An index finger

There are some of us who in after years say to Fate, “Now deal us your hardest blow; give us what you will; but let us never again suffer as we suffered when we were children.”

“Because I am weary and fain would rest,” he answered. “Yes, and I fain would do several other things, too; but I dare say I shall not. But you have been idling lately, too. Why...

“Too weak to change, though a mental hell To me the rôle of clown; A coward bound by a self-wrought spell, I wait the sound of the prompter’s bell Which rings the curtain down.”

“Instead of being tenderly cared for, as you imagine,” said Miss Hill, “I had a loveless childhood, though above all things I wanted to be loved and to be told that I was loved....

“O shaven priest that pratest of souls, Knowest thou not that men are moles That blindly grope and burrow? The field that is grey shall be green again; But whether with grass or...

Well, may there not be butterflies That lift with weary wings the air; That loathe the foreign sun, which lies On all their colors like despair; That glitter, homesick for the f...

One Sunday morning Mrs. Doring sat at a window, making a sketch of a figure she saw on the opposite side of the street, when Chrissalyn, who had entered by the open door, went n...

The child that enters life comes not with knowledge or intent; So those who enter death must go as little children sent. Nothing is known, but I believe that God is overhead; An...

The body, after all, is only a portable, two-legged telephone through which the soul, or part of it, communicates with other souls which for purposes of education and evolution...

Two years had passed since Colonel Layton died. Renewed health and beauty had come to the Butterfly, who still contentedly earned and ate her own bread. Self-dependence has many...

Cartice Doring was one of those blessed beings who intermeddle not with the affairs of another. She asked no questions and was free from the vulgar vice of curiosity. She listen...

Those who believe, as I do, that spiritual beings can and do, subject to general laws and for certain purposes, communicate with us, and even produce material effects in the wor...

“When by suffering thou hast learned not to suffer--by passion learned calmness; Then shalt thou know what I am to thee--then shalt thou be A clean mirror where I am reflected--...

“Life, with all it yields of joy and woe and hope and fear, Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love, How love might be, hath been, indeed, and is.”

Mrs. Doring had a friend, a gentle, patient, heavily-burdened woman who lived her difficult life with the high heroism of a daughter of the gods. Though fragile as a flower she...

“Is it wonderful that I should be immortal, as every one is immortal? I know it is wonderful, but my eye-sight is equally wonderful, and how I was conceived in my mother’s womb...

The Joys, otherwise the Hanleys, fell into financial trouble. Burton Hanley was forced to make an assignment for the benefit of his creditors. He had enough to pay every dollar...

“Work thou for pleasure; paint or sing or carve The thing thou lovest, though the body starve. Who works for glory misses oft the goal; Who works for money coins his very soul....

Mrs. Doring was surprised and delighted at receiving a visit from the Joys one evening. Having parted with everything that goes by the name of property, they had come to New Yor...

One evening at the house of a famous orator Mrs. Doring saw a face with which she had been familiar since childhood, yet never before had she seen it outside of the enchanted re...

Some time, it may be, before the world is very much older, we shall know well what now we but dimly discern, that thought is the substance and will the operating force of the un...

Two years passed, and Mrs. Doring still sat at her editorial desk. Farnsworth had been the kindest and most considerate of employers. The envious said no woman ever had an easie...

The tale is as old as the Eden Tree--and new as the new-cut tooth-- For each man knows ere his lip-thatch grows he is master of Art and Truth; And each man hears as the twilight...

Personally I must confess to one small weakness. I cannot help thinking that the souls toward whom we feel drawn in this life are the very souls whom we knew and loved in a form...

Prais’d be the fathomless universe, For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, And for love, sweet love--but praise! praise! praise! For the sure enwinding arms of...