The Reign of Law; a tale of the Kentucky hemp fields

EIGN

E

and hardly ventured forth for water, salt, game, tillage-in the very summer of that wild daylight ride of Tomlinson and Bell, by comparison with which, my children, the midnight ride of Paul Revere, was as tame as the pitching of a rocking-horse in a boy's nursery-on that history-making twelfth of Aug

great period of shipbuilding went on-greatest during the twenty years or more ending in 1860; as the great period of cotton-raising and cotton-baling went on-never so great before as that in that same year-the two parts of the nation looked equally to the one border plateau lying between them, to several counties of Kentucky, for most of the nation's hemp. It was in those days of the North that the CONSTITUTION was rigged with Russian hemp on one side, with American hemp on the other, for a patriotic test of the superiority of h

ired, bartered; lands perpetually rented and sold; fortunes made or lost. The advancing price of farms, the westward movement of poor families and consequent dispersion of the Kentuckians over cheaper territory, whither they carried the same passion for the cultivation of the same plant,-thus making Missouri the second hemp-producing state in the Union,-the regulation of the hours in the Kentucky cabin, in the house, at the rope-walk, in the factory,-what phase of life went unaffected by the pursuit and fascination of it.

, the entire country, with all but a small part of the native hemp consumed. Little comparatively is cultivated in Kentucky now. The traveller may still see it here and there, crowning those ever-renewing, self-renewing inexhaustible fields. But the time cannot be far distant when the ind

ng out of the soaked earth, trickles through banks of sod unbarred by ice; before a bee is abroad under the calling sky; before the red of apple-buds becomes a sign in t

ver-bottom, some valley threaded by streams, some table-land of mild rays, moist airs, alluvial or limestone soils-such is the favorite cradle of the hemp in Nature. Back and forth with me

oursing clouds, trickle down to them, moistening the dryness, closing up the little hollows of the ground, drawing the particles of maternal earth more closely. Suddenly-as an insect that has been feigning death cautiously unrolls itself and starts into action-in each seed the great miracle of

t out of sight, is the shallow tidal sea of the hemp, ever rippling. Green are the woods now with their varied greenness. Green are the pastures. Green here and there are the fields: with the bluish green of young oats and wheat; with the gray green of young barley and rye: with orderly dots of dull dark green in vast array-the hills of Indian ma

dden now; but darker in the tops. Yet here two shades of greenness: the male plants paler, smaller, maturing e

f April, so that it is July, it is August. And now, borne far through the steaming air floats an odor, balsamic, startling: the odor of those plumes and stalks and blossoms from which is exuding freely the narcotic resin of the great nettle. The nostril expands quickly

bursting barns. The heavy-headed, rustling wheat has turned to gold and been stacked in the stubble or sent through the whirling thresher. The barley and the rye are garnered and gone, the landscape has many bare and open spa

e crow and the blackbird will seem to love it, having a keen eye for the cutworm, its only enemy. The quail does love it, not for itself, but for its protection, leading her brood into its labyrinths out of the dusty road when danger draws near. Best of all winged creatures it is loved by the iris-eyed, burnish-breasted, murmuring doves, already beginning to gather in the deadened tree-tops with crops eager for the seed. Well remembered also by the long-flight passenger pigeon, coming into t

ect order, through which flows freely the full stream of a healthy man's red blood; lungs deep, clear, easily filled, easily emptied; a body that can bend and twist and be straightened again in ceaseless rhythmical movement; limbs tireless; the very spirit of primeval man conquering primeval nature-all these go into the cutting of the hemp. The leader strides to the edge, and throwing forward his left arm, along which the muscles play, he grasps as much as it will embrace, bends the stalks over, and with his right hand draws the bl

soil the nourishment they have drawn from it; the whole top being thus otherwise wasted-that part of the hemp which every year the dreamy millions of the Orient still consume in quant

ve the wagon-beds or slides, gathering the bundles and carrying them to where, huge, flat, and round, the stacks begin to rise. At last t

ason of scales and balances, when the Earth, brought to judgment

ter bright day, dripping night after dripping night, the never-ending filtering or gusty fall of leaves. The fall of walnuts, dropping from bare boughs with muffle

ps as they strike the rooty earth. The fall of red haw, persimmon, and pawpaw, and the odorous wild plum in its valley thickets. The fall of all seeds whatsoever of the forest, now made ripe in their high places a

n gathers within his arm the top-heavy stalks and presses them into the bulging shock. The fall of pumpkins into the slow-drawn wagons, the shaded side of them still white with the morning rime. In the orchards, the fall of apples shaken thunderously down

Two months have passed, the workmen are at it again. The stacks are torn down, the bundles scattered, the hemp spread out as once before. There to lie till it shall be dew-retted or rotted; there to suffer freeze and thaw, chill rains, locking fros

rs. The ends stick out clean apart; and lo! hanging between them, there it is at last-a festoon of wet, coarse, dark gray riband, wealth of the hem

und at the top, so that the slanting sides may catch the drying sun and the sturdy base resist the strong winds. And now the fields are as the dark brown camps of armies-eac

reaking continues. At each nightfall, cleaned and baled, it is hauled on wagon-beds or sli

nder; to see the flames spread and the sparks rush like swarms of red bees skyward through the smoke into the awful abysses of the night; to run from gray heap to gray heap, igniting the long line of signal fires, until the whole earth seems a conflagration and the

he hemp to the factories, thence to be scattered over land and sea. Some day, when the winds of

ce of the warming soil; the long, fierce arrows of the summer heat, the long, silvery arrows of the summer rain; autumn's dead skies and sobbing winds; winter's sternest, all-tightening frosts. Of none but strong virtues is it the sum. Sickness or infirm

tween our dross and our worth-poor perishable shard and immortal fibre. Oh, the mystery, the mystery of that growth from the casting of the soul as a seed into

Kentucky, and hot personal disputes among the members-as is the eternal law. So that the church grew as grow infusorians and certain worms,-by fissure, by periodical splittings and breakings to pieces, each spontaneous division becoming a new organism. The first church, however, for all that it split off and cast off, seemed to lose nothing of its vitality or fighting qualities spiritual and physical (the strenuous life in those days!); and there came a time when it

eld any faith, to ride with him through the woods and preach to his brethren. This was the front of his offending. For since he seemed brother to men of every cre

Not far from the church doors the bright Elkhorn (now nearly dry) swept past in its stately shimmering flood. The rush of the w

he pulpit-for he was a deacon-and turned squarely at th

people through the bars of our dungeons. Mobs were collected outside to drown our voices; we preached the louder and some jeered, but some felt sorry and began to serve God. They burned matches and pods of red pepper to choke us; they hired strolls to beat drums that we might not be heard for the din. Some of us knew what it was to have live snakes thrown into our assemblages while at worship; or nests of live hornets. Or to have a crowd rush into the church with farming tools and whips

nd travelled a path paved with suffering and lined with death into this wilderness. For in

l things together. You recall how lately it was that when we met in the woods for worship,-havin

the memories hu

r in the living God-whom honestly I try to serve according to my erring light-I can no longer have a seat among you-not believing as you believe. But this is the same tyranny that you found unendurable in Spottsylvani

from Virginia, their Ark of the Covenant on the way, seized it, and faced them again. He strode toward t

ur opinions of Him nor mine nor any man's! I will cut off a parcel of my farm and make a perpetual deed of it in the courts, to be held in trust forever. And while the earth sta

with shaking arms an

passion, "you may be saved in your crooked, narrow way, if the mercy of

hildren before him, and drove them out of the church. He mounted his horse, lifted his wife to her seat behind him

65-one Saturday afternoon-a lad was cutting weeds in a wood

s feet protected from briers or from the bees scattered upon the wild white clover or from the terrible hidden thorns of the honey-locust. No socks. A

sh; great thistles, thousand-nettled; great ironweed, plumed with royal purple; now and then a straggling bramble prone with velvety berries-the outpost of a patch behind him; now and then-more

erever a woodland stood; and around every woodland dense cornfields; or, denser still, the leagues of swaying hemp. The smell of this now lay heavy on the air, seeming to be dragged hither and thither like a slow scum on the breeze, like a moss on a slug

hook-he was using that for lack of a scythe. Turning, he walked back to the edge of the brier thicket, sat down in the shade of a black walnut, threw off his tattered head-gear, and, reachin

rumors had reached him away off here at work on his father's farm, of a great university to be opened the following autumn at Lexington. The like of it with its many colleges Kentucky, the South

of the nation lately at strife-scene of their advancing and retreating armies-pit of a frenzied commonwealth-here was to arise this calm university, pledge of the new times,

ho is to be a soldier-one day he hears a distant bugle: at once HE knows. A second glimpses a bellying sail: straightway the ocean path beckons to

se sometimes than a starting-point for a young life; as a flowerpot might serve to sprout an oak, and as the oak would inevitably reach the hour when it would either die or burst out, root and branch, into the whole heavens and the earth; as the shell and yolk of an egg are the starting-point for the wing and eye of the eagle. One thing only he had not outgrown, in one thing only he was not unhappy: his religious

fitted his ear as the right sound, as the gladness of long awaited intelligence. It was bugle to the soldier, sail to the sailor, lamp of learning to the inn

of the woods that Saturday afternoon. Sitting low amid heat and weeds and thorns, he was already as one who

ible College, had been travelling over the state during the summer, pleading its cause before the

the Kentucky wilderness as a house of religious liberty; and the lad was a great-grandchild of the fo

I

ioneer had been cut to pieces for his many sons. With the next generation the law of partible inheritance had further subdivided each of these; so that in David's time a single small farm was all that had fallen to his father; and his father had never increased it. The church was situa

Protestant believers with their parti-colored guides had for over fifty years found the place a very convenien

l denominations in the neighborhood, eager to hear the new plea, the new pleader. David's father and mother, intense sectarians and dully pious souls, sat among them. He himself, on a rearmost bench, was wedged fast between t

recious accumulations of that preceding time had been scattered; books lost, apparatus ruined, the furniture of lecture rooms destroyed, one college building burned, another seized and held as a hospital by the federal government; and he concluded with painting for them a vision of the real university which was now to arise at last, oldest, best passion of the people, measure of the height and breadth of the better times: knowing no North, no South, no latitude, creed, bias, or political end. In speaking of i

preparation of young men for the Christian ministry, that they might go into all the world and preach the Gospel. One truth he bade them bear in mind: that this training was to be given without sectarian theology; that his brethren themselves represented a revolution among b

f the Bible especially, he asked, then,

in low, confidential tones certain subjects discussed less frankly with their guests. These related to the sermon of the morning, to the university, to what boys in the neighborhood would probably be ent

his hand, his eyes on the g

of!" he muttered. "It's of no use; he wouldn

a pause in which she seemed to be surveying the boy's wh

r, striking his knee with clenched fi

ne, having it out with himself, perhaps shrinking, most of all, from this first exposure to his parents. Such an

stood before them, pallid a

the

he voice, but what they had never

know, and I don't expect to go at once. But I shall begin my preparations, and as soon as it

ountenances an incredible change of expression, he nat

me comes; it would be useless. Try to learn while I am getting ready t

d out of the yard gate toward th

mother, unmindful of what she had just said, began to recall little incidents of the lad's life to show that this was what he was always meant to be. She loosened from her throat the breast-pin containing the hair of the three heads braided together, and drew her husband's attention to it with a smile. He, too, disregarding his disparagement of the few minutes previous, now began to admit with warmth how good a m

always needed an explanation. But no wonder; he was to be a minister. An

inking at the candle-light, his father began to talk to him as he had never believed po

got away as soon as he could into the sacred joy of the night Ah, those thrilling hours when the young disciple, having f

pened wide its harmonious doo

nd from other states. Some boys out of his own neighborhood had started that morning, old schoolfellows. He had gone to say good-by; had sat on the bed and watched them pack their fine new trunks-cramming these with fond maternal gifts and the

ore this day; and more than once he stopped short in his work (the cutting of briers along a fence), arrested by the temptation to throw down his hook and go. The sacred arguments were on his side. Without choice or search of his they clamored and battered at his

e world, sure he felt of this: that for young Elijahs at the university there were no ravens; no

ugh to find out what, on its first appearance, is so terrible a discovery to the young, straining against restraint: that just the lack of a coarse garment or two-of a little money for a little plain food-of a few c

hardening of all that is soft within, the softening of all that is hard: until out of the hardening and the softening results the better tempering of the soul's metal, and higher development of those two qualities which are best in man and best in his ideal of his Maker-strength and kindness, power and mercy. With an added reward also, if the struggle lead you

on to make fresh reading. He toiled direfully, economized direfully, to get to his college, but in this showed only the heroism too ordinary among Amer

once to take many of its places. But meantime the slaves had been set free: where before ordered, they must now be hired. A difficult agreement to effect at all times, because will and word and bond were of no account. Most difficult when the breaking of hemp was t

rtunity-and seized it. When the hemp-breaking season opened that winter, he made his

t, maybe, on the coals of a stump set on fire near his brake; to bale his hemp at nightfall and follow the slide or wagon to the barn; there to wait with the negroes till it was we

r slaves. The preexisting order had indeed rolled away like a scroll; and there was the strange fresh universal stir of humanity over the land like the stir of natu

cres for himself-sowed it, watched it, prayed for it; in summer cut it; with hired help stacked it in autumn; bro

; and when, autumn once more advanced with her days of shadow and thoughtfulness-two years having now pass

ing for the university-very solemn tender da

and what so incredibly befell him afterward, an attempt must be made to reveal somewhat of h

illiant one of the Christian era. He had few other books, none important; he knew nothing of modern theology or modern science. Thus he was brought wholly under the influence of that view

up, as the dwelling-place of Man. Land, ocean, mountain-range, desert, valley-these were designed alike for Man. The sun-it was for him; and the moon; and the stars, hung about the earth as its lights-guides to the mariner, reminders to the landsman of the Eye that never slumbered. The clouds-shade and shower-they were mercifully for Man. Nothing had meaning, possessed value, save as it derived meaning and value from him. The great laws of Nature-they, too, were ordered for Man's s

uct of the race, running with endless applications throughout the spheres of practical life and vibrating away to the extremities of the imagination. In the case of this poor, devout, high-minded Kentucky boy, at work on a farm in the

ays of his Bible and his Bible college. Let it be remembered that he had an eye which was not merely an opening and closing but a seeing eye-full of health and of enjoyment of the pageantry of things; and that behind this eye, looki

e, guardian in the darkness, watched the moon, pouring its searching beams upon every roof, around every entrance, on kennel and fold, sty and barn-with light not enough to awaken but enough to protect: how he worshipped toward that lamp tended by the Sleepless! There were summer noons when he would be lying under a solitary tree in a field-in the edge of its shade, resting; his face turned toward the sky. This would be one over-bending vault of serenest blue, save for a distant flight of snow-white clouds, making him

he knew not how; if too much rain fell, so that his grain rotted, this again was from some fault of his or for his good; or perhaps it was the evil work of the prince of the pow

rough the laws of nature to some benevolent purpose of the Ruler. And ever before his eyes also he kept that spotless Figure which once walked among men on earth-that Saviour of the w

octors of divinity. When the long-looked-for day arrived for him to throw his arms around his father and mother and bid them good-by, he

he majestical front of Morrison College. Browned by heat and wind, rain and sun; straight of spine, fine of nerve, tough of muscle. In one hand he carried an enormous, faded

l pacing slowly to and fro in the grass, holding text-books before their faces. Some were grouped at the bases of the big Doric columns, at work together. From behind the college on the right, two or three appeared running and disappeared through a basement entrance. Out of the grass somewhere came the sound o

all with his eyes satisfied by the sight of that venerable building which, morning and night, for over

ditty through his nose, like music on a comb; one, in the middle, had his arms thrown over the shoulders of the others, and was at intervals

ound, red, and soft, like the full moon; th

ring how it was already known that he was to be a preac

ht turned to the middle man and

just the way to t

nd repeated it gravely

just the way to t

left seized a p

ll just the way to

Take it! Those steps? Go straight up those steps. Those doors? Enter! Then, if you don't see the Bible College

n't mind: what hurt him was that his Bible

e said pleasan

e of the three called after

tertained such a respect for knowledge tha

-I have," he o

full moon disappeare

ter do that sometime. But don't speak of it to your professors,

late for the fi

d's lips but never uttered. The

kered man, wearing a paper collar without a cravat, and a shiny,

e simple kindness which comes from being a husband and f

the lad. "Are you on

ged man laug

of the s

ted a wound. "How many studen

a tho

side by side to

ired the lad's companion. The

ulate. How DO you matricula

L show you," said the

will," breathed t

lence his compan

ut, you see, I've had a hard time. I've preached for years. But I wasn't satisfied. I wanted to understand

ly soul, "that's what I've come for, too. I want to understand the Bible better-a

companion, as they passed under a low do

the lad to himself with solemn

to his classes; had gone down town to the little packed and crowded book-store and bought the needful student's supplies-so making the first draught on his money; been assigned to a poor room in the austere dormitory behind the colle

sity: some from farms, some by teaching distant country or mountain schools; some by the peddling of b

the bare dining room of that dormitory: the single long, rough table; the coarse, frugal food; the shadows of the evenin

d mother, this scene came last; and his final words to them were a

ed to delve at learning. His brain was like that of a healthy wild animal freshly captured from nature. And as such an animal learns to snap at flung bits of food, springing to meet them and si

n. It seemed a hardship to him to have to spend priceless money for a thing like apples, which had always been as cheap and plentiful as spring water. But those evening suppers in the dormitory with the disciples! Even when he was filled (which was not often) he was never comforted; and one day happening upon one of those pomological pyramids, he paused, yearned, and bought the apex. It was harder not to buy than to buy. After that he fell into this fruitful vice almost diurnally; and with mortifying worldl

rior city of the state. From childhood he had longed to visit it. The thronged streets, the curious stores, the splendid residences, the flashing equipages-what a new world it was to him! But

dsome boarding-house on a fashionable street. He thought he had never even dreamed of anything so fine as was this house-nor had he. As he sat in the rich parlors, waiting to learn whether his friends were at home,

elow was a garden full of old vines black with grapes and pear trees bent down with pears and beds bright with cool autumn flowers. (The lad made a note of how much money he would save on apples if he could only live in reach of those pear trees.) There was a big rumpled bed in the room; and stretched across this bed on his stomach lay a student studying and w

you find your way t

heavily over, sat up dejectedly, and o

atriculated

t like it in the nature of man. But during the years since he had seen them, old times were gone, old manners changed. And was it not in the hemp fields of the father of one of them that he had

rch recorded. There it all was!-all written down to hold good while the world lasted: that perpetual grant of part and parcel of his land, for the

they should be which becomes in time the best seasoned staff of age. He hunted out especially the Catholic Church. His great-grandfather had founded his as free for Catholics as Protestants, but he recalled the fact that no priest had ever preached there. He felt very curious to see a priest. A synagogue in the town he could not find. He was sorry. He had a great desire to lay eyes on a synagogue-temple of that

ng gas). It was under this chandelier that he himself soon found a seat. All the Bible students sat there who could get there, that being the choir of male voices; and before a month passed he had been taken into this choir: for a s

f the Catholics and Jews: it would scarcely be necessary to speak of the Mohammedans and such others. He was driven to do this, he declared, and was anxious to do it, as part of the work of his brethren all over t

aps his motive resembled that which prompts us to visit a battle-field and count the slain. Only, not a soul of those people seemed even to have been wounded. The

or himself and to learn more about those worldly churches which had departed from the faith

come his acquaintances, discussed with him the impropriety of these absences: they agreed that he would better stick to his own church. He gave reasons why he should follow up the pastor's demonstrations with actual visits to the others: he contended that the pastor established the fact of the errors; but that the best way to understand any error was to study the err

action of all present, had riddled his own church, every wo

k in its own time. The next thing the lad knew was that a professor requested him to remain after class one day; and speaking with grave kindness, advised him to go regularly to his

gone. He could not have said what this feeling was, did not himself know. Only, a slight film seemed to

o old farmers in the pew behind him talked in smothered tones of stock and crops, till it fairly made him homesick. The sermon of the priest, too, filled him with amazement. It weighed the claims of various Protestant sects to be reckoned as parts of the one true historic church of God. In passing, he barely referred to the most modern of these self-constituted Protestant bodies-David's own church-and dismissed it with one blast of scorn, which seemed to strike the lad's face like a hot wind: it left it burning. But to the Episcopal Church the priest dispensed the most vitriolic criticism. And that night, carried away by the old impul

ture. Had Kentucky been peopled by her same people several generations earlier, the land would have run red with the blood of religious persecutions, as never were England and Scotland at their worst. So that this lad, brought in from his solemn, cloistered fields and introduced to wrangling, sarcastic, envious creeds, had already begun to feel doubtful and distressed, not knowing what to believe nor whom to follow. He had commenced by bei

Not while men are fighting their wars of conscience do they hate most, but after they have fought; and Southern and Union now hated to the bottom and nowhere else as at their prayers. David found a Presbyterian Church on one street called "Southern" and one a few blocks away called "Northern": how those brethren dwelt toge

ures and Apostolic music. He saw young people haled before the pulpit as before a tribunal of exact statutes and expelled for moving their feet in certain ways. If in dancing they whirled like a top instead of b

n his room at the dormitory one Sunday afternoon heard a debate on whether a tuning

ou think?"

worth talking about

ciled to each other; t

shifted. Out on the farm alone with it for two years, reading it never with a critical but always with a worshipping mind, it had been to him simply the summons to a great and good life, earthly and immortal. As he sat in the lecture rooms, studying it book by book, paragraph by paragraph, writing chalk notes about it on the blackboard, hearing the students recite it as they recited arithmetic or rhetoric, a lit

e one afternoon some seven months

the left and proceeded until he stood opposite a large brick church. Passing along the outside of this, he descended a few steps, traversed an alley, knocked timidly at a door, and by a voice w

hrough a valley, drinking the same water, nipping the same grass, and finding it what they wanted. His professors had singled him out as a case needing peculiar guidance. Not in his decorum as a student: he was the

at that big shock-head, at those grave brows, into those eager, troubled eyes. His persistent demonstrations that he and his brethren alone were right and all other churches Scriptural

s, he addressed the logician

once built a church simply to God,

e off a

ue. "Voltaire built a church to God: 'Erexit deo Voltaire' Your

Voltaire. The information

mire Voltaire," he o

. Then he added pleasantly, for he had

et Voltaire

. Is he coming he

hell-or will be after the

in the study

aking composedly all at once. "You think

roking his beard with syllogistic self-respect. "My dea

ng to tell you. My

begin with mor

tian believers. It stands in our neighborhood. I have always gone there. I joined the church there. All the different denominations in our part of the count

ou and your grandfather and Voltai

e was not

the lad, pressing across the interruption,

h?" inquired the pastor sharply

a

now that it is th

e it to their satisfaction. They declare that if I become a preacher of what my church believes, I shall becom

as entered into a man, he can mak

keeps the other churches from se

ung man, that Satan d

." There was silence agai

out of my future. I come to you then. You are my pastor. Where is the truth-the reason-the pr

f these things. Here was a plain, ignorant country lad who had rejected his logic and who apparently had not tact enough at t

opy of the Ne

school-master of old times

hav

an rea

c

the faith of the original church-the ear

d

stles, THEIR faith and THEIR practice, with the tea

tried to

d the LAW. We have no creed but the creed of the Apostolic churches; no practi

e that young men were to be prepared to preach the simple Gospel

ne taught you se

ly. Inevitably-perhaps. That is m

el

you some

't seem to have any creed, but you DO seem to have a catechism! Well, o

n, the l

ity to declare that infant

ly came like a f

to the contrary vio

ey

ty to affirm that only imme

t

any other form viol

ey

y to celebrate the Lord's Su

t

a different custom vi

ey

to have no such officer in the

t

then, is a violation of

t

on, no matter how small or influenced by passion, an a

t

of its members, so it may turn them out into the world, ban

t

other system of church

ey

ianity to teach that fa

t

n is itself the great reason why we

ey

nity to turn people out o

t

n worship-is that a vi

t

e that the believer in it shall likewis

t

teach that everything contained in what

ey

his church, his pulpit of authority and his baptismal pool of regeneration directly over his head, all round him in the city the solid hundreds of his followers, he forgot himself as a man and a minister and remembered only that as a servant of the Most High he was being interrogated and dishonored. His soul shook and thundered within him to repel these attacks up

essing behind-a few issuing bees of an aroused swarm. But they ceased. The past

some

tor might well believe his questioner beaten, brought back to modesty and silence. To a deeper-seeing eye, however, the truth would have been plain that the lad was not seeing his pastor at all, b

hem! Out with them ALL! Make

he had laid on the floor, and sto

ch Apostolic Christianity," he

t, he wheeled

do believe. My God!" he cried again, burying his face in his hands. "I believe I am beginning to d

f two storms which were approaching: one appoint

to burst upon the University was like its other storms that had gon

aring the name of the commonwealth and opening at the close of the Civil War as a sign of the new peace of the new nation, having begun so fairly and risen in a few years to fourth or fifth place in patronage among all those in the land, was already entering

in the district and contribute them. The early Kentuckians, for their part, planned and sold out a lottery-to help along the incorruptible work. For such an institution Washington and Adams and Aaron Burr and Thomas Marshall and many another opened their purses. For it thousands and thousands of dollars were raised among friends scattered throughout the Atlantic states, these responding to a petition addressed to all religious sects, to all political parties. A library and philosophical apparatus were wagoned over the Alleghanies. A committee was sent to England to choose further equipments. When Kentucky came to have a legislature of its own, it decreed tha

the Kentuckians! Perhaps the s

to cease murdering. Standing there in the heart of the people's land, it must have grown to stand in the heart of their affections: and so standing, to stand for peace. For true learning al

I

ing David was vast

ounsellors and appointed guides, the inference is that succor for our peculiar need has there been sought in vain. This succor, if existent at all, will be found elsewhere in one of two places: either farther away from home in greater minds whose teaching has not yet reached us; or still neare

ork, but most were absent: some gone into the country to preach trial sermons to trying congregations; some down in the town; some at the college, practising hymns, or rehearsing for society exhibiti

rry whatever man imposes. Year after year this particular tree had remained patiently backed up behind the dormitory, for the bearing of garments to be dusted or dried. More than once during the winter, the lad had gazed out of hi

ruggling to clothe itself-its own life vestments. Its enforced and artificial function as a human clothes-horse had indeed nearly destroy

d which he, seeing it only in winter, had supposed could not bud again, he fell to marvelling how constant each separate thing in nature is to its own life and how sole is its obligation to live that life only. All that a locust had to do in the world was to be a locust; and be a locust i

nd having chosen, I can never know that I have chosen best. Often I do know that what I have selected I must discard. And yet no one choice can ever be replaced by its rejected fellow; the better chance lost once, is lost e

, without exception, begun to pin on the branches of his mind the many-shaped garments of their dogmas, until by this time he appeared to himself as completely draped as the little locust after a heavy dormitory washing. There was this terrible difference, however: that the garments hung on the tree were an

to try. Little by little they would as certainly kill him in growth and spirit as the rags had killed the locust in sap and bud. Whatever they might

o his? Yearning, sad, immeasurable filled him as he now recalled the simple faith of what had already seemed to him his childhood. Through the mist blinding his vision, through the doubts blinding his brain, still

t believe what I formerly believed, let me determine quickly what

ng, at one of the great partings of the ways: when the whole of Life's road can be walked in by us no longer; when we must elect the half

less than a year, his entire youth had been passed in the possession of what he esteemed true religion. Brought from the country into the town, where each of the many churches was proclaiming itself the sole incarnation of this and all others the embodi

ving Lord, saints, philosophers, scholars, priests, knights, statesmen-what a throng! What thoughts there born, prayers there ended, vows there broken, light there breaking, hearts there torn in t

a single dandelion had opened. It burned like a steadfast yellow lamp, low in the edge of the young grass. These two simple things-the locust leaves, touched by the sun, shaken by the south wind; the d

ost arousing sermon that the lad had heard: it had grown out of that intervi

was at once seized with a desire to read those books, thus exhibiting again the identical trait that had already caused him so much trouble. But this trait was perhaps himself-h

hers. They were the early works of the great Darwin, together with some of that related illustrious group of scientific investigators and thinkers, who, emerging like promontories, islands, entire new countries, above the level of the world's knowledge, sent their waves of influence rushing away to every shore. It was in those years that

the yellow of the dandelion, he recalled the names of those anathematized books, which were described as dealing so s

ing the dormitory and taking his way with a

with live stock, with wagons hauling cord-wood, oats, hay, and hemp. Once, at a crossing, David waited while a wagon loaded with soft, creamy, gray hemp c

country customers, the pastor of the church often dropped in and sat near the stove, discoursing, perhaps, to some of his elders, o

he felt that he ought instantly to tell the pastor this was the case. But the pastor had reseated himself and regripped his masterful monologue. The lad was more than embarrassed; he felt conscious of a new remorseful tenderness for this grim, righteous man, now that he had emancipated mind and conscience from his teaching: so true it ofte

nquired a Bible student who had joined h

lad, joyously, "and un

ached there, he altered his purpose and instead of mounting to his room, went away off to a quie

d of the highest order, or listened to it, as it delivered over to mankind the astounding

lad changed

k written on a slip of paper: an unheard-of book; to be ordered-perhaps from the Old World. For one great book inevitably leads to another. They have their parentage, kinship, generations. They are watch-towers in sight of each other on the same human high

most scholar of the world, kindling his own personal lamp at that central sunlike radiance, retired straightway into his laboratory of whatsoever kind and found it truly illuminated for the first time. His lamp seemed to be of two flames enwrapped as one; a baleful and a benign. Whenever it shone upon anything that was true, it made this stand out the more clear, valuable, resplenden

s those smothering strata of vegetable decay; give once more a chance for every root below to meet the sun above; for every seed above to reach the ground below; soon again the barren will be the fertile, the desert blossom as the rose. It is so with the human mind. It is ever putting forth a thousand things which are the expression of its life for a brief season. These myriads of things mat

. It brought on therefore a period of intellectual upheaval and of drift, such as was once passed through by the planet itself. What had long stood locked and immovable began to move; what had been high sank out of sight; what had been low was lifted. The mental hearing,

ith consternation: to them it seems that nothing will survive, that beyond these cataclysms there will

the New Doubt, and stood by all that was included under the old beliefs. The voices of these three literatures filled the world: they were the characteristic notes of that half-century, heard sounding to

r the truth. Here he began to listen to them, one after another: reading a little in science (he was not prepared fo

changes more significant: he ceased to attend the Bible students' prayer-meeting at the college or the prayer-meeting of the congregation in the town; he would not say grace at those evening suppers of the Disciples; he declined the Lord's Supper; his voice was not heard in the choir. He was, singularly enough,

I

any states. Some never to return, having passed from the life of a school into the school of life; so

was fragrant with flowers brought from commencement; when a south wind sent ripples over the campus grass; and outside the campus, across the street, the yards were glowing with ro

id sat at his table by his open wind

e a man in his place to work on the farm during the summer. He said nothing of his doubts and troubles, but gave as the reason of his remaining away what indeed the reason was: that he wished to study during the vacation; it was the best chance he had ever had, perhaps would ever have; and it was of the utmost importance to

aptain. But he must remain where he was; what he had to do must be done quickly-a great duty was involved. And they must write to him oftener because he would need their letters, their love, more than ever now. And so God keep them in health an

ilure as best he could. But compensation for all this were the new interests, hopes, ambitions, which centred in the life of his son. To see him a minister, a religious leader among men-that would be happiness enough for him. His family had always been a religious people. One thing he was already looking forward to: he wanted his son to preach his first sermon in the neighborhood church founded by the lad's great-grandfather-that would

immovable bef

was to spend the summer there, having no means of getting away with his wife and children. Though he sometimes went off himself, to hold meetings where he could and for what might be paid him; now preaching and baptizing in the mountains; now back again, laboring in his shirt-sleeves at the Pentateuch and the elementary structure of the English language. Such troubles as Dav

imes when the day's work was done and the sober, still twilights came on, this reverent soul, sitting with his family gathered about him near the threshold of his single homeless room,-his oldest boy st

ndation, ye sai

r faith in His

for a little more reading. More than once he waited, listening in the darkness, to the re

t, there most he read. He was not the only reader. He was one of a multitude which no man could know or number; for many read in secret. Ministers of the Gospel read in secret in their libraries, and locked the boo

heir wives and children. In the church, from highest ecclesiastic and layman, wherever in the professions a religious, sc

ardly he drew back from this step; yet take any other, throw up the whole matter,-that he could not do. Wi

s every day, required of him duties which he could not longer conscientiously discharge; they forced from him express

s came, as c

riday afternoon preceding. All day through the college corridors, or along the snow-paths leading to the town, there had been the glad noises of that wild riotous time: whistle and song and shout and hurrying feet, gripping hands, good wishes, and good-bys. One by one

, closed the door behind him, and sat down white and trembling in the nearest chair. About the middle of the room were seated the professors of the Bible

n the pastor's study; there had been other interviews-with the pastor, with the professors. They had done what they could to check him, to bring him back. They had long been counsellors; now in duty

sitting solitary there in the flesh, the imagination beheld a throng so countless as to have been summoned and controlled by the deep arraigning eye of Dante alone. Unawares, he stood at the head of an invisible host, which stretched backward through time till it could be traced no farther. Witnesses all to that sublime, indispensable part of man which is his Doubt-Doubt respecting his origin, his meaning, his Maker, and his destiny. That perpetual half-night of his planet-mind-that shadowed side of his orbit-life-forever attracted and held in place by the force of Deity, but destined never to receive its light. Yet from that chill, bleak side what things have not reached round and caught the sun!

and his pastor, it was one of the

emselves to be divinely appointed agents of the Judge of all the earth: His creatures chosen to punish His creatures. And so behind those professors, away back in history, were ranged Catholic popes and Protestant archbishops, and kings and queens, Protestant and Catholic, and great mediaeval jurists, and mailed knights and palm-bearing soldiers of the cross, and holy inquisito

s long pathway through bordering mysteries, man himself has been brought to see, time and again, that what was his doubt was his ignorance; what was his faith was his error; that things rejected have become believed,

ll, here was a duty to be done, an awful responsibility to be discharged in sorrow and with prayer; and grave good men

, for what he believed to be the truth, so far as man had learned it. The conference lasted through that short winter afternoon. In all that he said the lad showed tha

itself the solemn picture of a red winter sunset. The light entered the windows and fell on the lad's face. One last question had just been asked him by th

even belie

en; which was framed in us ere we were born, which comes fullest to life in us as life itself ebbs fastest. That question which exa

even belie

y, but remained looking over the still heads of his elders into that low red sunset sky. How often had he beheld it, when feeding the stock at frozen twilights. One vision rose before him now of his boyhood life at home-his hopes of the ministry

elieve

e what his young soul had been abl

was received into the congregation. He opened it at a place where it seemed used to lie apart. He held it before his face, but c

he best answer I can give jus

o he

eve; help Tho

e turned to another p

hrist and believe that Christ and God are one. I may not u

e not, I judge him not: for I came not to

hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have s

put it back into his pocke

aid, "that whether I believe in Him or do not believe i

cross the fields on his way home: it

e dormitory entrance, the same stage that had conveyed him thither. Throwing up his window he had looked out at the curling white breath of the horses a

ce he entered college-a small, cheap trunk, containing a few garments and the priceless books. These things the driver stored in the boot of the stage, bespattered with mud now frozen. Then, running back once more, the lad seized his coat and hat, cast one troubled gla

laces: of the bookstore where he had bought the masterpieces of his masters; of the little Italian apple-man-who would never again have so simple a customer for his slightly damaged fruit; of several tall, proud, well-frosted church spires now turning rosy in the sunrise; of a big, handsome house standin

ther apart as farm-houses set back from the highroad; the street had become a turnp

From this place a mud road wound across the country to his neighborhood; and at a point some two

e promise that he would return for them, the lad str

. The sky was overcrowded with low, ragged clouds, without discernible order or direction. Nowhere a yellow sunbeam glinting on any object, but vast jets of mi

nter woods and fields. Having been away from them for the first time a

erent comment of their sentinel, perched on the silver-gray twig of a sycamore. In another field the startled flutter of field larks from pale-yellow bushes of ground-apple. Some boys out rabbit-hunting in the holidays, with red cheeks and gay woollen comforters around their hot necks and

ding distinct amid the reigning stillness-felled for cord wood. And in one field-right there before him!-the c

s of it, how little! He could see all around it, except where the woods hid the division fence on one side. And the house, standing in the still air of the winter afternoon, with its rotting roof and low red chimneys partly obscured by scraggy cedars-how s

iscovered one of the sheep, the rest being on the farther side. The cows by and by filed slowly around from behind the barn and entered the doorless milking stalls. Suddenly his dog emerged from one of those stalls, trotting cautiously, the

them? How would they ever understand? If he could only say to his father: "I have sinned and I have broken your heart: but forgive me." But he could not say this: he did no

they had lived happily together! Their pride in him! their self-d

knit, she never mended. But his father would be mending-leather perhaps, and sewing, as he liked to sew, with hog bristles-the beeswax and the awls lying in the bottom of a chair drawn to his side. There would be no noises in the room otherwise: he could hear the stewing of

e house and his dog appeared in full view, looking up that way, motionless. Then h

called with a

had any articulate speech nor needed it. As soon as he was released, the dog, after several leaps toward his face, was

he door itself, he stopped, gazing foolishly at those fagots, at the little gray lichens on them: he could not knock, he c

y!" she cried.

itting and threw h

father, with a glad proud voic

ook at his face. "Ah! the poor fellow's sick! Come in, come in. And this is why we had n

l-have you been unwell

ad with ghastly pallor; he

one to the other with forlorn, remorseful affection. They had drawn a chair

health. Then the trouble was something else, more terrible. The mother took refuge in

matter? Wha

f horrible silen

How can I e

you ever

distrust and fear in those w

her hands, and bursting into tears. She ros

his father, also rising a

; but the look which returned suddenly

is father, dazed by th

as soon as possible-I suppo

-why do you

ds chok

! o

er, d

t is

t out of college and ex

fire-the clocks-the blows of an axe at the

R W

nd dead. It summed up a lifetime of failure and

R W

ble any longer. I do not

on't d

ssed quickly and sat beside her husband, holdi

rs of self-denial, the insult to all this poverty. For the t

lence, the fath

YOU COME B

ng across to his son, struck

NEW THERE WAS N

kick of

lapped low and straight toward the black wood beyond the southern horizon. No sunset radiance streamed across the wid

-ends. Several yards to windward, where the dust and refuse might not settle on it, lay the pile of gray-tailed hemp,-the coarsest of man's work, but finished as conscientiously as an art. From the warming depths of this, rose the head and neck of a common shepherd dog, his face turned uneasily but patiently toward the worker. Whatever that master sho

for her children of the soil among that people. Striding rapidly back to his brake, the clumsy five-slatted device of the pioneer Kentuckians, he raised the handle and threw the armful of stalks crosswise between the upper and the lower blades. Then swinging the handle high,

d for him to come out to work. Though by noon it had moderated, it was cold still; but out of the warmer currents of the upper atmosphere, which was now the noiseless theatre of great changes going forward unshar

not be allowed to get wet. The dog leaped out and stood to one side, welcoming the end of the afternoon labor and the idea of returning home. Not many minutes were required for the hasty baling, and David so

and far away through the twilight, lower down, he saw the flash of a candle already being carried about in the kitchen. At the opposite end of the house the glow of firelig

h dubious forethought of to-morrow's weather. The raindrops had ceased to fall, but he was too good a countryman not to foresee unsettled conditions. The dog standing before him and watching his face, uttered an uneasy whine as he noted that question addressed to the clouds: at intervals dur

e said, "are

mained gazing toward that great light-into the stillness of it-the loneliness-the eternal peace. On his rugged face an answering light was kindled, the glory of a spiritual passion, the flame of immortal things alive in his soul. More akin to him seemed that beacon fire of the sky-more nearly his real pathway home appeared that di

arms about the hemp, lifted it to his shoulder. "Come, Captain," he called to his comp

ndation, ye sai

r faith in His

l not hurt the

nsume and thy g

now he sang the melody only. A little later, as though he had no right to indulge himself even in this, it died on the air; and only the

ays bleated familiarly, but this evening their long, quavering, gray notes were more penetrating, more insistent than usual. These sensitive, gentle creatures, whose instincts represent the accumulating and inherited experiences of age upon age of direct contact with nature, run far ahead of us in our forecasting wisdom; and many a time they utter their disquietude a

oof and floor. Several bales of hemp were already piled against the logs on one side; and besides these, the room contained the harness, the cart and the wagon gear, the

David. They had begun to think of him and call for him long before he had quit work in the field. Now, although it was not much later than usual, the heavy cloud made it appear so; and all these creatures, like ourselves, are deceived by appearances and suffer gr

ul change of mind, and began to pour into his ears the eager, earnest, gratifying tale of its rights and its wrongs. What honest voices as compared with the hu

he elements had first rotted away the shingles at the points where the nails pinned them to the roof; and, thus loosened, the winds of many years had dislodged and scattered them. Through these holes, rain could penetrate to the stalls of the horses, so that often they would get up mired and stiff and shivering; but they never reproached him. On the northern side of the barn the weather-boarding was quite gone in

ning sky. Do what he could for their comfort, it must be insufficient in a rotting, windswept shelter like that. And here came the pinch of conscience, the wrench of remorse: the small sums of money which his father and mother had saved up at such a sacrifice on the farm,-

g the logs of the woodpile: good dry hickory for its ready blaze and rousing heat; to be mixed with seasoned oak, lest it burn out too quickly-an expensive wood; and perhaps also with some white ash from a tree he had felled in the autumn. Then sundry back-logs and knots of black walnut for the cabin of the two negro women (there being no sense of the value of this wood in the land in those day

oud and rapid the strokes resounded; for he went at it with a youthful will, and with hunger gnawing him; and though his arms were stiff and tired, the axe to him was always a plaything-a plaything that he loved. At las

itchen; and then some to the side porch of the house, where he arranged it carefully against the wall, close to the door, and conveniently for a hand reaching outward f

kes you

ute curiosity rather

than usual; it's the clouds. Here's some good kindling for

held out to her, and watched him as he knee

more of that green oak; your

e seasoned oak. Father'll have to take h

a moment o

ver," she s

e hand a partl

. I've nothing to do

short interv

going,

ng to do

ck into the warm room

rk; his room dark and damp, and filled with the smell of farm boots and working clothes left wet in the closets. Groping his

hat, around the brim of which still hung filaments of tow, in the folds of which lay white splinters of hemp stalk. There was the dust of field and barn on the edges of the thick hair about the ears; dust around the eyes and the nostrils.

I

side for the cheap black-cloth suit, which he had been used to wear on Sundays while he was a student. Grave, gentle, looking tired but looking happy, with

ght him to the dining room. This was situated between the kitchen and his father's and mother's bedroom. The door of each of th

negro women. When the coffee had been brought in, standing, she poured out a cup, sweetened, stirred, and tasted it, and putting the spoon into it, placed it before him. Then she resumed her seat (and the biscuit) and looked on, occasionally scrutinizing

ed breastpin, containing a plait of her own and her husband's hair, braided together; and through these there ran a silky strand cut from David's head when an infant, and long before the parent

of care; for her years had been singularly uneventful and-for her-happy. The markings were, perhaps, inherited from the generations of her weather-beaten, toiling, plain ancestors-with the added creases of her own personal habits. For she lived in her house with the regularity and contentment of an insect in a dead log. And few causes age the body faster than su

re and the despair of Science. This did not seem one of those instances-also a secret of the great Creatress-in which she produces upon the stem of a common ros

e comfort of the fireside in the adjoining room, in order that she might pour out for him the coffee that was unfit to be drunk, she would have charged herself with being an unfaithful, undu

ront of him had been set a pitcher of milk; this rattled, as he poured it, with its own bluish ice. On all that homely, neglected board one thing only put everything else to shame. A single candle, in a low, brass candlestick in the middle of the table, scarce threw enough lig

aught him that nothing better was to be expected from her. How far he had unconsciously grown callous to things as they were at home, there is no telling. Ordinarily we become in such matters what we must; but it is likewise true that the first and last proof of high personal superiority is the native, irrepressible power of the mind to create standards which rise above all experience and surroundings;

w rose from the inner void to disturb the apathetic surface; and she did not hesitate t

kes you

he feeding, and the wood to cut. And I had to

going t

y unsettled and threatening. That's one

too ravenous to talk; and his mother's

ed from the roost and frozen; it was cracked,

hens are beginning to lay: THEY kno

ll one of the old one

evil-mind

had begun to manifest itself in him since his return from college. She,

in the last hill o

e with u

ough to last, I

hips to the smoke-house: the

ll have every basketful o

m from the negroes:

You shall have them, if I ha

satisfied: his spi

hat piece of biscuit? If not, j

in her fingers: humor was denied he

most appetizing of the morsels that he himself had not d

g; and with quiet dignity he prec

perhaps,-the not wholly obliterated markings of a thoughtful and powerful breed of men. His appearance suggested that some explanation of David might be traceable in this quarter. For while we know nothing of these deep things, nor ever shall, in the sense that we can supply the proofs of what we conjecture; while Nature goes ever about her

offspring not with themselves but with earlier sires. They are like sluggish canals running between far-separated oceans-from the deeps of life to the deeps of life, allowing the freighted ships to pass. And no m

line. He could not have understood how it was possible for him to transmit to the boy a nature which he himself did not actively possess. And, therefore, instead of beholding here one of Nature's mysterious returns, after a long period of quiescence, to her su

But while they had mingled their toil, sweat, hopes, and disappointments, their minds had never met. The father had never felt at home with his son; David, without knowing why-and many a sorrowful hour it had cost him

ched the door made it clear that he dreaded the entrance of his s

he mantelpiece on the opposite side and looked silently across at the face of her husband. (She was his second wife. His offspring by his first wife had died young. David was the only child of mature parents.) She looked across a

er?" he asked affectionately, a mom

a good deal. I thin

sor

nk it's goi

ruck, year after year, never quite together and never far apart. When David was first with one and then with another, he was often obliged to answer the same questions twice-somet

de you s

xplaine

hemp did y

father. Fifty or six

shocks are ther

en. I wish there

avid's mother, smiling p

s father. "He has sold his crop of twenty-seven acre

enthusiasm, thinking regretfu

twenty-five dollars an acre in the spring," conti

wall for two or three sticks of the wood he had piled there. He

at time. For the negroes, recently emancipated, were wandering hither and thither over the farms, or flocking to the towns, unused to freedom, unused to the very wages they now demanded, and nearly everywhere seeking employment from any one in pre

cs and then fell into embarrassed silence. The father broke t

what it is now, I am

ietly. "I don't see that w

ake the

ed David, whe

to hire the hands to clear it, then I'll rent it. Bailey wants it. He offered twenty-five dollars an

nquired the son, looking like one daze

d his father, catching up the words excit

er? What is back of it?" cried Davi

that Bailey wants to buy the farm. I mean that he urges me to sell out for my own good! tells

e wife with dismal resignat

asked David, with

N

promi

N

the farm away from you. You and mother shall never

her sat looking at the son, making a greater effort to control his.

of his chair, and began to unbutton his waistcoat, and rub his arms. The mother rose, and going to the high-posted bed in a corner of the room, ar

e me a candl

hed till she drew out a candle. No good-night was spoken; and David, with a look at his father and mother which neither of them

I

bottom of the grate was all

ng it, his candle unlighted in

ing thoughts, rose resolutely. He took from a closet one of his most worthless coats, and rolling it into a wad, stopped the hole. Going back to the grate, he piled on the wood, watching the blaze as it rushed up over the logs, devouring the dried lichens on the bark; then sinking back to the bottom rounds, where it must slowly rise again, reducing the wood to ashes. Beside him as he sat in his rush-bottomed chair stood a small square table and on this

ours of the long winter evening r

it held. For here were David's books-the great grave books which had been the making of him, or the undoing of

rgotten; the evening with his father and mother, the unalterable emptiness of it, the unkindness, the threatening tragedy, forgotten. Not that desolate room with firelight and candle; not the poor farmhouse; not the meagre farm, nor the whole broad Kentucky plateau of fields and woods, heavy with winter wealth, heavy wit

At the end of this time other laws than those which the writer was tracing began to assert their supremacy over David-the laws of strength and health, warmth and weariness. Sleep was descendi

e-work, wood-cutting, filial duties, study, he was alone with the thought of her, the newest influence in his life, taking heed of her solely, hearkening only to his heart's need of her. In all his rude existence she was the only being he had ever known who seemed to him worthy of a place in the company of his great books. Had the summons come to pack his effects to-morrow and, saying good-by to everything els

his trial had taken place, and where he had learned that it was all over with him. He was passing along one of the narrow cross streets, when at a certain point his course was barred by a heap of fresh cedar boughs, just thrown out of a wagon. Some children were gay and bu

A swarm of snowflakes, scarce more than glittering crystals, danced merrily about her head and flecked her black fur on one shoulder. As David, not very mindful just then of whithe

The night comes wh

r to her. He instantly became a human brother, next of kin to her-that was all; s

he smile. When she saw his face, he saw the joy go down out of hers; and he felt, as he tur

mourning, binding her wreath, the jets of the chandelier streaming out on her snow-sprinkled shoulder, the children carolling among the fragrant cedar boughs scattered at her feet; she there, decora

ss the slats. He became aware that this sound had reached him at intervals several times already, but as often happens, h

s the shutter was forced wide open and David peered out, there swung heavily against his cheek what felt like an enormous brush of thorns, covered with ice. It was the end of one of the limbs of the cedar tree which stood several feet from his window on one side, and close to the wall of the house. Before David was born, it had been growi

this time; and its radiance pouring from above on the roof of riftless cloud, diffused enough light below to render large objects near at hand visible in bulk and outline. A row of old cedars stretched across the yard. Their shapes, so familiar to him, were a

e, on the suffering of all stock and of the wild creatures. The ravage had been more terrible in the forests, his father had thought, than what the cyclones cause when they rush upon the trees, heavy in their full

the weather should moderate before morning and melt the ice away as quickly as it had formed-as sometimes was the case. A good sign of this, he took it, was the ever rising wind: for a rising wind an

ept rattling down across his shutters, twisted, snapped off at the trunk, rolled over i

encement of one of those vast appalling catastrophes in Nature, for which man sees no reason and can detect the furtherance of no plan-law being turned w

windows there began to reach him a succession of fragile sounds; the snapping of rotten, weakest, most overburdened twigs. On fruit tree and forest tree these went down first-as is also the law of storm and trial of strength among men. The ground was now as one flooring of glass; and as some of these small branches dropped from the tree-tops, they were broken i

y reverberated to him a deep boom as of a cannon: one of the great trees-two-forked at the mighty summit and already burdened in each half by its tons of timber, split in twain at the fork as though cleft by lightning; and now only the poin

its smoke. His wood was soon burnt out: only red coals in the bottom of the grate then, and these fast whitening. More than once he strode acros

s clothes and getting into bed, rolled himself in the bedclot

down, the booming ceased; and David, turning wearily, over,

I

ooming in the woods now, nor rattling of his window-frames. No contemplative twitter of winter birds about the cedars

ess of his room-before hurrying to his window to look out. When he tried the sash, it could not be raised. He thrust his hand through the broken pane and tugged

hung in silver. Tree, bush, and shrub in the yard below, the rose clambering the pillars of the porch under his window, the scant ivy lower down on the house wall, the stiff little junipers, every blade of grass-all encased in silver. The ruined cedars trailed from sparlike tops their sweeping sails of incrusted emerald and silver. Along the eaves,

ruin of the woods whence the noises had reached him in the night? Looking out of

brute kind that turns the soil with the nose, such putting of all food whatsoever out of reach of mouth or hoof or snout-brings these creatures face to face with the possibility of starving: they know it and are silent with apprehension of their peril; know it perhaps by the survival of prehistoric memories reverberating as instinct still. And there is another possible prong of truth to this repression o

their faces were bunched expectantly toward the yard gate through which he must emerge. But they spoke not a word to one another or to him as they hurried slipping for

night," he vowed within himself. "I

ly does. So that his father, despite his outburst of anger the night previous, forgot this morning his wrongs and disappointments and relaxed his severity. During the meal he had much to recount of other sleets and their consequences. He inferred similar consequences now if snow should follow, or a cold snap set in: no work in the fields, therefore no hemp-b

now," said David's mothe

hesitatingly. It was the first time since his son's return

er shelter to-night I'll fix new stalls for the horses inside where we used to have the corn crib. The cows can go where the horses have be

inding shelter for the stock-fresh reminder of the creeping, spreading poverty. His f

feecup and biscuit at David, witho

u get th

hen, m

wanted one of the old hens for

hen for the cook; the cook wil

t know the

either

the blue

or color; I might c

rking; she's s

r life? It would be a terrible pri

get the vegetables out of the holes in

under all this ice if there were no one on the place

ld hire a man to help her, I wouldn't ask you. It's h

way will do her a world of

vocation or no provocation, to s

utions; bodily pains she had none. The one other thing that could have agitated her profoundly was the idea that she would be compelled to leave Kentucky. It was hard for her to move about her house, much less move to Missouri. Not in months perhaps did she even go upstairs to bestow care upon, the closets, the bed, the comforts of he

last of February, and not once during that long ordeal of daily living t

ny conversation as to these or as to the events of which they were the sad consummation, hi

ght previous, with that prediction of coming bankruptcy, the selling of the farm of his Kentucky ancestors, the removal to Missouri in his enfeebled health. Not until his return had David realized how literally his father had begun to build life anew on the hopes of him. And now feel with him in his disappointment as deeply as he might, sympathy he could not open

avid's ears loud and ceaselessly ever since: "WHY HAVE YOU COME BACK HERE?" And "I ALWAYS KNEW THERE WAS NOTHING IN YOU?" The first assured him of the new footing on

re of the stock, the wood cutting, everything that a man can be required to do on a farm in winter. Of bright days he broke hemp. Nothing had touched David so deeply as the discovery in one corner of the farm of that field of hemp: his father had secretly raised it to be a surprise to him, to help him

ress at their reduced circumstances caused by his expenses at college

s overspreading the simple footpath of the pious pilgrim mind, interfered with him no more. It was not now necessary for him to think or preach that any particular church with which he might identify himself was right, t

vements of his time, heard the deep roar of the spirit's ocean. Amid coarse, daily labor once more, amid the penury and discord in that ruined farmhouse, one true secret of happiness with David was the recolle

at Nature and man's place in it; and of this fundamental change in him, no better proof could be given tha

aves; or to carry the load of these leaves weighted with raindrops; or to bear the winter snows. Wise self-physicians of the forest! Removing a weak or useless limb, healing their own wounds and fractures! But to be buried unde

stilence and famine. There still may be in this neighborhood people who will derive some such lesson from this. My father may in his heart believe it a judgment sent on us and on our neighbors for my impiety. Have not cities been afflicted on account of the presence of one sinner? Thankful I am not to think in this way now of physical law-not so to misconceive man's place in Nature. I know

h, under the forest trees and fronting a country lane, stood the schoolhouse of the district. David looked anxiously, as he drew near, for any signs of injury that the storm might have done. One enormous tree-top had fallen on the fence. A limb had dropped sheer on the steps. The entire yard was little better t

rom youth to manhood; Gabriella had wrought the second. The former was a fragment of

with the faculty, and had wandered forlorn and dazed into the happy town, just commencing to celebrate its season of peace on earth and

tpetre off a large middling and rubbing it with red pepper. Suddenly the light of the small doorway failed; and turning he beheld his mother, and a few feet behind her-David said that he did not believe in miracles-but a few feet behind his mother there now stood a divine presence. Believe it or not, there she was, the miracle! All the bashfulness of his li

information did not help David at all. He knew who HE was. He took it for gra

iling. "I have been teaching here ever since you went a

pped forward into the doorway beside his mother and peered curiously in, looking up at the smoke-blackened joists, at the black cross sticks on which the links of saus

e middlings?" she inquired,

middlings! David's mind executed a rudimentary m

is the

ay you make hams,

is the

the way you m

is the

he was going to abide by it whi

d to perceive that t

"I have never seen bacon hanged-or hung. I suppos

front of him, whereupon it slipped out of his nerveless fingers and fel

I hel

etre both. The flame of it seemed to kindle some faint spark of spirit in him. He picked up the middling, and as

se," he said, "i

rble for lustre and whiteness (for he had his sleeves rolled far back)-as massive a pair of man'

efore. Your mother told me you were working here, and I asked her to let me come and look on. While I have been liv

f, that truth in others was bare to him. Those gentle, sympathetic eyes seemed to declare: "I know about your troubles. I am the person for whom, without knowing it, you ha

ather had left the table, dropping his knife a

by the old people. She had taken great interest in HIM, his mother said reproachfully, and the idea of his studying for the ministry. She had often vi

a week-Wednesdays and Saturdays invariably. On that last day at college, when he had spoken out for himself, he had ende

of the schoolhouse, which had a great deal to do with Gabriella's remaining in that neighborhood, he renewed his

le, he fell to work upon his plan o

ent on books describing the fauna of the earth and the distribution of species on its surface. Some had gone for treatises on animals under domestication, while his own animals under domestication were allowed to go poorly fed and worse housed. He had had the theory; they had had the practice. But they apprehended nothing of all this. How many tragedies of evil passio

ones. One of them, he fancied, had backed up to him, offering a ride. And the cows were friendly. They were the same; their calv

ved of this fine young wether in terms of sweetbreads, tallow for chapped noses, and a soft seat for the spine of her husband. Even the larded dame of the snow-white sucklings had remembered him well, and ha

notion that the entire earth was a planet of provisions for human consumption. It had never even occurred to him to think that the horses were made but to ride and to work. Cows of course gave milk for the sa

p them in captivity, break, train, use, devour them, occasionally exterminate them by benevolent assimilation. But thi

the wild bull, not the wild boar, not even an angry ram. The argument that Man's whole physical constitution-structure and function-shows that he was intended to live on beef and mutton, is no better than the argument that the tiger finds man perfectly adapted to his system a

he sun had gone down with dark curtains closing heavily over it. Later, the cloud had parted in the east, and the moon had arisen amid white fleeces and floated above banks of pearl. Shining upon all splendid things else,

e cows where the horses had been, and the sheep under the shed of the cows. (It is the horse that always gets th

," he said disapprovingly

idden the moon. But there was light enough for him to see his way acro

o its warmth again, tucking the counterpane under her chin and looking out from the pillows with eyes as fresh as flowers. Flowers in truth Gabriella's eyes were-the closing and disclosing blossoms of a sweet nature. Somehow they made you think of earliest spring, of young leaves, of the flutings of birds deep with

ong ago have failed, broken down. Behind her were generations of fathers and mothers who had laughed heartily all their days. The simple gift of wholesome laughte

holiday! Gabriella's spirits invariably rose in a storm; her darkest days were her brightest. The weather that tried her soul was the weather which was disagreeable, but not disagreeable enough to break up school. When s

a was glad of the chance to wait for the house-girl to come up and kindle her fire-grateful for the luxury of lying in bed on Friday morning, instead of getting up to a farmer's early breakfast, when sometimes there were candles

they were the coldest bricks that ever came from a fiery furnace. There was one thing in the room still colder: the little cherrywood washstand away over on the other side of the big room between the windows,-placed there at the greatest possible distance from the fire! Sometimes when she peeped down into her wash-pitcher of mornings,

a point at the middle of the structure and widening toward the four sides. Her feet were tucked away under a bank of plum color sprinkled with salt;

f oilcloth covering the washstand-lead! The closet in the wall containing her things-lead! The stair-steps outside-lead

ut into this neighborhood of plain farming people to teach a district school. Whenever she was awake early enough to see this curiosity, she never failed to renew her study of it with unflagging zest. It was such a mysterious, careful arrangement of knots, and pine cones, and the strangest-looking little black sticks wrapped with white packing thread, and the whole system of coils seemingly connected with a centra

. It had cost the war of the Union, to enable this African girl to cast away the cloth enveloping her head-that detested sign of her slavery-and to arrange her hair with ancestral taste, the true African beauty sense. As long as she had been a slave, she had been compelled by her Anglo-Saxon mistress to wear her head-handkerchief; as soon as she was set free, she, with all the

gold can only be explained through the geology of the earth. But they can also be writ so small that each volume may be dropped, like

hite house with green window-shutters, in Lexington-so big that she knew only the two or three rooms in one ell. Her mother wore mourning for her father, and was always drawing her to her bosom and leaving tears on her face or lilylike hands. One day-she could not remember very well-but the house ha

return. Upstairs, front and back, verandas again, balustraded so that little girls could not forget themselves and fall off. The pillars of these verandas at the rear of the house were connected by a network of wires, and trained up the pillars and branching over the wires w

e end of the lawn was the great entrance gate and the street of the town, Gabriella long knew this approach only by her drives with her grandmother. At the rear of the house was enough for her: a large yard, green grazing lots for the stable of horses, and bes

e gardener began to make his garden, with her grandmother sometimes standing over him, directing, Gabriella, taking her little chair to the apple tree,-with some pretended needle-work and a real switch,-would set Milly to work making hers. Nothing that they put

sharp rap or two around the bare legs (for that was expected), and tell her that if she didn't stop being so trifling, she would sell her South to the plantations. Whe

work any more to-day. And you can h

ss the mud on her c

o' Milly down South, i

u know she WILL do it sometimes. Our cotton's got to be pi

d sift down on Gabriella. Looking up at the marriage bell of blosso

ed, I am going to be married out of

Milly would say with a hoarse, carele

n, she could play there by the hour; but as soon as anything got ripe and delicious, the gate with the high latch was shut and she could neve

" pleadingly to the negro

own and hur

of my falling down when I

get l

so amusing as that, Sam! D

s bite

ME, Sam? They have never bee

ratch y

yself, Sam, when I'm

lars craw

not in the garden, Sam. S

d on-past the tem

me try just

, Miss Ga

er the snakes

ould

ee the grapes," sh

s of black and of purple Hamburgs, and of transl

e, Sam,

you

hey are good for me! One COULDN'T make me sick. I'm sick

edge to the country, as she drove out beside her grand

uld say, pointing with her small fo

is c

hat is

is w

hat is

Gabri

mother, wh

w what that is? That's hemp. Th

dmother,

they began to pass it, over into their faces would be wafted the clean, cooling, velvet-soft, balsam breath of the hemp. The carriage would stop, and Gabriella,

nd drive back. I ha

d the wives and children of some of them. All the bedrooms in the big house were filled, and Gabriella was nearly lost in the multitude, she being the only child of the only daugh

gain under the one broad Kentucky roof, stopping for the beautiful Lexington fair, then celebrated all over the land; and for the races-th

nce later proceeding to New Orleans, at that time the most brilliant of American capitals; and so Gabriella would see the Father of Wate

ovely manners, the selfishness and cruelty in its terrible, unconscious, and narrow way, the false ideals, the aristocratic virtues. Then it was that, overspreading land and people,

d in battle are the eyes: the soldier flees from what he sees before him. But so often in the world's fight we are defeated by what we look back upon; we are whipped in the end by the things we sa

arth by the Anglo-Saxon race. Say that a second is the idea that with his own property a man has a right to do as he pleases: another notion that has been warred over, world without end. Let these two ideas run in the blood and passions of the Southern people. Say that a third idea is that of national greatness (the preservation of the Union), another idol of this nation-building race. Say that the fourth idea is that of evolving humanity, or, at lea

slaves, left them dead on the fields of battle, or wrecked in health, hope, fortune. Gabriella, placed in a boarding-school in Lexington at that last hurried parting with her grandmother, stayed there a year. Then the funds left to her account in bank were gone; she went to live with near relatives; and during the remaining years of the war

t now own a human being except herself; could give orders to none but herself; could train for this work, whip up to that duty, only

eginning of the war, were penniless and unrecognized wards of the federal government at its close, their slaves having been made citizens and their plantations laid waste. On these unprepared and innocent girls thus fell most heavily not only the mistakes and misdeeds of their own fathers and mothers but the c

aking: sometimes becoming the mainstay of aged or infirm parents, the dependence of younger brothers

t was so unlike the first volume as to seem no continuation of her own life. It began one summer morning about two

m a train at the station. Passing quickly along until she reached a certain ill-smelling little stairway which opened on the foul sidewalk, she mounted it, knocked at a low black-painted plank door, and entered a room which was a curiosity shop. T

terward on their foreheads and stomachs as a plaster. They had never failed to praise it to his face-both for its power to draw an appetite and for its power to withdraw an ache. In turn he now praised them and asked the easiest questions. Gabriell

and set out to a remote neighborhood, where, after many failures otherwise, she had secured a position to teach a small country scho

dministered to Gabriella's body such a massage as is not now known to medical science. But even this was as nothing in comparison

athly faintness, Gabriella saw, standing beside a narrow, no-top buggy, a big, hearty, sunburned farmer with his waist-coa

in a voice that carried like a heavy, sweet-sounding be

me over to the stage window and p

Gabriella's. "I'm glad to see you; and the children have been crying for you. Now, if you will just let me help you to a seat in the buggy, and hold the lin

enths of the space. She was so close to him that it scared her-so close that when h

lained Gabriella to herself. "I'm in

m pasture, with long, ragged hoofs, burrs in mane and tail, and a wild desire to get home to her foal; so that she fled across the country-bridges, ditches, everything, frantic with maternal passion. On

to send, and how many children from each. They had all heard from the superintendent what a fi

which he called her by her first name, as though she were an old friend-a sort of old sw

with extended arm and whip (which latter he h

untry, Kentucky home, God bless it! The whiteness won Gabriella at once; and with the whiteness went other things just as good: the assurance everywhere of thrift, comfort. Not a weed in sight, but September bluegrass, deep flowing, or fres

her in. The supper table was already set in the middle of the room; and over in one corner was a big white bed-with a trundle bed (not visible) under it. Gabriella "took

ce-house, to sit on her as they sat on the stiles. The oldest produced their geographies and arithmetics and showed her how far they had gone. (They had gone a

affairs of this world, and it en

ece of the breast of the fried chicken, inquired in a voice

a, will you ha

thank

he farmer, dropping his head a little, helped the children, calling their names one by one, more softly and in a tone meant to restore cheerfulness if possible. The little wife at the h

ve sugar in

usly restored during the night-a voice that seemed to issue from a honey-comb and to dr

ll you have cream g

thank

s mother, openly announcing that he had won

ht like a little f

rywhere, and feeling itself deeply wounded becau

dinner, she would take it though it were the dessert. A moment later she did

ange my mind. It l

vain: she took everything. So that in a few days they recovered their faith in her and resumed their crawling. Gabriella had never herself realized how many different route

on the table and love them. Whatever was put on the table was good; and they were all lovable. They were one live, d

which still fell upon her from the skies of the past; but more than these as staff to her young hands, cup to her lips, lamp to her feet, oil to her daily bruises, rest to her weary pillow, was reliance on Higher Help. For the years-and they seemed to her many and wide-had already driven Gabriella, as they have driven countless others of her sex, out of the cold, windy world into the church: she had become a Protestant devotee. Had she been a Romanist, she would long ere this have been a nun. She was now fitted for any of those mercif

As she drove about the country, visiting with the farmer's wife, there had been pointed out a melancholy remnant of a farm, desperately resisting absorption by some one of three growing estates touching it on three sides. She had been taken to call on the father and m

mething worth hearing! Here is the hero in life! Among these easy-going p

ation; she went away during hers. The autumn following he was back in college; she at her school. Then the Christmas holidays and his astounding, terrible home-comin

they had been seeing ea

s of religious doubt. So that both were early vestiges of the same immeasurable race evolution, proceeding along converging lines. She, living on the artificial summits of a decaying social order, had farthest to fall, in its collapse, ere she reached the natural earth; he, toiling at the bottom, had farthest to rise before he could look out upon the plains of widening modern thought and man's evolving destiny. Through

V

oo busy with the primary joys of life to notice the secondary resources of literature. She had no pleasant sewing. To escape the noise of the pent-up children, she must restrict herself to that part of the house which comprised her room. A walk out of door

lightest only after we have heaped them with the best we have to give. Gabriella filled the hour-baskets this day with thoughts of David,

een to her only a Prodigal who had squandered his substance, tried to feed his soul on the swinish husks of Doubt, and returning to his father's house unrepentant, had been adm

s her duty to succor if she could. But a woman's nursing of a man's wound-how often it becomes the nursing of the wounded! Moreover, Gabriella had now long been aware of what she had become to her prodigal, her Samaritan; she saw the truth and watched it growing from day t

tedium of the day instantly vanished. Happiness rose in her like a clear fountai

head, which overawed her a little always. Large as was the mould in which nature had cast his body, this seemed to her dwarfed by the inner largenes

ill at ease; only on general subjects did she ever see him master of his resources. Gabriella had fallen into the habit of looking

s of the wide deep fire-place: a grate

e is safe," he a

day but had no one to send! How d

ill have to be cleared

gratefully. "You a

, with a great forward

mark: it suggested his being kind because she had been kind;

only not killed!" she exclaime

e apple

they are mine, I take possession." After a moment she added: "They bring back t

were a lit

es

re a little girl," said David, in a

ible this would have been: the

ore and more involved in some inward strug

he first time

ot answer

ughter. Gabriella, when she was merry, made one, t

slowly. His eyes grew

time I ever saw YO

ake his head, and

before that, an

incredulous and

the manner of one who sets out to

ps of a church the Friday evening be

ust been thrown out on the sidewalk, the sexton was carrying it into the ch

every wor

to pass. You smiled at his difficulty. Not unk

ieved I had seen you before. But it was only for a mom

ed grave: his face that night

ssors and pastor for the last time; it ended me as a Bible student. I had

a turn across the room. Then he f

ng the faces of my professors-my judges-last, as the end of my

ever been declared or assumed in any other way. But her stripped and beaten young Samaritan was no labyrinthine courtier, bescented and bedraped and bedyed with wo

d looked across with a mixture

to you about my exp

nful pause

ed your silence. Perhaps you do not

w why I

d not

the only thing in the worl

ld you ha

separated me from my friends among the Bible students. It separated me from my professors,

all the time? Has it

toleration! We tolerate so much in people who are merely acquaintances-people that we do not care particularly for and that we are never to

her eyes. This was another one of the Prodigal

eve, it might be the end of me. And when you learned my feelings toward what YOU be

m her, and rising, walked s

een turned away. The only original ground of her interest in him, therefore, still remained a background, obscure and unexplored. She regretted this for many reasons. Her belief was that he was merely passing through a phase of religious life not uncommon with those who were born to go far in mental travels before they settled in their Holy Land. She believed it would be over the sooner if he had th

at you would talk with me about these things." And then to div

fs, I have no fear; they need not be

ed hesitatingly. "I do not wish to be

e ever thought of for a moment: or of any oth

pprehend God through his logic and psychology; a woman understands Him better through emotions and deeds. It is the men who are concerned about the cubits, the cedar wood, the Urim and Thummim of the Tabernacle; woman walks straight into the Holy of Holies. Men constructed the Cross; women wept for the Crucified. It was a man-a Jew defending

thout either believing or disbelievin

la, simply. "And so is any other church." That was all the logic she had

EM ALL?" he asked with

ve in th

ed David, reverently and

religion on account of your difficulties with theology

not. But there is more than theology in it. You do not know what I

erly. "I suppose now I shall hear

n her chair like one who

e arranged it? I shall have to begin far away and come

g; I have been wai

a few moments

the earth was the centre of this universe, the most important world in it, on account of Man. That is what the ancient Hebrews thought. In this room float millions of dust-particles too smal

see how she r

ook," she said approvingly.

garding it. I used to think the earth the most important part of the solar system, on account of Man. So the earliest natural

ted her

ook," she said simply. "S

s to how it has been evolved into its present stage of existence through other stages requiring unknown millions an

was si

e next book

s one might study the skin of an apple as large as the globe. In the course of an almost infinite time, as we measure things, it discovers the appearance of Life on t

he made none, and he continued, his i

forms of Life that have grown on the earth's crust, and gives the best o

ly gesture of displea

It describes how they have grown and flourished, how some have passed as absolutely away as the civilizations that produced them. It teaches that those religions were as natural a part of those civilizations as their civil laws, their games, their wars, their philosophy; that the religious books of these races, which they themselves often thought inspired revelations, were no more inspired and no more revelations than their secular books; that Buddha's faith or Brahma's were no more direct from God than Buddhistic or Brahman temples were from God; tha

ing forward in her chair, "that is

n-the driving force of Law has made it. Our earth-Law has shaped that; brought Life out of it; evolved Life on it from the lowest to the highest; lifted primeval Man to modern Man; out of barbarism developed civilization; out of prehistoric religions, historic religions. And this on

of all men. But if you ask whether I believe what the Hebrews wrote of God, or what any other age or people thought of God, I say 'No.' I believe what the best thought of

many has the Christian religion itself sprouted, nourished, and trampled down as dead weeds! What do we think now of the Christian theology of the tenth century? of the twelfth? of the fifteenth? In the nineteenth century alone, how many systems of theology have there been? In the Protestantism of the United States, how many are there to-day? Think of the names they bear-older and newer! According to founders, and places, and sources, and contents, and methods: Arminian-Augustinian-Calvinistic-Lutheran- Gallican-Genevan-Mercersburg-New England-Oxford-national- revealed-Catholic-evangelical-fundamental-historical- homiletical-moral-mystical-pastoral-practical-dogmatic- exegetical-polemic-rational-systematic. That sounds a little like Polonius," said David, stopping suddenly, "but there is no humor in it! One great lesson in the history of them all is not to be neglected: that through them also runs the gre

e off from it as no longer good. Its charity grows, its justice grows. All the nobler, finer elements of its spirit come forth more and more-a continuous advance along the paths of Law. And the better the world, the larger its knowledge, the easier its faith in Him who made it and who

conceiving himself as on trial a second time. He had in him the stuff of

his faith was to her but in what HE was to her, that she did not trust herself to speak. He was not on trial

ession which was obeying with some severity the nee

l!" he cried piteo

n the dark street. It had stopped her singing then; it drew an immediate response from her now. She cro

of the world, and Christ merely one of its religious teachers. I wish with all my strength you believed as you once believed, that the Bible is a direct Revelation from God, making known to us, beyond all doubt, the Resurrection of the dead, th

ok his

deceived

, and these questions never trouble us; but is it not a common occurrence th

ered my question," he said determinedly. "Does this make

hat book on the reli

, "you have n

ou that I am n

woman is never a judge. She is

y-"Mercy or Vengeance? And have you forgotte

fully, with immeasurable joy, and

d in the hall. And wrap up warmly! That is more i

emed to blot out the troublous past, to be the beginni

he said threateningly. "I came to

wer a remark like t

n for a slight pleasure, and it is

m at the same time: he received shocks of different kinds and

th science, but I am n

women

aid; "they are what a man thinks abou

V

at the storm had finished its work and gone and that the weather had settled stinging cold. The heavens were hyacinth, the ground white w

he beauty, the purity, the breadth, the clearnes

hine sky, the flashing lamp, the whit

ocks were buried. He had hard kicking to do before he reached the rich brown fragrant stalks. Afterwards he made paths through the snow about the house for his mother; to the dairy, to the hen-house. In the wooden

is axe on his shoulder, the water on it having instantly frozen, he saw riding away across the stable lot, the one of th

ontracts, were now being bought out, forced out, by debt or mortgage, and were seeking new homes where lay cheaper lands and escape from the suffering of living on, ruined, amid old prosperous acquaintances. It was a profound historic disturba

r his shoulder again and took a

again," he said, "nor shall he use to further his p

mprovements allowed to wait, in order that all possible revenues might be collected for him; even these caused them less acute distress than the fear that as a consequence they should now be forced so late in life to make that mournful

the reason of this last visit, and to have out the long-awaited talk with his fa

t to her now but a few hours off. "To-morrow! Day after to-morrow!

o each other. Some from the trees about the yard; some from the thickets, fences, and fields farther away. As he threw open the barn doors, a few more, shyer still,

the littler ones to this granary, the larger following to prey on them. To-night there would be owls and in the darkness tragedies. In the morning, perhaps, he would f

the clear crimson sky; every twig around him silver filigree; the whole tree glittering with a million gems of rose and white, gold and green; and wherever a fork, there a hanging of snow. The bird's crest was shot up. He had come forth to look a

ime and again during the meal the impulse well-nigh overcame him to speak to his father then and there; but he knew it would be a cruel, angry scene; and each time the fa

s forgotten; he was on his way t

V

rd works). These, when the earlier years of adversity came on, had been her second refuge from the world: religion was the first. Now they were the means by which she returned to the world in imagination. The failure to gather together so durable a company of friends leaves every mind the more destitute-especially a woman's, which has greater need to live upon ideals, and cann

icer. In a few hours he had mimicked with wild and savage fancy the structures which human art can scarce rear, stone by stone, in an age: white bastions curved with projected roof r

er beheld: a field of hemp shocks looking like a winter camp, dazzlingly white. The scene br

OF TH

the days when t

lds with rippli

chards pipes th

and like this

maid at twilig

ove i

er days and god

lds full-headed

oms what

and like this

maid as one

ve is

autumn days o

lds the ripened

ods ar

nd like this f

weeping by the

ve cut

homably dark, w

sun from out

ffled

d like this for

ed fields Love's S

empty

cience, and begun battling with him through the evidences of Christianity, that she might save his soul. But this was a Southern girl of strong, warm, deep nature, who felt David's life in its simple entirety, and had no thought of rejecting the whole on account of some peculiarity in one of its parts; the white flock was more to her than

k out of the soil. Had she been familiar with the Greek idea, she might have called him a Kentucky autochthon. It was the first time also that she had ever encountered in a Kentuckian the type of student mind-that f

hen the clouds marshalled across his clear vision from the minds of others had been withdrawn, he would once more behold the Sun of Righteousness as she did. Gabriella as by intuition reasoned that a good life most often leads to a belief in the Divine

nces of false teachers and guided back to the only Great One. But when a girl, with all the feelings which belong to her at that hour, see

and stable lots all mire, all ugly things. This ennoblement of eternal objects reacted with comic effect on the interior of the house itself; outside it was a ma

furniture-cold at all temperatures of the room and slippery in every position of the body. The little marble-top table on which rested a glass case holding a stuffed blue jay clutching a varnished limb: tail and eyes stretched beyond the reach of muscles. Near the door an enormous shell which, on summer days, the cook

d confront them with equanimity-that company of the pallid, the desperately sick, the unaccountably uncomfortable. All looked, not as though there had been a death in the family, but a death

the other with unconscious fear. Within a night and a day each had drawn nearer to the other; and each secretly inqu

the ear of night such roundelays as had never been conceived of by that disciplined singer. Had he been a master violinist, he would have been unable to play a note from a wild desire to flourish the bow. He had long stood rooted passively in the soil of being like a century plant when it is merely keeping itself in existence. But latterly, feeling in advance the approach of the Grea

s about half spent, "there was one subject I did not speak to yo

the school!" said Gabriella, laughing-Gabriella

gave him an eye which has adapted itself to get pleasure out of the greenness. The beauty of spring would have been the same, year after year, century after century, had he never existed. And the blue of the sky-I used to think it was hung about the earth for his sake; and the colors of the clouds, the great sunsets. But the blueness of the sky is nothing but the dust of the planet floating deep around

er own faith as

were given him that he might be adapted to bear Man's burdens; they were given him that he might bear his own burdens. Horses were not made for cavalry. And a camel-I nev

again. I prefer horses and carriages-though I suppose you would say that only t

horses on railroads now; we did use them at first in Kentucky. Sometime you may

"I should prefer a horse th

are not for a man. If I were a novelist, I'd never write stories about a grizzly bear, or a dog, or a red bird. If I were a sculptor, I'd not carve a lynx or a lion. If I were a painter, I'd never paint s

?" said Gabriella,

d David solemn

to the uttermost

ly one thing ever

stand pe

fter a moment or two of silence he went on, st

ly thing in the world that was ever made for him than anything else!

ndkerchief quickly to he

d in the manner of a soliloquy, "that never occur elsewhere. A man, for instance, is the only anima

be depended on," said Gabriel

mice their wives feed them on. It may show what you say in the na

depe

what women will endure when they are imposed upon. As a relic of barbarism-when it happens in our country-why not regard it as derived from the North American Indians? The chiefs loun

versation into other channels,

cross at her, with a shake of his head, as though she did not appreciate

resigning herself to the pe

hing else belonged to them, so did woman: therefore when

rranged at present,

n when he asks for her," and David tu

was not damaged by the storm,"

a revery but p

raction of a woman to every man. Still the men cannot take care of them. But

tice the hands i

ortrait without notici

ess without her so much more deeply. They ought to be very good and true

is words and sto

t even looking at Gabriella, and w

ow careless he was about making himself snug for his benumbing walk.

d a cold last night, and it is worse to

attempt. He w

wed him by using her fingers

before her with a mingling of emba

is throat, he lifting his head to receive it as it came. Then David with his eyes on the ceiling felt his coat collar turned up

, with a quick gesture of dismiss

ut of the distance and pushed him forward. But of them all there was none so helpless with

he candles. He bent down quickly and blew them

I

e, is to make us turn toward the past with a wish to straighten out its difficulties, heal its breaches, forgive its wrongs. We think m

om since the silent breakfast Two or three books chosen carelessly out of the trunk lay on his table before the fire: interest had gone out of them this day. With his face

ory; and it was in the days before the times of his trouble. The students were getting ready for church, with freshly shaved faces, boots well blacked, best suits on, not always good ones. He could hear their talk in the rooms around his, hear fragments of hymns, the opening and shutting of doors along th

hich then released the pinions of his love and faith as the air releases the wings of a bird. The hymn ceased; he could see the pastor rise from behind the pulpit, advance, and with a gesture gather that sea of heads to prayer. He could follow the s

the Eternal Strength which was behind their weakness, and closest to each other as student after student lifted a faltering, stumbling petition for a common blessing on their work. The Immortal seemed to be in that bare room, filling their hearts

tle while, after the studies of the night were over, talking to his room-mate? Who knelt down across the room at his prayers when the lights were put ou

green wild country again, a forest like his pioneer ancestor's. Regularly here he observed at out-of-door work the professor of Physical Science, who also was pressing his investigations forward during the leisure of those summer months. An authority from the north, from a New England university, who had resigned his chair to come to Kentucky, attracted by the fair prospects of the ne

to New England himself the next year; and he m

frigid professor and greeted with a man's grasp and a look of fresh beautiful affection. His apostasy from dogmatism had made him a fri

such simple steadfast faith: she cast the music of these upon the chords of his own soul. To the influence of her religion she was now adding the influence of her love; it filled him, subdued, overwhelmed him. And this morning, also out of his own happiness he remembered with most poignant suffering the un

hen all work is done, and the feeling of Sunday rest takes possession of our minds. The winter sunshine on the fields seems full of rest; the br

ding, as was his Sunday wont, the Bible. He had once written to David that his had always been a religious people; it was true. A grave, stern man-sternest, gravest on Sunday. When it was not possible to go to

end of the page or chapter. But his father read

the

wly toward him in silent res

be better to come do

e page, the lips res

y to inter

pired words, from left to righ

to talk about it all. You have declined, and meantime I have simply been at work, as I used to be. But this must not be put off longer for several reason

t on the page. The lips we

the side of his chair, and was standing in the middle of the room with his eyes on the door through which David had passed. He pointed to his son to be seated, and resumed his chair. He drew his penknife from his pocket and slowly tr

you! Know it as well as you do; bu

Christianity! YOU no

oice summed up again the

there was another than

derive it from myself and am not to blame. I have only made an earnest and an honest use of what mind was given me. But I have not re

eved it. Now these men tell you not to believe it and you believe t

standing across the fields yonder, is the church he himself built to freedom of opinion in religious matters? I grew up, not under the shadow of that church, for it casts none, but in the light of it. I have seen many churches wors

ain for the older one to reply. But his

rs. I do ask for your toleration, your charity. Everything else between us will be easy, if you can see that I have done only what I could. The faith of the world grows, changes. Sons cannot always agree with their fathers; otherwise the world would stand still. You do not

: it was too late in life for that. Neither could he defend his own views without attacking his father's: that also would ha

the old Bible that no

ey are not: I prefer to believe the Almighty. Pe

to speak with you, father," he said, changing the subject. "I recall one thing you said to

roof and in this neighborhood. Life was hard enough for your mother and me before. But we did f

the forge, but now cold and unchangeably shaped to its heavy purpo

work? For my years of labor did I receive more than a bare living? Did you ever know a slave as faithful? Were you ever

for us did your mother and I work for y

ept me helpless for so many years afterwards? If my being born was a fault, whose was it? Is the depende

uff down from under his coat-sleeve, shook it in his son's eyes-poverty. He went to one of the rotting doors and jerking it open without turning the knob, rattled it on its loose hinges-poverty. He turned to the

ith your advantages, you who are se

him in an agony of

h influenced by my mother's fears. This is Bailey's doing. It is ab

to see him or

" and David, to save other hard words that w

step mounting the stair. Not often in a year did he have the chance to recognize that step. His mot

Then she stood looking a little fearfully at her son, who had not moved. Ah, that is woman's way! She incites men to a difficulty, and then appears

ly. His mother suddenly turned, feeling a cold draft on her back, a

the store-room: why don't yo

She went over to his bed and beat up the

ed confidently; "the negroes are worthless. Good night," she

mother! mother!" he cried, and then he checked

ood night! Be careful, I'll bring the ca

table. He buried his head on his arms a moment, then, starting

k cry of an animal seized and being killed? The fright, the pain, the despair: whoso

hort rushes to and fro, round and round; then violent leapings against the door, the troughs, and sides of the stable; then m

ost the first sounds had reached his ear and sunk down into his brain: he stirred slightly. As the tumult grew louder, he tossed his head from side to side uneasily, and muttered a question in his broken dreams. And now the barn was in an uproar; and the dog, chained at his kennel behind the house, was howling, roaring to get loose. Woul

claimed, grin

t seemed he would never find them. As he dressed, he mutter

his bare, hot throat. Another moment and he could hear the dogs fighting. When he reached the door of the shed and threw it open, the flock of sheep bounded out past him in a wild rush for the open. He stepped inside, searching around with his foot as he groped.

own at it and kicked

e? Or the storm which deprived these prowlers of nearer food and started them on a far hunt, desperate with hunger? Or man who took you from wild Nature and made you more defenceless under his keeping? Or Nature herself who edged the tooth and the mind of the dog-wolf in the beginning that h

tood before David, awaiting orders. David seized the sheep by the feet and dragged it into the saddle-house; sent the dog to watch the rest of the flock; and ran back to the house, draw

in for it,

t masters and of Gabriella; and he

X

e black that thickened about them till they were effaced. Gabriella thought of them as still perfectly white out there in the darkness. Three evenings with her face against the pane she had watched for a familiar figure to stalk

d he had not come, Gabriella sat long before her fire with a new wound-she who had felt so many. By the third day she had reviewed all that she had ever heard of him or known of him: gathered it all afresh as a beautiful thing for receiving him

and began to w

ething is wrong. My heart is not mistaken. Oh, if anything were to happen to HIM!

noise of heavy boots-a tapping of the toes against the pillars, to knock off the snow, and then the slow creaking of soles ac

f the room, her arms dropped at h

rd running upstairs. Gabriella

he matter?

h a message for her. The

wn into the hall. "What i

and wanted her to come at once.

ill?" He had had a ba

as he sent fo

s to take her back first

at o

ark, he urged

tor! Where have yo

negro insisted that it would be b

"and don't keep me waiting.

d her to dismount

tones. It raised its head halfway and looked at her through the narrow slits of its yellow eyes and curled the tip of its tail-the cat which is never inconvenienced, which shares all comforts and no troubles. She sat down in a chair, overcome with

s father. Both were looking at David. He lay in the middle of the bed, his eyes fixed restlessly on the door. As soon as he saw h

he locked his

ong!" he said, drawin

send for me? I have

he pillows; then with a slight gestu

u leave

her hands and pressed it against his

ith a red spot, his restlessness, his hand burning. She could feel the big ve

er on the pillows and turned on

searching her face, "I've got

romi

monia, or I have it now.

answere

hing to throw me into a sweat-th

, he took her hand again and pressed i

long, hard chill. My head feels like it would burst, and there are other symptoms. This lung! It's pneumonia. One of the Bible

he murmured, "

ask is, Will y

could take

ng on. I have sent for the doctor. But there is a better one in Lexington. You try to get him to come. I know that he goes wherever he is called and stays till the danger

at can be done shall be done. Now oughtn't you to be quie

while I can, and am sure.

A

ot, have no fear about the future; I have no

ed hers on the bed. The flood of tears would come. He tu

est of your life you will be happy. I hop

w his arms around her again. "Oh, Gabriella!"

ee my father and mother. And tell them I left word that perhaps they had never quite un

a's, "this is my wife, as I hope she will be, and your daughter; and

ing; for though mothers may not greatly have loved their grown sons, when the big men lie stricken and the mothers once more take their hands to wash them, bathe their faces with a cloth, put

make and of who would write it; of his own harshness; and also not free from the awful dread that this was the summons to his son to enter Eternity with his soul unprepared. At the foot of

one to pour out in secret the prayer of her church, and of her o

he stable the cries of hungry, neglected animals; t

X

long first, but in time the path will come. It commences at the home gate or bars and reaches forward by degrees; it commences at the opposite goal and lengthens backward thence: some day

woods-gate, had begun to make one for herself. She followed her will from day to day; now led in this direction by some better vista; now drawn aside toward a group of finer trees; or seeing, farther on, some little nooklike place. In time, she had out of short disjointed threads sown a continuous path; it was made up of h

eaving the dripping boughs and bark. In time these were warmed and dried by sun and wind. New edges of greenness appeared running along the path. The tree-tops above were tossing and roaring in the

eared at last walking along this path, stepping over or passing around the fallen boughs. She was pale and thin, but the sweet war

mbling the children. They were gone; and she stood on the steps of the school-house, facing toward a gray field on a d

se wings of the sky, those breasts of earth. She reached the spot she was seeking, and paused. There it was-the whole pitiful scene! His hemp brake; the charred rind of a stump wher

e the window of his room at which she had sat how many days, gazing out toward this field! O

the hand of hemp he last had handled-half broken out, not yet ready for strong use and good service. At that moment one scene rose before her memory: a day at Bethlehem nigh Jerusalem; a young Hebrew

were as Martha's. She knelt down and laid her cheek agains

een here, hadst Thou not heard my p

X

iness. Autumn-the hours of falling and of departing; spring-season of rise and of return. The rise of sap from root to summit; the rise of plant from soil to sun; the rise of bud f

es be fatally surprised by the great February frost: their bark-cradled bud-infants had only been wrapped away the more warmly till danger was over. For

down into a wide green valley winding away toward the forest below. Through this valley a stream of white spring water, drunk by the stock, ran within banks of mint and over a bed of rocks and moss. On the hillside opposite was a field of

valley toward the woods; feel as an elixir about her the air, sweet from the trees, sweet with earth odors, sweet with all the lingering history of the day. Nearer, ever nearer would swing the stars into her view. The moon, late a bow of thinnest, mi

re as if stained by all the mixed petals of the boughs.) The sun was going down beyond the low hills

handiwork into her lap, and with

ile autocrat Gabriella was being instructed in this way and in that way by the powerful, strong-minded, efficient grandmother as a tender old lioness might train a cub for the mastering of its dangerous world. She recalled these twilight drives when the fields along the turnpikes were turning green with the young grain; the homeward return through the lamp-lit town to the big iron entrance-gate, the parklike lawn; the brilliant supper in the great house, the noiseless movements, the perfect manners of the many

e gentleness and courtesy, and the thousand unconscious moods and acts that rendered them distinguished and delightful. She would have liked to slip back into the o

When it transpired that she had declined all aid, thrown off all disguises, and taken her future into her own hands, to work and to receive wages for her work, in the social world where she was known and where the generations of her family had been leaders, there were kind offers of aid, secret condolences, whispered regrets, visible distress: her resolve was a new thing fo

ich she had come, a strange and solitary learner, these had turned into the abiding, the living landscapes of life now. Here she had found independence-sweet, wholesome crust; found another self within herself; and here found her mission for the future-David. So that looking upon the disordered

gift for the second time to himself, to her, to the world for which he must work with all his powers and work aright. And her pledge, her compact with the Divine, was to help him, to guide him back into the faith from which he had

, in the depths of which the brightest stars began to appear as points of sil

she had gone to see him, as he walked pa

e next time I am c

he saw him walking slowly toward her, thin, gaunt; he was leaning on a

and hastened to h

ng now-barely. This you

making a place for him. She moved it back a little, for sa

ow beautiful the evening

m some finished blossom

r talk was interrupted by the

, you save

have power over

your n

ayers," murmu

at also was a great help: without you I s

er Will than y

from town who

Physician who

, but then asked, turning hi

g at things-will they never m

re will be no

with me?" he exc

l agree

expect that I shall ever aga

in the New Testament, in the Resu

I do

ll in the Li

this sep

need me al

he green of the valley. A late bird fluttered in

softly, "a good thing to go

r. Your being in the house had much to do with this-especially your influence over my mother. My father was talked to by the doctor from town. During the days and nights he stayed with me, he got into my trunk of books, for he is a great reader; an

," said Gabriella. "An

almost pers

father, of course. It will go toward making necessary repairs. But it was not enough, and the woods has had to go. The farm shall not be sold, but the woods is rented for a term of years as hemp land, the trees must be dead

good arra

he continued in

is no place for me. I must be where people think as I do-must live where I shall not be alone. There will

said quietly. "It is best for

was inspired with fresh confid

ave determined to do in life: I want your app

been wanting to know. It is very important.

way through, sometimes by teaching, in whatever way I can. I want to study physical science. I want

r answer: it did

sen wisely. I

laws of His universe. A million years from now! Where will our dark theological dogmas be in that radiant time? The Creator of all life, in all life He must be studied! And in the study of science there is least wrangling, least tyranny, least bigotry, no persecution. It t

bout this. She was too intently thinking o

fore him also: he

g, how long the years will b

le nature starting up, terri

hrough college; while I am

e prepared a place for me and I ha

know I have not a d

hav

ut

would be the first time

can

the world alone? And you somewhere else alone? Lose those years of being

only b

be! I will not be

ough college with his wife beside him. His heart melted in joy and tender

r be separat

ver be separated from me! We three-I, thou, it-go together. My two years' salary

Gabri

air! How sacred the words and the silences! Two children of vast and distant revolutions guided

at things calling to him, how they call

ears them once,

ould not forget Truth for her. And so, she said to herself with a hidden tear, it would be always. She would give him her all, she could never be al

rk green hills of the silent land. Where

ove that makes a man be

d! Da

summer, blew from across the valley, from ac

d in our passions; by which our poor brief lives are led upward out of the