Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

“ Among a thousand picked men, his face and figure would have been distinguished. People did not call him old, for the alertness and force of youth radiated from him, and his gray eyes were clear and his color fresh, yet the face was lined heavily, and the thick thatch of hair shone in the firelight silvery white. Face and figure were full of character and breeding, of life lived to its utmost, of will, responsibility, success. Yet to-night the spring of the mechanism seemed broken, and the noble head lay back against the brown leather of his deep chair as listlessly as a tired girl's. ”

“ Zoëtique stood upright in the stern of the canoe, poling it through the shallows. His athletic figure swung with a sure balance; the wind swayed the grasses and floated the ends of the bandanna about his throat. I held my hat on my head as the breeze caught it, and he smiled broadly to see me. The spire of a tall spruce in the distance cut into the sky. It was one of those lucky amateur photographs which wing the spirit and the drawing combined. It takes perhaps a thousand films to produce one, but no professional work comes near the effect when such a one succeeds. ”

“ The amphitheatre of Yale Field is packed with more than ten thousand. The seniors are there with their mothers and fathers, their pretty little sisters and their proud little brothers—the flower of the country. One looks about and sees everywhere high-bred faces, strong faces, open-eyed, drinking in this extraordinary scene. For there is nothing just like it elsewhere. Across the field where hundreds of automobiles and carriages are drawn close—beyond that is a gate-way, and through this, at three o'clock or so, comes pouring a rainbow. A gigantic, light-filled, motion-swept rainbow of men. ”

“ The stronger you are the better your work is. I want to be strong, to be useful, to touch things with a personality which will move them, make them go, widen them. How? How can I? What can I do, ever? Oh what can I do—what can I do—with my life! I thought that day in August that it was only my illness, and my tie to an unloved man, but it's more than that. You have broadened the field of my longing, my restlessness, till it covers—everything. Help me then, for you have waked me to this want, question, agony. It's not only if I may kill my life—it's what I can do if I don't kill it. ”

“ Spring comes easily in the South. It is much as if the lover you doubted turned all at once his face toward you lighted with the fire unmistakable, and you wondered in the warm flood of happiness if ever you did doubt. So in the turn of a hand in that God’s country there are vivid colors of tulips and jonquils and hyacinths—gold and purple and pink—and the hedges are dim with mists of juicy color, and the lawns have sprung to emerald, and the sunlight stipples the ground with gold laughter through the lace of boughs. ”

“ The American fights for an ideal; the sign of it is in the faces of the men in uniform whom one meets everywhere in the street.
David Lance, splendidly powerful and fit except for the small limp which was his undoing, suffered as he joined, whole-hearted, in the glory of those who were going. Back in his room alone, smoking, staring into his dying fire, he was dreaming how it would feel if he were the one who was to march off in uniform to take his man's share of the hardship and comradeship and adventure and suffering, and of the salvation of the world. ”

“ As before, he rode out from the Phoenix Hotel, and at ten o'clock in the morning he turned into Fairfield. It was a still, bright Christmas morning, crisp and cool, and the air like wine. The house stood bravely in the sunlight, but the branches above it were bare and no softening leafage hid the marks of time; it looked old and sad and deserted to-day, and its master gazed at it with a pang in his heart. It was his, and he could not save it. He turned away and walked slowly to the garden, and stood a moment as he had stood last May, with his hand on the stone gateway. ”

“ The days were war days, and men's passions were inflamed, yet there were men who listened to Edward Everett who believed that his great speech would have been greater unenforced with bitterness.
As the clear, cultivated voice fell into silence, the mass of people burst into a long storm of applause, for they knew that they had heard an oration which was an event. They clapped and cheered him again and again and again, as good citizens acclaim a man worthy of honor whom they have delighted to honor. ”