Part 5

"There's the sofy; set down," said Gates, who seemed full of hospitable cheer. "I'll get a blind open. Girl's gone to the fair and Mother's setting out on the back piazza, listening to the noises on the road. She's all ready. Make yourself to home. Pastel like them pictures on the wall's what I want. My daughter done them." His tone changed on the last sentence, but Somers did not notice it; he was drinking in the details of the room to describe them afterwards to his sympathizing friends in Chicago.

"What a chamber of horrors," he thought, "and one can see he is proud of it." The carpet was soft to the foot, covered with a jungle of flowers and green leaves--the pattern of carpet which fashion leaves behind for disappointed salesmen to mark lower and lower until it shall be pushed into the ranks of shopworn bargains. The cheap paper on the wall was delicately tinted, but this boon came plainly from the designers, and not the taste of the buyer, since there was a simply terrible chair that swung by machinery, and had four brilliant hues of plush to vex the eye, besides a paroxysm of embroidery and lace to which was still attached the red ticket of the county fair. More embroidery figured on the cabinet organ and two tables, and another red ticket peeped coyly from under the ornate frame of a pastel landscape displaying every natural beauty--forest, mountain, sunlit lake, and meadow--at their bluest and greenest. There were three other pictures in the room, two very large colored photographs of a lad of twelve and of a pretty girl who might be sixteen, in a white gown with a roll of parchment in her hand tied with a blue ribbon; and the photograph of a cross of flowers.

The girl's dark, wistful, timid eyes seemed to follow the young artist as he walked about the room. They appealed to him. "Poor little girl," he thought, "to have to live here." Then he heard a dragging footfall, and there entered the mistress of the house. She was a tall woman who stooped. Her hair was gray and scanty, and so ill-arranged on the top of her head that the mournful tonsure of age showed under the false gray braid. She was thin with the gaunt thinness of years and toil, not the poetic, appealing slenderness of youth. She had attired herself for the picture in a black silken gown, sparkling with jet that tinkled as she moved; the harsh, black, bristling line at the neck defined her withered throat brutally. Yet Somer's sneer was transient. He was struck by two things--the woman was blind, and she had once worn a face like that of the pretty girl. With a sensation of pity he recalled Andrew Lang's verses; inaudibly, while she greeted him he was repeating:

"Who watches day by day The dust of time that stains her, The griefs that leave her gray, The flesh that still enchains her, Whose grace has passed away."

Her eyes were closed but she came straight toward him, holding out her hand. It was her left hand that was extended; her right closed over the top of a cane, and this added to the impression of decrepitude conveyed by her whole presence. She spoke in a gentle, monotonous, pleasant voice. "I guess this is Mr. Somers, the artist. I feel--we feel very glad to have the honor of meeting you, sir."

No one had ever felt honored to meet Somers before. He thought how much refinement and sadness were in a blind woman's face. In his most deferential manner he proffered her a chair. "I presume I am to paint you, madam?" he said.

She blushed faintly. "Ain't it rediculous?" she apologized. "But Mr. Gates will have it. He has been at me to have somebody paint a picture of me ever since I had my photograph taken. It was a big picture and most folks said it was real good, though not flattering; but he wouldn't hang it. He took it off and I don't know what he did do to it. 'I want a real artist to paint you, Mother,' he said. I guess if Kitty had lived she'd have suited him, though she was all for landscape; never did much figures. You noticed her work in this room, ain't you--on the table and chair and organ--art needlework? Kitty could do anything. She took six prizes at the county fair; two of 'em come in after she was in her last sickness. She was so pleased that she had the picture--that's the picture right above the sofy; it's a pastel--and the tidy, I mean the art needle work--put on her bed, and she looked at them the longest while. Her paw would never let the tickets be took off." She reached forth her hand to the chair near her and felt the ticket, stroking it absently, her chin quivering a little, while her lips smiled. "Mr. Gates was thinking," she said, "that maybe you'd paint a head of me--pastel like that landscape--that's why he likes pastel so. And he was thinking if--if maybe--my eyes was jest like Kitty's when we were married--if you would put in eyes, he would be awful much obliged and be willing to pay extra if necessary. Would it be hard?"

Somers dissembled a great dismay. "Certainly not," said he, rather dryly; and he was ashamed of himself at the sensitive flutter in the old features.

"Of course I know," she said, in a different tone than she had used before, "I understand how comical it must seem to a young man to have to draw an old woman's picture; but it ain't comical to my husband. He wants it very much. He's the kindest man that ever lived, to me, caring for me all the time. He's got me that organ--me that can't play a note, and never could--just because I love to hear music, and sometimes if we have an instrument, the neighbors will come in, especially Hattie Knight, who used to know Kittie, and is a splendid performer; she comes and plays and sings. It is a comfort to me. And though I guess you young folks can't understand it, it will be a comfort to him to have a picture of me. I mistrusted you'd be thinking it comical, and I hurried to come in and speak to you, lest, not meaning anything, you might, just by chance, let fall something might hurt his feelings--like you thought it queer or some sech thing. And he thinks so much of you, and having you here, that I couldn't bear there'd be any mistake."

"Surely it is the most natural thing in the world that he should want a portrait of you," Somers hastily interrupted.

"Yes, it is," she answered in her mild, even tones, "but it mightn't seem so to young folks. Young folks think they know all there is about loving. And it is very sweet and nice to enjoy things together; and you don't hardly seem to be in the world at all when you're courting, your feet and your head and your heart feel so light. But they don't know what it is to need each other? It's when folks suffer together that they find out what loving is. I never knew what I felt towards my husband till I lost my first baby; and I'd wake up in the night and there'd be no cradle there--and he'd comfort me. Do you see that picture under the photograph of the cross?"

"He's a pretty boy," said Somers.

"Yes, sir. He was drownded in the river. A lot of boys in playing, and one got too far, and Eddy, he swum out to help him. And he clumb up on Eddy and the man on shore didn't get there in time. He was a real good boy and liked to play home with me 'most as well as with the boys. Father was proud as he could be of him, though he wouldn't let on. That cross was what his schoolmates sent; and teacher she cried when she told me how hard Eddy was trying to win the prize to please his pa. Father and I went through that together. And we had to change all the things we used to talk of together, because Eddy was always in them; and we had to try not to let each other see how our hearts were breaking, and not shadder Kitty's life by letting her see how we missed him. Only once father broke down; it was when he give Kitty Eddy's colt." She stopped, for she could not go on.

"Don't--don't distress yourself," Somers begged lamely. His cheeks were very hot.

"It don't distress me," she answered, "only for the minnit; I'm always thinking of Eddy and Kitty too. Sometimes I think it was harder for father when his girl went than anything else. And then my blindness and my rheumatism come; and it seemed he was trying to make up to me for the daughter and the son I'd lost, and be all to once to me. He has been, too. And do you think that two old people that have grown old together, like us, and have been through losses like that--do you think they ain't drawed closer and kinder and tenderer to each other, like the Lord to his church? Why, I'm plain, and old and blind and crooked--but he don't know it. Now, do you understand?"

"Yes," said Somers, "I understand."

"And you'll please excuse me for speaking so free; it was only so father's feelings shouldn't get hurt by noticing maybe a look like you wanted to laugh."

"God knows I don't want to laugh," Somers burst in. "But I'm glad you spoke. It--it will be a better picture. Now may I ask you something? I want you to let me dress you--I mean put something about your neck, soft and white; and then I want to make two sketches of you--one, as Mr. Gates wishes, the head alone; the other of you sitting in the rustic chair outside."

"But--" she looked troubled--"it will be so expensive; and I know it will be foolish. If you'd just the same----"

"But I shouldn't; I want to do it. And it will not cost you anything. A hundred dollars will repay me well enough. I wish--I truly wish I could afford to do it all for nothing."

She gasped. "A hundred dollars! Oh, it ain't right. That was why he wouldn't buy the new buggy. And jest for a picture of me." But suddenly she flushed like a girl and smiled.

At this instant the old man, immaculate in his heavy black suit and glossy white shirt, appeared in the doorway bearing a tray.

"Father," said the old wife, "do you mean to tell me you are going to pay a hundred dollars jest for a picture of me?"

"Well, Mother, you know there's no fool like an old fool," he replied, jocosely; but when the old wife turned her sightless face toward the old husband's voice and he looked at her, Somers bowed his head.

He spent the afternoon over his sketches. Riding away in the twilight, he knew he had done better work than he had ever done before in his life, slight as its form might be; nevertheless he was not thinking of himself at all. He was trying to shape his own vague perception that the show of dainty thinking and the pomp of refinement are in truth amiable and lovely things, yet are they no more than the husks of life; not only under them, but under ungracious and sordid conditions, may be the human semblance of that "beauty most ancient, beauty most new," that the old saint found too late. He felt the elusive presence of something in love higher than his youthful dream; stronger than passion, fairer than delight. To this commonplace man and woman had come the deepest gift of life.

"A dream?" he murmured. "Yes, perhaps he has captured it."

Truth

_By Carrie Moss Hawley_

The archives of history contain wonderful revelations of the growth and physical development of man. Going back to the beginning of time, when creation donned its immortal robe of life and nature gave utterance to the thought that nothing perishes, we follow down the aisle of centuries until we find ourselves to-day where we realize that thought has become the most powerful factor in advancement. Gradations are everywhere, yet mental processes and volitions take control of the wheel of progress and guide everything with majestic power.

The mind, as we commonly think of it, is not a safe guide unless directed by wisdom. So we appeal for light to give direction to the ideas or conceptions that filter through the brain from the all-holding universal thought. How to distinguish true from false conceptions is the labor of philosophy.

Truth may be tested by one infallible rule: its power to construct. You may see it forming what may terminate in evil, and doing unmistakable harm. Then you say: How can this be truth if it creates disaster? But all that is created does not act one way. There is the gross and the refined, the blemished and the perfect. All is good in the sense that it comes from a perfect law. It is the direction creation takes that determines the outcome.

The next step is how to direct truth that it may produce only the end desired. There are millions of beings on this sphere, each of whom has the same access to truth. Many of these do not even know of their power in production, and, with sensualized vision which has not been renovated, they keep on bringing forth that which another class, further advanced, is endeavoring to exterminate. This will continue indefinitely, for there will always be growing souls that have to learn. Since what appears as evil must exist, when it has become abhorrent to you in all its forms, your privilege and power is to convert all that comes within your radius into what you desire it to be. Minimize your fear of all effects in the negative, and take firm hold of the actual forces and mold them into whatever _you desire_.

Were you a sculptor and had a piece of marble before you, you would not feel obliged to chisel out of it a cat, because a cat chanced to be rubbing her head against your leg in a friendly way. While you would be conscious of the cat she would be something outside the realm of your perceptions when you struck your first blow upon the marble. You would build from your perceptions that have been brought to the foreground by your conceptions of the valuable.

Man must reach a certain plane in his development before he realizes there are things worthless and things of worth, and that he may possess which he will. But when the moral milestone is passed he sees the dawn of a new day that will bring him his hopes realized.

Thus, the way to attain truth is first to see it from the vantage-point that comes through illumination; then realize that the cosmic world possesses all the material you need for its development. What surrounds you that does not appeal to you, merely touches and draws attention to its existence, need come into your creation no more than the cat came into the artist's production.

Work

_By Irving N. Brant_

Let me once more in Druid forest wander, To gain its legacy of ancient lore; Make me its prophet, as I dreamed of yore, A priest, on holy mysteries to ponder. Lead me to realms of quiet, or the fonder Scenes of the rising sea's unruly roar. Or turn my gaze upon the vistaed floor Of quiet valleys, and the blue haze yonder On the opposing hills. Let me traverse The shadows of man's immemorial mind, The haunt of fear, joy, sorrow and despair, God-given wonder and the primal curse. Within the throbbing heart of humankind Give me my work, or let me perish there.

Some Magic and a Moral

_By Virginia H. Reichard_

Along in the early nineties as I was traveling in the West, selling shoes, I left the train at the little junction of Skywaw and surveyed the town. I found that the proverbial hotel, blacksmith shop, general store and a handful of houses, beside the depot, comprised the town.

After supper at the hotel, where I was waited upon by the landlord's pretty daughter, I asked about the storekeeper across the way and found to my surprise that he carried about a ten or twelve thousand dollar general stock which included everything from a sheepskin to a paper of needles. The farming country being so good, it was no wonder that this man did almost as big a business as many others in much larger towns, so the daughter told me, while the landlord himself chipped in with a question: "Why, don't you know this is just the richest spot in Wahoo County? In fact the ground is too rich. Just think of it--too rich to grow pumpkins."

"Why," I asked, "can't you grow pumpkins?"

With a smile of confidence that his joke was entirely new he replied: "The vines grow so fast it drags them over the ground and wears them out. Go up and see the storekeeper and if you sell him you get your money for the goods sure thing, for he sells for cash only."

I picked up my grips and started to see my man at once; found him standing in the door chewing a quid and spitting out into the street at any stray chicken or dog that chanced to wander by. As he stood there indifferent, expressionless, he looked the typical Westerner, with an air of "do as you darn please" about him; pants tucked into a pair of boots that were run over and worn off at the toe in a peculiar way that would indicate to a shoeologist that he was a sharp, keen trader, very suspicious of strangers, hard to strike a trade with unless he could see a hundred per cent in it for himself. In early days he had been a horse trader and a dealer in buffalo hides, and had never seen the time when he couldn't tell what o'clock it was better by the sun than by a watch; a hard man to approach on the shoe subject as his mind didn't seem to hover around shoes.

There must have been a depression in his skull where his bump of order was supposed to be, as from the general appearance it looked as if the devil had held an auction there the day before. I began my little "spiel" by telling my business--who I was, where I was from--and asked if my conversation would interest him at all if I talked about shoes for awhile, remarking incidentally: "You'll have some business now sure. Trade will get good right away, as I never opened up my samples in a man's store in my life but what customers came dropping in."

"Well, then, for God's sake open them up. I need the business all right enough," quoth he.

Then strange to say, as if to cinch what I had said, up rode six country boys on horseback, and in a minute the big strapping fellows came tramping in. You know the kind that work on a farm all day, ride to town to buy one pound of sugar for family use and ten pounds of chewing tobacco for their own use, and other articles in like proportion while they are having a good time.

Taking seats on the counter opposite, they began a lot of loud talking.

One picked up a turnip and began peeling it, poising it on the tip of his knife-blade, taking large bites, and never for a minute losing sight of what we were doing in the shoe line.

It took a lot of persuading to get the proprietor to look at my samples, but I soon noticed the shrewd gleam of his eyes that told that he had had hold of good leather before and was a much better judge of my line than I expected to find in such a place. But talk about exhorting! How I worked with that fellow. And after keeping it up for two whole hours--from seven until nine, I finally landed him, selling him a little over five hundred dollars' worth of shoes. As I was getting a straight eight per cent commission at that time, the sale made me a little over forty dollars for two hours' work, and I was feeling mighty good. Even my cold-blooded customer had warmed up some from the effects of the deal on which he saw he was bound to make a good thing.

While I was packing up my samples he said, sort of edging around: "Say, can't you sing us a song or dance us a jig or do something to entertain us all? You travelin' fellers allus know somethin' new, and are up to whatever is goin' on over the country, ain't ye?"

I replied: "I can't sing; I am out of voice; but if you can furnish the music I can dance a jig or clog. Oh, by the way, did you ever see any sleight of hand or legerdemain tricks?"

None of them ever had; didn't even know what they were, and solemnly assured me they were something new in that burg.

As I had been practicing coin tricks and other feats of sleight of hand for the last ten years and could do many of the former, making the coins appear and disappear at will in a mysterious manner, I decided to try this form of amusement, thinking I had an easy bunch to work on. So I showed them a silver dollar, giving it to one of them to examine, passing it on to each one of them in succession, just to show them that it was a genuine, everyday piece. Then taking it in my hand, I proceeded to manipulate the coin by picking it out from underneath one fellow's foot as he sat on the counter dangling his long legs; taking it from another fellow's chin; picking it out from the pocket of the jumper one of them had on; finding it in the next man's ear; and finally, coming to the proprietor, I told him to hold his thumb and finger together, pointing up; then took the coin from between his own thumb and finger without his realizing how it got there or how it got away. I caught his startled look--the fellows jumped down off the counter and crowded close together--wonder and amazement written all over them. This was the first time in their lives they had ever seen a sleight of hand trick, where the motion of the hand is so quick the sight cannot follow it.

But presto, chango, begono, magico, came near being too much for them. They were absolutely horror stricken. Some of them were unable to speak; some were afraid to; others couldn't speak above a whisper; and one of these desired to know when I would be back in that country again. He wanted Brother Bill to see it; in fact he would like to bring the whole family in.

The proprietor's face was a study. Doubt, surprise and suspicion passed over his face in succession, but gave way to fresh curiosity when I asked him to bring me two hats and I would do Hermann's parlor trick with two hats and four balls. The method of doing this is to place the four balls in a square about three feet apart on a counter or a table, then place the hats over two of the balls; the object being to find all four balls under one hat, without, of course, anybody seeing how they got there. This I accomplished successfully, and this performance seemed to bring them close to the limit. They had been craning their necks to see, but when it was over they all straightened up, took a step backward in line and looked at one another. Then one of them said solemnly:

"Folks is gettin' geniuser and geniuser every day, boys. Ain't it so?" And Pete nudged Jim to make sure it was no dream, then spat excitedly on the rusty stove.

The proprietor had been eyeing me with suspicion for a good while. I noticed whenever I would pass in front of him he would step back and plant his hands tight on his pockets where he kept his money, as if he thought I might somehow coax it to jump out unless he held it in by main force. Legerdemain had scared him some and made him both suspicious and wary.

Pretty soon I began to realize I had done a little too much; in fact, I had given them a little more than they had been able to digest. But like many another fool who has overstepped, I tried to make up by giving them something in another line.

The proprietor looked up with a distrustful glance. "Is that all you can do?"

"That's all in the trick line, gentlemen. But I have something that I can do that is out of the line of tricks. It's a gift--mind-reading. Only about one in six millions has it. I do the same as Brown, Johnson or Bishop--those big guns you have heard about--in finding any given object. And if you, sir (to the proprietor), will place your mind on any one of the ten thousand articles in this store, concentrating your mind on it, I will get the object you are thinking about and hand it to you."

"You can't do that; it ain't possible," he said.

One of the boys spoke up: "Aw, let him try, Dan. Gosh! Let him try."

After looking around the store and meditating a little he said: "Durn it all, then, go ahead. I've picked out the thing I want you to get and by jigger I'll keep my mind on it all right."