Martha Everts Holden - A String of Amber Beads
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Martha Everts Holden >> A String of Amber Beads
XLIX.
GONE BACK TO FLIPPITY-FLOPPITY SKIRTS.
The rainy season is here again, and where is dress-reform? My soul
grew sick, the other morning as, with unfurled umbrella, lunch-basket,
bundle, and draperies, I beheld the working woman on her weary march.
Give a man a petticoat, a bundle and an umbrella, and the streets would
be full of capering lunatics whenever it rained. Stay at home, did you
say? That is good advice for the woman who has nothing else to do, but
in these latter days the right sort of husband don't go round. Either
he died in the war or the stock has run low, so that more than half the
well-meaning women have no homes to stay in. What Moses is going to
lead the poor creatures to the commonsense suit that shall protect them
from the inclement weather they are forced to meet as they go abroad to
earn their bread and salt? It must be a concerted movement, for there
is none among us who dares take the war path alone. The children of
Israel went in a crowd and so must we. For a principle there are those
among us who would die, perhaps, but there is no principle on the earth
below nor in the heaven above for which we would suffer ridicule. As
for me, I have furled my banner and laid aside my bugle. I am tired of
being a martyr to an unpopular cause. I am too big a coward to be
caught making an everlasting object of myself. I have gone back to
flippity-floppity skirts and long gowns and all the rest of the "flesh
pots." Browning says of a certain class of people: "The dread of shame
has made them tame," and I am one of the tame ones. A domestic tabby
couldn't be tamer, nor a yellow bird fed on lump sugar. I expect
nothing but that my winter's hat will be adorned with a chubby green
parrot, and that I shall walk the street leading a brimstone dog by a
magenta ribbon. If one is forced to eat, drink and sleep with the
Romans, perhaps it is better for one's peace of mind not to be too
pronounced a Greek!
L.
I SHALL MEET HIM SOME DAY.
I shall meet the man who ties his horse's nose in a bag, some day, in
single combat, and there will be only one of us left to tell the tale
of the encounter. Wouldn't I love to see that man forced to take his
dinner while tied up in a flour bag! I should love to deal out his
coffee through a garden hose, and serve his vegetables through a
long-distance telephone. There is nothing like turn about to incite
justice in the human breast. While we are afflicted with such an
epidemic of strikes, why not have one that has some sense in it. Let
the overworked horses, straining themselves blind with terrible loads,
go on a strike. Let the persecuted dogs, deprived of water and
scrimped for food, stoned and hounded as mad when they are only crazed
by man's inhumanity, go on a strike. Let the cattle, and the countless
thousands of stock, prodded into cars and cramped in long passages of
transit, blinded with the crash of fellow-victims' horns while crowded
together in their inadequate quarters, trampled under riotous hoofs,
and kept without food and overfilled with water to make them look fat,
go on a strike. Let the chickens and geese and all the live feathered
stock on South Water Street, kept in little bits of coops and flung
headlong and screaming down into dark cellars, trundled over rough
roads in jolting wagons and utterly deprived for hours at a time of a
drop of water to cool the fever of their terrible fear, go on a strike.
Let the horses of these fat aldermen, left all day in the court house
alleyway without food and checked tight with head-check lines, go on a
strike. Let the patient nags that stand all day by the curbstone and
are plagued and annoyed by mischievous boys, go on a strike. In such a
strike as any of these the Lord himself might condescend to take sides
with the oppressed against the oppressor.
LI.
A MANNISH WOMAN.
There are many disagreeable things to be met with in life, but none
that is much harder upon the nerves than a mannish woman. With a
strident voice and a swaggering walk, and a clattering tongue, she
takes her course through the world like a cat-bird through an orchard;
the thrushes and the robins are driven right and left before the
advance of the noisy nuisance. A coarse-tongued man is bad enough,
heaven knows, but when a woman descends to slangy speech, and vulgar
jests, and harsh diatribes, there is no language strong enough with
which to denounce her. On the principle that a strawberry is quicker
to spoil than a pumpkin, it takes less to render a woman obnoxious than
to make a man unfit for decent company. I am no lover of
butter-mouthed girls, of prudes and "prunes and prism" fine ladies; I
love sprightliness and gay spirits and unconventionality, but the
moment a woman steps over the border land that separates delicacy of
feeling, womanliness and lovableness, from rudeness, loud-voiced slang
and the unblushing desire for notoriety, she becomes, in the eyes of
all whose opinion is worth having, a miserable caricature upon her sex.
It is not quite so bad to see a young girl making a fool of herself as
to see an elderly woman comporting herself in a giddy manner in public
places. We look for feather-heads among juveniles, but surely the
cares and troubles of fifty years should tame down the high spirits of
any woman. Chance took me into a public office the other day, largely
conducted by women. Conspicuous among the clerks was a woman whose age
must have exceeded fifty years. She was exchanging loud pleasantries
with a couple of beardless boys upon the question of "getting tight."
Noble theme for a woman old enough to be their grandmother to choose!
As I listened to the coarse jests and looked into her hard and unlovely
face, I could but wonder how nature ever made the mistake to label such
material--"woman." It would be no more of a surprise to find a
confectioner's stock made up of coarse salt, marked "sugar," or to buy
burdock of a florist, merely because the tag attached to it was
lettered "moss rose."
LII.
THE ONLY WAY TO CONQUER A HARD DESTINY.
The only way to conquer a cast-iron destiny is to yield to it. You
will break to pieces if you are always casting yourself upon the rocks.
Sit down on the "sorrowing stone" now and then, but don't expect to
last long if you are constantly flinging yourself head first against
it. If life holds nothing nobler and sweeter than the routine of
uncongenial work, if all the pleasant anticipations and lively hopes of
youth remain but as cotton fabrics do when the colors have washed away,
if good intention and noble purpose glimmer only a little now and then
from out the murky environments of your lot, as fisher lights at sea,
accept the inevitable and make the best of it. Nothing can stop us if
we are bound to grow. We are not like trees that can be hewed down by
every chance woodman's axe; death is the only woodman abroad for us,
and he does not hew down, he simply transplants. God is our only
judge; to him alone shall we yield the record of life's troubled day,
and isn't it a great comfort to think that he so fully understands what
have been our limitations, and how we have been handicapped and baffled
and hindered? If jockeys were to enter their horses for the great
Derby with the understanding that the road was rough and the horses
blind, do you think much would be expected of the finish? And is
heaven less discriminating than a horse jockey?
LIII.
THE "SMART" PERSON.
Next to a steam calliope preserve me from a "smart" person. There is
as much difference between smartness and brain as there is between a
jewsharp and a flute, or between mustard and wine. A "smart" person
may turn off a lot of work and make things hum, so does a buzz-saw!
Who would not rather spend an afternoon with a lark than with a hornet?
The lark may not be so active, but activity is not always the most
desirable thing in the world. A smart person may accomplish more than
a dreamer, but in the long run I'll take my chance with the latter.
When we go up to St. Peter's gate by and by, after life's long,
blundering march is over, it will not be the answer to such questions
as this: "How many socks can you darn in an afternoon, besides baking
bread, washing windows, tending babies and scrubbing floors?" that is
going to help us; but, "How many times have you stopped your work to
bind up a broken heart, or say a comforting word, or help carry a
burden for somebody worse off than yourself?" I tell you, smart folks
never have the time to be sympathetic; they always have too much
thundering work on hand.
LIV.
A PRETTY STREET INCIDENT.
The other day a horse was trying to get a very small quantity of oats
from the depths of a very small nosebag. In vain the poor fellow
tossed his head and did his best to gain his dinner. At last, just as
he was settling down to dumb and despairing patience, a bright-faced
boy of perhaps ten or twelve years of age happened along. Seeing the
dilemma of the horse, the little fellow stopped and said: "Halloa,
can't get your oats, can you? Never mind, I'll fix you!" And
straightway he shortened up the straps that held the bag in place, and,
with a kindly pat and a cheery word which the grateful horse seemed to
appreciate, went his way. I would like to be the mother, or the aunt,
or even the first cousin of that boy. I would rather that he should
belong to me than that I should own a Paganini violin, or a first-water
diamond the size of a Concord grape. Bless his heart, wherever he is,
and may he long continue to live in a world that needs him. Kindness
of heart, and tenderness; consideration for the needs of the helpless
and the weak, and the courage that dares be true to a merciful impulse,
are traits that go far toward the make-up of angels. We need
tender-hearted boys more than we need a new tariff to bring up and
develop the resources of the country. The boy that succeeds in
bringing in the greatest number of dead sparrows may be the embryo man
of the future, and you may praise his energy and his smartness, but
give me the boy who took the trouble to adjust the nose-bag every time.
A little less business acumen, a good bit less greed and cruelty, will
tell on future character to the comfort of all concerned.
LV.
POLICY A DAMASCUS BLADE, NOT A CLUB.
Policy in the hands of a diplomat is like a sharp sword in the grasp of
an able fencer, but policy in the hands of fools, is like a good knife
wielded by a half-wit. It takes brains to be truly politic, the
unfortunate person who attempts to be cautious, and wise, and reticent,
and to let policy thread every action as a string runs through glass
beads, only succeeds in making himself ridiculous. To be afraid to
speak what is in your mind for fear you will make yourself unpopular,
to be too cautious to mention the fact that you are having a new latch
put on your front gate for fear that you might be over-communicative,
to be backward in taking sides for fear of committing yourself to a
losing cause, may be politic to your own feeble intelligence, but in
the estimation of brainy folks it is a species of feline idiocy worse
than fits.
LVI.
THE CONSTANT YEARS BRING AGE TO ALL.
All day long it has been trying to snow out here in the country. To me
not even June, with its showering apple-tree flowers and its
alternations of silver rain and golden sunshine, is more beautiful than
these soft winter days, full of snow-feathers and great shadows. I
love to watch the young pines take on their holiday attire. How they
robe themselves from head to foot in draperies of fleecy white, pin
diamonds in their dark branches and wind about their slender girth the
strands of evanescent pearl! I love to watch the skies at dawn when
they kindle like a flame above the bluffs and scatter sparkles of light
as a red rose scatters its petals. Where has the last year fled? It
seems but yesterday that I sat by this same window and hatched the
lilac plumes unfold on that old bush that to-day is getting ready to
don its ermine. Why, at this rate, my dear, it won't be longer than
day after to-morrow morning before you and I wake up and find ourselves
old folks. How odd it will seem to look in the glass and see wisps of
frosted stubble in place of the wavy locks of brown, and jet, and gold!
Ah, well, it is a comfort to think that some folks defy time, and are
as young at seventy as at seventeen. Beauty fades, and witchery takes
unto itself wings, but true hearts, like wine, mellow and enrich with
years.
LVII.
DID YOU EVER READ THE "LITTLE PILGRIM."
I often sit for a half hour or more in the depot waiting-room, and for
lack of anything else to do employ the time in watching the people who
crowd through the swinging doors. Did you ever read the "Little
Pilgrim?" Do you recall the chapter wherein the disembodied spirits
are represented as lingering near the gates to watch the coming in of
newly liberated souls? Sometimes while sitting in one of the big
rocking chairs I imagine to myself that the constantly opening doors
are the portals of death and I the lingering one who watches the
throngs that are constantly exchanging earth for paradise. Along comes
an old man with a shabby bundle; he cautiously opens the door and slips
in like one who offers an excuse for his presence on the thither side.
Presently he lays down his bundle and seats himself, a pilgrim whose
wanderings and weariness are over. The brilliant lights, the
comfortable surroundings, the sound of pleasant voices all fill his
heart with joy, and he settles himself back, thoroughly glad to be at
rest. Next, a beautiful woman enters, her face is lined with care and
her dark, bright eyes are full of trouble. She does not tarry, but
hurries on like one seeking for something yet to come. A little child,
with lingering, backward glance, flits through the swinging door as if
loath to say good-bye to some one on the other side. A hard-featured
man, whose sullen glance travels quickly about the place, comes next;
he seems seeking for some one to welcome him, and is abashed to find
himself alone among unheeding strangers. Next a bevy of laughing girls
come in together, and the door, swinging quickly behind them, discloses
a band of young companions who lingeringly turn away, content to know
the sheltered ones are safely gathered out of the darkness and the
storm which they must still face. Some enter the door as though
bewildered; some as though glad to find rest; some as though frightened
at unknown harm, and some as though suspicious of all that they beheld.
Once I noticed a poor creature who came through the door crying
bitterly, but her tears were quickly dried by a waiting one who sprang
forward and greeted her with a tender embrace. And at another time a
baby came through in the arms of one who held it close so that it was
not conscious of the transition. Sometimes I am glad to believe that
death is no more than the swinging door which divides two apartments in
a mighty mansion, and that our going through is no more than the
exchange of a cold and unlighted hallway for a spacious living-room
where all is light and warmth and blessed activity.
LVIII.
EATING MILK TOAST WITH A SPOON!
Eating milk toast with a spoon and stopping between each mouthful to
swear! That was what I saw and heard a brawny man doing not long since
in a popular down-town restaurant. The action and the manner of speech
did not harmonize. If I felt it borne in upon me that I must be a
profane fellow to prove my manliness, I would choose another diet than
spoon victuals to nourish my formidable zest for naughtiness. Rare
beef or wild game would be less incongruous. There are times when a
man may be excused for using objectionable language. Stress of
righteous indignation, seasons of personal conflict with hansom cabmen,
large-headed street car conductors, ubiquitous, never-dying
expectorators and many other particular forms of torment may make a man
swear a bit now and then, but what shall we say of a bearded creature
with the dew of a babe's food upon his chin who rends the placid air
with unnecessary cursing? Sew up his lips with a surgeon's needle and
throw him into the fool-killer's bag!
LIX.
BOYS, YOU KNOW I LIKE YOU.
Boys, you know I like you and will stand a good deal of your swaggering
ways. I like to see how fresh you are, and do not want to have you
salted down too early by the processes of life. But one thing let me
ask you. Don't wear silk hats before the down is fully apparent upon
your chin. If there is an embarrassing sight left to one grown wan and
worn in watching the foolishness of folly, it is the sight of a
stripling in a plug hat. I would rather see a yearling colt hauling
lumber, or a babe in arms scanning Homer. It is cruel; it is
premature. Be a boy until you are fit to be a man, and hold to a boy's
mode of dress at least until you are old enough to command the respect
of sensible girls by something more notable than cigarette smoking and
athletic sports.
LX.
WHAT TO DO WITH GROWLERS.
I often hear people making a big fuss about little things. My path in
life leads me among many "kickers" and many "growlers." Do you know
what I would like to do with some of these malcontents and whiners? I
would like to send them up for a week to watch life in the county
hospital. I would like to seat them by a bedside where a noble woman
lies dying all alone of a terrible disease. I would like to have them
become acquainted with her bravery and the more than queenly calm with
which she confronts her destiny. I would like to have them linger in
the corridors and hear the moans from the wards and private rooms where
the maimed and the crippled and the incurable are faintly struggling in
the grasp of death. I would like to lead them through the children's
ward, where mites of humanity cursed with heredity's blight, removed
from a mother's bosom, consigned to suffering throughout the span of
their feeble days, lie faintly breathing their lives away. And then
would like to say to them: "You contemptible cowards, you abominable
fussers, you inexcusable kickers, see what the Lord might bring you to
if he unloosed the leash and set real troubles in your track. Quit
complaining and go to thanking heaven for all your unspeakable mercies!"
LXI.
GOD BLESS 'EM!
Every morning just at 7 the entire neighborhood turns out to see them
pass. She is a demure little lady with a face that makes one think of
a blush rose, a little past its prime, but mighty sweet to look upon.
She wears a mite of a white sun-bonnet, clean as fresh fallen snow, and
starched and stiff as the best pearl gloss cap make it. The cape of
this cute little bonnet shades a round white throat, and the strings
are tied beneath the chin in a ravishing bow that stands guard over a
dimple. She has been married quite ten years, and they say that the
two little children who were cradled for a few happy months on her soft
breast are waiting and watching for her coming the other side of the
river of death. He is a matter-of-fact looking man, with a resolute
face and a constant smile in his eyes. He always carries a
lunch-basket in one hand and with the other guides the steps of the
faithful little woman who accompanies him part way on the march of his
daily grind. He works downtown in a big warehouse and he makes hardly
enough money each week to keep you in cigars, my good friend, or your
wife in novels. Though it rain, or though it shine, though the winds
blow or the winds are low, whatever betide of chance, or change, or
weather, there is not a morning that he goes to work that she does not
walk with him as far as the corner, and in the face of men and angels,
grip car conductors and clerks, shop girls and grimacing urchins, kiss
him good-bye. She stands and watches until he is well on his way, then
waves him a final farewell, and trips back home in the serene shadow of
her little bonnet. Now you may ridicule that love and call it "spoony"
and "silly," but, I tell you, a legacy of gold or a hatful of diamonds
could not begin to outvalue such love in a man's home. God bless the
two, say I, and roll round the joyful day when love and its free and
beautiful demonstration shall shine athwart the heresies of
conventionality as April suns dispel the winter's fog with the splendor
of their broadcast shining.
LXII.
"UNTO ONE OF THE LEAST OF THESE."
I was riding up-town in a cable car not long ago late at night. The
moon was at its full and all the ugliness of the city was shrouded,
like a homely woman in a bridal veil of shimmering lace. We skimmed
along on a smooth and unobstructed track, like a sloop with every sail
set, heading for the open sea. There were no idle chatterers aboard,
and from the stalwart gripman at his post of duty, to the shrinking
little girl passenger, who was half afraid and half delighted to be
abroad so late alone, everybody and everything was in harmony with the
hour and scene. Suddenly there fluttered into the car a snowy moth,
astray from some flower garden in the country and quite bewildered and
lost in the barren city. The beautiful creature fluttered into a
lady's face and she screamed and struggled as though attacked by a
rabid beast. "Oh, kill it! kill the horrid thing," she cried, while
her attendant beat the air with his cane and sought to drive the
dangerous interloper away. It rested for a moment upon the gripman's
cap, where it looked like a feather dropped from a wandering bird. At
last it settled upon the breast of a little child sleeping in its
mother's arms. The mother brushed it away with her handkerchief as
though its presence brought defilement. A gentleman who was seated
near me caught the bewildered thing and with a very tender touch held
it for a block or so until we came to one of the pretty parks that make
our city so attractive. Stepping from the car, he loosened his grasp
upon the captive moth near a big syringa bush that adorned the entrance
way. He watched the dainty white wings flutter down into the cool
seclusion of the blossom then turned and boarded the car and pursued
his homeward way conscious, let us hope, of a very pretty and graceful
deed of kindness to a most insignificant claimant for protection and
succor. Sentimental, was it? Well, God help the world when all
sentimentality of this kind is gone out of it.
LXIII.
TAKING INVENTORY.
How poor the most of us prove to be when we take inventory of the
soul's stock! We have lots of bonnets, and plenty of dresses, and no
end of lingerie, we women, but how are we off for the things that count
when the dry goods and the furbelows shall be forgotten? How about
love, of the right kind, the love that ennobles rather than degrades,
and how about loyalty, and patience, and truth? If one of Chicago's
big firms should close its doors to take inventory of stock in January
and find it had nothing but the labels on empty bales to account for,
its poverty would be as nothing to the poverty of the soul we are going
to schedule shortly behind the closed door of the grave. What slaves
we are to passion; how we hate one another for fancied or even actual
slights, when we have such a little moment of time in which to indulge
the evil tempers! How we bicker, and lie, and betray, the while the
messenger stands already at the door to bid us begone from the scene of
our petty conflicts. For my part, the interest we take in things that
pertain to this perishable life, when we are so soon going where these
are not to be; the choice we make of ranks and reputations, shams and
seemings, dinners and wines, jewels and fabrics; the importance we
attach to bubbles that break before we reach them; the allurements that
draw us far from the ideals we started out to gain; the way we content
ourselves with the environments of evil and forego forever the voice
that calls us away to partake of things which shall be as wine and
honey to the soul, frightens me; startles me as the sudden thunder of
the surf might startle one who sojourned by an unseen sea.
LXIV.
DON'T MARRY HIM TO SAVE HIM.
If any young woman who reads this is contemplating marriage with a wild
and wayward man, hoping to reform him, I want her to stop right here
and decide to give up the contract. As well might she go out and smile
down a northwest wind or expostulate with a cyclone to its own undoing.
If a man drinks to excess before he marries, there is no reason to hope
he will learn moderation afterward. If you become his wife with the
full knowledge of his habits, you will have no right to leave him or
forsake him after marriage because of his unfortunate addictions and
predilections. Once having taken the vows you have no right to refuse
to pay them to the uttermost. And the life you will lead will be
perhaps a trifle less pleasant than the life of a parlor boarder in
sheol.