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Title: The philosophy of Jake Haiden (late Jacob K. Huff)
        selected from the columns of the Reading Times, Reading, Pennsylvania : with a biographical appreciation by his friend Henry W. Shoemaker

Author: Jacob K. Huff

Contributor: Henry W. Shoemaker

Release date: September 19, 2024 [eBook #74444]

Language: English

Original publication: Reading: The Reading Times Publishing Company

Credits: Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHILOSOPHY OF JAKE HAIDEN (LATE JACOB K. HUFF) ***






[Illustration: JACOB K. HUFF

Deceased]




                            The Philosophy of
                               Jake Haiden

                          (_Late JACOB K. HUFF_)

                       SELECTED FROM THE COLUMNS OF
                 THE READING TIMES, READING, PENNSYLVANIA

                     WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
                              BY HIS FRIEND
                            Henry W. Shoemaker
                       (President of Reading Times)

            “A link is broken that bound us to the infinite.”

                           [Illustration: 1911]

                             Copyright, 1911
                   The Reading Times Publishing Company

                               READING, PA.
                  =The Reading Times Publishing Company=




Biographical Appreciation


Sudden death, in the midst of productive work, throws into bolder relief
a career destined for immortality. The cessation of a train of brilliant
and helpful ideas creates a want, and causes a careful examination of
all that has been previously done, and a just estimate of its worth.
These alone can be the consolations for the taking off of a genius like
the late Jacob K. Huff, known to his readers as “Jake Haiden,” “Faraway
Moses,” and “Finnicky Finucane.” After a long struggle against obscurity
and adverse circumstances he had emerged into an open country where
kind words of appreciation and growing fame greeted him on every side.
His message, which the modern life in this country, with its growth of
class distinctions, a self-constituted aristocracy, a rapidly developing
governing class, a contempt for the lowly born, a forgetfulness of
gentleness, a striving for self-advancement, and the train of kindred
evils, rendered imperative, was checked, but its echoes will be felt
through the years. He seemed to be the one voice strong enough and
fearless enough to do battle with the injustices of the big world, yet
he viewed it all from the porch of a modest cottage in a hamlet where
there was no railroad, no trolley, and few strangers ever penetrated. His
vision entered palaces of the supercilious rich, into the inner sanctums
of capitalists, of cringing editors; into the homes of neglectful
parents, undutiful children, designing wives, white slavers, and other
evildoers. His kindly words soothed the tired spirits of the unfortunate,
and as he never preached, and seldom condemned, he offered a loophole for
improvement, rather than promising punishment to the so-called “wicked.”
He was always ready to forgive, to lend a helping hand, and though his
infinite mind grasped all the depths of sin and sorrow in the world, he
believed in the innate goodness of his fellow beings. The modern world
was learning to walk along cleaner and better pathways, and he acted like
the careful parent, assisting the unsteady youngster in its course. His
writings do not contain a single word of rancor; it is amazing that a man
who fought so much oppression and crime could do so without descending
to invective or abuse. That was the secret of his success. If clergymen
could follow in his footsteps many an empty tabernacle would be crowded
on the Sabbath.

In a sense, the biography of a writer discloses the hidden springs
and motives for the development of his career. It would be difficult
for a writer not springing from the people to fight the people’s
battles with the pen. A man of the people like Abraham Lincoln
represented them thoroughly because he was of them, and at no time in
his life did his opportunities or tendencies cause him to forget his
original environment. Jacob Huff was born among the “great mass of
humanity” and his development came like Lincoln’s through struggles
and disappointments, aided by perseverance and hard work, until his
voice, clear and sympathetic, was heard above the multitude. Some day
an appreciative state will seek out and mark the lowly cabin in the
Pennsylvania mountains where he first saw the light. Like Plato and many
another wise man of the past, his message will live in his disciples,
and grow brighter, and more necessary with the advancement of time. It
was in such a cabin that Lincoln was born in the Kentucky wilds that
Jacob Huff was ushered into being in Clinton County, Pennsylvania, on
January 31, 1851. His father was John Huff, a typical backwoodsman,
sturdy, brave, and good natured. His mother was a German girl, Eve
Kalmbach, whose parents had left the Rhine country and cleared a
homestead high among lonely Pennsylvania hills. His father’s mother was
Elizabeth Walker, of Scotch-Irish ancestry, and from her came the strain
of humor, and perseverance that did so much to weld his destiny into a
successful whole. His mother is described as kindly and intelligent,
with a mystic side to her nature, observable in her distinguished son’s
traits of sentiment and tenderness. From earliest youth Jacob Huff knew
little but the most grinding toil. His first occupation, however, was
rather pleasurable, and he always liked to reminisce on the subject. In
1864, Colonel James Williams Quiggle, of McElhattan, directly across
the Susquehanna from Jacob’s mountain home, had conceived the idea
of starting an “American Tea Industry.” It is a known fact that the
Pennsylvania mountains produce a tea plant that rivals in flavor the
choicest product of Japan. Thousands of acres of wild lands were either
bought or optioned, and a tea house after a Japanese design was erected
on a plateau back of the smaller of the two McElhattan mountains. Men
and boys in considerable numbers were engaged to pick, sort, and dry
the leaves, and little Jacob hearing of the work, tramped down from the
high mountains and started for the “tea camp,” his first situation away
from home. Darkness had come on soon after he reached McElhattan, and he
spent the night with a family who lived at the “X Roads,” there meeting
the black-haired, black-eyed young girl with the cameo face who played
such an important part in the life of his dear, though older friend in
years, the gifted poet, Montgomery Quiggle. He was given a chance at
the tea camp, which was often visited by the genial Col. Quiggle. This
was probably the first man of education he had met at close range, and
his interest and politeness to the small tea-picker lingered as one
of the pleasantest of his earlier memories. Col. Quiggle, it may be
said, was a fine type of the old fashioned gentleman of Scotch-Irish
stock, always brimming over with good humor, but with that undercurrent
of seriousness inherent to his race. Winter coming on, the work was
suspended, and the merry company back of McElhattan mountain was forced
to separate. Once on his own responsibility, the desire to earn money
and see the world led the young lad to occupations of various kinds.
Once he trudged many miles to Leetonia, having heard of work in a lumber
camp, but was rejected because he was too young. He did not idle around
the shanties, but immediately started for home. A snowstorm began, and
evening closed in on him. He saw what he thought was a huge blackened
stump, and leaned against it for much needed rest. There was a grunt and
a growl, and a four hundred pound bear shook him off, and he sprawled in
the snow. Another time he had worked in a logging camp at the head of
Young Woman’s Creek, and with his purse of savings, was on his way to
Youngwomanstown, now misnamed North Bend. It was sunset, and he heard
a screech like a tormented woman, far up on the steep slope of one of
the denuded mountains. His quick eye showed it to come from a panther,
skulking along in search of its evening meal. Jacob walked faster, and
as he did so the animal quickened its pace. For miles it seemed to trail
him, but lacked the courage to come down from the ridge. Finally with
the lights of the settlement in sight, it uttered a despairing yell, and
was heard from no more. At other times he worked in lumber camps, bark
jobs, on railroads, highways, farms, and gardens. Every man or woman he
met had a life story that interested him, these were the romances he
read. His retentive mind became stored with a mass of unusual facts and
impressions, which he thought over and over, figuring out the whys and
wherefores when his companions were asleep. He had not gone to school a
full term in his life, but his teachers, Charles Hamilton and Benjamin
Langdon, were worthy men and he absorbed much from them. Despite his
brief schooling he could feel the harmonies of words and sentences like
a trained rhetorician. He longed to express himself, but he was too shy
for general conversation, and there seemed no opportunity to write. In
Lock Haven, the county seat of Clinton County, was a local paper called
“The Enterprise.” It had a correspondent in Gallauher Township where
Jacob was living, but he fell sick, and the editor looked about for a
substitute. Jacob applied for the position, and in February, 1876, in his
twenty-fifth year he had the pleasure of seeing his first communications
in print. They were well done, even for an old correspondent, and later
he made bold to intersperse them with jokes, and pathetic little verses.
He was so satisfactory that the regular correspondent never resumed the
work, and he continued with increasing reputation, until in 1880 he took
up the same task for the “Clinton Democrat,” a Lock Haven paper, which
is still a power in the county. About this time love had entered his
life, and he married Clara Bryan, a frail, pretty girl of sixteen, of
Scotch-Irish stock, the ceremony taking place September 25, 1881. But the
happy romance was to be short-lived, a girl baby, whom they called Rena,
was born on April 7, 1883, and the young mother’s health failed rapidly
afterwards. She died on July 26, the same year, and the motherless
infant followed her to the grave on October 7. Jacob Huff never spoke
much of this early bereavement, but some of his verses on taking Myron,
his son, by his second marriage, to the graves of the first wife and
child, are as beautiful and touching as exist in our language. In 1885
that enterprising and widely-read newspaper “_Grit_,” published in
Williamsport, having long noted the humor and pathos of his work, engaged
him to write weekly articles. He adopted the _nom de plume_ of “Faraway
Moses,” and the results were overwhelmingly successful.

He was a clever artist, like so many writers, and drew the sketches
each week for the illustrations. These were “worked up” by the staff
illustrators and engravers, and became an important feature of the
stories. Jacob Huff as a humorist was inimitable, but his immortality
will rest with his serious work, his “human interest” articles. The
popularity of “Faraway Moses” soon passed the bounds of the State, and
his trite and witty sayings were quoted by staid farmers in their shacks
in Kansas and the Dakotas. Meanwhile he established a modest “syndicate”
and furnished short stories, verses, and jokes to a number of rural
publications under various pen names. He conceived the idea of going
West, and his travels took him into many States, where his experiences
were varied, though he finally settled in Colorado. The results of this
change of abode, which did not last long, found immortality in a small
book of verses, published in 1895, by the Grit Company, entitled “Songs
of the Desert.” Unfortunately the little book was not fully appreciated
at the time, though it is destined to rank with the choicest productions
of Eugene Field or James Whitcomb Riley. Meanwhile a great and ennobling
influence had come to him, his romance and marriage with Charlotte
Crawford, the brilliant daughter of Captain William H. and Priscilla
Brown Crawford, of Chatham Run, Clinton County, who also for a short
while resided in Colorado. The Crawfords were among the earliest settlers
in the West Branch Valley, where they ranked high in social and political
life. They had intermarried with the Whites, Allisons, Stewarts, and
Quiggles, and each generation had added fresh lustre to the name. Jacob
Huff’s marriage to Charlotte Crawford occurred at Grand Junction,
Colorado, on October 11, 1892, and soon afterwards the happy couple
returned to their beloved Pennsylvania. The influence of his devoted wife
was broadening and inspiring, leading him into a wider sphere, and to the
association with persons of distinction and rank. He had tasted life in
all its bitterness, had mingled with the lowly, henceforth he was to see
the brighter phases of existence. He never forgot the past, it had burned
itself in too deeply. He saw the injustices and wrongs with an even
clearer vision now that he understood how happily it was possible to live.

One son, Myron Reed Huff, named after the great liberal preacher, Myron
Reed, whom Jacob warmly admired, was born on June 22, 1895, to bless the
union. This boy, who is a happy blend of his talented parents, is himself
an artist and author, and now contributes articles to the _Reading
Times_ under the name of Jake Haiden, Jr. And now comes the story of his
connection with the _Reading Times_, the last important event of his
life, in whose service he was at the time of his untimely demise. Early
in May, 1908, the writer of this article received an autograph copy of
“Songs from the Desert,” and it quickened the desire, which he later
learned was mutual, to meet the famous philosopher. At McElhattan on
Memorial Day, of that year, he waded across a muddy road in front of the
home of a mutual friend, Mrs. Anna S. Stabley, since deceased, and shook
the hand of “Faraway Moses,” Jacob Huff. A long conversation ensued,
and they became warm friends. The writer at that time was President of
the _Daily Record_, at Bradford, Pa., and soon after his new associate
began contributing short articles of timely interest to that paper. In
September of that year, he assumed the same position with the _Times_,
of Reading, and with the first issue under the new management began the
celebrated “Jake Haiden” articles. They were instantly successful, and
their appeal to all classes, their liberality, their toleration, their
humanity, their pathos, made them noted and quoted all over the State. It
is pleasant to recollect that Jacob Huff paid several visits to Reading
while contributing to the _Times_. He was there on New Year’s Eve, 1909,
and for New Year’s Day prepared an exceptionally strong editorial, for
he also wrote many editorials, called simply “1910,” which attracted
widespread attention. His last visit was late in January, 1910, when
the management of the _Times_ entertained him as guest of honor at a
dinner at the Wyomissing Club. The guests included the _Times_ staff,
the publishers of the _Reading Telegram_, Capt. Henry D. and Herbert
R. Green, who were always appreciative of his work, John D. Mishler,
and others of equal note. There were after dinner speeches of a brief
character, and the guest of honor closed the evening with a few remarks
which seemed to come directly from his heart. With the early summer, the
_Times_ conceived the idea of sending “_The Reading Times_ Philosopher,”
as he was becoming generally known, to the far west in order to gain
fresh impression for his powerful articles. Accompanied by his loving
wife and son, and a close friend Prof. Betts, he started away gaily. From
letters and postcards he must have enjoyed himself, and his note-book
shows he had jotted down ideas for five hundred and fifty new articles
or editorials. The party returned to Chatham Run on July 20, where the
philosopher maintained a comfortable home, and on the night of July 31,
1910, he was seized with heart failure and died a few hours later. Prompt
medical aid from Dr. Joseph M. Corson, his friend and neighbor, was of
no avail, and the giant intellect and friendly spirit returned to its
original source. His funeral was the occasion of a tremendous outpouring
of people, interment being made at Jersey Shore. The press of the entire
State echoed the grief of his relatives and friends and the great loss
to the literary world. The religious beliefs of such a man are always
interesting. His can be summed up in the final sentence of the little
speech he delivered at Reading, “We look around and in everything we see
God.” It was the religion of humanity, the creed of helpfulness and good
cheer. He lived up to the letter of his faith, for when he died he left
a host of friends and no enemies. He had steered his bark through the
perilous waters of life without hurting anyone, or sullying himself. It
was a beautiful life, but to those who knew him comes the ever recurring
regret “Why could not he have been spared a few years longer?” There was
so much to do, the world was crying for his help. Maybe the publication
of this book containing some of his most characteristic opinions will
give renewed energy to his disciples and send them into the thickest of
the fight for the betterment of mankind. If he had a motto it must have
been “I want to leave the world a little brighter, a little better, a
little happier than when I came in it.” Who knows, to what extent he
succeeded! Time alone will measure the fulness of his fame, but he should
rank as a nature lover with Henry D. Thoreau, as a humanitarian with
Theodore Parker, and as a poet with Eugene Field.

It is hoped his friends will get together and erect a memorial fountain
or statue to his memory in Lock Haven, Jersey Shore or Williamsport, in
the West Branch Valley whose people and scenery he loved so well.

                                                       HENRY W. SHOEMAKER.

September 4, 1911.




I PLEAD GUILTY


Before the law I stand a confessed criminal; before God I am only a weak
man trying to do good toward my fellow man. I am guilty of helping a
convicted man escape the clutches of man-made law. I couldn’t help it.
The love I bear humanity welled up, when the young man told his story,
and flooded my reason with the sunshine of sympathy; and I helped him get
away.

Early one morning I went to my wood shed to get kindling to build the
kitchen fire. In the dim light I thought I saw a man crouching in one
corner. A second look convinced me that it was true—there was a man
crouching there.

At first I was frightened, and thought of flight. It’s the first impulse
that comes over me at sight of possible danger. And a strange man, in
a strange place for that man to be, is danger enough to startle even a
brave man, like my wife, for instance.

But on looking closer, and catching a full glance of the startled eyes,
that looked up to me in fear and wild, beseeching hunger for something
his heart yearned for, I changed my mind. Fear gave way to curiosity and
sympathy. I said, “Good morning, brother—can I do anything for you this
morning?”

At the sound of friendly words he stood up, and I recognized in him the
young man who was tried and found guilty of forgery, and sentenced to 15
years in prison.

“I’ve escaped from jail, you see,” he said with a quiver in his voice,
while his boyish blue eyes looked away down into my soul (if I still had
it with me).

“So I see,” I replied. “And now, what are you going to do?”

“You heard me telling my story on the witness stand last week, didn’t
you?” I nodded in the affirmative, and he went on. “Well, nobody believed
me. They thought I was lying to save myself from prison. I told the court
that in my confession, when first arrested and sent to jail, I had plead
guilty to the charge of forgery, to save another man, because the father
of that other man promised to get me out of prison if I would assume the
crime and save the honor of his family.

“Before God that story is true. But the family I was bribed to save has
no honor. From the moment that confession was wheedled out of me, I was
forsaken, and left to the mercy of a jury whom I could not convince
that I was innocent. Not one amongst them would believe that I had
honor enough in my soul to assume the crime of another, because I am a
cobbler’s son. Neither could I convince them that the rich merchant on
B—d street had played false to me.

“I do not blame them. I could not believe it of that merchant myself,
were I not the victim of his perfidy.

“This morning I concealed myself in a barrel of ashes and other trash and
was hauled out of the jail yard by the darkie who drives the refuse cart.
When we got safely away from the jail I rose up out of the trash barrel
and scared that black man half to death. I took advantage of his fright
and told him if he informed the officials of my escape I would swear that
he was guilty of helping me away, for a price, and because I couldn’t pay
him he would not let me off. He promised to keep quiet, so I ran through
the fog and came here.”

“Why did you come here?”

“Because I know you appreciate life and love humanity. I knew you would
believe my story, or at least believe enough of it to awaken your
sympathy and think of the long time fifteen years must be—fifteen years
taken out of my life! The time is too long, even if I were guilty. Won’t
you try to think of how long fifteen years must seem to one so young as
I, and then hide me for a day, and then help me get away tonight? Won’t
you, for the love you bear humanity? Won’t you do so for my mother’s
sake?”

“For God’s sake, stop!” I cried; and then I sat down on the chopping
block and buried my face in my arms and tried to think. “Fifteen years
is a long, long time to take out of a boy’s life! Fifteen years, without
sight of a mother’s face, without flowers or the songs of birds; without
sunshine and the dews that fall from heaven for all. Fifteen years shut
up between black walls, and away from the smiles of women and little
children. God, the sentence is too hard, the punishment too great! We
can’t reform men by treating them as wild animals.”

I looked into his frank blue eyes and asked: “Tell me once more,
truthfully, are you innocent?” And he answered: “Before God I swear that
the story I told you is true!”

I plead guilty to helping a prisoner escape, and I feel no pangs of
regret. Fifteen years between black walls is a long, long time, and the
boy had a mother.




RELIGION OF HUMANITY


Near my home lived a poor, hard-working, but improvident man. He had a
wife and seven children. The oldest was thirteen, and the baby but ten
months old. They were poor. The husband and father was working only half
time. There is a cause for the dull times, but the man did not know what
it was. Those who do know are afraid to tell, for fear it may injure
their business. “Great is Diana!”

One month ago the wife and mother was taken suddenly ill, and died in
less than twenty-four hours. Everybody was shocked. It seemed so cruel
and hard of Providence to remove that poor woman at a time when she was
needed most. Many would have blamed Providence of cruelty, but they are
afraid to do so.

No one knew the reason why this death was ordered. Some thought it was
even a sin to make a study of the case, “lest they offend Providence.”

I was made to feel very sad when I heard of the sudden bereavement.
Little eyes of helpless children looked out of the night shadows and
made my sleep a nightmare. I looked down a long dark vista leading out
into future years, and I saw barefooted and ragged children plodding
hopelessly along, bearing burdens that should be carried by full grown
men and women. I saw cruel winter lurking only a few weeks off,
generating chill blasts of wind to pinch little brown legs and chapped
hands, and I wondered what the people would do about it.

While I was wondering what was to be done, my wife and her near neighbor
were already solving the problem. Old chests and boxes were ransacked for
cast-off clothing—for clothes the children had outgrown, but which were
almost as good as new. Neighbors were set to work ransacking chests and
boxes and bureau drawers, and many little dresses and pantaloons that
brought back tender memories were dug up and cast into the common fund of
collected goods.

To this collection was added a few dollars’ worth of new goods, and
thread, and the work of reconstruction began. The work was done in my
home, while I worked in an adjoining room, and I never heard a more
cheerful and happy set of women. Their hearts, their charity, their
mother love were all in the work, and these are the tender forces that
give inspiration to men and women who believe in the religion of humanity.

In my mind’s eye I could see those orphan children feasting their eyes
on the warm flannel petticoats, the bright gingham dresses, the soft
underwear and little aprons. I felt that it was good to be near this
working gang in the great cause of living humanity, and I seemed to share
the inspiration that gave such happiness to the ladies.

The minister’s wife came out and joined the workers, but suggested
that they open each sewing session with prayer; to which a majority
objected, saying they only had limited time to spare, and they believed
the children would be clothed much sooner if the sewing continued
uninterrupted.

These good women worked all day cheerfully, and reconstructed a big pile
of children’s clothes, and when the meeting was about to break up the
minister’s wife suggested that they kneel and return thanks.

“God will accept my weariness of body and contentment of soul,” replied
the busiest woman in the bunch. “Prayer is a private business between
two—between God and the worshipper; and between these two there are no
secrets,” she continued. “Public prayer is the work we do in public,
and for the people—for God’s creatures. We have been praying, tenderly
and seriously all afternoon, while many who could have joined us in the
good work, but refused, will be offering up worded prayers tonight and
thanking their God—for what? for escaping real work? for the squandering
of a few hours that might have been spent with religious profit in this
work of charity? So long as I believe in the religion of humanity, just
so long will I believe that a work for the bettering of humanity goes
ahead of worded prayer.”

“You may be right, Mary,” replied the minister’s wife. “If all women
prayed as cheerfully and willingly with their hands, as you have done
this afternoon, humanity would be the better for it. Perhaps, after all,
the uplifting of the human race is the greatest work we can perform.
Perhaps the bringing of joy and happiness to hearts that have been filled
with hopelessness and gloom, is the dearest work we can do for God. I am
not a bigot, Mary; only I believe in both work and prayer.”

For a long time after the women left I sat and pondered. The little
hungry eyes of the shivering orphans looked out of the gloaming, and
I knew what their decision would be. Their hearts would go out to the
workers. When the warm skirts and petticoats and little trousers shut out
the winter’s blast, the work of the workers would be appreciated.




JOE BAILEY’S RIDE


People who enjoy all the great improvements of the age have not the least
idea of the inconvenience and the hardships people endured previous to
the discoveries of the telegraph and the telephone. As an illustration
of the conditions prevailing previous to the above discoveries, I will
relate the story of Joe Bailey’s dangerous trip down the river on an ice
floe, and his brother’s exciting ride on horse back from Jersey Shore,
Pa., to Northumberland, a distance of fifty miles, to alarm the people
and bring them to the rescue of his brother Joe.

The Baileys owned the island just southeast of Jersey Shore, which is
still in the hands of the descendants of the Bailey family—Mrs. John S.
Tomb, and Mrs. Carrothers. I do not know whether McGinnis, the historian
of the West Branch Valley, mentioned this famous ride or not. I got the
story from Captain William H. Crawford, who died several years ago at the
age of seventy-seven years, and who was a boy at the time Joe Bailey went
adrift on the ice floe. Crawford then lived with his father, Hon. George
Crawford, two miles west of Jersey Shore.

It was in the spring, when a sudden rise in the river threatened to
take the ice out of the streams. The Baileys had a small flat boat in
the river which they plied between the island and Jersey Shore. It was
still in the river when the early spring freshet came, and was in danger
of being carried away with the heavy floe of ice. To save the flat, Joe
Bailey and another man took a team of oxen and went to haul the flat out
of the stream. While Joe was on the flat fastening a chain to a ring the
ice suddenly broke up and crowded down upon the place, tearing the boat
from the landing and sending the young man adrift on the ice.

His brother on the Jersey Shore side of the river stood horrified for
a moment, and then fully realizing the importance of imminent action,
borrowed a fast running horse and set out for Williamsport on a dead
run. It was a race for life. Night was setting in and the weather turned
suddenly bitter cold.

With horse and rider panting for breath, young Bailey reached
Williamsport and alarmed the town. Many rushed to the bridge, but none
were prepared to render service to the man going adrift on the ice. They
could hear him shouting for assistance, but the flood bore him down upon
them before they could secure a rope to drop down for Bailey to lay hold
of and be lifted to the bridge.

Knowing that rescue was impossible, one thoughtful man removed his
overcoat and dropped it down into the rushing boat, and received the
freezing man’s grateful thanks.

Nothing daunted, young Bailey secured a fresh horse and struck out for
Muncy, where another bridge spanned the Susquehanna river.

Again young Bailey reached the long bridge too late to secure help.
Joe passed under the bridge before the men could lower a rope. But the
undaunted brother would not give Joe up to the horrible death that
awaited him somewhere down the roaring, rushing, grinding gorge. No human
aid could reach him until he came to the bridge at Northumberland, so
the brother secured a third horse and dashed away to the rescue again.
No other ride through darkness and danger equalled that ride, except the
ride of Paul Revere. And poor Joe’s awful ride in the rushing ice gorge
could not be surpassed for danger and loneliness by any of the dangerous
rides noted by historians and sung of by the poets.

During the ice floe in the West Branch of the Susquehanna river the
current is extremely rapid and the brother dashing away on horseback knew
full well that no time must be lost if he reached the Northumberland
bridge in time to save Joe. This was the last chance. No other bridge
could be reached on horseback in time for a rescue. There was no railroad
then, no telegraph line, and the most rapid means of communication was by
horseback.

Can you blame young Bailey then for urging the horse to the utmost speed?
When the animal slowed up young Bailey laid on the lash and urged it to
even faster speed. He and the horse could alone rescue the frantic man
adrift on the ice floe. All those who knew of Joe Bailey’s peril were
left far behind. The people of Northumberland would know nothing until
young Bailey arrived. On and on he dashed, arriving at the town exhausted
and sore from his long, hard ride.

The town was alarmed, and a score of boatmen and old river men rushed to
the bridge, but not forgetting long ropes with nooses prepared at the
end. Thank God he had not passed yet! They could hear him calling for
help far up the stream. When near the bridge they called to him to be
ready and slip the nose of the rope under his arms. Quick! Joe Bailey
is safely tied in the loop! Up with the poor fellow! Safe! Thank God!
The two brothers clasp each other in their strong arms, the one softly
whispering: “Joe! Oh, Joe!”




THE OTHER MAN’S BABY


It’s a very easy matter to give away the other man’s baby, but not so
easy when it comes to parting with our own. Organized charity does a
whole lot for the unfortunate, but often does it in the wrong way. The
mothers who are active in organized charity are too ready to separate
parents from their children, never thinking for a moment what a loss it
is to both parents and children to be thus separated. The only excuse for
separating parents from charity children, is the economy. It is cheaper.
Charity using painful economy to a painful extent.

I believe it is better, where it is possible, to allow parents the
society of their children, and children the society of their parents,
even if charity is asked to step in and keep the wolf from the door. It’s
better for the parents, I’m sure. If anything will make a man or woman
better, the society of their own children must surely come first in the
elevating influence.

In my own individual case I can notice the self-improvement since I
have a child to look up to me with trusting eyes and feel the tight
clasp of his little hand. “A child shall lead them.” The man who wrote
this line had the love and power of a child’s influence in his mind. We
are all benefitted and made kindlier and more loving in the society of
children—and especially our own children.

Only a few weeks ago an old school-mate of mine lost his wife, leaving
him with a family of seven small children, including a baby girl of only
ten months. The charitable mothers of the neighborhood took an interest
in the poor man’s affairs, and began to collect clothing for the little
motherless orphans and fit them out for school. They all thought the
bereaved man could get a housekeeper much easier if the baby were out of
the way, and they began to look around to secure a good home for her.
They all agreed on that point—it was to be a good home for the baby, with
kind people.

I was present when the committee of charitable women met at the poor
man’s house to inform him that they had found a home for Baby Ruth. I
shall never forget the look of pain that flashed into his eyes at the
mention of finding a home for his baby. He was too full for words, but
he picked the baby up from where she was playing at his feet with a
yarn ball and string, and as he pressed her to the bosom of his coarse
blouse I saw the tears overflow from his grief stricken eyes and run
unrestrained down his rough cheeks.

After a few moments of silence he mastered his feelings and thanked
the ladies for taking an interest in his children, but hugged the baby
again and said: “But little Ruth is my baby! She was Mary’s baby! The
last kisses and caresses of my poor dead wife were given to our baby—her
baby. How can I put her away so soon after Mary’s death? She’s so small
and dependent—must I begin the separation of my family away down at the
bottom—away down with the weakest and smallest—with the baby—the one
dearest to the mother who is now dead?”

The spokeswoman of the crowd told him how it would be best for the baby,
and for him, to find it a good home, with kind people, who would care for
it “and give it all the comforts of life.”

“Yes, yes,” he interrupted, “I know you mean it all for the best, and
I could agree with you if—if it were some other father’s baby we were
discussing, and not my baby—Mary’s baby—the last of our family to feel
the loving caress of her embrace.

“Is it a crime that I am poor and wifeless, and my children are
orphans? Can I cease to love my children because I am poor and they are
motherless? They have been a great comfort and pleasure to me. I love
their prattling voices; the sound of the little toy cart, as baby drags
it across the floor, is sweeter music than the tones of the pipe organ
down in the fashionable church.

“Shut your eyes to the squalor and rags you see here, and let your
minds go back to your own homes, and recall the sound of the little tin
wagon, loaded with tin soldiers and rag dolls, your own children used to
pull through the house; and picture yourself standing at the gate after
parting with your favorite child. Picture the scene, as the strange
person carries your baby away, with her child face turned appealingly
towards you, and you make no effort to bring her back to your arms and
your heart.

“Would you, my good and kind women, who mean only good towards me and my
children—would you call this a picture of civilization—a scene amongst
enlightened people, or would you dream of it forever afterward as a
picture of hell?”




THE PATHOS OF HUMOR


The average reader of newspapers and magazines imagines that humorous
writers are always funny, and always saying funny things. Nothing could
be farther from the real facts. The humorous side of humanity while
wading through every day events, likewise sees the pathetic side. The
pathos of life makes the shade and shadow of life’s picture, while the
funny features make the humorous pictures—the cartoons and exaggerations.

I know a little story connected with the work of a humorous writer, so
full of pathos that one can but wonder how he could write of the humorous
side of life while sitting in the very presence of death.

During the days of his severest struggles for recognition (and bread)
his wife’s aged father was taken ill, and the doctor said it was only
a matter of a few weeks or days with the kind old man, and then his
struggles on the earth would be over. And through all the nursing and
watching the young author was obliged to grind out his “stuff” for the
publishers who kept the wolf from his door.

One night the faithful daughter could endure the strain and loss of sleep
no longer, and was obliged to go to bed, leaving only her author husband
to watch at the bedside of the dying father, and to grind out his sketch
for the next issue of the paper.

It was hard to forget the man who was passing over the dark stream and
concentrate his mind on some ridiculous phase of life, but this he must
do, for he needed yet a humorous anecdote to round out the line of
argument he was introducing—that men are more truthful than their dreams.
He was attempting to prove that men, while in the act of dreaming a lie,
would tell the truth, if subject to speaking out loud in their sleep.

But humorous ideas were slow about coming, and he leaned over, with
his face buried deep in his hands, and tried to think. All of a sudden
he recalled an incident of real life, that would serve to complete his
story, but before he could take up his pencil the sick man brightened up
and remarked:

“Pretty hard to write scenes from the funny side of life, while waiting
on some one to die!”

“’Tis that, father,” replied the young man tenderly; “but I just now
recall an incident from the life of old Jim McGrabber that will finish
the sketch.”

“Poor fellow!” softly exclaimed the dying man. “I pity you, my boy. It
is more than most men are obliged to do. But don’t mind me. Even if I
pass away while you are working, I will know that you are only doing
your duty. Besides, my boy, it softens death to me to feel that others
can forget it while it hovers so near. And in encouraging you to go on
with your work, I hope to leave the impression behind that dying men can
remain interested in the triumphs and achievements of life, even though
they are old and feeble and their heart liable to stop forever without a
moment’s warning. Go on with your work, and I will try to sleep.”

And then, after giving the old man a cool sip of water, and fixing his
pillow more comfortable, he sat down and wrote the anecdote that was to
complete his sketch.

“Timothy McGrabber always kept a private jug in his cellar, but was only
allowed two jiggers of whiskey a day. If detected in taking a third or
fourth drink, by his good old wife, she proceeded at once to pull his
gray hair vigorously until he would promise to do so no more.

“One Sunday morning in mid-summer the good old wife went to church
very early, leaving Tim to follow when ready to do so. This was Tim’s
opportunity, so instead of two jiggers from the beloved jug, he took
four—four big ones, and then followed the old lady to the church, singing
softly and gleefully to himself as he walked cheerfully along.

“Arrived at church he sat down near the open window, and his system
cleared of waste material and a painful conscience, he soon dropped
off to sleep. A young kitten climbed in the window, took an exploring
expedition out along the back of the seat, climbed up Tim’s passive arm
and began to smell his whiskers. Scenting nothing dangerous, the kitty
jumped to the top of his bald head and sat down to observe the house.

“A wasp flew by, and kitty attempted to catch it, lost her equilibrium
and was falling backwards when she grabbed at Tim’s straggling locks of
hair with both front feet and began to climb back to her lofty perch
again; then the congregation was startled by Tim’s loud expostulations:

“‘Hey, Nora! that’s anuff! Pon me sowl oi only tuck four little nips from
th’ joog, and bedad yee’r pulling all th’ hair out av me head! And how
the divil did yee’s foind it out, anyhow, because oi wint down cellar in
th’ dark and drank wid me oyes shut!’”

The author smiled at the bit of humor, and turned to the bed with a sigh
of relief—only to discover that the old man had died while he wrote.




THE PINE CREEK TRAGEDY


Love in a lumber camp is as full of romance as love in a king’s court;
for wherever love sets up her throne the world must bow down and
recognize the Queen of Hearts. Jack Cleveland had been Rhoda Carson’s
accepted lover ever since she came to be cook’s assistant in the big camp
run by Reuben Harris, and this was her second winter in the camp. They
expected to get married when they went back to civilization in the spring.

In January Walter Jackson, of Maine, came to work on the job, and Rhoda
was fairly hypnotized by his manly beauty and robust health. Before the
first week was out Jack saw how things were going, but still hoped Rhoda
would get over her infatuation and come back to her old love. But Rhoda
quarreled with Jack deliberately and after due meditation. She even
insinuated that she would be happier if he left the job.

Poor Jack was awfully broken up over the affair, and would have gone away
with his broken heart, but he was foreman and couldn’t leave his employer
until after the drive was out of the creek. For two months previous to
the spring flood Rhoda did not speak to Jack, but spent a great many
Sundays playing checkers with Walter in the big dining room, and her
merry laughter went straight to poor Jack’s heart. He had given her up,
but his love for her was greater than ever before.

The day the flood came, and they were starting the big jams of logs far
up the creek, Rhoda stood on the high bank near the camp to watch the
logs sluice through the narrow channel; for at this point the creek cut
through a rise of ground, with banks of red clay on both sides rising as
much as twelve feet above the water. It was very exciting to watch the
great logs dart through this narrow channel and pitch over the falls 200
feet further down the stream.

While she watched, a great mass of logs came sweeping down the stream and
jammed at the head of the narrow channel. Other logs piled up against
the jam. Then the men came and boldly walked out on the tumbled jam and
tried to pry it loose with their cant hooks. All at once the great jam
started, and the men ran back over the logs to a low place in the bank
and came ashore. No, not all the men came ashore, for Walter Jackson made
a mis-step and fell with one leg pinned between two logs.

It was lucky for Walter that the jam stopped before reaching the falls,
for he was unable to extricate himself, and would surely have gone over
and lost his life. Even now he must have assistance before the jam
started again, which was sure to occur, for the water was rising so fast
behind the logs that it must surely break loose in a few minutes. The
danger was so great that none of the men would venture on the jam again,
and Walter was given up by those who stood helplessly on the bank and
waited for the end.

At this moment Jack Cleveland came upon the scene and saw his rival lying
helplessly out on the logs. Did a gleam of triumph flash through his
heart? No one will ever know, for Rhoda came up to him and shouted in his
ear: “Can you save him, Jack?” Ah, did he catch a gleam of the old time
love in her blue eyes? And was it this that urged him on?

Taking a cant hook from one of the men, he leaped down upon the creaking
and surging logs and carefully walked down to where Walter lay. With a
strong pry on the log that pinned his rival fast, he parted the logs,
then took hold of the prostrate man and lifted him to his feet. But his
leg was injured so badly that Walter could not walk. Dropping his cant
hook, Jack picked Walter up and staggered with his heavy load toward the
bank. The men reached down and took Walter by the arms and were lifting
him to safety when the great jam started. They saved Walter, but Jack was
moving on with the logs!

Rhoda saw his danger and ran a few rods further down the stream, threw
herself on the ground and reached far down to give Jack her hands. In
his desperation he lay hold of them with a firm grasp and Rhoda braced
herself for a mighty pull. But she was now too far over the bank to gain
her poise again, and, with a scream that sounded above the roar of the
water, she pitched down upon the head of her jilted lover, and together
they went over the falls. He was holding her in his arms when they went
over, and then the terrible jam of logs dashed down upon them, while the
horrified men on the bank looked helplessly into each other’s eyes and
groaned with mental pain.

In the village graveyard there are two stones standing side by side,
where an old woodsman, now bent with age, visits every spring and places
a bunch of flowers between the two. It is Walter Jackson. When he goes
away the curious people go to the spot and read the card attached to the
flowers: “Jack and Rhoda—They died for me. Even the gods could do no
greater thing.”




THE HOMESICK BOY


    “Way down upon de Suanee river,
      Far, far away.
    Dah’s whar my heart am turning ebber,
      Dah’s whar de ole folks stay.”

Foster surely knew what it was to be homesick when he wrote those lines.
He knew the heart-aches of a homesick boy. What difference whether the
homesick boy is white or black? The heart-aches are just the same; the
longings just as sad, the memories just as sweet, the absent parents
just as sacred, the absent brothers and sisters just as dear. That song
makes the greatest appeal to human hearts for sympathy of any song ever
sung—sympathy for the black or white boy obliged to go away from home and
leave those he loves best on earth.

In my mind’s eye I see Foster’s little black boy who is sold into slavery
and driven far away from the banks of the Suanee river to the cotton
fields of the Southwest. Perhaps not one soul in all the world, besides
his mother and little brothers, ever gave the poor slave boy a single
thought after he was driven out of sight of the old cabin home. Other
boys going away from home—white boys of those days, had all the world
before them; but the poor slave boy had only his chains and his broken
heart.

I see him lying in his hard bed of straw at night, with the storms
howling around the cabin and the fading fire sending out only a few
feeble rays of light—I see the homesick lad lying with his face buried in
his hands and threading the old paths that lead up to his mother’s cabin
through his mind. He sees the dear old river and the wild fowls resting
on the bosom of the water. He sees his dear old mother sleeping in the
old familiar bed where he lay when a baby. He sees his younger brother
sleeping on the bed of straw near the hearth, his black face turned up
for the moon beams to write lines of tenderness and love on each well
remembered cheek. Outside the humble door the shaggy watchdog watches
over the family that owns nothing but their wrongs.

And, with my mind on that homesick boy, I hear him sobbing, while the
coarse sleeve of his soiled shirt absorbs the bitter tears that are
known only to the great God who has commanded every one to love his
neighbor as himself. In his ears the hum of the bees is still heard, and
the music of his father’s banjo comes back on the wings of memory, like
the odor of funeral-smelling flowers coming back from the grave of his
buried hopes. The darkie boy at his saddest best.

The homesick boy of Foster’s song is not the bad nigger, full of nigger
gin and hatred and evil intentions. The slave boy in whom you see only
centuries of wrongs and oppressions is the picture in Foster’s immortal
song.

Oh, the world would be better if every one had experienced a season of
homesick longings, and cried themselves to sleep with the image of absent
loved ones painted on their mind with the brush of tenderness. Better if
all had wrongs to remember, and oppressions to leave scars on their souls
that would make them feel kinship towards all the unfortunate who must
suffer and bear their burdens alone.

It is a well known sociological fact that those who suffer hardships
and privations have more tender feelings for the poor and unfortunate,
than those who were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and never
intermingled with the people of the lower world. Of course, there are
exceptions, but they are few. When you find a wealthy person who feels
charitable and kind towards all the world, that person has suffered
heart-aches, too. He wants the sympathy of those who have suffered like
he has. There is a fraternal feeling in his heart for the unfortunate,
planted there by his own heart-aches and watered with his own tears. A
man who has never known a heart-ache, never gives a single thought to the
homesick boy who longed for his Suanee river home.




FRIENDS WHO PASS IN THE DARK


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




VOICE OF THE STONE


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


HOW MANY HOPES LIE BURIED HERE

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

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

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

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




INGRATITUDE


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




ORPHAN EVA


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




LOVING THE WORLD


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




LOST IN THE SNOW


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




A PLEA FOR CHILDHOOD


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




THOUGHTS ON IMMORTALITY


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

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

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

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

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

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

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




TEACH SENTIMENT


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




THE SOUL OF SORROW


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




VISITING THE OLD HOME


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




THE WAYWARD BOY


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




A WASTED LIFE


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

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

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

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

“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.

Not long ago his boy of five years refused to repeat a word dictated by
his father, and for this disobedience the boy was made to stand on the
floor erect, until conquered. The father didn’t try moral suasion or
coaxing or petting. He was not in favor of arbitration between father
and child. It was war to the finish. The boy’s rebellious spirit must be
broken, at any cost. It was the father’s duty to conquer the child. The
big strong man must triumph, because might is right. Solomon advised this.

It was 7 P. M. when the boy was first stood up on the floor. The father
demanded obedience of the child when anger filled the child’s heart. It
aroused the rebellious spirit—the boy would not be conquered. It was
the courage and will that is to make the man a doer and a worker when
childhood is gone, but the father didn’t realize it. At 10 o’clock the
child fell over in a faint—unconquered and unsubdued—and was critically
ill for many days.

That father may be right, but I do not believe it. I would give much to
recall the one cruel blow I struck when my boy was a helpless child.




NOT A CLINGING VINE


Some men fail to win the woman they love, because they are physically too
strong and powerful. Some women love to cling, as a vine, to the man who
resembles the sturdy oak, but not all of them do—not even half the women
do the clinging act. I know of a case where a strong man proposed to a
beautiful girl who had entered a hospital to become a nurse. She did not
appear quite strong enough to endure the strenuous duties of a nurse, but
she insisted that she loved the work and would stick to it. Her lover
sought to turn her from her chosen profession and become his wife, but
she frankly told him that she did not love him enough to become his wife.

People without imagination and without a proper conception of what true
love really is, wondered why the girl did not marry the man, for he
was quite wealthy, handsome, and of good character. Some even alluded
to his good family, but the nurse declared that a man was good through
education, and not through inheritance. She referred to the case of a
child taken from a large family of children and placed in the home of
a rich man who gave her many educational advantages. She outgrew the
daughter even in intelligence and beauty, while all the other brothers
and sisters left in the home nest grew up in ignorance and immoralities
and did not resemble their educated sister at all. It was all the effect
of education and not of blood or inheritance.

And the strong man gave up the girl and went away to a distant town to
go into business. Bad investments swept his fortune away and he fell
ill. His last dollar was gone and his health so bad that he no longer
resembled the physical giant of former years.

At last he became so ill that he was taken to the hospital for treatment,
where in his delirium he called for “Agnes, Agnes!” all the time. The
physician declared that this Agnes must be found, or the man would surely
die. His old town was located and old acquaintances consulted, and the
Agnes called for was the girl in the hospital learning to become a
trained nurse.

When told who it was that was calling for her she said she would go to
him. All her nature seemed changed. Harry was no longer the physical
giant inviting her to cling to his sturdy frame for support. He was now
lying helpless on his back, his fortune and physical strength all gone.
She would be the strong uplifter and the inspiration that would bring him
back to health. She was now in her proper sphere. She was all woman, all
sympathy and affection. She who could not cling to the strong man, now
gave her strength to assist the weak.

“Agnes, Agnes!” he called one night, and when she went to him and placed
her cool hand on his feverish brow and asked tenderly: “What is it,
Harry? I am your Agnes—don’t you know me?” He looked up with a world of
joy in his eyes and exclaimed: “Thank God, Agnes! I have wanted you so
badly! I was going to die. I shall now get well!”

And he fell asleep while she watched. Was it strange that she now loved
the man better than her own life? How weak and helpless he was; only the
shadow of his former physical strength and beauty. And yet, as she looked
upon his helplessness, and realized that his fortune was gone, and that
he was now even poorer than herself, her heart and soul went out to him,
and all missions in life narrowed down to a resolve to nurse him back to
health and happiness.

When he recovered sufficiently to sit up, and noticed the changed look
in her beautiful eyes, he one day asked: “Agnes, dear Agnes, is it
possible that since my health and wealth are gone you can love me?” She
dropped her head and remained silent. “Forgive me,” he said sadly, “I was
foolishly mistaken in what I saw in your eyes. I was looking through my
love. Nobody could love a wreck like me.”

She looked up with a world of love in her eyes and cried: “You were not
mistaken, Harry! I do love you! and all the more because you need me now.
I could not be a vine, but I can be your support and guide!”




THE SALOON IN OUR TOWN


I simply judge from what I’ve seen. When I moved to this backwoods
village, six years ago, the hotel was the only industry in town—turning
out “skates.” One of the daily patrons of the hotel bar was brother to
a millionaire of Central Pennsylvania. I asked him one day if he didn’t
envy his brother the great wealth he had piled up, but “Uncle Enoch”
gave me a little dance on the flag stone in front of the post office and
remarked: “Phil never had the good time in life that I am having. Besides
this, he’s twenty years older than I am, which are good for at least five
hundred jolly times. Without a sou or a picayune in my pockets, I’m as
happy as a king, so long as I can work the crowd for a drink.”

Well, who can say how much “Uncle Enoch’s” light-hearted manner cheered
the plodding people, who worked year in and year out for a bare
existence? I have seen men laugh at his drunken pranks who hadn’t given
birth to a pleasant smile for weeks.

But somewhere in the world a deserted wife ekes out her own living at
slavish toil, because of Enoch’s love of the cup that cheers. And in his
sober hours I have heard “Uncle Enoch” lament the loss of his companion,
declaring that she was a good wife, and that the fault was all his own.

This country hotel made a splendid stopping place for the sporting
lawyers and business men of the nearest city, and no questions were
asked when several automobile loads of sports and loudly dressed females
stopped and engaged the ball room for a dance. “Uncle Enoch” would join
them and dance in a corner, while the set was going through the whirling
waltz, and sometimes stop the dance while he sang “My Bonny Black Bess.”

Several other local characters patronized the bar and thought they were
having a good time, but when seen next day in their homes, where poverty
and squalor and ragged children predominated, one could easily see that
their “good time” for one night cut a great gash into the bare comforts
of life during the next two weeks. And the wife and children, who had no
good time at all, were obliged to share in his regrets and poverty even
longer than he; for he went out to work amongst the farmers, and was well
fed, while the children and mother ate the scant supply of food in the
neglected home.

The second year after my arrival in the village the new Methodist
minister took sick and his wife ran over to my house to borrow some
brandy. I had none, but said I would go down to the hotel and get my
private bottle filled, and lend it to them. The landlord said he was
out of brandy, but had some extra good whiskey for fifty cents a pint.
Knowing the minister had severe cramps, I took the substitute and hurried
home, leaving the bottle at the minister’s house, and telling his wife
to use all the liquor she needed, and when the bottle was empty, I would
have it refilled.

Next day the minister was up and around again, and his wife brought the
flask home. It was almost full. The new minister was, no doubt, a good
judge of whiskey, and preferred to take chances with death, rather than
drink much of the vile stuff masquerading as whiskey.

After that time I was not very friendly to the hotel man. I had gone on
his petition to the court for a license to sell whiskey and beer, and
the stuff he sold me to save the minister’s life was neither. Afterwards
a neighbor’s wife took sick and we doped her with the contents of that
bottle, and she got well. Being no judge of liquor, she thought it was
all right, and her faith cured her.

Towards fall business became slack, the stock of whiskey became so low
in the jugs that there was spontaneous combustion, the insurance policy
took fire, and the hotel, with all its contents, except the most valuable
things which were stored in trunks and left near the door, were consumed
by fire.

Since then the town has been dry; “Uncle Enoch” is satisfied with an
occasional jag on hard cider, the wives and mothers look happier, the
children are better clothed, and we buy our medicinal liquor at the city
drug stores and pay five times more than it is worth.

My honest belief is, that the saloon could be easily dispensed with, if
the government would place on sale sealed bottles of genuine rye whiskey
for medicinal purposes, at a fair price. I do not believe in prohibition
to the full letter of the law. Whiskey is a medicine, and we need it just
as badly as we need any other poisonous drug. I am subject to chills, and
whiskey is the best remedy I ever discovered for chills. The only bad
effect is that the more whiskey I have in the house, the more frequent
are my attacks of chills. I use more caution, too—I take a jigger
occasionally to prevent the very first symptoms of a chill.




THE HOMESICK CHILD


It was in the cool of a summer evening that I saw the child leaning over
the railing of the river bridge and looking through her tears toward the
opposite side of the stream. I knew intuitively that the tears in her
eyes were sad ones, because sorrowful tears seem to stand in pools and
only gush out at intervals. Tears of joy well out as fast as generated,
for the eyelids stiffen under the influence of gladness and eject the
tears automatically. In sorrow the eyes seem to recede and the eye-lids
grow flabby and helpless, and the tears stand in pools around the corners
of the eyes, as though lacking the courage to gush out and part with the
aching heart beneath.

“Are you sick, little girl?” I asked. She tried to answer, but the words
would not come. She only sobbed, and the pool of tears gushed out under
the new disturbance and ran down her pale cheeks. “Don’t talk, if you
don’t care to, child, but if you are in trouble I may be able to assist
you. Have you a home?”

“Oh yes, sir!” she burst out, as though the word “home” opened the door
to her heart. “My home is far out over this river and beyond those hills
you see in the west!”

“And why are you here?” I asked kindly.

“Oh, I’m out at service. I’m working in Sheriff Barker’s kitchen, helping
the misses with her work. I’m earning my own living, besides giving some
money to papa for the other children. There’s so many of us, you see.”

“How old are you?” I asked, not out of curiosity, but out of sympathy.

“Oh, I’m twelve years old! There are four younger than me, and three
older. We all go out at ten years and rustle for ourselves.”

“Dear God, what an age! What trials for such little bodies! But what were
you crying about when I first came here?” I asked.

“Oh, sir, I was so homesick! I often get that way through the day, and
at evening I come out here to the bridge and look out toward the dear old
home and cry to see the children, and it really makes me feel better. It
takes that heavy feeling out of my heart and I can look away ahead and
feel hopeful.”

“What is your father’s name?” I asked.

“Papa’s name is John Deer—I’m Jennie. Mamma calls me Jean, and the boys
call me Jen. The Barkers call me Jane. I like to be called Jean, because
that’s what mamma calls me. I love my mamma so well, so well! and my
heart is aching to see Willie and Bessie and the others tonight!”

“Why, Jean, I know your father well, and I remember your mother. I worked
in the lumber woods with your father in 1884. He would write letters to
his sweetheart every Sunday, and every Wednesday he would always get one
from his girl. How glad he would be after reading her letters. She was a
little school teacher in those old days.”

“Go on,” she cried. “Oh, I love to hear you talk of my papa and mamma as
they were before they were married! I wonder if they loved each other
like the people we read about in the story books?”

“I believe they did, Jean. At least your father loved Carrie Green just
as fondly as young men love in story books. I had a best girl, too, in
those days, and we often spoke of them, and what we would do after we got
married.”

“And did you marry your best girl, too?” she eagerly inquired.

“No, Jean,” I said, and a wave of memory flashed over my mind and I
paused to look down through that memory to the vista away off in the
distance.

“Did you quarrel?” she asked, her eyes showing how much she was
interested.

“No, Jean—she died.”

“You poor man!” she cried. “Did it almost break your heart? Oh, I can
feel all you felt when your sweetheart died, for there can be no greater
sorrow than to be homesick—to wish so earnestly for the ones you love
best on earth—to long for your mother’s breast—that you may lay your
aching head down and close your eyes and think only of how dear she is to
you. Oh, I’m so glad you told me of your dead sweetheart, for you know
how it feels to be sad and sorrowful, and can sympathize with a homesick
girl!”




WHY HE QUIT HUNTING


My friend Stevenson visited me a few weeks ago, and during our
conversation I asked him what luck he had during the last hunting season.
He looked at me shame-faced and said: “I don’t hunt any more. I gave it
up two years ago. I don’t believe it’s the kind of pleasure a civilized
man needs. I prefer to live for other things—for joys that give pain to
no other living thing. I’ll tell you about that last hunt. We were out
on the Hogback mountain and three of us had been standing at the head
of the Cramer Hollow while one went down along the point and drove the
game into the ravine. While we were standing there looking down the
hollow I noticed something moving through the brush far down the ravine.
I whispered to the others and we all watched the thicket closely with
eager, alert eyes.

“Pretty soon two small deer stepped into view—a spike buck and a little
doe. Silently we drew up our guns and all aimed at the unsuspecting
little creatures. How eager we were to kill. Every man tingled with
eagerness and excitement. Not a shadow of mercy flitted across our
souls. We were savages and barbarians eager for blood! Why? We had gone
hunting for the pleasure of killing something. We needed a change. We had
been tied to our business for several months and felt worn-out and low
spirited, so we went out to the woods to take on new life by taking the
life of some innocent creature that loved life as well as we. The sight
of blood would appeal to the old savage nature that still lingers in the
human heart like typhoid germs in an old well.

“‘Crack, crack, crack!’ went the three rifles, and our victim fell to
his knees. He struggled to his feet and started to run up the hill. We
could see that he was wounded badly. How our souls rejoiced and exalted.
Some one’s bullet had gone tearing through his little body and his life’s
blood was flowing away. Again our guns cracked and belched forth the
death dealing lead, and the animal fell to the earth without a cry or
appeal for mercy. Did instinct, or reason, teach the poor creature that
it need not appeal to man for mercy?

“We all rushed down the hollow to where our victim lay. There was no more
mercy in our hearts than there is charity in the heart of a rattle snake.
The deer had tried to get up again and was on its knees when we came
upon it. I was in the lead. As I approached, the dying animal turned its
hopeless eyes full upon me, and the pain and the fear and the horror, all
mingled into one last dying appeal, went straight to my heart. I stopped
dead still and allowed the others to pass me. They grabbed the animal by
the head with eager, cruel hands and turned it over on its side. I shut
my eyes, but I could hear the ugly rasping sound of the knife as it was
drawn viciously back and forth across that helpless throat, and heard the
life blood gushing out upon the dead leaves.

“I felt sick at heart. A wave of regret and remorse swept over me—of
guilt and shame and humiliation, and the sweat stood on my forehead like
animated grains of corn. I had helped kill the innocent creature for
pleasure—for the mere pleasure of killing; for I did not even like the
taste of venison.

“I was too sick to assist in the job, but the others cut through the
abdominal walls and tore out the steaming entrails like savages. Not a
thought entered their mind that this poor animal loved life as well as
they. They came to kill, and they were exultant over the killing. The
life blood went coursing through their veins in a happy, exultant stream,
and their hearts beat in tune with the song of their souls. And on the
ground the stains of red showed where the innocent blood had seeped
into the earth. If the earth is part of God, then God was absorbing the
evidence of our guilt.

“We shouldered our victim and struggled down the ravine. We tied the
animal’s legs together and had a pole between them, and put the ends on
our shoulders. I managed to take the lead, so that I need not look upon
the body of our slain friend. But with all my care I got blood on my
hands and on my clothes! While my companions took delight in displaying
the dried blood stains on their hands when we reached home, I felt guilty
of mine and washed them several times before I went to bed.

“But I couldn’t sleep for many hours after I had gone to bed—not until I
made a solemn vow that I would never willingly shed innocent blood again.”




THE HARD-LUCK SHOWMAN


Few people pity the circus people when they are in hard luck. So long as
they can amuse and entertain they are applauded, but when they fail to do
this, people turn from them as they would from a bundle of old clothes,
forgetting that heartaches and sorrows and disappointments sink as deep
into their hearts as they do into the hearts of the unsuccessful people
in any other calling or profession. Dyke Dingleman had been a successful
clown and funny man for ten years. The audience had fairly whooped and
yelled at some of his funny sayings and antics, and the managers paid his
salary cheerfully and praised him for his successful work. But one night
in a large city he failed to win a smile from the large audience. He went
through his stunts in such a stiff and listless way that nobody could
see any fun in him or his bad attempts at humor. After the show was out
the senior proprietor of the show scolded him for his poor playing and
threatened to discharge him if it ever occurred again. He said nothing,
but pulled a telegram from his pocket and handed it to the proprietor. It
read: “Bessie is dying—can’t you come home?—Edith.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you had trouble, Dyke? Forgive me for what I have
said to you. Go home to your wife and dying child at once. Billings can
take your place until you join us again.”

Dyke didn’t seem like his old self after Bessie died. He joined the show
at Lima, Ohio, but he was no good as a clown. All the fun had gone out
of his soul, and the audience hissed him. The people did not understand.
He had to give up the situation and take the part of assistant, and wear
a red coat. Carrying mats and other fixtures into the ring was very
humiliating, and the wages were very low for such work. He couldn’t
support his wife on the salary, and she went home to her folks and
refused to write to him. She thought there was a chance to please his
other women, or for booze.

One day the man who gave the outside entertainment was ill, and the
proprietor wanted a substitute. Dyke used to perform on the tight rope,
and he thought here was a chance to please his employer. He felt that
he could do the clown stunts again, if he had another trial. Sorrow had
sweetened his bitter life, and he thought he knew better what genuine
humor should be than ever before. He would perform the old stunts on the
high rope in a more ridiculous manner than any man dared. It was all
pantomime, and he need not use his broken voice at all.

And the audience did enjoy the performance. They never saw such a daring,
desperate man before. He was playing for reputation and his wife’s love
and sympathy. The last jump on the rope was higher and wilder and more
daring than any before. When he landed on the rope something gave away,
the rope slipped through the pulley so rapidly that Dyke couldn’t grasp
any of the stays in his fall. He landed with one leg on a stake and the
bone was snapped above the knee. His poor shoulder was also dislocated
and his head bruised. The roustabouts picked him up and carried him into
the tent, and the crowd jammed closer to see his blood on the ground. A
few women had screamed when they saw him fall, and several men groaned,
but he was only a showman, and they all went away and soon forgot him.

The afternoon performance was just as good, and the clowns were just
as funny, as though poor Dyke Dingleman did not lie unconscious at
the hospital. In the morning the circus left town, but not before the
proprietors of the circus had made arrangements at the hospital for the
care of the injured actor.

Two weeks after the accident Dyke told his nurse all about his
misfortunes and about his wife leaving him. He said he had nothing to
live for and might as well die. The nurse was a romantic soul and set
about to win Dyke’s wife back to him. She wrote a long letter, telling
her husband’s story of hard luck just as he had told it to her, and
begged her to come at once to his bed and give him love and hope and
sympathy, so that he would have something to live for.

There never was a happier set of hospital nurses than there was in that
particular hospital when Dyke’s wife came to his bed and threw her loving
arms around his wasted body and asked him to forgive her for leaving him
when his heart was heavy with sorrow from grieving over Bessie’s death.

And then she embraced the nurse who had told Dyke’s story so beautifully
and pathetically, and the doctor assured them all that the patient was
going to recover rapidly now. He could see signs of health and love of
life coming back to the haggard face of the hard-luck showman.

The story was written up by the same romantic nurse and sent to a paper,
and the whole town was in sympathy with Dyke Dingleman and his wife. Next
day when another big circus came to town the nurse wrote the manager,
inclosing Dyke’s story, and advised a benefit exhibition. The city turned
out and Dyke’s share of the net profits was $300.




PLAYING WITH HEARTS


He was a cripple, without education or any accomplishments, and it was
wrong in Mary Mackey to encourage the boy in falling head over heels in
love with her, but she was only a school girl, with a desire for romance
and excitement, and Lyndal Mason, with his boyish adoration and loyalty
was just what she wanted to make life tolerable. In a way she liked
Lyndal, because he was full of romantic and heroic tales of adventure,
most of the tales being coined to suit the occasion.

I often wonder why boys, without future prospects or opportunity to make
life a success, are always falling seriously in love, with thoughts of
matrimony in the near future.

Looking back to my own early boyhood days, I can see myself in love with
girls who only laughed at my grotesque aspirations. I never once thought
of the responsibilities that go with matrimony. I only knew that there
was one girl on earth I could not live without possessing her love. But
I did live through it all, after discovering that she did not care a fig
for me. I always took consolation by falling in love with some other
girl. By the time I was eighteen years old, I had been slighted and
jilted so often that I began to realize my worth—or worthlessness, rather.

It was different with Lyndal, because Mary encouraged him and led him
on. She even sent him an invitation to her graduation at the high school
where she attended, and where Lyndal often called on her. I remember now
that he came to me and asked for a job to earn some money to buy Mary a
graduation present. I remember still how hard he worked and how pleased
he was at sight of the money he had earned. He bought her a pretty little
pin, and the superstitious told him it would prick the love bubble and
let out all her affections.

He sent his present by mail, for Mary’s parents were trying to break up
the youthful flirtation, and had forbidden her to encourage the young
man any longer. He sat away back in the school room on the commencement
night, but not too far back to notice the fact that she was not wearing
the pin he gave her as a graduation present. No, but at her throat she
wore the gold pin Oliver Birdsall had given her. He knew the pin because
he saw young Birdsall buy it. This young man was the son of wealthy
parents, and would be very acceptable to Mary’s parents. Lyndal saw his
rival throw a bouquet of carnations at the feet of Mary at the conclusion
of her address. She picked it up and smiled her thanks back to Oliver,
and Lyndal read his fate in that smile—Mary Mackey was forever out of his
reach.

Oh, the agony of the moments that followed that revelation. Had Mary ever
dreamed of the sorrow she was creating for the poor boy when she led him
on, would she have done so?

Playing with human hearts is a very dangerous game, yet some heartless,
thoughtless people take great delight in love conquests. They find a
morbid pleasure in the pain suffered by others. To have some one plainly
longing to possess them, satisfies their vanity. Youth is cruel and
heartless. To feel that hearts are aching for their smiles is food for
their ambition. They want to be heart breakers and the destroyers of
peace. The triumphant look Mary glanced at Lyndal as she passed out of
the school room on Birdsall’s arm, brought comfort to her giddy soul.

Did she ever regret it? It is hard to tell. Some people love notoriety
and to have some one die for them is the climax to earthly triumph. I
have often tried to picture in my mind the feelings of poor crippled
Lyndal Mason as he walked home through the darkness of the night, with
a denser darkness falling like a pall of gloom all around his throbbing
heart.

In the morning he did not come downstairs at the usual hour, and when his
mother went to his room, she noticed a peculiar odor of laudanum on the
air. With a wail of injured mother love she fell upon his stiffened form
and kissed his white face in a frenzy of despair. Could Mary Mackey have
seen this sad picture, would she have been sorry? I do not know. They
say she looked stunned when presented with the message written by Lyndal
on that fatal night. It was written with an unsteady hand, and said:
“Good-bye Mary—your plaything is at rest.”




TRUE FRIENDSHIP


True friendship never changes, never grows weary of serving, never dies.
I have in my mind two men I once knew in Colorado, Barney Kennedy and
Fred Gordon—“Little Fred Gordon.” Kennedy was a big, robust son of the
Emerald Isle, standing six feet in his shoes, and strong as an ox; Gordon
a puny little fellow, born in Iowa, and weighing scarcely 140 pounds.
I expected everything of Kennedy, but Gordon was only a little, common
place man who would not attract attention.

When the gold excitement in Alaska was raging in 1897 these two men left
home together, for they had been both friends and companions for many
long years, and struck out for the promised land in hopes of finding the
delusive metal. But hunting gold in Alaska is full of danger, privations
and hardships, and before the first year had passed away these two
friends found themselves 200 miles from a doctor, and Kennedy dying of
scurvy. The giant was helpless, and dependent on his little friend.
Gordon tried to get some one to assist him in taking his sick friend back
to Skagway, but these men had come out to dig for gold, and had no time
to waste on dying men who were strangers to them.

But Gordon’s friendship was of the true sort—the kind that never fails,
and only dies with the possessor. He started out alone to drag his friend
200 long, weary, horrible, soul-depressing miles through the trackless
snow to a physician.

Think of such an undertaking, for friendship’s sake—to drag a 200-pound
man on a sledge, with provisions enough to feed them for fifteen days.

Kennedy was unable to stand alone, and was awed by his comrade’s bravery
and daring courage. Could he succeed? The sick man was frightened at the
gloomy prospect. Two hundred miles over the virgin snow, and dragging
three times his weight on a clumsy sled. All day trudging along, and at
night camping on the dreary waste of unfriendly ice and snow. How far it
seemed back to civilization and a warm room. How cold the moon and the
stars appeared away up in the blue sky. God was supposed to be up there,
too, but he seemed to be farther away than the remotest star on these
lonely nights. But the undaunted Gordon refused to give up. His optimism
never failed. He must reach civilization and a physician, for Kennedy’s
sake.

One hundred miles are successfully, though painfully trudged over; then
twenty added—140 traversed, when one night Gordon camped to await the
morning. Weary and worn out with many days of exertion, he slept soundly,
dreaming of home and friends, wife and children. When he awoke the
stillness of the frozen north seemed more depressing than ever before.
There were many weary miles to travel yet; but he got up with resolutions
as strong as ever. He prepared the morning meal before he attempted to
wake Kennedy. But Kennedy would never awaken again.

Gordon was shocked and heart-broken on making the awful discovery. His
big-hearted Irish friend was beyond the aid of an earthly physician.

Perhaps it was the loneliness and the utter helplessness of the big man
that took away his courage and caused him to give up and die; for he had
seemed very much depressed before Gordon went to sleep that night.

But Gordon’s friendship did not die, and for four wearisome days he
tugged at the sledge dragging the dead body of his friend over the
crunching snow, too true a friend to desert an old companion even after
death had robbed the body of all that was loving and lovable, and the
generous Irish heart was silenced forever.

Who but Gordon could picture those last days and lonely nights, when he
labored so hard at his task, and camped alone on the dreary snow at the
side of his friend. He must sleep close to the body at night to prevent
the hungry wolves from devouring all that was left of his friend.

Alone with the dead and the awful dreariness and bitter cold, and the
realization that the trip had been a failure. Friendship had done all
that friend could do for the living, and all that friend could do for the
dead. The town was reached and Kennedy given decent burial, and Gordon
returned to the States.

Little Fred Gordon. To look at him one would never dream of such
friendship and courage. When I knew him he was keeping a feed store at
the corner of Fifth and Main streets, Grand Junction, Colorado, with no
thought of that awful experience in the land of delusive gold.




SIGHING OF THE PINES


To me there is something fascinating about an old deserted house standing
near a lonely country road. The sashless windows and open doorways always
remind me of some strange animal gasping in the agonies of death. And I
fall to wondering whether the people were happy who once occupied the
home when it was new. What were their hopes and ambitions? Did they love
some one, and were they loved in return? Did children once play around
that damaged door and look out through those windows and long to go out
in the world and accomplish great things?

A few Sundays ago I rode out over the country roads near my home, and
finally came to a road on which I had never traveled before. It led down
a valley that extended to the creek a few miles below. We drove down this
road after inquiring and learning that it connected with the creek road.
We knew our bearings when safely on the creek highway. We had not driven
a mile before we came to the ideal fascinating deserted house. All around
it rank weeds and briars were growing. The one door facing the road was
very low, and on closer examination we discovered that two of the lower
logs had rotted away, allowing the house to settle down two feet or more.
The windows were small and warped out of shape, and not a single sash
in place. The mortar and packing were gone from the crevices between the
logs, and the old stone chimney was ragged and battered at the top.

But the wonder was that the shingles were in pretty good condition. They
had been hewn from the virgin pine and shaved by the man who built the
house some eighty years ago.

It was a story-and-a-half house, the upper half-story consisting of the
garret only. The upper floor was missing and one could see to the rafters
when looking in the open door.

While we were sitting in the buggy and looking with a peculiar awe upon
the old home, an old man came along and we asked him who had built the
house. He stopped and walked over to the fence, put one foot on the
second rail to rest his leg, and pointing to the old ruins with his
crooked cane, said:

“This is the Fred Beaver home. He came here from Germany in 1824, and
settled on this piece of land. He had only been married six weeks before
he sailed for the new world. He had barely enough money to bring him and
his young wife to America. He had a cousin living near here at the time,
and that is how he came to locate here in the woods. His wife was never
contented, but kept longing and longing for the dear old home across the
sea. They were very poor, so my father told me, often not having enough
to eat, and this made life still more dreary for the homesick wife.

“At the end of five years, they had two children—Frederick and
Elizabeth—Elizabeth is still living down in the town, a very old woman.
After the children were born, Mrs. Beaver realized that she could never
go back to her home across the sea. She would never have the money to pay
her passage. She felt like a caged lion pining behind iron bars. Before
the babies came she hoped to save money enough to go back and take her
husband along—providing he would go. If not, she would go alone. He was
a hunchback and not really kind to her, though he loved her after the
manner of a wild animal loving its mate.

“One day Beaver came home and found the children crying with hunger. They
were only four and two years old. The boy could talk enough to inform his
father that his mother had gone up to the loft and would not come down.
The man climbed up the ladder and was horrified to find his wife hanging
to a rafter—dead. She had taken the rope out of the bed to hang herself
with. Her longing and longing for the home across the sea had ceased
forever. If you will come to the door I can show you the rafter on which
she was hanging. No? Don’t care to?

“Yes, the father lived right here with the children after that. He got
a house keeper from somewhere in the neighborhood. He was young and the
love of life was still in his soul, but he never married another woman.
Years afterward the children would find him sitting under the rafter on
which his wife died, weeping like a child.

“Yes, the son, young Fred, built the new house over yonder, after he got
married, and took his father there to live. But the old man would come
back daily and sit in the open door and sing the German hymn that was the
favorite with his wife when they were courting across the sea.

“Yes, they say the house is haunted, since the old man died. People
passing on moonlight nights insist that they see Beaver and his wife
sitting in the open door, and hear a low crooning song. Me? Oh, I think
the noise is the sighing of the pines over yonder.”




THE HOME-SICK HORSES


“Do horses think?” asked a lady of my acquaintance, and I hastened to
assure her that they did. I told her of the horse my boy drives every
Saturday evening to sell newspapers to the farmers near our home. Just so
soon as the horse sees that the boy is delivering papers he turns into
the gate of every regular customer and stops. If strangers get into the
buggy old “Vinci” turns his head to see who it is and what they look like.

“Yes,” replied the woman, “and they have melancholy thoughts, and become
home-sick, like human beings, too. The saddest thing I recall from my
farm life happened when I was a girl of twelve years. We had a little
team of bay horses named Colonel and Rock. When they were seven years old
father sold them to a man who lived away back on the mountains. I cried
when the man drove them away—cried because I hated to part with them,
and because the poor horses did not realize that they were sold and were
being driven away, never to return to the old barn and eat from the old
manger. And every time I met the horses on the road I noticed how lean
they were getting, and how melancholy and dejected they appeared. I could
see sorrow written all over their faces.

“I used to lie in bed and think of the long weary trips they were obliged
to make out over the rough mountain roads, and always pictured them
leaning in their collars and drawing the heavy load to their new home.
I don’t believe they were ever satisfied and contented with their new
master, but always dreamed of returning to the old home some glad day.

“Two years after they were sold they were turned out into the pasture
field for the night. Somehow I went to sleep thinking of Colonel
and Rock that same night. Were they thinking of me? Some believe in
the transmission of thought waves, and if this is true, why not the
transmission of animal thoughts, as well as human thoughts that go out
unspoken to distant friends?

“At midnight a storm came up and the fence surrounding the pasture field
was blown down in several places. After the storm was over both horses
found a broken panel in the fence and walked out of the inclosure. It
was ten miles back to their old home. I can see them look a ray of
intelligence into each other’s eyes, and then mutually start southward
over the lonely mountain road. They could hear the sound of the
locomotive whistle coming out through the night air, and they knew that
near the old barn there was a railroad track where these iron monsters
passed many times every day.

“And I was at home dreaming of just such a trip as they were making, only
I dreamed that I was with them and talking to them and telling them how
much I missed them since they were taken away.

“Early in the morning I awoke from my dreams and rushed to the back
window and looked toward the barn. ‘Mother!’ I shouted, ‘out yonder at
the barn stand dear old Colonel and Rock! They have come back home!’ She
came to the window and looked and gave a glad shout of surprise, for she,
too, felt sorry ever since the horses were driven away. How glad I was to
see them! but how my heart smote me when I saw how lean and dejected they
looked. I would put on my clothes and go out to feed them out of their
old manger.

“But while I looked a man came dashing up on a big black horse. It was
the owner of Colonel and Rock. He had gone out early in the morning and
saw that the horses were gone. He found the place where they left the
field and saw that their tracks turned toward the river. Did he, too,
realize that Rock and Colonel were never satisfied, and were always
longing for the old home?

“Mother went out and begged that the horses might be fed in their old
stalls before taken away, but the man was angry, and cursed Rock and
Colonel, and jerked at their bridles viciously and cut them severely with
a wicked whip as he lashed them into a trot and started back over the old
home-sick mountain road. At the bend of the road both horses turned and
looked back longingly, and I burst into bitter tears.”




THE BLIND CIGARMAKER


Riding into the city one day on the overland stage I looked far ahead and
there I saw a man coming down the middle the road. The highway was ankle
deep with dust, and I surely thought the man was drunk. I remarked to the
stage driver: “There comes a blind man;” and then I laughed, for I still
thought the man was intoxicated.

As we drew near I could see the man feeling his way with a heavy cane. He
was blind, and I had laughed at his blindness! But, as God is my judge, I
did not know it until after we drew so near to him that I could see his
cane.

The blind man heard the stage approach and stepped to the side of the
road for us to pass. And then I recognized the poor fellow—it was Peter
Paul. I knew him thirty years ago, when his diminishing eyesight warned
him that total blindness was near at hand.

Mentally Peter is far below the average, but he realizes that society
owed him sufficient brotherly love to make an attempt to save him from
the awful calamity of total blindness. He was a poor cigarmaker, and
barely earned a livelihood. He had no money to pay for treatment that
would help his poor eyes.

Think of it, in a land of Christian civilization a man is left to walk
in literal darkness right at our door, while zealous men and women send
thousands of dollars to so-called heathen lands, to save the people there
from so-called mental blindness. Justice and common sense should teach
us to save the literally blind man at our door first, and then go out to
enlighten the blinded mental eyes of the heathen. Charity begins at home:
if charity jumps over human suffering at home, and goes far abroad to do
spectacular work in the name of religion, both charity and religion are
misplaced.

I spoke to the blind man as the stage passed, and the response came so
very promptly that any one could see how gladly he received the greetings
of a human voice. And then came the words that showed so plainly that
the blind always feel a sense of danger when walking alone: “Am I near
the river bridge?” I told him how far it was to the bridge as the stage
whirled by, and then I turned and watched the poor fellow feeling his way
down the dusty road.

He carried a big box strapped to his shoulders in which he took cigars
to the town to sell, or trade for goods. He long ago married a widow who
lived in a village twenty miles north of the city, where he had been born
and reared. He still manufactured a poor variety of domestic cigars, and
when a stock accumulated beyond the local trade he would load a dozen
boxes on his back and start for the city, stopping to peddle his goods in
every little hamlet along the road.

Many good people ridiculed the idea of Peter Paul enjoying the society
of a wife. They thought it an extravagant idea. He should be denied
all this, because of his calamity. Men who value woman’s love next to
nothing, simply laughed at Peter. He could get along so easily without
such a luxury. But I tell you, dear reader, the man who puts no value on
woman’s love has more of the animal in him than true manhood. He makes
the poorest citizen of all men. And Peter Paul, though stone blind, has
as much right to value woman’s love as any other living man. His world
is dark enough, God knows, without denying him the one ray of light and
happiness that falls across his midnight road.

Perhaps the stage driver wondered why I was so silent during the rest of
the ride into town, but I could not erase blind Peter Paul from my mind.
Not only Peter, but in the city he had a brother and sister who were
blind. These two lived and kept house, being assisted by good neighbors
to obtain the necessaries of life. They inherited weak eyes from their
maternal parent, and through poverty and neglect they were allowed to
drift into absolute blindness without a single effort on the part of
society to save them from the awful calamity.

Seems to me that whatever knowledge science has gained in the treatment
of human eyes should be a free gift to humanity. If ever a public fund
was needed to save the unfortunate from such a calamity of darkness,
surely the treatment of the eyes should be as free as the salvation of
Jesus Christ.

I shut my eyes and see poor old Peter feeling his way down the dusty
road, with a big box strapped to his back, and I can not help but believe
that God is holding society guilty of brutal neglect. Seems to me that
when blind Peter Paul goes feeling his way to the gates of heaven many of
his sins will be taken from his back and charged up to society.




THE THREE CLASSES


Montgomery Quiggle once said: “The world’s population is divided into
three classes—those who have forged ahead of accepted theories, those
who have only reached the level of accepted theories, and those who are
slowly trudging along behind the march of progress without any theories
at all. And the strange thing of it all is, the middle class rule,
instead of those in advance.”

In fact, those in advance are punished for their advanced ideas, are
ostracised, maligned, mobbed and often imprisoned at the dictates of the
middle class, while the rear class of mere thoughtless plodders cheer the
proceedings when an advanced thinker is thus caught and punished.

It has always been thus. Galileo was an early victim, so was Bruno,
Savanarola, and a thousand other bright mental lights who threw beams of
illumination far in advance of the thick-headed middle class. The thinker
has always been a martyr to truth and justice. The man who would remove
the mental fetters that chain the human mind, has always been treated as
a heretic and traitor to good government and morality.

And the mobs that are chained to the old fogyism are always ready to
crucify the thinker who would dare devise means of setting them at
liberty.

The middle class are always insisting that they have arrived at the top
of advanced ideas, and that it is an unpardonable sin to advance one
single step farther. Whatever form of government is accepted by them is
the right form, and the “crank” who would suggest anything different, is
a bad man.

And the unthinking plodders take up the cry and shout “Bad man!” at
everybody who accepts the new theory. In fact, the plodding mob is
used as a tail to the middle class kite, and as of material assistance
in helping to hold the kite in proper position to catch the breeze.
And it is because the advanced class refuse to serve as a tail to the
conservative kite that they are persecuted. They may in time persuade the
mob of plodders to cease playing tail-piece to the middle class kite, and
let the kite come down with a bang and break up its stock of old exploded
theories and decayed ideas, and so leave them floundering in the mud of
mental stagnation.

Read up the history of the old martyrs, men who died on the scaffold and
at the stake for truth’s sake, and you will find in every instance that
they were men of advanced ideas—men who had broken away from conservative
fogyism and had made some attempt to break the fetters that bind the
minds of men and set them free.

In the eyes of the middle class there can be no greater crime than to
make an attempt to break the fetters of the mental slaves and stir the
minds of the plodding, unthinking mob and set them to thinking real
thoughts and evolving new theories.

Go back a few years previous to the abolition of human slavery and notice
how the advanced thinkers were treated. History tells how Thompson
narrowly escaped the mob at Concord, for teaching that human slavery is a
crime against God and man. Whittier was pelted with mud and stones, and
Garrison was often mobbed in Boston.

At one time a subscription to a fund was asked of the Norfolk people to
pay for the heads of Thompson, Garrison and Zappan, and many Southern
cities threatened to boycott all cities in the North that allowed men
to teach the abolition of slavery. And the plodding mob who were little
better than slaves themselves were ready to cast the first stone or
brickbat at the advanced thinkers who could see human slavery from the
human side.

I know a woman in Colorado who had once been a Mormon. She had been born
and reared in Mormondom. But she began to doubt the whole institution
when asked to become the fourth wife of a wealthy Mormon elder. Her
ideas had advanced beyond the pagan idea of such gross immorality. It was
lucky for this woman that just outside of Utah there were thousands of
people advanced beyond pagan morals. She fled from home one night in a
covered wagon, and outside the city she met her lover, the young Gentile
who had taught her the sham and pretentions of her father’s religion.

In Colorado they found safety and happiness. She was an old woman when
I met her, but she said she still trembled when she looked back to her
early experience. Had all the world believed in Mormonism she could not
have escaped the lust of the Mormon elder and a life of misery.




HISSED AND HOOTED


I saw him when he first came out of the Sisters’ hospital. He had been
with the Sells Brothers’ Circus, but was taken with mountain fever while
the show was in Grand Junction, Colorado. His wife was a tight rope
dancer and trapeze performer, and went on with the show. She may have
regretted to go, and she may not have cared at all. She had never written
to him after she went away. He told me confidentially that he suspected
her of being infatuated with one of the acrobats, but hoped to win her
back when he got on his feet again.

Somehow or other, every man with a pain at his heart came to me in that
faraway town. Was it because I was homesick and kept longing, longing for
the valleys of old Pennsylvania, and the unfortunate could read something
in my face that encouraged them to unburden their souls to me? Even my
wife was drawn into some of the unfortunate love affairs of the young men
and women, and we listened to the tales of woe, like martyrs, and gave
advice which we knew would never be followed; for who can advise a young
man or woman in love?

One poor fellow had been jilted by a young woman who visited at our home
very often, and he came around almost every evening to try and have a
last interview with her. But she never came back after treating the young
man so badly, for she knew our feelings in the matter. The man she jilted
was a handsome boy—a young French Canadian, and the man she intended to
marry was a boasting Yankee from Michigan.

Finally we persuaded George to go over into Wyoming, as he intended to do
if the girl married him; where he fell in love with a Western girl and
was happily married in less than a year. Emma married young Lane, and
deserted him in less than two years, and we never saw her again.

And the poor showman came likewise to me and told his tale of sorrow and
financial troubles. A relative of mine was organizing a little circus in
the town, and proposed going on the road after the summer fair. I secured
a situation for my new friend, but when the opening day came the poor
fellow had not gained sufficient strength to perform on the bars, or ride
bareback, as he had been doing before he was taken down with fever.

But he could sing a song, so on the first night he came out before an
unappreciative and unsympathetic audience and tried to sing. He did not
know that weakness of the body interfered with the voice. The audience
laughed at first, for they thought he was imitating an old man; but when
they discovered that the poor emaciated fellow was giving them the best
he had, they hooted him and hissed him, and called to him to take the
frog out of his throat, and to get more wind, and to go and hire out as a
nurse and sing to the baby.

Oh, how I pitied the poor fellow. The refrain of his song was: “But I
will say nothing, not I!” I went around to the dressing room to console
the poor man, for there was a look on his face when he left the ring
which I did not like to see. He had been despondent and dejected before,
but when he left the ring there was a look of desperation on his thin
face. I found him sitting on a trunk taking a fond look at the photo of
his absent wife. I tried to start a conversation with him, but he only
looked at me and asked: “Did you catch the refrain of the song I tried to
sing? Well ‘I will say nothing—not I’ tonight. You have been kind to me,
and some day it will come back to you, like bread cast upon the waters,
but nothing will ever come back to me. My heart is broken—I am no good. I
am deserted and alone. The woman I loved has left me, and my luck will go
with her—good bye—I’m going out.”

He shook hands and I said, “Wayne, I will see you in the morning.”

“Yes, in the morning,” he replied, as he lifted the flap of the tent and
passed out into the night, while I returned to the big tent and tried to
become interested in the performance.

Next morning the body of my despondent friend was found in the Grand
river, just below the bridge, lodged on the middle island.

When the ringmaster announced to the audience that the man who had been
hissed from the ring on the previous night had drowned himself, there
were a few “Oh’s!” from the women, but the men who hissed him were not
there. One man said if they had known the real facts, they would not have
hissed; but when people do not know the real facts, is when they should
be merciful—always.




THE WAR WITH SELF


If all wars were once abolished, and universal peace established, don’t
think for a moment that the age of conquests and triumphs would be
absolutely past forever. Those who argue that war and conquest bring
out man’s best energy and build up strong manhood, can turn their guns
against themselves and find all they care to fight. A man at war with his
appetite and passions and human frailties and weakness finds his match.
The man will not always be on top. At some careless hour a man will
forget his vigilance and watchfulness and will fall before the onslaught
of his passion or appetite, and it will require many days for him to
regain his former position and place human weakness under his feet.

I have seen strong men bowed down to the lowest notch of humiliation,
with all their courage and hope gone, yet no one did them a wrong. It was
only their own appetite and passion that dealt them the crushing blow.
No use to sit down and grieve over the fall. Grieving only adds to the
first defeat. A man’s own appetite and passion and lust and hate and fear
and weakness are his worst enemies, if once they get the upper hand. And
in our youth we are apt to receive our first defeat; before we know the
subtle strength of our weakness, we often become its victim.

Ninety per cent. of all the suicides come through man’s battle with self,
and his defeat. After a man has become a slave to appetite and passion
there isn’t much in life worth living for, and he falls a victim to
the worst of all weaknesses—the fear to go on with life to its natural
end. And how often the criminal, against whom every hand is raised in
condemnation, is only the victim of his own weakness.

Theodore Radden became the victim of self before he was sixteen years
old. His appetite began to rule him before he was twenty, and passion
began to ruin him at the same time. He found congenial company in
the lowest dives of his native town, where the fallen men and women
collected, like buzzards, to feast on each other’s fallen condition.
Several times he fought successfully with himself and broke away from his
evil associates, only to fall back again when temptation laid her snares
to catch his uncertain feet.

Once he held out for two years, and during that time he met and loved and
married a beautiful girl. In her eyes he found a new world, and for over
a year he lived in the only earthly paradise known to man—the world of
love.

How proud his wife was when she contemplated his physical strength and
manly beauty, never dreaming that the moral man within had been many
times conquered by temptation, and was absolutely unqualified to conquer
himself. She was but a weak and frail body, but morally she was a giant
of strength, while he was but a pigmy in the grasp of former defeats.
She was a country girl, and in marrying her he, too, lived out in God’s
beautiful country and far away from the influence of old associates.

But one unfortunate day he was obliged to go to the city. By chance he
met an old associate and was invited to take a social glass. And while
in the saloon he met a bad woman who had much influence over him in past
days. She knew that he had married and left the gang, and she set about
to bring him back. It was her weakness to lead men astray. She was not
all bad, nor had she always been bad. Once she had been a good girl, full
of hope and happy dreams; but her own weakness gained a victory over her,
and she fell. Even then she was not all bad. Many the poor woman and
half starved hobo had eaten at her expense, and on many occasions she
stooped and kissed a weeping child on the street and tried to soothe its
sorrowing heart.

Did she love Theodore Radden? No one will ever know, but many thought she
did, and that her love knew no moral code of honor, nor cared anything
for public opinion. She already knew what opinion the world entertained
for her—what need she care for public opinion?

And Theodore Radden fell a victim to his own weakness. He blamed the
woman for it all, just the same as Adam did; but nobody took Adam
seriously, nor will they take Theodore Radden’s word for it. A week later
the woman crawled to the street from a tenement house, bleeding from
several ugly wounds in her breast. Before she died she told them that
Theodore Radden had shot her in a drunken brawl, accusing her of parting
him from his wife; to which accusation she confessed her guilt, and said
she deserved to die at his hands.

Inside the house the police found Theodore Radden—dead. He had shot
himself through the head, after shooting the woman who tempted him from
the paradise where now only a brokenhearted woman was leaving to go out
into the shadows of sorrow and live her lonely life to the end. She had
never fallen, and she knew not how to forgive the woman who had led her
husband to his death.




CRIPPLE JOE AND THE SHOWMAN


Returning home from Reading on a Sunday not long ago, I was forced to
lie over at Pottsville for three long hours. I was angry with myself for
leaving Reading on Sunday, for the trains are so infernally chaotic and
uncertain on this day of mental distress. I must reach Williamsport in
time to catch the evening train on the Pennsy at 7.10, or be obliged to
lie over until Monday morning. Everybody in the station was feeling about
as blue as I was, for we were all travelers, and opposed to three hours
of monotonous delay. I walked the station outside and inside for about an
hour, and once as I passed the door leading into the toilet room I heard
a plaintive voice at my feet. I looked down and beheld a small body—a wee
boy sitting flat on the floor. He was looking up to me and speaking, but
I could not distinguish the words. I stooped down and asked the boy to
repeat his words: “Won’t you help a poor cripple?”

“Sure!” I exclaimed, as I caught sight of the poor twisted legs doubled
up under his body, and I reached into my pocket and handed him a couple
of coins. He reached out his hand and took my donation, and while he was
looking at them I sat down in a nearby seat. He then looked up into my
face with gratitude in his eyes and exclaimed: “Oh, thank you!” Then he
caught the arms of the seat and pulled himself into the adjoining seat
with his stout arms, looked into my face again and repeated: “Oh thank
you.”

I was interested in the boy, so I asked: “How did you become so
helplessly crippled?” “Born that way,” he replied carelessly, and then
whistled to a boy across the station room. The boy shouted back: “Hello
Joe, what luck today?” “Good!” the cripple replied, jingling several
coins in his pocket. Just then a red faced man came in through the south
door and Joe caught sight of him and called: “Hello, Charley!” Charley
didn’t turn his face our way, so the boy gave a shrill little whistle,
and the man turned toward us. “Hello, Charley! Come over here.”

The red faced man crossed the room hurriedly and Joe held out his hand,
pulled it back and removed his soiled glove, then extended the hand
again, saying: “It’s awfully muddy, and I get my gloves soiled crawling
around on the floor.”

The red faced man took Joe’s hand in his and greeted the cripple warmly,
but was called away before he could say more. While the red faced man
was talking to the man who called him away from us, I turned to Joe and
inquired: “Is he your brother?” The boy laughed and replied: “Oh, no;
he’s a showman—gave a show here last night—a good one, too—I met him up
at the opera—”

He stopped talking and whistled in a high key, like steam escaping under
high pressure. The red faced man came back to us again and the boy said,
in accusing tones: “Say, Charley, you went back on me—you weren’t as good
as your word. You promised to pass me into the show, and you didn’t show
up, so I had to cough up fifteen cents of my money.”

“Well, that’s too bad!” the man said. “I’ll just pay you back right here.”

He began to search through his pockets carefully, and finally exclaimed:
“I haven’t got a cent of change in my pockets now, but you wait here
until I buy my ticket, and I’ll have some change then. I’m going away on
the 1.50 train.”

“You’re foolin’, ain’t you, Charley? You’re goin’ away without livin’ up
to your promise, ain’t you, Charley?”

“Bet your life I ain’t Joe! I’m going to get change when the ticket
window opens and then——”

He went off to talk to his friend again at the opposite end of the room,
but every five minutes lame Joe would just whistle to him and say, “You
won’t forget, Charley!”

I became interested. Would the showman prove true to his promise? He
surely would. No man who could deliberately deceive a poor little cripple
like Joe could possibly possess enough sentiment in his soul to please an
audience. Once when Joe wasn’t looking, Charley winked at me and smiled.
What did he mean? Was he amused at Joe’s doubts, or was he tasting the
joke he was going to play on the poor boy later on? So certain was I of
this that I began to look at the man more closely. His face was a puzzle.
Not a bad face, but no doubt a lover of a practical joke. Maybe he
thought it a great joke that any one should expect to have his entrance
money refunded after the show was over.

I began to hate the man for what he intended to do, and pitied the boy
more and more, as so many people passed by unheeding his petition, “Won’t
you help a poor cripple?” They couldn’t help but hear, but so many people
have grown calloused to the appeals of the unfortunate that they can pass
through a shower of appeals without even putting up an umbrella.

One man even declared to me, on the side, that Joe’s begging should
be prohibited. He said it encouraged begging in other boys who were
not cripples. He said the town of Pottsville should support the boy in
comfort, and not drive him to begging for a living. In his own city he
paid an annual poor tax for the support of the indigent people, and
stopped at this. He was opposed to begging.

I suggested that maybe the sound of a beggar’s voice kept our hearts
mellow and our charity warm toward the world and God’s miserable poor. He
gave me a look of contempt and passed on. I do not know his profession.
He might have been a lawyer or a minister or a doctor. Anyhow, he was no
worse than the showman who was going to fool poor Joe.

Then the ticket window went up and there was a rush of people. I heard
Joe’s voice above the noise of tramping feet: “Don’t forget, Charley!”

I felt like crying. Poor crippled Joe! The crowd was rushing for the
train. I saw Charley stop and drop several coins into Joe’s outstretched
hand, and heard his “Oh, thank you, Charley! I’ll go to your show every
time you come back to Pottsville.”




RACE SUICIDE


During the last ten years race suicide has been one of the leading
problems of life, and on several occasions I have written my views on
this subject. I have not changed my views at all after hearing the many
arguments of the old conservative “stand patters” who try to imitate
Solomon and the other prolific polygamists of long ago. There is no such
a thing as race suicide. When big families are necessary, the big family
will be fashionable. There is an ebb and flow to everything. Just now the
pendulum of progress is swinging out toward the small, healthy, educated
family of two to six children.

In pioneer days in this country, when it was desirable to have many
children born to the new soil, and thus populate the wild country with
people who knew of no other land, and would more likely live contented in
the American wilderness than in the over-populated, lord-laden countries
beyond the seas, the big family was a safeguard against the encroachments
of the Indian and was desirable.

So, too, when Mormonism was a weak doctrine, and grown men would not
accept it as a religion, the pioneers of that faith removed to Utah
and built a city on the parched desert by the inland sea known as Salt
Lake. From here they sent out missionaries to foreign countries, making
converts among the women and families that were prolific in bearing
children. It shows the wisdom of Brigham Young.

He preached to the women that every child born to them added a new star
to their crown of glory. Those who believed the doctrine were anxious to
add to the population of Utah and add a few stars to their future crown.
This is one reason why the unmarried women accepted polygamy. The one
great desire, fired by religious enthusiasm, was to bear children who
would fight for the new doctrine.

It was a matter of wisdom on one side and sheer deception on the other.
It was cheaper to rear Mormon recruits than to secure them full grown.
And the child Mormon would never renounce the faith imbibed at the
mother’s knee.

And thus you will find the situation in all cases where the race was made
to believe that God loved the prolific woman better than the barren maid.
Women will submit to anything, if made to believe it is their religious
duty to do so. But men now realize that there is a psychological problem
connected with the rearing of children, and the question is asked: Is
it the wisest thing to bring into the world many children who cannot
obtain a practical education, and therefore over-populate the nation with
ignorant and dependent creatures? Do we not need quality rather than
quantity?

Is Germany any better off with its prolific families than France with
reduced numbers? Or take your own village or town—who is the best
prepared for the battles of life, the child belonging to a family of
fifteen members, or the child who is one of three or four offsprings?

In my own neighborhood the small families are the best educated or at
least have the best opportunities to educate the children. I know of two
families within a day’s travel of my home that have fifteen children
each. Thirty children in two poor families! And not a single child
obtained a common school education. They were obliged to go out to
service before they were fifteen years old, and many at even a younger
age. They are good citizens for the single reason that they were raised
in the country, where few temptations are found. Had they been born in
the city slums, what could have saved them from a life of crime? As it
is, not a single child will stand any chance to make the world better
for their having lived in it; for they belong to parents who came from
prolific families, and where education was only a luxury to be handed
over to the wealthy.

If Nature intended men and women to be as helpless in the reproduction
of their kind as the fruit tree or the wild animals, the knowledge of
reducing the crop would have been withheld from them. And until men
gained this knowledge Nature was obliged to step in and reduce the
population by famine, disease or earthquake and flood. It was an object
lesson against over-population, and to show men that there was no hurry
about God’s work. If God is love, he certainly does not desire the job of
removing an over-population through the means of some awful calamity or a
visitation of disease.

Don’t you suppose the God of nature loves to see men live in comfort and
plenty? The Meat Trust and the Kaiser want large families, but the Meat
Trust and the Kaiser have motives far removed from bringing happiness
into the world. The one wants children to consume more benzoated meat,
and the other wants to turn children into soldiers and human butchers.

The man who cries for overgrown families of children, to be brought up in
rags and ignorance and slavery, has not the happiness of the race in his
heart. He wants them for a selfish, barbarous purpose—for profit and for
plunder.




FOR A STAGE CAREER


She was a beautiful woman and her costumes were magnificent, but there
seemed to be a lack of soul in her acting. There was applause from the
house every time she came on the stage, and seldom she escaped after
singing a song in her entrancing voice without returning and singing to
an encore. There was the sweetness of despair in her voice, but made a
trifle harsh by a spirit of defiance. A trained ear could distinguish the
lack of harmony in her soul. The man at my side turned to me as she left
the stage and said:

“That poor girl has a history, and a sad one. It is one thing to have a
sorrow or an adventure that is absolutely located in the past, but still
another thing to have a sorrow and a regret that follows one through life
like a shadow.”

I looked at him in wonderment and he continued: “I have met her and she
told me of her mistaken life. She was so full of her sorrow and regret
that she simply had to talk of it to some one, and I am always a willing
listener when a troubled soul opens the secret door and invites me to
walk in and sit in the shadow.

“She told me that from the time she first took a leading part in a school
entertainment she had a desire for a stage career. She grew up with this
desire burning in her soul, at which fire she toasted her mental shins
every night before going to sleep. She never missed an opportunity to
take part in any entertainment given by the local talent of her village.
At seventeen she fell deeply in love with a young carpenter and they
became engaged to marry. Of course, the wedding was not to take place for
several years, since her young man was poor and must first set aside a
few hundred dollars to start with.

“After this engagement she went to attend school in the city, where
she met the son of a very wealthy business man. He fell desperately in
love with her, though many years older. One evening while out riding he
proposed to her, and she told him of her ambition. ‘Promise me a stage
career, and I will marry you,’ she told him. He readily agreed to this,
and the engagement and contract was entered into at that hour. He sent
her to a training school immediately, from where she wrote to her village
lover that their engagement must be declared a thing of the past, since
she had resolved to go on the stage, and give up the old life and the old
friends.

“The year following her debut on the professional stage she married the
man who made a stage career possible, but the face of the young carpenter
looked out of the shadows and reproached her as the train that took her
on her wedding tour went flying through the night. Only then it dawned on
her that she did not love the man who was to give her a stage career—did
not love him enough to become his bride, because her heart was still back
in the village with the broken-hearted carpenter to whom she gave her
most sincere and innocent love.

“And ever since this ambitious marriage there is the ghost of a wrong
follows her and looks with reproachful eyes from the dark corners of
every opera house. Her husband is kind to her, and follows her wherever
she goes, and is proud of her success; but always this truth is before
her—she sold her body to secure a stage career, but her heart was never a
partner in the deal. How much happier she could be in the humble home of
the poor carpenter, had not ambition so blinded her unsophisticated soul.

“What is life and success and the applause of the world when love’s
first and only idol lies broken at one’s feet? Happiness must be shared
with those we love best, and when we are obliged to share everything the
heart holds sacred with some one we can never love, the pleasures of life
crumble in our hands like an image that has been reduced to ashes. And
the ashes are always being blown into our eyes, and into our mouth, and
the taste is bitter, bitter; and the unloved lips that touch ours are
tainted with the bitterness of all life’s regrets and mistakes, though
we are tied to them with pledges and promises that must never, never be
broken.”




THE DEAD OF THE LAND AND SEA


Below I publish some verses I wrote thirty years ago, and while I worked
as a common laborer in the lumber woods of Tioga County, Pennsylvania. In
a religious discussion with a pious comrade he quoted Scripture to prove
that the earth and sea shall ultimately give up their dead, and each
individual shall be punished, or blest, according to the deeds committed
while they lived. The more I thought over this horrible picture, the more
I doubted that a God of Love would be so revengeful toward any of his
poor creatures, who are born into ignorance and superstition, and must go
mentally creeping through a life of hunger and pain.


OH, LET THEM SLEEP!

    They tell me that the earth and sea
    Will some day give up all their dead.
    Oh, what a strange day that will be
    To happen thus, as has been said:
    Clothed in power a God will stand—
    With outstretched hands this God will be—
    With one foot on the sea-washed sand,
    The other buried in the sea,
    And loudly call: “Come forth, ye dead,
    No matter where in death you fell;
    Come with a sentence on your head—
    You’ll make good fodder for my hell!

    Come with the heartaches that died with you,
    With ashes of hope within your hand:
    You died as all earth’s creatures do—
    Foreclosure, at Death’s demand.
    Come before me for sentence now—
    Come ev’ry one—I know you all:
    A few shall wear the glory brow,
    But many, many must go to hell!”
    “Oh, stay your hand, revengeful God,
    And let us all sleep where we lie!
    You know that man is but a clod—
    Was born to suffer and to die:
    And life is but chaotic dreams;
    With human love our one reward;
    We drifted down life’s midnight streams
    To stem the tide we found too hard.

    “Oh, let us sleep, revengeful God,
    Oblivion seems to fit us well;
    Here, mingled with the friendly clod,
    Is better far than pagan hell.”
    But this strange God will pay no heed
    To all the bitter cries that well—
    Cold as a rock, with savage greed,
    He’ll cast them into scorching hell!

       *       *       *       *       *

    A savage giant captured men,
    And took their wives and children, too,
    And put them in a dismal pen,
    And asked himself what he must do.
    He ne’er had eaten human flesh—
    His soul revolted at the thought;
    The clothes they wore were only trash,
    By their own hands they had been wrought.

    “I’ll torture them,” the giant said,
    “To see them writhe and twist with pain;
    I’ll watch them in their torture bed,
    And hear them weep and wail in vain.”
    And, while he planned, the pris’ners slept.
    A mother drew close to her breast
    The babe that had so loudly wept,
    And soon they both had sunk to rest.

    And now the giant loudly called;
    “Come forth, ye creatures of the damn’d
    And in this pit, so strangely walled,
    I’ll torture you, as I have planned,
    Forever you shall weep and cry—
    ’Twill be sweet music in my ears—
    For you shall never, never die
    While eternity winds up the years!”

       *       *       *       *       *

    I made this giant—who made this God,
    To do the work my giant schemed?
    For spirit ne’er this cold world trod
    With such a heart as brute man dreamed.
    The God who loves the blooming flower,
    Who tuned the voice of child and bird,
    Would never use his God-like power
    To conjure tortures so absurd.

    No! No! and when the earth and sea
    Give up the dead they’re holding fast,
    A God of love and life there’ll be
    Forgiving man his painful past;
    For, would a God who can forgive,
    Call back the dead from where they sleep,
    And take delight to have them live,
    Where they eternally must weep?
    If this be true, then keep your dead,
    Oh, tear-washed earth and troubled sea!
    And let them sleep within their bed
    To rest throughout eternity.




WHERE DREAMS COME TRUE


Are dreams but idle things, or is there a land where all our happy dreams
come true? Dreams are queer freaks of the intellect. We dream of the
dead whom we have not seen for so long, that we can scarcely recall the
picture of their face in our wakeful hours, but in our dreams we walk
with them and talk with them and see them just as they were while living.
The picture printed on our brain cells never fades away, and when the
brain is held under the proper light, the old picture comes to view. Do
these pictures fade away absolutely at death, or is there a land where
all these brain pictures are stored away, to be given to us when we are
called back?

I do not know; but it is a pleasant dream to half-believe that this is
true; for without these memory pictures being restored to us, how shall
we know our loved ones in the beyond when we meet them again? If the
grave swallows all our happy visions and dreams, the new life will find
us as babes, beginning to learn the very things we forgot at death. Then
all our present individuality would be lost, and the immortal part of us
would be a stranger to the mortal creature that died. God might as well
call new beings into existence, as an unknown and unknowable part of the
original creature. Without a memory we would not be able to recognize our
own soul, should we meet him in the spirit world.

Hence a recollection of our dreams and our visions must go with us into
the spirit world, or we must go as strangers without knowledge or a
consciousness of the past. No use to be of immortal material, if the
changes squeeze out memory pictures, for they are the tender chords that
bind the two conditions together. Heaven must be a land where our dreams
come true, or it would have no connection with this earth and this life.

I once wrote a few verses on this subject, that have never yet been
published. They fit in here very nicely:

    Is there a land where our dreams come true,
      The dreams that we dream when asleep;
    A land of love that is always new,
      Where the joyous never weep?
    And the dreams that we dream when wide awake,
      When the silence is on our soul,
    When we look far out where the shadows break,
      And the Dead sea billows roll.

    Oh, is there a land where we shall awake,
      From a dream that is full of sighs,
    In a land where the boughs of the green trees shake
      In the breezes that sweep the skies;
    And behold the faces we loved so dear—
      Who bade us the long adieu—
    And see them smile without sigh or tear,
      Oh, will ever our dreams come true?

    I dreamed last night my mother came
      And sang with the old-time charms,
    And called me “darling” just the same
      As when I slumbered in her arms.
    The vision changed; I was a man,
      A baby’s hand was on my face,
    Its warm breath on my cheek, and then
      I felt the baby’s warm embrace.

    It was my baby, long since dead,
      Her dreamy eyes were good to see;
    Its baby tongue moved, and it said:
      “Oh, isn’t it sweet to dream of me!
    Oh, papa dear, your cheeks are wet,
      Just like the flowers are wet with dew,
    But soon you’ll wake, and you’ll forget
      The land where all our dreams come true!”

    Oh, is there a land where our dreams come true—
      The dreams we are dreaming all day long?
    And do they almost come into our view
      When our souls are carried away with song?
    Will all our visions and day-dreams return
      The same as the seasons and song birds do?
    Will we meet the dear ones for whom we yearn
      In the land of immortals, where dreams come true?




IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN


“No,” said my companion, as the train dashed on, “it is not true
that men love but once. I believe that a man loves more sensibly and
truly after he has had two or three infatuations and suffered as many
disappointments. I believe, too, it is the same with the sensible woman,
only she sometimes does not have the opportunity to love so often as a
man.

“The other day I met an old sweetheart on the train in company with her
mother. Once I would have married the woman, for I thought she was the
only one in the world, but her mother objected to the match. My blood
wasn’t blue enough. She was a good, warm-hearted girl, but she lacked
courage. Had she been a girl of spirit, she would have married me in
spite of all opposition. But she gave me up and broke her own heart over
the affair.

“I’ll admit that I was pretty well broken up at first, but my pride
came to my rescue. I made up my mind that I needed a wife of more
individuality and character, and I soon found her. In a little while I
was deeper in love than ever before. She was brighter, deeper and more
resolute. Her parents objected at first to her choice, but she told them
it was not they who were making the match. She said if a girl had no
choice in selecting a husband, the natural selection of sex was ignored,
and love was seen only from a financial view.

“Honest and true, I believe now it would have been very unfortunate had
the first sweetheart married me, though I believe I could have loved her
always, had her mother not broken up the match. Truly, I believe her life
has been blighted by that disappointment. She never married. Perhaps
she never had another chance. I do not know. They are poor now, and her
mother has lost much of her pride. She has confessed lately that she made
a mistake when she broke up Mary’s love affair.

“The day I met them on the train they were going to ignore my presence,
but I would not have it that way. I respect them too much to drop
absolutely out of their world. I simply took a seat behind them and
called their attention to my presence. It was the first time in twenty
years we had met. The mother was greatly confused at first, and Mary
blushed like a school girl; but after the ice was broken, we had a very
pleasant two hours’ ride. Mary asked all about my wife and children, and
expressed a desire to see them.

“I pitied the woman I once loved, for she looked very unhappy and
discontented with life. Her mother is growing quite feeble and she is
devoting her life to her parents. I pitied her. This was all there was
left of my love. As I looked at the disappointed woman, I thought of how
I once held her in my arms and we both swore eternal loyalty to each
other. How we had lied to each other. She cast me off as a duty and I
forgot her in retaliation. How foolish it would be then to cork ourselves
up and never love another.

“Once she was the idol of all my youthful dreams, the queen of my
children. Now I love another woman more fondly than I ever loved before,
because she is worthy of it. She gave up home and friends for me, and
proved her great love for me, and, after all, this is the true test of
our love. A man can’t long love a woman who has not the courage to love
him in spite of the oppositions of friends. She sinks out of sight and
some one else is sure to take her place, if he only waits. There is no
occasion to commit suicide if jilted by one woman. She never was worthy
of the fellow’s love, or she would not have jilted him. She never loved
him. The woman who loves a man truly will give up all the world for him.

“Still, I pity Mary. I would feel just a little more happy if she were
married to a good man. A man can’t help but pity any woman he once loved,
if he thinks her unhappy. His mind will insist on going back occasionally
to the days when that woman was the only woman in the world to him; when
it might have ended just as he had dreamed. It might have been otherwise
than it has turned out to be. His present love is a flower of a later
growth, even though of sweeter odor.”




A MISGUIDED MOTHER


It was no fault of his own that caused a separation between Walter Clark
and his young wife. She took a dislike to him after a short matrimonial
voyage, simply because she had never sincerely and truly loved him. She
was one of those impulsive girls who are determined to have their own
way in everything, and when they can’t have things just as they want
them, they become unreasonable. They never admit that they are in the
wrong. They are always right, and all the world is wrong. Walter Clark’s
demonstrations of love and affection became disagreeable to his cold and
frivolous wife. She preferred to sit down and pout rather than go with
her husband to the theatre, or on an excursion. Perhaps there had been
a previous lover whom she lost, and no man could fill his place in her
heart.

When Walter discovered that his wife was determined to disagree with
him in everything, and to grow more disagreeable every day, he let her
pass the time as best she could without his presence, which had become
so annoying to her. One day she bundled up her belongings and went home
to her mother. Maybe she thought Walter would come after her and plead
with her to go back to the old life. But, God knows, Walter had enough of
the old life and felt relieved when the change came into his life. Every
tender feeling he had once felt toward his wife had been destroyed, and
by her own disagreeable conduct. In his heart he had deified the girl
he married, but she proved to be an idol of miserable clay. Three years
after the separation he went on a visit to the Middle West. He met a
beautiful young woman and felt himself drawn toward her by her loveliness
and most charming manner. He was hungry for the love of a good and
true woman, and in his heart he believed he had found her at last. His
attentions were encouraged, and he felt love growing deeper and fonder
every day.

He despised traveling under false colors, and frankly went to the girl’s
mother and told her that he was a married man, but hoped to be freed
from his wife before long. He told of everything that led up to the
separation, and confessed that he loved her daughter fondly and truly,
and would try to make her a good husband.

The mother was shocked. A married man making love to her daughter! All
her orthodox prejudice and provincial suspicion rebelled against Walter,
and she turned him out of the house, as though he were a criminal of
the lowest type. She could not see that he had played fair—that he
sailed under his true colors and could give her references as to his
good character from the people of his own home city. No, she didn’t
want references—a married man was an outlaw in the realms of love and
courtship. In her eyes Walter was forever damned.

The honorable, but heart-broken young man left the town, and the incident
was closed. He would not tread on that mother’s rights, even though
he realized that she was playing tyrant, and wrecking her daughter’s
happiness.

Dazed and unhappy, the young girl could not realize whether she had been
wronged by the mother’s decision, or by the presumption of Walter Clark,
who won her love while he was married to another. The whole world seemed
to be deceptive and false.

She was aroused from this condition of despair a few months later when
a young “unmarried” traveling man came to town. He had all the dash
and brilliancy of the gay world, and the disappointed girl, and her
misguided, ambitious and unsuspecting mother were captivated. He spent
many of his evenings at the girl’s home, and the mother was pleased to
see her daughter sitting in the parlor with such a promising young man.
The daughter had been in disgrace since her love affair with a horrid
married man, but now the mother was pleased.

Soon after captivating the mother the young man persuaded the girl to
elope with him. Having lost the love of one man she was willing to listen
to any proposal the lover might make, so she consented. There could be
nothing wrong about the elopement, for her mother believed the young man
was perfect. It was only a bit of romance, and every girl is romantic
when in love.

Six months later the agonized mother received a tear-stained letter from
her daughter, written in the city of San Francisco. The daughter was
deserted, penniless and without a friend, and must end it all in suicide
unless her mother forgave her and took her back home.

Reluctantly the disillusioned mother sent money to bring her daughter
back to the old home, but she did not know all until the daughter’s
return in charge of a trained nurse. She was suffering from a loathsome
disease contracted from the libertine who had dragged her from her home;
and is today a miserable invalid in her mother’s house, scolded and
abused daily for her miserable condition. The misguided mother will not
confess that she ruined her daughter’s life when she turned the honorable
lover away, and took the human vampire into her parlor. No, she blames
everything on the poor, ruined girl. Poor, blind mother—your prejudice
drove the honorable lover away.




THE WORLD IS BLIND


So many of the world’s inhabitants are going through life mentally blind.
The greatest education does not always guarantee mental sight. It takes
real wisdom to open the human intellect, and education is not always
wisdom. A man may be able to solve great mathematical problems, diagram
an intricate sentence in grammatical form, name all the capitals and
great cities of the big world geographically and historically—but still
be blind to human justice.

Without geological knowledge a man goes blindly through the world,
stepping on valuable specimens of minerals and precious stones without
realizing their value or worth.

And just so, in like manner, do men who are blind to the justice that
belong to their neighbors, go tramping on human hearts and human
principles without knowing the real value and worth of the objects on
which they tread.

It is painful to see a blind man go feeling his way with a cane, but he
never creates the sorrows that are created by the man who is blind to
human justice and the rights of the people below his station.

I know a man who loves a beautiful woman. He was once engaged to marry
her, but friends who are blind to the rights of humanity, no odds how
poor or rich the individuals may be, interfered and separated the loving
couple. They trampled on their young hearts and crushed them until they
bled from the bruises, and made love appear as a criminal and outlaw.

They love each other still, though both are married to another. There
is a pain in each heart that will never cease aching, but the wealthy
friends who separated them are blind to the wrong they perpetrated
against these disappointed souls. They crushed two ideals in the soul of
two loving people, but the ideals will never die in their souls. That
first dream of love will ever remain the sweetest, dearest dream that
ever took possession of their young souls—a dream that died and was
buried there and left a grave that is always bleeding.

And yet the blind friends do not realize that the ghost of a great wrong
stalks through their hearts during the silent hours of the night, when
the world imagines they are sleeping without a shadow to obscure the
sunlight of human happiness and hope.

And this is only one case out of a million. And through the blindness
of friends and relatives our divorce courts do a big business. Young
people who are denied the companionship of the one they love best, and
are induced to marry some one else for convenience sake, soon find the
matrimonial bands galling, and a separation is inevitable. This is
the main cause of so many divorces amongst the rich. They marry for
convenience when they find it impossible to marry the one they love.

How unfortunate for parents who no longer care for each other to bring
unwelcome children into a loveless world. The children find their
environment one of cold speculation and fashionable hypocrisy, and
they grow up believing that all the world is like their own domestic
relations. Where there is no display of affection between the parents,
the child grows up believing that love and affection are unnecessary, and
passion is cultivated as a substitute. These are the sons who make the
white slave business prosperous. They come from loveless homes, and do
not realize that there is any such thing as genuine companionship love.
Father and mother lived so independently of each other, spending most of
their time at their clubs and at card parties, or visiting abroad with
strangers, that the name of wife does not suggest a companion, nor does
the name mother suggest the dearest friend on earth to the child.

And thus the fashionable world goes staggering blindly on, grasping at
wealth and power and notoriety as the only prizes worth winning.




WRONG ON THE THRONE


As far back as the mind of man can trace the history of the race we
see bleeding Right on the scaffold and triumphant Wrong sitting on the
throne. If this is contrary to God’s plan, he is slow to correct error.
Cain slew his brother Abel because he was the stronger and most brutal.
The meek and humble Abel gave up his life to the violence of wrong, and
Cain’s punishment was rather mild. He was allowed to hunt a wife and
marry her and raise a family, while the name of his victim was wiped from
the face of nature.

Again, was it right that Jesus Christ should be crucified on a cross?
This is the most horrible death any living animal can die—nailed alive
to a cross of wood with cruel nails driven through feet and hands, and
left to die of terrible pain and anguish of soul. The good book says God
planned it. If so, then God himself indorses the rule of wrong and the
sufferings of right.

Socrates was forced to drink the deadly hemlock, for the crime of
teaching men the right. Socrates knew that the system taught by the
ruling spirits of his country was a wrong theory. It kept the people in
darkest ignorance and darkest slavery. He strove to lift them up and free
them from their mental and physical slavery. The men who fattened on the
spoils of the wrong system realized that Socrates would ultimately rob
them of their slaves and half-fed servants, by teaching them the truth,
and their natural rights, so they put Socrates to death. God did not
interfere or intervene; so he must surely indorse the violent rule of
wrong.

Almost every one knows of King Leopold’s cruelty to the natives of the
Congo Free State. It is said of him that he had instructed his agents to
inflict terrible punishment on the natives if they failed to bring in the
required quantity of rubber. Many of the poor, god-forsaken creatures
have had a hand cut off, or a foot removed, for failing to bring in
wealth to the agents of this monstrosity of a ruler. If I stood on the
banks of the crater known as the bottomless pit and saw such deeds of
brutality inacted in hell, I could not believe my own eyes; and to hear
of such things being done on top of ground, makes one’s soul groan in
utter despair of Right ever being able to dethrone Wrong and usher in the
rule of peace and love.

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.

I went to bed thinking of the outrages and violent cruelties of the old
slavery days, and fell asleep with the horrible picture of slavery in
my mind. And sleeping I dreamed that God had reversed the conditions
and changed the white men to colored slaves, and the old black slaves
were now their masters. Even in that dream I said to myself that the
proceedings were just and fair. If the black slave had been sold for the
sake of profit long ago, it was fair that he should take advantage of the
reversed order of things, and sell his old tormentors into slavery.

Suddenly the scene changed. I stood in a market place, a lad of fourteen.
The auctioneer was selling a woman. Her back was toward me, but I could
see that she was weeping. I caught the sound of her voice and it was
familiar to my ears. I had heard that voice before. Could it be the one
woman I had loved from birth—the woman whose first embrace was my first
lesson in human love? In heart-broken tones I called to her, “Mother.”

She turned and raised her face to look over the crowd. “Great God!” I
cried, “it is my own mother! And she is being sold into slavery!”

I rushed through the crowd toward the auction block, calling her name
aloud as I went. Strong men tried to catch and hold me, but I wiggled
from their grasp. I reached the block and caught hold of her dress, but
she could not stoop down to pick me up and hug me to her heart, because
her hands were tied behind her back. I could see her struggle in a mighty
effort to break the cords that bound her. Sorrow gave her the strength of
a giantess, and I saw the cords break and fall to the ground. The next
moment she had clasped me to her breast and made an attempt to run away
with me through the crowd. Blood hounds caught her by the throat and she
fell to the ground.

I was torn from her bosom by the cruel hands of the man who had bought
her, and when she reached her hands toward me the brutal man struck her
loving hands with the butt-end of his whip. Then he raised the whip to
strike me in the face, and as the blow descended I awoke. I was wet with
perspiration, and tears of agony stood on my cheeks.

Think of this—less than fifty years ago such scenes were common—to other
mothers and other sons.




THE OLD YARD MASTER


I was waiting on the ten o’clock train to leave the depot at
Williamsport, Pa., when a vigorous old man came into the waiting room,
accompanied by four children. It was an hour yet before train time, and
I happened to be the only waiting passenger up to this time. I had come
down from Lock Haven on the early morning train, and had two hours on my
hands before the Reading train pulled out for Philadelphia. I had passed
some of the time away talking to the vigorous scrub woman, who had mopped
up the entire floor space of the station since daylight. She had gathered
up her buckets and brooms and mops, and was leaving when the vigorous old
man and the four children arrived.

He bade me good morning and then seated the children, but he did not
sit down himself. He walked to the south window and looked out over the
frozen river for several minutes, then turned to me and said: “The old
river looks tame under her lid of ice, but some day she’ll get up and
shove the lid off, and if the lid refuses to go, there will be a scene
along here. I’ve seen her get her back up in my time and shove ice up on
the tracks, right here in front of the station.”

“I wonder how deep the flood in 1889 was in the station,” I ventured.
He put his finger on a spot a few inches up the window facing and said:
“About here somewhere, I think. I was here at the time. You see, I was
yard master here up to sixteen years ago. The boys went out on a strike,
and I went out along and I never came back. I went into business and gave
up railroading.”

“Do you never intend to railroad again?” I asked, by way of keeping up
the conversation.

“Oh, no; the roads have no use for us old fellows any more. They want
younger blood.”

“But you are not so old,” I said.

“Older than I look, sir. These are my grandchildren. We are off on a
little trip together. You see, my youngest daughter is getting married
today, and we are going along with the bridal party for a short distance.
These grandchildren are very dear to me now since my own children are all
married and gone off to build homes of their own.”

As the train drew near he took the children into the ladies waiting
room, and other people came in and attracted my attention. Pretty soon a
carriage drove up to the station. The horses were decorated with white
ribbons and a few white bows on the carriage. Even the driver’s whip was
decorated with a white bow. I knew by these signs that it was a wedding
party. Two ladies and two gentlemen got out of the carriage, and I found
myself guessing which couple were the bride and groom. They entered the
ladies waiting room, and other young people appeared on the scene and
began to throw rice and raise a great noise. They were having a great
time, a jolly, happy time.

In a few minutes the old train master came back to me, and jerked his
thumb over his shoulder and said: “They’re having their fun in there, as
young people will. The bride in there is my youngest daughter, going off
on her wedding trip.”

I could see that his voice was trembling and that his feelings were
getting the better of him, but he walked to the window and looked out
over the river and let the tears run quietly down his brave old face. He
had escaped from the merry crowd to look out over the frozen river. What
did he see? What was the fascination?

Intuitively I knew that the vision out there on the river was another
wedding party of long years ago. I knew that the fair bride he saw out
yonder was leaning on his own strong arm, and that they were going off
on that journey this world and this life only gives but once to men and
women—that journey which comes so near to making this world a heaven.
Was that bride still alive? No, the tears in the old man’s eyes were
silent witnesses to proclaim the sad news that she had gone on another
journey—and gone alone.

The train pulled up and the crowd rushed out to get on board, and the old
train master, with his untold story, drifted away from me, and I never
saw him again.




BOOKS THAT MADE ME THINK


A reader writes me to learn what books did me the most good. This is
hard to tell. As a boy we had but few books in our home, the Bible being
the leading book, and a Lutheran catechism being the next in importance.
My boyhood work was to watch cows. Our farm was small, and we raised
patches of grain and hay, instead of whole fields. When we pastured one
of these patches, I was obliged to keep them away from the patches of
grain. It was during this time that I read the entire Bible, and tried
in vain to grasp the meaning of many passages. The chapters devoted to
love and charity and honesty, were within the grasp of any boy, but
when it came to treating of sacrifices to please a God of love, I was
getting in too deep to wade through, and was obliged to back out and sit
down and contemplate the situation. I still hold the subject under deep
contemplation.

The next book I can remember was “Great Expectations,” by Dickens. It
filled my boyish mind with a love of literature. Since then I have read
all of Dickens’ books, and he is my favorite author. In spite of his
exaggerations and impossible characters, he is nearer in touch with all
manner of humanity than any other author I have read. I think still
that “David Copperfield” is the best book of fiction ever written, with
“Little Dorrit” a close second.

I never liked Scott. There was too much war and fantastic thunder about
him. His heroes were of the royalty, while Dickens found his among the
common people—my kind of people—the people I love.

I read a few of Thackeray’s best stories and liked them, only they lacked
the humor and the child sympathy I found in Dickens. He could never touch
me in the tender spot as Dickens could.

Then comes Mark Twain’s early stories—not for instruction alone, but
for amusement. His most humorous book is the most instructive, as well.
“Huckelberry Finn,” to my idea of humor, is the most humorous book I ever
read, providing one sees the pathetic and human qualities. The characters
of the story are not trying to make sport or act ridiculous—they are
serious all the time. It is this feature that brings out the humor.
“Huckelberry Finn” looks upon the subject of human slavery with the eyes
and soul of a southern boy fifty years before the great rebellion and the
emancipation of the negro slaves. It was part of his religion to believe
in the institution of human slavery, and he had to make up his mind to go
to hell for the sin of it, before he dared assist a black slave to escape
to a free state.

Never did any book give me as deep insight into human character as did
this one. A man can be trained to harmonize almost any outrage against
his weaker neighbor, if he can find a single verse of Scripture to uphold
his actions.

Of our more modern writers, I can get more thought food from Elbert
Hubbard, and this is what a reader wants. The writer who can make you
think thoughts of your own, is the one who draws out the truth and the
faith that is in you. Some can amuse and instruct without making you
think along new lines. Unless you do some original thinking, after
reading a book or a story, or a poem, you have not gained anything of
lasting effect. The thoughts that do you the most good are the thoughts
you can claim as your own. We are all looking at the world and into the
mysteries of life from different view points. Others can tell us of a
peep hole that brings to view many unknown things, but we must do the
peeping ourselves. We must see things with our own mental eyes before we
can size them up and grasp them and call them our own.

However, it all depends on the trend of one’s mind. The books that gave
me the most instruction and entertainment might have no value at all in
the judgment of another. Each individual must read until he discovers the
trend of his mind, and then read books that satisfy. Even the much abused
ten cent novel whetted my taste for higher literature. Occasionally one
would make me think.




FORGOTTEN GRAVES


During the seven years I lived in my present home, I have sat on the
front porch and looked across the Susquehanna river to a bluff just
beyond the P. & E. Railroad. White tombstones, looming up above the
weeds, like the great white teeth of Death, indicated that human bodies
had been laid there to rest, while the struggle with others continued for
a little while longer. Mrs. Haiden often spoke of going over to visit the
spot. To her an old graveyard appeals with stronger force than the most
beautiful garden of flowers. Three years ago, when we visited Washington,
the wise old faces of the Senators and Representatives of the people
did not appeal to her. Neither did the political stench of the Capitol.
Arlington cemetery and the Egyptian mummies in the National Museum took
her fancy. They were flowers handed down to us from a former generation,
as they say in the Declaration of Independence.

Well, Mrs. Haiden’s curiosity to visit the old Quiggle cemetery overcame
my laziness, and one fine Sunday we persuaded Professor Stevenson to
accompany us, and we crossed the river at the ferry and walked through
the fields to the place of interest. The cemetery is quite an old burial
ground for this neighborhood. We could not determine how old, because the
first graves made there were marked only with mountain sand stones, and
only a few of them bore an inscription.

One of the graves was marked with a granite monument and surrounded
with an iron fence, and inside the enclosure was an iron bench, just as
though some loved one left behind would often come there and sit in the
solitude and commune with the dead man under the sod. It was a beautiful
and tender suggestion, and if the dead could really send back a message
to the waiting ones, how much of death’s mystery could be cleared away.
But aching hearts and the longings of yearning souls have failed to bring
back even a whispered message from the land beyond the shadow line. The
dead cannot talk to us any more than the living can talk to the dead. The
wires are all down between the living and the dead—all down and out of
use, and when we sit at the graves of our loved ones, all we can do is to
recall the past; if time is a circle, then heaven lies in the past, as
well as in the future, and the needle of our mental compass always points
into the great beyond, no difference where we look.

On one mountain stone we found the figures 1803, and the name, Andrew K.
Rinder. He had been buried one hundred and seven years—before the war
of 1812 was fought between our country and Great Britain. The roar of
the cannons could not disturb his rest. The big trains on the “Pennsy”
go thundering by only two hundred feet away, but Rinder does not hear
them. He never saw a steam locomotive nor a railroad track. These modern
inventions have crowded in upon his resting place, but he is done with
the world—he does not care. He lived his little life and lies in his
little grave on this lonely little hill. Perhaps we will be as thoroughly
forgotten in a century from now as Andrew K. Rinder. It has been over
a hundred years since that name was set up in printed letters—perhaps
it will never appear again. Did some mysterious force lead me there to
resurrect that long forgotten name? Who can say? Life is a plan and a
purpose; we move as the wheels in a clock, urged by a power to which we
are attached by unseen hands.

On our return, we ran across a private burial ground we had known nothing
about. Here lie the two generations of Stech’s. John Stech was buried in
1815. His sons and daughters lie sleeping at his side. The sons never
married, and the name of Stech died out of the neighborhood. Not a man
bearing that good old German name is known in this county. The valuable
farm has fallen into the hands of strangers, and the private burial place
is overgrown with briars and trees, and the top of the marker fallen to
the ground. Nobody cares. These two bachelor brothers should have married
and left some one to carry their name and to care for their graves.

I do not advocate Rooseveltian families—the age for large families has
passed away—but I do believe every sane man should have a life behind
in place of the one he takes away when he steps out. These forgotten
and neglected graves in the Stech burial ground show that the Stechs
neglected their duty during life. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” is true
in all phases of earthly existence.

In less than a century ninety-nine per cent of the world’s dead are
forgotten on earth. We, too, will be forgotten. Is there a record kept
elsewhere? Are there more durable tablets than these rough mountain
stones and granite?




IN THE OPEN DOOR


While out driving during the summer days of last season, I passed a
little whitewashed cottage many times while returning in the evening,
and noticed that on clear sunset days, an old woman stood in the open
door and looked out toward the sunset, where the light lay like golden
sheets upon the distant hilltops. When I spoke to her and bade her “good
evening,” she lowered her eyes for a moment and returned my salute, and
then raised them to study the sun set beauties. At last I stopped one
September evening and remarked: “You seem to take great pleasure in the
glories of a Pennsylvania sunset, grandmother. Were you ever an artist or
painter?”

“Bless your heart, no. I’ve always been a plain housekeeper. My husband
used to make and repair shoes in that little shop across the road, and I
married him to keep house and cook his meals. I love the sunset for the
sake of old memories. It was a bright sunset evening when Albert and I
drove up the road to the gate yonder, and the farmer’s son came and took
the horse and buggy home. We walked down this gravel path hand in hand
and passed in through this door. We had been married only two hours, and
we came here to begin our married life.

“The cottage was new then, for Albert built it for our home when we first
became engaged. Previous to that he had lived in the shop. He came here
a journeyman shoemaker, but the journeyman business had changed to the
village shoe shop. He bought the little shop from the shoemaker who was
removing to Ohio. And there he worked for two years and prospered. He was
an orphan boy and had no relatives he knew of. Had been brought up in a
foundling, which they called a “poor house,” in those days. Albert and I
met at the country dances, for he could play the fiddle lovely. Nowadays
they call it a violin, but Albert was only a fiddler on a fiddle.

“Sixty-two years ago and better, we walked down this gravel path hand in
hand, and we were chums for over forty years. The old shop is falling
into decay and the door does not close tight any more, but the cottage
has been repaired since Albert died. But I don’t think of his death on
these bright sunset evenings. I only remember and think of our wedding
day, and of the other bright, sunny evenings when he and the children sat
on this bench after working hours, and I sat in the door with my knitting.

“You only see a poor, old, lonely woman standing in the open door of
her humble home, but I see the happiest little family circle in all the
world—a proud father and three healthy, laughing children. Albert would
always come out here on a summer evening to smoke his pipe, and the
children would bring toys to be mended by his dear, loving hands.”

She wiped a tear from her dim old eyes, and continued: “We were so very
happy while the children lived; but one winter diphtheria broke out in
the village and swept all our darling loved ones from our grasp. Poor
Albert was heartbroken for several years, and every Sunday we would walk
over to the little graveyard in yonder hill and talk of the children as
though the cemetery were a school and we had come to visit the children
and bring them flowers.

“But I do not see this sad picture as I stand in the open door and look
to the sunset sky. I only see the wedding party for a moment, and then
Albert and the children sitting on the porch. Sometimes I talk to them
while the sun is setting, and when the shadows fall, they bring back the
faces of those I love. It is then that I can hear Albert’s voice as he
sings the children to sleep out here on the porch, and sometimes I go
out to bring the sleeping baby in and lay it on the bed, as I used to do
sixty years ago.

“And I am not disappointed when I awake from my delusion, for I know that
over yonder, beyond the sunset, Albert is singing to the children, and it
is the echo of his voice that comes to me through the open door. You only
see a poor, old, gray-haired woman standing here alone in the open door,
but I am surrounded with dreams and visions and memories which no others
can behold.”




THE JUDGE’S TEARS


One of the nice things people tell of Judge Mayer, who served the
counties of Clinton, Cameron and Elk as president judge for almost forty
years, is of the deep sympathy he showed when Attorney Henry Harvey fell
dead in the court room. Harvey had been a law student in the judge’s
office, and he felt a fatherly interest in the young man. He was proud
of his achievements and successes at the bar, and was pleased when the
local Republicans spoke of Harvey as a candidate for the high office of
Governor of the great State of Pennsylvania. The judge much regretted
the conditions that robbed his pupil of the high honor, but still looked
ahead and hoped the honor might still hover near and select Mr. Harvey
later on.

The judge knew what disappointment tasted like, for, being a Democrat in
a Republican state, is what barred him from the Supreme bench. But he
deemed the honor, at the expense of his honest political convictions, to
be hollow and empty.

But one unfortunate day the man for whom he had seen such a brilliant
future was fatally stricken in court. Harvey was addressing the jury in
an important case, and was even more brilliant than usual, when suddenly
he threw up his arms and staggered backward into the arms of R. C.
Quiggle, calling to a physician sitting near him: “Doctor, I am sick.”

These were the last words uttered by the man of whom such a brilliant
future had been predicted. When all was over, and the dead attorney lay
cold in front of the jury, the venerable judge broke down and wept like a
tender-hearted woman.

People who had come to look upon Charles A. Mayer as a stern and
relentless judge, never dreamed of such a display of affection and
sympathy. The judge had revealed his humane and tender side to the
people, and they admired the new man far above the old one. After
adjourning court, he stood with a bunch of attorneys and court officials
discussing the tragical end of his friend, and out on the streets the
people were discussing the affair, and to each new man who joined the
crowds of startled citizens, some one would say: “The judge wept like a
child when Harvey died.”

The writer of these lines was attending a relative’s funeral on that
day, and when a man came to the funeral who had been in court when the
tragical death occurred, and was telling a bunch of men standing outside
the home and waiting for the services to begin, he did not forget to add:
“Judge Mayer cried like a loving father when he saw that his friend was
dead.”

And all over the country the news of Attorney Harvey’s death was
whispered in awed tones, and always in connection with the death of
Harvey was told the story of the judge’s tears.

It gave the people a peep into the real man behind the legal mask,
and they admired the real man far above the legal sternness which the
profession forced upon the judge. A man always gains in power and
admiration when he shows evidence of a sympathetic heart. Abraham
Lincoln’s tears of sympathy stand out as liquid diamonds upon his
official record, never to be washed away while his beloved name remains
on the pages of American history. The world may malign him and wrongly
accuse him of many things, but those tears of sympathy are out of reach
of human hands or slanderous tongues, and the crown of his earthly glory
will always sparkle in the light of his illustrious name as indelible
stars, forever polished by the love the American people retain for the
man.

So, too, do the judge’s tears stand out above all his other good
qualities, and command respect and admiration from his bitterest enemies.
They can never be forgotten. Though he is dead and in his grave, the
tears shed by loving friends will be forgotten by the world, while yet
his own tears of sympathy remain like drops of dew to keep his memory
fresh and green in the hearts of all those who know of the tender and
sympathetic side of the judge.




THE DOG’S KISS


It was a bleak morning in April, the country roads being muddy and heavy
and discouraging, and as the young man trudged along, his mind wandered
back to the day he started as a tramp. His parents had become suddenly
wealthy, through an oil strike on their mountain farm. They immediately
moved to the city and purchased a fine home. The boy was sent to college.
He was then eighteen years old. On the second year term Walter was
progressing in his studies rapidly, and the teachers were proud of their
bright pupil. They told him so. Their words of praise came back in memory
whispers as he trudged along, footsore, sick, weary and hungry.

It was a bitter recollection to recall the day when the news was brought
to him of his father’s and mother’s death. They had been killed in a
railroad wreck. After the funeral it was discovered that good fortune had
given Aaron Burfield the big head, and he started to gamble in stocks.
He knew as much about it as a cow knows about Latin. He was a lamb to
be easily fleeced. All the fortune had been lost and the big house was
mortgaged. Walter was a beggar when twenty years of age.

He realized that he had no rich relatives or friends to help him. His
foolish father had deserted all his old friends and many poor relatives
the hour he found himself wealthy. Walter’s pride barred him from going
back to these deserted friends and relatives. He went back to school,
but the news of his change of fortune reached the ears of the young
aristocratic friends with whom he had associated, and they cut him short.
His tuition was paid in full, but he could not remain at school and be
the outcast and beggar. News reached him that the big house was sold, and
did not satisfy the creditors. He had nothing left but his clothes and a
gold watch.

Now he regretted, as he walked along, that he had not remained at school
and graduated. The sting of becoming an outcast was painful. Had he to
do it all over again, he might do just as he had done—jumped a freight
train one night with ten dollars in his pocket and left the college town
forever. This was two years ago. He had harvested in the Dakotas, worked
on the lakes, tried packing-house drudgery and tried his hand at work
on a farm. He was now too sick and discouraged to beat his way by rail.
He had lost his old-time courage, and felt like a whipped child. He
must give up the careless, worthless life he was leading, and secure a
permanent job.

He came to a large farm-house and went around to the back door to ask
for a bite of breakfast. A tired woman told him to go away. He asked
permission to sit on the porch step and rest. The old farm dog came
up and licked his hand. His heart leaped in a glad response to even
the friendship of a dog. He put one arm around the dog’s neck and
unconsciously spoke aloud:

“Do you know how heart-sick and friendless I am, old doggie?”

“Do you like dogs?”

It was a girl’s voice. Walter Burfield looked up and saw it was a pretty
red-cheeked girl addressing him. My, but she looked pretty and wholesome.
A sinner standing outside of heaven and looking in through the open gate
and beholding an angel would feel as Walter felt on beholding that pretty
country girl.

“Do you like dogs,” she asked again, for the tramp sat dumb before her.
His eyes dropped. He had reached that point in the life of a vagabond
where the frank, honest eyes of some one in whom hope burns brightly,
makes the hopeless soul recoil and seek to hide away from questioning
eyes.

“I just feel like hugging the old dog,” he said, “because he offered to
be my friend, and I am so hungry for friendship. I would like to secure
a position, and find a home and settle down in the ways of peace once
more. I am without a friend in all the wide world. The touch of the dog’s
tongue on my hand is the first friendly touch I have felt for two years.
The woman inside allowed me to sit down and rest here, but she refused me
a bite to eat. I guess the old dog knows how hungry and friendless and
despondent I am, so he came up and gave me the kiss of loving friendship.”

“Wait,” said the girl, “I’ll bring you something to eat, poor man.”

She sat and talked to him while he ate. She had never found any one so
interesting, and he had never seen any one so beautiful. He could touch
her heart as never any one had touched it before. He knew so much of life
and was so discouraged and hopeless with it all. His talk opened up a
new world to her. Her life had been so tame and commonplace, and she had
longed for news from the outside world. He did not look like a tramp,
though he was ragged and dirty and unshaven. The girl went to her father
and persuaded him to give the poor tramp a job.

Walter Burfield stayed. He worked hard and faithfully. He resolved to
give up roaming forever and try to make a man of himself, though obliged
to begin down at the bottom. The old dog followed him through the fields
day after day, as though he felt that it was his influence that had
called Walter back to a life of usefulness. And Walter well knew that it
was old Hector’s warm kiss on his hand that brought out the heart talk
that morning with Adaline Blair.

Two years afterward, as he sat under a shade tree while resting his team
of horses, he hugged the old dog and said to him:

“Dear old Hector, that first kiss of yours opened the door to a brand new
world for me. God, but I must have been sick and lonely on that morning I
sat resting on the porch, and you and Adaline found me and took me into
your affections. Your kisses are still warm and affectionate, old doggie,
but I felt a warmer one last night on my lips. Do you know that your
little mistress has promised to be my wife? She says she was drawn toward
me when she saw me hugging her dog. It was your loving kiss, old Hector,
that has brought all this new love and hope and sunlight into my life.
She would never have caught me hugging you, were it not for your friendly
kiss.”




LOVE LETTERS


Through an almost fatal accident, an old lady of seventy-five years lay
at death’s door for many long weeks. She had not been as prosperous
during the last twenty-five years of her life as she had been in her
early married life, and many of her old time friends had drifted out of
her life, and she drifted out of theirs. She thought of all this as she
lay on her bed of affliction, too weak to move more than one arm. It was
sad to think of the old friends who had forgotten her so completely. They
must all know of her illness, for her daughter Mary had read several
notices to her from the local papers concerning her serious accident, and
more serious condition since the accident occurred.

Somehow she felt so lonely and isolated and neglected. Better die and be
out of this painful existence than to lie sick in bed for weeks and weeks
and be absolutely forgotten by the old-time friends, whose society she
once enjoyed so delightfully.

When her daughter came in she had hard work to turn her feeble head to
the wall, so the tears on her lashes could not be seen. She even felt
one on her thin cheek, but had not the physical power to wipe it away.
As the daughter went about the room, tidying things up, and dusting off
the stand on which the medicine bottles stood, she listened carefully to
see if her mother was sleeping. A slight cough from the bed convinced her
that the invalid was awake, and she broke the silence by saying:

“I hope the mail today will bring a letter from brother John. He knows
of your accident, and I feel sure he will reach us today with his answer.”

The finger on the bed moved slightly and a weak voice answered; “I hope
so, Mary. It’s nice to receive a letter from our absent ones, at such
times like this.”

Mary knew how it exhausted her mother to talk, so she said no more, but
pulled down the blind to shut out the light, and left the sick room with
a pain at her heart. Her keen eye had seen the tears on her mother’s eye
lashes, and she felt certain that the poor invalid had been weeping over
confinement and isolation from society and her friends.

In an hour the morning mail arrived, and she was agreeably surprised to
find five letters, addressed to her mother, besides the one from John.
She opened John’s letter and read it over carefully, to make sure that he
had said nothing to hurt his mother’s feelings. John was so careless at
times, and would bring up business problems that should not be spoken of
when the mother was not in condition for such matters. Then Mary went up
to the sick room and read John’s letter aloud.

“I’m glad to hear he’s well,” the invalid said laboriously, and closed
her eyes again from sheer weakness.

“But mother,” exclaimed Mary, “here’s a letter from Mrs. Moore—your old
friend, Mrs. Moore, of whom you spoke only yesterday.”

The invalid opened wide her eyes and listened until the letter was
finished. It spoke of the old time friendship, and expressed hope that
the invalid would soon recover, and be in condition to enjoy a visit from
her friend, just so soon as the weather was settled.

“How kind of Mrs. Moore to think of me in my affliction,” exclaimed
the invalid in much stronger tones. “It’s better than medicine to hear
from her. Old friends are so dear to the heart, for they bring up old
memories.”

“But here are letters from more of your old friends, mother. Here is
one from Mrs. Bridgens, and one from Mrs. Jones, and one from old Miss
Christie, and from Mrs. Cook.” And Mary sat for almost an hour reading
the messages from old friends to the invalid of whom the writers spoke so
tenderly, and wrote of old-time adventures and scenes from their girlhood
days.

Mary was delighted to see the change these messages of love had worked
in her invalid mother. The faded old eyes were lighted with a new
illumination, and a little color had struggled back to her cheeks. She
asked to have the letters given to her, and she brought both hands
together to receive them, holding them as tenderly as a little girl would
hold her first doll. Mary went downstairs, leaving the invalid holding
her love letters so fondly, and when she returned in half an hour, she
found her sleeping sweetly, and fondly holding those letters in one
feeble hand. And Mary whispered:

“If they only knew how much pleasure and hope their letters brought to my
dear old mother, they would never neglect writing to their old friends
when affliction is upon them. God bless them for the hope and happiness
they brought to this home.”




AT THE POOL OF LIFE


The unsatisfied hunger we experience during this life, creates a longing
in every human heart for another trial at living after this life has been
lived to the end. Once out on a desert, some travelers were perishing
from thirst. The man came to a small oasis amidst a few gnarled and
twisted trees. The sight of the trees was evidence that water was near,
so he hurried his steps and came near to the desired spot. He found water
there, but it was stagnated and foul, wild animals had been drinking and
wading and wallowing in the pool until it looked sickening and disgusting
to the traveler.

The hopes that filled his heart as he approached the promising oasis
began to ooze out through his fingers, and a sickly sensation filled his
soul. Yet this was all the available water to be had. His wife joined him
a few minutes later, bringing two children. They remained over night at
the pool, finding that the foul water had revived them in spite of the
filth. They did not know which way to go to find the inhabited country,
so they erected an improvised tent and thought to live there until some
traveling caravan came that way, when they would follow it back to the
green earth.

They could secure flesh to eat from the fowls that came to the trees
and the young of wild animals brought there to get a drink of water.
And so days passed into weeks and months and years, and the longing to
be rescued became as a dead hope. None were satisfied with the befouled
water, nor the narrow life, but the wife and children were afraid to
again brave the desert and go in search of inhabited land. One night the
husband and father became so sick and disgusted with the water that he
arose and stole away by the light of the moon determined to find a better
place of existence or become lost and perish out on the burning sands.

Next morning there was deep sorrow at the pool. The mother and children
mourned him as one dead. They tried to follow him, but his tracks were
soon lost in the shifting sands, so they returned to the pool and the
friendly trees, resolved to wait until some one came to take them away.

This is a good illustration of man’s life on earth. He is never satisfied
nor contented. The shallow pool of stagnated water never satisfies his
longings for a deeper and broader life. And finally he goes away into the
night of darkness, and the winds of mystery blow the sands of oblivion
over his tracks, and no one knows whither he went. And the living sit at
the pool and look out over the desert of life and wonder, and wonder,
and grow more and more dissatisfied and say to themselves: “This life is
so unsatisfactory and barren of real pleasure—there must be sweeter and
purer water away over yonder.”




A PALACE WITHOUT LOVE


The divorce trial of a handsome young woman and her wealthy husband,
brings up the story of her early environment and her unfortunate mother’s
disappointed life. The woman now seeking a divorce was reared in the
midst of matrimonial unrest and social misery—what other ending could the
world expect in her own case? Where the union is not purely a union of
heart and soul, a harmony of taste and temperament, where the souls are
not tuned to respond to the same vibrations, conjugal happiness is simply
impossible.

The mother of this woman in the divorce court was once a beautiful
Irish girl, the daughter of a man who kept a small crockery store
in Philadelphia. His store was located around the corner from the
aristocratic neighborhood, where the scions of the old Quaker families
reside in magnificent palaces. Sometimes a few of them would condescend
to stop at the modest shop and make a purchase, but the liveried negro
servants came more frequently to make the purchases desired by their
masters. At such times they would sit and gossip with the Irish merchant
and his wife about their aristocratic and proud employers.

These conversations with the servants revealed the great social chasm
existing between the humble shop people and the wealthy aristocrats
living just around the corner. The shopman’s eldest daughter, a beautiful
girl of sixteen, listened to the tales told by the liveried servants of
the rich, and a longing grew daily stronger in her humble soul to become
rich and aristocratic some day, too. She cared not by what means. She
only thought of the glorious end of the road leading up to one of these
magnificent palaces, and gave no thought to the mud and the mire and the
dangerous chasms to cross before arriving at the end of all this golden
glory and glitter of gilded gladness. She dreamed of it night and day.
Her pure soul became sordid and hard with an ambition that was ever in
her dreams. On the street where the shop was located, students bound for
the University of Pennsylvania would pass daily, and among them were a
number of young aristocrats, exquisitely attired, with their coats thrown
back to display their jeweled fraternity pins. As time went on, the
daughter of the shop man developed into a tall, slender, beautiful girl,
with violet eyes and chestnut brown hair, and a complexion of lovely
pink. In the morning she would go outside the store to put the goods
on display, and was noticed by the wealthy university students. One of
them in particular fell desperately in love with the bewitching girl.
They began to slyly flirt as the students passed. It would not be fair
nor true to put all the blame upon the student. The ambitious shop girl
was just as anxious to make a conquest as was the young man. She knew he
was rich and could see that he was handsome. She felt only hatred toward
the rich people who ignored her, and her humble parents. She could never
love this young man sincerely, but she would sell herself for the grand
position he could give her. He would always hold himself at an elevation
far above her parents, and this would always be a sting in her soul, but
she was too ambitious to hesitate at this.

One day he stopped at the shop to buy a shaving mug, and she waited on
him. They became acquainted. She was fascinated with his beauty and fine
clothes and polite manners. He made love to her from that day with ardor,
and she was in the heaven of glory she had dreamed of as she attended
to the shop. One day he proposed to her, and she gladly accepted his
offer. Her ambition was to be gratified. Oh, the fascination and the
wild ambition and magnificent hopes! But all the time she knew she did
not love him with a sincere heart. Her humble origin, and his proud and
aristocratic parents, made a chasm that could not be bridged in so short
a time. Her parents thought it a fine bargain and sale, and encouraged
the courtship. Love would come later on. A woman must learn to love where
love pays the largest dividends in gold.

So the beautiful, ambitious Irish girl and the aristocratic youth were
quietly married. When he told his proud mother that he had married the
girl from the crockery store, the last happy smile died on her lips, and
she never smiled again. She had such high ambitions for her boy, and he
had spoiled them by a rash marriage.

Is it any wonder the marriage proved a failure? They had six children,
yet the mother never loved her husband as a woman should love the father
of her babies. She was ever conscious of the social chasm between them,
and it was a thorn that never ceased to give pain. She had reached the
place her ambition craved, but it did not reward her with happiness.
There was more pleasure in slowly falling from it, than trying to go
higher. The home and money and position were not satisfying. Her popular
young husband and the social distinction he gave her were not satisfying.
She was not happy.

She filled the aching void with lovers. One was a society man in her
husband’s set, and one other was a big, dark, much-married actor. She
broke her husband’s heart, she broke the heart of his adoring mother, and
she grew more wretched herself every year. She then took to drink, and
soon after to drugs. Coming home one night from a party she fell on the
icy pavement and broke both lower limbs. She never saw a well day after
the accident, and died at the age of thirty-four. She had starved her
heart for wealth and position. She went without love to a high position
and found it a bitter mockery. She had outraged her own soul. Then began
the work of turning to ruin the palace in which she tried to live without
love.




THE SOLDIER’S DIARY


In an old trunk, up in the garret where the family letters were deposited
for more than half a century, I found the diary of a soldier, in which
the following notes attracted my attention: “August 14, 1864. Yesterday
was a terrible day for me. The battle at Deep Bottom, near Richmond,
took the last of my messmates. Andrew Brown was wounded early in the
engagement—shot through the thigh. Comrade Charles Pepperman assisted
him to the rear. While they were gone, the man at my side, Amos Friedel
was shot through the head and died instantly. Thus three of my messmates
left my side within fifteen minutes. Pepperman joined the ranks an hour
later, and a few minutes after was shot and fatally wounded. This morning
Henry Traveler was found on the battle field, with his arm shattered
horribly, and was taken to the hospital.

“In noting these fatalities and injuries, I cannot help but recall
Comrade Shoemaker, the first of my messmates to pass out. His was the
most pitiable death of all. He died three months ago of nostalgia. This
is simply a melancholy growing out of homesickness. Shoemaker had married
a pretty girl only a few weeks before he enlisted and went to the front.
The army lay in supine idleness for several weeks, and Shoemaker had
nothing to do but brood over his separation from the one he loved so
fondly. A deep melancholia settled down upon his soul and we could not
awaken an interest in his heart. Hour after hour his mind dwelt upon the
scenes of his Pennsylvania home, and his deserted wife’s sad face looked
out of the shadows and smiled the lonely smile of a forsaken woman.

“They took him to the hospital, but the doctors could find no organic
disease in his body. He was simply dying of loneliness and a longing,
longing to be with the people he loved. He was a large man, standing six
feet in his bare feet, and this made his death all the more pathetic.
We tried to get him a furlough and send him to his family at home, for
thirty days, but the officers laughed at us, and said the man would come
out of his melancholia in a few days and go to eating hard-tack. They
were men without heart or sentiment, and they did not know the depth of
Shoemaker’s gloom.

“Three weeks after being taken to the hospital, he died, and was buried
in Virginia, and the longing wife never saw his face again.

“August 25th. Was to see Comrade Brown today, before they removed him
to the hospital at Washington. He is very badly wounded, the bone being
shattered and there is danger of gangrene. He gave me a letter to read
which he received the previous day from home, written by his sister,
Barbara. Among the many things she wrote was this: ‘On the night of the
15th and about two o’clock in the morning I dreamed that you came home.
I could see you walking up to the door as plainly as I ever saw your
familiar face. Your knock on the door wakened me out of a troubled sleep,
and so sure was I that you were down at the door waiting to be admitted,
that I insisted on some one going down to let you in. Of course it was
all a dream, but so realistic, that I was sorely troubled until father
read in the Tribune that you were wounded. Surely you must have been
thinking of home at that hour.’”

There the diary ended. For it was only a portion of the book in which
this unknown comrade had been jotting down the events of his army life.
The hand that put those written pages in the old trunk has been dead for
many years, and we can only guess who the writer was. He, too, may have
left his bones to decay in Virginia soil, and his diary sent back to
Northern friends. But I knew this Samuel Shoemaker, and I still remember
of hearing my parents talking about his sad death. No doubt there were
many thousands of young men taken from their mountain homes and rushed
to the front, and the change was so great that they could not prevent
their hearts from longing for the dear old scenes of home—for the dear
old mother, wife or sweetheart. And then came the hopelessness and
melancholia and the loss of courage, and finally death.

And yet that war settled nothing. The negro question is still the
overshadowing problem calling for a solution. Burning negroes at the
stake marks America as one of the barbarous nations.




TWO MEN WHO TOUCHED MY SOUL


When I was a young man I had occasion to write something for the local
paper, published near my home. The late Girard Wright, brother of
Theodore, editor-in-chief of the Philadelphia Record, was managing the
paper at the time. He sent for me. Timidly I called at the office, for
I was an awkward country youth and afraid of men who were established
in the business world. There did not seem to be any place in the world
for me outside of a barren hillside farm, and I always felt like a thief
stealing off in the dark when I looked out over the world for something
better.

Mr. Wright was a revelation and an inspiration to me. Why, he was just
as approachable as a boy. A handsome man, with the kindliest and most
sympathetic face I had ever seen. I can shut my eyes and see that
intelligent face, with those sympathetic eyes, into which the hopeless
could look and find hope and courage.

He wanted me to write for his paper. I told him frankly that I lacked
education and vocabulary, and could write only in a crude style. And he
replied:

“Why, that is what the people want. The world is tired of rounded
phrases and poetical lines and erudite sentences. What the people want
is original thought, new ideas—a new and original way of looking at
every-day events, without prejudice or superstition or cant. You can
do this, for there is an originality about your ideas—an independent
peephole, through which you observe the world, without fear or favor.
All you want is practice. You do not ape or copy after any writer I ever
heard of, and practice will polish your original style to a surprising
extent. If your style was borrowed, practice would do you little good.
It might add to your ability to ape and copy after others, but the style
would never be your own.”

Something happened soon after this, and Mr. Wright went back to
Philadelphia before I could send in my contributions. Then my old mother
was taken very ill, and I had no time for literature. Mr. Wright kept
in touch with the country paper, and when my contributions no longer
appeared, he wrote me to know the reason why. I told him that I was
nursing my dying mother, and was obliged to drop literature until all was
over. He wrote me again and extended his sympathy, and what was of still
more material benefit—a bank note. It came when poverty and sorrow were
sweeping over me, and it gave me courage.

It was so pleasant to know that this big-hearted man was thinking
of me, away down in the big city. He was the first educated man to
find any merit in my feeble attempts at writing for publication. His
appreciation came like rain to a famishing flower. It was something I
had been hungering for through the miserable years when all the future
looked like a narrow horizon, that dipped down into a coming storm of
hopelessness.

I never saw Mr. Wright but that one time, and never heard directly
from him again. I never had the opportunity to tell him how much good
his kind words of appreciation had done for me. He died while I was
living in Colorado, and my soul was filled with sorrow and regret. I
had always hoped to meet him again and thank him for the good he had so
unconsciously imparted to me. I knew that an inspiration had gone out of
my life when he died, though he never dreamed of the great uplift he had
given me.

I am writing these lines to show the reader how much good one man’s
appreciative words can do for another. We all have a subtle force within
ourselves for doing good or harm to our fellow men. The thought pebble we
carelessly toss into the intellectual stream of our neighbor may start
little waves to vibrating and extending into a circle around him, which
will greatly influence his future life.

After Mr. Wright’s death there was a space of fifteen years in which
no man could transmit an inspiration to my soul and give my mind a new
impetus. Then, outside a little country church, I met for the first time
the other man who touched a vibrating chord in my soul, and a new world
of hope opened up, like the lifting of a dense fog often reveals the
distant mountains.




INDEX


                                       Page
    Frontispiece                          1
    Biographical Appreciation             3
    I Plead Guilty                        9
    Religion of Humanity                 10
    Joe Bailey’s Ride                    12
    The Other Man’s Baby                 13
    The Pathos of Humor                  15
    The Pine Creek Tragedy               16
    The Homesick Boy                     18
    Friends Who Pass in the Dark         19
    Voice of the Stone                   20
    Ingratitude                          22
    Orphan Eva                           23
    Loving the World                     24
    Lost in the Snow                     26
    A Plea for Childhood                 27
    Thoughts of Immortality              29
    Teach Sentiment                      30
    The Soul of Sorrow                   31
    Visiting the Old Home                32
    The Wayward Boy                      34
    A Wasted Life                        35
    Garret Memories                      36
    Your Baby Still                      38
    Wish I were a Jew                    39
    Memories                             40
    Sweetened with Sorrow                42
    In Her Dreams                        43
    The Mortgaged Mother                 45
    The Toy Maker                        46
    The Mother-in-Law                    47
    Bob White                            49
    Whipping a Child                     51
    Not a Clinging Vine                  52
    The Saloon in Our Town               53
    The Homesick Child                   55
    Why He Quit Hunting                  56
    The Hard-Luck Showman                58
    Playing with Hearts                  59
    True Friendship                      61
    Sighing of the Pines                 62
    The Homesick Horses                  64
    The Blind Cigarmaker                 65
    The Three Classes                    66
    Hissed and Hooted                    68
    The War with Self                    69
    Crippled Joe and the Showman         71
    Race Suicide                         73
    For a Stage Career                   74
    The Dead of the Land and Sea         76
    Where Dreams Come True               77
    It Might Have Been                   79
    A Misguided Mother                   80
    The World is Blind                   82
    Wrong on the Throne                  83
    The Voices We Understand             84
    Chasing the Cows Up                  86
    Flowers for the Living               87
    The Hobo’s Story                     89
    In the Looking Glass                 90
    Ungrateful Young Girls               92
    The Giant Pine                       93
    The Little House-Keeper              95
    The Male Flirt                       96
    Memories of the Old Trunk            98
    The Auction Block                   100
    The Old Yard Master                 101
    Books that Made Me Think            103
    Forgotten Graves                    104
    In the Open Door                    105
    The Judge’s Tears                   107
    The Dog’s Kiss                      108
    Love Letters                        110
    At the Pool of Life                 112
    A Palace Without Love               113
    The Soldier’s Diary                 114
    Two Men Who Touched My Soul         116





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