Chapter 9

One of them came back to me--it happened to be the only book I ever wrote that did--and when the Andover expressman brought in the square package, just before tea, I felt my heart stand still with mortification. Fortunately nobody saw the expressman. I always kept my ventures to myself, and did not, that I can remember, read any manuscript of mine to suffering relatives or friends, before publication. Indeed, I carried on the writer's profession for many years as if it had been a burglar's.

At the earliest moment possible I got myself into my little room, and turned both keys upon myself and my rejected manuscript. But when I came to read the publisher's letter, I learned that hope still remained, a flickering torch, upon a darkened universe. That excellent man did not refuse the story, but raised objections to certain points or forms therein, to which he summoned my attention. The criticism called substantially for the rewriting of the book. I lighted my lamp, and, with the June beetles butting at my head, I wrote all night. At three o'clock in the morning I put the last sentence to the remodelled story--the whole was a matter of some three hundred and fifty pages of manuscript--and crawled to bed. At six, I stole out and found the expressman, that innocent and ignorant messenger of joy or woe. The revised manuscript reached the publisher by ten o'clock, and his letter of unconditional acceptance was in my hands before another tea-time.

I have never been in the habit of writing at night, having been early warned against this practice by the wisest of fathers (who notably failed to follow his own advice); and this almost solitary experience of the midnight oil remains as vivid as yesterday's sunset to me. My present opinion of that night's exploit is, that it signified an abnormal pride which might as well have received its due humiliation. But, at the time, it seemed to be the inevitable or even the creditable thing.

Sunday-school writers did books by sets in those days; perhaps they do still. And at least two such sets I provided to order, each of four volumes. Both of these, it so happens, have survived their day and generation--the Tiny books, we called them, and the Gypsy books. Only last year I was called upon to renew the copyright for Gypsy, a young person now thirty years old in type.

There is a certain poetic justice in this little circumstance, owing to the fact that I never _worked_ harder in my life at anything than I did upon those little books; for I had, madly enough, contracted to supply four within a year.

We had no vacations in those days; I knew nothing of hills or shore; but "spoke straight on" through the terrible Andover weather. Our July and August thermometers used to stand up hard at over ninety degrees, day and night, for nearly a week at a time. The large white mansion was as comfortable as ceiled walls and back plaster could be in that furnace; but my own small room, on the sunny side of the house, was heated seven times hotter than endurance. Sometimes I got over an open register in a lower room, and wrote in the faint puffs of damp air that played with my misery. Sometimes I sat in the cellar itself; but it was rather dark, and one cherished a consciousness of mice. In the orchard, or the grove, one's brains fricasseed quickly; in fact, all out-of-doors was a scene of bottomless torment worthy of a theology older and severer than Andover's.

When the last chapter of the last book was done, it occurred to me to wonder whether I might ever be able to afford to get for a week or two where the thermometer went below ninety degrees in summer. But this was a wild and baseless dream, whose irrationality I quickly recognized. For such books as those into which I had been coining a year of my young strength and heart, I received the sum of one hundred dollars apiece. The "Gypsy" publisher was more munificent. He offered one hundred and fifty; a price which I accepted with incredible gratitude.

I mention these figures distinctly, with the cold-blooded view of dimming the rosy dreams of those young ladies and gentlemen with whom, if I may judge by their letters, our country seems to be brimming over.

"Will you read my poem?" "Won't you criticize my manuscript?" "I would like to forward my novel for your perusal." "I have sent you the copy of a rejected article of mine, on which I venture to ask--," etc., etc. "I have been told that all I need is Influence." "My friends think my book shows genius; but I have no Influence." "Will it trouble you too much to get this published for me?"

"Your Influence--" and so on, and so on, run the piteous appeals which every successful author receives from the great unknown world of discouraged and perplexed young people who are mistaking the stir of youth or vanity, or the _ennui_ of idleness, or the sting of poverty, for the solemn throes of power.

What can one do for them, whom no one but themselves can help? What can one say to them, when anything one says is sure to give pain, or dishearten courage?

Write, if you _must_; not otherwise. Do not write, if you can earn a fair living at teaching or dressmaking, at electricity or hod-carrying. Make shoes, weed cabbages, survey land, keep house, make ice-cream, sell cake, climb a telephone pole. Nay, be a lightning-rod peddler or a book agent, before you set your heart upon it that you shall write for a living. Do anything honest, but do not write, unless God calls you, and publishers want you, and people read you, and editors claim you. Respect the market laws. Lean on nobody. Trust the common sense of an experienced publisher to know whether your manuscript is worth something or nothing. Do not depend on influence. Editors do not care a drop of ink for influence. What they want is good material, and the fresher it is, the better. An editor will pass by an old writer, any day, for an unknown and gifted new one, with power to say a good thing in a fresh way. Make your calling and election sure. Do not flirt with your pen. Emerson's phrase was, "toiling terribly." Nothing less will hint at the grinding drudgery of a life spent in living "by your brains."

Inspiration is all very well; but "genius is the infinite capacity for taking pains."

Living? It is more likely to be dying by your pen; despairing by your pen; burying hope and heart and youth and courage in your ink-stand.

Unless you are prepared to work like a slave at his galley, for the toss-up chance of a freedom which may be denied him when his work is done, do not write. There are some pleasant things about this way of spending a lifetime, but there are no easy ones.

There are privileges in it, but there are heart-ache, mortification, discouragement, and an eternal doubt.

Had one not better have made bread or picture-frames, run a motor, or invented a bicycle tire?

Time alone--perhaps one might say, eternity--can answer.

* * * * *

[Footnote 5: "A sin once committed, always _deserves_ punishment; and, as long as strict _Justice_ is administered, the sin _must_ be punished. Unless there be an Atonement, strict Justice _must_ be administered; that is, Sin must be punished forever; but, on the ground of the Atonement, _Grace_ may be administered, instead of _Justice_, and then the sinner may be pardoned."]

LOST YOUTH.

BY R.L. STEVENSON.

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, Say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul he sailed on a day Over the sea to Skye.

Mull was astern, Egg on the port, Rum on the starboard bow; Glory of youth glowed in his soul: Where is that glory now?

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, Say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul he sailed on a day Over the sea to Skye.

Give me again all that was there, Give me the sun that shone! Give me the eyes, give me soul, Give me the lad that's gone!

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, Say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul he sailed on a day Over the sea to Skye.

Billows and breeze, islands and seas, Mountains of rain and sun, All that was good, all that was fair, All that was me is gone.

Originally published in the "Pall Mall Gazette."

THE DIVIDED HOUSE

BY JULIA D. WHITING,

Author of "The Story of Myra," "Brother Sesostris," "A special Providence," and other stories.

When Selucius Huxter had arrived at his last illness, he proved himself more than ever in his life troublesome and wearing. Having a suspicion that his condition was worse than his doctor or children allowed, he gave them no peace until he had extracted an admission that such was the case. Left alone with the doctor at his request, he reproached him.

"Ye might as well told me before as let me lay here thinkin' and stewin' about it. I've lost a sight of strength tryin' to git the truth from ye, and there wa'n't no need. Wall--I suppose I ain't reely dyin' naow, while I'm a-talkin', be I?"

Assured as to that point, he added: "The reason I wanted to know is because I've got to fix my concerns so as to leave 'em as well as I can; and all I want of you is that when you think I'm--wall--if you see there's goin' to be a change, I want you should tell me, so's't I can straighten things right out and git their consent to it." Having promised, the doctor apprised him as the last moments drew near.

"Sho! I want to know! Why, I feel full as well as I did yes'dy and a leetle grain easier, if anythin'."

"I hope this notice does not find you unprepared," observed the doctor.

"Wall, no; I'm prepared as much as I can be, as you may say. I've been a member in good and regular standin' this fifty-five year--and I hain't arrived at my age without seeing there's somethin' in life beside livin'." He paused, then added with an accent of pride, "I don't owe any man a cent, nor never cheated a man of one. Wall, I've had quite a spell to think of things in, durin' my sickness, and I don't know but what I've enjoyed it considerable. Thought of things all along back to when I was a boy. Events come up that I'd clean forgot."

The doctor gone, he called his children in.

"Wall, Armidy, wall, Lucas, the doctor don't seem to think I shall tucker it out much longer. Wall, naow," he exclaimed, quite vexed, "I vow for't if I didn't forgit to ask him how long! Wall, too late naow. He's got out of sight, I s'pose."

Armida stepped to the window, and assured him of the fact.

"Wall, no gret matter. I jist thought if I could git him to fix the time I'd like to see how nigh he'd hit it.

"Naow, I want to fix the property so's't you won't have no trouble with it. No use wastin' money gittin' lawyers here. There ain't no cheatin' nor double-dealin' anywhere to be found amongst the Huxters nor the Lucases; and when you give me your promises to abide by my last will and testament I shall expect you to hold to it jist the same as if it was writ out.

"Naow, about the farm and house. The house, as you know, stands in the middle line of the farm; that is, the north side has a leetle the advantage in hevin' the Jabez Norcross paster tacked unto it, over and above the south half, but it's near enough. That paster don't count for much. Pooty thick with sheep laurel. Wall, seein' the land lies jist as it does, and the house is jist as it is, I propose to divide it even. Lucas, you can have the north half, and Armidy the south, beginnin' right to the front door, and runnin' right through the house and right along down to the river, straight as you can fetch it. Do you agree to my plan?"

Armida and Lucas exchanged glances. "You speak," said Lucas in a low tone.

"No, you," said Armida.

"What you whisperin' about? P'raps you think I can't hear because I'm dyin', but I'd have you to know my hearin' ain't affected a grain. Speak up naow! What is it, Lucas?"

"We were thinkin' of Theodore," said Lucas. "You're leavin' him out, seems so."

"'Tain't 'cause I forgot him; but I give him all I cal'lated to when he quit home five year ago--money; and so I sha'n't leave him anythin'. Wouldn't do him no good, if I did," he said to himself.

"Well, we should feel better if you did," said Armida. "I don't want he should be left out. Neither would mother if she was livin'; she'd feel bad."

"I'll settle it with your ma when I see her. Come, now, what do you say?"

There was a long silence, which Armida broke by saying, "S'posin' him or me was to want to leave the place, I mean for good--get tired of stayin' here to home?"

"Wall," said her father with a chuckle, "if either of you feels like _givin_ your share to the other, you may. I ain't goin' to leave my old place for either of you to sell to each other nor nobody else. I expect you to live on't."

"Well," now objected Lucas; "s'posin' one of us should git married, then how would it be?"

"Why, live along. Put in and work a leetle harder, maybe. This farm carried a pooty fair number when I was younger. If you should git too numerous you could build on either side. I guess there ain't no gret danger," he added.

As neither offered further objections, Mr. Huxter said: "There's been talk enough, I s'pose. Do you agree to 't?" He waited while each gave an audible "yes." "Naow," said he, "I hain't an earthly thing to hamper me."

The father dead, for the brother and sister no new life began. Armida still skimmed all the milk and made the butter, looked after Lucas as she had before, and Lucas attended impartially to the whole of the farm, and Armida sometimes wondered what difference it made. To be sure the profits were divided with the most rigid exactness; but everything went tranquilly on until more than a year after their father's death, when Armida had a suspicion, confirmed by appearances, that Lucas was becoming interested in a young girl in a neighborhood a few miles away. The spirit of jealousy surely animated poor Armida, for nothing else could have prompted her action. Having ascertained the girl's name, she caused to be conveyed to her the facts, colored for the occasion, relating to the partition of the house and land; and the young woman, having a shrewd eye to the main chance, bluntly told Lucas when next she saw him that she didn't wish the half of a house nor the half of a farm.

Lucas had thought all might go on smoothly with a wife, and had counted on her accepting the situation. Inquiring as to who had meddled in his affairs, he traced the matter back to Armida, and coming home mortified and angry, reproached her in unsparing terms, ending his recital of wrongs with: "I don't know what you did it for, unless you was afraid your half was going to be invaded; and if you feel that way you'd better keep to your side and take care of your own property. I ain't going to interfere."

Armida was powerless to protect herself except with tears, which did not avail with Lucas. She made overtures of peace, such as offering to cook her brother's meals and look after his share of the milk; but was warned to attend to her own business.

Lucas had a new pipe-hole made in the kitchen chimney, and bought a new stove, and hunted up a kitchen table, telling Armida she was welcome to the stove and table they had previously used in common, but he'd thank her to stay on her own side of the room. The situation would have been ludicrous if it had not been grim earnest to the brother and sister. Lucas had a hard side to his character, and he could not forgive his sister's interference. He would not even give Armida advice, but allowed her cows to break into her cornfield and her sheep to stray away, without warning her, though all the while his heart pricked him at sight of her distress. Still all he would do was to suggest that she get a hired man.

Accordingly Armida, in despair, hired an easy-going, good-natured creature that offered his services. He did very well, and Armida got on better, and took courage.

But there was a dreadful blow in store for her. Lucas brought a gang of carpenters to the farm, who instituted repairs on his half of the house. He even went so far as to commit the extravagance of having blinds hung for his sitting-room and front chamber windows, and his half of the front porch was trimmed with brackets, and then the whole of his half of the house painted white, so that his neighbors rallied him on being proud. "Only," as one said, "why don't you extend your improvements right along acrost the house, Lucas? It looks sorter queer to see one-half so fine and the other so slack."

"Armida's free to do she's a mind to," said Lucas. "If she wants to fix up her side, she can. I don't hinder her--"

"Nor you don't help her neither, as I see," said the other.

"I believe in 'tendin' to your own affairs and not interferin' with other folks," Lucas rejoined.

Armida was made very unhappy by these changes and the comments of the neighbors, and would gladly have beautified her half also, but had no money to spend. The farm had fallen behind, and she was pinched for means. She did what she could, taking more care than usual of vines and flowers, and even had an extra bed dug under her front windows, where she had many bright-hued flowers; but as she rose from digging around her plants and surveyed the house--Lucas's side with the new green blinds and the clapboards shining with paint, hers with its stained, weather-beaten appearance and its staring windows--she felt ashamed and discouraged.

She feared her hired man was slack and neglected his work; yet when he threatened to go, and afterward compromised the matter by offering to stay if she'd marry him, at a loss what to do, and partly because she was lonely, she married him. He was a respectable man, whose only fault was laziness, and she hoped that now he would take an interest. When Armida and her husband came back from the minister's and announced to Lucas that they were married, his only comment was, "Well, a slack help will make a shif'less husband."

Years went by, and Armida's side of the house fell more and more into ruin; while Lucas, with what Armida considered cruel carefulness, kept his in excellent repair and occasionally renewed the paint. The contrast was so great that passers-by stopped their horses that they might look and wonder at their leisure. Every glance was like a blow to Armida, so that she avoided her sitting-room and kept herself in the uncomfortable kitchen that was divided by an imaginary line directly through the middle, a line never crossed by her brother, her husband, or herself.

It would have looked absurd enough to a stranger to see this divided room, with the brother clumsily carrying on his household affairs on the one side and the sister doing her work on the other, with often not a word exchanged between them for days together. Absurd it might be, but it was certainly wretched. Armida grew old rapidly. Her husband was a poor stick, and when, as years passed, a touch of rheumatism gave him a real excuse for laziness, he did little more than sit by the fire and smoke.

As Armida sat on the bench under the old russet apple-tree by the back door one day, regretting her evil fate, she heard footsteps approaching, and, pushing back her old sun-bonnet, looked up to see a shabby, shambling, oldish man coming around the side of the house and gazing in at the windows, "What ye doin' there?" said Armida sharply.

The man turned, surveyed her with a smile, then said with a drawl she remembered: "I hain't been gone so long but that I know ye, Armidy. Don't you remember me?"

"Theodore Huxter! Is that you? Well!" and she hurried up to him, and shook hands violently.

"I heard only last week that father was dead," he explained. "I seen a man from this way, and he said he was gone. How long since?"

"More than ten years ago."

"Well, I thought I'd come and see ye."

"I'm glad you did," she said. "But come right in;" and she led the way into the kitchen.

He leaned up against the door and surveyed the room. "I should 'a' s'posed I'd have remembered this room, but what ye done to it? What hev you got two stoves and two tables and all that for, Armidy?"

Armida told him all, winding up her story with a few tears.

"That accounts for the looks of the outside, I s'pose," was his only comment. "I thought it was about the queerest I ever see. It's ridiculous! Why haven't you and Lucas straightened out affairs before this?"

"I can't, and he can't, I s'pose," she said hopelessly; "and everything makes it worse. I wouldn't care so much if he hadn't fixed up the outside the way he did."

"Oh, well now, don't you fret. If I had money--but then I haven't."

"How have you lived sence you left home?" Armida inquired.

"Why, I've had a still, and made essence and peddled it out; but I sold the still to git money to come here, and it took all I had."

"Well now, Theodore, I wish you'd stay here now you've got round again," said Armida with great earnestness. "I've worried about you a sight. I'd be glad to have you, and Lucas would, I know."

To spare a possible rebuff for Theodore, she ran out as she saw Lucas coming to the house to get his supper, and apprised him of his brother's arrival, glad to find he shared her pleasure in it. As Lucas entered the room he shook hands with Theodore, saying, "How are ye?" to which Theodore responded with "How are you, Lucas?"

Theodore was a relief and pleasure to all the family. He observed a strict impartiality. If he split some kindling-wood for Armida, he churned for Lucas. If he took Armida's old horse to be shod, he helped Lucas wash his sheep. He accepted everything, asking no questions after the first evening, but kept an observant eye on all.

Both Lucas and Armida had loved him since their earliest remembrance, and retained their old fondness for him now. He was a welcome guest on either side of the kitchen, and though when he announced of an evening that he was going visiting, and stepped across the line to the other side of the half from where he had been sitting, the owner of the side he honored felt pleased by the distinction, yet the one on the opposite side, though no longer (according to an understood law) joining in the conversation, still had the benefit of Theodore's narratives.

He was busy, too, in his way. He was indefatigable in berry-picking and herb-gathering, selling what Armida and Lucas did not wish, and showing not a little shrewdness. When he had laid a little money together he bought a still, and distilled essences of peppermint, wintergreen, and other sweet-smelling herbs and roots, and when a store was accumulated he filled a basket and departed on a peddling expedition, returning with money in his purse and a handkerchief or ribbon for Armida. Once he bought her a stuff gown, which she came near ruining by weeping over it, it was such a delight.

Lucas remonstrated. "I think you're foolish, Theodore. Why don't you spend your money on yourself? You'd a sight better get you a new coat."

"I'd rather see Armida crying over that stuff," said Theodore, "than have a dozen coats. Nobody knows Armida's good looking, because she's no good clothes. But she is, and when she gets that dress made up and puts it on with that pink ribbon I bought her last time, she'll look as pretty as a pink."