors. I went to the door myself, and when he asked, “Could you give a hungry man something to eat?” I replied by inviting him inside and giving him a chair.

“Traveling?” I inquired, not from idle curiosity, but to start a conversation and make the stranger feel that I took an interest in him.

“A little,” he replied, “I came down from Erie last night on a freight train, and I ’most froze to death. No work up that way, except in the coke regions, and there they have Poles and Slavs and Finlanders and Hitalians and niggers.”

I knew he was English by the way he pronounced Italian.

“Did you use to work at the coke ovens?” I asked.

“No, but I use to work in the hard coal mines—at Nanticoke and Shamokin; knocked off thirteen years ago, when the foreigners cut down wages. It was at Nanticoke I had the narrow escape with my life. I’ll tell you while I’m getting warmed up. It was all the mistake of the engineer. We were putting a tunnel from the new drifts up into the old abandoned workings, in order to drain the old workings down into the lower level, and then pump it out through the great pump that was pumping out the lower level.

“The engineer calculated to strike the old drift several feet above the great body of water lying there, and then pump it up into the tunnel and let it flow down to the lower level. The engineer made a grave error in his calculations, for instead of entering the old drift above the water, the tunnel was almost on a level with the bottom of the old drift. There was a large quantity of water in the drift. When the men put in the last blast it tore the intervening wall down and the river of water came bursting into the tunnel. There were eleven men working there besides Ed Evans and me. We had gone back to the shaft to get some powder and were back as far as the big slope when we heard the mighty roar of the rushing waters.

“We could not tell at first what the noise meant, but we felt there was danger in the pitchy darkness. Ed and I ran up the slope, calling to big Billy Beck to follow us, who was then working at something near the foot of the slope. He waited to learn what the cause of the noise was. We looked back and saw him start in our direction. We could see the light waving rapidly up the slope behind us. Suddenly his light went out. We soon learned why, for a moment later the water came rushing up the slope and soon submerged our legs up to our knees.

“Luckily we had reached an elevation on the slope almost as high as the flood could ascend when the level was filled, and we soon found ourselves on dry ground. This slope had not been worked for over a year, and no one else was penned up in the horrible trap but Ed and me.

“We felt confident that all the men who were cutting the tunnel into the old drift had been drowned. The terrific flood came in so suddenly that none could escape. Then we began to think of our own situation. It would require months to pump all the water out of the level. In the meantime we would starve. We had even lost our dinner pails. We looked into each other’s eyes through the dim light, and Ed said, ‘We’re in a hell of a fix now, old man! I wonder if the people outside will still think we poor miners demand too much pay? Will they be good to my wife and the babies?’

“At the word ‘babies’ poor Ed broke down and wept as only a brave man can weep when facing despair. Then we remembered the old abandoned air shaft, and we went up the slope as fast as we could go until we found it. We called up the shaft to where we could see a speck of light, but there was nobody there to hear us. Then we both sat down and cried in utter despair.

“Yes, we were rescued. Men came to the old shaft next day intending to go down and see if anybody had found safety in the old slope. We were rescued thirty hours after the accident. Our wives and Ed’s children were on hand to receive us. But, dear God, I can never forget the wail of the poor wives whose dear ones lay drowned down in the lower level. Big Bill Beck’s poor old wife had to be carried home when she saw that Bill was not among the rescued.

“Yes, thank you very much for the food and your kindness. No, I’ll never go back to the mines again. It’s a hard life, and the operators have made the world believe that the miners are asking too much for their work and their lives. Say, did you ever notice? Two days after a mine accident the widows and orphans need help! Too much pay? Oh, the shame of it all!”

IN THE LOOKING GLASS

It seems to be a human impossibility for us to see ourselves as others see us. We never know exactly how we appear to our neighbors. Men are like moving pictures—it requires some distance from the picture to see the moving figures to the best advantage. We know that our nearest neighbor knows less of our true character than the people living at a distance. When Henry D. Thoreau built a little log cabin, with his own hands, on the banks of Walden Pond, Massachusetts, his neighbors saw the man at close range, and failed to notice the strength of mind and character. It was the people at a long distance who saw the real Thoreau at fitful glances, and anxiously magnified the man until he became a thing unnatural—a genius.

The too-appreciative public called Thoreau a genius—a man to whom thought came without an effort. He himself didn’t think so. He lamented his own weakness and ignorance of things. It required so much time to learn a simple truth: to cull out the true from the false. Half the thinkers of the world are thinking out a plan to live without menial labor. They are thinking out a plan to fool and deceive the unthinking into buying knowledge and secret keys to science. And the deceived people look at them from a distance and put a false estimate on their ability, and pay them well to be fooled and humbugged.

I have seen sick people ignore their home physician and go a hundred miles to consult a quack; and for a long time imagine that his knowledge of the healing art was almost divine. The quack’s nearest neighbors looked on in disgust, and repeated the immortal words of Shakespeare, “What fools these mortals be!”

But even Shakespeare is seen at a distance in greater lustre than around his own home. There is an old saying that “the king is never great to his own valet.” But often this is because of the mental gulf between the two men. The valet often judges only the physical man, or the moods of the mental man. Men are great only when they go into the silence and apply their entire force of mind to solving the problems of life. The great speech you heard your favorite orator deliver was not gathered spontaneously while standing before you. The speech was but the fruit of many, many hours of struggle and study and worry and of painful effort. Did you but know the late hour when he blew out the lamp and lay his aching, throbbing head on his pillow, and only slept to dream over again his struggles, you would not call him a genius, but a plodding student.

The man who stands looking into the mirror and beholds his own face, without finding weak spots and flaws and lack of character, is too vain to be judge of himself. The serious, sincere man is always finding flaws in himself, and seeking to find a remedy to cure them. The man or woman who “gets stuck” on the face they see in the glass are mental quacks—they are humbugging themselves. They see a genius in the reflection of an asinine mug. They go away from the glass, and a moment later cannot describe the manner of face they carry on their shoulders. If they were ever so good an artist and painter, they could not paint a picture of themselves from memory.

And if we cannot judge ourselves correctly, how can we expect our own neighbors to judge us even charitably. And our mental face flits before us and out of reach of our grasp as rapidly as the reflection of our physical countenance. We seem to sit in the midst of moving pictures, our mind the curtain on which the pictures are flashed. If we stop the machine and retain the same picture for any great length of time on our mental curtain, we become insane. The machine must be kept in motion, one scene following after the other all day long. True, we can repeat the passing scenes daily, but they must be in motion, passing swiftly on.

When we apply ourselves to any particular study we learn to ignore all the other passing scenes and fasten our mental eye on the screen at a point where our favorite figures appear as they flash by, but our subconscious mental eye realizes all the time that the entire picture show is in progress. The truth is, dear reader, we haven’t time to see our neighbor as he really is, nor even see ourself in all our many phases. Our face is passing through the mirror too rapidly for us to estimate the strength or force of character. In the great economy of nature we are only shadows cast upon the curtain of eternity and passing rapidly away. Our short life makes a film of limited length, the different scenes passing before us so rapidly that even in our sensitive memory only one per cent of all that transpires leaves a trace that can be recalled in after years.

What need we care what people think of us, when we cannot judge or estimate ourselves. If we can practice charity toward each other and forget our neighbor’s faults, as we forget our own face, we do well. The moving pictures of life will not stop long enough for us to “get stuck on ourself.” If we do so, we are left behind. The rushing crowd cannot see us as we see ourselves in the glass.

UNGRATEFUL YOUNG GIRLS

Girls are so prone to over-estimate their usefulness and greatness and social prestige. The average girl of eighteen or twenty is always “It” in her own estimation. And if she is a city-bred girl she sets a very low estimation on the young man from the country. “He is too slow,” or “too much of a jay,” no odds how sincere he may be. She prefers the flashy, dashing, frivolous city-bred bubble who is always bursting with light wit and shady insinuations. The traveling man is her ideal, whether she knows anything about his character or not.

A story just reached me through a mysterious channel about two rather pretty, well-dressed but flippant school teachers, who went from a Pennsylvania city to a nearby country village to teach in the local school. They felt country life a bore at first because traveling men seldom came that way. So, by way of making country life more tolerable, they began to cultivate the acquaintance of the neighborhood boys. Some of these they flattered and smiled upon and encouraged, and in return were treated often to candies, fruits, and were escorted to card parties and country dances and given a good time. When sleighing season came two of the rustic swains, who earned the munificent sum of three dollars per week, chipped in and hired a two-horse outfit at the cost of four dollars, and invited the two young teachers to take a ride with them and eat supper at a famous chicken and waffle resort at the far end of the valley.

The girls pretended to be delighted, and the party drove off gaily amid cheers and the jingle of bells. When the hotel was reached, where an elaborate and expensive supper had been ordered in advance, the gay, giddy teachers jumped out of the sleigh and ran into the warm parlor, while the unsuspecting young men drove around to the stable to see that the horses were properly attended to. In the parlor the girls met a gay party of young folks, of aristocratic tastes and manners, from their home city, who knew the two teachers. “Who brought you here?” inquired one of the city girls, to which one of the deceitful and shameless teachers responded: “Oh, a couple of country prunes—a pair of dubs brought us. Gee, but they are slow and jayish.”

But at the supper table these same shameless marms made an awful fuss over the country boys, thoroughly disgusting their city friends. Their hypocrisy and duplicity and deceitfulness was actually sickening to those city people who expected far greater honor and more stability of character in women capable of teaching school. How much better for these deceitful girls to have remained silent on the subject of their escorts, after receiving and accepting favors from them, and pretending that they were delighted with their society. They have now lowered themselves in the estimation of those friends who witnessed their hypocrisy to such an extent that they can never reinstate themselves again. Nobody likes a hypocrite, no difference how handsome or brilliant they may be. The honest, sincere and truthful girl is always respected and admired and loved.

Twenty years ago a young school teacher of my acquaintance was teaching out on the mountain, and to get taken home and back again to her boarding house, she pretended to be very fond of a young mountaineer who owned a horse and sleigh and buggy. The poor fellow fell desperately in love with her and she encouraged him, but when the school term was ended she took advantage of the first opportunity to insult him and throw him over, with as little feeling as though he had been a worn-out shoe.

She afterwards married a young man not half so honorable as the young mountaineer, whom she jilted so cruelly. He deserted her ten years ago, leaving her a family of helpless children and a broken heart. “As you sow, so shall you reap.” There is no more dangerous game to play than to play hypocrite. No one means to become hardened in the game, but it grows on a person and poisons all the nobler impulses of the soul, and as age advances, the face hardens and every line in the countenance tells the secret thoughts that have always haunted the mind. The hypocrite cannot hide her sins from the trained eye of the observer, and the world is unforgiving toward the deceptive soul.

THE GIANT PINE

Standing on a gentle slope
With outstretched arms,
With an air of vanished hope
But still retaining charms
Of glories past and gone;
Of beauty most divine,
Standing there alone—
The giant pine.

No companion tree is near
Of the dead and vanished past;
They have fallen, year by year—
This giant is the last;
And it wears a look of age
Ten times the sum of nine;
Of trees it is the sage—
This giant pine.

Around its feet there stands
The modern scrubby trees,
Looking up to outstretched hands,
That tremble in the breeze
Like priest who offers prayer
To heaven’s throne divine,
With outstretched arms so bare,
The giant pine.

Grandfather saw this tree,
Years and years gone by,
When but a boy was he,
And, towering in the sky,
This mighty giant stood,
With fragrance like old wine—
The guardian of the wood—
This giant pine.

Long centuries ago
This giant pine was here,
And bending to and fro,
And growing, year by year,
When England’s tyrant yoke
Lay heavy on this land
The maple and the oak
Reached up their feeble hand.

To ask this tree to bow
Its proud and lofty head,
That they might kiss its brow
Before their strength had fled.
They’re dead these many years—
The saw-mill carved each bone,
And the giant, left in tears
And outstretched arms—alone.

But now the axmen come,
With no respect for years,
And the giant, standing dumb,
Drops needles, as though tears
To it were long denied.
Then heavy body blows
Chop deep into its side,
While the deep wound deeper grows.

And still each outstretched limb,
Above the axmen grim
Asks of the clouds that swim
Before the face of Him
Who made the sky and earth,
A blessing on each foe
Who toil in savage mirth
To lay the giant low.

And now a spasm of pain,
From base to topmost bough,
Passes again—again—
The lofty head must bow.
Great giant, with all those charms,
A violent death has found,
And those strong, loving arms,
Lie broken on the ground!

And the echo of the roar,
Caused by the giant’s fall
Comes back from river shore:
The giant pine so tall
Lies prostrate on its face,
Broken in branch and spine;
The last of his giant race—
Farewell, giant pine!

Nothing is sacred to greedy man
That can be changed to gold;
Nothing is sacred of all God’s plan
That can be bought and sold.
Barren our mountains stand today,
Their giant trees all gone;
Their wondrous glories passed away—
All but their rock and stone.

This lone giant might have been
Spared as a relic of the past;
With lofty branches, ever green,
Outstretched until the last.
But ruthless hands have slain
This giant—half divine;
To say farewell gives pain—
Farewell, oh, Giant Pine!

THE LITTLE HOUSEKEEPER

A child of seven, with her mission marked out for her, and her future predestined to fall in hard places. Her childhood was to end at the age of ten, and she was to enter into the duties of a woman. Poor little Bernice, how my heart ached for her. But she was as happy as a child of seven could be. She had not forgotten the caresses of her dead mother, but they now seemed to be a long way back in the gloomy past—a year ago.

There were four children younger than she: Albert, Lottie, Addie and Mary; and Leonard was a year older. But he was only a boy, and boys are no good at keeping house. Little Bernice had heard her father tell her Aunt Maud that Bernice would soon be old enough to keep house, and then he would gather all the children in again and keep them together. Aunt Maud took little Addie and baby Mary to care for, and Bernice was sent to live with her grandmother, who had lately become a widow in very poor circumstances.

Bernice seemed to realize the situation and was perfectly satisfied. Her father was working in the lumber woods, and her brothers and sisters were scattered like autumn leaves. She was so anxious to become ten years old and gather them all under her little wings. What a laudable ambition!

Dear God, what an age to feel such motherly cares! Where would there be room to crowd in a few years of innocent childhood?

I wish this was only a story. I wish the child I am writing about was only a creature of my imagination. But it is all too painfully true. She sat in that chair over yonder only yesterday, and told me all about it. Told of it all in gladness and with the sunshine of hope beaming on her little child soul. But every word sent a pang of regret to my heart. This child was giving herself as a willing sacrifice to love and duty. Dear God, what an age to entertain such great resolutions—only seven years!

“Yes,” she said, childishly, “I must not lose a day at school, ’cause I’m goin’ to quit at ten and go to keepin’ house for papa. I kin read now, and kin write purty good, only I forgit how to spell the big words. But I kin learn a hull lot before I’m ten. It’s three long years off. I wish it wasn’t so long, ’cause I want to git the children all together and be their little mother. Mary isn’t quite two years old yit, but she’ll be five when I git to be her mother, and she’ll know how to do a hull lot of work for me. We’re going to live out in the country—out on a mountain farm, and there’ll be cows to milk and pigs and chickens to feed, but the children will all help. Maybe we’ll take grandma along, but she says she’ll have to keep house for Uncle Jim and Uncle Herman, unless they git married and set up for themselves.

“Yes, I must be goin’. Grandma will be waitin’ supper for me. No, sir, I haven’t seen brother Albert and Leonard and sister Lottie for over a year. But it won’t be long until we all git together. Grandma is goin’ to teach me how to bake next summer. She talks to me about keepin’ house for papa, and she cries about it, and kisses me and says, ‘God bless you, child!’ Do you s’pose God will?”

She took her books and went off, singing as happily as though she were the child of a millionaire father; and I sat and looked out of the east window to where the ice lay gorged along the banks of the river, and I tried to think about the ways of Providence. I knew of scores of children twice the age of little Bernice, who never took a single thought of tomorrow, who never expected to keep house until they grew to full womanhood and married a rich husband, who would employ servants and furnish everything the heart could desire. But this child of seven already had her life mapped out for her—a life of toil and care and hardships, and her only pay was to be with those she loved.

And down the road hurried the child, skipping hipperty-hop, her soul as happy as a blue-bird in May, her little red hood tilted to one side and a lock of escaped hair dancing in the wind. Unconsciously the tears welled into my eyes as I looked after her, and the words came again into my mouth: “Dear God, what an age to give up child-life for those she loves!”

THE MALE FLIRT

The fickle man was coming to have a last meeting with the girl whose heart he had broken—whose heart was still breaking. They had been engaged for two years, and he came out to the farm to visit her every time his business allowed him to visit the town near to the girl’s home. He had always lived in this particular country town, but had been traveling for an educational institution for several years. He had always written to Lizzie once a week while away, but of late he had often skipped a week, and now his letters were growing colder and more unfeeling. It had been rumored that he had another girl in town to whom he wrote almost daily, and with whom he had been seen riding on the day he promised to call on Lizzie and failed to appear.

It had been rumored that he was engaged to the other girl, but Lizzie could not believe the rumor. She knew there was something wrong, but hoped it would all be straightened out when he came. Again he disappointed the girl and failed to come. He wrote her a formal letter telling her that he had been detained in a distant town. But the following day a gossipping neighbor said she had seen him in town the previous night. She had gone into an ice cream parlor and saw him eating ice cream with the girl whom it had been said he was going to marry.

For several nights her sister Maggie, who roomed with Lizzie, heard her sobbing silently late in the night, sobbing as though her heart was breaking. Maggie longed to console her, but was it time yet to speak? Poor Lizzie still had hopes that the fickle lover would return and set everything straight.

Two weeks later the flirt made another appointment to call at eight o’clock. Maggie and her father retired, but Maggie did not undress. She wanted to know how serious the matter stood, for Lizzie was simply dying of a broken heart. If her sister broke down during the interview, Maggie fully intended to go down and take part in dismissing the false-hearted man.

At half-past eight there were sounds of horse steps and buggy wheels in the road. Maggie heard a sob and smothered cry downstairs. Had her poor sister broken down? But it was a firm step that walked to the door to let the caller in. They greeted each other coldly, and for a moment there was silence. Would Lizzie fail to defend herself? A moment longer and the injured girl began:

“Do I understand from your neglect of me that you wish our engagement broken?”

“Lizzie,” the man began coldly, “our engagement was all a mistake. I am not suited to make you an ideal husband. I am not good enough for you——”

The girl interrupted:

“If so, then how dare you marry another woman? Don’t try to defend yourself, sir. I know all. You tired of me because you met another girl who suited you better, and you neglected me to anger me and induce me to break the engagement. This I will never do. You must say the words yourself. I loved you truly and sincerely—I still love you. It is not a child’s love that will be forgotten in a few months or years. I am a woman and love as a woman. I will love you after all the sunlights have gone out of my life and my heart is dead within me. I can not help it. You taught me how to love, and I learned the lesson too well. Now you cast me off, but you can’t take the love out of my heart. I will still love the man I once thought you were. I will love you always. You take joy and sunshine from me and fill my life with shadows, but you can’t take back the love you planted in my soul.”

“Lizzie, for God’s sake hear me through! Our engagement was all a mistake——”

“Yes, a sad mistake—a cruel, wicked mistake,” she interrupted. “But I wish you no harm, no ill luck. God will punish you for your cruel work, I fear. I will even pray for you that you may be spared the punishment that goes to the man who ruins a woman’s life—who steals the sincerest sentiments of her soul and then throws them away, when he sees a new heart that can be won.”

Once again he attempted to explain, but she requested him to go and leave her alone, and he went. No one but himself will ever know the guilt and shame he felt at that hour as he slunk from the house. Maggie could hear her sister sobbing in the room below. She waited an hour and then went down quietly and led her up to bed. She helped to undress the drooping form and put her in the bed, and then got in herself and held the weeping girl in her arms during the night.

Oh, it was sad, sad, sad. Do these men flirts ever dream of the heartaches they bring to those who learn to love them and are then cast aside like broken toys? And think of the sadness this heart tragedy brought to the other members of Lizzie’s family. They watched her day after day, seeing the lines of despair grow deeper and deeper every week. And oh, how her sad, sweet face appealed to their love and sympathy. After the announcement of the fickle man’s wedding appeared in the local press, the sadness seemed to deepen for a few months, and then the poor girl slowly came out of the shadows. But any one who knew her could see that her poor heart was buried in the ashes of her early hopes, and that her never-dying love still sat sighing in the ashes.

MEMORIES OF THE OLD TRUNK

The other day while searching through an old trunk for a lost paper, I came across a little pasteboard box. Inside the box I found a photo of a three-year-old boy with Fontleroy curls, and in the same box I found those curls of beaten gold. I called to my wife, and together we examined the relics of a bygone day. This was the picture of our baby boy, and I recalled how, twelve years ago, we took him to the photographer and posed him for his picture; and from there we took him to the barber’s and had his curls cut off. He could not always remain our baby. We had postponed the sad day for several months, and when we brought him back home and his grandmother caught sight of the shorn boy, she took him in her arms and cried: “Oh, where is my baby? You have traded him off for a boy!”

Strange how these things affect us. Strange how these babies grow out of childhood and go exploring through boyhoodland. Our baby disappeared the moment his last curl was severed, and a boy took his place in our affection. Now that boy is passing from us. He is growing tall and stout, and his voice is changing. The moment we put long trousers on him and hide those sturdy legs he will be a young man. The boy will pass away as did the baby in curls, leaving a peculiar sadness at our hearts. That baby did not die, and yet he passed away from us as completely as though we had placed him in a little grave. And some day soon the boyish face will change to that of a man, and the boy will be gone forever.

I still recall the first evening we saw the boy sleeping on his bed, after shorn of his curls, and his mother said to me: “No one can tell how sadly I feel at this great change.” “I believe I do,” I replied; “and I will try to put down on paper some of the emotions passing through your heart. They are in mine too.”

And so I did try to write of her emotions, and the lines were still in the old trunk, tied up with the photo and

THE SEVERED CURLS

My baby boy was three years old,
His curls were a joy to see;
Their color was that of beaten gold,
But of far more value to me.
They hung in clusters about his head,
And shaded his baby brow;
Surrounding his dimpled cheeks so red—
But they’re gone forever now!

The neighbors all laughed at me, and said:
Don’t make him a Fontleroy;
So I kissed the curls on the darling head
Of my own dear baby boy.
And told the barber to go ahead,
In a voice made sad with tears;
And none will know how my poor heart bled
When I heard the swish of the shears.

I watched him through till the task was done,
And gathered the severed curls.
Then clasped to my heart my plundered son—
Still more to me than worlds.
But he was no longer my baby now;
He seemed to have grown in years.
I kissed his cheeks and plundered brow,
And struggled with my tears.

And now in a little box I keep
These treasures I loved so dear,
And when the household is still in sleep,
And the breath of slumber I hear,
I take those curls from their little nest
And live o’er the past again;
And hug them close to my aching breast,
To smother a strange, sad pain.

Yes, new curls may grow again, but oh,
They never will be like these!
For time is passing, and babies grow,
And travel over seas;
And mothers remain at home through years,
While the early memories die,
And I bathe those curls once more in tears,
And go to bed with a sigh.

And on the day we found those curls, and read these lines aloud, we could look through the window and see our boy coming home from school. “In a little while,” I said, “the boy will disappear with the baby, and the man will grow out of the ashes. Oh, this is a strange world, and were it not for our memories, life would be short indeed! How sad, how sweet, how full of sentiment, how inspiring to live over the past.”

THE AUCTION BLOCK

The old negro was past seventy years, hostler at a country hotel. Some of the young men were drinking, and they persuaded “Uncle Andy” to sing us a song. He willingly sang several of his jolliest negro songs, and then wound up with Nellie Gray. When he came to that part which concluded the song, I saw tears stealing down his old wrinkled cheeks. I asked him to sing the chorus over again, and when he looked into my eyes and saw the sympathy I knew was welling up from my heart, he began again in that peculiar cadence which belongs to the negro race alone:

“Oh, my darling Nellie Gray,
Up in heaven, there they say,
That they’ll never take you from me any more;
I’s a comin’, comin’, comin’, as the angels clear the way,
Farewell to the old Kentucky shore!”

He covered his old eyes with his black hands and sobbed aloud at the conclusion of the song, but the noisy young men who had persuaded him to sing were lined up against the bar for another drink, and had forgotten all about Uncle Andy and his song. I laid my hand on his shoulder and said:

“It was an awful thing to happen in a so-called civilized country—to separate two loving souls and sell the woman into damnable slavery, by a race of men who pretended to worship God and love their neighbors as themselves. I have never suffered such a thing, and I cannot even imagine the feelings of the man who saw his beloved wife torn from his bosom and sold like a horse in the market.”

“You should thank God, sah, dat you-all nevah ’sperienced sich a great sorrow,” he said, looking toward me through his tears. “I has. When I was twenty I was married to Clarissa Beckon. Master died, and we all was sold on de block de nex’ year. I saw her taken away and I fainted dead off. She wor strongah than me. She walked away with her head up in defiance. De las’ words she spoke to me was like de song, dat up in heaven we all shud meet again, where dey cud nevah take her away any more.”

Ah, what a mockery to tell the poor, broken-hearted slaves that up in heaven their wrongs would all be righted. If the slave wife should be restored to her husband up in heaven, why did not those old brutalized slave-owners restore the broken-hearted wife to her husband on earth? How would they picture a just heaven, full of love and mercy and beauty, and then turn around and make a cruel hell out of this world? Ah, yes, and even asked God daily to shower his divine blessings upon this hell of their own making.