Kate Douglas Wiggin

“ And therefore, these things, for aught I see, being unalterably so, I will take children’s love, woman’s love, and man’s friendship; man’s friendship, which, if it is not life’s poetry, is credible prose, says George Meredith,—'a land of low undulations, instead of Alps, beyond the terrors and deceptions.' That will fill to overflowing my life, already so full, and in time I shall grow from everybody’s Mistress Mary into everybody’s Mother Mary, and that will be the end of me in my present state of being. ”

“ When we think of our success with this experiment, we must try to keep our faith in human nature, even under the trying ordeal of the twins."
"My faith in human nature is absolutely intact," answered Rhoda; "the trouble is that the Warrior and the Cyclone are not altogether human. Atlantic is the coldest creature I ever knew,—so cold that he could stand the Shadrach-Meshech-and Abednego test with impunity; Pacific is hot,—so hot-tempered that one can hardly touch her without being scorched. ”

“ Rhoda was considerably taken aback by the sudden and violent slamming of the door of Number one, Eden Place, and she felt an unwelcome misgiving as to her wisdom in bringing Mrs. Grubb face to face with truth. Her rage had somewhat subsided by the time she reached Mistress Mary’s side, for she had stopped on the way to ask a policeman to telephone the various stations for news of the lost children, and report at once to her. "There is one good thing," she thought: "wherever they may be, their light cannot be hid any more than that of a city that is set on a hill. ”

“ Those children would have been missed last night if you had one drop of mother’s blood in your veins! You have three helpless children under what you are pleased to call your care" (and here Rhoda’s lip curled so scornfully that Mrs. Grubb was tempted to stab her with a curling-pin) , "and you went to sleep without knowing to a certainty whether they had had supper or bed! I don’t believe you are a woman at all—you are just a vague abstraction; and the only things you’ve ever borne or nursed or brooded in your life have been your miserable, bloodless little clubs and bands and unions!" ”

“ Miss Mary, as she stood on a certain flight of broad wooden steps on a sunshiny morning; yet she was undoubtedly having her own way and living her own life in spite of remonstrances from bevies of friends, who saw no shadow of reason or common sense in her sort of gardening. It would have been foolish enough for a young woman with a small living income to cultivate roses or violets or lavender, but this would at least have been poetic, while the arduous tilling of a soil where the only plants were little people "all in a row" was something beyond credence. ”

“ The major part of the audience were not of an age to appreciate high art, but the youngsters were awed by the strange spectacle of Mr. Man at the piano, and with gaping mouth and strained ear listened to the divine harmonies he evoked. On and on he played, weaving the story of his past into the music, so it seemed to Mistress Mary. ”

“ Marm Lisa stood at the foot of the steps, a twin glued to each side. She stared at Mistress Mary with open-mouthed wonder not unmixed with admiration.
"That same odd child," thought Mary. "I have seen her before, and always with those two little vampires hanging to her skirts. She looks a trifle young to have such constant family cares; perhaps we had better 'lend a hand.'"
"Won’t you come in?" she asked, with a smile that would have drawn a sane person up the side of a precipice.
Atlantic turned and ran, but the other two stood their ground. ”

“ The people who eat meat are not half so elevated nor half so teachable as the Edenites."
"The Edenites are possibly too weak and hungry to resist instruction," said Mary.
"They are neither weak nor hungry," replied their vice-president, with dignity. "They eat milk, and stewed fruit, and all the edible grains nicely boiled. It stands to reason that if you can subdue your earthly, devilish, sensual instincts on anything, you can do it on a diet like that. You can’t fancy an angel or a Mahatma devouring underdone beef." ”

“ Grubb easily. "There is plenty of money in the world, and it belongs equally to the whole human race. I don’t recognize anybody’s right to have a dollar more than I have; but Mr. Grubb could never accept any belief that had been held less than a thousand years, and before he died he gave some money to a friend of his, and told him to pay me ten dollars every month towards Lisa’s board. Untold gold could never pay for what my pride has suffered in having her, and if she hadn’t been so useful I couldn’t have done it,—I don’t pretend that I could. She’s an offense to the eye." ”

“ This gap seems to be filled now and then by some inspired little creature like Mistress Mary, with enough potential maternity to mother an orphan asylum; too busy, too absorbed, too radiantly absent-minded to see a husband in any man, but claiming every child in the universe as her very own. There was never anywhere an urchin so dirty, so ragged, so naughty, that it could not climb into Mistress Mary’s lap, and from thence into her heart. ”

“ Since then there had been day after day of brilliant, cloudless sunshine, and the moist earth, warmed gratefully through to the marrow, stirred and trembled and pushed forth myriads of tender shoots from the seeds that were hidden in its bosom; and the tender shoots themselves looked up to the sun, and, with their roots nestled in sweet, fragrant beds of richness, thought only of growing tall and green, dreamed only of the time when pink pimpernels would bloom between their waving blades, and when tribes of laughing children would come to ramble over the hillsides. ”

“ Old as we are, we are most of us mere children in this, that we go on hoping that next Christmas all the delicious happenings we have missed in other Christmases may descend upon us by the old and reliable chimney-route! A Santa Claus that had any bowels of compassion would rush down the narrowest and sootiest chimney in the world to give me my simple wishes. ”

“ It seems as if heaven’s sweet air must play about the towers, and heaven’s sunshine stream in at every window, of a house built from turret to foundation-stone of such royal material. The Castle might look like other castles, but every enchanted brick and stone and block of wood, every grain of mortar, every bit of glass and marble, unlike all others of its kind, would be transformed by the thought it represented and thrilled with the message it bore. ”

“ Marm Lisa could push the twins up to this vantage-ground, and crawl up after them. Once ensconced, if they had chosen the right time of day, interesting events were sure to be forthcoming. In a large playground within range of vision, there were small children, as many in number as the sands of the seashore. At a given moment, a lovely angel with black hair and a scarlet apron would ring a large bell. Simultaneously, a lovely angel with brown hair and a white apron would fly to the spot, and the children would go through a mysterious process like the swarming of bees around a queen. ”

“ As Lisa grew in power Rhoda grew in ingenuity, and failure in any one particular only stimulated her genius of invention the more. Did she spill paste, mucilage, water on her gingham aprons, and wipe anything and everything on them that came in her way, Rhoda dressed her in daintier ones of white cambric, with a ruffle at the neck and sleeves; the child’s pleasure knew no bounds, and she kept the aprons clean. With Mrs. Grubb’s permission her hair was cut shorter, and brushed back under a round comb. No regiment of soldiers could have kept the comb in place. ”

“ There! she has just come into the playground with Edith. Will wonders never cease? Pacific is embracing her knees, and Atlantic allows himself to be hugged!"
Marm Lisa was indeed beside herself with joy at the meeting. She clung to the infant rebels, stroked their hair, admired their aprons, their clean hands, their new boots; and, on being smartly slapped by Atlantic for putting the elastic of his hat behind his ears, kissed his hand as if it had offered a caress. "He’s so little," she said apologetically, looking up with wet eyes to Edith, who stood near. ”

“ Her spiritual antennæ were so fine, so fine, that they discerned the good in everything; they were feeling now after the soft spot in the rocky heart of Atlantic Simonson; they had not found it yet, but they would—oh, they would in time; for if hope is the lover’s staff, it is no less that of the idealist.
Marm Lisa looked upon the miracles that happened under Mistress Mary’s roof with a sort of dazed wonder, but her intelligence grew a little day by day; and though she sadly taxed everybody’s patience, she infused a new spirit into all the neophytes. ”

“ It was lovely to see Rhoda’s freshness, spontaneity, and unconsciousness, as she flitted about like a pretty cardinal-bird. Poor young minister, whose heart is dangling at the strings of her scarlet apron! Lucky young minister, if his arm ever goes about that slender red-ribboned waist, and his lips ever touch that glowing cheek! But poor me! what will the garden be without our crimson rose? ”

“ The crowd gave a long-drawn groan, and mothers turned their eyes away and shivered. Nobody followed Marm Lisa up that flaming path of death and duty: it was no use flinging a good life after a worthless one.
"Fool! crazy fool!" people ejaculated, with tears of reverence in their eyes.
"Darling, splendid fool!" cried Mary. "Fool worth all the wise ones among us!"
"He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it!" ”

“ Atlantic and Pacific were curious, too, but other passions held greater sway with them; for when the children disappeared and the music ceased, they called loudly for more, and usually scratched and pinched Marm Lisa as they were lifted down from the fence; not seeing daily how anybody else could be held answerable for the cessation of the entertainment, and scratches and pinches being the only remedial agencies that suggested themselves.
On this particular occasion there were no bells, no music, and no mysterious swarming; but the heavenly apparition sat on the broad steps. ”

“ There will be plenty of traces of their journey, for once seen they are never forgotten. Nobody but a hero would think of kidnapping them, and nobody but an idiot would expect a ransom for them!"
"I hope you didn’t upbraid Mrs. Grubb," said Mary, divining from Rhoda’s clouded brow that her interview had not been a pleasant one. "You know our only peaceful way of rescuing Lisa from her hold is to make a friend of her, and convert her to our way of thinking. Was she much disturbed about the children?" ”

“ It was a few minutes later when Rhoda said: "I am fired with zeal, I confess it. Henceforth my single aim shall be to bring Marm Lisa into her lost kingdom and inheritance. But meanwhile, how, oh how shall I master the hateful preliminaries? How shall I teach her to lace her shoes and keep them laced, unless I invent a game for it? How shall I keep her hair from dangling in her eyes, how keep her aprons neat?—though in those respects she is no worse than Pacific Simonson. I promised her a doll yesterday, and she was remarkably good. Do you object, Mistress Mary?" ”

“ It is the children of this year, of every new year, who are to bring the full dawn, that dawn that has been growing since first the world began. It is not only that children re-create the world year by year, decade by decade, by making over human nature; by transforming trivial, thoughtless men and women into serious, earnest ones; by waking in arid natures slumbering seeds of generosity, self-sacrifice, and helpfulness. It is not alone in this way that children are bringing the dawn of the perfect day. ”

“ Rhoda took the square of neat cardboard with the precious red circle that meant so much, and ran into the playground with it, hugging it to her heart, and crying and laughing over it like a child.
When she came back Mistress Mary put her arm round Lisa’s waist and said to the whole great family: "Children, after trying hard, for ever so long, Lisa has sewed this lovely picture all by herself. There is not a wrong stitch, and one side is as neat as the other. What shall we say?" ”

“ Nobody was certain that he felt any pleasure at all. His helpfulness was not spontaneous; it seemed a kind of reflex action, a survival of some former state of mind or heart; for he did his favors in a dream, nor heard any thanks: yet the elixir was working in his veins.
"He is dreadfully in the way," grumbled Edith; "he is more ever-present than my ardent Russian." ”

“ We who see more clearly the meaning of life know that this will not always happen, and we can be content to do right for right's sake. I don't object to your putting hosts of slumbering incentives in Lisa's mind, but a slumbering incentive is not vulgar and debasing, like a bribe."
A plant might be a feeble and common thing, yet it might grow in beauty and strength in a garden like Mistress Mary's. ”

“ She was surrounded by puzzles with never any answer to one of them, but if only she had comprehended the truth, it was these very puzzles that were her salvation. While her feeble mind stirred, while it wondered, brooded, suffered,—enough it did all these too seldom,—it kept itself alive, even if the life were only like the flickering of a candle. ”

“ This was greatly to the satisfaction of the augurs and the high priest; for a mighty joss is not always in a sunny humor on feast-days, and to parade a sulky god through the streets is a very depressing ceremony, foretelling to the initiated a season of dire misfortune. So his godship smiled and shook his plume of peacock feathers benignantly on Yeong Wo’s birthday, and therefore the pageant in which Atlantic and Pacific bore a part was more gorgeous than anything that ever took place out of the Flowery Kingdom itself. ”

“ Individuals never interested her; she cared for nothing but humanity, and humanity writ very large at that, so that once the twins nearly died of scarlatina while Mrs. Grubb was collecting money for the children of the yellow-fever sufferers in the South.
But Providence had an eye for Mr. Grubb’s perplexities. It does not and cannot always happen, in a world like this, that vice is assisted to shirk, and virtue aided to do, its duty; but any man as marvelously afflicted as Mr. Grubb is likely to receive not only spiritual consolation, but miraculous aid of some sort. ”

“ Grubb’s present residence, which appeared to be a perfect hot-bed of world-saving ideas, and was surrounded by such a halo of spots that it would have struck the unregenerate observer as an undesirable place in which to live, unless one wished to be broken daily on the rack of social progress. ”

“ If I had money enough to conduct an expensive experiment, I would separate them, and educate Pacific at the North Pole, and Atlantic in the Tropics."
"If they are not distinctly human, we must allow them a few human virtues at least," said Mary; "for example, their loyalty to each other. Pacific, always at war with the community, seldom hurts her brother; Atlantic, selfish and grasping with all the world, shares generously with his sister. We must remember, too, that Lisa’s care has been worse than nothing for them, notwithstanding its absolute fidelity ”

“ Grubb was moderately cheerful, for her troubles were as nebulous as everything else to her mind. She intended to invent some feasible plan for her deliverance sooner or later, but she was much more intent upon development than deliverance, and she never seemed to have the leisure to break her shackles. Nothing really mattered much. Her body might be occasionally in Eden Place, but her soul was always in a hired hall. ”

“ No one else could have recognized Atlantic in the smoke, but Rhoda and Mary knew the round cropped head and the familiar blue gingham apron.
Lisa stood in the empty window-frame, a trembling figure on a background of flame. Her post was not at the moment in absolute danger. There was hope yet, though to the onlookers there seemed none.
"Throw him!" "Drop him!" "Le’ go of him!" shouted the crowd.
"Hold your jaws, and let me do the talking!" roared the policeman. "Stop your noise, if you don’t want two dead children on your consciences! ”