A String of Amber Beads Part 3

x.x.x.

HUMAN STRAWS.

There is not much credit in being jolly when the joints of life are well oiled and events move as smoothly as feathers drawn through cream.

The glory lies in maintaining your serenity under adverse circ.u.mstances; in emulating Mark Tapley, and being jolly when there is not a hand's breadth of blue in all the heavens. There are straws laid upon us every day, which, if they do not break our backs, at least go far to loosen the vertebrae of our temper. One of these straws is the man who expectorates in public places. What shall I do with that man?

I cannot kill him, because there is a law against the violent removal of even a human straw. To be sure, he is the most insignificant straw that the wind of destiny blows across the waste of life. He never will mature a head of wheat though you give him eleven eternities to do it in. But he serves his purpose, and breaks the back of toleration.

x.x.xI.

A SALLOW FACED GIRL FOR YOUR PITY.

On the opposite corner sits a half-grown girl peddling apples. She polishes the fruit occasionally with a rag that she carries about her person (let us humbly hope it is not her handkerchief!) and now and then breaks into a double shuffle to dissipate the chill that invades her ill-clothed frame. What taste of joy do you suppose that child ever got out of the pewter cup the fates pour for her? Does she ever find time to run about with other children, playing the games which the generations hand down from one to the other? Does she ever play "tag,"

or "gray wolf," or "I spy?" Does she ever swing in a hammock like other girls when the days are long and blithe and sweet, as free from care as a cloud or a b.u.t.terfly? Does life hold for her one sparkle in its poor cup of wine, one flavor that is not sordid and low and mean?

You say it is easy to sit here all day selling apples, and wonder why I hold this sallow-faced girl up for special pity. To be sure there is no hardship in the part of her life visible to us. But in her dull soul lurks constantly the shadow of an ever present fear. The poor child is accountable to a cruel master, whether father or mother it matters little, who beats her each night that she returns to her wretched home with a scanty showing of nickels; and the consciousness of dull times and slow sales keeps her in a state of trepidation, which in you or me, my dear, would soon lapse into "nervous prostration," a big doctor's fee, and a change of air. Yet mark my words, if the dark-browed liberator of sorrow's captives were to proffer my little fruit peddler the exchange of death for all this wearing apprehension and constant toil, do you think she would accept the transfer? Not she. The "captain" out snow-balling to-day in her love-guarded home, with never a fear to shadow her sunny eyes, nor a big sorrow to start the showery tears, would not plead harder for the boon of longer living.

x.x.xII.

AND YET HE CLINGS TO LIFE.

As I sit here by my window I am reminded that this is a queer world and queer be the mortals that pa.s.s through it. There is that wreck of a man over yonder squeezing a bit of weird melody out of an old accordion and expecting the tortured public to throw a penny into his hat now and then to pay him for his trouble. Do you suppose that man knows what happiness means, as G.o.d designed it. He was, without doubt, a sad and grimy little baby once, brought up on gin slightly adulterated with his mother's milk. He was pounded daily before he was two years old, starved and cuffed and kicked all the way up to manhood, and now his neck is so completely under the heel of hydra-headed disaster, wickedness and want, that all he can find to do in this big and busy world is to sit on the sidewalk and lacerate the public ear with those dreadful discords. And yet, if death were to step up to that beggar's side and offer him release, instant and sure, in the form of a falling brick or a horse running amuck on the crowded sidewalk, he would cling to the miserable shred he calls life as eagerly as though he were the crown prince himself, with the heritage of his kingdom yet unwon.

x.x.xIII.

OH! TO RID THE WORLD OF SHAMS.

If you go to a florist and ask for a sweet pink root, you may get fooled on the label, but when blooming time comes round there will be no difficulty in deciding whether the flower you took on trust was pink or onion. Plant a seed in the horticultural kingdom by any name you please, there will be no mistake possible when June comes. A carrot is bound to yield carrots, and a rose will repeat the bright wonder of its beauty throughout the dreamy summer days, in spite of any other name the florist may have blundered upon in the labeling. Not so with humanity. There are souls that pa.s.s through life with the label of lily, balm or heart's-ease tagged to them, when they are nothing better than wild onion at heart. There are lives sown in out of the way places, and carelessly pa.s.sed by as weeds, whose blossom angels might stoop to wear in the whiteness of their own pure b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Oh, to rid the world of its shams! To sweep away the "Chadbands" with a feather duster, as the new girl removes dust; to open the windows and shoo away the traitors as one drives flies, to hoe out society plats as one hoes garden beds, and thin out the flaunting weeds so that the lilies may find room to grow; to turn the strong light of discerning truth upon hypocrites until, as the microscope changes a globule of dew into the abode of 10,000 wriggling abominations, so the deceitful heart shall stand revealed for what it actually is, rather than for what it seems to be.

x.x.xIV.

DRESS PARADE OF THE GREAT ALIKE

I am tired of the endless dress parade of the "Great Alike." I am weary of walking in line, like convicts in stripes. I glory in cranks who serve their own individuality and are in bondage to n.o.body. The onward sweep of progress in this age has opened up the way for non-conformists. It is not a matter of heresy, nowadays, to think for yourself, dress for yourself, and be yourself. I confess that I have no heart pinings for such nonconformists as Dr. Mary Walker or any other individual who believes that eccentricity, serving no purpose but to make one conspicuous, is interesting. There are certain general rules of conduct that must be observed or the world would go to wreck like a wild freight train. It would be embarra.s.sing to all concerned were I to decline to conform to the conventional custom of wearing shoes and bonnets, but when fashion ordains French heels and dead birds, if I decline to walk in file with the conformist, I am something of a hero, perhaps, and certainly preserve my own self-respect better than if I yielded to either a harmful or a cruel custom. When etiquette rules that I go through the world armed with a haughty reserve, like a picket soldier with a shotgun, if I conform to that rule, I act upon the warm impulses of natural living as the refrigerator acts upon meat; I may preserve the proprieties, but I chill the juices.

x.x.xV.

IF G.o.d MADE YOU A WILLOW DON'T TRY TO BE A PINE

I wish I could spend a fortnight in a world where folks dared to be true to themselves; where the conformist was shelved with last year's calendars, and a man studied out his own route to heaven and had the courage to walk in it. I would like to dwell with individuals and not with packs of human cards shuffled together in sets. I would like to feel my soul kindle into respect for distinct personalities, each one making his garment after his own measurement, and not trying to fit his coat after the cut of his neighbor's jacket. I would like to live for a while with men and women, rather than with human sheep blindly following a leader. Life is something better than a sheep-path aimlessly skirting the hills. It is a growth upward through the infinite blue into heaven. It is the spreading of many and various branches. If you are a willow, don't attempt to be a pine, and if the Lord made you to grow like an elm don't pattern yourself after a scrub oak. The rebuke "what will people say?" should never be applied to the waywardness of a child. Teach it rather to ask: "How will my own self-respect stand this test?" Such training will evolve something rarer in the way of development than a candle-mold or a yard-stick.

x.x.xVI.

TWO TYPES.

How full the streets are, to be sure! Where do all the folks come from and where do they stop? Surely there are not roofs enough to cover the steady stream of humanity that courses through the thoroughfares from dawn to night time. To one who walks much to and fro in the town there comes a rare chance to study human types. Books hold nothing within their covers so grotesque and so pathetic, so inexplicable and so queer as the folks that jostle one another on the streets! There is the precise female who nips along in a little apologetic way, as though there was an impropriety in the very act of locomotion for which she would fain atone. From the crown of her head to her boot tips she is proper, stupid and decorous, but too much of her company would prove to endurance what sultry weather proves to cream. In fact, I think if I were told I had to live with some of the women I meet on the streets, I would fall on my hat pin, as the old Romans did upon their swords, as the pleasanter alternative. There is nothing more charming than a bright woman, but she must be superior to her own environments and be able to talk and think about other things than a correct code of etiquette, her costumes and her domestic concerns.

There is a man I sometimes encounter on the street between whom and myself there looms a day of bitter reckoning. He wears rubbers if the day is at all moist, and next to ear m.u.f.fs, galoshes on an able bodied man goad me to fury. If the Lord made you a man, be a man and not a molly-coddle. Soup without meat, bread without salt, pie-crust without a filling, slack-baked dough, all these are prototypes of the man without endurance or sufficient stamina to stand getting his delicate feet dashed with dew, or his sh.e.l.l-like ears nipped by frost.

x.x.xVII.

A DREAM GARDEN.

Country living is delightful, but, like all other blessings, it has its alternates of shadow. I used to sit here by my window last April and gloat over the prospects for the vegetable garden a tramp laid out and seeded for me in the early spring. What luscious peas were going to clamber over the trellis along about the middle of July! What golden squashes were going to nestle in the little hollows! What l.u.s.ty corn was going to stride the hillocks! What colonies of beans and beds of lettuce should fill the s.p.a.ces, like stars in the wake of a triumphant moon, and how odorous the breath of the healthful onion should be upon the midsummer air! But listen. No a.s.syrian ever yet came down upon the fold as my neighbor's chickens have descended upon the fair territory of my garden. As for shooing a chicken off, my dear, when its gigantic intellect is set upon scratching up a seeded bed, you might as well attempt to wave back a thunderstorm with a fan.

I have undertaken several difficult things in my life, but never one so hopeless as convincing a calm and resolute hen that she is an intruder.

I spent one glad summer trying to keep a brood out of a geranium bed, and had typhoid fever all the fall just from overwork and worry. But say there had been no chickens to "wear the heart and waste the body,"

how about potato bugs, and caterpillars and huge and gruesome slugs? I never go out to sprinkle the sad pea vines or pick the drooping lettuce but what I resolve myself into a magnet to lure the early vegetable-devouring reptile from its lair. Large 7 by 9 caterpillars and zebra-striped ladybugs disport themselves on neck and ankle until I flee the scene.

x.x.xVIII.

ANYTHING WORSE THAN A BLUE-JAY? HARDLY!

If there is anything worse than a blue-jay, name it. Perhaps a mannish woman, with a shrill voice and a waspish tongue, is as bad, but she can't be worse. There are something less than a hundred of these feathered hornets dwelling in the grove that surrounds my house, and they began before sunrise to call names and fight clamorous battles.

One of them starts the row by crying something in the ear of a neighbor, which sounds like a challenge blown through a fish horn. At this the insulted neighbor flops down off the tree where he lives, and says naughty words very thick and very fast. Then five or six old ladies poke their heads over the sides of their nests and call "Police!" A squad of bluecoats comes tearing ever the border and attacks the original culprit. He whips out his fish horn and summons a general uprising. Very soon there is a battle royal, to which the old ladies add zest by squeaking out dire threats in shrill falsetto voices pitched at high "C." This keeps up until somebody arises and declaims from my open window, dancing meanwhile in helpless rage, to see how futile is the voice of august man when blue-jays hold the floor. Talk about the English sparrow! It is a mild-mannered little gentleman compared to the noisy jay. Its politeness and amiability are Chesterfieldan beside the behavior of its handsomely attired but boorish neighbor. And as for fighting, why, I verily believe a bluejay in good condition could "do up" John L. Sullivan so quickly the gentle pugilist would never know what struck him.

x.x.xIX.

GOOD HEALTH A BLESSING.