All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography Part 47

"What way would I do that?"

"Have you read or heard anything of Mr. Booth?"

"Ow, ay, he is just a parfect Goliath o' conceit, but he isna the man to hold the deil, for a' his talk."

"Is there a deil to hold? You know some ministers have given up the idea of personal devil," I said; and I quite antic.i.p.ated _the look_ I got in reply,

"Have they? Ay weel, getting rid o' the Wicked One, hasna got us rid o' the wicked. Good day to _you_, ma'am. I'll be requiring to go ben."

These scenes were in the early days of the Salvation Army. A short time afterward, I saw Glasgow ministers of the strictest sect of the Calvinistic Pharisees, with their congregations at their heels, following the music of the Moody and Sankey evangelical movement, and I met their leaders as guests in the most exclusive religious families. After my return home Dr. Talmage, then editor of the _Christian At Work_, asked me to tell him frankly, which side the paper ought to take.

"The popular side," I answered.

"Is that for, or against them?"

"For them, decidedly. Sankey's voice draws the crowd, and then they listen to Moody's speaking, and so the singing may lead to prayer."

"You think it will be a success?"

"It _is_ a success," I answered, "and is going to a very great one."

Then Dr. Talmage turning to Mr. B---- the active editor said, "_The Christian At Work_, will stand with Moody and Sankey, Mr. B----. It is the proper thing to do, I suppose?"

"Yes," I answered, and he then asked if I had "seen anything of General Booth."

"I have seen him several times," I replied.

"What kind of a man is Booth?" Dr. Talmage asked.

"A big man, every way. He is the Cromwell of Dissent." I heard that he was a pa.s.sionate little Chartist when he was thirteen years old. I will tell you something, a good name is a good fortune, and the name of the Salvation Army was a kind of inspiration. One day a secretary drawing up a paper wrote, "We are a Volunteer Army," and Mr. Booth took the pen from his hand, crossed out the word "Volunteer" and wrote in its place "_Salvation_." He saw in a moment the splendid capabilities of the word, it fitted itself to the work, as promptly as the stuttering out of the word "tee-to-tal" inaugurated the grand successes of the temperance cause.

They are burying William Booth today, and no one can deny that he has fought a good fight; for he, and only he and his army, reach down to that strata of humanity which has fallen below the churches; and which are emphatically "ready to perish." And if the Salvation Army only succeeds in facing a man around, or in making him take one step upward, instead of downward, there is hope for his next reincarnation.

CHAPTER XXII

THE LATEST GOSPEL: KNOW THY WORK AND DO IT

"What is our Life? A strange mixture of good and evil; of ill-a.s.sorted fates and pathetic acquiescences; and of the overpowering certainty of daily needs, against the world of thoughts, and Shadows."

"The object of Life is to gain wisdom through experience, even one life forces us to this conclusion."

In this year, 1883, I went to England alone, staying most of the time with Mr. Sam Wilson, who had been my friend and playmate when I was six years old. He was then a very tall fine-looking man of fifty-two years of age, with a beautiful and clever wife, and a son studying medicine in Edinburgh University. His handsome residence, with its wealth of flowers, was in the suburbs of Bradford, Yorkshire, and I remained there for many happy weeks; paying a short visit to London in the interval, and loitering some time around Glasgow, from which port I sailed to New York.

But I had a heartache all the time I was away about Mary, who I feared was going to marry, and I did not wish her to do so. I could not find one objection to the young man she intended to espouse. They had been friends for three years, and were truly attached to each other. He was a clever writer, especially for boys, and the first editor of _Harper's Young People_. He was fine-looking, gentlemanly, and quite sufficiently good-hearted for the world he was living in, fond of outdoor sports of all kinds, both on land and water, and a traveler who loved ways unknown and adventurous. I believe he was the first white man who penetrated the recesses of the Everglades. Incidentally it may be noticed, that he was a great friend of the Seminole Indians, who lived in the Everglades, and that to this day, he is regarded by them as their true comrade.

So what chance had I against a lover of such manifold attractions? I knew I must lose, and I thought I could bear it better at a distance.

In the middle of the Atlantic one night, I dreamed that Robert came to me and said, "This morning, Mary was married to Kirk Munroe." He said other things, but they were entirely personal, and may not be repeated; but when I awoke I was consoled and reconciled. And it has always been my way to accept the inevitable as cheerfully as possible, so I told myself "I will now forget." If Mary was happier with a stranger, than with the mother who had cherished and loved her, and worked for her for thirty-three years, well I must be content to shave my own pleasure to increase hers. Had I not done it all the years of her life? It was no new sacrifice. But I said all such things with a swelling heart, and eyes full of unshed tears. Yet the marriage has been a singularly happy and sympathetic one, and though her home is in southern Florida, she comes every year to spend a month with me. And I am now content in her happiness.

With the main events of my business life, Mary's marriage made no difference. I wrote constantly, and spent my days mostly in the Astor Library and Lilly or I attended to the office work, as was most convenient. The year 1884 found me writing a story called "Sandiland's Siller" which I finished on the sixteenth of January, noting in my diary, that I was tired, having composed the last six pages, and copied the last thirty-five pages that day. On the following day I took "Sandiland's" to Dr. Stevenson of the _Ill.u.s.trated Christian Weekly_. I mailed a poem called "He That Is Washed" to Mr. Mabie of the _Christian Union_, "Three Wishes" to _The Advance_, two little verses to _Puck_, and wrote "The Household Thrush" for Mr. Bonner. The first three poems had been written at intervals, while I was working on "Sandiland's Siller;" "The Household Thrush," only, was written on the seventeenth. About this latter poem the following incident occurred. It contained five verses, the length Mr. Bonner preferred, and the first three verses referred to the thrush. Mr. Bonner read it, and then turning to Lilly said,

"Too much bird, before you come to the girl."

"Take some of the bird away, Mr. Bonner," answered Lilly; and he smiled, cut out one verse, and handed her ten dollars. There were things about Mr. Bonner writers did not like, but all appreciated his clever criticisms, and his prompt payment. When Lilly came home and laughingly told me this story I was much amused. We had a merry little lunch together, and then I made three pencil drawings to ill.u.s.trate an article called "The Fishers of Fife" which I intended to begin the following day.

The list of work done by me from this time to the twenty-sixth of May is hardly credible. On that day I fell from the library steps while sitting on them reading, and hurt my foot and my neck very much. The next day I had a high fever, and was suffering severely from nervous shock. For nine days I was unable to do anything, and by that time the swollen condition of my throat was alarming, and I sent for Dr.

Fleuhrer, a very clever surgeon. For fourteen more days I was under his care, then I began to improve, so that on

_June 24th._ I began an article on the Scotch Highlands for Mr.

Mabie.

_June 25th._ I was writing on the same. Still in bed but mending slowly.

_June 26th._ Finished and copied the Highland article.

_June 27th._ I began "Jan Vedder's Wife," and on this day also received fifty-five pounds from London for work done for _The Leisure Hour_ and the _Sunday Magazine_. Lilly was down at Bonner's when the checks came, but as soon as I showed them to her, she said,

"Mamma, we have now plenty of money to furnish comfortably. Don't you want your own home, Mamma?"

"O Lilly!" I cried, "there is nothing on earth I want so much. Dear, dear child, go and look for what will suit us. Go tomorrow! Go this afternoon!"

So that afternoon Lilly went home hunting, and I wrote happily on "Jan Vedder's Wife" and Alice sat sewing beside me, touching my hand every now and then and smiling. On the twenty-eighth the flat suitable was found, and on the thirtieth I managed to get into a cab and go _home_.

All was in confusion, but such happy confusion, that we did not think of sleeping until midnight.

In a week the new home was in perfect order, and I was able to be on the sofa, and to write "Jan Vedder's Wife" more swiftly and comfortably. So sweet was home! So good was home, that I now felt all things possible, and really I had not been as happy, since Robert and I went into the wood cottage with its domestic ceilings, in Austin, and turned it into the prettiest and happiest of dwellings. Lilly and Alice furnished the rooms as they desired, and I was quite pleased and full of content.

And it was a great joy when the eleventh of July came round to find that my wedding anniversary was not now to be forgotten. In hotels it had seemed out of place to keep it. I do not know why, but it had always slipped past with a kiss and a word or two. But on this happy day, Lilly set a fine dinner, and Mary sent a wedding cake; we had a bottle of sparkling Moselle, and drank silently but lovingly to the memory of those of our household dwelling in the City Celestial; and our tears of love and hope made the wine sacramental--a pledge and token of our remembrance and our thanksgiving.

There does not seem much to write about in the life of a woman lame and sick, and confined to a flat in an upper Park Avenue. But our existence is always a story, for the fruit of life is experience, not happiness. And every experience that helps us in our ultimate aim of becoming a Spiritual Being, though it be as trite as suffering, is worthy of being considered. Chesterton calls Christ's counsel to "take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" an amazing command. To the majority it is an amazing command, but writers who love their work understand it. I was busy on "Jan Vedder's Wife," and so interested in the story that I forgot I was sick, and the processes of convalescence went right on without my regarding them. When the story was finished I read it to Lilly. It was then complete in four chapters, and she listened to them with critical interest, and when I laid down the ma.n.u.script said,

"It is too good for a short story, Mamma; make it into a novel. You have sufficient material and characters, and if the latter are more fully drawn out, the material will be better."

"But," I asked, "can we afford it? I shall get one hundred and fifty for it from the _Christian Union_ just as it is, and we need the money."

"No, we do not," she replied, "and if we did, I would still say, write it over, Mamma. It is a shame not to write it fully, just because we might want five dollars;" and she pushed my paper and pencils towards me with an encouraging smile. Then I began it all over, and added nearly two hundred pages. When all were corrected and copied I sent it by Lilly to Mr. Bonner. For once this reticent man broke his usual custom, and commented on the work in "the straight-flung words and few," which reflected him.

"It is a good story, a fine story," he said. "Take it to Dodd, Mead and Company. It will suit them. It is too good for the _Ledger_."

And when Lilly came home, and told me what Mr. Bonner had said, there flashed across my mind a dream I had had a week previously, in which Robert had given me the same advice. Christ said, that if one rose from the dead to inform, or direct us, we would not believe their message, and evidently I had not believed the dead, until they spoke through a mortal whose business capacities I trusted. I have often reproached myself on this score, but--Oh, there is no "but." I have no excuse for my want of faith.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MISS MARY BARR (Mrs. Kirk Munroe)]

I had finished the novel of "Jan Vedder's Wife" on the sixteenth of September, 1884, the seventeenth anniversary of Robert's death, and on October, the twelfth, I gave up the regular use of crutches, though my foot was extremely weak and painful, and I had nearly constant headaches. But on this date, I began a story called "Janet McFarlane,"