The Forerunner Part 44

Not a business have we in the world but needs to be considered as a matter of public service; needs to be studied, helped, restricted, generally managed for the public good. Not a business in the world but is crippled and distorted by the childish self-interest of its promoters. Kitchen-bred men born of kitchen-bred mothers are we, and inevitably must we consider the main duty of life to be the service of our own body. What else does the child see his mother do, but work, work, work to cover the family table with food three times a day, and clear up afterward? What else can he grow up to do but work, work, work, to provide the wherewithal for another woman to do the same?

A million women are making bread as their mothers made it. How many women are trying to lift the standard of bread-making for their country?

How many even know the difference in nutriment and digestibility between one bread and another?

They do not think "bread," but only "my bread." Their view of the staff of life is kitchen-minded. When our kitchen trades become world trades, when we are fed, not by the most ignorant, but by the wisest; when personal whims and painfully acquired habits give place to the light of science, and the fruit of wide experience; when, instead of dragging duty or sordid compulsion, we have wisdom and art to feed us; the change will be far greater than that of improved health. It will be a great and valuable advance even there. We shall become healthy, clean-fleshed people, intelligent eaters, each generation improving in strength and beauty, but we shall be helped in wider ways than that. We shall have the enlarged mental capacity that comes of a wider area of work and responsibility. We shall have in each man and woman the habitual power of organization, the daily recognition of mutual service and world-duty.

When the world comes out of the kitchen for good and all, and for that primitive little shop is subst.i.tuted the cool glittering laboratory, wherein the needs of bodily replenishment are fully and beautifully met, it will give to the growing child a different background for his thought processes. At last we shall mark the great division between production, which is the social function, and consumption which is personal.

As we now emerge from the warm and greasy confines of our ancient cookshop, we begin to see with new eyes its true place as an economic factor. We are learning the unbridled waste of it; how it costs struggling humanity about forty-three per cent. of its productive labor, and two-thirds of its living expenses; how it does not conserve the very end for which we uphold it,--the health of the family; how it leaves us helpless before the adulterators of food, the purveyors of impure milk, diseased meat, and all unpleasantness. We are beginning to see how, most dangerous of all, it works against our economic progress, by perpetuating a primitive selfishness.

Public interest grows in public service. Self-interest is maintained by self-service. We can neither rightly estimate social gain, nor rightly condemn social evil, because we are so soddenly habituated to consider only personal gain, personal good and personal evil; because we are kitchen-minded.

TWO STORKS

Two storks were nesting.

He was a young stork--and narrow-minded. Before he married he had consorted mainly with striplings of his own kind, and had given no thought to the ladies, either maid or matron.

After he married his attention was concentrated upon his All-Satisfying Wife; upon that Triumph of Art, Labor, and Love--their Nest, and upon those Special Creations--their Children. Deeply was he moved by the marvellous instincts and processes of motherhood. Love, reverence, intense admiration, rose in his heart for Her of the Well-built Nest; Her of the Gleaming Treasure of Smooth Eggs; Her of the Patient Brooding Breast, the Warming Wings, the downy wide-mouthed Group of Little Ones.

a.s.siduously he labored to help her build the nest, to help her feed the young; proud of his impa.s.sioned activity in her and their behalf; devoutly he performed his share of the brooding, while she hunted in her turn. When he was o-wing he thought continually of Her as one with the Brood--His Brood. When he was on the nest he thought all the more of Her, who sat there so long, so lovingly, to such n.o.ble ends.

The happy days flew by, fair Spring--sweet Summer--gentle Autumn. The young ones grew larger and larger; it was more and more work to keep their lengthening, widening beaks shut in contentment. Both parents flew far afield to feed them.

Then the days grew shorter, the sky greyer, the wind colder; there was less hunting and small success. In his dreams he began to see sunshine, broad, burning sunshine day after day; skies of limitless blue; dark, deep, yet full of fire; and stretches of bright water, shallow, warm, fringed with tall reeds and rushes, teeming with fat frogs.

They were in her dreams too, but he did not know that.

He stretched his wings and flew farther every day; but his wings were not satisfied. In his dreams came a sense of vast heights and boundless s.p.a.ces of the earth streaming away beneath him; black water and white land, grey water and brown land, blue water and green land, all flowing backward from day to day, while the cold lessened and the warmth grew.

He felt the empty sparkling nights, stars far above, quivering, burning; stars far below, quivering more in the dark water; and felt his great wings wide, strong, all sufficient, carrying him on and on!

This was in her dreams too, but he did not know that.

"It is time to Go!" he cried one day. "They are coming! It is upon us!

Yes--I must Go! Goodbye my wife! Goodbye my children!" For the Pa.s.sion of Wings was upon him.

She too was stirred to the heart. "Yes! It is time to Go! To Go!" she cried. "I am ready! Come!"

He was shocked; grieved; astonished. "Why, my Dear!" he said. "How preposterous! You cannot go on the Great Flight! Your wings are for brooding tender little ones! Your body is for the Wonder of the Gleaming Treasure!--not for days and nights of ceaseless soaring! You cannot go!"

She did not heed him. She spread her wide wings and swept and circled far and high above--as, in truth, she had been doing for many days, though he had not noticed it.

She dropped to the ridge-pole beside him where he was still muttering objections. "Is it not glorious!" she cried. "Come! They are nearly ready!"

"You unnatural Mother!" he burst forth. "You have forgotten the Order of Nature! You have forgotten your Children! Your lovely precious tender helpless Little Ones!" And he wept--for his highest ideals were shattered.

But the Precious Little Ones stood in a row on the ridge-pole and flapped their strong young wings in high derision. They were as big as he was, nearly; for as a matter of fact he was but a Young Stork himself.

Then the air was beaten white with a thousand wings, it was like snow and silver and seafoam, there was a flashing whirlwind, a hurricane of wild joy and then the Army of the Sky spread wide in due array and streamed Southward.

Full of remembered joy and more joyous hope, finding the high sunlight better than her dreams, she swept away to the far summerland; and her children, mad with the happiness of the First Flight, swept beside her.

"But you are a Mother!" he panted, as he caught up with them.

"Yes!" she cried, joyously, "but I was a Stork before I was A Mother!

and afterward!--and All the Time!"

And the Storks were Flying.

WHAT DIANTHA DID

CHAPTER IV.

A CRYING NEED

"Lovest thou me?" said the Fair Ladye; And the Lover he said, "Yea!"

"Then climb this tree--for my sake," said she, "And climb it every day!"

So from dawn till dark he abrazed the bark And wore his clothes away; Till, "What has this tree to do with thee?"

The Lover at last did say.

It was a poor dinner. Cold in the first place, because Isabel would wait to thoroughly wash her long artistic hands; and put on another dress. She hated the smell of cooking in her garments; hated it worse on her white fingers; and now to look at the graceful erect figure, the round throat with the silver necklace about it, the soft smooth hair, silver-filletted, the negative beauty of the dove-colored gown, specially designed for home evenings, one would never dream she had set the table so well--and cooked the steak so abominably.

Isabel was never a cook. In the many servantless gaps of domestic life in Orchardina, there was always a strained atmosphere in the p.o.r.ne household.

"Dear," said Mr. p.o.r.ne, "might I pet.i.tion to have the steak less cooked?

I know you don't like to do it, so why not shorten the process?"

"I'm sorry," she answered, "I always forget about the steak from one time to the next."

"Yet we've had it three times this week, my dear."

"I thought you liked it better than anything," she with marked gentleness. "I'll get you other things--oftener."

"It's a shame you should have this to do, Isabel. I never meant you should cook for me. Indeed I didn't dream you cared so little about it."

"And I never dreamed you cared so much about it," she replied, still with repression. "I'm not complaining, am I? I'm only sorry you should be disappointed in me."

"It's not _you,_ dear girl! You're all right! It's just this everlasting bother. Can't you get _anybody_ that will stay?"