Q 'W
/.:
liMj
(«.
c^
'■ \
mm
r ... V.
-\ ,-,
1. ' ''■
] "]y\f I f-lJ '^. y
BE'.ECrlEl^
r'
rj'i:' OW r
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Slielf.XS..._
UNITEB STATES OF AMERICA,
OTritm20 of J^arriet Wttt^tt ^totoe*
UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. Poplar IllustraUd Edition, i2mo,
i552.00.
The Same. lUztstrated Edition. A new edition, from new
plates, printed with red-line border. With an Introduction of
more than 30 pages, and a bibliography of the various editions
. and languages in which the work has appeared, by Mr. George
BuLLEN, of the British Museum, Over ico illustrations, 8vo,
$3.50.
The Same. Popular Edition. With Introduction, and Por-
trait of " Uncle Tom." lamo, $1.00.
DRED (sometimes called " Nina Gordon "). i2mo, ^1.50.
THE MINISTER'S WOOING, lamo, $1.50.
AGNES OF SORRENTO. i2mo, $1.50,
THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND, izmo, $1.50.
THE MAY-FLOWER, etc. i2mo, jSSi.So,
OLDTOWN FOLKS. i2mo, $1.50.
SAM LAWSON'S FIRESIDE STORIES. New and en-
larged Edition. Illustrated. i2mo, $1.50.
The Same. i6mo, paper covers, 50 cents.
MY WIFE AND I. New Edition. Illustrated, i2mo,;^i.so.
WE AND OUR NEIGHBORS. New Edition. Illustrated.
i2mo, $1.50.
POGANUC PEOPLE. New Edition. Illustrated i2mo,^i.so.
The above eleven i2mo volumes, uniform, in box, $16.50.
HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS. i6mo, $1.50.
LITTLE FOXES. i6mo, $1.50.
THE CHIMNEY-CORNER. i6mo, j^i.so.
A DOG'S MISSION, etc. New Edition. Illustrated. Small
4to, $1.25.
QUEER LITTLE PEOPLE. New Edition. Illustrated. Small
4to, $1.25.
LITTLE PUSSY WILLOW. New Edition. lUustrated. SmaU
4to, $1.25.
RELIGIOUS POEMS. Illustrated. i6mo, gilt edges, ;^ 1.50.
PALMETTO LEAVES. Sketches of Florida. Illustrated.
i6mo, $1.50.
FLOWERS AND FRUIT. From Mrs. Stowe's Writings.
i6mo, $1.00.
SCENES FROM MRS. STOWE'S WORKS. Paper, 15
cents.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., Publishers,
BOSTON.
FLOWERS AND FRUIT FROM THE
WRITINGS OF IIARRIET IM'^ -
BEECHER^TOWE
ARRANGED BY
ABBIE H. FAIRFIELD
BOSTON AND
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
Copyriglit, 1888,
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge :
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
The Inner Life 1
CHAPTER II.
Human Natube 55
CHAPTER III.
Woman 84
CHAPTER IV.
Children 105
CHAPTER V.
Education 118
CHAPTER VI.
Nature 134
CHAPTER VII.
Literature and Art 158
CHAPTER VIII.
New England Life 171
CHAPTER IX.
Miscellaneous 188
FLO WEES AITD FETJIT.
CHAPTER I.
THE INNER LIFE.
THE MESTISTER'S WOOING.
Sympathy. When we feel a thing ourselves, we can
see very quick the same in others.
Self- When a finely constituted nature wishes
deception. ^^ ^^ j^^^ baseness, it has first to bribe
itself. Evil is never embraced, undisguised, as
evil, but under some fiction which the mind
accepts, and with which it has the singular power
of bUnding itself in the face of dayUght. The
power of imposing on one's self is an essential
preliminary to imposing on others. The man
first argues himself down, and then he is ready
to put the whole weight of his nature to deceiv-
ing others.
Soul-corn- Perhaps it is so, that souls once inti-
munion. jj^^tely related have ever after this a
strange power of affecting each other, — a power
that neither absence nor death can annul. How
else can we interpret those mysterious hours in
2 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
which the power of departed love seems to over-
shadow us, making our souls vital with such long-
ings, with such wild throbbings, with such unut-
terable sighings, that a little more might burst
the mortal bond ? Is it not deep calling unto
deep? the free soul singing outside the cage to
her mate beating against the bars within ?
Soul- The greatest moral effects are like those
absorption. <. . . 1^.11
01 music, — not wrought out by sharp-
sided intellectual propositions, but melted in by
a divine fusion, by words that have mysterious,
indefinite fulness of meaning, made living by
sweet voices, which seem to be the out-throb-
bings of angelic hearts. So one verse in the
Bible read by a mother in some hour of tender
prayer has a significance deeper and higher than
the most elaborate of sermons, the most acute of
arguments.
Restric- Scarcely conscious, she lay in that dim,
thebody clairvoyaut state, when the half-sleep of
soui?^ the outward senses permits a delicious
dewy clearness of the soul, that perfect
ethereal rest and freshness of the faculties, com-
parable only to what we imagine of the spiritual
state, — season of celestial enchantment, in which
the heavy weight " of all this unintelligible world "
drops off, and the soul, divinely charmed, nestles
like a wind-tossed bu'd in the protecting bosom
of the One AU-perfect, All-beautiful. What vi-
sions then come to the inner eye have often no
THE INNER LIFE. 3
words corresponding in mortal vocabularies.
The poet, the artist, and the prophet in such
hours become possessed of divine certainties
which all their lives they struggle, with pencil
or song or burning words, to make evident to
their feUows. The world around wonders, but
they are unsatisfied, because they have seen the
glory and know how inadequate the copy.
Courage in Half the misery in the world comes of
want of courage to speak and to hear the
truth plainly and in a spirit of love.
MissPris- " Tho' I Can't say I 'm lone either,
because nobody need say that, so long
as there 's folks to be done for."
Blessed- We could not afford to have it always
ness vs. , ^ • ■, ■, ^
happi- night, — and we must thmk that the
broad, gay morning-light, when meadow-
lark and robin and bobolink are singing in chorus
with a thousand insects and the waving of a
thousand breezes, is on the whole the most in
accordance with the average wants of those
who have a material life to live and material
work to do. But then we reverence that clear-
obscure of midnight, when everything is still and
dewy ; — then sing the nightingales, which can-
not be heard by day ; then shine the mysterious
stars. So when all earthly voices are hushed in
the soul, all earthly lights darkened, music and
color float in from a higher sphere. . . . By
4 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
what name shall we call this beautiful twilight,
this night of the soul, so starry with heavenly-
mysteries ? Not happiness, but blessedness.
They who have it walk among men as " sorrow-
ful, yet alway rejoicing, as poor, yet making
many rich, — as having nothing, and yet possess-
ing all things."
Laws of Is it not possible that He who made
the world may have established laws for
prayer as invariable as those for the sowing of
seed and raising of grain ? Is it not as legiti-
mate a subject of inquiry, when petitions are not
answered, which of these laws has been neg-
lected ?
Influence No "^^^ artist or philosopher ever
SvSbie lived who has not at some hours risen
to the height of utter self-abnegation
for the glory of the invisible. There have been
painters who would have been crucified to demon-
strate the action of a muscle, — chemists who
would gladly have melted themselves and all
humanity in their crucible, if so a new discovery
might arise out of its fumes. Even persons of
mere artistic sensibility are at times raised by
music, painting, or poetry, to a momentary trance
of self-oblivion, in which they would offer their
whole being before the shrine of an invisible
_ loveliness. . . . But where theorists and
woman
feels ; man philosophers tread with sublime assur-
ance, woman often follows with bleed-
THE INNER LIFE. 5
ing footsteps ; — women are always turning
from the abstract to the individual, and feeling
where the philosopher only thinks.
Love a sac- True love is a natural sacrament; and
^™^" ' if ever a young man thanks God for
having saved what is noble and manly in his soul,
it is when he thinks of offering it to the woman
he loves.
God's " Mr. Scudder used to say that it took
tests.
great affliction to bring his mind to that
place," said Mrs. Katy. " He used to say that an
old paper-maker told him once, that paper that
was shaken only one way in the making would
tear across the other, and the best paper had to
be shaken every way ; and so he said we could
n't tell till we had been turned and shaken and
tried every way, where we should tear."
Uncon- So we ffo, — SO little knowing: what we
scions c? ' o
heart- touch and what touches us as we talk !
thrusts. xvr i i • p
We drop out a common piece ot news,
— " Mr. So-and-so is dead," — " Miss Such-a-one
is married," — " Such a ship has sailed," — and
lo, on our right hand or our left, some heart has
sunk under the news silently, — gone down in
the great ocean of Fate, without even a bubble
rising to teU its drowning pang. And this —
God help us ! — is what we call living !
Repres- It was not pride, nor sternness, but a
sort of habitual shamefacedness that
6 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
kept far back in each soul those feelings which
are the most beautiful in their outcome ; but
after a while the habit became so fixed a nature
that a caressing or affectionate expression could
not have passed the lips of one to another with-
out a painful awkwardness. Love was under-
stood, once for all, to be the basis on which their
life was built. Once for all, they loved each
other, and after that, the less said, the better. It
had cost the woman's heart of Mrs. Marvin some
pangs, in the earlier part of her wedlock, to
accept of this once for all in place of those daily
outgushings which every woman desires should be
like God's loving-kindnesses, " new every morn-
ing ; " but hers, too, was a nature strongly inclin-
ing inward, and, after a few tremulous move-
ments, the needle of her soul settled, and her
life-lot was accepted, — not as what she would
like or could conceive, but as a reasonable and
good one. Life was a picture painted in low,
cool tones, but in perfect keeping; and though
another and brighter style might have pleased
better, she did not quarrel with this.
Winged There are in this world two kinds of
L^gspSs. iiatures, — those that have wings, and
those that have feet, — the winged and
the walking spirits. The walking are the logi-
cians ; the winged are the instinctive and poetic.
Natures that must always walk find many a bog,
many a thicket, many a tangled brake, which
God's happy little winged birds flit over by one
THE INNER LIFE. 7
noiseless flight. Nay, when a man has toiled till
his feet weigh too heavily with the mud of earth
to enable him to walk another step, these little
birds will often cleave the air in a right line
towards the bosom of God, and show the way
where he could never have found it.
Unity in The truly good are of one language
prayer. .^ prayer. Whatever lines or angles of
thought may separate them in other hours, when
they pray in extremity, all good men pray alike.
The Emperor Charles V. and Martin Luther,
two great generals of opposite faiths, breathed
out their dying struggles in the self-same words.
Sympathy As well might thoso on the hither
sS^ol!^ side of mortality instruct the souls gone
beyond the veil, as souls outside a great
affliction guide those who are struggling in it.
That is a mighty baptism, and only Christ can
go down with us into those waters.
Agony of Against an uncertainty, who can brace
^^, the soul? We put all our forces of
faith and prayer against it, and it goes
down just as a buoy sinks in the water, and the
next moment it is up again. The soul fatigues
itself with efforts which come and go in waves ;
and when with laborious care it has adjusted all
things in the light of hope, back flows the tide
and sweeps all away. In such struggles life
spends itself fast ; an inward wound does not
8 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
carry one deathward more surely than this worst
wound of the soul. God has made us so merci-
fully that there is no certainty, however dreadful,
to which life-forces do not in time adjust them-
selves; but to uncertainty there is no possible
adjustment.
Candace's " 'Cause, as we 's got to live in dis yer
theology, ^q^j^j^ \^ 'g quite clar de Lord must ha'
fixed it so we can ; an' ef tings was as some
folks suppose, why, we could n't live, and dar
would n't be no sense in anyting dat goes on."
Death in So wc go, dear reader, — so long as
we have a body and a soul. For worlds
must mingle, — the great and the little, the sol-
emn and the trivial, wreathing in and out, like
the grotesque carvings on a gothic shrine ; only,
did we know it rightly, nothing is trivial, since
the human soul, with its awful shadow, makes
all things sacred. Have not ribbons, cast-off
flowers, soiled bits of gauze, trivial, trashy frag-
ments of millinery, sometimes had an awful
meaning, a deadly power, when they belonged to
one who should wear them no more, and whose
beautiful form, frail and crushed as they, is a
hidden and vanished thing for all time ? For so
sacred and individual is a human being, that, of
all the million-peopled earth, no one form ever
restores another. The mould of each mortal
type is broken at the grave ; and never, never,
though you look through all the faces on earth.
THE INNER LIFE. 9
shall the exact form you mourn ever meet your
eyes again ! You are living your daily life among
trifles that one death-stroke may make rehcs.
One false step, one luckless accident, an obstacle
on the track of a train, the tangling of a cord in
shifting a sail, and the penknife, the pen, the
papers, the trivial articles of dress and clothing,
which to-day you toss idly and jestingly from
hand to hand, may become dread memorials of
that awful tragedy whose deep abyss ever under-
lies our common life.
Memory. For oue flowcr laid on the shrine
which we keep in our hearts for the dead is
worth more than any gift to our living selves.
Control " How could you help it, mignonne ?
Noughts. Can you stop your thinking ? "
Mary said, after a moment's blush, —
"leaner?// "
Minor Behind every scale of music, the gay-
tions!^*" ®^* ^"^ cheeriest, the grandest, the most
triumphant, lies its dark relative minor ;
the notes are the same, but the change of a sem-
itone changes all to gloom ; — all our gayest
hours are tunes, that have a modulation into
these dreary keys ever possible ; at any moment
the keynote may be struck.
The ideal Nothing is moro striking, in the light
practical, and shadow of the human drama, than
10 . ' FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
to compare the inner life and thoughts of ele-
vated and silent natures with the thoughts and
plans which those hy whom they are surrounded
have of and for them. Little thought Mary of
any of the speculations that busied the friendly
head of Miss Prissy, or that lay in the provi-
dent forecastings of her prudent mother.
Perfect " Indeed, I am afraid something must
^ ' be wrong with me. I cannot have any
fears, — I never could ; I try sometimes, but the
thought of God's goodness comes all around me,
and I 'm so happy before I think of it."
Under- All the little, mean work of our nature
curren . j^ generally done in a small dark closet
just a little back of the subject we are talk-
ing about, on which subject we suppose ourselves
of course to be thinking ; — of course, we are
thinking of it ; how else could we talk about it ?
The divine As to evcry leaf and every flower
ideal. there is an ideal to which the growth of
the plant is constantly urging, so is there an ideal
to every human being, — a perfect form in which
it might appear, were every defect removed, and
every characteristic excellence stimulated to the
highest point. Once in an age, God sends to
some of us a friend who loves in us, not a false
imagining, an unreal character, but, looking
through all the rubbish of our imperfections,
loves in us the divine ideal of our nature, —
THE INNER LIFE. 11
loves, not the man that we are, but the angel
that we may be.
Responsi- To feel the immortality of a beloved
^'^*^" soul hanging upon us, to feel that its
only communications with Heaven must be
through us, is the most solemn and touching
thought that can pervade a mind.
Develop- What makes the love of a great mind
ingpower something fearful in its inception is,
of love. o p !.• I.
that it is often the unsealmg of a hith-
erto undeveloped portion of a large and power-
ful being.
Unsus- It is said that if a grapevine be
fiSutnce planted in the neighborhood of a well,
its roots, running silently underground,
wreathe themselves in a network round the cold,
clear waters, and the vine's putting on outward
greenness and unwonted clusters and fruit is aU
that tells where every root and fibre of its being
has been silently stealing. So, those loves are
most fatal, most absorbing, in which, with un-
heeded quietness, every thought and fibre of our
life twines gradually around some human soul,
to us the unsuspected wellspring of our being.
Fearful it is, because so often the vine must be
uprooted, and all its fibres wrenched away ; but
till the hour of discovery comes, how is it trans-
figured by a new and beautiful life !
12 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Personal Gradually an expression of intense in-
terest and deep concern spread over the
listeners ; it was the magnetism of a strong mind,
which held them for a time under the shadow of
his own awful sense of God's almighty justice.
It is said that a little child once described his
appearance in the pulpit by saying, " I saw God
there, and I was afraid."
Soul- There is a ladder to heaven whose base
growth, Q^^ j^^g placed in human affections,
tender instincts, symbolic feelings, sacraments of
love, through which the soul rises higher and
higher, refining as she goes, till she outgrows the
human, and changes, as she rises, into the image
of the divine. At the very top of this ladder,
at the threshold of Paradise, blazes dazzling and
crystalline that celestial grade where the soul
knows self no more, having learned, through a
long experience of devotion, how blest it is to
lose herself in that eternal Love and Beauty, of
which all earthly fairness and grandeur are but
the dim type, the distant shadow.
Discipline. It is said that gardeners sometimes,
when they would bring a rose to richer flower-
ing, deprive it, for a time, of light and moisture.
Silent and dark it stands, dropping one faded
leaf after another, and seeming to go down
patiently to death. But when every leaf is
dropped, and the plant stands stripped to the
THE INNER LIFE. 13
uttermost, a new life is even then working in the
buds, from which shall spring a tender foliage,
and a brighter wealth of flowers. So, often
in celestial gardening, every leaf of earthly joy
must drop, before a new and divine bloom visits
the soul.
Idealizing In a refined and exalted nature, it is
FovT'^*^* very seldom that the feeling of love,
when once thoroughly aroused, bears
any sort of relation to the reality of the object.
It is commonly an enkindling of the whole power
of the soul's love for whatever she considers
highest and fairest ; it is, in fact, the love of
something divine and unearthly, which, by a
sort of illusion, connects itself with a person-
ality. Properly speaking, there is but one true,
eternal object of all that the mind conceives, in
this trance of its exaltation. Disenchantment
must come, of course ; and in a love which ter-
minates in happy marriage, there is a tender and
gracious process by which, without shock or vio-
lence, the ideal is gradually sunk in the real,
which, though found faulty and earthly, is still
ever tenderly remembered as it seemed under
the morning light of that enchantment.
OLDTOWN FOLKS.
Moral ear- It is noticeable, in every battle of opin-
nes ness. .^^^ ^-^^^ honest, sincere, moral earnest-
14 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
ness has a certain advantage over mere intellec-
tual cleverness.
struggling Plato savs that we all once had vrings,
for higher -, ^ -, 'it . t , . •
things. and that they will tend to grow out m
us, and that our burnings and aspira-
tions for higher things are like the teething
pangs of children. We are trying to cut our
wings. Let us not despise these teething seasons.
Though the wings do not become apparent, they
may be starting under many a rough coat and on
many a clumsy pair of shoulders.
Faith, not " I oftcn think," said Harry, listening
^^^ ' for a moment, "that no one can pro-
nounce on what this life has been to him until he
has passed entirely through it, and turns around,
and surveys it from the other world. I think
then that we shall see everything in its true pro-
portions ; but, till then, we must walk by faith,
not by sight, — faith that God loves us, faith
that our Savior is always near us, and that all
things are working together for good."
God's But certain it is that there is a very
near way to God's heart, and so to the
great heart of all comfort, that sometimes opens
like a shaft of light between heaven and the soul,
in hours when everything earthly falls away
from us. A quaint old writer has said, "God
keeps his choicest cordials for the time of our
deepest faintings." And so it came to pass that,
THE INNER LIFE. 15
as this poor woman closed her eyes and prayed
earnestly, there fell a strange clearness into her
soul, which calmed every fear, and hushed the
voice of every passion, and she lay for a season
as if entranced. Words of Holy Writ, heard
years ago in church readings, in the hours of
miconscious girlhood, now seemed to come back,
borne in with a loving power on her soul.
snent com- The kind of silence which gives a sense
paniouship. « ... '^
01 companionship.
Moral in- Esther was one of those intense, silent,
hentance. , , ' '
repressed women, that have been a fre-
quent outgrowth of New England society. Moral
traits, like physical ones, often intensify them-
selves in course of descent, so that the child of a
long line of pious ancestry may sometimes suffer
from too fine a moral fibre, and become a victim
to a species of morbid spiritual ideality.
Esther looked to me, from the first, less like
a warm, breathing, impulsive woman, less like
ordinary flesh and blood, than some half-spiritual
organization, every particle of which was a
thought.
Holiness Among all the loves that man has to
01 age. ^ ,
woman, there is none so sacred and
saint-like as that toward these dear, white-haired
angels, who seem to form the connecting link
between heaven and earth, who have lived to get
the victory over every sin and every sorrow, and
16 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
live perpetually on the banks of the dark river,
in that bright, calm land of Beulah, where angels
daily walk to and fro, and sounds of celestial
music are heard across the water.
Such have no longer personal cares, or griefs,
or sorrows. The tears of life have all been shed,
and therefore they have hearts at leisure to
attend to every one else. Even the sweet guile-
less childishness that comes on in this period has
a sacred dignity ; it is a seal of fitness for that
heavenly kingdom, which whosoever shaU not
receive as a little child shall not enter therein.
Unity in Has there ever been a step in human
^'^ ^ ' progress that has not been taken against
the prayers of some good soul, and been washed
by tears sincerely and despondently shed ? But,
for all this, is there not a true unity of the faith
in all good hearts ? And when they have risen
a little above the mists of earth, may not both
sides — the conqueror and the conquered — agree
that God hath given them the victory in advanc-
ing the cause of truth and goodness ?
Growth It has been the experience of my life
wU;Mn. *^^* ^^ ^^ your quiet people who, above
all other children of men, are set in
their ways and intense in their opinions. Their
very reserve and silence are a fortification
behind which all their peculiarities grow and
thrive at their leisure, without encountering those
blows and shocks which materially modify more
THE INNER LIFE. 17
outspoken natures. It is owing to the peculiar
power of quietness that one sometimes sees char-
acters fashioning themselves in a manner the
least to be expected from the circumstances and
associates which surround them. As a fair white
lily gi'ows up out of the bed of meadow muck,
and without note or comment rejects all in the
soil that is ahen from her being, and goes on
fashioning her own silver cup side by side with
weeds that are drawing coarser nutriment from
the soil, so we often see a refined and gentle
nature, by some singular internal force, unfolding
itself by its own laws, and confirming itself in
its own beliefs, as wholly different from all that
surround it as is the lily from the ragweed. There
are persons, in fact, who seem to grow almost
wholly from within, and on whom the teachings,
the doctrine, and the opinions of those around
them, produce little or no impression.
Amuse- It may be set down, I think, as a gen-
merits
eral axiom, that people feel the need of
amusements less and less, precisely in proportion
as they have solid reasons for being happy.
Repres- Perhaps my readers may have turned
over a great, flat stone some time in
their rural rambles, and found under it little
clovers, and tufts of grass pressed to earth, flat,
white, and bloodless, but still growing, stretching,
creeping towards the edges, where their plant-
instinct tells them there is light and deliverance.
18 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
The kind of life that the little Tina led, under
the care of Miss Asphyxia, resembled that of
these poor clovers. It was all shut down and
repressed, but growing still.
Sympathy. I felt a cleaving of spirit to him that I
had never felt towards any human being before,
— a certainty tha,t something had come to me in
him that I had always been wanting, — and I
was too glad for speech.
Soul- Is it not true that, as we grow older,
the relationship of souls will make itself
relation.
felt?
PALMETTO LEAVES.
Life No dreamland on earth can be more
renew . unearthly in its beauty and glory than
the St. Johns in April. Tourists, for the most
part, see it only in winter, when half its gorgeous
forests stand bare of leaves, and go home, never
dreaming what it would be like in its resurrec-
tion robes. So do we, in our darkness, judge
the shores of the river of this mortal Hfe up
which we sail, ofttimes disappointed and com-
plaining. We are seeing aU things in winter,
and not as they will be when God shall wipe
away all tears, and bring about the new heavens
and new earth of which every spring is a symbol
and a prophecy. The flowers and leaves of last
year vanish for a season, but they come back
fresher and fairer than ever.
THE INNER LIFE. 19
A lesson On either side, perched on a tall, dry,
last year's coffee-bean-stalk, sit " papa "
and "mamma," chattering and scolding, exhort-
ing and coaxing. The little ones run from side
to side, and say in plaintive squeaks, " I can't,"
" I dare n't," as plain as birds can say it. There,
— now they spread their little wings ; and oh,
joy ! they find to their delight that they do not
fall ; they exult in the possession of a new-born
sense of existence. As we look at this pantomime,
graver thoughts come over us. And we think
how poor, timid, little souls moan, and hang back,
and tremble, when the time comes to leave this
nest of earth, and trust themselves to the free air
of the world they were made for. As the little
bird's moans and cries end in delight and raptm-e
in finding himself in a new, glorious, free life ; so,
just beyond the dark steps of death, will come a
buoyant, exulting sense of new existence.
PEARL OF ore's ISLAND.
DiscipUne. The ship, built on one element, but
designed to have its life in another, seemed an
image of the soul, formed and fashioned with
many a weary hammer-stroke in this life, but
finding its true element only when it sails out
into the ocean of eternity.
Heimweh. But there are souls sent into this world
who seem to have always mysterious affinities
20 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
for the invisible and the unknown — who see the
face of everything beautiful through a thin veil
of mystery and sadness. The Germans call this
yearning of spirit " homesickness " — the dim
remembrances of a spirit once affiliated to some
higher sphere, of whose lost brightness all things
fair are the vague reminders.
Limitation. But Miss Emily knew no more of the
deeper parts of her brother's nature than a little
bird that dips its beak into the sunny waters of
some spring knows of its depths of coldness and
shadow.
Learning The fact was, as the reader may per-
.° °^^' ceive, that Miss Roxy had been thawed
into an unusual attachment for the little Mara,
and this affection was beginning to spread a
warming element through her whole being. It
was as if a rough granite rock had suddenly
awakened to a passionate consciousness of the
beauty of some fluttering white anemone that
nestled in its cleft, and felt warm thrills running
through all its veins at every tender motion and
shadow.
Fitful Such people are not very wholesome
companions for those who are sensitively
organized and predisposed to self-sacrificing love.
They keep the heart in a perpetual freeze and
thaw, which, like the American northern climate,
is so particularly fatal to plants of a delicate
THE INNER LIFE. 21
habit. They could live through the hot summer
and the cold winter, but they cannot endure the
three or four months when it freezes one day and
melts the next, — when all the buds are started
out by a week of genial sunshine, and then
frozen for a fortnight. These fitful persons are
of all others most engrossing, because you are
always sure in their good moods that they are
just going to be angels, — an expectation which
no number of disappointments seems finally to
do away.
Love— a Nothing so much shows what a human
being is in moral advancement as the
quality of his love.
LITTLE FOXES.
Altruistic The faults and mistakes of us poor
human beings are as often perpetuated
by despair as by any other one thing. Have we
not all been burdened by a consciousness of
faults that we were slow to correct because we
felt discouraged ? Have we not been sensible of
a real help sometimes from the presence of a
friend who thought well of us, believed in us, set
our wisdom in the best light, and put our faults
in the background?
Expression " Dispute your mother's hateful dogma,
that love is to be taken for granted
22 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
without daily proof between lovers ; cry down
latent caloric in the market ; insist that the mere
fact of being a wife is not enough, — that the
words spoken once, years ago, are not enough, —
that love needs new leaves every summer of life,
as much as your elm-tree, and new branches to
grow broader and wider, and new flowers at the
root to cover the ground."
Latent I remember my school-day speculations
caloric. , , ,^ ^, . .. -.-
over an old " Chemistry " I used to
study as a text-book, which informed me that
a substance called Caloric exists in all bodies.
In some it exists in a latent state ; it is there,
but it affects neither the senses nor the thermom-
eter. Certain causes develop it, when it raises
the mercury and warms the hands. I remem-
ber the awe and wonder with which, even then,
I reflected on the vast amount of blind, deaf,
and dumb comfort which Nature had thus stowed
away. How mysterious it seemed to me that
poor families every winter should be shivering,
freezing, and catching cold, when Nature had
all this latent caloric locked up in her store-closet,
— when it was all around them, in everything
they touched and handled !
In the spiritual world there is an exact analogy
to this. There is a great life-giving, warming
power called Love, which exists in human hearts,
dumb and unseen, but which has no real life, no
warming power, till set free by expression.
Did you ever, in a raw, chilly day just before
THE INNER LIFE. 23
a snowstorm, sit at work in a room that was
judiciously warmed by an exact thermometer?
You do not freeze, but you shiver ; your fingers
do not become numb with cold, but you have all
the while an uneasy craving for more positive
warmth. You look at the empty grate, walk
mechanically towards it, and, suddenly awaking,
shiver to see that there is nothing there. You
long for a shawl or a cloak ; you draw yourself
within yourself ; you consult the thermometer,
and are vexed to find that there is nothing there
to be complained of, — it is standing most pro-
vokingly at the exact temperature that all the
good books and good doctors pronounce to be the
proper thing, — the golden mean of health ; and
yet perversely you shiver, and feel as if the face
of an open fire would be to you as the smile of an
angel.
Such a life-long chill, such an habitual shiver,
is the lot of many natures, which are not warm,
when all ordinary rules tell them they ought to
be warm, — whose life is cold and barren and
meagre, — which never see the blaze of an open
fire.
Regret. The bitterest tears shed over graves are
for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
" She never knew how I loved her." " He never
knew what he was to me." " I always meant to
make more of our friendship." " I never knew
what he was to me till he was gone." Such
words are the poisoned arrows which cruel Death
24 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
shoots backward at us from the door of the
sepulchre.
How much more we might make of our family
life, of our friendships, if every secret thought of
love blossomed into a deed ! We are not now
speaking of personal caresses. These may or
may not be the best language of affection. Many
are endowed with a delicacy, a fastidiousness of
physical organization, which shrinks away from
too much of these, repelled and overpowered.
But there are words and looks and little observ-
ances, thoughtfulnesses, watchful little attentions,
which speak of love, which make it manifest, and
there is scarce a family that might not be richer
in heart-wealth for more of them.
HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.
First In this art of home-making I have set
principles . . • r> 4. • •
of home- down in my mind certain nrst princi-
ma ng. pjgg^ j^jj^g ^jj^g axioiBS of Euclid, and the
first is, —
iVb hoTYie is possible without love.
All business marriages and marriages of con-
venience, all mere culinary marriages and mar-
riages of mere animal passion, make the creation
of a true home impossible in the outset. Love
is the jewelled foundation of this New Jeru-
salem descending from God out of heaven, and
takes as many bright forms as the amethyst,
topaz, and sapphire of that mysterious vision.
THE INNER LIFE. 25
In this range of creative art all things are possi-
ble to him that loveth, but without love nothing
is possible.
THE CHIMNEY CORNER.
Conversa- Real conversation presupposes intimate
acquaintance. People must see each
other often enough to wear off the rough bark
and outside rind of commonplaces and conven-
tionalities in which their real ideas are en-
wrapped, and give forth without reserve their
innermost and best feelings.
Saintu- What makes saintllness, in my view, as
distinguished from ordinary goodness,
is a certain quality of magnanimity and greatness
of soul that bringfs life within the circle of the
heroic. To be really great in little things, to be
truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of
every-day life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy
of canonization.
Teachings There IS a certain amount of suffering
g suffer- -y^t^ich must follow the rending of the
great cords of life, suffering which is
natural and inevitable : it cannot be argued
down ; it cannot be stilled ; it can no more be
soothed by any effort of faith and reason than the
pain of a fractured limb, or the agony of fire on
the living flesh. All that we can do is to brace
26 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
ourselves to bear it, calling on God, as the mar-
tyrs did in the fire, and resigning ourselves to let
it burn on. We must be willing to suffer, since
God so wills. There are just so many waves to
go over us, just so many arrows of stinging
thought to be shot into our soul, just so many
f aintings and sinkings and revi^dngs only to suffer
again, belonging to and inherent in our portion
of sorrow.; and there is a work of healing that
God has placed in the hands of Time alone.
Time heals all things at last ; yet it depends
much on us in our sufferings, whether Time shall
send us forth healed, indeed, but maimed and
crippled and callous, or whether, looking to the
great Physician of sorrows, and coworking with
him, we come forth stronger and fairer even for
our wounds.
Help in One soul redeemed will do more to lift
sorrow. ^^^^ burden of sorrow than all the bland-
ishments and diversions of art, all the alleviations
of luxury, all the sympathy of friends.
THE MAYFLOWER.
Aflanity of From that time a friendship commenced
opposi es. i^g^^ggjj ^jjg ^^Q which was a beautiful
illustration of the affinities of opposites. It was
like a friendship between morning and evening,
— all freshness and sunshine on one side, and all
gentleness and peace on the other.
THE INNER LIFE. 27
Superior- It is one mark of a superior mind to
^^" understand and be influenced by the
superiority of others.
Sympathy. The same quickness which makes a
mind buoyant in gladness often makes it gentlest
and most sympathetic in sorrow.
God's It is well for man that there is one
sympa y. jggjjjg ^j^q g^^g ^j^g suffering heart as
it is, and not as it manifests itself through the
repellences of outward infirmity, and who, per-
haps, feels more for the stern and wayward than
for those whose gentler feelings win for them
human sympathy.
Influence. He had traced her, even as a hidden
streamlet may be traced, by the freshness, the
verdure of heart, which her deeds of kindness
had left wherever she had passed.
Capacity A vcry Unnecessary and uncomfortable
^' capacity oi feeling, which, like a refined
ear for music, is undesirable, because, in this
world, one meets with discord ninety-nine times
where one meets with harmony once.
Heart- How vcry Contrary is the obstinate esti-
wisdom vs. pit , i • i j •
worldly mate of the heart to the rational esti-
wio om. jjjate of worldly wisdom ! Are there not
some who can remember when one word, one
look, or even the withholding of a word, has
28 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
drawn their heart more to a person than all the
substantial favors in the world? By ordinary
acceptation, substantial kindness respects the
necessaries of animal existence, while those
wants which are peculiar to mind, and will exist
with it forever, by equally correct classification,
are designated as sentimental ones, the supply of
which, though it will excite more gratitude in
fact, ought not to in theory.
Living From that time I . lived with her — and
together, ^t^q^q ^re some persons who can make
the word live signify much more than it com-
monly does — and she wrought on my character
all those miracles which benevolent genius can
work. She quieted my heart, directed my feel-
ings, unfolded my mind, and educated me, not
harshly or by force, but as the blessed sunshine
educates the flower, into full and perfect life;
and when all that was mortal of her died to this
world, her words and deeds of unutterable love
shed a twilight around her memory that will fade
only in the brightness of heaven.
Minister- What then ? May we look among the
ing spirits. ^^^^ ^j. ministering spirits for our own
departed ones? Whom would God be more
likely to send us ? Have we in heaven a friend
who knew us to the heart's core ? a friend to
whom we have unfolded our soul in its most
secret recesses ? to whom we have confessed our
weaknesses and deplored our griefs ? If we are
THE INNER LIFE. 29
to have a ministering spirit, who better adapted ?
Have we not memories which correspond to such
a belief? When our soul has been cast down,
has never an invisible voice whispered, " There
is lifting up " ? Have not gales and breezes of
sweet and healing thought been wafted over us,
as if an angel had shaken from his wings the
odors of paradise ? Many a one, we are confident,
can remember such things, — and whence come
they ? Why do the children of the pious mother,
whose grave has grown green and smooth with
years, seem often to walk through perils and
dangers fearful and imminent as the crossing of
Mohammed's fiery gulf on the edge of a drawn
sword, yet walk unhurt ? Ah ! could we see that
attendant form, that face where the angel con-
ceals not the mother, our question would be
answered.
Influence Something there is in the voice of real
mother's pi^^ycr that thrills a child's heart, even
prayer. before he understands it ; the holy
tones are a kind of heavenly music, and far-off
in distant years, the callous and worldly man
often thrills to his heart's core, when some turn
of life recalls to him his mother's prayer.
PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY.
Taught by It sometimes seems to take a stab, a
ermg. ^^^^g^^ ^ wouud, to Open in some hearts
30 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
the capacity of deep feeling and deep thought.
There are things taught by suffering that can be
taught in no other way. By suffering sometimes
is wrought out in a person the power of loving
and of appreciating love. During the first year,
Lillie had often seemed to herself in a sort of
wild, chaotic state. The coming in of a strange,
new, spiritual life was something so inexplicable
to her that it agitated and distressed her ; and
sometimes, when she appeared more petulant and
fretful than usual, it was only the stir and vibra-
tion on her weak nerves of new feelings, which
she wanted the power to express. These emo-
tions at first were painful to her. She felt weak,
miserable, and good-for-nothing. It seemed to
her that her whole life had been a wretched
cheat, and that she had ill repaid the devotion of
her husband. At first these thoughts only made
her bitter and angry ; and she contended against
them. But, as she sank from day to day, and
grew weaker and weaker, she grew more gentle ;
and a better spirit seemed to enter into her.
The object " The great object of life is not happi-
ness ; and when we have lost our own
personal happiness, we have not lost all that life
is worth living for. No, John, the very best of
life often lies beyond that. When we have
learned to let ourselves go, then we may find
that there is a better, a nobler, and a truer life
for us." . . . " If we contend with, and fly from
our duties, simply because they gall us and bur-
THE INNER LIFE. 81
den us, we go against everything ; but if we take
them up bravely, then everything goes with us.
God and good angels and good men and all good
influences are working with us when we are
working for the right. And in this way, John,
you may come to happiness ; or, if you do not
come to personal happiness, you may come to
something higher and better. You know that
you think it nobler to be an honest man than a
rich man ; and I am sure that you will think
it better to be a good man than to be a happy
one."
Self- It is astonishing how blindly people
Ignorance. gQjQjj^jjjjgg gQ q-,^ ^g ^q ^]^q character of
their own conduct, till suddenly, like a torch in a
dark place, the light of another person's opinion
is thrown in upon them, and they begin to judge
themselves under the quickening influence of
another person's moral magnetism. Then, in-
deed, it often happens that the graves give up
their dead, and that there is a sort of interior
resurrection nnd judgment.
Sympathy. When WG are feeling with the nerves of
some one else, we notice every roughness and in-
convenience.
ciairvoy- A terrible sort of clairvoyance that
*°^^' seems to beset very sincere people, and
makes them sensitive to the presence of anything
unreal or untrue.
32 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Unacknow- No, she did not say it. It would be
motSes. "^^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^ ^® ^^^ P^^* '^^^^ words,
plain and explicit, many instinctive re-
solves and purposes that arise in our hearts, and
which, for want of being so expressed, influence
us undetected and unchallenged. If we would
say out boldly, " I don't care for right or wrong,
or good or evil, or anybody's rights or anybody's
happiness, or the general good, or God himself,
— all I care for, or feel the least interest in, is
to have a good time myself, and I mean to do it,
come what may," — we should be only express-
ing a feeling which often lies in the dark back-
room of the human heart ; and saying it might
alarm us from the drugged sleep of life. It
might rouse us to shake oif the slow, creeping
paralysis of selfishness and sin before it is for-
ever too late.
Betty's bright idea.
Aspiration. That noble discontent that rises to aspi-
ration for higher things.
DEACON" Pitkin's farm.
The lesson " Well, daughter," said the deacon,
" it 's a pity we should go through all
we do in this world and not learn anything by it.
I hope the Lord has taught me not to worry, but
THE INNER LIFE. 33
just do my best, and leave myself and everything
else in his hands. We can't help ourselves, —
we can't make one hair white or black. Why
should we wear our lives out fretting ? If I 'd a
known that years ago, it would a been better for
us all."
" All for " She 's allers sayin' things is for the
^ ^ ■ best, maybe she '11 come to think so
about this, — folks gen'ally does when they can't
help themselves."
Sympathy. Eyes that have never wept cannot com-
prehend sorrow.
Trust. " Leave it ! "
These were words often in that woman's mouth,
and they expressed that habit of her life which
made her victorious over all troubles, that habit
of trust in the Infinite Will that actually could
and did leave every accomplished event in his
hand without murmur and without conflict.
AGNES OF SORRENTO.
Power of Such is the wonderful power of human
sympa y. gyj^pg^^j^y- ^^^d, the discovery even of the
existence of a soul capable of understanding our
inner life often operates as a perfect charm ;
every thought and feeling and aspiration carries
with it a new value, from the interwoven con-
34 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
sciousness that attends it, of the worth it would
bear to that other mind ; so that, while that per-
son lives, our existence is doubled in value, even
though oceans divide us.
Difficulty But he soon discovered, what every
fng'Sers. earnest soul learns who has been bap-
tized into a sense of things invisible,
how utterly powerless and inert any mortal man
is to inspire others with his own insights and
convictions. With bitter discouragement and
chagrin, he saw that the spiritual man must for-
ever lift the dead weight of all the indolence and
indifference and animal sensuality that surround
him, — that the curse of Cassandra is upon him,
forever to burn and writhe under awful visions
of truths which no one around him will regard.
Good As a bee can extract pure honey from
we?eekit. *^^ blossoms of some plants whose
leaves are poisonous, so some souls can
nourish themselves only with the holier and more
ethereal parts of popular belief.
Naivete. " Blessed are the flowers of God that
grow in cool solitudes, and have never been pro-
faned by the hot sun and dust of this world."
Sorrow a Never does love strike so deep and im-
tionfor mediate a root as in a sorrowful and
desolated nature ; there it has nothing
to dispute the soil, and soon fills it with its inter-
lacing fibre.
i
THE INNER LIFE. 35
o?t£^^ "He is happy, like the birds," said
heart. Agnes, " because he flies near heaven."
Dreams. Dreams are the hushing of the bodily
senses, that the eyes of the spirit may open.
Lost inno- When a man has once lost that uncon-
coverabie." scious soul-purity which exists in a mind
unscathed by the fires of passion, no
after-tears can weep it back again. No penance,
no prayer, no anguish of remorse, can give back
the simplicity of a soul that has never been
stained .
The strong- No passions are deeper in their hold,
sSns.*^" more pervading and more vital to the
whole human being, than those that
make their first entrance through the higher
nature, and, beginning with a religious and
poetic ideality, gradually work their way through
the whole fabric of the human existence. From
grosser passions, whose roots lie in the senses,
there is always a refuge in man's loftier nature.
He can cast them aside with contempt, and leave
them as one whose lower story is flooded can
remove to a higher loft, and live serenely with a
purer air and wider prospect. But to love that
is born of ideality, of intellectual sympathy, of
harmonies of the spiritual and immortal nature,
of the very poetry and purity of the soul, if it be
placed where reason and religion forbid its exer-
cise and expression, what refuge but the grave, —
86 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
what hope but that wide eternity where all human
barriers fall, all human relations end, and love
ceases to be a crime.
Agony in It is singular how the dumb, imprisoned
soul, locked within the walls of the
body, sometimes gives such a piercing power to
the tones of the voice during the access of a great
agony. The effect is entirely involuntary and
often against the most strenuous opposition of
the will ; but one sometimes hears another read-
ing or repeating words with an intense vitality, a
living force, which tells of some inward anguish
or conflict of which the language itself gives no
expression.
A sympa- The great Hearer of Prayer regards
thetic God. t ^ • ' •. p • •
each heart in its own scope or vision,
and helps not less the mistaken than the enlight-
ened distress. And for that matter, who is
enlightened? who carries to God's throne a
trouble or a temptation in which there is not
somewhere a misconception or a mistake ?
Transient "We hold it better to have even transient
up mg. |jpiift;jjigg Qf j^i^Q nobler and more devout
element of man's nature than never to have any
at all, and that he who goes on in worldly and
sordid courses, without ever a spark of religious
enthusiasm or a throb of aspiration, is less of a
man than he who sometimes soars heavenward,
though his wings be weak and he fall again.
THE INNER LIFE. 37
Coinci- When a man has a sensitive or sore
dence. ^^^^ -^ j^^^ heart, from the pain of
which he would gladly flee to the ends of the
earth, it is marvellous what coincidences of events
will he found to press upon it wherever he
may go.
suenceof They hoth sat awhile in that kind of
deep emo- Qujetude which often falls between two
tion. ^ t c • jc
who have stirred some deep tountain oi
emotion.
Innocence. There is something pleading and pitiful
in the simplicity of perfect ignorance, — a rare
and delicate beauty in its freshness, like the
morning-glory cup, which, once withered by the
heat, no second morning can restore.
World " This is such a beautiful world," said
conflicts, ^gj^gg^ u ^^Q ^ouia think it would be
such a hard one to live in ? — such battles and
conflicts as people have here 1 "
Nervous As one looking through a prism sees a
sensibility. ^^^ bordering of rainbow on every ob-
ject, so he beheld a glorified world. His former
self seemed to him something forever past and
gone. He looked at himself as at another per-
son, who had sinned and suffered, and was now
resting in beatified repose ; and he fondly thought
all this was firm reality, and believed that he
was now proof against all earthly impressions,
38 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
able to hear and to judge with the dispassionate
calmness of a disembodied spirit. He did not
know that this high-strung calmness, this fine
clearness, were only the most intense forms of
nervous sensibility, and as vividly susceptible to
every mortal impression as is the vitalized chem-
ical plate to the least action of the sun's rays.
UNCLE TOM's cabin.
Sorrow an Any mind that is capable of a real sor-
educator. . i ^ c i
TOW IS capable oi good.
Individ- Now, the reflections of two men, sitting
^' side by side, are a curious thing, —
seated on the same seat, having the same eyes,
ears, hands, and organs of all sorts, and having
pass before their eyes the same objects, — it is
wonderful what a variety we shall find in these
same reflections.
inspira- By what Strange law of mind is it that
an idea, long overlooked, and trodden
under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles
out in new light, as a discovered diamond.
Power of Sublime is the dominion of the mind
bSdy.''^^'^ over the body, that, for a time, can
make flesh and nerve impregnable, and
string the sinews like steel, so that the weak
become so mighty.
THE INNER LIFE. 39
True he- Have not many of us, in the weary way
of life, felt, in some hours, how far
easier it were to die than to live ?
The martyr, when faced even by a death of
bodily anguish and horror, finds in the very ter-
ror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic.
There is a vivid excitement, a thrill and fervor,
which may carry through any crisis of suffering
that is the birth-hour of eternal glory and rest.
But to live, — to wear on, day after day, of
mean, bitter, low, harassing servitude, every
nerve dampened and depressed, every power of
feeling gradually smothered, — this long and
wasting heart martyrdom, this slow, daily bleed-
ing away of the inward life, drop by drop, hour
after hour, — this is the true searching test of
what there may be in man or woman.
Moral at- An atmosphere of sympathetic influence
mosphere. . , i ,
encircles every human being; and the
man or woman who/eeZs strongly, healthily, and
justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a
constant benefactor to the human race.
Seif-sacri- There are in this world blessed souls,
whose sorrows all spring up into joys
for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the
grave with many tears, are the seed from which
spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate
and the distressed.
strength of When a heavy weight presses the soul
to the lowest level at which endurance
40 FLOWEKS AND FRUIT.
is possible, there is an instant and desperate
effort of every physical and moral nerve to throw-
off the weight ; and hence the heaviest anguish
often precedes a return tide of joy and courage.
Self-forget- " Thee uses thyself only to learn how to
love thy neighbor, Ruth," said Simeon,
looking with a beaming face on Ruth.
Natural He had one of those natures which
seJiSbmty. could better and more clearly conceive
of religious things from its own percep-
tions and instincts than many a matter-of-fact and
practical Christian. The gift to appreciate and
the sense to feel the finer shades and relations of
moral things often seems an attribute of those
whose whole life shows a careless disregard of
them. Hence, Moore, Byron, Goethe, often speak
words more wisely descriptive of the true reli-
gious sentiment, than another man whose whole
life is governed by it. In such minds, disregard
of religion is a more fearful treason, — a more
deadly sin.
Supersti- No one is so thoroughly superstitious as
the godless man. The Christian is com-
posed by the belief of a wise, all-ruling Father,
whose presence fills the void unknown with light
and order ; but to the man who has dethroned
God, the spirit-land is, indeed, in the words of
the Hebrew poet, " a land of darkness and the
shadow of death," without any order, where the
THE INNER LIFE. 41
light is as darkness. Life and death to him are
haunted grounds, filled with goblin forms of
vague and shadowy dread.
The human After aU, let a man take what pains he
may to hush it down, a human soul is
an awful ghostly, unquiet possession for a bad
man to have. Who knows the metes and bounds
of it ? Who knows all its awful perhapses, —
those shudderings and tremblings which it can
no more live down than it can outlive its own
eternity ! What a fool is he who locks his door
to keep out spirits, who has in his own bosom
a spirit he dares not meet alone, — whose voice,
smothered far down, and piled over with moun-
tains of earthliness, is yet like the forewarning
trumpet of doom !
' DRED.
Practical The divine part of man is often shame-
faced and seK-distrustful, iU at home in
this world, and standing in awe of nothing so
much as what is called common sense ; and yet
common sense very often, by its own keenness,
is able to see that these unavailable currencies of
another's mind are of more worth, if the world
only knew it, than the ready coin of its own ; and
so the practical and the ideal nature are drawn
together.
42 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
inexpiica- Sensitive people never like the fatigue
ences^^ ^^' of justifying their instincts. Nothing,
in fact, is less capable of being justified
by technical reasons than those fine insights into
character whereupon affection is built. We have
all had experience of preferences vrhich would
not follow the most exactly ascertained catalogue
of virtues, and would be made captive where
there was very little to be said in justification of
the captivity.
Congenial- " Why, surely," said Anne, " one wants
posites!^' one's friends to be congenial, I should
think."
" So we do ; and there is nothing in the world
so congenial as differences. To be sure, the
differences must be harmonious. In music, now,
for instance, one does n't want a repetition of the
same notes, but differing notes that chord. Nay,
even discords are indispensable to complete har-
mony. Now, Nina has just that difference from
me which chords with me ; and all our little
quarrels — for we have had a good many, and I
dare say shall have more — are only a sort of
chromatic passages, — discords of the seventh,
leading into harmony. My Hfe is inward, the-
orizing, self-absorbed. I am hypochondriac,
often morbid. The vivacity and acuteness of her
outer life makes her just what I need. She
wakens, she rouses, and keeps me in play ; and
her quick instincts are often more than a match
for my reason."
THE INNER LIFE. 43
Proof of " How do you know there is any heaven,
heaven. ■, ^ j>
anyhow r
" Know it ? " said Milly, her eyes kindling,
and striking her staff on the ground, " Know it ?
I know it by de hankering arter it I got in
here ; " giving her broad chest a blow which
made it resound like a barrel. " De Lord
knowed what he was 'bout when he made us.
When he made babies rootin' 'round, wid der
poor little mouths open, he made milk, and de
mammies for 'em too. Chile, we 's nothing but
great babies, dat ain't got our eyes open, —
rootin' 'round an' 'round ; but de Father 'U feed
us yet — He will so."
Power of As oil will find its way into crevices
^°^^' where water cannot penetrate, so song
will find its way where speech can no longer
enter.
Night reso- What we have thought and said under
lutions. ,1 , i? -J • i
the august presence oi witnessing stars,
or beneath the holy shadows of moonlight, seems
with the dry, hot heat of next day's sun to take
wings, and rise to heaven with the night's clear
drops. If all the prayers and good resolutions
which are laid down on sleeping pillows could
be found there on awaking, the world would be
better than it is.
Transition There are times in life when the soul,
peno s. Y[^^ ^ half-grown climbing vine, hangs
44 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
hovering tremulously, stretching out its tendrils
for something to ascend by. Such are generally
the great transition periods of life, when we are
passing from the ideas and conditions of one
stage of existence to those of another. Such
times are most favorable for the presentation of
the higher truths of religion.
Connection This life may truly be called a haunted
l^iTit ^ house, built as it is on the very confines
world. ^^ ^j^g Ysind of darkness and the shadow
of death. A thousand living fibres connect us
with the unknown and unseen state ; and the
strongest hearts, which never stand still for any
mortal terror, have sometimes hushed their very
beating at a breath of a whisper from within the
veil. Perhaps the most resolute unbeliever in
spiritual things has hours of which he would be
ashamed to tell, when he, too, yields to the
powers of those awful affinities which bind us to
that unknown realm.
Suffering It is the last triumph of affection and
in silence, magnanimity, when a loving heart can
respect the suffering silence of its beloved, and
allow that lonely liberty in which only some
natures can find comfort.
Joy in en- And, as he sang and prayed, that
durance. g^^ange joy arose within him, which,
like the sweetness of night flowers, is bora of
darkness and tribulation. The soul has in it
THE INNER LIFE. 45
somewhat of the divine, in that it can have joy-
in endurance beyond the joy of indulgence.
They mistake who suppose that the highest
happiness lies in wishes accomplished — in pros-
perity, wealth, favor, and success. There has
been a joy in dungeons and on racks passing the
joy of harvest. A joy strange and solemn,
mysterious even to its possessor. A white stone
dropped from that signet ring, peace, which a
dying Saviour took from his own bosom, and
bequeathed to those who endure the cross, de-
spising the shame.
SUNNY MEMORIES OF FOREIGN LANDS.
Inward How natural it is to say of some place
sheltered, simple, cool, and retired, here
one might find peace, as if peace came from
without, and not from within. In the shadiest
and stillest places may be the most turbulent
hearts, and there are hearts which, through the
busiest scenes, carry with them unchanging peace.
Grace in I have read of Alpine flowers leaning
their cheeks on the snow. I wonder if
any flowers grow near enough to that snow to
touch it. I mean to go and see. So I went ;
there, sure enough, my little fringed purple bell,
to which I had give the name of " suspirium,"
was growing, not only close to the snow but in it.
Thus God's grace, shining steadily on the
46 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
waste places of the human heart, brings up heav-
enward sighings and aspirations, which pierce
through the cold snows of affliction, and tell that
there is yet life beneath.
God as an I was glad to walk on alone : for the
scenery was so wonderful that human
sympathy and communion seemed to be out of
the question. The effect of such scenery to our
generally sleeping and drowsy souls, bound with
a double chain of earthliness and sin, is like the
electric touch of the angel on Peter, bound and
sleeping. They make us realize that we were
not only made to commune with God, but also
what a God He is with whom we may commune.
We talk of poetry, we talk of painting, we go to
the ends of the earth to see the artists and great
men of this world ; but what a poet, what an
artist, is God ! Truly said Michel Angelo, " The
true painting is only a copy of the divine perfec-
tions — a shadow of his pencil."
Soui-striv- The human soul seems to me an impris-
^"^' oned essence, striving after somewhat
divine. There is strength in it, as of suffocated
flame, finding vent now through poetry, now in
painting, now in music, sculpture, or architecture ;
various are the crevices and fissures, but the
flame is one.
Shadow. What a curious kind of thing shadow
is, — that invisible veil, falling so evenly and so
THE INNER LIFE. 47
lightly over all things, bringing with it such
thoughts of calmness and rest. I wonder the old
Greeks did not build temples to Shadow, and call
her the sister of Thought and Peace. The
Hebrew writers speak of the "overshadowing
of the Almighty ; " they call his protection " the
shadow of a great rock in a weary land." Even
as the shadow of Mont Blanc f aUs like a Sabbath
across this valley, so falls the sense of his pres-
ence across our weary life-road.
Heimweh. Why? why this veil of dim and inde-
finable anguish at sight of whatever is most fair,
at hearing whatever is most lovely ? Is it the
exiled spirit, yearning for its own? Is it the
captive, to whom the ray of heaven's own glory
comes tlirough the crevice of his dungeon wall ?
feS ^"^^ ^^ ^^ ^^* enough to open one's eyes on
scenes; one must be able to be "en
rapport" with them. Just so in the spiritual
world, we sometimes see great truths, — see that
God is beautiful and surpassingly lovely ; but at
other times we feel both nature and God, and O,
how different seeing and feeling I
POGA]SrUC PEOPLE.*
Kvlin ^^^^^ ^^® ^^^^' ^i"^"l' unlovely souls,
the un- who yet long to be loved, who sigh in
lovely. ii • 1 1 . ft °
their dark prison for that tenderness,
48 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
that devotion, of which they are consciously
unworthy. Love might redeem them ; but who
can love them ? There is a fable of a prince,
doomed by a cruel enchanter to wear a loath-
some, bestial form, till some fair woman should
redeem him by the transforming kiss of love.
The fable is a parable of the experience of many
a lost human soul. . . .
Who can read the awful mysteries of a single
soul ? We see human beings, hard, harsh, earthly,
and apparently without an aspiration for any-
thing high and holy ; but let us never say that
there is not far down in the depths of any soul a
smothered aspiration, a dumb, repressed desire
to be something higher and purer, to attain the
perfectness to which God calls it.
LITTLE PUSSY WILLOW.
Seeing the " She shall be called little Pussy Willow,
lilt^ ^^^ I shall give her the gift of always
seeing the bright side of everything.
That gift will be more to her than beauty or
riches or honors. It is not so much matter what
color one's eyes are as what one sees with them.
There is a bright side to everything, if people
only knew it, and the best eyes are those which
are always able to see this bright side."
THE INNER LIFE. 49
A DOG S MISSION.
Reaction A conscientious person should beware
of harsh- p ,•• • j. ' £
ness. ot getting into a passion, tor every
sharp word one speaks comes back and
lodges like a sliver in one's own heart ; and such
slivers hurt us worse than they ever can any one
else.
Man's Ah, the child is father of the man !
patience!"^" when he gets older he will have the
great toys of which these are emblems ;
he will believe in what he sees and touches, — in
house, land, raih'oad stock, — he will believe in
these earnestly and really, and in his eternal
manhood nominally and partially. And when
his father's messengers meet him, and face him
about, and take him off his darling pursuits, and
sweep his big ships into the fire, and crush his
full-grown cars, then the grown man will com-
plain and murmur, and wonder as the little man
does now. The Father wants the future, the
Child the present, all through life, till death
makes the child a man.
MY "WIFE AND I.
Discipline The moral discipline of bearing with
pa lence. ^^.^ p^^-jgjj^iy jg g^ great deal better and
more ennobling than the most vigorous assertion
of one's personal rights.
50 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Ennobling When WG look at the apparent reckless-
6oraow° ness with which great sorrows seem to
be distributed among the children of the
earth, there is no way to keep our faith in a
Fatherly love, except to recognize how invariably
the sorrows that spring from love are a means of
enlarging and dignifying a human being. Noth-
ing great or good comes without birth-pangs, and
in just the proportion that natures grow more
noble their capacities of suffering increase.
Line be- The line between right and wrong seems
aad^wrong. alvrays so indefinite, like the line be-
tween any two colors of the prism ; it
is hard to say just where one ends and another
begins.
Doubt. " Doubt is very well as a sort of consti-
tutional crisis in the beginning of one's life ; but
if it runs on and gets to be chronic it breaks a
fellow up, and makes him morally spindling and
sickly. Men that do anything in the world must
be men of strong convictions ; it won't do to go
through life like a hen, craw-crawing and lifting
up one foot, not knowing where to set it down
next."
Friends. " I don't think," said she, " you should
say ' make ' friends, — friends are discover ed,
rather than made. There are people who are in
their own nature friends, only they don't know
each other ; but certain things, like poetry, music,
THE INNER LIFE. 51
and painting, are like the free-masons' signs, —
they reveal the initiated to each other."
WE AND OUR NEIGHBORS.
Forgive- " Yes," Said Harry, " forgiveness of
friends. enemies used to be the ultima thule of
virtue ; but I rather think it will have
to be forgiveness of friends. I call the man a
perfect Christian that can always forgive his
friends."
Altruism. Do not our failures and mistakes often
come from discouragement? Does not every
human being need a believing second self, whose
support and approbation shall reinforce one's
failing courage ? The saddest hours of life are
when we doubt ourselves. To sensitive, excitable
people, who expend nervous energy freely, must
come many such low tides. " Am I really a
miserable failure, — a poor, good-for-nothing,
abortive attempt ? " In such crises we need
another self to restore our equilibrium.
Reproach. The agony of his self-reproach and
despair had been doubled by the reproaches and
expostulations of many of his own family friends,
who poured upon bare nerves the nitric acid of
reproach.
Help from Something definite to do is, in some
crises, a far better medicine for a sick
52 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
soul than any amount of meditation and prayer.
One step fairly taken in a right direction goes
farther than any amount of agonized back-looking.
Praise and Praise is sunshine ; it warms, it inspires,
it promotes growth : blame and rebuke
are rain and hail ; they beat down and bedraggle,
even though they may at times be necessary.
God work- The invisible Christ must be made
man. ^°"^ known through human eyes ; He must
speak though a voice of earthly love,
and a human hand inspired by his spirit must be
reached forth to save.
Inner life. The external life is positive, visible,
definable ; easily made the subject of conversa-
tion. The inner life is shy, retiring, most diffi-
cult to be expressed in words, often inexplicable,
even to the subject of it, yet no less a positive
reality than the outward.
RELIGIOtJS POEMS.
Peace For not alone in those old Eastern re-
through .
suffering. glOnS
Are Christ's beloved ones tried by cross
and chain ;
In many a house are his elect ones hidden,
His martyrs suffering in their patient pain.
The rack, the cross, life's weary wrench of woe,
THE INNER LIFE. 53
The world sees not, as slow, from day to day,
In calm, mispoken patience, sadly still.
The loving spirit bleeds itself away ;
But there are hours, when from the heavens un-
folding
Come down the angels with the glad release.
And we look upward, to behold in glory
Our suffering loved ones borne away to peace.
The spirit As some rare perfume in a vase of clay
within. Pervades it with a fragrance not its
own,
So, when Thou dwellest in a mortal soul.
All heaven's own sweetness seems around it
thrown.
The calm When winds are raging o'er the upper
of God's
love. ocean.
And billows wild contend with angry
roar,
'T is said, far down beneath the wild commotion,
That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore.
Far, far beneath, the noise of tempest dieth,
And silver waves chime ever peacefully ;
And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er he flieth,
Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.
So to the soul that knows thy love, O Purest,
There is a temple peaceful evermore !
And all the babble of life's angry voices
Die in hushed stillness at its sacred door.
God's com- Think not, when the wailing winds of
fort. ,
autumn
54 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Drive the shivering leaflets from the trees, —
Think not all is over : spring returneth ;
Buds and leaves and blossoms thou shalt see.
Think not, when thy heart is waste and dreary,
When thy cherished hopes lie chill and sere, —
Think not all is over : God still loveth ;
He will wipe away thy every tear.
CHAPTER 11.
HUMAN NATURE.
THE minister's WOOING.
Ignorant He was one of that class of people
selfishness. r r j? • i 'n i j ji
who, oi a ireezmg day, will plant them-
selves directly between you and the fire, and then
stand and argue to prove that selfishness is the
root of all moral evil. Simeon said he always
had thought so ; and his neighbors sometimes
supposed that nobody could enjoy better experi-
mental advantages for understanding the subject.
He was one of those men who suppose themselves
submissive to the divine will, to the uttermost
extent demanded by the extreme theology of
that day, simply because they have no nerves to
feel, no imagination to conceive, what endless
happiness or suffering is, and who deal therefore
with the great question of the salvation or dam-
nation of myriads as a problem of theological
algebra, to be worked out by their inevitable
X, y, z.
Sensitive- A generous, upright nature is always
blame. more sensitive to blame than another, —
sensitive in proportion to the amount of
its reverence for good.
66 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Depression It IS a hard condition of our existence
tation. " that every exaltation must have its de-
pression. God will not let us have
heaven here below, but only such glimpses and
faint showings as parents sometimes give to chil-
dren, when they show them beforehand the jewelry
and pictures and stores of rare and curious trea-
sures which they hold for the possession of their
riper years. So it very often happens that the
man who has gone to bed an angel, feeling as if
all sin were forever vanquished, and he himself
immutably grounded in love, may wake the next
morning with a sick-headache, and, if he be not
careful, may scold about his breakfast like a mis-
erable sinner.
French True Frenchwoman as she was, always
nature. . . , , . „ « ,
m one rambow shimmer ot lancy and
feeling, like one of those cloud-spotted April
days, which give you flowers and rain, sun and
shadow, and snatches of bird-singing, all at once.
Simple He is One of those great, honest fellows,
woridii^^^' without the smallest notion of the world
ness. ^g |-^g -jj^ ^jjQ think, in dealing with
men, that you must go to work and prove the
right or the wrong of a matter ; just as if any-
body cared for that ! Supposing he is right, —
which appears very probable to me, — what is
he going to do about it ? No moral argument,
since the world began, ever prevailed over twenty-
five per cent, profit.
HUMAN NATURE. 57
Duty p. "Madam," said the doctor, "I 'd sooner
ency. my System should be sunk in the sea
than that it should be a millstone round
my neck to keep me from my duty. Let God
take care of my theology ; I must do my duty."
Joy of There are some people so evidently
^^"^' broadly and heartily of this world that
their coming into a room always materializes the
conversation. We wish to be understood that
we mean no disparaging reflection on such per-
sons ; they are as necessary to make up a world
as cabbages to make up a garden ; the great,
healthy principles of cheerfulness and animal
life seem to exist in them in the gross ; they are
wedges and ingots of solid, contented vitality.
A boy'a " Oh, you go 'long, Massa Marvin ;
^'^ ' ye '11 live to count dat ar' boy for de
staff o' yer old age yit, now I tell ye ; got de
makin' o' ten or 'nary men in him ; kittles dat 's
full allers will bile over ; good yeast will blow at
de cork, — lucky ef it don't bust de bottle. Tell
ye, der 's angels hes der hooks in sich, an' when
de Lord wants him, dey '11 haul him in safe an*
sound."
Will- " Law me ! what 's de use ? I 'se set out
power. ^^ b'liebe de Catechize, an' I 'se gwine
to b'liebe it, so ! "
The ^ " But, Marie, how unjust is the world !
injustice, how unjust both in praise and blame."
58 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
OLDTOWN FOLKS.
Selfish These dear, good souls who wear their
life out for you, have they not a right
to scold you, and dictate to you, and tie up your
liberty, and make your life a burden to you ? If
they have not, who has ? If you complain, you
break their worthy old hearts. They insist on
the privilege of seeking your happiness by
thwarting you in everything you want to do, and
putting their will instead of yours in every step
of your life.
Expressive Aunt Lois, as I have often said before,
was a good Christian, and held it her
duty to govern her tongue. True, she said many
sharp and bitter things ; but nobody but herself
and her God knew how many more she would
have said had she not reined herself up in con-
scientious silence. But never was there a woman
whose silence could express more contempt and
displeasure than hers. You could feel it in the
air about you, though she never said a word.
You could feel it in the rustle of her dress, in
the tap of her heels over the floor, in the occa-
sional flash of her sharp black eye. She was
like a thunder-cloud, whose quiet is portentous,
and from which you every moment expect a flash
or an explosion.
HUMAN NATURE. 69
Power of That kind of tone which sounds so
much like a blow that one dodges one's
head involuntarily.
Makingthe " There 's no use in such talk, Lois :
what 's done 's done ; and if the Lord
let it be done, we may. We can't always make
people do as we would. There 's no use in being
dragged through the world like a dog under a
cart, hanging back and yelping. What we must
do, we may as weU do willmgly, — as well walk
as be dragged."
Influence It is Strange that no human being grows
SyaMas- "P "^^^o docs not SO intertwist in his
Bociation. growth the whole idea and spirit of his
day, that rightly to dissect out his history would
require one to cut to pieces and analyze society,
law, religion, the metaphysics, and the morals of
his time ; and, as all things run back to those of
past days, the problem is still further compli-
cated. The humblest human being is the sum
total of a column of figures which go back
through centuries before he was born.
Personal Supposing a man is made like an organ,
magne - ^j^j^ ^^^ ^^ three banks of keys, and
ism,
ever so many stops, so that he can
play all sorts of tunes on himself ; is it being a
hypocrite with each person to play precisely the
tune, and draw out exactly the stop, which he
knows will make himself agreeable and further
his purpose ?
60 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Physical That charming gift of physical good
humor. humor, which is often praised as a vir-
tue in children and in grown people,
but which is a mere condition of the animal
nature.
SAM LAWSON's stories.
Effect of "Ye know sinnin' will always make a
Buinmg. ^^^ leave prayin'."
Scepti- "You look at the folks that 's allers
tellin' you what they don't believe, —
they don't believe this, an' they don't believe that,
— an' what sort o' folks is they ? Why, like yer
Aunt Lois, sort o' stringy an' dry. There ain't
no 'sorption got out o' not belie vin' nothin'."
Life. " That 'are 's jest the way folks go all
their lives, boys. It 's all fuss, fuss, and stew,
stew, till ye get somewhere ; an' then it 's fuss,
fuss, an' stew, stew, to get back again ; jump here
an' scratch your eyes out, an' jump there an'
scratch 'em in again, — that 'are 's life."
PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND.
Life as a There are those people who possess a
peculiar faculty of mingling in the af-
fairs of this life as spectators as well as actors.
HUMAN NATURE. 61
It does not, of course, suppose any coldness of
nature or want of human interest or sympathy,
— nay, it often exists more completely with
people of the tenderest human feeling. It rather
seems to be a kind of distinct faculty working
harmoniously with all the others ; but he who
possesses it needs never to be at a loss for inter-
est or amusement ; he is always a spectator at
a tragedy or a comedy, and sees in real life a
humor and a pathos beyond anything he can find
shadowed in books.
AchUd- Mrs. Pennel had one of those natures,
■ gentle, trustful, and hopeful, because not
very deep ; she was one of the little children of
the world, whose faith rests on childlike igno-
ranee, and who know not the deeper needs of
deeper natures ; such see only the sunshine, and
forget the storm.
Unintend- All that there was developed of him, at
ed hurts. , p i c ,„
present, was a fund of energy, self-
esteem, hope, courage, and daring, the love of
action, life, and adventure ; his life was in the
outward and present, not in the inward and re-
flective ; he was a true ten-year-old boy, in its
healthiest and most animal perfection. What
she was, the small pearl with the golden hair,
with her frail and high-strung organization, her
sensitive nerves, her half-spiritual fibres, her pon-
derings, and marvels, and dreams, her power of
love and yearning for self-devotion, our reader
62 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
may, perhaps, have seen. But if ever two chil-
dren, or two grown people, thus organized, are
thrown into intimate relations, it follows, from
the very laws of their being, that one must hurt
the other, simply by being itself ; one must al-
ways hunger for what the other has not to give.
Real love. " I always thought that my wife must
be one of the sort of women who pray."
"And why?" said Mara, in surprise.
" Because I need to be loved a great deal, and
it is only that kind who pray who know how to
love really.''^
LITTLE rOXES»
Difficulty It is astonishing how much we think
knowledge, about ourselves, yet to how little pur-
pose ; how very clever people will talk
and wonder about themselves and each other, not
knowing how to use either themselves or each
other, — not having as much practical philosophy
in the matter of their own character and that of
their friends as they have in respect to the screws
of their gas-fixtures or the management of their
water-pipes.
Reserve There are in every family circle indi-
not under- • i i i , • «! • r
stood. V] duals whom a certam sensitiveness oi
nature inclines to quietness and reserve ;
and there are very well-meaning families where
no such quietness and reserve is possible. No-
HUMAN NATURE. 63
body can be let alone, nobody may have a secret,
nobody can move in any direction, without a host
of inquiries and comments : " Who is your letter
from ? Let 's see." — " My letter is from So-
and-so." — "He writing to you! I didn't
know that. What 's he writing about ? " —
" Where did you go yesterday ? What did you
buy ? What did you give for it ? What are
you going to do with it ? " — " Seems to me
that 's an odd way to do. I should n't do so."
— " Look here, Mary ; Sarah 's going to have a
dress of silk tissue this spring. Now I think
they 're too dear, don't you ? "
I recoUect seeing in some author a description
of a true gentleman, in which, among other
things, he was characterized as the man that asks
the fewest questions. This trait of refined so-
ciety might be adopted into home-life in a far
greater degree than it is, and make it far more
agreeable.
If there is perfect unreserve and mutual con-
fidence, let it show itself in free communications
coming unsolicited. It may fairly be pre-
sumed that, if there is anything our intimate
friends wish us to know, they will tell us of it,
and that when we are in close and confidential
terms with persons, and there are topics on which
they do not speak to us, it is because for some
reason they prefer to keep silence concerning
them ; and the delicacy that respects a friend's
silence is one of the charms of Hfe.
64 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Shyness of It comes far easier to scold our friend
in an angry moment than to say how
much we love, honor, and esteem him in a kindly
mood. "Wrath and bitterness speak themselves
and go with their own force ; love is shame-faced,
looks shyly out of the window, lingers long at the
door-latch.
Throwing For the Contentions that loosen the very
nes? ^^^' foundations of love, that crumble away
all its fine traceries and carved work,
about what miserable, worthless things do they
commonly begin ! A dinner underdone, too much
oil consumed, a newspaper torn, a waste of coal
or soap, a dish broken ! — and for this miserable
sort of trash, very good, very generous, very re-
ligious people will sometimes waste and throw
away by double-handfuls the very thing for
which houses are built and all the paraphernalia
of a home established, — their happi7iess. Better
cold coffee, smoky tea, burnt meat, better any
inconvenience, any loss, than a loss of love ; and
nothing so surely turns away love as constant
fault-finding.
Morbid There is fretfulness, a mizzling, driz-
ee mgs. ^ling rain of discomforting remark ; there
is grumbling, a northeast snowstorm that never
clears ; there is scolding, the thunder-storm with
lightning and hail. All these are worse than
useless ; they are positive sins, by whomsoever
indulged, — sins as great and real as many that
HUMAN NATURE. 65
are shuddered at in polite society. All these are
for the most part but the venting on our fellow-
beings of morbid feelings resulting from dyspep-
sia, over-taxed nerves, or general ill-health.
HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.
Love of a Milton says that the love of fame is the
bargain. j^^^ infirmity of noble minds. I think
he had not rightly considered the subject. I
believe that last infirmity is the love of getting
things cheap ! Understand me, now. I don't
mean the love of getting cheap things, by which
one understands showy, trashy, ill-made, spurious
articles, bearing certain apparent resemblances to
better things. All really sensible people are
quite superior to that sort of cheapness. But
those fortunate accidents which put within the
power of a man things really good and valuable
for half or a third of their value, what mortal
virtue and resolution can withstand ?
Warning Mothers who throw away the key of
formoth- ^j^g.j. ^ji^ii^jren's hearts in childhood
sometimes have a sad retribution. As
the children never were considered when they
were little and helpless, so they do not consider
when they are strong and powerful.
Careful ob- I think the best things on all subjects in
servation. ^^-^ ^^^^^ ^f ^^^.g ^^^ g^^^J^ ^ot by the
practical workers, but by the careful observers.
66 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
THE CHIMNEY COKNER.
Looking Friend Theophilus was born on the
blue glasses, shady side of Nature, and endowed by
his patron saint with every grace and
gift which can make a human creature worthy
and available, except the gift of seeing the bright
side of things. His bead-roll of Christian vir-
tues includes all the graces of the spirit except
hope ; and so, if one wants to know exactly the
flaw, the defect, the doubtful side, and to take
into account all the untoward possibilities of
any person, place, or thing, he had best apply to
friend Theophilus. He can tell you just where
and how the best-laid scheme is likely to
fail, just the screw that will fall loose in the
smoothest working machinery, just the flaw in
the most perfect character, just the defect in the
best written book, just the variety of thorn that
must accompany each particular species of rose.
Chateaux Rudolph is another of the habitues of
^pagne. our chimney corner, representing the
order of young knighthood in America,
and his dreams and fancies, if impracticable, are
always of a kind to make every one think him a
good fellow. He who has no romantic dreams
at twenty-one will be a horribly dry peascod at
fifty ; therefore it is that I gaze reverently at
aU Kudolph's chateaux in Spain, which want
nothing to complete them except solid earth to
stand on.
HUMAN NATURE. 67
Care in- The fact is that care and labor are as
human^n^ much Correlated to human existence as
ture. shadow is to light : there is no such
thing as excluding them from any mortal lot.
You may make a canary-bird or a gold-fish live
in absolute contentment without a care or labor,
but a human being you cannot. Human beings
are restless and active in their very nature, and
will do something, and that something will prove
a care, a labor, and a fatigue, arrange it how you
will. As long as there is anything to be desired
and not yet attained, so long its attainment will
be attempted; so long as that attainment is
doubtful or difficult, so long will there be care
and anxiety.
THE MAYFLOWER.
ness.'
Cute- He possessed a great share of that char-
acteristic national trait so happily de-
nominated " cuteness," which signifies an ability
to do everything without trying, to know every-
thing without learning, and to make more use of
one's ignorance than other people do of their
knowledge.
Making It Sometimes goes a great way towards
peope e jjjg^jjjjjg people like us to take it for
granted that they do already.
A common She therefore repeated over exactly
SasoiSng. what she said before, only in a much
68 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
louder tone of voice, and with much more vehe-
ment forms of asseveration, — a mode of reason-
ing which, if not entirely logical, has at least the
sanction of very respectable authorities among
the enlightened and learned.
Danger in There is no point in the history of ^ re-
apparent p .,1 . ... .-,.'.,
safety. lorm, either m communities or individ-
uals, so dangerous as that where danger
seems entirely past. As long as a man thinks
his health failing, he watches, he diets, and will
undergo the most heroic self-denial ; but let him
once set himself down as cured, and how readily
does he fall back to one soft, indulgent habit
after another, all tending to ruin everything that
he has before done !
Seif-decep. How strange that a man may appear
doomed, given up, and lost, to the eye
of every looker-on, before he begins to suspect
himself !
Convenient What would people do if the convenient
shelter of duty did not afford them a
retreat in cases where they are disposed to change
their minds ?
Too much A man can sometimes become an old
bachelor because he has too much heart,
as well as too little.
Privileged Thesc privileged truth-teUers are quite a
tellers. necessary of life to young ladies in the
HUMAN NATURE. 69
full tide of society, and we really think it would
be worth while for every dozen of them to unite
to keep a person of this kind on a salary for the
benefit of the whole.
Two kinds There is one kind of frankness which is
of frank- .^^ result of perfect unsuspiciousness,
IX6SSa •*■ |» •
and which requires a measure ot igno-
rance of the world and of life ; this kind appeals
to our generosity and tenderness. There is an-
other which is the frankness of a strong but
pure mind, acquainted with life, clear in its dis-
crimination and upright in its intention, yet above
disguise or concealment; this kind excites re-
spect. The first seems to proceed simply from
impulse, the second from impulse and reflection
united; the first proceeds, in a measure, from
ignorance, the second from knowledge ; the first
is born from an undoubting confidence in others,
the second from a virtuous and well-grounded
reliance on one's self.
PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY.
Genial and There are people who, wherever they
^iSvl^ move, freeze the hearts of those they
touch, and chill all demonstration of
feeling; and there are warm natures, that
unlock every fountain, and bid every feeling
gush forth.
70 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Power of " Oh, nonsense ! now, John, don't talk
^^^ ^' humbug. I 'd like to see you following
goodness when beauty is gone. I 've known lots
of plain old maids that were perfect saints and
angels j yet men crowded and jostled by them to
get at the pretty sinners. I dare say now," she
added, with a bewitching look over her shoulder
at him, " you 'd rather have me than Miss Almira
Carraway, — had n't you, now ? "
Grovping " The thing with you men," said Grace,
"is that you want your wives to see
with your eyes, all in a minute, what has got to
come with years and intimacy, and the gradual
growing closer and closer together. The hus-
band and wife, of themselves, drop many friend-
ships and associations that at first were mutually
distasteful, simply because their tastes have grown
insensibly to be the same."
DEACON PITKIN S FARM.
A New Diana Pitkin was like some of the fruits
woman. of her native hills, full of juices which
tend to sweetness in maturity, but which,
when not quite ripe, have a pretty decided dash
of sharpness. There are grapes that require a
frost to ripen them, and Diana was somewhat
akin to these.
HUMAN NATURE. 71
AGNES OF SORRENTO.
Acceptable Then he had given her advice which
^^®' exactly accorded with her own views ;
and such advice is always regarded as an emi-
nent proof of sagacity in the giver.
Dual But, reviewing his interior world, and
na ure. taking a survey of the work before him,
he felt that sense of a divided personality which
often becomes so vivid in the history of individ-
uals of strong will and passion. It seemed to
him that there were two men within him : the
one turbulent, passionate, demented ; the other
vainly endeavoring, by authority, reason, and
conscience, to bring the rebel to subjection.
The discipline of conventual life, the extraordi-
nary austerities to which he had condemned him-
self, the monotonous solitude of his existence, all
tended to exalt the vivacity of the nervous sys-
tem, which in the Italian constitution is at all
times disproportionately developed ; and when
those weird harp-strings of the nerves are once
thoroughly unstrung, the fury and tempest of
the discord sometimes utterly bewilders the most
practiced self-government.
Power of " Son, it is ever so," replied the monk.
characte^r. " If there be a man that cares neither
for duke nor emperor, but for God
alone, then dukes and emperors will give more
72 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
for his good word than for a whole dozen of
common priests."
Relation of " We old f olks are twisted and crabbed
youth. and full of knots with disappointment
and trouble, like the mulberry-trees that
they keep for vines to run on."
UNCLE TOM S CABIN.
Persis- " Dis ycr matter 'bout persistence, fel-
ler-niggers," said Sam, with the air of
one entering into an abstruse subject, " dis yer
'sistency 's a thing what ain't seed into very clar
by most anybody. Now, yer see, when a feller
stands up for a thing one day and night, de con-
trar' de next, folks ses (an' naturally enough dey
ses), Why, he ain't persistent — hand me dat ar'
bit o' corn-cake, Andy. But let 's look inter it. I
hope the gent'lmen and de fair sex will scuse my
usin' an or 'nary sort o' 'parison. Here ! I 'm a
tryin' to get top o' der hay. Wal, I puts up my
larder dis yer side ; 't ain't no go ; — den, 'cause
I don't try dere no more, but puts my larder
right de contrar' side, ain't I persistent ? I 'm
persistent in wantin' to get up which ary side
my larder is ; don't ye see, all on ye ? "
The negro The negro, it must be remembered, is
beauty. an exotic of the most gorgeous and
superb countries of the world, and he
HUMAN NATURE. 73
has, deep in his heart, a passion for all that is
splendid, rich, and fanciful ; a passion which,
rudely indulged by an untrained taste, draws on
him the ridicule of the colder and more correct
white race.
Effect of The ear that has never heard anything
harshness, i ■ i • . i • i i p
but abuse is strangely incredulous ot
anything so heavenly as kindness.
"Blessings Marie was one of those unfortunately
they take ^ constituted mortals, in whose eyes what-
mgw." ^^^^ i^ ^^^^ ^^^ gone assumes a value
which it never had in possession.
Whatever she had she seemed to survey only
to pick flaws in it ; but once fairly away, there
was no end to her valuation of it.
DRED.
Speaking " Now, Miss Nina, I want to speak as
as a friend. n . ■• ,,
a iriend.
" No, you sha'n't ; it is just what people say
when they are going to say something disagree-
able. I told Clayton, once for all, that I would
n't have him speak as a friend to me."
'Senses. " Ah, lots of 'scuses I keeps ! I tell
you now, 'scuses is excellent things. Why, 'senses
is like dis yer grease dat keeps de wheels from
screaking. Lord bless you, de whole world
74 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
turns 'round on 'senses. Whar de world be if
everybody was such fools to tell de raal reason
for every ting they are gwine for to do, or ain't
gwine for to ! "
Use of a Every kind of creature has its uses, and
box. there are times when a lively, unthink-
ing chatterbox is a perfect godsend.
Those unperceiving people who never notice the
embarrassment of others, and who walk with the
greatest facility into the gaps of conversation,
simply because they have no perception of any
difficulty there, have their hour ; and Nina felt
positively grateful to Mr. Carson for the contin-
uous and cheerful rattle which had so annoyed
her the day before.
Good and It is our fatality that everything that
arabie!"^^ does good must do harm. It is the con-
dition of our poor, imperfect life here.
♦' streaked " But den, you see, honey, der 's some
^^^' folks der 's two men in 'em, — one is a
good one, and t'oder is very bad. Wal, dis yer
was jest dat sort. . . . He was one of dese yer
streaked men, dat has drefful ugly streaks ; and,
some of dem times, de Lord only knows what he
won't do."
First steps. There is something in the first essay
of a young man, in any profession, like the first
launching of a ship, which has a never-ceasing
hold on human sympathies.
HUMAN NATURE. 75
Fromdif- There is no study in human nature
stand- more interesting than the aspects of the
^°^^ ^" same subject seen in the points of view
of different characters. One might almost imag-
ine that there were no such thing as absolute
truth, since a change of situation or tempera-
ment is capable of changing the whole force of
an argument.
Fine na- As good wine makcs the strongest vine-
vertecL^^ gar, SO fine nature perverted makes the
worst vice.
SUNNY MEMORIES OP FOREIGN LANDS.
Lost confi- There are some people who involve in
themselves so many of the elements
which go to make up our confidence in human
nature generally, that to lose confidence in them
seems to undermine our faith in human virtue.
Wit. Truly, wit, like charity, covers a mul-
titude of sins. A man who has the faculty of
raising a laugh in this sad, earnest world is
remembered with indulgence and complacency.
Value of But SO it always is. The man who has
ready ex- ..,.«,« . «
pressicn. exquisite giits 01 expression passes tor
more, popularly, than the man with
great and grand ideas, who utters but imper-
fectly.
76 FLOWEKS AND FKUIT.
POGANUC PEOPLE.
Opinion- Miss Debby was one of those human
pie. ^^^' beings who carry with them the apology
for their own existence. It took but a
glance to see that she was one of those forces of
nature which move always in straight lines, and
which must be turned out for if one wishes to
avoid a colhsion. All Miss Debby's opinions
had been made up, catalogued, and arranged at
a very early period of life, and she had no
thought of change. She moved in a region of
certainties, and always took her own opinions for
granted with a calm supremacy altogether above
reason. Yet there was all the while about her
a twinkle of humorous consciousness, a vein of
original drollery, which gave piquancy to the
brusqueness of her manner, and prevented people
from taking offence.
Difficulty It is curious that men are not generally
of confes- i t p r £ j.t_
sion. ashamed oi any torm oi anger, wrath,
or malice ; but of the first step towards
a nobler nature, — the confession of a wrong, —
they are ashamed.
LITTLE PUSSY WILLOW.
Animal When people work hard all day, and
spin s. Jiave a good digestion, it is not necessary
HUMAN NATURE. 77
that a thing should be very funny to make them
laugh tremendously.
First false Boys, and men too, sometimes, by a
^ ^^' single step, and that step taken in a
sudden hurry of inconsideration, get into a net-
work of false positions, in which they are very
uneasy and unhappy, but live along from day to
day seeing no way out.
QUEER LITTLE PEOPLE.
Marks of " Depend upon it, my dear," said Mrs.
gemus. Nut-cracker, solemnly, " that fellow must
be a genius."
" Fiddlestick on his genius ! " said old Mr.
Nut-cracker ; " what does he do ? "
" Oh, nothing, of course ; that 's one of the first
marks of genius. Geniuses, you know, never
can come down to common life."
A busy- Old Mother Magpie was about the busi-
° ^' est character in the forest. But you
must know that there is a great difference be-
tween being busy and being industrious. One
may be very busy all the time, and yet not in the
least industrious ; and this was the case with
Mother Magpie.
She was always full of everybody's business
but her own, — up and down, here and there,
everywhere but in her own nest, knowing every
78 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
one's affairs, telling what everybody had been
doing or ought to do, and ready to cast her ad-
vice gratis at every bird and beast of the woods.
A DOG S MISSION.
Broken Do you, my brother, or grown-up sister,
ever do anything like this ? Do your
friendships and loves ever go the course of our
Charley's toy ? First, enthusiasm ; second, sati-
ety ; third, discontent ; then picking to pieces ;
then dropping and losing ! How many idols are
in your box of by-gone playthings ? And may it
not be as well to suggest to you, when you find
flaws in your next one, to inquire before you pick
to pieces whether you can put together again, or
whether what you call defect is not a part of its
nature ? A tin locomotive won't draw a string
of parlor chairs, by any possible alteration, but it
may be very pretty for all that it was made for.
Charley and you might both learn something
from this.
MY WIFE AlO) I.
Soul-Ian- " There are people in this world who
guage. (ion't understand each other's vernac-
ular. Papa and I could no more discuss any
question of the inner life together than if he
spoke Chickasaw and I spoke French."
HUMAN NATURE. 79
Characters It is a charming thing, in one's rambles,
worth ex- . , n
pioring. to come across a tree, or a tlower, or a
fine bit of landscape that we can think
of afterwards, and feel richer for its being in
the world. But it is more, when one is in a
strange place, to come across a man that you feel
thoroughly persuaded is, somehow or other,
morally and intellectually worth exploring. Our
lives tend to become so hopelessly commonplace,
and the human beings we meet are generally so
much one just like another, that the possibility
of a new and peculiar style of character in an
acquaintance is a most enlivening one.
Unsuspect- The man who has begun to live and
® ^'^ser. ^Qj.], -^y artificial stimulant never
knows where he stands, and can never count upon
himself with any certainty. , He lets into his
castle a servant who becomes the most tyrannical
of masters. He may resolve to turn him out,
but will find himself reduced to the condition in
which he can neither do with nor without him.
In short, the use of stimulant to the brain
power brings on a disease in whose paroxysms a
man is no more his own master than in the rav-
ings of fever, a disease that few have the knowl-
edge to understand, and for whose manifestations
the world has no pity.
Heredity. Out of every ten young men who begin
the use of stimulants as a social exhilaration,
there are perhaps five in whose breast lies coiled
80 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
up and sleeping this serpent, destined in after
years to be the deadly tyrant of their life — this
curse, unappeasable by tears, or prayers, or
agonies — with whom the struggle is like that of
Laocoon with the hideous python, yet songs and
garlands and poetry encircle the wine-cup, and
ridicule and contumely are reserved for him who
fears to touch it.
Personality. "We are all familiar with the fact that
there are some people who, let them sit still as
they may, and conduct themselves never so
quietly, nevertheless impress their personality on
those around them, and make their presence felt.
WE AND OUR NEIGHBORS.
Friendly A great deal of good sermonizing, by
gossip, ^_^^ way, is expended on gossip, which
is denounced as one of the seven deadly sins of
society ; but, after all, gossip has its better side ;
if not a Christian grace, it certainly is one of
those weeds which show a good warm soil.
The kindly heart, that really cares for every-
thing liuman it meets, inclines toward gossi]D in a
good way. Just as a morning-glory throv/s out
tendrils, and climbs up and peeps cheerily into
your window, so a kindly gossip can't help watch-
ing the opening and shutting of your blinds, and
the curling smoke from your chimney.
HUMAN NATURE. 81
Persist- If you Will have your own way, and
^^^^' persist in it, people have to make up
with you.
Right side Human nature is always interesting:, if
of human ,..,., °
nature. One takes it right side out.
Human It is rather amusing to a general looker-
on ill this odd world of ours to contrast
the serene, cheerful good faith with which these
constitutionally active individuals go about criti-
cising, and suggesting, and directing right and
left, with the dismay and confusion of mind they
leave behind them wherever they operate.
They are often what the world calls well-
meaning people, animated by a most benevolent
spirit, and have no more intention of giving
offence than a nettle has of stinging. A large,
vigorous, well-growing nettle has no consciousness
of the stings it leaves in the delicate hands that
have been in contact with it ; it has simply acted
out its innocent and respectable nature as a
nettle. But a nettle armed with the power of
locomotion on an ambulatory tour, is something
the results of which may be fearful to contem-
plate.
Flaws in Ideal heroes are not plentiful, and there
^^^^' are few gems that don't need rich set-
ting.
82 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
impossi- People who hate trouble generally get a
evading good deal of it. It 's all very well for a
g^^tle, acquiescent spirit to be carried
through life by one bearer. But when half a
dozen bearers quarrel and insist on carrying one
opposite ways, the more facile the spirit, the
greater the trouble.
Righteous- Perhaps there is never a time when
through re- man or woman has a better chance, with
pen anoe. gu{t;a]3ie help, of building a good charac-
ter, than just after a humiliating fall which has
taught the sinner his own weakness, and given
him a sad experience of the bitterness of sin.
Nobody wants to be sold under sin, and go the
whole length in iniquity ; and when one has gone
just far enough in wrong living to perceive
in advance all its pains and penalties, there is
often an agonized effort to get back to respect-
ability, like the clutching of the drowning man
for the shore. The waters of death are cold and
bitter, and nobody wants to be drowned.
"I told "Whence is the feeling of satisfaction
you so. -v^hich we have when things that we al-
ways said we knew turn out just as we predicted ?
Had we really rather our neighbor would be
proved a thief and a liar than to be proved in
a mistake ourselves ? Would we be willing to
have somebody topple headlong into destruction
for the sake of being able to say, 'I told you
so ' ? "
HUMAN NATURE. 83
Gossip. In fact, the gossip plant is like the grain
of mustard-seed, which, though it be the least of
all seeds, becometh a great tree, and the fowls of
the air lodge in its branches, and chatter mightily
there at all seasons.
CHAPTER m.
WOMAN.
THE MIKESTEK's WOOING.
Woman as " You girls and women don't know your
ospe. pQ^ej.^ Why, Mary, you are a living
Gospel. You have always had a strange power
over us boys. You never talked religion much,
but I have seen high fellows come away from
being with you as stUl and quiet as one feels
when he goes into a church. I can't understand
all the hang of predestination and moral ability,
and natural ability, and God's efficiency, and
man's agency, which Dr. Hopkins is so en-
gaged about ; but I can understand you, — you
can do me good."
Holiness of " But do you remember you told me
once that, when the snow first fell, and
lay so dazzling and pure and soft all about, you
always felt as if the spreads and window cur-
tains, that seemed white before, were not clean ?
Well, it 's just like that with me. Your presence
makes me feel that I am not pure, — that I am
low and unworthy, — not worthy to touch the
hem of your garment. Your good Dr. Hopkins
WOMAN. 85
spent a whole half day, the other Sunday, trying
to tell us about the beauty of holiness ; and he
cut, and pared, and peeled, and sliced, and told
us what it was n't ; and what was like it, and
was n't ; and then he built up an exact definition,
and fortified and bricked it up all round ; and I
thought to myself that he 'd better tell 'em to
look at Mary Scudder, and they 'd understand all
about it."
Woman en- Do you remember, at Niagara, a little
man^siove. cataract on the American side, which
throws its silver, sheeny veil over a cave
called the Grot of Rainbows ? Whoever stands
on a rock in that grotto sees himself in the cen-
tre of a rainbow-circle, above, below, around.
In like manner, merry, chatty, positive, busy,
house-wifely Katy saw herself standing in a rain-
bow-shrine in her lover's inner soul, and liked to
see herself so. A woman, by-the-bye, must be
very insensible, who is not moved to come upon
a higher plane of being herself, by seeing how
undoubtingly she is insphered in the heart of a
good and noble man. A good man's faith in
you, fair lady, if you ever have it, will make
you better and nobler even before you know it.
Power of It is Only now and then that a matter-
of-fact woman is sublimated by a real
love ; but if she is, it is affecting to see how im-
possible it is for death to quench it.
86 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Woman's If women have one weakness more
marked than another, it is towards ven-
eration. They are born worshippers. . . . The
fact is, women are burdened with fealty, faith,
and reverence, more than they know what to do
with; they stand like a hedge of sweet-peas,
throwing out fluttering tendrils everywhere for
something high and strong to climb by, — and
when they find it, be it ever so rough in the
bark, they catch upon it. And instances are not
wanting of those who have turned away from
the flattery of admirers to prostrate themselves
at the feet of a genuine hero who never wooed
them, except by heroic deeds and the rhetoric of
a noble life.
Mother- None of the peculiar developments of
a°son.°'^ the female nature have a more exquisite
vitality than the sentiment of a frail,
delicate, repressed, timid woman, for a strong,
manly, generous son. There is her ideal ex-
pressed ; there is the outspeaking and outacting
of all she trembles to think, yet burns to say or
do ; here is the hero that shall speak for her, the
heart into which she has poured hers, and that
shall give to her tremulous and hidden aspirations
a strong and victorious expression. " I have
gotten a Tnan from the Lord," she says to her-
self, and each outburst of his manliness, his vigor,
his self-confidence, his superb vitality, fills her
with a strange, wondering pleasure, and she has
a secret tenderness and pride even in his wilful-
WOMAN. 87
ness and waywardness. . . . First love of wo-
manhood is something wonderful and mysterious,
— but in this second love it rises again, idealized
and refined ; she loves the father and herself
united and made one in this young heir of life
and hope.
Mothers' But even mothers who have married
Satenei. ^^^ ^^^^ themselves somehow so blend
a daughter's existence with their own as
to conceive that she must marry their love and
not her own.
Repression. Her large brown eyes had an eager joy
in them when Mary entered ; but they seemed
to calm down again, and she received her only
with that placid, sincere air which was her habit.
Everything about this woman showed an ardent
soul, repressed by timidity and by a certain
dumbness in the faculties of outward expression ;
but her eyes had, at times, that earnest, appeal-
ing language which is so pathetic in the silence
of inferior animals. One sometimes sees such
eyes, and wonders whether the story they inti-
mate wiU ever be spoken in mortal language.
Woman's Ah, that silence ! Do not listen to hear
instinctive -i • , i i
silence. whom a woman praises, to know where
her heart is ! do not ask for whom she
expresses the most earnest enthusiasm ! but if
there be one she once knew well whose name she
never speaks, — if she seems to have an instinct
88 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
to avoid every occasion of its mention, — if
when you speak, she drops into silence and
changes the subject, — why, look there for some-
thing ! just so, when going through deep mead-
ow-grass, a bird flies ostentatiously up before you,
you may know her nest is not there, but far off,
under distant tufts of fern and buttercup, through
which she has crept with a silent flutter in her
spotted breast, to act her pretty little falsehood
before you.
Idle talk. When Mrs. Twitchel began to talk, it
flowed a steady stream, as when one turns a
faucet, that never ceases running till some hand
turns it back again.
Reverence " Who cares ? " Said Candace, — " gen-
the basis , . • . > n .
of faith. erate or unregenerate, it s all one to
me ; I believe a man dat acts as he does.
Him as stands up for de poor, — him as pleads
for de weak, — he 's my man. I '11 believe straight
through any ting he 's a mind to put at me."
Mothers' Most mothcrs are instinctive philoso-
johers. No treatise on the laws of
nervous fluids could have taught Mrs. Scudder a
better role for this morning, than her tender
gravity, and her constant expedients to break
and ripple, by changing employments, that deep,
deadly undercurrent of thoughts which she feared
might undermine her child's life.
WOMAN. 89
OLDTOWN F0LE:S.
Woman's It is a man's nature to act, to do, and
■wlien nothing can be done, to forget.
It is a woman's nature to hold on to what can
only torture, and live all her despairs over.
Women's tears are their meat; men find the
diet too salt, and won't take it.
Using " My forte lies in picking knowledge
now e ge. ^^^ ^^ other folks and using it," said
Tina, joyously. " Out of the least little bit of
ore that you dig up, I can make no end of
gold-leaf."
Mothers' " Ain't the world hard enough without
fightin' babies, I want to know ? I hate
to see a woman that don't want to rock her own
baby, and is contriving ways all the time to
shirk the care of it. Why, if all the world was
that way, there would be no sense in Scriptur'.
' As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I
comfort you,' the Bible says, takin' for granted
that mothers were made to comfort children and
give them good times when they are little."
The mother "There 's no saying," said Miss Mehit-
womanf able, " you never know what you may
find in the odd corners of an old
maid's heart, when you fairly look into them.
There are often unused hoards of maternal affec-
90 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
tion enougli to set up an orphan asylum ; but it 's
like iron filings and a magnet, — you must try
them with a live child, and if there is anything
in 'em, you 11 find it out. That little object," she
said, looking over her shoulder at Tina, " made
an instant commotion in the dust and rubbish of
my forlorn old garret, brought to light a deal
that I thought had gone to the moles and the
bats long ago. She will do me good, I can feel,
with her little pertnesses, and her airs and fan-
cies. If you could know how chilly and lone-
some an old house gets sometimes, particularly in
autumn, when the equinoctial storm is brewing !
A lively child is a godsend, even if she turns the
whole house topsy-turvy."
Individ- Tina had one of those rebellious heads
^* of curls that every breeze takes liberties
with, and that have to be looked after, and
watched, and restrained. Esther's satin bands
of hair could pass through a whirlwind and not
lose their gloss. It is curious how character
runs even to the minutest thing, — the very hairs
of our head are numbered by it, — Esther,
always and in everything self-poised, thoughtful,
reflective ; Tina, the child of every wandering
influence, tremulously alive to every new excite-
ment, a wind-harp for every air of heaven to
breathe upon.
A woman's " The fact is, a man never sees a sub-
^^^* ject thoroughly till he sees what a
WOMAN. 91
woman will think of it, for there is a woman's
view of every subject, which has a different
shade from a man's view, and that is what you
and I have insensibly been absorbing in all our
course hitherto."
PEARL OF ORR's ISLAND.
Neighbor's Duty is never more formidable than
in uence. y^Yieu shc gcts on the cap and gown of
a neighbor.
Reserve. But it was not the little maiden's way to
speak when anything thwarted or hurt her, but
rather to fold all her feelings and thoughts in-
ward, as some insects, with fine gauzy wings,
draw them under a coat of horny concealment.
True cour- That kind of innocent hypocrisy which
^^^' is needed as a staple in the lives of
women who bridge a thousand awful chasms
with smUing, unconscious looks, and walk, sing-
ing and scattering flowers, over abysses of fear,
when their hearts are dying within them.
There- Pliable as she was to all outward ap-
power of pearances, the child had her own still,
quia ness. j^^-gp^Qj, -^orld, whcre all her little
notions and opinions stood up, crisp and fresh,
like flowers that grow in cool, shady places. If
anybody too rudely assailed a thought or sug-
92 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
gestion she put forth, she drew it back again into
this quiet, inner chamber, and went on. Reader,
there are some women of this habit ; there is no
independence and pertinacity of opinion like that
of those seemingly soft, quiet creatures, whom it
is so easy to silence, and so difficult to convince.
Mara, little and unformed as she yet was, be-
longed to the race of those spirits to whom is
deputed the office of the angel in the Apocalypse,
to whom was given the golden rod which meas-
ured the new Jerusalem. Infant though she
was, she had ever in her hands that invisible
measuring rod, which she was laying to the
foundations of all actions and thoughts. There
may, perhaps, come a time when the saucy boy,
who now steps so superbly, and predominates so
proudly in virtue of his physical strength and
daring, will learn to tremble at the golden meas-
uring rod held in the hand of a woman.
Sweetness. " She 's got sweet ways and kind words
for everybody, and it 's as good as a psalm to
look at her."
Woman's No man — especially one that is living
life within. ■, -, , n ^ tj?
a rough, busy, out-or-doors lite — can
form the slightest conception of that veiled and
secluded life which exists in the heart of a sen-
sitive woman, whose sphere is narrow, whose
external diversions are few, and whose mind,
therefore, acts by a continual introversion upon
itself. They know nothing how their careless
WOMAN. 93
words and actions are pondered and turned again
in weary, quiet hours of fruitless questioning.
What did he mean by this ? and what did he
mean by that ? — while he, the careless buffalo,
meant nothing, or has forgotten what it was, if
he did.
Girls' con- " Come, now, can 't you jest tramp
Mences. ^^^^ ^^ Pennol's and tell SaUie I want
her?"
" Not I, mother. There ain't but two gals in
two miles square here, an' I ain't a-goin' to be
the feller to shoo 'em apart. What 's the use o'
bein' gals, an' young, an' pretty, if they can't get
together an' talk about their new gowns an' the
fellers ? That ar 's what gals is for."
Maternal Her love for Moses had always had in
woman's it a large admixture of that maternal
^°^®' and care-taking element, which, in some
shape or other, qualifies the affection of woman
to man.
LITTLE FOXES.
Tact. Some women are endowed with a tact
for understanding human nature and guiding it.
They give a sense of largeness and freedom ;
they find a place for every one, see at once what
every one is good for, and are inspired by nature
with the happy wisdom of not wishing or asking
of any human being more than that human being
94 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
was made to give. They have the portion in due
season for all : a bone for the dog ; catnip for
the cat ; cuttle-fish and hemp-seed for the bird ;
a book or review for their bashful literary visitor ;
lively gossip for thoughtless Miss Seventeen ;
knitting for grandmamma ; fishing-rods, boats,
and gunpowder for Young Restless, whose beard
is just beginning to grow ; — and they never fall
into pets, because the canary-bird won't relish
the dog's bone, or the dog eat canary-seed, or
young Miss Seventeen read old Mr. Sixty's re-
view, or young Master Restless take delight in
knitting-work, or old grandmamma feel com-
placency in guns and gunpowder.
Again, there are others who lay the founda-
tions of family life so narrow, straight, and strict,
that there is room in them only for themselves
and people exactly like themselves ; and hence
comes much misery.
Modern Talk of hair-cloth shirts, and scourgings,
saints. i i • • i o
and sleepmg in ashes as a means ot
saintship ! there is no need of them in our coun-
try. Let a woman once look at her domestic
trials as her hair-cloth, her ashes, her scourges,
— - accept them, rejoice in them, smile and be
quiet, silent, patient, and loving under them, —
and the convent can teach her no more. She is
a victorious saint.
WOMAN. 95
HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.
A help- My wife resembles one of those convex
^^^^' mirrors I have sometimes seen. Every
idea I threw out, plain and simple, she reflected
back upon me in a thousand little glitters and
twinkles of her own ; she made my crude con-
ceptions come back to me in such perfectly daz-
zling performances that I hardly recognized
them.
A true How many, morally wearied, wandering,
^°^^' disabled, are healed and comforted by
the warmth of a true home ! When a mother
has sent her son to the temptations of a distant
city, what news is so glad to her heart as that he
has found some quiet family where he visits often
and is made to feel at home ? How many young
men have good women saved from temptation
and shipwreck, by drawing them often to the
sheltered corner by the fireside ! The poor artist
— the wandering genius who has lost his way in
this world, and stumbles like a child among hard
realities, — the many men and women, who,
while they have houses, have no homes, — see
from afar, in their distant, bleak life-journey, the
light of a true home-fire, and if made welcome
there, warm their stiffened Hmbs, and go forth
stronger to their pilgrimage. Let those who
have accomplished this beautiful and perfect
work of divine art be liberal of its influence.
96 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Let them not seek to bolt the doors and draw the
curtains ; for they know not, and will never know
till the future life, of the good they may do by
the ministration of this great charity of home.
THE CHIMNEY CORNER.
The art of She alone can keep the poetry and
home-mak- i . n 'itp ^ i J^ •
ing. beauty ot married lite who has this
poetry in her soul ; who with energy
and discretion can throw back and out of sight
the sordid and disagreeable details which beset
all human living, and can keep in the foreground
that which is agreeable ; who has enough know-
ledge of practical household matters to make
unskilled and rude hands minister to her culti-
vated and refined tastes, and constitute her
skilled brain the guide of unskilled hands. From
such a home, with such a mistress, no sirens will
seduce a man, even though the hair grow gray,
and the merely physical charms of early days
gradually pass away. The enchantment that was
about her person alone in the days of courtship
seems in the course of years to have interfused
and penetrated the hovie which she has created,
and which in every detail is only an expression
of her personality. Her thoughts, her plans, her
provident care, are everywhere ; and the ho7ne
attracts and holds by a thousand ties the heart
which before marriage was held by the woman
alone.
WOMAN. 97
THE MAYFLOWER.
A perfect " Was she beautiful ? " you ask. I also
character. mi i j.* ll T£. i
Will ask you one question : " it an angel
from heaven should dwell in human form, and
animate any human face, would not that face be
lovely ? It might not be beautiful^ but would it
not be lovely ? " She was not beautiful except
after this fashion.
How well I remember her, as she used some-
times to sit thinking, with her head resting on
her hand, her face mild and placid, with a quiet
October sunshine in her blue eyes, and an ever-
present smile over her whole countenance. I
remember the sudden sweetness of look when
any one spoke to her ; the prompt attention, the
quick comprehension of things before you uttered
them, the obliging readiness to leave for you
whatever she was doing.
To those who mistake occasional pensiveness
for melancholy, it might seem strange to say that
my Aunt Mary was always happy. Yet she was
so. Her spirits never rose to buoyancy, and
never sunk to despondency. I know that it is
an article in the sentimental confession of faith
that such a character cannot be interesting. For
this impression there is some ground. The pla-
cidity of a medium, commonplace mind is unin-
teresting, but the placidity of a strong and well
governed one borders on the sublime. Mutability
of emotion characterizes inferior orders of being ;
98 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
but He who combines all interest, all excitement,
all perfection, is "the same yesterday, to-day, and
forever." And if there be anything sublime in the
idea of an Almighty Mind, in perfect peace itself,
and, therefore, at leisure to bestow all its ener-
gies on the wants of others, there is at least a re-
flection of the same sublimity in the character of
that human being who has so quieted and gov-
erned the world within that nothing is left to
absorb sympathy or distract attention from those
around.
Such a woman was my Aunt Mary. Her
placidity was not so much the result of tempera-
ment as of choice. She had every susceptibility
of suffering incident to the noblest and most
delicate constitution of mind ; but they had been
so directed that, instead of concentrating thought
on self, they had prepared her to understand and
feel for others.
She was, beyond all things else, a sympathetic
person, and her character, like the green in a
landscape, was less remarkable for what it was
in itself than for its perfect and beautiful har-
mony with all the coloring and shading around
it.
Other women have had talents, others have
been good ; but no woman that ever I knew
possessed goodness and talent in union with such
an intuitive perception of feelings, and such a
faculty of instantaneous adaptation to them. The
most troublesome thing in this world is to be
condemned to the society of a person who can
WOMAN. 99
never understand anything you say unless you
say the whole of it, making your commas and
periods as you go along ; and the most desirable
thing in the world is to live with a person who
saves you all the trouble of talking by knowing
just what you mean before you begin to speak.
Woman's " That word delicacy is a charming
fluence. ' cover-all in all these cases, Florence.
Now, here is a fine, noble-spirited young
man, away from his mother and sisters, away
from any family friend who might care for him,
tempted, betrayed, almost to ruin, and a few
words from you, said as a woman knows how to
say them, might be his salvation. But you will
coldly look on and see him go to destruction,
because you have too much delicacy to make the
effort — like the man that would not help his
neighbor out of the water because he had never
had the honor of an introduction."
" But, Edward, consider how peculiarly fastid-
ious Elliot is — how jealous of any attempt to
restrain and guide him."
" And just for that reason it is that men of
his acquaintance cannot do anything with him.
But what are you women made with so much
tact and power of charming for, if it is not to do
these very things that we cannot do ? It is a
delicate matter — true ; and has not Heaven
given to you a fine touch and a fine eye for just
such delicate matters ? Have you not seen, a
thousand times, that what might be resented as
100 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
an impertinent interference on the part of a man
comes to us as a flattering expression of interest
from the lips of a woman ? "
PINK AKD WHITE TYKAITNY.
Selfishness. That kind of woman can't love. They
are like cats, that want to be stroked and ca-
ressed, and to be petted, and to lie soft and
warm ; and they will purr to any one that will
pet them, — that 's all. As for love that leads
to any self-sacrifice, they don't begin to know
anything about it.
Intuition. Now Grace had that perfect intuitive
knowledge of just what the matter was with her
brother that women always have who have grown
up in intimacy with a man. These fine female
eyes see farther between the rough cracks and
ridges of the oak-bark of manhood than men
themselves.
DEACON Pitkin's fakm.
The New Ncw England had of old times, and has
wife- still, perhaps, in her farm-houses, these
mother. in . j
women who seem rrom year to year to
develop in the spiritual sphere as the bodily form
shrinks and fades. While the cheek grows thin
and the form spare, the will-power grows daily
stronger ; though the outer man perish, the inner
WOMAN. 101
man is renewed day by day. The worn hand
that seems so weak yet holds every thread and
controls every movement of the most complex
family life, and wonders are daily accomplished
by the presence of a woman who seems little
more than a spirit. The New England wife-
mother was the one little jeweled pivot on which
all the wheel-work of the family moved.
Suppres- It was not the first time that, wounded
^''^''' by a loving hand in this dark struggle
of life, she had suppressed the pain of her own
hurt, that he that had wounded her might the
better forgive himself.
AGNES OF SORRENTO.
True "A beautiful face is a kind of psalm
beauty. ^]jich makes one want to be good."
Forcing a " After all, sistor, what need of haste ?
daughter. ,^ .^ ^ ^^^^^ ^j^^ ^^^^ ^j^^ ^^^^ ^^
out of the nest ? When once it is gone you will
never get it back. Let the pretty one have her
little day to play and sing and be happy. Does
she not make this garden a sort of Paradise with
her little ways and her sweet words ? Now, my
sister, these all belong to you ; but, once she is
given to another, there is no saying what may
come. One thing only may you count on with
certainty : that these dear days when she is all
102 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
day by your side and sleeps in your bosom all
night are over, — she will belong to you no
more, but to a strange man who hath neither
toiled nor wrought for her, and all her pretty
ways and dutiful thoughts must be for him."
UNCLE TOM's CABE^.
Beautiful Her face was round and rosy, with a
^^®' healthful, downy softness, suggestive of
a ripe peach. Her hair, partially silvered by
age, was parted smoothly back from her high,
placid forehead, on which time had written no
inscription except " Peace on earth, good will to
men," and beneath shone a large pair of clear,
honest, loving, brown eyes ; you only needed to
look straight into them, to feel that you saw to
the bottom of a heart as good and true as ever
throbbed in woman's bosom. So much has been
said and sung of beautiful young girls, why don't
somebody wake up to the beauty of old women ?
Exaction. It is a great mistake to suppose that a
woman with no heart will be an easy creditor in
the exchange of affection. There is not on earth
a more merciless exactor of love from others
than a thoroughly selfish woman ; and the more
unlovely she grows, the more jealously and scru-
pulously she exacts love to the uttermost far-
thing.
WOMAN. 103
PALMETTO LEAVES.
Character. A flower is commonly thought the em-
blem of a woman ; and a woman is generally
thought of as something sweet, clinging, tender,
and perishable. But there are women flowers
that correspond to the forest magnolia, — high
and strong, with a great hold of root and a great
spread of branches ; and whose pulsations of
heart and emotion come forth like these silver
lilies that illuminate the green shadows of the
magnolia forests.
POGANUC PEOPLE.
"Turn "Oh, land o' Goshen, Dolly, what do
you mmd them boys for? " said Nabby.
" Boys is mostly hateful when girls is little ; but
we take our turns by and by," she said, with a
complacent twinkle of her brown eyes. " I make
them stand 'round, I bet ye, and you will when
you get older."
MY WIFE AND I.
Woman's My mother was one of that class of
spiritual i .i .
power. women whose power on earth seems to
be only the greater for being a spiritual
and invisible one. The control of such women
over men is like that of the soul over the body.
104 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
The body is visible, forceful, obtrusive, self-as-
serting; the soul, invisible, sensitive, yet with a
subtile and vital power which constantly gains
control, and holds every inch that it gains.
Orderliness. Like a true little woman, she seemed to
have nerves through all her clothes, that kept
them in order.
Woman The motherly instinct is in the hearts
and Chris- r n j i i i
tianity. 01 all true women, and sooner or later
the true wife becomes a mother to her
husband ; she guides him, cares for him, teaches
him, and catechizes him, all in the nicest way
possible. ... As for the soul-life, I believe it is
woman who holds faith in the world, — it is
woman behind the wall, casting oil on the fire
that burns brighter and brighter, while the devil
pours on water ; and you '11 never get Christian-
ity out of the world while there 's a woman in it.
WE AMD OUR NEIGHBORS.
Woman's " That 's what you women are for — at
mission. i . i Ti. 5
least such women as you. It s your
mission to interpret differing natures — to bind,
-^nd blend, and unite."
Real con- That fine, skillful faculty of analysis
and synthesis which forms the distinc-
tive interest of feminine conversation.
CHAPTER IV.
CHILDREN.
THE minister's WOOING.
The odd One sometimes sees launched into a
family circle a child of so different a
nature from all the rest, that it might seem as if,
like an aerolite, he had fallen out of another
sphere.
OLDTOWN FOLKS.
ChUd's In childhood the passions move with a
simplicity of action unknown to any
other period of life, and a child's hatred and a
child's revenge have an intensity of bitterness
entirely unalloyed by moral considerations ; and
when a child is without an object of affection
and feels itself unloved, its whole vigor of being
goes into the channels of hate.
Child That instinctive sense by which children
^ "^ ' and dogs learn the discerning of spirits.
106 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Ciiiidish Among the many unexplained and in-
tMes.^ explicable woes of childhood are its
bitter antagonisms, so perfectly power-
less, but often so very decided, against certain of
the grown people who control it. Perhaps some
of us may remember respectable, well-meaning
people, with whom iu our mature years we live
in perfect amity, but who in our childhood appear
to us bitter enemies. Children are remarkably
helpless in this respect, because they cannot
choose their company and surroundings as grown
people can ; and are sometimes entirely in the
power of those with whom their natures are so
unsympathetic that they may almost be said to
have a constitutional aversion to them.
Getting Nobody that has not suffered from such
worid.^*^^ causes can tell the amount of torture
that a child of a certain nervous forma-
tion undergoes in the mere process of getting
accustomed to his body, to the physical forces of
life, and to the ways and doings of that world of
grown-up people who have taken possession of
the earth before him, and are using it, and deter-
mined to go on using it, for their own behoof
and convenience, in spite of his childish efforts
to push in his little individuality, and seize his
little portion of existence. He is at once laid
hold upon by the older majority as an instrument
to work out their views of what is fit and proper
for himself and themselves ; and if he proves a
hard-working or creaking instrument, has the
CHILDREN. 107
further capability of being rebuked and chas-
tened for it.
Quiet ciui- I was One of those children who are all
^^^ ear, — dreamy listeners, who brood
over all that they hear, without daring to speak
of it.
Individ- He was ouG of thosG children who
chiidre™. retreat into themselves and make a
shield of quietness and silence in the
presence of many people, while Tina, on the
other hand, was electrically excited, waxed bril-
liant in color, and rattled and chattered with as
fearless confidence as a cat-bird.
A child's " But, Tina, mother always told us it
p osop y. ^^g wicked to hate anybody. We must
love our enemies."
" You don't love old Crab Smith, do you ? "
" No, I don't ; but I try not to hate him,"
said the boy. "I won't think anything about
him."
" I can't help thinking," said Tina ; ** and when
I think, I am so angry ! I feel such a burning in
here ! " she said, striking her little breast ; " it 's
just like fire."
" Then don't think about her at all," said the
boy ; " it is n't pleasant to feel that way. Think
about the whip-poor-wills singing in the woods
over there, — how plain they say it, don't they ?
— And the frogs all singing, with their little,
108 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
round, yellow eyes looking up out of the water ;
and the moon looking down on us so pleasantly !
she seems just like mother ! "
A child's Is there ever a hard question in morals
ques ons. ^j^^^ children do not drive straight at in
their wide-eyed questioning ?
PEAKL OF orb's ISLAND.
Holiness of The wise men of the east at the feet of
^^^^' an infant, offering gifts, gold, frankin-
cense, and myrrh, is just a parable of what goes
on in every house where there is a young child.
AU the hard and the harsh, the common and the
disagreeable, is for the parents, — all the bright
and beautiful for their child.
Pure joy. Childhood's joys are all pure gold.
Mischief. " Of all the children that ever she see,
he beat all for finding out new mischief, — the
moment you make him understand he must n't
do one thing, he 's right at another."
Different " Mis' Peunel ought to be trainin' of
ments.^^ her up to work," said Mrs. Kittridge.
" Sally could oversew and hem when
she wa' n't more 'n three years old ; nothin'
straightens out children like work. Mis' Fennel
she jest keeps that ar' child to look at."
CHILDREN. 109
" All children a'n't alike, Mis' Kittridge," said
Miss Roxy, sententiously. "This 'un a'n't like
your Sally. ' A hen and a bumble-bee can't be
fetched up alike,' fix it how you will ! "
ChUd's All the efforts of Nature, during the
uoyancy. ^^j.^^. yg^rs of a healthy childhood, are
bent on effacing and obliterating painful imj)res-
sions, wiping out from each day the sorrows of
the last, as the daily tide effaces the furrows on
the seashore.
Unseen Neither of them had known a doubt or
^®^^* a fear in that joyous trance of forbid-
den pleasure, which shadowed with so many
fears the wiser and more far-seeing heads and
hearts of the grown people ; nor was there
enough language yet in common between the two
classes to make the little ones comprehend the
risk they had run.
Perhaps our older brothers, in our Father's
house, look anxiously out when we are sailing
gayly over life's sea, over unknown depths, amid
threatening monsters, but want words to tell us
why what seems so bright is so dangerous.
Love of The island was wholly solitary, and
there is something to children quite
delightful in feeling that they have a little, lonely
world all to themselves. Childhood is itself such
an enchanted island, separated by mysterious
depths from the main land of nature, life, and
reality.
110 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Fate. But babies will live, all the more when
everybody says it is a pity they should. Life
goes on as inexorably in this world as death.
Sensitive There are natures sent down into this
natures. -, ■, u j.* -i.' j
harsh world so timorous, sensitive, and
helpless in themselves, that the utmost stretch of
indulgence and kindness is needed for their
development, — like plants which the warmest
shelf of the green-house and the most watchful
care of the gardener alone can bring into flower.
Child's " It 's curious what notions chil'en will
^' get in their heads," said Captain Kit-
tridge. " They put this an' that together and
think it over, an' come out with such queer
things."
THE CHIMNEY CORKER.
A child's The hearts of little children are easily
gained, and their love is real and warm,
and no true woman can become the object of it
without feeling her own life made brighter.
THE MAYFLOWER.
A child's But the feelings of grown-up children
sjoapathy.^ exist in the minds of little ones oftener
than is supposed ; and I had, even at this early
day, the same keen sense of all that touched
CHILDREN. Ill
the heart wrong ; the same longing for some-
thing which should touch it aright ; the same
discontent with latent, matter-of-course affection,
and the same craving for sympathy, which
has been the unprofitable fashion of this world
in all ages. And no human being possessing
such constitutionals has a better chance of being
made unhappy by them than the backward, un-
interesting, wrong-doing child. We can all sym-
pathize, to some extent, with men and women y
but how few can go back to the sympathies of
childhood ; can understand the desolate insig-
nificance of not being one of the grown-up
people ; of being sent to bed, to be out of the way
in the evening, and to school, to be out of the
way in the morning ; of manifold similar griev-
ances and distresses, which the child has no
elocution to set forth, and the grown person no
imagination to conceive.
A child's Ah, these children, little witches, pretty
power. eyeix in all their faults and absurdities.
See, for example, yonder little fellow in a naughty
fit. He has shaken his long curls over his
deep-blue eyes, the fair brow is bent in a frown,
the rose-leaf Hp is pursed up in infinite defiance,
and the white shoulder thrust angrily forward.
Can any but a child look so pretty, even in its
naughtiness ?
Then comes the instant change ; flashing smiles
and tears, as the good comes back all in a rush,
and you are overwhelmed with protestations,
112 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
promises, and kisses ! They are irresistible, too,
these little ones. They pull away the scholar's
pen, tumble about his paper, make somersets
over his books ; and what can he do ? They
tear up newspapers, litter the carpets, break, pull,
and upset, and then jabber unheard-of English in
self-defense ; and what can you do for yourself ?
The child Wouldst thou know, parent, what is
that faith which unlocks heaven ? Go
not to wrangling polemics, or creeds and forms
of theology, but draw to thy bosom thy little one,
and read in that clear, trusting eye the lesson of
eternal life. Be only to thy God as thy child is
to thee, and all is done. Blessed shalt thou be,
indeed, when " a Httle child shall lead thee."
PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY.
Baby's " An' it 's a blessin' they brings wid
dreams. ? . i • ji ^
em to a house, sir ; the angels come
down wid 'em. We can't see 'em, sir ; but, bless
the darlin', she can. An' she smiles in her sleep
when she sees 'em."
Betty's bright idea.
Mother A heavenly amusement, such as that
with which mothers listen to the foolish-
wise prattle of children just learning to talk.
CHILDREN. 113
AGNES OF SORRENTO.
A child's " The fact is, when I begin to talk, she
defense. , -i i i i i i
gets her arms around my old neck, and
falls to weeping and kissing me at such a rate
as makes a fool of me. If the child would only
be rebellious, one could do something ; but this
love takes all the stiffness out of one's joints."
UNCLE TOM S CABIN.
Child's " What would the poor and lowly do
without children ? " said St. Clare, lean-
ing on the railing, and watching Eva, as she
tripped off, leading Tom with her. " Your little
child is your only true Democrat. Tom, now, is
a hero to Eva ; his stories are wonders in her
eyes, his songs and Methodist hymns are better
than an opera, and the traps and little bits of
trash in his pocket a mine of jewels, and he the
most wonderful Tom that ever wore a black skin.
This is one of the roses of Eden, that the Lord
has dropped down expressly for the poor and
lowly, who get few enough of any other kind."
Animation. She was one of those busy, tripping
creatures, that can no more be contained in one
place than a sunbeam or a summer breeze.
114 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
SUIOrK" MEMORIES OF FOREIGN LANDS.
Unpervert- Children are unsophisticated, and like
ed taste. t. j.j. j.i_ •! j
sugar better than silver any day.
POGANUC PEOPLE.
Child-faith. Dolly was at the happy age when any-
thing bright and heavenly seemed credible, and
had the child-faith to which all things are possi-
ble. She had even seriously pondered, at times,
the feasibility of walking some day to the end of
the rainbow, to look for the pot of gold which
Nabby had credibly assured her was to be found
there ; and if at any time in her ramblings
through the woods a wolf had met her, and
opened a conversation, as in the case of Little
Red Riding Hood, she would have been no way
surprised, but kept up her part of the interview
with becoming spirit.
LITTLE PUSSY WILLOW.
Simplicity. " Mother," she said, soberly, when she
lay down in her little bed that night, " I 'm going
to ask God to keep me humble."
" Why, my dear ? "
" Because I feel tempted to be proud, — I can
make such good bread ! "
CHILDREN. 116
A DOG S MISSION.
Hobbies. He bores everybody to death with his
locomotive as artlessly as grown people do with
their hobbies.
Our When the blaze of the wood-fire flick-
Charley. j j •
ers up and down m our snug evening
parlor, there dances upon the wall a little shadow,
with a pug nose, a domestic household shadow —
a busy shadow — a little restless specimen of
perpetual motion, and the owner thereof is " our
Charley." Now we should not write about him
and his ways, if he were strictly a peculiar and
individual existence of our own home-circle ; but
it is not so. " Our Charley " exists in a thousand,
nay, a million families ; he has existed in millions
in all time back ; his name is variously rendered
in all the tongues of the earth ; in short, we take
" our Charley " in a generic sense, and we mean
to treat of him as a little copy of the grown man
— enacting in a shadowy ballet by the fireside
all that men act in earnest in after life. He is a
looking-glass for grown people, in which they
may see how certain things become them — in
which they may sometimes even see streaks and
gleamings of something wiser tHan all the harsh
conflict of life teaches them.
116 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
MY WIFE AND I.
Heavenly It seems to me that lovely and loving
childhood, with its truthfulness, its
frank sincerity, its pure, simple love, is so sweet
and holy an estate that it would be a beautiful
thing in heaven to have a band of heavenly chil-
dren, guileless, gay, and forever joyous — tender
spring blossoms of the Kingdom of Light. Was
it of such whom He had left in his heavenly
home our Savior was thinking, when He took lit-
tle children up in his arms, and blessed them,
and said, " of such is the Kingdom of Heaven ? "
Poetiy and The first child in a family is its poem,
prose. — .J. .g ^ g^^^ ^£ nativity play, and we
bend before the young stranger with gifts, "gold,
frankincense, and myrrh." But the tenth child
in a poor family is prose, and gets simply what
is due to comfort. There are no superfluities, no
fripperies, no idealities, about the tenth cradle.
Aciuid's My individual pursuits, my own little
crosses. l ^ s^ • l ±. £ p
stock 01 interests, were ot course or no
account. I was required to be in a perfectly
free, disengaged state of mind, and ready to
drop everything at a moment's warning from
any of my half-dozen seniors. " Here, Hal, run
down cellar and get me a dozen apples," my
brother would say, just as I had half-built a
block-house. " Harry, run upstairs and get the
CHILDREN. 117
book I left on the bed " — " Harry, run out to
the barn and get the rake I left there " — " Here,
Harry, carry this up garret " — " Harry, run out
to the tool-shop and get that " — were sounds
constantly occurring — breaking up my private,
cherished little enterprise of building cob-houses,
making mill-dams and bridges, or loading car-
riages, or driving horses. Where is the mature
Christian who could bear with patience the inter-
ruptions and crosses in his daily schemes that
beset a boy?
Repression, When children grow up among older
people, and are pushed and jostled and set aside
in the more engrossing interests of their elders,
there is an almost incredible amount of timidity
and dumbness of nature, with regard to the
expression of inward feeling, — and yet, often at
this time, the instinctive sense of pleasure and
pain is fearfully acute. But the child has im-
perfectly learned language ; his stock of words,
as yet, consists only in names and attributes of
outward and physical objects, and he has no
phraseology with which to embody a mere emo-
tional experience.
CHAPTER V.
EDUCATION.
THE minister's WOOING.
Habit. A man cannot ravel out the stitches in
which early days have knit him.
Human All Systems that deal with the infinite
are, besides, exposed to danger from
small, unsuspected admixtures of human error,
which become deadly when carried to such vast
results. The smallest speck of earth's dust, in
the focus of an infinite lens, aj3pears magni-
fied among the heavenly orbs as a frightful mon-
ster.
Defective Tru© it is, that one can scarcely call
that education which teaches woman
everything except herself, — except the things
that relate to her own peculiar womanly destiny,
and, on plea of the holiness of ignorance, sends
her without a word of just counsel into the temp-
tations of life.
EDUCATION. 119
OLDTOWN FOLKS.
Education The problem of education is seriously
of man and t . i i ^i t •<• c
woman. Complicated by the peculiarities ot wo-
manhood. If we suppose two souls, ex-
actly alike, sent into bodies, the one of man, the
other of woman, that mere fact alone alters the
whole mental and moral history of the two.
SAM LAWSON's stories.
« Keep " Wal, ye see, boys, that 'ere 's jest the
on."^ way to fight the Devil. Jest keep
straight on with what ye 're doin', an'
don't ye mind him, an' he can't do nothin' to
ye."
Letting go. « Lordy massy ! what can any on us
do ? There 's places where folks jest lets go
'cause they hes to. Things ain't as they want
'em, an' they can't alter 'em."
PEARL OF ORR's ISLAJSTD.
A mutual Thosc who coutend against giving
education. ,■% j j.* j 'i.
woman the same education as man do it
on the ground that it would make the woman
unfeminine, — as if Nature had done her work
so slightly that it could be so easily raveled and
120 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
knit over. In fact, there is a masculine and femi-
nine element in all knowledge, and a man and a
woman, put to the same study, extract only what
their nature fits them to see — so that knowledge
can be fully orbed only when the two unite in
the search and share the spoils.
Baiting the " But don't you think Moses shows some
°^" taste for reading and study ? "
" Pretty well, pretty well ! " said Zephaniah.
" Jist keep him a little hungry, not let him get all
he wants, you see, and he '11 bite the sharper.
If I want to catch cod I don't begin with flingin'
over a barrel o' bait. So with the boys, jist bait
'em with a book here an' a book there, an' kind
o' let 'em feel their own way, an' then, if nothin'
will do but a feller must go to college, give in to
him, — that 'd be my way."
A natural " Colleges is well enough for your
education. ,f .♦!. "iii n
smooth, straight - gramed lumber, tor
gen'ral buildin' ; but come to fellers that 's got
knots an' streaks, an' cross-grains, like Moses
Pennel, an' the best way is to let 'em eddicate
'emselves, as he 's a-doin.' He 's cut out for the
sea, plain enough, an' he 'd better be up to Umba-
gog, cuttin' timber for his ship, than havin' rows
with tutors, an' blowin' the roof off the colleges,
as one o' them 'ere kind o' fellers is apt to, when
he don't have work to use up his steam. Why,
mother, there 's more gas got up in them Bruns-
wick buildin's from young men that are spiHn'
for hard work than you could shake a stick at."
EDUCATION. 121
LITTLE FOXES.
Recreation. The true manner of judging of the
worth of amusements is to trjr them by their
effects on the nerves and spirits the day after.
True amusement ought to be, as the word indi-
cates, recreation, — something that refreshes,
turns us out anew, rests the mind and body by
change, and gives cheerfulness and alacrity to
our return to duty.
Making the The principal of a large and compli-
cated public institution was compli-
mented on maintaining such uniformity of cheer-
fulness amid such a diversity of cares. " I 've
made up my mind to be satisfied, when things
are done half as well as I would have them,"
was his answer, and the same philosophy would
apply with cheering results to the domestic
sphere.
Individ- Every human being has some handle by
^* which he may be lifted, some groove in
which he was meant to run ; and the great work
of life, as far as our relations with each other are
concerned, is to lift each one by his own proper
handle, and run each one in his own proper
groove.
122 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.
Need of Parents may depend upon it that, if
trSons. they do not make an attractive resort
for their boys, Satan will. There are
places enough, kept warm and light, and bright
and merry, where boys can go whose mothers'
parlors are too fine for them to sit in. There are
enough to be found to clap them on the back,
and tell them stories that their mothers must not
hear, and laugh when they compass with their
little piping voices the dreadful litanies of sin
and shame.
Home edu- The word home has in it the elements
of love, rest, permanency, and liberty;
but besides these it has in it the idea of an educa-
tion by which all that is purest within us is de-
veloped into nobler forms, fit for a higher life.
The little child by the home fireside was taken
on the Master's knee when he would explain to
his disciples the mysteries of the kingdom.
The educa- Education is the highest object of home,
tion of the i , i , • • .i ' i .
parent. out education m the widest sense —
education of the parents no less than of
the children. In a true home, the man and the
woman receive, through their cares, their watch-
ings, their hospitality, their charity, the last and
highest finish that earth can put upon them.
From that they must pass upward, for earth can
teach them no more.
EDUCATION. 123
Perfection To do common things perfectly is far
thingsf better worth our endeavor than to do
uncommon things respectably.
The cross. Right on the threshold of all perfection
lies the cross to be taken up. No one can go
over or around that cross in science or in art.
Without labor and self-denial neither Raphael
nor Michael Angelo nor Newton was made per-
fect.
THE CHIMISTET CORNER.
A weu- "We still incline to class distinctions and
developed aristocracies. We incline to the scheme
of dividing the world's work into two
classes : first, physical labor, which is held to be
rude and vulgar, and the province of a lower
class ; and second, brain-labor, held to be refined
and aristocratic, and the province of a higher
class. Meanwhile the Creator, who is the great-
est of levelers, has given to every human being
both a physical system, needing to be kept in
order by physical labor, and an intellectual or
braui power, needing to be kept in order by
brain labor. Work, use, employment, is the con-
dition of health in both; and he who works
either to the neglect of the other lives but a half-
life, and is an imperfect human being.
124 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
THE MAYFLOWER.
intemper- It IS a great mistake to call nothing in-
temperance but that degree of physical
excitement which completely overthrows the
mental powers. There is a state of nervous
excitability, resulting from what is often called
moderate stimulation, which often long precedes
this, and is, in regard to it, like the premonitory
warnings of the fatal cholera — an unsuspected
draft on the vital powers, from which, at any
moment, they may sink into irremediable col-
lapse.
It is in this state, often, that the spirit of
gambling or of wild speculation is induced by the
morbid cravings of an over-stimulated system.
Unsatisfied with the healthy and regular routine
of business, and the laws of gradual and solid
prosperity, the excited and unsteady imagination
leads its subjects to daring risks, with the alter-
native of unbounded gain on the one side, or of
utter ruin on the other. And when, as is too
often the case, that ruin comes, unrestrained and
desperate intemperance is the wretched resort to
allay the ravings of disappointment and despair.
Religious The only difficulty, after all, is that the
at home, keeping of the Sabbath and the impart-
ing of religious instruction are not made
enough of a home object. Parents pass off the
responsibility on to the Sunday-school teacher,
EDUCATION. 125
and suppose, of course, if they send their children
to Sunday-school, they do the best they can for
them. Now, I am satisfied, from my experience
as a Sabbath-school teacher, that the best relig-
ious instruction imparted abroad still stands in
need of the cooperation of a systematic plan of
religious discipline and instruction at home ; for,
after all, God gives a power to the efforts of a
parent that can never be transferred to other
hands.
What girls If, amid the multiplied schools, whose
should be 1 , • , ,-,
taught. advertisements now throng our papers,
purporting to teach girls everything,
both ancient and modern, high and low, from
playing on the harp and working pin-cushions up
to civil engineering, surveying, and navigation,
there were any which could teach them to be
women, — to have thoughts, opinions, and modes
of action of their own, — such a school would be
worth having. If one half of the good purposes
which are in the hearts of the ladies of our nation
were only acted out without fear of anybody's
opinion, we should certainly be a step nearer the
millennium.
PESTK AND WHITE TYRANNY.
Dangers of She had the misfortune — and a great
^*"^ ^' one it is — to have been singularly
beautiful from the cradle, and so was praised and
126 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
exclaimed over and caressed as she walked the
streets. She was sent for far and near ; borrowed
to be looked at ; her picture taken by photogra-
phers. If one reflects how many foolish and
inconsiderate people there are in the world, who
have no scruple in making a pet and plaything of
a pretty child, one will see how this one unlucky
lot of being beautiful in childhood spoiled LiUie's
chances of an average share of good sense and
goodness. The only hope for such a case lies in
the chance of possessing judicious parents.
AGNES OF SOKRENTO.
Patient " Gently, my son ! gently ! " said the
wai mg. jiiQn]^^ . a nothing is lost by patience.
See how long it takes the good Lord to make a
fair flower out of a little seed ; and He does all
quietly, without bluster. Wait on Him a little
in peacefulness and prayer, and see what He will
do for thee."
UNCLE TOM S CABIN.
«*Bobser. "Well, yer see," said Sam, proceeding
gravely to wash down Haley's pony,
" I 'se 'quired what ye may call a habit o' hohser-
vation, Andy. It 's a very 'portant habit, Andy,
and I 'commend yer to be cultivatin' it, now
ye 'r' young. Hist up that hind foot, Andy.
EDUCATION. 127
Yer see, Andy, it 's bobservation makes all der
difference in niggers. Did n't I see which way
de wind blew dis yer mornin' ? Did n't I see
what missis wanted, though she never let on?
Dat ar' 's bobservation, Andy. I 'spects it 's what
you may call a faculty. Faculties is different in
different peoples, but cultivatin' of 'em goes a
great way."
Honoring " Now, Mas'r George," said Tom, " ye
mother. ^^^^ ^^ ^ ^^^^ ^^^ . 'j^ember how
many hearts is sot on ye. Al'ays keep close to
yer mother. Don't be gettin' into any o' them
foolish ways boys has of gettin' too big to mind
their mothers. Tell ye what, Mas'r George, the
Lord gives good many things twice over ; but he
don't give ye a mother but once. Ye '11 never
see sich another woman, Mas'r George, if ye live
to be a hundred years old. So, now, you hold
on to her, and grow up and be a comfort to her,
thar 's my own good boy, — you will, now, won't
ye-
DRED.
Silent in- " Nina, I know, will love you ; and if
fluence. ^^^ never try to advise her and in-
fluence her, you will influence her very much.
Good people are a long while learning thafj
Anne. They think to do good to others by
interfering and advising. They don't know that
all they have to do is to live."
128 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Starting It is Only the first step that costs.
right.
LITTLE PUSSY WILLOW.
The right " Knowledge has just been rubbed on to
study? me upon the outside, while you have
opened your mind, and stretched out
your arms to it, and taken it in with all your
heart."
A DOGS MISSION.
The turn- There is an age when the waves of
inlife,^^ manhood pour in on the boy like the
tides in the Bay of Fundy. He does
not know himself what to do with himself, and
nobody else knows either ; and it is exactly at
this point that many a fine fellow has been ruined
for want of faith and patience and hope in those
who have the care of him.
"What But, after all, Charley is not to be
dowiS wholly shirked, for he is an institution,
Charley?" ^ solemn and awful fact ; and on the
answer of the question, Y/hat is to be done with
him ? depends a future. Many a hard, morose,
and bitter man has come from a Charley turned
off and neglected ; many a parental heartache
has come from a Charley left to run the streets,
that mamma and sisters might play on the piano
and write letters m peace. It is easy to get rid
of him — there are fifty ways of doing that —
EDUCATION. 129
he is a spirit that can be promptly laid for a
season, but if not laid aright, will come back by
and by a strong man armed, when you cannot
send him off at pleasure.
Mamma and sisters had better pay a little tax
to Charley now, than a terrible one by and by.
There is something significant in the old English
phrase, with which our Scriptures make us famil-
iar, — a man child ! A man child ! There you
have the word that should make you think more
than twice before you answer the question, What
shall we do with Charley ?
For to-day he is at your feet — to-day you can
make him laugh; you can make him cry; you can
persuade, and coax, and turn him to your pleas-
ure ; you can make his eyes fill and his bosom
swell with recitals of good and noble deeds ; in
short, you can mold him, if you will take the
trouble.
But look ahead some years, when that little
voice shall ring in deep bass tones ; when that
small foot shall have a man's weight and tramp ;
when a rough beard shall cover that little round
chin, and all the strength of manhood fill out
that little form. Then, you would give worlds
to have the key to his heart, to be able to turn
and guide him to your wiU ; but if you lose that
key now he is little, you may search for it care-
fully with tears some other day, and not find it.
Old housekeepers have a proverb that one hour
lost in the morning is never found all day — it
has a significance in this case.
130 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
MY WIFE AND I.
Limit of One part of the science of living is to
bmty?^^' learn just what our own responsibility is,
and to let other people's alone.
starved People don't realize what it is to starve
faculties ; they understand physical star-
vation, but the slow fainting and dying of desires
and capabilities for want of anything to feed
upon, the withering of powers for want of exer-
cise, is what they do not understand.
Idealizing The chief evil of poverty is the crush-
our wor ^^ ^^ ideality out of life, taking away
its poetry and substituting hard prose ; — and
this, with them, was impossible. My father
loved the work he did as the artist loves his
painting, and the sculptor his chisel. A man
needs less money when he is doing only what he
loves to do — what, in fact, he Tnust do, — pay
or no pay. . . . My mother, from her deep spir-
itual nature, was one soul with my father in his
life-work. With the moral organization of a
prophetess she stood nearer to heaven than he,
and looking in told him what she saw, and he,
holding her hand, felt the thrill of celestial elec-
tricity.
True " I want you to be a good man. A
grea ess. ^j.^^^ many have tried to be great men,
EDUCATION. 131
and failed, but nobody ever sincerely tried to be
a good man and failed."
Lack of But I speak from experience when I
Sstf uction. say that the course of study in Christian
America is so arranged that a boy, from
the grammar school upward till he graduates, is
so fully pressed and overloaded with all other
studies that there is no probability that he will
find the time or the inclination for such (reli-
gious) investigations.
Educating In OUT days we have heard much said
husbands, of the importance of training women to
be wives. Is there not something to be
said on the importance of training men to be
husbands ? Is the wide latitude of thought and
reading and expression which has been accorded
as a matter of course to the boy and the young
man, the conventionally allowed familiarity with
coarseness and indelicacy, a fair preparation to
enable him to be the intimate companion of a
pure woman ? For how many ages has it been
the doctrine that man and woman were to meet
in marriage, the one crystal-pure, the other foul
with the permitted garbage of all sorts of un-
cleansed literature and license ?
If the man is to be the head of the woman,
even as Christ is the head of the Church, should
he not be her equal, at least, in purity ?
Moral The pain-giving power is a most neces-
sary part of a well-organized human
courage.
132 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
being. Nobody can ever do anything without
the courage to be disagreeable at times.
Appreciat- Who is appreciative and many-sided
^diMity. enough to guide the first efforts of gen-
ius just coming to consciousness ? How
many could profitably have advised Hawthorne
when his peculiar Rembrandt style was forming ?
As a race, we Anglo-Saxons are so self-sphered
that we lack the power to enter into the individ-
uality of another mind, and give profitable ad-
vice for its direction.
Truth told The truth, bitterly told by an enemy
enemy. witli a vivid power of statement, is a
tonic oftentimes too strong for one's
powers of endurance.
WE AND OUR NEIGHBORS.
immuta- In some constitutions, with some hered-
Nature's itary predispositions, the indiscretions
laws. ^j^^ ignorances of youth leave a fatal,
irremediable injury. Though the sin be in the
first place one of inexperience and ignorance, it
is one that nature never forgives. The evil once
done can never be undone ; no prayers, no en-
treaties, no resolutions, can change the conse-
quences of violated law. The brain and nerve
force once vitiated by poisonous stimulants be-
come thereafter subtle tempters and traitors, for-
EDUCATION. 133
ever lying in wait to deceive, and urging to ruin ;
and he who is saved is saved so as by fire.
Doing our " There must be second fiddles in an
own work, orchestra, and it 's fortunate that I have
precisely the talent for playing one, and my doc-
trine is that the second fiddle well played is
quite as good as the first. What would the first
be without it ? "
Courage. " Well, there *s no way to get through
the world but to keep doing, and to attack every
emergency with courage."
Value of " We Ve got to get truth as we can in
*™*^ this world, just as miners dig gold out
of the mines, with all the quartz, and dirt, and
dross ; but it pays."
CHAPTER VI.
NATURE.
THE MLN-JSTER's WOOING.
Want of The next day broke calm and fair. The
m nakire^ robins sang remorselessly in the apple-
tree, and were answered by bobolink,
oriole, and a whole tribe of ignorant little bits of
feathered happiness that danced among the
leaves. Golden-glorious unclosed those purple
eyelids of the east, and regally came up the sun ;
and the treacherous sea broke into a thousand
smiles, laughing and dancing with every ripple,
as unconsciously as if no form dear to human
hearts had gone down beneath it. Oh, treach-
erous, deceiving beauty of outward things !
beauty, wherein throbs not one answering nerve
to human pain !
The sea. And ever and anon came on the still
air the soft, eternal pulsations of the distant sea,
— sound mournfullest, most mysterious, of all
the harpings of nature. It was the sea, — the
deep, eternal sea, — the treacherous, soft, dread-
ful, inexplicable sea.
NATURE. 135
OLDTOWN FOLIiS.
The sunrise. The next moming showed as brilliant a
getting-up of gold and purple as ever belonged
to the toilet of a morning. There was to be seen
from Asphyxia's bedroom window a brave sight,
if there had been any eyes to enjoy it, — a range
of rocky cliffs with little pin-feathers of black
pine upon them, and behind them the sky all
aflame with bars of massy light, — orange and
crimson and burning gold, — and long bright
rays, darting hither and thither, touched now the
window of a farm-house, which seemed to kindle
and flash back a morning salutation ; now they hit
a tall, scarlet maple, now they pierced between
clumps of pine, making their black edges flame
with gold ; and over all, in the brightening sky,
stood the morning star, like a great, tremulous
tear of light, just ready to fall on the darkened
world.
October in Nature in New England is, for the most
New Eng- ^^^^^ ^ sharp, determined matron of the
Miss Asphyxia school. She is shrewd,
keen, relentless, energetic. She runs through the
seasons a merciless express-train, on which you
may jump if you can, at her hours, but which
knocks you down remorselessly if you come in
her way, and leaves you hopelessly behind if you
are late. Only for a few brief weeks in the
autumn does this grim, belligerent female conde-
136 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
scend to be charming; but v/hen she does set
about it, the veriest Circe of enchanted isles
could not do it better. Airs more dreamy, more
hazy, more full of purple light and lustre, never
lay over Cyprus or Capri, than those which each
October overshadow the granite rocks and prickly
chestnuts of New England. The trees seem to
run no longer sap, but some strange liquid glow ;
the colors of the flowers flame up, from the cold,
pallid delicacy of spring, into royal tints wrought
of the very fire of the sun, and the hues of even-
ing clouds. The humblest weed, which we trod
under our foot, unnoticed, in summer, changes
with the first frost into some colored marvel,
and lifts itself up into a study for a painter, just
as the touch of death or adversity strikes out in
a rough nature traits of nobleness and delicacy
before wholly undreamed of.
THE CHIMNEY CORNER.
Gems. Gems, in fact, are a species of mineral
flowers ; they are the blossoms of the dark,
hard mine ; and what they want in perfume, they
make up in durability.
THE MAYFLOWER.
Medita- I sometimes think that leaves are the
the oak. thoughts of trees, and that if we only
NATURE. 137
knew it, we should find their life's experience
recorded in them. Our oak — what a crop of
meditations and remembrances must he have
thrown forth, leafing out century after century !
Awhile he spake and thought only of red deer
and Indians ; of the trillium that opened its
white triangle in his shade ; of the scented arbu-
tus, fair as the pink ocean shell, weaving her
fragrant mats in the moss at his feet ; of feathery
ferns, casting their silent shadows on the check-
erberry leaves, and all those sweet, wild, name-
less, half-mossy things that live in the gloom of
forests, and are only desecrated when brought to
scientific light, laid out, and stretched on a bo-
tanic bier. Sweet old forest days ! when blue
jay, and yellow-hammer, and bobolink made his
leaves merry, and summer was a long opera of
such music as Mozart dimly dreamed. But then
came human kind bustling beneath ; wonder-
ing, fussing, exploring, measuring, treading down
flowers, cutting down trees, scaring bobolinks,
and Andover, as men say, began to be settled.
The brook Let US stop the old chaisc and get out a
in winter. ^^^^^^ ^^ i^^^ ^^ ^liis brook, — One of
our last summer's pets. What is he doing this
winter ? Let us at least say " How do you do ? "
to him. Ah, here he is ! and he and Jack Frost
together have been turning the little gap in the
old stone wall, through which he leaped down
to the road, into a little grotto of Antiparos.
Some old rough rails and boards that dropped
138 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
over it are sheathed in plates of transparent
silver. The trunks of the black alders are
mailed with crystal ; and the witch-hazel and
yellow osiers fringing its sedgy borders are like-
wise shining through their glossy covering.
Around every stem that rises from the water is
a glittering ring of ice. The tags of the alder
and the red berries of last summer's wild roses
glitter now like a lady's pendant. As for the
brook, he is wide-awake and joyful ; and where
the roof of sheet ice breaks away, you can see his
yellow-brown waters rattling and gurgling among
the stones as briskly as they did last July. Down
he springs ! over the glossy-coated stone wall,
throwing new sparkles into the fairy grotto
around him ; and widening daily from melting
snows, and such other godsends, he goes chatter-
ing off under yonder mossy stone bridge, and we
lose sight of him. It might be fancy, but it
seemed that our watery friend tipped us a cheery
wink as he passed, saying, " Fine weather, sir
and madam ; nice times these ; and in April
you 'U find us all right ; the flowers are making
up their finery for the next season ; there 's to
be a splendid display in a month or two."
Trees in Neither are trees, as seen in winter,
^" ^^' destitute of their own peculiar beauty.
If it be a gorgeous study in summer-time to
watch the play of their abundant foliage, we still
may thank winter for laying bare before us the
grand and beautiful anatomy of the tree, with all
NATURE. 139
its interlacing network of boughs, knotted on
each twig with the buds of next year's promise.
The fleecy and rosy clouds look all the more
beautiful through the dark lace veil of yonder
magnificent elms; and the down-drooping dra-
pery of yonder willow hath its own grace of out-
line as it sweeps the bare snows. And the comi-
cal old apple-trees, why, in summer they look
like so many plump, green cushions, one as much
like another as possible ; but under the revealing
light of winter every characteristic twist and
jerk stands disclosed.
One might moralize on this, — how affliction,
which strips us of all ornaments and accessories,
and brings us down to the permanent and solid
wood of our nature, develops such wide differ-
ences in people who before seemed not much
distinct.
Winter The cloud lights of a wintry sky have
clouds. ^ ^j^^^ purity and brilliancy that no
other months can rival. The rose tints, and the
shading of rose tint into gold, the flossy, filmy
accumulation of illuminated vapor that drifts
across the sky in a January afternoon, are beau-
ties far exceeding those of summer.
AGNES OF SORRENTO.
Natural There is always something of elevation
e?evSi^n. and purity that seems to come over one
140 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
from being in an elevated region. One feels
morally as well as physically above the world,
and from that clearer air able to look down on
it calmly, with disengaged freedom.
The sum- Around the foot of Vesuvius lie fair
suvius. ^" villages and villas garlanded with roses
and flushing with grapes whose juice
gains warmth from the breathing of its subter-
raneous fires, while just above them rises a region
more awful than can be created by the action of
any common causes of sterility. There, immense
tracts sloping gradually upward show a desola-
tion so peculiar, so utterly unlike every common
solitude of nature, that one enters upon it with
the shudder we give at that which is wholly un-
natural. On all sides are gigantic serpent convo-
lutions of black lava, their immense folds rolled
into every conceivable contortion, as if, in their
fiery agonies, they had struggled, and wreathed
and knotted together, and then grown cold and
black with the imperishable signs of those terrific
convulsions upon them. Not a blade of grass,
not a flower, not even the hardiest lichen, springs
up to reheve the utter deathhness of the scene.
The eye wanders from one black, shapeless mass
to another, and there is ever the same sugges-
tion of hideous monster life — of goblin convul-
sions and strange fiend-like agonies in some age
gone by. One's very footsteps have an unnatu-
ral, metallic clink, and one's garments brushing
over the rough surface are torn and fretted by its
NATURE. 141
sharp, remorseless touch, as if its very nature
were so pitiless and acrid that the slightest con-
tact revealed it.
UNCLE TOM's cabin.
The morn- Calmly the rosy hue of dawn was steal-
ing s ar. .^g j^^^ ^j^^ room. The morning star
stood, with its solemn, holy eye of light, looking
down on the man of sin, from out the brighten-
ing sky. Oh, with what freshness, what solem-
nity and beauty, is each new day born ; as if to
say to insensate man, " Behold ! thou hast one
more chance ! Strive for immortal glory ! "
DEED.
A Southern The day had been sultry, and it was
showerr iiow an hour or two past midnight, when
a thunder-storm, which had long been
gathering and muttering in the distant sky, began
to develop its forces.
A low shivering sigh crept through the woods,
and swayed in weird whistlings the tops of the
pines ; and sharp arrows of lightning came glit-
tering down among the darkness of the branches,
as if sent from the bow of some warlike angel.
An army of heavy clouds swept in a moment
across the moon ; then came a broad, dazzling,
blinding sheet of flame, concentrating itself on the
142 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
top of a tall pine near where Dred was standing,
and in a moment shivered all its branches to the
ground as a child strips the leaves from a twig. . . .
The storm, which howled around him, bent the
forest like a reed, and large trees, uprooted from
the spongy and tremulous soil, fell crashing with
a tremendous noise ; but, as if he had been a
dark spirit of the tempest, he shouted and ex-
ulted. . . .
Gradually the storm passed by ; the big drops
dashed less and less frequently ; a softer breeze
passed through the forest, with a patter like the
clapping of a thousand little wings ; and the
moon occasionally looked over the silvery battle-
ments of the great clouds.
Nature's " Love is a mighty good ting, anyhow,"
^esson on ^^.^ rj^.g^ ^^ Lord brcss you, Miss Nina,
it makes eberyting go kind o' easy.
Sometimes when I 'm studding upon dese yer
tings, I says to myself, 'pears like de trees in de
wood, dey loves each oder. Dey stands kind
o' lockin' arms so, and dey kind o' nod der
heads, and whispers so ! 'Pears like de grape-
vines and de birds, and all dem ar tings, dey
lives comfortable togeder, like dey was peaceable
and liked each oder. Now, folks is apt to get a-
stewin' an' a-frettin' round, an' turnin' up der
noses at dis yer ting, an' dat ar ; but 'pears like
de Lord's works takes eberyting mighty easy.
Dey jest kind o' lives along peaceable. I tink
it 's mighty 'structive I "
NATURE. 143
PALMETTO LEAVES.
Winter, In New England, Nature is an up-and-
Soutb. ^" down, smart, decisive house-mother, that
has her times and seasons, and brings up
her ends of life with a positive jerk. She will
have no shilly-shally. When her time comes, she
clears off the gardens and forests thoroughly and
once for all, and they are clean. Then she freezes
the ground solid as iron, and then she covers all
up with a nice, pure winding-sheet of snow, and
seals matters up as a good housewife does her
jelly-tumblers under white paper covers. There
you are, fast and cleanly. If you have not got
ready for it, so much the worse for you! If
your tender roots are not taken up, your cellar
banked, your doors listed, she can't help it ; it 's
your own lookout, not hers.
But Nature down here is an easy, demoralized,
indulgent old grandmother, who has no particu-
lar time for anything, and does everything when
she happens to feel like it. "Is it winter, or
is n't it ? " is the question likely often to occur in
the settling month of December, when everybody
up North has put away summer clothes, and put
all their establishments under winter orders.
The oiean- This bright morning we looked from
the roof of our veranda, and our neigh-
bor's oleander-trees were glowing like a great
crimson cloud ; and we said, " There ! the olean-
144 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
ders have come back ! " No Northern ideas can
give the glory of these trees as they raise their
heads in this their native land, and seem to be
covered with great crimson roses. The poor
stunted bushes of Northern greenhouses are as
much like it as our stunted virtues and poor,
frost-nipped enjoyments shall be like the bloom
and radiance of God's Paradise hereafter.
Moss. If you want to see a new and peculiar
beauty, watch a golden sunset through a grove
draperied with gray moss. The swaying, filmy
bands turn golden and rose-colored, and the long,
swaying avenues are Hke a scene in fairy-land.
The right Every place, like a bit of tapestry, has
the^\TO)ng. its right side and its wrong side ; and
both are true and real, — the wrong
side with its rags and tags, and seams and knots,
and thrums of worsted, and the right side with
its pretty picture.
SUNNY MEMORIES OF FOREIGN LANDS.
Beauty in " Turn off my eyes from beholding van-
na ure. .^^^„ ^^^^ ^ good man, when he sees a
display of graceful ornament. What, then, must
he think of the Almighty Being, all whose useful
work is so overlaid with ornament? There is
not a fly's leg, not an insect's wing, which is not
polished and decorated to an extent that we
NATURE. 145
should think positive extravagance in finishing
up a child's dress. And can we suppose that
this Being can take delight in dwellings and
modes of life and forms of worship where every-
thing is reduced to cold, naked utility ? I think
not. The instinct to adorn and beautify is from
Him ; it likens us to Him, and if rightly under-
stood, instead of bemg a siren to beguile our
hearts away, it will be the closest affiliating
band.
Flowers. There is a strange, unsatisfying pleas-
ure about flowers, which, like all earthly pleas-
ures, is akin to pain. What can you do with
them ? — you want to do something, but what ?
Take them all up and carry them with you?
You cannot do that. Get down and look at
them ? What, keep a whole caravan waiting for
your observation ? That wHl never do. Well,
then, pick and carry them along with you. That
is what, in despair of any better resource, I
did. ... It seemed almost sacrilegious to tear
away such fanciful creations, that looked as if
they were votive offerings on an altar, or, more
likely, living existences, whose only conscious life
was a continual exhalation of joy and praise.
These flowers seemed to me to be the Earth's
raptures and aspirations, — her better moments
— her lucid intervals. Like everything else in
our existence, they are mysterious.
In what mood of mind were they conceived by
the great Artist ? Of what feelings of His are
146 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
they the expression, — springing up out of the
dust, in the gigantic, waste, and desolate regions,
where one would think the sense of His almight-
iness might overpower the soul ? Born in the
track of the glacier and the avalanche, they seem
to say to us that this Almighty Being is very
pitiful, and of tender compassion; that, in His
infinite soul, there is an exquisite gentleness and
love of the beautiful, and that, if we would be
blessed, His will to bless is infinite.
Mountain I look at the strange, old, cloudy moun-
*^' tains, the Eiger, the Wetterhorn, the
Schreckhorn. A kind of hazy ether floats around
them — an indescribable aerial halo •^— which no
painter ever represents. Who can paint the air,
— that vivid blue in which these sharp peaks cut
their glittering images ?
The mys- I like best these snow-pure glaciers seen
na"^e."^ through these black pines ; there is
something mysterious about them when
you thus catch glimpses, and see not the earthly
base on which they rest. I recollect the same
fact in seeing the cataract of Niagara through
trees, where merely the dizzying fall of water
was visible, with its foam, and spray, and rain-
bow ; it produced an idea of something super-
natural. ...
Every prospect loses by being made definite.
As long as we only see a thing by glimpses, and
imagine that there is a deal more that we do not
NATURE. 147
see, the mind is kept in a constant excitement
and play ; but come to a point where you can
fairly and squarely take in the whole, and there
your mind falls listless. It is the greatest proof,
to me, of the infinite nature of our minds, that
we almost instantly undervalue what we have
thoroughly attained. ... I remember once, after
finishing a very circumstantial treatise on the
nature of heaven, being oppressed with a similar
sensation of satiety, — that which hath not entered
the heart of man to conceive must not be mapped
out, — hence the wisdom of the dim, indefinite
imagery of the Scriptures ; they give you no hard
outline, no definite limit ; occasionally they part
as do the clouds around these mountains, giving
you flashes and gleams of something supernatural
and splendid, but never fully unveiling.
Cloud land- It is odd, though, to look at those cloud-
scapes. caperings; quite as interestmg, in its
way, as to read new systems of transcendental
philosophy, and perhaps quite as profitable.
Yonder is a great white-headed cloud, slowly
unrolling himself in the bosom of a black pine
forest. Across the other side of the road a huge
granite cliff has picked up a bit of gauzy silver,
which he is winding around his scraggy neck.
And now, here comes a cascade, right over our
heads ; a cascade, not of water, but of cloud ;
for the poor little brook that makes it faints away
before it gets down to us ; it falls like a shimmer
of moonlight, or a shower of powdered silver,
148 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
■while a tremulous rainbow appears at uncertain
intervals, like a half-seen spirit.
A cascade. The cascade here, as in mountains gen-
erally, is a never-failing source of life and
variety. Water, joyous, buoyant son of Nature,
is calling to you, leaping, sparkling, mocking at
you between bushes, and singing as he goes down
the dells. A thousand little pictures he makes
among the rocks as he goes.
Phases of There are phases in nature which cor-
na*^e. respond to every phase of human
thought and emotion; and this stern, cloudy
scenery [in the Alps] answers to the melancholy
fatalism of Greek tragedy, or the kindred
mournfulness of the book of Job.
Sublimity Coming down I mentally compared Mont
m nature, ^gj^^j^^ .^jr^^ Niagara, as one should com-
pare two grand pictures in different styles of the
same master. Both are of that class of things
which mark eras in a mind's history, and open a
new door which no man can shut. Of the two,
I think Niagara is the more impressive, perhaps
because those aerial elements of foam and spray
give that vague and dreamy indefiniteness of
outline which seems essential in the sublime. For
this reason, while Niagara is equally impressive
in the distance, it does not lose on the nearest
approach, — it is always mysterious, and there-
fore stimulating. Those varying spray-wreaths,
NATURE. 149
rising like Ossian's ghosts from its abyss ; those
shimmering rainbows, through whose veil you
look ; those dizzying falls of water that seem like
clouds poured from the hollow of God's hand;
and that mystic undertone of sound that seems
to pervade the whole being as the voice of the
Almighty, — all these bewilder and enchant the
discriminating and prosaic part of us, and bring
us into that cloudy region of ecstasy where the
soul comes nearest to Him whom no eye has seen
or can see. I have sometimes asked myself if,
in the countless ages of the future, the heirs of
God shall ever be endowed by Him with a crea-
tive power, by which they shall bring into being
things like these ? In this infancy of his exist-
ence, man creates pictures, statues, cathedrals ;
but when he is made " ruler over many things,"
will his Father intrust to him the building and
adorning of worlds ? the ruling of the glorious,
dazzling forces of nature ?
Mountain Everybody knows, even in our sober
rooks. j^ew England, that mountain brooks are
a frisky, indiscreet set, rattling, chattering, and
capering, in defiance of all law and order, tum-
bling over precipices and picking themselves up
at the bottom, no whit wiser or more disposed to
be tranquil than they were at the top ; in fact,
seeming to grow more mad and frolicsome with
every leap. Well, that is just the way brooks
do here in the Alps.
150 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Alpine air. The whole air seemed to be surcharged
with tints, ranging between the palest rose and
the deepest violet — tints never without blue,
and never without red, but varying in the degree
of the two. It is this prismatic hue, diffused over
every object, which gives one of the most notice-
able characteristics of the Alpine landscape.
Color- I have seen sometimes, in spring, set
^* against a deep-blue sky, an array of
greens, from lightest yellow to deepest blue of
the pines, tipped and glittering with the after-
noon sun, yet so swathed in some invisible, har-
monizing medium, that the strong contrasts of
color jarred upon no sense. All seemed to be
bound by the invisible cestus of some celestial
Venus. Yet what painter would dare attempt
the same ?
Nature's Mountains are nature's testimonials of
^^^^ * anguish. They are the sharp cry of a
groaning and travailing creation. Nature's stern
agony writes itself on these furrowed brows of
gloomy stone. These reft and splintered crags
stand, the dreary images of patient sorrow, exist-
ing verdureless and stern because exist they
must. In them, hearts that have ceased to
rejoice, and have learned to suffer, find kindred,
and here an earth worn with countless cycles of
sorrow utters to the stars voices of speechless
despair.
NATURE. 151
Pines. I always love pines, to all generations.
I welcome this solemn old brotherhood, which
stand gray-bearded, like monks, old, dark, sol-
emn, sighing a certain mournful sound — like a
benedicite through the leaves.
POGANUC PEOPLE.
New Eng- But at last — at last — spring did come
land spring. ^^ p^ganuc ! This marvcl and mystery
of the new creation did finally take place there
every year, in spite of every appearance to the
contrary. Long after the bluebird that had
sung the first promise had gone back into his own
celestial ether, the promise that he sang was ful-
fiUed.
Like those sweet, foreseeing spirits, that on
high, bare tree-tops of human thought, pour
forth songs of hope in advance of their age and
time, our bluebird was gifted with a sure spirit
of prophecy ; and, though the winds were angry
and loud, though snows lay piled and deep for
long weeks after, though ice and frost and hail
armed themselves in embattled forces, yet the
sun behind them all kept shining and shining,
every day longer and longer, every day drawing
nearer and nearer, till the snows passed away
like a bad dream, and the brooks woke up and
began to laugh and gurgle, and the ice went out
of the ponds. Then the pussy-wiUows threw out
their soft catkins, and the ferns came up with
152 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
their woolly hoods on, like prudent old house-
mothers, looking to see if it was yet time to
unveil their tender greens, and the white blos-
soms of the shad-blow and the tremulous tags of
the birches and alders shook themselves gayly
out in the woods. Then, under brown, rustling
leaf-banks, came the white, waxy shells of the
trailing arbutus with its pink buds, fair as a win-
ter's dawn on snow ; the blue and white hepati-
cas opened their eyes, and cold, sweet, white vio-
lets starred the moist edges of water-courses, and
great blue violets opened large eyes in the shad-
ows, and the white and crimson trilliums xm-
furled under the flickering lace-work shadows of
the yet leafless woods ; the red columbine waved
its bells from the rocks, and great tufts of golden
cowslips fringed the borders of the brooks.
Then came in flocks the delicate wind-flower
family ; anemones, starry white, and the crow-
foot, with its pink outer shell, and the spotted
adder's tongue, with its waving yellow bells of
blossom. Then, too, the honest, great, green
leaves of the old skunk-cabbage, most refreshing
to the eye in its hardy, succulent greenness,
though an abomination to the nose of the ill-in-
formed who should be tempted to gather them.
In a few weeks, the woods, late so frozen, —
hopelessly buried in snow-drifts, — were full of a
thousand beauties and delicacies of life and mo-
tion, and flowers bloomed on every hand.
NATURE. 153
Autumn. The bright days of summer were a
short-lived joy at Poganuc. One hardly had
time to say " How beautiful ! " before it was
past. By September came the frosty nights
that turned the hills into rainbow colors, and
ushered in Autumn, with her gorgeous robes of
golden-rod and purple asters. There was still
the best of sport for the children, however ; for
the frost ripened the shagbark walnuts and
opened the chestnut burrs, and the glossy brown
chestnuts dropped down among the rustling yel-
low leaves and the beds of fringed blue gentian.
. . . Here and there groups of pines and tall
hemlocks, with their heavy background of sol-
emn green, threw out the flamboyant tracery of
the forest in startling distinctness. Here and
there, as they passed a bit of low land, the
swamp maple seemed really to burn like crimson
flame, and the clumps of black alder, with their
vivid scarlet berries, exalted the effect of color
to the very highest and most daring result. No
artist ever has ventured to put on canvas the
exact copy of the picture that Nature paints for
us every year in the autumn months. There
are things the Almighty Artist can do that no
earthly imitator can more than hopelessly ad-
mire.
Bird-talk. Who shall interpret what is meant by
the sweet jargon of robin and oriole and bobo-
link, with their endless reiterations ? Some-
thing wiser, perhaps, than we dream of in our
lower life here.
154 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
LITTLE PUSSY WILLOW.
NewEng. By and by the sun took to getting up
ter. ^"^ later and later, setting a dreadfully bad
example, it is to be confessed. It
would be seven o'clock and after before he would
show his red face above the bed-clothes of clouds
away off in the southeast ; and when he did
manage to get up, he was so far off and so chilly
in his demeanor that people seemed scarcely a
bit the better for him ; and by half-past four in
the afternoon he was down in bed again, tucked
up for the night, never caring what became of
the world. And so the clouds were full of snow,
as if a thousand white feather-beds had been
ripped up over the world ; and all the frisky
winds came out of their dens, and great frolics
they had, blowing and roaring and careering in
the clouds, — now bellowing down between the
mountains, as if they meant to tear the world to
pieces, then piping high and shrill, first round
one corner of the farm-house, and then round
the other, rattling the windows, bouncing against
the doors, and then with one united chorus rum-
bling, tumbling down the great chimney, as if
they had a mind to upset it. Oh, what a frisky,
rough, jolly, unmannerly set of winds they were !
By and by the snow drifted higher than the
fences, and nothing was to be seen around the
farm-house but smooth, waving hills and hollows
of snow ; and then came the rain and sleet, and
NATURE. 155
froze them over with a slippery, shining crust,
that looked as if the earth was dressed for the
winter in a silver coat of maU.
QUEER LITTLE PEOPLE.
Summer There had been a patter of rain the
^*^' night before, which had kept the leaves
awake talking to each other tiQ nearly morning,
but by dawn the small winds had blown brisk
little pufEs, and had whisked the heavens clean
and bright with their tiny wings, as you have
seen Susan clear away the cobwebs in your
mamma's parlor ; and so now there were left
only a thousand blinking, burning water-drops,
hanging like convex mirrors at the end of each
leaf, and Miss Katy admired herself in each one.
MY WIFE AND I.
Lifluence The mutual acquaintance that comes to
JoundSgs. companions in this solitude and face-to-
face communion with nature is deeper
and more radical than can come when surround-
ed by the factitious circumstances of society.
When the whole artificial world is withdrawn,
and far out of sight, when we are surrounded
with the pure and beautiful mysteries of nature,
the very best and most genuine part of us comes
to the surface, we know each other by the com-
munion of our very highest faculties.
156 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
RELIGIOUS POEMS.
Summer "Why shouldst thou study in the month
studies. n T
01 June
In dusky books of Greek and Hebrew lore,
When the great Teacher of all glorious things
Passes in hourly light before thy door ?
There is a brighter book unrolling now ;
Fair are its leaves as is the tree of heaven,
All veined and dewed and gemmed with won-
drous signs,
To which a healing, mystic power is given.
A thousand voices to its study call,
From the fair hill-top, from the water-fall.
Where the bird singeth, and the yellow bee,
And the breeze talketh from the airy tree.
Now is that glorious resurrection time
When all earth's buried beauties have new birth !
Behold the yearly miracle complete, —
God hath created a new heaven and earth !
Hast thou no tiTne for all this wondrous show, —
No thought to spare ? Wilt thou forever be
With thy last year's dry flower-stalk and dead
leaves,
And no new shoot or blossom on thy tree ?
See how the pines push off their last year's leaves.
And stretch beyond them with exultant bound :
NATURE. 157
The grass and flowers, with living power, o'er-
grow
Their last year's remnants on the greening
ground.
Wilt thou, then, all thy wintry feelings keep.
The old dead routine of the book-writ lore.
Nor deem that God can teach, by one bright hour,
What life hath never taught to thee before ?
Cease, cease to think, and be content to he y
Swing safe at anchor in fair Nature's bay ;
Reason no more, but o'er thy quiet soul
Let God's sweet teachings ripple their soft way.
Call not such hours an idle waste of time, —
Land that lies fallow gains a quiet power ;
It treasures, from the brooding of God's wings,
Strength to unfold the future tree and flower.
And when the summer's glorious show is past,
Its miracles no longer charm thy sight.
The treasured riches of those thoughtful hours
Shall make thy wintry musings warm and bright.
CHAPTER VII.
LITERATURE AND ART.
THE minister's WOOING.
Romance. All prosaic and all bitter, disenchanted
people talk as if poets and novelists made ro-
mances. They do, just as much as craters make
volcanoes, no more. What is romance ? Whence
comes it ? Plato spoke to the subject wisely, in
his quaint way, some two thousand years ago,
when he said, "Man's soul, in a former state,
was winged and soared among the gods : and
so it comes to pass that, in this life, when the
soul, by the power of music or poetry, or the
sight of beauty, hath her remembrance quick-
ened, forthwith there is a struggling and a prick-
ing pain, as of wings trying to come forth, even
as children in teething." And if an old heathen,
two thousand years ago, discoursed thus gravely
of the romantic part of our nature, whence comes
it that in Christian lands we think in so pagan a
way of it, and turn the whole care of it to ballad-
makers, romancers, and opera-singers ?
Let us look up in fear and reverence, and say,
" God is the great maker of romance ; He, from
whose hand came man and woman, — He, who
LITERATURE AND ART. 159
strung the great harp of existence, — He is the
great poet of life." Every impulse of beauty, of
heroism, and every craving for purer love, fairer
perfection, nobler type and style of being, than
that which closes like a prison-house around us,
in the dim, daily walk of life, is God's breath,
God's impulse, God's reminder to the soul that
there is something higher, sweeter, purer, yet to
be attained. . . .
The dullest street of the most prosaic town
has matter in it for more smiles, more tears,
more intense excitement, than ever were written
in story or sung in poem ; the reality is there, of
which the romance is the second-hand recorder.
OLDTOWN FOLKS.
Hebrew But it is a most remarkable property of
this old Hebrew literature that it seems
to be enchanted with a divine and living power,
which strikes the nerve of individual conscious-
ness in every desolate and suffering soul. It may
have been Judah or Jerusalem agces asro to whom
these words first came, but as they have traveled
on for thousands of years, they have seemed to
tens of thousands of sinking and desolate souls
the voice of God to them individually. They have
raised the burden from thousands of crushed
spirits ; they have been as the day-spring to thou-
sands of perplexed wanderers. Oh ! let us treas-
ure these old words, for as of old Jehovah chose
160 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
to dwell in a tabernacle in the wilderness, and
between the cherubim in the temple, so now He
dwells in them ; and to the simple soul that
seeks for Him here, He will look forth as of old
from the pillar of cloud and fire.
Influence For my part, I am impatient of the
Bible? theory of those who think that noth-
ing that is not understood makes any
valuable impression on the mind of a child. I
am certain that the constant contact of the Bible
with my childish mind was a very great mental
stimulant, as it certainly was a cause of a singu-
lar and vague pleasure. The wild, poetic parts
of the prophecies, with their bold figures, vivid
exclamations, and strange Oriental names and
images, fiUed me with a quaint and solemn de-
light. Just as a child brought up under the
shadow of the great cathedrals of the Old World,
wandering into them daily, at morning, or at
eventide, beholding the many-colored windows,
flamboyant with strange legends of saints and
angels, and neither understanding the legends,
nor comprehending the architecture, is yet stilled
and impressed, till the old minster grows into his
growth and fashions his nature, so this wonderful
old cathedral book insensibly wrought a sort of
mystical poetry into the otherwise hard and ster-
ile life of New England. Its passionate Oriental
phrases, its quaint, pathetic stories, its wild tran-
scendent bursts of imagery, fixed an indelible
mark in my imagination. ... I think no New
LITEKATURE AND ART. 161
Englander, brought up under the rSgime estab-
lished by the Puritans, could really estimate how
much of himself had actually been formed by
this constant, face-to-face intimacy with Hebrew
literature.
The study I recommend everybody who wishes to
tn^^e, try the waters of Lethe to study a new
language, and learn to think in new
forms ; it is like going out of one sphere of exist-
ence into another.
Greek. Greek is the morning land of languages,
and has the freshness of early dew m it which
will never exhale.
THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND.
The Bible. " This 'ere old Bible, — why it's jest
like yer mother — ye rove and ramble and cut
up round the world without her a spell, and
mebbe think the old woman ain't so fashionable
as some; but when sickness and sorrow comes,
why there ain't nothin' else to go back to. Is
there, now ? "
HOUSE AlsD HOME PAPERS.
Reading " But don't you think," said Marianne,
amJiment. " that there is danger in too much,
fiction ? "
162 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
" Yes," said I. " But the chief danger of all
that class of reading is its easiness, and the indo-
lent, careless mental habit it induces. A great
deal of the reading of young people on all days
is really reading to no purpose, its object being
merely present amusement. It is a Hstless yield-
ing of the mind to be washed over by a stream
which leaves no fertilizing properties, and carries
away by constant wear the good soil of thought.
I should try to estabhsh a barrier against this
kind of reading, not only on Sunday, but on
Monday, on Tuesday, and on all days. Instead,
therefore, of objecting to any particular class of
books for Sunday reading, I should say in gen-
eral that reading merely for pastime, without any
moral aim, is the thing to be guarded against.
That which inspires no thought, no purpose,
which steals away all our strength and energy,
and makes the Sabbath a day of dreams, is the
reading I would object to."
Sacred " So of music. I do not see the pro-
"^'^^^' priety of confining one's self to techni-
cal sacred music. Any grave, solemn, thoughtful,
or pathetic music has a proper relation to our
higher spiritual nature, whether it be printed in
a church service-book or on secular sheets. On
me, for example, Beethoven's Sonatas have a far
more deeply religious influence than much that
has religious names and words. Music is to be
judged of by its effects."
LITERATURE AND ART. 163
A good For a picture, painted by a real artist,
pic ure. ^j^^ studies Nature minutely and con-
scientiously, has something of the charm of the
good Mother herself, — something of her faculty
of putting on different aspects under different
lights.
PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY.
Letters. Those long letters in which thoughtful
people who live in retired situations delight ; let-
ters, not of outward events, but of sentiments
and opinions, the phases of the inner life.
AGNES OF SORKENTO.
The artist's What higher honor or grace can befall a
creature than to be called upon to make
visible to men that beauty of invisible things
which is divine and eternal ?
Hymns. " A hymn is a singing angel, and goes
walking through the earth, scattering the dev-
ils before it. Therefore he who creates hymns
imitates the most excellent and lovely works of
our Lord God, who made the angels. These
hymns watch our chamber-door, they sit upon
our pillow, they sing to us when we awake ; and
therefore our master was resolved to sow the
minds of his young people with them, as our
164 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
lovely Italy is sown with the seeds of all-colored
flowers."
Music the There is no phase of the Italian mind
oTnaiyf that has not found expression in its
music.
DEED.
The univer- As the mind, looking on the great vol-
ume of nature, sees there a reflection of
its own internal passions, and seizes on that in
it which sympathizes with itself, — as the fierce
and savage soul delights in the roar of torrents,
the thunder of avalanches, and the whirl of
ocean-storms, — so is it in the great answering
volume of revelation. There is something there
for every phase of man's nature, and hence its
endless vitality and stimulating force.
Prophecy It is remarkable that in all ages, com-
and Reve- •, • j • j' • i i ■li_ j^
lation. munities and mdividuais who nave sut-
fered under oppression have always fled
for refuge to the Old Testament and to the book
of Revelation in the New. Even if not defi-
nitely understood, these magnificent compositions
have a wild, inspiring power, like a wordless, yet
impassioned symphony, played by a sublime
orchestra, in which deep and awful sub-bass in-
struments mingle with those of ethereal softness,
and wild minors twine and interlace with marches
of battles and bursts of victorious harmony.
LITERATURE AND ART. 165
They are ranch mistaken who say that nothing
is efficient as a motive that is not definitely under-
stood. Who ever thought of understanding the
mingled wail and roar of the Marseillaise ? Just
this kind of indefinite stimulating power has the
Bible to the souls of the oppressed. There is
also a disposition, which has manifested itself
since the primitive times, by which the human
soul, bowed down beneath the weight of mighty
oppressions, and despairing in its own weakness,
seizes with avidity the intimations of a coming
judgment, in which the Son of Man, appearing
in His glory, and all His holy angels with Him,
shall right earth's mighty wrongs.
SUNNT MEMORIES OF FOREIGN LANDS.
The artist But, I take it, cvcry true painter, poet,
as prophet. j .• . • • £
and artist is in some sense so tar a
prophet that his utterances convey more to other
minds than he himself knows ; so that, doubtless,
should all the old masters rise from the dead,
they might be edified by what posterity has
found in their books.
Difficulty Certainly no emotions so rigidly reject
cism? ^' critical restraint and disdain to be bound
by rule as those excited by the fine arts.
A man unimpressible and incapable of moods and
tenses is for that reason an incompetent critic ;
and the sensitive, excitable man, how can he
166 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
know that he does not impose his peculiar mood
as a general rule ?
Rembrandt I always did admire the gorgeous and
thorne?^" solemn mysteries of his coloring. Rem-
brandt is like Hawthorne. He chooses
simple and every-day objects, and so arranges
light and shadow as to give them a sombre rich-
ness and mysterious gloom. " The House of
the Seven Gables " is a succession of Rembrandt
pictures, done in words instead of oils. Now,
this pleases us, because our life really is a
haunted one, the simplest thing in it is a mystery,
the invisible world always lies around us like a
shadow, and therefore this dreamy, golden gleam
of Rembrandt meets somewhat in our inner con-
sciousness to which it corresponds. . . .
Rubens and I should compare Rubens to Shake-
speare', speare, for the wonderful variety and
vital force of his artistic power. I
know no other mind he so nearly resembles.
Like Shakespeare, he forces you to accept and
to forgive a thousand excesses, and uses his own
faults as musicians use discords, only to enhance
the perfection of harmony. There certainly is
some use, even in defects. A faultless style sends
you to sleep. Defects rouse and excite the sen-
sibility to seek and appreciate excellence. Some
of Shakespeare's finest passages explode all
grammar and rhetoric like sky-rockets — the
thought blows the language to shivers.
LITEKATUKE AND ART. 167
Language I rejoice every hour that I am among
Bible? these scenes in my familiarity with the
language of the Bible. In it alone can
I find vocabulary and images to express what
this world of wonder excites.
The effect As to Christianity not making men hap-
tianity!^' picr, mcthinks M. Belloc forgets that
the old Greek tragedies are filled with
despair and gloom, as their prevailing character-
istic, and that nearly all the music of the world
before Christ was in the minor scale, as since
Christ it has come to be in the major. The
whole creation has, indeed, groaned and travailed
in pain together until now, but the mighty an-
them has modulated since the Cross, and the
requiem of Jesus has been the world's birth-song
of approaching jubilee.
Music is a far better test, moreover, on such
a point, than painting, for just where painting is
weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest
moral and spiritual ideas, there music is most
sublimely strong.
Real To me, all music is sacred. Is it not
^^^ ' so ? All real music, in its passionate
earnest, its blendings, its wild, heart-searching
tones, is the language of aspiration. So it may
not be meant; yet, when we know God, so we
translate it.
168 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Power of What is done from a genuine, strong,
^tion. inward emotion, whether in writing or
painting, always mesmerizes the paper
or the canvas, and gives it a power which every-
body must feel, though few know why. The
reason why the Bible has been omnipotent, in all
ages, has been because there were the emotions
of God in it.
POGANUC PEOPLE.
Puritan As there is a place for all things in this
great world of ours, so there was in its
time and day a place and a style for Puritan
music. If there were pathos and power and sol-
emn splendor in the rhythmic movement of the
churchly chants, there was a grand, wild freedom
and energy of motion in the old " fuguing tunes "
of that day that well expressed the heart of a
people courageous in combat and unshaken in
endurance. The church chant is like the meas-
ured motion of the mighty sea in calm weather,
but those old fuguing tunes were like that same
ocean aroused by stormy winds, when deep call-
eth unto deep in tempestuous confusion, out of
which, at last, is evolved union and harmony. It
was a music suggestive of the strife, the commo-
tion, the battle-cries of a transition period of
society, struggling onward toward dimly seen
ideals of peace and order.
LITERATURE AND ART. 169
LITTLE PUSSY WILLOW.
Books. No ornament of a house can compare
with books ; they are constant company in a
room, even when you are not reading them.
MY WIB^ AND I.
Our The only drawback when one reads
mothers' poems that exactly express what one
'^oxda. would like to say is that it makes us
envious ; one thinks, why could n't I have said it
thus?
WE AND OUR NEIGHBORS.
Books of St. John was seated in his study, with
meditation. -lip t..- ^ n i*
a book 01 meditations beiore him, on
which he was endeavoring to fix his mind. In
the hot, dusty, vulgar atmosphere of modern life,
it was his daily effort to bring around himself
the shady coolness, the calm, conventual stillness,
that breathes through such writers as St. Francis
de Sales and Thomas h Kempis, men with a
genius for devotion, who have left to mankind
records of the milestones and road-marks by
which they traveled towards the highest things.
Nor should the most stringent Protestant fail to
honor that rich and grand treasury of the expe-
rience of devout spirits of which the Romish
170 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Church has been the custodian. The hymns and
prayers and pious meditations which come to us
through this channel are particularly worthy of a
cherishing remembrance in this dusty, materialis-
tic age.
Hymns. "Words of piety, allied to a catching
tune, are like seeds with wings — they float out
in the air, and drop in the odd corners of the
heart, to spring up in good purposes.
CHAPTER Vni.
NEW ENGLAND LIFE.
THE minister's WOOING.
Earnest- It is impossible to write a story of New
NewEng^^ England life and manners for a thought-
land peo- jggg shallow-minded person. If we
pie. ' •*• 1 ' •
represent things as they are, their in-
tensity, their depth, their unworldly gravity and
earnestness must inevitably repel lighter spirits,
as the reverse pole of the magnet drives off sticks
and straws. In no other country were the soul
and the spiritual life ever such intense realities,
and everything contemplated so much (to use a
current New England phrase) " in reference to
eternity."
New Eng- The rigid theological discipline of New
wtheoi- England is fitted to produce rather
strength and purity than enjoyment. It
was not fitted to make a sensitive and thought-
ful nature happy, however it might ennoble and
exalt.
The kitch- The kitchen of a New England matron
®°* was her throne-room, her pride ; it was
172 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
the habit of her life to produce the greatest pos-
sible results there with the slightest possible dis-
composure ; and what any woman could do, Mrs.
Katy Scudder could do jpar excellence. Every-
thing there seemed to be always done and never
doing. Washing and baking, those formidable
disturbers of the composure of families, were all
over within those two or three morning hours
when we are composing ourselves for a last nap,
— and only the fluttering of linen over the green
yard on Monday mornings proclaimed that the
dreaded solemnity of a wash had transpired. A
breakfast arose there as by magic ; and in an
incredibly short space after, every knife, fork,
spoon, and trencher, clean and shining, was look-
ing as innocent and unconscious in its place as
if it never had been used and never expected
to be.
The floor, — perhaps, sir, you remember your
grandmother's floor of snowy boards sanded with
whitest sand ; you remember the ancient fire-
place stretching quite across one end, — a vast
cavern, in each corner of which a cozy seat
might be found, distant enough to enjoy the
crackle of the great jolly wood fire ; across the
room ran a dresser, on which was displayed
great store of shining pewter dishes and platters,
which always shone with the same mysterious
brightness; by the side of the fire, a commodi-
ous wooden settee, or " settle," offered repose to
people too little accustomed to luxury to ask for
a cushion. Oh, that kitchen of the olden time,
NEW ENGLAND LIFE. 173
— - the old, clean, roomy. New England kitchen !
Who that has breakfasted, dined, and supped in
one, has not cheery visions of its thrift, its warmth,
its coolness ? The noonmark on its floor was
a dial that told off some of the happiest days ;
thereby did we right up some of the shortcom-
ings of the solemn old clock that tick-tacked in
the corner, and whose ticks seemed mysterious
prophecies of unknown good yet to arise out of
the hours of life. How dreamy the winter twi-
light came in there, — when as yet the candles
were not lighted, — when the crickets chirped
around the dark stone hearth, and shifting tongues
af flame flickered and cast dancing shadows and
elfish lights on the walls, while grandmother nod-
ded over her knitting-work, and puss purred, and
old Rover lay dreamily opening now one eye and
then the other on the family group ! With all
our ceiled houses, let us not forget our grand-
mother's kitchen.
Faculty. She was one of the much admired class,
who, in the speech of New England, are said
to have faculty, a gift which, among that shrewd
people, commands more esteem than beauty,
riches, learning, or any other worldly endow-
ment. Faculty is Yankee for savoir faire, and
the opposite virtue to shiftlessness. Faculty is
the greatest virtue, and shiftlessness the great-
est vice, of Yankee men and women. To her
who has faculty nothing shall be impossible. She
shall scrub floors, wash, wring, bake, brew, and
174 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
yet her hands shall be small and white ; she
shall have no perceptible income, yet always be
handsomely dressed ; she shall have not a ser-
vant in her house, — with a dairy to manage,
hired men to feed, a boarder or two to care for,
unheard-of pickling and preserving to do, — and
yet you commonly see her every afternoon sit-
ting at her shady parlor-window behind the lilacs,
cool and easy, hemming muslin cap-strings, or
reading the last new book. She who hath fac-
ulty is never in a hurry, never behindhand. She
can always step over to distressed Mrs. Smith,
whose jelly won't come, — and stop to show
Mrs. Jones how she makes her pickles so green,
— and be ready to watch with poor old Mrs.
Simpkins, who is down with the rheumatism.
Garrets. Garrets are delicious places in any case,
for people of thoughtful, imaginative tempera-
ment. Who has not loved a garret in the twi-
light days of childhood, with its endless stores
of quaint, cast-off, suggestive antiquity, — old,
worm-eaten chests, — rickety chairs, — boxes and
casks full of odd comminglings, out of which,
with tiny, childish hands, we picked wonderful
hoards of fairy treasure ? "What peep-holes,
and hiding-places, and undiscoverable retreats
we made to ourselves, — where we sat rejoi-
cing in our security, and bidding defiance to
the vague, distant cry which summoned us to
school, or to some unsavory every-day task !
How deliciously the rain came pattering on the
NEW ENGLAND LIFE. 175
roof over our head, or the red twilight streamed
in at the window, while we sat snugly ensconced
over the delicious pages of some romance which
careful aunts had packed away at the bottom of
all things, to be sure we should never read it !
If you have anything, beloved friends, which you
wish your Charley or your Susy to be sure and
read, pack it mysteriously away at the bottom
of a trunk of stimulating rubbish in the darkest
corner of your garret ; in that case, if the book
be at all readable, — one that by any possible
chance can make its way into a young mind, you
may be sure that it will not only be read, but
remembered to the longest day they have to live.
ciearcut His was One of those clearly cut minds
°^^ ' which New England forms among her
farmers, as she forms quartz crystals in her
mountains, by a sort of gradual influence flow-
ing through every pore of the soil and system.
OLDTOWN FOLKS.
NewEng- Ncw England has been to the United
parent of States what the Dorian hive was to
the West. Qroece. It has always been a capital
country to emigrate from, and North, South,
East, and West have been populated largely from
New England, so that the seed-bed of New Eng-
land was the seed-bed of the great American
republic, and of all that is likely to come of it.
176 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
Rough Any one that has ever pricked his fin-
gers in trying to force open a chestnut-
burr may perhaps have moralized at the satin
lining, so smooth and soft, that lies inside of that
sharpness. It is an emblem of a kind of nature
very frequent in New England, where the best
and kindest and most desirable of traits are
enveloped in an outside wrapping of sharp
austerity.
The do- Every New England village, if you
mg- ^j^iy ^i^{jq\^ Qf {i^ must have its do-noth-
ing, as regularly as it has its school-house or its
meeting-house. Nature is always wide awake in
the matter of compensation. Work, thrift, and
industry are such an incessant steam-power in
Yankee life that society would burn itself out
with the intense friction, were there not inter-
posed here and there the lubricating power of
a decided do-nothing, — a man who won't be
hurried, and won't work, and will take his ease
in his own way, in spite of the whole protest of
his neighborhood to the contrary. And there is
on the face of the whole earth no do-nothing
whose softness, idleness, general inaptitude to
labor, and everlasting, universal shiftlessness,
can compare with that of the worthy, as found
in a brisk Yankee village.
Life an People have often supposed, because the
interest."^ Puritans founded a society where there
were no professed public amusements,
NEW ENGLAND LIFE. 177
that therefore there was no fun going on in the
ancient land of Israel, and that there were no
cakes and ale, because they were virtuous. They
were never more mistaken in their lives. There
was an abundance of sober, well-considered mer-
riment, and the hinges of life were well-oiled
with that sort of secret humor which to this day
gives the raciness to real Yankee wit. Besides
this, we must remember that life itself is the
greatest possible amusement to people who really
believe they can do much with it, — who have
that intense sense of what can be brought to pass
by human effort that was characteristic of the
New England colonies. To such, it is not exactly
proper to say that life is an amusement, but it
certainly is an engrossing interest, that takes the
place of all amusements.
New Eng- In the little theocracy which the Pil-
ity. ^ ^' grims established in the wilderness, the
ministry was the only order of nobility.
They were the only privileged class, and their
voice it was that decided ex cathedra on all ques-
tions both of church and state, from the choice
of governor to that of district school teacher.
Our minister, as I remember him, was one of
the cleanest, most gentlemanly, most well-bred of
men, — never appearing without all the decorums
of silk stockings, shining knee and shoe buckles,
well-brushed shoes, immaculately powdered wig,
out of which shone his clear, calm, serious face,
like the moon out of a fleecy cloud.
178 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND.
A ship- In the plain, simple regions we are
conunu? describing, — where the sea is the great
"^*y* avenue of active life, and the pine for-
ests are the great source of wealth, — ship-build-
ing is an engrossing interest, and there is no fete
that calls forth the community like the launching
of a vessel.
And no wonder ; for what is there belonging
to this workaday world of ours that has such
a never-failing fund of poetry and grace as a
ship ? A ship is a beauty and mystery wherever
we see it : its white wings touch the region of
the unknown and the imaginative ; they seem to
us full of the odors of quaint, strange, foreign
shores, where life, we fondly dream, moves in
brighter currents than the muddy, tranquil tides
of every day.
Who that sees one bound outward, with her
white breasts swelling and heaving, as if with
a reaching expectancy, does not feel his heart
swell with a longing impulse to go with her to
the far-off shores? Even at dingy, crowded
wharves, amid the stir and tumult of great cities,
the coming in of a ship is an event that can
never lose its interest. But on these romantic
shores of Maine, where all is so wild and still,
and the blue sea lies embraced in the arms of a
dark, solitary forest, the sudden incoming of a
ship from a distant voyage is a sort of romance.
NEW ENGLAND LIFE. 179
. . . The very life and spirit of strange, roman-
tic lands come with her ; suggestions of sandal-
wood and spice breathe through the pine woods ;
she is an Oriental queen, with hands full of mys-
tical gifts ; "all her garments smell of myrrh
and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they
have made her glad." No wonder men have
loved ships like birds, and that there have been
found brave, rough hearts that in fatal wrecks
chose rather to go down with their ocean love
than to leave her in the last throes of her death-
agony.
A ship-building, a ship-sailing community has
an unconscious poetry ever underlying its exist-
ence. Exotic ideas from foreign lands relieve
the trite monotony of life ; the ship-owner lives
in communion with the whole world, and is less
likely to fall into the petty conmionplaces that
infest the routine of inland life.
Repression. There is a class of people in New Eng-
land who betray the uprising of the softer feel-
ings of our nature only by an increase of out-
ward asperity — a sort of bashfulness and shyness
leaves them no power of expression for these
unwonted guests of the heart — they hurry them
into inner chambers and slam the doors upon
them, as if they were vexed at their appearance.
The Sab- A vague, dream-like sense of rest and
Sabbath stillness seemed to brood in the
air. The very spruce-trees seemed to know that
180 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
it was Sunday, and to point solemnly upward
with their dusky fingers, and the small tide-
waves that chased each other up on the sheUy
beach, or broke against projecting rocks, seemed
to do it with a chastened decorum, as each blue-
haired wave whispered to his brother, " Be still
— be still." . . .
Not merely as a burdensome restraint, or a
weary endurance came the shadow of that Puri-
tan Sabbath. It brought with it all the sweet-
ness that belongs to rest, all the sacredness that
hallows home, all the memories of patient thrift,
of sober order, of chastened yet intense family
feeling, of calmness, of purity, and self-respect-
ing dignity, which distinguished the Puritan
household. It seemed a solemn pause in aU the
sights and sounds of earth.
Early New The State of Society in some of the dis-
Bo^fety. tricts of Maine, in these days, much
resembled, in its spirit, that which
Moses labored to produce in ruder ages. It was
entirely democratic, simple, grave, hearty, and
sincere, — solemn and religious in its daily tone,
and yet, as to all material good, full of whole-
some thrift and prosperity. Perhaps taking the
average mass of the people, a more healthful and
desirable state of society never existed. Its bet-
ter specimens had a simple, Doric grandeur,
unsurpassed in any age.
NEW ENGLAND LIFE. 181
THE MAYFLOWER.
Atypical Did you ever see the little village of
landviuage. Newbiuy, in New England ? I dare
say you never did; for it was just one
of those out-of-the-way places where nobody ever
came unless they came on purpose : a green little
hollow, wedged like a bird's nest between half a
dozen high hills, that kept off the wind and kept
out foreigners ; so that the little place was as
straitly sui generis as if there were not another
in the world. The inhabitants were all of that
respectable old steadfast family who made it a
point to be bom, bred, married, die, and be bur-
ied, all in the self-same spot. There were just so
many houses, and just so many people lived in
them ; nobody ever seemed to be sick, or to
die either, at least while I was there. The na-
tives grew old till they could not grow any older,
and then they stood stUl, and lasted, from gener-
ation to generation. There was, too, an unchange-
ability about all the externals of Newbury. Here
was a red house, and there a brown house, and
across the way was a yellow house ; and there
was a straggling rail fence or a tribe of mullein
stalks between. The minister lived here, and
Squire Moses lived there, and Deacon Hart lived
under the hill, and Messrs. Nadab and Abihu
Peters lived by the cross-road, and the old " Wid-
der Smith " lived by the meeting-house, and
Ebenezer Camp kept a shoemaker's shop on one
182 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
side, and Patience Mosely kept a milliner's shop
in front ; and there was old Comfort Scran, who
kept store for the whole town, and sold axe-heads,
brass thimbles, licorice ball, fancy handkerchiefs,
and everything else you can think of. Here, too,
was the general post-office, where you might see
letters marvelously folded, directed wrong side
upwards, stamped with a thimble, and super-
scribed to some of the Dollys, or Pollys, or
Peters, or Moseses aforenamed or not named.
For the rest, as to manners, morals, arts, and
sciences, the people in Newbury always went to
their parties at three o'clock in the afternoon,
and came home before dark ; always stopped all
work the minute the sun was down on Saturday
night; always went to meeting on Sunday; had
a schoolhouse with all the ordinary inconven-
iences ; were in neighborly charity with one an-
other, read their Bibles, feared their God, and
were content with such things as they had, —
the best philosophy after all.
The farm- Everything in Uncle Abel's house was
house. • i.1 J." 1 J
m the same time, place, manner, and
form, from year's end to year's end. There was
old Master Bose, a dog after my uncle's, own
heart, who always walked as if he were studying
the multiplication table. There was the old
clock, forever ticking in the kitchen corner, with
a picture on its face of the sun forever setting
behind a perpendicular row of poplar - trees.
There was the never-failing supply of red pep-
NEW ENGLAND LIFE. 183
pers and onions hanging over the chimney.
There, too, were the yearly hollyhocks and
morning-glories blooming about the windows.
There was the " best room," with its sanded
floor, the cupboard in one corner with its glass
doors, the evergreen asparagus bushes in the
chimney, and there was the stand with the Bible
and almanac on it in another corner. There, too,
was Aunt Betsey, who never looked any older,
because she always looked as old as she could ;
who always dried her catnip and wormwood the
last of September, and began to clean house the
first of May. In short, this was the land of con-
tinuance. Old Time never took it into his head
to practice either addition, or subtraction, or mul-
tiplication on its sum total.
UNCLE TOM S CABIN.
Conscience Nowhere is Conscience so dominant and
England ull-absorbing as with New England
women. women. It is the granite formation
which lies deepest, and rises out even to the tops
of the highest mountains.
DEED.
SeUing *' But these Yankees turn everything to
their disad- . tp > n i i • j
vantages, account. It a man s tield is covered
with rock, he '11 find some way to sell it.
184 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
and make money out of it ; and if tliey freeze
up all winter, they sell the ice, and make money
out of that. They just live by selling their dis-
advantages ! "
POGANUC PEOPLE.
Yankee Zeph was a creature born to oppose, as
^" ' much as white bears are made to walk
on ice.
And how, we ask, would New England's rocky
soil and icy hills have been made mines of wealth
unless there had been human beings born to
oppose, delighting to combat and wrestle, and
with an unconquerable power of will ?
Zeph had taken a thirteen acre lot, so rocky
that a sheep could scarce find a nibble there,
had dug out and blasted and carted the rocks,
wrought them into a circumambient fence, —
ploughed and planted and raised crop after crop
of good rye thereon. He did it with heat, with
zeal, with dogged determination ; he did it all
the more because neighbors said he was a fool
for trying, and that he could never raise any-
thing on that lot. There was a stern joy in
this hand-to-hand fight with Nature. He got his
bread as Samson did his honeycomb out of the
aarcass of the slain lion. " Out of the eater
came forth meat, and out of the strong came
forth sweetness." Even the sharp March wind
did not annoy him. It was a controversial wind,
and that suited him ; it was fighting him all the
NEW ENGLAND LIFE. 185
way, and he enjoyed beating it. Such a human
being has his place in the Creator's scheme.
Religious They greatly mistake the New England
rn^t.^^ rehgious development who suppose that
it was a mere culture of the head in
dry, metaphysical doctrines. As in the rifts of
the granite rocks grow flowers of wonderful
beauty and delicacy, so in the secret recesses of
Puritan life, by the fireside of the farmhouse, in
the contemplative silence of austere care and
labor, grew up religious experiences that brought
a heavenly brightness down into the poverty of
commonplace existence.
Family The custom of family worship was one
wors ^p. ^£ ^YiQ most rigid inculcations of the
Puritan order of society, and came down from
parent to child with the big family Bible, where
the births, deaths, and marriages of the house-
hold stood recorded.
In Zeph's case, the custom seemed to be
merely an inherited tradition, which had dwin-
dled into a habit purely mechanical. Yet, who
shall say?
Of a rugged race, educated in hardness, wring-
ing his substance out of the very teeth and claws
of reluctant nature, on a rocky and barren soil,
and under a harsh, forbidding sky, who but the
All-seeing could judge him ? In that hard soul,
there may have been, thus uncouthly expressed,
a loyalty to Something Higher, however dimly
186 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
perceived. It was acknowledging that even he
had his master. One thing is certain, the cus-
tom of family prayers, such as it was, was a
great comfort to the meek saint by his side, to
whom any form of prayer, any pause from earthly
care, and looking up to a Heavenly Power, was
a blessed rest. In that daily toil, often beyond
her strength, when she never received a word of
sympathy or praise, it was a comfort all day to
her to have had a chapter in the Bible and a
prayer in the morning. Even though the chapter
were one that she could not by any possibility un-
derstand a word of, yet it put her in mind of things
in that same dear book that she did understand,
— things that gave her strength to live and hope
to die by, — and it was enough ! Her faith in
the Invisible Friend was so strong that she needed
but to touch the hem of His garment. Even a
table of genealogies out of His book was a sacred
charm, an amulet of peace.
TheMtch- The fire that illuminated the great
p?ace. kitchen of the farmhouse was a splen-
did sight to behold. It is, alas, with
us, only a vision and memory of the past ; for
who, in our days, can afford to keep up the
great fireplace, where the backlogs were cut
from the giants of the forest, and the forestick
was as much as a modern man could lift ? And
then the glowing fire-palace built thereon ! That
architectural pile of split and seasoned wood,
over which the flames leaped and danced and
NEW ENGLAND LIFE. 187
crackled like rejoicing genii — what a glory it
was I The hearty, bright, warm hearth, in those
days, stood instead of fine furniture and hand-
some pictures. The plainest room becomes beau-
tiful and attractive by firelight, and when men
think of a country and home to be fought for and
defended, they think of the fireside.
The cur- Though not exactly backed by the arbi-
trary power which enforced the cele-
brated curfew, yet the nine o'clock bell was one
of the authoritative institutions of New England ;
and, at its sound, all obediently set their faces
homeward, to rake up housefires, put out can-
dles, and say their prayers before going to rest.
MY WIFE AND I.
Faculty. What Yankee matrons are pleased to
denominate faculty, which is, being interpreted,
a genius for home life.
CHAPTER IX.
MISCELLANEOUS.
OLDTOWN FOLKS.
The com- It takes some hours to get a room
panyroom. ^g^^j^ where a family never sits, and
which therefore has not in its walls one particle
of the genial vitality which comes from the in-
dwelling of hmnan beings.
The turn When you get into a tight place, and
of the tide. , i • • , . .n .,
everythmg goes agamst you, till it
seems as if you could not hold on a minute
longer, never give up then, for that 's just the
place and time that the tide '11 turn.
SAM LAWSON S STORIES.
Little "Some seem to think the Lord don't
°^^' look out only for gret things ; but, ye
see, little things is kind o' hinges that gret ones
turns on. They say, take care o' pennies, an*
dollars '11 take care o' themselves. It's jest so
in everything ; and ef the Lord don't look arter
little things. He ain't so gret as they say, any
way."
MISCELLANEOUS. 189
LITTLE FOXES.
Sincerity Truth before all things ; sincerity before
tesy.*'°*"" all things ; pure, clean, diamond-bright
sincerity is of more value than the gold
of Ophir ; the foundation of aU love must rest
here. How those people do who live in the
nearest and dearest intimacy with friends who,
they believe, will lie to them for any purpose,
even the most refined and delicate, is a mystery
to me. If I once know that my wife or my
friend will tell me only what they think will be
agreeable to me, then I am at once lost, my way
is a pathless quicksand. But all this being pre-
mised, I still say that we Anglo-Saxons might
improve our domestic life, if we would graft
upon the strong stock of its homely sincerity the
courteous grace of the French character.
Flattery. Flattery is insincere praise, given from
interested motives, not the sincere utterance to
a friend of what we deem good and lovely in
him.
HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.
Household In fact, nobody wanted to stay in our
parlor now. It was a cold, correct, ac-
complished fact ; the household fairies had left it,
— and when the fairies leave a room, nobody
ever feels at home in it. No pictures, curtains.
190 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
no wealth of mirrors, no elegance of lounges, can
in the least make up for their absence. They
are a capricious little set ; there are rooms where
they will not stay, and rooms where they will,
but no one can ever have a good time without
them.
SUNNY MEMORIES OF FOREIGN LANDS.
Cathe- Cathedrals do not seem to me to have
been built. They seem, rather, stupen-
dous growths of nature, like crystals, or cliffs of
basalt.
French Conversation of French circles seems to
tion. me like gambols of a thistledown, or the
rainbow changes in soap-bubbles. One
laughs with tears in one's eyes. One moment
confounded with the absolute childhood of the
simplicity, in the next one is a little afraid of the
keen edge of the shrewdness.
TheGer- These Germans seem an odd race, a
mans. mixture of clay and spirit — what with
their beer-drinking and smoking, and their slow,
stolid ways, you would think them perfectly
earthy ; but ethereal fire is all the while work-
ing in them, and bursting out in most unexpected
little jets of poetry and sentiment, like blossoms
on a cactus.
MISCELLANEOUS. 191
MY WIFE AND I.
Physiogno- Houses have their physiognomy as much
hJmae.* as persons. There are commonplace
houses, suggestive houses, attractive
houses, mysterious houses, and fascinating houses,
just as there are all these classes of persons.
There are houses whose windows seem to yawn
idly — to stare vacantly ; there are houses whose
windows glower weirdly, and glance at you
askance ; there are houses, again, whose very
doors and windows seem wide open with frank
cordiality, which seem to stretch their arms to
embrace you, and woo you kindly to come and
possess them. ...
Is not this a species of high art, by which a
house, in itself cold and barren, becomes in every
part warm and inviting, glowing with suggestion,
alive with human tastes and personalities ? Wall-
paper, paint, furniture, pictures, in the hands of
the home artist, are like the tubes of paint, out
of which arises, as by inspiration, a picture. It
is the woman who combines them into the won-
derful creation which we call a home.
When I came home from my office, night after
night, and was led in triumph by Eva to view
the result of her achievements, I confess I began
to remember, with approbation, the old Greek
mythology, and no longer to wonder that divine
honors had been paid to household goddesses.
192 FLOWERS AND FRUIT.
LETTERS.
Heaven. You do like to do good, and live a life
worth living, and when you get to heaven you
will always want to do exactly the thing by
which you can best please the dear Lord. The
fashions there in Heaven are set by Him who
made himself of no reputation, and came and
spent years among poor, ignorant, stupid, wicked
people, that He might bring them up to himself,
— and I dare say the saints are burning with
zeal to be sent on such messages to our world,
I don't think they " sit on every heavenly hill,"
paying compliments to each other, but they are
flying hither and thither on messages of mercy
to the dark, the desolate, the sorrowful. That 's
the way you '11 be when you get there, and spite
of all you say about yourself, you '11 get to liking
that sort of work more and more here.
Hjsown I shall be glad when he is in a house
of his own, — a man is n't half a man
till he is.
FINIS.
INDEX OF BOOKS.
The MmisTER's Wooing, 1, 55,
84, 105, 118, 134, 158, 171.
Oldtown Folks, 13, 58, 89, 105,
119, 135, 159, 175, 188.
Sam Lawson's Stories, 60, 119,
188.
Pearl of Orr's Island, 19, 60,
91, 108, 119, 161, 178.
Little Foxes, 21, 62, 93, 121,
189.
House and Home Papers, 24, 65,
95, 122, 161, 189.
The Chimney Corner, 25, 66, 96,
110, 123, 136.
The Mayflower, 26, 67, 97, 110,
124, 136, 181.
Pink and White Tyranny, 29,
69, 100, 112, 125, 163.
Betty's Bright Idea, 32, 112.
Deacon Pitkin's Farm, 32, 70,
100.
Agnes of Sorhbnto, 33, 71, 101,
113, 126, 139, 163.
Uncle Tom's Cabin, 38, 72, 102,
113, 126, 141, 183.
Dred, 41, 73, 127, 141, 164, 183.
Palmetto Leaves, 18, 103, 143.
Sunny Memories of Foreign
Lands, 45, 75, 114, 144, 165,
190.
PoGANUc People, 47, 76, 103, 114,
151, 168, 184.
Little Pussy WniLOW, 48, 76,
114, 128, 154, 169.
A Dog's Mission, 49, 78, 115, 128.
Queer Little People, 77, 155.
My Wife and 1, 49, 78, 103, 116,
130, 155, 169, 187, 191.
We and our Neighbors, 51, 80,
104, 132, 169.
Religious Poems, 52, 156.
Letters, 192.
INDEX OF TITLES.
A boy's growth, 57.
A busy-body, 77.
A cascade, 148.
Acceptable advice, 71.
A child-like nature, 61.
A child's crosses, 116.
A child's defense, 113.
A child's longing for sympathy,
110.
A child's love, 110.
A child's philosophy, 107.
A child's power, 111.
A child's questions, 108.
A common mode of reasoningi
67.
AflSnity of opposites, 26.
Agony of uncertainty, 7.
Agony in the voice, 36.
A good picture, 103.
A help-meet, 95.
A lesson in faith, 19.
" AU for the best," 33.
194
INDEX.
Alpine air, 150.
Altruism, 51.
Altruistic faith, 21.
Amusements, 17.
A mutual education, 1 19.
A natural education, 120.
A New England woman, 70.
Animal spirits, 76.
Animation, 113.
A perfect character, 97.
Appreciating individuality, 132.
A ship-building community, 178.
A Southern thunder-shower, 141.
Aspiration, 32.
A sympathetic God, 36.
A true home, 95.
A typical New England village,
181.
Autumn, 153.
A well-developed man, 123.
A woman's view, 90.
Baby's dreams, 112.
Baiting the boy, 120.
Beautiful old age, 102.
Beauty in nature, 144.
Bird-talk, 153.
Blessedness vs. happiness, 3.
" Blessings brighten as they take
their flight," 73.
" Bobservation," 126.
Books, 169.
Books of meditation, 169.
Broken idols, 78.
Candace's theology, 8.
Capacity of feeling, 27.
Careful observation, 65.
Care inevitable to human nature,
67.
Cathedrals, 190.
Character, 103.
Characters worth exploring, 79.
Chateaux en Espagne, 66.
Child faith, 114.
Child instinct, 105.
Childish antipathies, 106.
Child's buoyancy, 109.
Child's intensity, 105.
Child's mission, 113.
Child's reasoning, 110.
Clairvoyance, 31.
Clear-cut thought, 175.
Cloud landscapes, 147.
Coincidence, 37.
Color-blending, 150.
Congeniality of opposites, 42.
Connection with the spirit-world,
44.
Conscience in New England wo-
men, 183.
Control of the thoughts, 9.
Convenient duties, 68.
Conversation, 25.
Coiirage, 133.
Courage in the truth, 3.
" Cuteness," 67.
Danger in apparent safety, 68.
Dangers of vanity, 125.
Death in life, 8.
Defective education, 118.
Depression after exaltation, 56.
Developing power of love, 11.
Different temperaments, 108.
Difficulty of confession, 76.
Difficulty of criticism, 165.
Difficulty of inspiring others, 34.
Difficulty of self-knowledge, 62.
Discipline, 12, 19.
Discipline of patience, 49.
Doing our own work, 133.
Doubt, 50.
Dreams, 35.
Dual nature, 71.
Duty vs. expediency, 57.
Early New England society, 180.
Earnestness of the New England
people, 171.
Educating boys for husbands,
131.
Education of man and woman,
119.
Effect of harshness, 73.
Effect of sinning, 60.
Eimobling power of sorrow, 50.
Exaction, 102.
Expression of love, 21.
Expressive silence, 58.
Faculty, 173, 187.
Faith, not sight, 14.
Family worship, 185.
Fate, 110.
Fine natures perverted, 75.
First false step, 77.
First principles of home-making,
24.
First steps, 74.
Fitful persons, 20.
Flattery, 189.
Flaws in gems, 81.
Flowers, 145.
INDEX.
195
Forcing a daughter, 101.
Forgiveness of friends, 51.
French conversation, 190.
French nature, 56.
Friends, 50.
Friendly gossip, 80.
From different standpoints, 75.
Garrets, 174.
Gems, 136.
Genial and ungenial natures, 69.
Getting used to the world, 106.
Girls' confidences, 93.
God as an artist, 46.
God's comfort, 53.
God's cordials, 14.
God's sympathj', 27.
God's tests, 5.
God working through man, 52.
Good and evil inseparable, 74.
Good wherever we seek it, 34.
Gossip, 83.
Grace in affliction, 45.
Greek, 161.
(growing alike, 70.
Growth from within, 16.
Habit, 118.
Heart-wisdom vs. worldly wis-
dom, 27.
Heaven, 192.
Heavenly chUdren, 116.
Hebrew literature, 159.
Heimweh, 19, 47.
Help in sorrow, 26.
Help from work, 51.
Heredity, 79.
His own house, 192.
Hobbies, 115.
Holiness of age, 15.
Holiness of infancy, 108.
Hohness of woman, 84.
Home education, 122.
Honoring mother, 127.
Household fairies, 189.
Human error, 118.
Human nettles, 81.
Hymns, 163, 170.
Idealizing our work, 130.
Idealizing power of love, 13.
Idle talk, 88.
Ignorant selfishness, 55.
Immutability of nature's laws,
132.
Impossibility of evading trouble,
82.
IndividuaUty, 38, 90, 121.
Individuality in children, 107.
Inexplicable preferences, 42.
Influence, 27.
Influence of the invisible, 4.
Influence of a mother's prayer,
29.
Influence of heredity and asso-
ciations, 59.
Influence of surroundings, 155.
Influence of the Bible, 160.
Inner life, 52.
Innocence, 37.
Inspiration, 38.
Intemperance, 124.
Intuition, 100.
Inward peace, 45.
" I told you so," 82.
Joy in endurance, 44.
Joy of living, 57.
" Keep straight on," 119.
Lack of religious instruction, 131.
Language of the Bible, 167.
Latent caloric, 22.
Laws of prayer, 4.
Learning to love, 25.
Letters, 163.
Letting go, 119.
Life, 60.
Life an engrossing interest, 176.
Life as a play, 60.
Life renewed, 18.
Limitation, 20.
Limit of responsibility, 130.
Lme between right and wrong,
50.
Little things, 188.
Living together, 28.
Longing for love in the unlovely,
47.
Looking through blue glasses, 66.
Lost confidence, 75.
Lost innocence irrecoverable, 35.
Love a sacrament, 5.
Love a test, 21.
Love of a bargain, 65.
Love of solitude, 109.
Making people like us, 67.
Making the best of it, 59, 121.
Man's childish impatience, 49.
Marks of genius, 77.
Maternal element in woman s
love, 93.
196
INDEX.
Meditations of the oak, 136.
Memory, 9.
Ministering spirits, 28.
Minor modulations, 9.
Mischief, 108.
Miss Prissy's motto, 3.
Modern saints, 94.
Moral atmosphere, 39.
Moral courage, 131.
Moral earnestness, 13.
Moral inheritance, 15.
Morbid feelings, 64.
Moss, 144.
Mother-love for a son, 86.
Mother pride, 112.
Mother's inconsiderateness, 87.
Mother's intuition, 88.
Mother's work, 89.
Mountain air, 146.
Mountain brooks, 149.
Music the language of Italy, 164.
Naivete, 34.
Natural and moral elevation, 139.
Natural religious sensibility, 40.
Nature's anguish, 150.
Nature's lesson on love, 142.
Need of home attractions, 122.
Neighbors' influence, 91.
Nervous sensibility, 37.
New England nobility, 177.
New England spring, 151.
New England theology, 171.
New England the parent of the
West, 175.
New England winter, 154.
Night resolutions, 43.
October in New England, 135.
Opinionated people, 76.
Orderliness, 104.
Our Charley, 115.
Our thoughts in others' words,
169.
Patient waiting, 126.
Peace through suffering, 52.
Perfect faith, 10.
Perfection in little things, 123.
Persistence, 72.
Persistency, 81.
Personal magnetism, 12, 59.
Personality, 80.
Phases of nature, 148.
Physical good-humor, 60.
Physiognomy of a house, 191.
Pines, 151.
Poetry and prose, 116.
Power of a tone, 59.
Power of an honest character, 71.
Power of beauty, 70.
Power of inward emotion, 168.
Power of mind over body, 38.
Power of real love, 85.
Power of song, 43.
Power of sympathy, 33.
Practical and ideal, 41.
Praise and blame, 52.
Privileged truth-tellers, 68.
Proof of heaven, 43.
Prophecy and revelation, 164.
Pure joy, 108.
Puritan music, 168.
Quiet children, 107.
Reaction of harshness, 49.
Reading only for amusement, 161.
Real conversation, 104.
Real love, 62.
Real music, 167.
Recreation, 121.
Regret, 23.
Relation of age to youth, 72.
Religious development, 185.
Religious instruction at home,
124.
Rembrandt and Hawthorne, 166.
Repression, 5, 17, 87, 117, 179.
Reproach, 51.
Reserve, 91.
Reserve not understood, 62.
Restrictions of the body on the
soul, 2.
Responsibility, 11.
Reverence the basis of faith, 88.
Righteousness through repent-
ance, 82.
Right side of human nature, 81.
Romance, 158.
Rough exterior, 176.
Rubens and Shakespeare, 166.
Sacred music, 162.
Saintliness, 25.
Scepticism, 60.
'Senses, 73.
Seeing and feeling, 47.
Seeing the bright side, 48.
Self-deception, 1, 68.
Self-forgetfulness, 40.
Self-ignorance, 31.
Selfish love, 58.
Selfishness, 100.
INDEX.
197
Self-sacrifice, 39.
Sellii^ their disadvantages, 183.
Sensitive natures, 110.
Sensitiveness to blame, 55.
Shadow, 46.
Shyness of love, 64.
Silence of deep emotion, 37.
Silent companionship, 15.
Silent influence, 127.
Simple honesty vs. worldliness,
56.
Simplicity, 114.
Sincerity and courtesy, 189.
Sorrow an educator, 38.
Sorrow a preparation for love,
34.
Soul-absorption, 2.
Soul-communion, 1.
Soul-growth, 12.
Soul-language, 78.
Soul-relation, 18.
Soul-striving, 46.
Speaking as a friend, 73.
Starting right, 128.
Starved faculties, 130.
Streaked men, 74.
Strength of despair, 39.
Struggling for higher things, 14.
Sublimity in nature, 148.
Suffering in silence, 44.
Summer rain, 155.
Summer studies, 156.
Simshine of the heart, 35.
Superiority, 27.
Superstition, 40.
Suppression, 101.
Sweetness, 92.
Sympathy, 1, 18, 27, 31, 33.
Sympathy through sorrow, 7.
Tact, 93.
Taught by suffering, 29.
Teachings of suffering, 25.
The artist as prophet, 165.
The artist's mission, 163.
The art of home-making, 96.
The Bible, 161.
The brook in winter, 137.
The calm of God's love, 53.
The child as teacher, 112.
The company room, 188.
The curfew, 187.
The divine ideal, 10.
The do-nothing, 176.
The education of the parent, 122,
The effect of Christianity, 167.
The farmhouse, 182.
The Germans, 190.
The human soul, 41.
The ideal and the practical, 9.
The kitchen, 171.
The kitchen fireplace, 186.
The lesson of faith, 32.
The morning star, l41.
The mother in every woman, 89.
The mysterious in nature, 146.
The negro love of beauty, 72.
The New England wife-mother,
100.
The object of life, 30.
The odd one, 105.
The oleander, 143.
The reserve power of quietness,
91.
The right side and the wrong,
144.
The right way to study, 128.
The Sabbath, 179,
The sea, 134.
The spirit within, 53.
The strongest passions, 35.
The study of anew language, 161.
The summit of Vesuvius, 140.
The siuirise, 135.
The turning-point in life, 128.
The turn of the tide, 188.
The universal book, 164.
The world's injustice, 57.
Throwing away happiness, 64.
Too much heart, 68.
Transient uplifting, 36.
Transition periods, 43.
Trees in winter, 138.
True beauty, 101.
True courage, 91.
True heroism, 39.
True greatness, 130.
Trust, 33.
Truth told by an enemy, 132.
"Turn about," 103.
Two kinds of frankness, 69.
Unacknowledged motives, 32.
Unconscious heart-thrusts, 5.
Undercurrent, 10.
Unintended hurts, 61.
Unity in conflict, 16.
Unity in prayer, 7.
Unperverted taste, 114.
Unseen dangers, 109,
Unsuspected danger, 79.
Unsuspected influence, 11.
Use of a chatterbox, 74.
Using knowledge, 89.
198
INDEX,
Value of ready expression, 75.
Value of truth, 133.
"Want of sympathy in nature, 134.
■Warning for mothers, 65.
What girls should be taught, 125.
"What shall we do with Char-
ley ? " 128.
Will-power, 57.
Winged and walking spirits, 6.
Winter clouds, 139.
Winter, North and South, 143.
Wit, 75. . ^^^
Woman and Christiamty, 101.
Woman as a gospel, 84.
Woman ennobled by man's love,
85.
Woman feels ; man reasons, 4.
Woman's instinctive silence, 87.
Woman's life within, 92.
Woman's mission, 104.
Woman's moral influence, 99.
Woman's nature, 89.
Woman's spiritual power, 103.
Woman's veneration, 86.
World conflicts, 37.
Yankee grit, 184.
TEXT AND VERSE
FOR EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR.
Scripture Passages and Parallel Selections from the
Writings of John Greenleap Whittier, arranged
by Gertrude W. Cartland. TastefuUy bound in
cloth. 32mo, 75 cents.
This little book of helpful passages for every day is com-
posed of a verse from the Bible and a stanza of similar
character from Mr. Whittier's works arranged together.
The spirit of Mr, Whittier's poetry renders this associ-
ation altogether harmonious, and the little book furnishes
a series of stimulating and consoling thoughts for the
whole course of the year.
Calculated to give strength and comfort to a wide circle, and to in-
crease the poet's admirers. — The Nation (New York).
Very pretty, very cleverly done, and a success of which the au-
thoress may be proud. — Tke Churchman (New York).
FIVE EXQUISITE BIRTHDAY BOOKS
From the Writings of Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow,
Lowell, and Whittiek.
These Birthday Books are of a high order of excel-
lence. The most striking and beautiful passages in^ the
poems and prose works of these five illustrious writers
are arranged on the left-hand pages. On the right-hand
pages are given the names of distinguished persons born
and the record of memorable events occurring on the
same day. A blank space is left under each date. Each
of the books has a portrait of the author and twelve illus-
trations.
The price of the Birthday Books in cloth is $1.00
each, in flexible sealskin, $2.50.
*^* For sale by all Booksellers. Sent hy mail, post-paid,
on receipt of price hy the Publishers,
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,
Boston and New York.
Beckonings for Every Day.
A Calendar of Thought. Arranged by Luct Larcom,
editor of " Breathings of the Better Life," etc. 16mo,
$1.00.
It aims to give some of the most awakening and inspiring words
of the great and good of all ages, and contains quotations from
Browning and Phillips Brooks, from Robertson and Channing and
Fenelon. The writer is catholic enough to include selections from
James Martineau and Newman, and has been especially happy in
finding new quotations both in prose and verse for her little vol-
ume. — Boston Transcript,
A book of devotional thoughts for daily use, of a much higher
order than common. — New York Evening Post.
Flowers and Fruit
From the writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
16mo, $1.00.
This little book has been prepared with much intelli-
gence and care, and includes a large number of striking
and quotable passages from Mrs. Stowe's various works.
They form a book of quite remarkable variety, admira-
ble for brief leisure moments. Side titles are inserted in
the text for each quotation, so that one can see at a
glance what is the subject of each of the selections.
After Noontide.
Selected and edited by Margaret E. White. 16mo,
$1.00.
A book containing passages designed to add sunshine
and comfort to the afternoon of life. The selections are
from numerous writers, of widely differing schools of
literature and religion, but are rendered harmonious by
the spirit of cheerful acceptance of the peculiar bless-
ings which advancing years bring, and the recognition of
the fact that though some burdens and infirmities may
accompany these years, yet they are, or at least may be,
full of cheer, of pleasant memories, and of serene hope.
*** For sale by all Booksellers. Sent by mail, post-
paid, on receipt of price by the Publishers,
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,
Boston and New York. Q
PS