Annie S. Swan

“ Once more Gladys made a pilgrimage to the old home where Walter dwelt alone, working early and late, the monotony of his toil only brightened by one constant hope. It was a strange existence for the lad on the threshold of his young manhood, and many who knew something of his way of life wondered at the steady and dogged persistence with which he pursued his avocation. He appeared to have reached, while yet not much past his boyhood, the grave, passionless calm which comes to most men only after they have outlived the passion of their youth. ”

“ The cars were half an hour late, and Miss Hepsy strode up and down the platform in a ferment of wrath and impatience, thinking of the dinner under awkward Keziah's supervision; of the sweeping and dusting and baking all to be done in the afternoon; of the bother two strange children were sure to be; of a hundred and one things, which brought her temper up to fever heat by the time the train puffed into the depot. From the window of a first-class compartment two faces looked out eagerly, but failed to recognize in Miss Hepsy the sister of the dear dead mother they had so lately lost. ”

“ However wise and wifely and absolutely conscientious in her endeavour the wife may be, she cannot unaided make the perfect home—it must be a joint concern. The pity of it is we so often see two, bound together by the closest and most indissoluble of all earthly ties, walking their separate ways, forgetful of both spirit and letter of their marriage vows. This home-making and home-keeping quality is the very wherefore of the man's existence as a husband; for his home with its shelter, adequate or inadequate, is all he has to offer in exchange for the woman who has given him herself. ”

“ Gladys would have welcomed that message gladly, ear and heart having been early taught to wait and listen for it, but as yet she believed Glasgow to be but a city of streets, of dull and dreadful stones, against which the tide of life beat remorselessly for ever. And such life! For very pity the child's heart grew heavy within her often as she looked upon the stream of humanity in these poor streets, on the degraded, hopeless faces, the dull eyes, the languid bearing of those who appeared to have lost interest in, and respect for, themselves. ”

“ Tom was silent. "When my temper is up, Miss Goldthwaite," he said at length, "I don't care for anything or anybody, except to get it out somehow. I was keeping so straight, too; I hadn't once answered back to Uncle Josh or Aunt Hepsy for weeks. It's no use trying to be good."
"No use? Why, Tom, if everybody gave up at the first stumble, what would become of the world, do you think? Our life, you know, is nothing but falling and rising again, and will be till we reach the land where all these trials are over. Keep up a brave heart. Begin again, and keep a double watch over self." ”

“ If it be a weak and colourless individuality, then so much the worse for the home, which must be its reflex.
This fact has, I think, something solemn in it for women, and it is somewhat saddening that so many look upon the responsibilities that home-making entails without the smallest consideration. Verily fools rush in where angels fear to tread! If they think of the responsibility at all, they comfort themselves with the delusion that it is every woman's natural gift to keep house; but housekeeping and home-making are two different things, though each is dependent on the other. ”

“ You will remember, then, Mary, that I am a very poor man, struggling to get the necessaries of life. You have no false and extravagant ideas of life, I hope? Your father, surely, has taught you that it is a desperate struggle, in which men trample each other remorselessly under foot. Heaven knows he has had experience of it, so far as I can hear and see.'
'He never told me anything, Uncle Abel. We were happy always, he and I together, because we loved each other. But I know that life is always hard, and that the good suffer most,' said Gladys simply. ”

“ Goldthwaite, but at home it is different. I shall never be able to get on with them though I live a hundred years. And O Miss Goldthwaite, you don't know how I want to go on drawing and painting. I feel as if I could die sometimes because I can't."
"When the time comes, dear; and it will come sooner, perhaps, than you think," said Miss Carrie hopefully. "You will prize it all the more because of this sharp discipline. Do your duty like a man, and believe me, God will reward you for it one day."
"I will try, Miss Goldthwaite," said Tom with a new great earnestness of face and voice. ”

“ We are constantly being informed by statistics which cannot be questioned that the marriage rate is decreasing; and we know that in our own circles the number of marriageable girls and marriageable youths who for some inexplicable reason don't marry is very great.
What is the reason? Is the age of romance over? is it impossible any longer to conjure with the words love and marriage in the garden of youth? or is it that our young people are less brave and enduring, that they shrink from the added responsibility, care, and self-denial involved in the double life? ”

“ We never miss mother more than at tea-time,' said Mina, jumping up. Love for her mother was the passion of her soul. It shone in her face, and betrayed itself in a hundred little attentions which touched Gladys inexpressibly. Clara was always more reserved, but though her feelings found slower expression they were not less deep and keen; and though Gladys felt at home and happy with every member of that singularly united household, it was to Clara, who was so seldom the favourite outside, that her heart went out in love. ”

“ How pleasant it was, to be sure, to look out upon the flower-laden garden; upon the sunny orchard, rich and golden with its precious harvest; upon the silver thread of the river winding through the green meadow beyond; and to see and feel all the loveliness with which God had clothed the world. But Miss Hepzibah had no eyes for any of the beauties I have mentioned; she was intent upon her work, and hung on the clothes-horse piece after piece of stiff, spotless linen, which, as she could boast, could not be equalled in the township. Miss Hepzibah herself was not a pretty picture. ”

“ He has to bear the sins of others. That is where the injustice comes in. The innocent must suffer for and with the guilty always. There is no escape.'
Gladys sighed, and her face became pale and weary-looking. Never had life appeared so hard, so full of pain and care. Looking at the face of Walter, which she had always thought so noble and so good,—the index to a soul striving, though sometimes but feebly, yet striving always after what was highest and best,—looking at his face then, and seeing it so shadowed by the bitterness of his lot, her own simple faith for the moment seemed to fail. ”

“ If she be a thoughtful and conscientious woman she knows that she is sowing the seeds of future good and ill, that early impressions are never erased, and that her own influence is the one which will leave the strongest, the most indelible mark on the future of the little ones she has under her wing. To this there is no exception whatever; it is a fact nobody attempts to dispute. Who shall say, then—who shall dare to say—that a woman's work is slight, her sphere narrow, her influence feeble? Have we not yet with us the proverb, "She who rocks the cradle rules the world"? ”

“ The older I grow the more strongly do I feel that religion is a matter of daily living—of practice, not precept; and that unless the Spirit of Christ animate us in all our relations one to the other we name His name in vain. And what a lovely spirit it was, unsullied by any trace of selfishness, gentle, forbearing, long-suffering, just to the last degree!
It is this spirit alone that can sanctify and bless the home, and raise all common life out of a sordid groove; that can make homely things beautiful, and hard things, of which so many meet us on life's road, easier to bear. ”

“ The hardy flowers Gladys planted in the little yard grew and blossomed; the solitary tree, in spite of its loneliness, put forth its fresh green buds, and made itself a thing of beauty in the maiden's eyes. In that lonely home the tide of life flowed evenly. The old man made his bargains, cutting them perhaps a trifle less keenly than in former years. The lad, approaching young manhood, did his daily work, and drank yet deeper of the waters of knowledge, becoming day by day more conscious of his power, more full of hope and high ambition for the future. ”

“ Not a soft, gentle summer rain, but a fierce, wild storm, which beat the poor flowers to the earth, spoiled the fruit, and overflowed the river till half the meadow lay under water. There was plenty of work in the barn for Uncle Josh and the men, and plenty in the house for Aunt Hepsy and the girls. The scullery was full of wet clothes waiting on a dry day. That of itself, not to speak of the damage to the orchard, was sufficient to make Aunt Hepsy a very disagreeable person to live with while the storm lasted. ”

“ Home-making, like the other arts, is with some an inborn gift,—the secret of making others happy, of conferring blessings, of scattering the sunny largesse of love everywhere, is as natural to some as to breathe. Such sweet souls are to be envied, as are those whose happy lot it is to dwell with them. But, at the same time, perhaps they are not so deserving of our admiration and respect as some who, in order to confer happiness on others, themselves undergo what is to them mental and moral privation, who day by day have to keep a curb on themselves in order to crucify the "natural man." ”

“ For the first time for many many months Walter permitted himself to be at ease and perfectly natural in his manner, and the result was entirely satisfactory; self-consciousness is fatal to comfort always. Gladys wore a black gown of some shimmering soft material, with a quaint frill of old lace falling over the low collar, a bunch of spring snowdrops at her belt, and her lovely hair bound with the black velvet band which none could wear just in the same way—a very simple, unostentatious home toilet, but she looked, Walter thought, like a queen. ”

“ The woman who trains her daughters in the belief that marriage is their only end and aim, the very raison d'être of their being, is a mistaken, despicable creature, and in all probability her daughters will take after her.
If they do not marry, then what is to become of our daughters? Of late years their path of life has opened up more widely and clearly, and though the avocations open to women are very crowded there is still room for the best equipped. That is the secret,—to bring to the market the highest value only, to render oneself as efficient as nature and circumstances permit. ”

“ He found her in a lonely and impressionable mood, and left the house, to his own profound astonishment, an accepted lover.
That very evening, after he was gone, Gladys sat by the fire in her spacious drawing-room, turning upon her third finger the diamond ring George Fordyce had transferred from his own hand to hers, whispering as he did so that she should soon have one worthier of her. Watching the flashing of the stone in the gleaming firelight, she wondered to see tears, matching the diamonds in brilliance, falling on her gown. She did not understand these tears ”

“ So she said to Miss Goldthwaite one day; and she carried the message, slightly modified, to Mrs. Keane. So the days and weeks slipped away, till Winter had to hide his diminished head before the harbingers of Spring. In the closing days of March the ice broke up on the river, and all nature seemed to spring to life again. Green blades and tiny blossoms began to peep above ground, and the birds sang their songs of gladness on the budding boughs. It was a busy time at Thankful Rest, both indoors and out. In the first week of April began that awful revolution, Miss Hepsy Strong's spring-cleaning. ”

“ A well-known novelist, lecturing recently on the younger generation of fiction-writers, remarked that Robert Louis Stevenson, in ignoring woman so much in his works, had passed by the most picturesque part of human life. The contention was perfectly unimpeachable from the artistic point of view; but we aim, I trust, at being something more than picturesque. While not disdaining the high privilege of giving the romance and sweetness to life, we would desire also to be strong, capable, serviceable to our day and generation. So and so only can we hope to be the equal and the friend of man. ”

“ There is Walter Hepburn.'
'Who is Walter Hepburn?' asked Gladys, and the Scotch name fell most musically from her lips for the first time, the name which was one day to be the dearest to her on earth.
'He's the office boy—an imp of the devil he is; but he is sharp and clever as a needle; and then he is cheap.'
'Are cheap things always good, Uncle Abel?' Gladys asked. 'I have heard papa say that cheap things are so often nasty, and he has spoken to me more than once of the sin of cheapness. Even genius must be bought and sold cheaply. ”

“ It is the great, almost awful, responsibility of this bond which makes thinking people deplore the prevalence of early and improvident marriage between persons who seem to lack entirely this sense of responsibility, and who undertake the most solemn duties in the same flippant mood as they go out on a day's enjoyment. The idea that they have in their power the making and marring of a human soul, to say nothing of the influences which in fulness of time must go forth from that same soul, does not trouble them, or indeed exist for them at all. ”

“ It stood a mile or so beyond Pendlepoint on the farther side of the river, from which it was separated by a broad meadow, where in the summer time the sleek kine stood udder-deep in cowslips and clover.
It was a long, low, comfortable-looking house, hidden by lovely creeping plants, and sheltered at the back by the old elm trees in the paddock, and at the front by the apple trees in the orchard. Perhaps it was because it had such a snug, cosy, restful look about it that it had been queerly christened Thankful Rest. ”

“ It was a sad letter, conveying a great deal more than was actually expressed. Gladys threw it from her, and, laying her head on her hands, sobbed bitterly.
'My dear,' cried the little spinster, in sympathetic concern, 'don't break your heart. You have done a great deal—far more, I assure you, than almost any one else would have done. You cannot help the poor girl having chosen the way of transgressors.'
'It is not Liz I am crying for at present, Miss Peck,' said Gladys mournfully; 'it is for Walter. It is a heartbreaking letter. I cannot, dare not, comfort him. ”

“ And his Nemesis sits at home, querulous and fretful because her establishment is more modest than her ambition, her possessions than her pretensions. Life is embittered to him; hope has died: if love follow it sadly to the bier, who can blame him? Certainly not the woman who has been a hindrance and not a help, one whose reproaches, tacit and acknowledged, have caused the iron to enter into his soul. It is such women who send men to mental and moral destruction, nor is their punishment lacking. ”