Prairie Gold Part 7

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 sh.o.r.e 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."

"G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+rt, 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 pa.s.sion, 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "DING" BY WING]

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 cla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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, G.o.d-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 b.u.mp 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."