Mary MacLane

“ For a measure of sorrow is sufficient to color a great sea.
"The sea will give to the measure of sorrow a bit of wild joy. There is no joy in the world like that of the sea—for there is enough in it to come out and touch all things in life, and life itself. And the wild joy will stop short only of a scene of death. If a life is joined with the sea, in spite of all the weariness, all the anguish, all the heavy-days of unrest, and all the futile struggling and wasting of nerves, there will yet be a wild joy in it all, and thrill after thrill of triumph in extreme moments. ”

“ The half-conscious soul knows its love—and wonders why it loves, and wonders if it really can love any but itself, and wonders that it cares for love; the half-conscious soul knows its sorrow—and marvels that it should have sorrow since it can grasp not truth; the half-conscious soul knows its bitterness, and realizes at once its right to and its reason for bitterness—but, thinking of it, the arrow is turned in the wound; the half-conscious soul knows its remorse, but it is convinced that it has no right to remorse, since it does its unworthy acts with infinite forethought. ”

“ Having looked long at the visions the princess takes her eyes from the line of thin sky and looks down into the tumbled dark water.
When all is seen, says the princess, there is nothing better than wild, dark water that is too vast to be measured and that is good for a thousand of years, and that contains yet as good fish as ever came out of it. It gives up pink shells upon the sand in the kindness of its heart, and it sends wild whistling gales up to the pinnacles of my red castle to sing for me and to tell me many stories. ”

“ We should be happy there, you and I.'
"But Delilah would say: 'Oh, go back over the river, Gerald Spoon-bill! You and I never should be happy together. Why do you stand there by the rubber-tree day after day? And why do you waste your life-nerves and your heart-nerves? Why are you not giving your good heart to some one who can take it?'
"'But you would be happy with me, Delilah,' he under the dark leaves would answer her eagerly. ”

“ Whether it is like Sir John A. MacDonald, one does not know—'tis enough that it's an exquisite piece of workmanship with which to adorn a city. And the Maisonneuve statue is a fine, handsome thing, and is altogether alive. The bronze is no bronze, but has seventeenth-century red blood in its veins, and the arm that is held high and the hand with the flag mean conquest and victory.
I shall see Quebec and the length of the blue river before I see you again, and they, like Montreal, will be mingled with a many-tinted looking-forward to being with you again. ”

“ You feel the breath of the very long-ago among the wildness of green—as if only human beings had come and gone, but it had never changed its smallest twig or grass-blade. It seems but waiting, and its patience in the waiting is without end.
Away on the other side of the tree-covered mountain I have seen a flat, gently-curved, country road with the sunshine upon it and a few little English sparrows alighting and flying along it and picking at grains. And the grass by the road-side was tall and rank and sweet to the senses, and the road led to farms and the river and the wildwood. ”

“ The Flat Surfaces of Things "THERE are moments," said my friend Annabel Lee, "when, willy nilly, they must all come out upon the flat surfaces of things.
"They look deep into the green water as the sun goes down, and their mood is heavy. Their heart aches, and they shed no tears. They look out over the brilliant waves as the sun comes up, and their mood is light-hearted and they enjoy the moment. Or else their heart aches at the rising and their mood is light-hearted at the setting. But let it be one or the other, there are bland moments when they see nothing but flat surfaces. ”

“ Meanwhile, for myself, I have two visions of this Mary Magdalene.
One—in one of the acts wherein her eyes do hunger and thirst after righteousness—when she sits before a small table and lifts her pathetic, sweet voice with the words, "When the dawn breaks, and the darkness shall flee away"; and then she stands and the red hair is equally pathetic and twofold bewitching, and she says again, "When the dawn breaks, and the darkness shall flee away." ”

“ Music is in the air of Boston. It pours into the heart like fire and flood—it awakens the soul from its dreaming—it sends the human being out into the many-colored pathways to see, to suffer, it may be—yes, surely to suffer—but to live, oh, to live! ”

“ If for you and me to-day there should come over frozen hills and green meadows from a far country the message of a tender soul, should we shiver when it is dark and should we dread the coming of the years, and should we consider what would bring weariness and what would bring rest, and should we measure and contemplate? ”

“ For the message of a tender soul is a message from one that has found the quiet and is absolutely at peace, and has gone so far toward the stars and so far and wide over the green earth that she has indeed reached the truth, and her soul gives of its tenderness without thinking, and without knowing, and all in the dark. ”

“ If you have had it in mind ever to give way to bursts of gratitude for this air that comes from off the salt sea, for that line of pearls and violets that you see just above the horizon, for the health of your body, for the sleep that comes to you at the close of the day, for any of those things, then get rid of the idea at once. Those things are quite well, but they are not really given to you. They are merely placed where any one can reach them with little effort. ”

“ There have but seven years passed since then, but when seven years more, and seven years again, up to threescore, have gone, I still shall spend one-half my rest-hours, my pleasure-hours, my loosely-comfortable, unstrained hours with the young-books of Trowbridge.
When I go to a theater I enjoy it thoroughly. A theater is a good thing, and the actor is a stunning person—but how eagerly and gladly I come back into my own room where there is a faithful, little, tan deer standing waiting, all so pathetic and sweet, upon the desk. ”

“ They wear brass rings on their hands and in their ears, and the women wear gay-colored fish-wife petticoats, and in all their faces and eyes is that look that comes from working always among vegetables in the sun, the look of a piteous, useless brain.
And there is the strange, long, tree-covered hill that they call Mount Royal. I have in my mind a picture of it in a bygone century, when an adventurous, brave Frenchman and a few Indians of the wild stood high at its summit—he with the French flag unfurled in the wind, and the Indians shading their eyes and looking off and down into the valley. ”

“ If the gray-stone buildings were of yellow gold and of emeralds and brilliants, the green country would be no fairer and no less exquisitely fair, and the blue of the water would go no deeper into the heart and no less deep, and the pale clouds would float high and gently with the same old-time mystery. And the centuries they know are countless. ”

“ They bring comfort, but also they bring tears into the eyes and pain into the heart. The message of a tender soul—what does it bring but ineffable comfort to the heart? You do not feel that it is a message, you do not feel it to be a divinely beautiful thing. ”

“ I said. "But perhaps that is because of the power and the depth of your eyes and your fair soul. Where there are no eyes and no fair souls—at least where the eyes and the fair souls can not be considered as themselves, but only as things without feeling for life—then are not things relative?"
"Nothing is relative," said Annabel Lee. "If your dog's splendid fur coat is full of fleas and you caress your dog with your hands, then presently you may acquire numbers of the fleas. You love the dog, but you do not love the fleas. ”

“ It must need be something characteristic of herself.
"I like strength, and I like simplicity, and I like emotion, and I like vital things always. And I like poetry rather than prose. Just now," said Annabel Lee, "I am thinking of an old-fashioned bit of verse that to me is all that a poem need be. To have written it is to have done enough in the way of writing, because it's real—like your Trowbridge." ”

“ Such people working like that in small rooms, and all, with wearied nerves, always have their reward. And the princess on the turret looked out at the woman as if she with her linen and her needle were the fortunate one.
There is a scene of French Canadians cutting hay and raking it early in the summer afternoon—women and men. The day is so beautifully hot and the perfume of the grass is so sweet that a tall red castle by the side of the sea is the dreariest place of all. The princess looks out from her turret with desolate purple eyes. ”

“ And the princess looks with envy upon one who can go forth and fall in battle.
There is a scene of a young woman in a small room working hard and persistently by a dim light at some exquisitely fine needlework upon an immense linen oblong. And her shoulders are bent and her eyes are strained and her hands are weary and her nerves shattered and crying out. But she does not leave off her work. She and her work are like an ant carrying away a desert grain by grain, and like one miserable person building up a pyramid, and like one counting all the stars. ”

“ One is a vision of her as the quiet martyr-sister who comes at my call and retires at my bidding—and in this part my friend Annabel Lee walks with exceeding beauty.
One is a vision of her as a strong elderly friend who stands between me and all icy blasts, who lays out my daily life, who quiets my foolish excitement with her calmness and wisdom.
One is a vision of her as one who knows no law, who leads me in strange highways and byways, and whose mind for me is a labyrinth wherein I walk in piteous confusion. ”

“ And whosoever may have it, thus brought to a state of perfection, is a most fortunate possessor and must need go bravely down the world.
"Perhaps, now," said my friend Annabel Lee, "when one is a goose-girl and goes to eat at a deal table under a green yew-tree, one should contemplate only kings in gilded palaces. One should begin at the beginning of a king's life, it may be, and follow it step by step through heaviness and strife until one sees, in one's vivid goose-girl fancy, the king at last tottering and white-haired and forsaken toward his lonely grave. ”

“ Water runs down through the meadow near by where she sits and she dips it up also in the spoon to thin out the mud. The rows of mud-cakes on the shingle are very neat and arranged with infinite care. The princess forgets to envy the child and her mud-cakes in the interest she takes in the making of them. Her face and her purple eyes even take on an indefinite look of contentment in that she is in the same world with so fit a thing. ”

“ And when we should feel the message, all without knowing, there would come again that long-since faith, and that fullness of life, and that sense of realness, and the shining of the sun would be of new meaning. ”

“ As I rest me between my two great barrels and watch this grewsome pageant, I think: It seems a quite desperate thing to be poor in Boston, for Boston is said to be of the best-seasoned knowledge and to carry a lump of ice in its heart. ”

“ I said, "are made bright because of two other lives that are dear to it, and if the life happens upon a day when the thought of the two whom it loves makes its own heart like lead, then what can there be to smooth away its weariness, in heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth?" ”

“ The Magdalene is no longer a shadowy ideal with a somewhat buxom body, scantily draped, with indefinite hair and with the lifeless beauty that the old masters paint. Nor is she quite the woman of the scriptures who is presented to one's mind without that quality which is called local coloring, and with too much of the quality that is ever present with the women in the scriptures—a something between uncleanness and final complete redemption. ”

“ Even in Montreal, where so much is French, there is enough to stamp it as beyond question Canadian. One still sees marks of her majesty the queen—but shop-keepers assert confidently that "Edward is going to make a good king," and Canadian men are made up as nearly as possible after his pattern, stout and with that short pointed beard.
In the greenness of Dominion Square is the most beautiful piece of sculpture I have seen. All the statues that stand about in Montreal are finer than most of their kind, and there are no such hideous creations as are set up in Boston and New York. ”

“ There have been those that have had happiness that was more than the world, but in the end there was no comfort, for their happiness brought with it tears of joy and emotion that had limitless source. ”

“ Mingled with the dead midnight would be memories of the day that had just gone. In my sleep I would seem to walk again in the meadows, and the green of the couutless grass-blades would affect me with a strange delirium—as if now for the first time I saw them. Each little grass-blade would have a voice and would shout: Mary MacLane, oh, we are the grass-blades and we are here! We are the grass-blades, we are the grass-blades, and we are here! ”

“ She has will-power, has Mary Magdalene. It is her will, her strength, her concentration of all her power to herself that makes her thus bewitching—and that seduces the brains of those who sit watching her as she moves upon the stage. ”