'^tfgssmxifuuMUiuiun 
 
 aWt 
 
 "I& 
 
 Grace CoodmanJ^iuran 
 
 \u ui u i mmunu\\w iiw\nauimiiuu nwini\uitiuiiiiii\uim»mm u 
 
Class S1S3SZ S 
 Boric -M I 1*5 pf 
 CmwighfR t '3 1 1 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 The Library of Congress 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/fromdaytodayOOmaur 
 
From Day To Day 
 
 Essays on Things 
 Ordinary 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 Essays onThings 
 Ordinary 
 
 by 
 
 Grace Goodman Mauran 
 
 Ralph Fletcher Seymour 
 Publisher Chicago 
 
$ 
 
 
 % 
 
 Copyrighted 1918 
 Ralph Fletcher Seymour 
 
 JAN -6 I9I9, 
 
 V 
 
 'CU ,'508884 
 
To the Memory of my Sister 
 Daisy Goodman Baldwin 
 
Contents 
 
 Page 
 
 Introduction 1 
 
 Taking Inventory 3 
 
 Stagnant Ponds 7 
 
 Optical Allusions 11 
 
 Companionship 15 
 
 Curtains 19 
 
 The Dozen Napkins 23 
 
 Memories of Maids 29 
 
 Spring Within Doors 33 
 
 Ghostly Gowns 37 
 
 With the Fish Course 43 
 
 Gardening 47 
 
 On the Sleeping Porch 53 
 
 Sweet Nancies 57 
 
 Dusting Walden Pond 61 
 
 The Bridge 65 
 
 Size Fourteen 69 
 
 In Memoriam 73 
 
 Opera Versus Sunsets 79 
 
 At the Death-Bed of Hens 81 
 
 Autumn Leaves and Daffodils .... 85 
 
 To My Attic 89 
 
Contents— Continued 
 
 Those Little Court House Bells . . 
 
 Other Library Tables 
 
 Beethoven in the Rain .... 
 
 Page 
 . . 93 
 . . 97 
 . . 101 
 
 The Village House 
 
 Twenty-Five Bouquets .... 
 The Great Adventure .... 
 
 . . 105 
 . . Ill 
 . . 117 
 
Introduction 
 
 j^HE writing of daily themes is one 
 u? of the requirements in the courses 
 pjj in English compositions in univer- 
 
 $Mgi sities, and, I believe, in high 
 schools and colleges. Within the compass of a 
 page, or a paragraph or two, the student is 
 requested to express views on any subject that 
 may enter his or her head. After dropping 
 these "dailies" into a theme box, or handing 
 them in to the instructor, these budding authors 
 await, with more or less trepidation, the read- 
 ing aloud in class of the best, or the worst of 
 these bits of composition, and the verdicts of 
 fellow-students and teacher. 
 
 At the termination of the course many of 
 these theme-writers abandon this form of 
 composition with glad alacrity, others carry 
 it into the broader fields of journalism, while 
 still another class, though not actually con- 
 tinuing the habit of composing "dailies," go 
 on looking at life from the theme point of view. 
 
 Particularly is this true of a housekeeper, 
 with leanings toward literature, who often 
 finds relief for her spirits in looking upon her 
 various duties and activities from the old 
 
 HI 
 
theme standpoint. The face of the grocer's 
 boy, the hanging of her curtains, the dusting 
 of her books, the putting up of fruit, indeed 
 all of the small interests and intimacies of 
 home life come to be regarded as legitimate 
 subjects for themes, and she may either allow 
 these "dailies" to evaporate in the thin 
 domestic air, or she may continue the practice 
 of putting them into written words, and of 
 dropping them into a drawer which to her 
 fancy becomes a theme box. 
 
 The following collection of "dailies" repre- 
 sent such an accumulation. Whether they 
 may serve as a warning to universities, or 
 merely become a further reproach to the 
 "house-bound" woman depends upon the 
 verdict of that larger class-room, the public. 
 
 [21 
 
Taking Inventory 
 
 feiT'S too bad to leave you alone on 
 New Year's day," remarks the 
 husband of the housekeeper, as he 
 reaches for his umbrella in the 
 hall, "and on such a beastly day, too, but 
 you know I must be at the office, for it's 
 the day for taking inventory." 
 
 "Yes," she answered, "it's the day for 
 taking inventory," and as the figure of the 
 Proprietor disappears in the fog and rain, 
 and the housekeeper returns to her seat by 
 the open fire, she adds to herself, "and why 
 shouldn't a housekeeper take inventory on 
 this day, not an inventory of her material 
 possessions, but of her intellectual and 
 spiritual assets." Yet not being quite clear 
 as to what, in commercial terms, is the 
 exact meaning of the word 'inventory,' the 
 dictionary is brought into requisition. "An 
 itemized list of goods with an estimated 
 value of their worth;" why, yes, such a 
 definition lends itself very readily to the 
 higher purposes, but what, in spiritual 
 terms, is a housekeeper's 'itemized list of 
 goods?' 
 
 [3] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 The fire begins to blaze and to throw a 
 bright light on the work-basket on the 
 floor at one side of it, and on a chair upon 
 which lie two half-open books on the other 
 side. Why, here are some of the items of a 
 housekeeper's inventory: here is the work- 
 basket that is a symbol of domesticity, 
 books that offer an escape from too much 
 domesticity, and the fire that brings the two 
 together in a beautiful union. 
 
 And as she mused over these symbolic 
 'items' and gazed at the increasing fog out- 
 side it seemed to her that a whole company 
 of ghostly housekeepers appeared before her 
 to demand recognition for their past services. 
 They said that in their day a good house- 
 keeper had no time for these musings by 
 the fire, this nonsense of 'taking inventory;' 
 she was too busy with her daily occupations, 
 her preservings and cannings, her quiltings 
 and soap-makings to find time for such 
 frivolities. The old housekeeper, they as- 
 sured her, used to work from sun to sun, 
 and to be always ready for any kind of 
 personal sacrifice, or renunciation, feeling 
 fully repaid if only her family grew and 
 prospered. 
 
 Presenting each member of this ghostly 
 assembly with a spiritual laurel wreath this 
 
 [4] 
 
Taking Inventory 
 
 housekeeper banished them, and reached 
 for one of the half-open books on the chair. 
 It was a volume of the essays of Sainte 
 Beuve, and was open at that part of the 
 chapter on Joubert in which is analyzed 
 the great Frenchman's feeling for the cele- 
 brated Madame De Beaumont. In writing 
 to his beloved friend Joubert says: "to 
 live is to think and be conscious of one's 
 soul; all the rest, drinking, eating, etc., 
 although I do not think lightly of them, are 
 merely aids to life, means of carrying it on." 
 
 This Alice-by-the-fire recalled her phan- 
 tom companions long enough to assure them 
 that their trouble had been that they did 
 not think enough, and thus possess their 
 souls, and that they had given too much 
 time to the material aids to life. The wise 
 housekeeper of today, she assured them, 
 having known the luxury of possession, 
 longs for the luxury of non-possession, hav- 
 ing experienced the weariness of being 
 served she would know the delights of 
 serving, not of serving in a material way, 
 but in a spiritual and intellectual sense. 
 
 But the ghostly company had vanished, 
 this time of their own accord, and the house- 
 keeper reached for the other volume on the 
 chair. This was Montaigne's essays and a 
 
 [5] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 small handkerchief served as a bookmark in 
 the chaper entitled "That to Philosophize 
 is to know How to Die." There was a 
 pencil mark after these lines: "I would 
 always have a man to be doing and as much 
 as in him lies to extend and spin out the 
 offices of life — and then let death come and 
 find me planting my cabbages." 
 
 Well, truly this is quite contrary advice 
 to that offered by the other famous French- 
 man, and yet both of these statements 
 bring grist to the housekeeper's mill. For 
 she knows how to mix together two seemingly 
 unreconcilable elements, and to produce a 
 harmony out of apparently antagonistic 
 statements. So she says to herself, 'why of 
 course this is a housekeeper's imperative 
 duty; to think, no matter how small her 
 thoughts may be — and to possess her soul. 
 And naturally she should be up and doing, 
 no matter how trivial her doings may be 
 and thus extend and spin out the offices of 
 life — and then let death come and find her 
 planting her cabbages, or thinking her small 
 thoughts and performing her trivial offices.' 
 
 And so in a vague sort of way this 
 dreaming housekeeper felt that she too had 
 been "taking inventory." 
 
 [6] 
 
Stagnant Ponds 
 
 §ggOD forbid," wrote Keats to Fanny 
 Brawne, at a moment during that 
 tragic courtship when there seem- 
 ed to be a promise of a union, and 
 a life spent together, "that we should ever 
 settle anywhere, become a stagnant pond." 
 It is this fear of being what is called "settled 
 in life" which has unsettled so many 
 artistic natures, and caused them to rebel 
 against the domestic yoke. Stevenson 
 voiced it in his protest against a life of 
 simple ease and domestic routine, and we 
 know that the author was true to his con- 
 viction and chose to "sit loosely in the 
 saddle of life." Yet in his poems Keats 
 prescribes, as an ideal pleasure, the sitting 
 by the ingle of a winter's night, content to 
 allow the fancy to do the roaming, and 
 Stevenson's feeling about death is expressed 
 in purely domestic terms: "Home is the 
 sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter 
 is home from the hill." 
 
 Yet when I read these lines of Keats to 
 his adored Fanny, I said to myself: 'Yes, 
 this is what we all become, we who stick to 
 
 [7] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 the fireside, who dread changes, and shrink 
 from new surroundings; we become stag- 
 nant; both the shallows and the deeps of 
 our natures reveal muddiness and frequently 
 a little unpleasant slime arises to the top.' 
 
 And then, recalling the manner in which 
 many of my favorite authors had lived, it 
 seemed to me that each was associated with 
 some fixed place. There was Lamb who by 
 his own confession died every time he moved, 
 and who loved so intensely the "sweet 
 charities of home," and Wordsworth who 
 was not one to season his life with much 
 personal talk, but who loved to sit without 
 emotion, hope, or aim in the loved presence 
 of his cottage fire, and William Morris 
 whose creative impulses seemed to have 
 been strengthened by his domestic life. 
 George Meredith would not be George 
 Meredith without his Box Hill, and as for 
 our own New England immortals each one 
 seems to have had his own " undisputed 
 dwelling place." 
 
 And who has written so feelingly about 
 the wistful yearnings towards home as 
 Pater whose "Child in the House" we all 
 recognize as ourselves, holding fast some 
 poignant memory of a cherished home: 
 "the little white room with the window 
 
 [8] 
 
Stagnant Ponds 
 
 across which the heavy blossoms could beat 
 so peevishly in the wind, with just that 
 particular catch or throb, such a sense of 
 teasing in it on gusty mornings — ." And 
 he says again in this wonderful analysis of 
 a child's mind, that "out of so many possible 
 conditions, just this for you and that for 
 me brings ever the unmistakable realization 
 of the delightful chez soi." 
 
 And so fortified with these illustrious 
 examples of home-lovers one is inclined to 
 believe that after all it is the rolling stone 
 that is more to be dreaded than the stag- 
 nant pond, for the former brings greater 
 distress both to the stone and its associates. 
 And although some people may be inclined 
 to regard the housekeeper as a type of un- 
 desirably quiet waters she knows of secret 
 springs that relieve the seeming stagnation. 
 And had Fanny Brawne possessed the true 
 domestic instinct her answer to the poet 
 would have been: "God forbid that we 
 should ever not settle." 
 
 [9] 
 
Optical Allusions 
 
 AN you see the fine print at the 
 top now?" questioned the optician 
 in stereotyped accents as he put 
 another bit of glass to my eye and 
 directed my attention to a series of para- 
 graphs printed on a large piece of paste- 
 board. I answered with conscious pride 
 that I could read even the finest print with 
 perfect ease, yet my brain, if not my eyes, 
 was confused by the rapid change of glasses 
 and I was not quite sure whether the brig 
 mentioned in the first line had sailed on the 
 sixth or the eighth of August. 
 
 Yet it was really very important, from a 
 physical, if not from a historical standpoint 
 that I should know the exact date of the 
 sailing, but I said to myself that no doubt 
 I was as clear about the matter as most of 
 the victims condemned to this optical test. 
 There were many of these victims seated 
 before showcases containing glasses suited 
 to every kind of normal or abnormal vision, 
 and as I awaited the return of my optician 
 who had dived into some mysterious recess, 
 in search, I feared, of a still more difficult 
 
 [HI 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 brig, I watched these seekers after a clearer 
 vision. 
 
 Over near the door sat a man whom I at 
 once recognized as a popular society beau 
 of my party days. He was noted then for 
 his polished manner and correct dressing, 
 but now he was addressing the optician in 
 the querulous tones of an old man, and his 
 clothes were shabby almost to the point of 
 seediness. Seemingly his one object in life 
 was to get those somewhat reddened eyes 
 adjusted to the proper glasses, though from 
 time to time he stole a glance at a showily 
 dressed woman next to him who seemed to 
 be waiting for some one. I followed his 
 glance, and said to myself that for a place to 
 meet old acquaintance and to arouse happy 
 memories there is no place like an optician's. 
 For years ago, I had a speaking acquaintance 
 with this woman, but now we did not know 
 each other even "by sight." She had been 
 something of a beauty in her day, the soul- 
 ful-eyed type, and I wondered how she 
 reconciled herself to the hiding of the 
 soulfulness behind glasses, and how she 
 would get on with that ancient brig that 
 sailed in August. "What is it to grow 
 old?" I questioned, quoting Matthew Arnold 
 under my breath. 
 
 [12] 
 
Optical Allusions 
 
 Is it to lose the glory of the form, 
 
 The lustre of the eye? 
 
 Is it for beauty to forego her wreath? 
 
 — Yes, but not this alone. 
 
 No, not this alone, I thought, though I 
 knew that Arnold and I parted company 
 here, for, whereas he goes on to mention 
 even worse things than the loss of beauty's 
 wreath and the lustre of the eye that comes 
 with age, I was discovering something more 
 interesting than declining beauty in the 
 faded countenances of my ancient beau and 
 belle. 
 
 A troop of school children came in to have 
 their eyes adjusted to glasses and though 
 they seemed to regard the operation with 
 quiet matter-of-factness it seemed to me 
 that they were more pathetic figures than 
 my old friends. Here was the lustre of the 
 eye and a few flowers from beauty's wreath, 
 but I turned from them to gaze at the 
 dimmed eyes of the beau and belle. 
 
 And in spite of his fussiness and seediness 
 there was something in those reddened eyes 
 that told of battles fought and won, and 
 yellow as were the cheeks of the belle the 
 soulfulness was still in her eyes, nay it was 
 intensified; she had dreamed dreams and 
 had visions. And I said to myself, what 
 
 [13] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 matters it after all whether the ancient 
 brig sailed on the sixth or the eighth, the 
 important fact is that ancient brigs can 
 sail, and that they are sometimes more re- 
 liable than the younger craft. 
 
 [14] 
 
Companionship 
 
 M thinking of spending the winter 
 in Carolina," remarks an ac- 
 quaintance, "one of my friends 
 who lives there has written, beg- 
 ging for a long visit, and I have accepted 
 her invitation." 
 
 I marvel over the fact that there is a 
 woman in Carolina pining for companion- 
 ship and another in Chicago who has the 
 courage to face such a relationship. I 
 wonder to myself how these two women will 
 get on together, what they will do with 
 their mornings, and how they will find con- 
 versation to spread over the evening hours. 
 "You see, she doesn't treat me as a visitor." 
 adds my acquaintance, "but simply allows 
 me to do as I please while she does as she 
 pleases." How delightful, yet I ask myself 
 whether what pleases one does not some- 
 times displease the other, and whether there 
 are not times when one of them is tempted 
 to ask the other to do something she is not 
 pleased to do, thus putting an end to 
 independence, and straining friendship to the 
 breaking point. 
 
 [15] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 In fancy I seem to see one of these friends 
 seated alone in her room at night and thus 
 soliloquizing: "What an unpleasant way 
 Jane has of looking for the seamy side of 
 people's characters, and I do wish she would 
 get over that irritating habit of telling the 
 same thing over and over." Yet, of course, 
 it is quite possible that this woman has the 
 knack of seizing the garment of character 
 from Jane's hands before it has been turned, 
 and of nipping in the bud the twice told 
 tale. There are women like this, and it is 
 well that they exist for too many of us 
 sympathize with the doctor in one of 
 Dostoevsky's novels who admitted with 
 bitterness that the more he loved humanity 
 in general the less he loved man in particu- 
 lar. "I have often come to making en- 
 thusiastic schemes for the service of 
 humanity," he says, "and perhaps I might 
 actually have faced crucifixion if it had been 
 suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable 
 of living in the same room with any one for 
 two days together, as I know by experience. 
 As soon as any one is near me, his person- 
 ality disturbs my self-complacency and 
 restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours 
 I begin to hate the best of men : one because 
 he's too long over his dinner; another 
 
 [16] 
 
Companionship 
 
 because he has a cold and keeps on blowing 
 his nose. I become hostile to people the 
 moment they come too close to me — ." 
 
 Of course this gentleman's feelings to- 
 wards man was pathological, as are most of 
 the emotions expressed by the characters 
 created by the great Russian, but such 
 feelings often find a response in the breast 
 of a housekeeper who by virtue of her 
 solitude grows supersensitive and over 
 fastidious. Dwelling so much alone, she 
 comes to have some of the same feeling 
 about her fellow creatures as Dostoevsky's 
 doctor expressed, or she writes to Jane and 
 begs for a prolonged visit. 
 
 Yet the hermit housekeeper has been 
 known to discover a piquant charm in her 
 bits of intercourse with the tradespeople 
 who come to her door, some of whom offer 
 observations that are like their wares; 
 neatly put up in packages and ready for 
 use, while those irregular ringers of door 
 bells, the photographer who promises beau- 
 ty, the seller of matches just out of the 
 hospital, and the lady of fallen fortunes and 
 evil toilet preparations frequently bring 
 glimpses of another, and less stereotyped 
 world that are a stimulus to a fireside spirit. 
 
 [17] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 'She's a sociable soul,' we sometimes say 
 of the woman who would always have some 
 one with her and who hardly ventures on a 
 trip to town without a companion, but one 
 questions whether the most sociable of all 
 souls are not those who are content to be 
 the friend of their friend's thought, who 
 hold imaginary conversations with prized 
 companions, and keep close to them only 
 in spirit. In the words of the poet: 
 When each the other shall avoid, 
 Shall each by each be most enjoyed." 
 
 [18] 
 
Curtains 
 
 SOMETIMES think that a house- 
 keeper is known by her hangings, 
 and that it is quite possible to 
 determine her character and tem- 
 perament by the self revealing curtains that 
 are hung in her windows. The geologist, 
 or botanist traveling through an unfamiliar 
 country discovers an interest in the land- 
 scape unknown to the mere pleasure seeking 
 traveler; to them the earth and flowers have 
 a special significance, and a particular 
 message. Just so with the housekeeper 
 whose promenades through the streets are 
 touched with a kind of piquancy and interest 
 because of her knowledge of the psychology 
 of window draperies. There is a curtain 
 stiff, elaborate lace curtain that always 
 suggests rigidity and conventionality, and 
 you say to yourself: " Behind these reside 
 those bestial goddesses of comfort and 
 respectability that Stevenson so despised, 
 and then you go on to some soft, graceful 
 unobtrusive draperies that call up visions 
 of artistic souls within, and make you want 
 to steal by some evening when the lights 
 
 [19] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 are lit and confirm your bit of window 
 psychology. 
 
 Of course, sometimes you are mistaken; 
 very agreeable people have been known to 
 hide behind very ugly draperies, and souls 
 without artistic impulses are found back of 
 the soft graceful hangings. But as a rule 
 it may be said that a housekeeper stands, 
 or rather hangs revealed in her windows, and 
 it is her knowledge of this fact that some- 
 times compels her to discard a bit of drapery 
 long before it is worn out, but which is no 
 longer true to her present standard of taste. 
 And new curtains sometimes serve to gratify 
 her love of change, while freshly laundried 
 ones seem to impart a purity to her spirit 
 that no one but a housekeeper can under- 
 stand. 
 
 The curtain has been an important 
 feature in literature. Heroines have been 
 concealed behind them, secrets have been 
 revealed through their means, and humilia- 
 tion has been glad to use them as a screen. 
 "You raise that curtain, my lord," ex- 
 claimed the irate brother of a neglected 
 wife, in Meredith's 'Amazing Marriage' to 
 the repentant husband was was vainly 
 seeing a cause for reconciliation in his 
 
 [20] 
 
Curtains 
 
 paternity, "and all three realized that the 
 curtain would not bear shaking." 
 
 "The silken, sad uncertain rustle of each 
 purple curtain" struck terror to the lover 
 of Lenore in Poe's Raven, while in Dos- 
 toevsky's 'Poor Folk' it is made to serve 
 as a medium of communication between the 
 aged hero and his youthful love across the 
 way. 
 
 And who can forget that memorable 
 scene in 'Persuasion' where Lady Russel 
 and the heroine, Anne Elliot, are taking a 
 drive and have just passed by the estranged, 
 but still adored lover of Anne. Lady Russel 
 turns her head to look, and Anne, believing 
 that it is her lover at whom her friend 
 gazes, is all of a tremble. "You will 
 wonder," said the older lady, "what has 
 been fixing my eye so long; but I was look- 
 ing after some window-curtains which Lady 
 Alicia and Mrs. Frankland were telling me 
 of last night. They described the drawing- 
 room window-curtains of one of the houses 
 on this side of the street and this part of the 
 town as being the handsomest hung of any 
 in Bath — ." After a housekeeper has 
 arrived at a certain stage in her career it is 
 window curtains rather than discarded 
 
 [21] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 lovers that most attract her, and that most 
 repay her interest. 
 
 [22] 
 
The Dozen Napkins 
 
 INE'S friends sometimes seem most 
 interesting by virtue of the con- 
 trary traits in their natures, and 
 because they are so delightfully 
 ill-suited to their present way of living. 
 There's Phebe for instance, an urban spirit 
 in a suburban setting, one who despises 
 domestic ways but is frequently caught in 
 the most domestic of poses. It was always 
 a comfort, she admitted, to know that there 
 was a dozen napkins in her basket awaiting 
 hemming. Not that she loved to sew, 
 Heaven forbid ! One of the most irritating 
 of spectacles was a company of women with 
 work-bags, forming what is called a "thim- 
 ble party." "A thimbleful of ideas," she 
 would say to herself, with scorn, "their 
 spools are wound with the threads of gossip, 
 and their needles are mere points of personal 
 criticism." 
 
 And yet such was the contrariness of her 
 nature, and never were there so many 
 conflicting traits gathered into one woman's 
 soul that she sometimes invited the com- 
 panionship of her own thimble and thread 
 
 [23] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 and needle. And at such times, I fancy, that 
 she proudly thought that no thimble could 
 hold the ideas teeming in her ample brain, 
 that her spools were wound with threads of 
 colors not to be found in other lives, and 
 that all of her needles had golden eyes. 
 
 At any rate I know that she seldom failed 
 to attend a January linen sale and procure 
 at least one dozen napkins for hemming. 
 There was something about the act of 
 turning a hem, and of stitching it in a fixed 
 place that brought peace to her mind, and 
 the sight of the dozen napkins awaiting 
 her impatient fingers calmed her nerves. 
 
 And she was in sore need of peace and 
 calm though her outward lot was one that 
 many women would have envied. But she 
 was a woman of undeveloped talents who 
 longed for a career, for the artist's life of 
 freedom, and instead, she was chained to 
 the stake of domesticity and compelled to 
 satisfy her craving for expression in the 
 management of the home routine, the 
 Monday washings, Wednesday cleanings, 
 and Saturday bakings. If she so much as 
 sat down by the fire for a moment's com- 
 munion with her soul the cook would put 
 her head in the room and demand to know 
 
 [24] 
 
The Dozen Napkins 
 
 whether she wanted the potatoes fried or 
 mashed. 
 
 "Oh, mash them," she would say irritably 
 and her soul seemed to have joined the 
 potatoes for she could dream no more. 
 And then she would seize one of the napkins 
 and the mere mechanical act of hemming 
 would bring acceptance of the narrow 
 domestic life that had goaded her. 
 
 And adventures, too, came with the 
 hemming, for one Thursday when the cook 
 was out and she sat alone on the porch, that 
 is alone save for the presence of the napkin, 
 the thimble, thread and needle, a woman 
 from across the track came, bringing one of 
 the fruits of her own hours of silent work. 
 It was a bit of fine edging that she had 
 crocheted herself and that would look well 
 on the underwear of a fine lady. She was 
 trying to help her husband pay for their 
 home, she said, and there would be no 
 happier woman in this world when once 
 she was assured that the house was theirs, 
 and that a roof was secured for their seven 
 children. It was the oldest of stories, but 
 somehow it stirred the emotions of the dis- 
 contented sewer who went back to her 
 napkin with humility in her heart. 
 
 [25] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 And while the Ninth napkin was under 
 the needle, and on another Thursday after- 
 noon came an artist to the door to ask the 
 way to the house of a friend. They fell 
 into conversation, and he assured her that 
 she was an enviable woman to live in the 
 midst of such paintable scenes, and that if 
 in the words of the poet, there were dreams 
 to sell and the crier rang the bell, he would 
 answer as did this poet: "a cottage lone and 
 still with bowers nigh," such as this was. 
 At first his words aroused the old rebellion, 
 and she was ready to tear the ninth napkin 
 to bits, but she reflected upon the words of 
 the artist, after he was gone, and wondered 
 if she had not been blind to the beauty 
 about her and dead to the opportunities 
 of her own life. 
 
 And when she had finished the dozen 
 napkins a sense of satisfaction in something 
 achieved, in a duty accomplished, filled her 
 soul. She had added something to the com- 
 pleted things of this world and the most 
 fastidious housekeeper was welcome to 
 examine her work. "I've finished the 
 whole dozen," she proudly remarked to the 
 cook as she carefully placed the little pile 
 of napkins in a drawer. 
 
 [26] 
 
The Dozen Napkins 
 
 "It's a good thing," replied the cook, 
 "you needed them." 
 
 And remembering the thimbleful of wise 
 thoughts that they had brought her, she 
 answered meekly, "yes, I needed them." 
 
 127| 
 
Memories of Maids 
 
 ILL the hereafter of a housekeeper 
 be visited, I wonder, by an army 
 of discharged house-maids with 
 whom she has lived for a time in 
 proud isolation, and from whom she too 
 often parted in vexation of spirit? Will 
 this ghostly company demand retribution 
 for what they considered unfair discharges, 
 and will they be permitted to speak their 
 minds in a way not countenanced in well- 
 regulated earthly habitations? 
 
 When I recall these maids who for brief 
 periods dwelt so near to me, as far as bodily 
 presence was concerned, I feel that it is 
 true, as Thoreau says, that no exertion of 
 the legs will bring you near to people, and 
 that what Lamb has called the Great God 
 Propinquity failed in too many of my own 
 cases to bring about the desired conse- 
 quences. 
 
 Alas! I seem to recall these flitting 
 figures by their faults rather than by 
 their virtues, and I fancy that most of 
 them preserve the same unfortunate atti- 
 tude towards myself. Hardly one do I 
 
 [29] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 recall whose departure was not a signal for 
 rejoicing, and I particularly remember a 
 fleshy Flemish blonde with a passion for 
 wearing green feathers who filled my soul 
 with positive bliss when she was at last 
 persuaded that a separation w r ould be for 
 our mutual good, and I saw the last of the 
 green feathers disappear around the corner. 
 
 It takes but little effort to cause this 
 dismal army to flash upon the inward eye. 
 There was Leona, that curious creature who 
 could never be brought to sleep in a bed, 
 and Ida who was with great difficulty per- 
 suaded to leave hers. I recall with anguish 
 Hester's habit of humming, and Irma's 
 penchant for Jap rose perfume. And then 
 there was a period when the Jap rose would 
 have been welcome to mitigate the odor of 
 carbolic that Cora had always with her, and 
 with which she warded off any possible 
 contagion. And there was Tilda who never 
 went out without leaving doubts as to 
 whether she would ever return, and Sophie 
 who cared not to go out at all, but spent 
 her holidays in her room doing fancy work 
 with a zest never given to the plainer tasks, 
 and eating loaf sugar with a like ardor. 
 
 And I recall Christina who was forever 
 holding up a former mistress as a person for 
 
 [30] 
 
Memories of Maids 
 
 me to imitate, and Elberta whose cod-fish 
 balls were of a quality that made us willing 
 to endure an evil temper in their maker. 
 Hetty had what I considered a commend- 
 able habit of breaking cut glass, but the 
 way in which she made up for these 
 accidents by the purchase of substitutes in 
 imitation was not so praiseworthy. And it 
 was Hetty, I think, or was it Lena, who 
 never dusted the bust of Emerson, in our 
 library, without pausing to exclaim over 
 the wonderful likeness between the Concord 
 sage and her Swedish uncle? 
 
 If marriage is a lottery, domestic service 
 is still more of a one, both for mistress and 
 maid. "Hulda is an honest girl, has lived 
 in my home eleven months and has given 
 perfect satisfaction during that time," reads 
 the reference of Mrs. Black, but who knows 
 what Mrs. Black's standard of excellence is, 
 or what constitutes her notion of satisfac- 
 tion. And, of course, poor Hulda will find 
 that Mrs. White's manner of housekeeping 
 differs greatly from Mrs. Black's, and she 
 may grow discouraged in an effort to adjust 
 herself to a shifting standard of excellence. 
 
 Yes, the maid-of-all work seems to be 
 part of a vanished domestic regime, and I 
 fancy that the hereafter of the housekeeper 
 
 [31] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 of the future will not be visited by a ghostly 
 army of discharged helpers, or by any 
 misgivings as to fairness of her treatment of 
 these lost presences. But when my domes- 
 tic accusers arise before me in some future 
 state and demand to know whether, after 
 all, I wasn't unjust and too exacting, 
 whether they hadn't a right to live their 
 own lives and have their own beaux — 
 didn't I live my life and have my own 
 beaux? I will hang my head and, as a 
 punishment, say to each one: "Yes, I was 
 wrong and you were right, and won't you 
 please come back to me?" 
 
 [32] 
 
Spring Within Doors 
 
 THOUGHTFUL housekeeper, 
 one who realizes that a home 
 should not only reflect the spirit 
 of its inmates, but be, besides, in 
 harmony with the season of the year, is 
 unwilling that spring should be wholly an 
 out-of-door affair, and that while nature is 
 busily stirring without, all is torpid and 
 stagnant within. She desires an indoor 
 equivalent for this activity in the green 
 world, and although the sap in the wood of 
 her furniture is successfully glued against 
 "budding at the prime" she knows of 
 subtle ways of imparting a spring-like 
 freshness to her possessions. 
 
 Of course, furnishings cannot be renewed 
 as can the flowers, more's the pity, and 
 seedy draperies and dead ornaments do not 
 fall to the ground as do withered blossoms 
 and dead leaves, more's the pity for that 
 too, but there are secret methods of im- 
 parting bloom to old possessions, and those 
 seemingly prosaic agencies, soap and water, 
 have really magical powers. 
 
 [33] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 Yet this indoor awakening is not wholly 
 an affair of soap and water, nor can it be 
 defined by that commonplace term, 'house- 
 cleaning;' it would be more correct to call 
 it a domestic renaissance, for it answers 
 Peter's interpretation of the word 'ren- 
 aissance,' as "a more liberal and comely 
 way of conceiving life." This new con- 
 ception arises in the brain of a housekeeper 
 after she has made a survey of her be- 
 longings, with an eye to possible eliminations 
 and readjustments, and she feels that by 
 means of certain changes and alterations it 
 is within her power to 
 
 — bring thee, all together, 
 
 All delights of summer weather." 
 
 And so a sensitive guest who visits a 
 home thus treated will not have his, or her 
 nerves painfully jarred by a sudden trans- 
 ition from dandelions to plush draperies, or 
 be reduced to an unpleasant effort to 
 reconcile the lilacs without to the art 
 leathers within. Not that this wise house- 
 keeper would have no distinction between 
 indoors and outdoors, no shut-in coziness 
 and shut-out spring frostiness, but she 
 desires that there should be some kind of 
 unity and harmony between the forces 
 without and those within, and it is her 
 
 [34] 
 
Spring Within Doors 
 
 ambition to make it possible for the inmates 
 of her home to be conscious of this unity 
 and harmony. 
 
 And it is curious what a natural affinity 
 there sometimes seems to exist between 
 impersonal outofdoorness and personal in- 
 doorness, and how closed-in possessions will 
 reflect the meteorological conditions with- 
 out. Books, particularly, have a way of 
 putting out fresh green sprouts in the 
 springtime, and of revealing other indica- 
 tions of the fact that the people imprisoned 
 within their pages are about to enjoy a 
 happy release. On certain stormy days 
 gentle-folks from Jane Austen's pages des- 
 cend from their shelves and demand recog- 
 nition, and again when a mild spring rain 
 is falling such stormy characters as the 
 mad lovers in 'Wuthering Heights,' or 
 some of Dostoevsky's hysterical heroes 
 come forth to answer one's need for an 
 indoor counteracting violence. 
 
 And on the days when the weather 
 without is so wild as to bring about that 
 'tumultuous privacy' of which the poets 
 have written, not only the books but all 
 the indoor possessions seem to reveal that 
 "subtlety of operation" that places them 
 among the things of the imagination. And 
 
 [35] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 it is the ability to perceive these subtle- 
 ties, and to comprehend such phases of 
 domestic psychology that gives to the 
 sensitive housekeeper her keenest joys, and 
 permit her to work, in harmony, as it were, 
 with nature. 
 
 [36] 
 
Ghostly Gowns 
 
 ^rTin^HIS afternoon Patricia and I 
 strolled down Michigan Boule- 
 vard together, and at the end of 
 a two-mile walk we agreed that 
 rarely had we enjoyed a more interesting 
 experience. For we had not only delved 
 into the delights and adventures of our 
 pasts, but we had, besides, gained some im- 
 portant data on the psychology of dress. 
 
 Psychology is Patricia's specialty; she 
 teaches it in a girl's school, but when not so 
 engaged, when she turns her back on the 
 sciences, and her face to the superficialities 
 I know of no one who can be more charm- 
 ingly gay and flippant than my friend, 
 Patricia. And today the superficialities 
 that she faced were some beautiful window- 
 ed gowns and hats about which she chatted 
 with the ardor of a school girl. 
 
 "Would you believe it," she said, as we 
 stood before a milliner's window, "my 
 spring hat is just a mass of yellow roses, 
 and yet when I bought it I was terribly 
 in the dumps, for we had just received news 
 that brother Roy had been slightly wounded 
 
 [37] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 in action. Can you fancy buying yellow 
 roses under such conditions?" 
 
 "Yes," I answered, "it is one of woman's 
 compensations, to put roses on her head 
 when she cannot have them in her heart. 
 Hats have always acted as a kind of drug 
 for us." 
 
 "Ah, there's a dress that would just suit 
 you," declared Patricia, directing my atten- 
 tion to a plain stone-gray poplin that 
 adorned the mature figure of a waxen lady 
 in our next shop window, but my eyes were 
 fixed upon quite another sort of costume; 
 a pale blue bodice above a gauzy white 
 skirt. I was standing in my old bed-room 
 at home arrayed in this same gown, and 
 while patient maternal fingers were fumb- 
 ling with the laces of this bodice I was saying 
 in irritated tones: "Hurry, hurry, we shall 
 be too late for the grand march, and the 
 smilax on my gown is wilted already — ." 
 
 "Do you suppose I could wear that shade 
 of green?" demanded the voice of Patricia, 
 and I saw that she was gazing in rapture 
 upon a somewhat fussy gown of gray-green 
 chiffon. "Is it too youthful, do you think?" 
 Secretly, I thought this dress much too 
 youthful for Patricia, but I knew that she, 
 like myself, was choosing garments for 
 
 [38] 
 
Ghostly Gowns 
 
 the figure of her youth, and so I replied: 
 "It was made for you." 
 
 But just then Patricia nudged my elbow, 
 and directed my attention to a well- 
 dressed young man who was standing in 
 wide-eyed admiration before a beautiful 
 waxen blonde, arrayed in a shimmering 
 gown of lavender tulle covered with opal 
 beads. 
 
 "If a cat may look at a king, a dog of a 
 man may glance at these queenly beauties," 
 whispered Patricia, "and isn't it nice that 
 he may be allowed to take his full of all this 
 loveliness, and stare as long as he pleases at 
 the beautiful blonde. He knows that her 
 sweet, waxen smile will never relax and that 
 she will not turn her head in haughty 
 scorn at his impertinence." 
 
 "Perhaps he is only a commercial buyer," 
 I suggested, but Patricia said I had no 
 imagination, "or it is possible," I went on, 
 "that, like us, he is visited by some vision of 
 the past, and the lovely blonde serves only 
 to recall a flesh and blood beauty whom he 
 once adored." 
 
 We left the young man still gazing at his 
 charmer, and passed on to the next window. 
 Here a marvel of simplicity in the form of a 
 
 [39] 
 
From Day to Day- 
 white net gown belted in at the waist with 
 a satin sash caught our fancies, and aroused 
 again our sentimental musings. 
 
 * 'White is always lovely," I tritely re- 
 marked. 
 
 "Yes," answered Patricia, "it's the only 
 color, or lack of color, that suits every 
 occasion; we are christened in white, gradu- 
 ate in it, are married and buried in it. And 
 speaking of graduation I can see myself 
 as plainly as I see this figure in white net, 
 standing on the platform in Room One of 
 the old Douglas school, dressed in a fluffy 
 white muslin and assuring a restless audi- 
 ence that 'fiction has existed to a greater 
 or less extent since the earliest history we 
 have of mankind, but it probably received 
 its greatest impetus during the crusades 
 when—.' " 
 
 "There's that same young man again," 
 I interrupted. 
 
 "I suppose he has forgotten all about the 
 Lady of the Opal Beads" whispered Pat- 
 ricia, "and is losing his heart, in true man- 
 fashion, to our sweet girl graduate. I won- 
 der if he don't wish he might own one of 
 these waxen ladies to take about with him, 
 like that girl in the story who dressed up a 
 
 [40] 
 
Ghostly Gowns 
 
 wire frame in a man's mackintosh and pro- 
 vided herself with a suitable escort.' ' 
 
 "How foolish you are Patricia, and how 
 foolish most of us women are when it comes 
 to the subject of clothes." 
 
 "Wasn't it Emerson, or was it some 
 woman friend of his who said — " 
 
 "That the consciousness of being well- 
 dressed gave a woman a greater satisfaction 
 than that bestowed by religion," I con- 
 tinued, "Gracious Patricia! you might have 
 spared me that hackneyed quotation." 
 
 "But it's true nevertheless," declared my 
 friend. "Men don't understand a woman's 
 attitude towards her clothes; they think it 
 purely a question of vanity and love of dis- 
 play, whereas it is her method of self ex- 
 pression, just as her home is. Do you 
 remember that heroine in Hardy's 'Mayor 
 of Casterbridge' who hesitated so long in 
 her choice of two gowns because she knew 
 that she would be entirely a different 
 creature in one from what she would be 
 in the other. We like our clothes to re- 
 flect our spirits, to be true to our innermost 
 being." 
 
 "As if we were ever true to our innermost 
 being, either in clothes or conversation." 
 
 [41] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 "You are getting tired," declared Patricia 
 "let's stop in this candy shop and satisfy our 
 innermost being with a cup of chocolate. 
 We really have taken a longer walk than we 
 realize." 
 
 "Yes," I replied, "we have walked back 
 into our pasts and this is always a weari- 
 some performance." 
 
 "But I should like to know," declared 
 Patricia, the psychologist, ' 'something of the 
 past of that young man, and his present 
 thoughts on the subject of woman's 
 clothes." 
 
 142] 
 
With The Fish Course 
 
 HE connection between fried fish 
 on our dining table and a ship 
 that sailed in 'forty nine' around 
 Cape Horn on its way to the 
 California gold fields does not, at first 
 thought, seem very close, but that is be- 
 cause one reckons without the host. He 
 supplies the connection. For while serving 
 guests at his table this host no sooner feels 
 the touch of the fish under his knife, when 
 straightway fancy is off for the Gold Fields, 
 and he is saying to his guests: 
 
 "I hope you like fish as well as I do; I'm 
 extravagantly fond of all kinds of sea food, 
 and I come naturally by the taste, for you 
 see my grandfather was a sea captain, and 
 during the gold fever he commanded a ves- 
 sel that sailed around Cape Horn for Cali- 
 fornia, and took seven months for the 
 voyage. The captain's son, my father, 
 sailed with him, and he kept a diary of the 
 events of the trip. By the way, Phyllis, 
 where is that diary." 
 
 And Phyllis, the hostess, who has vainly 
 been seeking the eye of the host for personal 
 
 [43] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 communication, and who has sailed around 
 Cape Horn about a hundred times before, 
 answers pleasantly: 
 
 "Oh, it's in the book-case, and after din- 
 ner I'll bring it out." 
 
 But the host thinks that one or two se- 
 lections from this prized record would be 
 a delightful appetizer, and a Polite Guest 
 echoes this opinion. So instead of eating 
 Lake Michigan white fish at a cozy little din- 
 ner party, the company at table is dragged 
 around Cape Horn in the society of the 
 father and grandfather of the host. Says 
 the latter: "just listen to this bit": 
 
 January 29th. Fish, beef soup, and 
 green peas for dinner and the steerage pas- 
 sengers were allowed butter and cheese for 
 their meal, which seems to have reconciled 
 them to their fates and satisfied their 
 hunger, though they appear to have appe- 
 tites of animals. 
 
 "How interesting," murmurs the Polite 
 Guest, and the others gaze sadly at the pile 
 of empty plates before the host, and sym- 
 pathize with the steerage passengers. 
 
 January 30th. The steerage passengers 
 are grumbling over burnt bean soup. Got 
 up the stove and we shall now have things 
 
 [44] 
 
With The Fish Course 
 
 in better shape. Hope to see canary birds 
 off Canary Islands, and they will make us 
 think, not of the islands, but of home. 
 
 "How touching," remarks the Polite 
 Guest, and the other guests think how grate- 
 ful they would be even for burnt soup. 
 
 'February 2nd. This is Washington's 
 birthday, and we celebrated with a fine 
 rainbow and a dinner of salt junk and Indian 
 pudding.' "Will there ever be any pudding 
 for us?" wonder the guests. 
 
 'March 11th. All busy getting ready 
 for the great Cape Horn. Passengers now 
 lively and a little homesick. Two months 
 since we left Boston and we are now 6000 
 miles from home. Passengers are feeding 
 the sharks.' 
 
 But at the word 'feeding' the hostess 
 starts. "Are we never to have our fish? 
 I'm sure it must be stone cold." 
 
 "But we haven't reached the Horn yet," 
 says the Polite Guest, and the other guests 
 look as if they would prefer to reach the 
 white fish on the table. 
 
 "You see," apologizes the hostess, "these 
 ambitious ancestors of Paul's always sit at 
 our table whenever there is a fish course, 
 and though they rather hinder the dinner 
 
 [45] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 I have come to the conclusion that this is 
 a very nice way for Paul to honor the 
 memory of our two sailors." 
 
 And the guests politely echo her conclu- 
 sion, but what they said afterwards is 
 recorded only in their own diaries. 
 
 146] 
 
Gardening 
 
 IASNT it Adela Chart, the heroine 
 of Henry James' delightful story, 
 'The Marriages/ and the lady 
 famous for having made so deep 
 an impression on Stevenson's 'elderly heart', 
 who looked forward to an old age spent in a 
 garden, on her knees, with her gloves and 
 scissors and steeped in the comfort of being 
 thought mad? Gardening is assuredly a 
 dignified and satisfying resource for old age, 
 but devotion to this pursuit is not to be 
 regarded as a sign of madness, for on the 
 contrary it seems to be one of the safest 
 of the roads that lead to sanity. 
 
 For if anything will take the taint of 
 sickness from the brain, and the irritating 
 kinks from the nerves it is the digging and 
 fussing about in a garden. "Glut your 
 sorrow on a morning rose, or on the wealth 
 of globed peonies," wrote Keats, who 
 probably knew no more of the subtle 
 delights of a garden than was to be ob- 
 tained by the mere act of gazing at the rose 
 and the peony. But when you are inter- 
 ested in the actual cultivation of these 
 
 [47] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 flowers, when you become a partner in their 
 efforts to develop, and to free themselves 
 from their enemies, then their beauty per- 
 meates still further into your being, and you 
 may indeed glut your sorrows on their per- 
 fections. 
 
 Yet some people confess to a distaste for 
 this noble pursuit, find no fascination in the 
 hoe and trowel, and are bored by conversa- 
 tions of a flowery or seedy character. And 
 of course it is useless for these persons to try 
 and become gardeners, their interests lie in 
 other directions and they should be allowed 
 to follow the flowerless paths. For the love 
 of gardening seems to be a matter of 
 inheritance or temperament, you either love 
 to dig or you don't, and those of us who 
 love to dig are sorry for those who don't. 
 
 A garden may be as personal and indiv- 
 idual as a home. It may be as imitative 
 and characterless as a modern colonial 
 drawing room, or as expressive and alluring 
 as the most charming of living rooms. It 
 may have its floral equivalents for mahog- 
 any furniture, rose hangings and white 
 wood-work, or it may be as full of subtle 
 touches, of intimate personal revelations 
 as a library or bedroom. 
 
 [48] 
 
Gardening 
 
 At the beginning of one's career as a 
 gardener the temptation is to plant any- 
 thing that is suggested, either by pro- 
 fessional or amateur, and to accept all 
 horticultural advice without question, but 
 after a time you become conscious of a 
 strong affection for certain flowers and of 
 indifference to others. Perhaps those for 
 whom you have formed a friendship grew 
 in the gardens of your youth, or are asso- 
 ciated with certain episodes in your life, and 
 since there is not room in your garden for 
 all flowers, why naturally those that you 
 love are given the preference. And thus 
 the garden becomes a part of you, the finer 
 part, and you discover that to live among 
 these, your floral affinities, is to bring joy 
 and peace to your soul. 
 
 Of course, .there is the garden egotist who 
 is about the most tiresome egotist in the 
 world. He talks of "my fox-gloves" and 
 "my marigolds" in a way that makes you feel 
 that fox-gloves and marigolds were created 
 for him alone, and when you walk about 
 in his garden, and listen to his horticultural 
 chatter you are conscious of a strange aloof- 
 ness from his flowers and you long to get 
 out among the wild plants that call no 
 man master. Naturally, one has a right to 
 
 [49] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 feel pride in one's achievements in garden- 
 ing, a pride that has been dearly won in 
 the hours of quiet, uncelebrated digging, 
 but the lesson of the flowers is humility, and 
 it is not a well cultivated garden that 
 brings forth a crop of weedy boastfulness. 
 
 If you happen to be a book-lover, as well 
 as a gardener, you will be sure to find a 
 quotation at the heart of every flower that 
 blooms in your garden, and there will be, 
 besides, sermons in the seeds, books in the 
 climbing vines, but not good in everything. 
 For high tragedy stalks about in the garden 
 when the rabbits eat up the tulip bulbs, 
 when the birds fly away with the berries 
 and storms lay low the proud plumes of the 
 corn. But nature has many compensa- 
 tions, and one gains a riper philosophy from 
 these adversities. 
 
 But of course, it is a harrowing experience 
 to show off one's garden to one who knows 
 flowers only as they have bloomed in 
 literature, and whose speech is adorned 
 with the blossoms of rhetoric and quota- 
 tion. Such a flower-lover sees not your 
 daffodils but those which flashed upon 
 Wordsworth's inward eye; your English 
 daisies recall the "wee, modest, crimson- 
 tipped flower" that fell under the plow of 
 
 [50] 
 
Gardening 
 
 Burns and your foxglove reminds him of 
 the fact that Maeterlinck called these 
 blossoms melancholy sky-rockets. And so 
 he runs on, while your flowers blush unseen 
 to his actual vision and you grow weary of 
 the blossoms of literature. 
 
 And then there is the unintelligent lover 
 of flowers, one who don't know a buttercup 
 from a canterbury bell, who demands the 
 name of all and remembers none, who has 
 always adored flowers but who would never 
 think of becoming intimate with them. He 
 is not so bad as the egotist or the quoter, 
 but what a relief when they have all winded 
 their weary ways, and have left you alone 
 with your garden, your gloves and scissors, 
 steeped in the comfort, not of being thought 
 mad, but of being regarded as a somewhat 
 unbalanced lover of gardens and gardening. 
 
 [51] 
 
On The Sleeping Porch 
 
 fPSDlB^^ sleeping out of doors makes of 
 x going to bed an eagerly antici- 
 pated nightly adventure, and of 
 awakening a delightful dramatic 
 experience. Insomnia is robbed of half its 
 terrors when the stars are willing to bear 
 one company through the wakeful hours, 
 and it almost seems ill-mannered to turn 
 one's back on them to seek a dull oblivion. 
 Yet, as Hardy has somewhere pointed out, 
 the pleasures of the imagination do not 
 atone for wakefulness, and even though the 
 stars teach the lesson of humility and assure 
 one that the sleeping or waking of one 
 porched individual matters but little to the 
 world at large, still it matters a great deal 
 to the individual, who goes to bed for the 
 purpose of sleeping, and who insists upon 
 the presence of the balmy restorer. 
 
 During the romantic years one restless 
 sleeper fortified herself against insomnia by 
 learning by heart the odes of Keats so that 
 even now during the wakeful hours that 
 are the product of the philosophic years she 
 can still remark to the friendly orbs: 
 
 [53] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 "Bright star! would I were steadfast as 
 thou art," but before reaching the "lone 
 splendor" she is in the midst of the "season 
 of mists and mellow fruitfulness," and then 
 jumps directly from 'Autumn' to a "drear- 
 nighted December," assuring the trees just 
 outside the porch that "the North cannot 
 undo them with its sleepy whistle through 
 them, nor frozen thawings glue them" — 
 but it is impossible to continue along these 
 lines and now she is announcing to the 
 nightingale that "my heart aches, and a 
 drowsy numbness pains my sense as though 
 of hemlock I had drunk." What is hem- 
 lock, and would it really cure this horrid 
 wakefulness, or is there any other dull 
 opiate that could be guaranteed to send 
 one 'Lethe-wards?' But why should that 
 Grecian Urn now intrude itself upon one's 
 thoughts, bringing with it its 'maidens 
 loath,' its 'pipes and timbrels,' its 'fair 
 youths beneath the trees.' 
 
 The nightingale has come to the front 
 again, and is being assured that: I am half 
 in love with easeful death and should like 
 to 'cease upon the midnight with no pain.' 
 Yes, why make such a fuss about death 
 when, at the worst, it is but a prolonged 
 sleep, and sleep is so precious. 
 
 [54] 
 
On The Sleeping Porch 
 
 But the nightingale has flown, the Grecian 
 Urn with its youths and maidens have faded 
 and she is back among the stars, again 
 repeating: 'Bright star! would I were 
 steadfast as thou art;' just what did 
 Keats mean by 'steadfast' and how does 
 that line about the sleepless Eremite go? 
 What in the world is a sleepless Eremite? 
 Is she one? 'Yet still steadfast, still un- 
 changeable — why how loud those birds 
 sing, it must be time to get up." 
 
 155] 
 
Sweet Nancies 
 
 HAT is this little flower," ques- 
 tioned a famous musician who 
 had strayed into my garden on 
 his way to a morning rehearsal 
 in a nearby summer garden. During the 
 summer a flock of musicians take posses- 
 sion of our woods, and while strolling about 
 one is quite as liable to be greeted by the 
 notes of a violin as those of a vireo. 
 
 "Why, that's a sweet nancy," was my 
 answer, "and one of the most old-fashioned 
 of flowers; didn't they grow in the garden 
 of your childhood?" 
 
 "I didn't have any garden in my child- 
 hood," he replied quietly, "for you see I 
 was raised in a tenement house." 
 
 "And yet your music always suggests 
 flowers, and birds, and the free air." 
 
 "And earthiness?" he questioned. 
 
 "No, the earthiness belongs to the days 
 of your struggles, now your art is concerned 
 only with the fruits and blossoms." 
 
 "But I had to dig," he went on, smiling, 
 "harder than ever you have dug in this 
 garden." 
 
 [57] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 "But to how much greater a purpose; 
 you have become an interpreter of Bach, 
 while I have produced only buttercups and 
 sweet nancies. But do you know," I went 
 on, "sometimes I think it would be better 
 for your art if you were still living in the 
 tenement house." 
 
 "Thank you," he laughed, as he slipped 
 into a swinging seat near the nancies, 
 brushing aside a few books and seed pack- 
 ages to make room for himself, "and are 
 not artists to be permitted any of the com- 
 forts of life?" 
 
 "You make me think of a story in one 
 of these books that I am rereading for 
 about the seventh time, just wait till I 
 find the place and I'll read you a bit. The 
 story is by Henry James and is called the 
 "Lesson of the Master," and the lesson 
 that the master, a literary genius, teaches 
 to the younger aspirant to fame is to the 
 effect that the latter must dispense with 
 such false idols as a wife and establishment. 
 Listen to this: 
 
 'Isn't the artist a man?' questions the 
 younger genius. 
 
 'Sometimes I really think not,' replies the 
 Master, 'y° u know as well as I what he has 
 to do; the concentration, the finish, the 
 
 [58] 
 
Sweet Nancies 
 
 independence he must strive for, from the 
 moment that he begins to respect his work. 
 Ah, my young friend, his relation to women, 
 especially in matrimony is at the mercy of 
 this damning fact — that whereas he can in 
 the nature of things have but one standard, 
 they have about fifty. Fancy an artist 
 with a plurality of standards. To do it 
 and make it divine is the only thing he 
 has to think about.' 
 
 "And did the pupil accept the lesson?" 
 questioned my visitor, who was moving 
 uneasily among the books and seed pack- 
 ages. 
 
 "He had to," I laughed, "because the 
 Master married the woman he was in love 
 with." 
 
 "That's a good story, but really these 
 outward things make no difference to an 
 artist, his art is independent of circum- 
 stances, or possessions, and expresses only 
 what is locked within his own soul." 
 
 "Fiddlesticks," was my reply, "the soul 
 would be but an empty cask were it not 
 filled with the experiences and sufferings 
 of its possessor. Don't you know what 
 Rosetti has written: 'By thine own tears 
 thy song must tears beget, O Singer! 
 Magic mirror thou hast none except thy 
 
 [59] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 manifest heart — ' and something more 
 about the musician having no amulet save 
 his own anguish or ardor." 
 
 "How awfully literary you are," declared 
 the musician, "but do you know I think 
 that the one who listens must have suffered 
 and agonized also." 
 
 "Yes, the old saying is true that to enjoy 
 the wealth of the Indies one must bring the 
 wealth of the Indies." 
 
 "Well, it's pretty hard lines for us 
 artists," declared my visitor, rising, "no 
 comforts or companions, only anguish and 
 ardor, but I must be off to rehearsal which 
 is a part of my anguish; may I have a 
 flower?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, take a bachelor's button," I 
 slyly suggested. 
 
 "No, thank you, if you don't mind I'll 
 have one of these sweet nancies." 
 
 [60] 
 
Dusting Walden Pond 
 
 I VERY housekeeper, even the maid- 
 keeping one, should occasionally 
 dust her own possessions, if only 
 to learn whether these are worth 
 possessing. There is nothing like the inti- 
 mate relation between duster and dustee to 
 bring home this fact, as well as other 
 interesting domestic data. Yet to most 
 women dusting is merely a mindless, mech- 
 anical performance to be got through with 
 as quickly as possible, and to be relegated 
 to others when admissible. I recall the 
 innumerable dustings that I gave to a small 
 marble statuette of " Cleopatra and the 
 Asp" before it occurred to me to question 
 whether this lady was worth the trouble 
 she cost. 
 
 And all the world knows how Thoreau 
 threw away an ornament, or bit of furnish- 
 ing that graced his hermitage because he 
 could not afford the time required to dust 
 it while the furniture of his mind remained 
 undusted. But Thoreau could not have 
 been much of a housekeeper, or he would 
 have recognized the fact that the process 
 
 [61[ 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 may be a dual one, that it is quite possible 
 to brush away the dust from one's mental 
 furniture at the same time that one is 
 removing it from the material possession. 
 Take the case of my Cleopatra for instance: 
 though it was long before I questioned 
 whether the statuette was a work of 
 genuine artistic merit, justifying careful 
 dusting, I frequently paused while perform- 
 ing such an act to brush up my Shakespeare 
 and to repeat: "I'm fire and air; my other 
 elements I give to baser life," or: "Come 
 thou mortal wretch with thy sharp teeth 
 this knot intrinsicate, of life at once 
 untie—" 
 
 And Walden Pond itself, or at least the 
 photograph of this famous water, which I 
 was wont to dust so carefully used often 
 to inspire me to take up the famous classic, 
 written on its borders, and to refresh 
 memories of the inspiring utterances of the 
 great naturalist. An actual visit to the 
 place seemed not to bring the author so 
 vividly before one as when standing in 
 front of the photograph, duster in one hand 
 and open book in the other. No, Thoreau 
 was not so great a housekeeper as he was a 
 naturalist, else he would have realized that 
 to throw away a useless ornament for no 
 
 [62] 
 
Dusting Walden Pond 
 
 better reason than because there is no time 
 to devote to the dusting of this possession 
 may be to deprive the mind of some 
 precious mental stimulus. 
 
 [63] 
 
The Bridge 
 
 [T spans a ravine in a bit of woods 
 that has the air of being remote 
 from civilization, but which in 
 reality is but about twenty miles 
 from Chicago's center. It is but a crude 
 and commonplace structure with no "archi- 
 tectural features" or ' 'historical values," 
 and it was built with no other purpose than 
 that of providing a convenient passage 
 across an otherwise impassable gulch. 
 
 Yet nature has insisted upon decorating 
 this bridge, and giving it some picturesque 
 touches in the form of a clump of lovely 
 maples from which it emerges, and by means 
 of the golden rod, bergamot and other wild 
 flowers that grow at each end. Below the 
 bridge runs a somewhat uncertain stream 
 over which bend some graceful sumacs and 
 shad bushes, and in the springtime the 
 blossoms on the latter look like ladies' white 
 veils dropped from the bridge by careless 
 hands. 
 
 During the summer afternoons of leisure 
 it is pleasant to lie in my hammock in the 
 garden that overhangs this ravine and 
 
 [65] 
 
From Day to Day- 
 listen to the footsteps of wayfarers crossing 
 the nearby bridge. There are not many 
 of them, it would be tiresome always 
 listening and looking, but there are enough 
 to give charm to one's retreat, and piquancy 
 to one's meditations. I find myself looking 
 away from my book, from pen and ink 
 people to the more attractive figures on the 
 bridge, and it seems easier to weave a 
 romance about these moving shapes than 
 to find one in the pages of a dull novel. 
 
 For most of these footsteps seem to be 
 charged with expectancy and hope, and are 
 not heavy and dragging like the footsteps 
 on a city bridge. Even the grocer's boy 
 who has left his wagon at the other end of 
 the bridge and is crossing with his basket 
 to an out-of-the-way customer whistles the 
 "Meditations from Thais" as he goes, and 
 though he has difficulties with the air you 
 know that its sugared sweetness has sunk 
 into his soul while listening to the playing 
 of a great artist at a nearby summer garden. 
 
 Friendship goes blithely across my bridge 
 in the form of basketfuls of vegetables for 
 gardenless neighbors, or huge bunches of 
 bergamot and black-eyed susans for those 
 who are unable to wander about the woods. 
 And frequently I catch fascinating glimpses 
 
 [66] 
 
The Bridge 
 
 of gay knitting bags hurrying across to join 
 other knitting bags on the oposite side, or 
 white napkins covering some dainties de- 
 signed to tempt the appeties of the sick. 
 
 Lovers seldom linger on my bridge, 
 though I have fancied that I have detected 
 an occasional pair pausing to gaze at the 
 sumacs and shadbushes, and seeming to take 
 an exaggerated interest in some bird's nest 
 in a tree below. Once a white handker- 
 chief floated out of the hands of a small 
 figure in rose-pink and straightway the figure 
 beside it, in brown corduroy, disappeared 
 only to reappear a few moments later 
 carrying the bit of white muslin. I ven- 
 tured to wonder if, after marriage, they 
 should be crossing this bridge and she 
 should again drop her handkerchief whether 
 he would be as eager to recover it. But 
 why cross a bridge before it is reached? 
 
 On another occasion I came face to face 
 with two of the bridge-walkers who had 
 got lost, and had strayed into my garden 
 for information. They seemed more inter- 
 ested in the larkspurs and foxgloves than 
 in the directions I gave them and they 
 presented such happy faces that I was not 
 in the least bit surprised when assured that 
 they had been married but an hour. The 
 
 [67] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 wedding had occurred at the home of a 
 mutual friend, and choosing to walk to the 
 station alone they had been directed which 
 road to take. But they had turned the 
 wrong corner, crossed the wrong bridge, 
 and now among my flowers seemed quite 
 unconcerned whether they missed their 
 train or not. I gave them a wedding 
 bouquet of foxgloves and larkspurs, and 
 returned to my hammock hoping that this 
 was not an evil omen, and that they would 
 not always be turning the wrong corners 
 and crossing the wrong bridges. 
 
 But for the most part I have but little 
 intercourse with this goodly company of 
 bridge walkers and they for their part are 
 ignorant of the fact that other eyes than 
 those of the birds are watching them. Yet 
 I count them among my most congenial 
 friends, and am grateful to them for the 
 whistled airs, the basketed and white nap- 
 kined offerings, and for meditations con- 
 cerning woman's humanity to woman. 
 
 [68] 
 
Size Fourteen 
 
 ONCE knew a woman who glor- 
 ied in the fact that at an advanced 
 age she still continued to wear 
 the garments of juvenility, that 
 the gowns and coats that now hid her 
 stooping figure were of the same size as 
 those which covered the erect frame of her 
 girlhood. Physically, she had never grown 
 up, and while not being conspicuously 
 undersized or underweighted she was in 
 reality not normally developed. 
 
 To many women this would have been a 
 source of mortification, and they would have 
 sought to conceal immaturity under the 
 garments that properly belonged to age, 
 but this woman seemed to take a genuine 
 delight in underdevelopment, and when 
 purchasing a gown or waist she would an- 
 swer the saleswoman's query: "what size 
 please?" with the quick and proud response: 
 "fourteen." 
 
 Of course every purchaser of "ready- 
 mades" knows that in these days when 
 women never really become old women 
 there is not so much difference between 
 
 [69] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 juvenile and senior apparel; perhaps the 
 misses' waists are a trifle more girlish in cut, 
 and perhaps the colors of their gowns are a 
 bit livelier, but in general it may be said 
 that the styles are the same. 
 
 And this wearer really gloated over even 
 the slight difference in cut, and over the 
 gay colors with which she arrayed her ma- 
 ture but immature figure. And when a 
 gown that had caught her fancy proved to 
 be even of greater juvenility of style than 
 usually characterized size fourteen she 
 rejoiced in secret over the fact, and regarded 
 this new possession with a particular affec- 
 tion. 
 
 But a strange punishment overtook the 
 vanity of this woman. As the years went 
 on and she continued to haunt the misses 
 section of ready-mades, and to answer 
 "size fourteen" to the queries of sales- 
 women her mind seemed gradually to take 
 on a juvenile cut and her spirits to betray 
 an unbecoming girlishness. It seemed as if 
 she was so dominated by her clothes, and 
 she had always set great store by what she 
 wore, that her mind grew to adapt itself 
 to her raiment and she became, intellect- 
 ually, "size fourteen." 
 
 [70] 
 
Size Fourteen 
 
 In plain words she dressed too youthfully, 
 and her spirits were too lively for one of 
 her years. People said of her that she 
 would appear much more dignified and 
 properly sedate if she would not insist upon 
 decking herself out in such youthful looking 
 clothes, and really she could not, however 
 hard she tried, be dignified and sedate in 
 such garments, dignity and sedateness did 
 not go with size fourteen. 
 
 And the strange thing about it all was 
 that she did not realize her punishment and 
 that while her friends were deploring this 
 prolonged juvenility she imagined that they 
 were saying to one another: "How wonder- 
 ful she is, she is the kind that never grows 
 old, because she will always keep the 
 joyousness of youth, the spirit of "size 
 fourteen." 
 
 And I often question whether, after all, 
 she was not more to be envied than pitied. 
 
 [71] 
 
In Memoriam 
 
 i^jlj^JHIS morning a pall seems to hang 
 ll^tt^l a b° ve a certain row of handsome 
 |lsf||^ r ed volumes on my unglassed 
 ^sIbIIs shelves, and I glance sorrowfully 
 at the picture of their author that rests on 
 my desk. For the morning paper has 
 brought the sad news that Henry James is 
 dead, and for a moment I feel that one of 
 my dearest household companions has been 
 taken away. But only for a moment do I 
 feel thus, for in reality I know that the great 
 novelist is still here, to share my solitude 
 and inspire my domestic activities, and 
 that he will continue to "lubricate my days," 
 to use one of his own phrases, as long as 
 there are days to be lived through. 
 
 Personal acquaintance with an author, or 
 visits to his home and haunts do not always 
 tend to deepen your sense of intimacy with 
 him, or intensify your admiration for his 
 work, and I recall my disappointment when 
 upon visiting Concord, and the home and 
 grave of its sage I realized that, for me, 
 Emerson's spirit did not hover about Sleepy 
 Hollow, or even about the old homestead, 
 
 [73] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 but that it was shut up in my little library 
 at home. 
 
 Yet I am glad to have heard that 
 Cathedral-bell voice of Henry James, and 
 to have been permitted to gaze for an hour 
 or so at the face of one who had given me 
 so many delicious moments. "Ladies and 
 Gentlemen," he began, and then he smiled 
 and pretended to peer about for the gentle- 
 men, who of course were sadly in the 
 minority. I am glad, too, that on this 
 occasion when I stood in line waiting my 
 turn to shake the hand of the great novelist 
 he was whisked off by a zealous hostess 
 before I had an opportunity to make the 
 silly speech that was forming in my brain. 
 Fancy daring to make a speech, to utter a 
 witticism to Henry James! 
 
 Gazing this morning at the backs of these 
 prized volumes I realize that no girl actually 
 living in the flesh has ever seemed more real 
 than poor, pretty Daisy Miller in her white 
 muslin "with a hundred flounces and knots 
 of pale-colored ribbon." Yes, Henry James 
 knew how to dress up his heroines and make 
 you look twice to see what they wore. As 
 for Daisy's incorrigible little brother, Ran- 
 dolph, I can still hear him crunching the 
 
 [741 
 
In Memoriam 
 
 lump of sugar bestowed by the inquisitive 
 hero and declaring: "Oh, blazes, it's hard." 
 Of course, many of Daisy's successors 
 had but little of the flesh-and-blood quality, 
 but they had brains and nerves and the gift 
 of saying such clever things. Or if they 
 could not say the clever things themselves 
 their creator said them for them, and many 
 of these utterances will remain as long, nay 
 longer, than the red volumes hold together. 
 There was the girl whose eyes looked as if 
 they had just been sent home from the 
 wash, and the one with the "brambles of 
 the woodland caught in the folds of her 
 gown and a look as if the satyrs had toyed 
 with her tresses." There was the woman 
 with "a loud hurrying voice like the bell of 
 a steamboat," and the pne who always 
 "jumped into the conversation with a hand- 
 spring." And there was the hero who had 
 'fallen in love, really fallen in love,' "and 
 the fracture was of a kind that would make 
 him permanently lame," and the wife who 
 had washed her hands off her husband but 
 was always "carrying the water of this 
 ablution about with her for the inspection 
 of her friends." But why speak of the 
 characters in the past when they are still 
 here alive on my shelves, and ready at a 
 
 [75] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 moment's notice to exhibit their queer- 
 nesses. 
 
 Of course, one is not always in a mood for 
 James, there are moments when one is 
 ready to pass coldly by these highly 
 evolved heroines and choose instead one of 
 those "frail, passive, wild-rose blossom 
 women of Hardy's who, without passion or 
 strength or constancy, have but one power, 
 to hold and break the hearts of men." 
 But I always hold it as a housekeeper's test 
 of the power of an author his ability to send 
 her from him, to cause her to close his book 
 and run to perform some purely mechanical 
 domestic task simply because she cannot 
 go on reading until she has had time to 
 gloat over some particular bit of delicious 
 profundity, and has worked off her excess 
 of delight on some material object. Many 
 and many a time has this housekeeper put 
 down one of Henry James' stories and 
 rushed out into the kitchen to fill the pepper 
 bottle, or clean out the table-drawer, 
 thinking all the time not of the pepper 
 bottle or the drawer, but of that bit of 
 human insight that has just been revealed. 
 
 Not all his feminine readers have found 
 this stimulation in the great novelist's 
 work, and some have confessed that for 
 
 [76] 
 
In Memoriam 
 
 them he is duller than the dullest household 
 task, and that they would rather go on filling 
 pepper bottles and cleaning out drawers to 
 the end of time than to be obliged to read 
 him. But for one reader at least, Henry 
 James is inextricably woven with domestic 
 occupations, he has imparted color and 
 charm to them, or to repeat again his own 
 phrase: he has lubricated her days. 
 
 [77] 
 
Opera Versus Sunsets 
 
 3 BOUT half a mile away from our 
 suburban bower, and in a beau- 
 tiful wooded spot, summer grand 
 opera is offered to those who like 
 to take their music informally and out-of- 
 doorly, and to regale themselves with the 
 perennial charms of such old time favorites 
 as "Martha," "Suzanne," "Rigoletto," 
 "Madame Butterfly." And at about equal 
 distance, but in another direction nature 
 puts on the dramatic spectacle of a sunset, 
 to be witnessed from the auditorium of what 
 goes under the name of the Green Bay Road. 
 And it our custom to ask each other: 
 "Well, what shall it be this evening: 
 Suzanne, or the sunset? Martha, or a ride 
 across the Skokie marshes? Madame 
 Butterfly, or just plain real butterflies flut- 
 tering about the roadside milkweed?" 
 And almost always, with the vision of 
 Martha addressing her artificial last rose, 
 of Suzanne smoking her everlasting cigar- 
 ette, of the bagged Soloist in Rigoletto, 
 and of the warbled woes of Madame Butter- 
 fly we decide in favor of what we like to call 
 
 [79] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 Nature's Movies, and as we ride by the 
 illuminated gates that open upon the 
 scenes of operatic suffering we say to each 
 other: ''wouldn't you rather be here than 
 there?" 
 
 "But I thought you were music-lovers," 
 kind friends will protest, and meekly we 
 explain that we are, but we like the kind of 
 music that leaves something to our imagi- 
 nations and allows us to summon before the 
 inward eye our own ideals of Marthas and 
 Suzannes. We declare that we are rather 
 weary of operatic absurdities, of shouted 
 love confessions, of proclaimed secrets and 
 death-bed solos, and we prefer, while 
 listening to music, to forget the elemental 
 passions of man, and be minded only of his 
 spiritual attributes. 
 
 1 ' Nonsense ! ' ' say our friends, ' ' your trouble 
 is a lack of imagination, you are not able to 
 discover that the artificial roses, the cigar- 
 ettes, and the bagged soloists that you so 
 despise are but symbols that assist the 
 mind to understand and the heart to 
 enjoy the music. You should" — but we are 
 off for the marshes, for the music afforded 
 by the "wailful choir of small gnats," and 
 by the "gathering swallows twittering in 
 the skies." 
 
 [80] 
 
At The Death Bed of Hens 
 
 ITERATURE owes much to poul- 
 try for its inspiration and for its 
 phraseology. Has not chanti- 
 cleer crowed through innumerable 
 immortal works, and have not such terms 
 as 'hen-pecked,' 'chicken-hearted,' 'hen- 
 minded' become part of the bed-rock of 
 our language? 
 
 So it is quite in the nature of things that 
 when present at the death bed of a hen — 
 and in my time I have been the unhappy 
 witness of the dissolution of many a worthy 
 fowl — I should be reminded of a poem of 
 Matthew Arnold's entitled 'A Wish.' And 
 it is with no feeling of levity or of disrespect 
 to the memory of the great poet that on 
 such occasions I recall this poem, but it is 
 simply that the dying of these dumb crea- 
 tures seems to be accomplished with the 
 dignity and absence of the "ceremonious 
 air of gloom" which Arnold hoped might 
 characterize his own departure from the 
 world. He wished for more than this; he 
 would have his death-bed unvisited either 
 
 [81] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 by "some doctor full of phrase and fame," 
 or his ' 'brother-doctor of the soul:" 
 "To canvass with official breath 
 
 The future and its viewless things — 
 That undiscovered mystery 
 
 Which one who feels death's winnoning 
 wings 
 Must needs read clearer, sure, than he! 
 
 Our funeral customs seem to have yielded 
 less to progress than any other of our 
 practices. Perhaps there is less of crepe 
 than there used to be and the "ceremonious 
 air of gloom" is somewhat less ceremonious, 
 but we still demand blackness to express our 
 grief and we hurry about in search of a 
 minister to 'officiate' at the last service, and 
 to express some paid-for sentiments on the 
 life of one whom perhaps he never saw. 
 
 "I don't mind dying," a friend once re- 
 marked to me, "but I can't bear the thought 
 that the Reverend Doctor Shale should 
 preach my funeral sermon." If some sym- 
 pathetic friend who had worked side by 
 side with the lost comrade could utter, no 
 matter how clumsily, an expression of 
 his appreciation and his grief it would be 
 well, though perhaps after all it does not 
 matter, for at every funeral each friend 
 
 [82] 
 
At The Death Bed of Hens 
 
 present is in reality preaching the sermon, 
 while the deeds of the dead go marching on. 
 The hen is spared these ceremonies and 
 the way she withdraws to a remote spot to 
 fight out her battle with nature, and the 
 manner in which she gently and meekly 
 submits to her fate seem sometimes better 
 than human. To be sure the other hens 
 will often manifest their contempt and 
 disgust by spiteful peckings at a suffering 
 sister, and we deplore their cruelty, but 
 there have been atrocities committed in 
 the name of civilization that make the hen 
 seem like a humanitarian in comparison. 
 And after all, who knows but what this 
 gentle sufferer, at the moment of dissolution, 
 sees into the future and its viewless things, 
 and is vouchsafed some faint understanding 
 of the "undiscovered mystery." 
 
 [83] 
 
Autumn Leaves and Daffodils 
 
 E played wall-flower last evening 
 at a children's party, but why 
 call ourselves flowers when in 
 reality we were autumn leaves, 
 swept up against a wall to form a rusty 
 background to a host of golden daffodils, 
 dancing and fluttering about on the ball 
 room floor. 
 
 The dancers were not all of the daffodil 
 type, but had other prototypes in the green 
 world. There was a queen lily in white 
 taffeta with a physique of royal proportions, 
 and a face that recalled Mary Anderson in 
 her starry days, and there was a rose in 
 yellow gauze who was a symbol of June. 
 A hepatica in pale pink tulle reviewed the 
 charm of the first spring days, and a plump 
 little buttercup in green chiffon aroused 
 visions of midsummer. They all danced 
 and fluttered, and the autumn leaves 
 against the wall rustled and grew reminis- 
 cent. 
 
 ''I remember when I was a little girl 
 attending parties," said one of them, "we 
 were not allowed to wear tulle and chiffon, 
 
 185] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 but were grateful for dotted muslins and 
 pink sashes." "Yes," said another, "and 
 I can recall a time when I would have been 
 in ecstasies over a dotted muslin and a pink 
 sash, for I was compelled to wear a black 
 and white check plaid every Saturday at 
 dancing school, and when the closing party 
 arrived, for fear I might become too vain 
 and self-conscious if permitted a new gown 
 I was obliged to appear in the black and 
 white check. Never shall I forget the 
 suffering of that evening or the awful 
 mortification of being the only child present 
 in an old gown. Children know how to 
 suffer as well as to enjoy." 
 
 And then some of the autumn leaves 
 became philosophical and questioned each 
 other as to whether there was any delight 
 in after life, any artistic triumph or com- 
 mercial success, any gratified ambition or 
 professional achievement that could com- 
 pensate for the loss of youth, or be as keen 
 as its simple delights. Why could we not 
 always remain children, they sadly asked 
 one another, and be forever nodding and 
 dancing on ball room floors? 
 
 And then a certain red-brown leaf re- 
 marked that there were many a flinty little 
 heart hidden under the taffeta and tulle, 
 
 [86] 
 
Autumn Leaves and Daffodils 
 
 and that after all, were not the only joys 
 worthy of attainment those that came after 
 life had been refined in the crucible of pain 
 and suffering? 
 
 And just then the lily in white taffeta 
 lost her program. Heavens! what a calam- 
 ity, and how was she to go on dancing 
 without it. She appealed to her fourteen- 
 year old host. Had he seen anything of 
 a lost program? "Gee!" was his answer, 
 "everybody's lost their program." But at 
 last the lily's was found and the nodding 
 and dancing went on. 
 
 And of these autumn leaves against the 
 wall the daffodils on the floor took no heed. 
 They were Peter Bells in their attitude 
 towards these disciplined beings. To them 
 an autumn leaf against the ball room wall 
 was simply an autumn leaf, a thing that 
 had had its day, and was now cut off from 
 the joys of dancing and fluttering. The 
 leaves scattered and went home to enjoy 
 at later moments, with their inward eyes, 
 and accompanying thrill of pleasure, this 
 charming spectacle of beautiful childhood 
 at its merrymaking. "And would you 
 be a child again?" one leaf asked of another. 
 The answer was prompt: "Oh, no, no, no!" 
 
 [87] 
 
To My Attic 
 
 HERE have been many attic 
 philosophers, wise men who either 
 from necessity or choice have 
 brought to these humble retreats 
 a lofty kind of thinking and a theory of 
 life that made them indifferent to their 
 humble surroundings, or disposed to regard 
 them with a fine scorn and fortitude. But 
 when this suburban philosopher climbs the 
 step-ladder stairs that lead to her attic nest 
 she goes to seek there a philosophy that is 
 already made and which seems to be a part 
 of its atmosphere. Instead of ancient 
 chests, and travel-beaten trunks filled with 
 actual curios and mementoes and smelling 
 of sandal wood and attar of roses this attic 
 appears to contain quaint imaginary chests 
 and trunks that are crowded with all sorts 
 of odds and ends of philosophy and ethics 
 that are the fragrant relics of dead and 
 gone philosophers. 
 
 Of course, the material curios and mem- 
 entoes are there too, driven into dark 
 corners by a philosophy that accepts only 
 the spiritual significance of possessions, but 
 
 [89] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 the real inhabitants of the place are the 
 ghostly presences of bygone philosophers 
 and the little motes of their high thinking 
 with which they have filled the air. Even 
 the most prosaic of worldly souls who 
 venture to climb the steep stairs anticipat- 
 ing a conventional garret at the top will, 
 before they have caught their breath, gasp 
 out some commonplace quotation about 
 this being indeed a little kindgom of con- 
 tent, and restfully remote from the madding 
 crowd. 
 
 Yes, it is a little kingdom of content, 
 though it is difficult to analyze this attic- 
 ized feeling; sometimes I think it is due to 
 the mere fact of its difference from the 
 conventional city study or bed-room, and 
 again the absence of regulation doors and 
 windows and decorated walls are enough to 
 account for its charm. On the days when 
 the rain patters on the roof or the squirrels 
 scamper over it, or when the acorns drop 
 upon it with a loud thud one is at no loss to 
 account for the romance of the place, though 
 I believe there have been attic roofs visited 
 by rain, squirrels and acorns which shel- 
 tered no romantic philosophy. And so one 
 is forced to the conclusion that the peace 
 and content, the philosophy and fancies 
 
 [90] 
 
To My Attic 
 
 that lurk there are individual matters, and 
 that indeed all indoor philosophies are 
 individual matters. But whatever be the 
 reason for these mental curios I only know 
 that here in this suburban attic peace laps 
 one round with a greater air of security 
 than in any other spot. One may sleep in 
 any of its corners and weep in them too, one 
 may gaze at the stars through tiny case- 
 ment windows and try on one's new hats 
 before blurred cast-off mirrors. 
 
 Ah, yes! the mirrors are the only things 
 that will not yield to the spell of the place, 
 and in spite of their blurredness they will 
 insist upon pinning you down to plain facts 
 and figures. But while you are making 
 this admission to yourself and are staring 
 at the antiquated reflection in the glass 
 the dear old philosophy of the place will 
 step out of some imaginary chest to assure 
 you that the new hat is not a bit too juvenile 
 for your face, for the face is but the index 
 of the soul and souls have no age, while 
 beauty is only in the eye of the beholder. 
 
 And then there are those pictured faces 
 of dead and gone geniuses gazing at you 
 from crude shelves and ' 'sealed" walls, and 
 assuring you that they, at least care, not for 
 your years. There is Madame Modjeski 
 
 [91] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 to recall immortal youth as expressed in her 
 Juliets and Rosalinds, Mrs. Browning shak- 
 ing her curls at you and declaring that after 
 all it is quite possible for moss roses to bud 
 and bloom in the snow, and Keats, to assure 
 you that all you need to know is that 
 Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty, and 
 Matthew Arnold looking out of a cheap 
 frame and shedding a "sweet reasonable- 
 ness" over everything you do. 
 
 Oh, yes! when I want to be in the com- 
 pany of the immortals, immortal truths and 
 undying philosophies, I climb my attic 
 stairs, open the imaginary chests, and take 
 my full of inherited spiritual treasures. 
 
 [92] 
 
Those Little Court House Bells 
 
 HERE are not so many Chicago- 
 ans whose memories are illumined 
 by the blaze of the Great Fire, 
 HJ$&1 and we find it the better part of 
 discretion not to mention this event in 
 general conversation with those we regard as 
 our contemporaries. For in this matter it 
 almost seems as if we had no contemporaries, 
 that we stood alone on the burning deck of 
 the Chicago ship, and that all the other 
 passengers were yet to be born. For any 
 allusion to this tragedy only meets with the 
 response: "Oh, that was before my time, 
 but I remember of hearing my grandfather 
 talk about it." 
 
 Well, we like to talk about it, sometimes 
 of an evening, and while sitting before our 
 own fire we venture to rake the ashes of 
 this memorable blaze. Paul is a South side 
 boy, madly driving a distracted father down 
 town to a scene of desolation and ruin, and 
 afterwards helping him to stake out a small 
 portion of the lake front, where the business 
 of selling dried fruits might be resumed. 
 And I am a small West side child awakened 
 
 [93] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 in the night by the sound of voices in the 
 street and the cry: "The Court House is on 
 fire!" Dimly, I was aware that all of the 
 parental savings were invested in a row of 
 buildings near the Court House, and so I 
 found it not surprising that this midnight 
 cry was followed by some confusion in the 
 front bed-room, and later by the soft closing 
 of the door. 
 
 Yes, the Court House burned, as did the 
 row of buildings, but the Court House bell 
 was fireproof and later it was made up into 
 a million tiny bells that tinkled on chains 
 about the necks of very early Chicagoans. 
 The memory of the after horrors, the dep- 
 rivations and sufferings are almost for- 
 gotten, but I can still see those precious 
 bells and hear their musical tinkles. 
 
 And it is to the sound of these bells that 
 we revive our memories and thus question 
 each other: 
 
 "Do you remember," asks Paul, "those 
 lucky people who w r ere obliged to live in 
 their vaults, life cliff-dwellers, because they 
 could find no other shelter, and the wonder- 
 ful melted specimens that lay all about 
 them? Why we boys used to walk down 
 town with grape baskets on our arms and 
 
 [94] 
 
Those Little Court House Bells 
 
 come back so heavily loaded that we could 
 hardly reach our own doors." 
 
 And true to my housekeeper's instinct I 
 interrupt: "And the cups and saucers, all 
 melted and run together, do you remember 
 them?" 
 
 "Don't I? and the melted nails, didn't 
 you gather all these relics into a beautiful 
 pile to serve as an ornament to the front 
 yard?" 
 
 Alas! no such relics were allowed to grace 
 the front yard of the little West side cottage 
 to which we moved; such reminders of the 
 wreck of a hard-won competency were not 
 to be tolerated, and I shall never forget my 
 grief over this decree, while even now I 
 envy Paul his remembered relics. 
 
 And then he thus muses: "Isn't it 
 strange that those horrible old specimens 
 and relics should have made a deeper im- 
 pression on our childish memories than the 
 actual sufferings and miseries of the time?" 
 
 "Yes," I answer, "I didn't much care 
 about the burning of the Court House, but 
 how eager I was to possess one of those 
 little bells, but I suppose that is because 
 material objects play so much more im- 
 portant a part in children's lives than 
 
 [95] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 abstract miseries. Yet perhaps the reason 
 that I so loved those bells was because 
 their cheerful tinkle seemed to ring out the 
 old Chicago and ring in the new, and I recog- 
 nized their symoblic value." 
 
 11 Perhaps," said Paul, as he poked about 
 among the ashes of our real fire. 
 
 [96] 
 
Other Library Tables 
 
 IF the fireplace is, as some one has 
 said, the soul of a house, then 
 the library table may be said to 
 be its spirit. At least there is 
 no piece of furniture in a home that will 
 so surely reveal the character of the in- 
 mates, and none which is more intimate or 
 personal. The pictures on the walls, the 
 ornaments and hangings may represent 
 an outgrown taste, a bye-gone fancy, but 
 that motley assemblage of books and maga- 
 zines that are found on a library table is 
 almost sure to express the latest interests 
 and aspirations of the inmates. 
 
 Of course, one doesn't refer to those 
 museums of literary immortals sometimes 
 found enclosed within decorative book- 
 ends, and which seem to have been put 
 there with no other purpose than to im- 
 press a visitor with the owner's fine taste 
 in things intellectual. Of this goodly com- 
 pany is 'Emerson's Essays,' First and 
 Second Series, " Little Journeys to the 
 Homes of the Great," "Sesame and Lilies," 
 and "Over the Tea-Cups." Not that any 
 
 [97] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 one of these volumes is unworthy of a 
 permanent resting place on library tables, 
 and not that they may not have been placed 
 there to offer a needed stimulus in dull 
 hours, but somehow one can always tell 
 by the expression on their covers whether 
 they represent a deference to accepted 
 public taste, or are the beloved companions 
 of their owners. 
 
 And what a debt of gratitude do we owe 
 to other people's library tables, and how 
 often have they been the means of con- 
 tributing not a little to both our education 
 and our entertainment. It is one of the 
 most delightful of the spirit's adventures to 
 come unexpectedly upon some refreshing 
 piece of literature on the table of a friend, 
 and to lose one's self in it while the hostess 
 makes ready to join her guest. Memory 
 recalls many agreeable acquaintances made 
 in this way. Don Quixote first introduced 
 himself to me from such a position and so 
 did 'The Mayor of Casterbridge,' and 
 'Daniel Deronda.' On a memorable occa- 
 sion 'The Idiot' held me spell bound in the 
 chair of a stranger, and 'Diana of the 
 Crossways' and 'Rhoda Fleming' caused me 
 to be grateful to both their creator and 
 their collector. 
 
 [98] 
 
Other Library Tables 
 
 And then what delightful renewals of 
 old acquaintances one sometimes enjoys at 
 other tables. You may venture to be 
 patronizing when you see some of your old 
 literary idols evidently giving present de- 
 light to a later reader. "I see you are 
 reading 'Henry Esmond,' " you remark 
 casually to your hostess, "remarkable novel, 
 isn't it?" But your friend hastens to 
 assure you that of course she read the book 
 years ago, and that now she merely wished 
 to look up a certain scene, or to recall a 
 famous interview. 
 
 But you are glad that she has given you 
 this opportunity to revive your own youth, 
 and you are grateful for these meetings 
 with old loves. And perhaps some child 
 in the house you visit happens to be reading 
 'David Copperfield' for the first time, if 
 children of to-day do read David Copper- 
 field, and you are pleased to be once more 
 informed that: "I was born on a Friday, 
 at twelve o'clock at night. It was re- 
 marked that the clock began to strike and 
 I began to cry simultaneously." 
 
 Or you may be permitted an entrance into 
 dear old "Vanity Fair," and to fall again 
 under the spell of those opening lines: 
 "While the present century was in its 
 
 [99] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 teens, and on one sunshiny morning in 
 June, there drove up to the great iron gate 
 of Miss Pinkerton's academy for young 
 ladies, a large family coach." You know 
 perfectly well who is to enter that coach and 
 what is to be the destiny of the occupants, 
 but you relinquish the book with a sigh 
 when your hostess appears, and you ask 
 yourself whether you would not rather 
 be left alone with Becky and Amelia than 
 to meet, in the flesh, the most charming of 
 hostesses. 
 
 [100] 
 
Beethoven In The Rain 
 
 *F course, from the point of view 
 of the managers of this summer 
 garden it was unfortunate that it 
 should begin to rain just before 
 concert time, and from the musicians' 
 standpoint no doubt it was discouraging, 
 and even depressing, to play to forty 
 people and more than forty times that 
 number of empty seats. But if you hap- 
 pened to be one of these weather-proof 
 music lovers, and was seated in a front seat 
 that shut out the other thirty-nine listeners 
 and gave you an unobstructed view of the 
 musicians and their leader, then indeed you 
 might feel yourself the favored of the gods, 
 one of the forty immortals. 
 
 At least this is the way I felt this August 
 afternoon as I gazed contentedly from my 
 snug seat in the third row, at the rain 
 which was increasing to a torrent, and 
 which seemed to shut out the rest of the 
 world. And when the leader took his 
 place, and the orchestra played the opening 
 bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony one 
 could not but feel that it would be well 
 
 [101] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 never to go back to the trivial round of 
 daily life, but pass quietly out of existence 
 to the sound of the rain, and the Fifth 
 Symphony. 
 
 The storm grew worse, bending to the 
 ground the golden-glow and pink phlox that 
 bloomed in a bed just outside the pavilion. 
 Darkness fell upon the group of listeners, a 
 darkness that seemed the more intense for 
 the electric lights that illumined the stage 
 and the faces of the musicians. 
 
 During the brief interval between the 
 playing of the Adagio and the Allegro a 
 deaf old gentleman, accompanied by a pret- 
 ty young girl, moved to the front row, and 
 he was heard to say in a loud voice to his 
 companion: " Can't understand music? You 
 don't have to understand it, nobody under- 
 stands it, you have simply to feel it." The 
 old gentleman was certainly living up to 
 this requirement, and so, it appeared, was 
 every member of this still and absorbed 
 audience. 
 
 The storm had not abated when the 
 time came for the intermission, and few of 
 the listeners ventured to leave their seats. 
 The deaf old gentleman was explaining the 
 different instruments to the pretty girl, and 
 after listening to him for a time I wandered 
 
 [102] 
 
Beethoven in the Rain 
 
 to the back of the pavilion, pausing on my 
 way to greet a sweet-faced old lady with 
 her head wrapped in a gray chiffon scarf. 
 
 "You here on such a day?" I ventured to 
 remark. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I was obliged to come," she 
 said with a charming smile, "for you see 
 that symphony was played for me. I wrote 
 to the conductor, some time ago, requesting 
 that the orchestra play this glorious work, 
 and explaining that it had always been my 
 favorite composition, for it is, although I 
 love everything the composer wrote. When 
 I was a girl," she went on, giving a twist to 
 the gray scarf, "I used to ask everyone I 
 was introduced to if they liked Beethoven 
 and if they said no, why I just didn't seem 
 to want to have anything more to do with 
 them." 
 
 "How proud and happy you must have 
 been while the orchestra was playing," I 
 exclaimed. 
 
 "Yes, indeed," she replied, "You see I 
 didn't get any answer to my request for 
 several days, and I had decided that the 
 conductor was too busy to give it any 
 attention and so had made my reservations 
 for a Western trip. But when the note 
 came this morning, and such a nice note 
 
 [103] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 it was, and I was assured that I might hear 
 the whole Symphony to-day, I simply 
 threw up all my plans, cancelled my reser- 
 vation — and put on my rain coat." 
 
 "And do you feel repaid?" I demanded. 
 
 "Repaid!" she echoed, "why I lived the 
 best part of my life over again while the 
 orchestra was playing. All of the happiest 
 moments of my past came back to me, and 
 the unhappy ones were forgotten. My 
 dead loved ones seemed to be with me 
 again, and we smiled at each other and 
 were content not to speak but merely to 
 listen to this noble music." 
 
 The words of the deaf old gentleman 
 came back to me: "You don't have to 
 understand music, you have simply to feel 
 it," and it seemed to me that an old age 
 that could be thrilled and aroused to sweet 
 memories by the magic of music was an 
 old age robbed of its terrors. 
 
 [104] 
 
The Village House 
 
 F suburbs may be said to have 
 souls, and there are those who 
 would be unwilling to grant that 
 they have, but I say, if they 
 have, then a certain suburb that I know, 
 and which is located not more than a 
 thousand miles from the city is blessed in 
 such a possession. And this soul takes the 
 form of a modest little edifice called the 
 "Village House." Of course there are 
 many houses in this picturesque bit of 
 suburban woods, but there is but one 
 1 'Village House." And the houses of the 
 village seem to be bound to the "Village 
 House" by a kind of fraternal tie, and there 
 is between them such a spirit of mutual 
 co-operation and helpfulness as to make the 
 larger house appear like a big brother, or 
 perhaps we should say a watchful mother 
 to the smaller structure. 
 
 Not that this 'Village House' is large or 
 imposing, on the contrary, its charm lies in 
 the smallness of its size, in its shrinking 
 modesty of manner, and in the fact that its 
 
 [105] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 purpose and activities do not vaunt them- 
 selves from the bricks and mortar. 
 
 "And what is that little building?" a 
 stranger guest who is passing will ask, and 
 straightway will come the answer: "Oh, 
 that's the 'Village House,' and there's a 
 cake sale going on to-day, won't you come 
 in and help pay for our decorations by 
 buying your dessert for dinner?" And 
 though the guest is but just off the train 
 she has been here long enough to catch the 
 unique spirit of the place, and in she goes 
 shining with benevolent intentions, and 
 out she comes laden with buns and beans, 
 jellies and jams, cakes and candies, or 
 whatever may have appealed to her gas- 
 tronomical fancy from the large collection 
 of edibles gathered from private pantries 
 and contributed by generous housewives. 
 For all of the inhabitants of this little 
 suburb take a personal and intimate interest 
 in the "Village House," an interest that 
 comes from having taken a hand in its 
 decorations, in the making of its curtains, 
 the filling of its library shelves, the arrange- 
 ment of the flowers in its vases. 
 
 Once when a large sum was needed for 
 some necessary changes in this little build- 
 
 [106] 
 
The Village House 
 
 ing the villagers came forward and pledged 
 themselves not only to raise the required 
 sum but to earn it. Most of those inter- 
 ested agreed to contribute a specified 
 amount and to raise this amount by per- 
 sonal effort. All of the talents hidden 
 under napkins now came to light, and all 
 the lights concealed under bushels were 
 permitted full shining. If you wanted your 
 shopping done for you, or your doughnuts 
 made for you, or your bureau drawers put 
 in order for you, there was some one who 
 could do these things. Fair ladies peddled 
 vegetables at your doors, and fine gentlemen 
 sold fly-swatters on the streets. At night 
 talented troubadours serenaded under your 
 windows, and by day noted painters sat in 
 your garden and painted you a picture that 
 would have been an ornament to any public 
 gallery. Of course, the money was raised 
 and there was one memorable evening when 
 the "Village House" echoed with the laugh- 
 ter aroused by the recital of these different 
 methods of earning money. 
 
 But this soul of the suburb is not always 
 a merry soul, sometimes it is a very serious 
 one. For grave problems connected with 
 the welfare of the plan, the laying out of its 
 
 [107] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 streets, the education of its children, the 
 annihilation of its mosquitoes are brought 
 up for discussion here, and hidden talents 
 of oratory and declamation first come to 
 light within its walls. And on the occa- 
 sions of those serious meetings the place 
 may be converted into the coziness of a 
 home living room with open fire and evening 
 lamp, or it may be made to present the more 
 formal appearance of a public assembly- 
 room. 
 
 When as a "restless analyst," Henry 
 James returned to New England for re- 
 vived impressions of the American scene he 
 found that the New England village lacked 
 two features that made for the charm of the 
 villages of Old England. These were the 
 Parson and the Squire and every novel 
 reader knows how important a part these 
 personages play in English fiction. 
 
 But in the suburb of which I write many 
 of the men can at a moment's notice play 
 the part of either Parson or Squire, and if 
 there are grievances to be aired they are 
 always ready to assist at the airing. And 
 as for the Lady Bountifuls they flock in 
 large numbers to this suburban centre and 
 there distribute their bounties or cheer on 
 
 [108] 
 
The Village House 
 
 the citizen who is acting as Preacher or 
 Squire. And as this "Village House" is the 
 recognized soul of the place, Parson, Squire, 
 and Lady Bountifuls are each and all 
 interested in its preservation. 
 
 [109] 
 
Twenty-Five Bouquets 
 
 EMANDED our telephone, early 
 one August morning: ' 'Would 
 you be willing to make up 
 twenty-five bouquets to present 
 to the poor city mothers at the picnic to 
 be given to them to-day, on the lawn in 
 front of the Village House?" Of course 
 I would, for what more congenial task for 
 a flower-lover than to gather in from her 
 neighbors' gardens and her own the forms 
 of beauty that might move away the pall 
 from dark spirits. Who could tell into 
 what dingy corners these offerings might 
 shed their charms, or into what dull lives 
 they might bring memories of more flowery 
 existence. 
 
 Twenty -Five bouquets! Why that 
 
 meant twenty - five gifts of happiness to 
 dull-eyed, care-ridden souls, and indeed 
 there might be fifty souls who would come 
 under the influence of these flowers, for 
 were there not waiting ones at home thirst- 
 ing for news of the picnic and ready to be 
 thrilled by the smallest of its festivities. 
 
 [Ill] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 And so I, the bouquet-maker, went blithely 
 and sentimentally to my task and found 
 great pleasure in bringing together floral 
 affinities, and in keeping apart those that 
 were never meant to be joined together in 
 a bouquet. But at about the seventh 
 bouquet my flowery sentimentality seemed 
 to droop, and I began to glance with im- 
 patience at the pail-full of gay blossoms. 
 'Even flowers may become tiresome, if one 
 has too much of them,' I said to myself,' and 
 really these flaunting marigolds get on my 
 nerves. No wonder that William Morris 
 likened certain double garden flowers to 
 lumps of cut paper; I think I'll go out and 
 gather some of the wild things that grow 
 by the roadside.' 
 
 Ah yes, these uncultivated blossoms have 
 a beauty and charm all their own; they are 
 more rugged than the cultivated blossoms 
 and do not wither so quickly within doors. 
 After all it seems hardly worth while to 
 cultivate a garden when such lovely results 
 may be obtained without this labor. But 
 is it likely that these poor mothers of large 
 families will care about any of these blos- 
 soms? Wouldn't they rather take home 
 some pieces of cake, or left-over sand- 
 wiches? And flowers fade so quickly; no 
 
 [112] 
 
Twenty-Five Bouquets 
 
 doubt before they reach the tenement 
 quarters these blossoms will have gone the 
 way of both the wild and the cultivated, 
 and be fit only for the dump heap. 
 
 Who would have believed that it would 
 take so long to arrange twenty-five bou- 
 quets, and who would think that the face 
 of a daisy could ever betray so much weari- 
 ness? And what messy things flowers are, 
 to be sure, really it makes one sad to look 
 upon so many broken-necked zinnias and 
 petalless cosmos. 
 
 Well, the bouquets are finished at last 
 and when arranged in a large gathering 
 basket they make quite a gay and im- 
 posing appearance, and do indeed seem like 
 so many shapes of beauty designed to lift 
 the pall from dark spirits. So I'm off for 
 the dark spirits. 
 
 They were there on the lawn surrounding 
 the Village House awaiting a second in- 
 stallment of sandwiches, and perhaps the 
 fourth or fifth cup of coffee. All had par- 
 taken of coffee, children as well as grown 
 people, babes in arms and youngsters just 
 learning to toddle. But before presenting 
 the bouquets they must be given a short 
 ride around the country. Five of the 
 picnickers fell to my share, and did I ever 
 
 [113] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 act as chauffeur to a more appreciative 
 five? 
 
 "My but this is swell air," declared an 
 eighteen-year old mother with a two- 
 months baby in her arms, and her own 
 mother, a youngish looking Italian woman 
 nodded her head in ecstacy, and chattered 
 in Italian to her two smaller children who 
 were awed into silence by the double 
 wonders of riding and gazing at real country. 
 
 The young wife grew confidential as we 
 drove. Before her marriage, a little over 
 a year ago, her husband had been a trav- 
 eler, a very great traveler, one who never 
 stopped in one place longer than was neces- 
 sary to pick up a little change by splitting 
 wood or cutting grass. But now he was 
 a steady driver of a wagon and brought to 
 her his three-dollars-a-day wages at the 
 end of each week. "But of course," she 
 said, "it's up to me to give him two dollars 
 once in a while to have a good time with." 
 
 As we rode rapidly through the country 
 we created a slight breeze on this hot Aug- 
 ust day, and the pink chiffon waist worn 
 by the mother of the girl-wife fluttered in 
 the wind. The woman touched this gar- 
 ment affectionately and said something to 
 her daughter in Italian. "She says," de- 
 ll 14] 
 
Twenty-Five Bouquets 
 
 clared the girl, translating for my benefit, 
 "that when she has seen women driving she 
 has often admired the way in which their 
 waists blew in the breeze, and now her 
 waist is blowing just as theirs did." 
 
 And then later came the bouquets. 
 What were rides and coffee compared to 
 flowers! Could Joey have a bunch? and 
 Mina? and Margherita? and could they 
 take one home to a sick sister? Oh, 
 yes, they were happy over the flowers, but 
 then they had been happy before the 
 flowers came, they were always happy. 
 Even the jaded mother in a green net waist 
 with an imbecile boy at her knee, and an 
 infant in her arms who looked as mindless 
 as his brother, she was happy, and the 
 mother of the child who screamed perpet- 
 ually, and the one who had twins with her, 
 and heaven knows how many at home were 
 all happy. In fact there seemed to be no 
 dark spirits among them, and as I listened 
 to their cheerful talk and laughter, and 
 remembered the delight of my fellow-riders 
 I said to myself, after all I am the one who 
 has received the twenty - five bouquets, 
 twenty - five bouquets of the uncultured 
 blossoms. 
 
 [115] 
 
The Great Adventure 
 
 HEY were sitting together over 
 their knitting, these women of 
 elegant and intellectual leisure, 
 and dropping silently into a 
 vacant porch rocker I caught the threads 
 of their conversation and learned that they 
 were discussing a recent sea disaster. They 
 expressed their admiration of the way in 
 which many of the victims of this calamity 
 met death, and wondered what they would 
 have done in a similiar situation. 
 
 'Tm sure I should have been a craven 
 coward," declared a knitter of a large gray 
 sock, "and have spent my last moments in 
 undignified waitings and denouncing of 
 fate." 
 
 "Do you really think it was fate?" ques- 
 tioned a frail looking knitter of a stout 
 sweater, "do you believe, as Emerson has 
 said, that each soul contains from the be- 
 ginning the event that shall befall it?" 
 
 "How awful," exclaimed another knitter, 
 "and who reads Emerson these days?" 
 
 "I think it would be better if we all read 
 him more," said the Frail One, "he might 
 
 [117] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 help us to understand some of these present 
 horrors, and fortify us to meet them." 
 
 "I shall never forget," remarked the 
 hostess, as she fumbled about in her knit- 
 ting bag for some lost treasure, "the way 
 in which that theatrical manager, I have 
 forgotten his name, met his fate on this ship, 
 saying, just before the boat went down that 
 one should not fear death, for after all it 
 was the great adventure." 
 
 "And there is no evil in life for him who 
 realizes that death itself is no evil," quoted 
 the Frail Knitter, "at least that is what 
 Montaigne says, "and I have often felt as 
 the theatrical manager did, for our earthly 
 adventures are so terribly handicapped by 
 the physical, and what Pater calls this 
 painful ministry to the flesh has stood so 
 much in the way of our terrestrial happiness, 
 that it is a positive joy to remember that 
 with the adventure of dissolution these 
 'angry stains of life and action' will be 
 removed, and our spirits may soar untram- 
 meled." 
 
 "And where will they soar to?" demanded 
 the Knitter of the Gray Sock. 
 
 "That's too big a question for me," pro- 
 tested the Frail One, "perhaps they will 
 soar only as far as the 'great store-house of 
 
 [118] 
 
The Great x^dventure 
 
 being' as Matthew Arnold calls it, and there 
 await another incarnation." 
 
 "And more physical handicaps?" ques- 
 tioned the Knitter of the Gray Sock, "it 
 seems to me that this would not be much of 
 an adventure, and can anyone tell me what 
 Arnold meant by 'a store-house of being?" 
 
 No one seemed to know, but another 
 voice was heard in quotation, "Well you 
 know what George Meredith has said: that 
 there is nothing the body suffers but what 
 the soul may profit by." 
 
 "Now isn't that absurd?" declared the 
 Knitter of the Gray Sock, "as if our souls 
 were not entirely submerged by our physical 
 woes. I know that I for one am never so 
 hateful and disagreeable as when I'm ill. 
 I hate sickness — and old age, that's another 
 of my horrors." 
 
 "Oh there's no old age now," said the 
 hostess, rising with some evident hospita- 
 ble intent, "except among the very young; 
 who was it that said we are oldest when we 
 are born?" 
 
 "I don't know," admitted the literary 
 Frail One, "but I know that Compton 
 Leith has said that for those who have ex- 
 perienced joy and really know the meaning 
 of life there shall be no sadness of surrender, 
 
 [119] 
 
From Day to Day 
 
 but that the ecstacy of endeavor shall be 
 prolonged to the end. The tree of life, he 
 says, shall not rust to dull hues, but flush 
 to a swift splendour — I have forgotten the 
 rest." 
 
 "Well that's too much for me," admitted 
 the Knitter of the Gray Sock, "but I sup- 
 pose that is the way it was with that the- 
 atrical manager, his life certainly flushed 
 to a swift splendour. But really ladies, I feel 
 like saying what Thoreau did to the minister 
 who came in his last illness to talk to him 
 about another life: 'one world at a time.' 
 Let us take old age and death when they 
 come, and in the meantime stick to our 
 knitting." 
 
 "Then you will not be sorry that tea has 
 arrived," said the hostess as she helped a 
 maid steer a tea-wagon into the midst of 
 this little group. 
 
 "Tea!"' exclaimed the Frail One under 
 her breath to the knitter of the Gray Sock, 
 "it's always tea." 
 
 "Yes," was the answer, "tea is a part of 
 the earthly adventure." 
 
 [120] 
 
Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: Sept. 2009 
 
 PreservationTechnologies 
 
 A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 
 
 111 Thomson Park Drive 
 Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
 (724)779-2111 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 015 909 328 1