Martha Everts Holden - A String of Amber Beads
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Martha Everts Holden >> A String of Amber Beads
A STRING OF AMBER BEADS
by
MARTHA EVERTS HOLDEN
"AMBER"
Siegel, Cooper Co.,
New York. ---------- Chicago.
Copyright 1893 by
Charles H. Kerr & Company
DEDICATED
TO THE LATE
ANDREW SHUMAN
MY LITERARY ADVISER
AND
TRUEST FRIEND
CONTENTS.
I. "I DIDN'T THINK."
II. "STAY WHERE YOU ARE."
III. A COWARDLY MATE.
IV. THEY CARRY NO BANNER.
V. SHUT IN.
VI. THE CIRCLING YEAR--A CLOCK.
VII. SOMETHING BETTER THAN SURFACE MANNERS.
VIII. MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.
IX. THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE ME MOST WEARY.
X. NOTHING SO GRAND AS FORCE.
XI. A RAINY RHAPSODY.
XII. CAUSE FOR WONDER.
XIII. THE FIRST KATYDID.
XIV. A PLEA FOR MEN.
XV. WHAT I'M TIRED OF.
XVI. NOTHING LIKE A GOOD LAUGH.
XVII. HOLD! ENOUGH!!
XVIII. RIPE OPPORTUNITIES.
XIX. A SUNSET CLOUD.
XX. ONE SECRET OF SUCCESS.
XXI. A NEW BEATITUDE.
XXII. BLESSED BE BASHFULNESS.
XXIII. A BEWITCHED VIOLIN.
XXIV. A HAT PIN PROBLEM.
XXV. POLITENESS VS. SINCERITY.
XXVI. THE MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN.
XXVII. SERMONS FROM FLIES.
XXVIII. THE MAN WHO KNOWS IT ALL.
XXIX. BALD HEADS AND UNEQUAL CHANCES.
XXX. HUMAN STRAWS.
XXXI. A SALLOW FACED GIRL FOR YOUR PITY.
XXXII. AND YET HE CLINGS TO LIFE.
XXXIII. OH! TO RID THE WORLD OF SHAMS.
XXXIV. DRESS PARADE OF THE GREAT ALIKE.
XXXV. IF GOD MADE YOU A WILLOW DON'T TRY TO BE A PINE.
XXXVI. TWO TYPES.
XXXVII. A DREAM GARDEN.
XXXVIII. ANYTHING WORSE THAN A BLUE-JAY? HARDLY!
XXXIX. GOOD HEALTH A BLESSING.
XL. WHY, BLESS MY SOUL! IT REALLY SEEMS TO THINK.
XLI. TAKE TO DRINK, OF COURSE!
XLII. A WARNING TO GIRLS.
XLIII. A FROG MAY DO WHAT A MAN MAY NOT.
XLIV. THANKING GOD FOR A GOOD HUSBAND.
XLV. JUST A LITTLE TIRED!
XLVI. PAINTING THE OLD HOMESTEAD.
XLVII. THE OLD SITTING-ROOM STOVE.
XLVIII. A TALK ABOUT DIVORCE.
XLIX. GONE BACK TO FLIPPITY-FLOPPITY SKIRTS.
L. I SHALL MEET HIM SOME DAY.
LI. A MANNISH WOMAN.
LII. THE ONLY WAY TO CONQUER A HARD DESTINY.
LIII. THE "SMART" PERSON.
LIV. A PRETTY STREET INCIDENT.
LV. POLICY A DAMASCUS BLADE, NOT A CLUB.
LVI. THE CONSTANT YEARS BRING AGE TO ALL.
LVII. DID YOU EVER READ THE "LITTLE PILGRIM."
LVIII. EATING MILK TOAST WITH A SPOON!
LIX. BOYS, YOU KNOW I LIKE YOU.
LX. WHAT TO DO WITH GROWLERS.
LXI. GOD BLESS 'EM!
LXII. "UNTO ONE OF THE LEAST OF THESE."
LXIII. TAKING INVENTORY.
LXIV. DON'T MARRY HIM TO SAVE HIM.
A STRING OF BEADS
I.
"I DIDN'T THINK."
"I didn't think!" A woman flings the whiteness of her reputation in
the dust, and, waking to the realization of her loss when the cruel
glare of the world's disapproval reveals it, she seeks to plead her
thoughtlessness as an entreaty of the world's pardon. But the
flint-hearted world is slow to grant it, if she be a woman. "You have
thrown your rose in the dust, go live there with it," the world cries,
and there is no appeal, although the dust become the grave of all that
is bright and lovely and sweet in a thoughtless woman's really innocent
life. A young girl flirts with a stranger on the street. The result
is something disagreeable, and straight-way comes the excuse: "Why, I
didn't think! I meant no harm; I just wanted to have a little fun."
Now, look me straight in the eye, young gossamer-head, while I tell you
what I _know_. The girl who will flirt with strange men in public
places, however harmless and innocent it may appear, places herself in
that man's estimation upon a level with the most abandoned of her sex
and courts the same regard. Strong language, perhaps you think, but I
tell you it is gospel truth, and I feel like going into orders and
preaching from a pulpit whenever I see a thoughtless, gay and giddy
girl tiptoeing her way upon the road that leads direct to destruction.
The boat that dances like a feather on the current a mile above
Niagara's plunge is just as much lost as when it enters the swirling,
swinging wrath of waters, unless some strong hand head it up stream and
out of danger. A flirtation to-day is a ripple merely, but to-morrow
it will be a breaker, and then a whirlpool, and after that comes
hopeless loss of character. Girls, I have seen you gather up your
roses from their vases at night and fold them away in damp paper to
protect their loveliness for another day. I have seen you pluck the
jewels like sun sparkles from your fingers and your ears, and lay them
in velvet caskets which you locked with a silver key for safe beeping.
You do all this for flowers which a thousand suns shall duplicate in
beauty, and for jewels for which a handful of dollars can reimburse
your loss; but you are infinitely careless with the delicate rose of
maidenliness, which, once faded, no summer shining can ever woo back to
freshness, and with the unsullied jewel of personal reputation which
all the wealth of kings can never buy back again, once lost. See to it
that you preserve that modesty and womanliness without which the
prettiest girl in the world is no better than a bit of scentless lawn
in a milliner's window, as compared to the white rose in the garden,
around which the honey bees gather. See to it that you lock up the
unsullied splendor of the jewel of your reputation as carefully as you
do your diamonds, and carry the key within your heart of hearts.
II.
"STAY WHERE YOU ARE."
I received a letter the other day in which the writer said: "Amber, I
want to come to the city and earn my living. What chance have I?" And
I felt like posting back an immediate answer and saying: "Stay where
you are." I didn't do it, though, for I knew it would be useless. The
child is bound to come, and come she will. And she will drift into a
third-rate Chicago boarding-house, than which if there is anything
meaner--let us pray! And if she is pretty she will have to carry
herself like snow on high hills to avoid contamination. If she is
confiding and innocent the fate of that highly persecuted heroine of
old-fashioned romance, Clarissa Harlowe, is before her. If she is
homely the doors of opportunity are firmly closed against her. If she
is smart she will perhaps succeed in earning enough money to pay her
board bill and have sufficient left over to indulge in the maddening
extravagance of an occasional paper of pins or a ball of tape! What
if, after hard labor, and repeated failure, she does secure something
like success? No sooner will she do so, than up will step some dapper
youth who will beckon her over the border into the land where troubles
just begin. She won't know how to sew, or bake, or make good coffee,
for such arts are liable to be overlooked when a girl makes a career
for herself, and so love will gallop away over the hills like a
riderless steed, and happiness will flare like a light in a windy
night. Oh, no, my little country maid, stay where you are, if you have
a home and friends. Be content with fishing for trout in the brook
rather than cruising a stormy sea for whales. A great city is a cruel
place for young lives. It takes them as the cider press takes juicy
apples, sun-kissed and flavored with the breath of the hills, and
crushes them into pulp. There is a spoonful of juice for each apple,
but cider is cheap!
III.
A COWARDLY MATE.
I know a wife who is waiting, safe and sound in her father's home, for
her young husband to earn the money single handed to make a home worthy
of her acceptance. She makes me think of the first mate of a ship who
should stay on shore until the captain tested the ability of his vessel
to weather the storm. Back to your ship, you cowardly one! If the
boat goes down, go down with it, but do not count yourself worthy of
any fair weather you did not help to gain! A woman who will do all she
can to win a man's love merely for the profit his purse is going to be
to her, and will desert him when the cash runs low, is a bad woman and
carries a bad heart in her bosom. Why, you are never really wedded
until you have had dark days together. What earthly purpose would a
cable serve that never was tested by a weight? Of what use is the tie
that binds wedded hearts together if like a filament of floss it parts
when the strain is brought to bear upon it? It is not when you are
young, my dear, when the skies are blue and every wayside weed flaunts
a summer blossom, that the story of your life is recorded. It is when
"Darby and Joan" are faded and wasted and old, when poverty has nipped
the roses, when trouble and want and care have flown like uncanny birds
over their heads (but never yet nested in their hearts, thank God),
that the completed chronicle of their lives furnishes the record over
which heaven smiles or weeps.
IV.
THEY CARRY NO BANNER.
There never yet was a grand procession that was not accompanied, or,
rather, in great measure made up of, followers and onlookers. So in
this life parade of ours, with its ever varying pageant and brilliant
display, there are comparatively few who carry banners, who disport the
epaulette, and the gold lace. And sometimes, we who help swell the
ranks of those who watch and wait, grow discouraged, almost thinking
that life is a failure because it holds no gala-day for us, nothing but
sober tints and quiet duties. What chance for any one, and a woman
especially, to make a career for herself, tied down to a lot of
precious babies, or lassooed by ten thousand galloping cares! As well
expect a rose to blossom in midwinter hedges, or a lark to sing in a
snowstorm, as to look for bloom and song in such a life! But just bend
down your ear a minute, poor, tired, overworked and troubled sister, I
have a special word for you. It is simply impossible for circumstances
of any sort to overthrow the high spirit of one who believes in
something yet to come and out of sight. What are poverty and adverse
fate and mocking hopes and disappointed ambition to the soul which is
only journeying through an unfriendly world to a heritage that cannot
fail? As well might a flower complain of the rains that called it from
the sod, of the winds that rocked it, and the cloudless noons that
flamed above it, when June at last has lightly laid the coronal of
summer's perfect bloom upon its bending bough. We shall find our June
somewhere, never fear. Be content then a little longer with
uncongenial surroundings and a life that knows no outlook of hope. Be
all the sweeter and the stronger and the braver that the way is short.
To-morrow, in the Palace of Love, the dark and unfriendly inn that
sheltered us for a night upon the way, shall be forgotten.
V.
SHUT IN.
Were you ever shut in by a fog? Lost at mid-day in a soundless,
rayless world of nebulous vapor--so seemingly alone in the universe
that your voice found no echo, and your ears caught no footfall in all
the vast domain of silence about you? The other morning, when I left
the house, I paused in wonderment at the strange world into which I was
about to plunge. All landmarks were gone, nothing but silver and gray
left of nature's brilliant tints, not even so much shadow as an artist
might use to accentuate a bird's wing in crayon--no heaven above, no
earth beneath. The interior of a raised biscuit could not have been
more densely uniform than the atmosphere. It seemed as if the world
had slipped its moorings and drifted off its course into companionless
space, leaving me behind, as an ocean steamer sometimes leaves a
straggler on an uninhabited shore. I felt like sending forth a call
that should give my bearings and bring back a boat to the rescue. I
groped my way down the steps, and, following an intuition, sought the
station. Ahead of me I heard muffled steps, yet saw no form. But
suddenly a doorway opened in the east and out strode the sun. In the
air above and about me, behold, the wonder of diamond domes and slender
minarets traced in pearl! The wayside banks were fringed with crystal
spray of downbeaten weed and bush that sparkled like the billows of a
sunlit sea. The tall elms here and there towered like the masts of
returning ships, slow sailing from a wintry voyage back to summer lands
and splendor. There was no sound in all the air, but the whole
universe seemed singing as when the morning stars chorused the glory of
God. More and more widely opened that doorway in the east; step by
step advanced the great magician, and over all the world the splendor
grew, until it seemed too much for mortal eyes to bear, when lo! a
touch dispelled it all and commonplace day stood revealed.
VI.
THE CIRCLING YEAR--A CLOCK.
The circling year is a clock whereon nature writes the hours in
blossoms. First come the wind flowers and the violets, they denote the
early morning hours and are quickly passed. The forenoon is marked by
lilacs, apple blooms and roses. The day's meridian is reached with
lilies, red carnations, and the dusky splendor of pansies and passion
flowers. Then come the languid poppy and the prim little 4 o'clock,
the marigold, the sweet pea, and later the dahlia and the many-tinted
chrysanthemum to mark the day's decline. Lastly the goldenrod, the
aster and the gentian, tell us it is evening time, and night and frost
are close at hand. The rose hour has struck already for '93. The
garden beds are full of scattered petals and the dusty roadways glimmer
with ghostly blossoms too wan to be roses, and wafted by a breath into
nothingness. With such a calendar to mark the advance of decay and
death the seasons differ from the mortal race which substitutes aches
and pains for a horologe of flowers, and grows old by processes of
physical failure and mental blight.
VII.
SOMETHING BETTER THAN SURFACE MANNERS.
There are days when my heart is so full of love for young girls that as
I pass them on the street I feel myself smiling as one does to walk by
a garden of daffodils. And when I see how careful some of them are to
be circumspect and demure, I think to myself how fine a thing it is, to
be sure, to have good manners! How happy the parent whose young
daughter knows just how to hold her hands in company, just how and when
to smile, just how to enter a room or gracefully leave it. Easy,
indeed, must lie the head of that mother who is secure in the knowledge
that her daughter will never make a false step in the stately minuet of
etiquette, or strike a discordant note in the festival of life; that
she will never laugh too loud, nor turn her head in the street, even
when the gay and glittering "king of the cannibal isles" rides by, nor
do anything odd or queer or unconventional. To the mother who believes
that good manners can be taught in books and conned in dancing schools,
there is something to satisfy the heart's finest craving in a strictly
conventional daughter, who thinks and acts and speaks by rule, and
whose life is like the life of an apricot, canned, or a music box wound
up with a key. But to my thinking, my dear, good manners are not put
on and off like varying fashions, nor done up like sweetmeats, pound
for pound, and kept in the storeroom for state occasions. They strike
root from the heart out, and the prettiest manners in the world are
only the blossoming of a good heart. Surface manners are like cut
flowers stuck in a shallow glass with just enough water to keep them
fresh an hour or so, but the courtesy that has its growth in the heart
is like the rosebush in the garden that no inclement season can kill,
and no dark day force to forego the unfolding of a bud.
VIII.
MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.
I am more and more convinced the longer I live that the very best
advice that was ever given from friend to friend is contained in those
four words: "Mind your own business." The following of it would save
many a heartache. Its observance would insure against every sort of
wrangling. When we mind our own business we are sure of success in
what we undertake, and may count upon a glorious immunity from failure.
When the husbandman harvests a crop by hanging over the fence and
watching his neighbor hoe weeds, it will be time for you and for me to
achieve renown in any undertaking in which we do not exclusively mind
our own business. If I had a family of young folks to give advice to,
my early, late and constant admonition would be always and everywhere
to "mind their own business." Thus should they woo harmony and peace,
and live to enjoy something like the completeness of life.
IX.
THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE ME MOST WEARY.
In the ups and downs and hithers and thithers of an eventful life shall
I tell you the people who have made me the most weary? It is not the
bad people, nor the foolish people; we can get along with all such
because of a streak of common humanity in us all, but I cannot survive
without extreme lassitude the decorous people; those who slip through
life without sound or sparkle, those who behave themselves upon every
occasion, and would pass through a dynamite explosion without rumpling
a hair; those who never have done anything out of the way and never
will, simply for the same reason that a fish cannot perspire--no blood
in 'em! Cut them and they would run cold sap, like a maple tree in
April. Such people are always frightened to death for fear of what the
world is going to say about them. They are under everlasting bonds to
keep the peace. I wonder that they ever un-bend to kiss their
children. If one of them lived in my house I should stick pins in him.
Morality and goodness that lie no deeper than "behavior" are like the
veneering they put on cheap tables--very tawdry and soon peeled off.
X.
NOTHING SO GRAND AS FORCE.
Reading about the superb management of the big fire the other day, a
certain girl of my acquaintance remarked: "Is there anything so grand
in a man as force? In my estimation those firemen and the chief who so
splendidly controlled them are as far superior to the dancing youth, we
meet at parties and hops, as meat is better than foam." Put that into
your pipe, you callow striplings, who aim to be lady-killers! It is
not your tennis suits, nor your small feet, nor your ability to dance
and lead the german that makes a woman's heart kindle at your approach.
It is your response to an emergency, your muscle in a tilt against
odds, your endurance and force, that will win the way to feminine
regard. As for me there is something pathetic in the sight of a big,
handsome fellow in dancing pumps and a Prince Albert coat. I would
rather see him swinging a blacksmith's hammer, or driving a plow
through stony furrows if need be. The "original man" was not created
to shine in the military schottische or win his laurels in the berlin.
XI.
A RAINY RHAPSODY.
Gently, idly, lazily, as petals from an over-blown rose, while I write,
the welcome rain is falling. The sky is neutral tinted, save in the
east, where a faint blush lingers. All along the country roadways a
thousand fainting clovers uplift their purple crests, and in the dusky
spaces of the dense June woods a host of grateful leaves wait and
beckon. A voice comes from the garden bed; it is the complaint of the
pansy. "Here I lie," it says, "with all my jewels low in the dust.
Where is the purple of my amethysts, the yellow of my topaz, the
inimitable sheen of my milk-white pearls? Alas and alack for pansies
when the rain beats them earthward!" The marigold, like a
yellow-haired boy with his straw hat well back from his flying mane,
whistles softly to himself for joy, and buries his hands in the pockets
of his green breeches. The peonies burn low their tinted globes of
light, and the sweet peas swing like idle girls upon the tendrils of
their drooping vines. The dog lifts his nose and sniffs the moist air
approvingly, while poor Old Tom, the cat, blinks benignly upon the
scene. In the poultry yard the hens pose in the same indescribable
amaze that has bewildered their species since the dawn of time. I
think the first chicken that was ever hatched in Eden must have
experienced some great nervous shock that has descended along the
infinite line of its progeny. The monotonous rooster chants ever and
anon from the top of the fence his unalterable convictions. The ducks
waddle waggishly through the rain and the pigeons coo softly the
mellowest melodies that ever sounded from a feathered throat.
XII.
CAUSE FOR WONDER.
I do not wonder so much that so few people blossom into sunny old age,
as I wonder that one-half of humanity ever shows a leaf or unfolds a
bud. Look at the idiots who have children. Look at the little ones
thrown into the street like troublesome kittens. Look at the
injudicious methods of diet and training. I declare, my dear, if I
were to go into the room where Theodore Thomas was rehearsing his
orchestra, and see the flutists using their flutes for hammers, and the
violinists using their violins for tennis rackets, and the divine old
cello in the hands of a lusty blacksmith who was utilizing it for an
anvil, the sight would be nothing to what it is to see the muddle we
make of the children's sweet lives. God meant us for musical
instruments, and gave to each soul its capacity for some original
harmony. Can a flute keep its tone for three score years it you use it
for a clothes stick on wash day, or a violin retain intact the angel
voice within it if you let rats breed and nest in it, fling it against
the side of the house and dance on it with hob-nailed boots? If an
instrument subjected to such usage pipes out a silver note once in a
dozen years, uncover your head when you hear it, for it is the original
angel within the mechanism, which nothing can kill!
XIII.
THE FIRST KATYDID.
The first katydid of the season has whipped out his bow and drawn the
preparatory note across the strings of his violin. He is alone at
present and he plays to an empty house, but it will not be long before
the orchestra fills up and the music is in full blast. The cricket is
getting ready to throw aside the green baize that has held his piccolo
so long, and before the middle of the month there will not be a tuft of
grass nor a shelter of low-lying leaves that is not alive with the
shrill, complaining sweetness of his theme. The goldenrod has lighted
the candles in the candelabra that skirt the borders of the wood, and
the aster has already hung out her purple gown and her yellow laces
upon the bushes that follow the windings of the steep ravine. Only six
weeks to frost! Only six weeks to the time for the unbottling of the
year's vintage and the exchange of tea for sparkling wine. Hasten
forward, then, oh, days of radiant life and sparkling weather! We are
tired of torrid waves and flies; of snakes, hornets and cyclones.
XIV.
A PLEA FOR MEN.
A more or less extended experience as a bread-winner has taught me a
noble charity for men. I used to think that all the head of a family
was good for was to accumulate riches and pay bills, but I am beginning
to think that there is many a martyr spirit hidden away beneath the
business man's suit of tweed. Wife and daughters stand ever before
him, like hoppers waiting for grist to grind. "Give! Give!" is their
constant cry, like the rattle of the upper and nether stones. This
panegyric does not apply to the man who frequents clubs and spends his
money on between-meal drinks and lottery tickets. It applies rather to
the unselfish, hardworking father of a family, who works early and late
to keep his daughters like lilies that have no need to toil, and to
help maintain the ostentation of vain display upon which depends the
social success of a worldly and frivolous wife. It would be far more
to those daughters' credit if they did something in the line of honest
and honorable toil to support themselves, rather than live on the
heart's blood of an unselfish and overworked father; and as for the
wife who exacts the income of a duchess to keep up the silly parade of
Vanity Fair, there may come a day for her, when, shorn of the generous
and loving support of a good husband, and forced to earn her own
livelihood, as the penniless widows of bankrupt men are sometimes
forced to do, she will appreciate, too late, the blessing that Heaven
has taken from her.
XV.
WHAT I'M TIRED OF.
I am tired of many things. I am tired of the miserable little god,
"worry," shrined in every home. I am tired of doing perpetual homage
to the same black-faced little wretch. I am tired of putting down
pride and curbing a righteous indignation. I am tired of keeping my
hands off human weeds. I am tired of crucifying my tastes, and
cultivating the nickel that springs perennial to meet my needs. I am
tired of poverty and all needful discipline. I am tired of seeing
babies born to people who don't know how to bring them up. I am tired
of folks who smile continuously. I am tired of amiable fools and the
platitudes of unintelligent saints. I am tired of mediocrity. I am
tired of cats, both human and feline. I am tired of being a soldier
and marching with the advance guard. I am tired of girls who giggle
and of boys who swear. I am tired of married women who think it
charming to be a little giddy, and of married men who ogle young girls
and other men's wives. I am tired of a world where love is like the
blossom of the century plant, unfolding only once in a hundred years.
I am tired of men who are worthless and decayed to the core, like
blighted peaches. I am tired of seeing such men in power. I am tired
of being obliged to smile where I long to smite. I am tired of
vulgarity which glides forever through the world like the snake through
Eden. I am tired of women who bear the hearts of tigers, and of men
who roar like lions, yet show the valor of mice. I am tired of living
shoulder to shoulder with my pet antipathies. I am tired of the
everlasting inveighing against capital, when any idiot knows that
capital is the king-bolt that holds the world together. I am tired of
wearing shabby clothes, and meeting folks who judge of a parcel by the
quality of wrapping paper it is incased in. I am tired of being
well-behaved and decorous when I want to fling stones and make faces.
I am tired of smelling the game dinner of my neighbor and sitting down
at home to beans and bacon. I am tired of many more things, the
enumeration of which would take from now until the day after forever.
