V 
 
 f
 
 The End of the Beginning.
 
 The 
 
 End of the Beginning. 
 
 . ^ 
 
 Boston: 
 
 Little, Brown, and Company. 
 1896.
 
 Copyright, 1896, 
 BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 
 Utttbersttg 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. A FRIEND OF THE DEAD .... 7 
 
 II. A BOOKSELLER'S ROOF-TREE ... 30 
 
 III. THE JOY OF LIFE 44 
 
 IV. HERE AND THERE 63 
 
 V. THE SURGE OF THE SEA 98 
 
 VI. AN HEIR OF THE AGES 130 
 
 VII. A SUMMER STORM 154 
 
 VIII. WHAT OF THE NIGHT? 188 
 
 IX. TIME'S FOOL 221 
 
 X. HIPPOCRATES 248 
 
 XJ. ONE OR Two 273 
 
 XII. THE WORLD ROLLS EASTWARD . . . 300
 
 " Life is love, and love is eternity?
 
 THE 
 
 END OF THE BEGINNING. 
 
 I. 
 
 A FRIEND OF THE DEAD. 
 
 dead folks like to have flowers grow 
 over them ? " said the little girl to her 
 self, as she sat on the edge of the stone table 
 that surmounted the old Bexley tomb, and 
 dangled her legs optimistically. Amoret's 
 own handful of whiteweed and buttercups had 
 been plucked outside the mossy brick wall and 
 rusty iron gate at the front of the churchyard ; 
 for -her seven-year-old conscience had some 
 how guessed that even constant visitors should 
 not take liberties in an enclosure of which, 
 after all, the underground inhabitants were the 
 proper owners. But her eye was caught by 
 the solid green and red buds, plentifully burst 
 ing on the tangled old rose-bush just beyond
 
 8 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 the tomb; while, a little farther off, she saw 
 the waterless vase, the snow-soaked ribbon, the 
 withered leaves, and the dirty white live-for 
 ever that lay on a last year's grave. It seemed 
 clear that buried people did not wish to be 
 forgotten all at once, and that they agreed 
 with her in thinking flowers the prettiest 
 things in any world. 
 
 Nobody ever put any flowers on the crum 
 bling yellow marble of the Bexley memorial, 
 or took the time to try to spell the letters of 
 the inset metal tablet that commemorated the 
 alleged virtues of Anthony, armiger, and 
 Priscilla his wife. But the slab, resting table- 
 wise on four carved pillars of not impossible 
 height, was a favorite place for Amoret to 
 play tea. One of the legs, to be sure, was 
 suspiciously insecure, seeming to hang from 
 the top rather than to support from beneath ; 
 and ever since a woodchuck and a subsequent 
 rainstorm had visibly burrowed into the mys 
 teries below, Amoret had not been untouched 
 by occasional ideas of mortal collapse and 
 confusion at her little banquets. 
 
 Sometimes she was all alone when she ate 
 her bits of ginger-snap and apple, and drank 
 sweetened water in economical sips from a tiny 
 cup whose thickness was somewhat dispropor 
 tionate to its height. Now and then she in-
 
 A Friend of the Dead. 9 
 
 vited Joan and Bob to share the festivities; 
 but the lively Joan, being a little older, was 
 afraid of graveyards, and told too many buga 
 boo stories, while Bob was only a boy, and 
 therefore could not be expected to know that 
 it was improper to eat a whole apple all at 
 once, or to throw away his teacupful of sweet 
 ened water because it was too warm to be fit 
 to drink. 
 
 Amoret had never been afraid of death, and 
 always liked to come to the " death's-acre," 
 the funny phrase her grandfather had used the 
 other day, when, pet doll in hand, she was 
 starting out for an afternoon in this favorite 
 haunt. Once, to be sure, she had seen a dead 
 man in a box they called a coffin ; and that 
 box, after more or less singing and talking, 
 had been buried in a neatly-cut hole in this 
 very ground ; now there was a pile of fresh 
 dirt heaped over it, with a pine peg driven in 
 at one end, because no gravestone had yet 
 been set up. When she had been lifted in 
 her -grandfather's arms to look at the face of 
 this old Mr. Woodcom, the tailor, as he lay in 
 his coffin, it seemed to her that it was very 
 white ; and she noticed that his dickey was 
 stififer than usual and his scanty hair more 
 carefully brushed, and that he had gone to 
 sleep with his lips tight shut and his eyes a
 
 io The End of the Beginning. 
 
 little open at the bottom of the lids. Then 
 they carried him out, and he never came back 
 again to the shop where he used to work every 
 week-day, or to the old-fashioned garden where 
 he trimmed the bushes every Sunday. She 
 had at first been puzzled by this failure to 
 return, and still more grieved by the obvious 
 thought that, six feet under ground, one could 
 hardly find air to breathe, or water to drink, 
 or a chance to walk, or light to read by, or 
 flowers to pick. But old Mr. Woodcom was 
 at least as well off as the poor little canary 
 she had found dead in the bottom of the cage 
 a month before, and subsequently wrapped in 
 cotton and duly buried with more tears than 
 anybody shed for the tired but not very 
 amiable tailor. The canary, she was sure, 
 could not be unhappy, with a blue ribbon 
 round its neck, and its pink feet so prettily 
 turned upward ; and why should Mr. Wood- 
 corn complain of what was good enough for 
 the little yellow singer? Besides, Amoret's 
 grandfather had told her that the wielder of 
 the scissors had gone " where the wicked cease 
 from troubling and the weary be at rest," 
 which phrase she duly memorized because it 
 sounded pretty, and localized as descriptive of 
 a fairy grotto underground, easily accessible 
 to Mr. Woodcom, the canary, the Bexleys, and
 
 A Friend of the Dead. 1 1 
 
 other graveyard people, but having no ex 
 ternal entrance. 
 
 So Amoret found nothing unpleasant in the 
 graveyard, but many a joyous thing and sunny 
 experience. It was fun to spell out the chil 
 dren's names on the smallest stones, and guess 
 whether the boys and girls were having a 
 good time now, and what they looked like, 
 if they were lively like Joan, or rough and 
 rather selfish like Bob, or as fond of birds and 
 flowers as she. Then, too, the enclosure was 
 attractive in itself, and pleasantly situated. 
 The old brick church at one end was ugly 
 enough, but Amoret did not know it; and she 
 liked to look at the slowly turning vane far 
 up in the sky; to watch the pigeons flutter 
 through the boards of the belfry, or to hear 
 the bell strike the hour which occurrence, 
 bothersomely enough, was regularly at three 
 minutes past the time when the minute-hand 
 pointed straight up to XII. But everything 
 in the gray and gently dilapidated old town of 
 Bellwood seemed a good while ago, or just 
 around the corner; so why should the official 
 timepiece affect any superior or annoying 
 accuracy? 
 
 Church, graveyard, and surmounting elms 
 certainly made a place to please young eyes 
 or old. The turfy yard was a little beyond the
 
 1 2 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 small bustle of the village, and it had no near 
 or constant neighbor but the slow river that 
 passed in a leisurely curve on its southward 
 way. Amoret's grandfather, the old book 
 seller, who used to like to walk here of a Sun 
 day afternoon, once solemnly said that the 
 stream was a " life-in-death, like the proces 
 sion of vitality toward mortality." Just what 
 this meant was not apparent to Amoret's small 
 brain, and it made the yard seem a little more 
 shivery than before until she saw the sun 
 light dancing on the waters under the pine- 
 clad hill on the opposite bank, and heard the 
 first thrush of the season call from a shady 
 four-o'-clock nook still farther away. 
 
 Week-days, indeed, there used to be swift 
 trains on the railroad that somewhat incon 
 gruously filled the narrow space between the 
 graveyard fence and the river. Once Amoret 
 was standing by the iron door of an old tomb 
 at the eastern end of the yard, and the passing 
 rumble of the flying wheels jarred its door so 
 that it audibly rattled. Joan was there, too, 
 and ran away with a scream, saying that she 
 was sure the buried people were shaking it 
 and trying to get out; but Amoret knew 
 better, for she had often stood on the wooden 
 bridge that crossed the tracks nearer home, 
 and had felt the boards tremble in the increas-
 
 A Friend of the Dead. 13 
 
 ing roar of the coming locomotive. Some 
 times, on such occasions, the smoke and the 
 racket made it seem advisable to jump down 
 from her perch on the bridge rails, over which 
 peered her bravely determined little face ; but 
 usually she endured the coming of the train 
 more courageously than, in her dreams, she 
 ever could await the approach of the immiti 
 gable countenance that sometimes came on 
 and on, nearer and larger and grimmer, until 
 she awoke with a cry that brought grandpa to 
 her bedside. This was Amoret's one horrid 
 vision of the night, shared by many a child, 
 and sometimes half remembered when a weary 
 man ends life and all by throwing his tired 
 body and harassed brain beneath the oncom 
 ing engine whose headlight lures him like the 
 moth to the fruitless flame. For the most 
 part, however, Amoret's night was long and 
 dreamless, unless, just at dawn, she had visions 
 of some strange power of keeping herself afloat 
 in the air by just wishing to do so, a power 
 she was sure was possessed by every one of 
 the dead people who had gone to their under 
 ground fairyland after the uncomfortable pre 
 liminary of burial. 
 
 As far as the railroad was concerned, the 
 people under the gravestones did not care for 
 it at all, in Amoret's opinion ; nor did most of
 
 14 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 the faces that flew by in the car-windows give 
 so much as a single glance at the tombstones, 
 or the church-tower, or the pigeons, or Amoret 
 and the flowers. Amoret, however, was rather 
 glad that the railroad ran so near; for, after 
 all, when she was tired of her tea-table on the 
 tombstone, or of putting vexatiously big flow 
 ers in her doll's fluffy hair, or of watching the 
 birds and wondering what they were saying, 
 she liked to hear the whistle of the up-train, 
 and to have a chance to run and see the busi 
 ness-like engine and its following of cars, all 
 acting just as though they were the most im 
 portant things in the world. 
 
 Children and puppies have a catholic in 
 terest in things in general ; and life, to Amoret's 
 happy little self, was so pleasant a thing that 
 she was inclined to personify not only grave- 
 dwellers and locomotives, but such trees or 
 hills or houses as most struck her fancy, 
 windows, at any rate, looked just like eyes. 
 Thus she had plenty of companions, and in 
 the common fashion of childhood, she was so 
 exceedingly busy all day long that at early 
 bedtime she was very tired, but not half 
 through. 
 
 One night, when she had climbed into her 
 grandfather's lap after a somewhat unusually 
 complicated day, she informed that individual
 
 A Friend of the Dead. 1 5 
 
 that the world was so full of things that she 
 did n't have time to catch up. " You little 
 rascal," said he, " when I hold you in my lap I 
 have to carry a poet, a painter, an architect, a 
 soldier, a playwright, an actor, a baby-tender, 
 a preacher, a cook, a botanist, and the pro 
 prietor of a menagerie ; " but the conglomera 
 tion of personalities was fast asleep, and missed 
 the compliment. 
 
 To crowd the time the more, as Amoret 
 soon found out, there were the four seasons 
 and the twelve months, with their procession 
 of beautiful things set right before the eyes 
 of a New England child. In March the wind 
 in the north and the sun in the south held 
 pitched battles, and sometimes the early dande 
 lion on a warm housebank got covered with two 
 feet of snow. The first of April the holes in the 
 river ice grew bigger, and the patches of water 
 by the banks stretched wider; until at length, 
 with crash and grinding and stately sweep, the 
 ice went out and the spring freshet rose so 
 high that it swept back into the cellar of grand 
 father's bookshop. Then Amoret would sit in 
 the eastward window and watch the great ice- 
 sheets go sailing down the strong current in 
 the middle of the stream ; while alongshore 
 the lazier and reluctant cakes went grumbling 
 and fighting like polar bears disturbed in their
 
 1 6 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 sleep. And spring flew in as winter floated 
 out, for then came the chipping-sparrows and 
 began their monotonous, cricket-like song on 
 the tree across the street; and the frogs piped 
 at nightfall on the marshland of the Plains. 
 
 Sometimes May-day was lovely and some 
 times it was shivery, but soon the May-flowers 
 surreptitiously stole forth on Clark's hill, right 
 on the heels of the belated snow, which still 
 lay unmelted in dark hollows here and there, 
 beneath the stumpy hillsides most liked by 
 the pink and white blossoms. Picking May 
 flowers, thought Amoret, was like finding coins 
 in dreams first one by chance, and then 
 more, and then a handful. 
 
 And June ! Amoret thought God must have 
 made June just for fun. There was more green 
 ness than flowering, and never a fruit as yet; 
 the world seemed just old enough to be rich 
 and full, but not so old as to suggest any 
 troublesome past. As for the future, if you 
 thought of it, the idea meant nothing but 
 the going on and on of such joy as each 
 new morrow of early summer found waiting 
 at hand. One small girl's head could not take 
 it all in; but that head philosophized a good 
 deal, though not for long at a time. The ever 
 lasting Why of childhood got its answers 
 from within as well as from without; for
 
 A Friend of the Dead. 1 7 
 
 when Amoret was dissatisfied with replies 
 she thought evasive or insufficient, she fell 
 back on the right to put old truths into new 
 theologies. Of all the creeds of the world a 
 child's is not the worst. 
 
 Little by little, as she grew older, Amoret 
 learned the names of May's, June's, and July's 
 flowers, but she loved the blooms before she 
 knew what they were called. Sometimes she 
 made up names for them, especially when 
 she found them " all by her lone," and loved 
 them with the pride of original discovery. 
 Wakerobin, and marsh-marigold, and Dutch 
 man's breeches were good enough names, and 
 she retained them ; but at first she called vio 
 lets " old-woman's blue dresses," after she had 
 picked one to pieces and seen the two little 
 legs in their tub; while bloodroot was " white- 
 carpet," columbines were " red-tassels," and 
 anemones were " wood-flowers." As the sum 
 mer went on, the roses were the best loved, 
 and the wild ones the dearest of all, though 
 they persisted in reddening the northern wood- 
 paths a month later than they ought, accord 
 ing to a little poem Amoret knew by heart. 
 Then the homely dandelions were always at 
 hand with all their miscellaneous uses : little 
 piping trumpets, greens for the dinner-table, 
 ringlets over the ears, and fortune-telling fluft
 
 1 8 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 to be blown away with one prodigious blast of 
 distended cheeks. And there was plenty of 
 the whiteweed the farmers hated and the city 
 visitors called daisies; of bluets all over the 
 meadow; and of buttercups the children held 
 under each other's chins to see whether they 
 liked butter or not. 
 
 Once, on a long-memorable day in late sum 
 mer, when her grandfather took her for ever 
 so long a walk in the woods, Amoret found 
 an Indian pipe, just like the one Mike Bryan 
 smoked, only whiter, and growing in the shade 
 of some big trees. She took it home and laid 
 it away in cotton to keep forever, it was so 
 pure and pretty, only, alas ! to find it, a little 
 later, all black and clammy, like a corpse-plant 
 indeed. But if blooms would decay, or shrivel 
 like the flower-de-luces that used to be so 
 pretty, more could be got next day, or next 
 year, for Amoret at length attained to a knowl 
 edge of time's boon as well as its bane ; of 
 " by and by " as well as " never again." 
 
 Overhead, in the time between mayflower 
 and golden-rod, many a bird nested and sang. 
 Up in the graveyard trees were robins, and 
 orioles, and kingbirds and sparrows, while out 
 in the open fields to the northward the bobo 
 link " flew in scallops," as Amoret said, and 
 sang his delirious song on his way to his teet-
 
 A Friend of the Dead. 19 
 
 ering perch down among the tallest grasses 
 and clovers. It was plenty of work for one 
 small girl to watch the procession of songsters 
 from the arrival of the first bold robin while 
 snow was still on the ground, until, in late fall, 
 the modest little flocks of nondescript flyers 
 used silently to flit through the wayside bushes 
 and flutter away together at the sound of an 
 approaching step. They came from nowhere 
 and went somewhere ; " down south," said 
 Bob, superciliously, in an expression as vague 
 in Amoret's mind as would have been the 
 " land east of the sun and west of the moon." 
 More methodical were the wild ducks, that 
 migrated in a business-like V with some strong- 
 minded leader at the advancing point. 
 
 To Amoret there was a special charm about 
 the high-flying birds, such as the chimney 
 swallows that came out of the big chimney of 
 the old academy on cloudy days or at sunset 
 time. How they skimmed, and swam, and 
 darted, and turned ! And then at late twilight 
 they- all formed in a great ring that slowly 
 circled above the square top of the yawning 
 brick flue, until one broke away and darted 
 down into the sooty monument, followed by 
 two or three, and at last by the whole ring 
 that swiftly poured in until every bird was out 
 of the air, and it seemed as though the whole
 
 20 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 chimney could contain no more, but must be 
 all wings and flutter and chatter. 
 
 It would take a book to tell of everything 
 that Amoret saw as the year went by; once 
 she began to make such a book, but her slow 
 printing got no farther than the top of the 
 fourth page, with nothing said as yet about 
 the long drought of that melancholy August, 
 when the forlorn air was full of smoke from 
 the burning Canadian woods, and the sun 
 hung in the murky sky like a great copper 
 pot, and all the little girls were sure something 
 awful was going to happen ; or the hot day in 
 middle September, so swiftly followed by a 
 premonition of coming frost; or October's 
 red maples and purple-brown oaks ; or 
 November's leafless trees and six-pointed 
 crystal stars falling on your sleeve at Thanks 
 giving time ; or December's snow-fort ; or the 
 old horse on the river in January, walking to 
 and fro to plow the cutter's lines on the two- 
 foot ice. And then there was that wonderful 
 sleigh-ride in February, when the moon was 
 full and every twig and stone and sweep of 
 crusted snow was covered with a glassy 
 coat of pure transparency. As the sleigh- 
 bells jingled past her summer haunt in the 
 graveyard that night, Amoret looked through 
 the glittering rods of the iron gate, and
 
 A Friend of the Dead. 21 
 
 thought the old stones prettier than ever in 
 their moonlit glory. She was rather glad, 
 however, to be safe at home, by the freshly 
 kindled fire, when her grandfather told her 
 an old story of his boyhood days, of which 
 this shining night had reminded him. 
 
 " Well, little lass," said he, " it was many a 
 year ago, late in the winter, that this river 
 behind us lay as still and white as it does to 
 night. It no longer carried any boats on its 
 swift current down to the sea, or stopped to 
 play in quiet nooks with the drooping boughs 
 that hung over its edges. Surly old winter, 
 you see, had looked at it, and just his glance 
 had buried its strength and its playfulness 
 under a coat of ice, and then had spread a 
 blanket of soft snow on the top. So, for the 
 time, what used to be a highway to the ocean 
 seemed just like a part of the solid earth, or, 
 rather, one great long bridge, which was a 
 comfort to those who lived in the houses 
 scattered on the hillsides along the river. 
 Th& farmer and his wife could go to the store, 
 where he sat smoking and spitting and talk 
 ing politics, while she traded butter and eggs 
 for alpaca or bombazine, without having to 
 drive all the way round by the old wooden 
 bridge. 
 
 " So the new highway was covered with
 
 22 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 straight or crooked paths, all tending, like a 
 section of a big spider's web, to one point: 
 the little village that hugged the steep hillside 
 on the west bank of the river. The youngsters 
 had sleighing parties on the ice, and the elder 
 folk of pious minds rejoiced in a short and 
 easy way of getting to meeting on Sundays. 
 
 " But that Saturday afternoon in late Feb 
 ruary it seemed as though all weathers came 
 together and flouted each others' faces." 
 
 "What does 'flouted' mean?" said Amoret, 
 with her head snugly tucked in her grand 
 father's elbow. 
 
 " Oh, made fun of each other," said he. 
 "At any rate, it dripped, and rained, and 
 sleeted, and snowed ; it smiled in sunshine, 
 wept in showers, and roared in great gusty 
 winds ; until, late at night, there hung icicle- 
 spears from the stiff arms of the trees that had 
 got all tired out with their waving to and fro. 
 Then something happened down on the frozen 
 river, unbeknownst to the villagers, whom the 
 freezing wind had driven close to their kitchen 
 stoves and sent pretty early to bed. 
 
 " The night grew darker and darker, and the 
 wind roared louder, while thicker and faster 
 fell the sharp sleet that cut like needles. And 
 just think of it! All alone with the winter 
 weather, trying to cross the river, was a with-
 
 A Friend of the Dead, 23 
 
 ered and bent old man. Staggering along, he 
 had to stop every half-dozen steps, to catch 
 his breath, and to hunt for the path that grew 
 harder and harder to find and keep. Getting a 
 glimpse of a light in one of the houses on the 
 hill, he would stop and call for help : a hope 
 less, dreary call that hardly served to make 
 any louder the shriek of the blast that took it 
 from him. His hat was gone, and his poor 
 thin gray hair was whisked about in the wind ; 
 and his torn old coat flapped round him, 
 threatening every minute to fly off in the dark 
 ness. Oh, dear ! As he went dragging slowly 
 along, shivering in his rags, falling again and 
 again, his face bleeding from the sharp cut of 
 the sleet, the old fellow would have been a 
 sorry sight, if anybody had been there to 
 see. 
 
 " But the old man had with him a friend, 
 the friend that had broken his wife's heart; 
 the friend that had scattered his children 
 among strangers; the friend that had ruined 
 his life ; the friend for whose sake he had given 
 up love, honor, happiness, and who had now 
 driven him, a homeless wanderer, out into the 
 night and the storm. This friend he pressed 
 now and again with eager lips, or hugged closely 
 with his stiff, blue fingers and aching arms, 
 while the storm grew wilder, and his own little
 
 24 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 strength failed more and more with each icy 
 gust." 
 
 "Why didn't his friend help him?" said 
 Amoret " I think it was real wicked." 
 
 " You '11 see," said the story-teller, coming 
 back to the intelligence of his hearer. 
 
 " At any rate, as he stumbled and picked him 
 self up again and again, alone with his jug in the 
 fearful night, he kept muttering all the while. 
 What did he think, little girl, if he could think, 
 and what did he say, when at last, with a sigh 
 of relief, he sank back to rest a little? Per 
 haps, like Falstaff of old, ' a' babbled of green 
 fields.' " 
 
 " Was his friend nothing but a jug ? " queried 
 the wide-awake listener. " And who was 
 Falstaff?" 
 
 " I '11 tell you sometime," said he ; " one 
 story at a time. 
 
 " As the night wore on, the storm raged it 
 self out; the wind sank to a sort of little 
 moan; and the sleet became just a cold, dull, 
 straight pouring rain that froze as it fell. 
 After midnight it stopped, and the blast carried 
 all the clouds away, leaving the air so clear 
 that the shining stars looked down as if all 
 polished new, and a deep breath was like a 
 drink of cold water fresh from some woodsy 
 spring.
 
 A Friend of the Dead. 25 
 
 "When morning dawned you never saw 
 such a pretty picture. Of all the lovely things 
 in the world : the bright yellow-green mistiness 
 of budding leaves in spring; the dark, rich 
 luxuriance of summer; the gorgeous colors of 
 autumn; the pure white of winter; shining 
 sunlight on a quiet sea; or the awful beauty 
 of a mighty storm, none could be so unearthly 
 as the one that came that February Sunday 
 morning. It was just as though you had been 
 suddenly transplanted to a new planet where 
 there was no warmth, no color, nothing but 
 clear, cold, glittering purity. Why, hills and 
 fields and river lay smooth and white, with 
 millions of little sparkles of light on the icy 
 crust; while every tiny twig of every bush 
 and tree, all snug in its perfect coat of ice, 
 looked as if crusted with diamonds. The 
 whole world was one great jewel that lay 
 flashing and glowing in the rays of the morn 
 ing sun." 
 
 " Was it prettier than to-night? " said Amoret. 
 
 "-} 'm afraid it was," candidly said her grand 
 father. 
 
 " I just don't believe it," retorted the incred 
 ulous agnostic. 
 
 " At any rate," he went on, " the next thing 
 you noticed was the sound of the church bells, 
 thin, and cold, and clear. Far away the
 
 26 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 circles of sound spread in the rarefied air, till 
 over in ' the gully ' [" I know where that is," 
 affirmed Amoret], where Sunday was hardly 
 noted as it passed, they sounded their call and 
 their wail [" I know that, too," said she] : 
 
 " ' Come to church come to church come to church ; 
 They won't come they won't come they won't 
 come.' 
 
 "A good many did come, however, even 
 from a long distance, over the glare of ice. 
 The horses were sharp-shod, and the day so 
 glorious that everybody felt a longing to go 
 out into the crisp air. So half an hour before 
 the time for service there was quite a crowd in 
 front of the meeting-house. They came in all 
 sorts of queer old sleighs, well bundled up, 
 the men's big mufflers keeping out the cold, 
 and the women's green veils the intense light. 
 The village people, too, were getting ready 
 for meeting ; and the mothers, having washed 
 dishes and faces, brushed hair and hats, and 
 found mittens and goloshes for all the rest of 
 the household, were taking a quiet minute for 
 themselves. 
 
 "All at once, a little quiver of excitement 
 was spread through the village by the an 
 nouncement made by the many small boys 
 who had their faces glued to the window-
 
 A Friend of the Dead. 27 
 
 panes, that an ox-team was coming up the hill. 
 Such a Sabbath sight wasn't common in that 
 old-fashioned community, and so every one 
 wondered what it could mean. And folks 
 wondered still more when, as the team came 
 nearer, they saw the slow oxen drawing a 
 woodsled with something on it covered by a 
 horse-blanket. As it came nearer, the men 
 found they had business that called them to 
 the front gate ; but those who asked, ' What 
 ye got there?' only received for answer from 
 the walkers beside the team : ' Ye '11 see at the 
 meetin'-house.' 
 
 " When the team finally got there, and the 
 men lifted their queer burden and placed it on 
 the great horse-block, those who came behind 
 could see a sudden stir among the folks already 
 gathered. They moved rapidly to and fro, 
 and pointed, and asked eager questions that 
 no man could answer. All that anybody could 
 say, was : ' We found him on the river, and 
 we brought him to meetin' to see if anybody 
 knovved him.' 
 
 " So, when each new-comer got to the edge 
 of the crowd, he hurried out a ' What is it?' 
 and got for answer a silent gesture toward the 
 centre of the group, while the bystanders fell 
 back and opened the way for him to see a 
 sight he never forgot. Why, ever since, the
 
 28 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 story of that Sunday morning has been told 
 and retold, just as I have been telling it to 
 you, how some went right up to it, while 
 others eyed it fearfully from a distance ; and 
 how the old minister, baring his white head in 
 the chill air, said : ' Dear friends, let us pray 
 here, in this awful presence, that we may all 
 be saved from the power of the dreadful habit 
 that has brought this poor stranger to so sad 
 an end.' One little chap, whose mother tried 
 to prevent his seeing it, caught, round her 
 skirt, just a glimpse with his great gray eyes, 
 and he can see it yet. There, before the 
 meeting-house door, lay a ragged old man, 
 his gray hair spread round his head like a 
 halo, and his thin old arms clasping a jug 
 close to his shrunken body. 
 
 " Who he was, whence he came, whither he 
 was going, nobody knew. But surely this for 
 lorn old drunkard died as no other has ever 
 been known to die : for as he lay there on the 
 hillside, and preached a never-to-be-forgotten 
 sermon, his wretched body was hermetically 
 sealed in a coffin that glittered clear and pure 
 in the brilliant sunlight; a coffin as transparent 
 as air, as cold as death a coffin of ice!" 
 
 As the old man finished his story he sat in 
 silent thought, and looked at the quiet little 
 flames that wavered over the half-burned sticks
 
 A Friend of the Dead. 29 
 
 of the open fire ; for he had been one of the 
 small boys who saw the vitrified body years 
 agone. 
 
 At length his thoughts came back to the 
 serious little face before him, aglow in the 
 firelight; and he wondered whether he had 
 been thoughtless in telling the child so grue 
 some a tale. But just as he brought back his 
 wandering thoughts, and turned to Amoret 
 with a pleasant smile on his thin old face, and 
 was about to say, " Don't grieve, lassie mine ; 
 it was ever so long ago," she anticipated him 
 with slowly spoken words : " Was n't it lovely, 
 grandpa? for just as soon as he died he knew 
 all about everything ! "
 
 30 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 II. 
 
 A BOOKSELLER'S ROOF-TREE. 
 
 AMORET WENTON, child, had her home 
 with her grandfather, Thomas Welby, 
 bookseller. Her father, who bore the resonant 
 name of Montague Outerbridge Wenton, had 
 been a genius or a ne'er-do-weel, according to 
 the bias of those who commented on his brief 
 career. The antiquity of his family had be 
 come a certain attenuation in himself, so that 
 its ancient power in politics or in large land- 
 schemes fluttered but fitfully in his year or. two 
 of painting, his briefer study of the principles 
 of symphonic composition, and his invention of 
 a portentous rapid-firing cannon, which the 
 government was never wise enough to adopt. 
 Finally, for the last few years of his gentle and 
 blameless life, he had actually earned his living 
 as a designer of patterns for oil-cloth carpets, 
 to which utilitarian product he brought a 
 cheery enthusiasm that perhaps was the pater 
 nal precursor of his little daughter's love for 
 things in general.
 
 A Bookseller s Roof-Tree. 31 
 
 Montague Wenton and Alice Welby had 
 been village playmates and school-fellows; 
 they had always loved each other, and they 
 had married because neither could imagine 
 any other possibility. The happiness which 
 followed their marriage was but the continu 
 ation of what had preceded it. Poverty, which 
 both had known before, was the pleasanter 
 when shared; and the first swift grief the 
 young wife ever knew was her husband's un 
 looked-for death. One of the twin demons of 
 the New England climate seized him unawares, 
 burned his little body in quick and immitigable 
 fire, and then laid it in the Wenton family 
 burying plot, where it was soon joined by that 
 of wife Alice, drowned in a lonely and woeful 
 riverside ramble by a mishap that forever for 
 bade her father to hear the name of Ophelia 
 without a tear. 
 
 Of all this Amoret remembered nothing and 
 heard little. Her present was lovely, her 
 grandfather lovable; that was enough. In 
 this world of death it chances not seldom that 
 an orphan is left in the care of a mateless and 
 childless grandparent with ample oppor 
 tunity for indiscretion and ill influence on 
 either side. But in this instance the dangers 
 seemed minimized from the start. Poetic babes 
 trail clouds of glory as they come to earthly
 
 32 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 life; other infants suggest mist-banks more 
 fuliginous, and a pre-natal abode less benign. 
 Amoret was simply a natural little child, with 
 the merits and faults that must ever go with 
 childhood. Like a little transcendentalist, 
 she accepted the universe, and the sun, stars, 
 rivers, fields, birds, and flowers took her into 
 their honorable company, at least as a harmless 
 and agreeable ephemeron. 
 
 As far as her grandfather was concerned, half 
 the griefs and disappointments of sixty-five 
 years seemed cancelled by this last gift of the 
 good God. 
 
 If bookseller Welby had been more eccen 
 tric, he would hardly have been a wise guardian ; 
 had he been less so, he would have been com 
 monplace. Everybody knew he was unlike 
 other Bellwood people, and therefore was to be 
 allowed to go his own gait Those who thought 
 him chary of speech admitted that he was 
 scrupulously just in his few words; and re 
 grets that he so seldom went to church for 
 the small congregation of his own faith had dis 
 persed some years before were not made 
 more acrid by any accusations of misdealings 
 in his little business affairs. Some elderly 
 church-members of his own age called him a 
 mere moralist; but on the whole, the com 
 munity was inclined to blame him chiefly for
 
 A Bookseller s Roof -Tree. 33 
 
 not keeping a larger assortment of illiterate 
 trifles and Saturday storypapers. 
 
 Mr. Welby and his shop had grown old and 
 poor together. He was tall and thin, with 
 large ears, high cheek-bones, and firm and 
 clean-shaven face. A fringe of soft white hair 
 stood out at each side of his bald head, and 
 a perfectly straight and slightly thicker growth 
 fell to the top of his coat-collar behind. Heavy 
 eyebrows half covered the outer corners of blue 
 eyes that sometimes twinkled and sometimes 
 glared, but more often were of a merely nega 
 tive character, while the lower lip of his broad 
 and straight mouth protruded a little because 
 of imperfectly-fitting false teeth. Other in- 
 variables, in his outward man, were hexagonal 
 spectacles, usually on the top of his head; a 
 worn broadcloth coat with a zigzag cut at the 
 lapels, and sleeves that made up in length for 
 what they lacked in circumference ; linen that 
 was sometimes frayed, but always scrupu 
 lously white ; and a stock and dickey of such 
 elongated and inflexible perpendicularity as 
 seemed in themselves to secure an unswerving 
 conscience. 
 
 All his life had been spent in the needlessly 
 
 large building he now occupied as shop and 
 
 home. Once it had been filled by a printing 
 
 and publishing-house of local magnitude, in 
 
 3
 
 34 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 the days before book-making became a met 
 ropolitan industry. Many painstakingly manu 
 factured things had gone forth from these 
 old brick walls : an almanac every year, divers 
 moribund newspapers, law reports, some school- 
 books, and a few old classics in verse and 
 fiction. Thomas Welby had been office-boy, 
 typesetter, and salesman in turn; and when 
 the process of dwindling and elimination had 
 left but the bookstore, when the old press 
 was abandoned and the types sold and the lone 
 bookbinder had departed, the middle-aged 
 survivor moved his household effects into the 
 second story of the half-deserted warehouse 
 above the river, and continued to sell books, 
 and slate-pencils, and paper, and a stray maga 
 zine to such buyers as still chanced to come to 
 what had once been dignified as Number I 
 New England row. 
 
 This combination of shop and home was 
 two stories high, with a pair of dormer win 
 dows in its steep roofs in front and rear, and 
 huge chimneys set in the open southern wall. 
 The immediate and inner world of Amoret's 
 childhood and of Thomas Welby's age was 
 accordingly bounded on the north by Num 
 ber 2, on the west by the street, on the south 
 by the slope to the town wharf, and on the 
 east by the dilapidated wharf itself, with the
 
 A Bookseller s Roof-Tree. 35 
 
 lazily treacherous currents of the sparkling 
 river just beyond. Kitchen, sitting-room, and 
 bedrooms took but part of the rambling 
 spaces of the upper stories, while the high 
 basement was big enough for a play ground. 
 Indeed, the whole establishment gave Amoret 
 the constant zest of possible discoveries of 
 almost any sort, pictures, type, ink-rolls, 
 old books and newspapers, and discarded per 
 sonalia of many kinds ; though it was for the 
 most part neat enough, the ancient grime of 
 its typographic days having become a harm 
 less mahogany tone with the lapse of time. 
 The book shop itself, of course, occupied the 
 front on the street, its floor being a foot or 
 two below the impressive inscription chiselled 
 into the stone of the foundation wall on the 
 wharf alley: " Height of water April 4, 1811." 
 Its large front windows were closed at night 
 by thick wooden shutters ; and the huge key 
 hole of the solid front door, with its sober 
 and much-polished brass, suggested ancient 
 ancT solid respectability. Outside the door, in 
 pleasant weather, stood a little portable case 
 of bargains to attract the eye of the passer; 
 the contents of the shelves being graded to 
 fit all purses, from the two-dollar to the five- 
 cent capacity. There were the superannuated 
 and dog's-eared school-book ; the worn liturgy,
 
 36 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 with the former owner's name still unerased ; 
 the heavy treatise in polemical divinity, once 
 read by patient and pious eyes, now covered 
 with thicker dust than rests on its own brown 
 leaves ; the forgotten book of verse, that not 
 even duty made pleasurable to any one save 
 its writer; stray and shabby volumes, that 
 once purported to be Keepsakes or Friend 
 ship's Offerings. Here and there, however, 
 was some piece of early printing, or young 
 sprout of American literature, which tempted 
 the eyes of such bookish loiterers as occa 
 sionally visited the old town, or of Mr. Wel- 
 by's few resident patrons. For the most part, 
 however, these old books were patiently car 
 ried out in the morning and back at night, 
 with few depletions of the shelves, which came 
 to seem almost fixed furniture to their patient 
 proprietor. 
 
 Within, besides volumes of the same sort, 
 and more imposing piles of the complete 
 works of ancient theologians ("the set, 20 vols., 
 sheep, $3"), and divers relics of the former 
 publications of the firm, there was a due array 
 of well-chosen books by standard British and 
 other authors, which, if they were seldom sold, 
 the intelligent dealer declared should never be 
 lacking if anybody asked for them. A book 
 store, he averred, was the intellectual ther-
 
 A Bookseller's Roof-Tree. 37 
 
 mometer of the community, and its owner a 
 missionary of wisdom, a purveyor of brain- 
 food, as well worthy of support as the minister 
 or the butcher, and as much bound to deal in 
 honest wares. But he was used to leading a 
 forlorn hope ; the greater part of his modest 
 gains came from pens and ink, writing-paper 
 and wall-paper, sealing-wax and notebooks, 
 slates for little folks, and legal blanks for their 
 parents. Pennies were as needful as dollars 
 in his scanty trade ; and he made the tiniest 
 sales with the kindly grace and the scrupulous 
 care, though hardly with the inward pleasure, 
 shown in the transfer on some rare and happy 
 day of a sheep-bound Federalist, printed within 
 these very walls, or of that old-time typo 
 graphic marvel of the young nation, Barlow's 
 Columbiad. 
 
 Most singers do not write songs, few actors 
 invent plays, and bookseller-authors are as 
 rare as Samuel Richardsons. But Mr. Welby 
 had his one little secret: he was writing a 
 bopk. Not a soul in the world knew it, not 
 even Amoret, though she sometimes saw him 
 go to the old many-drawered desk in his own 
 room upstairs, take out a red-backed manu 
 script volume, write a few words in it, and 
 then sit long in thought before he put it 
 back into its place. Forty years had it been
 
 38 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 a-preparing ; for its author deprecated modern 
 hurry, and held the whimsey that minds ripen ; 
 that age is fruitage rather than decay; and 
 that men talk and scribble too much and 
 think too little. Accordingly he became critic 
 rather than creator, and had, as toward his 
 own possible volume, a mind curiously divided 
 between intense pleasure in its slow compo 
 sition and an unwillingness to inflict upon a 
 patient world even one more pair of book- 
 covers, though nobody might perchance turn 
 them. 
 
 Mr. Welby's manuscript, then, was a mag 
 num, yet parvum opus, a record oi personalia 
 and penetralia, as he said to himself, when, as 
 often happened, he fell back upon the scanty 
 but serviceable stock of Latin he had got in 
 his boyhood days at Bellwood Academy. On 
 its first leaf was written, in large letters, 
 
 "THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE." 
 with this motto just below: 
 " Hamlet, Act n. Scene 2. 
 
 Pol. What do you read, my lord? 
 Ham. Words, words, words." 
 
 Here, at least, if no winged words, were 
 things that their writer had thought for himself, 
 not read in others' pages, things devout and
 
 A Bookseller s Roof-Tree. 39 
 
 sarcastic, monitory or reflective, yet never, 
 he hoped, frivolous or untrue. Every man, he 
 reasoned, knew himself, plus and minus, best 
 of all; and so, in a way, he had a right to 
 make a book, if but for his own eyes. 
 The foreword was this : 
 
 I give you the world, said God. Throw it away, 
 said Satan. Perhaps, said man. 
 
 And among the entries in the earlier pages 
 were these sentences : 
 
 Humanity rhymes with vanity. 
 
 Lovest thou art? Develop thine own character, 
 for it is the only art-product thou canst carry hence. 
 
 This is the problem of the universe : What is the 
 reason of advantage ? 
 
 Freedom to choose the good is the greatest gift 
 the Unknown has made to man, a gift worth all 
 the woe that is born of the choice of the bad. 
 
 It takes a lifetime to learn the meaning of one 
 word in the schoolboy's Latin grammar : " satis." 
 
 And so the life of the little household ran 
 on. Every morning, soon after the sun had 
 risen above the tops of the tall pines on the 
 hills east of the river, appeared Mr. Welby at 
 the front door of his shop, wearing the old 
 Panama that surmounted his head winter and 
 summer, save when it was replaced by an
 
 4O The End of the Beginning. 
 
 ancient silk hat as he took his walks abroad. 
 Down came the iron bars that held in place 
 the wooden shutters of the windows ; off the 
 door fell the similar protections to its old- 
 fashioned glass panels ; out went the cases of 
 books on the sidewalk; and then was put into 
 the window any attractive new volume, or biblio 
 graphic rarity, or pleasing picture, or standard 
 magazine. Meanwhile breakfast was got by 
 old Nancy Lee, who came in from her neigh 
 boring home to do the morning work, Mr. 
 Welby and Amoret prepared a simple supper 
 for themselves, and then Amoret, in earlier 
 years, sat down to study by herself, or later 
 set out for the village school or the academy. 
 Surrounded by books, she had learned to read 
 almost intuitively, getting her first knowledge 
 of A, B, C from a big volume of type-founders' 
 specimens of fonts. It was fun to pick out 
 the different shapes, to connect them with 
 names or sounds, and then to discover that 
 the printed things could be put together in 
 words, just as could the different noises she 
 made when she spoke. So, at four years, 
 Amoret could read her verses in her little 
 Bible, to and fro with her grandfather, in the 
 morning prayers that always began the day. 
 Then both knelt for a collect or two from the 
 red-edged volume that some Bellwood people
 
 A Bookseller's Roof -Tree. 41 
 
 called heretical and others a caricature, but 
 which probably would have passed muster 
 with Jesus or Paul, and surely would nowa 
 days be called a rather conservative manual of 
 catholic Christianity. Mr. Welby was pious 
 in his own way ; he did not talk religion out 
 side, either for attack or for defence ; he 
 fought his soul-battles by himself, and then 
 tried at least so he thought to be nega 
 tively pure and positively helpful. The founder 
 of Christianity, in the bookseller's view, had 
 established the world-religion because, more 
 clearly than anybody else, he had perceived 
 that hypocrisy is the comprehensive vice of 
 man and self-sacrifice his ultimate virtue. 
 
 Amoret's education took the gentle life for 
 granted, other things coming to her as vulgar 
 surprises ; as when, for instance, she beheld a 
 casual dinner guest reach half across the table 
 to help himself to a boiled potato with his 
 own fork. So it was with the bad things she 
 heard on the street or at school ; angry words, 
 tittle-tattle, calling names, swearing, or the 
 mention of things nobody ought to say. Her 
 grandfather, and her best-liked teachers, and 
 the old ladies who gave her figs, fell into none 
 of these things ; they came to her ears after she 
 had got used to better manners; and so they 
 seemed but deviations from the ought-to-be.
 
 42 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 Two things puzzled Amoret, however, and 
 she soon found, with no little sadness, that 
 they were going to bother her whole life. 
 One was the way in which she was sometimes 
 naughty and knew it all the while ; the other 
 was the large number of folk in the world who 
 were unlike her grandfather, or the old retired 
 minister who used to come to see him, or 
 gentle Miss Annabella More, with the gray 
 curls on her temples, and the Brazil-nuts in 
 her pocket, and the mitts on her hands, and 
 ever so many pretty poems in her memory. 
 If everybody were good and happy and never 
 hurt or shocked one, what an improvement it 
 would be ! Once, when Amoret was a tiny 
 child, and her grandfather was carrying her up 
 stairs to bed, the flickering candle threw a 
 black image on the wall, and the little girl ex 
 claimed, " Shadow," the first word she ever 
 spoke; and so she found that light always 
 makes darkness in this world of ours. 
 
 On the whole, however, she was happy, very 
 happy, but chiefly on account of her loneli 
 ness ; it is easier to manage a private paradise 
 than a public one. Yet Amoret was not selfish, 
 she was sorry for things long before she learned 
 to construe sunt lacrimce rerum. 
 
 As years went on and Amoret looked back 
 on childhood, she was never foolish enough to
 
 A Bookseller s Roof-Tree. 43 
 
 call it the time of happiest days. No woe of 
 manhood or womanhood, she declared, is 
 worse than the boy's or girl's sense of immiti 
 gable misunderstanding by others ; and Amo- 
 ret, when she was a little girl, was sometimes 
 misunderstood.
 
 44 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE JOY OF LIFE. 
 
 ONE summer afternoon, a dozen years be 
 yond the days of her playtimes in the 
 old graveyard, Amoret sat on Hunger Hill. 
 She was still, as of yore, the friend of the dead ; 
 she could not believe that, in a universe whose 
 every atom tingles with force, the soul 
 noblest result of all could in any true sense 
 die. But she loved the dead because she loved 
 life and living ; because Nature's supernal 
 beauty and unending opportunity seem to bind 
 here and there together, and to make a single 
 tense of was, is, and shall be. 
 
 That day the soft June sun fell on the long 
 slope of the hill; bees hummed and butterflies 
 flickered in a gentle air that disturbed not the 
 freedom of their wayward motions; and the 
 grass had a good time in its growing. A half 
 mile away the cool river swept along in a 
 leisurely curve, while far to the west the White 
 Mountain peaks rose skyward in aspiration, 
 the while their lower slopes covered the land
 
 The Joy of Life. 45 
 
 in benediction. In its early summer loveliness 
 the world was more smiling than solemn, and 
 its present beauty and mere enjoyableness left 
 little room for thought; to be was enough. 
 Even the New England conscience is some 
 times lulled or lured away from its dreary 
 habit of introspection, and is content to exist, 
 like Nature. The brightness of the afternoon 
 light, the flicker of the distant water, the good 
 smell of pine trees, warmed by the steady sun 
 and the mild air, promoted a sense that com 
 bined delicious laziness and poetic alertness. 
 As for Amoret, her philosophy had always 
 been optimistic enough ; and to-day, for the 
 very frolic of life, she sat singing to herself a 
 little making of her own : 
 
 Time and space began a race, all on a dateless day ; 
 Run they yet, the goal is set, but ever moves away. 
 
 While Beauty sat thus on the hillside, amid 
 all things sweet, up came Youth with a cheery 
 " Good-afternoon, and good luck to my good 
 old ..friend ! " 
 
 Beauty, in sufficiently truthful word, was 
 Amoret, and Youth was Robert Rodney, New 
 York artist, the roistering and selfish boy Bob 
 of the times of play-tea on the churchyard slabs. 
 Years had gone since Amoret last saw him, for 
 they had parted as school-children when Rod-
 
 46 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 ney went away to study art in nobody knew 
 what European galleries. Yet here again, 
 unmistakable and instantly to be recognized, 
 were the cheery face, the curly mass of light 
 hair, the well-knit sturdiness of active figure, 
 and the ringing voice of yore. Amoret jumped 
 up, tumbled some flowers and leaves out of 
 her lap, and ran toward him in quick happi 
 ness, with no more original or rhetorical wel 
 come than " Why, Robert Rodney, where did 
 you come from? " 
 
 " Everywhere and nowhere," said Robert, as 
 he pulled his cap from his bright head, and 
 returned Amoret's warm handshake with a 
 new desire to make the hearty ceremony as 
 long as possible, and a sudden thought that 
 he never would have dreamed that the tomb 
 stone chit would grow into a being so pictur 
 esque. " Everywhere, for F ve trotted over 
 half Europe since I saw you, and nowhere, 
 because I 'm turned out of one studio and am 
 going to move into a bigger one ; " and mean 
 while he continued his inventory of the details 
 of the figure before him, as though she had 
 been a model. But Amoret though she in 
 stinctively saw that Bob was as handsome as 
 ever, had lost his freckles, had gained polite 
 ness without losing frankness, and that his un 
 questionably pretty hair had concluded not to
 
 The Joy of Life. 47 
 
 be red was so sincerely and spontaneously 
 glad to see him that she really gave her whole 
 welcome to the individual and not to his acci 
 dents. It was too good to be true; here, 
 already, had been this lovely day and her 
 happy dreams, and now came an old play 
 mate, with nobody knew how many bright 
 stories to tell of the world that never gave 
 Bellwood a single thought. 
 
 " Dear me," said she, " so I 'm a good old 
 friend ; you should n't twit on the facts of 
 age." 
 
 " I know how old you are," said he, " nine 
 teen this spring; that's the good of coming 
 home again. In Paris, nobody knows anything 
 about age, anyway; and in New York every 
 woman subtracts x, the unknown and incon 
 stant quantity, from the family Bible record." 
 
 "Do they have Bibles in New York?" 
 queried Amoret. " Well, a citizen of the 
 United States, ' setat. 23,' as our old tomb 
 stones used to say, ought to know better 
 than to laugh at woman's foibles ; " and she 
 sat down on a little knoll of dry moss, while 
 Robert took for his seat a neighboring rock. 
 " Men are every bit as sensitive about their 
 age as women are, and as vain, too." 
 
 " Oh, but you ought to see some of those 
 careless artists and poets on the other side;
 
 48 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 sixteen and sixty are all one to them, and a 
 dress coat or a flannel shirt." 
 
 " As artless, I suppose, as the Oregon bard 
 who wore cowhide boots in London parlors, and 
 insisted on sleeping in a buffalo-robe ; there 's 
 nobody so artificial as the man who is always 
 declaiming against the conventional. It 's easy 
 enough to do as other people do ; it takes a 
 great deal of trouble to be natural," said 
 Amoret, giving a hasty and slightly peniten 
 tial glance at Robert to see whether she was 
 unintentionally criticising him, too ; but reas 
 suring herself by his generally familiar dress, 
 though his waiscoat and necktie were hardly 
 of the prevalent Bellwood order. 
 
 " That 's so," said he ; " but your really great 
 reformer, your giant socialist, your true revo 
 lutionary leader, despises all fashions as mere 
 cant." 
 
 " Of course he does," said Amoret. " Did 
 you ever notice that a revolutionist is a man 
 who can't control himself ? " 
 
 "I'm a revolutionist, then, for the thought 
 of coming back to Bellwood for a few days, 
 while the carpenters were disporting them 
 selves in the university building, popped into 
 my head, and I couldn't control the impulse 
 to do so, right away." 
 
 " I 'm glad you did, for you can tell us rus-
 
 The Joy of Life. 49 
 
 tics about everything ; we don't know whether 
 Notre Dame has towers or a dome, or whether 
 Milo was a sculptor or a town." 
 
 " Oh, never mind about Europe; I want to 
 talk about Bellwood folks, and you, especially 
 the latter," said Robert, noticing once more 
 how pretty Amoret really was. " That was 
 what brought me out of New York, and " 
 with an additional happy thought " up this 
 hill." He had never got over his boyish habit 
 of believing his own improvisations. In fact, 
 Amoret had not come to his mind for five 
 years ; but since, in those years, he had been 
 artistically interested in the Ideal Vision, and 
 here was an unquestionable incarnation of 
 certain elements thereof, he was reasonably 
 satisfied of the inherent truth of his supple 
 mentary remark : " I Ve never forgotten, you 
 see, that there's only one Bellwood in the 
 world, and only one you ! " and he threw off 
 his cap in graceful enthusiasm, and looked 
 Amoret straight in the eye with the spon 
 taneous honesty of youth. 
 
 " That's good," said Amoret, with real pleas 
 ure ; " at least, half of it is. But all this does n't 
 seem natural. We have n't quarrelled more 
 than a quarter of our old stint ; " and she 
 bent and plucked a single daisy with a very 
 long stem, the while a song-sparrow sang 
 4
 
 50 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 like a canary-bird on a neighboring bush, 
 and Rodney noticed the pretty springing of 
 Amoret's wrist. 
 
 Most women, and more men, are homely; 
 yet here on a summer hillside were a very 
 presentable Apollo and Diana of Yankee 
 birth, either of whom was sufficiently pleasant 
 to the eye. Robert Rodney united negative 
 and positive physical merits in an attractive 
 way; he was neither heavy nor thin; not too 
 tall or too short; and combined a pleasant 
 roundness of outline with an activity and 
 bright spontaneity of manner that seemed to 
 make him a perennial boy, and certainly 
 made him a universal favorite, save with the 
 few who instinctively disliked him at the 
 start for his buoyant conspicuousness. His 
 hands and feet were smaller than one usually 
 sees in a man of such physical strength ; his 
 rather large head was covered by a poetic 
 mass of fine, sunny brown hair, which had 
 been his distinction and his annoyance from 
 boyhood; his skin was of delicate texture, but 
 well browned by constant out-door exercise; 
 his eyes, chameleon fashion, veered between 
 green and gray; his teeth were perfect without 
 being prominent; and sometimes his smile 
 was the pleasantest thing one could ask to 
 see. Too happy to be really selfish, he ac-
 
 The Joy of Life. 51 
 
 cepted good and bright things as his kin by 
 right, and simply avoided, as far as he might, 
 people and objects that seemed to him vul 
 gar, or troublesome, or uninteresting. Some 
 drops of Greek blood had evidently wandered 
 through the veins of Saxon ancestors until 
 they vitalized the pulse of this agreeable 
 son of the north-temperate zone in the new 
 world. 
 
 With fair artistic ability, and just money 
 enough to get a decent art education at home 
 and abroad, he had finally set up his easel in 
 the American metropolis. By no means a 
 genius, and clearly lacking both the tact of 
 the schemer and the patience of the artist 
 who works for long results, his quick eye and 
 ready hand, and, most of all, his unfailing 
 good luck, enabled him to avoid the weary 
 days of waiting that confronted most begin 
 ners in the Twenty-third or West-tenth 
 streets of his time. Like some of his latter- 
 day successors in the Fifty-seventh street 
 home of impressions, Rodney sometimes 
 painted unintelligible landscapes in impossi 
 ble yellow, or inscrutable damsels in washed- 
 out green ; but he was almost vexed with 
 himself that, willy-nilly, he turned off so 
 many swiftly painted story pictures, which 
 the philistine public insisted on buying at
 
 52 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 prices that gave him a very comfortable liv 
 ing. How could he help it? things would 
 suggest themselves in Bleecker street and 
 Washington square, up in Sleepy Hollow or 
 down at Perth Amboy; and, after all, was it 
 wicked to paint fruit-stands and baby-carts 
 and old shoemakers? Let them keep out of 
 the way, then ; at least they were not so tire 
 some as Joan of Arc or Saint Mark's. 
 
 Certainly an artistic eye could have had 
 no difficulty in finding a pleasing subject in 
 Amoret. Rodney's not altogether vivid rec 
 ollections of her, stimulated by the present 
 agreeable apparition, reproduced a somewhat 
 plain and silent little girl (save as she talked 
 to herself in her lonely play), with serious 
 eyes, a low forehead, brownish black hair, and 
 scarcely any beauty, save her graceful and 
 spontaneous little motions of hand or head or 
 supple, small body. From that estate Bell- 
 wood had seen her grow into her present sweet 
 girlhood, with its curious combination of 
 childish simplicity and womanly self-reliance. 
 Left largely to herself, with neither father nor 
 mother, brother nor sister, she was a child 
 of the soil, of whom God seemed to have 
 dropped the personal responsibility, leaving 
 her to grow as she would, for his own enjoy 
 ment and that of her small world, like a lily
 
 The Joy of Life. 53 
 
 in a mere. But her cares for her grandfather 
 and the bookshop, and later, her modest money- 
 making ventures of her own, had given her, 
 with all her innocence, a sort of maturity that 
 is never gained by some people who are al 
 ways protected or always thrust aside. Bell- 
 wood, on the whole, hardly appreciated her or 
 knew her, any more than it appreciated its 
 sunsets, or mayflowers, or midnight stars; but 
 now and then somebody said, " Amoret Wen- 
 ton's getting to be quite a pretty girl;" and, 
 at any rate, nobody disliked her. 
 
 Of all this Rodney was yet to learn in his 
 homeward visit. Meanwhile, what did he see ? 
 
 A girl of rather slight figure, and of an 
 average height. Her little artistic heap of 
 dark hair, almost black when not in the sun 
 light, covered her well-shaped head like a 
 fairy's cap, and never seemed to need any 
 attention, being neither smooth nor curly, 
 parted nor put back, but only a bit of Amoret. 
 The forehead was low, the eyebrows slightly 
 arched, the eyes brown and rather far apart, 
 the mouth small, like a solemn little rosebud 
 of half-melancholy curl, the ear-tips just visi 
 ble beneath the airy hair-shock at the side, 
 the nose decidedly unimportant when meas- 
 red by the rest of the face, and slightly "tip- 
 tilted " at that. What right had such a dark
 
 54 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 vision of a wood thought Rodney, as he 
 instinctively, professionally, and unsatisfac 
 torily ran through the inventory just given 
 to a nose that a critic might call inharmoni 
 ous? Just how to reconstruct it, in the 
 painting already half planned, he did not see; 
 and therefore he turned with more satisfaction 
 to the pathetic little hands, the pretty arms, 
 and the sweet symmetry of the sinuous body, 
 at the same time felicitating himself, on gen 
 eral principles, that rosy plumpness in art was 
 entirely out of fashion. 
 
 The little pause for happy thinking that 
 often comes at the very beginning of a pleas 
 ant meeting was broken by Amoret, to whom 
 Robert's apparition was merely one new 
 agreeable in a bright afternoon. " Is n't 
 Bellwood lovel)' ! " she exclaimed with the 
 enthusiasm of a native who really revelled in 
 its granite hillsides and shady ways, and yet 
 knew that sometimes it needed an affectionate 
 defence against heedless visitors, who declared 
 its houses ugly, its streets ragged, its door- 
 yards unkempt, and its people unresponsive. 
 
 "It's God's smile to-day," said Rodney, 
 truthfully enough. He had been wandering 
 through the old familiar town with mixed 
 impressions of pleasure and disappointment; 
 one looks at his birthplace, after years of
 
 The Joy of Life. 55 
 
 absence, as a soul looks at its dead body. 
 Reaching the village by the midnight train, 
 it had pleased his fancy to walk through the 
 slumbering region for an hour or two, touch 
 ing the trees behind which he had many a 
 time played tag; looking at the plain old 
 sleep-stilled houses, whose every chimney he 
 knew so well; and finally, walking round his 
 birthhome and viewing it from every point, 
 like an undisturbed nocturnal burglar of mem 
 ories. He could hardly believe how cramped 
 that native house really was, as far as its 
 immediate surroundings were concerned; but 
 it had been big enough for all his boyish 
 dreams, now well toward fulfillment. " Ghost 
 like I paced round the haunts of my child 
 hood ; " all seemed his, and yet not his ; the 
 realest things in the world, and yet the phan 
 tasm of a dream. The bright stars glittered 
 through the tops of the sturdy horse-chestnut 
 he had set out as a boy, when its sticky top- 
 bud was not so high as his own head; the 
 windows of the house looked like soulless 
 eyes; while up on the stable still stood the 
 flagpole he had put there at the imminent 
 risk of his neck; he remembered that he split 
 the bottom of the staff with a big nail that 
 had nevertheless held the wood in place for 
 all these years. No little home-made flag flew
 
 56 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 there now, and when Rodney went belatedly 
 to bed, his sunny mind was as near the mood 
 of pathos as it ever came. 
 
 Next morning most of those he saw on the 
 streets did not remember him, nor he them; 
 and on the whole the greetings of some few 
 old acquaintances bored him; school play 
 mates had become commonplace, old folks 
 remained tiresome, and the inquiries he had 
 to answer were clumsy or irrelevant. As for 
 asking questions himself, he did not care to, 
 save to find out that the present occupant 
 of his old home was a new doctor, named 
 Ercott, or some such thing; and it was in 
 self-defence that he had climbed the hill this 
 afternoon. "How much more attractive the 
 world would be if you did n't have to meet 
 people ! " thought this promising and success 
 ful painter of old women knitting on the 
 doorstep, and sweet little girls with handfuls 
 of forget-me-nots, and good old gnarly coun 
 try deacons standing to pray in Wednesday 
 evening meeting. Why, even his canvas 
 illustrating the Kitten and the Falling Leaves 
 had led a careful critic to say that here was 
 "a young American painter who is, above all 
 things, a lover and sharer of all that is whole 
 some in the world of simple humanity and 
 heartfelt happiness; and who promises, what
 
 The Joy of Life. 57 
 
 with his sympathetic insight and his enthusi 
 astic brush, to become no mean chronicler of 
 the folk-life of his time." 
 
 But never mind his midnight or starlight 
 musings, or his morning disenchantments; 
 here, at any rate, was Amoret. Amoret 
 what a pretty name ! How came it to reappear 
 for this wildwood creature ? thought Rodney. 
 Did it just happen, or had her mother read 
 about that "goodly mayd .... the which 
 was all in lilly white arayd;" Rodney was 
 surprised to find some such quotation floating 
 in his own mind. 
 
 If there was one thing in the world really 
 disliked by this painter of commonplace affec 
 tion and homely characteristics, it was the 
 ordinary; if he reverenced anything save him 
 self and whatever made him aesthetically com 
 fortable, it was the peculiar. That Amoret 
 was a novelty he was satisfied in view of all 
 his sage sight-seeings in a wider world; and 
 a new sensation flashed upon him, though he 
 did not care to take the trouble to define it. 
 As far as Amoret's own feelings went, this 
 was a day when analysis of existence seemed 
 really despicable. So, when Robert said that 
 Bellwood was God's smile, her June joy was 
 full ; not for many a day had two words fitted 
 so well into her heart's mood; and when their
 
 58 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 eyes met, there was nothing but spontaneous 
 happiness in their world. 
 
 "Now tell me all about yourself," said 
 Robert, with the affableness of former child 
 ish familiarity, and with an interest whose 
 present genuineness was unquestionable; the 
 last ten minutes had certainly made their 
 mark upon an externally impressionable 
 mind. 
 
 "Oh! I'd rather hear about you," said 
 Amoret simply; "I have lived here in Bell- 
 wood all my life, and my little doings are not 
 worth talking about. " 
 
 "But some people make their own world," 
 replied Rodney, and checked himself before 
 saying more, as there came to his mind a 
 quick apprehension that subtle and indirect 
 compliment would affect the beautiful girl 
 before him, but that mere flattery would be 
 worse than useless. 
 
 "One has to, here," said she, "else we 
 would n't have a very great world. I 've 
 helped grandfather in his shop, and I 've 
 taught music up and down this valley; and 
 once I made a long visit to a dear old second 
 cousin, who spends her summers on the sea 
 side rocks." 
 
 "Yes," said Rodney, with something like 
 a woman's intuition of the heart of the mat-
 
 The Joy of Life. 59 
 
 ter; "but what do you really care for, what is 
 the thing that makes life worth most when 
 you've shut out everybody but yourself? It 
 seems to me that we only half live, the greater 
 part of the time, and that it 's useless to ask 
 what we 've done; what we 've been is the real 
 thing." And Amoret thought that she had 
 not heard in five years from anybody, save her 
 grandfather, a remark so well worth making. 
 
 "Well," said she, " it 's good to work, it 's 
 better to help, and it 's best to grow, I sup 
 pose;" and she thought of the few and poor 
 little poems in her old desk at home, in which 
 she had tried to put some of her thoughts, and 
 which, aside from her grandfather and half a 
 dozen pet books, were the only things in the 
 world she would hate to leave if she were to 
 die. And she amused herself by a little 
 inward giggle at the absurdity of the remark, 
 were she to make it in reply to Robert : 
 "Poetry makes life worth living; that is, my 
 poetry first and other folks' afterward." In 
 stead, she said : " Oh, it 's enough to exist, and 
 to let Beethoven and Wagner sing your creed 
 for you." 
 
 "Beethoven was a pantheist," said Rodney; 
 "and that 's what such a day as this makes of 
 us all ; one thing is as beautiful and as good 
 and as important as another."
 
 60 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 " Do you really think he was a pantheist ? " 
 said Amoret, to whom the old theological 
 nomenclature of New England still had some 
 objurgatory power, though she was liberal 
 enough in her own thoughts. " I think he 
 tried to say in that movement in the Ninth 
 Symphony don't you remember? \headagio 
 that is such an illustration of the pathos of 
 the major key, where it begins so softly with 
 the funny little eighth note off the beat just 
 what the apostle said in his ' God is love. ' ' 
 
 "That's what I mean," said he; "mix 
 together the sunshine, and the bees, and the 
 flowers, and the birds, and the butterflies, and 
 the west wind, and this pine smell, and these 
 old granite rocks, and yesterday, and to 
 morrow, and you, and me, and I should think 
 the maker of the universe would feel very well 
 satisfied with things." 
 
 Amoret laughed in spite of herself, in the 
 very gayety of contradiction, and added : " But 
 I suppose we are in duty bound to think of all 
 the poor sufferers in the world, and the wicked 
 yesterdays and the dreary to-morrows ; besides, 
 how do you know that the Over-Soul is as well 
 satisfied with you as you are yourself ? " 
 
 "I said you and me," said Rodney; "so 
 the average of the two would be very high." 
 
 "Worse yet," exclaimed Amoret, as she
 
 The Joy of Life. 61 
 
 clapped her hands and rose from her seat. 
 "But I must go." 
 
 "May I go too?" said he; "you know that 
 used to be one of our most frequent beggings 
 when we were children. " 
 
 "Yes, indeed," said Amoret; "if you can 
 go where I am going, down to grandfather's 
 to get ready for giving a music-lesson. The 
 more we are together to-day the better I like 
 it," said she, simply. 
 
 "What nonsense it is," said Rodney, "to 
 call childhood days the happiest ; I never was 
 half so happy as I am now." 
 
 "Nor half so good company," thought 
 Amoret ; and the thought slipped to her lips 
 before she knew it. 
 
 "Thank you," said he, sincerely; "I used 
 to be a hateful little prig." 
 
 "Oh, no, said Amoret; "I was the prig 
 and you were let me see, you were " 
 
 "The blunderbuss of the juvenile tragedy," 
 laughed Rodney; and Amoret did not deny 
 it in her pretty smile, adding, "Never mind 
 the "past, the present is enough for me; don't 
 you remember 
 
 " ' What thy life last put heart and soul into, 
 There shall I taste thy product.' " 
 
 "Don't I remember though I don't recall 
 your quotation for the very good reason that
 
 62 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 I never heard it when first that idea popped 
 into my head ! I had climbed up into the old 
 steeple, above the clock and beside the big 
 bell, and I was looking down on the little 
 folks on the street, and did n't dare lean very 
 far over the rail. It was then that I thought : 
 ' It 's now, now, all the while, for them and 
 for me, and it 's always now for God up in the 
 clouds and for us crawling around on the earth. 
 And this instant is the sum and show of all 
 one has ever been. ' ' 
 
 Rodney had not read many books, but he 
 had often enjoyed the benefit of his own ideas, 
 such as they were; and although his swift 
 notions were as a rule neither influential nor 
 consistently progressive, they sounded well 
 enough when spoken by his red lips and happy 
 voice. Amoret, at least, who knew half her 
 own bookshelf by heart, thought his extem- 
 porizings better than her quotations, not real 
 izing how little she herself was limited to 
 other people for her thoughts. 
 
 And so they walked down to the bookstore 
 in the radiant Now.
 
 Here and There. 63 
 
 IV. 
 
 HERE AND THERE. 
 
 MR. WELBY was standing in his door as 
 Amoret and Robert walked down the 
 hill to his corner, his thin figure clad in its 
 usual rusty coat, and surmounted by the 
 inevitable straw hat. A little girl had just 
 bought an arithmetic and a slate, and had been 
 turning with envious fingers the leaves of a 
 podgy little copy of "Evenings at Home," 
 staring at the venerable woodcuts of the 
 young mouse, the thieving kite in his swoop 
 upon the chicken-yard, and the ancient man 
 who sat upon a rock as the pictorial introduc 
 tion to "The Transmigrations of Indur." 
 The good old bibliopole, pleased that in these 
 degenerate days a child should care to look 
 at one of the wholesome juveniles of a bygone 
 generation, had told her he would give her the 
 book if she would tell him what "transmigra 
 tions " meant, and would promise to read the 
 story of " Eyes and No Eyes. " The promise 
 came bashfully, but quickly; the definition 
 was not the little lass a New Englander?
 
 64 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 was given in some rough but decently adequate 
 fashion; and the book was duly transferred, 
 done up in a brown-paper parcel tied with a 
 red string, as though it had been a real pur 
 chase. Thereby Mr. Welby gave away the 
 profits got by the sale of the arithmetic and 
 the slate, but he gained the sense of satisfac 
 tion which approves the true-minded book- 
 vendor as a local missionary of wisdom. 
 
 Turning to the door of the shop, after this 
 little transaction in didactics, he was enjoying 
 the cool breeze just beginning to blow from 
 the west, and was half-fashioning in his mind 
 some phrase for his book, on the evanescence 
 of the permanent and the perpetuity of the 
 transient. Once the might of a single look! 
 what more fleeting than ancient civilizations 
 and marble monuments ? what more enduring 
 than the little breath of the breeze that has 
 fainted or flickered for a million years? And 
 what is an idea but an inspiration ; what an 
 inspiration but a breath? The wind, the 
 spirit, the soul, the ghost : that it is which we 
 brought with us and shall carry with us. So 
 when his next jotting was written in the slowly 
 growing volume in the desk it took this form : 
 
 The saddest thing about death, next to leaving a 
 friend or two, is parting with one's books ; but we 
 can take with us the souls of both.
 
 Here and There. 65 
 
 Then it was that Amoret and Robert, with 
 quick step and laughing faces, came in sight. 
 They were so happy in themselves, and Mr. 
 Welby was so lonely, that the old man's eyes 
 discerned the two before they saw him at all. 
 And in that discernment came a flash to the 
 brain, whose workings seemed all the quicker 
 for advancing years, the inevitable duality 
 behind so much of our philosophy: he and 
 she. The ancient parallelism reverberated in 
 his mind: 
 
 " There be three things which are too wonderful for me, 
 Yea, four which I know not : 
 The way of an eagle in the air ; 
 The way of a serpent upon a rock ; 
 The way of a ship in the midst of a sea, 
 And the way of a man with a maid." 
 
 By this time Amoret and Robert were half 
 way across the street, so the thinker was 
 obliged to postpone a supplementary reflection 
 which finally appeared in his manuscript vol 
 ume as follows 
 
 The good old times forsooth ! Who knows but 
 we are now living in crude and crass antiquity? 
 Certainly the nineteenth is the first comparatively 
 decent century the world has ever known. 
 
 The philosopher was, in fact, unphilosophi- 
 cally annoyed at the radiant appearance and 
 5
 
 66 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 happy association of the two who now came 
 up to him like a dual incarnation of young 
 summer. It was not that crabbed age and 
 youth could not live together, for his mind 
 was far younger and less jaded than Robert's; 
 he could have spent a whole afternoon in equal 
 companionship with the little girl of " Even 
 ings at Home;" and surely Amoret was good 
 company the whole year round. Nor did he 
 suspect or distrust Amoret in any way; she 
 was in some things his elder and his teacher, 
 for she really had more of the only ancient 
 thing in the world wisdom and he knew 
 it. If Eros can still befool Psyche in these 
 days, so be it; Psyche ought to know better 
 in equal opportunity. But, in the first place, 
 Robert had interrupted a thought, yes, two 
 thoughts, for the great work; a circumstance 
 to upset anybody. Then again, the childly 
 heart of the author of "The Philosophy of 
 Life " had always mistrusted Robert as not 
 being a true boy, but a masquerading metemp 
 sychosis. Last and chiefest was the everlast 
 ing intrusiveness of sex. 
 
 "Ah! how do you do, sir," said the old 
 gentleman, with punctilious kindliness, in 
 reply to Robert's rather eager and would-be 
 flattering greeting; yet what his mind was 
 saying to itself was this: "May the good
 
 Here and There. 67 
 
 Lord keep my little girl; but I do wish she 
 might have been born a thousand years hence, 
 when love will be nothing but friendship, yet 
 keeping its own pretty name. " 
 
 Afterward they went in for a little, and 
 while Amoret prepared for her music-lesson, 
 the young man and the old one sat in the cool 
 back room behind the bookshelves and coun 
 ters, overlooking the self-centred river in 
 which, forty years apart, both of them used to 
 row, and fish, and swim. Rodney, being 
 obliged to his senior for not pestering him 
 with misfitting inquiries, talked volubly of his 
 own works and ways at home and abroad, 
 skipping from Bellwood to Washington 
 square, and from the Pinakothek to the dan 
 delions on the disused wharf, with an agility 
 that even Mr. Welby had to admit was about 
 as graceful and self-sacrificing as that of a 
 kitten at play. The two were so unlike in all 
 their tastes and mentalities that at least some 
 brief conversation between them was easy; 
 we talk most readily, in the off-hand meetings 
 of life, with those who are like us, or with our 
 utter opposites. Few indeed were the people 
 who were not put at ease by Mr. Welby 's 
 manner of gentle superiority and self-respect 
 ing deference, superiority, for his was the 
 aristocracy of the man of thought; deference,
 
 68 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 for he knew he was a public servant behind 
 his counter. As for Rodney, he was never 
 ill at ease save when he suspected that people 
 disliked or distrusted him; and nothing in 
 Mr. Welby's manner troubled him at this 
 time. 
 
 Indeed, when there happened to come to 
 Rodney's mind the not disagreeable thought 
 that he was now getting for a couple of easily 
 made paintings more than the patient book- 
 vendor and his rediscovered granddaughter 
 could make in their most economical and 
 painstaking year, his self-esteem grew pleas 
 antly warm, and he ventured to put on a little 
 of that purring and patronizing manner which 
 " successful " people like to carry back to their 
 native heath. On the whole, however, the 
 clear-cut old face opposite him displayed no 
 signs of being overawed by inquiries concern 
 ing the book business, literature, or Amoret's 
 education. With scrupulous loyalty to his 
 love for the girl, however, her grandfather 
 told his eager young listener some little part 
 of her faithful helpfulness in making the old 
 shop more attractive; in getting pretty and 
 modern wall-papers, and lamp-shades, and 
 stationery, and pocket-books, and periodicals 
 to add to the somewhat venerable stock in 
 trs.de; and in deftly selling the same. Even
 
 Here and There. 69 
 
 Mr. Welby, however, did not know how 
 Amoret detested the knickknackery of the 
 so-called modern bookstore, how she hated 
 to part with the best-loved of the old vol 
 umes, or how hard it was for her to be polite 
 to brainless or overbearing customers whose 
 money she knew was much needed in the old 
 wooden till, so scantily sprinkled with coin. 
 
 On the more important subject of the 
 development of Amoret's personality Robert 
 got no more information than that her sole 
 teachers had been (aside from the village 
 schools) her grandfather, his books, Nature, 
 and herself, in that order of ascending im 
 portance. 
 
 When Amoret came downstairs, the happy 
 look still irradiating her whole face, Rodney 
 was gazing through the window at the little 
 square patch of tide-water where the river 
 rose and fell on the slope between two old 
 wharves. Boyish memories rose to haunt 
 every spot in Bellwood, and half of them 
 suggested pictures. Here he had once seen 
 an open-air baptism, and had wondered 
 whether the tall and half-submerged minister, 
 in his anxiety to keep down the floating skirts 
 of the "candidate," would unwittingly disap 
 pear in the sudden hole off Pinkington's 
 wharf, of the location of which the town boys
 
 jo The End of the Beginning. 
 
 had superior knowledge. Here, too, he had 
 once seen a boatman towing to shore a drowned 
 maniac from the hospital up the river, the 
 tow-rope tied to the rigid arm that the swollen 
 but half-sunk corpse upstretched above the 
 hot summer wave. What a good subject for 
 a canvas ! but very likely it would not sell ; 
 certainly not to the provincial plutocrats who 
 bought his village-blacksmiths and children- 
 in-apple-trees to hang in their dining-rooms. 
 Something really ought to be done, however, 
 with that ghastly clutch of the dead fingers, 
 holding, as it were, their own painter and 
 as the wretched little pun came into his head 
 there was a good honest step behind him, and 
 he turned to see Amoret again, Amoret in 
 a nondescript brown of some fashion that 
 neither he nor she could assign to type or 
 period, but that seemed right in the eyes of 
 the artist and of the wearer alike. Her 
 clothes appeared to do nothing but drape the 
 person they covered, which, perhaps, is one 
 of the functions of clothes. 
 
 "Well, Robert," said she, "are you going 
 with me to the south end? When are you 
 going home ? " she added, abruptly. The 
 question would not have annoyed Mr. Welby 
 if he had not detected in it some suspicion of 
 desire that the date be not immediate.
 
 Here and There. 71 
 
 "Oh, I don't know," laughed he; "that's 
 just what you used to ask when I 'd clumsily 
 spoiled your play-tea, and lost one of your 
 doll's gloves, and torn the frontispiece of your 
 pet picture-book." 
 
 "Yes," said Araoret; "you used to stand 
 for change, and I for conservatism. What 
 would the world be without either?" 
 
 " It would be perfect with the two to 
 gether," flashed Rodney's reply, which struck 
 him as being so pat that he would risk it 
 even in Mr. Welby's presence. He seldom 
 made any remarks without some reference to 
 himself, or the likes and dislikes that formed 
 the sum total of his personality; and he was 
 never so self-conscious as in his swiftest im 
 provisations. But Amoret interested him, 
 and he could see plainly enough that he inter 
 ested her, at least for the present. Just what 
 it all meant he would perhaps think out 
 sometime, should it seem worth while. 
 
 "Good-bye, grandpa," said Amoret, with a 
 sidewise glance and a little pat on his coat- 
 sleeve. "Good-bye for now," added Rodney, 
 who was never formal save when compelled ; 
 and Mr. Welby gave them a minor benedic 
 tion in the suggestion that they would better 
 not talk simultaneously all the time, as on 
 the whole a dialogue suited conversational 
 speech better than did a chorus.
 
 ji The End of the Beginning. 
 
 As they started to walk down the river 
 street, Rodney could hardly avoid a swift 
 reflection on the narrow circumstances of 
 Amoret and her grandfather, indeed, of Bell- 
 wood in its entirety. On the whole, all of 
 them seemed to lack the glitter of prosperity 
 on the one hand pleasure-accepting Rodney 
 loved Paris and felt no discontent with New 
 York and the romance of actual dilapida 
 tion and antiquity on the other. But he was 
 too much of an epicurean to concern himself 
 about money or the lack of it, and his thought 
 only consolidated itself in the non-committal 
 remark: "Do you ever get tired of Bell- 
 wood ? " 
 
 "Only once in a while, when for a little 
 minute I tire of everything; but I guess Para 
 dise is as near here as anywhere. " 
 
 "Nearer, nowadays," soliloquized the artist 
 in a half-tone; and Amoret replied: "What 
 a good-natured couple of friends we seem to 
 be to-day ! We ought to arrange an antipho- 
 nal service, you to say ' I am happy, ' and I to 
 reply, ' I am, too. ' ' 
 
 "Yes," said he; "then there could be a 
 chorus to the duologue : ' Happy are we both 
 of us, the livelong day. ' " 
 
 "I think there is too much grumbling in 
 the world, too much endurance, and too little
 
 Here and There. 73 
 
 joy," said Amoret. "I know what work is; 
 and sometimes the little devil of Worry comes 
 prowling round my door; but for all that I 'm 
 happy and grateful, most of the time." 
 
 "Gratitude, too," added Rodney, "need not 
 always be outspoken ; how grateful that warm 
 cat on the doorstep looks, just now. Some 
 times I think I 'd like to be metamorphosed 
 into a feline." 
 
 "Wild or domestic?" queried Amoret. 
 "But I am not sure that a perennial flower 
 would not be better; every luxury of light 
 and shade, and rain and frost, and cool 
 hibernation in turn, and then gentle death 
 on a soft grave." 
 
 " You would n't be you unless you were 
 talking about graves. " 
 
 " But not about worms or sheeted goblins. 
 Death is nothing to me but contrast, black 
 against white, for the white to show more 
 brightly. You 're an artist, and so you know 
 all about complements and values; it's just 
 so -with joy and sorrow; I honestly would 
 prefer achieved virtue with sin plain in sight, 
 to negative innocence;" and the girl looked 
 far away down to the turn of the river. 
 Robert, for his part, fully appreciated the 
 remark, but felt, for once in his life, a certain 
 sense of shame at the unlikelihood that he
 
 74 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 would ever prove its truth. So he quickly 
 turned the subject, in his favorite way, by 
 exclaiming repetitiously, " Oh, did I ever 
 have so bright an afternoon in all my life ! " 
 
 " I hope you have had better ones, and will 
 have many more," said Amoret; "but it is 
 pleasant for wayfarers on life's pretty path 
 ways to meet and just resume the dropped 
 threads. That 's what friendship ought to 
 be; twenty years afterwards, in Timbuctoo, 
 we should start where we left off, as though 
 nothing had happened. So good-bye until 
 next time," said she, with a quick little laugh, 
 as she ran up the steps of Squire Bennett's 
 bare white house, where she was to give her 
 music-lesson, and left Robert standing in sur 
 prise on the sidewalk. 
 
 Things were always so pleasant for him 
 that he had fallen into the habit of thinking 
 that he, as a matter of course, must be the one 
 to decide when to say " enough ; " so he was a 
 little jarred by this abrupt termination of a 
 mildly titillating experience. Amoret was 
 as innocent of coquetry as a marble Diana, or 
 a puppy that assumes the prompt friendship 
 of the whole world ; but had she planned it, 
 she could hardly have left on the painter's 
 mind a quicker zest for further companionship 
 than she caused by her flight up the steps.
 
 Here and There. 75 
 
 It was as though a humming-bird had suddenly 
 swept into the illimitable; but Rodney pre 
 ferred to play that part himself. 
 
 The artist's stay in Bellwood was pro 
 longed by daily indecision until a fortnight 
 had passed. He accepted, without visible 
 reluctance, a few invitations to simple sup 
 pers, here and there, and pleasantly ate, at 
 those repasts served according to the local 
 fashion, his modicum of flaky raised biscuits, 
 " sauce, " and two or three kinds of cake. The 
 dining-rooms and shady parlors seemed, to 
 his artistic eye, quite to miss duly propor 
 tioned effects ; the old silver candlesticks on 
 the mantels were unused, the delicate gilt- 
 rimmed china was flanked by plated silverware 
 of Philistine patterns, and solid mahogany 
 chairs stood too near veneered centre-tables 
 and pyramidal "what-nots." The noteworthy 
 festivities, however, were a symmetrical and 
 anciently aristocratic tea at Squire Bennett's, 
 and a "delightful semi-Bohemian noonday 
 lunch in Mr. Welby's upstairs dining-room 
 above the wharf. Amoret's intuitive taste 
 minimized the vulgarities of eating and at the 
 same time raised appetite to the level of a 
 legitimate pleasure. 
 
 In fact, for him, everything in the fortnight 
 seemed to centre around that meditative and
 
 7 6 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 musical up-country maiden. The other young 
 girls of the town were, in his frankly sybaritic 
 analysis, somewhat too rural; while a few, 
 possessing unquestionable intellect and pos 
 sible taste, were not sufficiently conspicuous 
 as regards youth, good looks, or pretty gowns. 
 Among the men, Rodney's chief associates 
 were Mr. Welby himself whom he perforce 
 respected and slightly feared, for his un 
 doubted mental strength and his silently 
 invincible guardianship of Amoret and 
 the youngish, book-loving doctor who lived 
 in Rodney's birthplace. This Doctor Ur- 
 quhart for that was the way he spelled his 
 name, Rodney discovered seemed to know 
 the contents of the neighboring village library, 
 and some things besides ; perhaps it was be 
 cause he was not of New England birth, but 
 had strayed into the Bellwood enclosure from 
 some other bailiwick. At any rate, he was 
 not provincial; Rodney, since his Parisian 
 studies, had some expansive ideas on the 
 subject of one's natal environment, and was 
 glad to find that not all Bellwood people were 
 alike. 
 
 As far as Amoret was concerned, walks 
 and talks and a picnic at Runaway Pond and 
 a row on the river had followed with Ameri 
 can freedom, but somehow he felt that he had
 
 Here and There. 77 
 
 made no progress. Progress? toward what? 
 Was he in love? Distinctly not, in his own 
 opinion. Was she ? If so her tact was con 
 summate. Rodney had adequate knowledge 
 of the chess of flirtation, whatever the astute 
 ness or the simplicity of his opponent; but 
 Amoret's happy and unmonotonous friendli 
 ness puzzled him. For himself, drifting was 
 good enough fun. But his pleasure in 
 Amoret's ready promise to exchange an occa 
 sional letter was mitigated by a clear convic 
 tion that his good-bye call was a failure. A 
 man never feels less satisfied with himself 
 than when he knows that he is worse than 
 wasting the few minutes left him in the pres 
 ence of a woman he admires. The experience 
 is dust at the time and ashes afterward. One 
 misty remark of Amoret's bothered him all 
 the way back to New York ; it rose between 
 him and the sun as he looked out of the win 
 dow on the day-train, and it overcast the moon 
 as he stood on the deck of the Sound steam 
 boat. "I never could care for anyone," said 
 she, "" a single minute after I found him dis 
 loyal to the ideal of his best moods; for then 
 I should know that my supposed friend had 
 never really lived." 
 
 " Must a man always be perfect ? " Rodney 
 had replied, with a little irritation, which
 
 7 8 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 was not wholly concealed in his codicil re 
 mark: "You are too good for this world; I 
 don't know where you can find fit companions 
 this side of Paradise." 
 
 "I mean," said Amoret, slowly, and she 
 clasped her hands around her knees and 
 looked at the moon, " that if I ever loved any 
 body, woman or man, who proved to be differ 
 ent from what I thought, my love would have 
 been given to a creature that never existed, 
 and so would come back to me as though it 
 had not been." 
 
 "But there is a love," said Rodney, "that 
 follows into the gutter and the depths of the 
 sea," and he felt that he had the better of the 
 argument. " It may be a regret, but it 's also 
 a hope. " 
 
 "One pities a suicide," said Amoret, sim 
 ply, and she seemed to Rodney to be as far 
 away from him as a star. 
 
 "Aren't you just a little bit more inexora 
 ble than God?" retorted Rodney; and spent 
 the next thirty minutes in more or less floun 
 dering efforts to restore things to the condi 
 tion in which they stood before this little con 
 versation anent the verities of the eternities. 
 
 For there seemed something actually gro 
 tesque in such a turn to the talk just then. 
 Amoret, as the moon was softly rising across
 
 Here and There. 79 
 
 the still river, had been playing the allegretto 
 from Chopin's opus 59; and Rodney's half- 
 indulged suspicion that she had been talking 
 to him through the keys was strengthened 
 when she rose with a little sigh of weary ten 
 derness (so he supposed), and asked whether 
 he would n't like to go out on the old wharf 
 and see the moon rise. There was a great dry 
 mossy log, a relic of the days of Bellwood's 
 commercial dreams, on which Amoret liked 
 to sit summer evenings; and thither they 
 went. As luck would have it, Mr. Welby 
 had delightedly gone up to his desk to wrestle 
 with the proper wording of a new thought 
 which seemed to him the best that had 
 occurred to him for some time, as far as the 
 real inner idea of the Book was concerned : 
 
 To live the right life is to do nothing and every 
 thing. 
 
 Rodney's handsome self was artistically 
 and attractively enveloped in summer habili 
 ments that gave the best effect to the hatless 
 hair,- the impulsive eyes, and the radiant 
 young face, made more attractive by a visible 
 mood of anticipatory memory of so delight 
 some a time. The summer day had been hot ; 
 every movement of Amoret's round neck and 
 half-visible shoulders was closely followed by
 
 80 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 delicate clinging lace; her bare arms had 
 never a faulty line, and the little bulge of the 
 wrist was really vexatiously pretty; one foot 
 rested on the other, while above her low shoes 
 Rodney noted a pair of clocked silk stockings 
 her mother used to wear at the dances of a 
 generation ago. A faint odor of violets 
 exhaled from a bunch of the flowers carelessly 
 tucked into the top of her high belt. 
 
 It seemed to Rodney that there were but 
 two things in the world, Amoret and he; 
 or, more properly, only one thing, his as 
 yet unknown feeling towards this lovely girl. 
 They talked a little of the moonrise over the 
 eastern hill; of the ripple of the river; of the 
 distant light reflected in Braham's Cove, down 
 below; of the clearness of the nine-o'clock 
 bell coming down from the city two miles 
 north; of the old days and the new; of art 
 and beauty ; and, before they knew it, of the 
 might-have-been and the may-be, the mystery 
 of life. Then they looked up to the zenith, 
 with its sparse stars in the bright moonlight, 
 and spoke of space and time. Amoret' s 
 thoughts were always readily turned in a kind 
 of far-eyed abstraction to the depths of the 
 oceans of the ultimate skies; and now, with 
 soul bent by their poetic talk to the illimita- 
 bles of the astronomy of the unseen, she knew
 
 Here and There. 81 
 
 and yet did not know when Rodney picked a 
 few of the longer-stemmed flowers from her 
 waist and twined them in and out of her hair. 
 It was to her as though her grandfather were 
 smoothing her forehead when some problem 
 perplexed the little girl's head; but to Rod 
 ney it seemed that the time had well-nigh 
 come to catch that white loveliness in eager 
 arms and give their first red kiss to the rose 
 bud lips with the melancholy little curl. He 
 heard his heart beat the quicker as a little 
 wind from the north blew just one hair from 
 Amoret's pretty head across his cheek, which 
 tingled and then grew cold. 
 
 But Amoret sprang up with the suddenness 
 of one in a dream, her soul open only to the 
 ideas just broached anew, and exclaimed: 
 "Oh, things must sooner or later be right in 
 this wonderful world, with a million more 
 wonderful all around its poor little self." 
 
 Rodney's first impulse was to grasp her 
 hand, but on second thought he sat in silent 
 mood and watched her as she tossed a pebble 
 toward a bit of wood floating down the moon 
 lit stream, noting, to his surprise, that she 
 hit it. 
 
 " We are all parts of some great possibility," 
 said he, as though he had followed her line 
 of meditation all along. "You and I, you 
 6
 
 82 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 and I; what if we had lived a thousand years 
 ago or a thousand years hence? Did you 
 ever hear an old song called, 'A Conjecture,' 
 or something like that? " 
 
 "No," said she; "what is it?" 
 
 "Three little stanzas I found in an old 
 song-book, with the queerest copperplate 
 pictures, in your grandfather's shop the other 
 day; they partly stuck in my memory, and 
 ran about like this : 
 
 " ' I wonder, dear, if you had been 
 
 The maiden queen's pet maid of honor, 
 A flower of that fair time wherein 
 A court of roses smiled upon her, 
 
 " ' And I, ere while, by Trojan wall 
 
 Had fiercely fought for Grecian glory, 
 Beheld the pride of Priam fall, 
 And home in Athens told the story. 
 
 '"Whether we, wandering in the glow 
 Of the Hereafter's radiant spaces, 
 Would there have mutely met, and so 
 
 Seen love make bright our yearning faces.' " 
 
 "That 's my idea of love," said he; "it 's 
 above space, or time, or law" and the last 
 word of the three was just one too many, for 
 Amoret noted it first of all, wondered what it 
 meant, and asked him. 
 
 " 'There is no sin to hearts that love, ' " said
 
 Here and There. 83 
 
 he, in continued ill-fortune. Then it was 
 that Amoret sat down again, but it chanced 
 to be on the farther end of the log ; the vio 
 lets had fallen from the ebon flame of her hair 
 when she tossed the stone; her face was 
 grave; and she picked up and threw over her 
 shoulders, with a tiny shiver, the little shawl 
 that seemed so superfluous ten minutes 
 before. 
 
 "Oh," said she in a low voice, "that all, 
 all depends on what one means by love." And 
 then she explained it in the phrase that 
 annoyed Rodney on his homeward journey, 
 and with diminishing frequency for the rest 
 of his life. 
 
 Rodney reached New York in no very ami 
 able humor. Amoret had at first quickened 
 and irradiated his not very enthusiastic mem 
 ories of Bellwood; but the drab-colored events 
 of night-before-last had dispelled the glow 
 and left things rather worse than before. His 
 pride had been touched; when a winsome 
 egotist has but half made up his mind to fol 
 low a certain line of irresponsible action, he 
 does not enjoy having a contrary decision 
 thrust before him by somebody else. To go 
 on and make Amoret something more than a 
 summer fancy would take time and trouble, 
 and involve a pretended or actual reconstruc-
 
 84 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 tion of his own personality, which had always 
 satisfied him sufficiently well; but to banish 
 her from his mind was for some reason not 
 easy. Indeed, for the first time within his 
 memory, it seemed as though fate was inter 
 fering with freedom, and the effect of the 
 interference was to vulgarize the actual be 
 cause of the loss of the ideal even the old 
 ideal of undisturbed epicureanism. 
 
 Sending his luggage to his rooms by ex 
 press, Rodney was minded to walk to his 
 Washington square quarters, and to take 
 breakfast on the way. The cool warehouses 
 on Warren street, with their smell of grocer 
 ies and vegetables and crockery crates, and the 
 rumble of drays on West Broadway, affected 
 his mind with a certain sense of friendly 
 consolation; the world went on, anyway, if 
 girls did act unexpectedly. He wondered 
 whether that stooping and business-like rag 
 picker, with the bulgy bag on his back, ever 
 had a love affair; and with his usual quick 
 eye for effects, he made up his mind to paint 
 sometime a dual picture, the love-letter in 
 two stages of its career; Alpha and Omega 
 would be a good title for it. Then his eye 
 caught old Johnstine, the wholesale grocer, 
 just entering his nine-story "establishment; " 
 he knew Johnstine by sight, but Johnstine
 
 Here and There. 85 
 
 knew not him. Did the plutocrat ever think 
 of his boyhood in Ulster county, or the brook 
 behind the hill? Probably not, though Rod 
 ney had once sold him, through a middle 
 man, a picture of a lot of cows by a log 
 trough near the bars; eight hundred dollars 
 for a week's work; pretty good pay, chuckled 
 the simple-minded artist, as he gave a glance 
 at the man of money, and of flour barrels. 
 Crossing Canal street, he noticed the spitz 
 dog, dyed red, blue, and yellow, as an 
 advertisement of his owner's trade; and he 
 laughed to himself at the thought of the way 
 in which a few tints catch the public eye. 
 After all, the dyer and he were in the same 
 business. 
 
 As he followed his leisurely path through 
 the broad shabbiness of South Fifth avenue, 
 he happened to think how many high-up win 
 dows were adorned with forlorn geraniums or 
 nondescript dusty greennesses in tomato-cans 
 and soap-boxes : another subject for a senti 
 mental picture. Really, he must set up a 
 painting establishment and hire apprentices, 
 if this sort of artistic fertility were to con 
 tinue. " Beneficial results of vacation travel 
 in quickening the mind," he laughed to him 
 self, as with slightly restored self-satisfac 
 tion he turned into Bleecker street for a
 
 86 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 leisurely breakfast in a Gallic basement res 
 taurant affected by men of his set. And just 
 around the corner he met the magnificent 
 Nancy so abruptly that he almost ran into her. 
 "Oh," said she, "beg pardon," said he; and 
 then the two acquaintances indicated orally a 
 simultaneous desire to ascertain the cause of 
 so early an appearance on the street. 
 
 Nancy Gibber was the daughter of a Lon 
 don cabman, whose long-suffering horse had 
 kicked him to death, in a spasm of that 
 revenge which is a kind of wild justice, when 
 the child was six years old. A jaded widow 
 who belonged to the class of beings that 
 always have something happening to them 
 and five children were left to make their way 
 in the world; and Nancy's juvenile career 
 had irregularly proceeded until she rose, at 
 fifteen, to be a barmaid. Her amiability and 
 her prettiness made her a favorite, and her 
 easy coolness saved her from downright sin, 
 though she had peccadilloes by the score. 
 She was above vice and below respectability. 
 If more brilliant or more vicious, she would 
 have been dangerous ; but as her desires were 
 satisfied with a particularly good dinner o' 
 Sundays, a neat dress, and a few shillings 
 saved at the end of the month, she led with 
 reasonable blamelessness a life that would
 
 Here and There. 87 
 
 have been impossible in Paris and incredible 
 in Boston. As for Man, she had come to 
 regard him chiefly as a bibulous animal, with 
 a few cheap jokes. 
 
 But fortune soon advanced her to a plane 
 at once more conspicuous and more remuner 
 ative. Burlesque was the vogue at the time, 
 in half the London theatres ; and while some 
 humble intellectual, histrionic, or vocal 
 powers were needed in its producers, vigorous 
 and striking physical personalities were yet 
 more necessary. One day a theatrical man 
 ager stepped into the Golden Bell for a glass 
 of Burton, and was duly served by the stately 
 and affable Nancy, who caught his profes 
 sional eye at once, what with her Junonian 
 shoulders, her yellow hair, her blue eyes, 
 and her black dress and white collar. Why 
 not introduce her as a Venus, or spirit of the 
 wood, or goddess of the weird, or something 
 of the sort, in his forthcoming extravaganza 
 to be called the Procession of Life? Two or 
 three interviews proved that Nancy had an 
 audible voice, an easy carriage, and a teach 
 able disposition; and though her powers of 
 reading and speaking were limited, and of 
 vocalization apparently non-existent, he had 
 never seen a flesh-and-blood statue of greater 
 possibilities of professional utilization. Her
 
 88 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 name, he found, was Nancy Crackenby; the 
 first title was good enough, for old-fashioned 
 christenings were coming into theatrical 
 vogue ; while the surname was readily changed 
 to a well-known dissyllable that looked well 
 on the bills. 
 
 Nancy was five feet nine inches tall, 
 weighed a hundred and sixty-five pounds, 
 had round, soft hands of considerable size, a 
 figure fit to translate into perennial marble, 
 and a good walk ; what else was needed in a 
 stage procession? Let the homelier women 
 do the singing and talking and gesticulating. 
 When the play was brought out she instantly 
 charmed the public. One of the young uni 
 versity graduates who wrote dramatic criti 
 cisms for a leading daily said of her: incessu 
 patuit dea; and the phrase, with due care for 
 accuracy, letter by letter, was transferred to 
 the bill-boards next day. Her weekly wage 
 was four pounds, plenty for a roast beef 
 dinner every day, for good clothes on the 
 street, for an occasional barber's dressing of 
 her huge mass of tawny hair, and, best of 
 all, for a high-priced canary bird she had 
 coveted for six months. A fortnight's sav 
 ings bought the bird, the third week supplied 
 a pretty cage, and the noodles' bouquets that 
 now came to her by wholesale were more than
 
 Here and There. 89 
 
 sufficient to surround the golden-throated 
 singer with bowers fit for his most rapturous 
 dreams. As for the notes attached to the 
 flowers, Nancy could not read, without more 
 trouble than she was willing to take; and her 
 tired-faced mother, whom she now transferred 
 to her own modest quarters, was perfection in 
 the duties of virago-guardian against persecu 
 tions on the part of admirers inclined to press 
 their claims in person. Mrs. Crackenby had 
 not fought the battle of life, and her late 
 husband, for twenty years in vain. " They 're 
 all alike," was the comprehensive motto of 
 this follower of Schopenhauer; "good clo's 
 can't fool me." 
 
 At length, after a long London run, the 
 Procession of Life made its westward way 
 across the Atlantic, and marched nightly over 
 the boards of a down-town theatre. The 
 Crakenbys took up their quarters in the top 
 story of a house in a once fashionable row on 
 the south side of Bleecker Street ; the radiant 
 canary was duly enshrined in his new sky- 
 temple; bouquets and notes reappeared; the 
 four pounds had become thirty dollars; and 
 remittances began to be sent to the younger 
 children in London. New York was charmed 
 with the source of this modest prosperity, 
 and though Nancy's little part in the play
 
 90 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 elicited no Latin quotations, one poetic rhet 
 orician expressed his appreciation of her 
 "magnificence of muliebrity." 
 
 When Rodney met Nancy that morning, 
 around the Bleecker street corner, it was as 
 though he had encountered an opposing fate, 
 most welcome because most dreaded. It 
 might as well come now as any time. She 
 was the incarnation, in her superb body 
 with its never half-an-inch too much or too 
 little, and its curves and lines and tints that 
 even a painter need not wish to revise, of 
 all that Amoret was not. Amoret was beau 
 tiful, to be sure, but hers was the beauty of 
 a star-child, a creature of a universal rather 
 than a particular sphere, in which sunlight 
 and song weighed as much as bone and blood. 
 Nancy was a daughter of the world, a late 
 progeny of tempted and tempting Eve, a sort 
 of consummation of the physical element 
 alone. Amoret was the soul and mind of 
 New England, yet somehow strangely unpro- 
 vincial; but London Nancy? had she a soul 
 and mind at all ? A kind of pleasant feline 
 intelligence seemed to take the place of 
 both. Yet Rodney had always liked her, 
 ever since they first met in the little fruit- 
 shop, where he was buying grapes and she 
 bananas. Her large and languorous beauty
 
 Here and There. 91 
 
 was so obvious that it charmed him, by the 
 law of opposites, into a sort of indifference to 
 it; she was like a partially animated picture, 
 right pleasant to see; only he made up his 
 mind that if any man-about-town insulted her, 
 he would himself exercise his undeniable 
 powers of fist, pistol, or poniard, at the risk 
 of a newspaper sensation and a smirched name. 
 
 Nancy, for her part, was love-free, but on 
 the whole she had never met anybody she bet 
 ter liked among the thousands of men who 
 had stared at her. Meanwhile Mrs. Crack- 
 enby, with the shrewdness of a thick mind 
 bent on a single object, saw that Rodney's 
 inner indifference to Nancy made him a 
 superficially valuable friend and protector, for 
 the time being; and so the three had met with 
 tolerable frequency, and Rodney had been a 
 welcome caller at their humble rooms, on 
 which occasion the canary, who for the best 
 of reasons despised and distrusted men, re 
 lapsed into marked and unbroken silence. 
 
 " When are you going to take mamma and 
 me fo Long Branch," said Nancy with per 
 tinent promptness. "And where have you 
 been these three weeks to forget us entirely ? 
 Off in the country, I suppose, flirting on the 
 inn-lawns, and us poor girls sweating away 
 every night on that hot stage."
 
 92 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 Rodney was a little disgusted, slightly 
 penitential, and half glad to be once more 
 in the society of a conspicuous inferior. 
 Under the influence of the last named mood 
 he cheerily said, "Next Sunday, Nan, we'll 
 go down to the Branch and have no end of 
 a jolly time," language which gave to the 
 east London lass a high satisfaction with the 
 linguistic attainments of some Americans, 
 and brought into her mind a series of attrac 
 tive pictures, a steamboat ride, quail on 
 toast, asparagus, a glass of champagne, and a 
 half-hour in a new bathing-dress of gorgeous 
 stripes of yellow and black. 
 
 For the trio, rarely reinforced by any 
 fourth or fifth, had not been unfamiliar in 
 the Park, at the table d hdte of the Bohemia 
 restaurant, or even at Coney Island. Rod 
 ney's artistic independence fortified him 
 against the possibility of disagreeable criti 
 cism from his rather numerous friends of 
 both sexes, in the fashionable district up 
 town. He despised the conventional ; Nancy, 
 from ample experience, hated the ways of 
 poverty; and Mrs. Crackenby disliked nearly 
 everybody and everything. Here was a ready 
 bond of union equally unintelligible to the 
 just and the unjust, and chiefly to suspicion 
 of whatsoever social grade. In fact, Rodney
 
 Here and There. 93 
 
 himself never felt that he could make, were 
 he required, any widely acceptable justifica 
 tion of the lone but delectable kiss he once 
 gave the lovely Nancy at the very instant 
 when both were suddenly submerged by a 
 mighty wave off the West End Pavilion. It 
 was just before he went to Bellwood; Nancy, 
 doubtless, had forgotten it already; but Rod 
 ney remembered it when the large lips, once 
 wet with the sparkling brine of life, had lain 
 for a decade six feet beneath the dry earth of 
 Woodlawn. And in those later years a 
 middle-aged man, over his pipe and beer he 
 wondered whether there would ever be some 
 far-off land, some distant day of the soul, 
 when all joy would be one and interchange 
 able; when a memory would be as good as a 
 fact, and some single youthful aspiration 
 fully excuse the stolid degeneration of age. 
 
 They went to Long Branch. Rodney was 
 envied by half the men on the boat, and poor 
 Nancy denounced by half the women ; while 
 both,, when they got home and resumed their 
 business of giving the public the pictures it 
 paid for she behind the footlights and he 
 behind the great gilt frame saw the late 
 summer melt into hot autumn, and autumn 
 freeze into winter. Nancy went "on the 
 road" with her troupe, and displayed herself
 
 94 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 to this or that provincial city; Rodney 
 dreamed and painted as of yore, and, for 
 rumors anent Nancy, fell into disfavor in a 
 certain courtly house on Forty-seventh street, 
 where paternal respectability, maternal kindli 
 ness, and two pleasant daughters had formerly 
 welcomed him. Frigidity such as theirs in 
 due time chilled other social waters. Upper 
 New York, as far as it recognized the young 
 artist at all, gradually decided that his pict 
 ures might be bought, but that he himself 
 was to be left in the list of mere street ac 
 quaintance; and Rodney rebelled at all this 
 in direct and indiscreet proportion to his 
 recognition of his own folly, and his knowl 
 edge of some limited degree of innocence. 
 Nancy was, after all, but a sign in his mind; 
 but the sign was of portent, for Rodney well 
 knew that his real self was growing smaller 
 and forlorner every day. Amoret had been 
 the dream ; Robert Rodney was the day lit 
 fact. To Amoret' s level he had not risen, 
 apparently could not rise. It was some grim 
 comfort, perhaps, to feel that his chance 
 meeting with her had prevented him from 
 falling to any lower plane of moral inanition. 
 Society, indeed, had banished him in part, 
 and had banished him for one of the most 
 innocent things he ever did, as innocent,
 
 Here and There. 95 
 
 in its way, as his walks and talks with 
 Amoret. Very well, he would banish society, 
 that artificial conglomeration that so readily 
 forgave decorous rascality, but was inexorable 
 toward superficial impropriety. But Amoret ? 
 Was she right in what she had said of occa 
 sional disloyalty to one's best self? Was he 
 ever loyal to his best self? Perhaps not; but 
 from the froth of his good moods or quick 
 perceptions he was constantly painting, so 
 folks said, sweet things that seemed to help 
 the world's sympathies and tendernesses. 
 For a castaway to preach to others was better 
 than not to preach at all. Perhaps what he 
 needed was something like the conversion 
 which the old preachers used to urge when 
 they shouted the loudest. Well, conversion 
 had never come to him. What was it that 
 old Mr. Welby was saying so oracularly the 
 other day ? " Nobody is so fettered as he 
 who thinks himself freest." If that is the 
 condition of life, so be it; there are some 
 minor mitigations ; maybe somebody will like 
 to look at one of my pictures when the painter 
 is gone. Yes, the stream rises higher than 
 its source. 
 
 Two things constantly reverted to Rod 
 ney's mind all that winter and spring, even 
 when he was working with all his might, and
 
 96 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 thereby making uncared-for money faster than 
 ever. 
 
 One was Nancy. The little canary outlived 
 its owner, and sang as happily as ever for 
 the two days that the dead body of the Diana 
 of east London lay in splendid state in the 
 low-ceiled attic room on Bleecker street. 
 There was neither romance nor tragedy in 
 her departure she only died. The barn-like 
 stage of a Philadelphia theatre, one raw 
 December night, had been full of draughts 
 that chilled the girl to the bone. Some of the 
 men in front did not throw off their over 
 coats, but her attire was merely poetical. 
 Shivering, she came home to New York, and 
 promptly succumbed to pneumonia ; " lung 
 fever," poor Mrs. Crackenby called it. " Things 
 is allers 'appenin' to we," she added, between 
 her begrudged tears and choky sobs. An 
 actors' benevolent fund paid the expenses of 
 the burial and sent the mother back to fight 
 the squalid London battle once more; but 
 somebody bought a pretty lot in Woodlawn, 
 and set up a costly runic cross bearing but 
 two initials, "N. C," and one date; while 
 along its foot were carved the words : " And 
 lead us not into temptation." 
 
 The other thing that Rodney thought of 
 after Nancy ended, was the matter of the
 
 Here and There, 97 
 
 letters to Amoret The first of his epistles 
 was written three weeks after Rodney's return 
 to New York, nor did the irregular corre 
 spondence cease ; but Amoret never felt that 
 she was lastingly successful in helping him 
 to discover his better self. 
 
 Perhaps it was ten years later that Rodney 
 painted his masterpiece, "Taedium Vitae." 
 A girl lay alone on a bankside whose crushed 
 flowers were fading, her white face languor 
 ously turned toward the thickening night. 
 The supple beauty of the weary white limbs 
 was Nancy's, but the far-off look in the eyes 
 was Amoret's.
 
 98 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 V. 
 
 THE SURGE OF THE SEA. 
 
 HALF a hundred miles to the southward 
 of Amoret's birth-home, sea, earth, 
 and sky disport themselves in many a mood, 
 the twelvemonth long. The rocky coast juts 
 forth in peaked headlands, or arrays long lines 
 of beetling cliffs against the constant boom 
 of the winter waves. Off shore, in the long 
 curves of the bay, lie a hundred islands ; some 
 fair and fertile, tiny continents in themselves ; 
 others bare and bleak, mere points in the 
 watery chaos. The mainland is deeply in 
 dented with shady creeks and shallow inlets ; 
 on the low marshes grows a plentiful crop of 
 salt hay, while the higher shores are fringed 
 to the water's edge by pines and beeches 
 whose leaves drop into the tide. The farmer 
 mows his meadows far down to the pebbly 
 strand or the ragged rocks, and the salty 
 odors of the ocean mingle with the fragrance of 
 the hay-cocks and the bay-bushes. The swish 
 of the quieter waves is indistinguishable from
 
 The Surge of the Sea. 99 
 
 the soft rush of the air through the odorous 
 needles of the pine ; and the atmosphere which 
 at dawn was thick with fog shines at noonday 
 with a stereoscopically clear but not heat- 
 giving glare. August is June in that sweet 
 climate, but a June that may relapse into 
 memories of April or anticipate the chill of 
 October. The cow-bell tinkles in accord with 
 the faint sound of the bell-buoy at the edge 
 of the channel; and the lighthouse beyond 
 the abandoned fort welcomes the fees of the 
 vacation pedestrian with the same zeal with 
 which it flares its warning into the straining 
 eyes of the weary sailor as he works his way 
 into port. 
 
 It was more than a year after Amoret met 
 Rodney on the hill that she stood, once more 
 alone, on the cliff just north of the light, and 
 looked out to sea. It was cool but not cold, 
 warm but not hot; wild roses and half-dried 
 fern-bushes were her pleasant neighbors, 
 indeed, the only neighbors save a ruminant 
 cow that stood in sleepy silence on the grassy 
 parapet of the disused breastwork. To Amo 
 ret, nature was always a friend and companion, 
 a mirror and a mentor. And now save for 
 one unrecognized and unconfessed undertone 
 the intense local atmosphere pervaded her 
 very being with a sense of which some deep
 
 ioo The End of the Beginning. 
 
 inner content was the only perceptible thing. 
 Yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow were one, 
 and all were good; the time and the scene 
 made her so much in love with life that she 
 was perfectly willing to die, knowing that she 
 could not lose herself in what the world calls 
 death. What though a rose-leaf fell, dis 
 lodged by the sluggish breeze, and made its 
 final little journey to earth? Was the lapsing 
 wave troubled that it could never be its own 
 self again in the multiplying years? Nowhere 
 else does the eternal in the transient so per 
 vade the mind as beside the hundred-tinted, 
 the thousand-voiced ocean. " All is," it seems 
 to say. 
 
 Winter had slowly melted into spring, and 
 down in the valley the stumpy little willows, 
 which were shorn of their beauty last year 
 that its dainty yellow might be blackened into 
 charcoal, saw their ugly, despoiled selves in 
 the tiny two-foot stream that ran in and out 
 amongst them, trying, with its soothing chat 
 ter, to console them for the pitiful picture its 
 honest little bosom so plainly showed. So 
 their brightening stems and soft new catkins 
 waved the banners of the season of resurrec 
 tion in the dawn of a northern summer. 
 
 A temporary change had come over the lit 
 tle household above the bookstore. Amoret
 
 The Surge of the Sea. 101 
 
 was twenty, and had twenty ambitions; her 
 tireless patience in that most fretting of tasks, 
 the music teacher's, could not make many 
 dollars, what with the meagre rates of pay 
 ment then in vogue in provincial towns ; while 
 the old man's business across the counter was 
 plainly getting slenderer. Respectability must 
 increasingly make that most pathetic of strug 
 gles, a downhill fight with poverty. A bus 
 tling rival across the way had rented a shop, 
 put in a plate-glass window with never a wooden 
 shutter at night, and filled it with gaudy pict 
 ures and toys, trashy Saturday weeklies that 
 purveyed cheap fiction to sewing-girls, and 
 even the horrible sheets that hebdomadally 
 displayed lurid representations of prize-fights, 
 robberies, and assassinated females. Into the 
 sale of this wretched " literature " Mr. Welby 
 could not go ; to him his traffic was a matter 
 of conscience, and he half despaired of the 
 republic when he reflected that the younger 
 part of Bellwood was actually patronizing his 
 new neighbor, and ignoring the old publishing- 
 house of half a century's standing. It was not 
 the loss of the poor little money that vexed 
 him ; it was the possible flitting of the self- 
 respect of the ancient community that he had 
 served for a lifetime, as boy and man, and 
 quietly loved.
 
 IO2 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 Meanwhile his best patron died ; the value 
 of the plentiful first editions on his shelves was 
 as yet undreamed of; and Amoret, with more 
 regrets and more quavers than she let her 
 grandfather know, made up her mind to earn 
 her own living and send something home to 
 Bellwood. Flat amazement and definite de 
 nial gradually yielded to her resolution and 
 common-sense. A second cousin in the city 
 by the island-dotted bay offered her a home 
 and a chance to teach music and literature in 
 her eminently respectable and fairly successful 
 school for girls ; and still another ancient rela 
 tive, lame, kindly, and efficient, was tempora 
 rily installed as Mr. Welby's housekeeper. So 
 Amoret began to try to show the world that it 
 ought to give her some few dollars in return 
 for various large ideas concerning Tennyson 
 and Beethoven. What other exchange could 
 she ask? A woman could hardly preach or 
 plead; authorship was uncertain, and day- 
 labor hard on one's back. Teaching and 
 housekeeping were almost all that were left 
 to think of. 
 
 The parting was hard enough, for all that 
 Amoret had cheerily said about the trifle of 
 sixty miles, a monthly run up the river, a 
 letter every Sunday, and the nearness of the 
 telegraph office to the old book-store. But
 
 The Surge of the Sea. 103 
 
 there would, at any rate, be no woes of the 
 uncertain sort to encounter; Cousin Lodema 
 Tetley was too good and too self-respecting, 
 albeit a little cold, to permit Amoret to en 
 dure any Bronte experiences in her new posi 
 tion ; and she rose to a state almost of 
 cheerfulness just as she got on the train and 
 left the poor old philosopher disconsolate on 
 the platform by the thought that if this 
 scheme failed she would come straight home, 
 contract the book-store into half its quarters, 
 take possession of the other half herself, 
 astonish Bellwood with millinery such as it 
 never dreamed of, and quit teaching forever. 
 Amoret knew that she had taste and tact 
 enough to make her living as a milliner, if 
 worse came to worse. Her bonnets and hats 
 and draperies were the prettiest she knew of; 
 she had deftly designed the headgear of many 
 an impecunious or tasteless friend, getting 
 something out of nothing in a marvellous 
 way ; and she grimly felt that she would yet 
 make people pay for this sort of thing, rather 
 than starve or see Mr. Welby's thin face get to 
 look worried in its old age. Indeed, her will 
 ingness to work was catholic. Two avenues of 
 financial gain, however, she regarded as per 
 manently closed, stealing and keeping 
 boarders. A teacher may be patronized or
 
 IO4 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 dismissed by the community ; but a milliner, 
 with strong ideas and a hundred dollars ahead, 
 has that community at its mercy. And then, 
 by and by, The Philosophy of Life and her 
 own book of poems could be published from 
 the proceeds, mammon should serve the 
 muses ! All this was laughingly whispered by 
 the poet to the philosopher through the car- 
 window, just before the train left the station 
 and began to pass the familiar objects with an 
 increasing speed that finally rose to an average 
 of no less than twenty-five miles an hour. 
 
 Miss Tetley's school occupied a great square 
 house on the aristocratic street of the seaport 
 city, just where the thoroughfare began to 
 slope down to the wharves and the harbor. It 
 had been built in the days of the merchant 
 princes, before the Embargo. Above its third 
 high wooden story the roof was bordered by 
 a heavy railing, reproducing in little the clas 
 sical fashion of the fence whose partially de 
 cayed urn-topped wooden pillars surrounded 
 the generous yard. The window-glass was of 
 the largest size purchasable in 1800; the front 
 door was embellished by an enormous brass 
 knocker, still of use because of the habitual 
 incertitude of the adjoining bell-wire; while 
 within the spacious hall and generous rooms 
 of the mansion were the mahogany chairs,
 
 The Surge of the Sea. 105 
 
 the majestic but impracticable sofas, the locked 
 book-cases, and the silver candlesticks of the 
 date when the establishment was set up. Over 
 the carved and white painted mantel of the 
 parlor hung a portrait of Sir William Pep- 
 perell, the lurid hue of whose generous 
 cheeks matched that of his equally generous 
 waistcoat. 
 
 The house was deliciously cool in summer, 
 never thoroughly warmed in winter, and dis 
 tinctly melancholy in rainy weather, when, 
 like some people, it radiated an air of respect 
 able discomfort. But Amoret was by no 
 means lonesome in her new habitation. Aside 
 from her own soul and the friendly companion 
 ship of birds, flowers, and hills, she had never 
 known of any environment save that of deca 
 dent respectability. In that she slept and ate ; 
 but in Nature and in the cool corners of her 
 own aloof personality was her real existence. 
 Indeed, the distinctly and sometimes power 
 fully marine atmosphere of the bay city, with 
 its morning fogs and its afternoon whiffs from 
 the shallow coves to the westward, seemed 
 only to intensify that effect of ancient quietude, 
 of severance from things definitely new or 
 modern, in which her life had been spent. 
 The shifting sea, after all, appears more change 
 less than the immovable mountains of the
 
 io6 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 cloud-swept inner country, and is better able 
 to make to-day seem a long time ago. 
 
 In Miss Tetley's school Amoret's duties had 
 begun in the spring, nor had they ceased when 
 the summer term closed at its old-fashioned 
 July date. The school was a successful one, 
 but while mere prosperity always seemed to 
 Amoret rather vulgar, she could not object to 
 the quiet and decorous way in which Miss 
 Tetley's twenty boarders and sixty day schol 
 ars paid their goodly moneys for instruction 
 that was by no means superficial. Miss Tet 
 ley's brain and birth and tact were alike un 
 questionable, and she knew it, and knew that 
 others knew it ; therefore the dignified transfer 
 of accomplishments for dollars hurt nobody's 
 pride, and distinctly increased the sum-total of 
 self-satisfaction in the community. It may be 
 doubted whether the world can show a higher 
 average of civilization than that of the strip of 
 seacoast from the Penobscot to the Hudson; 
 but it is no matter of doubt that the best repre 
 sentative of that civilization is the New Eng 
 land woman over thirty years of age. That 
 Miss Tetley was of such maturity nobody 
 questioned. 
 
 To Amoret was assigned the duty of teach 
 ing rhetoric, English literature, and piano- 
 playing; an old German, who came in three
 
 The Surge of the Sea. 107 
 
 times a week, took charge of vocal music. 
 Her success was instantaneous, though it had 
 been seriously questioned before her arrival 
 from the vague region known as " up the 
 river." The girls, with the deferential and 
 unjealous adoration they often bestow upon 
 older persons of their own sex, at once declared 
 her ravishingly beautiful ; nor could there be 
 any question as to the knowledge of solecisms, 
 of Kubla Khan, or of counterpoint possessed 
 by one who dressed with such divine simplic 
 ity that you never could tell how it was done, 
 though you looked at her for the entire forty- 
 four minutes when you were not reciting. 
 Thus, though the tale of Amoret's toils as 
 teacher would be more romantic if adorned 
 by accounts of trials and persecutions wrought 
 by employer and scholar on a sensitive soul, 
 she was fortunate from the start, and there 
 is nothing more to say. 
 
 Indeed, Amoret was in no true sense sensi 
 tive. If anything displeased her, she wished 
 to avoid it forever ; if she could not, she made 
 it dwell in the suburbs of her good pleasure, 
 and consoled herself with her inner resources 
 and her next outing. 
 
 So spring had become summer ; and Amoret, 
 with some money in her purse and some mem 
 ories of success in her head, had made the first
 
 io8 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 of her little visits to the old home, finding 
 Grandfather Welby still lonesome, but more 
 industrious than ever in the small affairs of the 
 venerable shop, and happier than of yore in 
 the accumulation of notes for the great work. 
 Indeed, he had taken large though theoretically 
 melancholy satisfaction in making some data 
 of his recent regrets for the loss of Amoret, 
 thus : 
 
 Absence is true presence ; we think of people but 
 when they are out of sight. 
 
 Experience comes high, but it pays. 
 
 Three things show an infinite variety in a changeless 
 unity : the sea, the sky, and woman's love. 
 
 Or, in unconscious egotism, after such en 
 tries as these last: 
 
 The author turns for his readers the leaves of the 
 book of his brain. 
 
 He meditated somewhat more than usual, it 
 is true, on death ; and came to a newly realized 
 sense that he was getting to be a tolerably old 
 man. Of his demise and its consequences he 
 had no real fear in any case. Being Amoret's 
 grandfather, he would have been ashamed to 
 show it. Indeed, in her absence he made to a
 
 The Surge of the Sea. 109 
 
 still more ancient contemporary one slightly 
 vicious remark which he would hardly have 
 ventured to utter to her of whose clear spiritual 
 insight he stood somewhat in awe. " I never 
 asked to be born," said he ; "I have tried to 
 live a decent life ; and God is as much respon 
 sible for my getting out as for my coming 
 in." 
 
 " Yes," replied old Hendrickson, the grocer ; 
 " but I 'm glad to have had my chance." 
 When Mr. Welby got back to his desk he 
 was a little ashamed of his seeming cynicism, 
 and thought Hendrickson had the better of 
 the colloquy, until, re-reading one of his own 
 manuscript dicta, he reflected that his old 
 friend had probably got his idea from himself. 
 As far as death went, Mr. Welby's chief regrets 
 were two : first, that the world might crowd 
 Amoret; second, and more selfish and per 
 sonal, the thought that he must leave his few 
 pet old books in the corner that were not for 
 sale. From this mood came the entry, dashed 
 down in a sort of defiance of the fact that it 
 was unaxiomatically diffuse in its wording, and 
 not original at that : 
 
 Art is long, but the book-lover's time is fleeting ; 
 as he passes the shelf and furtively pats his loved 
 volumes there comes a whisper in a drear corner of 
 his brain : " Nunc mihi, mox aliis."
 
 no The End of the Beginning. 
 
 Indeed, in one of these days of blueness the 
 philospher certainly twitted on facts when he 
 recorded the observation : 
 
 Death rids us, sooner or later, of many whom we 
 dislike ; but it also, unluckily, takes us out of the way 
 of some who dislike us. 
 
 All this cynicism, however, was but skin- 
 deep ; it did not permeate his being more than 
 does the pleasant-sour tang of that honest 
 fruit, the bellflower apple. In his real self 
 Thomas Welby was a sweet old sunny soul ; 
 but sweetness is not insipidity, and sunshine 
 would be naught without shadow. Perhaps, 
 however, he never reached a nobler height of 
 altruism than when he came to say and even 
 half to believe : 
 
 Gathering books is good, but scattering them is 
 better : to each reader his chosen few. 
 
 Amoret's run to Bellwood could not be 
 prolonged to any considerable time, for her 
 stately employer intimated, in a way that 
 might be interpreted as a command, that she 
 could return if she chose, and spend the va 
 cation in superintending the reading and the 
 French of a few ladies, beyond " school age," 
 summering in the adjoining coast village,
 
 The Surge of the Sea. 1 1 1 
 
 wherein Miss Tetley herself had a modest 
 cottage. This suggestion meant an additional 
 stipend which Amoret could not afford to 
 lose; and since all her absences from Bell- 
 wood were for financial reasons, she felt that 
 she had no right to say no ; for things in her 
 grandfather's simple domestic establishment 
 were going well enough, and in the book-shop 
 no worse than usual. But the week at home 
 had certainly been pleasant; the villagers 
 showed the increased respect they felt for 
 one reputed to be getting good wages in the 
 State metropolis ; and her visit was dignified 
 by the actual production, after all the years, 
 of the veritable volume of The Philosophy of 
 Life, from which the dear old sage read a few 
 entries with a combination of modesty and 
 didacticism, of maidenliness and sagesse, that 
 made Amoret love him better than ever. " You 
 can not," she exclaimed with vocal italicization, 
 " love what you don't respect unless the ele 
 ment of pity creeps in, and that 's the way you 
 love a bird : you patronize it. I 'm glad, dear 
 granddaddy, that I don't have to pretend to 
 love you just because you 're a relative ; that 's 
 the dreariest lie in the world." 
 
 So it was that, after her return, Amoret 
 found herself, for the first time in her life, a 
 seaside summerer, with two months more of the
 
 ii2 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 green ocean as her recreation, and two months 
 more of fat-handed women as her duty. And 
 the day when she stood alone on the cliff 
 like a bright statue of eternal-womanly above 
 the perennial surge she had turned her back 
 upon Miss Lodema, the personages whose 
 brains she was expected to veneer, and all the 
 rest of the cottagers, in order to have one 
 whole long day all by herself. She was still, 
 in essentials, the little girl of the graveyard ; 
 she must withdraw, now and then, from " man 
 with his wasty ways," and live for a few hours 
 with her heart-beats for companion and the 
 butterflies and the grasses for teachers. Nor 
 was the change abrupt from the graves of her 
 girlhood to the waves of to-day : each was in 
 stinct with life in a sense not true of the crowds 
 on the city sidewalk. 
 
 Clambering over the earthworks, with their 
 huge semi-circular foundations for cannon that 
 never fired a shot, Amoret left the cows to 
 their unaesthetic nibbles earthward and stupid 
 blinks seaward, and picked her way to a crevice, 
 half down the cliff, which she had already made 
 a favorite seat. A little piece of driftwood 
 formed a good bottom for the chair ; the rocks 
 were so shaped as to make a back, while im 
 mediately in front jutted an irregular up-slop 
 ing plane of weather-seamed stone, surrounded
 
 The Surge of the Sea. 113 
 
 at every high tide, but easily accessible at low 
 water. This rock-slope terminated in a point 
 that got splashed by the more ambitious waves 
 when wind and tide were right, a point that 
 Amoret christened the Pope's Nose, accord 
 ing to a habit she had never outgrown. From 
 her earliest childhood a certain personality had 
 seemed to her to inhere in half the objects she 
 saw houses had characters of their own, win 
 dows looked like faces, chimneys were solemn, 
 hills were meditative, brooks talked to them 
 selves, rivers were untrustworthy, roads beck 
 oned, and trees, if less than human, were more 
 than animal. As for the ocean, it was the uni 
 versal solvent, the catholic language, whisper 
 ing some of the secrets of eternity. Yet if it 
 was the cathedral of reason in this unsuper- 
 stitious age, why not adorn its edges with gar 
 goyles and sportive sculptures? Nature fur 
 nished the decorative carvings, she would give 
 the names. 
 
 Somehow, by the sea, one can do nothing, 
 that is to say everything, for hours and hours 
 without weariness or satiety. If nature does 
 not bore herself as man does, it is because she 
 fills her round of daily tasks without any hate 
 ful set of rules, nor does she ever look at a 
 watch or a calendar. Some days, such as this 
 of Amoret's in her seat under the cliff, the soul 
 8
 
 H4 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 goes on and on in the unmethodical progres- 
 siveness, the irregular unity, of nature herself. 
 What Amoret began to think of she could 
 not tell any more than the bay-bushes and ferns 
 over her head ; she merely kept on like them, 
 and in the same way. Maybe they knew more 
 than she did, for they did not quarrel with their 
 environment or their time of being, and when 
 they died they died. Perhaps they knew they 
 were luckier than their fellows a mile inland, 
 but perhaps they did n't. Plants have to suffer, 
 but so do minerals ; the wave eats the cliff, 
 and then itself evaporates. Suffering is change, 
 and change is life; indeed, there is a sort of 
 likeness between force and existence. But 
 force never makes an individual, and one single 
 true vitality, whatever it is, has a character that 
 no amount of mere activity can possess. We 
 know it, and so does the lower animal, when 
 we look each other straight in the eye. It is 
 the oneness of the soul for which we two are 
 searching in that look; number or fewness 
 of volts or kilos does not form a soul. So 
 Homer and the Edda-writers used to make a 
 brook into a little divinity, and a man into a 
 big one, and think they had settled it all. 
 Their gods and goddesses were rather meaner 
 than common folks; but what of it? We have 
 to make more excuses nowadays for presidents
 
 The Surge of the Sea. 115 
 
 and princes than for sewing-women or black 
 smiths. So Amoret thought, and she went on 
 and on, 
 
 " Dear me, what a lovely curve that gull 
 made as he swooped between the schooner 
 and the island ! What fun it must be to fly ! 
 Poor things, we can't boast, as long as we can't 
 keep ourselves one minute one inch above the 
 earth by willing it. Gulls and fish-hawks can 
 see better than we; dirty bats, too, for that 
 matter. Everything can do something better 
 than anything else can. A dog can run faster 
 than Chaucer, smell a world Shakespeare never 
 knew, and crunch a bone that would tax the 
 tooth of time. Oh ! that was the first splash 
 on the Pope's Nose. What a lazy, tricky whirl 
 pool out over that sunken ledge ! I wonder 
 whether I 'd rather be drowned or slowly swal 
 lowed in a quicksand. One would have time 
 enough for a death-bed repentance in the lat 
 ter case. Indians used to bury each other in 
 the sand up to the neck, over night, for small 
 pox, or did they ever have the small 
 pox? and once the foxes came and ate off 
 the heads of two or three. I suppose death 
 stared them in the face. What would folks 
 think of us if we said everything we think ! 
 How easy it is for us to philosophize when 
 we are happy ourselves? What was it grandpa
 
 1 1 6 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 was saying the other day? Severity is easily 
 endurable when it falls on somebody else. But 
 I 'm sure I 'm sorry enough for everything. 
 Once when I was a little girl I waked up with 
 my face wet with tears, and when I had cried 
 for an hour, and grandpa asked what was the 
 matter, I said, ' the sins of the world.' I must 
 have gone to church the day before. 
 
 " That swirl over the rock reminds me of the 
 time when I had to drown a poor little kitten 
 I could n't find a mother for, or make drink 
 milk. The mystery of death ! We don't 
 know much more, after all, than the monkey 
 some one told me of, that was so puzzled when 
 he closed his paw and accidentally killed a fly 
 he had been watching therein ; then he handed 
 it to a by-standing woman, with a pathetic 
 look in his simian eye, as much as to say: 
 ' Tell me about that life that is n't ; where is it 
 now?' The day I drowned the kitten was the 
 first time I ever read the line ' Our little life 
 is rounded with a sleep.' Anybody could 
 have said that ; I believe one is as good a poet 
 as another, if he spoke out; and thinking is 
 better than speaking. The only trouble is 
 that the old cow up there looks as though she 
 had deeper thoughts than I do. Stagnation 
 is n't thought ; neither is buzzy activity, for 
 that matter. Thinking and doing are the left
 
 The Surge of the Sea. 117 
 
 hand and the right, might put that into 
 shape and give it to grandpa for his book, or 
 they 're the brain and the hand. Most people 
 have hands and no brains; some have brains 
 and no hands. 
 
 " Oh ! there 's a butterfly in the surf, just 
 like a soul caught and whirled to its fate by 
 this great rolling world ; I wonder whether we 
 ought to be sorrier for the butterfly or the surf. 
 
 " I wish we did n't have backs ; there, that 's 
 more comfortable. I wonder why these off 
 shore fishermen like to row face-forward ; that 
 man has to sit so, to steer, and manage his 
 sail. How much has he caught? Is he going 
 home to his wife? I hope he'll be good to 
 her. Some of these common folks get a good 
 deal of comfort out of being married. There 
 can't be much of the ideal about it, but at least 
 there is a sort of humdrum friendship, while it 
 lasts ; and then she dies and he marries again. 
 Two things are sure in this world : death and 
 second marriages. But I 'd rather be a good 
 friend than a poor lover. I would have to love 
 anybody man or woman ever so much to 
 endure him at all, every day, year after year ; 
 but if I did, it would be because I really liked 
 him, and liked to be with him. And that, if 
 you mean twenty years together, come weal 
 come woe, is friendship, and friendship is love.
 
 1 1 8 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 The friend of God: what a lot God must 
 know ! his friendship would be worth while. 
 I wonder if anybody loves Mr. Morland, and 
 he loves anybody, you can't forget his face, 
 any way. 
 
 " This is getting rather warm, but the breeze 
 is cool. What a perfect smell ! I don't see 
 why smelling is n't as legitimate as seeing. 
 Who was it that said he wanted to die to 
 escape the tyranny of the three dimensions? 
 I suppose if I made that remark to Miss Mor- 
 fax to-morrow morning it would be about as 
 intelligible as the Russian she says she is 'just 
 crazy to learn.' She 'd be crazy before she 
 got it learned. What fun it will be just after 
 we die ! out of space, out of time, sans teeth, 
 sans everything, without the vexation of our 
 bodies. That is like what I heard Mr. Mor 
 land say to Mrs. Catherwood at the reception. 
 How pretty she is, for a widow. Why 
 shouldn't widows be pretty? they ought to 
 have got more out of life than the rest of us. 
 ' Does n't it make you shiver to think of dying, 
 Mr. Morland?' said she; 'to think of going 
 all alone you don't know where?' And Mr. 
 Morland turned his face down to hers with a 
 far-away look he is taller than most of us 
 and his only words were : ' No one can be more 
 lonely in the next world than in this; our own
 
 The Surge of the Sea. 119 
 
 bodies are far outside our real selves.' I don't 
 think Mrs. Catherwood understood him; she 
 merely flashed her blue eyes, with a little 
 smile, and said ' Oh, Mr. Morland ! ' which 
 might mean anything. I never saw anybody 
 just like him ; he seems a poet out of a story 
 book, or an old-time, gentle knight strayed 
 into our days, a sort of womanly man or manly 
 woman what is the difference? At any rate, 
 I am glad he is he, if I never see him again ; 
 there are so many common-place people in 
 the world that one likes to meet somebody 
 that is different. I am sure he is different. 
 He reminds me a little of Robert, for the very 
 reason that he is so unlike him ; he has n't 
 Robert's dash and fire and superficial foolish 
 ness. Mind and not body imagine Robert's 
 making such a remark as that ! " 
 
 Amoret left her rocky perch, went and 
 picked a few leaves of bay and fern, crushed 
 them in her fingers for the fragrance, sat down 
 in the afternoon shade east of the fort, and 
 looked one would have said far out to 
 sea ; but she was really staring at a new figure 
 on the horizon of life. 
 
 Henry Morland was a man at whom street- 
 passers riot infrequently gave a second glance ; 
 a fact which he well knew, while never giving 
 the slightest hint of the knowledge. But his
 
 1 20 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 notableness was very unlike Rodney's. If 
 Amoret had thought of him and Rodney in the 
 same mood, it was, as she said to herself, but 
 for contrast ; for of Rodney's radiant animal 
 ism Morland had not a trace. Tall, dark, 
 thin, he had seemed to Amoret, on first view, 
 to personate mind in a material world. His 
 rather low but broad forehead was surmounted 
 and surrounded by black hair. The eyes were 
 far apart; the nose not small, and of an out 
 ward arch ; the lips thin and delicate, suggest 
 ing in their ordinary expression a mood of 
 reticent firmness that most men reserve for 
 occasions of some significance ; and the hands 
 and feet like a Cuban's. Perhaps his most 
 notable characteristic at first glance was a 
 monotonous pallor of complexion, as of the 
 smoothness and softness of porcelain, but 
 suggesting delicacy of diposition rather than 
 any tendency toward ill-health. 
 
 Morland and Amoret had first met at an 
 in-door party late in the social season, before 
 the summer cessation of festivities. The two 
 had been bestowing upon others the chit-chat 
 which neither liked, but both deemed neces 
 sary in the interchange of superficial civilities, 
 a sort of small coin of the market-place, far 
 outside the temple of life. Neither conde 
 scended, then or ever, to the discussion of
 
 The Surge of the Sea. 121 
 
 thermometrical, barometrical, or hygrometri- 
 cal conditions ; but each was willing to inquire, 
 in deferential interest that did not pretend to 
 be profound, concerning the length of time 
 people had remained in Harborwood, and the 
 comparative intensity of their satisfaction with 
 the topography and society of the seaboard 
 town. 
 
 A general " party " or reception is an amuse 
 ment to the many, a despair to the few, and 
 an opportunity to some. Before Morland was 
 presented to Amoret, each had been studying 
 the gathering with equal interest, if from dif 
 ferent motives. Morland, with the journal 
 ist's and critic's inveterate habit of external 
 comment, was quietly noting a few absurdities 
 of appearance or incongruities of dress, and 
 was amusing himself with the thought that 
 years dealt indifferently with some men and 
 women who had seemed old to him in his boy 
 hood days, nor appeared more ancient now. 
 In the same observant temper he was watching 
 for new faces, and two attracted his unexcit- 
 able notice. One was that of a fairly success 
 ful novelist from another city, tall, large, 
 blonde, voluble, forty; the other was Amoret, 
 who could lay claim to none of these terms. 
 
 The social function had reached its middle 
 stage ; the first scattering arrivals had been re-
 
 122 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 inforced by rapidly accumulating recruits from 
 the dressing-rooms ; refreshments had not yet 
 been served ; and numerous groups were talk 
 ing and laughing in a roar which, though en 
 durable, was not in all respects more agreeable 
 than the atmosphere of the rooms, heavily 
 laden with the odor of strong half-wilted flow 
 ers and miscellaneous perfumes from the toilet 
 table. Amoret had never before been present 
 at so large or so ambitious a gathering; and 
 the effect of her inner sense of modest inexpe 
 rience was to give her an external air of 
 superiority. Nobody in the world seems so 
 haughty as he or she who is most timid ; a 
 feebleness at times almost despairing assumes 
 the form of conscious pride or visible dislike. 
 Amoret's look that night was perhaps nothing 
 more than her habitual flower-like indifference 
 to beholders ; rooted in nature, she instinc 
 tively turned her face skyward, not manward ; 
 but it was enough to puzzle Morland, to whom 
 her simplicity was a stronger magnet than the 
 dominant personality of the blonde novelist, 
 though that popular personage was one who 
 never appeared anywhere without seeming to 
 say, " I am here," she pre-supposed a public, 
 and Morland had no doubt that she attitudin 
 ized even at the desk where she wrote her 
 florid but effective stories of the relations be-
 
 The Surge of the Sea. 123 
 
 tween a polyonomous her and an erratic him. 
 Morland had written reviews of more than one 
 of her books, and his memory now flattered 
 him that those reviews had been as kindly as 
 the novels warranted ; at least his judgment 
 had not been unconsciously warped by any 
 anticipatory knowledge of her insistent per 
 sonality. 
 
 After this little preliminary study Morland 
 was sure that if he talked with his fellow-author 
 for long she would find him out, and turn 
 the conversation straight toward her own ad 
 vantage as a future maker of books; and so 
 there was some personal desire for self-pres 
 ervation in his request to be presented, in 
 stead, to the dark and interesting newcomer. 
 The better part of the chat that followed was 
 one that Amoret recalled, word by word, as 
 she looked seaward and unconsciously made 
 Morland the dream-figure on the far sky-line 
 of the green ocean. 
 
 " Miss Wenton," he had said, " my evening 
 would have been incomplete without this 
 honor." 
 
 " One meets whom one wishes to meet, 
 sooner or later, in this life," replied Amoret, with 
 a pretty turn of the head and a prettier look in 
 her eyes, as she lifted a round arm and fixed a 
 stray little lock of hair on the back of her head.
 
 124 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 The cryptic reply might have been deemed 
 as light as Morland's was merely conventional ; 
 but each felt some undercurrent of truth in 
 his or her part of the little duologue, which 
 gave the few words a new significance, and 
 started the following conversation far in ad 
 vance of the usual beginning point of society 
 chatter. The king's pawn had merely moved 
 two squares forward, but the serious play was 
 quickly on, and the queen was in the game. 
 Amoret's pleasure in the talk was that of an 
 innocence so childish as to be impenetrable, 
 while Morland's subtle compliments became 
 more than superficial because of the evident 
 sincerity of his interest in his new acquaint 
 ance. To have noticed little things is the 
 most irresistible of minor flatteries ; and each 
 had been watching the other, a fact which 
 Amoret instinctively concealed and Morland 
 judiciously made known. And as the subse 
 quent days went on, it was his minute remem 
 brance of her unconsidered trifles that surprised 
 Amoret most, while Morland was best pleased 
 by the novelty of the girl's point of view, and 
 her way of setting forth her own thoughts. 
 
 To Amoret, in her day by the sea, there 
 came back, accordingly, every detail of this, 
 their first talk, in the ten minutes before the 
 blonde novelist came swooping into their little
 
 The Surge of the Sea. 125 
 
 cove-nook of intelligence like a ferry-boat 
 among wherries, ending it all save for a scant 
 minute at parting. They had spoken of roses 
 and violets ; of " In Memoriam," and the tire 
 someness of standing for two hours; of the 
 waste of time in reading daily papers, and of a 
 late concert of the Mendelssohn Quintette Club. 
 From the last, to Morland's amazement and 
 Amoret's delight, the talk had drifted into the 
 deep discussion how should it be described 
 in simple words? of the correlation and 
 transmutation of the forces of aesthetic com 
 munication between mind and mind : what 
 smell and taste could suggest, and whether a 
 symphony could tell a story or a painting 
 sing a song. Morland had quoted some hack 
 neyed lines on the subject ; but the lines, and 
 he himself, had been made commonplace in 
 his own mind by the girl's quick citation of 
 Shelley's - 
 
 " land 
 Where music and moonlight and feeling are one." 
 
 Frivolity and giggle were all around them in 
 the crowded and uncomfortable room ; but in 
 a far corner these two chance wanderers in the 
 wilderness of inanity had happened upon a 
 topic which each had often thought of, but 
 seldom broached.
 
 126 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 " I suppose," said Morland, " that if we 
 have any existence at all beyond this life, we 
 shall have little need of the senses we most 
 employ here, and shall make most use of mere 
 dim feeling between soul and soul." 
 
 " Angelic eyes, and noses, and tongues, and 
 fingers and ears will all become one sense of 
 apprehension then," said Amoret. 
 
 " Don't you think there is a little truth in 
 telepathy, Miss Wenton?" said Morland. 
 
 " I suppose so," said she, " underneath a 
 great deal of humbug and coincidence. How 
 strange it is when we feel that we Ve been in a 
 place before, and heard the very same things 
 said, though the chances are all against it." 
 
 " And stranger still," said Morland, " when 
 one knows just what somebody else is going 
 to say." 
 
 " It 's partly," said Amoret, " that we have 
 so few ideas and not many words, and must 
 come back to the old things. Don't you 
 remember the nursery jingle, 
 
 " ' We eat and drink and sleep, and then 
 We eat and drink and sleep again ? ' 
 
 That's all some folks' life amounts to." 
 
 " I know it," said he ; " but, as you say, 
 coincidence hardly accounts for it all. I think
 
 The Surge of the Sea. 1 27 
 
 I feel this sense more when talking with intel 
 ligent people on out-of-the-way themes." 
 
 " Do you have it now ? " said Amoret. " Our 
 themes are out-of-the-way, I am sure," and 
 as she looked at his deep eyes, she was in 
 stantly ashamed of seeming to trifle, a tiny 
 vexation that raised Morland in her esteem, 
 and belittled herself in her own mind for a 
 fortnight afterward. 
 
 " I wish I could think I ever had so full a 
 ten minutes before in some previous state," 
 said Morland, with a pleasant smile ; and just 
 then the impressive novelist descended on the 
 pair, and the hostess brought a callow col 
 legian to present to Amoret. Morland was 
 thirty-eight ; but Amoret, from babyhood, had 
 always liked antiquity. It was an hour after 
 ward, in the hall, when Morland got a chance 
 to say : " Miss Tetley is a valued friend of 
 mine ; I hope I may see you, too, the next 
 time I dislocate the bell-wire or pound the 
 great brass knocker. Time, you know, is good 
 for nothing save as a memory or a hope ; " 
 and the quiet face was brightened by a still 
 smile that Amoret suddenly compared, in her 
 mind, with Robert's old-time laughs, and the 
 latter seemed very far away. 
 
 As for Morland's farewell words, they came 
 back to her again and again, as she looked
 
 128 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 seaward : " Time is good for nothing save as a 
 memory or a hope." A memory, or a hope, 
 that had never been her idea of the days and 
 years; they had been one long and delight 
 some procession of present moments, even 
 the absence of her grandfather had not left them 
 empty, and certainly Robert's had not, though 
 she often gave him a regretful thought, for all 
 her life she had wished he was different. But 
 now, for some new reason that she could not 
 understand, she had spent half the afternoon 
 in thinking about that chance meeting at the 
 party, and in wondering when the old brass 
 knocker would sound. The worst of it was 
 that Miss Tetley had almost immediately trans 
 ferred herself to the seaside cottage, and per 
 haps he had come and gone, and the knocks 
 had but echoed through the emptiness of the 
 great square rooms. 
 
 The sun set ; the darkness deepened ; night 
 shut down ; the broken cliffs grew black ; and 
 the sea, whose roar and splash had been com 
 pany during the day, took another tone and 
 moaned drearily. Then it was, the while the 
 two great lights at the extremities of the long 
 island began to glow like huge candlesticks on 
 either end of an altar to Neptune, that Amoret 
 wrote the last lines of a sonnet she had begun 
 long ago in her river home. As her pencil
 
 The Surge of the Sea. 129 
 
 closed its work in the gloom, and she turned 
 to go, she thought she was thinking only of 
 the illimitable ocean. 
 
 AFTER DEATH. 
 
 When I forthfare beyond this narrow earth, 
 With all its metes and bounds of now and here, 
 And brooding clouds of ignorance and fear 
 
 That overhung me on my day of birth, 
 
 Wherethrough the jocund sun's perennial mirth 
 Has shone more inly bright each coming year, 
 With some new glory of that outer sphere 
 
 Where length and breadth and height are little worth, 
 
 Then shall I find that even here below 
 We guessed the secret of eternity, 
 And learned in years the yearless mystery ; 
 
 For in our earliest world we came to know 
 The master-lesson and the riddle's key: 
 Unending love unending growth shall be.
 
 130 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 VI. 
 
 AN HEIR OF THE AGES. 
 
 THE congregation of the dead awaits the 
 pilgrims of life, and the grave is the 
 second cradle of man. We came from our 
 own and we go to our own, bearing the bur 
 den of sins before our birth, and borne on the 
 wings of the hopes of our ancestors. Our 
 grandfathers' faces peer back from our mir 
 rors, and our very voices are those that once 
 came from lips now dust Yet we shall not 
 be damned for Adam's sin, nor saved by a 
 mother's virtues. 
 
 Man's brain is most vexed by the problem 
 of self, so he seeks to shirk it by throwing it 
 on somebody else. Once it was laid on the 
 priest, now it falls on the environment. But the 
 old Spanish philosopher summed our case when 
 he said : " Blood is an inheritance, virtue an 
 acquisition." Our bodies are no more than 
 the hands and feet of the soul. Life is an 
 eternal now, an unending triumph over death, 
 if so we will make it. If we fall away it is
 
 An Heir of the Ages. 131 
 
 because we yield hold ; neither God nor man 
 may push us off. The human mind, indeed, 
 comprehends neither infinitude nor limitation 
 of life, of space, of time, of matter; it stag 
 gers at the thought of something, nothing, 
 self, the rest; it sometimes calls good bad and 
 bad good. But light shines on the origin of 
 ill because of the glory of freedom and tri 
 umph by choice. Mere liberty has no room 
 for God, mere foreordination makes man a 
 puppet; we know there is a shaping power, 
 and we also know we are free. 
 
 When Henry Morland was a boy in an up- 
 country village, however, he thought there 
 were ten compelling fates and one poor little 
 sprite of freedom in his narrow world. The 
 care that others showed him seemed a kind of 
 immitigable cruelty, and whenever, in boyish 
 fashion, he resolved to be his own be and do 
 his own do, he seemed forced into petty and 
 wayward rebellion. The neighbors said he 
 was moody, but his parents thought he had 
 a strong will, and were glad that his bookish 
 tastes saved them from frequent necessity to 
 " break " it. He could read at five, by ten he 
 knew nearly all the books behind the glass 
 doors of the mahogany cases, and at fifteen 
 the little town library in an upper room of the 
 academy building was housed in his own head
 
 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 as well. Boys and girls acquire the reading 
 habit then or never; and little Morland fol 
 lowed the fortunes of the Faerie Queene as 
 well as Mr. Abbott's Napoleon, and could 
 locate Inchcape Rock as accurately as the 
 Sugarloaf of his own village. Caring little 
 for scud, or prisoners' base, or three old cat, 
 or swimming, or horseback riding, or the rude 
 gymnasium of the academy, his one physical 
 triumph lay in his long legs, which could run 
 a race faster than those of any boy in the 
 county town. And his acquaintance, young 
 and old, excused peculiarities that were per 
 verse, perhaps, but seldom vicious or sullen, 
 by saying " Henry 's a great reader," as though 
 that settled everything. 
 
 But the boy's book-loving tastes had at 
 least given him ability to compare the actual 
 with the fanciful, and in a lazy way he appre 
 ciated some part of the beauties of his en 
 vironment. The long village of one street, 
 whence strayed a few minor thoroughfares at 
 right angles, rested on the top of a great 
 truncated cone. Around the town, straggling 
 off into the eastward meadows in many an 
 intricate S or graceful C, was the eccentric 
 little river, subdividing the hayfields into divers 
 patterns, and demanding a log bridge, here 
 and there, for the farmers' ways. In spring
 
 An Heir of the Ages. 133 
 
 the sluggish stream overflowed the surround 
 ing acres, and in the long winter, save when, 
 as usually happened, it was covered with snow, 
 it stretched a vitreous floor for the muffled 
 skaters. But the glory of Reedville was the 
 great irregular line of mountains to the west 
 ward, running north and south in majestic 
 superiority to the white steeple of the Con 
 gregational church or the modest brick tower 
 of the academy. In the morning their bare 
 tops caught the first thin, shivering rod of 
 sunlight, and in the late evening their dark 
 contour, like that of a row of huge trans 
 ported pyramids, shocked and distorted by an 
 earthquake, bordered the deepening purple of 
 the sky. Most of the farmers regarded them 
 as so much possibly productive woodland, for 
 their eastern sides were occasionally seamed 
 by chutes down which great logs were slid in 
 favorable winters ; while the villagers' daugh 
 ters viewed them as huge blueberry pastures, 
 yielding five cents a quart or three by the 
 Bushel, and demanding patience, sugar, and 
 stained-handedness in the doing-up. To young 
 Morland these outlying peaks of a greater 
 range were neither the delectable mountains 
 of a joyous imagination, nor the prosaic neigh 
 bors of an unintelligent mind. 
 
 If Henry was a reader, it was because the
 
 1 34 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 world of books was larger than that of Reed- 
 ville, and because books never annoyed him 
 by intrusiveness or misapprehension, the two 
 great banes of childhood. To be misjudged 
 or wrongly blamed, to be obliged to make a 
 timid explanation, or to rest in undeserved 
 though perhaps tacit condemnation, these 
 things make childhood's alleged joyousness a 
 time out of which the struggles or woes of 
 middle life give a blessed deliverance, for we 
 are at least freed from the supervision of offi 
 cial and officious inspectors whose knowledge 
 may or may not be greater than ours, but 
 whose tastes and sympathies are surely not 
 identical with our own. 
 
 The townspeople, when they said that the boy 
 was a great reader, gave the reasons that his 
 parents were such superior persons : the father, 
 a calm, cool, spectacled lawyer, who shaved 
 his upper-lip Sundays and Wednesdays and 
 sat for the rest of the week in the little brick 
 office at the farther corner of the garden ; the 
 mother, a mild, timid, flat-chested excellence 
 with attenuated gray curls over her ears, two 
 straight wrinkles all across her forehead, a 
 perpetual wonder what husband thought about 
 it, and a constant worried apprehension lest 
 something should happen to Henry. The 
 despots are not all in mid-Asia, and Squire Mor-
 
 An Heir of the Ages. 135 
 
 land ruled in that most torturous of tyrannies : 
 a sense of incertitude as to his majesty's 
 pleasure in house and what was called home. 
 Mrs. Morland did not dream, for forty years, 
 that she came nearest a sort of negative hap 
 piness when her husband had left her and 
 gone to sit alone among his calf-bound law- 
 books in the one-story office and dispense 
 remunerative equity in his capacity of incor 
 ruptible executor and estate-lawyer for half the 
 county; but Henry was well aware that his 
 own freedom was best found when an open 
 book lay in his lap, and his father was some 
 where else. The squire never interrupted him 
 then, for he felt that the boy was following 
 the intellectual bent of the family far better 
 than his older sister, who, by the law of con 
 traries one sometimes sees in this crooked 
 world, was the plump and jolly wife of a well- 
 to-do merchant, deemed rather below her in 
 social station, and the mother of two rollick 
 ing babies. Everybody had always said that 
 sister Helen's was just like the roly-poly face 
 of her great grandmother, in the be-capped 
 painting that hung at the turn of the front 
 staircase. So Time wreaks his jocose revenges. 
 Of course Henry went to college in due 
 season, after he had gone through his Greek 
 reader and six books of Virgil in the academy.
 
 136 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 Fitting for college and keeping at the head 
 of his little and dwindling class was easy 
 enough, and as his instructor was one of the 
 faithful classicists of the last generation, con 
 tent to labor for a lifetime at eight hundred a 
 year without dreams of a professorship or a 
 higher salary or a "wider sphere," the boy 
 went well prepared to the famous old institu 
 tion where his father had graduated thirty years 
 before. If his mathematics were a little in 
 secure, he knew his Andrews and Stoddard by 
 heart, and used to amuse himself by giving 
 elocutionary renditions of the sense of Dem 
 osthenes, or delicate scansions of the more 
 melodious lines of Horace, while his less fa 
 vored classmates were almost vanquished by the 
 ordinary tasks of preparing a rugged transla 
 tion, or adapting Bohn to the style of their 
 own presumed vocabulary. College life was a 
 little hard, at first, for the reason that Morland 
 found among his hundred fellows of the same 
 year a dozen who knew as much as he, and 
 fifty who worked harder ; while, to his amaze 
 ment, there was one who had actually read 
 more books. Gradually, however, he adjusted 
 himself to a condition never wholly agreeable 
 to one who has always been first in his set and 
 vicinage; and, after passing through various 
 grades of collegiate unpopularity because of
 
 An Heir of the Ages. 137 
 
 alleged reserve or egotism, was on the whole 
 declared to be a good fellow and an unques 
 tionably bright one. Skimming over mathe 
 matics ; getting into the literature of Greek and 
 Latin and the paradigms of French and German 
 (plus an occasional lyric of Heine) ; perversely 
 enjoying philosophy and political economy; 
 nearly ruining his Commencement standing by 
 his frank heresies in the natural religion class 
 room ; personally liking some of the more 
 reckless collegians, but despising dissipation as 
 vulgar, Morland was first and last a reader. 
 The great college library was to him a treas 
 ury of gold and gems; had his soul been as 
 large as his mind it would also have seemed 
 a shrine, a paradise. Not even the excess 
 ively uninspiring professor of literature could 
 diminish his zeal for books, though the English 
 classroom was to him the least attractive 
 place in the college; and the old instructor 
 never dreamed that the dark boy had read the 
 Ormulum and the comedies of Congreve and 
 unlike himself had mastered an Anglo- 
 Saxon grammar he found on the dusty top 
 shelf of the philological alcove. 
 
 So Morland's four years passed right pleas 
 antly, and at Commencement his externally 
 impassive father, his tearfully gratified mother, 
 and his roseate sister heard him deliver a really
 
 138 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 excellent dissertation on the influence of the 
 Sasanian Dynasty, the adjective having been 
 unfamiliar to him when, six weeks earlier, the 
 topic had been assigned by the discretion of 
 the authorities. 
 
 What profession or pursuit should be 
 followed by this new heir of the ages, this 
 green scion of a hill-town ancestral tree? 
 Morland's father was a lawyer, but the previous 
 Morlands, with the exception of a single shoe 
 maker, had been farmers for generations, solid 
 deacons in the church of which Squire Mor- 
 land himself was deemed an important pillar. 
 That the squire's nature lacked flexibility, 
 warmth, sympathy, was proof of its fitness for 
 columnar service. In the maternal line of 
 descent there had been more irregularity, but 
 more visible ability, including that of several 
 ministers, one of whom had been an eighteenth- 
 century divine, wit, sermonizer, pamphleteer, 
 and college trustee of large local repute, who, 
 had he lived in later times, would have been 
 a social novelist or an effective politician. 
 
 Granting, then, that the fledgling bachelor 
 of arts had inherited hard rectitude from his 
 father's line, intellectual ability from his 
 mother's, and probably longevity from both, 
 what was he to do ? The ministry was out of 
 the question ; medicine had never entered his
 
 An Heir of the Ages. 139 
 
 mind ; teaching would bring him too near to 
 actual humanity; while business, since their 
 jovial daughter's alleged matrimonial deflection, 
 had been coldly received by both his parents. 
 The law who would care to sit in his father's 
 fusty office for fifty years more, or duplicate it 
 elsewhere and get a living by beating some 
 other pettifogger or writing wills for valetudina 
 rians who bestowed their earthly goods with 
 the generosity of the fishhawk when he drops 
 his marine spoils beneath the eagle's swoop? 
 Why not literature, then? A man of books 
 might surely make books, or at least a reader 
 could edit periodicals for others to read. The 
 more Morland thought of the scheme the better 
 he liked it ; nor, strange to say, was there any 
 opposition at home. His mother always said 
 yes whenever possible, and it was not hard to 
 get the assent of his father, who had never 
 ceased to pride himself on the invincible vigor 
 and unanswerable satire of his own series of anti- 
 abolitionist letters contributed to the " Surrey 
 County Democrat " in the '40*3 ; and had 
 since felt an inward assurance that he could 
 show these fellows how to run a paper, if he 
 had a mind to. 
 
 So it was that Morland went to the New 
 England metropolis and got a position on a 
 daily newspaper at ten dollars a week, with
 
 140 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 five dollars a column for space-work beyond a 
 certain amount. A graduate of his college, on 
 the editorial staff of the paper, who knew some 
 thing of his capabilities and the quality of his 
 penwork, gave him this brilliant opening, 
 which he soon made available for proving his 
 possession of a more varied industry than his 
 classmates had ever supposed he possessed. 
 Quartering himself in a third-story back bed 
 room up on " boarding-house hill," he sub 
 sisted in Washington-pie restaurants, kept his 
 eyes open in his walks abroad, and turned out 
 miscellaneous copy with a success that was 
 approved by the city editor, and ultimately 
 caught the eye of the managing editor himself. 
 Morland felt that the best result of a college 
 education is or ought to be facile adapt 
 ability to circumstances; and was quick to 
 adjust himself to his new environment. He 
 who, in his undergraduate days, had been 
 thought to care more for a sixteenth-century 
 play than for a nineteenth-century newspaper, 
 smiled as he cut out and pasted daily in his 
 rapidly growing but soon abandoned scrap- 
 book such varia as an account of a new statue 
 in the Public Garden, a "story" of a stroll 
 among the once aristocratic mansions of the 
 West End, a description of the funeral of a 
 Salem street common-councilman, an inter-
 
 An Heir of the Ages. 14.1 
 
 view with an Irish nationalist, a satirical poem 
 on the presidential aspirants of the other politi 
 cal party, and a review of a Russian pessimistic 
 novel. 
 
 Morland was now as near happiness as he 
 ever came ; far from classmates for whom he 
 cared little or from relatives or village neigh 
 bors to whom he felt it necessary to make 
 explanations of his point of view, he now 
 could follow his own bent, knowing next to 
 nobody outside the office, and finding a new 
 zest in intellectual creation, humble as it was. 
 Perhaps this was better than his lifelong habit 
 of mere book absorption. He had never, in 
 deed, been really unhappy; all his aloofness 
 from his quondam associates in northern New 
 England had not blinded him to the fact that 
 largeness of thought and freedom of intellec 
 tual stimulus, in that keen air, amply offset the 
 limitations of rocky acres, four months of 
 snow, and men and women with granite and 
 ice in their hearts. He would not have ex 
 changed, if he could, the storm, and stress, 
 and query, and worry, and " riz-biscuits " and 
 scrawny women of his birth-land for the placid 
 and sometimes bovine content of richer states 
 to the southward ; yet he keenly enjoyed, 
 when he came to know it, the way in which 
 some city people, even on Massachusetts Bay,
 
 142 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 accept things, without suffering any pangs of 
 mental dyspepsia or spiritual introspection. 
 
 His first urban year told against his health. 
 It is not easy for a country boy, though more 
 athletic than Morland, to breakfast at noon, 
 dine at night, take a bite at midnight, smoke 
 irregularly, frequent basement beer-saloons, 
 and endure what becomes to him the engross 
 ing dissipation of work on a daily newspaper. 
 The end of the world seems to come when the 
 last form of a morning journal goes to the 
 electrotyping room and the endless coil of paper 
 begins to be fed to the presses for the early 
 trains. Next morning, however, all must be 
 begun anew; and to the tax of regular work is 
 added the manifold charm of miscellaneous 
 and not always ascetic wanderings under the 
 gaslight. After six months Morland had a 
 queer feeling or, worst of all, a lack of feel 
 ing in his head; a positive headache or a 
 broken limb, or a clear case of diphtheria 
 would have been actually welcome in com 
 parison. When, for a fortnight, he had walked 
 through the city as though in a dazy dream in 
 which men's voices sounded strange or distant 
 and his hold on his own personality seemed to 
 be failing him, and he had gone at length to 
 the basement office of a German West End 
 doctor, he found difficulty in saying, in answer
 
 An Heir of the Ages. 143 
 
 to the medical man's questions, that anything 
 was the matter with him. He slept, ate, 
 walked, wrote, and reasoned as usual, but he 
 could only aver that things seemed queer 
 a proposition which the Teutonic ^Esculapius, 
 who was an advanced "thinker" and ethical 
 sociologist, readily admitted, while he adminis 
 tered jokes and prescribed plenty of fresh air, 
 roast beef, stale bread, no beer or sweets, and 
 a semi-daily dose of a diluted acid to be drunk 
 through a glass tube. Slow recovery came, 
 with occasional relapses, and Morland, at the 
 end of his second year, though he had lost the 
 slight touch of up-country red in his cheeks, 
 and looked thirty years old, was duly acclima 
 tized, with a clear sense of the silliness of his 
 own visions which had included death or 
 dementia and the superiority of the medical 
 profession over the clerical in real utility to 
 the world. 
 
 When his little salary and steadily increasing 
 space-writing concerning all things, and a few 
 other matters, had for some time brought him 
 thirty-five or forty dollars a week, he was put, 
 according to the thrifty custom of newspaper 
 counting-rooms, on a regular weekly wage of 
 twenty-five dollars for all work; which sum, 
 when reported in the white and green houses 
 of his native village, seemed permissive of in-
 
 144 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 definite possibilities of expenditure: " Only 
 two years out of college, too ! Why, our pastor 
 gets eight hundred a year, instead of thirteen ; 
 and hard enough it is to raise the minister-tax 
 to pay him once a quarter." 
 
 In the city, with its more magnificent money 
 standards, Morland found his new stipend, with 
 some savings from the former wage, just suf 
 ficient to warrant a double room and some 
 what more dainty dinners. In the newspaper 
 office, as his special fitnesses became more mani 
 fest, his assignments to general work fell off, 
 while those of book-reviews and miscellaneous 
 editorials increased, until, with the exception of 
 an occasional obituary of some man of letters, 
 he was virtually nothing more than literary 
 critic. His ten-year stock of English literature 
 stood him in good stead, reinforced as it was 
 by the journalist's sixth sense of quickly turn 
 ing to the right pigeon-hole of his brain for 
 the desired fact or apt allusion. It happened 
 that the managing editor, who declared that 
 he had n't read a book for thirteen years, was 
 specially pleased, in any article, with twenty 
 mentions of collateral or remote names, while, 
 on his own side, Morland's knack of multifari 
 ous literary allusion was almost a fault ; hence 
 his comparatively rapid advancement to a chair 
 usually denominated soft.
 
 An Heir of the Ages. 145 
 
 Mystery hangs, for the public eye, over the 
 newspaper office in general, and especially, 
 perhaps, over the desk of the book-reviewer. 
 In his non-professional walks Morland had to 
 answer many an italicised question. " Do you 
 really read all the books you review?" " How 
 do you find time?" " Aren't you afraid the 
 author will be very angry if you say such un 
 kind things of him?" " What a great library 
 you must have?" "How perfectly lovely it 
 must be to have nothing to do but to read all 
 day long, and get paid for it ! " Meanwhile 
 poor Morland reduced his gentle art to a sys 
 tem, and revised my lord of Verulam's dictum 
 until, in the midnight gaslight of the top stories 
 that overhung the narrow thoroughfare, it read 
 somewhat as follows : " Some books are re 
 prints from periodicals; others are worthless 
 on page 28, preposterous in chapter IX., or 
 wave asses' ears in the preface; still others 
 are manufactured alphabetically ; then, of 
 course, there are novels ; and once in a year 
 or two may come something really worth 
 while. Say of the first what you already 
 know; put to the second the knack of the 
 tea-taster; test the third by their weakest 
 spots; get the gist of the fourth, if you can; 
 and thank Apollo for the fifth." Meanwhile, 
 if his old stock of classic literature got farther 
 10
 
 146 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 and farther away, and less and less often did 
 he read a book through, seldom did he make 
 a conspicuous mistake in his estimates, or fail 
 to produce swift reviews that served the public 
 better than those laboriously contributed by 
 professorial specialists, which, he noted, were 
 usually four weeks late, too long or too short, 
 and chiefly devoted to the magnifying of some 
 little point that had delighted or disgusted the 
 learned reviewer, with whom he was usually 
 obliged to carry on a voluminous correspon 
 dence, largely devoted to explanations why 
 proof had not been sent, as requested, a week 
 before publication. 
 
 So the years went on; Morland's reviews 
 and editorials and obituaries somewhat gained 
 in facility of epigram, and correspondingly 
 lost in enthusiasm of expression. Censure 
 and commendation from his pen became more 
 indirect, and his readers, if they admired the 
 cleverness of the verbal product, were not 
 always certain as to the real drift of the writ 
 ing. Indeed, a sort of haze of insincerity 
 sometimes seemed to hang between the news 
 paper he served and the eyes of its readers, 
 a circumstance due perhaps to the fact that 
 it was so often read by club-gentlemen over 
 cigarettes and coffee. 
 
 Indeed, Morland found the environment of
 
 An Heir of the Ages. 147 
 
 his profession, from which he neither saw nor 
 desired escape in life, steadily conducive to 
 the development of a spirit of negation. His 
 function was to criticise, not create; to de 
 nounce, or at best to describe, and certainly 
 not to do. If his denials were languid, they 
 were increasingly artistic, and his very visible 
 cynicism was contemplative rather than vio 
 lent. Excessive vituperation was indubitably 
 as vulgar as hearty and creative optimism was 
 risky; he would none of either. He who 
 builds may err, and he who destroys may re 
 gret ; but it is always safe to make mild sug 
 gestions that things might well be different. 
 Even one of God's sunsets may seem inartis- 
 tically arranged. Who has not noted the un- 
 naturalness of nature, with its dauby green 
 landscapes and eye-smiting collocations of 
 color? If, on an evening when somebody 
 had seen the radiant orb go down in regal 
 glory of orange and purple, he had asked 
 Morland whether it were not the most beau 
 tiful day-ending he had ever beheld, he would 
 have replied, in circumflex, "perhaps;" which, 
 in his vocabulary, had become the substitute 
 for " yes," as " hardly " had taken the place 
 of " no." Possibly that was one of the rea 
 sons why readers called his newspaper " The 
 Laodicean."
 
 148 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 But Morland was no specialist in sunsets, 
 despite all his youthful visions of the great 
 range to the westward of his boyhood home. 
 Once in a while he could not fail to notice, 
 through the southwestern streets of the Back 
 Bay, the saffron that overhung the spires; 
 while Corey Hill and West Roxbury were al 
 together more agreeable for his Sunday walks 
 in May and October than in August, just 
 before his two weeks' vacation, earned at 
 both ends. But the lilt of the meadow-lark 
 was not for him, save as it refreshed an uncon 
 scious ear after a hard and hot night at the 
 office. His life, for the most part, was the 
 negatively innocent one of the flaneur ; abso 
 lute vice was so coarsely commonplace as to 
 be unendurable to a nature that was becom 
 ing or thought it was becoming more 
 refined with every year; but the song-bird's 
 chorus, the sky's banners, the garden's glory, 
 the ocean's lure were in vain, for which cir 
 cumstance he was not unduly to be blamed ; 
 for to most eyes seeing is not vision. Morland 
 himself had once averred, with a chuckle, that 
 a botanist sees no flowers, a geologist no land 
 scape, a biologist no life. 
 
 But he had his better moods, or rather 
 mood. That evolution is progress is proved 
 by the decadents and degenerates who lag by
 
 An Heir of the Ages. 149 
 
 the way, stroll into by-paths, or turn and go 
 backward ; and Morland thought he was 
 proving it when he made up his mind to give 
 his brain a chance; though his soul might be 
 stunted, he had determined that his mind 
 should do something more than grind out 
 book-reviews of which not one reader in ten 
 thousand knew the authorship, and which were 
 dead and inaccessible in a month. It was his 
 fancy even that his mental courage had in 
 creased because of his sacrifice of spiritual 
 sense, the half is more than the whole. 
 Against religion, for that matter, he had noth 
 ing to say ; it was indubitably, like the police 
 force, a necessity for the lower classes, and, 
 like a cup of tea, a boon to old ladies. At 
 one time, indeed, he debated during an entire 
 table d'hote dinner whether, by a final act of 
 rationalism, to enter the Roman Church and 
 eliminate even the slight interruption given 
 him by his nearly dormant ethical sense ; but 
 by the time he lit his cigar he found it difficult 
 to reconcile his vision of the most august in 
 stitution of the ages with actual paper flowers, 
 bad art, and imperfect ventilation. On the 
 other hand, the thin and impersonal aspirations 
 toward ethical improvement addressed to 
 nobody in particular which took the place 
 of prayers in the weekly gathering of a body
 
 150 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 of " advanced thinkers," ceased to interest him 
 after a Sunday or two. If that was all, why 
 take the trouble to go and sit for an hour in a 
 dance-hall, and then, while going down the 
 stairs, have to listen to the reverential adora 
 tion bestowed upon the lecturer by various 
 half educated acquaintances who refused to 
 worship anything else, with the possible excep 
 tion of their own brains and Mr. Darwin's. 
 
 Out of this sort of life, then, came a misty 
 but gradually consolidating idea that he would 
 write a book, books perhaps, or at any rate 
 essays, since his newspaper habit of finishing 
 everything at a sitting had become almost a 
 second nature. In this idea he was as far 
 from the thought of money as he was from 
 that of benefiting anybody. Even the fame 
 he had in mind was simply that of one who 
 could clearly set forth something that the un- 
 superstitious would read and know he wrote ; 
 the anonymous irked him. So does the east 
 ern American think, with pen in hand, ser 
 mons in the seventeenth century, Federalists 
 in the eighteenth, and what-not in the nine 
 teenth. If Morland, like old Thomas Welby, 
 had ever framed a title, it would have been 
 no Philosophy of Life, delicate and dispas 
 sionate negation need not fuss about philoso 
 phies. Once he reflected concerning the idea
 
 An Heir of the Ages. 151 
 
 of a collection of essays to be called " The 
 Disproof of the Provable," until he happened 
 to think that it might be used against Herbert 
 Spencer as well as against the Reverend John 
 Angell James. Was he a propagandist of 
 anything? No; there was not much use if 
 you were a Schopenhauer in taking the trouble 
 to say so in hundreds of printed pages. His 
 heartiest laugh for many a day came when he 
 saw on a bill-board a theatrical poster in which 
 a shock-headed and broken-toothed farm-boy 
 was enunciating and answering the query, 
 " What 's the good of anythin' ? Nothin'." 
 
 But the evolved mood in its last estate 
 the proof that his own personality had reached 
 a point somewhat above that of the primitive 
 cave-dweller, with sharpened flint-stone in 
 hairy hand, fighting wild beasts for scanty 
 food led to his ultimate decision to quit his 
 editorial place, write book-reviews when he 
 chose, multiply the neatly-turned essays he 
 was already contributing to one English 
 monthly review and two or three American 
 magazines, and let his mind grow for mind's 
 sake merely. Was not this heroic altruism? 
 
 So it came to pass that he bought an in 
 terest in a home-and-literary weekly of good 
 local repute, published for long in Harborside, 
 and well known to him from his boyhood days,
 
 152 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 when the post-office boxes had been plenti 
 fully sprinkled with its issues every Friday 
 afternoon. Morland, strange to say, now had 
 eight or ten thousand dollars ahead, partly 
 saved from his salary and partly made by 
 modest flyers in the " street; " he having had 
 sufficient sense to pull in his kites before the 
 strings broke. The easy editorship of his new 
 paper came to him as of right; his old one 
 was glad to retain his services as caustic re 
 viewer of as many books as he cared to have 
 sent him ; and the strain of an intenser jour 
 nalism being removed, he filed and refined his 
 published or unpublished social and semi- 
 scientific essays to his heart's content. Har- 
 borside was a pleasant place, the most metro 
 politan small city he knew, with a library and a 
 bookstore and a club and a coterie not very 
 large, of course of people of sufficient intel 
 ligence to know when to talk, and sufficient 
 culture to know when to be silent ; so, since 
 its atmosphere was unquestionably saline and 
 did not suggest his now disliked up-country 
 New England in the least, Morland got along 
 very well, and was deemed, by those whose 
 aims were neither financial nor political, al 
 most the lion of the town. 
 
 He had lived there nearly ten years when he 
 met Amoret, and determined, after a day's
 
 An Heir of the Ages. 153 
 
 casual reflection, that she was the only woman 
 who had ever interested him. " A pretty high 
 compliment?" queried he, as he laid down his 
 curling-iron. " It is barely possible that she 
 will deserve it."
 
 154 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 VII. 
 
 A SUMMER STORM. 
 
 MORLAND found no such difficulty as 
 the gentle Amoret had anticipated in 
 discovering the fact that Miss Tetley and her 
 new assistant had quartered themselves in 
 their seaside cottage; nor was the location 
 of that modest domicile difficult of ascertain 
 ment. Perhaps three days intervened between 
 his call at the deserted house in town and his 
 appearance at the door of the summer house- 
 let three miles away. The call was nominally 
 made in friendly fashion upon Miss Tetley, for 
 whom, in point of fact, Morland had always 
 felt a mild liking. She was intelligent, she 
 was not commonplace ; she had a tactful way 
 of suggesting satirical opinions without actu 
 ally expressing them, and as a conversation 
 alist, she had the custom, none too common, 
 of talking half the time and listening half; 
 for neither she nor Morland believed that the 
 art of talk consisted of a lecture-monologue 
 on one side and a beaming or bored silence
 
 A Summer Storm. 155 
 
 on the other. So they got along very well 
 together, and Morland mildly enjoyed a 
 quarterly chat in her frigid parlor. Nothing 
 was easier, accordingly, than to seem to make 
 Amoret a pleasant afterthought in his walk 
 out the Cape in search of the house of his old 
 friend; and, strangely enough, both the ladies 
 believed that his appearance was a sort of acci 
 dent Miss Lodema because she never had 
 connected the thought of sentiment, or even 
 of ordinary " attentions " to young women, 
 with the cool, self-centred, and now suffi 
 ciently mature personality of Harborside's 
 chief man-of-letters ; Amoret because her 
 entirely unaffected modesty assumed that she 
 was but a minor part of her cousin's eminently 
 respectable and long-known establishment. 
 
 They were sitting on the shaded porch when 
 Morland came to the gateway, hat in hand 
 and black hair blowing lightly away from his 
 white forehead. 
 
 " Ah ! I 've found you ! What a pleasant 
 summer shrine ! " said he. 
 
 Amoret rose with a happy look, but Miss 
 Tetley remained seated; she was embroider 
 ing a table-scarf in a complexity of flossy 
 silks, and said, in the unruffled contralto that 
 is developed by long years of dealing with 
 the gushing gayety or stolid intractability of
 
 156 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 schoolgirls, "This is a welcome sight, Mr. 
 Morland ; take a seat, and stay to tea as a 
 penalty for never coming here before." 
 
 "With pleasure," said the critic, "since 
 that allows me to come again and make my 
 ' party-call ; ' " and he sat down at the foot of 
 the elder lady, where he could conveniently 
 look into the face of Amoret, who noticed, as 
 he held his soft hat in his hand, the green tint 
 in both hat and eyes, and the delicacy of his 
 shapely long fingers. As for his motions, 
 they seemed so reticently graceful and yet 
 unartificial that Amoret rather envied them, 
 and began to feel a wholly new sense of awk 
 wardness. Rodney had not often been in her 
 mind of late; but since meeting Morland, she 
 could hardly avoid recurrent thoughts of her 
 childhood friend, in the persistency of con 
 trast. Rodney was like or had been like 
 abounding, happy dog; Morland's movements 
 were those of a cat shod in aristocracy, clad 
 in ermine, soft in action, and reposeful in 
 quiet. The feline comparison did not suggest 
 cool trickery to Amoret's mind, but rather a 
 remark she had read in some essay, to the 
 effect that cats should be the companions of 
 brain-toilers, because of their self-respectful 
 delicacy of demeanor. Somehow, at any 
 rate, Amoret felt for the first time in her life
 
 A Summer Storm. 157 
 
 in the presence of a person clearly and hope 
 lessly superior to herself, whose thoughts and 
 words were well worth following, and in whose 
 esteem she fain would stand, because he repre 
 sented an ideal, unfleshly and high, no incar 
 nation of which had previously crossed her 
 path. 
 
 " These seaside days of yours must be very 
 happy," said Morland, looking at both ladies, 
 but letting his eyes rest upon Amoret's. 
 " How do you best like to spend them, Miss 
 Wenton ? " said he. 
 
 Amoret bent forward and picked one huge 
 daisy of a preposterously long and twiggy 
 stem, her supple movement being as pretty in 
 Morland' s eyes as it was clumsy in her own. 
 Secretly delighted to see Morland again, she 
 felt desirous of doing something to gain a 
 minute's time that she might seem to be 
 more at ease than she really was, for she was 
 troubled by her new annoyance at the limita 
 tions of her self -education as compared with 
 the .richly-stored mind of this veritable editor 
 and author, concerning whom she had easily 
 elicited plenty of information since their first 
 meeting. Morland, on his part, was wonder 
 ing whether his new interest in this slip of a 
 girl was due to the fact that she seemed a 
 living heroine of the Elizabethan lyric period,
 
 158 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 or to her ill-concealed awareness of his pres 
 ence. Physical beauty and flattering defer 
 ence in woman are about equally attractive to 
 the masculine mind, and when the cords of 
 the two are wound together, and pull in the 
 same direction, they stir even so self-centred 
 an individual as Henry Morland. 
 
 " Oh, in looking at the sea and reading an 
 occasional book," said Amoret, rather weakly, 
 in her own opinion. 
 
 "You agree with our cosmic American, 
 then, that it is good to ' loaf and invite your 
 soul,' " said Morland. 
 
 "My soul gets plenty of invitations and 
 returns few acceptances," replied Amoret, 
 with a ringing little laugh that Morland heard 
 for the first time, and that also seemed to 
 carry away with it, to Amoret 's delight, her 
 own silly embarrassment. 
 
 "Your notion of rest, Mr. Morland," said 
 Miss Tetley, "would be better expressed by 
 Whitman's great opposite: 'Toil unsevered 
 from tranquillity. ' How did you happen to 
 allow yourself the leisure of this afternoon 
 walk?" 
 
 "Because I couldn't drive from my mind 
 the thought of this poetic creature," said 
 Fact in Morland's mind. "Because my work 
 was done two days ahead, and I wanted to ask
 
 A Summer Storm. 159 
 
 you again about that quotation from Haw 
 thorne I've been hunting it for a week," 
 said Fiction, as it looked Miss Tetley ingenu 
 ously in the eye. 
 
 " That passage about growing old ? " said 
 she. " I found it for you the very next day, 
 and wrote it out. Amoret, dear, won't you 
 get a little slip that lies in my desk? Open 
 the top and you '11 find it in the right-hand 
 pigeon-hole. " As Amoret went through the 
 door the wind fluttered the long ribbons that 
 hung from her belt, and Morland wondered 
 where she found their nondescript tint of 
 Italian yellow. 
 
 "Here it is," said Miss Tetley, on her re 
 turn, and read : 
 
 This bemoaning of one's self over the first careless, 
 shallow gayety of youth departed, and this profound 
 happiness over youth regained, so much deeper 
 and richer than that we lost, are essential to the 
 soul's development. 
 
 r 'That 's good gospel for a woman of fifty- 
 five ! " 
 
 "Or for a man of thirty-eight," said Mor 
 land, with equal candor. "Time, while it 
 lasts, is nothing but a procession of dots, to 
 be used seriatim; we must throw away the
 
 160 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 old before we get the new, and the new is as 
 fresh for you or me as for Miss Wenton. " 
 
 "And as old for me as for Methuselah," 
 added Amoret. " I wonder if Methuselah is 
 alive somewhere this minute? What fun it 
 will be when we die! I don't care anything 
 about eternal rest, but I would like to hear 
 Chaucer talk, tell Sir Thomas Browne about 
 the new crematories, and ask Bach how fast 
 his fugues ought to be played." 
 
 "Life must be youth," said Morland; 
 "when it ceases to be so it becomes death." 
 
 "And any minute is the tip of the stalk, 
 the sum of all the good that has gone before 
 just like the sticky bud on top of the little 
 horse-chestnut tree I used to watch behind 
 grandpa's shop," said Amoret; and there 
 flashed into her mind the thought that Rod 
 ney and she had once had some such talk as 
 this very one. 
 
 " Death itself is nothing but another min 
 ute in our career, as though we were just 
 stepping on a railroad train," said Miss 
 Tetley, who made up for her unorthodoxy 
 in some things by a dogmatic conservatism 
 in others. 
 
 " Unless it may be the rotting of the last 
 living particle of Miss Wenton's horse- 
 chestnut," said Morland.
 
 A Summer Storm. 161 
 
 "But the tree leaves behind it other chest 
 nuts to plant," said Amoret. 
 
 " My great-grandfather is not alive because 
 I am," said he. 
 
 "But his memory is," said Amoret. "If 
 so frail a thing as a mere recollection can 
 survive, mustn't a thing a thousand fold more 
 important be in existence still ? " 
 
 " On that argument you could prove that the 
 bit of stone you threw into the ocean week 
 before last has a soul, because you remember 
 its corner scratched your hand when you threw 
 it," said Morland. 
 
 "You see, Amoret dear, what a dreadful 
 heretic Mr. Morland is," said Miss Tetley 
 with a smile. " I really must n't let you stay 
 together too long. But he likes to shock 
 people." 
 
 "Well," said Amoret, eagerly, "living is 
 everlasting youth, and I 'm sure I shall be 
 happier and wiser ten thousand years ahead 
 than I am to-day. This world would be a 
 dead failure were it not for two things, God 
 and* immortality. " 
 
 "A dead failure," said Morland, in a low 
 voice; and Amoret wondered what he meant, 
 meanwhile guessing that he had some inner 
 sorrow, and determining to prove to him, some 
 time and somehow, that the theme of all life 
 ii
 
 1 62 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 is the growth of the human soul, the develop 
 ment of character, the setting forth of the 
 universality of the upward tendency of the 
 world. Morland had heard such sermons 
 before. 
 
 Lighter and brighter talk followed, and at 
 tea-time the trio became as jestful as though 
 there were never a problem in the world. 
 Morland never got excited over anything, nor 
 did his coolness desert him now; but his 
 wonder grew that a girl could be so pretty 
 and yet know so much. His city experiences 
 had confirmed him in an early impression that 
 feminine beauty was, as a matter of fact, dis 
 associated from anything save a modicum of 
 mentality, and that sagacity was most fre 
 quently accompanied in this world by raw- 
 boned faces and large feet; but here was a 
 compact disproof of his theory. Oddly 
 enough, Amoret seemed to be virgin soil. Why 
 had n't she had any " experiences " before this ? 
 Anybody might fall in love with her, though 
 Morland had as yet hardly framed such a boy 
 ish plan for himself. If she was a flirt, she 
 was at least an actress whose ways were worth 
 studying, and he would study them. Morland 
 was no Dante, and the faintly defined new 
 life which began for him when first he saw 
 this modern Beatrice, meant if it meant
 
 A Summer Storm. 163 
 
 anything at all that he would study her for 
 a little, and let come what would. Love, in 
 his ultimate view, was simply possession of a 
 woman for what she was worth to him; any 
 trifling element of self-sacifice for Amoret or 
 anybody else would have seemed somewhat 
 juvenile or novelistic. Meanwhile the pos 
 sible loss due to her intrusion upon his time 
 was more than made up by a new opportunity 
 for critical observation of Woman. If his vol 
 ume of " Studies in Social Evolution," already 
 half written, was to be good for anything it 
 must include more than one type, and here 
 surely was a comparatively unfamiliar one. 
 
 Amoret' s Morland, however, was another 
 man. To her he seemed gentle, thoughtful, 
 cultured, serious, with a pathetic little under 
 tone of sadness beneath his pleasant smile, 
 and a sort of attractiveness in his tentative 
 pessimism, which, she was sure, was but the 
 scar of some brave inward battle he had fought 
 all alone. For him the shapes of life must 
 have- seemed empty and giftless, harmless for 
 evil but feeble for good to one who was wan 
 dering like a pilgrim knight through a forlorn 
 world. Had not his existence so far been a 
 succession of preludes to some nobler song? 
 If she could but help him to one strain of 
 sweeter sound, though she never met him
 
 164 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 again, she would be glad. Did he know the 
 sense of "God is love," a love greater than 
 faith or hope, a love bearing through the ages 
 the inner idea of the Venus of Milo? If not, 
 might she not be a humble priestess to him, 
 or to any soul that needed help ? 
 
 It was eleven o'clock when such thoughts 
 as these ran through the mind of the white- 
 clad Amoret, ready for bed. She had put 
 out her kerosene lamp and stood by the eastern 
 window, looking at the slightly dilapidated 
 moon as it rose clear from the tremulous 
 water. A chipping sparrow, somewhere in 
 the night, gave one abbreviated trill and was 
 silent. "Oh," thought Amoret, "there is so 
 much to do in the world, so much ; but I know 
 I can do a little," and she went to bed. The 
 shadow of the sash crept across the counter 
 pane as the light increased ; the slow clock of 
 the distant city hall struck twelve, one, two, 
 and then Amoret stood in a little garden, 
 alone with Morland. On one side was a city 
 peopled with statues, on the other was a wood 
 of oak trees swarming with mosquitoes. Then 
 the statues waved their hands and the mosqui 
 toes buzzed, while Morland said, "Choose 
 between the saints and the sinners ; " and 
 Amoret tried to run away, but her legs refused 
 their work, and she could n't find her French
 
 A Summer Storm. 165 
 
 grammar. Just then she awoke, and discov 
 ered that she had left the window-screen open. 
 It was seventeen minutes past eight. 
 
 Amoret's forthcoming days were not self 
 ish, nor did she become moon-struck in her 
 new scheme of helpfulness. There was enough 
 to do : to help Miss Tetley get a good rest ; 
 to keep the house in order; to meet the per 
 fumed and amiable subjects of her instruction 
 every other morning, and on the alternate 
 days, at just eleven o'clock, to take an ocean 
 bath that was theoretically joyous and invig 
 orating but practically boreal ; to write a daily 
 letter to grandfather; and to read a daily stint 
 of a chapter in a big book on sociology, and 
 two chapters in one of George Meredith's 
 novels, this was enough. Vacation is the 
 busiest time of the year, and rest the most 
 absorbing of avocations, especially if there is 
 an inexplicable amount of mending to be 
 done. Between Morland's visits which, 
 though not intrusively numerous, were not 
 exactly infrequent Amoret therefore found 
 her time as fully employed as did the recipient 
 of her intended spiritual counsels, in his read 
 ing of manuscripts and proof, dictating of 
 correspondence, and writing of editorials and 
 book-reviews. His essay revision somehow 
 fell into abeyance. "Grind out your day,"
 
 1 66 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 thought the editor ; " I 've a mind to walk 
 out to the Cape to-morrow, for exercise." 
 "Make each minute a joy, for it 's the good 
 God's gift," wrote Amoret in red ink, and 
 pinned the sentiment over her stained-pine 
 desk. 
 
 One morning, a whole month after these 
 first meetings between Morland and Amoret, 
 Mr. Welby happened to go to the post-office 
 a little earlier than usual. His life, since 
 Amoret's absence, had gone forward in its 
 monotonous but not unhappy way. Trade 
 was as it was, less and less as compared 
 with the business of years ago, but not so 
 meagre as to mean instant need or ultimate 
 departure to the staring white poorhouse be 
 yond Hunger Hill. The vulgarity over the 
 way still sold his flash weeklies by the dozen, 
 and got the trade of the boys about town, the 
 servant-girls, the new middle-class working- 
 people, and, in general, the race that knew 
 not Joseph. Mr. Welby 's experience was no 
 worse than that of others ; for instance, Hen- 
 drickson the grocer, whose wooden shutters 
 and weather beaten sign availed little against 
 the showy front and big paned windows of the 
 new "Boston store," the proprietor of which 
 dyed his moustache and parted his hair in a 
 horizontal line up the middle of the back of
 
 A Summer Storm. 167 
 
 his head. Communities are ungrateful to 
 their old servants in trade, and care little for 
 the good old times in comparison with the 
 glitter of gaudy to-day; besides, in the period 
 of Mr. Welby's elder years, antiquity had 
 not come into new fashion, and was out of 
 old vogue. Inns were hotels; shops were 
 stores; tall clocks were sent to the barn-loft; 
 bed-warmers were remanded to the garret or 
 the junk-shop; the bonnets and checked 
 waistcoats of 1830 were laughed at instead of 
 being restored to fashion-plates; and such a 
 thing as a silver buckle or a painted minia 
 ture was deemed a relic of the days of Napo 
 leon. If Mr. Welby had been living a quar 
 ter of a century earlier or later, or if he had 
 been " worth " twenty thousand dollars, he 
 would have been deemed an eccentric but very 
 able and estimable man ; as it was, all but a 
 few faithful friends passed him by. The 
 courtly remnant of the ancient town, to be 
 sure, withdrew more and more into its shell, 
 and_ talked with gentle sadness of the good 
 time lost, agreeing that its relics were get 
 ting fewer and fewer; but this remnant, un 
 fortunately, was largely composed of those too 
 poor to promote the circulation of money in 
 the community, or too stingy to be generous. 
 In New England economy becomes inveterate
 
 1 68 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 even when unnecessary. Furthermore, the 
 old circle had never dreamed of any obliga 
 tion to aid, directly or indirectly, those who, 
 as scions of well-known families, had always 
 been regarded as leaders of local affairs. 
 Their struggle might be bitter, but it must be 
 concealed, most of all, from those who knew 
 it best ; and self-deception, even, was the 
 apparent rule. 
 
 But Mr. Welby, in his capacity of local 
 philosopher, deemed that he had a keener 
 sense of the facts of things than most of his 
 contemporaries. " From him that hath not 
 shall be taken even that which he hath," said 
 he to the grocer, sonorously, when once they 
 met on the corner and fell into a chat about 
 the " improvements " that stared here and 
 there from the familiar walls. " Plenty of 
 horse sense in the Bible," soliloquized the 
 philosopher on his lonely way homeward. 
 " My ' Philosophy of Life ' seldom comes up 
 to it, and perhaps never surpasses it." And 
 so he walked up the old staircase, took down 
 his Paragraph Bible, put on his octagonal 
 gold spectacles, lit his solar lamp, and laid 
 the book down only to turn, for comparison's 
 sake, to his own manuscript bible of philo 
 sophic experience, in which the last entries 
 were :
 
 A Summer Storm. 169 
 
 As for the much and the little in the universe, 
 each is explanatory of the other. 
 
 Make your character your book ; live love. 
 
 (and he wondered whether anybody would 
 mistake " live " for an adjective, but deter 
 mined to let the word stand for the present.) 
 
 Some men are derelicts on the sea of life. 
 Do not test the universe by your house- 
 thermometer. 
 
 Then he added, after his Bible reading: 
 
 Christ had the wit to see that wedlock is earthly, 
 friendship heavenly ; there ought to be a state called 
 lovelock. 
 
 Old Testament and New hint strongly toward a 
 falling away from a possible gift of immortal life. 
 
 The anthropomorphism of the Hebrew and the 
 Christian religious books was as necessary as 
 temporary. 
 
 And he closed the two dear volumes, the 
 printed and the written; put the one on the 
 shelf, locked the other in its desk, went to 
 bed late, therefore rose early, breakfasted on 
 a bit of broiled ham, and went to the post- 
 office to see if his letter from Amoret had 
 come in the midnight mail. 
 
 The Bellwood post-office occupied the
 
 170 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 ground floor of an old two-story granite build 
 ing; the call-boxes were opposite the front 
 door, while on the little corridor leading back 
 to the distribution-room were a dozen lock- 
 boxes of large size, the generous wooden flap- 
 doors of which opened downward. The pos 
 session of one of these boxes, the rental of 
 which was no less than two dollars a year, 
 was supposed by the small boys of the village 
 to give a peculiar air of aristocracy to the 
 proprietors. While the ignoble crowd was 
 humbly waiting for the general delivery, 
 watching whether anything was put into this 
 or that number, hopeful as the postmaster, 
 with his bundle of letters, approached the 
 desired region, and hopeless when the box- 
 surrounded door was opened ; some one of the 
 few lock-box magnates would step quietly to 
 the dark passage-way, leisurely pull his bunch 
 of keys from his trousers pocket, open the 
 wooden flap, let it hang downward, keys and 
 all, extract his Whig or Democratic Boston 
 daily, or weekly paper from distant New York, 
 glance at his half-dozen letters, close the box, 
 and walk out with the sober air of one on 
 confidential terms with the inner administra 
 tion of this world's affairs. 
 
 Mr. Welby had succeeded, by inheritance, 
 to the old box of the dwindled publishing and
 
 A Summer Storm. 171 
 
 printing house; and had no more thought of 
 giving it up than of abandoning the book 
 shop itself. Box B stood in his mind as the 
 door of the outer world ; and though its former 
 daily contents had shrunk so that two or three 
 stray epistles and an occasional circular were 
 all that usually came, before Amoret left 
 home, it would have seemed worse than a sin 
 an impropriety to surrender the box for 
 economy's sake, and let some new tenant 
 pilfer, as it were, its enclosures day by 
 day. 
 
 That morning the bookseller walked south 
 ward in the damp coolness of the river street 
 before the sun was high. The freshness of 
 perennial youth was in the gift of the new 
 day; and a smile played around his thin lips 
 as Squire Bennett's weather-beaten, one-seat 
 gig stopped by the post-office door. The Bell- 
 wood children said that the squire's carriage 
 had but one seat, so that he needn't ever be 
 delayed, when he was going to court, by hav 
 ing to ask country trudgers to ride with him, 
 and" so wear out the wagon-springs. 
 
 "No chance for you to-day, squire," said 
 the bookseller; "the weather's too pleasant 
 for anybody to want to go to law." 
 
 "Ah, my friend," said the squire, "just the 
 sort of sun to be a weather-breeder; one never
 
 1 72 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 knows what 's going to happen in this world, 
 or when the storm 's to come." 
 
 The contents of box B, that morning, were 
 a circular from a printing-ink manufacturer 
 and a fat letter from Harborside, evi 
 dently the longest epistle Amoret had yet 
 sent, unless it should prove to contain wild 
 roses, newspaper cuttings, or other things 
 the girl so often inclosed as of possible in 
 terest to their recipient. Possible? The old 
 man's brain had but two thoughts nowadays 
 Amoret and the " Philosophy of Life. " Of 
 the two, he imagined that he cared more for 
 the second, because its writing was his mature 
 business as a man, while Amoret was but a 
 child whom he was lovingly bringing up in 
 the intervals of adult toil and grandfatherly 
 reflection. Of late the book had come to 
 have its chief value in his mind as a sort of 
 legacy, a possible mentor for Amoret when 
 he should be gone. Since, then, whatever 
 concerned Amoret or the note-book was of 
 paramount importance, he took his podgy 
 envelope with a happy heart, walked back to 
 the shop, unlocked the heavy wooden door 
 with the brass key, long since worn shiny, sat 
 down in a chair near the breeze, took his 
 glasses from their leather case, and with 
 thoughts of deliberate joy, began to read :
 
 A Summer Storm. 173 
 
 LONG CAPE, 2 August, highnoon. 
 To THE DEAR GRANDFATHER, Greeting: 
 
 Oh dear ! I 've so many things to say that I don't 
 know where to begin. I really don't know but I 
 would save time by going up on the train to tell it 
 all instead of scribbling it. Why can't we simply 
 turn on a current of apprehension, to run through 
 the air from mind to mind, so that the one will 
 understand just what the other wishes, without these 
 poor slow ways to which enfleshed mortals are 
 bound ? A gives B a rose to smell ; B hands C an 
 apple to taste ; C kicks D ; D kisses E ; E pats F ; 
 F's eyes flash hate at G ; G carves a statue whose 
 stony instant suggests a past and a future ; H tells 
 his story in the pigments of a picture, while J utters 
 his soul to the world in a symphony, the meaning 
 of which would be perfectly plain if you only knew 
 whether the composer had in mind a moonlit lake, a 
 summer noon, or a placid nun who frets not in her 
 convent's narrow room. Meanwhile those of us who 
 chatter or scrawl in words do somewhat more, but 
 after all, I can't really get at you or you understand 
 the inner me. By and by telepathy will do the busi 
 ness, and when we are disembodied, we shall use 
 leas'! what now is most important, and just flash ideas 
 into each other. Don't you think there's a little 
 truth in clairvoyance, second sight, apparitions of the 
 dying, and all our queer sensations about hearing the 
 flutter of angels' wings, speaking of the devil and 
 having him appear, thinking we Ve been in places 
 before, knowing what somebody is going to say,
 
 174 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 and all that? Of course it's fifty per cent humbug 
 and forty-five coincidence, but what we shall know 
 sometime is the five per cent. 
 
 Well, I 'm not getting on at all with my letter. I 
 think I '11 tell you the worst and the best last. My 
 teaching the uninstructable ladies every other day 
 isn't the worst by any means. They don't know 
 much and they never will; but they know more 
 than they did when I began to sell them my brains, 
 and more than they will when, six months hence, 
 they Ve forgotten all they are paying for now. One 
 of them wanted to know the other day if Tennyson 
 was n't a great atheistic lecturer. Come to find out, 
 she meant the Concord sage. That must have been 
 because she had for dessert at the hotel, where we 
 dined the day before, two pieces of blueberry pie, 
 brandy-whips, orange sherbet, peaches, and water 
 melon, enough to make one think Spenser wrote 
 the Rowley poems. But the three others know 
 more, and all four are just as pleasant as need be. 
 I believe it 's all nonsense, this talk about the trials 
 of teachers. In my experience so far, I 've hardly 
 had any trouble at all, any more, that is to say, 
 than everybody must have in this world of drudgery, 
 unless she has an independent fortune ; and then, 
 she merely swaps drudgery for tedium. And do you 
 know, granddaddy, I really like to teach, that is, 
 theoretically I do. Did you ever see that device of 
 a big torch in a big hand, with a lot of little torches 
 in little hands held up to it to catch some of the 
 rlame? Well, the big torch is you or me selling
 
 A Summer Storm. 175 
 
 books, writing philosophy, teaching girls, or telling 
 New York women the difference between Sebastian 
 Bach and Offenbach. 
 
 Cousin Lodema is just as good as she can be, 
 but I don't think she is a bit well. The more she 
 rests the weaker she seems to get. I do hope that 
 this month of August will begin to build her up. 
 
 What are you reading lately? I suppose you will 
 laugh when I say that I have begun Sir Charles for 
 the second time. You see I picked up the fourth 
 volume at random, and before I knew it I had read 
 so much that I thought I might as well go back to 
 the start. 
 
 We don't see many friends out here, but Mr. 
 Morland comes two or three times a week just to 
 chat with cousin Lodema and me. You know I 
 mentioned a Mr. Morland in a letter a week or two 
 ago a literary man and editor in Harborside. 
 He certainly is an interesting personage, and one I 
 think you would like to know ; for real literary men, 
 with their minds above the mud of this world, are 
 not so very common. Let me describe him : Age 
 thirty-eight (I know exactly, for he told us the other 
 day) ; height about five feet ten-and-a-half inches, I 
 should say ; complexion tinted marble ; hair black, 
 and a good deal of it ; hands and feet small ; voice 
 low, but firm ; eyes I am sure I can't tell ; one 
 doesn't want to stare at him too much, and all I 
 have been able to make out is a sort of chameleon- 
 like dark brownish green. He is very gentle and 
 thoughtful, and says such unusual things that you
 
 ij6 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 can't help thinking about them long afterward. I 
 am sure he has had some great sorrow, or some deep 
 sense of the problem of life and the woefulness of the 
 world ; for though he is as gentle as a knight-errant, 
 and I am sure would be as brave if there were 
 need, he does n't seem to feel sure that there is any 
 God or immortality, or that things in this world of 
 ours don't merely drift, without any such thing as 
 real right or wrong. " There is no such thing as 
 abstract truth," he said the other day. But I do 
 believe that this is all a pretence, I mean a self- 
 deception, for I know that nobody who has such 
 thoughts as his can fail to be a sort of poet ; and a 
 poet is a priest, and a priest preaches goodness. I 
 wouldn't say so much about him, save that he 
 seems I 'm sure I can't tell why to rely on poor 
 foolish me. Once he said that nobody had ever 
 helped him, or ever would, unless I did. And he 
 knows all English and American, and half all Ger 
 man, literature by heart ; and has written for ever so 
 many reviews and magazines, and knows fifty times 
 as much as I do ! What he meant when he said, 
 another time, that I helped him as a flower helped 
 Pan, was, I suppose, that any little thing might teach 
 something to a wise big one. He doesn't drink 
 wine, I am sure, or smoke much, I know, and 
 does n't care for clubs or friends. Indeed, he seems 
 so all alone that I 'm glad if I can pass the time 
 of day with him just for one short summer. He 
 declares society a sham, and social institutions mere 
 shells, so I don't believe he ever means to marry.
 
 A Summer Storm. 177 
 
 I must say I think there 's a good deal of truth in 
 what he says ; but I wish he could get a little more 
 sunshine into his great big brain. I will make him 
 yet, before I get through with him. 
 
 Now, my own dearest good grandfather Thomas 
 Welby, don't be frightened, but just hop out of your 
 armchair and say hurrah ! I nearly got drowned the 
 other day, and Mr. Morland saved my life. Read 
 this through just as fast as ever you can, and forget 
 all about it, except to thank him in your heart. 
 We 'd been planning a little sailing expedition for 
 ever so long, that is, cousin Lode ma and Mr. 
 Morland had ; and at length we took a little sloop 
 yacht, with a captain who knows every sunken rock 
 and barren tree on shore between here and the sun 
 rise end of the United States, and started out. The 
 party was a funny one : we three and an old Cana 
 dian Episcopal minister and his wife and son, a col 
 lege boy, who have taken the next cottage for the 
 summer. Mr. Morland said he thought it would be 
 better fun I think that 's the first time I ever heard 
 him use the \vordfun not to fill up with giggling 
 schoolgirls and yachting-cap youth, and I thought 
 so too. 
 
 WeJJ, we started bright and early half-past five 
 in the morning for our sail northeastward up the 
 coast. The wind was fair, though not strong, and 
 the captain thought we could easily go up to the 
 head of a little narrow bay or fjord (you see I have n't 
 read Norwegian novels for nothing), get dinner, and 
 come home, with tide favoring us, in the afternoon. 
 
 12
 
 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 Over and up we went in pretty fashion ; we seemed 
 to skim along as though there were a stock of motion 
 in the sails themselves; it was evener than flying 
 could be, and more varied than travelling on a 
 smooth railroad track; the waves danced and the 
 seagulls swooped, and over it all was the delicious 
 fragrance of a comparatively still summer ocean, and 
 a warm glow in the air that would have burned you 
 without the breeze, but, as it was, merely made you 
 content. We talked about everything, from fish 
 breakfasts to the inscrutables and the mysteries ; and, 
 do you know, without giving away the secret of your 
 book, I told them how wise you were and what 
 thoughts you had. Mr. Morland said they must 
 give you a great deal of satisfaction, which I think 
 he meant as a compliment, for he never condescends 
 to flatter. Don't you respect anybody more who 
 seems thoughtfully sincere in all he says, especially 
 when he looks at you as though he were passing 
 through the door of your eyes to the shrine of your 
 soul? 
 
 The wind did n't prove very faithful, but at length 
 we got to the little village of Higgins' Cove just 
 think of such a name for a picturesquely situated 
 hamlet under the shadow of a great hill, beside sweet 
 salt-hay meadows, and looking down the long ten- 
 mile stretch of lovely sea and diminishing shore ! 
 Then we " partook of a frugal repast," as the old 
 novels used to say, to wit : fish chowder, cold sliced 
 corned beef, and blueberry pie, in a funny little hotel. 
 In the " parlor," or " drawing-room," as Mrs. Minis-
 
 A Summer Storm. 179 
 
 ter called it, were hung the marriage certificate of the 
 tavern-keeper and his wife, with inserted photographs 
 of himself, herself, and the person who " solemnized " 
 the ceremony; somehow the record was not a bit 
 solemn. But over on the opposite wall was another 
 framed monstrosity, and that was a pitiful one, 
 nothing less than the coffin-plate would you believe 
 it? of two little children they had, who died of 
 diphtheria on the same day three years afterward. 
 
 Then Mr. Morland and the Episcopal minister 
 had their cigars, prudently imported, why is it 
 that Episcopalians all smoke, while an Orthodox or 
 Baptist preacher with a pipe in his mouth would be 
 a sort of curiosity ? and we started back. The 
 wind was weak for the first mile, weaker the second, 
 weakest the third, and a figment of fancy the fourth. 
 We took our bearings by things on the shore, and 
 finally could hardly see that we were moving at 
 all ; we were just teetering on the glassy water, and 
 the glare grew so hot and heady that cousin Lodema 
 had to go below into the little cabin, which was hot 
 ter yet, and put a wet cloth on her head. The rest of 
 us stayed on deck, and had enough to do to keep 
 the mirrored, wavering sun- reflection out of our eyes. 
 
 Here and there in the west were one or two little 
 clouds, but no prospect of any more wind for an 
 indefinite time. There was a strange feeling in the 
 air, as though of some impending calamity ; our 
 voices sounded hollow and artificial, and seemed to 
 echo back on us ; and we wished we were some 
 where else, or had a chance to do something instead
 
 180 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 of sitting and waiting. Don't you know the sensa 
 tion one has just before a summer thunder storm at 
 the end of a hot day? It isn't fear that we shall be 
 struck by lightning or washed away by a cloud-burst ; 
 it's just being "perplexed and low," like Will the 
 Warrener's mother in the old song if only we could 
 draw a full breath, or see a little more clearly, or 
 move about with some life in our legs. Well, it was 
 just so in the boat ; I never understood before how 
 the Ancient Mariner must have felt under similar 
 circumstances. On land you can at least do some 
 thing or go somewhere light the lamp or make 
 believe you have an errand down cellar ; but on the 
 water there is nothing, unless, as the men of the 
 party suggested, you get out and row. They made 
 some empty jokes, and I tried to be cheerful for 
 poor cousin Lodema's sake, she seemed so pale in 
 the hot and musty cabin ; but we were all waiting 
 and waiting, that was all. If we could only float 
 down beyond the black spar buoy on Dead Man's 
 Ledge, as far as Thread-of-Life channel, off Hurri 
 cane Island, two miles below what a set of 
 names ! the skipper thought there 'd be a bit of 
 a breeze ; but as it was the sails simply hung in limp 
 perpendicularity. 
 
 Then there was a ripple in the water, five hun 
 dred feet away, and the ripple spread into a broad 
 dark sheet that seemed as unlike the mirroring glitter 
 beside us as though it had been the land itself; the 
 sail gave a shivery beat, two or three times, against 
 the mast, as if it were vexed, or were being roused
 
 A Summer Storm. 181 
 
 from sleep ; the little hollow tube-like pennon at the 
 masthead wiggled like a cat's tail in meditative ill- 
 nature ; and the minister said : " There 's a little 
 breeze; that's good." But before you knew it the 
 ripples became waves and the waves whitecaps ; the 
 glassy sheet of water was all covered by the black 
 blanket beyond ; the sail suddenly swept around to 
 the other side of the sloop, giving the minister's son 
 just time to dodge it, and when his mother said : 
 " Look at that ! " we saw for the first time a great 
 mass of dark, dirty-gray cloud, like smoke from a 
 bituminous coal furnace, sweeping towards us from 
 the southwest. All this took less time, I really be 
 lieve, than it takes me to write it ; but as soon as the 
 cloud came in sight and the sail veered the captain 
 jumped around as though things were important, 
 though he did n't say anything ; told the minister's 
 son to do something or other with the rudder, and 
 tried himself to be in two places at once, as he loos 
 ened the ropes to lower the sails. The jib was flut 
 tering free and the mainsail was half down when I 
 felt a splash of water in my face and saw that the 
 brown-black cloud was directly on us and was liter 
 ally scooping the waves before it as it came. The 
 next thing I knew the sloop gave a great lurch for 
 ward, then pitched into a hole in the water and went 
 almost over on her leeward side. " Get up on the 
 cabin, quick ! " shouted the captain, as he grabbed 
 the loose sail and pulled it down by main strength ; 
 poor cousin Lodema gave a little scream from in 
 side ; and I everything comes back to the I
 
 1 82 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 in this selfish world lurched backward, and be 
 fore I knew it, felt a great ringing in my ears and 
 strangulation in my throat and icy helplessness every 
 where : I was in the water over my head, for the 
 first time since I tumbled from the shed back of old 
 Bill Jones's house, one spring freshet when I was a 
 little girl. Well, to tell the truth, I' did n't know any 
 thing for half a minute, save one universal discomfort, 
 though I did n't faint away or anything of that sort ; 
 but they told me afterwards that I had been sitting 
 on the gunwale to try to weight the boat on the side 
 against the wind, had gone off backward when she 
 nearly upset, and that Mr. Morland, quick as a flash, 
 had thrown himself off the side, keeping hold of the 
 gunwale with one hand and clutching my skirts with 
 the other. I don't know whether he can swim, but I 
 do know that I can't ; and if he had been a tenth of 
 a second later, the sloop, whether it overturned or 
 not, would have lurched a rod eastward and left 
 me, head downwards, to take my chances in a bay- 
 full of water and a sky-full of wind. 
 
 Well, they pulled me aboard, the sloop righted, 
 and I was the first person to come to my senses 
 except the captain and Mr. Morland, who kept theirs 
 all the while. By the time I was well on the boat we 
 could see the squall scudding away to the northeast, 
 and in five minutes we were in a dead calm once 
 more. The captain (who, of course, was mate and 
 crew and everything) had hardly spoken ten words 
 on the whole cruise, just sitting with one hand on the 
 wheel and one eye on the sail ; but now he shifted his
 
 A Summer Storm. 183 
 
 quid, opened both eyes, drew his tattooed right hand 
 apologetically down his scrubby chin-beard, and said : 
 " You '11 have to 'scuse me this time, ladies ; them 
 flaws off Smutty Head comes quicker 'n the devil 
 could wink at his wife." The next thing was to 
 dry me, which performance I rather enjoyed, as I 
 never was afraid of a bath when I did n't have to 
 stay wet or sit in a draft ; don't you remember the 
 old saw? 
 
 " When the wind blows on you through a hole, 
 Fall on your knees and pray for your soul." 
 
 But when 1 crowded into the cabin with poor cousin 
 Lodema who by this time had palpitation of the 
 heart without her digitalis bottle and handed out 
 my habiliments one by one to dry on the bow, and 
 thought what it all meant, I knew why chance had 
 led Mr. Morland to ask to be presented to me that 
 night at the party. All I said to him was : " Thank you 
 with all my heart even my life is worth something to 
 me and more to grandfather ; and all he said was 
 I think, for he spoke very low " and maybe most 
 of all to others." 
 
 " Then it was quieter again, if possible, than it had 
 been before the " flaw." All I could think of was 
 the ah-poet's " Calm me ! ah ! compose me to the 
 end." By this time we were all laughing, except my 
 woeful relative, who had crawled from the cabin to 
 the stern ; and for two mortal hours we waited, or 
 watched the seals sunning themselves on the rocks, 
 or tried to weigh as little as possible when the men
 
 184 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 got out into the appended rowboat, hitched it to the 
 bow, and rowed us along. At length, what with row 
 ing and a tiny bit of sailing, we got to shore some 
 where, the men bought crackers and codfish at a 
 grocery and bunked on the sloop for the night, while 
 the " wimmin-folks " were hospitably taken into a 
 neighboring farm house, where we slept (in August !) 
 on feather-beds under marvellous Joseph's-coat coun 
 terpanes, and breakfasted next morning on half-boiled 
 green peas, served with genuine cordiality by a fat 
 woman and her freckled-faced daughter, and liber 
 ally consumed by three knife-swallowing men in their 
 shirt-sleeves. 
 
 Oh, dear, will this interminable letter never end? 
 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter : we 
 sailed home in a fresh breeze, I caught no cold from 
 the harmless salt water, cousin Lodema was better, 
 and I had saved my life and gained and proved a new 
 friend. Was n't that worth the slight discomfort ? 
 
 Good-bye God be with ye and put down in 
 the Philosophy of Life, 
 
 " From fearful flaws' fierce fury fate forfend." 
 
 AMORET. 
 
 As the old man slowly read the letter, leaf 
 by leaf, his thin lips shut more tightly over 
 the false teeth, his eyes darkled, and once a 
 tiny spot of red came to his white left cheek. 
 When the last page was finished he deliber 
 ately turned again to the first one, and read
 
 A Summer Storm. 185 
 
 the whole once more. The bright spot faded 
 from his cheek, but the old eyes blazed as he 
 walked to the desk in the back of the shop, 
 untied a big package of Amoret's letters, put 
 this new one on the top, tied the bundle with 
 its red tape, crowded it back into its pigeon 
 hole, and unconsciously spoke aloud : " It has 
 come; I 've expected it; but I '11 save her 
 from that selfish and soulless son of luck ! " 
 
 That very morning Amoret woke at three 
 o'clock, when the gray morrowtide was 
 brightening in the east, and lay in her bed 
 and thought and thought. At length, when 
 four parallel slats of sunlight appeared upon 
 the wall opposite the window, she rose, put on 
 her wrapper, took from her trunk a little old 
 calf-bound book that had been a favorite 
 almost from childhood, opened it to a familiar 
 page, threw back the shutters toward the yel 
 low sea, fell on her knees in the glow, and 
 read aloud. The podgy volume was old Nich 
 olas Netherwell's "Golden Hopes," and the 
 passage Amoret's eyes and lips followed with 
 the fervor of a mediaeval saint, was 
 
 A LITANY OF LIFE. 
 O rosy dawn, 
 
 Thou risest from the darkness whence I came ; 
 O rosy dawn, 
 
 Thou art the lingering glory of my dream ;
 
 1 86 The , End of the Beginning. 
 
 O rosy dawn, 
 
 Thou showest me the pathway I must tread. 
 O golden noon, 
 
 The old is new, the new is old ; 
 O golden noon, 
 
 Baptize my yearning soul with fire ; 
 O golden noon, 
 
 Thou art, and so I fain would be. 
 O hush of even, 
 
 Thy dawntide comes never again ; 
 O hush of even, 
 
 Thy day, it is dead, is dead ; 
 O hush of even, 
 
 Thy moment is mine, all mine. 
 O starry midnight, 
 
 Dost thou weep for the day that is past ? 
 O starry midnight, 
 
 Dost thou fear for the morning to come ? 
 O starry midnight, 
 
 May the peace of thy silence be mine. 
 O day of my birth, 
 
 A spark enkindled a clod; 
 O day of my birth, 
 
 I was, I am, I shall be. 
 O day of my death, 
 
 Thou shalt tear off the veil of the flesh ; 
 O day of my death, 
 
 Thou shalt hide not the secret of being. 
 O times gone by, 
 
 Perennial life is perennial youth. 
 O times to come, 
 
 Perennial life is perennial youth. 
 O heart, my heart, 
 
 Be thou strong and true as the heart of the 
 worlds.
 
 A Summer Storm. 187 
 
 O friend of my soul, 
 
 Bless me with the pathos of thy pleasant smile. 
 In grassy spring, in odorous summer, in yellow autumn, 
 in lonely winter, 
 
 I follow, follow. 
 When sunlight has never a shadow, 
 
 I follow, follow. 
 When weary and stricken and old, 
 
 I follow, follow. 
 When I climb from the grave, 
 
 I follow, follow 
 
 The glory of ultimate Love. 
 
 More than once had Amoret taken pleasure 
 in the resonance of the words, half mystic, all 
 clear; but now, as they fell from her lips, 
 their meaning was new.
 
 1 88 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 WHAT OF THE NIGHT? 
 
 FOR the next few days the old bookseller 
 went about his vocation in a silence 
 deeper than usual, selling lead-pencils or 
 wrapping-paper or arithmetics in a half-ab 
 straction of mind, as though one hemisphere 
 of his brain was doing the petty work of 
 life, while the other was thinking of Amoret, 
 ever of Amoret His manuscript volume 
 made little progress ; he even reviewed some 
 of the fundamental postulates of those scat 
 tered and inconsistent dicta which he had 
 ventured to call a Philosophy of Life. Scat 
 tered what of it? Could anything be more 
 heterogeneous than this thing we call exist 
 ence? Inconsistent? What more improb 
 able than that his little girl, mere pure 
 spontaneous living idyl of nature that she 
 was should clearly be half infatuated with 
 a being of no more soul or utility, he verily 
 believed, than one of the little vitreous steam-
 
 What of the Night? 189 
 
 engines the glass-blowers exhibit : transparent 
 and hollow motion, that is all. 
 
 Mr. Welby's egotism had been thoroughly 
 chastened by the experiences of life. Few find 
 it conducive to self-esteem to grow poorer and 
 less potent as years multiply. Nor was there 
 more than a single grain of superstition in one 
 who had for fifty years declared himself free 
 from the fetters forged by the twin-burners of 
 Servetus, and yet had refused to walk in the 
 misty marshes at the foot of the sky-soaring 
 mount of Transcendentalism. But that single 
 grain, which neither his misfortunes nor his 
 liberalism could make him throw away, was a 
 latent belief that there lurked in his brain 
 some unquestionable power of clear-seeing. 
 That his grandmother had been a Scotch 
 woman and the seventh child of a seventh 
 child was to him merely a laughable coinci 
 dence ; but that the intuitive theory of morals 
 was true, and that the Oversoul sometimes 
 told the Undersoul what was and was to be, 
 he, was forced to admit, or else fall back 
 upon some sort of grim unspiritual material 
 ism. And certain peculiar experiences in his 
 lonely life had convinced him that such fore- 
 tellings had really come to him, now and then, 
 with a peculiar force and significance. 
 
 Well, if his philosophic insight or foresight
 
 190 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 was ever needed, it was needed now. That 
 Henry Morland was a soulless selfishness he 
 had no doubt whatever; nor had he much 
 more doubt that Amoret meeting for the 
 first time a man of unquestionable intellec 
 tuality, free from gross qualities, and appar 
 ently in need of help had thrown a warm, 
 yellow nimbus of sainthood around a head 
 that was at best (to vary his steam-engine 
 metaphor) but marble. And now, by the 
 very perversity of ill-luck, merely because he 
 had sat on the same side of the boat in a squall, 
 Morland had seemed to Amoret the savior of 
 her life. Very likely somebody else would 
 have pulled her out if he had not; the squall 
 was quickly over, and the skipper or the 
 cleric's boy might have had time to become 
 the noble rescuer, nor would Amoret have 
 fallen in love with either of them. 
 
 But never mind the crookedness of events ; 
 she was alive, for which God be praised. What 
 was now to be done? To do nothing was to 
 give Morland a great advantage; to warn 
 Amoret against him would be to make her 
 miserable and probably force her to choose 
 between a visibly dilapidated grandfather and 
 an idealized hero. Again, was he, Thomas 
 Welby, after all, a jealous old curmudgeon, 
 wishing to keep a warm, bright, pure spirit
 
 What of the Night? 191 
 
 to himself, instead of letting her love and 
 marry in the way of all the world? Just 
 here, after six hours of thought, the philoso 
 pher settled at least one thing : he could and 
 would be willing to think of Amoret as loving 
 and loved otherwise and elsewhere, if all the 
 conditions were as they should be. He him 
 self had married, so had his daughter; mar 
 riage was all very well as a temporary expedient, 
 though, like the ancient woman who denounced 
 Universalism, we may hope for something bet 
 ter than all that in the next world ; and the 
 poor old man gave a little chuckle as of re 
 viving spirits, under the influence of which, in 
 the next hour or two, he wrote Amoret a brief 
 note which was virtually nothing more than a 
 thank God, with an appended true statement 
 that he had had a very busy day and would 
 soon write more at length. 
 
 Just four petty customers crossed his well- 
 worn doorstone on the morrow, and the phi 
 losopher was at leisure to write his write and 
 thereby say his say. He had decided, on the 
 whole, not to take his few immediately avail 
 able dollars and go to Harborside for a talk, 
 for he preferred to trust his poor wisdom to 
 an old pen rather than an old tongue; and 
 after sleeping on it, he had also determined 
 that he would gain rather than lose by frankly
 
 192 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 letting Amoret know that he perceived that 
 she was virtually in love, and that Morland 
 was at least " interested" oh, how mean the 
 phrases ! That Morland would make Amoret 
 but a boy's plaything he did not fear ; that his 
 cold lips would turn the kiss of love into the 
 kiss of death Mr. Welby was bitterly appre 
 hensive. But the Philosophy of Life, which 
 he was writing as his one legacy to Amoret, 
 was permeated with the idea that last decisions 
 must rest with the individual ; he would send 
 Amoret some extracts from it, which should 
 tell her she was in a labyrinth, give her a 
 thread of help, and leave her tangled feet to 
 make their own way out. 
 
 The letter bore to Amoret a ray of sunshine 
 from out the grim clouds and miasmatic fears 
 of Mr. Welby's past twenty-four hours. All 
 Amoret read or felt, was that her grandfather 
 sent gratitude, love, hope, interest, with an 
 added apprehension for Miss Tetley's visibly 
 declining health. So much for the letter ; but 
 it enclosed a neatly-tied packet, made of Mr. 
 Welby's most cherished 1809 hand-made paper 
 which Amoret knew so well, sealed with his 
 old PVRSVE VlRTVE seal, and bearing the 
 inscription : " Thoughts for the Dawn of the 
 New Day ; to be read next Sun-day morning." 
 As Amoret looked at it long and long, half in
 
 What of the Night? 193 
 
 abashed wonder and half in timid fear that the 
 dear old writer had guessed a secret she re 
 fused to know herself, she noticed the glitter 
 of some grains of the familiar black sand he 
 always used to dry his writing-ink. Glitter or 
 black obscurity, what was the message to 
 mean? 
 
 Saturday night Morland called earlier than 
 usual. In his manner alternated a tenderness 
 and a gayety which had been somewhat 
 strange to his former moods. He had never 
 taken the slightest advantage of the incident 
 of the rescue, warding off all allusions to it; 
 and to-night, though Miss Tetley, confined to 
 her room, left Morland and Amoret alone, he 
 did not repeat, when an accidental remark 
 of Amoret's gave him opportunity, any such 
 words as he had uttered when first he drew 
 her from the water. Only, through all their 
 random talk about the cruel foam, the un 
 inhabited moon, the canals of Mars, marsh- 
 rosemary, Wordsworth's Recluse, Morland's 
 own unpublished essay on the Poets as Pessi 
 mists, two new summer novels, or the question 
 whether purple or yellow is the more queenly 
 color, there was a sort of kindly companion 
 ship on both sides that bespoke a mental ease 
 that might, it would seem, become permanent. 
 They were getting to take each other for 
 13
 
 194 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 granted. When Morland started home his 
 good-bye handshake became a sort of close 
 little clasp that was in no way presumptuous; 
 and he said: " A uf wiedersehen ; one can't 
 improve on that, if two of our poets have made 
 it hackneyed." Amoret retorted : " Which is, 
 being interpreted, au revoir ; how easy it is to 
 be polyglot ! " And she stood at the door 
 until his last footfall fell out of hearing as he 
 turned around the bend in the road. 
 
 Next Sunday morning Amoret took her 
 grandfather's little paper packet of thoughts, 
 and went alone to her favorite rock by the 
 sea. The warm sun was high, but the air was 
 full of that sweet combination of ocean salt- 
 ness and inland breeze that drops from the 
 skies as a double gift on the waves and crags 
 and hayfields and gnarled appletrees of south 
 ern Maine or the tip of Cape Ann. The rich 
 ancient serenity of the outer world befitted 
 her inward, tender, though tremulous content, 
 as she broke the well-known seal, opened 
 the yellowed sheets, and read in the old 
 man's scrupulously clear and not yet senile 
 chirography : 
 
 There are three parts of life : vague before earthly 
 birth ; vague after death ; dark or clear in the flesh, 
 as we choose. 
 
 There are, likewise, three kinds of love : sensu-
 
 What of the Night? 195 
 
 ous, intellectual, spiritual : the first dies, the second 
 starves, the third triumphs over space, time, and 
 matter. 
 
 Life is complex, from the new-born babe's first 
 glance. What will you take, the moon, or the 
 rattle, or mother's eyes ? 
 
 Let us act what we think, yet learn that if love is 
 law, law is love. 
 
 Take time ; God's minutes are eternities. 
 
 Life in life and death in life which? 
 
 There is no sin to hearts that love, says the poet. 
 There is no love to hearts that sin. 
 
 The nobility of love returns to bless you, though 
 you learn that the one to whom you would fain have 
 given it never really lived. 
 
 Remember that the highest woman is purer than 
 the highest man, save one ; do not worship your own 
 image, and dream that you have found the second 
 perfect man. 
 
 Are you doubtful? Wait. Are you sure? Then 
 you can afford to wait. 
 
 Youth is always detached ; it stands out alone ; it 
 has no background, no history, no intermingling of 
 fibres with other lives ; and to it experience stretches 
 both "hands in vain. 
 
 The patience of hope is far easier than the 
 patience of an immitigable past. 
 
 Oh, for a glimpse of the cool deep mind of God, 
 in our iron darkness and silence ! 
 
 Love is the one eternal thing in the universe, but 
 yet so fragile that it may be shattered forever by the 
 blow of a look.
 
 196 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 Amoret had begun to read with a little 
 flutter in her heart, a chill at the tips of her 
 fingers, and a flush on her cheeks that deepened 
 into crimson and then whitened into pallor as 
 she went on. The real meaning of what her 
 grandfather had written appeared slowly in 
 her face, like the spots that emerge from a 
 hitherto monotonous negative in the develop 
 ing bath ; and, like them, the brief clearness 
 of the picture faded into obscurity as she laid 
 the little packet of manuscript on the rock at 
 her side, and looked long and long at the blue 
 water, now shimmering and speckled in the 
 wind, save for one sheet of smoothness far out 
 toward the southeast horizon. She seemed to 
 have grown ten years older, yet not ten years 
 wiser or happier. Was she in love, love 
 that binds all or soon or late? She had never 
 connected it with her own existence or future, 
 save as she loved her grandfather, the birds 
 and flowers, the hills and waves, and the What 
 ever that made and continued them. She 
 understood the old man's patiently elaborated 
 enigmas at once ; all her life she had known 
 his fondness for putting the moral universe 
 into paradoxes or pithinesses, and had partly 
 humored him and partly revered him. Never 
 mind the form of these latest Thoughts ; what 
 they meant was that her grandfather thought
 
 What of the Night? 197 
 
 she was beginning to love Mr. Morland 
 Amoret framed his name with difficulty, even 
 in her own mind that Mr. Morland was pos 
 sibly but half what she fancied him ; and that 
 she must choose. Oh, the pity, the perplexity, 
 the glory ! Was it all a woe or a boon? Had 
 her life been embittered by the drops of trial, 
 or was it now to be consecrated by the bap 
 tism of a new spirit? Who could tell? Not 
 the ripening morning; not the leisurely notes 
 of the bell-buoy across the channel : " Only 
 I, I, I, all alone with God," thought Amoret, 
 as she lifted her heavy limbs from their rocky 
 seat, and half wearily began her homeward 
 walk, " but neither God nor I just now." 
 And a placid cow, chewing the cud on the 
 sunny slope of the earthworks, turned her a 
 lazy sidewise look, while a grasshopper whirred 
 resonantly in her path. 
 
 During the next three or four weeks both 
 Amoret and Morland had plenty of time to 
 think, and their thinking was often of each 
 other. The next time Morland called at the 
 cottage it happened that Amoret and Miss 
 Tetley had gone to drive ; and a few days 
 later, by the orders of the elder lady's physi 
 cian, they suddenly started on a fortnight's 
 trip to the mountains, for the gain of upland 
 air, before the beginning of the school year.
 
 198 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 Morland's prevalent mood, during the inter 
 val of the absence of the two, was chiefly one 
 of annoyance, the more intense because it was 
 doubled. Constantly as Rodney had been 
 accustomed to deal with the world from the 
 standpoint of self, he was similarly vexed 
 that an association which had become a mild 
 but now sufficiently steady pleasure, should 
 be intermitted without his own choice, and he 
 was still more annoyed that he, a mature man 
 and a sociological critic, who prided himself 
 on some supposed emancipation from the 
 cheaper and more obvious human emotions, 
 should be wasting so much time over a girl. 
 One never is more angry at others than when 
 he has cheapened himself in his own mind; 
 and, in Morland's view, it seemed a sort of 
 debasement to feel any need of Miss Wenton's 
 society. Dangling is all very well if you are 
 the conscious dangler; but when volition 
 becomes conditioned, the universe of self is 
 somewhat belittled. 
 
 So it was that, one evening, he lit his cigar 
 with some inner acerbity, and indulged in a 
 little light introspection, after eight hours of 
 hack work at his newspaper desk, for it was 
 press-day, and no time was left him to take 
 up his latest anonymous essay to be entitled 
 "Wordsworth as Duffer." What was the
 
 What of the Night? 199 
 
 matter with him, anyway? Was he in love 
 with a pretty schoolma'am because her waist 
 was graceful and her rose-leaf lips innocently 
 pathetic in their curl ? He might better leave 
 them to the admiration of the callow colle 
 gians who were at this minute, doubtless, 
 inveigling for an introduction to her on the 
 Profile House piazza. Was it her mental bril 
 liancy that attracted him ? Certainly she was 
 an "original," which was something, espe 
 cially for one with theories concerning the 
 social evolution of monotonous mediocrity. 
 Was he flattered by her evident interest in 
 himself? If so, the more fool he to admit it. 
 But he was the preserver of her life ! and he 
 gave a little laugh as he knocked off the ashes 
 of his cigar, carefully laid it on the edge of 
 the window-sill so that it should not roll off, 
 and stepped to a cupboard to prepare a small 
 glass of old bourbon whiskey and soda water 
 " alcohol in its most beneficent form, as 
 every scientific man well knows," said Mor- 
 land to himself. " A true hero !" said he, as 
 he sipped the last of the pervasive beverage. 
 "Lucky enough that I didn't have to jump 
 overboard, for I might have got drowned 
 and I want to go to Europe again before my 
 final exit from everything everywhere. " 
 
 By the time the first copy of his innocuous
 
 2OO The End of the Beginning. 
 
 weekly was brought up damp from the press 
 room the cigar and the soda-whiskey had 
 clarified his mind to the extent of a definite 
 reflection that he might as well let things 
 drift. " I am not responsible for the universe, 
 anyway," added Morland to Morland. "I 
 never asked to be born, and dying would save 
 a good deal of trouble ; why not take things 
 as they are? But if anybody tried to cross 
 me about little Amoret, or to marry her in 
 dove-love fashion, I 'd really like to spoil his 
 nonsense somehow." And then he said to 
 the foreman of the pressroom, who had just 
 come in, "I think you 'd better ask Carter to 
 pay a little more for the next ink he buys; I 
 don't care so much about paper, but this ink 
 is rather wishy-washy. Good-night." 
 
 As for Amoret, when the train skirted the 
 clear, cool ponds and rolled through the sweet 
 meadows that lie to the eastward of the White 
 Mountain range, and at length climbed into 
 the picturesque defiles of the Notch, her eyes 
 turned to the new wonders with an elation 
 that not even her ever-present problem could 
 quell. Like the railway itself, if she now 
 crawled at the foot of majestic heights, she 
 could at least win by the courage of confident 
 abasement. In her mind, when she thought 
 of Morland and of her grandfather's plain
 
 What of the Night ? 201 
 
 warning to love worthily, there seemed to rise 
 misty and cloud-crowned summits of eternal 
 joy, the joy of spiritual triumph; yet as, 
 on her railway journey, the far-down brooks 
 beneath the trestles still sang cheerily on 
 their path to the sea, so her own obedience 
 must concern itself with every-day duties. 
 One fact was a puzzle : her definite sense of 
 humiliation that her grandfather should have 
 felt and said that she was in love she, the 
 lonely little daughter of the soil, the self- 
 centred friend of thousand-minded nature, 
 the lover only of books and the ideal. A 
 constantly-recurring impulse was to write to 
 him a letter of mere conventionality, and 
 then, on her return, banish Morland to the 
 suburbs of her good pleasure, whatever pain 
 it cost. Against this plan struggled two 
 thoughts, the one that it would be a real 
 and seemingly unnecessary trial to lose the 
 society of the deepest mind that had ever 
 opened to her own; and the other, that it 
 might be a wrong to refuse to try to throw 
 some sunlight into the dim, sad caverns of a 
 brain that seemed to need some accession of 
 the spiritual to brighten its mere mentality. 
 That some little part of nature's soul lay in 
 her own she was vain enough to think, after 
 all these years ; that it was a duty to show it
 
 2O2 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 and share it, in any poor way, she devoutly 
 believed. Mere pity she could never trans 
 form into love, but duty seemed divine, and 
 it had almost come to appear a clear duty to 
 discover and uplift the true Henry Morland 
 for, said she, a child can sometimes stir a 
 great rock. This done, he might go his way 
 and she hers; all of which fine theory or half- 
 formed intention she duly set forth in a long 
 letter to her grandfather, written out of doors 
 beneath the tutelar presence of the august and 
 immitigable Profile, which gave her no small 
 comfort in her present doubts. Then, with 
 the resiliency of girlhood, she proceeded to 
 enjoy every minute of the short weeks of her 
 mountain experiences in woods, by pools, 
 through flumes and trails, and, best of all, in 
 golden sunsets or mute moonrises. If only 
 cousin Lodema would get well a little faster ! 
 but, of course, the benefit of the change could 
 not come all at once. At any rate, Amoret's 
 cheer was her cousin's best medicine. One 
 evening, after a day of singular weakness, 
 Miss Tetley, for the first time, spoke of 
 death, and half whispered the lines: 
 
 " If my bark sinks, 'tis to another sea ; " 
 
 but Amoret's laugh rang back with the 
 remark, "Oh, no, dear; the girls won't lose
 
 What of the Night ? 203 
 
 you for many a year; school teachers should 
 quote, instead, that other Concord line : 
 
 " ' They reckon ill who leave me out.' " 
 
 The days of the vacation drew to a close. 
 Amoret had enjoyed all their variety and 
 novelty in her own way. Essentially lonely 
 from earliest childhood, she yet found a 
 double pleasure in life because of her dramatic 
 sense of the time, place, circumstance in 
 which events or people stood or moved. 
 This sense, which sometimes amounted v to 
 anticipatory memory, at first had led her to 
 try to arrange her environment with a some 
 what fussy exactitude, or, when she could not, 
 unduly to centre her thoughts upon herself; 
 but later years had made her perceive more 
 clearly the artless unconsciousness of true 
 beauty, and the fact that though man must 
 painstakingly grow, his growth should be 
 toward spontaneous loveliness. The baby 
 wishes everything to suit his whim, and 
 cries for the moon; but the saint's halo is 
 around his own head. So, if Amoret had 
 less freedom than in the old up-river days in 
 the graveyard, she also had found more; for, 
 in learning the bitterness of the problem of 
 choice, she was getting to see the joy of a 
 broadened world. And yet, the wider her
 
 2O4 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 world and the stronger her sense of the 
 beauty of helping others her cousin, her 
 scholars, Morland, a lame bird, a one-legged 
 grasshopper, a jaded horse, a broken flower- 
 stalk, or a nest of deserted mouselings the 
 keener was her knowledge, half piteous and 
 half joyous, that nobody knew her real self, 
 in its thoughts and hopes. The true Amoret, 
 after all, was far within her fettering body, 
 with its clumsy scheme of words and looks 
 and hands and feet. She had always felt that 
 if her mother, or Jesus, or some such rare 
 person, could come to life again, either of 
 them would understand it all. That was why 
 the stony calm of the big face on the moun 
 tain seemed so restful. " You and I," she said 
 to herself, "partly know each other." 
 
 When they returned to Harborside there 
 was plenty to do. Miss Tetley was still rather 
 feeble, so another teacher was engaged, and 
 on Amoret really fell the charge of the school, 
 though neither the public nor the preceptress 
 knew it. There were more girls than ever in 
 the old house, and, thanks to Amoret, more 
 sunshine, which Morland noticed when he 
 made his first prompt afternoon call. He 
 got and he gave a cordial welcome, but in that 
 and subsequent meetings he felt that he had 
 somehow lost ground. At any rate, he was
 
 What of the Night ? 205 
 
 no longer master of the situation. Amoret 
 was busy, very busy; acquaintanceships settle 
 down, after a while; of course she could not 
 make him a declaration of love or proffer him 
 a certificate of admiration. But it was clear 
 that Amoret, for some reason, with all her 
 simplicity and cordiality, was not to him the 
 Amoret of the summer; there was about her 
 an intangible but vexing air of innocent in 
 accessibility, or what you will. Some prying 
 devil, thought he, has been warning her to 
 make me play my cards, and show that there 
 are trumps in my hand ; if she 'd been let 
 alone I could have twisted her about my little 
 finger for three years to come. " Oh, " 
 thought Amoret, " if he would give me a 
 chance to see and to help his best self! I '11 
 make a chance one of these days, for there 
 must be a great soul behind such a mind." 
 And so their interviews, though nominally of 
 the familiar old summer sort, went along 
 somewhat unsatisfactorily to both of them for 
 two^or three months; and Amoret could only 
 dwell on her own inner test principle, rein 
 forced as it had been by Mr. Welby's senten 
 tious philosophy, and say to herself, " If he 
 is what I believe him to be, I shall sometime 
 know it at the full." 
 
 If but progress, in this world, would sym-
 
 206 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 metrically follow commencement, what an 
 advantage to the evolution of things ! A hun 
 dred thousand barnacle-eggs swish about in 
 the limitless ocean, and only a dozen catch 
 hold of a rock, there to live a life that is 
 merely not death. We visit a new town, and 
 in one day see it all, leaving poor room for 
 expansion in a twelve-month to come. A 
 fresh friendship promises all potencies, and 
 we learn too late that we have travelled over 
 the little soul-plot at the start, and can but 
 retread the familiar round. The child, a poet 
 at five, a soldier at ten, a lover at fifteen, a 
 wiseacre at twenty, declines and decays at 
 last, and so dies and is buried out of mind 
 with the remark, "It was in the order of 
 nature." "That is not life, it's mere vege 
 tation ; and lacking at that the patient pleas 
 antness of a grass-blade," Amoret used to 
 say, almost angrily, when she saw so many 
 people about her to whom her gospel of growth 
 was mere chatter. As toward Morland, once 
 in a while, as the winter waned, she came 
 into a mood of indignation that such a man 
 should need to be helped; and once, for a 
 blazing quarter of an hour, she fairly hated 
 him because she was satisfied that, when she 
 had been pouring forth her noblest ideals, he 
 had been " drawing her out " by pretended
 
 What of the Night? 207 
 
 denials, and smiling in his sleeve at all her 
 eloquence. But, on the whole, meanwhile, 
 neither could banish the other from frequent 
 thought; Amoret, more than ever, because 
 she was really increasingly interested in the 
 complex problems discussed in the essays he 
 begged to read to her for advice and correc 
 tion, he was writing a requested series, for 
 the London Semi-Monthly Review, on " Prob 
 lems of Mind and Morals;" and Morland, 
 because, for some occult reason, he would 
 feel his essentially small world still more 
 shrunken without Amoret. In fact, they were 
 drawn together by one common bond, namely, 
 Amoret's interest in him and his interest in 
 himself. 
 
 Over against her wish, almost devout, to 
 consecrate him to all good things, beginning 
 with the ethical gain to the world from the 
 Problems articles, was a somewhat strength- 
 ning idea, on his part, of making Amoret 
 marry him, if necessary to keep her from 
 marrying somebody else, or from throwing 
 herself away on some dream of philanthropic 
 helpfulness, of which fate for her he was 
 almost equally afraid. That he could make 
 her marry him he was satisfied, if he put the 
 demand on the ground of duty to a struggling 
 soul, and to other strugglers whom they two
 
 208 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 could influence. But meanwhile he very well 
 knew that his one rival was Amoret's better 
 self, and he was now satisfied that his path 
 to the ownership of her was greatly hindered 
 by that old fool of an egotistic potterer up the 
 river. The journalist's cleverness was as 
 quick as the philosopher's insight, and if the 
 bookseller read Morland's selfishness before 
 he ever saw him, Morland quite as easily 
 divined from Amoret's occasional admiring 
 quotations that the bookseller was constantly 
 stuffing her head with foolish notions of im 
 practicable perfection. "What damned non 
 sense the Golden Rule is ! " said he one day, 
 in the freedom of his editorial room, after he 
 had, with peculiar difficulty, restrained himself 
 from expressing his real opinion of a letter 
 of Mr. Welby's which Amoret had read to 
 him, with the remark that she thought her 
 grandfather a living illustration of that aureal 
 maxim. " Put into practice, it would reduce 
 the world to a dead level in twenty-four hours. 
 Evolution proves the individual, and not 
 society, to be the germ of improvement, and 
 the individual must get for himself what best 
 suits him. I '11 go up and talk to the old 
 fellow sometime; I can convert him easily 
 enough, for he 's liberal in a sort of way." 
 And Morland did go to Bellwood one week
 
 What of the Night ? 209 
 
 in spring, when Amoret had repaired thither 
 for a visit to the old home. By chance, he 
 said, he must go to the north of the state on 
 business for his paper. Might he stop off a 
 day or two on his return and see the good man 
 and the old elm-shaded streets of which he 
 had heard so much ? Amoret could but assent, 
 and the three were therefore together in Bell- 
 wood, Morland in the biggest chamber of 
 the Bellwood House. " Grandpa will see what 
 he really is," said Amoret to herself. "Now 
 I shall prove that I am right," thought the 
 bookseller. "I'll take his measure and get 
 rid of him somehow," reflected Morland. 
 After two days of talk between the elder and 
 the younger man, as warm as sunlight glitter 
 ing on ice, Amoret felt that they surely must 
 respect each other's powers; but she did wish 
 they could seem to like each other a little 
 better. Grandfather, she feared, was confirmed 
 in his unswerving prejudice; and Morland, as 
 he beheld at close quarters the girl's affection 
 for the old man, only consoled himself with 
 the evident proposition that the venerable 
 relic couldn't last long. 
 
 But the ancient sun settled all their difficul 
 ties at last Sol, reverend outpourer of light 
 and life on a waiting world, that sheds its 
 gracious glory even on the sterile and airless
 
 
 2io The End of the Beginning. 
 
 satellite which gratefully becomes a silver 
 mirror hung on the wall of night. The 
 steadily strengthening rays of the luminary 
 slowly spread from south to north, and the 
 snows of the wintry hills grew shrunken and 
 hollow and thin, and at length dissolved in 
 chilly waters that filled the brooks that swelled 
 the rivers running southward from pine- 
 environed lakes. Once more, in the perennial 
 miracle of a new heavens and a new earth, the 
 old stream behind the bookseller's shop began 
 to rise and crack its weakened ice-coat. 
 There was open water on the banks, and the 
 lines of disused sleigh-tracks from shore to 
 shore showed that the ice-bridge was but a 
 memory. Then there appeared a patch of 
 smooth black water below the island, and at 
 last, with stately swing, or complaining 
 creak, the ice began to go out. And still the 
 river rose, as the thicker masses came down 
 from the farther north ; rose little by little to 
 the tops of the wharves, then stretched back 
 toward the foundations of the shops, while in 
 the middle of the stream one straight, desper 
 ate current swept steadily on, with never a 
 thought of the eddies on either side, and 
 indifferent whether the cakes it hurried for 
 ward were a handbreadth long or a hundred 
 feet.
 
 What of the Night? 211 
 
 The snows of that winter had been unusu 
 ally heavy, especially in the woody regions of 
 the interior, and the spring floods were corre 
 spondingly vigorous when the breakup came. 
 An ice-dam, too, had formed at the Point, 
 three miles below, and the water speedily 
 backed up behind a barrier that for the present 
 seemed as strong as granite. Hour by hour 
 it crept nearer the cellars of the Water street 
 stores, which, indeed, were usually wet at this 
 time of year, and sometimes flooded. The 
 occupants of the buildings on the river line 
 knew what to expect in any ordinary freshet ; 
 but Mr. Welby did not worry, for it was long 
 since the basement of the old printing estab 
 lishment had been used for any service more 
 important than that of a woodshed, and now 
 there was left in it little more than half a cord 
 of sawed and split and a modest pile of green 
 four-foot wood, to which a brief bath would 
 bring no lasting injury. Others along the 
 street, however, were not so fortunate; and 
 as evening deepened, they shook their heads 
 and hoped the ice-dam would break before 
 morning, else there must be some moving of 
 goods. The idea of moving them that night 
 was not in accordance with Bellwood prece 
 dents. 
 
 Still the surly river swelled backwards and
 
 212 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 upwards; and if Amoret had not known, by 
 annual experience, the firmness of the granite 
 foundations of the heavy brick building, she 
 might have felt nervous about going to sleep 
 near such a neighbor as the icy and turbulent 
 torrent. But often, in childhood, had the 
 swish and the grinding of the flood lulled her 
 to sleep; and at nine o'clock, when Morland 
 went home, and grandfather and granddaugh 
 ter went to bed, tired by a day of talk, and 
 walk, and watch, the river was yet eight or 
 ten feet below the legend chiselled on the 
 south wall of the old printery recording the 
 unprecedented height attained by the great 
 freshet of 1811. 
 
 By twelve o'clock, however, Amoret was 
 wakened by excited talk and shouted orders in 
 the street, and by an unfamiliar smell, half 
 earthy, half chemical. Dressing hastily and 
 going to the back window, she looked out on 
 what she could see of the immitigable sweep 
 of dark waters. A strong gust of warm south 
 wind slammed the half-open shutter back in 
 her face, but not before she saw dull masses 
 of smoke pouring out of the back windows of 
 the building next but one north, the quarters 
 of a dealer whose former sellings of E. and 
 W. I. Goods and Groceries, as recorded on a 
 battered and scarcely legible sign high up on
 
 What of the Night? 213 
 
 the front of his building, had yielded to the 
 more aristocratic vending of Flour, Grain, 
 Coal, Lime, and Cement. This time the 
 freshet had literally caught him napping, with 
 fifty barrels of lime on a floor usually safe, but 
 now reached by the quick upward tide. The 
 lime slacked, the hot, stifling smoke made it 
 impossible to hoist more than a few barrels 
 out of the pit, and soon the waters, in grim 
 paradox, set the ancient warehouse on fire, 
 a dead, steady, inaccessible, sizzling, smoking 
 conflagration, that fed on the dry timbers and 
 was fanned by the wind that swept freely 
 through the windows just opened to let out 
 the suffocating fumes. That most fearful of 
 country cries, " Fire ! fire ! " rose on the 
 street, first from a few excited throats, and 
 then from many, as boys and half-dressed men 
 rushed down the highway, deserted as usual at 
 that late Bellwood hour. Then the Orthodox 
 bell began to ring in alarmist, secular fashion, 
 so different from its decorous Sunday call, and 
 by the time the smaller bell in the Calvinist 
 Baptist steeple followed suit, the two hand 
 fire-engines of the village rattled on their way 
 to the scene, the Lion a little ahead; she was 
 an older tub than the Niagara, but had more 
 of " the boys " perennial youths from twenty 
 to sixty years of age in her company.
 
 214 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 "Water had begun the fire; let water, by 
 hydropathic homoeopathy, put it out," said 
 Squire Bennett. But the situation was too 
 serious for anybody to pay attention to his 
 joke. The south wind, though warm, was 
 now a gale, the sky was black, the front of the 
 warehouse was half invisible for smoke, and 
 at length little flames appeared through the 
 round hole of a wooden shutter on the second 
 story front. The firemen of one engine car 
 ried their hose up through a building north 
 of that first attacked and began to play on the 
 roof, while those of the other undertook the 
 protection of property on the street. All 
 thoughts of saving the structure already on 
 fire were now given up. 
 
 Amoret had waked her grandfather, who did 
 not lose his head, though for sixty years he 
 had never seen danger in the familiar row 
 now so imperilled. The south wind seemed 
 to leave his own quarters safe, and telling 
 Amoret not to stay in the building, and not to 
 go too near the fire, he ran as fast as his thin 
 legs would carry him to help remove other 
 folks' goods in the apparent path of disaster, 
 should, as on the whole seemed probable, 
 the flames not be confined to their source. 
 Busily enough did he and his old friend the 
 grocer toil in getting ready for the worst in
 
 What of the Night? 215 
 
 the shop of the latter; everybody else was 
 too busy, or too excited, or too curious to give 
 them any help. " You 'd better watch your 
 own place; you've thought of yourself last 
 ever since you were born," said Mr. Hendrick- 
 son, in a shrill voice, as with trembling hands 
 he gathered into his arms an account-book, 
 a tea-canister, and a small pair of scales. 
 
 "Oh, no," said the bookseller, "I'm all 
 right, and you may be all wrong. " 
 
 Meanwhile Morland had hurried down from 
 the hotel and speedily met anxious-faced 
 Amoret, key in hand, on the corner opposite 
 the book-shop. "Oh, Mr. Morland," said 
 she, "you didn't have to save my life the 
 second time, did you? but do you think our 
 place will burn? I don't dare leave it or 
 stay in it, and grandpa has gone somewhere. 
 Won't you take this key, though the door's 
 open, while I go and hunt him, and then I '11 
 be right back if anything happens. " Amoret' s 
 mind, to tell the truth, was for the moment 
 in t^e state of that of Saint Peter on the 
 mount. "And here 's grandfather's pet book 
 of writing," added she; "I was sure if any 
 thing happened he 'd want it most of all, so I 
 ran up stairs and got it out of the desk in the 
 dark ; I knew just where it was. Do keep it 
 for him; you're a man and I'm only a
 
 216 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 woman; and don't let anything happen to it 
 for the world. " And she started away. 
 
 "Amoret, Amoret," said Morland, for the 
 first time calling her by her Christian name 
 as, whelmed with an irresistible passion, he 
 seized her hand in a vise-like grip, "you've 
 given me his old Philosophy book that he 
 values most in the world save one thing, and 
 that 's yourself. Give me that, too, and I '11 
 worship book, heart, and him all the rest of 
 the days of all of us." 
 
 A gust of the wind suddenly veering to the 
 north had blown his hat from his head. The 
 glare of the fire shone full on his pale face, 
 marked with an intensity of purpose Amoret 
 had never before seen. Just then the roof of 
 the burning warehouse fell, a tower of sparks 
 shot skyward, and the picture was reflected in 
 eyes that seemed fairly to burn into her soul. 
 Amoret wondered if she were alive, or if this 
 sudden wild drama was a dream here within 
 a few feet of her childhood's home, where 
 every brick and stone was familiar, fire and 
 water, the foes, were fighting hand in hand to 
 whelm the familiar old shops, the while Mor 
 land, perhaps the man of men she had ever 
 known, was asking to be her servant and 
 friend. Her brain whirled, and for absolute 
 physical lack of power to stand, she half fell
 
 What of the Night? 217 
 
 against him, swiftly thinking that he had, 
 after all, fitly chosen a woeful time to proffer 
 help, and had proved himself to be all she 
 had hoped, by his linking together in utter 
 unselfishness herself, the dear old man, and 
 his poor, beloved, wise-foolish book. An 
 instant vision of perfect, large life for the 
 three, in which each should strengthen each by 
 giving strongest to weakest, flashed through 
 her mind, and she hurriedly said, "Oh, per 
 haps, perhaps; I can't think now, I must go 
 to find him," and ran past the excited groups 
 up street. 
 
 The veer of the wind had saved the build 
 ings to the north, but the bookstore was now 
 in danger. The volunteer firemen broke in 
 its doors, rushed up stairs, and threw open 
 the wooden shutters to toss furniture out, if 
 need be, or let water in ; thereby, with rural 
 fatuity, doing the worst thing possible by 
 letting the fierce drafts of wind suck through. 
 Morland took the lead in helping, and as there 
 was ample time for salvage, walked quickly 
 in and out with great armfuls of the books his 
 instinctive glance told him were the most 
 valuable, trying the while to restrain willing 
 but clumsy hands from carrying out wall-paper 
 and children's slates, and the ten-cent side 
 walk book-box, instead of heavy cases of old
 
 2 1 8 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 calf -bound tomes, or a portfolio of irreplace 
 able prints. 
 
 Meanwhile the old man was back again, 
 breathless and feeble from his needless tasks 
 of self-sacrifice amid Hendrickson's raisins and 
 sugars, and now confronted by the probable 
 ruin of his life-long home. Amoret had 
 found him without trouble, coming out of the 
 grocery, and had got from him a solemn prom 
 ise not to go into his own shop after one 
 single little flame of fire should burst from it, 
 at the same time telling him that " The Phi 
 losophy of Life " had been saved first of all. 
 What Morland was doing they both could see, 
 displaying, as he was, that directive power 
 which so often makes a white-handed college 
 man a better helper in an emergency than 
 fireman or fisherman or carpenter knows how 
 to be. 
 
 But Bellwood had not yet filled up the 
 measure of an excitement unparalleled for a 
 quarter of a century. Fast and far and furious 
 flew the sparks, or bits of burning shingles as 
 big as a man's hand, endangering more than 
 one house in the village; so that some of the 
 weary crew of firemen had to go home to pour 
 pails of water on their own house-roofs. Just 
 as four men were staggering across the street 
 with the biggest case of books in Mr. Welby's
 
 What of the Night? 219 
 
 shop, one of them looked over the opposite 
 roofs and shouted, "See that light way over 
 there on the steeple ! " 
 
 A flying torch had kindled the tower far 
 above the belfry of the Orthodox meeting 
 house, and a little colony of flame, in the stiff 
 breeze, was running around the telescopic 
 Sir Christopher Wren spire that had so long 
 stood out against the west sloping hill. After 
 much excited talk, the new danger to the 
 whole village seemed to demand that the old 
 Lion should be taken to the vicinity of the 
 church, at least to play upon the roof ; for the 
 fire on the river street might perhaps be 
 checked at the wide wharf -way below Welby's, 
 even if the bookstore, as now seemed likely, 
 should go. 
 
 The better half of the bookseller's goods had 
 now been taken out and carried well up the 
 cross-street, where Amoret, with a queer sense 
 of the pitifulness of it all, saw some of her 
 childish playthings piled pellmell on a hair 
 cloth sofa that had belonged to her mother's 
 scanty wedding outfit, on which sofa the little 
 girl of years ago used to play ship. Smoke 
 was now leaking from half-a-dozen windows 
 in front of the bookshop; the apothecary's, 
 next door, was apparently doomed; and in 
 dreary exhaustion Mr. Welby was seated on a
 
 22O The End of the Beginning. 
 
 doorstep on the other side of the street. 
 Having refused to take a sip from the whiskey- 
 flask Morland ran over to proffer him, he 
 was helplessly waiting for the end. Mean 
 while, when half the crowd had run to the new 
 scene of danger, a little girl, who had been 
 standing too near the original conflagration, 
 fell to the earth with a shriek; a falling pane 
 of glass had cut her left cheek and apparently 
 blinded an eye, which was covered with a red 
 stream. Amoret picked her up and ran with 
 her in search of warm water and bandages, 
 and it was half an hour before she thought 
 again of bookstore, grandfather, or Morland. 
 
 Then it was, in the little time of her absence, 
 in the small hours of that lurid spring morn 
 ing by the river, that the devil came forth 
 from the flames and tempted man and man 
 fell; but the flames were not those of the 
 burning buildings, but those of his fiery heart.
 
 Time's Fool. 221 
 
 IX. 
 
 TIME'S FOOL. 
 
 IT all happened so quickly, the cutting of 
 the threads that bound three lives together. 
 Amoret had gone on her errand of mercy, and 
 the fire had settled into that steady, irrevo 
 cable spit and crackle and glow and tumble 
 that denote a conflagration hopeless, yet not 
 increasingly dangerous. The wind had died 
 away, and though the church, as well as the 
 three old shops on the river street, were plainly 
 doomed, there seemed little likelihood of 
 further spread of the flame-foe. Then it was 
 that Morland caught sight of old Welby sitting 
 wearily on the doorstep across the way, watch 
 ing the fate of the bricks and boards that had 
 been his home and workshop for a lifetime. 
 
 ' r Well, Mr. Welby," said Morland, "it's 
 pretty bad ; but you and Amoret are safe, any 
 way, and here 's your book of books, without 
 a singe on a single leaf. " 
 
 Amoret had already told him of its safety, 
 so now he took the volume from Morland 's
 
 222 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 hand with a weary grasp, a listless eye, and a 
 faint " thank you. " No sooner had he touched 
 the old leather-bound tome, however, than he 
 gave a start from his lowly seat. Weight and 
 feeling had told him instantly that it was not 
 the volume whose every atom he knew so well, 
 by long and loving use, that he could have 
 recognized it by a sixth sense of apprehension 
 had he gone to get it in black midnight in 
 some impossible place. The old volume 
 Morland now gave him was of the same size, 
 it had chanced to be in the same desk, and so 
 Amoret had caught it up because of location 
 rather than identity. The slowly-filled jot 
 tings toward vital philosophy had been made 
 in a disused blank book that had come down 
 from the thrifty business days of the printing- 
 house, a journal, or invoice, or day-book, 
 or something of the sort. Knowing her grand 
 father's inveterate and mysterious reverence 
 for his self-imposed task, Amoret had never 
 handled the manuscript volume, nor would she 
 have ventured, in a less critical time, to try 
 to open the ark and rescue the covenant. No 
 wonder, then, that she made so disastrous a 
 mistake in her swift excitement; the old man 
 could not blame her. But the precious pages 
 what was to become of them now, unwit 
 tingly left In the furnace of fire ? Into them,
 
 Times Fool. 223 
 
 for many a year, his slow right hand had been 
 trying to put the quintessence of his own soul 
 and wit. Its covers included his sum-total, for 
 good or bad, and therefore could hardly have 
 failed to bind up some little, modest egotism, 
 some personal sense of value born at least of 
 toil and ambition, if worthless otherwise. 
 But more: Mr. Welby had all along meant 
 this scattered record to be his best, almost his 
 only, legacy to Amoret herself; and now that 
 she was half in the toils of one whom, despite 
 some external helpfulness, he instinctively 
 felt to be conscienceless and utterly unworthy 
 of her, the " Philosophy of Life " appeared to 
 be of more value than all else that could burn 
 in the store, or in the street, or in the church 
 itself. It must not perish; he would save it; 
 not an instant was to be lost. 
 
 "Mr. Morland," said he, with the solemn 
 precision that sometimes attends times of 
 greatest excitement, "this is not the right 
 book; I must go and get the other one," and 
 he started totteringly toward the burning 
 building. Flames curled from the roof and 
 blazed from the river end, while even the front 
 door and windows were half invisible for 
 smoke. 
 
 "It is not safe, sir; you must not go," said 
 Morland, rising, and instinctively clutching
 
 224 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 his arm, the while three spirits seemed to 
 scream into the younger man's ear, all in a 
 single second. And the first said, " Go your 
 self. " And the second said, "Neither may 
 go." And the third said, " Let him go, be rid 
 of him, and Amoret is yours." 
 
 They started across the street, the editor's 
 hand still on Welby's arm. Morland gave a 
 hurried look up and down, and saw that they 
 two were unobserved at the moment, by the 
 firemen or the jaded or idle men and boys 
 scattered along the thoroughfare ; for the eyes 
 of all were fixed on flames high in air, rather 
 than on doorways or rubbishy sidewalks in 
 front of the fire-doomed shops. Then there 
 rushed on his mind nothing less than the whole 
 thought of the relation of the present moment 
 to the future of the three to their future on 
 earth, that is to say, for there is no other 
 future. Now or never was his time to apply 
 common sense to the situation. What was the 
 good of mentality if it could not make years 
 swing on the pivot of a second? Amoret 
 loved him; old Welby had some senile, jeal 
 ous, fussy dislike of him that was sure to be 
 an annoyance so long as the septuagenarian 
 crawled or mumbled into dotage, and possibly 
 might spoil everything, what with Amoret's 
 sentimental, feminine ideas of duty. Duty?
 
 Time's Fool. 225 
 
 What is duty ? Ask nature. It is the indi 
 vidual's care of self as he seeks his best good. 
 Deny it if you dare, and accept the alterna 
 tive of providing for age, imbecility, pauper 
 ism, superfluity, at the expense of youth, vigor, 
 productiveness, usefulness. Why, even the 
 North American Indians, or the Spartans, 
 knew better than that. Old Welby had done 
 his work ; what right had he to interfere to the 
 bedevilment of a chance for a most interest 
 ing experiment, should Morland conclude to 
 marry Amoret? His old rubbishy proverbs 
 would be no loss any way, but let him save 
 them if he could; nobody asked him to write 
 them or to rescue them ; on his own head be 
 the risk. In fact, would it not be a sort of 
 poetic euthanasia for his atoms to dissipate in 
 flame along with those of his house, and notes, 
 and shop? And wouldn't it be better, if you 
 must talk about ethics, for Amoret to lose her 
 grandfather for five years, maybe, than to lose 
 the chance of forty years with himself? One 
 need be no more afraid of death than of life 
 leSs, for that matter. Even the Christians 
 call death for others the supreme good; very 
 well, let the old fellow attain it by dying for 
 Amoret and him ; who would deny him such a 
 privilege? You must decide some things 
 quickly in this world, if all such thoughts as 
 15
 
 226 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 these come crowding on your mind while you 
 pass through a flash of time and a rod of space ; 
 so Morland was sure that he rose superior to 
 the accidents of circumstance and prejudice 
 when to the half-crazed old man's second ap 
 peal for release he said, "All right, then, be 
 careful," let go his arm, and saw him rush 
 through the smoky door. It was mere chance 
 that Morland simultaneously looked up and 
 down the street to reassure himself that the 
 disappearance had been unperceived by any 
 body else; and that he thought he would walk 
 briskly up to the burning church on the hill, 
 now really a pretty spectacle in its heaven 
 ward pyre of sheeted flame. "You wouldn't 
 believe," said he to himself, "that a man could 
 disappear in that way with so much light in 
 so many people's eyes; perhaps it was that 
 last puff of downward smoke that covered him. 
 But we scientists should never forget that it 
 is the improbable that must often be ac 
 counted for." 
 
 Amoret, meanwhile, had cared for her little 
 sufferer as quickly as was possible for sympa 
 thetic fingers, and hurried back to find her 
 grandfather. That she did not see him at 
 once was no marvel, but when she had run up 
 and down the street for some minutes, inquir 
 ing with ever-gaining anxiety concerning his
 
 Times Fool. 227 
 
 whereabouts, and had got no information of 
 any satisafctory kind, she began to be alarmed. 
 Yes, he had been seen quite lately; he had 
 been sitting on a doorstep on the west side of 
 the street ; and that was all. Where had he 
 gone? there was no new danger to call him 
 away; the property saved from the bookstore 
 was well guarded, nor had Mr. Welby visited 
 the pile for an hour, she was told. Could he 
 have gone, from mere curiosity, to the burning 
 church? It was unlikely, in his weary state; 
 but where else could he be? Where too, 
 was Morland? Amoret had not met him in 
 her new huntings, and could only learn from 
 a bystander, who chanced to know him by 
 sight, that he had been on the street in the 
 vague period "within an hour or two." No 
 body had seen the two men together, but by 
 the perversity of horror the thought flashed 
 into Amoret 's tired brain that they might have 
 gone into the burning building for some last 
 rescue. Morland, said she to herself, would 
 be tlje very man to try to help poor grandfather 
 in that way, at the risk of his own life. Im 
 possible ! somebody would have seen them, even 
 if nobody had prevented such foolhardiness. 
 
 In despair, Amoret turned up the hill toward 
 the burning church, now a glorious spectacle. 
 The first dispersed light of dawn over the pine-
 
 228 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 clad eastern hills was beginning faintly to 
 rival the glow of the flame, when, far up in the 
 fire-girt tower, the bell tolled its own knell by 
 striking four an instant before steeple, bell, 
 clock and all shivered, leaned, and fell back 
 ward through the red-skeleton roof. A shower 
 of sparks, a pillar of fire by night, rose majes 
 tically skyward, and by their light Amoret saw 
 the pale face of Morland standing at a safe 
 distance, and looking upward with that pure, 
 ethereal gaze she had always connected with 
 his best moods. 
 
 She rushed up and took his hand with a 
 clutch in which new love and newer despair 
 seemed to combine; he was all she had for 
 the moment. "Where is grandfather?" she 
 gasped, with strained voice and eager eyes, 
 in a child's assurance that he must know all, 
 or that his lack of knowledge would be some 
 thing to cling to. Morland was more startled 
 by her apparition than so calm a being had 
 ever before been in all his self-centred days; 
 he had not expected to see Amoret just then, 
 nor had he ever beheld on her face such dis 
 traught anxiety; youth and beauty had, for 
 the time being, become agonized age. How 
 much did she know? he wondered. A slight 
 flush, as of mirrored coals, rose to his cheeks, 
 and his throat was half locked as he said, in
 
 Times Fool. 229 
 
 reply, "Where is Mr. Welby, dear? How 
 should I know? I 've been up here for an 
 hour; isn't he on the street? I spoke to him 
 a while ago when he was down there." 
 
 Morland wanted to make the time of his 
 absence as long as possible, but Amoret hit 
 at once, with woman's clear, incisive jus 
 tice, on the very word he thought the safest. 
 "An hour, Mr. Morland? Oh! how could 
 you leave him ? Did n't you know I was away ? 
 and I 'm sure it was n't thirty minutes ! " "I 
 missed him when you were gone," said Mor 
 land, now in full possession of his powers, 
 "and came up here to see if he was n't at the 
 second fire." 
 
 " And you 've been here an hour and have n't 
 seen him ! Oh, Mr. Morland, we must go 
 back right away and find him, if we ask every 
 man, woman, and child on the street where 
 he is ! Come ! " said she, simply, with iron 
 will, as she grasped his hand again in cold 
 immitigability. 
 
 There was nothing for the modern Cain to 
 do save to become his brother's keeper. Down 
 the street they went; Amoret made no con 
 cealment of her agony of suspense, and her 
 queries were fast and almost fierce, but nobody 
 could reassure her save by general remarks 
 that he "must be all right."
 
 230 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 "If 'twere n't that he had his book," said 
 she, in a new thought, " I 'd be sure he had 
 gone back for it; but you gave it him, didn't 
 you ? " she exclaimed, with the precision that 
 clung to every known fact in the awful puzzle. 
 
 "Yes," said Morland simply; "the last 
 time T saw him." 
 
 " But that was after you left me, and I had 
 given it to you," said she. "That couldn't 
 have been an hour ago," she added, unsuspi 
 ciously; "you could n't have been up there as 
 long as you thought." 
 
 Morland grew uneasy, but felt that in the 
 affair, however it ended, nothing could ever 
 be definitely known. It must have ended by 
 this time, for the shop was now nearly con 
 sumed. Welby had not reappeared, nor could 
 he be thought to have survived, soliloquized 
 the one man who knew of his fate. He had 
 often reflected that folks who told the whole 
 truth told something more than the truth, that 
 is to say, progressive scientific truth. To 
 wait, to be calm, and to let Amoret's visible 
 need of him be the magnet to draw her to him 
 in the days to come, was a policy so obvious 
 that there was not the slightest use of hurry. 
 A few quiet words of reassurance and consola 
 tion were all that would ever be necessary, 
 nor were they needed yet; it was enough to
 
 Times Fool. 231 
 
 urge Amoret not to worry, for the old man 
 must be somewhere all right ; nobody would 
 have dreamed of going into the building for 
 an hour or more past. 
 
 Everybody else thought and said the same 
 thing, except lame, witless Alice, who came 
 stumbling up to the two, all breathless and 
 muddy. Amoret had befriended the child of 
 yore, and Alice was always hanging about 
 her, when allowed, in humble, dog-like adora 
 tion. Excitement now, however, unlimbered 
 her dull tongue to say, " Oh, Miss Amoret, 
 oh, mister ! did he come out the front way or 
 the back way ? " 
 
 "What do you mean, child?" said Amoret, 
 wondering if her own brain would cease to do 
 its work, and her legs fail to support her 
 body. 
 
 "Oh! the back way's all water and the 
 front way 's all fire ! and I see yer mister and 
 yer grandfather a goin' in; but the new mister 
 jest stopped, 't was so smoky, and Mister 
 Wejby, I guess he went ahead ; and I watched 
 and watched, and he did n't come out, and I 
 told everybody, and they said I was crazy 
 Alice! but I ain't crazy, and I see Mister 
 Welby, and he didn't have his hat on, and 
 then this mister went up the hill, and I 
 thought he must have knowed yer grand-
 
 232 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 father 'd come out somehow, an' I donno how, 
 for I 've watched 'im and he 's been all alone 
 till yer come, and I knowed he would n't go 
 off till he come out too ; but he ain't with you, 
 and I don' know, I don' know nothin' more," 
 and Alice stopped for mere lack of breath. 
 
 " Went in!" said Amoret, in terror. Her 
 heart fairly stopped beating while she clutched 
 the child with icy hand; "went in alone, and 
 Mr. Morland was with him and saw him ? " 
 
 Alice nodded her head in the vociferous- 
 ness of affirmative. To believe her was im 
 possible, to doubt all truth in her statement 
 was to throw away the one hideous gleam of 
 light on the mystery. 
 
 "Amoret," said Morland, who felt that he 
 must play trumps against luck, " the child is 
 crazy, and your own brain is fairly reeling; 
 let us go and find some place for you to rest." 
 
 "Alice," said Amoret, unheeding him, 
 " Alice, dear, you must have dreamed it ; this 
 has been an awful night for us all, enough to 
 turn a stronger head than yours." 
 
 "Oh, no, I did n't, Miss Amoret," said she, 
 gaining breath. "This mister he guv Mister 
 Welby a book, and Mr. Welby guv a groan 
 and throwed the book away, and I picked it 
 up, and here it is; and then Mister Welby 
 said, oh dear, he must go and get the tother
 
 Times Fool. 233 
 
 one, and then he went, and I don't guess he 
 got it after all;" and Alice's left hand dived 
 under her dirty skirt and handed Amoret a 
 book, half -bound in old Russia leather, and 
 labeled "Invoice." 
 
 Amoret mechanically took it, opened its 
 leaves, half-written over with old business 
 accounts of the publishing firm, and recog 
 nized it at once by a crack in the top of the 
 back of the binding, in which she had caught 
 her finger when, a few hours ago, she had got 
 this very volume from the upstairs desk. It 
 was the book that she had transferred to Mor- 
 land for safe keeping, and it was not "The 
 Philosophy of Life." And there burned into 
 Amoret's mind, in intense and immitigable 
 and irrefutable clearness, a tenfold horror, in 
 which culminated all the woes of that night 
 of nights. She had got the wrong book ; Mor- 
 land had given it to her grandfather, who had 
 rushed to his death in the furnace of his own 
 home and his own hopes ; and Morland 
 Morland Henry Morland had let him, and 
 then had gone up the hill to watch a steeple 
 tumble down. And this was the culmination 
 of the wealth of life; this her hero; this the 
 revelation of a supreme moment. 
 
 Amoret turned toward him with the stony 
 look of a sphinx set on a judgment throne.
 
 234 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 What to do or say he knew not for the 
 moment; even the heirs of all the ages are 
 not infallible on the instant; and against that 
 look he could but stutter a few words that 
 not one of the three Amoret, crazy Alice, or 
 himself really heard. Between them had 
 come a century of years and a universe of 
 morals ; that was all. 
 
 The man was the first to speak again. 
 "Amoret," said he, "if you have loved me 
 ever so little, hear me now or hear me by and 
 by, when you are calmer. You and I ought 
 to be able to live by the higher truth and the 
 greater good; you will see that it was best for 
 us both; " but he visibly trembled. 
 
 All Amoret ever said to him again was 
 spoken that moment, after a pause that was 
 bitter to both, and seemed never to end. 
 "Mr. Morland," said she, in a voice that 
 sounded as strangely to her own ears as to 
 his, "you are more dead than my poor grand 
 father you let go to his death, for you never 
 lived ; I have dreamed you ; " and she turned 
 her face from his forever. 
 
 Dawn grew apace, and the wild and woful 
 night was over. For long did the little town 
 tell and re-tell the vicissitudes of those lurid 
 and awful hours; but upon none of them did 
 the babblers and wiseacres more fondly dwell
 
 Times Fool. 235 
 
 than upon the strange escape of old Mr. 
 Welby. With many a variation and expan 
 sion, many a query and asseveration and 
 denial, did town-talk say how he had rushed 
 through stifling smoke to the back room of the 
 second story of his bookstore, rescued from a 
 desk an old book on which, said one, he " sot 
 everythin' mebbe 't was old accounts he 
 thought he might collect ; " found his way of 
 exit to the street cut off; become confused by 
 the heat and well-nigh suffocated by the 
 smoke; struggled down stairs by a back way, 
 he hardly knew how, and by the good luck of 
 very fatuity, when his wits were all gone, 
 thrust a heavy wooden shutter through a win 
 dow and trusted himself thereto as upon a 
 raft to sail down the ice-floed flood of the 
 freshet. Starting on his voyage so far from 
 the centre of the current, he chanced soon to 
 drift ashore, and was found, half fainting and 
 half frozen, beside a coal shed, no more than 
 two hundred feet below, with the drenched 
 book beneath his rusty coat. The news of his 
 rescue flew apace; a crowd gathered, for the 
 fires were now nearly burned out, and a dozen 
 tender hands bore him to Squire Bennett's, 
 where he lay in mere feebleness for a week, 
 but began, after a fortnight, under Doctor 
 Urquhart's cheery care, to get over the shock.
 
 236 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 The doctor gave him so little medicine that 
 Mr. Welby could hardly account for the fact 
 that each day brought new strength, unless it 
 was because, having been assured that he had 
 no physiological right to die, he felt that a 
 relapse would be illogical. When he began 
 to talk much, a favorite theme was Doctor 
 Urquhart's intuitive perception and common 
 sense; but Amoret was inclined to apply the 
 related adjective commonplace to man and 
 method. The doctor, she admitted, had a 
 pleasant face and knew when to hold his 
 tongue; for the rest, he seemed to let things 
 drift, while nature did the curing. 
 
 Bellwood, as became a provincial town, did 
 not quickly recover from its draught of excite 
 ment ; but of all its people Amoret, in those 
 sequent days, was the serenely quiet one; 
 anybody might have thought her a marble 
 statue had not her few words been so kindly 
 and her hand-touch so soft. That her face 
 was pale was no wonder; had not her grand 
 father lost his livelihood and narrowly escaped 
 with his life ? It was lucky, folks said, that 
 Amoret had a good place, and that her school 
 mistress was willing to let her off for a few 
 weeks; while they noted, with considerable 
 unanimity, that she was "a good deal of a 
 girl."
 
 Times Fool. 237 
 
 Down went the river water ; the day after 
 the fire the charred, fallen timbers were picked 
 up from the streets in front of the long-to-be- 
 vacant black holes where the stores and the 
 church had been; and then breakfasts were 
 eaten and tenpenny nails sold as before. One 
 more sensation, however, was to follow the 
 parlous time: Death was to have its victim, 
 if balked of its chance of the bookseller. 
 
 "Kind of funny, wasn't it?" said sapient 
 Gossip; "friend of Amoret's, just stopping 
 over for a train or two. I would n't wonder a 
 bit if he died of heart-disease; he must have 
 been excited, and those city fellows aren't 
 used to hard work ; besides, those that saw 
 him said he did n't look over strong. Wish 't 
 had been Jones that saw him first, instead of 
 Urquhart; he'd have let folks know what he 
 thought about it. I hate a doctor that never 
 says nothing; seem 's though the public had 
 some rights. Some folks said he was hang 
 ing around Amoret. Well, there 's all sorts 
 of talk, and I suppose he was pretty well 
 known down to Harborside; but what I guess 
 is that he was a Catholic priest in disguise. 
 Amoret would n't have had him, anyway, and 
 he couldn't have married her if she would; 
 and if he was a priest, it 's just as well he 's 
 out of the way. They said his poor old mother
 
 238 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 was kind of glad he was found where he was, 
 for she was sure he 'd been a-praying; but his 
 father didn't like it quite so well. Did 
 Amoret see his folks when they came to take 
 the body away? Well, there, I never thought 
 to ask." 
 
 If Fact had been minded as, according 
 to custom, it was not to tell the community 
 the truth, it would have said this : 
 
 When Amoret gave Morland a last leaden 
 look and turned northward up the blighted 
 street, he was left in a mental state of which 
 deep and all-pervading annoyance was the 
 chief element. Accustomed all his life to 
 be and say and do what he chose, in a reticent 
 and refined loyalty to the thought of personal 
 advantage, things seemed sadly askew when 
 they failed to happen as he wished. Ever 
 since Amoret had made that miserable visit 
 to the mountains he had felt his power over 
 her wane, what with time, luck, grandfather, 
 and all. The cards were no longer in his 
 own hand, and so, without conscious misplay 
 in his intellectual game, things had somewhat 
 passed beyond his control. Having had, at 
 least, the good sense to wait, to make no 
 scene, and to betray no undue interest, every 
 thing had at length come right again for a 
 moment, thanks to this tempest in a local
 
 Time's Fool. 
 
 teapot, but only to go disgustingly wrong at 
 last. If that idiotic brat had never cursed 
 the world, to come tattling the devil's mis 
 chief! And then old Welby's book and 
 Morland laughed hollowly to himself as he 
 thought of its perversely important part in 
 the recent fiasco play. Well, book and Welby 
 were gone, he himself was gone, everything 
 was gone; for when pride departs whoever 
 will may have the rest. 
 
 Just what was next to do he knew not! 
 Get out of Bellwood in decent obscurity and 
 go back to his tiresome paper and his rubbishy 
 essays? What was the good of proving or 
 disproving anything, or pottering away over 
 problems and essays thereon? The only 
 decent thing for a man to do before he dies 
 is to work; but what is the use of work? For 
 yourself ? you die and lose it all. For others ? 
 the higher you raise them the greater their 
 ultimate fall into nescience and obscurity. 
 The earthworm suffered less than man, and 
 the molten rock less than the earthworm. 
 
 Then there flashed into his mind Swin 
 burne's line: " Now what a thing it is to be 
 an ass ! " By this time he was walking up 
 deserted Union street toward the top of the 
 hill. It was getting light, but nobody saw 
 him, and nobody would have known him if
 
 240 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 seen; that at least was good luck. To be 
 made ridiculous by the top-lofty righteousness 
 of a schoolteacher and the timely tattling of 
 a non-compos! high fate for a critic of civili 
 zation ! Amoret would never tell ; Morland 
 almost wished she would, for then he would 
 have a little comfort in his self-despite. It 
 would be a friendly service if there could be 
 pinned on his back one of the labels affable 
 schoolboys affix to each other: "Somebody 
 please kick me." 
 
 Well, then, should he show his magnitude 
 and manliness by dismissing this whole epi 
 sode as one more proof of the general reign of 
 folly and perversity in the world? Why 
 trouble any more with such a world, anyhow ? 
 Suppose he were to quit it now would be 
 as good a time as any, and he would save ten 
 days or ten years or fifty years of drudgery. 
 Suicide for disappointed love, the world 
 might say? Not a bit of it; no one would 
 guess it, not even Amoret. He had often 
 thought of quitting things if they became 
 really annoying, and certainly he was at this 
 minute a trial to himself. He never asked 
 to be born, and he had a perfect right to die. 
 What was it that fine old pessimist said: 
 "There is no work, nor device, nor knowl 
 edge, nor wisdom in the grave whither thou
 
 Times Fool. 241 
 
 goest. " Exactly; he could put himself on a 
 dead level with Plato and Theodora in ten 
 minutes. The game is not worth the candle; 
 blow out the light and there you are. It 
 would really be a good joke to kill yourself 
 not because you cared so much for Amoret, 
 but because you cared so little; and besides, 
 it would serve her right. He knew her well 
 enough to know that the thought of such an 
 exit on his part would be to her a lifelong 
 misery; a just punishment for her procrastina 
 tion to begin with, and her dulness in failing 
 to see the large advantageousness of taking 
 his say-so to end with. She, too, would 
 sooner or later come to this same boon of 
 oblivion; but meanwhile let her suffer; such 
 simpletons ought to make their own bed and 
 lie in it. 
 
 What was he doing? making faces at Fate 
 when he dared not defy her? Did he really 
 dare to carry out this whim of the moment? 
 It was no whim; it had been a thought of 
 years. A prudent man foreseeth the evil and 
 hideth himself, but the simple pass on, and 
 are punished the Hebrews were politic as 
 well as pessimistic. At any rate, now was a 
 good time to try a little experiment. Would 
 twice his occasional luxurious dose of Indian 
 hemp be an overplus ? If no, luck would tell 
 16
 
 242 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 him to live a while longer; if yes, then the 
 devil take the hindmost : to wit, Mademoi 
 selle Amoret Wenton, of Bellwood, present. 
 
 Out came a little bottle from a morocco case 
 well-worn by long carrying; there was a trou 
 blesome swallowing, and Henry Morland stood 
 on the borderland between two worlds no, 
 not that, on the edge of the only world. Was 
 he to tumble off? He glanced down the hill 
 at the two columns of gray smoke, pale and 
 thin in the early sunlight, and was rather sur 
 prised at the trifling change wrought in him, 
 at the start, by a possibly irrevocable step. If 
 he ever came out of this he would give science 
 the benefit of his experiences. He might 
 imagine a numbness and prickling in his left 
 foot, but that was the bootmaker's fault; the 
 boot had seemed tight before, and had got wet 
 at the fire. 
 
 Why take the trouble to climb that hill, 
 when you can just as well walk down as up ? 
 So he crossed to Academy street and saun 
 tered down. A rooster on a fence saw him, 
 abbreviated his crow and hurriedly and awk 
 wardly hopped down and ran across the street 
 in front of him. They used to say that 
 animals perceived impending death in man; 
 a pig sees the wind, and it is blood-red ; was 
 the chanticleer frightened? He might try
 
 Times Fool. 243 
 
 to pet the first dog he saw. There goes one : 
 " Come here, sir ! " The puppy ran readily 
 up, with a quickly wagging tail, a deprecatory 
 air, and an increasingly grovelling gait, and 
 finally threw himself on his back before the 
 poison-taker, his tail still trying to wag. 
 "Not much terror there, " said Morland; "per 
 haps my time hasn't come yet. But, my boy, 
 you and I will turn up our toes for good and 
 all before a great while, whatever happens ; " 
 and he stooped to pat the puppy. As he did 
 so there came a slight ringing in his ears, 
 the sky flushed with pink, and he staggered a 
 little. " Better not try that again ; what was 
 it the ethical spouter used to say about man's 
 privilege to stand erect? I doubt if I stand 
 erect much longer, but I may as well while I 
 can. I 've had at least one poor goodness in 
 my life ; never asked anybody to boost me up. 
 
 " Rather pretty view that ; feel as though 
 I'd like to have something to take hold of; 
 that 's why lamp-posts are useful; wish I had 
 a cane. Why not sit down ? If I do I may 
 have to stay; better keep going. What a 
 noise the river makes! you could hear it 
 twenty miles off. My left leg don't seem to 
 care to keep step with the right. 
 
 " Suppose I do die, why make a spectacle 
 of myself by being found out here? First,
 
 244 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 they 'd think me drunk, and then they 'd 
 wonder who 'd killed me. Why not go into 
 the next yard, or this one, and sit down under 
 a tree? What's this? little church? door 
 open as early as this? Catholic; haven't 
 been in a church for twenty years ; might go 
 and rest a bit; very likely this mean feeling 
 will pass away; I believe I feel a little better 
 already; of course one couldn't take such a 
 dereliction without some shiver of result. 
 
 " Hard work up that procession ; dark was 
 the willow wan ; oh, what a roar on the denk 
 of the rock! when will the benefit askew? if I 
 only had a helper to hold that heart-will." 
 In truth the blood beat, beat into his brain 
 like the thud of a hydraulic ram, but he looked 
 at his hand, and was surprised to see that he 
 could not lift it. Then it occurred to him to 
 try to wink, and just as the eyelids moved he 
 stumbled and fell sidewise through the red 
 curtain that screened a confessional box near 
 the door of the little church, all untenanted 
 as yet, but open for early mass an hour to 
 come, for the sexton had saved himself another 
 journey by turning the key on his way home 
 from the fire. 
 
 As he fell, his head rolled to one side, and 
 he caught the faint flickering of a tiny red 
 light in the glass bowl of a lamp hanging
 
 Times Fool. 245 
 
 above the tawdry little altar of white paint 
 and pseudo gold. It was the eye of God! 
 would it jump out of its socket and chase him ? 
 If so, perhaps that man would stop it; but 
 no, he could n't, for he was nailed hand and 
 foot to a post. He himself must run away. 
 He was sure he could think clearer than ever, 
 if only words would come; but somehow his 
 brain and his body alike refused to obey the 
 real him. Green roaring, that was all; but 
 then came a whirl of far music and plenty of 
 pictures, one after another, or another in one; 
 and he could walk into each picture without 
 getting up from the floor, that was a com 
 fort. He stood in the Lenox churchyard on 
 the hill, with Death's serene outlook across 
 the valleys; he looked seaward from Green 
 Mountain over the isles, and up through hill- 
 girt Lake George; he sniffed the odors of a 
 hayfield, and there came back to him his first 
 reading of The Earthly Paradise in the sunny 
 July afternoons of a college vacation ; he 
 peeced into the pool near the Flume House, 
 and saw the water tumbling down to Niagara 
 Falls, more majestic than the falls them 
 selves ; he walked on the top of the Natural 
 Bridge at twilight and tried to hear the brook 
 that rushed through the gorge below; a dirty 
 squirrel in Capitol park at Richmond hopped
 
 246 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 into his hand for a nut; a thunderstorm 
 crashed anew over Lake Champlain, while a 
 night-hawk screamed; there rose before his 
 gaze the White Hills in winter, sixty miles 
 away; waked by the trombones, he walked 
 with the Moravians up to the hillside graves 
 in the Pennsylvania Nazareth for the Easter- 
 morning service ; in the plain square church 
 of the Irvingites in West-sixteenth street he 
 heard one speak with tongues, and he under 
 stood it all, and knew that it meant that the 
 secret of life was the inwhirl, provided only 
 that he clutch the ice-clad chains of the Bat 
 tery and row across Sachacha pond in view 
 less fog. Last of all 
 
 When Father Conaty came to the church for 
 early mass he found Morland's body on the 
 floor, hat on head, and eyes as the good 
 father explained to his flock in his first sermon 
 after the service of purification of the build 
 ing firmly fixed on the red wound in the 
 side of the great plaster figure on the crucifix. 
 
 "Died of heart disease, didn't he, doctor? " 
 said the sidewalk committee to Doctor Ur- 
 quhart, who had been quickly sent for; but 
 somehow the gossips were unable satisfac 
 torily to quote just what that gentleman said 
 in reply, before he gave his testimony to a 
 representative of the law.
 
 Times Fool. 247 
 
 The very next day, however, the world 
 knew all about the events of that night of 
 Bellwood nights ; for was it not able to read 
 the following despatch : 
 
 BELLWOOD, March 25. 
 
 A serious fire in this town, last night, was caused 
 by the slacking of lime in the basement of Higgins & 
 Co.'s store, due to the rapid rise of the river in the 
 spring freshet. Three stores and the old Congrega 
 tional meeting-house were destroyed. One man 
 died of heart-failure on account of over-exertion, and 
 his body was found early in the morning in the con 
 fessional box of St. Bridget's Roman Catholic church, 
 whither, it is thought, he had gone in hopes of abso 
 lution at early mass-time. From papers in his pocket 
 it is supposed his name was Henry Morion, a type 
 setter of Harborside. 
 
 When Robert Rodney read the item at 
 bachelor breakfast in his handsome studio 
 he exclaimed : " By Jove, what a subject for a 
 picture, and in my own town, too ! Wonder 
 who the poor chap was? Too bad the old 
 church went ; must have caught from sparks. 
 Don't say whether one of the three stores 
 was Welby's, but guess it must have been, 
 so near to Higgins's. Must write to Amoret 
 and find out. "
 
 248 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 X. 
 
 HIPPOCRATES. 
 
 WEARY were the days that followed 
 Bellwood's baptism of water and of 
 fire. The world seemed to close round Amo- 
 ret, and its major and minor miseries were 
 harder to bear, week by week, than the greater 
 woes she had endured. It is easy to be heroic 
 once for all ; but afterward ? 
 
 Friends were kind, and the hospitality of 
 Squire Bennett's house was freely extended 
 for an indefinite period, but of course some 
 new home had to be sought as soon as Mr. 
 Welby's convalescence had fairly begun. Noth 
 ing seemed left to do save to go to Mrs. 
 Eggstone's boarding-house, a step as unwel 
 come to Amoret as to her grandfather, for 
 both had loved the privacy of their own queer 
 home, nor had conceived the possibility of 
 any other standing-place for life in Bellwood. 
 Mrs. Eggstone did not mean to be unkindly, 
 but she was precise and provincial in her no 
 tions of life, which were for the most part
 
 Hippocrates. 249 
 
 rather petty. The inveterate experiences of 
 forty years had made economy so integral a 
 part of her constitution that she saved by 
 mechanism and spent by moral struggle. 
 
 Amoret's own new life of care for her grand 
 father, in the extended vacation from school 
 duties which she perforce was taking, was so 
 busy as to leave little time for elaborate or 
 methodical exercises in melancholy, but there 
 was with her an ever-present sense of the 
 wrongness of things, which became the dull 
 undertone of all the music left in life. It 
 haunted her half-conscious sleep, and awaited 
 her like a pale ghost in the early dawn, a 
 thought that could be neither banished nor 
 eluded. If, for an instant, on waking she 
 queried, " What is it?" at once came the woe 
 begone " Ah, yes ! " to mind. It was like a 
 perpetual exaggeration of the gloomy feeling 
 that overhangs one sojourning in the strong 
 sea-air and monotonous moors of a treeless, 
 sandy island, as though he had committed 
 some sin, or evil were impending. Once be 
 fore "had Amoret endured the merest slight 
 forerunner of this discipline of prevalent heart 
 broken misery: when, in her early girlhood, a 
 long August drought had overhung the Bell- 
 wood hills with dry stifling smoke, and the sun 
 had risen and set like an old copper pot, and
 
 250 The^End of the Beginning. 
 
 the ministers, Sunday by Sunday, wrestled 
 with Providence in prayer for rain, and peo 
 ple's faces looked sallow when they met. But 
 then there was at least no fault of her own. 
 Now, the spring sunshine smiled more sweetly 
 day by day; Miss Tetley, though plainly fail 
 ing, wrote the kindest of little notes in a pa 
 thetically wavering hand, to tell her " poor little 
 girl" how well school affairs were going in her 
 absence, but how much all sympathized with 
 her and longed for her return ; in various ways, 
 too, of deftness or clumsiness, the villagers 
 opened to her their cordial hearts and willing 
 hands ; while Mr. Welby, with a more patient 
 smile on his thin face and a gentle touch from 
 his white hands, was as good as anybody could 
 be expected to be who had lost his living, his 
 little stock of physical activity, and the roof- 
 tree which had come to seem to him his one 
 tent of pilgrimage through the world. 
 
 Between Amoret's case and her grandfather's, 
 however, there was an all-severing difference. 
 Mr. Welby now felt, more keenly than ever 
 before in his life, that there surely existed 
 some close partnership of common sense and 
 immutable justice between his own perceptions 
 and those of the Great Unknown. Such a 
 sense is a comfort, whether you are trying to 
 be good-natured and to make little trouble in a
 
 Hippocrates. 251 
 
 boarding-house rocking-chair, or are wrestling 
 with principalities and powers. Holding Ni- 
 cene, Athanasian, Augsburg, Savoy, or Trent 
 platforms to be either lastingly mischievous 
 or temporarily serviceable, Mr. Welby still 
 clung with the intensity of a Moses to the 
 three certitudes, as he called them, a Fath 
 er's might, man's eternity, the oneness of jus 
 tice. If for the name of the great divinity he 
 cared little, of his long, inexorable exactness 
 he had the profoundest sense. And now It 
 Fate, Destiny, Law, Providence, what you 
 will had not only allowed Henry Morland 
 freely to go to his own place, but had so ar 
 ranged his exit that Amoret had perforce seen 
 in the clearest light all of that blackness and 
 sad conscienceless negation which Mr. Welby 
 was now sure he himself had foreknown with 
 unerring divination. Amoret alone, poor gen 
 tle child, had been deceived ; Mr. Welby, the 
 Philosophy of Life, and the ethical regulation 
 of the universe were vindicated beyond ques 
 tion. _ The author of the Philosophy, thus 
 borne up by an I-told-you-so of the greatest 
 firmness, was accordingly sustained in his trials 
 by a comfortable and righteous egotism of 
 such power and radiance that it naturally and 
 sincerely assumed the guise of the gentlest 
 patience and most affectionate thoughtfulness,
 
 252 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 certainly a result worth reaching, and one 
 that made Amoret's devotion to the old man 
 more willing and reverential than ever. 
 
 But poor Amoret's world was for the time 
 shattered, not vindicated. A dull pain was 
 the environment of her monotony of routine, 
 and everything she saw, or thought, or read 
 seemed to tend toward one grim end. Once she 
 picked up a shabby old copy of " The Bride's 
 Tragedy," and her eyes fell on the words, 
 " Beware of thine own soul. 'T is but one 
 devil ever tempts a man, and his name 's Self." 
 
 When read, they haunted her; reason as 
 sured her that she had been blameless, that 
 the lines were Morland's biography, not hers ; 
 but yet, had it not been for her, Morland might 
 be alive. She had brought death's blight upon 
 this very valley these soon-to-be verdant and 
 fragrant hillsides. Of death itself, from her 
 childish days, she had never felt the slightest 
 fear. But the shadow of destruction which 
 had now fallen on her life was not the one she 
 used to think so beautiful in the old, old 
 days how far away they seemed when 
 she played among the gravestones. Not only 
 was Morland dead in the body, that, after 
 all, was not so much, but she had laid in 
 the grave of sheeted memories the soul Mor 
 land, which she had herself, it now appeared,
 
 Hippocrates. 253 
 
 summoned from nothingness and given a life 
 but fleeting and visionary. Mortality of the 
 ordinary sort was tenfold more endurable than 
 this death of a ghost ; and she devoutly wished 
 she had never met him or created him at all. 
 Weak and worn by fitful experience, notwith 
 standing her invariable appearance of outward 
 calm, in the depths of her heart she felt a 
 distrust, and despite of herself. She had al 
 ways assumed a sort of moral responsibility 
 for the choice and even the individual charac 
 ter of her associates, whom she felt to be partly 
 of her own moulding, as certainly they were 
 indexes of her tastes and capacities. And now 
 her chief friend of all, the one she had most 
 ideally and unreservedly admired, had proved 
 to be a will-o'-the-wisp, nay, worse, a noth 
 ing, a shade, and a shade of infernal blackness. 
 She herself must be either a sinner or a fool. 
 
 Again, from the worldly point of view, what 
 had been her success in that life to which she 
 had been born? She had fancied herself, at 
 least in a negative way, a harmless friend 
 of woods and waves, of birds and flowers ; 
 a pleasant-meaning, if naturally aloof, liver 
 among men and women and children, who 
 surely intended no harm to anybody, but the 
 rather sighed for the ultimate good. How 
 about the results? Aside from her grand-
 
 254 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 father, who was mentor and not follower, and 
 her scholars down in Harborside, circum 
 stances had thrown her into peculiar and, as 
 she had hoped, mutually helpful association 
 with two men. One of these she had sent 
 back to his city home a frankly sybaritic and 
 perpetual boy, of whom nothing better could 
 be said, to judge from his infrequent let 
 ters, than that, in all save the unquestion 
 ably pleasing pictures which he painted, he 
 was a case of arrested development, perhaps 
 not positively mischievous to himself or others. 
 The other she had driven straight to miserable 
 suicide, in this very town, on this very street, 
 just three buildings away from her present 
 abode. Nobody else in Bellwood, she re 
 flected, had ever been obliged to confess this 
 much since old Fitzpatrick, who used to kick 
 his wife when he came home drunk, found 
 her hanging dead from a beam in the empty 
 woodshed. The end crowns the work ! 
 
 It could not be said that Amoret's inner 
 most spark of trust in life's good quite went 
 out, even in those dark days. She knew that 
 love must outlast all else, and that love meant 
 loyalty to the spirit of things true. That 
 Morland, under disguises hardly specious, had 
 been faithless and utterly false to that spirit, 
 she could not doubt; indeed, she had half
 
 Hippocrates. 255 
 
 feared as much in some moments of dreari 
 ness before the final crash. Loves go, let 
 love remain ; if half-gods or no-gods depart, 
 we may hope the true god will sometime ap 
 pear. It was this deep inner sense, and this 
 alone, that gave her strength to nurse Mr. 
 Welby through long days and dark nights, 
 or to be patient when she tried to find her 
 appetite tempted by Mrs. Eggstone's frugally 
 fried rump steak or problematic coffee. There 
 used occasionally to come to her, in child 
 hood's sleep, a dream-face of one summing 
 up all of beautiful ever known ; and still, in 
 her present shabby woes, she was loyal to 
 some such far ideal; but meanwhile the pity 
 of it all! A sweet soul sometimes feels as 
 much debased by involuntary association with 
 evil as by the acceptance thereof; and Amo- 
 ret, for all her inner purity, bore a grudge 
 against Fate for besmirching her fair horizon 
 with blood. At best, her life could never be 
 rid of one great blighting memory: she had 
 been unwillingly and innocently forced by 
 some power outside herself to be the last 
 link in the chain that dragged a man to his 
 death. As she looked back upon the series 
 of events she could see no single point for 
 severe blame of self, but the whole had some 
 how proved greater than the sum of all its
 
 256 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 parts, and the very town seemed withered and 
 blackened because she had lived in it. 
 
 But money must be earned, that was certain; 
 all the more because Mr. Welby's poor dwin 
 dling little business was now, of course, utterly 
 gone, and there was only the meagre insurance 
 to take its place. So, with the promise of a 
 visit every Sunday, Amoret went back to her 
 Harborside school. Some facts and more fan 
 cies with reference to the death of Morland, 
 who had been for years a well-known Harbor- 
 side figure, had run through the city, and 
 Amoret's name had been so connected with 
 his as to stimulate conjectural gossip, but with 
 out personal blame of herself, thanks to the 
 uncommon circumstance that Mr. Welby, Mor 
 land, and Amoret had all been persons who 
 knew how to hold their tongues, and had never 
 been in the habit of volunteering unsolicited 
 defences against self-constituted critics. The 
 girls of the school were fascinated by the 
 slight glamour of mysterious romance that 
 now hung about the shapely head whose out 
 side and inside they had always rapturously 
 admired. Now they all were sure that there 
 must be some great hidden sorrow behind 
 those dark brown eyes ; and for once they 
 were right. Therefore Amoret's toils of teach 
 ing were easier than ever, save that at times,
 
 Hippocrates. 257 
 
 when she asked a girl to distinguish between 
 a metaphor and a simile, she found it hard to 
 startle the staring-eyed damsel from a far away 
 reverie of which she herself was the subject. 
 Her recitations in English literature, too, came 
 to have a semi-religious character in the eyes 
 of her pupils, who were sure there was some 
 deep inner meaning when she quoted, " An 
 honest man 's the noblest work of God." 
 
 In Miss Tetley's treatment of her there was 
 a new gentleness and delicacy of sympathy, 
 shown not only in the old school teacher's 
 willingness to let details of instruction go their 
 own way, or rather in Amoret's way, for 
 Miss Tetley now sat up only on pleasant after 
 noons, but also in the fact that she saw to it 
 that there was more sunshine in the rooms and 
 less dankness and weeds in the ancient flower 
 garden inclosed by the classic fence. Then, 
 likewise, it was pleasant that Amoret's wage 
 was increased, for the school was so prosperous 
 that intending pupils were obliged to wait 
 their turn ; and thus the weekly stipend taken 
 home to Bellwood seemed to Mr. Welby 
 preposterously large. He, himself, without 
 Amoret's knowledge, religiously put all of it 
 into the savings-bank in her name, meanwhile 
 subsisting frugally on the insurance-money. 
 " Maybe I shall die before that is all gone," 
 
 17
 
 258 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 he said to himself, in cheerful financial fore 
 cast. 
 
 Amoret's Sundays in Bellwood, as her sum 
 mer term wore away and the long vacation 
 approached, brought her two comforts, aside 
 from the physical rest and change. One was 
 the new pleasure she took in talking with Mr. 
 Welby himself. Now that, for the first time 
 in her life, she had learned bitter lessons in the 
 school of woe, she appreciated more than ever 
 the simplicity of his character, and came to 
 take an actual rather than an obligatory satis 
 faction in his sayings in the Philosophy of 
 Life, which was now his daily companion and 
 chief vital function. It was worth something, 
 she thought, to sit on the doorstep of the 
 boarding-house, some warm, sunshiny, fragrant 
 Sunday in May, and hear him read, with im 
 pressive voice and modest twinkle of gray 
 eyes and utter oblivion to a seeming assump 
 tion now and then : 
 
 The riddle of existence is solved only by self- 
 development Godward through endless years. 
 
 The undertone of the Eternal is drowned by the 
 whirring wheels of the petty. 
 
 I am Sin and Sainthood. 
 
 A man will forgive you for killing him, but not for 
 laying your little finger on his egotism. 
 
 Nevertheless, I am glad I learned to read.
 
 Hippocrates. 259 
 
 The gentleman does not speak of money or the 
 lack of it. 
 
 Quit talk about three things : numbers , doctrine, 
 and misunderstanding. 
 
 It takes intellect to appreciate the beauty of inde 
 cent books. 
 
 Rome deified men and brutalized gods. 
 
 The library is a church, its alcoves shrines. 
 
 Philology is to literature as brick-measuring to 
 architecture. 
 
 Heterogeneous enough, surely, and not 
 always, perhaps, any newer or truer than 
 most attempts to pack wide knowledge into 
 little nuts ; but Amoret, somehow, found them 
 increasingly helpful. That one about self- 
 development and the endless years oh, it 
 the thought was not true nothing was true, 
 nothing left to live by; but with it to-day was 
 divine. At any rate, she must be all she could to 
 all she could, just as the dear, gentle old man 
 was with his courtly compliments to Mrs. Egg- 
 stone on the appearance of an occasionally 
 edible potato or unexpectedly delicate griddle- 
 cake, and all his endeavors to make his poor, 
 wee world just a little more comfortable for 
 his living in it one day more. 
 
 " Put this in your book, grandpa," said 
 Amoret, as she kissed his thin cheek one Mon 
 day morning just before train-time: "'Only
 
 260 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 the gentleman and the gentlewoman can be ill 
 gracefully.' " 
 
 Her other Bellwood comfort, though a 
 minor one, was in its way rather pleasant : the 
 helpfulness of Dr. Urquhart. The doctor is 
 the modern priest, who confesses a man and 
 shrives him and prescribes penance as he will, 
 meanwhile getting his bread from the uncertain 
 alms of the laity. John Urquhart was a doctor 
 from the third and fourth generation. Father, 
 grandfather, and greatgrandfather had dis 
 pensed pills, potions, and common-sense from 
 gigs or saddle-bags, and it seemed as natural 
 for their descendant to follow the ancestral line 
 as for a Brahmin to continue in his caste. 
 
 Once when " young doctor John," as his 
 relatives had to call him for distinction's sake, 
 was vaccinating Mrs. Eggstone's scared child, 
 and it was all over before the tearful little girl 
 thought he had begun, she said in delight: 
 " Why, that was only a scratch." " Oh yes," 
 said the smiling practitioner, " I 'm a scratcher 
 by profession. First I had to scratch for a bit 
 of money when I taught day-school up in the 
 Wyoming valley or singing-school way over in 
 Nantucket, and now, you see, I have to scratch 
 for a living." 
 
 Just then Mr. Welby chanced to walk into 
 the sitting-room, and, picking up the little girl,
 
 Hippocrates. 16 1 
 
 now smiling through her tears, sat down on the 
 hair-cloth sofa, taking pains as he did so to 
 cover with his person the worn rip, on general 
 principles of benignity to the world at large. 
 
 " I did n't know you ever were in Nantucket, 
 doctor," said he, administering a peppermint 
 to the child, who was delightedly pointing to a 
 minute drop of blood on her arm. " You 
 don't ever say much about your past," he 
 added, tentatively. 
 
 The doctor laughed a happy little laugh, and 
 retorted : " Medical men have enough to do in 
 taking care of the present. I always thought 
 there was a good deal of sense in the head of 
 the old fellow who remarked, ' Where I am, 
 there I be.' But speaking of Nantucket, it's all 
 put away in my memory. Nothing is quite so 
 clear in our recollections as the times when we 
 have the least money, and are trying to make 
 a specialty of things in general." 
 
 " Nobody has much money on those fre 
 quent wind-swept moors, does he?" said Mr. 
 Welby. 
 
 "^Not unless it's the summer boarders," 
 said the doctor. " The native jacks-of-all- 
 trades have to sweep the Grand Banks and the 
 sand banks for what they get to live on, now 
 that whale-fishing's gone." 
 
 " I was there for two or three days when I
 
 262 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 was a lad, bluefishing," said Mr. Welby ; " and 
 1 was struck with the pathetic, worn faces of 
 the women." 
 
 " More than here? " said the doctor. 
 
 " Perhaps so," said Mr. Welby, " because in 
 the sea air they get skinnier and bonier than our 
 inland mistresses of piecrust and frying-pan." 
 
 " Well," said the doctor, " there is certainly 
 an added pathos in sea-women's lives of which 
 we of the inland country know nothing they 
 have so little but monotonous drudgery or 
 swift tragedy. Up here among the hills, for 
 that matter, all romance seems driven out of 
 womanhood save its stock of Christian names ; 
 when some farmer's wife dies, worn out at 
 forty-two, you find Ormacinda, or Theda, or 
 Zula, or something like that, on the plated 
 plate of her stained pine coffin." 
 
 " Is n't it queer that all fisher folk seem to 
 have an unlimited stock of time and patience? 
 Nobody dreams of having anything to do to 
 day; everything is to be done the week after 
 next." 
 
 "Why is it, do you suppose, that those 
 who have the hardest work to do in the world 
 are often the softest in manner? I remember 
 going once to a Nantucket prayer-meeting 
 in a school-house seven miles from town, 
 snuggled beneath a dreary little suggestion of
 
 Hippocrates. 263 
 
 a hill. One of the roughest of old tars was 
 called on to pray. I could only think of him 
 as bellowing oaths with the roar of a foghorn, 
 but he knelt down and addressed the Lord 
 with the voice of a sucking dove." 
 
 " Perhaps his courage was taken out of him 
 by the stormy vicissitudes of his life." 
 
 " Oh, no, Mr. Welby, not that ; nobody in 
 this world is good for anything until he has 
 had a hard time ; but your man who has been 
 through danger knows when to be humble." 
 
 Nobody in this world is good for anything 
 until he has had a hard time? then I ought to 
 be good for something, for my time has been 
 hard enough, thought Amoret, who had come 
 in and said a pleasant good morning, and sat 
 silent in the other corner of the room. When 
 your statue of Faith has been rudely knocked 
 from its pedestal, and you are trying to re 
 adjust your moral universe, all black and ma 
 lign, you would rather listen than chatter ; arid 
 that was Amoret's mood nowadays. 
 
 " Well, doctor," said the old man, as he 
 walk'ed to the door with his friend, " I was 
 humble enough when first I drove through 
 one of those moor holes on that island. Why, 
 it was hemmed in with inextricable swampy 
 growth on both sides, and looked like a blood- 
 red pool fathoms deep; I never shall forget
 
 264 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 it" Mr. Welby's experiences as a traveller 
 were both limited and ancient. 
 
 " Quite an allegory of life," said the doctor, 
 as he nodded his head in cheery good-bye to 
 Amoret, and told the little girl not to touch 
 the sore spot if her arm began to ache or 
 itch a little. " Blood and flood and fire are n't 
 so awful when you 've driven through them, 
 after all. Well, sir, you are getting along so 
 finely that you might as well turn me adrift." 
 
 " Not quite yet, doctor," said the old man, 
 who disliked the thought of losing the ozone 
 of his society. " Come once or twice more 
 just to see that I don't have a relapse ; I go 
 out walking twice a day now, you know, and 
 I might catch cold." But the doctor was 
 already putting his hitch-weight into his nonde 
 script two-wheeled vehicle ; meanwhile the 
 white horse whinnied appreciatively, and got 
 three little pats in return. 
 
 "Just who is Doctor Urquhart, grandpa?" 
 queried Amoret. " All I ever knew about 
 him, before he began to come to see you, was 
 that he has lived here two or three years, is 
 always good-natured and never in a hurry, and 
 is going to marry Miss Bennett." 
 
 " Is he? " said Mr. Welby ; " that 's too bad ; 
 she is n't quite up to him, though a little 
 money at home is convenient for a doctor.
 
 Hippocrates. 265 
 
 Yes, I remember now, I did hear of that 
 engagement a while ago ; too bad, too bad." 
 
 " Don't worry about it, grandpa; you are n't 
 responsible for all the folks in the world," said 
 Amoret, with a slight feeling on her own part 
 that the match between Gertrude Bennett and 
 the doctor would be hardly " appropriate," as 
 the world puts it. " Gertrude is bright and 
 pretty, and was ever so good to us when we 
 were at the house." 
 
 " Oh, I know it," said he ; " that 's all very 
 well, but marriage is too great a risk to ven 
 ture; don't ever get married, child." 
 
 " I never shall," said Amoret, simply. 
 
 " So much the better," said Mr. Welby. 
 
 " Do you suppose," said Amoret, " the 
 doctor meant to minister to a mind diseased 
 when he said that about driving through blood 
 and flood and fire? That 's just what you and 
 I have been doing." 
 
 " Not a bit, not a bit, not at all, of course 
 not," said Mr. Welby with alacrity, and an 
 earnest desire to change the subject as soon 
 as possible. He was getting so strong now 
 that he was resuming his old function of 
 guardian of a little girl who must be shielded 
 from things by superior masculine discretion. 
 " That 's just his talk ; sometimes he has an 
 idea, a pretty good one too."
 
 266 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 " I 'm glad he has ideas sometimes," said 
 Amoret, with a tiny little laugh, her first since 
 It happened. He heard it and was delighted ; 
 while she went on : " That 's more than some 
 people do in their life-time." 
 
 " Well, little miss," said the philosopher, 
 "you asked who he was; now just come over 
 here and I '11 tell you about him. Let me see, 
 how much I know. Urquhart, John, M. D. 
 you remember Leigh Hunt said the height of 
 his ambition was to see his name printed 
 in reverse order was born somewhere down 
 in Virginia, or was it South Carolina? His 
 father must have been a country doctor of the 
 old school, with a rambling practice and 
 maybe a poor farm that his children and I 
 suppose there were plenty of them had to 
 take care of as best they could. John very 
 likely made up his mind he 'd have a better 
 education than his father, so he and his brother 
 went to some academy near by, boarded them 
 selves, and picked up what ninepences they 
 could earn until first one and then the other 
 got through." 
 
 "By the orthodox exit, or prematurely?" 
 said Amoret, absent-mindedly. 
 
 " Oh, they graduated all right, though I 
 don't believe they had more than one black 
 suit between them. But they could n't have
 
 Hippocrates. 267 
 
 been in the same class ; so the elder could pass 
 it along, like his text-books and his stock of 
 experience, to the other. Then they wandered 
 north, and taught ' deestrick ' school winters, 
 and banged their tuning-forks in singing- 
 schools, and so one contrived to make him 
 self a minister or a lawyer and John a doctor ; 
 for when he got through school he must have 
 started for the city medical colleges and fought 
 his way through one or two of them in the 
 same style. Oh, why did n't my father make 
 me go to college ! " said Mr. Welby, in abrupt 
 personal application of his supposititious life 
 and times of Urquhart. 
 
 " You know more than most college pro 
 fessors, if you don't know much about Dr. 
 Urquhart," said his affectionate descendant. 
 
 " More than some, perhaps," was the dis 
 creet reply of the author of the Philosophy 
 of Life, " but not as much as I ought to. 
 And one thing is sure, I don't know as much 
 medicine as John Urquhart, or as much about 
 farming, nor do I have as much practical horse- 
 sense." 
 
 " What has farming to do with ' doctoring,' 
 as Mrs. Eggstone calls it? I can see the con 
 nection between horse-sense and veterinary 
 surgery," said Amoret, who was just weary 
 enough to want to hear her grandfather talk,
 
 268 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 without being particular what the subject was ; 
 Dr. Urquhart would answer as well as any 
 thing; and it was a pleasure to see Mr. 
 Welby's restored animation. 
 
 " A good deal, my dear. Good food and 
 good health are the foci of the ellipse of 
 life," said he, wondering whether the obser 
 vation were worth putting into shape for the 
 book. "You see the doctor spent so much time 
 clearing up pastures, and mowing, and hoeing 
 corn, and digging potatoes, and so on, that he 
 never goes by a dilapidated farm without wish 
 ing he could set it right If he had his way 
 he'd run a subsoil drain there, lay a stone 
 wall here, make Jones put his cart under 
 cover and clear up the rotting lumber around 
 his back door for the kitchen stove, and tell 
 Smith the black pool in his barnyard is 
 enough to give all the children sore throats." 
 
 " What was that story Gertrude told me 
 about his digging graves for a couple of 
 children with his own hands?" said Amoret, 
 ignoring her ancestor's somewhat fanciful de 
 scriptions of southern agriculture. 
 
 " Why, that was all there was to tell. A 
 couple of Phin Rogers's children, just across 
 the river, died of scarlet fever, in spite of all 
 the doctor could do, and so he buried them 
 himself and said the Lord's prayer and the
 
 Hippocrates. 269 
 
 ' Suffer little children ' text over their poor 
 scraps of bodies as he filled the short graves. 
 Everybody else was afraid to go near them. 
 And the worst of it is that such cases are the 
 very ones that never pay anything. Somebody 
 was saying the other day, in our beautiful 
 down-east dialect, that ' Urquhart 'd got quite 
 er practice, but 't want good fer nothin.' " 
 
 " Yes, he seems to be gentleness itself." 
 
 " Not so very gentle, they say, when he 
 turned a brute of a husband out of his own 
 wife's bed-room, and told him he 'd throw him 
 down stairs if he came back into the house 
 before the crisis was passed." 
 
 " Doctors must have a pretty good chance 
 to see what a failure marriage is," said Amoret, 
 with the positiveness of pessimism. 
 
 " I suppose so," said Mr. Welby, " but Dr. 
 Urquhart, they say, is sometimes a belated 
 matchmaker himself, and sends for the minister 
 or the justice, while he stays with the groom, 
 just to see that the future happy husband don't 
 chance to be absent when the ceremony ought 
 to begin " and he gave a little interior laugh. 
 " Another of his great hobbies is that poor folks 
 ought to be more careful about saving meat- 
 scraps and making good wholesome soups; 
 and then he 's made the town authorities put 
 in two or three new watering-troughs on the
 
 270 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 long hill roads over west," said Mr. Welby, 
 who found his garrulity and his subject simul 
 taneously and indefinitely increase in extent. 
 
 Amoret looked at her watch; it was Mon 
 day morning, and getting near train-time. " He 
 must be a busy man," said she, as her grand 
 father's pause made it seem necessary to make 
 some audible sound. 
 
 " Not so busy but what he went into the 
 grammar-school twice a week, all last fall, to 
 teach them singing ; he showed me a gold pen 
 the youngsters gave him as a present when he 
 got through. And then he takes a good deal 
 of interest in the library, especially in " 
 
 " Do you know where my little one-volume 
 Shakespeare is, grandpa? I want to take it 
 back with me." 
 
 " Yes, over on that corner-table ; I had it 
 yesterday. Do you know, Amoret child, I 
 believe the all-round man does more good in 
 the world than your modern specialist ! " 
 
 " Whom do you mean," said she, " Shake 
 speare or Dr. Urquhart? " 
 
 " Both of them," said the philosopher, almost 
 fiercely. 
 
 " Now be a good boy until next Saturday 
 night, and don't walk enough to get tired, or 
 let any caller stay long enough to weary you 
 out. Good-bye," and she gave him a kiss just
 
 Hippocrates. 271 
 
 like those she used to leave behind her when 
 she went to play in the graveyard : long enough 
 to be sweet and short enough to sharpen its 
 memory. 
 
 " Good-bye, child," said he at the door. As 
 Amoret waved her supplementary farewell 
 from the sidewalk gate the old man stood on 
 the porch a moment and looked up toward 
 the sunlight that bathed his bald head and 
 smooth face in a grateful warmth. " Pleas 
 ant weather nowadays," he soliloquized. " I 'm 
 glad Amoret is getting a little more cheerful ; 
 I chatter away about anything, so long as I 
 can take her mind off herself." 
 
 As the train clattered southward past the 
 huge ice-houses, all filled to their roofs with 
 the garnered store of winter's harvest, Amo- 
 ret's thought recurred for a minute to the 
 morning's visit and following talk : " How 
 strange it is we know so little about people 
 in our own small bailiwicks ! I 've known 
 Dr. Urquhart by sight, and to speak to, for 
 two or three years, but I never really knew 
 anythmg about him. I 'm not sure but his 
 way of life is the best one, whatever happens ; 
 if this world is all, it surely is; if there's to be 
 a series of worlds for us, why, it's a good 
 start. There are plenty of mysteries in this 
 universe, but there are one or two certainties.
 
 272 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 Anyway, he 's done grandpa a world of good 
 more by his coming, I believe, than by 
 his liniments, and porous plasters, and tonics. 
 Isn't it good that granddad is so well? I 
 really don't see but that Richard is actually 
 himself again ! " 
 
 "What's the name of the next station?" 
 said an old woman on the seat in front, with 
 that abrupt sense of proprietorship which 
 characterizes the rural traveller. 
 
 " Saxony," said Amoret.
 
 One or Two. 273 
 
 XI. 
 ONE OR TWO. 
 
 July 12. This is my twenty-first birthday 
 anniversary, the purists would have us say 
 and in my old age I, Amoret Wenton, spinster, 
 nevertheless being of sound mind, am going 
 to begin to keep a journal. Not a diary, for 
 I care not whether my entries be daily, or 
 quarterly, or decennial, a hundred pages or a 
 single line. I must be placidly good to dear 
 grandpa, and ought to be to my scholars, 
 when next term begins and I go back to Har- 
 borside as " first assistant to the principal in 
 charge." Poor cousin Lodema, I fear me, 
 will never be well again, and surely I ought 
 to hold up her hands as Aaron held up Hur's, 
 or was it Moses that held up Aaron's? At 
 any rate, my function seems to be that of gen 
 eral helper in two little corners of this weary 
 and wicked world. Ever since that awful night 
 last spring, I have sometimes felt so dreary 
 and hateful that I want to have some place 
 wherein to put my wicked self, so that it 
 18
 
 274 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 shan't trouble anybody else. When my great- 
 grandmother became engaged fifteen years 
 old, poor little thing she went out into the 
 garden, dug a deep hole under a cherry tree, 
 and buried her dolls. I shall never be engaged 
 what a hateful word but I 've buried my 
 dolls all the same. There are three Amorets: 
 first, the outside one, who " bears up " so won 
 derfully, the kind world says ; then the other 
 one whose heart has ached so, ever since her 
 dream died ; and last and least the inner speck 
 or spark that knows the great plan will some 
 how and somewhere come true and sweet 
 in the mysterious event. Perhaps this book, 
 therefore, will be more trinitarian than unita- 
 rian, but I mean to make it my tell-tale, for 
 I cannot weight dear grandpa or poor cousin 
 with my burden of woes, and I have n't an 
 other friend in the wide world. I sometimes 
 think I don't really and inly love even them, 
 though cousin Lodema is so good to me, and 
 what could I do without grandpa? 
 
 July 13. Here is my second day, and I 
 make an entry, not as in duty bound, but as 
 I chance to wish. Dear me ; this book must 
 never be seen by a living soul, or a dead one 
 either! just look at what I wrote yesterday. 
 Two note-books are too many for one house ; 
 but grandpa's is of blessing, mine of bane, or
 
 One or Two. 275 
 
 at least a sort of scapegoat. Poor goat! 
 what a pathetic picture of Holman Hunt's; 
 why should one thing suffer for another? But 
 I have suffered, and I do, and was I to blame? 
 Perhaps I am going to develop a New Eng 
 land conscience of the " Am I his, or am I 
 not," order. " Nobody asked you, sir, she 
 said." Humor is grimly severe, and severity 
 is grimly humorous. 
 
 July 20. I have a mind to copy some of 
 my poor old poems in this book; perhaps 
 that would reduce the weight of the burden 
 of past sin I must carry. I can make believe 
 this is publication: they will never get a 
 chance of issue in any other way. Here is 
 one I wrote ever so long ago : 
 
 AT SUNSET. 
 
 Adown the burning west the splendor goes, 
 Its glories brightening as they fade and die, 
 
 And in the lessening light each cloudlet glows 
 In rosy red against the violet sky. 
 
 For see, the happy day is near to death, 
 The lowlier hills have faded from our sight, 
 
 And in the leaves there stirs the chilling breath 
 Of death's twin sister, icy-throated night. 
 
 Our love, dear heart, its dewy dawntide had, 
 And then it waxed unto its perfect noon ; 
 
 Alas ! shall love grow sad that now is glad, 
 And vanish ? for death's twilight cometh soon.
 
 2y 6 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 Not so ; the sun that dies beneath the west 
 To-morrow's east shall newly glorify, 
 
 And death itself in death's own tomb shall rest, 
 An episode in love's eternity ! 
 
 Well, that is what love ought to be, I know. 
 Has any one ever proved it? Very like, 
 surely ; but not I. How easy it is to preach 
 to others and then be a castaway. Yet I know 
 the spark is a possible fire and that it still glows 
 far under the dismal waste of many a life. 
 
 Here is No. 2. I wrote it before I ever had 
 a trouble in the world, or lost a friend, ex 
 cepting poor father and mother, that I never 
 knew. That is the way most poems are writ 
 ten, I suppose, make-believe love and fanci 
 ful bereavement : 
 
 AFTER. 
 
 Beneath the trees that shade the lonely river 
 The ancient house is standing as before, 
 
 Across the porch the wonted shadows quiver, 
 And still the bluebells blossom by the door. 
 
 I see a nameless Something lying whitely 
 Behind the swaying curtains of her room ; 
 
 Across the breast the hands are folded tightly, 
 And in their icy clutch two roses bloom. 
 
 Alike to her to-day are joy and sadness ; 
 
 Why do I weep ? the shut eyes cannot see, 
 Her ears are deaf to sounds of woe or gladness, 
 
 And those mute lips shall never speak to me.
 
 One or Two. 277 
 
 But still beside the dark and lonely river 
 The ancient house is standing as before, 
 
 Across the porch the wonted shadows quiver, 
 And still the bluebells blossom.by the door. 
 
 Very well, then, I suppose they do. Now 
 that might be printed in a country newspaper, 
 and somebody might cut it out and paste it in 
 a scrapbook, with a tear-fall somewhere on the 
 dingy type. That is n't the worst death, though. 
 
 July 23. I think, after all, I will put an 
 end to two things in this book, and not spoil 
 any more pages with them. One is pessim 
 ism, for if there be one thing in the world 
 I utterly loathe it is that. All tends to good, 
 and if I am a part of all I also must, and all 
 my woebegone sufferings. Out with you, for 
 ever; though I 'm glad of you, for I love Love 
 better because I Ve seen its hideous opposite. 
 I do hope, though, that I can get rid of things 
 by simply saying " out with you," or " aroint 
 thee, witch," on paper. 
 
 The other beginning that shall have swift 
 ending is the putting of poetry, or rather 
 verse-scribbling, into these innocent pages. 
 I will sin just once more, however, and copy 
 this new thing I have been writing the last day 
 or two. It 's wrong, somehow, but I can't 
 correct it, so if I keep it here maybe I can 
 better it by and by. The idea is all right, but
 
 278 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 the execution lacks, wherein it adequately re 
 presents the poor poet that produced it : 
 
 ONCE ON A TIME. 
 
 Once on a time a palace stood 
 
 In the midst of a paradise; 
 Dull folks called it a house in a wood, 
 
 But they must have been blind in their eyes, 
 For I who was born in it very well knew 
 
 That its roof had a golden glow 
 " Oh, tell me where was that palace fair ! " 
 
 My child, it was long ago. 
 
 Once on a time the westward hills 
 
 Were mountains, every one, 
 And just beyond were islands and seas 
 
 Aflame in the setting sun ; 
 And up in the air were splendid steeds 
 
 All galloping to and fro 
 " Oh, tell me true what they used to do ! " 
 
 My child, it was long ago, 
 
 Once on a time the girls and boys 
 
 Were as wise as men to-day, 
 And they used to see such wonderful things 
 
 By the brooks that have run away ; 
 Golden fishes in emerald pools, 
 
 And diamonds over the snow 
 " Oh, tell me when they will come again ! " 
 
 My child, it was long ago. 
 
 Once on a time, the whole year long, 
 The stars and the moon and the sun 
 
 Had nothing to do but to wake me up 
 And to tell when day was done ;
 
 One or Two. 279 
 
 But now they shine in a different way 
 On graves that are long and low 
 " Oh, tell me why there 's a tear in your eye ? " 
 My child, it was long ago. 
 
 That is meant to be an idealization of the 
 dear old bookshop, or of anybody's childhood 
 home; which intention I record here lest 
 sometime I come on the scrap and wonder 
 what it all is about. This is a picture of a 
 horse. Protean Amoret ! a confident lover, a 
 stricken mourner for a dead girl, a reminiscen- 
 tial octogenarian. 
 
 July 28. The doctor and Gertrude Ben 
 nett are not engaged, after all, and never have 
 thought of such a thing, for what in the 
 world do I put that into my journal? My pen 
 writes like planchette this morning, and re 
 produces the last outside influence. Well, let 
 the words stand : I would be ashamed to take 
 enough interest in them to cut out the leaf. 
 One marriage less in the world, for the time 
 being. Let them wait ; reflection saves many 
 a mistake, and I respected the gay Gertrude 
 and the apathetic doctor too much to want 
 them to make any mistakes in so awful a 
 thing. What a gossipy town this is ! Why 
 don't they gossip about me? perhaps they do. 
 By the way, Gertrude Bennett is far the loveli 
 est girl in Bellwood; her swift moods are
 
 280 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 cloaks, as airy as gossamer, for a light and 
 radiant nature ; she might captivate anybody, 
 unless he were a philosopher like me or a 
 steadily amiable drudge like the doctor. 
 There is something stolid in steadiness; I dis 
 like people whose photographs always are 
 good, and have an expression as invariable as 
 a haystack or the side of a house. Whom are 
 you talking about? the doctor? Suppose, 
 my dear Amoret, you begin by being stolidly 
 or stupidly good yourself, for a year or two, 
 and then throw stones through your neighbors' 
 conservatory windows. Speaking of the doc 
 tor, what a lovable dog he has ; just a common 
 mongrel smuzzly cur; that is the kind that 
 knows the most and has the biggest heart. 
 We had such a good time in the garden the 
 other day, when the doctor was making his 
 final call on grandpa. I know he understood 
 me before we shook hands ; and full anticipa 
 tory sympathy is the truest mark of soul. If 
 that dog has no soul I have none. I wonder 
 if he beneficently influences the doctor, or the 
 doctor him. His name, it seems, is Don 
 Quixote. I don't see how he finds time to 
 read. My he 's are as mixed as in a school 
 girl's theme. Don Quixote does n't need to 
 read ; he apprehends. 
 
 August 3. I believe I am slowly getting
 
 One or Two. 281 
 
 to see a little of the joy of just using the min 
 ute right, whether it be foggy or sunshiny. 
 And I hardly dare write it, lest it sound like 
 vainglory or temerity, but I half rejoice over 
 this duty of struggling and casting off. Life 
 is the braver and brighter for death, and now 
 I have seen death I live the more, just as I 
 used to play in the graveyard on effigies of 
 skulls and crossbones and chubby angels. 
 Deaths and marriages ought to be beginnings, 
 not endings, and now-a-days I feel as though 
 I had been married, sometime, to the idea of 
 present duty, and I mean to make it lovely 
 and happy if I can. Why, even the old 
 mediaevals used to see that love, for anybody 
 or anything, was a passion that went out rather 
 than in ; an enthusiasm that blessed and 
 ennobled the lover a " a habit of joy," some 
 body has called it; what a good term ! " Love 
 that withdraws my thoughts from all vile 
 things," says the Vita Nuova. 
 
 August 4. I would rather find a model 
 than hunt up a critic, and I would rather be a 
 model than find one. I wonder if I ever shall? 
 Who are my models? Jesus is one, grandpa 
 is another, and sometimes I imitate even plain 
 Doctor Urquhart in his good-natured jog-trot 
 of cheery helpfulness. Plenty of people do 
 that, I suppose; but I never met many of
 
 282 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 them. Your model is generally annoyingly 
 virtuous, but these three are n't. Friends are 
 better than lovers, anyway. I think Christ 
 and I would get along nicely together if we 
 ever met ; he would understand things, and 
 would not weary you with explanations. The 
 blessing of a private journal is that you can 
 be as egotistic and irreverent as you wish. 
 
 August 8. We are always begging for more 
 strength, instead of using what we have. Now 
 and here is good enough chance for anybody. 
 If only we would do and be without forever 
 prating or thinking about it. Why, look at 
 that poor little tumbler full of forget-me-nots 
 I picked the other day; some of them have 
 grown half an inch since they were torn from 
 their home. A month hence I shall be so 
 busy that I shall have no time to be philo 
 sophical; that will be one good thing. 
 
 August 12. I have been out of doors with 
 grandpa nearly all the time the last few days ; 
 he seems perfectly well, but pines for some 
 thing to do. I hardly see what is the next 
 move. 
 
 August 13. Cousin Lodema was found dead 
 in her bed this morning, and I must go to 
 Harborside at once ; shall ask grandpa to go 
 too. 
 
 August 14. There is nothing to do, the
 
 One or Two. 283 
 
 housekeeper is competent; the undertaker in 
 a city attends to all the external details ; only 
 the burial to-morrow from the old stone church. 
 She lies so peaceful and sleepful in her cedar 
 coffin ; they say she apparently died without a 
 motion. She has been ripening and richening 
 ever since I have known her, not so hard 
 and prim as they say she used to be. Now if 
 I could only keep her school together as her 
 memorial ; but if scholars fall off I never 
 could pay the rent of this big house. Indeed, 
 I have no right to decide anything, only I 
 wish I could show I mourn her by doing what 
 she liked. Somehow, though, I am not sor 
 rowful or stricken. She deserved a good rest, 
 but I cannot pray she have rest eternal, for 
 such as she would never endure it. Let light 
 perpetual shine upon her, Lord ! After the 
 burial I am going to help the housekeeper set 
 cousin's little belongings to rights. 
 
 August 15. A Christian burial; that's all, 
 and that's enough: flowers, and some tears 
 from dozens of her girls, young and old, and 
 good cheer of upward and onward hope 
 from the old minister. I would just as soon 
 die myself, if I could die that way, when 
 my time comes. She never made too much 
 trouble about anything, precise as she used to 
 be ; and so she died as she would have wished.
 
 284 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 For me, I would prefer to dissipate into space 
 when my time came; but such a burial as 
 hers, all the way from the solemn granite 
 church out to that sweet sunny bank by the 
 ocean inset, is the next best thing. And her 
 legacy is like what grandpa's will be : a thou 
 sand memories of modest faithfulness. 
 
 August 17. To-day came a lawyer, for 
 the reading of the will ; never thought of such 
 a thing, or supposed she would think it worth 
 while to make one ; but it was like a bit of an 
 old English novel. She owned this place, it 
 seems, and the lawyer says she was a rather 
 rich woman besides. I am her sole heir, and 
 may carry on the school or not as I choose. 
 Of course I shall ; I hate money save as some 
 thing to give away. But grandpa is now a 
 rich man; that is, rich for Bellwood. Who 
 ever dreamed it? 
 
 August 20. " Estimated value of real prop 
 erty, $25,000; personal property, $36,294.17; 
 total, $61,294.17." That ever this poor jour 
 nal should become a ledger ! I will go on 
 with the school, and I have a new teacher 
 already in mind ; that will be six in all, if the 
 school continues to prosper. Annus mirabilis ; 
 so many things have happened since Decem 
 ber 31 became January i. 
 
 August 23. Somehow I cannot sleep lately;
 
 One or Two. 285 
 
 I lie awake and think and think, that is all, and 
 do not care to eat. What of it? but grandpa 
 somehow found it out, and got frightened, and 
 sent up home for Dr. Urquhart without my 
 knowledge. The funny part of it was that 
 Don Quixote came too. He had never seen 
 his master get on a railroad train, and so 
 jumped aboard too late to be put off. I be 
 lieve his fuzzy, honest little face did me as 
 much good as his master's. The doctor said 
 something about my being so tired I did n't 
 know it; but I am sure I never felt so much 
 like working in my life. He told me to get 
 out my notices for the school year and then 
 take grandpa and go just where we both 
 wanted to, for a solid ten days. Where 
 shall it be? 
 
 August 2$. The doctor said I was not to 
 be crossed in anything, so I decided to " do 
 just what we both wanted to," videlicet, go 
 home to Bellwood. I 'm going to go and 
 play in the graveyard everyday but Sunday, 
 and make leaf-wreaths and take grandpa along 
 for 'playmate, and likewise Don Quixote, if I 
 can inveigle him up there, once in a while. 
 
 September 7. Bellwood is a dear old 
 heaven, and grandpa a false-toothed angel, and 
 I a lazy good-for-nothing. I despise one thing 
 here, however, the sickening talk about my
 
 286 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 trumpery new money. You would think I had 
 become a magnifico. Just one person has 
 spoken about its being good for grandpa, and 
 just two have had the grace to say nothing 
 about it at all, one is Dr. Urquhart and the 
 other is Don Quixote. 
 
 September 1 8, Harborside. School opened 
 day before yesterday, with more girls than 
 ever; why, I can't guess. Nowadays I sleep 
 like a statue and eat like a chanty pupil. Dr. 
 Urquhart said he wanted to turn my soul out 
 of doors and give my body a chance ; he 
 seems to have done it, what with his cheery 
 smile and his vicious, bitter, nondescript, com 
 pact, quintessential drug-store, a teaspoonful 
 before meals. 
 
 October 4. Waked up saying, " Oh, how 
 suddenly are my works brought to confusion; 
 they swiftly complain, and come to end ! " 
 quite a biblical swing; A. W. among the 
 prophets, and a sort of Jeremiah at that. But 
 the only time I 'm tempted to blueness, lat 
 terly, is when I think how much of life is 
 taken with drudgery ! The school-teacher 
 leads a pack of youngsters a little way up a 
 pleasant hill, and then goes back to the foot to 
 start all over again. No climbing for one's 
 self to far away summits ; no long, daring jour 
 neys to lands of sunrise or moonset; nothing
 
 One or Two. 287 
 
 but giving out one's personality. A tenth of 
 the world leads, four-tenths are dragged, five- 
 tenths fall by the way into the stagnant ditch. 
 There 's pessimism for you ! I said I was 
 going to make this wretched book a safety- 
 valve. Of course I really know that grandpa, 
 and cousin Lodema, and I, and Queen Victoria, 
 and Doctor Urquhart, and wool-spinners, and 
 all of us generally, have to keep at it. So do 
 the glorious sun and the lazy moon; there 
 is n't, thanks be to heaven, a moveless thing in 
 the universe. 
 
 October 29. Whom would I like to re 
 semble? My mother, as I dream of her and 
 believe she must have been, and is to-day, and 
 will be when we meet ; my grandfather, trying 
 so bravely to be busy in doing nothing, and 
 going daily to the public library to read and 
 reflect concerning his newest axiom (his work 
 is harder than mine) ; any brave, simple, self- 
 sacrificing, unegotistic toiler, say, for instance, 
 a backwoods doctor in northern Michigan. 
 I 'd like to write a novel with an M.D. for the 
 hero ; the trouble would be to get a heroine ; 
 " helpmeets " are so flat and insipid. There 
 are some people whom it is an inspiration just 
 to have met, though you go your way and 
 they theirs, and though, perhaps, they do not 
 have the highest intellectual capacity. What
 
 288 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 puts doctors into my head, I wonder? Be 
 cause I have had so much to do with them 
 this year, I suppose. Did Doctor Urquhart 
 name his dog Don Quixote because he had 
 read the book? I never knew that he was a 
 " great reader," but one day he mentioned, 
 quite accidentally, " Tristram Shandy," the 
 "Religio Medici," " Rab and his Friends," 
 "Walton's Lives," and "The Quarterly Re 
 view," a curious lot. He seems to know 
 more than he seems to might give that sen 
 tence to my rhetoric class for correction. Here 
 endeth, in this journal, stupid mentions of two 
 persons, one is myself and the other is 
 grandpa's " medical adviser." Before dismiss 
 ing him I wish to give him the credit, in this 
 highly public manner, of making my life less 
 lonely and my ideals a bit higher, these few 
 months that he 's been a professional caller at 
 our house, or rather our boarding-house and 
 my house. Dear me, I never realized before 
 that I don't live in Bellwood and do live in 
 Harborside. There is the 7 again. Now for 
 more important entries in this book, or none. 
 Still, it was to be semi-personal, a tomb of my 
 worst self. Never mind, I '11 let it be a Liberty 
 Hall. A journal need not be consistent, par 
 ticularly one that will never be read. 
 
 November 2$, Thanksgiving. I am thank-
 
 One or Two. 289 
 
 ful, and thankful all through. This is a good 
 world, and now I know it. And the best fun 
 is this going out into others ; what a fortunate 
 pursuit is the teacher's. On a holiday one has 
 time to think it all over. I believe I would 
 not go back to a year ago if I could. I think 
 grandpa was a bit dreary not to be in Bell- 
 wood, however, the first time in his life. He 
 frets a little about being supported ; I tell him 
 I am beginning to pay back debts. Happy 
 thought! make him treasurer of the con 
 cern; I hate accounts. I will. 
 
 December 8. Doctor- U Some students 
 are like the walls of the class-room, the 
 sound-waves of the teacher's voice strike them, 
 and that is all. 
 
 December 22. Sometimes you find in a 
 stray corner of a newspaper that which is more 
 to your life than many a dull chapter in a 
 famous book. I read to-day a little story of a 
 big dog, caught over night on an ice-floe on 
 Lake Michigan. They could n't rescue him, 
 and he could n't swim away, half frozen to the 
 cake ; so when the morning storm howled and 
 a huge wave was blown toward his forlorn raft, 
 he turned to the ice-blocks crashing upon him, 
 gave a great, bold, defiant bark, as though he 
 were quoting the line, " I can resist no more, 
 but will not yield," and died like a dog.
 
 290 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 December 25. Last night, Christmas eve, 
 an aurora swirled in such a way as to make a 
 great cloudy angel, with outstretched arms, 
 spread wings, and long, floating drapery, 
 seemingly darting down to earth. Somehow 
 I felt as though it meant my next year would 
 be a bright one to me. The incredible and 
 impenetrable stupidity of some of the girls is 
 my greatest grief just now. If they were hate 
 ful I would not mind it, but amiable and will 
 ing brainlessness makes the teacher aweary, 
 aweary. Yet external troubles are n't much 
 when you are doing your best. Why was I so 
 crushed last spring, then? Surely I had meant 
 to do my best before all the awfulness happened. 
 
 January 8. I dreamed last night that I 
 met the Spectre of the Universe on the street 
 corner, and it said : " Chant the dirge of 
 defeat;" but I replied: " No, I will ring the 
 Devil's knell, for Satan died when Christ was 
 born ; " and then I ran away as fast as I could. 
 
 February 4. When things go worst then 
 they go best, as the tired and thankful teacher 
 knows very well, for right after you fail to get 
 an answer to some such question as " What is 
 the subject of Gray's Elegy? " the brighter 
 pupils will cheer you by putting into their 
 examination-books such bits of originality as 
 these : " In the Puritan's view it was a sin to
 
 One or Two. 291 
 
 listen to the birds singing; " " Poe was a poet 
 of the world between the living and the dead ; " 
 " literature is not only the artistic expression 
 of thought, but is the artistic expression of 
 thought which has enduring value. Life, love, 
 moral and religious truth these are the most 
 profound subjects of human thought." 
 
 What great moralists young people are ! 
 Old ones, too often, get over it and quote 
 Carlyle and Ecclesiastes. Grandpa, however, 
 has a young head on old shoulders. I would 
 like to quote some more things from this pile of 
 literature-papers ; but I am keeping my note 
 book, not the schoolgirls'. That was not bad, 
 though, a girl said in the class the other 
 day when she called lyrical poetry the skylark 
 of literature. My own poor little muse seems 
 mortuary, and the happier I am the more my 
 thoughts on awful subjects roll, damnation and 
 the dead. Do I believe in damnation, I who 
 was brought up among what the old country 
 woman called " High Church atheists? " In 
 deed, I do. Lovelessness is hell, and the law 
 of cause and effect cannot be turned out of the 
 moral world merely because sin cannot be 
 weighed or virtue hypodermically injected. 
 
 February 27. Spring is almost here, the 
 oretically. What of it? If immortality is true, 
 the difference between age and youth amounts
 
 292 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 to nothing ; now is all. The pageant of the 
 seasons, though, helps us toward minor happi 
 ness and bedecks our greater delights. Up 
 north here, the twelve-month brings naught 
 pleasanter than the first flying snowflakes of 
 some Sunday in November ; they suggest fire 
 light, and books and all pleasant things. I am 
 half sorry winter is going. This spring I am 
 going to think joy, and not keep saying " a 
 year ago to day," as that dreadful anniversary 
 draws near. 
 
 March 23. Grandpa works every day on 
 the Philosophy of Life, sometimes in the town 
 library, sometimes prowling through the book 
 stores, and once in a while walking over to the 
 seaside cliffs and cogitating there. He declares 
 that a maxim a day is too much to write, on 
 the average, and one a week a good se'nnights' 
 task; I should think so; most people cannot 
 philosophize quickly, or by measure. He 
 likewise avers that the book, if it ever is 
 brought out, shall be issued in blue paper- 
 sided boards, leaves wholly untrimmed, with 
 printed paper label on yellow cloth back. If 
 so, I fear me it will find few purchasers, but 
 who cares? Maybe, some time, years gone 
 by, a stray reader will pick it up on the five 
 cent sidewalk case and take it home, and say at 
 length : " Here is a book. 1 ' Most generations,
 
 One or Two. 293 
 
 though, don't take much trouble to save that 
 which their predecessors have not singled out. 
 Every author, however, hopes that if buried, 
 he may rise again ; and then what a pleasure 
 he gives his discoverer ! If you are the only 
 one who really appreciates a book and calls it 
 great, why, then, how much wiser are you than 
 anybody else. 
 
 March 24. Hope deferred maketh the 
 heart sick; very true, but it also delighteth 
 the soul. I was writing about the Philoso 
 phy of Life yesterday. I verily believe its 
 dear old author takes ten times the pleasure 
 he would if it were all printed and bound. 
 The slow scribbler makes his world at leisure, 
 and revises it a dozen times before he sets it 
 swinging through space. But what I was go 
 ing to do, was to steal a few of his later max 
 ims that have been really helpful to me in 
 my work, and hopes, and struggles with mel 
 ancholy, and transfer them to this journal. 
 That's no theft, for he makes no secret of 
 the. great work now, and is so happy to 
 feel that he aids the illustrious Amoret, 
 teacher, arbiter elegantiarum, poetess, heiress 
 (think of it!). I must say that, putting laugh 
 ing aside, I have got comfort of one sort or 
 another from spiritual strength to fun in my 
 sleeve out of the dear heterogeneousness of
 
 294 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 these mots, pens/es, maxims, wise saws and 
 modern instances, dicta, proverbs, paradoxes, 
 puzzles, orphicisms : 
 
 O lover of life, does Life love thee ? 
 
 There is such a thing as carrying good sense en 
 tirely too far. 
 
 Perfunctory " enjoyment " is the most melancholy 
 thing in the world. 
 
 To have hated him was a religious education. 
 
 There is a moral element in nature's struggle for 
 life. 
 
 Mere self-sacrifice God never asks ; why, then, do 
 Christians stick pins into themselves for his greater 
 glory ? 
 
 Do you doubt ? look at the tinted cloud or the 
 twilight ocean, and hear the song-bird at dawn. 
 
 The ideal is the ultimate real. 
 
 When fades and fails the inner light of any man's 
 conscience, then for one soul eternity begins to 
 dwindle. 
 
 That last is solemnly, beautifully true ; life 
 without it would be hideous gray chaos, while 
 with it night is day, but the wording is too 
 preachy ; I must tell grandpa to strike it out 
 and let the one just before stand for both. 
 We must allow people to work out their own 
 thoughts, and not do their thinking for them. 
 
 April i. I have been offered $30,000 for
 
 One or Two. 295 
 
 this house this "place," as Chaucer would 
 call it ; and my lawyer advises me to sell. I 
 suppose I ought to go on, from loyalty to 
 cousin's memory, but I am tired to-day, and 
 homesick for Bellwood and Don Quixote. 
 Somehow it seems to lower one to have to 
 talk about money matters, especially when 
 you have n't earned one cent of the money. 
 Grandpa says that is n't so, and that the 
 will expressly said I was the fit heir, by 
 " proved competence and conspicuous dis 
 cretion." Cousin was partial. She thought 
 of retiring herself in a year or two, though, 
 and she once said the only property she cared 
 to leave was her memory in the minds of those 
 who knew her. 
 
 April 7. Cutting from an article in the 
 last number of Days : " Fiction, at its best, 
 is the highest form of prose, because it de 
 lineates the ideal in terms of the real, or por 
 trays the real and the local and the temporary 
 in such fashion as to enable the reader, though 
 of other times and places, to recognize in the 
 printed page some touch of perennial art, 
 some beautiful or noble portrayal of nature 
 and human nature." 
 
 May i. Grandpa has been home on a 
 little visit, and for the last two days I have 
 begrudged every minute of school time, I so
 
 296 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 wanted to hear him tell it all over and over. 
 Bellwood contains some pretty small timber, 
 but it is big enough for downright, faithful, 
 brave, cheery goodness in the daily toil, and 
 morning joys, and evening sorrows of this 
 world of ours. When one thinks of the way 
 in which some people just go on and on, 
 making life just a little better for their having 
 existed that space of twenty-four hours, he 
 fairly gets angry at mere vegetation and mod 
 ern paganism, and declares that a good man 
 or woman is the only decent thing in garret 
 or palace. I am so tired of people who are 
 always thinking about themselves that I half 
 worship those who just do for others without 
 even thinking about anybody at all. Don't 
 they ever get tired? I do ; I am too tired to 
 re-read what I 've just written ; but I 'm thank 
 ful to say that my enthusiasm is better than 
 my rhetoric, and that I like to hear grandpa 
 tell how some people are still making the sun 
 light the brighter on that dear old riverside 
 hill. The two shops next north of our old 
 one are to be rebuilt, with " mansard roofs ; " 
 dear me ! Don Quixote had his leg broken 
 last winter by a boy who threw an icy snow 
 ball, but he (D. Q.) had a splint made and 
 soon got well, not lame a bit. I wish I could 
 have bitten the boy in return ; but I suppose
 
 One or Two. 297 
 
 the mere dog felt the fault all his own in being 
 just in line of the snowball. 
 
 May 15. Isn't it pathetic to see the dun 
 and dreary way in which people try to get out of 
 the humdrum ! Take their books, for instance. 
 Grandpa and I had to make a call out in the 
 country this afternoon, and I had the curiosity 
 to note the intellectual resources of what the 
 Canadians would call the " drawing-room " of 
 the establishment. The house was not exactly 
 a literary Sahara, but its few books had been 
 gathered by the irony of v luck. There was a 
 huge " family Bible," the neglected fetich of 
 the unwarmed parlor, resting on the chilling 
 marble-top table in begilt grandeur. Grouped 
 about it, in awkward attitudes hardly suggest 
 ing present use, were a subscription history of 
 the United States, a " fringed " copy of an 
 evangelical hymn, the Poems Sacred, Passion 
 ate, and Humorous of N. P. Willis, a wed 
 ding present dated 1850 in the thin pointed 
 chirography of the time, an autograph al 
 bum, and the inevitable collection of counterfeit 
 presentments of family worthies, caught by the 
 rural photography of the past three decades. 
 Elsewhere, in a " what-not," were half a dozen 
 text-books, neither very new nor very valuable, 
 Holland's " Kathrina," " The Wide, Wide 
 World," well worn, a few juveniles, ill-worn,
 
 298 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 Gospel Hymns Number 2, and a campaign 
 biography of Samuel J. Tilden. 
 
 July i. What an irregular thing a journal 
 is ! I have n't had a minute for making an 
 entry since the school year began to draw 
 or rather to scurry to a close. Everything 
 went pretty well for the first year under a 
 green hand, though I can see chances for im 
 provement should I return and go on. Some 
 advisers urge me to sell, even if I continue the 
 school, as business is beginning to crowd on 
 this street. Meanwhile, I have rented the old 
 Andrew K. Ropes house in Bellwood, and we 
 are going home for the summer, when I shall 
 have plenty of time to think things over, 
 with two of my good domestics from this estab 
 lishment to take the house care. I suppose 
 Bellwood will think me a purse-proud aristo 
 crat, inflated by new fortune ; for up there one 
 " help " is enough, and she sits at the same 
 table. But grandpa and I are going to have a 
 good rest this time, if we never do again. He 
 is perfectly delighted to go back, and so am I, 
 in a less degree ; for I don't think it fair for 
 everybody to leave the old sod to its fate as 
 soon as he gets a little money or thinks his 
 brains are beginning to sprout. We owe some 
 thing to the soil that has raised us. Besides, 
 there are one or two Bellwoodites I really 
 would like to get to know better.
 
 One or Two. 299 
 
 6, Bcllwood. Everything here is more 
 beautiful than ever, and the scenery up and 
 down the dear, treacherous river was never 
 fairer. On the heights where I walked yester 
 day still lies repose, and a suggestion of peace 
 ful twilight while the sun is full in air. 
 
 July 9. Net profits of the school last year, 
 after paying all expenses (including grandpa's 
 and mine), $648.12; not much for so hard 
 work and such a big building, but tolerable 
 for a beginning, or an ending. What I really 
 have brought back from Harborside, however, 
 is a sort of moral victory that is not included 
 in the above " demnition total." I am no 
 Pamela as a moral diarizer, nor do I expect to 
 marry a missionary; but I am honest, I be 
 lieve, when I say that I am learning that they 
 live best who try to copy the life which was 
 and which gave, the one because of the other. 
 And it is all nonsense to say there are no 
 Nazarenes nowadays: there are at least two 
 right here in Bellwood. 
 
 Here endeth this diary, I 'm tired of it ; 
 explicit liber, laus Deo. I am going to burn 
 it up in the big fireplace behind the hideous 
 stove in the parlor. I want to see whether 
 that north chimney will draw next winter, pro 
 vided we plan to stay in the house.
 
 300 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 XII. 
 
 THE WORLD ROLLS EASTWARD. 
 
 A MORET sat at the piano, in the swift 
 JL\ twilight that followed a bright day of 
 the next autumn. The night air was chilly; 
 the elm trees were bare, most of the maples 
 had lost their glory, and even the maroon of 
 the oaks was quietly fading and falling. 
 Within, a placid little wood fire minded its 
 own small business on the reopened hearth of 
 the big chimney. As the last notes were 
 lingeringly struck, the music sank into 
 Amoret's mind as a sort of summary of past 
 experiences, and it was the most natural 
 thing for her to pass into an easy mood of 
 random retrospect. 
 
 She was again an inhabitant of Bellwood, 
 and now, as she supposed, a permanent one. 
 It had seemed better on the whole to sell the 
 Tetley house ; the teacher of French and the 
 old German who came in from the town to 
 instruct in modern languages had rented a 
 smaller building, christened it the Tetley
 
 The World Rolls Eastward. 301 
 
 School, and reopened it chiefly for day schol 
 ars ; and so Amoret was free to do what seemed 
 largest and best. Her grandfather's evident 
 homesickness and her own pretty definite 
 conclusion that charity might actually begin 
 at home, had led her to buy the Ropes " man 
 sion " of Bellwood's old ship-owning days, 
 and begin life anew in the valley of her small 
 girlhood. The quick possession of more or 
 less money had not confused her wits or 
 destroyed her habit of familiarity with the 
 use of smaller revenues; and the purchase- 
 money paid for the big house was but a third 
 of its cost. Prudence, too, as well as poetic 
 justice, lay in her plan to build on the site 
 of the old publishing house a neat new little 
 bookshop, a story and a half high, to be well 
 stocked with wall-paper, pretty leather goods, 
 a few etchings or lithographs of the better 
 order, some illustrated magazines of which 
 nobody need be ashamed, and one modest case 
 of standard books. All this was for Mr. 
 We,lby, to whom idleness was now become 
 irksome, in the restored health of a wiry 
 septuagenarian, and who really felt that he 
 could philosophize the better for some daily 
 practical occupation. It would not be, 
 thought Amoret, an expensive luxury, even 
 with a boy clerk to help the happy old man,
 
 302 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 who was delighted with the plan; while the 
 unliterary miscellany would sell at least as well 
 as formerly, and the few well-chosen books 
 and etchings would accustom the community 
 to the idea of a bookstore as it should be 
 an intellectual thermometer of the surrounding 
 atmosphere. Mr. Welby consented, provided 
 the pretty little architectural shop should be 
 of brick, with wooden shutters, and should 
 cost no more than three thousand dollars, he 
 being permitted to give Amoret his note for 
 the money. Thus the two had already begun 
 to make their plans for its erection the moment 
 the spring opened. 
 
 Mr. Welby, to whom planning ahead was 
 as delightful as it was odious to Amoret, 
 even determined to go to "the cities" in 
 January to purchase stock ; it was more than a 
 dozen years since he had sat in King's Chapel 
 or sipped his little toby of porter in Old 
 Tom's, and these modest dissipations of a 
 metropolitan trip were already beginning to 
 rise pleasantly to mind, though he deceived 
 himself with the thought that nothing but 
 business was in mind. Besides, he might 
 glance at the book-counters in the big shops 
 and see how they were printing and binding 
 really solid books nowadays; there was a 
 good deal to be decided before the " Philoso-
 
 The World Rolls Eastward. 303 
 
 phy of Life "could go to press, perhaps two or 
 three years hence. 
 
 All this was talked over, for the dozenth 
 time, at the tea-table that night; and after 
 they returned to the fire-lit library, the minds 
 of both still turned toward the future rather 
 than the past. The early moon rose full, and 
 the shadow of the big-paned window began to 
 creep eastward across the floor before Amoret 
 or Mr. Welby cared to light the lamp. 
 
 There was a ring at the door, and the 
 white-aproned maid an importation from 
 Harborside announced " Doctor Urquhart, 
 ma'am." 
 
 "Capital, capital," said Mr. Welby, as he 
 jumped from his chair and tripped to the door 
 with both hands outstretched. " Here 's the 
 good doctor just for a friendly call, when 
 neither Amoret nor I is sick." 
 
 "You should pay me as the Chinese do," 
 said Dr. Urquhart; "for keeping you well, 
 and stop the quid pro quo when you fall 
 ailing." 
 
 "We would think of that," said Amoret, 
 when she had given her greeting, " if you 
 would nevertheless let us have the pleasure 
 of your company once in a while, just to take 
 note of things. " 
 
 "Sit down by the fire, doctor," said the
 
 304 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 old man, as he put on a fresh stick. "What 
 with the blaze within and Luna without we '11 
 get along very well." 
 
 " Moonlight is better than sunlight for social 
 bats like me," said the doctor; " it 's not often 
 that I allow myself a luxury like this. My 
 face looks queer away from a bedside, I fear 
 me." 
 
 "You don't have the time, ah?" said the 
 elder man. "Well, moonlight is a pretty 
 good thing, even spiritual moonlight, for 
 those that must struggle along nights as well 
 as daytimes. Now take an hour's rest, doc 
 tor, for once in your life; you are out of the 
 grind to-night, unless you 've left word where 
 you are." 
 
 " May I stay an hour, then ? " said he. 
 "Well, life does sometimes seem a wearisome 
 grind, but I am most thankful for the grind ; 
 what would become of one if he had no regular 
 duties ? " 
 
 "Exactly," said Mr. Welby; "he would go 
 into business again, as I am going to do." 
 
 "Really?" 
 
 "Yes, indeed, literally ' at the old stand.' 
 And Amoret is going to start out in the world 
 as general benefactrix, she says. " 
 
 "She'll have enough to do," said the doc 
 tor, as he turned toward the picturesque
 
 The World Rolls Eastward. 305 
 
 figure, half glowing and half shaded, by the 
 farther corner of the fireplace; "enough to 
 do without going out of Bellwood. " 
 
 "I'll preach and you can practise," said 
 she. " Or you can go around first and leave 
 me to comfort the people afterward, and nurse 
 them back to life." 
 
 "Good enough," said the doctor, with the 
 hearty laugh of a man who is enjoying him 
 self; "they need it." 
 
 " Well, " said Amoret, with a tiny blush that 
 nobody saw, "that belongs to the list of 
 remarks one might have phrased otherwise; 
 what I meant was " 
 
 "Don't explain," said her grandfather; 
 "you meant that when the doctor finished 
 them they should n't be allowed to go to 
 grass. " 
 
 "If people would only go to grass," said 
 the doctor, changing the subject, "it would 
 be all right; but they go to poison-ivy." 
 
 "What a comfort it would be," said 
 Amoret, comprehensively, " if everybody were 
 perfect ! " 
 
 " You are," was the doctor's boyish thought ; 
 but his manly lips said, more reservedly, " Per 
 fection is what we are supposed to make our 
 goal." 
 
 "And isn't it better," said Amoret, "that 
 
 20
 
 306 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 we can strain our eyes oat of the flicker and 
 shadow to some distant glory like that great 
 round moon over there! The child wouldn't 
 be so happy, if it came tumbling into his lap 
 when he cried for it, as you and I who are 
 chasing it yet. Patient pursuit is better than 
 sudden possession." 
 
 "And even more than that," said the doc 
 tor; "I sometimes think we like to lose a 
 thing and then recover it to prize it the more 
 for the loss. So we tumble out of innocence 
 and climb to purity." 
 
 Mr. Welby had been going to say, "just as 
 a cat lets a mouse run a little way off," but he 
 politely forbore to jar on the doctor's last 
 thought. 
 
 " A hard time certainly makes a good time 
 all the more enjoyable," said Amoret. 
 
 " Surely you and Mr. Welby have earned 
 your present comfort," said the doctor, who 
 knew all their external troubles, and, with a 
 medical man's insight, surmised that Amoret 
 had turned Morland away, and then been sorely 
 stung by his speedy death. 
 
 "Oh, no, we haven't; it came by luck of 
 inheritance," said she. Somehow the doctor 
 was the one person in Bellwood to whom she 
 could talk absolutely freely, without fear of 
 misunderstanding anywhere.
 
 The World Rolls Eastward. 307 
 
 "But you approved yourself to Miss Tetley, 
 as an individual, a relative, and a person of 
 sense, I know." 
 
 " It would be nearer the truth to say that 
 she did n't disapprove of me. But seriously, 
 doctor, nobody knows half as much as you 
 about men and things hereabouts, and I 'm 
 going to trouble you in all sorts of ways. 
 See here," and she drew a bit nearer him, 
 but fixed her gaze on the fire, and made small 
 hills and valleys in the ashes. "Now this is 
 our little secret, and you shall be our father- 
 confessor. This money has come to us un 
 sought, from a dear, good woman who saved it 
 piecemeal in a hard life; and it 's going to be 
 managed just as a trust -fund for the public, 
 especially for those who help themselves, or 
 would if they could. Once for all, for I 
 don't want to talk about it, I want to do it, 
 I hate tramps, and professional beggars, and 
 all that, and I fear me I don't really like the 
 'indigent poor,' or dirty-handed babies, or 
 receptive missionaries, or Causes, or Societies 
 to Promote this or that, or ' giving to the 
 Lord,' or things you ought to want to help, 
 but are really bored by. But I do like to do 
 a little good in my own way, and I 'm going 
 to, and you will help, won't you?" and the 
 little left hand brushed away the black hair
 
 308 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 from the broad, low forehead that covered the 
 brown eyes that blazed in the firelight. 
 
 Doctor Urquhart, to his amazement, dis 
 covered that this bright personality was the 
 most interesting object in the world ; and all 
 kinds of supplementary thoughts rushed into 
 his head, of which the mere joyousness of the 
 fact that she lived in the same country and 
 century with him was the chief. And Amoret 
 thought to herself how good it was to have 
 one person in the world who was only a friend, 
 and who understood things; so there came 
 again into her mind the pleasantness of such 
 a free gladness of unsuspicious companionship. 
 Tired as she was of helping people, or draw 
 ing them out, or doing things lest she be 
 misunderstood, Doctor Urquhart seemed to 
 her merely a pleasant fact for which to be 
 thankful. 
 
 " Indeed I will, if you will let me," said he, 
 and the whole future became radiant for him, 
 what with this one thing to be in it. 
 
 "And we'll begin at Jerusalem," said 
 Amoret, "that is to say, with Thomas Welby, 
 Esquire, Bibliopolist, who 's to be director- 
 general in the scheme." 
 
 "I '11 put in the prudence," said that indi 
 vidual, " the doctor the tact and Amoret the 
 money, which will be fair all round."
 
 The World Rolls Eastward. 309 
 
 "I don't see, then," said the doctor, "but 
 that poor I must be the corner-stone of the 
 new temple of philanthropy, for 
 
 " ' What boots it, thy virtue, 
 What profit thy parts, 
 If the one thing thou lackest, 
 The art of all arts.' " 
 
 "What do you suppose made him leave that 
 out of his revised poems?" said Amoret; and 
 each, from this tiny dialogue, thought to 
 measure the extent of the other's reading and 
 thinking. 
 
 "Doctor," said the bookseller, "why is it 
 that medical men are always so cheerful? Is 
 it because the full life is the useful and there 
 fore the happy one ? " 
 
 "They aren't always," said he, "but they 
 ought to be. Melancholy helps nobody, but 
 good cheer may. A moping doctor mistakes 
 his calling as much as does a chattering 
 one. To tell the truth, we poor fellows some 
 times ache for a chance to groan, or to swear, 
 or to tell all about it. Don Quixote knows 
 how all the world wishes us to help them, and 
 never stops to think or care whether we have 
 headaches or our horses have surcingles ; " 
 and he turned his face toward Mr. Welby with 
 a bright smile. Amoret noted that his
 
 310 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 smooth-shaven face was round, tanned to a 
 firm reddish-brown; his green eyes full of 
 laughter; his well knit body neither short nor 
 tall, just a hundred and fifty pounds of honest 
 bone, muscle, and flesh ; and that it was absurd 
 that he should have a tiny bald spot, perfectly 
 round, on the back of his head, and a gray 
 patch above either ear. 
 
 "You look like a monk, doctor," said she, 
 abruptly; "and so you must conquer your 
 blasphemous propensities." 
 
 " You said I might be your father-confessor," 
 said he, not quite liking the word, as he 
 thought of it, "and here you are putting me 
 on the rack. But I won't swear save before 
 you or Don Quixote. " There flashed into his 
 mind the idea that he must change the subject 
 before she thought of that dreadful confes 
 sional-box, where lay one swiftly dead ; and so 
 he said to Mr. Welby, "Life, not medicine 
 or bookselling, is the thing, after all, is n't 
 it?" 
 
 "Yes; and you might say not religion and 
 not literature, either; ethics is the one thing 
 that makes a man. " 
 
 " What a dreadful confession for an author 
 to make ! " said Amoret. 
 
 Mr. Welby had never heard himself called 
 an author before, and was visibly flattered.
 
 The World Rolls Eastward. 311 
 
 " I mean," said he, "that books are so often 
 hollow." 
 
 " Vours won't be," said she, determined 
 that his little secret, as well as hers, should be 
 shared. 
 
 "May I ask what " 
 
 "No, no, no, no! not quite yet," said the 
 
 'philosopher cheerfully; "I've set a few 
 
 marionettes of ideas against the background 
 
 of life, and perhaps I '11 pull their strings for 
 
 you some day. " 
 
 Amoret, however, thought the cosy time 
 just suitable for a few bits of the Philosophy, 
 since the talk of the three friends had run on 
 themes so varied ; so she got the water-soaked 
 book that had played such a part in the 
 melodrama of that night of loss and rescue. 
 No great persuasion was needed to induce Mr. 
 Welby to turn the warped leaves, nor was the 
 reading of some stray bits long postponed. 
 As the old man read, the doctor felt that he 
 was getting acquainted with some new tracts 
 of -the bookseller's brain; Mr. Welby himself 
 was in a happy mood betwixt modesty and 
 vanity; while for Amoret, the enjoyable 
 moment was enough. 
 
 Do you repent? then do not, but do. 
 
 "That isn't worded plainly," thought the 
 reader.
 
 312 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 Of the A B C of life we know nothing. 
 Shakespeare is intellectual rather than spiritual. 
 He seems to have been afraid of the future life. 
 
 " Do you think so ? " said Amoret. 
 
 " Have you a right to read his characters 
 into himself? " added the doctor. 
 
 "No, certainly not," said Mr. Welby; 
 "but there is a prevalent drift in plots and 
 characters, and we know he wrote the 
 sonnets." 
 
 "You see," said Dr. Urquhart, "we pay 
 your book the compliment of aroused dis 
 sent; it isn't every writer who can start other 
 minds a- working. We don't love Shake 
 speare, surely." 
 
 Mr. Welby smiled, readjusted his glasses, 
 and went on, Amoret meanwhile tucking 
 down his cravat, which had risen above the 
 back of his dickey. The philosopher did not 
 notice either evil or remedy. 
 
 Why should we rejoice that a good man has gone 
 to enrich paradise ? The longest life is a speck in 
 eternity, and we needed him here. 
 
 " Grandpa is a heretic, you see. " 
 
 Noblesse oblige : the Whig Arian can afford to 
 be tolerant. 
 
 We miss the unregions of the seen more than the 
 regions of the unseen.
 
 The World Rolls Eastward. 313 
 " I wonder what that means ? " thought both. 
 
 Let not the tragedy of the old world be followed 
 by the farce of the new. 
 
 The great genius shows a large sanity in his calm 
 superiority over the conventional; he shuns placid 
 unideal content that he may rise to the true calm of 
 a life for others. 
 
 "There's a good deal in that," said the 
 doctor to Amoret. "It 's all nonsense to say 
 that genius is insanity and commonplaceness 
 a mark of mental soundness." 
 
 A man's talk should be quiet, gentle, and clear-cut, 
 and not much of himself. 
 
 "But a bird is noisily egotistic," said 
 Amoret, to which her grandfather added the 
 demonstrable statement that " A man is n't a 
 bird." 
 
 Make not self-renunciation a shriveling. 
 
 How small a stone will cause a stumble. 
 
 The three parts of salvation : stop ; begin ; 
 continue. 
 
 There is nothing in the animal world so interesting 
 as the attachment of animal dog to animal man. 
 
 "Good," said the doctor; "I'm glad you 
 put in a word for Don Quixote. " 
 
 "The other day," quoth Amoret, "Judge 
 Bennett said : ' Old Jenkins is dead, and not
 
 314 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 a soul in town cares, not even his wife. ' ' Oh, 
 yes, ' said Gertrude, quick as a flash, ' his little 
 brown dog does. ' ' 
 
 "Miss Bennett is a bright girl," said the 
 doctor. "By the way, speaking about dogs, 
 did I ever tell you how Don Quixote's father 
 departed this life? He was a handsome fel 
 low, of a reserved and dignified disposition, 
 who took it for granted that the world would 
 make way for his self-centred movements, as 
 it generally did. He 'd lie down in the mid 
 dle of the road and wait for carriages to turn 
 out, as a matter of course ; but once, when he 
 was sitting on a railroad track enjoying the 
 morning breeze, the unexpected happened. 
 He was as unsophisticated as a noisy sparrow 
 that kept up its chittering outside my bedroom 
 window for a whole May month, once I 
 threw a stone at it, but it did n't know what 
 stoning meant, and continued its alleged 
 song as cheerfully as ever. I was the one 
 that was ashamed." 
 
 "The poor dog!" said Amoret, oblivious 
 of the sparrow. 
 
 "But dear me," said Doctor Urquhart, "I 
 oughtn't to be interrupting in this way." 
 
 "Your talk is more interesting than mine," 
 pleasantly retorted Mr. Welby, as he went 
 on:
 
 The World Rolls Eastward. 315 
 
 Nothing seems so important to man as the things 
 he forgets ; so the missing of heaven will be the 
 depth of hell. 
 
 Follow the trend of truth, and the pace of God, 
 and let the past path fade ; for the great wholesome 
 world turns on. 
 
 Oh, the books we 've never written, and the songs 
 we could not sing. 
 
 "Why, that 's poetry," said Amoret. 
 " So is the next one, " said he : 
 
 Work in work-time, 
 Play in play-time, 
 Worry at no time. 
 
 "No, it isn't," said she. 
 
 "But it's uncommon sense," said the doc 
 tor. " Say it over again ; I want to remember 
 it, to put it over my office desk." 
 
 As we do not remember when we did not live, we 
 seem to have lived forever. 
 
 Catch but the real meaning of " I am," and you 
 are a son of God. 
 
 Right things abide, though they hide. 
 
 " But I must stop this random leaf -turning, 
 or I shall send you both to sleep. The fault 
 of these poor jottings, I fear," added the old 
 man, "is that they look too fixedly within. 
 Introspection has filled more insane asylums
 
 316 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 and made more unhappy homes than anything 
 that can be called a good." 
 
 "So it has," said Doctor Urquhart; "but I 
 kept thinking of myself all the time you were 
 reading, not of you; I am surej<?# are helpful 
 rather than introspective. " 
 
 "I think so, too," said Amoret; "his book 
 has really helped me in sad or weary times, 
 until it has fairly made me a cheerful philoso 
 pher again, in spite of myself, just as I used 
 to be when I was a little girl." 
 
 "And have been ever since," testified her 
 relative. 
 
 " It 's a good thing to have such thinkers as 
 you watching us men in the working world," 
 said the doctor. " When I was a little boy in 
 the old church, I used to think a small venti- 
 lating-hole in the ceiling was to let angels look 
 through to see if the minister was preaching 
 right; and it was a solemnizing reflection 
 when it flashed over me, one Sunday after 
 noon, that perhaps they might turn their 
 eyes on me occasionally." And he rose to 
 
 g- 
 
 "Grandpa is our angel," said Amoret. 
 
 "She said our," thought the doctor, ninety 
 minutes later, as he went to his stable to say 
 good-night to Don Quixote and the pale horse 
 Mors.
 
 The World Rolls Eastward. 317 
 
 The joy of winter ! 
 
 On some clear October afternoon there is a 
 chill in the air; frost impends over the 
 weather-wise; potted geraniums are brought 
 into the house, and belated tomatoes are 
 sheeted in white, as though mimicking the 
 irregular snow-heaps so soon to come. Next 
 morning roof and lawn sparkle in a thin 
 sprinkling of crystals, the scarlet runners 
 hang limp beside the kitchen door, the ferns 
 on the bank are black and unsightly, and the 
 few last withered elm leaves drop crookedly 
 and clumsily to earth. Next noon the sun 
 shine is so warm as to make one think of May- 
 time; but as the early twilight falls there is a 
 clearness of cloudless sky that foretells a repe 
 tition of the portent of winter. Then in 
 November, when the shallowest pools and the 
 tub under the rain-spout are skimmed with 
 brittle glass, and the sky has been overcast 
 for twenty-four hours, one first sees a stray 
 snowflake sailing horizontally against the 
 blackness of the open barn-door, and another, 
 and another, and the snowstorm has begun. 
 Soon appear the sleds, and the youngsters try 
 to coast on the inch-covering of the stiffly 
 frozen grass, into which the runners helplessly 
 sink. Out in the shed are two barrels of 
 cider, with straw around their wooden bungs,
 
 3 1 8 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 and a bulge of white fizzle through the air 
 hole near by, if the plug be loose. Strings 
 of corn hang high on the wall, the pumpkins 
 are piled in the corner, the cellar is banked 
 up, and the evening lamps shine early out 
 upon the dim slopes. 
 
 But just before night of some short Decem 
 ber day, when the river is closed and the hills 
 are mottled with gray and green and some 
 new patches of dirty white, the snow begins 
 in earnest, and falls and falls into three feet 
 of its own accumulated softness, not wholly 
 to be lost before April. Or in January a new 
 storm drapes every twig and herb with a white 
 covering, against which stand the black boles 
 of the elms or the smooth silences of the 
 young beeches. Twig, fence-rail, hayfield, 
 and sheeted pond sparkle in one multiform 
 glory, which Amoret makes the radiant mirror 
 of the not less serene pleasures of her own 
 heart. 
 
 For now was the winter of her content. 
 The fact was that she had somehow become, of 
 late, a little girl again. Student and teacher 
 in the university of life, once sorrow-stricken 
 and shamed by the lurid vision of a lost soul, 
 she had grown backward to some simple, 
 childlike acceptance of things. Doubts re 
 garding her failure or responsibility toward
 
 The World Rolls Eastward. 319 
 
 Rodney and Morland had faded before a new 
 inner sense of attempted duty done. Had 
 her own attitude been other, day by day, in 
 those other times, she knew she would have 
 been disloyal to truth and love, all for the 
 sake of standards not her own, and far enough, 
 she felt, from those of the men and women 
 who make the world really worth living in. 
 Nature itself is not inexorable or false; and 
 she would have been both had Rodney's easy 
 going epicureanism or Morland's new morality 
 of individualism taken the place of what she 
 felt to be of lovely trend. Once that winter, 
 indeed, she wrote a friendly letter to Rodney, 
 and his reply, half hopeless and half cheery, 
 showed at least that there was no poorest 
 semblance of love on either side, but maybe, 
 even yet, some tiny chance of friendly help 
 fulness on hers. 
 
 And she took things for granted, that was 
 all, in a joy sometimes quiet and sometimes 
 almost rollicking. She was meant, she de 
 clared in a not unkindly anger, to be good and 
 happy ; and how could she really be one if not 
 the other? Even her money, of which she 
 was neither ashamed nor proud, was some 
 comfort; it enabled her to go on without 
 worry for her grandfather, and to let him live 
 where he wished and as he had; while for
 
 320 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 the rest, there was enough unselfishly to do 
 with it, goodness knew. What had once 
 laughingly been called her profession of bene- 
 factrix, interpreted as it was by herself, gave 
 her due occupation. Why shouldn't one be, 
 said she to herself, and do on the basis of 
 being, just like a flower or a star? 
 
 But what of Doctor Urquhart? Simply 
 this: he found, right by him in Bellwood, in 
 indubitable flesh and blood, the ideal which 
 he had always worshipped, but never thought 
 to see with open eyes save, as he admitted 
 one day, that he had dreamed of his goddess 
 of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good as 
 having an absolutely straight nose. And 
 Amoret? From mere tacit enjoyment of the 
 doctor's talk and cheerily wholesome presence 
 she had turned to two moods of a much more 
 definite sort. First, she thought of him as 
 the only one in the world whom she could 
 endure to have always around ; and then she 
 came to reflect, to her amazement, and at 
 first to her tiny vexation, that her world 
 would actually be lovelier if he were always 
 near than if he were not she, to whom all 
 others, even her grandfather, had sooner or 
 later seemed somewhat obtrusive. Each, 
 indeed, thought of the other as the one person 
 in existence to whom the words Pleasant
 
 The World Rolls Eastward. 321 
 
 Friend might apply in all resplendent truth, 
 and winsome enjoyment, and cheery struggle, 
 and picturesque vicissitude and indispensable 
 helpfulness, forever and a day. 
 
 If Doctor Urquhart had been a smaller man 
 than he was, he would have been annoyed 
 that Amoret had a country fortune, and he 
 but a house, and barn, and horse, and dog, and 
 receipts for his debts, and naught but one 
 modest savings-bank account beside. And if 
 Amoret's soul had been a smaller one, she 
 would have wished that he might go to some 
 larger town, there to be freed from the black 
 midnights and pauper tyranny of a country 
 doctor's life. But, next to the fact that she 
 had come to feel toward him, in all sincerity, 
 the three words / like you, there had grown in 
 her mind a conviction, at first rather unwel 
 come, that bright, heartful, helpful goodness 
 was better, if you must choose, than cold men 
 tality. The books, to be sure, had piously 
 said just that again and again, and Amoret 
 had despised their preachments. What con 
 quered her prejudices against mere goodness 
 at first she had thought the doctor hum 
 drum was the discovery that, in him at 
 least, calmness was not a loss of enthusiasm 
 but a gain of tranquillity; that in life, as in 
 nature, simplicity is beauty; and that a soul 
 21
 
 322 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 can combine the idle glow of a summer's noon 
 with the force of all perfect things that merely 
 act as they must, without waste of time or 
 strength. Once Amoret told him she would 
 have loved him as much if he had been a 
 woman. "Would you me if I had been a 
 man ? " she added ; and he replied, " I don't 
 know." 
 
 When did this love-friendship begin? 
 Neither could tell. When did it end ? Never. 
 When did either first speak of it ? It would 
 not be easy to answer even that question ; but 
 perhaps one day of springtide localized it as 
 truly as any. 
 
 Amoret, that Thursday, was minded to take 
 an early morning walk to the hilltop; for 
 now that her time was her own, the sunrise 
 and she were frequent friends. As she climbed 
 the familiar path day grew slowly, great 
 clouds rolled majestically up from the horizon, 
 and the wet grass and young leaves caught 
 enough light to glisten in. The sky was all 
 pale gold when she reached the top and looked 
 down on the village, which lay hushed under 
 the blessing of dawn. Lighter and brighter 
 grew the day, the sky flushed all over a rosy 
 hue, and the rim of the sun rose above the 
 horizon beyond the river. Then it grew clear 
 and full in the fresh morning air; the
 
 The World Rolls Eastward. 323 
 
 branches swayed rhythmically to and fro in 
 the freshening breeze; every blade of grass, 
 tipped with its pearly drop, nodded and bowed 
 to its neighbor; while the robins sang blithely 
 as they flitted about. It was a new heaven 
 and a new earth, and the little hills were joy 
 ful together before the Lord. 
 
 In her dawntide delight, Amoret felt utterly 
 at one with nature ; it was a part of her, she 
 of it. Through the veil of things she seemed 
 to see some of the secrets of being. Stoop 
 ing to pluck a dandelion, she stopped at the 
 remembrance of an old-time fancy that flowers 
 lived as truly as she, and that she must n't 
 hurt them by tearing them from their stalks. 
 Anyway, there was a certain something within 
 her that told of the Tightness of joy, of the 
 love of love and of life, of the beautifulness 
 of being. In her mood, her childish dreams 
 had all come true, for she was a child again; 
 but more, if the strength of knowledge were 
 as simply true as the innocence of inexperi 
 ence. 
 
 All the way down the hill, when she started 
 home, there were plenty of pleasant things, 
 so pleasant that she enjoyed them every 
 one in anticipatory memory: a cat and four 
 kittens playing in and out of a little hole at 
 the foot of the big elm in old Diantheya
 
 324 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 Blynman's back yard; a queer, lonely, suspi 
 cious bird flying in and out of the lilac bushes 
 in front of the Kitfield house Amoret was 
 sure the bird's name must be the skulk; a big 
 dog sitting contentedly by some daffodils, as 
 though he had a bit of aesthetic sense of their 
 straight loveliness, or at least some physical 
 pleasure in the pleasant environment. He 
 made her think of Don Quixote, who, she was 
 sure, was a moralist, whether or not he was 
 an artist. 
 
 Before she knew it, she turned her free 
 feet toward the graveyard, now bright in the 
 sun and breeze and song of the birds. And 
 it was Don Quixote that found her there and 
 ran bounding up in a hurry to get as much of 
 her time as he might, without losing more of 
 his master's society than he must. The wel 
 come was hilarious on either side, for both, 
 though they did not know it, were too happy 
 to enjoy loneliness for long. 
 
 Doctor Urquhart had been going along on 
 the other side of the street, and was puzzled 
 that all his whistling for Don Quixote was in 
 vain, for it was not usual for that evolved 
 representative of age-end dogdom to be obliv 
 ious alike to the sanctity of grave grass and 
 to the ethics of obedience. The reason was 
 soon apparent, for the happy dog and happy
 
 The World Rolls Eastward. 325 
 
 girl became audible as well as visible under 
 the thickly crowded pines that made a forlorn 
 square around the Rotherwell tombstones. 
 
 When the doctor walked briskly across with 
 a "May I come, too? " Amoret turned around 
 in a queer disorder: hat wrongside before, hair 
 in eyes, teeth all a-laughing, and two great 
 mud marks left by Don Quixote's eager feet 
 on the front of her fuzzy plaid dress. 
 
 "Oh, good," said the girl; "now the whole 
 world 's here." 
 
 "Till death do us part?" said the doctor, 
 hat in one hand, small medicine case in other, 
 a curious little tremor in his jolly voice, a 
 strange bit of confident hope in his happy 
 glance. 
 
 "Death doesn't end all," said Amoret, and 
 wondered what she was saying, and why. 
 
 "Forever," said the doctor. He caught 
 her hand, and his soul flew out in a little kiss, 
 which Amoret dodged, though her hand stayed 
 captive. But the kiss just grazed her cheek, 
 a humming-bird on the wing. 
 
 Don Quixote was visibly puzzled, but his 
 attention was distracted, just then, by a scurry 
 through the granite gate-posts of the grave 
 yard. It was a boy, running up all breath 
 less and dusty, to say, between his gasps, 
 "Oh, doctor, come right off, little Jimmy
 
 326 The End of the Beginning. 
 
 Nelligan's a-broken his leg, and they found 
 where yer was, and he's a-howlin' awful, and 
 I 've been a-chasin' yer everywhere." 
 
 The doctor went, and so did Don Quixote, 
 after an afflicting period of indecision marked 
 by drooping ears, squat haunches, and a 
 pathetic interrogation-mark in either eye. 
 Duties may never conflict, but pleasures do. 
 
 They were all gone, save she who was left 
 alone in her childish playground, among the 
 trees and the graves she knew and loved so 
 well. She looked down the gravelled roadway 
 until she saw Don Quixote gallop southward 
 in an abrupt right angle at the gate, at length 
 accepting his immediate future with an alac 
 rity that he apparently deemed not inconsis 
 tent with the bygone regret of ten seconds 
 before. Then she climbed on the slab of the 
 Bexley tomb, and unconsciously dangled her 
 feet as of yore. 
 
 "And this is the end of the beginning," 
 said Amoret. 
 
 THE END.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
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