Ellis Meredith

“ We do not need any one to tell us that what God has joined cannot be sundered by man. All this year has been a long wedding of every thought and feeling and desire, until I have looked into your eyes to see my own wish. We have thought and thought, but that way madness lies. Now I feel that all the world we have lost, lives for us in every glorious possibility in each other. ”

“ I wouldn't dare to be as radical as Lowell, nor as bitter as Tennyson, nor as savage as Carlyle, or Ruskin, or Hugo. We had overcome the sharpness of death, but whence could we hope for deliverance from the sharpness of living?"
"We have been delivered," said Adam, slowly, "but you don't seem disposed to be the Miriam of this Israel—limited."
"Well, no," answered Robin. "I should like to believe that you and I were rewarded for our superhuman excellence by being saved when Pharaoh and his multitudes went under, but a somewhat wide acquaintance with other people forbids. ”

“ Robin rested her chin in her hands and looked down the valley, the lines of perplexity deepening in her forehead.
"If only we had an angel with a sword, or without one, to tell us what to do," she said. "If only we were deeply religious with the old-fashioned orthodox religion, that would enable us to believe we were predestined not to be drowned—"
"Or if we believed in a personal God, without whom not a sparrow falleth, though the waters cover the face of the earth and blot out millions of His creatures," answered Adam. ”

“ What is Nature, and on what compulsion must we obey her? The imperative mandates of our own hearts? But what if our hearts are at war with our heads? Are we to follow no higher law than the blind instinct that moves the house-fly? Or will we aspire to the indomitable [pg. 244] soul of the mocking-birds that feed their young in captivity until they see they are prisoners for life, and then bring them poisonous spiders that they may die rather than live under such conditions? Shall we give hostages to Nature when she has given nothing to us? ”

“ It was beautiful before, but what wouldn't it mean now, Adam? But have you any one left on earth; if this continent is all gone, who would look for you? There are people of my blood, or there were, but they did not even know of my existence."
"There is not a soul," he answered. ”

“ I used to wonder how conscientious men and women could bring other human beings into it, to be and to suffer and to faint in the frantic struggle for the unrealities that made us miserable or happy. Consider how paltry they were. If we built a new house, we were infinitely more concerned to see that the contractor used pressed brick than we were to see that the construction of our own characters was true. ”

“ The dogs were lying about them, and the thump, thump of first one tail and then another told the story of canine content, while the kittens walked over them impartially.
"What a strange thing human nature is!" Adam said. "The only thing needed to make our life perfect is that it shall not last. The moment, if that moment ever comes, when it is real no more, it will become ideal." ”

“ We are not children, Adam, nor are we in any way the prototypes of those first parents of ours. I think sometimes that ever since their day their children have been walking in a blind circle, eating not the fruit of knowledge, but of the knowledge of good and evil. ”

“ VII The World is too much with us; late and soon Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon. Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,— So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ”

“ XVIII Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life: So careful of the type? but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, "A thousand types are gone: I care for nothing, all shall go." Tennyson. ”

“ Robin concluded that the owners of the cabin had not been long married, and the bride, knowing to what kind of a place she was coming, had thought more of her house than of herself. All the feminine garments had to be re-fashioned. Robin made her skirts short enough for mountain climbing, and dreading the time when her one pair of shoes should give out, she wore sandals fashioned from yucca leaves by Adam's clever fingers. ”

“ Robin shook her head sadly. "At first, Adam. We should learn their language and their customs. New friends are speedily acquired, and as for relatives,—well, in the scheme of life relatives don't count for much. There always comes a time when they step out of our lives, anyway."
"But as to happiness?"
Her face paled a little. "Have you been happy here?" she asked, without raising her eyes to his, and then went on, not waiting for a reply, "If you have been, it has been in the care of our little family of dependents, who do not need you half so much as the great family of human dependents. ”

“ Robin answered moodily. "The poor we had always with us. History always repeated itself."
"Still, it didn't exactly repeat itself," Adam said. "Our dark age would have done for a golden age in the past. Greece was glorious for a little while, but her literature tells us of her ideals. The isles of Greece, where Byron contracted his last illness, would have left him to die among the rocks twenty-five hundred years earlier, because he had a lame foot. We at least were kinder to animals, and that means a great deal." ”

“ We were afraid to say, I love you, to anything more sensitive than a stray kitten, though the world has hungered and thirsted after the love we have feared to give even to our own children. And yet just the love a man and woman may bear each other, unconsciously, is enough to transform the earth. ”

“ Robin, breaking a silence of an hour, during which even Lassie had been motionless.
"But it is toward land," answered Adam.
"But the same wind that brings us the ship may dash it to pieces on this awful coast."
"True, but she is far enough out to make herself secure. Oh, Robin, suppose she sails around us and goes on!"
"That is impossible," answered Robin. "The people on that ship are as anxious to find us as we can be to see them, if they are civilized at all. Noah and Mt. Ararat are not to be named in the same day with us."
Adam crossed the gorge and added fuel to the fire. ”

“ One day early in December, Robin woke to the consciousness of a steady drip, drip of rain, accompanied by an indescribably mournful wind. In the other room she heard Adam piling on [pg. 68] the logs, and shivered. Perhaps the winter had come. It had been hard enough when there was plenty of work, and the free outdoor life; if they should become prisoners, how should they, how would he endure it? ”

“ I have been afraid to put things in words. They grow so much more real then. [pg. 48] But now I am afraid to keep my thoughts longer."
They went past the wheat and corn fields, through a narrow cañon that led them to a valley they had never seen before. It was very beautiful, and the play of the sunlight on the high walls of rock, the murmur of the stream below them, the trembling aspens, the white peaks in the distance, made a scene worthy their attention, but they were blind to it.
They sat down on a broad stone seat; presently Adam said, "Now, tell me; tell me how it seems to you." ”

“ When a race has run its course, nature cries 'habet,' and nothing can alter its fate. It was not alone the merciless onslaughts of the white man that exterminated the buffalo. They died, and none came to take their places. They vanished, less on account of man's cruelty than by reason of their own sterility. Degenerates or regenerates, can't we leave the decision with a power that forever builds or destroys, in accordance with a law we do not understand, a higher law that comes from the source of all law, whatever that source may be? ”

“ We called it heredity, the Hindoos called it karma, and, though that is different, educators called it the recapitulation theory."
Adam shook his head. "I understand heredity," he said, "but karma and recapitulation are too much for me."
"Karma is our heritage from former existences," she answered, "that may have been lived here or elsewhere. It is the sum of our past, good and bad. It is based on a belief in reincarnation, and it is the law that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. ”

“ Even if a dozen other people had been left instead, no one would have understood as you have. Oh, I would infinitely rather be alone with you than in the utter loneliness of the society of a lot of men and women who would drive me mad with their complaints and inefficiency. I don't know whether it is a dream, or heaven or hell, or the work of some black magic ”

“ They seemed to be on an island, alone on a wide, wide sea. Nowhere curled a friendly wreath of smoke; nowhere was there sound of any human thing.
They went wearily back. There was nowhere else to go. If the gateway had been awful in its solitude, the Peak was still more desolate. There was nothing living there, except themselves and the dog that followed closely at their heels, making no excursions of its own. The hour was wearing toward midnight when they sank down [pg. 17] by the boulder once more to watch the darkness disappear, and wait for they knew not what. ”

“ Nature's laws are immutable, so we have been told with wearying insistence, but suppose you and I have wills as strong as Nature herself? Suppose we ask what she has done for the humanity of which we are a part, that she should demand fresh victims from us? Oh, I know; you will tell me,—
"'What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! [pg. 243] in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!'
"And I should answer,—
"'What is man, that thou art mindful of him? ”

“ You have told me of your dream of a home, but Emerson said, 'not even a home in the heart of one we love can satisfy the awful soul that dwells in clay.' Can it satisfy you, who hoped and expected so much? ”

“ Don't you think it is possible to love with our souls, our subconsciousness, and realize with our slow brains, after months and years, what our hearts knew at once? Even love has become more or less of a mental process. We reason about things instead of feeling them, and yet when we come to our last analyses we don't know anything; we simply feel. When the scientist says, 'The amœba moves out of the shade into the sunlight because it wants the sunlight,' he bases his postulate upon what he feels, and believes that the atom feels. ”

“ It is not, and it never was, And it, perhaps, may never be,'"
quoted Adam, cynically. "I wonder what they will call us, Robin, and who will lecture on my mistakes in seven or eight thousand years, and show how it never could have happened. Do you suppose there is any one else on earth? [pg. 229] Did the Atlantis people leave any literature behind them?"
Robin shook her head. "Who really knows? God has not left Himself without a witness, at any time. In some way the story of creation has gone on and on. Every nation has its Eden and flood and Saviour. ”

“ I should give it the code of Christ, 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.' To love one's neighbor as oneself,—isn't that code enough for any world? And I should make the neighbor include every dumb creature. ”

“ But we must think."
"I have," answered Adam, gravely. "All my life I have thought. I have wanted the perfect companionship of the one woman in all the world who could give it; I have always known she would come. I have wanted a home; I have wanted to see my sons and daughters grow up about me. I wanted to be a power for good in this world of which we are a part, and [pg. 214] where we live for some good purpose, if there be any purpose in life. ”

“ It was this very discomfort and inequality that used so to enrage me, for it need not have been."
"I wish," said Robin, "we knew how to make paper; of all the fascinating things in Bellamy's 'Equality,' there was nothing I liked so well as the idea of paper garments, to be burned when one got through with them. Think of never having any washing and ironing, and always having new clothes."
"I wonder whether we could invent some of those things over again," said Adam, reflectively. ”

“ They stopped and regarded the two gateways,—one the work of nature, the other the feeble counterfeit of man,—and then swinging open the creaking wooden affair, passed into the peaceful valley. A few yards away stood a small log cabin, but the chimney was smokeless, and though the chickens clucked in the yard, and a collie lay on the doorstep, it seemed desolate and deserted.
[pg. 8] Passing along an almost invisible trail, they found themselves in the wildest and most remote part of that wild and remote region. They saw a few stray animals, but no human beings. ”