Class _lj_5:^^ 
 Book.___J:!l55: 
 
 CoRTight ^'"_ 
 
 MEffilOHI DEPOSm 
 
THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
THE GREAT 
 EXPECTANCY 
 
 BY 
 
 Margaret Prescott Montague 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "HOME TO hem's MTJWER," "OF WATER AND THE SPIRir," 
 
 "TWENTY MINUTES OF REALITY," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 68i FIFTH AVENUE 
 

 Copyright, 1918, 
 BY E. p. BUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 4!1G i 2 1918 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 ©GLA501470 
 
 ^^v I 
 
PUBLISHERS' NOTE 
 
 The Great Expectancy made its 
 first public appearance in the columns 
 of The Atlantic Monthly as one of a 
 series of papers about the effect of the 
 War on a secluded southern valley. 
 
 The special message which it holds 
 seemed to make its publication in 
 some more permanent form desirable. 
 
THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
THE 
 GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
 BY MARGARET PRESCOTT MONTAGUE 
 
 YESTERDAY we had our Sun- 
 day-school picnic. We have one 
 every year, and heretofore they have 
 all floated down the tide of memory, 
 hardly distinguishable one from an- 
 other, in a medley of green trees, 
 fried chicken, boys and girls, toddling 
 babies, and old people. But this one 
 was different. I shall always remem- 
 ber it on account of old Aunt Livy. 
 It so happens that three of our 
 9 
 
lo THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
 four volunteers come from different 
 branches of the same family, and all 
 are Aunt Livy's great nephews. They 
 were at home for the picnic from near- 
 by training-camps, very gay and self- 
 conscious in their khaki, and were 
 soon to leave us, first for larger train- 
 ing-camps, and then for France. And 
 while they strutted about and drilled 
 the girls in their Red Cross costumes, 
 Aunt Livy sat under the green trees 
 and wept all alone, and everybody 
 pretended not to notice. We did not 
 want to see the tears, we wanted to 
 think that war was just smart uni- 
 forms, and pretty Red Cross girls, and 
 picnics; and so, when Aunt Livy, in 
 her bright purple dress and her hat 
 with its black plume nodding gro- 
 
THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 1 1 
 
 tesquely down over her eyes, said, 
 'He's my little nephew,' and, 'Well, 
 write ef you kin,' mopping her eyes 
 and her trembling mouth with a big 
 old hand, because she had lost her 
 handkerchief, we all tried to slip 
 away from her. But I shall always 
 see that picnic, with the boys and girls 
 laughing together, and the babies 
 meandering here and there, and in the 
 background, poor Aunt Livy, with no 
 one to comfort her, sitting all alone 
 under the sugar-maples, trembling 
 and old, weeping over her little 
 nephews. 
 
 And now Christopher is dead, 
 Christopher, who came all the way 
 from England to our mountains seek- 
 ing his fortune; Christopher, who 
 
12 THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
 shot ground-hogs, and rode, and fid- 
 dled, and sang 'John PeeP so gayly, 
 and who sat at our dinner-table just 
 before he sailed for home and the 
 great adventure. 
 
 'Yes,' Maggie says, 'I kin see him 
 now a settin' right here' — she indi- 
 cates a special corner of the table, — 
 'an' he says, "Yes, when the war's 
 over I'll come back an' give a lecture 
 here in the church and tell you about 
 fighting in France and everything." ' 
 
 O, Christopher! If you would 
 come back now and tell us all about 
 everything, how breathlessly we 
 should listen! But I like to think 
 how happy you were just before you 
 went. Down here in the West Vir- 
 ginia mountains, so far away from 
 
THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 13 
 
 the great conflict, I suspect that you 
 had known 'great thoughts of heart.' 
 But once the decision was made, you 
 won through to a great serenity and 
 content; and one thinks of you only 
 as young and gay and fortunate; for, 
 in the old days, — such a short little 
 time ago, — when we all made merry 
 together, who ever thought that so 
 many of you Englishmen were to be 
 offered a place in the ranks of a great 
 crusade, to have the glory of a very 
 great enterprise'? 
 
 And what of us who are left? 
 Life has all at once become a very 
 solemn and sacred thing. We cannot 
 take it lightly any more, it is sancti- 
 fied by the deaths of too many. It is 
 a gift to us, something to be accepted 
 
14 THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
 gravely and reverently from dead 
 hands, and to be lifted up to such 
 high and shining levels, that the con- 
 secrated gift may be the medium 
 through which the Great Expectancy 
 may find its way into the world for 
 its fulfillment. 
 
 Yes, war is here; it is staring at us 
 through the boys' khaki, the girls' red 
 crosses, and through old Aunt Livy's 
 tears. But what next? What after 
 the war? 
 
 Well, as the life of our valley 
 breaks through its own narrow isola- 
 tion and goes forth into the activities 
 of a wider world, so all those activi- 
 ties are gathered up and enfolded in 
 something else, something larger, 
 something further on — and this some- 
 
THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 15 
 
 thing seems to me to be what the 
 Great Expectancy points to. 
 
 When I look back over the years, 
 and seek to reconstruct my own past, 
 I see it most often against the back- 
 ground of the Big Valley. I see my- 
 self seeking, hoping, and dreaming, 
 under its trees, on the tops of its hills, 
 and in the green pie-comers of its 
 rail-fences; and certainly, if hopes 
 and fancies and aspirations ever do 
 have a resurrection, then, at the Day 
 of Judgment, most of mine will arise 
 and take wing out of the woods and 
 fields and hillsides of the Big Valley 
 in which they have so long lain asleep. 
 
 But the Great Expectancy, which 
 was the chief among the dreams, is 
 having a resurrection already — with- 
 
i6 THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
 out waiting for the Judgment Day, — 
 unless indeed that day is now upon 
 us; and if it is to be born again, it 
 shall be here in the Big Valley where 
 it was first conceived, and where it 
 went beside me, so constantly, albeit 
 so elusively, through all those early 
 days. 
 
 If I am doubtful of the good taste 
 of the personal pronoun, I rejoice to 
 think that there are other and bigger 
 things in the world at present than 
 good taste; life has surged up, and 
 overflowed its dykes too far to be 
 stagnated in the cockle-shells and sil- 
 ver bells of the small proprieties. 
 Moreover, what I seek to offer 
 through the narrow medium of self 
 is, I know, a flood tide that is pouring 
 
THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 17 
 
 itself into the world through many 
 another channel of personality, and 
 mine will be only one among many. 
 
 I came into the world with a Great 
 Expectancy. Somewhere, sometime, 
 something immense, something won- 
 derful might happen while I was here. 
 What the great event was to be, I did 
 not know; I only knew a vague rest- 
 lessness and waiting. Possibly I sus- 
 pected that the existing order of 
 things was not quite as permanent as 
 older people appeared to think it. 
 Amusingly enough, one of my earliest 
 recollections is of myself trying to re- 
 fute the gloomy statement of an older 
 person that we all had to die, on the 
 ground that the end of the world 
 might come while some of us were 
 
i8 THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
 yet alive, in which case we should be 
 translated to heaven without the for- 
 mality of death. For this contention 
 I believe I had biblical authority to 
 offer. But I was not allowed to offer 
 it; I was told instead that, if I said 
 such a silly thing again, I should be 
 sent to bed; which of course was no 
 argument, but was, I suppose, all that 
 could be expected from elders living 
 in a finished world. 
 
 My world, however, was not fin- 
 ished; it had not really begun, and I 
 was waiting from moment to moment 
 for the curtain to go up. I opened 
 many a door, thinking that each 
 might be the magic one that would 
 give on the great adventure. And 
 they all disclosed delightful bits of 
 
THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 19 
 
 life, but they all stopped just short of 
 what I was seeking. Perhaps I should 
 never have felt that there was any 
 big unseen thing afoot in the world — 
 any romance just there behind the 
 curtain — if I had not lived so close 
 to nature. Some say that they are of 
 Paul and some of ApoUos, but I was, 
 first of all, of the Big Valley, of its 
 woods and its fields, its wide sky and 
 its mountains. They lifted me out 
 of the littleness of self, and what 
 they first suggested, Paul and Apol- 
 los, Wordsworth and Blake later on 
 elaborated. There was always a cer- 
 tain adventure in going into the 
 woods alone. When I pushed through 
 the undergrowth and emerged under 
 the trees, as the bushes swung to be- 
 
20 THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
 hind me, intangible doors closed on 
 the outer world and inner doors 
 opened. If I could not exactly say 
 with Wordsworth, — 
 
 There was a time when meadow, grove and 
 
 stream 
 The earth and every common sight, 
 To me did seem 
 Apparelled in celestial light, — 
 
 at least I constantly expected that I 
 might see them thus. There was al- 
 ways a chance that that something 
 else that was there might drop its cur- 
 tain of woods and grass and birds, 
 and suddenly stand forth revealed. I 
 hoped and feared that some day I 
 might meet Pan. 
 
 Later I pursued this will-o'-the- 
 
THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 21 
 
 wisp of expectancy through many 
 other things. That was after Nature, 
 my first love, had begun somewhat to 
 relax her hold, knowing full well, the 
 wise old woman, that she had set her 
 image and superscription upon my 
 heart forever ; knowing that, no mat- 
 ter how occupied the rest of me might 
 be, there would always be a little sen- 
 tinel of love deep within me, who 
 could never see any of her merry chil- 
 dren, bird, bee, or blossom, without 
 answering with a gay and affectionate 
 salute. 
 
 But while Nature had awakened 
 love and drawn me ever on a quest of 
 wonder and reverence that was out- 
 side of my own small self, the other 
 things too often played on vanity 
 
22 THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
 with extravagant promises. Well, I 
 never really believed them; for, when 
 one grows up with mountains rather 
 than molehills against which to meas- 
 ure one's self, one's importance be- 
 comes amusingly small. Indeed, 
 'Why so hot, little man'?' But at 
 last I grew weary of the chase, de- 
 ciding that if there were any great ad- 
 venture it was not in the mirage of 
 the just beyond, but rather in a clear- 
 ing of the inner vision by a passion- 
 ate devotion to the least and simplest 
 events of everyday life. In which re- 
 flection I was no doubt nearer to 
 clutching the hem of Truth's garment 
 than I had been at any time since 
 childhood, when Nature, through the 
 medium of the Big Valley, sought so 
 
THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 23 
 
 tenderly and so charmingly to open 
 my eyes. 
 
 So, like a spectator at the play, I 
 had come early, and waited so long 
 for the performance to begin, that I 
 had almost dropped asleep in my 
 chair, when suddenly, with a crash, 
 the curtain flew up on a drama so 
 amazing, so titanic, so overwhelming, 
 that one's very breath was snatched 
 away in horror. In the wink of an 
 eye we beheld the old stable world 
 that we knew go up in fire and smoke 
 — vanish like the snows of yesteryear. 
 
 'Just think,' commented a friend of 
 mine, looking at two little girls of 
 five and six, 'these children will not 
 be able to remember what the world 
 was like before the war.' No, that 
 
24 THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
 is past history now. Where are those 
 old years of 1911, 1912, 1913'? They 
 seem ages away across there in the 
 sunshine of the past, with a black 
 chasm yawning between us. Never 
 did history leap so abruptly from one 
 epoch to another. Some of us do not 
 even yet realize the change. We 
 think that when peace returns, the 
 old world as we knew it will return 
 with it. And in that hope we are 
 still trying to pull the remnants of 
 that old world up over our ears to 
 shut out the tremendous footfalls of 
 the oncoming new. We think to pla- 
 cate the ravenous times with little 
 sops of service, a little knitting, a 
 little patriotism, a little Red Cross 
 work, as if one sought to defend one's 
 
THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 25 
 
 self with a knitting-needle against the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. Like the man 
 in the parable, we had built snug ma- 
 terial barns, and thought ourselves 
 safe, when suddenly God said, 'Thou 
 fool, this night is thy soul required of 
 thee.' 
 
 Can Fate be moving toward such 
 an overwhelming event, just there be- 
 hind the curtain of human sight, and 
 no one in the world have any presci- 
 ence of it? Did not the coming 
 events cast their shadows before in all 
 the wild restlessness of the first years 
 of the century ? And did not some of 
 us perhaps invite ourselves into life 
 for this very period? Since time im- 
 memorial there has been the belief 
 that the spirit, before it enters the 
 
26 THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
 world, pulling the dark veil of time 
 and matter over the eyes, has chosen 
 its entry with a foreknowledge of 
 what that period in life is to hold. 
 What if some of us came into the 
 world for the very sake of these tre- 
 mendous times'? Can this be true? 
 Who knows ? Not I, at least. I know 
 only that, if it were true, when we got 
 back to the other side, and stood at 
 the crossroads of eternity, where we 
 could look both forward and back, 
 we should be deeply humiliated if, 
 when the great events which we had 
 sent our spirits forth to meet had ar- 
 rived, they had so overwhelmed us 
 that we went down into despair be- 
 fore them, instead of meeting them 
 with courage and high hearts, and 
 
THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 27 
 
 weaving out of them some great re- 
 demption. 
 
 I would not force the idea either 
 that the Great Expectancy which in- 
 vited me through all the early years 
 — as it doubtless invites most young 
 people — was any veiled prophecy of 
 the coming of a world-war. But one 
 begins now to hope that that expect- 
 ancy, which was no doubt the spirit 
 groping through the dark, may yet 
 out of all this world-agony come to 
 a fuller realization. Shall nothing 
 spiritual be born for the world out 
 of all this grief? Shall old Aunt 
 Livy weep all alone for her little 
 nephews, in vain ; and Europe be cru- 
 cified for no resurrection *? 
 
 We have been like bewildered mar- 
 
28 THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
 iners swept by a dark tidal wave out 
 of all our bearings, and, like the sail- 
 ors of Columbus, we too at times have 
 been mutinous with fear. 
 
 They sailed and sailed as winds might 
 
 blow, 
 Until at last the blanched mate said: 
 'Why, now not even God would know, 
 Should I and all my men fall dead. 
 These very winds forget their way. 
 For God from these dead seas is gone. 
 Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and 
 
 say — ' 
 He said: 'Sail on I sail on! and on!' 
 
 And well, indeed, has it been for 
 any of us who could hear a brave 
 voice crying through the dark, 'Sail 
 on, and on,' for now at length that 
 voice begins to be justified. In 1914, 
 the old world, as we knew it, sud- 
 
THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 29 
 
 denly became without form and void 
 and darkness was upon the face 
 of the deep ; but now we begin to be- 
 lieve that all the time the spirit of 
 God was moving upon the face of the 
 waters, and that presently He shall 
 say, 'Let there be light/ 
 
 The first act of the great drama 
 was war and blood and destruction, 
 and the second act was the same, 
 more agony, more grief, terror, and 
 destruction; but now there begins to 
 be a great hope flaring through the 
 darkness in many different quarters, 
 and the voices of watchmen set 
 upon towers begin to cry the glim- 
 mer of daybreak. Perhaps the world 
 sailing a dark track has all along 
 been headed toward a great con- 
 
30 THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
 summation — 'Time's burst of dawn.' 
 
 One holds no brief for war. This 
 new thing was knocking at the doors 
 of the world before 1914, and no one 
 can say whether the war has hastened 
 or retarded its entry; but perhaps it 
 was inevitable that the old world of 
 the materialist, topheavy with its 
 overweening pride, should, like the 
 devil-possessed swine of the Scrip- 
 tures, rush violently down a steep 
 place to its own destruction, and in 
 the throes of its titanic suicide pull 
 the rest of the world temporarily 
 down with it. Moreover, when man 
 is well and prosperous and full of 
 himself, there seems to be little room 
 for God; but when his prosperous 
 
THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 31 
 
 world comes suddenly to an end, it 
 leaves within him a vacuum of de- 
 spair, into which the Spirit may pour 
 itself. Perhaps also we hold too 
 cheaply beliefs for which we are never 
 called upon to die. The early Chris- 
 tians did not take their faith lightly 
 — they knew that at any moment 
 they might have to offer their lives 
 for it, and a thing that one dies for 
 is a precious thing. We had forgot- 
 ten that we could die for ideals, and 
 when enough have fought and bled, 
 those who are left may accept from 
 their hands, with a stricken reverence, 
 the hyssop of Eternal Truth, seeing 
 how very deep it has been dipped in 
 the sacrificial blood. 
 
 Some look for a furtherance of de- 
 
32 THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
 mocracy out of this great conflict, 
 and some for a brotherhood among 
 the nations ; but others again look for 
 something more — a fuller incarnation 
 of the Spirit. I could quote many 
 passages from late books and from 
 magazine articles giving voice to this 
 expectancy, but I will take instead the 
 words of a blacksmith — not, it is true, 
 of the Big Valley, but of this state, at 
 least. 
 
 'Yes,' he said, 'there's something 
 new comin' — you can sorter feel it in 
 the air.' 
 
 The first sight is the difficult sight. 
 When one goes into the spring woods 
 to look for hepaticas, at first the 
 woods are gray and dead. At last 
 the eye lights upon a single clump of 
 
THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 33 
 
 blossoms, and then, the sight being 
 cleared, as it were, by this one cluster, 
 suddenly one perceives that the woods 
 are full of bloom. The eye must be 
 attuned to hepaticas; so also the in- 
 ner vision needs its adjustment as 
 well. But catch one glimpse of this 
 great expectancy, and suddenly one 
 realizes that it is bursting forth in 
 every direction. It is the young peo- 
 ple who have the quick, the fresh eye ; 
 their sight has not been too long ac- 
 customed to the old things. And it 
 is natural that they should be the 
 first to offer a response to the oncom- 
 ing of the Spirit. They have not been 
 blind to the terror and awfulness of 
 the time, they have seen the dark- 
 
34 THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
 ness of the tower, they have dared the 
 worst, — 
 
 In a sheet of flame 
 I saw them and I know them all, and yet 
 Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, 
 And blew, 'Childe Roland to the dark 
 tower came.' 
 
 They are the children of the new 
 generation, they are seeing something 
 that their elders cannot always 
 glimpse. 
 
 'They have rediscovered the secret 
 of the Ages of Enthusiasm,' says 
 Maurice Barres. *By this token they 
 are more complete natures than we, 
 and come nearer to fulfilling the type 
 of man made perfect.' And earlier in 
 the same essay, he says, In these 
 young men is taking place a resurrec- 
 
THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 35 
 
 tion of our most glorious days. Some 
 great thing is about to come into be- 
 ing.' And again, 'Have you noticed 
 that they speak constantly of God — 
 that they pray?' 
 
 *Some great thing is about to come 
 into being.' 
 
 'There's something new comin' — 
 you kin sorter feel it in the air.' 
 
 Blacksmiths in West Virginia, and 
 Member of the French Academy echo 
 each other. All over the world there 
 is this feeling, this stir of expect- 
 ancy, — 
 
 Waiting to see some wonder momently 
 Grow out, stand full, fade slow against the 
 sky. 
 
 Yet they are careful not to formu- 
 
36 THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
 late the hope beyond expectancy. 
 Remembering Christ's admonition 
 against the pouring of new wine into 
 old bottles, they await the outpour- 
 ing of this new wine, not anticipat- 
 ing it, or insisting that it shall go into 
 any old inflexible bottle of the past, 
 but offering to it instead the humble 
 and passionate receptacle of a broken 
 and a contrite heart. 
 
 The herald of the times displays a 
 black scroll, but it is shot through 
 with a transcendent gleam, a hope 
 that cries to humanity for a great 
 service, a great faith, and a great sur- 
 render. Shall not this be our gift: 
 that we in America oifer to all the 
 gallant young men who have died for 
 the cause of righteousness, a solemn 
 
THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 37 
 
 consecration and dedication of our 
 hopes to the Great Expectancy *? 
 And bringing what treasures of gold 
 and frankincense and myrrh our souls 
 possess, pay a passionate tribute to 
 their heroic memories in a high- 
 hearted devotion to the blazing hope 
 of the hour. 
 
 If we can make answer in some 
 such way, then indeed may we have 
 confidence that none of old Aunt 
 Livy's tears have been wasted, that 
 none of the unutterably dear and 
 brave Christophers of the world have 
 been offered up in vain. These last 
 have in very truth, like their proto- 
 type, been the Christ-bearers to the 
 world ; and as that Christopher of old 
 carried the mysterious Child through 
 
38 THE GREAT EXPECTANCY 
 
 the raging torrent, so they, breasting 
 a darker and more dreadful flood, 
 have brought his shining spirit back 
 into the world and presented it to hu- 
 manity at this most solemn Time. 
 Shall we fail, then, to accept their 
 poignant gift with anything short of 
 the complete surrender of soul and 
 body? 
 
 What does the future hold*? 
 Agony, death and war, no doubt, but 
 also our own souls^ God, and the 
 Great Expectancy. 
 
iJ^^Ry OF 
 
 ^OA/GRe< 
 
 02, j|«« 
 
 «3S2