Jennie Gerhardt

ent which words can but vaguely suggest. There are natures born to the inheritance of flesh that come without understanding, and that go again without seeming to have wondered why. Life, so long as t

ance of their state. If no one said to them "Mine" they would wander radiantly forth, si

ouds, the answer is a warning against idleness. If one seeks to give ear to the winds, it shall be well with his soul, but they will seize upon his possessions. If all the world of the so-called inanimate delay one, calling with tenderness in so

alking period she had been as the right hand of her mother. What scrubbing, baking, errand-running, and nursing there had been to do she did. No one had ever heard her rudely complain, though she often thought of the hardness of her lot. She knew that there were other girls whose lives were infinitely freer and fuller, but, it never occurred to her to be meanly envious; her heart might be lonely, but her lips continued to sing. When the days were fair she looked out of her kitchen

e out of the distance, she would incline her head and listen, the whole spi

e she delighted to wonder at the pattern of it, to walk where it was most gol

ul radiance which fills the western sky at

simplicity, "how it would feel to flo

of a wild grape-vine, and was sit

ce if you had a boat u

face at a far-off cloud, a r

aid, "people could live

e, and its elysian paths kne

said George, noting

, dreamily, "it

ng have a home

rything," s

go home?" ques

eling the poetry of it her

go home?" u

e bees g

orge, who saw one travelling l

he said, "you know

f those curious spirals of minute insects

half believing he

redulously, "I wonder what k

sted, putting out h

used also. A scarlet-breasted robin was hopping in short spaces upon the grass before her. A humming bee hummed, a cow-bell tinkled, while some suspicious cracklings told of a secr

were crystal tears overflowing in her eyes. The wondrous sea of feeling in