A String of Amber Beads Part 4

What roses are with worms in the bud, such are women without health.

There can be no beauty in unwholesomeness, there can be nothing attractive in a delicate pallor caused by the disregard of hygiene, or in a willowy figure, the result of lacing. If I could now and then thread some particular bead on an electric wire that should tingle and thrill wherever it touched, or write in a streak of zig-zag light across the sky, I might, perhaps, compel attention to what I have to say. There are certain laws of health which, if they only might be regarded, would make us all as beautiful in outward seeming as we strive to be, no doubt, in spirit. Ever so pure and lovely a soul in an unhealthy body is like a bird trying to thrive and sing in an ill-kept cage, or a flower blooming with a blight set deep within its withering petals. You or I can serve neither heaven nor mankind worthily if we disregard the laws of health, and bear about with us a frail and poorly nurtured body. There are "shut in" spirits, to be sure, captives from birth to pain, the record of whose patient endurance of suffering sweetens the world in which they live, as a rose shut within a dull and prosy book imparts to its pages a fragrance born of summer and heaven; but such lives are the exception. The true destiny of the sons and daughters of earth is to grow within the garden of life as a sapling rather than as a sickly weed, developing timber rather than pith, and yielding finally to death, the sharp-axed old woodman, as the tree falls, to pa.s.s onward to new opportunities of power and service. The tree does not decay where it stands, nor does it often fall because its core is honeycombed by disease. It is cut down in the meridian of its strength, because somewhere on distant seas a new ship is to be launched and needs a stalwart mainmast, or a home is to be builded that needs the fiber of strong and steadfast timber.

So, I think, with men and women, there would not be so much unsightly growing old, with waning power and wasted faculties, if we attended more strictly to the laws of health, and when death came to us at last it should only be because there was need of good timber further on.

XL.

WHY, BLESS MY SOUL! IT REALLY SEEMS TO THINK.

I was watching not long since, a man talking to a bright woman on the train, and his manner of comporting himself set me to thinking of the peculiar ways men have of addressing themselves to women. Some talk to a woman very much as they might talk to the wonderful automaton around at the museum when it plays a game of chess. "Why, bless my soul, it really seems to be thinking! What apparent intelligence? What evident faculty of mental independence! It almost appears to possess the power of coherent thought!" Others sit in the presence of a woman as though she was a dish of ice cream. "How sweet." "How refreshing." "How altogether nice!" Many behave in her company as though she was a loaded gun, and liable to do mischief, while a very few act as though she was above the wiles of flattery, and not to be bought for the price of a new bonnet. Hasten the day, good Lord, when she shall be regarded as something wiser and n.o.bler than an automaton, less perishable than a confection, more comforting and peace-producing than a fire-arm, a veritable comrade for man at his best, not so much prized for the vain and evanescent charm of her beauty as for the steadfastness and the incorruptible purity of her soul.

XLI.

TAKE TO DRINK, OF COURSE!

What would a man do, I yonder, if things went so irretrievably wrong with him as they do with some of us women? Why, take to drink, of course. That is a sovereign consolation I am told for many ills. A woman has no equivalent for whisky. She must needs clench her hands and set her teeth and bear her lot. And yet you tell us a man is the stronger. I tell you, my dear, I know a dozen women who could discount any soldier that ever fought in the Crimean wars, for downright heroism and pluck. Where do you find the man who is willing to wear shabby clothes and old boots and a seedy hat that his boys may go fine as fiddles? Where do you find a man who will get up cold mornings and make the fire, tramp to work through snow, pick his way through flooding rain, weather northeast blasts and go hungry and cold that he may keep the children together which a bad and wayward mother has deserted? First thing a man would do in such a case would be to board the children out with convenient relatives while he looked around for a divorce and another wife! How long would a man brace up under the servant question? How long would he endure the insolence and the flings of cruel and covert enemies because the children needed all he could give them, and, only along the th.o.r.n.y road of continual hara.s.sment and trial might he attain the earnings needed to render them happy and comfortable? If a man is insulted he settles the insult with a blow straight from the shoulder and that is the end of it; he would never be able to endure, as some women do, a never-ending round of persecution that would whiten the hairs on a sealskin jacket!

XLII.

A WARNING TO GIRLS.

There is one thing we sometimes see in the face of the young that is sadder than the ravages of any disease or the disfigurement of any deformity. Shall I tell you what it is? It is the mark that an impure thought or an unclean jest leaves behind it. No serpent ever went gliding through the gra.s.s and left the trail of defilement more palpably in its wake than vulgarity marks the face. You may be ever so secret in your enjoyment of a shady story, you may hide ever so cunningly the fact that you carry something in your pocket which you purpose to show only to a few and which will perhaps start the laugh that, like a bird of carrion, waits upon impurity and moral corruption for its choicest feeding, but the mark of what you tell, and what you do, and what you laugh at, is left behind like a sketch traced in indelible fluid. There is no beauty that can stand the disfigurement of such a scar. However bright your eyes, and rosy-red your color, and soft the contour of lip and cheek, when the relish of an impure jest creeps in, the comeliness fades and perishes, as lilies in the languor of a poisonous breath from off the marshes. I beg of you, dear girls, shun the companion who seeks to foul your soul with an obscene story or picture, as you would shun the contagion of smallpox. If I had a daughter who went out into the world to earn her bread, as some of you do, and any one should seek to corrupt her purity by insidious advances, I would get down on my knees and pray G.o.d, to take her to himself before her fair, sweet innocence should sully under the breath of corruption and moral death. n.o.body ever went to the devil yet by one big bound, like a tiger out of a jungle or a trout to the fly; it is an imperceptible pa.s.sage down an easy slope, and the first step of all is sometimes taken when a young girl lends her ears to a s.m.u.tty story or a questionable jest. Then let me say again, and I wish I could borrow Fort Sheridan's bugle to blow it far and wide, that every girl might hear: Close your ears and harden your hearts against the insidious advance of evil. Have nothing to do with a desk-mate or with a comrade who seeks to amuse or entertain you with conversation you would not care to have "mother" hear, and which you would be sorry to remember, if this night the death angel came knocking at the door and summoned your soul away upon its lonely journey to find its G.o.d.

XLIII.

A FROG MAY DO WHAT A MAN MAY NOT.

A bull-frog in a malarial pond is expected to croak and make all the protest he can against his surroundings. But a man! Destined for a crown and sent upon earth to be educated for the court of the King of kings! Placed in an emerald world with a hither edge of opaline shadow and a fine spray of diamond-dust to set it sparkling; with ten million singing birds to form its orchestra; sunset clouds and sunrise mists to drape it, and countless flowers to make it sweet while the hand of G.o.d himself upholds it on its way among the cl.u.s.tering stars, what right has a man to find fault with his surroundings, or lament himself that all things do not go to suit him here below? When it shall be in order for the glow-worm to call the midday sun to account, or for the wood-tick to find fault with the century old oak that protects it; or for the blue-bird to question the haze on a midsummer horizon because, forsooth! it is a little off color with his own wings, then it will be time for man to find fault with the ordering of the seasons and the allotment of the weather in the world he is allowed to inhabit.

XLIV.

THANKING G.o.d FOR A GOOD HUSBAND.

About one hour of the twenty-four would perhaps be the proportion of time a woman ought to spend upon her knees thanking G.o.d for a good husband. When I see the hosts of sorry maids, and women wearing draggled widow's weeds who fill the ranks of the great army of the self-supporting; when I see them trooping along in the rain, slipping along in the mud, leaping for turning bridges, and hanging on to the straps in horse cars, I feel like sending out a circular to sheltered and happy wives bidding them be thankful for their lot. To be sure, one would rather be a scrub-woman or a circus-jumper than be the wife of some men we wot of, but in the main, a woman well married is like a jewel well set, or like a light well sheltered from the wind.

XLV.

JUST A LITTLE TIRED!

What a grubby old stopping place this world is, anyway. How hard we have to work just to keep the flesh on our bones and that flesh covered, even with nothing better than homespun. And we are getting a little tired of it all, aren't we, my dear? Just a little tired of the treadmill, where, like a sheep in a dairy, we pace our limited beat to bring a handful of inadequate b.u.t.ter. We have trudged to and fro about long enough, and have half a mind to throw up the contract with fate.

But hold on a bit. There is something worse than too much work, and that is idleness. Imagine a sudden hush in all the myriad sounds of labor. The ceasing of the whirr of countless wheels whereat men stand day after day through toilful years, fashioning everything from a pin's head to a ship's mast; the suspended click of millions of sewing machines, above which bend delicate women st.i.tching their lives into shirts and garments that find their way onto bargain tables, where rich women crowd to seize the advantage of the discount. Let all suspended hammers in the myriad workshops swing into silence and all footsteps cease their weary plodding to and fro, I think the awful hush would far transcend the muteness of midnight or that still hour when dawn steals in among the pallid stars, and on the dim, uncertain sh.o.r.e of time the tide of man's vitality ebbs faint and low. There is no blight so fell as the blight of enforced calm. It is in the unworked garden that weeds grow. It is in the stagnant water that disease germs waken to horrid life. Ennui palls upon a brave heart. Ennui is like a long-winded, amiable, but watery-idea'd friend who drops in to see us and dribbles plat.i.tudes until every nerve is tapped. Ennui is like being forced to drink tepid water or to eat soup without salt. Labor, on the contrary, is like a friend with grit and tonic in his make-up.

It comes to us as a wind visits the forest, and sets our faculties stirring as the wind rustles the leaves and sets the wood fragrance flying. It puts spice in our broth and ice in our drink. It puts a flavor in life that starts an appet.i.te, or, in other words, awakens ambition. Although the world is full of toilers it would be worse off were it full of idlers. Good, hard workers find no time to make mischief. Your anarchists and your breeders of discord are never found among busy men; they breed, like mosquitoes, out of stagnant places.

It is the idle man that quickens hatred and contention, as it is the setting hen and not the scratching one that hatches out the eggs.

XLVI.

PAINTING THE OLD HOMESTEAD.

It had been a battle renewed for more years than there are dandelions just now in the front yard. Various members of the family had declared from time to time that if the old house was not painted it would fall to pieces from sheer mortification at its own disreputable appearance.

"Why, you can put your toothpick right through the rotten shingles,"

cried the doctor. "The only way to save it is to paint it."

Now, I have always been the odd sheep of a highly decorous fold. I have more love for nature than hard good sense, I am told. So I loathe paint just as I hate surface manners. I want the true grain all the way through, be it in boards or people. I love the weather stain on an old house. I love the mossy touches, the lichen grays and the russet browns that age imparts to the shingles, and I almost feel like murdering the paint fiend when he comes around every spring, and transforms some dear old landmark into a gorgeous "Mrs. Skewton," with hideous coats and splashy tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. But alas for sentiment when the money bags are against it! Profit before poetry any day in this nineteenth century, my dear, and so when an interested capitalist came up from town and gave it as his opinion that the old house would be worth a third more if put on the market in a terra cotta coat with sage-green tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs the day was lost for me. I had to strike my colors like many another idealist in this practical world. In the first place, there has been for the last fifteen years or so, a vine growing all over the old home, catching its lithe tendrils into the roof and making cathedral lights in all the windows. It has been the home of generations of robins. It has hung full of purple, bell-shaped blossoms on coral stems that have attracted a thousand humming birds and honey bees by their fragrance. It has changed into a veritable cloth of gold in early September, and in late October has flamed into scarlet against the gray roof, like a blaze that quivers athwart a stormy sky. It has been the joy of my life and the inspiration of my dreams, but it had to come down before the paint-pot! So one night when I reached home, tired to death with a hand-to-hand encounter with the demon who gives poor mortals their bread and b.u.t.ter for an equivalent of flesh and blood and spirit, I noticed that the little folks greeted me with an air of subdued decorum as though fresh from a funeral. There were no caperings, no flauntings, no cavortings. Each young minx had on her Sunday go-to-meeting air, and the boy stood with his hat on one side of his head, as though for a sixpence he would fight all creation. Wondering at the change, I happened to look toward the house, and there it stood in the light of the fading day, like a poor old woman without a veil to hide her wrinkles! Every window looked ashamed of itself, and on the ground lay the dear old vine, p.r.o.ne as a lost reputation.

"I never see such an ill-fired crank in all the days of my life!"

remarked the painter to the new girl, after I had held a brief but spirited interview with him over the garden fence; "blanked if she didn't cry because her vine was down!"

XLVII.

THE OLD SITTING-ROOM STOVE.

What is there within the home, during the winter season at least, that seems so thoroughly to const.i.tute the soul of home as the family-room stove? It can never be replaced by that ugly hole in the floor which floods our rooms with furnace heat, with no glow of cheerful firelight, no flicker of flame or changeful play of shadow out of which to weave fantastic dreams and fancies. I once watched the dying out of one of these fires in a great base burner, around which for years a large and loving family had gathered. The furniture of the home had all been sold, and the family was about to scatter. The trunks were packed and gone, the last article removed from the place, and the old stove was left to burn out its fire at the last, that it, too, might be removed next morning. And after the evening had come and was far spent, the last evening wherein any right should remain to us to enter the old home as its owners and occupants, I took my pa.s.s-key and slipped over from the neighbor's for my final good-bye to the dear old home. The fire-light, like the glance of a reproachful eye, shone upon me through the gloom of the deserted parlor. "Have I not warmed you and comforted you and cheered you with my genial glow?" a voice seemed to say; "and now you have come to see me die! I am the vital spirit of your home.

I am dying, and nothing can ever reanimate these deserted rooms again with the dear, the beautiful past."

Like the eye of one who is going down to death, the firelight faded and finally went out in the pallor of ashes, while I, sitting alone in the darkness, felt the whole world drearier for a little s.p.a.ce for the final extinguishment of this fire, the death hour of a once happy home.

XLVIII.

A TALK ABOUT DIVORCE.

Somebody asked me the other day if I favored divorce. Like everything else in the world the matter depends largely upon special circ.u.mstance, but in the main I do not believe in divorce. If husbands and wives cannot live together without quarreling, let them live apart, but they have no business to sever the bond that unites them. The promise to take each other for "better or for worse" must be regarded in both readings of the clause. If the "worse" comes along we have no right to ignore it because the "better" has failed. If your husband is a drunkard, all the more reason for you to stand by him if you are a good woman. If he is cruel and abusive, you need not put your life in danger by staying under his roof, but you need not throw him over and get another husband. If he goes into the gutter, pull him out, and know that your experience is only a big dose of the "worse" you promised to take along with the "better." It is the quinine with the honey, and you have no right to reject it. There are 10,000 things that work discord in married life that a little tact and forbearance would dissipate, as a steady wind will blow away gnats. The trouble with all of us is, we make too much of trifles. We nurse them, and feed them, and magnify them, until from gnats they grow to be buzzards with their beaks in our hearts. Not for one sin, nor seven sins, nor seventy sins, forsake the friend you chose from all the world to make your own. A good woman will save anything but a liar, and G.o.d's grace is adequate, in time, for even him. I say unto wives, be large-hearted, wide in your charity, generous, not paltry, nor exacting, (exaction has murdered more loves than Herod murdered babies!) companionable, forbearing and true, and stand by your husbands through everything. And I say unto men, be _men_! Don't choose a wife, in the first place, for the mere exterior of a pretty face and form. Be as alert in the choice of a wife as you are in a bargain.

You don't invest in a house just because it looks well, or buy a suit of clothes at first sight, or dash on change and s.n.a.t.c.h at the first deal. After you are once married stand by your choice like a man. If you must have your beer, don't sneak out of it on a clove and a lie; carefully weigh the cost, and if you conclude to risk everything for the gratification of an appet.i.te drink at home and above board, and don't attempt to deceive your wife with subterfuges and excuses. Don't run after other women because your wife is not so young as she once was, or because the bloom is faded a little from the face you once thought so fair. It is the part of an Indian to retract a gift once given, or to go back on a bargain. Don't live together if you can't rise above the level of fighting cats, but be careful how you throw aside the bonds that G.o.d has joined between you. Live the lot you have chosen as bravely as you can, remembering that the thorn that you have developed will never change into a rose by mere change of circ.u.mstances. Divorce and the mere shifting of the stage setting will never make your tragedy over into a vaudeville or a light opera.