Helen H. Gardener

“ Does literature throw a true or a fictitious light on such questions as these?
To whose advantage is it to sustain such fictitious standard of morals, of justice, of love, of right, of manliness, of honor, of womanly dignity and worth? To whose advantage is it to teach by all the arts of fiction that contentment with one's lot—whatever the lot may be—is a virtue? Yet it is one of the fictions of fiction that the contented man or woman is the admirable person. All progress proves the contrary. To whose advantage is it to insist that virtue is always rewarded—vice punished? ”

“ The time allotted anyone was long since overrun; but no one thought of that, and she went on:
"'With love!' Ah, there is where the iron can burn and scar and open every wound afresh each day, make poverty a curse, a blight, a scourge, a vulture, iron-beaked, with claws of burning steel, that leave no nerve untouched, no drop of blood unshed.
"'With love!' 'Tis there the hand of Poverty can deal the deadliest blows, and show, as nowhere else on earth, the value of that slandered, hoarded thing called wealth." ”

“ Fear scatters the blossoms of genius to the winds, and superstition buries truth beneath the incrustation of inherited mediocrity. Fear puts the fetters of religious stagnation on every child of the brain. It covers the form of purity and truth with the contagion of contumely and distrust. It warps and dwarfs every character that it touches. It is the father, mother, and nurse of hypocrisy. It is the one great disgrace of our day, the one incalculable curse of our time; and its nurse and hot-bed is the Church. ”

“ The river was left behind, with its horrible secret, to keep its bloody tryst with the sea; to carry its drift of gallant men, who would, alas, be gallant no more, on the infinite wanderings of its waves, as they ran and struggled in vain to leave behind the memory and the burden of the pitiless struggle and carnage—the relics of man's power and courage and savagery, to do and to die by and for his fellow-man, that he may adjust differences he himself has raised from the infinite depths of his own ignorance—from the blindness of his benighted past! ”

“ But would any man sell what is gained in liberty, in strength, in breadth, in conscious superiority, for the delights which every brute has left him in his stagnant paradise of ignorance and rest? What man in this nineteenth century can unblushingly say he would not choose the labor with all its pain, the effort with all its failure, the struggle with all its exhaustion? Why try to bind the human mind by the silly theory that a God requires man to crush out or subject the intellect he has given him? ”

“ What tricks they play us! What cowards they make of us! What selfishness they breed in us! For ourselves we can be brave, defiant, even jocose, in the midst of danger or of sorrow; but for those we love! Ah, for those we love, our philosophy is scant comfort, our courage is undermined before it is tested, and we are helpless in the face of Love. We can walk bravely enough into the mouth of a cannon, but Love disarms us, and we cry for mercy where we did not shrink from death!
Roy wondered how much Beverly knew of the battle, and if his heart was anxious, also. ”

“ We all know that vicious success is common—that often vice and success are partners for life and that in death they are not divided; that the wicked flourish like a green bay-tree—why blink it in fiction? Why add suspicion to failure and misfortune, and gloss success with the added glory that it is necessarily the result of virtue? To those who know how false the theory is, it is a bad lesson—to those who do not know it, it is a disarmament against imposition. ”

“ You, who are so good, so good; and I—oh, how can you be so kind to me? Hate me! Hate me! Thrust me from your house, and tell the world I tried to steal your husband! Tell that I am vile and wicked! Tell—and now I have sent him away from you, who love him—whom he loves! Why do you not blame me? Why do you never blame anyone? Why—"
There was a pause; the girl sobbed bitterly, while the older woman seemed afraid to trust her voice. After a while in a tired, solemn tone, Nellie went on:
"Do you think you can believe a word I say, Florence? Is there any use for me to tell you the truth?" ”

“ The throne and the altar have ever Combined to despoil the home, But the home is the heaven to live for, And Love is the God sublime Who paints in tints of glory, Upon the wings of Time This legend, grand and simple, And true as eternal Right— "No Justice e'er came from Jury, Whose verdict was based on might!" As high above earth as is heaven; As high as the stars above The Church, the chapel, the altar; Is the home whose God is Love. ”

“ And I tell you, gentlemen, with my one term's experience in the Legislature and what it has taught me—I tell you that there is no outrage which wealth and power can commit upon man that it cannot and does not commit doubly upon woman! There is no cruelty upon all this cruel earth half so terrible as the tyranny of sex! And again, I tell you that to woman every man is a capitalist in wealth and in power, and I reiterate:—the destruction of the poor is their poverty. ”

“ To Griffith it was like watching the tide rise on the sea. It was unavoidable, and those who were caught out beyond the safety line were bound to go down. He did not blame the sea. He only deplored the inevitable loss, the sorrow, the suffering, and the mistakes which made it all possible. That his own part of it was in and of the past lightened his heart. One day as he sat listlessly on the side porch reading his Gazette, he noticed vaguely the half-witted girl, now almost grown to womanhood, circling about the gate and making aimless passes toward the end of the house. ”