A String of Amber Beads Part 1

A String of Amber Beads.

by Martha Everts Holden.

I.

"I DIDN'T THINK."

"I didn't think!" A woman flings the whiteness of her reputation in the dust, and, waking to the realization of her loss when the cruel glare of the world's disapproval reveals it, she seeks to plead her thoughtlessness as an entreaty of the world's pardon. But the flint-hearted world is slow to grant it, if she be a woman. "You have thrown your rose in the dust, go live there with it," the world cries, and there is no appeal, although the dust become the grave of all that is bright and lovely and sweet in a thoughtless woman's really innocent life. A young girl flirts with a stranger on the street. The result is something disagreeable, and straight-way comes the excuse: "Why, I didn't think! I meant no harm; I just wanted to have a little fun."

Now, look me straight in the eye, young gossamer-head, while I tell you what I _know_. The girl who will flirt with strange men in public places, however harmless and innocent it may appear, places herself in that man's estimation upon a level with the most abandoned of her s.e.x and courts the same regard. Strong language, perhaps you think, but I tell you it is gospel truth, and I feel like going into orders and preaching from a pulpit whenever I see a thoughtless, gay and giddy girl tiptoeing her way upon the road that leads direct to destruction.

The boat that dances like a feather on the current a mile above Niagara's plunge is just as much lost as when it enters the swirling, swinging wrath of waters, unless some strong hand head it up stream and out of danger. A flirtation to-day is a ripple merely, but to-morrow it will be a breaker, and then a whirlpool, and after that comes hopeless loss of character. Girls, I have seen you gather up your roses from their vases at night and fold them away in damp paper to protect their loveliness for another day. I have seen you pluck the jewels like sun sparkles from your fingers and your ears, and lay them in velvet caskets which you locked with a silver key for safe beeping.

You do all this for flowers which a thousand suns shall duplicate in beauty, and for jewels for which a handful of dollars can reimburse your loss; but you are infinitely careless with the delicate rose of maidenliness, which, once faded, no summer s.h.i.+ning can ever woo back to freshness, and with the unsullied jewel of personal reputation which all the wealth of kings can never buy back again, once lost. See to it that you preserve that modesty and womanliness without which the prettiest girl in the world is no better than a bit of scentless lawn in a milliner's window, as compared to the white rose in the garden, around which the honey bees gather. See to it that you lock up the unsullied splendor of the jewel of your reputation as carefully as you do your diamonds, and carry the key within your heart of hearts.

II.

"STAY WHERE YOU ARE."

I received a letter the other day in which the writer said: "Amber, I want to come to the city and earn my living. What chance have I?" And I felt like posting back an immediate answer and saying: "Stay where you are." I didn't do it, though, for I knew it would be useless. The child is bound to come, and come she will. And she will drift into a third-rate Chicago boarding-house, than which if there is anything meaner--let us pray! And if she is pretty she will have to carry herself like snow on high hills to avoid contamination. If she is confiding and innocent the fate of that highly persecuted heroine of old-fas.h.i.+oned romance, Clarissa Harlowe, is before her. If she is homely the doors of opportunity are firmly closed against her. If she is smart she will perhaps succeed in earning enough money to pay her board bill and have sufficient left over to indulge in the maddening extravagance of an occasional paper of pins or a ball of tape! What if, after hard labor, and repeated failure, she does secure something like success? No sooner will she do so, than up will step some dapper youth who will beckon her over the border into the land where troubles just begin. She won't know how to sew, or bake, or make good coffee, for such arts are liable to be overlooked when a girl makes a career for herself, and so love will gallop away over the hills like a riderless steed, and happiness will flare like a light in a windy night. Oh, no, my little country maid, stay where you are, if you have a home and friends. Be content with fis.h.i.+ng for trout in the brook rather than cruising a stormy sea for whales. A great city is a cruel place for young lives. It takes them as the cider press takes juicy apples, sun-kissed and flavored with the breath of the hills, and crushes them into pulp. There is a spoonful of juice for each apple, but cider is cheap!

III.

A COWARDLY MATE.

I know a wife who is waiting, safe and sound in her father's home, for her young husband to earn the money single handed to make a home worthy of her acceptance. She makes me think of the first mate of a s.h.i.+p who should stay on sh.o.r.e until the captain tested the ability of his vessel to weather the storm. Back to your s.h.i.+p, you cowardly one! If the boat goes down, go down with it, but do not count yourself worthy of any fair weather you did not help to gain! A woman who will do all she can to win a man's love merely for the profit his purse is going to be to her, and will desert him when the cash runs low, is a bad woman and carries a bad heart in her bosom. Why, you are never really wedded until you have had dark days together. What earthly purpose would a cable serve that never was tested by a weight? Of what use is the tie that binds wedded hearts together if like a filament of floss it parts when the strain is brought to bear upon it? It is not when you are young, my dear, when the skies are blue and every wayside weed flaunts a summer blossom, that the story of your life is recorded. It is when "Darby and Joan" are faded and wasted and old, when poverty has nipped the roses, when trouble and want and care have flown like uncanny birds over their heads (but never yet nested in their hearts, thank G.o.d), that the completed chronicle of their lives furnishes the record over which heaven smiles or weeps.

IV.

THEY CARRY NO BANNER.

There never yet was a grand procession that was not accompanied, or, rather, in great measure made up of, followers and onlookers. So in this life parade of ours, with its ever varying pageant and brilliant display, there are comparatively few who carry banners, who disport the epaulette, and the gold lace. And sometimes, we who help swell the ranks of those who watch and wait, grow discouraged, almost thinking that life is a failure because it holds no gala-day for us, nothing but sober tints and quiet duties. What chance for any one, and a woman especially, to make a career for herself, tied down to a lot of precious babies, or la.s.sooed by ten thousand galloping cares! As well expect a rose to blossom in midwinter hedges, or a lark to sing in a snowstorm, as to look for bloom and song in such a life! But just bend down your ear a minute, poor, tired, overworked and troubled sister, I have a special word for you. It is simply impossible for circ.u.mstances of any sort to overthrow the high spirit of one who believes in something yet to come and out of sight. What are poverty and adverse fate and mocking hopes and disappointed ambition to the soul which is only journeying through an unfriendly world to a heritage that cannot fail? As well might a flower complain of the rains that called it from the sod, of the winds that rocked it, and the cloudless noons that flamed above it, when June at last has lightly laid the coronal of summer's perfect bloom upon its bending bough. We shall find our June somewhere, never fear. Be content then a little longer with uncongenial surroundings and a life that knows no outlook of hope. Be all the sweeter and the stronger and the braver that the way is short.

To-morrow, in the Palace of Love, the dark and unfriendly inn that sheltered us for a night upon the way, shall be forgotten.

V.

SHUT IN.

Were you ever shut in by a fog? Lost at mid-day in a soundless, rayless world of nebulous vapor--so seemingly alone in the universe that your voice found no echo, and your ears caught no footfall in all the vast domain of silence about you? The other morning, when I left the house, I paused in wonderment at the strange world into which I was about to plunge. All landmarks were gone, nothing but silver and gray left of nature's brilliant tints, not even so much shadow as an artist might use to accentuate a bird's wing in crayon--no heaven above, no earth beneath. The interior of a raised biscuit could not have been more densely uniform than the atmosphere. It seemed as if the world had slipped its moorings and drifted off its course into companionless s.p.a.ce, leaving me behind, as an ocean steamer sometimes leaves a straggler on an uninhabited sh.o.r.e. I felt like sending forth a call that should give my bearings and bring back a boat to the rescue. I groped my way down the steps, and, following an intuition, sought the station. Ahead of me I heard m.u.f.fled steps, yet saw no form. But suddenly a doorway opened in the east and out strode the sun. In the air above and about me, behold, the wonder of diamond domes and slender minarets traced in pearl! The wayside banks were fringed with crystal spray of downbeaten weed and bush that sparkled like the billows of a sunlit sea. The tall elms here and there towered like the masts of returning s.h.i.+ps, slow sailing from a wintry voyage back to summer lands and splendor. There was no sound in all the air, but the whole universe seemed singing as when the morning stars chorused the glory of G.o.d. More and more widely opened that doorway in the east; step by step advanced the great magician, and over all the world the splendor grew, until it seemed too much for mortal eyes to bear, when lo! a touch dispelled it all and commonplace day stood revealed.

VI.

THE CIRCLING YEAR--A CLOCK.

The circling year is a clock whereon nature writes the hours in blossoms. First come the wind flowers and the violets, they denote the early morning hours and are quickly pa.s.sed. The forenoon is marked by lilacs, apple blooms and roses. The day's meridian is reached with lilies, red carnations, and the dusky splendor of pansies and pa.s.sion flowers. Then come the languid poppy and the prim little 4 o'clock, the marigold, the sweet pea, and later the dahlia and the many-tinted chrysanthemum to mark the day's decline. Lastly the goldenrod, the aster and the gentian, tell us it is evening time, and night and frost are close at hand. The rose hour has struck already for '93. The garden beds are full of scattered petals and the dusty roadways glimmer with ghostly blossoms too wan to be roses, and wafted by a breath into nothingness. With such a calendar to mark the advance of decay and death the seasons differ from the mortal race which subst.i.tutes aches and pains for a horologe of flowers, and grows old by processes of physical failure and mental blight.

VII.

SOMETHING BETTER THAN SURFACE MANNERS.

There are days when my heart is so full of love for young girls that as I pa.s.s them on the street I feel myself smiling as one does to walk by a garden of daffodils. And when I see how careful some of them are to be circ.u.mspect and demure, I think to myself how fine a thing it is, to be sure, to have good manners! How happy the parent whose young daughter knows just how to hold her hands in company, just how and when to smile, just how to enter a room or gracefully leave it. Easy, indeed, must lie the head of that mother who is secure in the knowledge that her daughter will never make a false step in the stately minuet of etiquette, or strike a discordant note in the festival of life; that she will never laugh too loud, nor turn her head in the street, even when the gay and glittering "king of the cannibal isles" rides by, nor do anything odd or queer or unconventional. To the mother who believes that good manners can be taught in books and conned in dancing schools, there is something to satisfy the heart's finest craving in a strictly conventional daughter, who thinks and acts and speaks by rule, and whose life is like the life of an apricot, canned, or a music box wound up with a key. But to my thinking, my dear, good manners are not put on and off like varying fas.h.i.+ons, nor done up like sweetmeats, pound for pound, and kept in the storeroom for state occasions. They strike root from the heart out, and the prettiest manners in the world are only the blossoming of a good heart. Surface manners are like cut flowers stuck in a shallow gla.s.s with just enough water to keep them fresh an hour or so, but the courtesy that has its growth in the heart is like the rosebush in the garden that no inclement season can kill, and no dark day force to forego the unfolding of a bud.

VIII.

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.

I am more and more convinced the longer I live that the very best advice that was ever given from friend to friend is contained in those four words: "Mind your own business." The following of it would save many a heartache. Its observance would insure against every sort of wrangling. When we mind our own business we are sure of success in what we undertake, and may count upon a glorious immunity from failure.

When the husbandman harvests a crop by hanging over the fence and watching his neighbor hoe weeds, it will be time for you and for me to achieve renown in any undertaking in which we do not exclusively mind our own business. If I had a family of young folks to give advice to, my early, late and constant admonition would be always and everywhere to "mind their own business." Thus should they woo harmony and peace, and live to enjoy something like the completeness of life.

IX.

THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE ME MOST WEARY.

In the ups and downs and hithers and thithers of an eventful life shall I tell you the people who have made me the most weary? It is not the bad people, nor the foolish people; we can get along with all such because of a streak of common humanity in us all, but I cannot survive without extreme la.s.situde the decorous people; those who slip through life without sound or sparkle, those who behave themselves upon every occasion, and would pa.s.s through a dynamite explosion without rumpling a hair; those who never have done anything out of the way and never will, simply for the same reason that a fish cannot perspire--no blood in 'em! Cut them and they would run cold sap, like a maple tree in April. Such people are always frightened to death for fear of what the world is going to say about them. They are under everlasting bonds to keep the peace. I wonder that they ever un-bend to kiss their children. If one of them lived in my house I should stick pins in him.

Morality and goodness that lie no deeper than "behavior" are like the veneering they put on cheap tables--very tawdry and soon peeled off.

X.

NOTHING SO GRAND AS FORCE.

Reading about the superb management of the big fire the other day, a certain girl of my acquaintance remarked: "Is there anything so grand in a man as force? In my estimation those firemen and the chief who so splendidly controlled them are as far superior to the dancing youth, we meet at parties and hops, as meat is better than foam." Put that into your pipe, you callow striplings, who aim to be lady-killers! It is not your tennis suits, nor your small feet, nor your ability to dance and lead the german that makes a woman's heart kindle at your approach.

It is your response to an emergency, your muscle in a tilt against odds, your endurance and force, that will win the way to feminine regard. As for me there is something pathetic in the sight of a big, handsome fellow in dancing pumps and a Prince Albert coat. I would rather see him swinging a blacksmith's hammer, or driving a plow through stony furrows if need be. The "original man" was not created to s.h.i.+ne in the military schottische or win his laurels in the berlin.