A String of Amber Beads Part 2

XX.

ONE SECRET OF SUCCESS.

There is just one thing nowadays that never fails to bring success, and that is a.s.surance. If you are going to make yourself known, it is no longer the thing to quietly hand out your card and a modest credential; you must advance with a trumpet and blow a brazen blast to shake the stars. The time has gone by when self-advancement can be gained by modest and una.s.suming methods. To stand with lifted hat and solicit a hearing savors of an all too humble spirit. The easily abashed may starve in a garret, or go die on the highways. There is no chance for them in the jostle of life. The gilded circus chariot, with a full bra.s.s band and a plump G.o.ddess distributing posters, is what takes the popular heart by storm. Your silent entry into town, depending upon the merits of your wares to work up a trade, is chimerical and obsolete. We no longer sit in the shadow and play flutes; we parade in a sawdust ring and play on trombones, or take our place on a raised platform and beat the ba.s.s drum, and in that way we draw a crowd and gather in the coppers, and that is what we live for, isn't it?

XXI.

A NEW BEAt.i.tUDE.

There should be a new beat.i.tude, and it should read, "Blessed is the man who hath the courage of his convictions." It should apply to poor, long-suffering women as well. We have plenty of the sort of courage that will lead a man to step in front of a runaway horse, or dash into a burning house, or throw himself off a dock to rescue a perishing wretch, but there is a dearth of the kind of bravery that will enable either man or woman to face a laugh in defense of a principle, or succor a losing cause despite a sneer. How the best of us will retreat trailing our banner in the dust, when the hot shot of ridicule confronts us from the enemy's camp, or when some merry sentinel challenges us with the opprobrious epithet, "crank." Why, I believe there is hardly a man or woman to-day who would have the courage to march up to a half-grown boy and knock the cigarette out of his mouth, or tackle the omnipresent, from everlasting to everlasting expectorator and buffet him into decency, or drive the "nose-bag" and the "head-check" fiend at the point of an umbrella from all future molestation of the n.o.ble horse he persecutes! We all believe in the extermination of public nuisances, but we have not the courage of our convictions to enable us to fight the fight of the just to overthrow the rampancy of the evil doer.

XXII.

BLESSED BE BASHFULNESS.

Like the presence of a fresh clover in a meadow of sun-scorched gra.s.ses, or the sound of a singing lark in a council of crows, is the sight of a bashful child. In this age of juvenile precocity and pinafore wisdom I would rather run across a downright timid boy or girl than drink Arctic soda in dog days. Never be distressed, then, when "johnnie" hangs his head and blushes like a girl, or when his little sister stands on one foot and fairly writhes with embarra.s.sment in the presence of strangers. Count it rather the very crown of joy that you are the parent of a fresh and innocent child, rather than the superfluous attendant of a _blase_ infant, who discounts a circus herald in "cheek" and outdistances a drummer in politic address and unabashed effrontery. If I had my way I would put half the little mannikins and pattern dolls of our latter day nurseries into a big corn-popper and see if I couldn't evolve something sweeter and more wholesome out of the hard, round, compact little kernels of their present individuality. I would utterly do away with children's parties and "b.u.t.terfly b.a.l.l.s" and kirmess dissipations. There should be a new deal of bread and milk all around. Every boy in the land should go to bed at sundown, and every girl should wear a sunbonnet. There should be no carrying of canes, or eating of candy, or wearing of jewelry, or talking of beaux, and I would dig up from the grave of the long ago the quaint old custom of courtesying to strangers, of keeping silent until spoken to, and of universal respect for the aged. This world would brighten up like a rose garden after a shower with the presence of so many modest little girls and bashful boys of the good old-fashioned sort.

XXIII.

A BEWITCHED VIOLIN.

I went to the Auditorium the other night to hear somebody play on the violin. But that was not a violin which the slender, dark eyed performer used, and the music that so charmed me was not drawn from strings and flashed forth by any ordinary bow. The heavenly notes to which I listened were like those that young leaves give forth when May winds find them, or that ripples make, drawn softly over pebbly beaches. And when they died away and floated like a whisper through the hushed house, it was no longer music; it was a great golden-jacketed bee settling sleepily into the heart of a rose; it was the chime of a vesper-bell broken in mellow cadences between vine-clad hills; it was a something that had no form nor shape, nor semblance to any earthly thing, yet floated midway between the earth and sky, light as the frailest flower of snow the north wind ever cradled, substanceless as smoke or wind-followed mist.

XXIV.

A HAT PIN PROBLEM.

I overheard the following conversation the other day in a popular refectory:

"Do your children mind you?"

"I guess not; they never pay any more attention to me than if I was a dummy. It takes their father to bring them to terms every time!"

"I am so glad to hear it. I like to know that somebody else besides me has a hard time with their children. I declare the only way I can get baby to mind already is to jab him with a hat-pin!"

I waited to hear no more. With sad precipitation I gathered up my check and fled. Had I waited another minute I should have said to that mother: "Madam, I will give you a problem to solve. If, at the age of three, a child needs the impetus of one hat-pin to make him obey, how many meat-axes will it require to keep him in order at the age of ten?

And if you are such a poor miserable failure as a mother and a woman now, just at the commencement of an immortal destiny, what have the eternities in store for you?"

Why, oh, why are children sent to people who have no more idea about bringing them up than a trout has about training hop-vines? It is a question that has given and does give me much uneasiness.

XXV.

POLITENESS VS. SINCERITY.

You imagine it is not polite to be plain spoken! My dear, there are times when to be merely "polite" is to be a toady! There are times when politeness is a pillow of hen feathers, wherewith to smother honor and strangle truth. If all you care for is to be popular, to go through life like a mola.s.ses-drop in a child's mouth, why, then, choose your way and live up to it, but don't expect to rank higher than mola.s.ses, and cheap mola.s.ses at that. For my part I would rather be outspoken in the cause of right, even if plain speech did offend, than be a coward and a woolly mouth. Somebody once lived upon earth, the example of whose thirty odd years of mortal environment we are taught to pattern our own lives close upon. How about his politeness when he talked with the hypocrites and rebuked the pharisees? How about his policy when he drove the money-changers before a stinging whip, and championed the cause of the sinful woman? Oh! I tell you, the soul that is always looking out for the chance to score one for the winning cause, and throw up its hat with the crowd that makes the most noise, is poor stock to invest in. In the time of need such a friend would turn out worse than a real estate investment in a Calumet swamp.

XXVI.

THE MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN.

Shall I tell you plainly, and without any mincing, what type of woman I think the most dangerous? It is not the virago, the wounds of a sharp tongue are hard enough to bear, but there is a balm for them. Mother may be overworked, or sister may be fretted; something is the matter with the digestion, often, when the one we love scolds and is excessively disagreeable in manner and speech. The harshest word is soon excused and overlooked by the smile and the caress that are sure to follow. So, bad as a scolding, nagging tongue may be, it has its alleviations, and somewhere there is an excuse made to fit it. But what palliation is there for the offense of the woman who seeks by blandishments and artifices of the evil one's own concoction to steal the affection of a man away from his wife? There are more such people in the world than you can imagine (and the evil is not confined to the one s.e.x either.) An intriguing woman (or man) who steals into a happy home and seeks to undermine it, deserves to be stoned on the highway.

She may steal your purse, your diamonds, or your checkbook, and, while love reigns on its rightful throne, the home will be happy; but let her seek to discrown love, and entertain a clandestine pa.s.sion in its place, and the foundation of the stoutest home that was ever founded on the rocks of time will tumble in ruin about her ears. Avoid the intriguing, fascinating, dangerous, designing woman, then, who recognizes no sanct.i.ty in wedded honor, and by her wiles and witcheries lets in a thousand devils to the heart and home she curses with her presence.

XXVII.

SERMONS FROM FLIES.

I chanced to stand the other day in a stuffy little room, the only window of which was shaded by a ground gla.s.s light. Before the gray void of this cheerless window a few flies darted hither and thither in consequential flurry, while I myself, for the time being a most blue and down-cast mortal, was battling with the thought that life, after all, was hardly worth the living, and the outlook for anything better in a dim and uncertain future, too dubious to be entertained. But all at once my vision seemed to pierce the shaded pane that intervened between me and the great, rushing, riotous world, and such a conception of all that lay the other side the ground gla.s.s window overflowed my soul, that I felt rebuked as by an audible voice.

XXVIII.

THE MAN WHO KNOWS IT ALL.

There is a type of humanity we all encounter from day to day, at whose funeral I shall carry a banner and beat a tom-tom. He is the man who knows it all. In his grave, human forethought, and general knowledge, and mortal perfection and everything worth knowing, shall one day lie down and die. He never makes mistakes, nor loses his temper, nor gets the worst of an argument, nor is worsted in a bargain. He never acts on impulse, nor jumps without looking, nor commits himself rashly, nor loses the wind out of his sails. He is so overwhelmingly superior (sometimes he is a woman!) that in his presence you are a child of wrath, a hopeless imbecile, and a black sheep all in one, and yet--how you hate him and how you long to see some brave young David come along and hit him with a sling shot! Such a man as he, is fitted to bring the average human to the dust as quickly and as surely as a well aimed bullet brings down a wild duck.

XXIX.

BALD HEADS AND UNEQUAL CHANCES.

What a superior chance a man has in this world over a woman! In the matter of physical attributes alone his innings are as far ahead of hers as the man who carries the banner in a Fourth of July procession is ahead of the little boy who tugs along behind with the lemonade pail. The other evening I attended the theatre, and casting my eye over the audience between acts, I beheld no less than a score of bald-headed men. They were composed, and even cheerful, under an infliction that would have ostracized a woman. Imagine a man taking a bald-headed woman to see the "Railroad of Love!" Imagine a bald-headed girl with a fat, red neck and white eyelashes being in eager demand for parties, coaching jubilees or private suppers. There never was a man so homely, so halt, so deficient in beauty or brain that he could not get a wife when he wanted, but the candidates for the position of mistress of any man's household must be pretty, graceful and sweet.

The chances are uneven, my dear, but what are you going to do about it?