Carmen Ariza

The tropical sun mounted the rim of the golden Caribbean, quivered for a moment like a fledgeling preening its wings for flight, then launched forth boldly into the vault of hea...

The long War of Independence which destroyed the last vestige of Spanish control over the Peruvian colonies of South America was virtually brought to a close by the terrific bat...

If, as Thoreau said, "God is on the side of the most sensitive," then He should have been very close to the timid, irresolute lad in Seville, in whom the softer traits of charac...

Seville is called the heart of Spain. In a deeper sense it is her soul. Within it, extremes touch, but only to blend into a harmonious unit which manifests the Spanish temperame...

Thus did the Church open her arms to receive her wandering child. Thus did her infallible wisdom, as expressed through her zealous agents in Seville, essay to solve the perplexi...

Rome, like a fallen gladiator, spent and prostrate on the Alban hills, still awaits the issue of the conflict between the forces of life and death within. Dead, where the blight...

It must have been, necessarily, a very complex set of causes that could lay hold on a boy so really gifted as Josè de Rincón and, against his instincts and, on the part of those...

On a sweltering midsummer afternoon, a year after the events just related, Rome lay panting for breath and counting the interminable hours which must elapse before the unpitying...

Always as a child Josè had been the tortured victim of a vague, unformed apprehension of impending disaster, a presentiment that some day a great evil would befall him. The dang...

Days passed--days whose every dawn found the priest staring in sleepless, wide-eyed terror at the ceiling above--days crowded with torturing apprehension and sickening suggestio...

Rome again lay scorching beneath a merciless summer sun. But the energetic uncle of Josè was not thereby restrained from making another hurried visit to the Vatican. What his mi...

There is no region in the Western Hemisphere more invested with the spirit of romance and adventure than that strip of Caribbean coast stretching from the Cape of Yucatan to the...

The querulous tones of the aged Bishop eddied the brooding silence within the Cathedral. Without waiting for a reply he turned again to his table and took up a paper containing...

All through the following day the priest mused over the conversation of the preceding night. The precipitation with which this new friendship had been formed, and the subsequent...

The next day was one of the Church's innumerable feast-days, and Josè was free to utilize it as he might. He determined on a visit to the suburb of Turbaco, some eight miles fro...

The tropical moon shone in her fullness from an unclouded sky. Through the ethereal atmosphere which bathed the storied city her beams fell, plashing noiselessly upon the grim m...

The twisted, turbid "Danube of New Granada," under the gentle guidance of its patron, Saint Mary Magdalene, threads the greater part of its sinuous way through the heart of Colo...

Ay, to save and redeem and restore, snatch Saul, the mistake, Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now,--and bid him awake from the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find hi...

Josè de Rincón opened his eyes and turned painfully on his hard bed. The early sun streamed through the wooden grating before the unglazed window. A slight, tepid breeze stirred...

The priest essayed to rise from his bed. Night had fallen, and the feeble light of the candle cast heavy shadows over the room, and made grotesque pictures of the black, anxious...

"Now you must come and see my garden--and Cucumbra, too. And Cantar-las-horas; have you heard him? I scolded him lots; and I know he wants to mind; but he just thinks he can't s...

The reporters of the unique Man of Galilee, upon whose straining ears these words fell, noted them for future generations of footsore pilgrims on life's wandering highway--for t...

The day following was filled to the brim with bustling activity. Josè plunged into his new life with an enthusiasm he had never known before. His first care was to relieve Rosen...

The dawn of a new day broke white and glistering upon the ancient _pueblo_. From their hard beds of palm, and their straw mats on the dirt floors, the provincial dwellers in thi...

Carmen's studies began in earnest that afternoon. In the quiet of his humble cottage Josè, now "a prisoner of the Lord," opened the door of his mental storehouse and carefully s...

Like the great Exemplar in the days of his preparation, Josè was early driven by the spirit into the wilderness, where temptation smote him sore. But his soul had been saved--"y...

At the first faint flush of morn Rosendo departed for the hills. The emerald coronels of the giant _ceibas_ on the far lake verge burned softly with a ruddy glow. From the water...

Momentous changes, of far-reaching effect, had come swiftly upon Josè de Rincón during the last few days, changes which were destined after much vacillation and great mental str...

Two weeks after his arrival in Simití Josè conducted his first services in the ancient church. After four years of silence, the rusty bell sent out its raucous call from the old...

In the days that followed, while at times Josè still struggled desperately against the depression of his primal environment, and against its insidious suggestions of license, Ca...

The courage of the man was magnificent. On its rebound it carried him over the protest of Doña Maria and the gloomy forebodings of his fellow-townsmen, and launched him again on...

With Rosendo again on the trail, Josè and Carmen bent once more to their work. Within a few days the grateful Lázaro was sent to Rosendo's _hacienda_, biding the time when the p...

Juan's startling announcement linked Josè again with a fading past. Standing with his arm about Carmen, while the child looked up wonderingly at her grimly silent protector, the...

Struggling vainly with his agitation, while the good tidings which he could no longer hold fairly bubbled from his lips, Rosendo dragged the priest into the parish house and mad...

Within the month Juan brought from Bodega Central the glad news of the revolution's utter collapse. The anticlerical element, scenting treachery in their own ranks, and realizin...

"You do not know the story?" queried Rosendo in surprise. "Why, there is not a shrine in the whole of Colombia that works so many cures as this one. Your grandfather, Don Ignaci...

Feliz Gomez, who had been sent to Bodega Central for merchandise which Don Mario was awaiting from the coast, had collapsed as he stepped from his boat on his return to Simití....

Dawn brought Juan Mendoza and Pedro Cárdenas again to the hill, and with them came others. "Mateo Gil, Pablo Polo, and Juanita Gomez are sick, Padre," announced Mendoza, the spo...

Josè rose from his hard bed stiff and weary. Depression sat heavily upon his soul, and he felt miserably unable to meet the day. Doña Maria was preparing the coffee over a littl...

"I--why, I had forgotten it, child. What was it? You asked Him to tell us why the people thought they had to die, did you not? Well--and what was His answer?"

When Josè awoke the next morning he quickly put his hand under his pillow. Yes, the little coffer was there! It had not been a dream. He drew it forth and raised the cover. The...

apart from God; we must wash off the beliefs of evil as a power, created in opposition to Him, or permitted by Him to exist and to use His children; we must wash off beliefs of...

Days melted into weeks, and these in turn into months. Simití, drab and shabby, a crumbling and abandoned relique of ancient Spanish pride and arrogance, drowsed undisturbed in...

The candles and smoky oil lamps of Banco threw a fitful shimmer out upon the great river, casting huge, spectral shadows across its muddy, swirling waters, and seeming rather to...

"But, Padre dear, why are you so surprised that Padre Diego did not hurt me? I would have been much more surprised if he had. You are always so astonished when evil doesn't happ...

The reversal of a life-current is not always effected suddenly, nor amid the din of stirring events, nor yet in an environment that we ourselves might choose as an appropriate s...

"Rosendo," said Josè one morning shortly thereafter, as the old man entered the parish house for a little chat, "a Decree has been issued recently by the Sacred Congregation of...

The rainy season dragged its reeking length through the Simití valley with fearful deliberation. Josè thought that he should never again see the sun. The lake steamed like a cau...

The "revolutionist" of Latin America is generally only the disgruntled politician. His revolution is seldom more than a violent squabble among greedy spoilsmen for control of th...

In the weeks that followed there were days when the very air seemed pregnant with potential destruction, awaiting only the daring hand that would render it kinetic. Josè dwelt i...

"We come to say, Padre," announced Andres Arellano, the dignified spokesman, "that we have confidence in your words of last night. We suspect Don Mario, even though he has lette...

Rosendo's hoarse whisper drifted across the silence like a wraith. He crept out and along the floor, scarce daring to look up. Through the darkness his straining eyes caught the...

The low-hung moon, shrouded in heavy vapor, threw an eldritch shimmer upon the little group that silently bore the body of the martyred Lázaro from the old church late that nigh...

"No, Padre dear," with an energetic shake of her head, "no. Not even after all that has seemed to happen to us do I believe it true. No, I do not believe it real. Evil is not po...

What had kept Josè de Rincón chained all these years to an institution to which in thought, feeling, and sympathy he was so utterly alien, we have repeatedly pointed out--a warp...

The two hundred miles which lay before Rosendo and his little band stretched their rugged, forbidding length through ragged cañons, rushing waters, and dank, virginal forest. On...

The emotion of the jungle is a direct function of human temperament. Where one sees in it naught but a "grim, green sepulcher," teeming with malignant, destructive forces, inimi...

On the day that Carmen arrived in Cartagena, Rosendo staggered down the Guamocó trail into Simití. On that same momentous day the flames of war again flared up throughout the co...

And while within myself I trace The greatness of some future race, Aloof with hermit-eye I scan The present works of present man,-- A wild and dream-like trade of blood and guil...

The blanket of wet fog which had hung over the harbor with such exasperating tenacity lifted suddenly, late in the raw fall afternoon, and revealed to the wondering eyes of the...

Carmen was astir next morning long before the rising-bell sounded its shrill summons through the long corridors. When she opened her eyes she gazed at the ceiling above in perpl...

"Get some o' th' foolish notions out of your head, is it? Och, puir bairn, wid yer swate face an' that hivenly hair, it's welcome ye air to yer notions! But, hist! Ye have talke...

From the mysterious wastes which lie far out on the ocean, the fog was again creeping stealthily across the bay and into the throbbing arteries of the great city. Through half-o...

"Reed," said Harris the following day, as they sat in the dusty, creaking car that was conveying them to their dinner appointment with Ketchim, "who is this Ames that Ketchim re...

Carmen's rapid transition from the eternal solitudes of Guamocó to the whirring activities of New York was like a plunge into the maelstrom, and left her groping blindly in the...

As has been said, Carmen's six months in the Elwin school had been a period of slow adjustment to the changed order. She had brought into this new world a charm of unsophisticat...

Mrs. James Hawley-Crowles, more keenly perceptive than her sister, had seized upon Carmen with avidity bred of hope long deferred. The scourge of years of fruitless social striv...

"Sing it again, dear. I know you are tired, but I want to hear that song just once more. Somehow it seems to bring up thoughts of--of things that might have been." The Beaubien'...

The chill blasts had begun to swoop down from the frozen North, and summer had gathered her dainty robes about her and fled shivering before them. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles stood at a...

MONSIGNOR LAFELLE made another afternoon call on the Beaubien a few days later. That lady, fresh from her bath, scented, powdered, and charming in a loose, flowing Mandarin robe...

The Ames building, a block from the Stock Exchange, was originally only five stories in height. But as the Ames interests grew, floor after floor was added, until, on the day th...

The _Cossack_, with its great turbines purring like a sleeping kitten, and its twin screws turning lazily, almost imperceptibly in the dark waters, moved through the frosty nigh...

Almost within the brief period of a year, the barefoot, calico-clad Carmen had been ejected from unknown Simití and dropped into the midst of the pyrotechnical society life of t...

"Wait, my little princess, wait," the Beaubien had said, when Carmen, her eyes flowing and her lips quivering, had again thrown herself into that strange woman's arms and poured...

Before Mrs. Hawley-Crowles sought her bed that morning the east was red with the winter sun. "The loss of the pearls is bad enough," she exclaimed in conclusion, glowering over...

On the morning following Mrs. Hawley-Crowles's very successful imitation of the _Bal de l'Opéra_, Monsignor Lafelle paid an early call to the Ames _sanctum_. And the latter gent...

Monsignor Lafelle in his interview with Carmen had thrown out a hint of certain rumors regarding her; but the days passed, and the girl awoke not to their significance. Then, on...

To the great horde of starving European nobility the daughters of American millionaires have dropped as heavenly manna. It was but dire necessity that forced low the bars of soc...

Carmen looked up into her face with a wistful yearning. "Will you not tell me?" she pleaded. "Ever since Monsignor Lafelle and Father Waite were here you have been so quiet; and...

The chill winds of another autumn swirled through the masonry-lined cañons of the metropolis and sighed among the stark trees of its deserted parks. They caught up the tinted le...

"I'm afraid," Haynerd was saying, as he and Father Waite were wending their way to the Beaubien home a few evenings later, "that this Carmen is the kind of girl you read about i...

With her exit from the _beau monde_ and her entrance upon the broad stage of University life, Carmen seemed to have awakened from the lethargy which her abrupt transition from m...

Carmen's first serious test of her knowledge of English composition was made early in the semester, in an essay on town life in Colombia; and so meritorious did her instructor c...

ON the Monday morning following the Ames reception the society columns of the daily papers still teemed with extravagant depictions of the magnificent affair. On that same morni...

The Social Era had for many years made its weekly appearance every Saturday morning, that its fashionable clientele might appease their jaded appetites on the Sabbath day by nib...

Man reasons and seeks human counsel; but woman obeys her instincts. Carmen did this and more. Her life had been one of utter freedom from dependence upon human judgment. The bur...

For several days Ames reflected, and waited. Judging by the data which he was able to secure, the Express was eating up money at a fearful pace. To continue at that rate meant c...

Four weeks from that crisp morning when Carmen led the bewildered, stupified lad to her home, she and Sidney sat out upon the little porch of the cottage, drinking in the glorie...

"We have now arrived at a subject whose interest and significance for us are incalculable," said Father Waite, standing before the little group which had assembled in their usua...

The town of Avon, two hours from New York, lay along Avon creek, from which its first manufacturing industries derived their motive power. Years before, when it was little more...

It is sometimes said of the man who toils at forge or loom in this great commonwealth that he is fast forgetting that Washington is something more significant to him than what i...

"It's corking! Simply corking!" cried Haynerd, when he and Hitt had finished reading Carmen's report on her first few days in Washington. "Makes a fellow feel as if the best thi...

The immense frame of J. Wilton Ames bent slightly, and the great legs might have been seen to drag a bit, as the man entered his private elevator the morning after his rejection...

If additional proof of the awful cost of hating one's fellow-men were required, the strike which burst upon the industrial world that winter must furnish it in sickening excess....

With the wreckage which he had wrought strewn about him, J. Wilton Ames sat at his rich desk far above the scampering human ants in the streets below and contemplated the fell w...

In the days to come, when the divine leaven which is in the world to-day shall have brought more of the carnal mind's iniquity to the surface, that the Sun of Truth may destroy...

Borne on pulsing electric waves, the news of the great _dénoûement_ flashed over the city, and across a startled continent. Beneath the seas it sped, and into court and hovel. M...

A curious, gossiping world, dwelling only in the froth of the human mind, will not comprehend for many a year to come what took place in that dim, tapestried chamber of the rich...

Cartagena's slumber of centuries had been broken by nearly four years of civil warfare. But on the day that the lookout in the abandoned convent of Santa Candelaria, on the summ...

Another summer had come and gone. Through the trees in Central Park the afternoon sunlight, sifted and softened by the tinted autumn leaves, spread over the brown turf like a go...